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Her teeth snapped through the thread viciously. The garment looked no better for her hard work, but it was wearable now at the very least. She tugged it on over her thin undershirt, the coarse fabric protesting a bit against the billowy shirt.
"Oh, dear!" Aunt Beru's hands clasped over her mouth as Leia rushed into the kitchen, pouring whatever was left of the morning porridge into a bowl. "Leia… I see you mended that hole in your tunic."
"Yep." Leia dropped her bowl at the table and began to shovel the oversaturated nutrient flakes into her mouth. The milk had been absorbing for too long, and the lukewarm flakes clumped together like they'd been sitting in a bowl of paste. She didn't think to mind.
"I told you I would do that, didn't I?"
"Mm…" Leia looked up at her aunt, her spoon sticking out of the corner of her mouth. "Uh, maybe? It doesn't really matter."
Aunt Beru sighed as Leia went back to inhaling her breakfast. "Are we in a hurry today?" she asked, pouring Leia a glass of blue milk and setting it before her. She grasped it with both hands and tipped it back gratefully.
"I'm meeting Biggs and Windy before lessons today," Leia explained hastily, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Meeting Biggs and Windy… to go to lessons, I assume?"
Leia blinked up at her aunt innocently. "What else would we be doing?" she asked.
Aunt Beru watched her hesitantly. Leia smiled as if to assure her that her suspicions were unfounded, and then she hopped up and dumped her dishes in the sink. "Bye!"
"Leia!" Aunt Beru scolded. But Leia ignored her, bolting out of the Lars homestead and barreling into the sand and glittering morning suns.
It wasn't that she'd meant to be rude— Aunt Beru was a stickler for polite and heartfelt goodbyes, for whatever reason. Leia usually hugged and kissed her before trotting off to lessons, but today was different.
Today she was gonna fly.
Her soft soled shoes sunk into loose sand, as the trek from the Lars homestead to Beggar's Canyon hardly a comfortable one. It didn't take long, lucky for her, but she had to slide down a few sand dunes and duck for cover anxiously at the sound of distant shouting. The last thing she needed was to run into some Tusken Raiders.
"Look who finally made it," a scrawny, gap toothed boy crooned from the top of a rather large rock at the center of the canyon.
Leia made a rather obscene gesture she had seen a sleazy Rodian make once while on an errand with Uncle Owen in Mos Espa. "Eat it, Biggs."
"As much of a lady as ever," Biggs remarked, jumping off his rock and catching her in a headlock. Leia stomped on his foot and twisted out of his grasp before she had to resort to biting. "Ow— you know—!"
Windy laughed from his place on the rock, clapping slowly. "Always a show with you, Leia," he teased.
"I'll give you a show, Windy," Leia said heatedly, folding her arms across her chest. "When you watch me leave you in the dust, you'll wet yourself from pure amazement."
Leia didn't think herself invincible, per se— Leia was smarter than that, give her some credit. But she was a pretty cocky kid, all and all, and even as she spoke she grew a bit nervous at the prospect of losing. Even though that was impossible.
More likely one of them would die, but that was beside the point.
"Are we gonna do this, or what?" Leia called, brushing past Biggs toward the heap of scraps she'd managed to scrounge up with some scavenging, some slight of hand, and a lot of womp rat carcasses. She shot a grin at the boys as she climbed up into the cockpit. "Don't wanna be late for lessons, do you?"
"Girl's got a point," Windy pointed out.
"Girl's got a brain," Biggs jabbed. Windy scowled at him in response.
Leia listened to this exchange, half amused and half offended, while trying to get her helmet on right so it didn't obstruct her vision. It kept wobbling in front of her eyes stubbornly. Short, brief chuckles erupted from the boys' place on their rock, and she shot them a withering look. The helmet was her uncle's, something that had been stashed deep in the bowels of his bedroom in an unmarked crate of rubbish. Leia had gotten into the habit of nicking things from it.
"Well?" She buckled herself in with the flimsy, sun-beaten twin belts she'd ripped up from a crashed speeder nearby. The Jawas had been furious, but she'd traded them the engine she'd salvaged for the belts, knowing it was only really a back up in case she couldn't get this one working.
"We've only got one more speeder," Biggs scoffed, "hold your banthas, alright?"
"Yeah, yeah." Leia settled back in her seat as Windy and Biggs debated who would race against her. The morning suns were trickling white light across the battered clifftops of Beggar's Canyon, rays sliding north and south and east like pale fingers running across the sky. She could taste the heat on the rise, sunlight baking away the dregs of midnight chill and desert storms. Trickles of sweat were beginning to form at her hairline and the base of her neck. She closed her eyes and smiled.
She heard Biggs shout before she felt it. The dull roar of an engine pulling up behind her. She bolted upright, twisting in her seat to peer over her shoulder. A Skyhopper had appeared, and not a bad model at that. Leia blinked, and she turned her attention sharply to Biggs.
"I dunno!" He flung his hands into the air. "I didn't tell anyone— Windy?"
"Nah," Windy sniffed, shuffling anxiously on the rock. Biggs had leapt off, slowly approaching the stranger.
"Hey," Biggs called, waving his arms. "Brother, you here for something?"
"Cool it, Biggs," Leia hissed, unbuckling her belts hastily. The last thing they needed was for Biggs to get shot when they were supposed to be at lessons.
"Heard there was a race goin' on," a new, familiar voice said brightly. "You got room for one more?"
Leia hopped out of her speeder, her soft soled boots kicking up sand, and she tore off her helmet. Her braids tugged uselessly against the buckles.
"Nine hells," she breathed, shoving her helmet into Bigg's stomach as she passed him, "it's Cam Veruna."
"Ah," Cam gasped, clasping his hands together heartily, "it's the runt!"
"We're all runts, Cam," Leia said dully. "You're not even thirteen yet, you dried up wad of engine grease."
Cam Veruna was in fact much taller than Leia or Windy or even gangly Biggs. He was tall and strapping, his broad shoulders straight and strong from years and years of heavy lifting. He was human, just as dusty and malnourished as the rest of them, with the exception that he had real muscle peeking out of his drab black clothes. His mother had been a bounty hunter, but she'd bolted a few years after he'd been born. So he knew enough about being a scoundrel to become one.
Leia hated him.
