Princess Leia Organa (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
imahologram) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2016-05-04 06:07 pm
imahologram) wrote in thisavrou_log2016-05-04 06:07 pm
it kills you to see them grow up.
Who: Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker
When: May 1
Where: Moro 002
What: Passing on a mislaid mail drop.
Warnings:
[Leia's still a little uncertain about the fact that Luke won't deliver the journal himself, but what matters is that Anakin receives what's rightfully his. If it comes from one twin instead of the other, that can't make much difference in the long run.
Hopefully.
She knocks before slipping inside the room, the casual approach to good manners, and gives her father a smile.]
It's good to see you.
[Starting with pleasantries seems like it might soften the inevitable moment when she has to hand over the chip.]
When: May 1
Where: Moro 002
What: Passing on a mislaid mail drop.
Warnings:
[Leia's still a little uncertain about the fact that Luke won't deliver the journal himself, but what matters is that Anakin receives what's rightfully his. If it comes from one twin instead of the other, that can't make much difference in the long run.
Hopefully.
She knocks before slipping inside the room, the casual approach to good manners, and gives her father a smile.]
It's good to see you.
[Starting with pleasantries seems like it might soften the inevitable moment when she has to hand over the chip.]
no subject
(That said, Leia undoubtedly feels more comfortable with the situation, and they have something of a stronger rapport; there is nothing in this visit he minds).
He glances up from idle tinkering on his arm; if it's not a ship, it's this. It's calming and he doesn't have to think (or is it that it helps him think more clearly?). He still looks tired through the smile he returns, but not quite dangerously so as Obi-Wan had been happy to point out
and force him to rectify, though the smile is happily and immediately returned in kind.]And you. You know you don't need an occasion for this, right?
[There's a reason why she's here. He knows this, feels it though she's said as much, can hear it unsaid just under the greeting. Had she been anyone else, he'd have pressed her to get to the point, but this is...nice? It's comfortable, and for all of the strange circumstances bringing them to this point, almost normal. It seems a shame to shatter that for the sake of whatever the point is.]
no subject
[She says it with a smile. It's clear enough that Anakin is unlikely to mind her coming in to say hello. Even knowing that, though, it's difficult to imagine barging in on him whenever the mood strikes her, as she once did with her other father.
Leia takes a seat next to him, glancing with mild interest at his prosthesis.]
How's your hand?
[Outside her family, she wouldn't ask--that's drawing attention where it might not be wanted--but it's the sort of thing she asks Luke, the same way she might inquire about the weather.]
no subject
[He laughs; it might still be strange for her, but he's hardly a stranger to being walked in on with regularity. Private space is a luxury, but in this case, he finds he doesn't mind.
He stops "working" as he sits down, having heard only a million and half times from multiple people how impolite the opposite is. Anakin regards her interest with another note of fondness: he's heard that same question in many different ways, most of them skeptical to disapproving of the prosthesis' existence, and so rarely with genuine, easy curiosity that makes it feel normal.]
Fine as it can be, under the circumstances.
[Which is part of the problem, but he doubts she's come for a diatribe on the essence of feeling and how the mechanics never quite translate it correctly.]
How are you holding up?
[There's a "how's your brother?" hidden in there somewhere too, but he's still unsure of where the line there is drawn, how that's okay to ask. It doesn't feel like the point she's here to make. And thus, the concern sits.]
no subject
[Good that she's not a bother, good that he's not doing any major damage repair today. His hand isn't the same model that Luke had at home, but he's also working with technology two decades behind their own. Before now, it's never occurred to Leia to wonder what the quality of synthflesh was in her parents' time.]
I've been all right.
[Where to begin? Besides the mess that was the end of the Del Pascia, there's the Falcon, all those discussions of what goes into being a Jedi, and the everyday flurry of non-work that is "navigating" a ship with only a partial understanding of the area.
The Falcon, she decides, after a moment. Start with the Falcon, move on to everything that's going to be much more difficult to say.]
My fr--[Come on, Leia, you both know he's not your friend]--Han received his ship. You've probably seen it in the cargo bay. It doesn't look like much, but if he ever agrees to open it up, you should go out with him in it.
[But she's not here to talk about Han, and if she stalls much longer, she might never get to the point. As she speaks, she draws out the little holo-journal and holds it out to Anakin.]
But this is what I came to give you.
no subject
[He's not calling it junk. The bitten-back laugh, however, mightimply that he's a little skeptical of being proud of the damned thing. (Not that he has room to talk when he's build craft out of nothing but actual junk). They're common enough in his time, but...well. The Falcon doesn't exactly look too common, either.
