WHO: Anakin Solo, Leia Organa WHEN: Tonight! WHERE: 504T WHAT: Anakin and Leia come face to face. Both of them are kind of awkward. WARNINGS: NONE.
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"Han Solo, any relation?"
"That's my Dad."
And that had been the point Anakin Solo had stopped trying to completely make sense of what had just happened to him. He'd been on the Falcon, and now he was on a world he didn't recognize being poked and prodded by people who didn't seem to have a decent medical droid, and his questions had gotten a lot of run-around. Anakin was familiar with run-around since it was pretty much what happened in the Senate all of the time, and he'd grown up with first hand seats to that sort of thing. Although not so much recently now that his mother had stepped back from her position as Chief of State.
But if his Dad was here, then maybe he could explain what was going on in a way that would make actual sense. Even if Anakin wasn't certain how his Dad was here. After all, his Father had been there in the Falcon with him, but at least they could figure it out together. Asking about Jacen and Jaina had given him nothing but shaking his head and he'd stopped asking, instead trying to reach out in the Force for anything that felt familiar to him. He could find his Dad, non-Force sensitive, but still distinct and not so very far away, and… his Mom. Except that she didn't feel quite the same - but it was definitely her and he wasn't surprised when he was told that he'd be sharing housing with his parents, that the presence was very much in the apartment he was dropped off in front of.
And in the immediate strangeness of everything that had just happened, having the familiar presence of his parents, sounded honestly amazing. Only it was just his Mom right now. Well - that was enough. He opened the door and stepped in and not immediately finding her stopped and then called: "Mom?"
Leia had felt off for the last few hours, ever since she felt a peculiar disturbance. It had an eerily familiar sense of deja vu about it, like when Luke called out to her on Bespin. Luke had been here, not long ago, and he'd told her a great deal of what happened. That they were twins, and that's why she felt that automatic bond with him, and if he was a Jedi, then there was the possibility that she had those powers too.
No. She had no training, like Luke, and she wasn't even sure that was something she'd want to explore. Maybe if Luke were here, and there was nothing else to do, she could make time to learn something of it. Instead, the strange feeling settled over her. She climbed into bed right after lunch, and tried to shake this peculiarity. She hoped she wasn't getting sick.
The door. Someone opened the door to their housing, and it wasn't Tony Stark or Han. Sounded like a young boy, so Leia pulled herself out of bed and heading into the living room. The boy before he resembled — if she was completely honest, he looked like a mix of her and Han, but that couldn't be right. "You sure you got the right place?"
The voice sounded like his mom, it felt like his mom in the Force, but she looked like holos of his mom from ages ago, long before he was born, or Jaina or Jacen, back when she'd been a leader in the Rebellion against the Empire, and the surprise of that made Anakin stop and stare, falling into what was almost certainly an awkward and maybe even rude silence.
But it almost definitely had to be her…
"I-No. I mean, they said this was where I was supposed to be," Anakin turned his head back to the door wondering if there was some mistake after all. Because he could believe that his parents might have been taken at the same time as him and that they had arrived around the same time, been processed in different places and then brought here, but his mother hadn't looked like the woman in front of him. This woman looked more like - well, like Jaina, or even Jacen a little bit, and like a hundred holos he'd seen. This was what he kept coming back to. He shifted back to look at her again, the stance unconsciously a mirror image of one of his father's, and he tried to start over again.
"I'm Anakin," he said finally. "They said Dad was here, and I felt you in the Force - so I just - you are Leia Organa Solo right?" The Force had never lied to him before, but nothing about this day had yet made any sense to him.
That pulled Leia up short. She couldn't see much of herself or Han in Allana, so it was easier to put it out of sight, out of mind. Tenel and Allana hadn't been around all that long either. Leia knew what Han had told her, that they'd gotten married, had children, but seeing one of them in the flesh was an entirely new experience.
"Anakin." She breathed in slowly. There was never any time to adjust to these things, especially when they showed up on your doorstep. No Rebellion to throw herself into, just a ragtag group of people trying to survive on some backwoods planet with no other creatures but themselves. She shook herself out of it. The kid likely had enough worries without her behaving strangely. Of course, she didn't know what he considered normal. "Yes, of course. Han told me about you." Sort of. " Did you — no one told me you were here. Are you all right?"