"Always the charmer," Cam remarked. An older boy leaned out of the Skyhopper beside him, surveying the competition with cold blue eyes. "Am I really to race against the mouthiest little womp rat on this side of the Dune Sea?"
"Eat bantha fodder, you- you ingrate," Leia snapped, her nostrils flaring.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Biggs slid easily between them, her helmet hugged to his stomach. "Everyone please calm down. There's nothing wrong with some friendly competition, right?"
Leia bit her tongue, shooting a furious look up at the sky. This is anything but friendly, she thought ruefully, glancing at Cam's blasé little face.
"I want no trouble." Cam smirked at her, and she watched him with a cool gaze. Her arms were folded firmly across her chest, a scowl stuck on her lips. "I just want to prove that you're just slave whelp after all."
A silence fell like dusk across the canyon. Biggs stiffened, his eyes flitting toward his feet. Windy gaped from his perch on the rock, his face growing red in the burning yellow sunlight.
Leia lurched forward and tackled Cam to the ground.
It took a lot of force, mind you. Her initial assault only rocked him back, a short grunt of shock escaping him. She dug her toes into the sand and pushed, knocking him another step, and then another, until he backpedaled over a rock and they went crashing into the sand.
Biggs's distant shout went unheeded. She buried her fist into his stomach, jabbing him in the ribs, ducking his rapid and aimless swings at her head and then latching her fingers at his face.
Her scream pitched across the air, rising up high and echoing across the valley as she was snatched around the waist and torn off Cam's writhing body. He'd managed to knock her in the ear, and it was still ringing when Biggs dragged her kicking, lurching body away from him.
"Not so high and mighty now, are you?" She sneered, listening to him as he wheezed and cried. His older friend— Leia didn't know his name— leapt out of the speeder to help him sit up. His face was raw and bloody, a purpling bruise forming on his jaw beneath the trails of claw marks on his cheek.
"You kriffin' crazy!" Cam cried, tears running down his cheeks. Leia bared her teeth at him, stomping furiously as Biggs tightened his grip on her waist.
Leia gathered phlegm from the back of her throat and spittle from her mouth and spat at Cam's feet when his friend pulled him up.
"You don't deserve to lose to us," she snapped at him, lifting her head high. "Go tell daddy some little slave whelp messed up your face."
She tore away from Biggs, snatching her helmet out of his hands and hopping back into her speeder.
"Leia!" Biggs cried, taking half a step toward her before the engine roared and the repulsors hissed into life.
She dropped a pair of goggles over her eyes, and she shot forward through the canyon. The speed had her back pressed up against the seat, and she made impossible turns expertly, flitting over the dusty rocks and toothy crags. Sand and sunlight were all that existed, sand and sunlight speeding past her, sand and sunlight molding her.
When she was far enough away, tucked in a cranny that snaked round back and out of Beggar's Canyon, she turned off the ignition and tore the dusty goggles and helmet from her head. Her heart was thudding violently against her ribs, filling up the whole of her chest and making it ache. She inhaled and she exhaled and she rested her sweaty forehead against the yoke of the speeder.
Slave whelp, she thought, closing her eyes and listening to the subtle nothings of the desert morning. Good for nothing. What did grandmother think when ugly little bastards like that insulted her? What'd she do?
Leia couldn't imagine anyone just taking it, but she knew what slave mentalities were like. Their teacher, Ms. Rona, was a slave. Cam always joked that any day now, any day, they'd drag her out of the white clay dome that served as their makeshift schoolhouse and get taken to Jabba.
People like Cam deserved to eat sand for the rest of their lives.
She climbed out of her speeder, sniffling as she shuffled up onto a rock and sat down. It was cooler in the canyon than out on open sand, and she gratefully lounged in the shadows for a few minutes watching them inch away gradually. Tears streamed steadily down her cheeks, and she scrubbed them stubbornly. Her fingers scratched her, and a faint coppery smell tickled her nostrils. When she looked down at her hands, she saw that they were stained red. Blood had caught beneath her stubby nails and around her cuticles, gathered up in the creases of her skin and the edges of her calluses. Her knuckles were raw and open, blood drying around the busted flesh.
"Great," she muttered, closing her hands into fists and digging her bloody nails into her palms. "Aunt Beru'll have a field day with this."
For once, she thought she could probably get Uncle Owen on her side more than Aunt Beru. Uncle Owen had loved her grandmother, and when she'd been younger he had often taken her out to her grave. Shmi wasn't exactly a name often said in the house, but it wasn't taboo either. Not like her father's.
Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, and this time a sob accompanied it, bubbling up inside her chest and rolling off her tongue. She slid her knees up to her chest and heaved a deep breath.
It wasn't fair. Was any of this fair? If all she was meant for was moisture farming, why'd the gods make her so good at fixing? Why'd they give her a pit in her heart the size of the galaxy?
Why'd they give her the name Skywalker, anyhow?
She thought about her father again, and she swallowed another sob. She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and scowled at the sand. Her father. Anakin Skywalker, dead as a fried circuit. At least he had an excuse, unlike Cam's deadbeat mom.
Leia wondered about her mom. A shudder passed through her. Sometimes she thought she remembered her. Sometimes she could hear her sigh, when the night was dark and the desert was empty.
Sometimes Leia thought she heard her voice, calling from her distant past sweet and tender.
Something wonderful has happened!
Leia scraped off some dry blood on the rock.
"Something wonderful has happened," she said aloud, listening to her own raspy voice mimic those hushed, delicate words. She folded up her fingers and pressed her knuckles against the hot stone. The heat against her open wounds made her wince.
"Yeah? What's happened?"
Leia jerked to her feet, knuckles up to her chin as she whirled on whoever had snuck up on her. To her relief, Biggs hopped up on her rock and set a gentle hand on her wrist, pulling her fists down slowly.
"Easy there, Skygirl," he said lightly. "I'm not here to pick a fight."
"How'd you find me?" she huffed, dropping back to the ground and scowling into her knees. Biggs stood for a moment, shrugging his bony shoulders up to his ears. He sat down beside her and smiled.
"I knew the general direction you went in. I just scouted around for a bit until I saw this path. Figured you'd wanna lie low."
Leia groaned. She sniffed, and she thought to herself, Another fine mess I've gotten myself in. Uncle Owen's right, I gotta learn some self-control.
