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Leia’s adoption was sudden. Bail had been speculating about Padme’s pregnancy for a while, but he never expected the outcome. The Chancellor had been in office far past his term and he certainly didn’t like the man, but he didn’t expect for the Empire to rise. Or maybe he did. Maybe he just didn’t want to see it.
He can remember Leia’s birth vividly, yet it all seemed to pass so quickly. When he looks back now, the memory takes on a sort of mist. Padme had looked so distressed. Who wouldn’t if they were going into double labor after finding out their lover had fallen to the dark side and murdered countless men, women, and children. She was always so strong, a fortress, it was strange to see her like that. She kept that same strength until her last breath, but there was a sadness to her that he hadn’t been shown before. A sorrow he couldn’t imagine.
The little boy, Luke, was first. He came to the world like a beacon of light, millions of stars with bright blue eyes. Leia was born only a few moments later. She was so small, no doubt both the twins were premature. She barely cried at all and her big brown eyes were like the abyss between the stars. Obi-wan was next to Padme until her life flickered out. Bail could tell that he was trying to be strong for her, when his soft smile faded to a look of exhaustion. Both of them were broken and burned from the events of the past few hours. It had been hard to come to terms with how life would continue with the Empire, but they would all do their best to make due.
Only a few minutes later they were discussing what they would do with the children, what with Padme being gone. It was a shocking truth to accept. She had been his co-worker, yes, yet there had always been something so special about her and he considered her a close friend for a very long time. They worked together in and out of the senate, and she had gotten him into more than his fair share of trouble. She was one of the most genuine people in his line of work and one of the most remarkable people he knew.
The boy was sent to Tatooine. What an unforgiving place to send a baby. Hopefully, the Skywalker blood running through his veins would keep him safe. He agreed to take Leia, afterall Breha and himself had always wanted a little girl and she needed protection. It always felt strange. Looking at this newborn, knowing who her parents were and what happened to them. Anxious, headstrong, impossible Anakin and wonderful, dangerous, empathetic Padme. One, gone too early from this galaxy, and the other a monster enslaved to the Emperor. Her birth mother had known her for but seconds before she was gone, and her father would never know about her if Bail had anything to say about it. Somehow it felt like stealing, even though she needed a home and family. The circumstances felt too dirty.
No matter what, they couldn’t have been prepared for their Leia. Turns out she inherited a little more than they expected from her father.
A few weeks later Padme’s funeral was held. Hundreds showed up and somehow she looked ethereal. Her blue gown and brown curls flowing like the rivers of Naboo. Her body was made to look as if still pregnant, to hide the fact that the children were alive. His friend and his daughter had officially been pronounced dead.
Most of the time she seemed normal. Long brown hair braided tightly and a small pale frame. However, before he and Breha had had her a month, they could tell that her childhood wouldn’t exactly be a normal one.
They both knew of Anakin’s force-sensitivity. He was a Jedi of course, and a powerful one at that. The hero with no fear (ha!). But a few details might have been left out or undisclosed, because he must have been a little more than force-sensitive. Sure, normal force-sensitives would move things without touching them, read emotions easier, or jump higher, but he was certain they could not do the things that Leia did. They did not act like she acted. They did not seem to shift forms in the corner of your eye. They did not move with the sheer grace and power she had. The walls did not seem to shake with their anger, the air crackling with their fury. He could only assume that these things came from Anakin, because she certainly didn’t get it from Padme.
Nonetheless Bail tried his best to raise her the best he could. He certainly wasn’t prepared to raise a force-sensitive child, but a daughter who sometimes forgot about her mortal constraints was a whole different beast. Easier in some ways, but harder in most. He and Breha took well to being parents. They loved Leia with everything they had in them. They would sit on the balcony looking at the frost covered mountains and rushing waterfalls that their daughter loved so much. They would make tea and snuggle up on the sofa cuddling her small body, even though it felt like she was the one surrounding them. He would teach her to write stories to let her release her wild self into better outlets. Breha would sit and talk with her while braiding her flowing hair. They absolutely adored it, even if it was sometimes more than they could handle.
