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Glancing over at the clock, Leia leaned against the back of her chair with a huff. She had every intention of going home three hours ago, but time had somehow gotten away from her. She felt like she’d been on holo conferences from the moment she woke up today.
At Mon Mothma’s request, Leia was coordinating with old Republic senators from Naboo on the construction of the New Republic. She had visited the planet a few standard weeks ago, but there was still a lot to be done remotely.
She pressed the tips of her fingers against her eyes, taking stock of just how truly exhausted she was. It was worth it, Leia told herself on nights like these. She owed it to her father to see the creation of the New Republic all the way through. This was what he had been fighting for her whole life; there was no giving up now.
A soft knock broke her from her thoughts, and she quickly straightened up at her desk.
“Come in,” she said, noting how even her voice sounded tired.
Her shoulders slumped once more when she realized it was only Luke.
“You...” he started, carrying a mug in each hand and kicking the door closed behind him, “look exhausted.”
He set down a mug in front of Leia before sitting down in the chair opposite the desk.
“I feel it,” she said, grabbing the mug.
The aroma and warmth immediately soothed her.
“So,” he started, leaning back in his own chair. “What have you been up to locked up in here all day?”
“Trying to resurrect the Republic from inside the heat of a nova like a Starbird,” Leia said, trying to push more humor into it than she felt. “Been talking with Naboo, trying to get their advice and secure their cooperation.”
“Well, I think you’ve worked plenty for one day. I am officially cutting you off—you work too hard.”
She stared at the unblinking, stern face of her brother and knew any protest she had wouldn’t go anywhere. She simply sighed and started cleaning up her desk.
“You aren’t one to talk, Luke. You’ve been going on days long missions to Arkanis. I mean, are you even sleeping?” Leia retorted, throwing Luke an equally serious look.
“Leia, you know how close we are to securing that system from the Empire; I have to be there.” He looked at her, searching for any sign that she would cut him some slack. He clicked his tongue when that sign never came. “Alright, alright. Call it even then.”
Leia smiled and lifted her mug to her lips, taking a sip. It tasted better than it smelled somehow. Her sudden feeling of calm surprised her. It reminded her a lot of the tea her father often made for her when she was a little girl, but there was a hint of something she’d never tasted before, which lent itself beautifully to all the other notes in the drink.
“This is delicious!” She said earnestly. “Where’d you find the recipe?”
“Our father told me,” Luke said, with an unmistakable sense of pride in his voice.
Leia froze, mug positioned mid-sip. She peered at Luke over the rim and couldn’t miss the pride in his eyes, either.
“What do you mean?” She tried to say it carefully, but it sounded more like a warning than a question.
“Exactly what I said. I can still talk to him, like I can with Ben Kenobi. He’s been telling me all about our mother. Our grandmother, too, even. That’s where the recipe comes from; it’s grandmother’s.”
His smile both comforted and terrified Leia. She hadn’t even originally liked the idea of Luke talking to Ben. Talking to someone after they had passed didn’t seem right or natural to her, but she knew how important Ben was to Luke, so she grew to accept it. Ben was important to her too, after all. But Luke talking to his father was a completely different matter. Leia couldn’t understand why he would even want to.
“I don’t want to hear anymore,” Leia said seriously, shaking her head.
Luke looked confused. “What do you mean? I have so many stories about our parents to share with you. Don’t you want to hear them? Like, one time Ben fell into this nest of gundarks. Dad had to rescue him and—”
“Enough!” Leia shouted, harshly cutting Luke off. She knew it was rude, but she was too exhausted to care.
Luke deflated at the outburst. Suddenly, he was on edge; a white-knuckled grip on his mug. Leia sensed fear coming off him in waves, exactly as she had on Bespin. This connection wasn’t perfect, but they were working on it. Still, Luke’s emotions were often strong enough to be felt without much effort.
“What? What did I do?” he whispered. He sounded far younger than he had moments ago.
Leia sighed, now kicking herself for her lack of patience. “Nothing, I’m sorry, Luke. I’m just exhausted. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
His grip on the mug eased, but his fear did not.
“Why do you never want to talk about our father,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact.
