Fic Prompts: Star Wars Wednesday

ready for a throwback? I wrote this in 2017. Five years ago!! It was part of a small series of pictures and drabbles in which Obi-wan told Luke that he had a sister on their way to the Death Star, but never got the chance to warn them about their father.

“Leia? Leia! Wake up, dear one!”
Her eyes opened slowly. She was warm and comfortable, not eager to move. When the voice called again, she groaned and sat up. It would not occur to her until much later that she seemed to be no bigger than a five year old.

“Leia my darling, are you going to lie there all day?”
She was sitting in a sunny field, surrounded by flowers that only grew on Alderaan. Surprised, she stood up and looked around for the source of the voices. An achingly familiar laugh met her when she did, and she turned quickly.

“There you are, sleepyhead!” Bail Organa laughed and held his arms out. Without a second thought, Leia rushed to him and was swept up into a fond embrace. He still smelled like mountain air and pressed linens.

“I missed you, Papa!” Leia choked back a sob. Gentle hands patted her back and smoothed her hair, and Bail chuckled again.

“Dear oh dear, after being asleep in the field for only ten minutes? Well nevermind, dear heart, I’ve missed you too. Come on, let’s go find Mama, eh? She’s probably got the picnic all set up.”

The field seemed to swirl around them, grass and wildflowers blending like smoke until they reached a tree where two elegant women sat laughing on a blanket. As Bail approached, both Breha and the other woman reached up with loving smiles and cried, “My baby!”

Confused, Leia looked from Breha’s dark eyes and tanned skin to the stranger’s familiar gaze and strangely decorated face, painted white with crimson spots upon her cheeks. It occurred to her that her father had showed her this woman’s portrait once and told her at least one story about her.

“Mama,” she said, still wondering why she was a child again, “Do we have a guest?”

“Of course, my love!” Breha laughed and pulled her into her arms. “It can hardly be a Mother’s Festival picnic without both your mothers here.” She beamed at the woman, who returned her smile. “Without our dear friend Padme, we would not have had you at all!”

Dreams are funny things, and statements that would be immediately questioned in waking life are sometimes left to pass uncontested. Leia sat between Breha and the woman called Padme, who laughed and joked with her parents as though they were the oldest and dearest of friends. Perhaps they were.

“It is a shame that Luke can’t join us today,” Bail remarked, and Padme’s face darkened.

“Yes,” she said sadly, “I do wish he could remember my voice, or at least remember that I belonged to that voice.” She turned to Leia, who was awkwardly patting her hand in an attempt at comfort. “But you remember, don’t you, my wide awake baby?”

“That’s our girl, alright,” Breha nodded and brushed Leia’s hair out of her face. “Always watching.”

The air cooled suddenly, and the sky grew overcast. Bail, Breha, and Padme all looked up with concern on their faces.
“He’s coming,” Bail said sharply.

“Who’s coming?” Leia asked. “Papa, who’s coming?”

Breha took Leia’s face in her hands, and there seemed to be tears in her eyes. “My love, you must be very very brave. Your father is coming.”

Confused, Leia pointed at Bail. “He’s right there.”

Padme laughed, but there was a catch in that laugh almost like a sob. “Yes he is, you clever girl, Bail is absolutely your Papa. But you’ve got two mammas and two papas and the other one is looking for you and your-” she stopped short and looked up.

Shadow swirled around them, making it hard to see anything. The field and the tree melted away, and a great wind tore at them.
“Leia!” Bail flew back, out of sight. Breha’s hand was torn from her grasp as she too melted into the darkness, and Padme seemed simply to fade, like a ghost.
She was alone in the midst of the storm.

“Mama! Papa!” Leia called out frantically, then, “Mother?”
The shadows twisted around to surround her in a massive set of claws, like some huge beast. She was lifted up to face burning eyes while some rhythmic whooshing of air nearly drowned out everything.

“There you are, little angel,” the shadows said, and drew her close, into an inky blackness.

Leia sat bolt upright, gasping for air. Her hands grasped blankets, not shadow, and she was surrounded by walls and a high window that only barely screened out Coruscant’s flickering lights.

Leia sat up straighter and pulled one of the blankets up around her shoulders, shivering. The dream was already fading, but there was something horribly familiar about the sound of the wind when the shadow being had appeared.

“Leia?”

