A/N This is something that kind of just came out while I was writing. I know the style is a little different, but I really like it. Please give it a try. I do not own Star Wars or any of the characters in this story.

Sometimes Leia wondered why the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic never told her, why she never confirmed this feeling that sank deep into her gut and then shot upwards as if it were eating at her soul. She had a memory, perhaps the first moments of her life that she could recall, of green grass and white shua flowers that grew in the Lake Country of her home planet. She was laughing. The Senator was there, breading shua flowers into her hair. There was a man there too, but Leia couldn't remember him well at all. She supposed he was her father, but her father was dead. He had been for years.

Leia knew that when she was younger that there were things she couldn't understand. Things that she might never know, but every daughter had a right to know who her mother was, even the slave daughters who were worked in misery at the far reaches of Hutt space. When she first asked where her mother was, when she became aware that normal people didn't live in the household of the Nubian queen, when she understood that she was somehow less than family but somehow more than a servant, when she heard her tutor shake his head at her loneliness, she was told that her mother was far away, that her mother couldn't be with her now.

Leia remembered those answers well. They were cold condolences to a sad child. They were the harsh realities that comforted her as she fell asleep on her tear-stained pillow. She had no mother. She had no one but the then-Senator of the Chommell Sector. She was Leia's guardian, Leia's protector. But she never acknowledged herself as Leia's mother. She never acted like Leia's mother either. They rarely talked. Occasionally, the Senator had asked about her lessons with her tutor, about whether or not she was happy. Of course she told the Senator she was delighted to be a part of her household. How she could she reply otherwise? How did a child explain to the person past childhood that children were not meant to be alone, to be without friends or comforters? There was a void in Leia's heart deeper than even the deepest part of the Maw. But she admitted this to no one. Not even to herself.

When the Senator was made Supreme Chancellor, Leia was left on Naboo with her tutor and with Sabé, a handmaiden who preferred semi-retirement to the politics on the capital. She was left if near-isolation for six standard years. It was then she started to wonder about the family that left her alone, to celebrate alone during mid-winter festivals and coronations without merriment, to listen to Sabé's stories without relief. But when she had finally gathered the courage to ask Sabé who she was, where she came from, she was told that only the Chancellor had the answers, only the Chancellor could tell her, only…, so Leia never asked again. She only immersed herself more in her school work; she began to follow the politics of the Chancellor closely, so that when it was time, she would know…she would know what it is she needed to know.

Leia both loved and hated the Lake Country. It was her home; it was her prison. It was a fortress no man could scale, save one. She saw him sometimes in her dreams. He was kind to her. He smiled at her. And while Leia knew he was just the spectator of a dream, a ghost of someone she knew could never be, sometimes she felt him watching her as she slept. It was a good feeling, one that reminded her that she was not alone in the universe. Sometimes when she woke up, the feeling lingered, warming the hole in her heart. But other times it disappeared as soon as she awoke.

A year ago, Leia partially solved the mystery of her birth. She had been having her history lesson, and she saw a holo of the Chancellor, a holo of when the Chancellor was much younger. Leia wasn't her spitting image. Her face had a hardness that the Chancellor's lacked. Her chin was too sharp, her nose was too angular, her eyes were too hard, but the resemblance was there. It was enough for Leia to slam the door on her tutor and cry herself to sleep. Her mother had never wanted her, had never even acknowledged her, had never wanted a daughter to trouble herself with. Because her mother was too busy doing other things…like running the galaxy. Because that fateful day, she discovered that Chancellor Amidala was more than her guardian—she was her mother, too.

If Sabé ever reported the incident to the Chancellor, Leia never knew about it. After that day, she passed her days as she had all the rest, living in her prison world and waiting for the summons she knew would one-day come. And they did come, on her nineteenth birthday. Sabé was elated when she told Leia that the Chancellor had decided she was ready to be of service, that she would be pleased if Leia would serve as her handmaiden on Coruscant. Leia knew there would be no refusing her, and so she went. She wasn't sure if it was with an angry heart or a hopeful one that she traveled across the galaxy to reach Chancellor Amidala. But she went with the determination that she would find out answers. Even if answers were better left unsaid.

