#star wars#!!!!!#ladyknightradiant#your thoughts? (via @kogiopsis)
“We’ll take the boy,” Bail Organa says to Obi-wan Kenobi, “my wife and I have always dreamed of having a little boy.” And Obi-wan nods and gathers the tiny, squalling girl into his arms and heads for his ship.
“Exile for us then, eh?” he says quietly, soothing, but the girl still screams. Her brother was quiet, serious, even moments after birth. But she is full of fire. “Oh, do be quiet, Leia,” Obi-wan says wearily, but he’s smiling. And she suddenly stops crying and stares back at him with a steely gaze as if she’s realizing she’ll get farther with less dramatics. “Your mother was just as brilliant,” he says dryly and sets course for Tatooine.
She grows up loved, yes, but it’s a harsh world, this endless desert, and she soaks some of that into her skin. Luke would have been softer, the sand grinding his harsh edges down, but Leia is ignited by the heat of this world, and she glows like fire. She grows up angry (this does not change), and she grows up ready. For what, she’s not sure, but she’s ready. She takes her speeder into town and gets into bar fights. She flies out to the Jutland Wastes and tangles with sand people and old Ben Kenobi comes in and saves her on more than one occasion–not that she needs saving. She leans on her stun-rifle, self-satisfied grin on her face, sand people unconscious at her feet. “What?” she asks Kenobi, grin tilting over the edge into mischievous, “I can take care of myself.”
“I know,” he says, world-weary, resigned. “Your father was the same.”
He tells her about Anakin, the best fighter pilot in the galaxy–“I always knew he wasn’t a spice merchant, like Uncle Ben said,” Leia crows triumphantly–the fighter, the Jedi, the friend. He hesitates, but can’t bring himself to tell her what happened to him. “Vader killed him,” he says, and it’s not a total lie, but Leia’s eyes narrow and her head tilts to one side. She’s shrewd. She knows it’s not the whole truth. “You’re a lot like him,” Kenobi says sadly. “You share a fire.”
She wants to come to Mos Eisley with him. Her brother would have accepted that he needed to get home, that he was in enough trouble as it is, but Leia wants off this rock. She wants to use her fire, wants to learn how to be a Jedi, wants to change the world (this does not change), and the soft strength of the boy in the hologram begging for aid just stokes her fires. “He needs help,” she says to Kenobi, “and I’m going to help him. It’s my droid, anyway.”
Prince Luke of Alderaan has his own fire, but it’s quiet, a hearth compared to her bonfire (this does not change), but he’s brave and strong and he draws her into his fight for the galaxy as easily as pulling her in for a hug. She’s comfortable around him without explanation, and she can’t help but love him and his adorable hope and optimism. “I’m a senator,” he says, shrugging, “I have to believe there’s a better way. A better galaxy. That there’s still good out there” She laughs, but claps him on the shoulder.
“Okay,” she says, “let’s go find that good.”
She’s still in charge (this does not change), and she’s still the one to save their skins over and over, because no matter what world Leia grows up on, she’s good with a blaster, good at the pilot’s controls, and the only one quick enough to fix the plans that go awry. She’s backed this time by years of back alley scraps in Tashi Station instead of senate floor debates. But they made her just as furious, just as brilliant. She still takes after her father, and Luke still takes after their mother. But it’s more pronounced, more obvious. Kenobi watches and worries.
But he didn’t have to worry. Leia on Degobah is determined, fierce in her studies, desperate to cultivate her control of the Force. Yoda worries–“Much anger, there is in you, much hate for the Empire.”
“What do you expect?” she snaps. “They murdered a planet, and they would have murdered more if we hadn’t stopped them. They’re horrible.”
“Do not let this anger control you,” Obi-wan says from beyond the grave, but she just shrugs. “Vader was consumed by his anger, and it led him to the Dark Side.”
“Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m not him,” she says, gritting her teeth as she lifts the X-Wing from the marsh and sets it on dry land with nothing but the Force. “I will never be him.”
There is more than one way to channel anger. Leia channels hers into love (this does not change), and when she goes to save her friends, when she goes to save her father, it’s her furious love for them, for what she’s protecting, that burns with the fire of Tatooine’s twin suns. She grew up in a blazing desert, soaking in the heat of two stars and all the love her uncle and aunt could muster, and she lets that radiate out of her until she glows.
She’s still the same Leia. Her brother is still the same Luke. It doesn’t matter what world they grow up on.
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