#( * leia organa : char. study. )

[exitiosae-arch]

@hopefulsun !!

A companion piece to this post

Luke Skywalker is many things. He is a pilot, a moisture farmer, a nephew, a brother, a rebellion commander and a Jedi Knight. These are the things that he knows, these are the things he claims. He bought them in blood and sweat and tears and hope. They are his.

Above all, Luke is a Skywalker.

Luke was born to a world of sand, on a world of slavery and subjugation. Luke was born under twin suns (twin, twin, half of a whole, something out there something missing). Luke was born and given to a family to raise named Lars. Lars is the name of moisture farmers. It is the name of harsh, desert people who tear back the very water the sands and heat take from them. It is the name of oasis. Lars is not a slave name.

Names mean things on Tatooine. Skywalker means things. It means pilot, mechanic, space-farer. It means the trickster in the night, it means metalworker. But above all, it means slave. Skywalker, Darklighter, Sandhoms, Simwaste—they are all slave names (they are the only thing the slavers cannot take from them).

Luke is born with the name Skywalker but not with what it means. He reaches with hungry hands for scraps of a history that should have always been his, for the sand in his bones and the sky in his eyes (that never should have been his, child, child, you are the joy of us—). But he was raised by Lars, and they do not know what to tell him. Uncle Owen will not speak of the man Luke got his name from, snarls and spits and turns away with a coldness that is better found in the desert night. But Luke has a slave’s name, chipped blood running through his veins; he is the culmination of everyone that came before him. He wants to know. He needs to know.

Tell me about them, he asks the desert. It is bright and it is burning and it is not kind. In the whip of sand around his feet, in whispers back; There was a woman, and there is such quiet tragedy in that, dripping blood and bruises and burned bones, though it is not the desert’s sorrow. She was brave.

Tell me about them, he asks the old, creaking Wookie in the slave quarters. She is old, the oldest slave on Tatooine, and she has been there for longer than some settlements. She knows every family, remembers every soul. There was a woman, she says after a long, long moment. She was kind.

There was a woman, Luke hears, in the spill of blood and of sunlight; in the fire and the sand and the solemn sunrise. She was steady; she was holy; she was a slave; she was free; she was wise.

Luke goes to his Uncle, and asks. Tell me about her. My grandmother. Uncle Owen looks down at him in the heat of the desert day, and sighs. Her name was Shmi…

Luke grew up knowing nothing else about his father other than he was a pilot. He was a spice trader. He did not come back. Luke grew up learning about a sandstorm-stone woman with gentle hands and oil beneath her fingernails.

Luke learned his history from desert and family and slaves (the lines between those last two are blurry and indistinct but still sometimes there). Luke is the first child born without shackles. He is the first child born free. He is the first child to be born with starlight in his blood that is allowed to run free, the first child who gets to walk the sky under his own power, to take his first steps and have them be nothing but his.

He is the first. He is not the only.

Leia is the First Free Daughter, grown tall and strong and hard on a world where she had water and food and love and life (Look at our daughter, the desert whispers. Look at how she has not suffered. Look at how she prospers.).

Leia is dark haired and dark-eyed and water-born. Her brow is heavy with crowns of gold and grief, a ruler of a dead planet (but not a dead people, never a dead people). She has many names. Princess Leia, she snarls. Senator Organa, she introduces, General Organa, she dares, steely-eyed. Leia, she says, and smiles.

She is never Skywalker. She is the politicians daughter, the Queen, the leader, the warrior with righteousness smeared across her teeth like blood bitten and ripped from the throats of the unsuspecting, the undeserving. She is a sea serpent, never a krayt dragon. Her spine is straight and tall and when Luke looks at her, a crown on her brow and fire in her eyes, staring down battles of politics he’ll never really get, he can’t imagine she was born for anything else.

I didn’t grow up like you, Luke, she says. I grew up on Alderaan. I’m from Alderaan.

I’m not from Tatooine, she doesn’t say, but Luke hears it anyway.

She does not want their name, and she doesn’t want to know of their father (the father he never knew, the father who’s name he bore, the father with shackle marks on his wrists and a lightsaber at his side, the son of the woman who loved him, Skywalker, Skywalker, Skywalker). But Luke does not push, does not ever push. She doesn’t want him, the slave-turned-Jedi or the Jedi-turned-Sith or the Sith-turned-savior; she doesn’t claim him. He would never ask her to. Their father has torn the holes in her barehanded that he left in Luke by leaving (rubble and ash and voices screaming right before they go silent, silent, and somehow that’s worse).

