In My Head

Chapter 3 - Home

Author's Note: This is the end! Yes, it's very open-ended, but that just means that you can decide what you think happens next. All I know for sure is that Vader, Obi-Wan, Leia, and Luke survive. Idk about anyone else. :)

Thank you all so much for reading, voting, and/or commenting on this story! :D

~ Amina Gila

Leia feels Ben's dread before he turns to look at her. "What are you doing here?" He sounds... angry, and she instinctively takes a step back from him, remembering.

"Well, then you are lost!"

He had been so angry on that lava planet, and she knows he would never hurt her, not deliberately, not like that, but still, she can't stop her instinctive reactions. "I wasn't going to let you come alone," she replies, raising her chin defiantly.

She holds his eyes for but a moment before her gaze skirts to Vader again, curious. He's dark and cold but soothing; it doesn't make sense, not at all, but that's what it is. Unlike Ben, Vader's thoughts and feelings are much more closed to her, though she can still get hints of... something. Resentment? Anger. Pain. So much pain. And there's something else, something buried deep down, far enough that she can't grasp it.

"You should not have come," he says a little harshly, but he feels scared again. Panicked, even.

"What are you doing with this child?" Vader demands, taking one step closer.

"Protecting her obviously," Ben snarks, "So you don't kill her like you have killed every other child in your path."

"What makes her special? I have hunted you for years, and I have found nothing. Then, this child is taken, and you come for her. Why her?" There's loathing there, a bitter wild fury that makes Leia want to cower under the sheer intensity. But she thinks that she can hear the unspoken words to which he would never give voice. Why not me?

"She is the future. All children are. I don't owe you any answers," Ben snaps. He glances back at her for a moment. "Go back to the ship and wait for me to return."

"Planning to leave so soon are we, Master?"

Leia catches a glimpse of a deep unfathomable pain. Pain and yearning. Love twisted into possessiveness. And she knows that unless she does something, fast, this will get entirely out of hand. Besides, watching these two destroy one another verbally is too reminiscent of what happened on the lava planet. She cannot let it happen again.

"I will do what I must."

Vader flinches in the Force, and Leia does too, because she knows what those words mean for him. There's no doubt in her mind that Ben chose them deliberately, but she never thought that he could be so – so spiteful, so petty. It doesn't seem like behavior befitting of a Jedi, especially not when his grief over Anakin was so real, so genuine. He thought Anakin was dead. He thought he killed them. Wouldn't finding out he's alive make him happy, or at the very least want to do better? Ugh. Adults are so complicated.

"You're hurting him," Leia states flatly, taking a few steps closer, gaze drilling into Ben's back. The thought of announcing that Vader is her father is... strange all of a sudden, and she's hesitant for reasons that she can't even explain to herself. Perhaps it's because she can feel the tension in the air, and it's as if a bomb is about to go off. She does not want to be the one who unleashes it.

"Go back to the ship," Ben grits out, his grip on his weapon tightening. "Please."

"No." She shakes her head, unable to take her eyes off Vader, studying him, gauging him, wishing that she could read him better. He's... closed to her. "Ben, I can't. I – I need to know if – if... I –"