Leia had been serving the Chancellor for less than a year when she met him. He was shy and mumbled when he spoke to her. But she liked him anyway. He was a Jedi apprentice sometimes assigned to watch over the Chancellor when other Jedi masters had more urgent matters to attend. He watched over the Chancellor, but sometimes Leia suspected it was the Chancellor who was watching him. He said his name was Luke.

It was the first time Leia had a friend her own age, someone she could share secrets with without worrying about the Chancellor finding out. And sometimes between errands or on quiet nights they would talk, when they discussed the stars as Dormé said when the two young people visited in the quiet of the Chancellor's private rooms. And Leia almost told him about her fears, about her desire to know the truth. She would have if he had not told her one night when only the clone detail that watched over the 500 Republica caused noise outside the Chancellor's window, when the Chancellor was already engulfed in a deep sleep, that Jedi had no family. They were raised without knowing where they came from or who their parents were. He said it was such matter-of-factness, with such hopelessness that her pity for him became greater than the sadness she had for herself.

Later, Leia was glad she withheld her suspicions and fears from being spoken out loud. Because when she met Luke's master, a Jedi named Obi-Wan, a man with guarded eyes and orthodox Jedi views, something told her that he was someone she should be careful around. Even though his smile was pleasant and he was always friendly, she felt as if he were hiding something from her, something he was deliberately trying to avoid saying or doing. Because of this tingling in her fingertips, she only spoke to him when it was absolutely necessary. The Jedi was a paradox of sorts because he lit up when he saw Leia and delighted in her presence even if he had secrets to hide from her…or secrets about her as the case seemed.

But because Leia's quest for answers could not be halted or advanced by the presence of a Jedi master and his padawan, she pursued her mission anyway. But when after one standard year she was no closer to the truth than when she first arrived on Coruscant, she knew that she had to become more than just a handmaiden, more than someone who was a replica of five others. She was close to the Chancellor, but she was not close enough. She needed to make herself valuable, she needed to make herself known. She needed an excuse to get closer to the Chancellor herself.

The opportunity presented itself when Leia volunteered herself for a diplomatic mission that required the utmost secrecy and tact. She agreed to go to Corellia and find a smuggler who could provide vital information about the Hutts that could sway a crucial vote in the Senate. In the company of the newly-knighted Jedi Luke Starkiller, she would look like a woman and her brother on a visit to Corellia. She and Luke would blend in, disappear, not make themselves noticed. She would find the smuggler and validate his information. She had to. It was her only chance of proving herself to the Chancellor, to her mother.

The mission was a success. Luke was a pleasant and helpful companion even if the smuggler, a man by the name of Han Solo, was not. He was crass and he smelled. His furry carpet of a copilot, a Wookie, was little more than a nuisance, too. Leia was more than happy to leave the pair behind on Corellia while she became invaluable to the Chancellor. Chancellor Amidala came to rely on her for her political advice which she took more often than not. Leia was let into more than just the Chancellor's world of dresses and frippery. She was let into the Chancellor's real universe of decision-making and fateful political meetings. She was given the opportunity to look into the Chancellor's mind, to see how her thought-process worked.

She learned that Chancellor Amidala was naturally kind, but harsh when occasion demanded. She was brilliant in her professional realm, but fretted when it came to her personal life. She saw the Jedi as an asset whose beliefs she would never fully realize or understand. She believed the Hutts were power-hungry beasts who needed to be stripped of their power. She loved Naboo even if she had not been there in years. She was distant with her family because of the choices she had made about her life. She preferred her own company above that of nearly anyone. Most of all, Leia came to learn that when her eyes clouded over with mist, she got lonely and sad too.

