InsaneJournal

This shore leave and all of its ups and downs had actually been good for Leia. The loss of her mother (again) had been difficult, but she held it off the same way that she did everything else in her life. Losing Ben was easier, because she had been avoiding him in the first place, terrified that she was of just who he was, since he had come in as Kylo Ren. And losing Breha had been devastating. She pushed herself into learning about this planet, experiencing it, and she was thankful she had Chris to keep her busy too. So now that she was feeling more settled, she knew her next step was to get to know her children. Well, the children that she had in another timeline. And she was starting with Anakin.

They met at an open air cafe in the resort everyone was staying at in, overlooking the ocean. It reminded her, just with the feel of it, of a holiday home her family had on Alderaan. She pulled a long plait of her hair over her shoulder and sipped on the warm bitter cocoa she was drinking, even as the air was warm and she didn’t need to warm herself. She turned and smiled when she spotted Anakin crossing to her, and got to her feet.

“Anakin,” she said, the name unfamiliar on her tongue as she spoke it out loud. Her counterpart had named him after Anakin Skywalker, and that was incredibly hard for Leia to fathom, but she held any comments back. She squeezed his arm and leaned up to kiss his cheek in greeting. “I didn’t know what you wanted, but I’m sure someone will be by to ask shortly.” She returned to her seat.

It was odd to Anakin to see his mother's face on someone and know that she had no real memories of him. There was an entire shared history that was missing between himself and this Leia Organa. And while his world had certainly had its share of ups and downs, and certainly there were things that he had wished hadn't happened - overall he couldn't help but feel that what he knew of her world was one that he was certain had brought pain. No Jedi, a son that had turned to the Dark Side… those felt like things that Anakin wouldn't wish on anyone.

He greeted her with a side hug as she squeezed his arm and gave her a warm smile, one that was very much like his father's. "That's all right, I'll take a look and see what they've got and get something ordered," he returned easily, sliding into the seat across from her.

Now that they weren't on the network, he thought she looked perhaps a bit sadder than his own mother, but maybe that was also to be expected. No less determined though, and there was a smile as he recognized Leia Organa Solo's fire in her eyes. "I'm glad to get to spend some time with you," he offered. "How do you find Hawaii?"

Yes, Leia could see Han in Anakin, in different ways than she could see Han in Ben. Her heart ached and she pushed that aside too, because there was no use in worrying about things that weren’t possible here, not when she was working on a new life as much as she could. “I’m glad we have a chance to spend time together too,” she said honestly. She had missed years of Ben’s life, having sent him off to train with Luke and then losing him entirely. But that wasn’t any reason to be scared of getting to know Anakin.

She smiled and leaned back comfortably in her seat. “I’m enjoying it quite a bit,” she said. That probably had to do with the fact that between her and Captain Kirk, they had convinced Chris to join them here. But it was also because the entire environment was simply relaxing. “Like I said on the network, I don’t remember the last time, if ever, I’ve had a vacation. And I don’t count the time Han took me to a resort on Corellia because that was interrupted by insurgents. Not to mention, it was over twenty years ago.”

Anakin chuckled at this. "Corellian vacations are, in my experience, never quite as relaxing as what they're advertised to be. But maybe that's just the Solo genes factoring in." The last time he'd been on Corellia for any length of time had been during the war, and there had been the complications of Centerpoint Station involved. Centerpoint in and of itself tended to up the stress level by at least double what it should have been. "I was there not that long ago, but it wasn't what you'd call a vacation experience, so I suppose that's not a fair comparison. Still though - I haven't found that it matters too much."

One of the servers had wandered over and so Anakin ordered a drink, a kombucha that promised to be a flavored, fermented tea, and then he turned his attention back to his mother. Or at least the closest thing that he had to it here. He turned slightly serious, uncertain if he should bring it up or not, but instinct said not ignoring it was probably better than ignoring it. Certainly he'd had enough of secrets in his own family of recent. Secrets had been where everything had gone wrong with Jacen, so given the choice, Anakin planned to be more open and honest here.

"I saw Kylo Ren was returned," he gave her a searching look. "How are you feeling?"