No, Luke doesn’t tell her.

But he tells her of a woman named Shmi, in the quiet of the night, curled up in the bunks of the Millenium Falcon, Aunt Beru falling falling falling whenever he closes his eyes. He whispers it in the forests of Yavin VI with the death knell of the Empire still in his ears and his father’s last breaths echoing in his chest. When they sit, collapsed in the remains of an Imperial Stronghold, it spills out of him to pool on the floor with the blood drip, drip, dripping from Leia’s shoulder wound.

All these pieces of them, he gives to her. Skywalker and slave and First Free and Free Born, mechanic and metalworker, skyfarer and pilot and all the things that have loved them. Leia listens, because she loves him and Luke cannot love her and not tell her. She tells him of Alderaan in return, sometimes. Of Breha and Bail and the way they used to braid her hair in the early morning light. She tells him of blue skies and things Luke did not grow up knowing. She tells him of the people who raised her.

What he doesn’t say is this: Leia Organa is a stolen child. Leia is a child of chipped blood and shackled wrists, of sand and wind and sun—and yet she knows the turn of tides and the fall of rain, the rise of mountains and the cover of trees. She knows the sea spray on her face and the break of waves against the rocks, the cold snows of winter. She does not know the whip of sandstorms. She does not know the twin suns, the language they wrote because nothing else was left for them, the Grandmothers and Grandfathers in the slave quarters that shielded them at every turn. She does not know how proud they are of her (child, child, you are the joy of us, look at how you prosper).

Leia says she is not a Skywalker. She has not lived a Skywalker’s life, has not lived the hardship of a Tatooine child, desert sand and twin suns. She grew up in a place far from her grandmother’s bones, in a place where water grew up in place of sand. She was taken away from that. She doesn’t know her history. She doesn’t know what is hers.

Luke doesn’t know how to tell her that she’s lived just as much of a slave’s legacy as he has.

But, Leia loves her adoptive parents. She loves her planet, her people, and Luke knows she will not take it the way he means it (he does not blame the Organas, but the people who love you cannot fill the places that never should have been empty. They cannot fill the beach with lake water and make an ocean). So he doesn’t tell her. She is his only family, the only one that could claim the name of Skywalker along with him, but he holds her hand in knee-deep water and lets her lean on him when Organa weighs on her shoulders. He calls her sister, twin only when no one can hear them (he can claim Leia or he can claim Skywalker, but not both. Not when the tall shadow of their father looms behind him). She is his family and he hers, but he listens to her tell him of things that are just hers, of a water-calm father and a snow-bright mother who raised her tall and strong and determined and royal. Because she is his sister, and he would do anything for her.

Even carry Skywalker on his own.

[exitiosae-arch]

HOW DO YOU NEED TO BE TOUCHED?

cautiously. your teeth are bared, as they have been, your jaw aching for so long as growls slip free. you always have to defend yourself. you lash out in fear. you need someone who does not shrink back... a hand falling slowly to your shoulder, however briefly, in a reminder that you do not have to lunge. there is no danger here, now.

[notbecauseofvictories]

How does Bail Organa deal with being dad to an angry baby quarter-eldritch-abomination?

“Well,” Breha began, and then stopped. She was sitting very straight and regal in her chair, the way she only did when her mind was a hundred parsecs away and moving at lightspeed.

Bail had always been amused by that, how his wife looked more attentive and composed when not paying attention to what was going on around her. But she’d told him all about her parade of different tutors, etiquette and comportment and a hundred things a merchant’s son had no need of knowing. He supposed a lifetime of preparing to be Queen of Alderaan gave one all hells of muscle memory.

“Yes,” Bail sighed. He crossed the room to the sideboard, where someone had very considerately refilled the decanter. “Drink?”

“Yes,” Breha said absently. “Something with a great deal of alcohol in it, I think.”

Bail snorted. She was clearly not as distracted as he assumed.