Not that she'd ever tell Uncle Owen he was right, but she'd let it weigh on her mind.
"He deserved it," she said, raising her chin from her knees and shooting Biggs a fierce look. "You know he deserved it, Biggs, you know it."
"I know it," Biggs admitted, albeit cautiously. "He's a bastard, and I hate him, but Leia was that all that necessary?"
"Teach him to look at me the wrong way twice," she sniffed.
"Leia," Biggs sighed. "He's gonna tell his dad. That's gonna scar, even if old Veruna's got some bacta lying around."
Leia considered his words carefully for a moment.
"You really think it'll scar?" she asked hopefully.
Biggs cracked a disbelieving smile, and he turned his head away to laugh discreetly. "You're impossible," he said.
"Yeah, yeah," Leia yawned. "That's why you love me. I'm a delight."
"Right…" Biggs's incredulity was uncalled for, so she elbowed him in the ribs.
"Eat it," she muttered. "I'm a kriffin' delight."
"Got the mouth to prove it, too."
"Damn straight."
Biggs grinned. He offered out his hand, and she took it gladly. He stood and pulled her up with him.
"Let's go," he said. "I'll bet we could find some cool bones out in the sand for awhile. Lessons will be there tomorrow."
"You wanna skip lessons altogether?" Leia asked, genuinely shocked and betrayed by the suggestion. She really did enjoy lessons, even if she didn't agree with half the things they taught.
"Aren't you the one who's always on about how they're indoctrinatin' us into a bogus system, and how it's all poodoo, just Imperial mandate and propos and the like?" Biggs shot her a look. A look. She shuffled guiltily in place.
"It's still interesting," she muttered.
"You're ridiculous. Let's go find some bones or fossils. Come on, Skygirl, live a little!"
"You say that to me again, and you ain't gonna be living at all," Leia snapped, marching past him and stepping off the rock. "Let's go."
Across the high sands and dipping into the low canyons, a song seemed to resonate. It was an old song.
How long? sang the dunes. How long will I thirst?
If the rock could weep, then it would make rivers of tears. Its sadness seeped through its restless crust and whispered woe and woe, how long, how long, how long?
How long had it been?
Obi-Wan Kenobi imagined this yellow ball turning slowly from space, and he wondered how long it could keep turning before it burned up.
The sands did not say. They merely sighed and sang and asked for a drink.
When the skies spoke, would they tell him to move on?
Somewhere close by, a light burned white hot on the desert sands. It burned with fury and it burned with life and it burned and burned with no sign of stopping.
When all was black and bleak and blown away by the unforgiving hand of fate, that light was there to anchor him. He meditated on that. The light that hummed along to the desert's song, quick and steady as a heartbeat. For all it was worth, it was his heartbeat he felt burning like a third sun on Tatooine's arid surface.
She was always moving, that little one. Every time Obi-Wan thought he had a lock on her and he could relax for a moment, her sunlit presence would shift and burst and dart away from his grasp. It was like trying to chart a comet's trail across the stars amidst a meteor shower.
He felt her now, a beacon that bathed warmth across his face— the first wash of sunshine after a long bout of darkness. She was in the desert again. Force, did that girl ever go home? He felt her nervousness, her anger, and her stubborn pride. It was all burning the way that the desert was singing and the way that he was longing but he felt nothing more concrete than that.
His eyes opened. The floor of his hovel was draped in shadows.
Night had fallen on Tatooine.
Yet Leia was not home, Obi-Wan realized. Leia was out in the desert, burning bright and angry like the molten rivers of Mustafar.
Obi-Wan leapt to his feet and summoned his lightsaber into his fist. "Force," he hissed, squeezing his eyes shut as he swept out of his home and into the cool night. "That stubborn girl…"
This was customary. He woke, he trimmed his beard, he meditated, he checked on Leia, he returned, ate little, meditated more, he practiced his katas, he meditated, and if need be he checked on Leia again.
Tatooine nights were something that always seemed to elude him. He thought he understood this planet, but then he stepped into the bitter cold and saw the galaxy stretch out before him, and he realized time and again that he knew nothing.
He moved quickly, following Leia's distinct force signature through the wastes, past the Lars homestead and out farther into bleak, black nothing.
He felt her before he heard her, and he heard her before he saw her. Embers were prickling his skin as she bellowed.
"I may be the daughter of a slave, but at least I've got the balls to stand here and defend him!"
Leia was standing among three boys— teenagers a few years older than she was. Obi-Wan listened, planting himself behind a rock and studying the boys' movements closely. One of them was the boy from that morning, that Veruna boy's friend. The other two were strangers.
"What's there to defend?" one boy scoffed. "You said it yourself, your pops was a slave and you ain't exactly living the good life."
"We live on Tatooine, sleemo," Leia said in a cold deadpan. "Nobody's living the good life if you ain't a Hutt, are you kidding me? Why am I even wasting my breath arguing with you imbeciles?"
"Because you're kriffin' crazy," muttered Veruna's friend, "and you like the challenge?"
"You dragged me out here for an apology, right?" Leia huffed, and she folded her arms across her chest. "Well, you can forget it."
"Who said we nabbed you for an apology, huh?"
Obi-Wan jumped up, sensing the imminent danger seconds too late. By the time he leapt over the rock and ran down the incline toward them, the scuffle had begun.
The last boy who had spoken had grabbed Leia's wrist, which she responded to by kicking him in the groin and wrenching her arm away with a vicious cry. She'd backed up into Veruna's friend, who had caught her around the waist. She'd stomped on his foot and broken free, elbowing him in the gut, but the third boy had raised his fist and smashed it right into her nose.
Obi-Wan slid between them, kicking the first boy down with a clean hit to the back of his legs, sweeping him off his feet. Leia was on the ground between the other two boys, sprawled across the sand. Obi-Wan whipped around in time to see the Veruna's friend was kneeling over her, a knife glinting in his fist.
A swell of disgust and horror swept over him. He felt sickness, crushing sickness, the fear of being alone swallowing him up. He had forgotten, how had he forgotten— the fear of losing someone was so raw and unrepentant, it devoured everything. It became you.
The boy's hand jerked, and he shrieked as his knife grazed his cheek seemingly out of nowhere. He jerked back, one of Leia's dark braids unraveling in his fist.
