Work Text:
“Be still, Rebel,” the trooper spat.
Leia complied uneasily and allowed him to fasten her wrists in the binders. Her entire body vibrated with adrenaline, ready to spring forward into action any moment now.
The last time she had been apprehended, she was hit with a stun shot by some random trooper and dragged before Vader, then tortured for hours and forced to watch her home destroyed by the very station on which she stood. She was risking everything with this move, and she knew all too well what awaited her if her friends failed.
The troopers began to march her to the ship, and she tensed with every step forward.
It was already taking too long. They had timed this to the second, but ideally, Evaan would have shown before they put Leia in binders. Now, Leia needed her to appear before she stepped across the threshold, some ten meters away. Otherwise, her fate would be sealed.
And yet there was no telltale sound of an incoming craft. Leia let herself be led along, but her unease mounted.
Five meters.
Where was she? Had they even made it past the blockade yet?
Three meters.
A faint sense of doom crawled across her skin. This was familiar. Too familiar.
Leia kept walking, her composure impeccable even as she was steered onboard and the door hissed shut behind her damingly, trapping her in the utilitarian steel walls of an Imperial structure.
It was too late.
She was once again the Empire’s captive, and this time, it was by her own foolish design.
Aboard the Devastator, Darth Vader turned away from the cracked viewport when he felt a tech officer approach. His hand twitched, aching to crush the man’s trachea before he could even speak for daring to disturb him at such a crucial moment, but instead he drew back and simply reveled in the fear roiling off the man in waves. It made him powerful, grounded him in a way the revelations had not, because they were disgustingly full of light and the memory of a weak, dead man.
And yet, they continued to sing. He had a son. His son’s name was Luke Skywalker, and he had the Force.
“Report,” he barked, banishing the marvel from his mind.
“M-my Lord,” said the officer. “Commander Dreed has apprehend the traitor Organa on Skaradosh.”
Vader considered this.
Leia Organa. That insufferable child who seemed to want herself to be his premier enemy. She had escaped with the boy on the Death Star.
She knew his son, and was a clear connection to him.
The girl was a thorn in his side, but now she was of use. Perhaps he could lure the boy in with the news of her capture. He did not know him—Luke, his name was Luke—well enough to discern whether it would work.
The thought of what had been stolen from him made his rage spike.
Either way, he must take custody of her, as unpleasant as she was to deal with. Her continued outspokenness represented all his failures—between the immolation of the Inquisitors by a half-trained padawan and a sixteen-year-old boy, the stolen Death Star plans, and the station’s subsequent destruction, Leia Organa’s escape was just one of many reasons why Vader had continually drawn his master’s ire of late. He had failed much.
But now he had son. Using her, he would have him at his side.
“Set a course for Skaradosh,” he ordered, sweeping past the man with a dismissive whirl of his cape.
The Force was with him today.
The Empire had wasted no time ferrying the shuttle into orbit and dragging her aboard a Star Destroyer to seal her fate. Leia cursed herself over and over as she paced her cell, mind racing. What had happened to Evaan? Would the rest of the fleet get away? Was this the end of everything for her, so soon after it all began?
Too soon, the door whooshed open and an officer flanked by stormtroopers stepped inside.
Leia took in his expressionless face but tense posture and smirked. Even if it made escaping that much harder, some part of her was extremely smug about the lengths they had gone to keep her contained.
She scared them, and she loved it.
“He wishes to speak with you,” the officer said eventually, when her staring made the silence too uncomfortable for him.
“Who does?”
Leia didn’t want to admit she didn’t know whose mercy she found herself at, but she needed to narrow it down. The names of the closest Moffs sprung to mind, faint in her memory, all of them of lower-ranking relative to the rest because this sector was in the Outer Rim and severely underdeveloped.
If she could figure out who, perhaps her leftover knowledge from the Senate could pay off here.
Undoubtedly, she was a prize to ingratiate themselves into the Emperor’s favor. She would have to play it carefully.
Politics as ever, even when it was life and death.
The officer shot her a look that was almost...pitying? “You shall see,” he replied cryptically, and gestured for her to stand with a pretentious, curt wave.
Typical.
She scoffed but did as requested, because she would not give them the opportunity to yank her around if she could help it. No, she would be regal about this.
He led her down one dark, sterile corridor after another until she lost all sense of direction—obviously intentional—then shoved her into another, larger cell.