There's some reason for skepticism. He's just not saying as much.
At least she's a sight better than the transports they have to deal with here.]I'll have to ask him about that.
[Or give him an endless amount of grief. A fact that again, remains--and should--unsaid. He flashes a grin before she hands over the journal; it fades straight-away into something far more concerned.The journal feels weighty in his hands, something he senses is less the actual object and more what it contains.
It pulls at the core of him, a subtle, invisible wrench at his heart that leaves him suddenly quiet despite the well-meant ribbing only seconds prior. He glances, confused, from the still-quiet holo to his daughter, as if there's some explanation here he's missed.]
What is this?
no subject
[Great praise from someone whose appreciation of the ship has been hard-won over the course of years. At her worst, the Millennium Falcon is a nightmare who costs her pilots endless time in repairs. At her best, she's a lifesaver.
She grows on you.
Anakin's silence in the wake of the journal is heavier than she might have expected. She's not so familiar with the Force that she knows the possibility of sensing truths through objects--but something has clearly changed. It's as though he knows, now that he holds it in his hands, what's to come.]
They gave it to Luke with the last mail--by mistake, we think. [Her eyes are on the holo-journal as she speaks, but she glances up into her father's eyes for this part. There's no room for cowardice here.] It belonged to your mother.
holy shit i am sorry this took so long
[His breath all but stops in his throat as his heart drops into his stomach. Suddenly the box he'd all but shoved back in Obi-Wan's direction makes so much more sense, why it had been meant for someone else so tangentially related.
The weight in his feels all the heavier, hearkening back to a moment where it had been his mother he held, not the only thing left of her. It's so much, holding the barest remnant of the light in the universe most important to him, like something he shouldn't be allowed. How do you contain a piece of a star?
He can't contain the onset of shock, his pain near-bare in the explanation, and he averts his eyes when he finds that he doesn't have words to return in kind. Instead, he turns the holo on. Whether he believes her implicitly or not, it's too difficult to fathom without proof.]
“With my voice? Oh, Kitster, I don’t think that’s a very good—”
[Anakin cuts it off as as his mother does, and that breath he holds comes out in a shaky exhale. It's not enough to reground him, the memory is thirteen years old and blurring at the edges. Like a ghost.
Of the very same he's only ever been to his own children.
It takes another pregnant pause and a reminder to breathe before he can pull his eyes back to Leia. The mask he usually tries to push forth: cavalier, fearless, competent, is shattered and the thought of it moot. He can't even try.]
I...I don't-- [A pause. Another breath.] Thank you.
it's okay it's completely fine <3
Of all people, she knows how desperately a person can long for some trace of the woman who bore them. Even with others around, however loving, that hunger for the person who first carried her is something etched in Leia's bones. That longing for any part of her, for something external that proves she existed outside worn memories, never falls away.
It isn't like that for everyone in her position. But for her, it is.
And maybe it's similar to what Anakin feels then, his breath audible beside her. She looks up at him, resting a hand on his forearm.]
She made it for you. [A smile (or nearly), sad-eyed. She wishes Luke was here.] It's yours.
<3 <3 <3
It had been intense enough for murder, once. Grief causing yet more, as if the whole galaxy deserved to feel the same wrenching pain. Now it's only grief upon grief, each instance piling one on top of another, a suffocating thing that never goes away, only slightly tempered by hindsight and acknowledgement-that-shouldn't-be.
To have a part of his mother back again, even as fleeting and insubstantial as it is, is a step in the right direction. That much he can feel, every ordinance forbidding attachment be damned. It doesn't dull the pain, does nothing for the acute sting in his heart every time he thinks about it, but it does quiet the anger. If only because he knows it's not what she would have wanted.
How disappointed she would have been, even in the face of her tormentors. Always...especially in the face of those who had wronged her. Shmi's forgiveness had always been a large, incomprehensible sort of grace that no one deserved and she bestowed without thought anyway. She had been the core of the sun, bright, and blinding, and Light, where he had only inherited the ring of fire, burning and scalding along its surface, the dragon curled around its center, siphoning its warmth.
She'd deserved so much more than this.]
She...she died. [It's finally offered by way of explanation, quiet and near-choked. She's part of that sun, he thinks. She deserves to know. They deserve to know.] Three years ago. I didn't...
[...]
