Saga Saga - OT Her Father's Daughter (Leia Organa Oneshot Written for First Draft Challenge)

Title: Her Father's Daughter

Author: devilinthedetails

Characters: Leia Organa; Luke Skywalker; Bail Organa (flashback).

Genre: General; Family; Angst; Drama.

Timeline: At the end of ROTJ with a flashback to Rogue One era.

Summary: Leia is her father's daughter.

Author's Note: A First Draft written for @amidalachick's First Draft Challenge. Since this is a first draft in keeping with the challenge, it might be a bit rough around the edges, but the final copy can now be read in post #6 on this thread.

Her Father’s Daughter

“Leia.” Luke stood in the tree hut of the Ewok village Leia had been assigned, his face streaked with the sunset shadows of twilight. Soon, after night fell over the Endor forest, there would be a celebration complete with singing and bonfires of the Empire’s defeat. “Our father turned back to the light at the end. He regretted and repented the evil he committed as a servant of the Empire and the Dark Side. He killed the Emperor to save me and redeemed himself, restoring himself to the Light Side of the Force before he died.”

This was too rooted in a Force and a spirituality Leia didn’t understand and didn’t believe in no matter how ardently Luke did for her to do anything other than scoff, “So he finally decided to stop doing evil and do one good thing, and that is supposed to atone for all the evil he did for decades in the galaxy?”

“No, of course not.” Sky blue eyes earnest, Luke reached out to clasp her hand, and she twisted away before he could touch her. She couldn’t bear to be touched by him right now, not when she felt a fury mounting hot inside her. “It only ended the horror, and isn’t that what we were fighting for? An end to the horror?”

“An end to the horror?” Leia stared at her brother, unable to believe the words that were emerging from his mouth. “Alderaan is destroyed. Billions are dead and can never be brought back to life. That’s a horror I see and hear so many nights before I slip into a restless sleep. It’s a horror that won’t ever stop or end. A horror Vader never could atone for unless he could bring all those dead back to life.”

“He couldn’t.” Luke bit his lip. “The Force doesn’t work that way, Leia.”

“I thought not.” Leia’s nostrils flared. “And you think I should forgive him because he was sorry and did one good thing before he died. As if that could make up for torturing me or holding me back, forcing me to watch helplessly, while my planet was destroyed by the Death Star? Am I supposed to just forget that and forgive him when he never even apologized to me?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to forget anything.” Luke shook his head. “Forgiveness is different than forgetting.”

“Forgiveness is the ultimate forgetting. The complete erasing of a wrong committed.” Leia’s lips pursed. “It’s not my place to forgive and erase the destruction of Alderaan. It is my place only to honor the dead.”

“Do you think the dead want to be honored by your hatred? Your bitterness and resentment?” Luke’s words felt like a slap across the face. “Wouldn’t they prefer to be honored by your peace?”

“Who knows what they would prefer,” snapped Leia. “They’re dead and nobody can ever ask them what they’d prefer again thanks to your father.”

“Our father, Leia. His blood runs through your veins as much as mine.” The emphasis Luke laid on the “our” felt like another smack in the face.

Our father. Not just Luke’s but hers as well. A truth written in blood that she wasn’t supposed to be able to deny, but family wasn’t defined and created by blood alone, was it? It was also defined and created by love. The love she had felt streaming through her toward her adoptive parents—her real parents—and that she had felt flowing back to her as light reflected in a mirror from them. The love she felt for Luke even when his naivety irked her, and the love she knew he felt for her even when her words became abrasive as acid.

“He’s not my father.” Leia’s fists clenched, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. “My father was and always will be the man who raised me and took pride in me. Encouraged me and celebrated all my accomplishments from the time I could talk. The moment I could crawl and walk. Bail Organa of Alderaan.”