Leia’s white dress snagged on her legs as she stumbled across the threshold, only just barely managing to keep herself from falling. The door clicker shut behind her, leaving her alone with her unknown captor. She breathed into the tense air, waiting.
Immediately, the steady, bloodcurdling, unmistakable hiss of a respirator filled the air.
She froze. Leia Organa did not freeze up, and yet.
No. No. Not him. Not now.
How was he even here? Why did she matter so much to him, specifically?
The awful noise surrounded her, suffocated her. She was drowning and she was so cold down to her very soul and she couldn’t breathe.
She’d resigned herself to being dragged before the Emperor himself, executed publicly even, but this—this—
It was too soon.
She stood on the bridge of the Death Star again, Tarkin’s sneering face watching her scream, with him at her back, holding her back with a bone-crushing as everything she had ever loved shattered into dust.
It seemed she would always wind up back here, trying to save Alderaan but failing over and over again.
Vader smugly watched the girl struggle to compose herself. Her fear was palpable this time, and she was once again utterly at his mercy.
“Lord Vader,” she said, inclining her head to stare up into his lenses. “So strange to see you without a master holding your leash like the dutiful little attack dog you are. Tell me, are you simply rabid now?”
He nearly snapped her neck then and there. Only the faint promise of his son stayed his hand. “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent, Your Highness.”
“So we’re still talking about you, I see,” she retorted immediately.
The child possessed a quick wit, he would give her that. Of course, it only served to remind him of certain others, and to guarantee her a much more painful death.
Satisfied to note her voice was fainter—with grief and terror, the emotions fluctuating between plainly broadcast and shuttered behind those infuriatingly strong shields he’d encountered on the Death Star—Vader began pacing. This tactic often intimidated captives, and her cell of their last encounter had regretfully been too small to employ it.
“Enough games. You will tell me what I want to know.”
Organa sneered, folding her arms across her chest and drawing her short frame up to appear taller. Not that it made much of a difference; Vader still towered over her. “I’m not telling you where the base is. Just like I didn’t tell you last time.”
Vader growled, stopping to fix her with the stare that made most men shrivel. “You didn’t tell me last time, but you led me to it. Furthermore, I didn’t ask anything yet.”
She curled her lip in distaste, but didn’t reply. He resumed pacing.
“Luke Skywalker,” he said into the silence.
Leia paused, completely caught out. All of this was about Luke?
That did not bode well for him.
How much did Vader know already? That Luke was training to be a Jedi? That he was the one who destroyed the Death Star? All that and more?
“What do you want with him?” she snapped, defensive anger flaring. Someone like Luke didn’t deserve the ire of this man. And while she was here, she might as well confront him on Luke’s behalf too. The glorified trash can had no shortage of crimes to his name. “To kill him like you killed his father?”
Without warning, the air around them seemed to plunge into frigid temperatures.
“No. I did not kill his father.” She scoffed; this man was the single biggest Jedi exterminator—he didn’t honestly expect her to believe that? “I am his father.”
Leia’s mouth fell open in disbelief, even as something in the very air seemed to hum its truth. “No…” she murmured.
It didn’t make sense. It was the last thing she ever expected him to say.
And yet, something about it continued to true.
Leia considered.
She hadn’t known Luke very long at all, but she knew he was a good person. There was nothing to suggest Vader was anything but a monster, much less someone capable of creating that bright light that was Luke.
More than that, to say that he was Luke’s father was to say that he was Anakin Skywalker. A Jedi whose memory Luke cherished like no other. A Jedi who, according to the Old Republic legends, had been a hero.
“It is true,” Vader continued doggedly, ignoring the maelstrom of emotions churning inside her. “Luke is my son, and I will see him returned to me.”
Leia gaped, stunned out of her disbelief as she registered how possessive the words were. She tossed her head. “Returned to you? What, like a slave?”
The reaction was swift and immediate. Vader whirled and lashed out, one hand seizing her by the throat at the same time he shoved her back into the wall. The gloved fingers tightened on her skin, crushing the life out of her.
Her hands scrambled for purchase on his arm, trying to yank him away so she could draw in a breath, but he swatted them away easily and drew back without ever releasing the pressure. He simply moved away, continuing to pace, but the sensation on her throat remained—intensified, even.
