The Sky Walkers
By Rey

8. Tug of War

"Leia." A prayer? A plea? An urge?

`Leia.` Possessive, protective, jealous.

Two grown men, powerful on their own rights and fiercely territorial, demanded her attention. But Leia herself could say nothing, could do nothing to refute one or the other, despite her current position favouring her father.

"Leia." There was a deep, genuine regret there, in the captain's… no, Uncle Ray's faintly trembling voice, regret of twelve years lost. Whoever her mother had been to the man, Capt… Uncle Ray did not view her simply as the extention of her mother, just… Leia.

`Leia.` Fear, palpable fear, she could practically taste it now, flowing thick and sickening from her father; fear of her abandoning him for another, despite the fact that she was still snuggled in his arms. Too proud yet to beg, too hesitant yet somehow to remove himself and her from the vicinity, but it was a near thing. Regret was there as well, of twelve years stolen. Regret which was steadily turning into determination that he was not going to waste more time, even if he had to sequester her somewhere remote…

But she wanted both, and she couldn't get both if her father spirited her away.

She shifted, wriggling a little. Tired, shaky hands wiped at swollen eyes and wet cheeks. She shifted again, but the arms round her refused to budge.

"Let me go," she croaked. "Please," she added almost as an afterthought.

But he didn't. Black fire roared with the strength of the fear instead, and reached out to kick the other man out, to eliminate the rival, the threat. `No!`

"No!" It was her turn to feel afraid now, to feel desperate, though not of abandonment.

She hated being caged.

And there was also the very real possibility of Capt… Uncle Ray being crushed like a bug, regardless of whatever his relation to her birth parents had been in the past.

The wild, fearsome power halted on its way.

But she didn't take into account the latter man's equal stubbornness, as he apparently regained his bearing for just one purpose. "She is not yours. Let her go, please, Lord Vader." Firm, demanding, just half a tone away from insolence, trying to mask – and perhaps also to tamp down – the dread of helplessness and, ironically, the same fear of separation.

With that, the tall man flew across the corridor outside, smack against the bulkhead opposite the door. And for that, Leia kicked the leather-encased belly of her captor. "You hurt him! Let me go!"

Whatever her father would do to her for that stunt, or for that demand, was postponed, for her droid friends, who had been forgotten in all the turmoil so far, came racing down the corridor. "Captain Antilles!" she could hear Threepio's fussy exclamation a long moment before the droid's golden frame appeared at the door. Artoo's nervous crooning could be faintly discerned farther away.

Allies.

"Artoo!" she implored. "Help!" But her father chose just that moment to shift his hold on her to a horizontal position, pinning her arms and legs flush against his armoured body, turning her face into the crook of his arm, and covering her with his thick cape, so all that she could let out next were just muffled noises.

Her fear grew.

Artoo had apparently arrived and taken in the entirety of the very, very odd scene, for he let out a shocked blat. Then, as expected with how she was effectively hidden from his visual sensors, he wondered aloud about where his Mistress Leia was.

The fear turned into desperate frustration.

`Artoo!` she wailed. `Uncle Ray! Let me go – I'm not going anywhere!`

Deep-seated pain churned the fear fuelling the black flames, thick with pangs of betrayal and loss. `Anakin,you're breaking my heart. I'll never stop loving you, but you are going downa path I can't follow,` echoed from the past, she knew; an echo from her mother, she knew, wreathed in love and pain and loss and fire and anger and betrayal.

And then, she was dropped onto the floor, gentler than she had expected, gentler than what he had done to her mother those years ago, just as the black flames churned wilder with agony and rage and creeping apathy. She wasn't sent flying across the corridor, but neither was she kept near like before.

For the first time in their meeting, since even before he had known that she was his daughter, her father had retracted his presence fully from her.

It was a worse – far worse – feeling than being choked by him.

She wanted both men in her life. Why must she choose to abandon one and take the other? Her heart was big enough for two, and more; why couldn't they see that?

Or did they refuse to see that?

But they were grown-ups! Adults were supposed not to be petty.

