Insane. That’s what this whole thing was: insane.

The skyhopper lurched underneath of her, and Leia Organa shifted her balance with the vehicle’s movement.

Insane.

Insane to be barreling at this speed standing outside of the skyhopper’s canopy. Insane to be doing it blindfolded. And even more insane when the pilot who was flying the thing was also blindfolded.

If it was anyone but Luke at the controls, she’d have refused to do it.

But then, her life had been full of insanity for so long. She fought against a despot in the form of Palpatine, first with her words, then as one of the Rebellion’s soldiers and leaders. She lost Alderaan, and her father and her mother along with so many other loved ones. Then came all the many days buried in those pains of loss and the gnawing dread that she would lose more if she let anyone close to her heart again; then pain closed in with more injuries and torture, with the burdens of leadership and war, and the tenacious fear that none of the sacrifices meant they would win. Then, in the last-throw everything at the Empire attempt at victory, she found out about Vader. And her. And Luke.

Screaming inside herself about Vader being her father had gotten her nowhere. It was the same thing as standing still in quicksand: all she did was sink. She took the first step out of it on Naboo when she made herself face who her biological father was, and found she had escaped one patch of quicksand to a spot where she was surrounded by it in the form of her anger.

She had so much anger over Anakin Skywalker because of everything he did and how she felt being his daughter. And that had been the real problem: not just Vader/Anakin for himself, but for what part of him was in her.

Starting with her anger... and fears.

She also found an unexpected sadness. To see that young man the way he had been, the man Padme and Kenobi had loved, and yet know what he would become and all that he would do. All that had been lost to his anger... and fears. They had led to hate... the same hate Leia held for Vader -- and herself for coming from him.

Seeing Anakin Skywalker for who he had been brought her little peace, but it did bring her to a decision. She had taken Luke's cybernetic hand, that legacy of Darth Vader, and asked him to train her. The only way to peace and winning against the turmoil was to face it.

The effort it took to do that...

... was the same strength Luke had told her she must call on to look inside herself all over again and find out who really was Leia Organa, the person she thought she already knew as well the person that she hid from with all those rising abilities inside her.

She was always terrible at hiding from herself.

Which led to the present insanity: riding on the outside of skyhopper, the wind crackling the folds of her desert clothes, blindfolded, while Luke, eyes equally covered, never kept the thing steady under her feet.

Insanity.

Not that she had a say in the matter. She was Luke’s student, and he had said she should be at a point in her Force skills that she could maintain her balance and concentration in this exercise. Which she could, but she swore it was a lesson in trust: trust that her brother didn’t want his twin sister and best friend to be a smear on one of the canyon walls.

Luke had stressed how difficult the training would be even before they left Naboo months ago, but she had never thought he could come up with anything as twisted as this. Where did he ever get the idea?

But either way, he was the teacher and in charge.

“Leia,” Luke called into her earpiece. “Concentrate.”

She was concentrating. If she wasn’t, she never would have ducked in time as a stone overhang passed through the air where her head had just been.

Luke’s smile was clear in his voice. “Welcome to Beggar’s Canyon!”

He could keep it as far as she was concerned.

Her feet danced across the transparent canopy as Luke dipped the skyhopper on its port side to make the tight squeeze ahead. Leia was flat against the now horizontal starboard wing as they slipped through. She heard the rush of the wind that constantly threatened to snatch her off her perch, and felt the moving machine beneath her feet giving only half second warnings of what it was about to do. But mostly, she felt the Force, its energy and the way she tied herself with it, keeping her steady, allowing her to make the moves she did.

“Did you have to do this sort of thing in your training?” she half-protested.

“Sort of. Yoda made me do things that tested the same skills, but everyone has their own style in teaching. Sandpeople up ahead.”

She knew that, but couldn’t say anything because their shooting at her cut the conversation short. Getting fired at didn’t mean she got to come inside or that the exercise was over. Luke’s style of teaching was plainly that of a madman, and she hoped he heard her think that.

She focused. She felt the Force as a living presence, and saw through her blindfolded eyes how It tied her with the wind and the skyhopper shifting beneath her. How it tied her to each Tusken Raider who was coming up fast, tied her to the weapons in their hands, and the bullets they fired. Even those shots made paths of energy in the Force with their trails blazing like comets. Given that insight, she moved her body easily around them.

“Leia...” Luke warned.

He wanted her to draw her lightsaber, but she was avoiding that for as long as possible. She was Alderaani. Alderaan’s peace had been built on using no weapons unless absolutely necessary. She never had a problem using a blaster and still didn’t, but the Force gave her the chance to defend herself without a weapon. She was taking advantage of that whenever she could.