Evening had fallen over the Capital, painting everything in blue shadows. This early in the year, everything was snow and ice, even the broad main streets. A convenient enough excuse, when the Datu’s son—tripped and…slid accidentally into a wall, bloodying his nose, ears, mouth. And when the Princesa of Aldera, Leia Organa, bared her teeth at the Datu’s son’s and snarled, You are a cruel and heartless boy—

Well. The cold had been convenient for that too. You know these long winter months, Bail had said, forcing warmth into his voice, because the Datu was looking to him in confusion and thinly-veiled horror, clutching at his son even as blood streamed down the boy’s face. Everyone goes a little stir-crazy.

Bail sat down across from Breha, setting down her glass of cognac. She reached for it, but he couldn’t be sure whether she knew it—her eyes were faraway, and her spine was very straight. Bail was used to this, being the third or fourth thing on her mind; he didn’t mind being patient, waiting for her to circle back to them, their daughter.

“When you—” Breha fell silent, running her finger lightly along the rim of the glass. Bail sipped his liquor, composing a list of necessary munitions for the Rebellion in his head, waiting for her to continue. 

“When you told me that it was safer not to openly discuss our daughter’s origins, I assumed that was because Padmé had somehow made an enemy of the Emperor. A miscalculation that perhaps also led to her death. But that is not the only reason, is it?”

Bail sighed, setting his glass down. “No.”

“The Jedi, the handsome one I met at the—”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” Breha said. Her eyes were still far off, unfocused. “I see. And the edict that was issued, calling for the death of all affiliated with the Jedi Order?”

“Yes. It also remains in effect for any��future Jedi that might arise.”

Bail straightened up when Breha’s gaze flickered, and met his. He smiled bitterly, tipping his glass to her as thought calling a toast. “You see my conundrum,” he said, not bothering to keep the irony from his voice.

“You said Obi-Wan escaped the destruction of the temple,” Breha said slowly. “He could—instruct her, teach her to contain it. At least enough so we don’t have further incidents like today’s.”

“We would be putting ourselves and all of Alderaan at risk. The Emperor’s enforcer, Darth Vader, is said to have a special hatred for him—I think they fought on another in the wars.”

Breha nodded, and Bail watched as she lifted the glass to her mouth, swallowed. She was a lovely creature, his wife, with a fearsome sort of mind; he liked to  watch her as it ticked over unerringly as any other piece of machinery. 

“Do you have a way to contact him more discreetly?” she finally asked. 

“Not—at the moment, but I know where he is. I’m sure I can come up with something. Why do you ask?”

Breha smiled triumphantly. There was a glint in her eye. “If you and I are going to raise a Jedi, husband, we’re going to need some guidance on the subject.”

.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Obi-Wan said, gazing in thinly-veiled horror at Bail. Bail had no idea why Obi-Wan had chosen Tatooine—other than the fact that it was possibly the furthest from the center of the galaxy you could get without going off the edge of a regulation star map. Bail supposed it was beautiful, in a sere, barren sort of way, though he personally didn’t enjoy the implicit promise of death that seemed to linger like a miasma over the sand. Bail had slept badly the night before, listening to some unknown thing screaming in the dark. 

Then again, if Kenobi truly was trying to stay off the Empire’s radar and away from Darth Vader’s wrath, no one would ever think to look here.

Bail squinted into late-afternoon sunlight. Officially, he was travelling through the Outer Rim as part of an outreach initiative by the Senate. Unofficially, he knew that most of his fellow senators believed he was visiting a mistress—more than one of them had congratulated him on slipping the grip of his formidable royal wife. (When Bail told Breha this, she’d mostly been flattered by the implication that if Bail wanted a mistress, he’d have to stash them all the way in the Outer Rim to avoid her.)

Actually, Bail was sitting beside Obi-Wan Kenobi outside a wattled hut, watching the sun set over the mesas and graciously pretending to drink the awful tea Obi-Wan had made for him. 

“Why not?”

Obi-Wan blinked. “The art of being a Jedi is complex and ancient—there are arcane secrets—it’s just not advisable,” he spluttered.

Bail huffed. “That is hardly a convincing argument.”

“Neither you nor Breha are Force-sensitive; you won’t even be able to tell if she’s doing it correctly. This is like a fish blithely announcing he plans to teach a starbird how to fly!”

“Well, give me the introductory level. Or whichever level involves teaching young Jedi not to assault people with the Force.”

Obi-Wan froze, his hand spasming around his own mug of tea. “Leia hurt someone?” he breathed, his face going shadowed and haunted. Bail frowned.

