Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Anakin wakes up suddenly.

It’s not in a panic. It’s not slow. It’s just that one moment, he is asleep, and the next, he is filled with a sense of doom.

He opens his eyes and rolls onto his back, and sees Leia.

The doom is her.

Or hers?

He isn’t sure.

She looks as closed off and iced over as she ever has. More, maybe. He’s not entirely sure he isn’t still dreaming.

“Leia?” he asks, voice cracking with sleep.

“I need your help,” she says, monotone and all but dead inside.

He scrambles up to sitting immediately. “Yeah, yes, whatever you need.”

Leia needs him! Maybe she’ll trust him, really, and—

“I am doing something unauthorized and reckless,” she says, “and I would like backup. If you don’t come along, I won’t let you stop me.”

He blinks at her, heart sinking what little bit it had managed to rise. “Why would I stop you?”

“I told you. It’s unauthorized.”

She doesn’t elaborate. Anakin’s getting worried, which is a bit of a feat considering he’s been a little worried this whole time.

“I want to help,” he reaffirms, because this is Leia, “but can I know what we’re doing?”

She shoves a datapad in his face.

He turns it on. It’s a video, on some holosite run by the CIS. An official press release, or close enough.

Bail Organa lays on a bed, intubated and covered in bandages, and very much unconscious.

But alive.

“They were waiting for him to stabilize before they made demands,” Leia says, low and flat and Anakin thinks she is trying very hard to not fall apart. “You can’t get the same concessions for a dead Senator’s body as you can for a live one.”

Saving a senator. One that Leia was, against all sense, viscerally connected to. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll come.”

He jumps out of bed and starts grabbing his day clothes. “Why me?”

“I helped you save Obi-Wan,” she says. “You’ll help me save Organa.”

It’s so… transactional. Anakin tries not to take it personally. Leia’s not at her best right now. “Uh, since we got into a lot of trouble for that… can I tell someone before we leave? I think asking permission might be better than asking forgiveness.”

She eyes him for so long that he almost forgets to finish pulling on his boots.

“Once we’re in the air,” she finally says. “We won’t have to steal a ship this time.”

--

Anakin gets to call Yoda once they’re in orbit, too late for anyone to stop them. He explains what he can, that Leia wasn’t in a mood to be stopped and Anakin would rather be her backup than let her go off alone on a suicide mission, and that the Jedi needed to know what was going on, just in case.

Leia is a void beside him. She’s hiding everything, so cut off from him and everything else that it almost feels like she’s dead.

Like when Organa died.

Anakin gives it a few hours in hyperspace. Leia pilots, the controls easy under her hands, even natural, and Anakin doesn’t even try to wheedle his way into flying.

She watches hyperspace pass. He watches her.

He can’t take the silence forever. “You’re not usually this reckless. Do I get to know… I mean, can I even ask? Why you’re so focused on Organa? Hearing he was presumed dead sent you into a coma, and now you’re doing… possibly the most reckless thing I’ve ever seen you do to save him.”

She turns to look at him. Silent.

“I’m still going to help,” he promises, “but… can I know anything?”

She looks at hyperspace again. Her focus is lightyears away.

Anakin has resigned himself to her silence, to still not being trusted, when she finally speaks.

“He reminds me of my father,” Leia says. “Not my biological father, but my papa. The man who raised me. I was adopted, by the most wonderful people in the galaxy. They died when I was nineteen.”

That… explains a lot, and yet not enough. “I see.”

He doesn’t. Leia’s not the kind of person to project like that, he thinks. It’s enough to explain her weird behavior around Organa, sure, the stuff Padmé complained about, but not enough to explain the collapse in the Dome. Not enough to explain this.

“I can’t tell you everything,” Leia says, after a few long moments. “It would be a distraction.”

Which could be deadly in a rescue mission like this. “Okay.”

“But I can tell you something,” she says. There’s a note of something in her voice, a decision, which is more real emotion than she’s showed since he woke up. “And the rest…”

He’s helping her. He’s acting outside the military structure for her. He is putting so much on the line for her. Can’t she see that?

“I’ll tell you after,” she sighs. “Maybe still not everything. But something.”

She gets up and leaves the seat with the autopilot running. R2 can handle it. “Let’s meditate.”

Anakin jumps to follow.

--

Leia’s mindscape looks a lot like Tatooine.

Anakin’s not a fan, but whatever. He’s used to sand, and he thinks he knows the building in the distance.

“Is that the Lars homestead?”