So his Dad was here and this was his Mom, although, if Anakin was good at putting puzzles together, and he generally was, she didn't actually know him. His dad had mentioned him to her, so his Dad apparently did know about him. And the woman in front of him was too young to be the mother he knew and he could easily see both of his siblings in her face when she was probably not much older than they were. Which, so she was older than Jaina and Jacen, but probably not too terribly older. When had she married his Dad? How old had she been when she'd had the twins? Anakin found himself blanking on the answers to those questions so he put them aside to consider later. The important thing was that for whatever reason and however it was possible, his mom was young enough that she didn't remember him.
"I'm fine. I mean, yeah, I'm fine." There was the part where he was internally freaking out about the fact that he was standing and talking to a mother who didn't really know him because she was so young, but beyond that, he was absolutely fine. "I just got here - and they brought me here. I haven't been here so long, they may not have thought to…" He trailed off and raised a hand to push through his hair. "I don't really know what's going on?"
"I haven't married your Han — your father. Yet. Where I'm from." Leia thought that when she came face to face with one of her children, she'd have been slightly more elegant than all this. She thought she'd have answers for what any of them were doing here, and maybe one for getting back. Leia hadn't counted on being just as stunned as he was.
But she recognized the gesture, the hand through his hair, and smiled a little. It was more relief to see him behaving like Han. It was reassuring somehow. "None of us really know what's really going on here. We know that we fall out of the sky from those escape pods. We know that people come from different points in their timelines." Evidenced by the pair of them standing in front of one another. "And we know that sometimes people disappear. Just vanish. Luke was here some time ago."
"Okay." Anakin responded automatically. It made sense in its own way. Well, at least as much as any of this made sense, but this was his Mom. She wasn't married to his Dad, yet. But she knew that she did marry his Dad, so probably his Father must know that. Or Uncle Luke had, because if Uncle luke was here - but he'd left again. And different points in their timelines, well, that explained the fact that he was talking to what he would have mistaken for a holo of his Mom if she hadn't been so in the flesh, and also in the Force. He realized he hadn't said anything and he shook his head, and tried to pull his thoughts together a bit.
"So - if we're all from different points in our timeline - when are you from? When is Dad from?"
"I'm from after Bespin. After your father was encased in carbonite." She moved to sit on the edge of one of the old antique couches Mount Weather provided. Behind her was some famous (according to several people she'd talked to) work of art by someone or other. None of it made sense. She knew why they'd want to put up artwork; it was dark and dreadful down here at times, but it seemed irresponsible to put expensive pieces where people could just rip them up if they wanted to.
Was she supposed to hug him? And if not, why did she feel the urge to? This must have been what was throwing her off the last few hours. Feeling his presence. "Han's… complicated. He came from nearly the same time I did, but a few months ago, he got new memories. So he looks young, but the last thing he remembers is Chewie's death." Leia remembered waking him up when he was screaming in his sleep. Things between them just hadn't been the same since.
"Bespin? Wow." Anakin decided to take her lead and he followed her over to sit down on the other edge of the couch. Somewhere in the back of his head when he'd thought about his parents being here, it had been his parents, Han and Leia Organa Solo who, despite not always being around 100% of the time, were still likely to be able to solve almost any problem, which admittedly this was them, just - lacking the same sense of familiarity and comfort that he realized as he sat down he'd been wanting.
"Wait Chewie's death?" Anakin stared at his mom. But it would be impossible for Chewie to die. Chewie was as invincible as either of his parents, as invincible as the Falcon. Wookiees were hardly known for their lack of strength and fortitude and Anakin blinked half-ready to stand up and just walk out and ask someone to pinch him really hard. This whole thing was nuts. It had to be a dream, or some sort of elaborate set-up… Anakin placed his hand on the back of his neck and yes, pinched it lightly, but it didn't seem to wake him up. "He's - So he looks like you? I mean, not like you, but like the holos, but he remembers stuff I don't?"
