made this as a warm up for some other big projects! Anakin and Padme take their twins out for a morning picnic at the meadow. :> a AU of a much happier ending.
Mando/Hunter/Obi-Wan: The galaxy is a harsh and cruel place where the weak are prey to the strong. Corruption is rampant and our ideologies are as flawed as the people who follow them. We are insignificant cogs in a larger unfeeling machine that will eat us up and spit us out should we lose our grip. We are kept chained because of the trauma we bear from seeing this corruption firsthand and all we can do is keep our head down and hope for some glimmer of hope to make our galaxy a better place.
Grogu/Omega/Leia: hello
Mando/Hunter/Obi-Wan: The strong must protect the sweet. There is still good in this galaxy and I will lay down my life to protect it even if the odds are against me. I will see this child surpass me and thrive as I pass on my skills and knowledge knowing they will build a better galaxy when at long last I pass.
A Secret Santa fic for Amylion! (My dumbass couldnt find your tumblr ashfg).
I hereby present this... mess. Probably not what you were asking for (definitely not; Im so sorry I just realized I didnt use the prompts they were going to come up later on RIP) and maybe a tinsy bit cringe-worthy. There was supposed to be more, but yeah; here’s some good-natured kid Leia and Dad Vader, with a pinch of prophetic dreams for zest.
Well, I tried.
(Also, this one shot was not beta’ed, I die like the horrible mess of a writer I am)
The hallways are dark.
The shadows that surround a few illuminated viewports create frightening monsters, if one had the right imagination for it. What was worse was that she was alone. There were no droids, white masks or suit-people in sight.
If she were younger, maybe she’d ask a droid to accompany her on this late night journey. But no; she was a big girl now (Seven! That was two fingers more than a whole hand) and besides, her daddy didn’t really like them much.
He didn’t like a lot of things, but there were some he disliked more than others. And she noticed, which was why she was walking alone, in the dark, the metal caging her in from the side. And she’s not scared. Not at all.
Still, if she squeezes Mr. Catty just a bit too tight that was just because he was shivering so much.
The big silver doors are in view soon enough, and she shuffles a bit faster when she notices them. It doesn’t even take a moment before they silently open. She walks in, the doors close and the familiar whirring noise echoes all around her.
“Leia.” Her daddy steps out of the dark, his breathing machine the only constant source of sound in the room. He’s tall, dark and shiny- just like he was when he put her to bed. It calms her; and Mr. Catty.
He absently waves a finger, turning the lights on as he steps closer to her small form. “Angel, what’s wrong?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead she walks over with her bare feet (she was going to get a scolding for that for sure), Mr. Catty firmly in hand and looks up at her father’s dark mask. The staring only lasts a moment.
There’s a small hitch in the constant whirring noise, like an exhausted little sound, and her father firmly picks her up and sits himself down on a nearby chair. She’s on his knee, one black gloved arm still around her while she makes herself comfortable, and now it’s just her father’s strange mask that stares down at her.
Leia doesn’t hesitate. “I had a strange dream daddy.”
She didn’t dream often, but when she did, she always dreamed of strange things. A cave filled with crystals, shining so brightly she swore she heard them sing. An underwater city, beautiful; but there were fish people standing on top of buildings, crying, screaming: “Traitor, traitor!”.
A moon made out of metal, with a heart that screeched in pain.
Everyone always said her dreams were silly, and she was making too much of a fuss about them. Overactive imagination, her retelling a version of a story she read somewhere; one suit-man even accused her of lying once! The more she talked about them, the less everyone who heard them believed her.
Sometimes, Leia thought that if it weren’t for her daddy, their gentle reprimands would turn scathing.
She knew she shouldn’t have shared her dreams, knew most never believed her, but she couldn’t help herself; they all felt so real to her in a way. Why couldn’t other people understand that?
She knew better now. All the droids and suit-people dismissed her worries so she dismissed them as well; except for her daddy.
He never said she was making things up, and he always listened.
“It was a dry place.” Leia began, fumbling with Mr.Catty’s stuffed legs. She tried to remember. “Like, really dry. Everything was orange and the ground was bright and smooth; with all these little pebbles on them.” She shook her head lightly. “Oh no, they were even smaller than that: tiny, little pebbles. And there were no trees, or rivers, or-“
“A desert.” Her father stated, quickly cutting off her rambling. “You were dreaming of a desert.”
She scrunched her little button nose up at him. “A desert? Like, dessert?”
“No. A desert is a barren wasteland, largely inhospitable, dry and covered in sand; the tiny pebbles.” He explained, and she files away this new revelation in her mind. “I believe the chocolate waffles you had for breakfast this morning don’t fit the same description.”