Or maybe Luke was right. Maybe she was being extra-sensitive to Bail Organa – in this case, his ideals for peace – because of her making at least a shaky truce with Anakin Skywalker. Plus the hastily stored message in the embassy records back on Coruscant, broken and filled with static, made by her adoptive father.

No, her real father, but when she thought that, it came with the automatic guilty thought, I’m sorry, Luke, right on its heels.

Two lines of Bail Organa’s sounded through the static clearly: You’re capable of so much, Leia. Don’t be anything less than that.

Her father and mother had never let her hide from herself either.

What had the rest of that message been?

A chuckle came over her earcomm. “You would’ve done better at the tree than I did,” Luke said.

No time to ask what that was about, and she had to get rid of the guilt she felt for putting the Organas above Anakin Skywalker when Luke might be sensing those thoughts. Guilt weakened her and people were shooting at her.

She went on her hands, flipping her legs over, shots passing close but still harmlessly past her abdomen and the back of her knees. She was still in motion when she called a nearby boulder from off a ledge and into the path of yet another shot that would have struck the skyhopper. She reached out further, and picked up a small rock, levitating it behind the Tusken Raiders and up the canyon wall before dropping it one precise place. It fell, striking other, ever larger rocks, all of them gathering momentum until a decent sized rock slide scattered down on the Sandpeople like meteors. Beggars Canyon echoed loudly with shouts of frustration and of feet madly running away.

They cleared the Raiders.

“You’re insane,” she told Luke in between quick breaths.

She felt his warm, laughing presence in the Force more than she heard him over their open comm channel. The skyhopper flipped over making her scamper like a womprat over its surface to the belly.

“You’ve been thinking that all morning,” he replied.

He turned them right side up again, and then slammed in the reverse thrusters. The skyhopper lurched and Leia tumbled, caught herself before she fell, and landed face down on the canopy. Luke was laughing.

“You demented---!” she started yelling, but he flung the ship forward again, snickering into her earcomm.

“We’re almost to the straight away,” he said. “Take off your blindfold.”

She did, and her eyes sent panicked messages to her brain that the canyon was whizzing by too fast, that this was too dangerous, that the upcoming wall was going to kill her. The wind stung her eyes into watering, making the world blur. The panic made her connection with the Force waiver.

Which was exactly why Luke had told her to take off the blindfold.

She breathed in, searched for her center again, and connected. Panic faded in front of the strong wall of peace the Force brought to her.

It put a blazing mirror in front of her soul, reflecting light into all the shadowy places where Darkness might be born. She didn’t turn away; she opened herself to it as any Jedi would. She re-learned who Leia Organa was and that included her shadows.

Anger, hate, fear of losing those she loved as she had when Alderaan was destroyed, guilt...

The mirror also revealed what made her Light:

Commitment to others, convinction and dedication, accepting the burdens of leadership without abusing its power, the ability to let go of the violence of war for the sake of peace, the strength to love after so many losses...

Luke accelerated even faster and then banked the skyhopper hard, causing a miniature sand storm from the force of their wake. Leia leapt into the air rather than battle the vessel’s jolting movement, and came down with a flip as it righted itself on the straight away to head back into the canyon.

“Back on your hands,” he instructed.

She felt him so strongly, and with it, how sure he was of himself and of her. Felt his heart beating at its even pace and his calm breathing at such odds with the hammering wind threatening to pluck her off. She trusted how sure he was and felt it in herself.

Accept the shadows.

Luke had been frank with her. If she excelled in all other Jedi practices that he taught her but didn’t learn this lesson, she wasn’t getting off the planet.

Do you think training is going to make you a saint?

She’d always carry the shadows with her.

I do, Luke had said.

If she reached that acceptance, that knowing herself, it would combine her Light into her greatest weapon for keeping the dark places from taking over, Leia. You didn’t see how aggravated and angry I could make Master Yoda. But he never let it affect his thinking. Never let it control him. That’s the most important thing to learn from the training.

She swapped the blindfold with the clear goggles on her belt, putting them on to protect her eyes from the wind. She stood on her hands and, with no doubts, found her center. She took away her left hand, standing only on her right.

Wind and gravity wanted to steal her again, but she was linked firmly to the skyhopper. And Luke. And herself.

They entered the canyon again.