Obi-Wan reached over Leia and grabbed the boy by the front of his tunic, throwing him as hard as he could without the force into the third boy. They both toppled over with a shout, rolling in the sand as Obi-Wan knelt and turned Leia gingerly onto her back. His heart was thudding so fast, he felt as though these sands had melted away, and his muscles had grown taut in the tireless fighting on Naboo, Qui-Gon's eyes meeting his dimly, his last breaths beating on his face as his knuckle brushed a stray tear from his cheek.
Leia's mouth was parted to accept two streams of blood flooding from her nostrils. Sand clung to tufts of her uneven hair, and her eyes darted restlessly behind her eyelids. He pulled her gingerly into his lap, his fingers finding the pulse at her neck and finding solace in the steady rhythm.
She could have died, he thought numbly. It could have happened in an instant. Death comes so quickly, Master, and I have never been prepared for it, not once in my life, not for you, not for Satine, not for my brothers and sisters in the Order, not for Padmé, and she's just a child, she's so reckless and bold, she doesn't understand that this planet will kill her without mercy— Master, please, show me how to protect her, I'm begging you!
"Who do you think you are," the first boy started shakily, "interfering—?"
Obi-Wan did not even glance at the three teenagers as he held up his hand and listened to them scream as they went flying several feet across the sand. He scooped Leia up into his arms, cradling her head gingerly as he started back toward the Lars residence.
One of the boys cried, "You crazy old wizard!"
Obi-Wan just kept walking.
She was so light— so tiny and underfed that he worried for her. But he remembered how scrawny and malnourished Anakin had been all those years ago. He remembered. In this dark overcast of night, he could mistake Leia for her father, small and dusty and emaciated as he curled against his chest and slept.
Anakin had been such an awful, impetuous child, but Obi-Wan had been so grateful for his irrational fear of sleeping alone. He remembered how easily, how frequently he'd fallen into nightmares after Qui-Gon's death, how restless and cold their apartment had been as Obi-Wan and Anakin went night after night staring at the white ceilings from separate rooms until finally Anakin let himself in one night and crawled into bed beside him. Neither of them had spoken, and this arrangement had remained until Anakin was thirteen and very suddenly stopped coming.
How disappointing and illuminating it had been when Anakin had outgrown something Obi-Wan had still needed.
Obi-Wan paused when the girl in his arms stirred. She groaned, lifting her hand to her nose and then hissing in pain.
"Ah…" she moaned, "ah, kriff…"
Obi-Wan nearly chided her for her language, but considering they had never really been quite acquainted, he decided against it.
Leia's dark eyes opened slowly, first gazing dazedly up at the clusters of stars blazing above her, their reflections gleaming in her pupils. Then she blinked, and she found Obi-Wan's face. Her eyes widened.
"Don't fret, little one," Obi-Wan assured her quickly. "I'm taking you home right now, and then we can wash our hands of all this absurdity."
"No."
Obi-Wan looked down at her incredulously. "No?" he repeated.
Leia closed her eyes. She groaned, letting her head loll back unsteadily. "Please," she murmured. "Please don't let my aunt and uncle see me like this. Can I… you must not live far away, right?"
Obi-Wan didn't need to ask to understand where she was going with this. He adjusted his course so they would reach his home faster. He did not think of Owen Lars's wrath.
He did not think at all.
He just walked, and held this little girl so gingerly as though she might disintegrate at any moment. He was tired, and he was lonely, but she made it all so worth it.
She had fallen unconscious again, curled in his arms, her face tucked into his sleeve. He saw Padmé at times, when he observed her from afar. She was so intelligent, viciously witty and remarkably kind. At least to those who she deemed deserving of her kindness.
He wondered for not the first or the last time how her twin was fairing on Alderaan. If Bail was having as much difficulty wrangling the child of two impossibly willful individuals as Obi-Wan was.
Home came upon him in a hurry, appearing suddenly as he'd been walking and wondering. He nudged his door open and turned on the lights. They cast a yellowish glow around the small hovel, bathing everything in a dim glaze of honey gold.
Obi-Wan set Leia down carefully on his cot, draping a thin woolen blanket over her tiny shoulders. She shuddered and curled up beneath it, perhaps on instinct. Anakin had often slept like that. Even into his adulthood, he had sometimes caught Anakin curled up on one of the bunks in the cabins, his long legs tucked to his chest as he tried to make himself as scarce as possible.
Perhaps it had something to do with growing up on Tatooine.
He scrounged up some water into a bowl and set a rag beside it for when she woke up. After a little while of waiting for her to wake, he poured half the water in the bowl into a glass and waited longer. She slept soundly, a small bundle that made hardly a sound, and he was content with that. With this. With simply feeling her radiant force signature wash over him, reminding him that she was here and she was real. There was nothing to fear.
He had told himself he would not regret it. Years ago he had decided, and he had told himself that he could not regret letting the twins go. He could not have them— he could not let Anakin… no, Vader, have the satisfaction of ripping them away from him.
So Leia was here with him, but not with him, and he ached.
So Luke was far away, turning words to gold under the careful guidance of the most brilliant politician alive.
He had let this happen. He had ripped them from each other, and pushed them away.
Oh, Anakin, he thought drearily as he watched Leia's dark brows furrow, if you could see me now… if you could see your child, and see how I have treated her. Oh, Anakin, I never learn.
Sometimes it was easier to believe that Anakin was dead. Sometimes he spent days on end addressing a man who was not there, a man who had sworn himself Obi-Wan's enemy, a man that would steal Leia's light away in a heartbeat if he caught a glimpse of its existence.
It was so much easier to just pretend.
Obi-Wan wanted to meditate on that. On his own follies, on where he had taken a misstep, on where he had failed. He had turned it over in his head so many times now that he felt like he knew exactly what he would do if he could do it all again. He saw Anakin here, curled on his cot, small and sandy and stubbornly holding back tears. He saw a boy with suns in his eyes radiating so brightly, so hotly that Obi-Wan could hardly stand to be around him. Sometimes he felt the effects of radiation sickness, and oh did it blind him.
Even now he was dying slowly from proximity to the nuclear disaster that was Anakin Skywalker.
In his place, his daughter slept. He had been a fool among fools.
She can never know, he thought sadly, how much I care for her, Anakin. You can never know now how much I cared for you. My only solace is knowing that she is loved, and that she knows she is loved. I'm not sure now if you knew even that much.