She looked up to see Luke standing hesitantly in the doorway that connected their rooms. He looked afraid to intrude, but he shuffled forward a step.

“Nightmares?” Luke asked gingerly. When Leia hesitated, then nodded, he made a wry face. “Me too.”

Leia gazed at her brother – still adjusting to the fact that she even had a brother, given that Luke had only found out when they were on the way to the Death Star to rescue her, and it had only been three months since then – and waved him over.
“C'mere,” she whispered. “Want to talk about it?”

Luke climbed up onto the bed, sinking a little into the softness of the comforter, and sat with one knee pulled to his chest, a soft frown on his face.
“I dreamed I was flying,” he said.

“I was in a two-man fighter, piloting with my- with our father, though I couldn’t see his face.”
It had taken some awkward tries and a few stiff arguments, but they’d finally worked out that “My father” or “My parents” meant the Organas, and “our father” or “our parents” referred to the Skywalkers, and so Leia didn’t have to guess who Luke meant.

“Yeah?” Leia asked encouragingly, even as she tried to push her hair back into place.

“We were flying over a green world with a lot of lakes. I don’t know what it was, offhand. I’m still learning. But it felt familiar. I asked m- our father where we were, where we were going, and he said "It’s time to go home, son. We have to get your sister now.” But his voice wasn’t the same as it had been earlier.“
Luke picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of his sleep tunic and wrinkled his brow.

"I started to get scared, I don’t know why, and started to get out of the co-pilots seat. He grabbed my shoulder and it felt like a ten pound weight holding me down.” Luke swallowed hard. “He…he said, "There is no use in running, Luke, I’ve already found you. We are going to find your sister and we are going to go home.” Only he wasn’t Anakin Skywalker anymore. He’d…“

Luke was silent for several seconds. Leia waited patiently, but her gut was twisting, wondering what horrible thing she was so certain would come out of his mouth next.

"He’d turned into…into Darth Vader.” Luke shuddered and dropped his forehead to his knees. “I don’t know what that means, if it means anything.”

Leia held up the corner of her blanket and Luke needed no second invitation. They huddled together, staring at nothing for a while, and Leia quietly described her own dream.

“Padme,” Luke repeated wonderingly. “Do you think that was really our mother’s name?”

“I have no idea,” Leia confessed, “It could’ve been something I heard years ago and forgot. I think it’s part of Senator Amidala’s name, actually.” Something seemed to tug at her mind, trying to pull up the dream-woman’s face in her memories, as she said this. “Either way, it works well enough for a temporary name until we find out who she really was, right?”
Leia worked up a smile and laced her fingers through her brother’s.

“Yeah…” Luke murmured. For a moment, he seemed lost in thought. Then he turned to look at Leia. “I think we’re not safe here,” he said hesitantly, as if unsure of himself.

“So do I,” Leia confessed without meaning to. She shivered, remembering the shadow in her dream.
There you are, little angel

What had the Padme woman said about the shadows? Something about their father. The shadows and Vader in Luke’s dream were putting together a picture she couldn’t see yet, something just out of focus.
Neither she nor Luke felt they would like the answer.

“Maybe it means that the more we search for the truth about Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi, the more Darth Vader will be hunting us?” Luke suggested suddenly, but it was a halfhearted suggestion.

Leia kicked off the blankets and pulled on boots under her nightgown.
“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Come on, if we go out the window in your room, there’s a ledge just wide enough to walk on. We’ll just have to go to the rendezvous point early, that’s all.”

“I’ll get my stuff,” Luke whispered and slipped back to his room to get dressed.
It wouldn’t be the first time a sudden bad feeling had driven them out of a hiding place.

As the twins carefully climbed out of the window, Luke gripped his sister’s hand tightly and couldn’t help wondering about his dream. He still felt the weight on his shoulder, the sense of being watched. He raised his head and, for no reason he could think of, found himself staring directly at a row of windows in a skyscraper just opposite them. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and he squeezed Leia’s fingers.

“We need to move, now,” he gulped. “Someone’s watching us.”

Behind the windows, an ominous figure shifted, watching the young fugitives easing around the corner. They wouldn’t get far. He knew Coruscant better than they did. The trick would be capturing them without anyone recognizing the pair. The little princess had made too much of a name for herself and the little pilot was shaping up to follow in his sister’s footsteps.
Or perhaps more their father’s footsteps, he thought to himself, and behind his grotesque mask, he smiled.