Outdoor drills stopped when the heat peaked at midday. Luke made lunch in their tiny kitchen in the late Ben Kenobi’s home while she huddled over a workbench with Artoo and her lightsaber. Threepio stood in front of her, giving the diplomatic updates from the Republic as well as the Alderaanis’ efforts to build themselves a home on their new planet. So far, his report covered everything she’d discussed with Reynold Idwal before she left. Idwal was her coadjutor in the Alderaani diplomatic system. She had given him full power to act on her behalf, but she still needed to know what was happening.

Luke had made her lightsaber shortly after Endor, using parts originally stored in this same hut. Those parts made it just like her twin’s except for the blade’s color, which was a pale gold with a white center. She had never felt the need for having a saber until her training, barring the rare moments such as those on Naboo a few months ago.

Even so, the lightsaber had been no more personal to her than the multitude of blasters she had used during the war. No meaning to it, no feeling to it. Not until the endless hours, nights, and days she had spent mastering it here on Tatooine.

Luke had told her Jedis built their own sabers eventually. He had after losing his first one, and he had drilled lightsaber mechanics into her head until she could strip theirs down to their components and rebuild them -- blindfolded again.

Even so, Leia felt no desire to get rid of her present saber to build something new, but she did want to put her own touches to it. After a fruitless search in Anchorhead and Mos Eislely, she had suggested they take the long trip to Mos Espa, but Luke had refused. He had gone on a solo trip when he had scouted Tatooine for her training ground, and had come back with his jaw clenched hard, the same way he had looked when he had told her she wasn’t ready for what she’d find in Mos Espa.

She knew it had to do with their father because Anakin was from that desert town, and something of that same look haunted her brother’s face when they went to the old Lars farm to find their grandmother’s grave. Luke hadn’t talked about it then either.

Instead, he sent her back into Mos Eisley where she worked the docking bays this time. It worked, and she bartered a deal with a trade ship for the perfect new casings. They slimmed down the saber, and made a streamlined, slender handle. It and its recessed grip better fit her hand, not to mention the special holster she had for concealing the weapon under a sleeve or skirt, and she admired how the metal’s darker hue also brought out the blade’s gold.

Now she planned, with the help of Artoo and his welding tool, to circle the top of the handle with four delicate, etched markings, each of them a symbol of something important in her life. Alderaan, of course, which also stood for the Organas, then the Republic emblem followed by the stylized bird of the former Rebel Alliance, and the last one was Naboo to represent Padme Amidala and for how King Pormet had said she and Luke should look on the planet as a second home.

She finished the stencil and put it in place around the saber. She smiled as she brought it closer to Artoo. “Don’t burn me.”

The little droid’s beeps sounded more laughing than reassuring, but her hands stayed steady as he brought the welding laser to bear.

Threepio stopped the relentless flow he had been pouring out the whole time to admonish his counterpart. “Be careful, Artoo! Mistress Leia is trusting you to do a proper job!”

She raised her bright eyes, still sparkling even behind welder’s goggles, to Artoo’s photoreceptor. “Did you get that?” He whistled like he happily hummed while he worked, and she hid her smile from the other droid as she bent down over the saber again. She rotated it slowly to the next spot. “Sorry, Threepio. Go ahead.”

“Adjutant Idwal reports a major discovery in the Alderaan restoration project, Mistress Leia. The embassy palace on Marisa is intact.”

She glanced up sharply. Without her needing to ask, Artoo extended a clamp to replace her hands and continued engraving the symbols like compass points around the blade opening. She pulled off her goggles. “That palace was destroyed by the Empire right after Alderaan. I saw the remains.”

“I beg your pardon, Princess, but I believe what you saw was a report fabricated by the Empire. It appears the regional Governor chose to keep the palace for himself and faked its destruction even to the Emperor. It is unknown if Emperor Palpatine ever cared to find out the truth. However, the restored Marisan government has notified you, through the Alderaani Cabinet, that the palace is there. Adjutant Idwal led a team personally to confirm it. He reports that the original furnishings are ruined, but the architecture itself is intact. The Marisan government offers it to you for your new homeworld.”

She couldn’t believe it. Luke apparently caught that last statement as he came in with their lunch.

“Why did you have a palace on another planet?” he asked.

She blinked, pulling her mind back from the gift she was just given. She felt like someone just told all her warm memories were about to happen all over again. “Alderaan colonized Marisa centuries ago, but we eventually lost our claim to another planet. The Traekess.”

Not the first or last time Alderaan and Traekess glared at each other either.

“They left the palace alone, probably as a reminder that we lost it. The problem was they literally left it alone and did nothing to maintain it or support its people. By the time Marisa gained its independence with us as their ally for it, the palace needed a lot of repair. We rebuilt it and used it as our embassy.” Under her breath, she added softly, “It’s almost an exact replica of the one where I grew up.”