He woke up when the stars were still visible one night. Leia was nine then and she had been having strange nightmares all week and he had gotten used to checking on her in the middle of the night. He quietly got out of bed, trying not to wake Breha, and started to make his way to Leia’s room. They may have lived in the royal castle of Alderaan with enough space for each of them to have their own wing, but neither of them could bear to have Leia’s room too far away from their own.
He turned a corner and eyes peeked out of her room. At first a primal part of his brain mistook them for that of a wolf-cat or snow owl, because of their glossy reflection in the pitch black of the hall. A second later all he saw was his daughter standing in her doorway, waiting for him to arrive and comfort her.
“Hey sweet girl, couldn’t sleep again?” he came up to her and hugged her small body to his own. He had a feeling she would always be somewhat small, she definitely inherited her stature from Padme.
“Yeah,” she spoke in a timid voice, as if hesitant to talk.
He slowly lifted her into his arms, letting her rest on his chest, and walked back into her room. The curtains were drawn to let the subtle starlight through the balcony window, and her white sheets and blankets had been strewn across the bed as if she could not bear to have the weight holding her down.
He gently placed her on the bed, and pulled the covers up to her chin. He sat down on the bed beside her and started to stroke her soft hair.
“Do you want to talk about your dream, my princess?” She gave him a hesitant look, her eyes shifting to the extra pillow she held close. She started fiddling with her tiny fingers before she answered.
“I saw a boy,” was all she said before she looked back up at him.
“Oh yeah? And who was this boy, someone from your school?” he asked in a teasing manner.
“No!” she let out a grumpy huff for his quip, “I had never seen him before. He seemed nice. We were in a desert,”
Huh. His mind automatically went to Luke. A nice boy in a desert. Leia’s brother who had been sent away to a planet with twin suns so long ago. Was this some kind of weird force thing he should be worried about? Was this a strange Leia thing he should be worried about?
“Okay... what was this boy in the desert like? How did you see him?” She scratched her scalp and scrunched up her little nose, as if formulating an answer to his question was a task that needed time. Maybe it was, maybe her dream would seem incomprehensible to him.
“I was having another nightmare, it was about the scary man with the mask again, and I was really really afraid. Then, when I was afraid, he showed up and helped me not be afraid. We went to a desert and we hugged and he was very nice. He was warm, not like the mountains, they’re cold. Like the sun or that lake we went to with momma,”
“Well he sounds like a very kind dream boy, I’m glad he helped you not be afraid,”
“Me too,” She let out a little nod as her eyes started to drift closed. It was still late and her tiny body was definitely exhausted.
He gave a final stroke to her face as she drifted off to sleep. He got up from the bed and left the door open by a little as he left the room.
When he got back into his own bed with Breha his mind couldn’t help but go back to Leia’s dream. He had no doubt that the boy in the desert had been her brother. Now, whether it was just her imagining her long separated twin or somehow he really had found a way to comfort her in the confines of her young mind, he could not say. It was moments like these where he wished any information on the Jedi had not been banished or burned or stolen. Maybe some texts could have helped him understand his daughter’s situation more.
He wondered how the little boy was doing. If his hair had been bleached by the bright suns, if his skin had been damaged by the grueling sandstorms, if he was content in his freedom far away from watchful eyes. He wondered how it would have been if he had been able to take both of the twins with him to live on Alderaan. How it would have been if Leia had grown up with her other half, her opposite, her equal, her brother. Someone able to truly understand what she was going through. Someone able to understand what she was.
A part of the thought comforted him. Would they be able to connect with each other? Would she finally have someone that could understand her experience of the world?
A part of the thought scared him. That even after all they had gone through to keep them safe and seperate, they had found a way back to each other. Did this mean they were both in greater danger? Would the Emperor or Vader somehow know?
He didn’t sleep any more that night.
From then on, they tried to teach her. Not only as the daughter of royalty and a politician, but to keep her hidden from the Emperor. They taught her how to blend in, how to hide her otherness from those around her.
She eventually learned to only show the body that everyone expected. She learned to only respond to the words people spoke out loud, instead of the thoughts that ran through their heads. She learned to show her sweet smile instead of the sharp toothy grin of a predator.
It wasn’t easy at first. He knew that the powers of normal force-sensitives could fade away and become dormant with time, but Leia was different. It was as if these things were just a part of her. Second nature, something that couldn’t truly fade away.