“Another boy; she was angry, and she choked him, bloodied his nose. The incident was embarrassing and—suspicious, if we’re trying to keep her existence a secret, but minor. We’re just worried, you needn’t look like someone has died.”

Obi-Wan shut his eyes as though pained, and a shudder ran through his whole body until he was almost doubled-over. “Obi-Wan?” Bail asked. “Are you—”

“You have a datapad?” Obi-Wan mumbled. Bail blinked.

“Yes.”

“Take notes.” Obi-Wan didn’t wait, and Bail scrambled to dig through his pack and grab the datapad and stylus before he got too far. “The first lesson any Jedi must learn—”

.

The first five lessons were a nightmare. 

“That was my great-grandmother’s favorite dining table,” Breha said mournfully as she and Bail watched the charred hunks of wood carried from the room. “It was a gift from one of the Queens of Naboo, in honor of the jubilee celebration of her reign.”

“We can ask Queen Raina for another one,” Bail offered. The guards bowed, and shut the doors behind them, such that it was just Bail and Breha alone in the study.

He could hear Leia’s sobbing from the next room. They hadn’t meant to scare her, or yell as much as they had, but it had been terrifying, a little girl with fire all around her and a look of unnatural peace on her face. Bail sighed. “This isn’t working.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Our daughter managed to somehow summon lightning from her hands, that seems like some sort of progress.”

Bail snorted. “In the wrong direction, I think. She’s supposed to learn restraint, not….I’m afraid she’s sliding further away, she’s losing control. Obi-Wan told me that many of the Sith were Jedi, once.”

“We cannot keep running to him,” Breha said with a sigh, leaning against the doorframe in a rare show of weariness. Bail realized with a start that there were lines, bracketing around her mouth, that had not been there only a few years before. “The Security Council has begun discussing a military installation on Alderaan, I will need to use every weapon in my arsenal to keep those—stormtroopers,” she ground out icily, “from our world. If there is even a hint—”

“What about Jedha?” Bail said, and Breha blinked. Then her expression transformed into something thoughtful, considering.

“I thought the temple there was destroyed.”

“It was. But the worshipers still come. And the Jedi Order was only one of the sects that revered the Force, at this point we may be safer to look outside the Core for aid.”

“Someone discreet,” Breha said, finally.

“Of course.”

“Someone—patient. And not afraid. I will not allow our daughter to grow up with her teacher fearing what she can do.”

“Of course not.”

Bail crossed the room to her, and with an indulgent smile, Breha allowed herself to be crowded against the wall, fitted herself into his arms; her hands finding the small of his back with familiar ease. Bail had been away too long; her hair smelled different, something floral that made his nose itch. “Do you ever wish I had brought you a simpler daughter?” he murmured, and he could feel her laugh.

“There are no easy children,” Breha murmured. “I would rather simply love ours. Now bring her someone who will teach her how not to burn the galaxy down around her.”

Privately, Bail doubted there existed anyone who would make Leia Organa less incendiary—but at least they could make it less literal.

.

(“Everyone says of all the Guardians of the Whills, you are the most learned, and faithful. You remember the old ways,” Bail said.

“I sympathize with your plight,” Chirrut Îmwe said, setting his own teacup down. Malbus, standing in the doorway and casting a long shadow, grunted; a smile flickered across Chirrut’s mouth in response. “But as long as there are pilgrims to the Holy City, we must stay, and defend her.”

Bail exhaled, and thought of shining Aldera, in the mountains, where the air was thin and cold and bright. Where his daughter could make the air burn, and his wife ruled the world. “I understand,” he said. “Thank you for your time.”)

.

Later—much later, when neither Jedha or Alderaan could be defended any more, and Obi-Wan was nothing more than another nexus of brightness in the Force—Leia was watching her brother.

“I remember this,” she said suddenly.

“What?” Luke asked, cracking open an eye. “Do you mean remember, or—remember, like our mother?”

“We have to come up with a better term for that,” Leia sighed. “And no, I actually remember this,” she added. “One of my tutors, Mistress Draight. We used to do breathing exercises and control exercises, and…I always just thought it was mindfulness. I had a lot of tutors,” she said with a shrug.

“You had Jedi lessons?” Luke asked, opening his eyes fully and uncurling from his cross-legged meditation pose.