As if the sentence were a trigger for memory, she was back on the landing pad of the base of Yavin IV. Jungle sounds echoed in her ears in a strange symphony with the noises of ships preparing for takeoff as she said goodbye to her father for what both of them had feared could be the last time and had fervently hoped wouldn’t be. The final farewell could come at any moment when resisting the Empire. Even back then, just starting to serve the Rebel Alliance in secret, Leia had understood that. Or thought she understood that. She certainly understood it all the more keenly and painfully now than she had then. When a glow of innocence still shone about her, pure and radiant as her favored, spotless white dresses.

“I need you to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi,” her father had told her, resting gentle hands on her shoulders. “He was a Jedi and general during the Clone Wars now hiding from the Empire on Tatooine. You must persuade him to come out of hiding. His assistance at this juncture will be critical to the survival of the Alliance—of the hope of freedom in this galaxy.”

“How will I persuade him to come out of hiding?” Leia had hoped that she sounded calm and confident, not like a nervous wreck on the cusp of total collapse.

“You are your father’s daughter. That’ll be enough.” One of her father’s hands had left her shoulder to cup her cheek. “Your father and Obi-Wan Kenobi fought the Separatists together during the Clone Wars. They were best friends. So close they were almost brothers. They saved each others’ lives more times than either of them could count, and together, they were an almost unbeatable force for good.”

They must have gotten beaten, Leia thought. Otherwise, the Empire wouldn’t have risen in the galaxy.

As if he could read her thoughts through the expression on her face, her father said, “They fought to keep back the dark at bay, but eventually the dark swallowed your father and forced Obi-Wan Kenobi into exile.” There was an almost wistful gaze in her father’s eyes, as he finished, “Skywalker and Kenobi. They made an epic duo that should’ve been remembered through the ages instead of instead of forgotten history and forbidden lore under the rule of the Empire. Anakin Skywalker, that was your father’s name, and, through all these intervening years, Obi-Wan Kenobi will still do anything he can for Anakin Skywalker—or Anakin Skywalker’s offspring.”

“My father isn’t Anakin Skywalker.” Leia had shaken her head, her chin lifting. She had always wanted to know the name of her biological father, but when it was given to her she found it was meaningless—an identity she could reject instantly. A label that she had no desire to attach to herself when she could be Bail Organia’s daughter instead. “You’re my father as much as if we were bound by blood and birth. I love you more than I ever could this unknown Anakin Skywalker.”

“I love you too, my dear.” Her father had leaned forward to kiss her forehead, pride for the young woman she was growing into shimmering in the Yavin IV sunlight. “And I consider you as much my daughter as if you had been born to me and had my blood in your veins.”

Leia wrapped her arms around her father, taking a warm comfort in the music of their hearts beating as one for a moment, before her father’s head tilted to whisper in her ear, “Make sure you remind Obi-Wan Kenobi that he served with your father during the Clone Wars, however. That’ll be important to drawing him from his exile.”

“I will.” Leia had nodded her understanding and lingered in her father’s arms for one last moment before climbing aboard her ship and embarking on her mission to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi. A mission that had quickly morphed into accepting the Death Star plans and ensuring that they were smuggled to safety…

She returned to the present moment with a jolt as she realized that Luke was gazing at her as if she had been the one to slap him in the face—to reject him—with her words.

She was her father’s daughter, she told herself. Bail Organa’s daughter, and Bail Organa had always promoted peace and compromise—had always been courteous in even the most heated arguments and graceful in even the most awkward situations.

Determined to follow his example, Leia said more gently, reaching out to take and squeeze her brother’s hand at last, “I may not think of Vader as my father, Luke, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think of you as my brother.”

“Will you forgive him for my sake?” Luke asked, squeezing her hand back.

“No.” Leia couldn’t forgive Vader. Not even for love of Luke. “Please don’t ask me to do that. I respect your choice to forgive Vader and won’t question it, but you need to respect my decision not to forgive Vader and not question it in return.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Luke bowed his head. “I do plan to burn his body tonight if you wish to join me for the cremation.”