Uh-oh. She cringed, fumbling her fingers around her stuffed toy. “Oh- you know about that?”
So she might have eaten sweets for breakfast this morning. Really, though, it hadn’t been her fault! She was alone with the droid in the kitchen, and it did ask her what she wanted for breakfast. And she really didn’t want to eat porridge filled with fruits, vitamins and all the “healthy necessities her body required to grow”. Besides, she was sure chocolate waffles made her grow more than that mush anyway.
“We will discuss your punishment tomorrow.” Leia made a face at that; she really didn’t want to scrub her room clean. Again. Her father’s mask turned towards her wriggling feet. “Where are your socks?”
“-So anyway.” She continued undeterred. “I was in a desert. But I wasn’t alone. There was a boy there too.”
Her father straightened a bit more at that. He always did, whenever she dreamed of someone. “What kind of boy?”
She shrugged. “A boy. I guess he was like me- except, well, he’s a boy.” Leia thought about him for a bit; the boy that inexplicably drew her attention more than any scary dream ever had. “He was blonde, with blue eyes- and his clothes were too big.”
She furrowed her eyebrows in concentration, trying to recall the image of a boy in large white sleeves chasing furry creatures across the ground. “He was kinda scruffy looking.”
“Language.” Her father quietly added, though it was more of an automatic response than anything. “Is that all?”
“Umm, he was chasing some weird rat; I guess he was playing a game and-“
“I mean, was there anyone else in the dream?”
Leia shook her head, expression serious as she looked up at her daddy. With her chubby cheeks and button nose, she looked far too adorable to emulate any kind of sobering face but that hardly stopped her from trying. Like a little queen waiting for her adviser’s opinion, she stared at her father while he thought about her dream.
Her father’s mask stared off in a vague direction, head tilted as he considered what she said. The longer he remained in that position, the more Leia’s heartbeat echoed in her head. This is important then. Daddy must think so too.
It didn’t scare her; it made her strangely giddy. Like that boy was a puzzle piece, something she unknowingly needed to complete the distorted picture in her life.
“It’s nothing like your… usual visions.” His rough voice brought her back from her daydreams. Black mask meeting her large chocolate eyes, her father stated his final judgment. “No. I do not believe it really means anything, angel. Maybe it really was just a dream.”
Mr.Catty made a straining nose from the pressure of her tiny fingers.
In hindsight, this information was wonderful. She often came to her father, crying her eyes out because she hated all the scary dreams she was having, and she didn’t want them anymore. The fact that this dream might have been just that; a dream, not a nightmare, not reality…
Leia hated it.
“No daddy!” She yelled suddenly, wiggling free and sliding down to the floor. It caught her father off guard, too surprised to stop her.
With red cheeks she stared up at him, and all his black glory. “He was real. I know he was.”
“Leia…”
“No!” She threw Mr. Catty to the floor, angry tears appearing in her narrowed eyes. “You think I’m making things up! Like everyone else!”
“Leia.”
Her father got up, voice cold as the atmosphere in the room shifted. No longer approachable, but massive; He stared down at her in the oppressive silence, hands on his hips, looking like a mountain that would break the earth before it would bend.
A scary sight, one that many feared. Leia was no match for that; small, with her chin trembling, and wet, sloppy tears already rolling down her cheeks. She couldn’t even compare.
Still, she refused to back down.
She knew her daddy was angry, and he was probably going to be even angrier the more she continued this staring contest; but- I’m angry too!
After all, out of all the people in her life, it was her father who was supposed to believe her no matter what. The fact that he didn’t, that he thought it was all a dream…
That hurt her.
The staring continued. The tension rose. Before she knew it, the temperature in the room dropped some more. She vaguely wondered if she was going to freeze up. Like those poor people in the vacuum of space, ones that fell under fire and drifted out of reach into an asteroid field. No one went back for them. Nobody even tried.
Would her father leave her like that, all alone? Here in this room, like a sculpture? Would she be able to see? Move? Become a statue for eternity?
It was a daunting thought, the coldness seeping through her jammies and into her skin now. She couldn’t stop shaking; the fear was swallowing her, but she wouldn’t-
It wasn’t until she glanced at Mr. Catty laying on the floor that realization set it and the fear stilled. Eyes straying away from the black void of her father, she took a few steps to her fallen toy, the coldness subsiding as well.
Gingerly picking him up, she muttered a quick apology to her favorite friend, facing her father as the tears roamed unchecked now.
“I-I’m sorry Daddy…” The hiccuping made it harder to speak. “But, but-“
She was full on sobbing now, and just like that, the atmosphere in the room shifted back to normal. The coldness subsided, the warmth came back and she couldn’t stop crying.