Before he had left for Tatooine with Luke, Obi-wan had taught him about the Jedi’s tactic of mental shielding. A way for them to hide their overwhelming presences in the force from others. He tried to teach Leia the best he could, but he was no Jedi. He never truly grasped the force. But he tried. Eventually, she learned to shield on her own, it becoming another part of her second nature.
She never really got the chance to talk with any other force-sensitives. Most of them were taken by Vader’s inquisitors so that they couldn’t become Jedi. Just last week a little boy had been taken from Alderaan. Breha, Bail, and the boy’s guardians did everything in their power to try to stop the inquisitors that came. In the end they failed and the boy was taken from them. That day had set a new fear into Breha and himself. They would never let their daughter succumb to the same fate. They would never let her be taken into the hands of the Empire.
They continued to teach her. The rules of formal gatherings. The minute social cues within politics. How to tear down adversaries with words. How to style the most intricate braids of their planet. And how to hide herself from the Empire.
When she was around four she had found a little white bird in the gardens. Breha had been with her when it happened. Leia showed it to him and kept asking if she could help it, to make it feel better. He had told her that it couldn’t stay in the house and it would have to go back outside. She walked off, a dejected look on her face. Probably going to create a bed for the injured bird anyways.
“Bail,”
“Hmm,” he looked over at his wife who had just spoken. She was staring off into the corridor that Leia had just left through.
“I think she did it,” He gave her a puzzled look at that.
“What do you mean dearest?” He knew what she meant, but he wasn’t going to be the one to say it.
“Leia, I think she made the bird fall,”
“Why’s that?” She turned to him, putting one of her hands to his chest and moving her head to look into his eyes.
“I can't say. She was playing in the garden, and I was sitting a few feet away on a bench. She was acting normal, running around, getting grass stains on her dress, finding flowers, rocks, and bugs and putting them on the bench beside me to add to her collections,” He let out a small laugh. If she could Leia would spend all her time outdoors playing, if that wasn’t an option she would spend it around the house trying to draw anything and everything. Her imagination had always been so vivid.
“Then there was a flock of birds flying overhead in an X formation. She peered up at them with the strangest look on her face. I just can’t place it. Then, it fell. One of the smaller ones, flying at the back. It dropped right in front of her. She crouched down and just... stared at it. The poor thing. And- and well. I can’t say for sure. But... I don’t know it’s silly,”
“No, what were you going to say, love,”
“She- she seemed to look different. I don’t know what it was, Bail. She- it looked like she had wings, it looked like she was glowing. It looked like the light and color from the world was being sucked towards her like a vacuum, while simultaneously it all flowed from her. I know it’s impossible. I know it’s insane, but she didn’t look like our daughter. I- for a second I was almost scared of her. I had the sense that she could do so much more than she let on. That my daughter in the form of this… thing, could rip the universe apart in mere seconds,” Breha had a distant look to her eyes, back to staring at the corridor. The sun from the room faded as a cloud passed over the sun, turning the white furnishings to grey.
“Then she looked back at me like everything was normal, everything seemed fine again. She picked up the little thing and brought it to me. She was smiling, but I think she saw the look on my face. She looked confused. Then- then she apologized, Bail. I don’t want to know what for, but she just looked up to me and said ‘sorry momma’. She did genuinely seem sorry, she looked sad. And a second later, she was asking if she could help to heal it. ‘To make it feel better’ she said, those were her exact words,”
“I’m- I’m sure it was just a trick of the light. I- Leia is fine, I’m sure it was just coincidence,” He stroked her hair as she came in for a hug, rapping her arms softly around his abdomen, “It’s fine love, everything is fine,” He had wanted to hear, wanted to finally hear someone else recognize that their daughter wasn’t normal. That she wasn’t always completely human. He had wanted to hear those words for so long, but now they just felt sour. Like it wasn’t something they were supposed to recognize. Like it was forbidden for those who managed to notice, to speak of it.
That was the first and last time they talked about Leia’s otherness.
The next day she brought the bird out of her room to release it. It had been completely healed.