At least now she knew that he wasn't as far along as Han. She tried to get a gage on just how old he was, but she was beginning to feel old just looking at him. It was bad enough with Han having a head full of memories about her — things that she hadn't yet shared with him, but he knew — but now there was a child who had depended on her. Some future version of her had given birth to him, watched him grow up, and now he was here. She felt… left behind.
"How old are you?"
Anakin felt suddenly awkward. This was his mom, but she was meeting him for the first time. What did she see when she looked at him? He realized that she didn't know anything about him outside of what his father might have told her, and he glanced down trying to remember what he'd even put on that morning. Corellian style trousers, a sandy tunic, his lightsaber was hanging from his belt, his boots were scuffed. They were his better boots and his mom had just scolded him about getting them polished up, but he hadn't done it before they left Coruscant for Dubrillion. He suddenly wished he'd listened to his mother, sitting here in front of, well, his mother and knowing that she could only go off of what she saw currently. She didn't know he was really good with mechanics, or a Jedi Apprentice, or an excellent pilot.
"Um," he raised his hand up to push his hair back. "Fifteen. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago. At home, I mean. Obviously."
"Fifteen?" Leia's eyebrows shot up. There were fifteen years that she was missing and would likely hear about from both Han and Anakin now. Point of fact, there were a lot of things that she wanted to ask. Was she a good mother? Was Han a good father? Did they eventually clean things up in the Galaxy? When was his birthday? What was his favorite food, color, book? Had he met Winter?
She asked none of these, not wanting to overwhelm him. "So I guess you're too old for a hug from your mother, eh?"
Oddly enough, twenty-four hours ago Anakin would have probably said yes. But right now, in this particular moment he wasn't feeling that old at all. He was feeling a little lost, and the offer of a hug from his mom, even if she looked so young and he knew now that she didn't have any memories of him specifically, was enough to make his lips turn up into a smile, a slightly lopsided smile that couldn't be mistaken for anything other than Solo.
"You just can't tell anyone," he stipulated. "I think that's the unspoken rule we usually operate with."
It was weird, she realized, because Anakin was 15, and she was only 6 years older. There was a world of difference between the ages in terms of maturity, but when you put it all into perspective, they were so close in age that it just felt wrong. Still, she smiled and reached out for his shoulder, pulling him in for a hug. She'd never been one of those dainty girls who gingerly patted people on the back when she hugged then. She threw herself into them.
"Oh, is that the unspoken rule, huh?" Leia ruffled his hair, knowing that Han didn't like it, and he probably wouldn't either. "I'll have to make sure to embarrass you ever chance I get."
If Anakin closed his eyes and didn't think about it too much, he could pretty much pretend that this was one hundred percent normal. His mom was his mom from home, and he was getting a normal hug, and this would all work itself out. But even if he wasn't pretending, he realized that he still was pretty certain this would all work itself out. It always worked itself out. And even if there were some things in the future that didn't - the fact that Chewie died was still sitting in the back of his mind to be considered later on his own - this would. It was a puzzle, and he'd just have to figure out how to solve it.
The familiarity of the hug gave way to the familiarity of his hair being ruffled and the response came out on autopilot: "Mom, hey!" And only as he pulled back, his hand reaching up to smooth down his hair did he realize that it wasn't all that familiar to either of them. "Watch the hair," he said, a good-natured tone in his voice as he eyed her mock-suspiciously.
Leia couldn't contain the smile. Even if she wasn't acquainted with him, she already felt more at ease. She'd have to ask Han more questions about him so that Anakin wouldn't have to tell her everything. She released him, only to keep her arm across the back of his shoulders. "Come on, let's go find your father. He'll be eager to see you, I think. Think he's missing home a lot more than usual since those new memories."
Anakin realized that he had no idea how his Dad had gotten new memories, but that it was a question for another time. So far all he'd had today were questions and far more of them than answers. Eventually he was going to have to sit down and meditate on all of that. But for the moment he realized he really did want to see his Dad and maybe it wouldn't take so very long for him to get used to his Mom like this. He wrapped his arm around her waist and nodded. "Yeah, let's go."