#ididsaysobefore

[empiresbane]

Aren’t You A Little Tall For A Brother?

@ididsaysobefore​

Leia stood for several seconds just looking at the boy as he played with his model T-16 Skyhopper. Ben said he was her brother, but Ben said a lot of things that weren’t true. Leia didn’t know how she knew, but she’d always been good at guessing when people were lying to her or hiding things. And Ben was hiding a lot. This, though...

This felt right.

Anyway, she’d always wanted a brother. And even if he wasn’t one yet, maybe he’d like to be. Her parents hadn’t been her mom and dad right away, either; they’d found her later and decided they wanted her to be their daughter. Maybe even if Ben was lying about the boy right now, he might decide he’d like to be her brother anyway.

“Ben says you’re my brother,” she said at last, not bothering with any sort of preamble. She wasn’t on Alderaan anymore, wasn’t supposed to tell anybody that she was a princess; surely that meant she didn’t have to say silly diplomatic things now. Not that she’d ever been very good at not speaking her mind even when she was being a princess. “That your name is Luke.” She stared at him some more, with his pale hair and his sun-pink cheeks and his pale eyes and his sandy tunic. “You don’t look much like my brother,” she said accusingly. “Are you sure he didn’t maybe get confused, and you’re not the boy he was supposed to get?”

[empiresbane]

The First Day of Tomorrow

@ididsaysobefore

Leia was tired. That was nothing new; sometimes she felt like she’d been running on adrenaline and spite ever since the plans for the first Death Star had ended up in her hands. But there was tired and then there was tired, and right now Leia was the latter. Part of it was the long and busy day, but she knew most of it was how helpless she felt in the face of so much death and illness that she could do nothing to stop.

Damn Ysane Isard, anyway...

A shrill sequence of beeps drew her attention from her datapad, and as her concentration wavered she recognized a familiar presence (a statement she was still getting used to being able to make). Leia tried to draw comfort from the fact that even without the Force she would have been able to figure out that Luke was in her apartment, because who else traveled around the upper levels of Coruscant with an astromech droid in tow? Especially one with a vocabulary like that. It wasn’t actually much comfort, but she tried.

She also gave up on work. She wasn’t getting anywhere, anyway. Better to take a break and come back fresh, preferably with some new ideas. For now, she shut the datapad down and stood, rolling her neck and shoulders against the stiffness from too many time parts in the same chair, and walked into the other room. There was no sign of Han and Chewie (probably working on the Falcon, because they hated feeling helpless almost as much as she did and at least tinkering with the old ship meant doing something) but Threepio was recharging in the corner, now booting-up in response to Artoo’s demanding whistle.

Leia turned to face the other organic in the room and mustered a tired smile for him. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she said to her brother. “I would have thought you’d have talked your way into going to Ryloth with Wedge...not that you’re supposed to know about their trip, of course,” she added drily, having little doubt that Luke already knew all about Rogue Squadron’s desperate diplomatic endeavors. “What brings you to Coruscant, if not that? Not that I’m not happy to see you.” Leia walked forward to offer him a hug.