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“Did you run away, again?”
“Are you going to lecture me?”
Obi-Wan sighs. Leia Skywalker’s learned every one of Obi-Wan’s sighs, in the many times she’s shown up at the Temple with a defiant glare and mulish frown. This one says he has a lecture on the tip of his tongue, but he isn’t going to say it.
“What did Anakin do now?”
She sniffs. “What didn’t he do?”
Her mother was one of the youngest Queens in Naboo history. She’d gone on to be a Senator, negotiating peace throughout the galaxy. Her father was the Hero with No Fear during the Clone Wars. She’s the result of two successful people, star-crossed lovers who found each other and kept each other despite a war.
She’s sixteen now, older than her mother was when she was Queen, and her father watches over her like a hawk, following her every move. She went out with Luke yesterday, just a brief trip to the botanical gardens on their student discount day, only to find her father wearing a hat and sunglasses tailing them.
A week ago, she tried to order the steak at a restaurant, only for her father to insist she order the fish instead, because he knew she’d like it more. Two weeks ago, he insisted that she give up on her summer internship at the Palace in favor of a family vacation to the Lake House, because didn’t she know how important family was to him? Three weeks ago, he insisted that she stop spending time with Ryn from Debate Club, because didn’t she understand that spending time with others meant she had less time with her family? Her family who loved her? And mom sighed and said to just indulge your father, dear, and wasn’t she allowed to make choices of her own?
A month ago, she woke up with dreams fighting against tyranny on a forested moon, and it was been so real. But her mother insisted that they not be trained in the Force, insisted—just as her father insisted—that going to the temple would make them cold and heartless, even though none of the Jedi she’d ever met were cold and heartless, but kind and giving, considerate and thoughtful.
Obi-Wan says, “Leia,” very quietly. “I’m sorry.”
She’s crying. She can feel the tears, hot and angry, on her cheeks. She thought she’d cried out all her tears as she screamed at her dad and stormed out, but apparently she still has more in her. They’re different tears now—not angry, but still bitter. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
There is a hesitation in Obi-Wan’s voice. “There is no emotion,” he says, in the low voice he used when she and Luke were younglings.
“There is peace,” she finishes. The words soothe, the meditation mantra he taught them—because Anakin Skywalker had never bothered, had always preferred them screaming and shrieking at each other instead of settling. But she closes her eyes and breathes deeply. She is angry, but the anger comes from helplessness. It comes from feeling useless and weak and as though she is trapped in a swaddle of Anakin’s oppressive love.
Leia, when she opens her eyes, is calm.
“We should have been Jedi, Luke and I,” she says.
“It was your parents choice, not to send you to the Temple.”
Leia shakes her head. She knows. She is helpless, like this. Untrained, her emotions wild and angry. She should have been raised in the creche, surrounded by patience and care and the understanding guidance of Jedi around her. Both her and Luke.
“We should have been Jedi,” she says. “That’s why I keep coming back.” She stares at the Temple, bright and golden. “This should have been my home.”
And she swallows down the bitterness, because she is not a Jedi, and she does not know how to let it go. Instead, the bitterness lingers, deep in the pit of her belly, and it grows, and grows, and grows until there is nothing of Leia left, and only the darkness.