“I can’t join you for that.” Leia’s tone wavered, and tears stung her eyes suddenly. She didn’t know who the tears were for. For herself. For Luke. For the people who had died in a single beam of light when Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star. For the billions upon billions of victims of the Empire’s tyranny and violence. For Vader. For the Anakin Skywalker she had never met but whom her father had made sound like a tragic, fallen hero instead of a monster—a villain out of a child’s storybook or morality fable. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Luke gave her a small, sad smile. “This is supposed to be a night of celebration for you. I don’t want to mar it.”

Later that night, when the embers of Vader’s funeral pyre had burned to ash and Luke stood alone, staring into the forest at invisible figures only he could see, Leia crossed a crunching bed of leaves and pine needles to fold her brother in an embrace.

“His name was Anakin Skywalker,” she murmured, wondering how soon her words would be swallowed in the wind and music. “My father made him sound like a hero, but I never knew him as such.”

“I think I did.” Luke’s head leaned against her shoulder. “At the end.”

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha As always, thank you so much for commenting! I'm so glad that you found this piece beautiful even in first draft form, and that you felt it was very, very in character for both Luke and Leia. It was definitely interesting to explore how differently Leia and Luke react to events at the end of ROTJ and each reaction can sort of be valid and understandable in its own way. I definitely think that forgiveness can sometimes can be about healing rather than the negation of harm being done and that it can be a good way for the forgiver to move forward and sort of step beyond pain. At the same time, forgiveness isn't always easy, and Leia certainly wrestles with it in this story...

@ZV-83 Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm so flattered that you thought this was excellent and well-done even in its sort of rough, first draft form. Leia's emotions were very powerful for me to explore in this story, and they definitely formed the foundation of the story for me. and in the final copy below I tried to add some more elaboration and development of Leia's emotions compared to the first draft.

@AzureAngel2 As always, thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! I do think Leia is starting to move on and think about things a little differently as she joins Luke at the funeral pyre for Anakin Skywalker. There is definitely a very painful history between Leia and Vader so her healing journey won't be quick but this may be a first step on that journey and in its own way a powerful one. I'm so flattered that you think I write strong, emotional stuff because I was definitely reaching for tissues myself as I wrote this story. Hopefully the emotions can be even stronger in this final draft as I try to refine the story further.

@gizkaspice Thank you so much for commenting!It's awesome to hear that you loved this piece. Leia is one of my all-time favorite Star Wars characters so there can be no higher praise than that you think I got her to a T and that you could totally picture that conversation happening between her and Luke.

Many months ago on here I got into a discussion with someone on the OT forum and we started to speculate on why Luke is alone at the end of ROTJ. That was what first got the idea for a story about why Luke is alone--why Leia doesn't want to be at the funeral pyre--churning in my head. I wanted to write something centered in Leia's perspective, but my muse lacked the motivation to turn that idea into words on paper/screen until this challenge came along and provided the perfect opportunity to do so without judgment for my intial efforts. In a way, I could just write freely once I wasn't worried about whether the story would be "good" or "bad," and that allowed the story to exist at all.

I really see emotions as being at the heart of this story (what this story is about)--so it makes me so happy to hear that you felt I captured those emotions well. I agree with you that Leia's feelings of resentment are justified and understandable. She definitely needs and deserves her healing time.

---

Author's Note: My final copy in which I've attempted to flesh out Leia's emotions in greater detail, incorporate more vivid details into my settings to better ground my story in senses of place, and made some formatting/grammatical changes to the flashback sequence so that I could be a bit more satisfied with it. Hope everyone likes the changes I've made and thank you to everyone for their kind, thoughtful feedback, which is always a great motivator for me

Her Father’s Daughter

“Leia.” Luke stood in the Bright Tree Village hut with its walls carved from Endorian redwood and its roof of woven savanna grass that Leia had been assigned, his face streaked with the sunset shadows of twilight. Soon, after night fell over the Endorian forest with its towering life and sanctuary trees, there would be a celebration complete with singing and bonfires of the Empire’s defeat. “Our father turned back to the light at the end. He regretted and repented the evil he committed as a servant of the Empire and the Dark Side. He killed the Emperor to save me and redeemed himself, restoring himself to the Light Side of the Force before he died.”