“Corellia isn’t really like any other place in the universe, is it?” she mused, thinking that it seemed so far away and yet so fixed in her memory, woven together with her memories of her husband. “Though I guess I could say that about any number of worlds, too.” That was something she had always appreciated about her home universe - its diversity of beings and worlds, so many of them scattered throughout the universe. This place seemed less spread out, less full as what she knew.

Leia looked over at Anakin, considered for a moment how to answer, before she nodded. “Relieved,” she said.

"It's not. It's a good place though, despite individual quirks and certainly tons of personality," Anakin mused back in return. He'd never minded his Corellian heritage, perhaps even it was something he was fairly at home with. Much like what his mother had passed on from Alderaan. And while he might consider himself a citizen of Coruscant when he was at home, and a citizen of the galaxy most other times, it was still a place that mattered.

"That's understandable," he offered in response to her words. "It's a weight to carry when you can't trust someone fully."

There were a lot of places for Leia that mattered. She sipped her cocoa and sighed heavily. “Yes,” she said, “it is. And I hate to admit that I don’t know if I could ever trust him again.” Even though she wanted him to come back to her. But if Han hadn’t been able to get through to him, if Han’s attempt had ended the way it had, then what hope did she have in bringing him back? Perhaps that hope was something she didn’t explore here, though she should have. She had let her own fear and failure keep her from any attempt at reaching out to him.

Anakin couldn't say what had gone wrong and in all truthfulness the fact that it had happened there brought to his mind all the unpleasantness with Jacen of recent. His own brother had tried to kill him, and yet Anakin believed Jacen could still be a greater man - the one Anakin knew he wanted to be in all honesty. For a moment he was quiet, letting the warm tropical breeze pick up his hair and brush it across his forehead and then for the server to deliver his drink before he said anything.

"I know you may not want to talk about what happened," he said, reaching for the tea. "And I don't know him at all. But I do know that trust is a complicated thing. I think it's always an act of faith really. And you have to decide how far your faith goes and what you're willing to live with - or not as the case may go." Anakin let go of a breath as he considered how much he'd been willing to give up for Jacen to have a chance at light. It had been entirely his own choice and maybe not one Jaina would have made or either of his parents, but it had been right for him. "I think if you choose not to extend that faith, under the circumstances, it would make perfect sense."

Leia had spent the last many years believing that Ben could be a greater man, that he wasn’t so far gone even after the events at the Jedi temple, even after the horrifying things he had done. And yet that all changed as she stood there and felt the pain of Han’s death, of Ben’s betrayal, sear through her. She still felt it, sometimes, when she let herself, that lingering pain imprinted deep inside of her.

She didn’t know what Anakin had gone through in his life, what he and his siblings had. But she understood something of him as he spoke, as she felt him speak. She made a decision, in that moment, to be completely honest. Ben was gone. She didn’t know if he would be coming back. She was trying to move on. But Anakin, and his brother and sister, they needed to know all the facts in case he returned. “He killed his father,” she said quietly, bluntly.

The reaction crossed Anakin's face more than anywhere else. A flicker in his eyes of recognition and sorrow, and a sudden burst of empathy for the woman in front of him. He could imagine if Jacen had harmed someone else… truthfully part of Anakin's ability to reach out was directly correlated to Jacen choosing to make it personal to him. Giving himself was something that Anakin could give, and was willing to do, but to give someone else, or to have someone else taken from him? That would have been much more difficult to live with.

Anakin leaned forward, reaching his hand out to gently cover one of hers for a moment. "I - " He wasn't certain what words he could offer that would mean anything. He struggled with knowing what to say that might mean anything. What was helpful? What was merely a platitude that would mean nothing. He knew how torn he would be had it been Jacen who had done the same. "I can only imagine what pain that would be. I … I'm so sorry, mother."

She looked at his hand on hers and let it relax her. “Thank you,” she said, her voice scratchy. She wasn’t used to hearing someone call her mother like this. She reached out and put her other hand on top of theirs and forced a smile at him, forced it to show that she was all right. “I sent Han off and told him to bring Ben back and - it didn’t work. I should have known better.” Yes, Leia blamed herself, and she didn’t think anything could be said or done to remove that overwhelming feeling of guilt from her.