His head was too jumbled to meditate. Any time Anakin entered his mind, there was no way to extricate the sorrow and the loss and the guilt, and he spent days trying to purge his mind of the jumbled, anxious thoughts, the unbidden despair that crawled and gnawed and ate and grew exponentially from his regret. He could never repent for any of it. Nothing would be enough.
Obi-Wan leapt to his feet as Leia's shrill scream filled the cramped living room of his small hovel. She bolted upright, dark eyes flitting wildly about the dimly lit room as though assessing a threat. Her chest heaved heavily, and her small shoulders shook.
"Are you alright there, little one?" Obi-Wan asked tentatively. He did not approach her, but instead held up his hands as a small gesture of peace. He could not be sure what sort of information Owen Lars had fed to her.
She focused her dark, somber gaze upon Obi-Wan's face. She looked gaunt and miserable, like a beggar child in the pits of Coruscant. Her eyes were big and wide, a child's if he had ever seen one, but the way she held her shoulders and the way she blinked back a well of terror-filled tears, she seemed suddenly so much older than eleven.
"I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was level, though hoarse from strain. "Am I intruding?"
"Not at all."
Leia studied him. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned her eyes down toward her hands. "Is my arm broken?"
"You would know if your arm was broken, little one," Obi-Wan said amusedly.
She scoffed, her eyes rolling back into her skull as she cradled her injured arm gingerly. "Don't call me that," she said stiffly. "I'm not that little— and y'know, looking at you… you're really not that old, are you, Ben?"
Obi-Wan quirked an eyebrow as he sat down very carefully at the edge of the table beside her cot. "You know who I am?" he asked.
"Are there many crazy old hermits in the Jundland Wastes I should know about?" Leia asked dryly. "Uncle Owen said I shouldn't talk to you. I might entertain your wild fantasies, and it'd be cruel."
"My wild fantasies," Obi-Wan repeated, unable to keep the unparalleled derision from dripping into his tone. "Quite right, isn't he? I might think myself a krayt dragon if you so imply it."
Leia blinked, and a small smirk rose to her lips. "No self-respecting krayt dragon would live in a little place like this," she said, her shoulders shaking once more— this time though, Obi-Wan realized with a swell of delight, it was because she was stifling laughter. "But dream big, old man."
Obi-Wan smiled at her, warmed by her charisma and nonchalant attitude. She didn't seem to care that he was a stranger. Perhaps the Force was guiding her.
"I think I just might," Obi-Wan said, dragging the dish of water closer and dabbing a rag into it. "Does your nose hurt?"
"Only a little." She shrugged, though she scooted closer so she could see what was in the dish. She looked mildly surprised at the sight of water— Obi-Wan knew why. He remembered Anakin stinginess with water at first, bathing himself as quickly as possible, pouring only meager portions into his glass, seeking alternatives wherever he could. Leia was so… reminiscent of him. "That's to clean me up?"
"Will you let me?"
"Sure." She lifted her chin so he could get at the stubborn dried blood trailing from her nose to her lips. The trails were so dark that it looked like her skin was rusting away. "The less I gotta explain to Uncle Owen, the better."
"Why were you out there?" Obi-Wan took her chin and gingerly began to wipe the blood away. "It certainly did not seem like a friendly affair, so why involve yourself in an altercation?"
She said something, but it was muffled beneath the reddening cloth. Obi-Wan lifted it, and she sighed, blood half smeared across her open mouth.
"I wasn't looking for a fight, alright?" She averted her gaze miserably, her dark eyes defiantly glowering away from his face. "I just… they were saying all this stuff, y'know, about slaves, and about children of slaves, and there wasn't exactly anyone going out of their way to shut 'em up. And then they came to me, and started trying to rile me up, and I figured if I got 'em away from the farm… I didn't want Uncle Owen hearing 'em and doing somethin' he'd regret, you know?" She sniffed irritably, rubbing a bloody nostril and grimacing. "I'll get in trouble with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, maybe get a little roughed up in the process, but at least those bastards got what was comin'. Why were you there?"
"I was passing by."
"At night?" Leia glanced at him in sharp disbelief, but shrugged. "Alright, if you say so."
Obi-Wan scrubbed the rest of the blood away, and he swiped the rag over her hands, rubbing her fingernails for good measure.
"How about we don't tell my Aunt and Uncle about this?" Leia suggested. "In fact, they don't have to know I was here at all."
"No?" Obi-Wan couldn't deny it was tempting. However, he knew Owen would know. Once he realized Leia was missing, he would check here after all the obvious places were ruled out. "Are you sure that's wise?"
"Do I look like I know a damn thing about being wise, Mr. Ben, sir?" Leia asked pointedly, her eyes salient and her nose still tinged red and her hair shorn, uneven, and askew.
"I think you know better than you'd like me to believe. Here, have a drink." He handed her the cup of water, watching her blink bemusedly before he got to his feet and walked toward the small kitchenette. "I doubt you have any idea what you look like, so I will save you the horror of what has happened to your hair."
He glanced at her and saw her patting her braided side, and then her short side. Her face dropped.
"Don't panic," Obi-Wan said gently. "We can fix it."
"My hair," she croaked. "My braids— oh no, Aunt Beru's gonna kill me!"
"I doubt that." Obi-Wan returned to her with a small paring knife. "If this hurts at all, please tell me."
"You gonna shave me bald, old man?"
"I'm only leveling it out."
Leia sighed, and she sat very still as he undid the plaiting of her braids and began to take the knife to them one by one. And one by one they unraveled.
"Are you feeling better?" Obi-Wan asked her.
"A little. I guess."
Obi-Wan watched her hair fall away, and he recalled the sight of his padawan braid falling to the floor. Of Anakin's. Of Ahsoka's, nothing but a pile of beads in a gloved palm, in a small box, regret mounting upon regret.
"Ow."
She said it as a bored child might say it. Pointedly and irritably.
"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan said, setting the knife aside. He undid the remains of the last braid with his fingers. "You might want to run your fingers through it."
Leia did just that, ruffling her hair until it stuck up around her ears like a fluffy brown cloud of vaguely uneven tufts. It landed above her chin but below her mouth, curling against her lower lip as it began to settle.
"Feels even," she said.