This was too rooted in a Force and a spirituality Leia didn’t understand and didn’t believe in no matter how ardently Luke did for her to do anything other than scoff, “So he finally decided to stop doing evil and do one good thing, and that is supposed to atone for all the evil he did for decades in the galaxy?”

“No, of course not.” Sky blue eyes earnest, Luke reached out to clasp her hand, and she twisted away before he could touch her. She couldn’t bear to be touched by him right now, not when she felt a fury mounting hot inside her. “It only ended the horror, and isn’t that what we were fighting for? An end to the horror?”

“An end to the horror?” Leia stared at her brother, unable to believe the words that were emerging from his mouth. “Alderaan is destroyed. Billions are dead and can never be brought back to life. That’s a horror I see and hear so many nights before I slip into a restless sleep. It’s a horror that won’t ever stop or end. A horror Vader never could atone for unless he could bring all those dead back to life.”

“He couldn’t.” Luke bit his lip. “The Force doesn’t work that way, Leia.”

“I thought not.” Leia’s nostrils flared. “And you think I should forgive him because he was sorry and did one good thing before he died. As if that could make up for torturing me or holding me back, forcing me to watch helplessly, while my planet was destroyed by the Death Star? Am I supposed to just forget that and forgive him when he never even apologized to me?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to forget anything.” Luke shook his head. “Forgiveness is different than forgetting.”

“Forgiveness is the ultimate forgetting. The complete erasing of a wrong committed.” Leia’s lips pursed. “It’s not my place to forgive and erase the destruction of Alderaan. It is my place only to honor the dead.”

“Do you think the dead want to be honored by your hatred? Your bitterness and resentment?” Luke’s words felt like a slap across the face. “Wouldn’t they prefer to be honored by your peace?”

“Who knows what they would prefer,” snapped Leia. “They’re dead and nobody can ever ask them what they’d prefer again thanks to your father.”

“Our father, Leia. His blood runs through your veins as much as mine.” The emphasis Luke laid on the “our” felt like another smack in the face.

Our father. Not just Luke’s but hers as well. A truth written in blood that she wasn’t supposed to be able to deny, but family wasn’t defined and created by blood alone, was it? It was also defined and created by love. The love she had felt streaming through her toward her adoptive parents—her real parents—and that she had felt flowing back to her as light reflected in a mirror from them. The love she felt for Luke even when his naivety irked her, and the love she knew he felt for her even when her words became abrasive as acid.

“He’s not my father.” Leia’s fists clenched, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. “My father was and always will be the man who raised me and took pride in me. Encouraged me and celebrated all my accomplishments from the time I could talk. The moment I could crawl and walk. Bail Organa of Alderaan.”

As if the sentence were a trigger for memory, she was back bathing in the humid soup that was the air around the Great Temple that served as the Rebel Base on Yavin IV, back on the landing pad of the base of Yavin IV. Jungle sounds, the chirping of birds whose wings were a rainbow of colors and bugs whose beauty belied the poison inside them, echoed in her ears. The noises of nature mingled in a strange symphony with those that provided proof of technological advancement as ships prepared for takeoff and she said goodbye to her father for what both of them feared could be the last time and fervently hoped wouldn’t be.

The final farewell could come at any moment when resisting the Empire. Even back then, just starting to serve the Rebel Alliance in secret, Leia understood that. Or thought she understood that. She certainly understood it all the more keenly and painfully now than she had then. When a glow of innocence still shone about her, pure and radiant as her favored, spotless white dresses.

“I need you to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi,” her father told her, resting gentle hands on her shoulders. “He was a Jedi and general during the Clone Wars now hiding from the Empire on Tatooine. You must persuade him to come out of hiding. His assistance at this juncture will be critical to the survival of the Alliance—of the hope of freedom in this galaxy.”

“How will I persuade him to come out of hiding?” Leia hoped she sounded calm and confident, not like a nervous wreck on the cusp of total collapse.