Anakin could see his mother's guilt. Oh, Leia might not be his mother, but her tells were similar, and he knew the Leia he knew so well. And he couldn't tell her anything about what happened with any authority, but he couldn't help but feel that she shouldn't blame herself. He also knew his father, and while he hadn't met Kylo Ren, he had some understanding of what had happened with Jacen - had something happened to him would his parents or Jaina have blamed themselves? Possibly, but it had also been Anakin's call.

"You can't make something work just because you want it to, and it isn't necessarily your fault that it didn't," he suggested. "There have been dozens of times where my intentions have been one thing, but the reality turned out to be something else. I don't know a lot about the details here, but I think it's too much to carry it on your own shoulders as if it were all your fault. If the Han you knew is anything like the one I did, it wouldn't have mattered if you had asked him or not."

She looked at him. Leia already knew that his father, the other Han, was light years different than hers. She knew for a fact he wouldn't have gone after Ben if she hadn't practically pleaded with him to. Oh, he would have taken that foolhardy mission to Starkiller base, and he might have even brought Breha back to her, but to go after Ben like that? Leia started to shake her head. Maybe she didn't really know her husband though. At least she hadn't known him well in years. “The Han I've gotten to know here is vastly different than the one I knew.”

Anakin didn't have a good response to that. He supposed there was the time after Chewie's death when his Dad had disappeared from the entire family. When the galaxy had been falling apart, Han had disappeared into - something. Sometimes Anakin still wasn't certain where he'd gone. He remembered Jacen telling him shortly after he'd arrived, that he'd seen the man he could become, and Anakin knew that choices defined you - perhaps the Han this Leia knew had made different choices, become a different person ultimately. Anakin probably had a tendency to defend his Father no matter what, maybe always had, and maybe it wasn't healthy, but he probably shouldn't here, when he had no understanding of the situation.

"Maybe not," he finally said aloud. "But even so, everyone makes their own choices, and those aren't your weight to bear." He hesitated a beat and then laughed shortly at himself. Part of him still blamed himself for not seeing Jacen's fall. "And it's a lot easier to tell someone else that then to believe it yourself, as I'm well aware."

How many times had she said something similar, or at the very least thought it? She smiled fondly at him. "That's very true," she said. "Always easier said than done. That's been true my entire life." Leia turned to glance out down to the sand, the water past it. After a long moment she turned back to Anakin. "Did you have a good - your family, I mean, it was good? Supportive? You and your brother and sister seem well-adjusted, smart, successful … are you happy?" Maybe she just needed to hear that somewhere, in some universe, in some reality, she and Han did something right.

Anakin looked over at his mother, or not his mother exactly, but still very much Leia Organa he could tell, and he smiled. "Yes," he affirmed. "Overall I would say yes. You were Chief of State when I was born, so the bulk of our childhood was in the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, well, that is when we weren't in hiding during our early years to keep us from being kidnapped. It mostly worked," he laughed and shook his head. "There were a few times it didn't, but mostly, I've good memories. Uncle Luke had a praxeum on Yavin IV and we all trained there."

He stared off into the distance for a moment, thinking back. "The war was difficult," he admitted. "The Yuuzhan Vong came from Unknown Space and they attacked, and for a while it seemed as if they might win the whole galaxy. But darkness didn't prevail then. And I was able to pick up and work with the Jedi after the war. We've trained more - the Jedi as an Order… we're changing and growing, learning new things. It's good I think. Jacen's had…" Anakin moistened his lips. He didn't really want to tell his brothers story for him, so how to say it without really doing so? "He's had more questions than Jaina and I, but we work as a team, the three of us. We always have. And I have a beautiful fiance, so," he looked over to his mother and gave her a familiar lopsided grin. "Of course I'm happy. Ecstatic might be a better term for it."

Few similarities, Leia thought. She smiled at him though. "I'm very glad to hear that, Anakin," she said to him, touching his arm gently. She enjoyed the feeling in the Force around him, so different from her experience with her own son, where the Force pushed and pulled in on her until she had to block it. She thought of her own attempt at running for Chief of State. How different things might have been. But would they have been, really? Would she then have told Ben on her own about Vader, rather than him hearing it broadcast across the galaxy? She didn't know. She was glad to hear that Anakin and his siblings hadn't been kidnapped like her own Breha had been though. It was as though the darkness shrouded her life whereas the light touched his.