But the Chancellor never confessed the existence of a daughter, and as Leia passed from her twentieth to her twenty-first standard year, she kept on waiting. What she was waiting for she wasn't exactly sure, a moment perhaps or a feeling of some sort. In the meantime, she became a liaison between the Chancellor and the smuggler Han Solo. He became a spy for the Chancellor, feeding her office information about the Hutts. While Leia knew he hated them as much as she did, she knew Solo spied not out of the goodness of his heart, but because of the credits that flowed into his bank account. She didn't like the work, but it kept her in the Chancellor's good graces. And she intended to stay there. She probably would have, too, if the Chancellor had not been summoned before the Jedi Council during Leia's twenty-second standard year.

Master Yoda, Leia knew, was the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order. At over nine-hundred- standard-years-old, he was older, wiser, smarter, stronger, and even faster than any other Jedi in the Order. Or so it was said. When Master Yoda came to visit the personal chambers of Chancellor Amidala. The Chancellor and the old Jedi sat behind closed doors for what seemed like hours. Leia could feel anger, fear, and even mourning come behind those doors. He had come to give the Chancellor summons and information about someone or something Leia sensed. And even if such a feeling had not over-taken her, she saw it in the Chancellor's tear-streaked face when she let Master Yoda out the door. But the oddest thing about the entire event was when the Jedi looked at Leia with those great green eyes of his with such intensity, Leia sensed he was searching her soul.

But the moment passed so swiftly, Leia thought she had imagined it, and shook the feeling off. However, when Leia, and only Leia, accompanied the Chancellor at dawn three days later to the Jedi Temple, she supposed that maybe she was not imagining things. Although Leia was permitted to walk hallowed columned walls of the Jedi Temple that morning, she was not permitted inside the Council chamber itself. She waited outside of it for the Chancellor. She could not hear what went on within, but she was very much aware of what was going on outside the room. She saw the Coruscanti sunrise, she noticed the plain pattern of the hallway's carpet, she took note of the Jedi laws carved outside the Council chamber's door. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. It was strange for someone for whom ignorance had been a way of life to be told that knowledge was the key to all. But most of all, Leia noticed the figure cloaked in black down the hall who seemed to be staring at her, an outsider, intently.

When the sun bathed the city-planet in brightness, Leia and the Chancellor left the Temple. The Chancellor was silent and angry. And hurt, Leia guessed. They never spoke of that day. It was only days later, when Han asked with a roguish grin if she was angry at her boss, that Leia realized she was. She completed their usual transaction with little more words than necessary before leaving him. She was upset, hurt, angry, tired, frustrated, and most of all, she wondered what it was about the Jedi that unsettled her. She confessed her thoughts to no one and nothing except the dark recesses of her own mind.

She grew even more unsettled when the Senator of Chommell Sector, Pooja Naberrie of Naboo, had a private meeting with the Chancellor in her personal apartment. The Senator and the Chancellor had never been close, despite having come from the same home-planet. Nevertheless, the argument that ensued behind closed doors seemed more like a family squabble than a political discussion. It caused C-3PO, the Chancellor's protocol droid, to short-circuit. When the Senator left, she gave Leia, who had been waiting attentively outside the door, a curious look that turned into one of disturbance. When Leia rose to help dress the Chancellor the next morning, she found the dresser mirror shattered into shards of crystal glass and the Chancellor asleep in her bed, exhausted, clutching what seemed to Leia to be a snippet of jappor.

Somehow Leia knew she was on the verge of finding her answers, but even as she was on the cusp of everything she had wanted to know, she shied away from it. She had grown comfortable on Coruscant. Too comfortable. She needed a distraction. She needed to get away. She needed to escape the loneliness that still consumed her. She requested permission to join Han Solo on his next mission. She was slightly hurt when she saw that the Chancellor needed very little of an excuse to send her away. Leia was gone for the next three standard months.