If that could be moved to the new planet, something that was so like her old home...

Threepio’s words burst this dream. “Alderaan will have to pay for its transportion as well as for its deconstruction and rebuilding. Marisa cannot spare the funds from its own restoration.”

Her previous joy sank. “Do we know the costs?”

Threepio did, giving the figures Idwal had sent. As Leia sank lower, he hesitated in his cost breakdown. “Princess Leia?”

“We can’t afford it, not now.” She swallowed and pushed disappointment out of her voice. She tried being all business, although she wasn’t sure that she succeeded. “It’ll take too much of our budget, and we can’t put off any of the building we’re doing already. Our people need somewhere to live. They need towns and cities, not to mention the ports and all the other places to do their work. The palace isn’t necessary in comparison to that.”

“What shall I tell the adjutant?”

“He’ll have to find a way to diplomatically tell the Marisan government that the palace can’t be moved until sometime in the future. I know he’s more than able to handle it, but they might demand that I speak to them myself since their offer was made to me personally. Let him now I’ll make myself available if he needs me to contact Marisa.”

Luke glanced over when she made that last statement. They had a deal about her work not interrupting her training, but his stern gaze melted into a grin. He knew that Leia couldn’t be completely out of touch, just as he couldn't.

The Republic needed Jedi, even as they feared a new Sith. It was a heavy mantle on his shoulders.

He took the finished saber from Artoo and examined it with an expert eye. She waited for him to say something about not having a symbol for their father, but he only nodded. “Good work.”

She attached the lightsaber to her belt with the standard clip and picked up her bowl. She took a good look at her meal and glanced over the rim at the cook.

He didn’t bother looking up. “Eat it. I’m not a great cook, but you’re worse. A lot worse.”

The best thing she could say about the food was that it was cold and very refreshing with the heat leaking in from the outside. Plus it was edible and actually pretty good, but being Luke’s student, she didn’t get to tease him as much as usual so she took advantage of this opportunity by making faces as she took careful bites.

He ignored her and, after having her clean up when the meal was done, he nodded to her saber. “Let’s check out your handiwork.”

That was his way of ordering her outside for lightsaber practice under the setting suns. Her skills had come a long way from when Luke could disarm her in two seconds, and he had only taken that long because he had felt like taking his time.

Yes, a very long, hard and painful way...

This was the second skill that she had to learn or she wasn’t getting off the planet. Not one foot would be allowed out of Kenobi’s home to return to the Republic if her lightsaber skills didn’t meet his exacting standards. Not when they still climbed out of the dark times with so many enemies still to face, not when her own life and those she was taking an oath to defend counted on it. Not ever.

It was why he had frowned at her for not drawing her lightsaber against the Sandpeople in the canyon, even though she had sensed he was secretly pleased at her ability to defend herself and give back the Sandpeople’s fight without using her weapon. It proved she had learned the other defenses as well, and that, like any Jedi, she could use any object, as well as the air and the Force itself, to block, repel, and yes, attack.

Jedi knights are the defenders of peace, Leia. You know that. And you know that means sometimes taking the fight into the enemy camp before innocents get hurt.

So Luke applauded her efforts in the canyon today, and would now make her prove that she hadn’t refrained from using her lightsaber because she was weak with it. Like the physical pounding she had endured to strengthen her body, and the meditations to strengthen her mind and spirit, plus every other exercise he had taught her, she had advanced to here.

She kept up with him, blow for blow, and kept him from getting under her guard. She used every advanced technique he had taught her, and managed to slip under his longer reach a few times.

The relentless workouts also strengthened her physically, so she no longer tired so easily while battling in the sand. Unlike when she first got here and Luke sent her in constant races up the dunes.

He swept from defense to an assaulting offense, stopping to show her how to combat his moves and how to make his tactics herself. In the end, her muscles quivering with exhaustion, sweating pouring from her even in the night air, she finished their last spar with no breaks or instruction from him and held her own. Even when he hurled things from the dunes at her as he struck at the opposite side.

He had told her that one of the big reasons he had lost his battle with Vader on Bespin was because their father had used the Force to attack Luke’s flanks, tiring him out. Her brother was making sure she was ready for such tactics.

Spent, she was released from any more training that day for a shower, dinner, and evening meditations. She went outside, throwing down a blanket to keep the sand from finding a way into her clothes like it always did, and to cover her body heat so a predator living within the dune didn’t find her for its dining pleasure.