Anakin might be putting his foot in his mouth. Although he'd been doing leadership for years, he still sometimes felt like the boy who didn't really want to make speeches or talk, who would prefer to sit back and listen. But this wasn't a time for that - it couldn't be. So he kept the smile and plunged in.

"It's so odd to me think of our experiences being so different," he shrugged lightly. "But with my mother not here, I hope that maybe you'll sit where she would at our wedding. If you would like to that is. We may not have the history that I would have with my mother, but we share the same DNA - and it would mean a lot to me if you would be there as a part of my family."

Her chest ached and she looked at him for a moment before nodding. "I would be honored, Anakin, to do that," she said. And she was, truly honored, to be asked. She didn't know why he might want that as they didn't know each other, but she would absolutely do that for him. "Thank you for asking."

"Yeah, you're welcome," he said reaching for the drink that he had ordered and feeling relieved. At least there was a connection there, even if not all the shared history and memories. It felt right, basically, and he was going to be pleased with the small pieces if he could be.

He sat the cup down and looked over at her. "So, I mean, I gave you the quick lowdown of my life, and I know some things, you have two kids, not three, for instance, but what else? I mean, you were in politics, but you're a General now, right?"

Leia leaned back in her chair, more relaxed now that she was opening herself up more to the connection she had with Anakin, even if it didn't feel the same as hers with Ben or even Breha. She looked at him. "Yes, I founded a Resistance," she said simply, "when it was clear the New Republic wasn't going to do anything about the increasing thread of the First Order. I - my original intent had been to work from within the government. I was hoping to make a bid at chief of state. However, a political opponent got hold of evidence of -" She paused for a moment, glancing away. She felt certain that Anakin, with a name like that, had to know who his namesake was. Besides, with Vader around … "Evidence of my bloodline and made it public. No one wanted the daughter of Darth Vader leading their government," she finished off dryly, downing the rest of her drink quickly.

Anakin nodded, curious at the fact that it had apparently been an unknown prior to that point. It wasn't particularly a surprising turn of events - his own mother had certainly been the target of such things multiple times in his childhood, but never to the extent it seemed that it had created such a profound change in events.

"It's a…" Anakin paused, reaching for his drink although he didn't pull the glass to his mouth. He didn't know exactly how to characterise that bloodline, nor, he supposed, did he really know how this Leia felt about it. But he'd had to grapple with it often enough. They both knew that. "It's a burden, and a gift, I guess," he finally said. "The bloodline I mean. I suppose it makes people feel better to jump to the notion that you'll be just like them, but what they don't quite realize is that knowing you have that history changes how you interact with everything."

Leia would never consider it a gift, not after what it did to her family, how it split them apart, what it did to her life. "And sometimes even knowing that history doesn't change where you end up," she said. She didn't mean for it to come out as cynically as it did but the fact was, she was cynical about it.

Anakin considered this for a moment, and this time he did lift the drink to his lips to take a sip. "Maybe, but I think we always have choices. At least that's how I've always lived it. It doesn't mean that the nightmares don't touch me still, but I have a choice in how I live with them. We all do. But that also doesn't mean we always make the right ones," he looked over at her, knowing that she had lived with the very real fact of her son not making the right ones. Jacen hadn't always either though, and honestly Anakin felt there were times he'd stumbled.

She nodded. "Exactly," she said, though looking at Anakin, getting to know him as she was beginning to, she saw the man she could have had for a son and it made her ache. It wasn't fair to either Anakin or Ben to compare them like this. And yet here she was doing exactly that. "We all have to live with the choices we've made." She had made a lot of pretty awful ones herself over the years too.

"The nice thing about it," he tilted his glass towards her with smile. "Is that as long as we're living we have the opportunity to make new choices. At least most of the time that's a nice thing," he chuckled.

He knew they hadn't had the same life at all, but he could still see his mother in her, even if it was like looking at an artist's impression at time. Something just enough different that he'd glance and see something new and different, but that wasn't all bad. And he supposed it was an opportunity too.

He glanced up as some music started playing. It had a nice sound to it, and made his toes tap a bit, and he grinned over at Leia. "Do you dance?"

Was Anakin asking her to dance? She smiled and glanced out as a few other people started to get up to dance too. "I haven't danced in a long while. Why, you interested?" She stood up and held out a hand for him. "I'll try not to step on your toes at least," Leia continued with a smile as he stood up and took her hand.