“Yes.”

That voice is not Leia. Anakin turns on his heel, and—

Blonde. Taller than Leia, but not nearly as tall as Anakin. Wearing all black, but with a gentle smile that knows too much.

Leia is tucked under the man’s arm, looking tired and drained and all such things.

“Hi?” Anakin tries.

“Hi,” the man says. He bows his head, presumably because he can’t do much else without jostling Leia. “I’m Luke. The dead brother.”

Yeah, he figured. “I’m… it’s nice to meet you.”

Anakin dithers a bit, and then asks, “have you… met a lot of people since you died?”

“Other than Leia? Only two,” Luke says. “And only Grandmother was on purpose.”

Well, yeah. If anyone was going to be introduced to Luke, of course it was Mom. “What do you mean, not on purpose? Someone broke into Leia’s head?”

“The Healers had to send someone in to wake me up after the news,” Leia says. She still sounds so flat. So dead. Her brother is more alive than she is. “So Master Windu met him, incidentally.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Luke says cheerily, “I don’t think he wanted to be in there any more than Leia did.”

Anakin has an odd feeling that they are managing him right now. So he doesn’t get too upset that Master Windu met Luke before Anakin did.

It’s working.

“Okay,” Anakin says. “Um… did you have anything you wanted to talk about?”

They do.

--

It is not until after they rescue Organa, and are well on their way back to Coruscant, that anyone explains the whole ‘future’ thing to him.

Apparently, he is no longer allowed to talk to the Chancellor, because the Chancellor is a Sith Lord, and Anakin is really, really bad at lying to him.

He tries to argue this, but Leia shows him a memory, aboard the Death Star and watching Alderaan blown to nothing.

She says, “I was the Princess Organa, then.”

She says, “my parents were on that planet.”

She says, pointing at the dark, ominous figure holding her back, “that was you.”

And Anakin decides to listen to her.

Chapter Text

Anakin flies them out. Leia is too busy with the hijacked medical droid and the senator, and Anakin isn’t going to get in the way of that.

He flies, and waits, and then realizes that Leia isn’t going to take care of herself while the Senator is here.

Probably, she’s thinking something like Anakin did after they got Obi-Wan back: if she takes her eyes off the man, he’ll disappear.

Anakin should probably do something about that.

So he does. He sets the autopilot, trusting R2 to handle it the way he did their trip out, and goes to… make some tea? Leia likes tea, and Obi-Wan taught Anakin how to make it the ‘right’ way. He can do that.

He brings Leia the tea. She seems surprised. He doesn’t let it get to him; Leia isn’t at her best right now.

“The droid bullied you into letting it wrap your arm?” he asks.

She nods. The burn is hidden. She doesn’t meet his eyes.

“You should probably get some sleep,” Anakin says, trying to think of how he’d react to things in this situation. Worse than Leia, probably, but that’s Leia at her best, not Leia like… this. “Or… at least meditate? Get some energy back in case we get ambushed on the way back.”

“You want to talk to Luke again,” she says. It’s flat, like so much has been, and so it’s not quite accusatory.

(Her voice hadn’t been flat when they enacted the rescue. She’d been screaming. There were tears. She’d held it together until she hadn’t, and then it had been up to Anakin and R2 to get the Senator, the medical droid, and Leia out.)

“I mean, I’d rather you talk to him,” Anakin tries. “Or something else to feel better. You haven’t slept at least since we left the Temple. And you got shot.”

“It was a graze.”

Anakin is trying so hard right now. Really, he should get some kind of award. “Leia, please? I’ll keep an eye on him, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll wake you up if anything changes.”

She stares at Organa, still, and doesn’t meet Anakin’s eyes.

Anakin looks past her, at the reflective door of the med bay medicine cabinet, and sees Luke.

The man shrugs. He says something Anakin cannot hear, but that has Leia twitching a little. Just a hint of an expression on her face, but something.

“Meditate with me,” she says.

Sure! Sure. Anything to try and fix whatever’s wrong right now. “Of course.”

--

They are not on Tatooine.

Anakin doesn’t know where they are. It’s a cell, but not one he’s familiar with. It doesn’t match up to any of the GAR ships, or any of the CIS cells he’s been in, or any of the planetary jails he’s visited.

Leia stands next to him, drawn and tired. Crucially, she is also laying on the cell’s bench.

The other Leia looks younger. She’s all in white.

Luke isn’t here, at least not physically. Or whatever. Anakin thinks he can maybe feel him, somehow? It’s unclear.