She choked back a sob. No, she wasn't going to cry yet again. She doubted she would be able to stop herself if she did, that's why, and she had neither the energy nor the luxury to indulge herself right now.

Artoo bumped against her kneeling form with a concerned coo. Choking back yet another sob, she blindly reached out and put her arms round his cylindrical body. "Artoo," she murmured, her voice wobbling dangerously. "Artoo." But what should she say? What could she say? What could Artoo, a small droid, help her with, actually? She had born the brunt of a droid's lack of tact just some time ago; she ought to know that well.

She couldn't think. She felt so hollow, unreal. The man just centimetres away behind her – her father – acted as if she were not there, while the other man at least two metres away, her uncle, groaning and cursing lowly, seemed to be trying to return to the room, on the peril of being a man-sized unfortunate bug.

She felt like a trinket being contended for by children.

But she wasn't. She refused to be roped into taking a side.

Nobody was in her side anyway, except perhaps her two droid friends. She suspected she couldn't even depend on Winter. Winter wouldn't understand; Winter hadn't had to choose between kin and kin, given that her birth family had all died before the Empire had been formed, and the Royal Family had adopted her right afterwards.

For a wild moment, driven by desperation and anger at the situation in general, Leia wished their positions had been exchanged. Winter was composed and cool-headed. Winter could argue her way out of a volatile situation without ruffling any temper. Leia? Well, she could make it worse, she well knew that.

Still, she wanted her father and her uncle, and nothing in the galaxy would change that.

"Leia?" Uncle Ray rasped, when the twelve-year-old stumbled past him with the astromech practically welded to her side. But she didn't look at him, nor did she answer him.

Only one thought ran in her mind, one person that might be in her side: Luke. He was her twin, after all. She just had to find him, and explain it all to him.

"Mistress Leia?" Threepio was approaching fast; and given her slow pace, he overtook her just in the next moment. "What are we going to do now, Mistress Leia? Where are you going, Mistress Leia? Shall I ask Captain Antilles and Lord Vader to vacate Mistress Padmé's cabin? She wouldn't want a stranger in her bedroom, after all. And although Captain Antilles has been well known to her, Lord Vadar is not. I would suggest…"

She let the chattery droid's words wash over her, like a strange balm. It didn't fill in the emptiness caused by her father's rejection and her uncle's inconsiderate demands, but at least it soothed the roughest edges.

All the same, as she reseated herself on the pilot's seat and mulled over the chain of events, however painful it was, on her last bid to reconcile the two men, she realised something.

No, two things.

First, Uncle Ray might not know the man behind the fearsome giant black armour.

Second, in all their interactions, especially after the revelation of her parentage, she had never called her father… well, Father; not even once. No wonder the man felt rejected, and sought to reject her in turn.

She rushed back to the cabin, using the energy that she'd never known she possessed, hoping she wasn't too late yet.

She hadn't expected for her Uncle Ray, the respected captain of the palace guards, to be seated on the edge of the bed on the centre of the wrecked cabin, gawping at the pacing form of her father, as the latter was declaiming demands for her proper upkeep, of all things.

"Father," she greeted the black armoured behemoth, struggling to conceal an inappropriate snort of incredulous laughter.

She flinched, as both men snapped their heads round, staring agape at her. Well, she had been spot-on regarding her oversights, at least, though it didn't make being under such emotionally-charged gazes more bearable.

"Father," she restarted valiantly, nonetheless. One deep breath, two, three… "Uncle Ray didn't know that you're Anakin Skywalker. And–"

"That name has no meaning for me!" Anger, pain, but muted, compared to earlier. Quick denial, too quick.

She flinched again, but arched a small wry smile. "If it had no meaning, you wouldn't deny it so quickly," she pointed out. "You wouldn't be my father too."

The said black armoured behemoth stalked closer to her. Uncle Ray stood up with a groan of pain, but Father was far quicker. In a flash, Leia was dangling in the air once more, this time supported by a pair of large hands set on arms' length. He didn't answer, but the black flames, now swarming round her again, whirled with so many unnamed emotions that pelted her from all sides as if they had physical bodies.