"That's good." Obi-Wan had cut his own hair— and Anakin's— enough times to grasp the basics of it. Leia settled back into the cot, leaning back and examining her arm. It was badly bruised, possibly sprained, but he doubted it was much worse than that. "If you don't mind… may I ask what your dream was about?"
"What dream?" Leia went on staring at her arm, her voice low and reedy.
"The dream that had you screaming quite alarmingly not twenty minutes ago."
Leia exhaled sharply, and she shot him an irritated glance. "Why? Are you gonna interpret it for me, Wizard?"
"Wizard?" Obi-Wan blinked. "As in… ah, 'cool'?"
"No, wizard as in wizard. It's what Uncle Owen calls you sometimes." Leia thought for a moment, and then glanced at him frantically. "Don't tell him I said that."
"Don't worry now," Obi-Wan chuckled. "I won't. Now, about that dream…"
Leia sat, and he saw her conviction waning in the somber darkness of her eyes. He saw her grow smaller under the weight of the shadow of her dreams, and he felt that— he empathized deeply with the strange and confusing nature of dreams and visions, especially in one so young. At least he had had the Temple— the Order. He had had a reason. She had nothing but the assumption that her imagination was running wild, and no one to talk to about it.
"I was in the desert," she whispered. Her voice had gone so quiet that Obi-Wan had to lean closer to hear her. "I felt the sunlight. I could smell the sand. And there was— it was water. I was walking along the bank of a mighty river— like the one the Jawas say used to be Beggar's Canyon. And as I was walking, I could feel the mist rising off the current, and I wanted to wade in, but I was scared to for some reason. And then I saw a boy."
Obi-Wan did not let his surprise reach his face. Instead he twisted a few short strands of his beard between his fingers. "A boy," he repeated.
"He was wading in the water," she sighed, rubbing her eyes tiredly, "across the river, y'know, and he was looking right at me, calling for me. So I waved, and before I could call back to him to tell him to come over to my side, he was sucked right into the river, and I couldn't even scream, I just stood there with the water roaring all around me and the desert stretching on and on forever in every direction."
Obi-Wan sighed. Yes, that seemed normal. He had separated two very powerful Force sensitive twins, and the children of Anakin Skywalker. Their connection was too strong to sever by dragging them half a galaxy apart.
"I see," he said.
Leia's eyes moved swiftly to his. "That's not all," she said somberly.
Obi-Wan stared at her. Oh no, he thought. This doesn't bode well.
"Go on, Leia," Obi-Wan said.
She studied him briefly, as though trying to remember if she had ever told him her name. He could not remember if she had either. In the end it did not matter. He had always known her name, and she seemed comfortable with that.
"I stood at the edge of the water, wanting so badly to go in after the boy, but I couldn't move." Leia closed her eyes. "I was looking into the water, and suddenly an arm was floating at the edge of the bank. But then it started to move, and it crawled toward me, and it— I heard it, even if it wasn't really talking. It was crying. It didn't want me to leave. It said, "Why did you leave me here?" and I said, "I didn't." But then the arm started screaming, "Liar, liar, liar," and I told it, I said I didn't know what it was saying, but then it wrapped its hand around my throat and dragged me into the water— and it burned."
Obi-Wan sat in silence, her words sinking in. He closed his eyes. It burned.
Haunted was he, fool among fools, who left his brother behind.
It burned.
If this child could pardon all his transgressions with a single word, then he would have wept, he would have left himself to the desert.
It burned.
"What do you suppose that means?" Obi-Wan asked her. His heart was beating viciously in his chest.
"I suppose," she said languidly, "it means I'm tired as all nine Correllian hells. I'm gonna sleep some more, kay?"
"Do what you must, little one," Obi-Wan said softly.
He was content with knowing these dreams did not haunt her enough to dissuade her from sleep, but he had a feeling they would haunt him for a long while.
It was dark here. Cold and dark and spacious, like an old cavern but with none of the mildew. Leia did not think she had ever been here before, not even in her dreams, and that made her apprehensive. She sat on a bed, sinking into it as the iridescent glow of the holonet screen burned into her eyes. She could not read it no matter how long she stared at it.
"What am I looking for?" she asked to no one in particular.
The chrono stamped on the holonet page flipped vertically. She stared at it vacantly.
Numbers sank into words. They bled into blurry images and seeped deep into her mind.
She crawled closer, sinking deeper into the feathery bed as the holoscreen came as close as her nose. The window behind it glittered, and a city of a million lights sparkled in her eyes.
"Oh," she breathed.
She woke up to the sound of a loud and rattling slam that caused her cot to buckle beneath her. She lay still, holding her breath as she considered her surroundings and the throbbing of her arm. It was dim, wherever she was, and too barren to be her cluttered room at home. It was— oh, it was Old Ben's place. The faint smell of dried tea leaves and her own blood lingered. She noticed a cup on the table beside her cot, still steaming and filled with a creamy liquid— tea leaves mixed with milk were only something Beru made for her when she had an upset stomach. She couldn't imagine anyone actually liking it.
"Have I not told you," Uncle Owen's distinct, gruff voice hissed in the dark, "a hundred times?"
Leia squeezed her eyes shut. This was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that she woke up to Owen's fierce whispering.
The trick was to make him think she was still sleeping. She got so much more information that way.
"Certainly," said a vague and quiet voice, the lilt of a core world cadence twirling the word effortlessly. "I don't mean to meddle in your life, Owen— it just happens that I find myself in these situations."
"Like you happened to find yourself persuading Jawas to give her a box full of spare parts?" Owen scoffed. "You take me for a fool, don't you, Kenobi. You think I'm some backwater hick who doesn't know left from right."
"I don't believe I have ever insulted your intelligence, Owen," Ben sighed. "If I ever have, it certainly has nothing to do with where you come from. I know firsthand that even the poorest of the poor on Tatooine can be the most brilliant."
Uncle Owen was quiet enough that Leia was tempted to open her eyes and glance around to see where he was. She heard the floor creak, and she figured Owen had let go of Ben— she sensed he'd been pinned to the wall as soon as she'd woken up to that slam.
"You will not condemn her to a life of fear and pain and death, Kenobi," Uncle Owen said darkly. His voice was so heavy— she felt the immense defeat of it all, the desolation that hung on his every word. She had never heard her uncle speak with such conviction or reverence before. "Your services are unnecessary. She is my niece, and I will raise her the way I see fit!"