“The only reason you are still living is because you have a purpose to me,” he snarled, and she still could not breathe. “But living does not mean unharmed. Should you persist in your insolence, I will tear you apart limb by limb, until you beg for death. Do you understand?”
Leia barely heard the words; the need to breathe was so primal and strong that she nodded blindly. The hold on her throat stopped, and she stumbled, gasping.
“My son is reckless and self-sacrificing and weak,” Vader continued, almost to himself. “He will try to save you. And then I will have him at my side.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Leia snapped before she could think better of it, even with all Vader’s threats. Her voice was hoarse, and her throat screamed in pain, but she kept talking. “He is not weak, and you won’t succeed."
She needed to believe it. With her captured, the Rebellion needed him more than ever, and she did not want to imagine what would happen to him if Vader managed to ensnare him too.
Unfortunately, she knew with sinking certainty that Vader was right. Luke would certainly try. And then he would be captive just like her.
“He will come,” Vader said, and it sounded obstinate, as if he wanted to debate further with her, but had stopped himself. “Regardless, now—” he waved his hand, and the door opened to allow a circular droid to float in, a needle already extended from its internal mechanisms. The suffocating sense of smugness increased as he turned back to her. “We will run a medical scan and test your blood for toxic materials to make sure you have not grievously injured yourself in your foolish escapades on that planet. Your pain will lure him here, but I won’t cause your death too soon.”
Leia jerked away at the sight of the needle. Not because it reminded her of the ITO torture droid—although it certainly did—but because it had been impressed upon her for her entire life to never, under any circumstances, allow her blood to be drawn.
She had been confused by her parents’ insistence, of course, especially during early adolescence, before finally deducting that it probably had to do with her biological parents. She was orphaned by the Clone Wars, they had said, and they had made it sound like she was a child whose parents were unknown.
Eventually, though, she grew to suspect they had actually known exactly who her biological parents were, and that for some reason this knowledge was dangerous. She couldn’t think of any other reason why her very blood should be a secret, after all.
Leia had been curious, but also afraid to actively probe more. She had quickly realized she didn’t want to know more about them, and had buried the impulse with the knowledge that her true parents were all anyone could ever ask for, she loved them, and she didn’t need to know the specifics of the nameless people who had created her.
She regretted that now, but her parents were too dead to ask. And the needle was drawing closer as the med-droid tightened its grip around her arm forcefully she couldn’t even attempt to tug it free.
Leia realized she’d been silent far too long just as her captor did.
“Why are you afraid of a blood test, Your Highness?” Vader asked suddenly, looming over her the living omen of death he was. His helmet tilted at an odd, almost dangerously curious angle. Without knowing why, she knew she had just drawn his interest to an alarming degree, and it made her skin prickle with unease. “Are you Force-sensitive?”
Force...what? Like...like Luke? Just what was he implying?
She shook her head violently. “No, of course not,” she cried, trying to jerk away, to no avail.
Vader surveyed her, mask making his thoughts infuriatingly unreadable as ever. “We shall see.”
The syringe plunged into the skin on her arm, and she watched in minute horror as the tube filled with blood, damning her to whatever secrets lurked within.
The worst part was, part of her did want to know.
When Vader returned, he stood in the open doorway, as though he didn’t want to get any closer to her. That would have been a small relief, except for the fact she knew by the way he stood that he had discovered something, likely the very thing her mother and father had sought to hide. He now knew more about where she came from than she did, and she hated it.
The strangest part was how he had yet to completely enter the room.
Just how bad was this?
“When is your birthday?”
Leia frowned at the abrupt question, then squared her shoulders. She figured the information was not worth being tortured for, since it was rather public knowledge anyway. “We didn’t know. We celebrated it on the day I was adopted.”
At this, Vader stalked forward. Leia did her best not to flinch as he drew inches away from her and wagged a gloved finger directly in her face.
“Lies,” he hissed, sounding unhinged, even with the voice modulator; again, she fought the urge to draw back in the face of palpable, unusually intense anger from an already extremely volatile person. “Organa knew.”
She blinked rapidly, shuddering at how much sense that made, even if it was Vader saying it.
Now that she thought about it...her father probably knew exactly when she was born, if he had known who her parents were in the first place, and retrieved her from them almost directly after her birth—which it would have to have been, for her to been young enough to celebrate her birthday a day later.