Leia was eleven. He was looking at one of his old holo-recordings when she walked into his office, coming to see him after one of her language classes. The holo was from the first year of the Clone Wars. It was of a gathering between him and a few other senators. Mon Mothma sitting quietly and enjoying the Toniray wine from Alderaan. Bail conversing with Senator Farr and Senator Chuchi. Finally sitting in one of the chairs in a blood orange gown was Padme Amidala. It looked like she was simply listening to the other’s conversations, witnessing their joy with a smile on her face. If he remembers correctly they had just passed a bill in the senate that would bring better welfare to the people of Coruscant, neglected during the war.
Leia walked around his desk to get a better look at what he was doing. She was wearing a simple white short bell sleeved tunic, a pair of trousers, silver flats, and her hair was up with two looped braids going into a bun. She peaked over his shoulder to get a look at the holo, a little grin on her face.
“What’s that?”
“This is a holo from the Clone Wars,” he looked over at her, knowing her curiosity had been sparked.
“Really!” she pulled up a chair from the other side of the office and sat down in it next to him, “Who are the people in it?”
“Well, that’s Mon Mothma and that’s Riyo Chuchi, they both still work in the senate with me,” She gave him a smirk.
“Dad, I’ve met Senator Mothma and Senator Chuchi before. Who are the other people?”
“The Rodian is Onaconda Farr, he died early in the second year of the Clone Wars,” He failed to mention that he had been assassinated. He didn’t really want to tell his eleven year old daughter the story of a co-worker being murdered, “and this right here, is Padme Amidala. She died at the end of the war when the Empire rose to power,” Bail, suddenly reminded of his friend's untimely death, took a breath to calm down and looked over towards his daughter.
She was staring quizzically at the blue shifting form of Padme.
“What is it, sweet girl?” She shook her head as if to remove herself from a trance.
“Oh, nothing. I think. I thought I recognized her,” This was no doubt more force shenanigans Bail hadn't signed up for.
“Does she look familiar to you?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” she locked eyes with him, still looking slightly puzzled, “I feel like I recognize her but I can’t place when I might have met her,” She looked back to the holo.
“I’m sure it’s nothing. Can you tell me more about when it was taken?” Bail gave a short laugh as his daughter’s face shifted to a smile. She always loved hearing stories of his time as a senator during the Age of the Republic.
Later that day he sat down with Breha and they decided to tell Leia about her birth mother.
Leia walked into their bedroom in one of her nightgowns, her hair down falling to her waist, it was just about time for her to go to sleep. She nervously walked to the bed and sat down on the side opposite them. She probably sensed that this was going to be a more serious conversation, something quite rare among their little family.
“You guys wanted to talk to me,” it wasn’t a question, it was a statement, but Breha still gave her an answer.
“Yes, sweetheart, there’s something we want to tell you. Come here,” Breha waved her hands motioning Leia to come closer. Leia shifted and moved herself in between the both of them resting against the headboard. It was dark in the room with only some of the light shining in from outside. Alderaan had no moon, so the only night lights came from stars and the occasional man made fixture.
“What is it?” She asked as she looked between the both of them. Breha looked over at him with a nervousness to her eyes. He decided to answer the question of the night.
“We wanted to tell you about your birth mother,” Leia let out a little gasp and glanced up at him. He knew that she always thought of them as her true parents, she had said so when she figured out that she had been adopted, but she had definitely always been at least a little curious about her birth parents.
“What- what about her?” She tried to fake nonchalance to hide her enthusiasm at the topic. She probably never wanted to bring it up, thinking that it might hurt the feelings of her mother and father.
“Remember the holo I showed you earlier today?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with my birth mom?” She gave him a skeptical look, as if the two had absolutely no correlation. He supposed that to her, they couldn’t have.
“The woman, Senator Amidala, she was your mother,” Leia’s eyes widened slightly but she did not make any sound. She looked forward, her brows hunched in thought.
“Oh, and she was the one who died at the end of the war, yeah?” She still looked perplexed, but the idea had seemed to become a little less jarring.
“Yes, little one, she had been injured, and she died a little after giving birth to you. You’re mother and I decided to raise you as our own. She was a dear friend of mine,”
“Huh,” Leia seemed to think for a second, “I think that’s why I recognized her,”
“What do you mean sweetheart?” Breha asked petting Leia’s long hair.