She reeled from the assault, dizzy and lost. But she did know one thing: Her father had been hurt, deeply, and the hurt had been associated with that name*(1).

She wriggled and clawed at the arms keeping her captive until she was back in his embrace. She put her hands on either side of his mask, then, pressing at it, wishing with all her might that she could touch the warm skin beneath, not the cold plasteel, to give her father at least some modicum of comfort, a wordless apology that would be more than mere words.

But judging from how he jerked, she somehow could.

She narrowed her eyes in thought, refocused herself, then hugged him round the neck, wishing for the same inexplicable miracle.

His mental voice keened a wordless longing, a wordless loss.

She smiled sadly. Well, whether Anakin Skywalker or Darth Vader, he was Father to her anyway, and it was all that mattered. If she were to regather pieces of her origin and trace her way to Luke, though, the name Anakin Skywalker wasn't to be discarded.

So, with a last squeeze, this time an advance apology for her next words, she picked the earlier topic back up. "Uncle Ray didn't know that you're Anakin Skywalker, so he thought you're going to just kidnap me." `Or kill me.` "The situation here hasn't been well lately, so we've all been on edge."

Her father flinched on the unspoken bit, but didn't refute the thought. Leia acknowledged it with sad acceptance.

He was far from perfect; the whole situation was far from perfect, far from what her imagination had conjured up, for that matter; but he was real, and he was hers, and they were reunited and reconciled, hopefully for ever.

And as Uncle Rey ventured a tentative "Ani?" she had hope for the two men, too.

Too bad that the reality of the outside world never gave them that chance, not now.

Not now, as the sound of an explosion travelled to their nook of the hangar, originating from the palace.

Both Alderaani shouted "Winter!" even as Darth Vader demanded "What?!" and both men were already sprinting to the ramp before Leia could register that they were moving.

Even more unfortunately, both men, in a strange truce, agreed that she wasn't to return to the palace, and the farther away from it the better.

"But Winter!" she squawked, before her father covered her mouth with one gloved hand, as he took off to the opposite side of the hangar with Threepio and Artoo trailing behind, darting behind the bulks of lonely starships. The sprinting footsteps of Uncle Ray, going right to the palace opposite their trajectory, sounded ominous.

It was deeply ironic, that Darth Vader was now steering the tiny speeder that had been meant to be used to flee from him, but Leia couldn't bring herself to note that point now. All that occupied her mind were: Uncle Ray was running into danger, and Winter was in danger.

And a moment after, as the speeder thrust out of the hangar on full throttle, the only thing that registered was: It was a trap!

Because it wasn't palace guards that welcomed them, but a rain of green plasma strafed from the hangar's roof.

End Notes:
Footnote: *(1) Well, "Darth Vader" may be viewed as a slave's name; but Anakin has no additional bad memories and feelings associated with this name, unlike "Anakin Skywalker," aside from the Sithly principle, which I don't think he would follow diligently if that other name doesn't hold that much pain. Under "Anakin Skywalker," he's been a slave too, lost his mother, lost his wife, lost his child, lost his mentor, lost his limbs and breathing ability, regardless of other considerations.
Argument: Why did Vader just let go of his kid? Well, he let go of his other kid on Bespin in the Original Trilogy… I guess poor Dad doesn't want to repeat what happened with their mother with them, and one betrayal is already one betrayal too many, in his point of view. (Remember, this point and the one above are pretty subjective, regardless of what we think.)
Author's Notes: Umm… I just can say… sorry? Heheh. And my profuse apologies, especially, to that one reviewer who squawked about me not updating for four months, whom I raged at. Uni-work did drown me for a while there, and then a dreadful spell of writer's block took me. In fact, I'd been struggling with this chapter for a long while, after a few rewrites, and my super-patient beta-reader Malicean got the brunt of my whinging and fretting and general indecision, before I at last figuratively sat myself down and told myself not to leave the doc file until it's full, today. I hope you aren't terribly disappointed. And sorry if it's not coherent at all or riddled with more holes than a Swiss cheese. It's literally fresh from the press, as it's posted minutes away after being written, without any reread, let alone edits. I'll return to this later, promise, though I can't say when I can update next…