“This is a memory?” Anakin asks, just to confirm.

Leia nods shortly.

Some soldiers show up. Their armor looks like the clones, but not. The helmets in particular are different, and there are no colors.

There is a man, taller than Anakin, and all in black. He breathes mechanically, and it sends a shiver up Anakin’s spine.

Anakin and his Leia follow the man in black and the other one.

They enter what seems to be the bridge. There are plenty of people around, some in sharper detail than others.

There’s a man who looks like he could be Admiral Yularen’s uncle or something. The name is the same, even, so—

The younger Leia addresses the older man in charge as Tarkin. Like the captain who died a few months back. Anakin remembers something about a brother, but he doubts this is it, unless he’d misunderstood how old the dead one is.

Anakin looks past them all out the window. That’s Alderaan.

And it sounds a lot like this Tarkin is threatening it.

Anakin doesn’t remember any incident of Eriadu, or anyone, directly threatening Alderaan like this. The size of the bridge means this has to at least be the size of a Venator, and if anything that size had—

He turns to find the Leia he knows. She is watching him.

“Leia?”

“Watch,” she says, jutting her chin at the younger her, the Tarkin, and the man in black.

Anakin turns, heart sinking as the younger Leia screams and struggles, held back by the towering figure, and Tarkin gives an order.

It’s not real. It can’t be, because this would have been at least a few years ago, given how young this Leia looks, and Anakin’s been invited to the—no longer needed, thank goodness—funeral of Bail Organa on there.

Padmé spoke to Queen Breha last week.

The younger Leia collapses, sobbing. The people on the bridge look uncaring or, at best, uncomfortable, but none seem to feel particularly guilty. Tarkin oozes a smug satisfaction, and the man in black just stands there. No guilt from him, either, but a certain distate, Anakin thinks.

It’s hard to tell; all he has to go off of are the echoes of what Leia felt, and she hadn’t been trained, yet.

The scene freezes. Alderaan in dust, the younger Leia on her knees, and the officials enjoying her pain.

“I don’t think you were paying attention to what they said,” his Leia says quietly.

“Uh, sorry, no, I was trying to… take in everything,” Anakin says.

“I figured,” she says, “or you’d have already asked why they were calling me Senator Organa.”

Anakin’s stomach twists a little. He doesn’t know what the pieces are, yet, but they don’t seem good.

“Or why they called me princess,” she whispers.

Her eyes are fixed on the dust that used to be Alderaan.

“Is it some kind of… alternate timeline?” Anakin tries. “Like… uh… one where Queen Breha died on that mountain, and you took her place from some branch family nobody knew abo—”

“No,” Leia says. She looks at him again, and then at Tarkin, and then at the older Yularen. “I guess I can’t expect you to put together all the pieces so fast. They don’t make much sense.”

“Well, yeah,” Anakin says. “But I promise I’m trying.”

“We’re in the Death Star, you know,” Leia says, almost conversational. “This is why I was so desperate to get the plans out. I’ve seen what it can do.”

Ah. Yeah, that would… that would track.

She looks at Anakin again, and then says, “maybe we fast forward.”

--

There is an old man. The figure in black calls him Kenobi. They don’t really banter; it’s too cold to be something so playful. They were master and student, once.

Leia is on the ramp of a ship that looks just like the one he gave her. Luke is there too, and a Wookiee, and a tall human man, and—R2?

“Watch,” Leia tells him.

Anakin does, just in time to catch the lightsaber swing through a suddenly-disappeared Jedi.

The Sith seems just as confused as Anakin.

“Was that guy related to Obi-Wan?” Anakin asks, because that seems much more important than the Tarkins and Yularens of the galaxy.

“That was Obi-Wan,” Leia says. And that doesn’t make sense.

The scene rewinds, and Anakin darts over to look at the old Jedi.

He can kind of see it. Maybe? But—

That’s Obi-Wan’s lightsaber. It’s infinitely more scratched up and dirty than he’s ever seen it, but that’s Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.

Anakin looks at Leia, his Leia, and asks, “please just tell it to me straight.”

Leia looks at him, long and hard and so incredibly tired, and says, “I’m from the future. I was raised by Bail and Breha Organa.”

Well… well fuck.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she says. “And you can never talk to the Chancellor again.

“Leia—”

The scene changes again.

--

This is the Senate dome. Anakin knows it pretty well. Not as well as Leia, but well enough to know that something is wrong.