But she couldn’t blame him, either. He’d likely covered up the true date to avoid...this.
Whatever this was, it was bad.
She shuddered heavily, at the fact that another part of herself, another part she’d grown up with, was a lie. A necessary lie, perhaps, and she could recognize that, but it was still another part of her identity and her tie to Alderaan, gone, just like the world itself.
Every day she lost something more.
And now Darth Vader, of all people, was the one filling her in. About herself.
Her own words to Tarkin bit at her. The more you tighten your grip…
This entire time, she’d been clinging to Alderaan. Now, it seemed to be trying to rid itself of her.
Who knew if she was even born on the planet?
“So?” she managed to retort after her mind had gone through all these thoughts rapid-fire, squaring her jaw. “I didn’t know.”
“So,” he repeated, “Organa knew Padmé Amidala.”
That name was familiar. Faint recognition tickled the back of her mind, and she frowned, rifling desperately through her memories before Vader could speak again.
Then it clicked.
The Queen of Naboo. The senator for democracy.
Leia had been to Naboo more than once now. Once, she had thought then that Queen’s portrait had turned to look at her, almost like a ghost, her face mournful...
Everything was suddenly making horrible, horrible sense.
When she was sixteen and on Naboo, Moff Panaka had spilled his tea when he saw her in the Queen’s outfits.
It was not out of clumsiness, as she had assumed.
No, it was because Padmé Amidala was her birth mother. And Leia must look like her.
The information was strange, and not what she’d expected to result from this capture, but it fit.
Of course; of course it had been hidden! Her father had known her birth mother. He’d known she was the Emperor’s most outspoken critic, and that the evil man would no doubt want to harm her child. And so he had protected the child—her—because he was an amazing man.
Once again, she felt a rush of affection for her parents and everything they had done for her.
As for Padmé Amidala...her birth mother was a beacon of hope, a legend even. Leia had idolized her based on her reputation alone. The realization that she’d admired her birth mother that entire time made her feel...well, not happy, because her parents who’d raised her were still dead, but something closer than she’d been in a while.
There were worse things to be descended from.
She almost forgot Vader was in front of her as she let it wash over her, a strange lightness thrumming through her body as she accepted the information. A smile nearly came to her face.
“You are pleased.”
She glanced up at him. “Of course I am! She was my hero—a champion of democracy! She’s…” she drew off, biting her lip. “...all I could’ve asked for in a birth mother.”
Vader continued staring. “She was my wife.”
Leia’s brain stopped working.
And then, as if everything had not already been shattered with his previous sentence, he continued, “Luke is our son.”
That meant—
That meant Vader was—
That meant Luke was her brother.
It could not be true.
But.
It added up.
They’d both been adopted.
If her birthday was when she now suspected it was, they were the exact same age.
When she was very young, she’d had dreams of a blond boy on a desert planet.
She shook her head violently. Luke could be her brother, but him?
He could not be anything to her.
She did not want him to be.
This could not be.
“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” he pressed, and he was on the other side of the room and his hand was still, but it was like being choked again to hear him speak to her with anything less than absolute malice.
She did know.
It was why she couldn’t move.
Vader was her biological father, and Leia felt even more lost than the vaporized bodies of Alderaan.
Leia wondered if she was made to suffer.
“Get out.”
Vader went still, but did not move. “Leia—”
And that was it.
His first use of her given name, and after everything he’d done to her, it was only because they shared blood.
“Get out!” she shrieked, louder and shriller than she even knew she was capable of being. “I hate you!”
To her surprise, after another moment of staring, he did.
As far as she was concerned, her opinion of Padmé Amidala had just gone into the trash compactor. No one who conceived children with Vader could have been a good person. Even if he’d once inexplicably been Anakin Skywalker. No matter what the stories said about her virtues. Or his, for that matter.
Perhaps she was starting to understand why her father had never told her any of this. It was unthinkable.
She closed her eyes, and imagined, not for the first time, that Bail and Breha Organa were her biological parents—this time, so she could be spared the pain of a heritage she didn’t want.
The next time Vader entered her cell, he stalked forward with the familiar anger. She flinched away, shouting in protest as he seized her arm and pulled her into the hall.
She tried digging her heels for the entire walk, but the monster was so large and inhumanly strong that it was futile.
“You are determined to hate me? Then I will show you what hate truly is.”
