Motherhood is a page unturned, a storybook left unopened in her bedside drawer. Leia Organa is her father’s daughter. The prodigy of Bail Organa, the great daughter of Anakin Skywalker — a temper and ambition unparalleled in the galactic republic. She was always far closer to him, to Bail than to Breha. He coddled her, taught her the ways of the Senate, the way of the people of Alderaan. Breha’s kindness was in her, of course, there are moments of memories of hair braiding, of being taught the ways of the palace draped in silk and nightmares shushed by a mother’s hand. But Leia Organa is her father’s daughter. It was always easier with Jacen than it was with Jaina. The twins had their respective favorite parents, and try as she might, Leia never broke the tide between the two of them. Winter frosts between the two of them, memories of a daughter that Leia could never reach. [ General Organa — you are needed at the front lines. I’m sorry Jaina, my apologies my dearest. Your father will go with you. Perhaps next time. Perhaps next time. Perhaps — ] It fades, a woman more a mother to a republic than to her own daughter.
She wonders if that’s why it’s so empty here. They stand in the sand, the same sand in which her father and mother — Jaina’s grandparents, tore the republic apart with a decision to fall in love, setting forward a path that shaped their destiny. The soft breeze between the mother and daughter is an excuse to shiver, to blame the most awkward silence on something as trivial as the weather in Naboo and not the tattered relationship of a daughter who once triumphantly proclaimed herself as an Organa before a Solo. Now, Jaina is her father’s daughter. 𝐃𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬, more father-like than girls.
❛ You haven’t said anything since we’ve walked this far. ❜ Soft, remembering the sound of a lullaby she once sang to Jaina as she held her in her arms years ago. The night after the New Republic raged over trade wars, the extinction of the empire’s reach more troublesome than the princess had hoped. But Leia found her daughter that night, cooing softly. So small. So safe. In her mind, perhaps Jaina never left the safe cradle. Never saw the horrors of war that still haunted Leia each night. It is the distance that keeps them safe. Or perhaps — that is a lie Leia’s told over and over until she’s learned to believe it herself.
@darkmeld