“You are your father’s daughter. That’ll be enough.” One of her father’s hands left her shoulder to cup her cheek. “Your father and Obi-Wan Kenobi fought the Separatists together during the Clone Wars. They were best friends. So close they were almost brothers. They saved each others’ lives more times than either of them could count, and together, they were an almost unbeatable force for good.”

They must have gotten beaten, Leia thought. Otherwise, the Empire wouldn’t have risen in the galaxy.

As if he could read her thoughts through the expression on her face, her father said, “They fought to keep back the dark at bay, but eventually the dark swallowed your father and forced Obi-Wan Kenobi into exile.” There was an almost wistful gaze in her father’s eyes, as he finished, “Skywalker and Kenobi. They made an epic duo that should’ve been remembered through the ages instead of instead of forgotten history and forbidden lore under the rule of the Empire. Anakin Skywalker, that was your father’s name, and, through all these intervening years, Obi-Wan Kenobi will still do anything he can for Anakin Skywalker—or Anakin Skywalker’s offspring.”

“My father isn’t Anakin Skywalker.” Leia shook her head, her chin lifting. She had always wanted to know the name of her biological father, but when it was given to her she found it was meaningless—an identity she could reject instantly. A label that she had no desire to attach to herself when she could be Bail Organa’s daughter instead. “You’re my father as much as if we were bound by blood and birth. I love you more than I ever could this unknown Anakin Skywalker.”

“I love you too, my dear.” Her father leaned forward to kiss her forehead, pride for the young woman she was growing into shimmering in the Yavin IV sunlight. “And I consider you as much my daughter as if you had been born to me and had my blood in your veins.”

Leia wrapped her arms around her father, taking a warm comfort in the music of their hearts beating as one for a moment, before her father’s head tilted to whisper in her ear, “Make sure you remind Obi-Wan Kenobi that he served with your father during the Clone Wars, however. That’ll be important to drawing him from his exile.”

“I will.” Leia nodded her understanding and lingered in her father’s arms for one last moment before climbing aboard her ship and embarking on her mission to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi. A mission that quickly morphed into accepting the Death Star plans and ensuring that they were smuggled to safety…

She returned to the present moment with a jolt, realizing Luke was gazing at her as if she had been the one to slap him in the face—to reject him—with her words.

She was her father’s daughter, she told herself. Bail Organa’s daughter, and Bail Organa had always promoted peace and compromise—had always been courteous in even the most heated arguments and graceful in even the most awkward situations.

Determined to follow his example, Leia said more gently, reaching out to take and squeeze her brother’s hand at last, “I may not think of Vader as my father, Luke, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think of you as my brother.”

“Will you forgive him for my sake?” Luke asked, squeezing her hand back.

“No.” Leia couldn’t forgive Vader. Not even for love of Luke. “Please don’t ask me to do that. I respect your choice to forgive Vader and won’t question it, but you need to respect my decision not to forgive Vader and not question it in return.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Luke bowed his head. “I do plan to burn his body tonight if you wish to join me for the cremation.”

“I can’t join you for that.” Leia’s tone wavered, and tears stung her eyes suddenly. She didn’t know who the tears were for. For herself. For Luke. For the people who had died in a single beam of light when Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star. For the billions upon billions of victims of the Empire’s tyranny and violence. For Vader. For the Anakin Skywalker she had never met but whom her father had made sound like a tragic, fallen hero instead of a monster—a villain out of a child’s storybook or morality fable. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Luke gave her a small, sad smile. “This is supposed to be a night of celebration for you. I don’t want to mar it.”

Luke left her in peace then. Only she didn’t feel at peace. She felt torn. Torn between two fathers. One who had loved her and one who had tortured her. One who had been gentle and one who had been a tyrant. One she had sought to emulate and one she had resisted at every opportunity. One who was her greatest hero and the other her most hated enemy. One who had nurtured her since she was small and one who had shared her blood. One she wanted to be like and one she never wanted to be like.