I didn't think there was anything left.
no subject
[It seems like so little in the face of his grief. But she means it, and in the wake of her own loss, she'd appreciated expressions of sympathy--especially from people who'd known her parents, or from people who spoke for her sake, not their own. Words can, she knows, make a difference. But they feel paltry when she's giving them, rather than accepting them.]
I hope you'll forgive me for watching it--but once I heard her voice, I couldn't turn away. [Some part of her expects he'll understand that. His mother seemed so kind in her entries, so warm and guileless. She seemed to love everyone she met, even the man who owned her.] She was a good woman.
[Then there's the part that's more difficult to speak aloud. But Leia thinks she must. It's waiting in her throat, begging to be said.]
And she loved you so much.
no subject
No.
The conflict, however unspoken it is, flashes in his expression for a moment, the anger a comet through his eyes: there in one moment, passed in the next. His mother has always left him a mess of conflicting emotion. It seems that too runs in the family.
It's in unspoken apology for that betraying thought that he moves to hug her. Maybe this isn't right, isn't proper when he hasn't raised her and their only connection comes through a tangential, coincidental meeting and a force trick of happenstance. But that supposition can be damned, for all Anakin cares for it.]
I wouldn't know, if not for you.
[The admission is given quietly, following a long, shaking breath. He screws his eyes shut into that embrace, an effort put into regaining some sense of footing. She deserves to be remembered better than this, he thinks.]
And she'd have loved you more. [A rueful admission. Regretful on too many levels.] You and your brother both.
no subject
(She did, though, and more than that, she thinks she felt it. Perhaps she did.)
She's also not sure what to make of it. Hugging him gives her a moment to hide her face and push the vague sense of his ire away. More importantly, Anakin needs the contact--and so does she, whether she'll admit it or not. Affectionate by nature as she is, embracing people comes naturally to her. To know her father without ever throwing her arms around him doesn't feel like truly knowing him at all.]
I doubt it. [There's warmth there. Somehow, he makes her feel older than him and younger all at once.] She might have loved us just as much, but I don't think she could love anyone more than you.
no subject
Anakin shakes his head with a soft laugh.]
If you say so. I think you underestimate how much she'd have wanted this.
[Or maybe he's conflating that with how much he'd wanted it, all the times that he'd dreamed of an idyllic family, his mother ever present in each one. She may have never said--never been able to express it--but he knows. He knows the depths of her love better than anyone, he thinks, and that has to count for something.]
Thank you, [again, after a pause. For everything.]
no subject
[Leia's seen wobbling, damaged holo shots of her grandmother; Anakin actually knew her. She's willing to take his word as truth, but it seems difficult to believe his mother could love anyone in the galaxy more than her son.
There's no jealousy in that fact. So much of Anakin's story seems cruel to her; that he was the star to his mother's planet seems like one small mercy amid too many callous moments. (And now she's the star to his wandering bark, but alas, the reference is unknown to their galaxy.)
She squeezes him, kissing his cheek as she draws away. Alderaanians, right? Leia's quick to express love, when she's willing to admit she feels it, and she couldn't deny her father some affection at a time like this.]
You don't have to thank me. [Smiling a little, as if to say you're welcome nonetheless.]
no subject
Aside from the obvious poor exception in Shmi's end--details he doesn't feel necessary to lay on anyone, a poor way for anyone to be remembered, let alone his mother--the image of family so firmly centered in his mind, whether from daydreams or desperately wanting hallucinations, has been nothing but happiness. His mother, Padmé are both constants therein, the two people in the whole of the galaxy he's cared for the most until now, but the feeling had been the real take-away. Completion. And it's easier now to fill in those hazy gaps in those visions, unclear faces now smiling at him in sharp contrast.
Mostly smiling, anyway. It's then that Leia's explanation, easily glossed over in the headiness of the overwhelming reveal, finally starts to click. Hadn't she said--]
Has Luke seen this?
no subject
This is the closest she'll ever be to her grandmother, she realizes, through the warmth of her voice and her father's presence at her side. It's not much, but it's more than she suspects either of them could have hoped.
It's enough.
Leia nods, glancing down at his hands, and the journal still grasped in one, again.]
He was listening to it when I visited him. [A little smile, a glance up from the corners of her eyes.] He was charmed by her, too.
no subject
You both had to get it from somewhere. Her and your mother, maybe.
[He chuckles quietly, and reaches out to gently grasp her hand in his. An unspoken affirmation. I love you too, he thinks. I'm not sure how, but I do.]