Ignoring her struggling, he dragged her summarily to the bridge viewport, the iron, inhuman grip on her arm not unlike that of the droid that had held her down mere hours earlier.
She sucked in a breath as she realized what she was seeing.
The motley fleet of Alderaanian survivors hung there, suspended in space, unable to make the jump to hyperspace. Even if the Espirions on the surface suddenly decided to change their minds and join them, their collective forces would still be no match for two Star Destroyers and all their accompanying fighters.
“Captain Needa,” barked Vader. “Fire.”
She backpedaled rapidly, shaking her head with mounting panic as green and red shots exchanged across the space—and collided with solid durasteel. No, no, no, no, not again.
All of her people were as trapped as she was. And it was her fault.
“Please…” she breathed, voice hoarse with desperation. “Please don’t. Please let them go. I’ll stay with you. I—I won’t fight anymore. Just let them go.”
At that moment, she would’ve said anything.
Vader’s grip on her shoulder tightened, and she clenched her teeth so hard they clacked together. She was here, not the Death Star, but here wasn’t any better, because at least then she wasn’t alone, at least then she’d had something to fight for. Here she was completely, utterly alone, and she was going to have to watch again.
“They should not have taken you from me. Now they will pay.”
She choked on a sob, and watched the last of her people died.
It did not take long. There were very few of them left.
In mere minutes, Leia was left staring at the aimless debris in dull horror.
“You are not Alderaanian. You do not belong to the people who stole you. It would be wise for you to understand this. You are my daughter, and you will become what you were meant to be.”
Tears were streaming down her face silently as he continued to speak. Her nails dug into her palms so hard that she nearly gasped at the pain.
And then Leia Organa lost the last of her composure.
She whirled on him, for once stepping into his personal space rather than the other way around, and she pulled at that conniving, intuitive part of that reminded her of a person’s weakness at precisely the right moment.
That weakness was her mother, and she was going to torture him with it.
“You want to know something, Lord Vader? My birth mother—Padmé—died miserable! She was kind, but every time I think about her I feel such unfathomable sadness and it’s because I know her end was horrible. Because of you! She may have been my mother, but you will never be my father!”
It started as a low, deadly hiss, but by the end of it, she was shouting in feral rage, one hand digging into his upper arm with every ounce of strength she had. It hardly mattered whether he felt anything, because now that she knew what he was, she could see beyond the mask as if it did not exist at all.
She knew with certainty that every word cut him to the bone, and she relished in it, because he was a monster, and all he ever did was hurt people. He’d hurt Leia, he’d hurt her mother, he’d killed her parents, he’d made her watch Alderaan die twice, and he was going to hurt Luke.
Leia did what she always did, and she focused on the next step, even with the weight of all the deaths crushing her. This was all because of her, and because of Luke.
Luke, who she’d known only a few months, and yet who was one of her only friends left in the world. Luke, who was her brother. Luke, who was all she had left. Luke, who she was realizing now her father must have sent her to meet, before she’d been rerouted to Scarif.
Luke, who would break into this Star Destroyer by himself if it meant he had even the slightest chance of saving her.
“You will make an excellent Sith. I will collect you when you have composed yourself adequately,” was all he said, before sweeping out of the room.
An awful snapping sound cracked through her ears, and the bodies of every witness hit the floor before he had even made it out of the room.
Leia was once again left alone with nothing but ghosts and her own tears for company.
She didn’t know how long she stood there before she even registered his words.
An excellent Sith, he’d said.
Was that what he was?
She’d never be a Sith, then, if only to spite him. She’d become a Jedi like Luke on sheer principle, because that would make him absolutely livid, wouldn’t it?
Jedi...wait...
Vader could invade her mind, and perhaps that ability only belonged to Sith, but Luke had told her about Ben mind-tricking the stormtroopers, and about him hearing his voice over Yavin. If Jedi could cross the distance between death, maybe she could do the same on a parsec scale.
She had no idea how, but she had to try.
Leia shut her eyes, the way she’d seen her...brother….do countless times now, and imagined Luke somewhere among the stars. There was something incorporeal clinging to her—two somethings, actually. Apparently the Force thought that blood was far more important than it was, but it helped her in this case.
She pulled on the light thread she could now see in her mind stretching across the galaxy, and felt an awareness flare up that wasn’t her own. It was warm, like a distant sunrise.
Luke, I have something to tell you.