Hopefully.

The meditation stilled the clamoring demands of Republic and the new planet for Alderaan, as well as Han’s reaction when she left --

Han. The name hitched at her heartbeat. She tried not to think of how long it had been since his last message. Or how impersonal it had been.

She tried.

It almost brought back the hostile voices that told her she shouldn’t be here. Except the reflection brought quiet, and with it, the balanced center to see just the next moment and the next action she needed to take, making the clamors silence into simple tasks and questions.

Bail Organa had first taught her this technique, and Luke surprisingly had repeated it an unwitting echo. Her father had spread his big, long fingered hands near her face, so his large palms encompassed her entire vision. “This represents everything you have to do. Frightening, isn’t it?”

It was frightening with his spread fingers like a cage in front of her.

“So, you don’t focus on that. You focus on this.” And he closed his hands, leaving only one little finger up. “Tell me just about this. Describe this one finger you see.”

The sunlight became visible again along with his warm eyes and his familiar office that managed to be both impressive and cozy. The overwhelming feeling died down, and the younger Leia had easily described that one task represented by one small finger.

She was finishing her meditation when Luke came up beside her and flung himself down on the blanket. He said nothing, just watched the evening sky, so she lifted up her face like he did and sat quietly, thinking.

Her brother once gazed at these same stars while dreaming of the adventures he craved. He was so changed from that naive farmboy, even though she still saw a part of that youth in him. Especially in such things as his smirks as he strode around in his element while she floundered in the sand, broiling suns and hot winds.

Not to mention his gleefully trying to fling her off the skyhopper.

Some sensitivity remained after her meditation, and she wondered if it came from Luke. He stayed quiet, but he frowned up at the sky. For some reason she didn’t understand, she frowned too and glanced around them.

Maybe it was returning to this planet that made everything seem so... out of sorts. Tatooine always appeared right before a major change in her life: sending the Death Star plans to Kenobi inside of Artoo, rescuing Han from Jabba, and now here she sat, nestled amongst the sand, a Jedi student near the end of her training.

But it didn’t explain why Luke kept staring up at the heavens, or why, when he could have brooded somewhere else, he came seeking her.

She broke the silence with the question she couldn’t ask before. “Luke, what did you mean when you said I would have done better at the tree than you did. What tree?”

He made a pillow of his hands, and shifted his body against the blanket to squirm the underlying sand into a more comfortable hollow. “It was during my training with Yoda at a point when I had already learned a lot.” He made an audible, small exhale, somewhere between a sigh and a quiet laugh as he smiled at some memory. “Of course, I was always telling Yoda that I had learned so much -- until I came back from Bespin.”

Leia listened to him, saying nothing.

“The tree didn’t look any different, not for Dagobah anyway, but it held this... pocket filled with the Dark Side. As if you could actually put a chunk of it into a box and seal it from spilling out to everything else. He told me to go in it, but as I started to, I put on my blaster and lightsaber. Yoda told me I didn’t need them. I didn’t listen. I didn’t think I should, and he didn’t make it an order. I didn’t understand, even though he said that I would be facing whatever I took in with me.”

His small smile was aimed at himself, a Luke who understood shaking his head at a time when he didn’t. She knew the feeling all to well.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“I met Vader, a phantom of him anyway, and I drew my saber first.” He gave another of those soft, odd breaths, this one more reflective than rueful. “I wanted so badly to kill him in those days. I wanted it more than anything. So I did it, I killed him. His head rolled away from his body and the mask burst open. And it was my face inside.”

Leia, who had been leaning closer, sat back, startled. She stared at him before she made some sense of what he said. “It was telling you that Vader was your father?”

“Maybe.” She couldn’t believe how quiet and calm he was. “I thought that later on too, but then I began to think Yoda was right. I didn’t need a blaster or lightsaber to defend myself in that cavern. He had shown me the Force and how it was a part of me. That’s all I needed. But I took in my weapons and the way they symbolized my violence. My anger, my hate and my need for revenge. And the Dark Side showed me how I brought in the part of me that was my worst enemy -- my violence and my wanting to use it. And that part was Vader.”

She moved so she sat cross-legged facing him and thought over what he had said. “I wonder... what part of Vader would have come out from inside of me.”

He turned his head so he faced her. “You wouldn’t have taken in your weapons. At least, you don’t rely on them. Like you did today in the canyon.”

“Maybe not, but if you told me I was facing the Dark Side, my natural reaction would probably be to reach for some weapon.”

“Even if I told you not to?”