Leia barely restrained herself from opening her eyes to glimpse the look on Ben's face. She sensed his resignation in the bitter silence, nothing but a soft sigh to fill it.
"It is not a question of parenting, Owen," Ben said very gently. "Some things are beyond your control."
"Are you saying I can't control her?" Owen huffed. "You have no say—!"
"Oh, please, Owen, be reasonable," Ben said, his soft voice taking on a suddenly sharp and sardonic tone. "You will never control her. No one can control her, least of all you or me. The best you can do for her is to quit pretending like you can keep her here all her life when she knows she's meant for more."
"You don't know her, you old fool!" Owen sounded absolutely furious. His voice boomed across the small hovel, and he paused in consideration before continuing in a much quieter, though no less intense tone. "You say I'm pretending? You spend all your days with your head so far in the past, you can't even see what's in front of you! She is not who you think she is, and she never will be."
"That is up to her," Ben said firmly. "Not you, not me. Just her, and the Force."
"Kriff your Force," Owen snapped. "No more of this, Kenobi. No more sneaking around, waiting for the moment where you can fill her head with some— some zany old fantasies that will get her killed!"
"She does quite alright trying to get herself killed daily," Ben said dryly. "I have suffered this rhetoric a hundred times, Owen, but I will not let it stand this time. She ran off tonight, and that was not your fault, but if I had not been there then I can hardly imagine she'd be safe right now. She is too willful to leave her to her own devices. She will find trouble wherever she goes."
"I can handle it," Owen hissed.
"The five hours it took you to locate her would say otherwise."
"You have no right—!"
"I am not trying to undermine you, Owen," Ben sighed. "You may raise her however you see fit. However, I recognize that you may not be equipped to handle some of Leia's more… unruly characteristics. She will not listen to you. It will only get worse as she grows older."
"You don't know that."
"Oh," Ben chuckled quietly, "I know. She is a stubborn, feral, self-righteous child who will disregard authority without a second thought if it suits her goal. She is far too much like her father."
"And what happened to him?" Owen asked coldly.
Ben fell into a somber silence. Owen scoffed in clear derision, and his boots drew quiet footsteps across the floor that grew heavier as they neared her.
"Oh, Leia…" Owen sighed as he gingerly pulled her upright. She moaned groggily, making a show of lolling her head onto his shoulder. "What's happened to your hair?"
"Cut it," she mumbled. "Don't you like it?"
"Did you cut it yourself?"
"Yeah. Oh." She pulled away from him and rubbed her eyes blearily. "You don't like it."
"No, no," Owen gasped, "that's not it. It's… nice."
"Mhm…" She didn't meet his eyes. "Am I in trouble?"
"We'll talk about it when we get home."
She sighed deeply. Oh yes, she was in trouble.
To alleviate the amount of stress and yelling for later, she wrapped her uninjured arm around her uncle's neck and buried her face in his shoulder. She had done this more as a child, often when she had fallen asleep in strange places and he had come to take her to bed. Owen picked her up gingerly, and he turned around.
"Goodbye, Kenobi," he said, as civilly as possible after that entire ordeal.
"Goodnight, Owen," Ben replied wearily, "Leia."
"Bye, Ben," Leia said, waving at him. He waved back at her, his blue eyes shadowy with an unparalleled sadness.
Owen carried her to the speeder outside and carefully set her down. She curled her knees up to her chin and sniffed. Her nose still ached.
They flew off at an alarming speed. Leia knew better than to throw a spare glance at Ben's hovel. Now that she had heard all that, she thought she could piece together why exactly Owen seemed to unnecessarily mean toward the old man. If it could avoid an awkward conversation and permit Leia to move around freely, then as far as Uncle Owen was concerned, she hated Ben Kenobi.
The drive was silent as silence could be, and for that Leia was grateful. She didn't need a lecture, not after the night she'd had. She had a feeling she'd get one anyway though.
Owen stopped outside their home, and they sat in the dark and the silence, desert sounds muttering in the distance.
"What were you doing, Leia?" he finally sighed, looking down at her tiredly. "Why? I know you're not stupid."
"You know that's arguable, Uncle Owen," she muttered.
He didn't laugh, much to her disappointment. She closed her eyes.
"You got into a fight, and then you went with that crazy old man to his home? Leia, haven't we taught you better than that?"
"I wasn't really awake enough to care," Leia sighed. "Listen, Uncle Owen, we could argue about this tomorrow. Please, can we just go to sleep? It's so late."
"It is late," Owen exhaled, his grip relaxing on the yoke of the speeder as he slumped. "It's so late, Leia, and you were out doing who knows what! What were you thinking?"
"Uncle Owen," Leia said calmly, "I think we both know I wasn't exactly thinking at all."
"I know you better than that," Owen said gravely, fixing his tired eyes on her face. She noticed that he seemed to have gotten so much older so quickly, and she wondered if it had happened all at once or if she was fool enough not to have noticed. "There was a reason— not a good one, I'm sure, but I reason nonetheless. You do nothing without cause."
"Can't we just skip to the part where you yell at me that I'm not leaving the farm for full rotation around the suns and move on?" Leia sunk into her seat, casting her gaze miserably at the silhouette of their domed home. Ben's voice was lingering like ringing in her ears.
"You want me to yell?" Uncle Owen asked fiercely. "What on earth is wrong with you? I don't like yelling at you!"
"There we are," Leia muttered. Good old Uncle Owen.
His face was as red as it could be in the darkness, illuminated by the light of the dizzying stars above them. "You impossible child," he muttered. "Go to your room. I— I can't speak to you like this. Not right now."
"Yes, sir," she said drearily, hopping out of the speeder and trudging toward the arched entrance of one of the domes, feeling along the walls in the dark and taking a left onto a narrow path toward her room.
It was a cluttered space, filled with half-finished projects and pieces of scrap metal, of bolts and screws and wires and various tools. There was a star map projected onto her ceiling, circling slowly as a mobile. She trudged across the mess and flopped onto her bed, thumbing her nostrils gingerly. No blood came, so she assumed she would be fine.
Disappointing Uncle Owen wasn't what was bothering her. She always knew she'd been born to disappoint him, and she'd accepted that a long time ago. She felt bad, but it wasn't like she was going to change any time soon. Leia was too stubborn and proud to think of changing her habits to suit Owen's needs.