She traveled with Han aboard his traveling junkyard, the Millenium Falcon, and visited his smooth-talking friends, the most disreputable of them all, a spice baron named Lando Calrissian. She even ventured into the palace of Jabba the Hutt disguised as a bounty hunter. She found herself enjoying the mission, admitting that Solo wasn't so bad, becoming close to the Wookie Chewbacca. She had expected the distraction of it all. She hadn't expected her to find herself liking Han so much. One night, on the return trip back to Coruscant, they got drunk enough to talk to each other about their pasts. She divulged her lonely childhood, about not growing up without a family. She even admitted to her dreams about the man who was nice to her. He told her about growing up in Corellia and fending for himself. It was only after much prodding and prying that he admitted that he was a member, a somewhat removed member (as in he had removed himself), of the royal family of Corellia. Perhaps, the shock was too readily apparent on her face because he burst out laughing at her expression. A few drinks later, they grew more serious, and he kissed her.

It wasn't Leia's first kiss, and she supposed it wouldn't be her last, but she wasn't sure how she felt about him. She knew Han sensed her reluctance. They barely spoke a word to each other when he landed on Coruscant. As Leia exited the landing ramp, she understood that although she had come to Coruscant to unravel the mysteries that surrounded her life, she was becoming tangled in more secrets that she didn't understand. She took the next several weeks to consider her options before going to a place she could not return from.

In the end, a decision was made for Leia. The Chancellor resigned from office before the completion of her second term, citing personal and familial needs. The entire Republic was thrown into chaos. But Chancellor Amidala took this all calmly. She had her staff pack up her office, her household put in order, and made sure that Vice-Chancellor Mon Mothma of Chandrilla was ready for the task that lay ahead of her. Within a standard month, all traces of the former Chancellor's presence on the capital planet disappeared.

Lady Amidala arrived on Naboo earlier to than the rest of her staff. She had requested only the presences of Leia as her ward, and Luke as a Jedi protection detail. She did not land in Theed and request an audience with the Queen. A Chancellor did not need to answer to anyone. Instead, Luke landed the ship in the northern part of the planet. Leia shook her head when she saw where they were. It was the place that had once been her prison, her fortress. They were back in the Lake Coutnry of Naboo. Leia shook her head and shuddered as Lady Amidala urged Luke to check the perimeter of her home for threats. Leia found her feet unable to move forward.

"Why?" she whispered into the wind, finding her voice.

"Did you say something?" asked Lady Amidala.

"Why?" repeated Leia, angrily this time. "I won't go back there. I can't. It, it was my prison, my lady," she said, her voice getting softer.

Lady Amidala looked at the younger woman with compassion and genuine regret in her eyes. "I am so sorry, Leia, but if you come this one last time, I promise that all the answers you've been seeking will be found inside."

Leia shook her head fiercely. "How do you know what I answers I'm looking for?"

"I know much more than you think, Leia," said Lady Amidala. "I know about your sadness, your hurt, your fears, your hopes, your dreams." The woman's eyes clouded with tears. "Come, please, this one last time," she pleaded.

For a brief moment, Leia saw the years of burden that Lady Amidala had carried on her shoulders, the weight of her decisions, the dashed hopes of her dreams. She saw the years that wore on her. And for the first time, Leia mourned with her. And for the last time, Leia followed her.

Luke greeted them worriedly in the entry way of the mansion. "I sense a strange presence, my lady."

Lady Amidala half-smiled. "I've been expecting him."

She opened the doors to the drawing room, a place where Leia often spent her afternoons reading. A man in a black-cloak greeted the trio, happiness shining in his eyes for a brief moment before Lady Amidala shook her head. Leia recognized his presence although she could not remember having met him. Meanwhile, Luke had gone pale with concern.

"Master Skywalker?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes, Luke." The man flashed a frightened Luke a friendly smile of understanding before turning his attention to Leia.

"Luke has been taught that I am a criminal. That I am to be feared. That I am not to be trusted," he told her.

"But I have not been taught such things," answered Leia, defiantly lifting her chin. He didn't frighten her in the slightest. "I was not raised in the Temple as he has been."