“I didn’t think they were Jedi lessons. No one ever said the word ‘Jedi’ and we never moved anything with the Force, or discussed lightsabers. It was just supposed to be calming. A way of establishing control.”

“Huh,” Luke said. “Did it help?”

“I—think so? My mother used to joke about the time I set my great great-grandmother’s table on fire, but I always assumed it was because my sleeve caught on the candle,“ she mused.

Luke laughed, hooking his hand in the loose fabric of her dress and pulling her forward until his legs were tangled hers. “Okay,” he said, touching his forehead to hers. “Show me what you got.”

Leia grinned.

[lastfulcrum-a]

❝It’s your baby I’m carrying…❞

           in correlation with THIS .

         A breath ballooned painfully out of his chest – and, for once in his life, Cassian Andor looked at a loss. He looked out of his element ; like he was treading carefully on broken glass and hot coals. Without really meaning to, he’s diverting his eyes to his hands – much like he would see children ( CHILDREN ! ) do when scolded – studying the lines on his hands as he let the words seep deep into the valleys of his brain ; worrying down on his bottom lip.     No matter how much air he pushed out of his lungs, his chest still felt as if it had an immoveable WEIGHT on it ; his throat felt tight. Something swelling inside of his chest cavity that he didn’t quite understand – that he couldn’t remember truly feeling in his life. And he was STUNNED – there was no other way to put it.   He had never seen himself as a FATHER – he was much to brash. Much too crass and charred around the edges. His morality was gray at best, even with the Empire in ashes in their past ; how was he supposed to raise a child when his own heart was soured?        Tell me what you’re thinking – and, oh – he could hear it in her voice. This was not the Leia Organa he had come to know. This was not demanding. This was not forward or confident. She sounded unsure ; just as lost as he did. Neither of them were prepared for this. He almost felt small — oh, what a STRANGE sensation, as the former Rebellion Captain had never had such a sensation since he was very small.      “I don’t know -” he found himself finally admitting in a quiet tone, as if still not quite believing – not quite comprehending. “I — …. I’ve never thought about having a child ; always knew I would be a TERRIBLE father.” What do you want me to say? perhaps felt easier to ask than telling her what he thought. Because, truthfully, what he thought was that the child would be better off without him.      But would Leia? He was not about to leave her with this on her own, if she wanted him there – “ … I’m not above trying … “ he eventually started again, his voice thin, “I don’t want to disappoint you, or the child, Leia – … but, I also don’t want to leave you to deal with this on your own.”  

                                     PREGNANCY STARTERS | SELECTIVELY ACCEPTING 

[exitiosae-arch]

@hopefulsun !!

luke and leia are half of a whole. they’re two pieces perfectly cracked in half, because they’ll always be one entity but they can still survive without each other.

luke existed without his sister for only a few minutes. technically, he existed 19 years without her, and so did she. but i doubt they were ever truly without each other.

they were always there in the backs of each other’s minds. i’d imagine that when luke was upset about the way the others at anchorhead mocked him, only twelve and still so naive about so many things, leia felt it across the galaxy.

in the middle of her lessons, she felt sad. she could not explain why her mood subdued to anyone around her. she only felt small, teased, and lonely. the loneliness was not something new; even though her parents doted and she loved them more than anything else, she always felt lonely. like she was waiting quietly for someone to come back, to stay beside her in the during her lessons or at dinner time. but there was never anyone on alderaan who fit such a role.

i think that maybe some days luke felt even more restless than usual, a certain righteous indignation he was not used to feeling. he paces in front of the moisture vaporator he’s meant to be repairing, as his sister stands beside her father in the middle of the galactic senate, staring down the tyrant and system that held the galaxy hostage.

their moods affected one another. they worried for each other, missed each other, long before they knew who they were missing.

even apart, luke and leia were never really without each other.

[exitiosae-arch]

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[exitiosae-arch]

@hopefulsun

THE TWINS

kamand kojouri / toni morrison / war of the foxes, richard siken / the other boleyn girl (2008) / waiting room, phoebe bridgers / smoke signals, phoebe bridgers / ill give you the sun, jandy nelson / alla dzevaltovska / here before, vashti bunyan / with the fog so dense on the bridge in almond blossoms and beyond, mahmoud darwish / plato’s other half, reproduced in lapham’s quarterly