A civil war, every bit as painful as the one between the Empire and the Rebels, waged inside her as she wondered whether it was possible to have two fathers, and to ever be at peace with herself or with them when those two contradictory identities dueled for dominance within her.

She wondered if it was the same for Luke, or if it was different because his stern uncle had never been a father to him. Perhaps that was why Vader could come to feel like the father he had been searching for all his life, while to Leia Vader still felt like the terrible embodiment of evil.

Later that night, when the embers of Vader’s funeral pyre had burned to ash and Luke stood alone, staring into the forest at invisible figures only he could see, Leia crossed a crunching bed of leaves and conifer needles to fold her brother in an embrace.

“His name was Anakin Skywalker,” she murmured, wondering how soon her words would be swallowed in the wind and music. “My father made him sound like a hero, but I never knew him as such.”

She almost wished she had known him as Anakin Skywalker and a hero. Then she might not feel so divided within herself right now. Maybe then she would be at peace and centered within herself. As calm inside as her brother appeared on the surface.

“I think I did.” Luke’s head leaned against her shoulder. “At the end.”

 

@AzureAngel2 Once again, thank you so much for commenting! So sorry to send you off in search of tissues. I'm so glad that both versions worked for you, and that you liked the changes in the second draft. If it was interesting to sort of show what editing normally looks like for me, since most of the time it doesn't entail massive changes from my first written draft. It's often the case of more minor changes with the biggest editing going on in translating my mental ideas to the page for the first time. So, that was interesting for me to really see. I think this challenge helped make me more aware of my editing process.

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha As always, thank you so much for your kind words!I'm so flattered that you found the final version excellent!

 

@gizkaspice Once again, thank you so much for commenting! I'm so happy that you found this to be a great polished version and that you very much enjoyed the additions. It was interesting for me to see the changes between the first draft and the final version on the screen like this for this challenge. Really showed how much a work can change over time and editing!

@DarthIshtar Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm so glad that you followed others to this story and were touched by the thoughts on forgiveness. This fic was such a moving one for me to write because it turned into such a meditation on the nature of forgiveness, which is such a powerful theme and concept to explore especially in the Star Wars context.

@Bel505 Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! The movies don't really feature Leia grappling with Vader as her biological father in the same way they show Luke learning about that and dealing with that fact, so it is left for Star Wars books and to fanfic to explore the emotional fallout of Leia learning that Vader was her biological father, same as he was Luke's. I'm so glad that you enjoyed reading about her thoughts and qualms in this story and found it consistent with her portrayal in Truce at Bakura. Her defiant refusal to forgive Anakin Skywalker felt true to that feisty and stubborn side of Leia, and I think it is a testament to how much Bail and Leia loved each other that Leia is very focused on him and the lessons that he taught her. She is truly his daughter in so many ways and so much of what he taught her defines her as a person and leader.

It is so wonderful that you felt the story really shone in how I brought the two narratives together because much of my focus in writing and then editing this story was to try to get those two narratives to weave and flow together well. I really wanted to showcase Leia remembering Bail telling her about Anakin and sort of giving her permission to forgive Anakin if she can. I don't think she has forgiven Anakin by the end of the story, but she is able to reach out to Luke in a more compassionate way and express a sort of longing or wish to have known Anakin when he was heroic rather than when he was the evil Darth Vader.

I really wanted to do justice to Luke as well as Leia in this story, so I'm so happy that you felt I wrote him perfectly and that you appreciated the contrast of how the two siblings saw the world, which was something I really wanted to explore and emphasize in this piece!

@Hopefulwriter Thank you so much for commenting! I'm so flattered that you found this story well-written and very happy to hear that you enjoyed reading it and felt I did a good job. This story was truly touching for me to write, and it's wonderful to hear how it has touched and resonated with readers as well!

@ZV-83 Once again, thank you so much for commenting!It's awesome to know that you found this final version well-written, and that you liked the updates! Thank you for following the story as it was polished and revised!