The decorations are wrong, the people are wrong, the energy is wrong. It’s never been a particularly Light building, but the Dark is omnipresent.

Leia pulls him to the Alderaan pod. It’s hard to see from a distance, but there’s a… well, that’s Mas Amedda, at least. Older, but him.

“He always said,” Leia intones, “that the Jedi were what disfigured him so. When they committed treason, and he was ‘forced’ to wipe them out.”

Anakin has far too many thoughts clamoring for attention right now. “Wiped out?”

“Almost as completely as Alderaan,” she says. “The Emperor doesn’t like things to stand in his way, and the Jedi certainly are.”

Anakin doesn’t—he can’t—what? “What Emperor?”

“The one that can end democracy by collecting emergency powers over the course of a war he helped engineer,” she says, “Sheev Palpatine. Darth Sidious. Whatever you want to call him.”

No. That’s—no.

“You have to be wrong.”

Her head snaps to him, suddenly raging, and she takes his wrist. She drags him out of the pod, ignoring his protests, and to some window to the outside.

Anakin sees what has been made of the Temple.

His stomach turns again.

“He is manipulating you,” she hisses. “He’s a goddamn Sith Lord. We barely killed him the first time, and I can’t even do that again without accidentally screwing everything over by triggering some failsafe. I still don’t know why the clones turned and helped genocide the Jedi! I still don’t know how much Dooku knows! There is so much going on, but of all of it, I know that Darth Sidious is the Chancellor and you will not fuck this up for me!”

Right. Cool.

“Let’s… let’s say I do believe you,” Anakin says, because that’s still a little up in the air. Luke materializes behind Leia’s shoulder, looking at him like he’s crazy, which—whatever. “Let’s say I understand why you didn’t want to tell anyone, because you’re the most paranoid person I’ve ever met, whatever… why you? You’re probably the most competent person that could travel through time, and you have a lot of the Force… but how? Why?”

She looks at him, and she is haunted.

The scene changes again. They are on the Death Star.

“The Sith Lord changed towards the end, and helped kill his master, Sidious,” Leia says, “because of Luke.”

Anakin glances at the other man, who shrugs. “It was a close call, but… he decided he cared more about his son than about his Master.”

Brows furrowing, Anakin looks between Luke and the tall man, and thinks they’re twins, and says, “your biological father is a Sith Lord?”

“His ghost sent me,” she says, “after Luke died.”

Okay. Well. That explains something?

Several somethings?

Anakin strides to them, and thinks I want Leia to trust me, thinks everyone dislikes the Chancellor, thinks even Mom said he looks through her.

He takes Leia’s hands into his own. “Tell me it’s real.”

She meets his eyes. She does not waver. “Sheev Palpatine is a Sith Lord, and I am going to take him and his empire down if I have to die to do it.”

There is no hint of a lie in this, and it’s her mindspace.

Anakin closes his eyes, thinks my friend is a Sith Lord, thinks he is going to kill almost everyone I know and love, thinks he’s been lying to me for years.

That little kernel of rage starts burning in him, too.

Anakin opens his eyes. “Okay. How do we kill him?”

“There is no we,” Leia snaps.

“You said there are traps and all, but what’s stopping me from just telling the Jedi there will be traps, and then going to kill him myself?” Anakin asks. “He won’t see it coming. We can even bring Obi-Wan or, I dunno, Master Windu. Backup.”

He’s warming up to the plan.

“No,” Leia says, “you are not doing that.”

“Leia has reasons for delaying,” Luke warns. “Trust us, you don’t want—”

“I could!” Anakin says. “Not alone, but I could!”

“He’ll get into your head,” Leia insists, “he’ll make you hesitate, turn you against your friends. That’s how he works!”

“I’ll be fine,” Anakin says. “I know he’s a Sith now, and that means—”

Leia jabs a finger at Darth Vader, “that Sith, Darth Vader, is you.”

…what?

“You tortured me,” she hisses, “for that man. You chopped of Luke’s hand, for that man! And you may not have known I was your daughter, but you damn well knew Luke was your son by that point!”

“It took several rounds of Palpatine torturing me for Father to step in,” Luke says. “It’s… I trust you in a vacuum.”

“But we do not trust you around that monster,” Leia says. She steps forward, eyes burning. “Do not go after him. Do not talk to him. Let. Me. Handle it.”

She’s his daughter.

And, he thinks, laughing just a touch wildly, he kind of understands why she hated him when they first met.