Her father made that whirring exhausted little noise, before slowly bending his knees in a crouch so they were more at eye level (Leia didn’t like how he towered over her so much, so piggybacks were still an often occasion).
It was a bit comical to see her tall and menacing father lost as to what to do, his tiny daughter shaking and desperately trying to rub away all the evidence of her uncontrollable tears.
“Oh no, angel not your-“ The warning was too late, as she blew her nose into her sleeves. They were icky already, but she kept smearing her tears in them. Her father quickly battered her attempts away. He looked around, his shoulders slumping some more.
Soon enough, she was blowing into a soft and leathery like material; her father sacrificing his shiny black gloves, gently wiping away the grime and the snot from her small face.
He was probably going to make that sad little whirring noise about that later, but for now, he remained composed.
“Calm down, angel.” He spoke as gently as he could with his distorted voice, his own version of Sssh, sssh- don’t cry now.
“I’m sorry, daddy.” Leia stared at his black, droid like mask with her puffy eyes. She made a few more hiccuping noises, before croaking out the truth she knew in her heart. “But… but he’s important.”
“The boy from your dream?” She nodded. “How so?”
“Be-because!” She wiped the remains of her tears away, frantically trying to explain to her father the underlining importance of it all. It was so clear to her, didn’t he understand? “I saw him, daddy. I saw him jump around rocks, kick rats; fix- or maybe he was breaking- droids-!“
Another memory appeared in her head, one that makes her smile. “And he stares at the sunset daddy! Like you stare out the viewport. He must be real.”
This knowledge didn’t seem to appease her father; if anything, it seemed to do the opposite. The coldness in the room came back with alarming ferocity, before it changed into something incredibly hot, like a blazing sun- and then she could breathe again.
Her father’s shoulders slumped lightly, before he started to reach out his hand to her. He stopped, probably remembering the sobbing incident, and pried his gloves off, gently laying his hands down on her small shoulders. Leia tried her best to not shiver from the cold metal prosthetics. They glinted in the light, fake fingers squeezing her softly.
(Once, a long time ago, when she was still curious about her father’s strange suit, she had asked him if he was a droid. She couldn’t see it, but she just knew her daddy became very sad, and she instantly felt bad about it.
“No, not completely” he said.
She never asked again.)
“Leia.” He had her complete undivided attention. “The dream you had was real. But it was only a vision of the past.”
“The past?” She repeated, blinking as her father retracted his hands from her. But that would mean… “Really?”
“Really.”
The boy she dreamed about was real, as real as her heart in her chest. But it was a boy from before, not now. A boy from the past.
She felt an uncomfortable weight settle inside her.
“How do you know?” It couldn’t be true- the boy she saw was here, now, like she was- and he was important. She just knew it. “Did you… know him?”
“Once.” Her father looked away, like when he looked through viewports at the stars; like the boy. “I knew him, once.”
Her father was many things, but he wasn’t a liar.
She sagged with that newfound knowledge, tired and sad all at once, Mr.Catty limp in her hold. A boy from the past- it hurt her in a way she couldn’t explain, like a goal she could see as plain as day evaporated just beyond her reach. He had seemed so real (was he still real?), and now…
Just a boy from before. It felt like the truth.
And yet, there was still a part of her that believed differently.
There was shuffling in the background, her father’s loud stomps echoing in the room. Looking up, she saw him searching for something in his sleek metal closet. He only had one in his room.
Or was it an office- that term would perhaps better serve to describe his room (he didn’t even have a bed; sometimes Leia thought the plush chairs and sofa were there only for her benefit).
Most would have called it an office- if it wasn’t for the large bacta tank standing at the other end.
She opened her mouth when he walked back to her, but he stopped her new bouts of questions by deftly picking her up- new and shiny, clean black gloves in place.
“Enough. It’s late.” That was his order-voice now. The one that didn’t allow protests. She slumped a little in his hold.
The walk back through the shadowed corridors wasn’t as scary as before, and Leia rested her cheek on her father’s broad shoulder as he swallowed the distance between their rooms in short time.
He put her back to bed, exchanging her star shirt for a clean one with lothcats, and tucked her in. Opening her closet, he made sure to look inside before closing it again. A nightly ritual for checking monsters. No matter how many times he assured her that there was nothing scarier than him around, Leia insisted. That late-night holo she saw still made her shiver.
Besides, her daddy wasn’t that scary.
Smoothing down the hair on her head, Mr.Catty snuggled up beside her, he straightened and pointed a finger at her in warning (like he did at the suit-people, though his voice wasn’t so cold): “Now, sleep.”
He left. She shifted to find a more comfortable position, obeying the silent order and closing her eyes. Before drifting off, she repeated the words she knew rang true in her head; her heart.