“... I don’t know. But I think the point is, if I didn’t take my weapons into that tree, it would still find some part of Vader in me. My violence.”

He gave a small nod. He was the quiet one now as her eyes looked inside herself.

“My anger, my hate, how much I wanted him dead. He was always my personal demon, more than Palpatine.”

“Because of the Death Star. Your interrogation. And then Alderaan and Bespin.”

“Even before that,” she said. “I remember the first time I actually saw Palpatine in person. I felt like I met... pure evil. I know that sounds overdramatic, but I don’t know a better way to describe it. He was a disease that seeped into you until it clutched your heart and your throat.”

“I know,” he said.

“I’m know you do. You couldn’t really see it unless you were in his presence... Vader was different, I don’t know how to describe it. And yet, from the moment we first met, he was the only thing I ever truly feared.” They looked at each other for a moment. Those words said a lot on many levels. “So I think your tree would have found something to use.”

“And yet, look where you are,” he answered.

“Except that I haven’t gone through anything like your tree.”

He lapsed back into saying nothing. No sounds came from anywhere in the desert, no wind through the dunes, no Sandpeople circling closer, nothing. She strained to hear the droids inside the hut, and made out Threepio saying that he knew what he was doing, and was Artoo actually going to serve his miserable function in life by helping or not.

The quiet after that was broken by Luke saying, “Leia, have you ever wondered what our lives would be like if things were different?”

She waited for him to say something more, but nothing more came. “You mean, if we hadn’t been separated? If-- there hadn’t been a Vader.”

“Yeah.”

She whispered, “Of course.”

He nodded, lost in thought, and she tried to lighten his mood. “I know one thing,” she said. “You’d have been their favorite.”

He smiled, but his mood stayed, and she questioned if it was indeed about a possible Anakin Skywalker who had stayed away from the Dark Side.

“Luke, what are you really thinking?”

He was back to looking up at the stars. “You’re doing well, Leia.”

She smiled. “You sound surprised.”

“Not at you. Only that I was able to get you here.”

Ah, this old fear. That Luke, like Obi-Wan, would fail as a teacher and lose a Skywalker to the Dark Side.

“I’m glad you’re my first student. Since you can read me, it gave me room to learn to be a teacher while you learned to be the student.” He suddenly sat up and leaned his arms on his raised knees. He looked like he had during his years here as a youth, what with his old white tunic and his hair streaked blonde by the suns. But against that, he showed an air of command gained during the war, along with a calm dignity garnered as a Jedi that suited him well. “I know what’s been happening with Han.”

She looked away. “He’s never been great at communicating. You know that.”

“No, he’s not. He also doesn’t like you training to be a Jedi.”

“He never said that.”

“But we both know it’s true anyway. And we know why he feels that why. He loves you.”

She made a strangled sound in her chest, and wrapped her arms around herself.

For three years, she and Han had run from their feelings for each other. She was afraid of losing anyone else after Alderaan, especially someone who was so busy telling her he was leaving at the first chance, promising a broken heart. And he ran from feeling anything for anyone that put him at the same risks when he had been tossed out of one life into being a mercenary. That was hard to let go.

Then that all changed after rescuing him from Jabba.

Until now. Still, maybe she shouldn't be surprised Han was pulling back. He was at risk again, after all.

...but it hurt.

“When we were on Naboo a few months ago,” Luke said, “he spent a lot of time asking about our mother.”

She got the inference; of course she did. “Except there’s a big difference. Our parents were married when Anakin Skywalker fell. Han and I aren’t.”

“He still loves you.”

That night on Naboo when Han had held her in front of the fireplace, and she had told him that if he still needed to leave rather than commit to the Republic. He had let his kiss tell her he was never leaving. His later promise, in her mother’s cabin retreat, that he’d never go far from her.

Never pull away...

“Is there a point to this?” she demanded.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. I do have a point, and I should have made it better than this. Leia, you’re wrong if you think you haven’t faced what’s dark inside yourself. If anything, I’m more concerned that you think too much about it. It’s something that would make anyone afraid, and on top of it, you had to go against what Han wanted. That would have stopped a lot of people, but you found the strength to come here. Not only that, you’ve maintained your focus in your training despite everything so that you’ve made it as far as you have.”

That earlier tingle she experienced turned into a chill. “As much as that means to me, something tells me there’s more. And that lessons didn’t really end for today.”

He gazed out over Tatooine where Anakin Skywalker had started, where he, Luke, had started, and where he had brought her to start her life as a Jedi. “Every Jedi faces a trial where they are tempted by the Dark Side.”

