In Which Vader Discovers He is a Father

IT-O

Chapter Five: In which Vader figures out exactly how Leia resisted his mind probe.

19 AFE

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How was the girl hiding the information he desired?

Not only was it impossible for any being in the universe to resist his power, the droid had pumped her full of truth serum and inserted a neural probe into her!

For this to be happening the girl would have to be....

No, that was impossible.

Wasn't it?

Even if the Princess was Force-sensitive, it should not be possible for her to overpower him. He knew his power, knew how the Dark Side increased his already not inconsiderable strength.

There was no way this child could have more power than him.

Just who was this girl?

He reviewed the files that had been collected on her over the years, comparing the documents with his own impression of her since he'd captured her ship, as well as what little he had picked up about her simply due to her celebrity. He had never sought information about her out before, never even met her, but it was impossible to exist on Coruscant without hearing of the Alderaanian Princess.

He knew of course of her many, countless, mercy missions. How she would visit all sorts of pathetic populations and bring them food and aide they did not deserve. He knew those missions had often gone "wrong" and had been covered by the media as evidence of her foolhardy idealism and youth.

The Imperial Security Bureau had interviewed her several times about those losses. According to their reports, when pressed about why she would continue to carry out on these missions despite their negative outcome, she had claimed to feel an affiliation and connection with the galaxy's refugee populations, citing the fact she had been a war refugee herself prior to her adoption.

He suspected, given her now obvious affiliation with the Rebellion, that those missions had never gone wrong at all, and instead had always been intended to end the way they had.

She probably had planned and coordinated the theft of her ships herself.

The ISB agents who had interviewed her had bought her excuse about identifying with the galaxy's downtrodden. Incompetent fools, all of them. They had a Rebel in their grasps and they had let themselves be tricked by sentiment.

There was no bloodwork of any sort in any of her reports and profiles. Curious.

He dug through the holonet systems to pull up her Alderaanian legal files, looking for information that had not been submitted to central offices on Coruscant.

There were surprising gaps even in this information.

The paperwork corresponding to her adoption had far too many blank fields, the Organas claiming the names of either of her birth parents were unknown. However, the ISB reports documented that while she did not know their names, she knew vague details about both of her birth parents stories. That her father had fought for the Republic in the Clone Wars and had died in battle, and her mother had died just after her birth.

How could she know these details if the identities of her biological family were unknown? Most likely they were mere fairytales her parents had told her, a false story to create the most politically beneficial situation for Alderaan. What better way could exist to profess and prove a commitment to refugee rights, to proving refugees would be embraced as part of Alderaanian culture, than making one the heir to the throne?