What bothered her was that Owen and Ben knew each other.
They knew each other— they knew her father. Why had no one told her that Ben had known her father?
She would pursue this. Somehow, some way, she would question Old Ben about her father and Owen, and all the things that had been left unsaid. She had to.
She lay there, under artificial stars that masked her need to see the real ones just out of reach above them, and she thought for a moment, My father.
Anakin Skywalker. Former slave, Navigator. Father. Beloved by her for no reason than bearing her name.
Leia knew. She wasn't quite so naïve to think that Owen's refusal to speak of her father was grief alone. Uncle Owen resented Anakin Skywalker.
This man, this shadow looming over all their lives like a phantom in the night, held all of her love in the palm of his hands, and all he had done for it is die.
Uncle Owen had slaved away half his life trying to raise her, and she was a reckless little beast at the best of times.
At the very least she was self-aware.
My father.
She clung to scraps of information, hung this man over her head and flung him toward the stars, idolizing him for what he was, what he was not, and knowing she could never fully understand him. She was grasping at straws trying to understand her place here, in Owen Lars's house, and Anakin Skywalker's place in her head where he took up too much damn space.
My father. How did Ben know my father?
When she had been little, very little, little enough that Aunt Beru still let her crawl into her lap and would rock her gently as she hummed, she had made a mistake.
She had called Uncle Owen papa.
That had been the first time she had heard Anakin Skywalker's name.
She remembered now, the reluctance in Owen's eyes as he spoke.
Leia, he'd said, I am not your father.
Owen, Aunt Beru had said, her voice hushed. Don't.
Your father… he was… he was a navigator. On a spice freighter. Leia, he was my brother, and I loved him, but he is gone now.
Gone? Leia had uttered faintly, fingers balled up in Aunt Beru's robe.
Dead, Leia. Your father is dead.
That's enough, Owen, you're frightening her.
But Leia had not been frightened. She'd stared right into Uncle Owen's eyes, and recognized his words as truth.
Who was he? She had asked softly.
Uncle Owen had seemed so resigned. Like he was hearing her voice, but not really listening, for he knew what she had meant to say before her lips had moved.
Anakin, Uncle Owen had murmured. His name was Anakin Skywalker.
Like Granma Shimi! Leia had cried excitedly.
Grandma Shmi, darling, Aunt Beru had corrected gently. And like you as well. Your name is Skywalker too.
Me?
Beru had pulled her close and bopped their noses together, rubbing the tip of hers against Leia's affectionately. You, you, you! Beru had declared, dipping Leia back gently as she burst into a fit of giggles. She remembered Uncle Owen's face from the upside-down, her brown curls sliding from her forehead and dangling close to the dusty floor.
The memory was faded after that. All she knew was the strangeness of Owen's gaze, like a man who had lost something and resigned himself to never finding it.
"Me, me, me," she murmured, closing her eyes to the glittery galaxy above her.
She would find out. She would understand.
She would not be tied down by the status of her father or her father's fathers. She was Leia Skywalker, and she would make the stars bend and bow at her heels.
One day.
Days, it seemed, turned to weeks, which turned to months, and little Leia's arm sling fell away like nothing had happened. She ran around with that ragamuffin boy, Darklighter, and flew whatever she could get her hands on, and sometimes she would speak and words flew out like moths wings, fast and vivid. She was so… so very much Anakin. Her certainty, her recklessness, her fury, her quick wit, her unflinching loyalty, and most of all her ability to love so very deeply that all else in the world ceased to matter.
But sometimes she spoke, and Obi-Wan heard her with a twinge of his heart.
Padmé. Like a ghost in a swarm. Moths falling from her lips, like the dead speaking.
They fell. They fell fast.
As steadily as they had risen, they fell from Leia's lips and drifted across the sand, a thousand dead husks becoming one with the earth, as words were words and meant only to disappear.
Like that, she was gone. That flicker, that faulty image like a hologram stuttering. One moment Padmé stood beside the looming silhouette of an aging master, the young and determined queen garbed in commoner's clothes, dark eyes flashing inquisitively over her shoulder at Obi-Wan's face as the hangar door closed. Then the dust beneath her shifted, and the silhouette of Qui-Gon Jinn vanished. Her long braid became an unruly bob, and her inquisitive brown eyes turned fierce.
She was so much like Anakin.
She was too much like Anakin.
Master, he thought numbly, how can I teach her when I know my teachings are faulty? I cannot bear to lose her, not to death, not to darkness, and certainly not to my own follies.
One day, Obi-Wan opened his door, and he nearly stumbled over a handwoven basket. He crouched, his robes pool in the sand, and he touched the brambles gingerly. Dried tumble weeds and slivers of white wood, with all the thorns and bark shorn away, braided intricately to form reedy basket at his doorstep. When Obi-Wan inspected it further, he discovered that the brambles had been weaved into shaved slivers of a japor tree. Obi-Wan picked up the basket, finding it to be a bit heavier than expected, and brought it into his home.
He sat across from it for a while simply staring.
In his heart, Anakin sat on the table, his small legs dangling and his blue eyes blazing like wild fire.
Master Qui-Gon wouldn't make me!
A child's words— his child, if anyone in this world were to hold that designation— stung like a whip across his cheek. The wound had already been so fresh.
No. He would not have. But I am not Qui-Gon, Anakin.
He stood up, and the illusion dispersed like smoke.
The japor was smooth, its ivory links studded with dark, uneven brambles. It creaked softly as he lifted its lid and set it aside.
Inside it was a jug and a scrap of flimsi.
He opened up the folded flimsi first, scanning it quickly.
All it said was: Thank you, Ben.
He lifted the jug, and found that it was filled to the brim with fresh, clean water.
His heart swelled, understanding washing over him as he set the jug on his table and gazed at Leia's neat handwriting.
She must have been shortening her own water rations to get this to him. He appreciated the gesture, though he did worry about her health.
More importantly, he focused upon the basket. He traced the japor ivory along its sides, and up the length of the lid.
Obi-Wan smiled, and he dashed a tear from the side of his nose. He brought the basket over to his trunk, and he opened it very carefully. He picked up the smooth, familiar old object and wrapped it in an old cloak.
He then deposited Anakin's lightsaber into Leia's basket and set the lid gingerly over it.