“I know. You told me.”

“Before then... I first faced the Dark Side in that tree on Dagobah. I felt it again when Vader said he was my father. I thought it was my trial, that I won it by almost dying rather than going with him. But my real trial was on the second Death Star where I remembered how much I wanted to kill Vader, and almost did it.”

“Luke--”

“The point is, I don’t know when your trial will be. But something, your tree or your Bespin, is coming.” He held her eyes, steady. “You can feel it.”

That chill... the seasoned rebel in her now recognized it: the wait before the upcoming battle.

“Leia, the most important lesson I can give you is to have the same faith in you that I do. You know how much I believe in you and your strength. The thing that saved me, and our father in the end, was finding something to hold on to. On Bespin, my faith was in you. I knew you’d hear me if I called you. On the Death Star, I believed in Anakin Skywalker. And that kept me from killing Vader, and Anakin’s faith in me brought us both back from the Emperor.”

The horizon stretched out dark above the lighter shadows made by the the dunes and below the blackness of the ebony, star filled sky.

“It wasn’t about,” he said, “destroying the Emperor out of hate or revenge. It was about removing the disease you felt when you first saw him. It was about saving Life and holding on to someone you love. That’s the most important lesson I can give you now. You’ve learned everything else.” He watched her. “Do you understand?”

She said she did and he nodded, but they both knew it was one thing to listen to the words, another to hold on to their meaning when the time came.

She stared out into the darkness for a long time.

The rising suns found them both hard at lightsaber practice again. Luke saying she had learned everything he had to teach her apparently didn’t mean she was done her training after all. Four remotes darted in and out around her, entering and leaving her vision. Despite last night’s sobering lesson, she felt the Force buoyant in her body. Luke waved at the remotes, and two immediately fired. Leia leapt straight up, the sting bolts hitting the spot where she had stood, and twisted in mid-air, avoiding a third shot. Landing cleanly, she went head over heels, a strafing of bolts following her path.

Jumping to one side, she reached out to a small rock and brought it sailing to her, simultaneously ‘seeing’ two remotes headed for her back. Using the rock as a shield against the remote aiming at her side, she ignited her saber and stepped into the path of her rear assailants. She struck the shots meant for her back with the gold blade, and then waved her hand, sending the two remotes into a third where they crashed into each other and then the ground.

Springing from her crouched position, she threw herself into the air again, stretching her body flat to miss a bolt aimed for her thigh and, spinning into a spiral, slashed the remote down. She landed on her feet, and gave Luke a grin as she shut down her lightsaber. The remaining chill from last night dissipated. His expression never changed, not even as five more remotes arrived from around the hut.

She shifted back into an offensive stance when something grabbed at her mind, and screamed within her head. Luke pushed off from the wall, staring off in the direction from where the call orginated. He flicked his fingers and the remotes shut off. She moved to their speeder and climbed in.

What could send such a strong summons?

The trip was made in silence as they sat listening intently. Leia didn’t read anything special into their direction, but caught, out of the corner of her eye, Luke’s expression turning from pensive to a deep frown. A look soon matched by her as they arrived at the Sarlacc Pit.

She walked towards it, surprised at how empty the dunes around the Pit were. Her brother had talked about the way the Jawas scavenged anything they could find, but she never expected them to take the ruined sail barges, or the shrapnel blown everywhere when Jabba’s transport exploded. Her footprints marred the pristine surface of the wind swept sands, and she felt as if she violated sacred ground.

She went as close as she dared, careful to stay clear from where a Sarlacc limb could reach her, and opened herself cautiously, seeking out whoever had called her here. At once she experienced a cold grip similar to what she once undergone when she met Palpatine.

The Dark Side had formed another pocket.

How?

She glanced down at her waist and her lightsaber, and then back at Luke. In wordless agreement, she held it out to him, sent it drifting from her fingertips to his waiting hand before turning back into that cold touch.

Then, like knives of ice, the cries of many voices slammed into her, causing her to reel. Unable to force them out, she shuddered as their wails turned from unintelligible shrieks to fierce accusations, condemning her for their thousand year fate. The all too familiar stench of death, learned from too many battlefields, sickened her nostrils and coated her skin like an oily layer. She dropped to her knees without knowing it.

She tried defending herself by showing the self-defense in her acts, but they shouted her down and slowly other voices joined them, people whose deaths she’d caused. Stormtroopers appeared like specters, the burn mark from her blaster a horrid stain on the gleaming white body armor. Their helmets fell off revealing eyes with the life either draining from them in a slow fade or suddenly gone in an explosion. No longer enemies, but revealed as people.