“When dad showed me the holo earlier I thought I recognized her. If I still got to see her after I was born I must have memories of her. It feels a little clearer now. When I was little, I would sometimes see a sad looking beautiful blue woman with flowers in her hair. I must have made one of my imaginary friends to look like my birth mother,” Breha gave him a questioning look. Padme had only been alive for a few seconds after Leia’s birth, and she hadn’t even opened her eyes by the time that Padme had died. He replied with his own look of confusion. Did Padme still exist somehow? Everything he was told by the Jedi he knew, was that the afterlife simply didn’t exist. Did Leia somehow conjure the perfect image of her deceased mother for an imaginary friend?
“What about my birth father?” Bail gets pulled from his line of questioning as Leia looked up at him with curious eyes. Bail looked over to Breha in panic. They hadn’t really planned to talk about Anakin. She gave him a reassuring look, trusting him with the situation.
“You’re father wasn’t around much during the war. He was busy, and his job took him all around the galaxy. He was loving and strong, but he was also gone by the end of the war,” She had no way of knowing how true those words were, and had no way of knowing the implications. She probably took it as both of her birth parents dying at the end of the war. She had no way of knowing that he was still so alive. That he just used a different name now, and had forgotten what it was like to feel that love for another.
“What was his name?” Bail showed a small smile to his daughter.
“His name was Anakin,”
“Huh, Anakin Amidala,” Bail and Breha both let out bits of laughter, though surely not for the reason their daughter guessed.
“Thank you for telling me,” Leia looked between the two of them, still looking halfway between confused, sad, and interested. They wrapped their arms around her and gave her a tight hug. She slept in their bed that night, snuggled between them. Safe and warm. She didn’t talk about her birth parents again till years later, when her world had completely shifted.
Leia seemed fearless all her life. She was always making the bold decisions, always spoke her mind. No doubt, she was more than a little hot-headed.
When she was a little girl, only about six years old, she had cut off her hair without telling Bail, her mother, or any of the staff. When Breha had asked for an explanation, crouched down to be at Leia’s level taking her tiny hands into her larger ones, all she had said was that it was correct. The only answer she had was that cutting off fifty galactic standard centimeters of hair from her head had simply been the correct thing to do at that moment. Breha tried her best to braid the new bob into a simple crown for the gala they were hosting that night. By the end of the event little strands had been falling from the elaborate hairstyle. It took about three years for it to grow back to her regular length.
When she was twelve in primary school, a low ranking imperial had come to talk to her class about the so called glory of the empire, something mandatory for most core worlds. Leia had simply started arguing with the man in the middle of the lecture, surely spewing some of the things Bail and Breha had said within the private walls of their home. She got detention that day, but neither Bail or her mother could try and fake anger.
At sixteen she couldn’t help sneaking out of lessons to play and train with her friends. She had always had trouble making friends. She could interact with people just fine, but it was hard for her to get close to them. Or maybe they didn’t want to get close to her. She eventually gained the friendship of one Amilyn Holdo from the Apprentice legislature (which he suspected might have been more than a friendship), a servant girl from the castle, and two children from town. She protected them like a guardian angel at times, like she wanted to guard those most close to her from ever coming into harm's way.
Point is, Leia had always been bold and headstrong, and that would never change. This would only come to help her as a young rebel and politician. She discovered the Rebel Alliance Bail had been helping to form and lead not soon after she turned sixteen, and she would become one of it’s most daring members.
She started taking classes on how to use a blaster and how to defend herself on top of her school work and political work. Her battle prowess was another thing he added to the list of otherness. She was just so naturally skilled. Her work with a blaster was almost always perfect, and she could fight with the best of them. He knew Jedi had the ability to predict the movements of their foes in a way, but this was something more. This was something even more unnatural than the Jedi. And she took glee in it. She seemed to enjoy the fighting and the adrenaline and the winning and the bruises.