"Who do your feelings tell you I am?"

Leia looked at him, confused for a moment before reaching into her memory, and what seemed into her very heart for a response. Her head snapped towards him when she had her answer. "You're the man from my dreams. And…you're the one who watched me in the Jedi Temple. The hooded cloak."

He nodded. "Do you fear me?"

Leia shook her head. "Something about you is familiar."

"What was my crime, Luke?" he asked, turning his attention back to the young Jedi.

Luke swallowed nervously before answering hoarsely, "A forbidden attachment."

"And my sentence?"

"Twenty-two years of isolation on Mustafar. The years of your life over again. Twenty-two years for the twenty-two spent dishonoring the Code." Luke's voice shook.

Skywalker looked at her again. "Now you know why he fears me. He believes darkness has touched me."

"There is light in you," Leia answered calmly. Luke looked at her, eyebrows raised. Skywalker smiled gently, his blue eyes dancing. His eyes, Leia noticed, that were similar to Luke's.

"That's what Padmé says," Skywalker told her.

"Who is Padmé?" asked Leia.

He responded by looking at the woman who stood behind her. Lady Amidala.

"My lady?" Luke asked hesitantly.

"Let me tell you a story," she began, urging them to settle themselves on the furniture. It was a long story that spanned forty-four years. It was about a young boy who fell in love with a queen, a man who fell in love with a Senator, a Jedi who married a woman he had no right to love. It was about a war that was destroyed before it could be declared, a Sith Lord who escaped into darkness, a government that was left in shambles. In the midst of all this, a woman gave birth to two children, twins, and her Jedi could no longer hide from the Council. For breaking the law, he was sentenced to isolation, and he children were to be raised in the Temple to ensure that the second generation would not repeat the mistakes of the first. Although the mother begged for the right to raise her own children, they denied her. But she continued to plead until they gave her her daughter, upon the oath that she would not to claim her daughter as her own. Attachments were too strong in the Jedi's family and such power could be corrupted. But when the years of the sentence were over, the Jedi returned to find his family broken, and the Council found his attachments stronger than ever. His wife had buried herself in her work to avoid the truth, but when the truth could no longer be avoided, she begged the Jedi Council to reunite her with her husband. They refused. They feared the darkness within him, for during his time in isolation, he confronted the Sith Lord and destroyed him. But such an encounter cannot leave a man unchanged, but it was the love of his wife that kept light in him, that kept him faithful to his promises and his vows. He swore he would see his children again. But eventually the Jedi Council relented. He had grown too powerful for them to refuse. He embraced both the light and the dark. He was serene, unemotional, knowledgeable, in harmony with the universe. But he also understood emotion, passion, ignorance, and even chaos. He could have conquered the galaxy, but he chose to conquer the law instead. He became a master of himself, and when he reunited with his wife, it was with more love than either of them had ever known and with longing for their family to be complete.

Leia listened to Lady Amidala's words in wonder and in awe. And even though she knew she was being told the story of her own life, she felt as if she had heard it before, as if she had already known. Because Lady Amidala was confirming what Leia had suspected all along, that Leia and Luke were her own children and that Leia's father was not dead. The family stayed up late into the early hours of the morning. They planned, they wished, they hoped, and they dreamed, and as Leia recalled what she had believed was her earliest memory, she discovered that it was not a memory at all, but her mother's dearest wish for what could have been.

And as the days passed in quick succession, Leia found herself hoping that she wouldn't find herself wishing like her mother. She didn't want to live life hoping for what could have been. A standard month after the family reunion, she found herself on Corellia looking for Han Solo. She had to tell him she loved him. Even if he already knew. Because she didn't want to spend the next part of her life wondering what could have been. The Jedi Council had taught her that the mistakes of the first generation should not be made by the second. Because Leia wanted her daughter to know what it felt like to be sheltered in her father's arms, to be at home, to be at peace.

A/N The next chapter is from Lady Amidala's point-of-view.