“It was a war!” she cried, but their keening shrieks drowned out her voice, even inside her head. She tried recapturing their own butchery, but it failed in overriding the truth. People were dead because she’d killed them. It was a fact she could not change.

Filtering through their cries came the sound of harsh breathing, sending shivers through her every pore. She looked over to the other side of the Sarlacc where a black armored figure appeared: Vader.

A small groan escaped Luke’s lips. “I should have known.”

Leia didn’t need to ask. If Anakin Skywalker had been strong enough with the Force to become one with the Light, then his creation, the other half of his soul, Vader, was more than strong enough to become one with the Dark after Anakin ejected him like a parasite in a painful internal exorcism. Two men, Luke had told Leia, and here was the other one. The feel of his presence both pulsed with cheerless life and the emptiness of something metallic, like the taste of blood in her mouth.

The growing cold brought by death and Vader blocked Tatooine’s heat until she wanted to strip off her desert clothing and bare herself to the inferno of the twin suns so they may burn out the chill reaching the marrow in her bones. Luke started to break into a run, his expression anxious as he tried to reach Leia’s side, but he crashed into a barrier that separated him from the center of turmoil. He shouted at Vader only to be ignored. The Dark Lord gave him no choice but to stand watching, helpless.

Leia barely heard Luke, but Vader’s voice was unmistakably clear.

“Daughter.”

“You have no right to call me that.”

“You scorn your abilities by staying on this path, Leia.”

She hated that he used her name. It had taken her years to get Han to call her Leia, and now Vader thought he could use it?

Han...

Something inside of her trembled and weakened so slightly.

“You are meant for greater things. Do not make the same mistake your brother did.”

“I won’t turn! Your promises mean nothing to me. I’ve been offered the galaxy before. I didn’t want cowering slaves then, and I don’t want them now!”

“You will join the Dark Side. You have already shown your affinity for it.”

“No.”

“You are so much like me. You have a great deal of your mother in you, I see that as well, but you have the same power I have. And when you take your rightful place, you will bring your brother with you.”

Her breathing grew more rapid and her voice more hoarse. “No! I won’t turn! And Luke has gone beyond you!”

“Very good, child. Maintain your arrogant front. It will only bring your turning more quickly.” He strode across the pit as if it were hard deckplates instead of an open maw beneath his feet. The screams from those within the Sarlacc rose in shrieking wails that somehow clung to his boots and cape like fog.

She scrambled to her feet when she realized she was prostrate before him, and held on to her convictions like shields.

His deep, penetrating voice plucked those convictions like weak strings. “You want to change the galaxy, as did I. I wanted to save it from the people who weakened it with their constant bickering in the Senate.”

“So you took away people’s voices. You gave them no choice but to live and die at your command,” she said with the same defiance, but a part of her was set back on its heels. Anakin Skywalker had originally thought he was saving the galaxy.

He flicked his fingers in an idle movement, and the empty clip on her belt banged against her body. “You put aside your lightsaber and use the Force to arm yourself. Excellent. You did the same when you murdered the Hutt.”

From the pit came Jabba’s choked and croaking bellows, and her hands felt a phantom chain buck in their grasp, first with his fight to save his life, and then with his death rattles when the chain pulled tight around his throat. She felt him die again, ineffectively battling a strength that came out of her hatred and her wanting him dead.

Vader said, “I always found strangulation an effective means of killing someone. In time, you will learn to do it without the chain.”

Pain burned through her chest down to her belly as something within her clawed to escape. No, someone with fingernails sharpened like talons that tore her presence in the Force. Someone separate from her and yet still her. Someone that sought freedom, the way Anakin had finally rid himself of Vader. This time, however, the attempted exorcism happened in reverse.

As if he saw the person pushing Leia out of her own body, Vader held out a hand to cup her chin. “When the time comes, I will tell you the ways of the Sith.”

She pulled out of his fingers, as she had done with Tarkin on the Death Star, but the gesture was meaningless. Vader turned his head towards Luke, and the coldness Leia experienced before was nothing to what she felt now. Vader loved his son, loved both her and Luke, his children; she felt it radiating from him, and that twisted paternal emotion defiled by the Dark Side made her want to sob.

Slowly, Vader faded from sight and with him, that darkened someone inside her sunk into a mire hidden from her senses. She turned to Luke, and grasped his presence to burn the shadows out of her soul.

He spoke. “It’s time for us to go.”

Her testing was coming, but it wasn’t here.

To be continued in chapter 2...