“He’s not my father, he’s yours,” Leia said, sternly and clipped. “Bail is my father. Vader is someone who donated some genes, nothing more,” she continued. She loathed the taste his name left in her mouth; she usually tried to avoid it whenever she could.
“Is that all I am to you, then? Someone you share genes with? I thought I was family.”
Leia’s own heart ached at how hurt he seemed at the assumption.
“You know you’re my brother” she tried to reason.
“But Anakin isn’t your father?”
Leia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Had Luke completely forgotten everything Vader had done to her, done to him? Why would she ever consider that monster her father and not Bail, the fearless, headstrong man who raised her?
“You are an Organa in every way,” her father had said all those years ago.
That’s who her father was. Not the man who was responsible for the destruction of her home.
“How could you even ask me that? Why would I? I had two amazing parents who loved me like their own. Do you remember how they died, Luke? Do you remember who killed them?” She said, voice cracking as a lump formed in her throat. The death of her parents had gotten easier with time, but it would always hurt.
“Of course I do.” He sounded taken aback by the accusation. “But you cannot change what is. He is our father.”
“He is your father. I want nothing to do with him.” Leia’s words were final.
The air between them filled with uncertainty. She didn’t know much about the force, but she presumed Luke, or their connection to it, caused this terrible feeling. The mechanics of that, she didn’t know. He looked so small, retreating in on himself. Almost as if the problem would go away if he could only disappear. She knew she needed to fix this.
“I just can’t understand why you do not see Vader as the monster he is,” she started.
“Anakin. His name is Anakin.”
“That name gives him humanity—humanity I will not give.” Luke had always seemed to believe they were two separate people. Leia did not. “You didn’t answer my question. Why can’t you see him for who he is?” She continued.
“Not all of us were lucky enough to grow up as royalty on a wealthy, lush green planet with two loving parents, now were we?” Luke spat, clearly annoyed.
“What does that have to do with anything? It’s not like I asked to be adopted by Bail and Breha. Neither of us asked for our lives to be painted by such tragedy when we were mere moments old.”
“You won the lottery, Leia.” He scrutinized Leia’s face for a moment before shaking his head. “Forget it. You don’t understand.”
He seemed lost, unmoored. Leia had a sense that he thought he was alone in this. That no one could possibly understand how he felt. Leia could, she just needed to know more. Troubled by his demeanor, Leia pushed her chair away from her desk and got up. Taking the adjacent seat next to Luke now, she rested a gentle hand on Luke’s forearm.
“Explain it to me then,” she said gently. “Help me understand; I want to. Why is it so important for you to have a relationship with him?”
Her words were initially met with apprehension, as he still seemed unwilling to open up to her. His eyes were fixed on his lap so Leia dipped her head down to meet them. Once he was looking at her again, his face softened. Leia gave him a small, encouraging nod, aiming to convey that he wasn’t alone, not anymore.
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t grow up like you. Tatooine was harsh, both in the climate and in the culture there. My Uncle Owen…” he trailed off, seemingly trying to think of what to say. “Well, he was harsh, too. He had me doing farm work the minute I was old enough to hold a tool. He was impatient, quick to anger, and a strict disciplinarian. I sometimes chose to brave a run in with the Tusken Raiders rather than face him.”
At the mention of Owen, Leia felt Luke’s arm tense up under her hand, his fists clenching. Leia had a sense that there was more to Owen’s discipline than Luke was letting on, something that scared her and made her heart ache for her brother.
Luke continued. “My Aunt Beru was different, though. The stories you told me about Breha remind me of her, actually. I never gave much thought to my birth mother; Beru was everything I needed.”
Leia waited for him to continue and to tell her more about Owen, but he seemed lost in thought.
“What of Owen, then?” She encouraged.
“I didn’t have a Bail Organa, who always treated you as nothing less than his flesh and blood daughter. Owen made me call him ‘uncle’ and ‘sir’. I was ‘Skywalker’, you became ‘Organa’. Maybe he might’ve thought of me as his own, but if he did, it never felt like that. Most days, I felt more like a problem or an obligation. I wanted a father, you know? I needed a father. So, to comfort myself, I crafted this image of a perfect father, one that would teach me how to pilot a starship. One who’d take me all over the galaxy. It comforted me when I would stare beyond those twin suns, wondering what else was out there. I’d often cry myself to sleep thinking about him. Or when…” Luke stopped himself, afraid to give too much away. “My whole childhood, my whole life even, I’ve needed a father. I always will.”