She started volunteering for humanitarian missions left and right. Bail couldn’t have gotten her to stop if he tried. He would say that she became obsessively devoted to the cause, but that would have been hypocrisy at the highest level. He was somewhat joyous that she discovered the Rebellion. As much as it scared him that she was putting herself into so much danger, it was nice to know that he didn’t have to hide his most important work from her. It was nice that his daughter was as invested and interested in the cause as he was. It was amazing to have such a brave and talented and caring person as his daughter.
One week she went on a mission to Lothal when she was seventeen. It was simple enough. She was supposed to bring three Sphyrna-class Hammerhead corvettes to the rebels there. The Phoenix Squadron who Ahsoka had taken a liking to. He didn’t really think of the implications of that.
When she got back all she talked about were the Mandalorian girl and the two Jedi. Beskar this, lightsabers that. It wasn’t too surprising. There was a shortage of kids her age in the Rebellion and most of them worked as pilots. It must have been interesting to meet two different people her age that went on the sort of missions Phoenix Squadron and the Ghost crew tended to favor. It made Bail anxious though.
She started researching what she could about the cultures of those individuals soon after. Something Bail was hoping wouldn’t happen. The Mandalorians weren’t as bad, but he remembered the conflicts during the Clone Wars and their shared history with the Jedi. Now, having Leia researching the Jedi was an even more dangerous idea. They’d be in an even more precarious situation if Leia found out she was force-sensitive, or somehow found out about the famous war hero Anakin Skywalker. So he encouraged her to go to him for information. There wasn’t much she could learn under the Empire anyways.
He told her the stories he could about the Jedi before and during the Clone Wars. Her favorite stories were of General Skywalker, General Kenobi, and Commander Tano. He tried to talk as little as he could about the former, but she was more interested in the tales of Obi-wan Kenobi and Ahsoka Tano anyways. He told her about the missions he only learned of from a second hand source, and the ones he had the “luxury” of experiencing first hand.
A few weeks later she was tasked with bringing data tapes of imperial military bases to those same rebels. At least she had friends in the Rebellion she was so devoted to.
Soon she took his place in the senate, so he could spend more of his time on the growing cause. The youngest senator to ever serve. He couldn’t have been more proud. Her aunts and the media argued, but they didn’t know how ready she was. They didn’t know how much she had wanted it. He trusted her with his life, even around those highest up in the Empire.
That is to say, she knew of Palpatine and Vader. Of course she did. How could you live under the Empire and not know of it’s Emperor and his loyal emissary. However, he had never let her come into close contact with either. How could he? Both were powerful in the force, and knowing what he now knows about both of them, they could have easily sensed that she was too. The idea of finding out she was Anakin and Padme’s daughter wasn’t even a farfetched thought. In the senate she would have to come into contact with them. Having frequent senate sessions where Palpatine would most definitely be. This also meant she paid more attention to them.
He could notice her anger towards the both of them growing day by day. With every refused humanitarian mission, with every bit of fake sympathy, with every atrocity she discovered. He was somewhat surprised she didn’t just confront either one. She tried her best to fight them in the senate, even if most senators were just following Palpatine’s every wish.
Every mission she was allowed she would take, and soon enough the public actually started to recognize her efforts. The Rebellion and the people under the Empire’s thumb growing a soft spot for ‘their princess’. She became somewhat of a symbol within the Alliance. The princess from Alderaan. The one who always fought for the people most in need. A benevolent protector of sorts. She became an integral part of their sense of hope. That’s what she was to them. Hope. Peace. Freedom. Sometimes when she smiled he could see that too. That somehow this wonderful young woman would bring the galaxy back to a better time. That she would take everyone from the Twi’leks to the Wookies to the Tuskens into her protection and make this small spot in time and space right again.
He was so proud of her. He knew she would do such a great job on this mission. Sure, she was head-strong, she was bold and quick to anger, she was frightening with a blaster, she had strange dreams, she would seem as if she could become one with the air around her, she would stand as if her shadow didn’t shift and shake into unimaginable things, and she would lose herself in work and endless swirls of hyperspace, but she was also kind, strong, impossible, wonderful, and empathetic.
Jyn and Cassian, Rogue One, would get the Death Star plans to her. The Rebellion will be one step closer to protecting the galaxy.
Bail looked up at the swirling clouds of Alderaan as he stood on the landing platform. He felt love for his daughter, and a sense of peace.