The puzzling mystery of Luke’s early life was revealing itself to Leia. She had a general idea of what Luke’s childhood had been like, but she hadn’t known anything about Owen. Between the anxiety she was picking up from him, and him still tense under her hand, she suspected there was a lot more to their relationship than Luke was willing to share.
“Thank you for telling me that, really. But, Luke, Vader is a monster. Look at everything he did to you. That’s not love.”
Luke shrugged, indifferent to Leia’s comment, and dismissed her concern. “I just feel complete when I’m with him. He’s my father, Leia. The final missing piece of my life is in place.” Luke took a deep breath, shaking his hands out as if to deflect the anxious energy in the room. “I wish things were different, I do. I wish we could have grown up together. I wish I hadn’t grown up being…” Again, he stopped himself. “This is the way our lives are. He hurt you Leia. Terribly. Awfully. Badly. I know you suffered unimaginable things because of him and I’m sorry.”
Leia sat with this for a while, processing all she had heard. Luke’s continual defense of his father had been a severe point of contention between them since his triumph on the second Death Star. At times, it felt like Luke had no consideration for how his treatment of Vader would make her feel. Leia felt the pain of Alderaan all over again when Luke came back after giving him a proper funeral. It still hurt, and it would never be something Leia would ever fully grasp, but she was tired of fighting with her brother. She wanted to understand him, though they still had a way to go.
“He hurt you, too. Your aunt and uncle, Ben, your hand. You suffered too, Luke, because of him. I need you to understand that. Look, I’m not saying you can’t love him, but you aren’t great at separating love from pain. They’re the same for you, it’s frightening, Luke. People who love you aren’t supposed to hurt you.”
“That was Vader, I’m talking about Ana—”
“Luke,” she said firmly, cutting him off. “People who love you are not supposed to hurt you.”
Luke mumbled incoherently under his breath but quickly grew quiet as Leia’s words finally seemed to sink in. Leia waited while he processed, stroking his arm gently with her thumb.
“I know.” Luke raised his mechanical hand, “it’s hard to forget.” He gestured towards its general direction. “But it doesn’t change anything. He’s still my father, and I still love him. You can love people who hurt you,” Luke’s words stuck to his throat, he sighed, his shoulders slumping. “It’s how I’ve felt about Owen my whole life.” .
Leia wasn’t totally convinced he understood what she was trying to say, but it would take time. Time they now had, thanks to him. There would always be parts of him Leia would never get, but she could accept him the way he was. She didn’t have to understand every reason behind every decision he made to love her brother.
“I don’t forgive him, Luke. I can’t, not after everything he took from me. But I can accept that you need him. I can accept that Anakin is your father.” That name felt sour on her lips, but Luke’s genuine smile at her use of it made the taste a little easier to bear.
“Bail was your father, I know that. I’m glad he was; he raised an amazing person,” he said earnestly.
“You are and will always be my brother, no matter what.”
“Luke and Leia against the galaxy,” he said. Leia could sense something still weighing on his mind,
“What is it?” She asked.
“Do you think… do you think you will ever be ready to hear the stories he’s told me?”
Leia chewed on that. She didn’t want to hear anything about Vader; it was hard to even stomach that thought. But she could see how much Luke wanted to share them with someone, and who else could he besides her? She came to a compromise.
“If he tells you any stories about Ben, I want to hear those, but that’s all.”
At that, Luke immediately perked up. “I have a ton of those already!”
Leia couldn’t help but smile. Luke’s happiness tended to be rather contagious. She looked down at their mugs on the desk, now likely very cold.
“Let’s go home first. I’ll make you some tea using my father’s recipe and then you can tell me about it.”
“Best idea you have had all night,” he said, standing up from his chair and stretching.
Leia was just about to turn the lights in her office off when Luke caught her hand.
“I love you. I hope you know that.”
She smiled. For all that the both of them have endured, fate was kind enough to lead them to each other. Or perhaps the Force, she wondered.
“I do know that. I love you too.”
Leia shut her office door and brother and sister stepped out into the night.