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stealingpotatoes · 1 year

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And I'll Go With You

Summary: After finding out about their long lost family, the Naberries invite Luke & Leia to the family home for a traditional Naboo dinner. Leia’s feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all.

(sequel to my pooja meets the twins comic that got too long (nearly 3k) and turned into a fic instead of a 2nd comic!!) -- [also on ao3!]

It wasn’t like Luke had been eating badly these past few months. Ever since the Rebellion had become the New Republic, rations had been swapped out for consistent, mostly-hearty meals. There were still battlefields and shoddy basecamps, of course, where the food primarily consisted of ration packs and whatever the base cooks could make with what they’d managed to get through battle lines. Yet those were slowly becoming the exception and not the rule, especially as Luke fell further into the ancient role of Jedi diplomat, helping Leia convince systems to join the New Republic. Battles in politics tended to mean fancy meals with too many people and food Luke couldn’t even begin to understand. Even moreso for him than most; politicians and the like were more than happy to offer their finest meals to the Jedi master who’d blown up the Death Star and supposedly defeated the Emperor.

But none of that fine cheffery compared to the simple stomach-filling warmth of a home-cooked meal -- especially not a home-cooked meal prepared by his grandmother (he had one of those now!) for him, his sister, and their entire family.

Luke looked around the Naberrie dining room, joy bubbling in his chest and stomach at the warmly-lit sight. Empty dishes and plates stretched across the long table, that had earlier been filled with all kinds of Naboo dishes Luke had never seen or tried before. At either head of the table, his grandparents sat laughing at something Ryoo, sitting by their grandmother, had just said. At Luke’s side, Leia was enraptured in a quiet conversation with their cousin and her old colleague, Pooja, that Luke imagined he wouldn’t understand even if he was listening. His aunt and uncle, Sola and Darred, were the only ones not seated, circling around the table and dilligently clearing up the wreckage of the family meal.

“Are you sure you don't want some help with that?” Luke asked Sola as she piled up another plate opposite him.

“Really Luke, it’s alright,” she replied with a kind smile.

Luke half expected an assertion that he was their guest to follow, but none came. The blank space left a sunny feeling in his chest; he wasn’t a guest here, he was family. Completely and utterly welcome, as if he’d been a part of that family his whole life, and not as of a few days ago.

He was so wrapped up in the small joy that he almost didn’t notice Leia’s quiet excuse me, before she gently placed her napkin down on the table and gracefully got up to leave the dining room.

Luke doubted the Naberries thought anything of it -- Leia’s years of politics made her far too good at hiding her emotions to let them do otherwise. She was so good that even the strongest of force users might not have been able to sense it through her mental and expressive shields. But Luke was not any old strong force user; he was Leia's twin, and so her secret turmoil blared in his head like a whirring attack alarm.

He cleared his throat and excused himself too, not sticking around to field anyone’s quick questions (though knowing he should’ve). He wound through the love-filled house, following his senses and memory of the tour they’d been given earlier to reach the starlike presence of his sister. He passed through only two short hallways, both’s walls were filled to the brim with memories he’d never known. Holos of his young cousins, of Sola and Darred on their wedding, and of a brown-haired woman Luke wished he’d known as mom. He’d learn every story behind each of the pictures and keepsakes, some day.

He reached the back garden door -- a light, wooden thing, as ornately simple as the rest of the house -- and stepped into the early night.

The garden was hardly cold, but the sudden coolness compared to the hearth-warmth of the house bit at Luke. He stared up for a moment. Three moons hung white in the sky, painting the white house walls and the green of the garden in blueish moonlight. It was strange how it reminded him of home and yet was so different. Tatooine too had three moons, though all it did was turn golden sand a deep, colourless blue or silver. Never the friendly blue of Naboo’s.

Shaking himself from the thought, he easily spotted his sister standing cross-armed in front of a neat, flowery maybe-vegetable patch. Her white, Naboo-style dress with puffy sleeves and a many-layered skirt stood out against the dark of the moonlit garden as if it were a small, fourth moon itself.

Leia had bought the dress shortly before their diplomatic trip to Naboo for any formal dinners they would be invited to as a part of their Republic negotiations with the Naboo. It was, apparently, very strategically important to acknowledge the culture of those you wished to diplomatise with -- even if Luke and his poor galactic fashion knowledge thought the dress looked no different from any of her Alderaanian dresses. He supposed it was lucky he got to wear his Jedi robes everywhere.

“Hey,” Luke started, stepping up beside her, careful not to get his boots too close to the pristine flowers.

Leia smiled up at him, almost hiding her sorrowful expression. “Hi.”

She glanced back at the windows of the house, where warm, orange light diffused out across the neatly cut lawn, not quite reaching their night-blue patch of the garden. “You didn’t need to come out here for me,” she half-apologised. “It’s cold, you should get back to dinner.”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Leia opened her mouth, but quickly closed it, as if realising I’m fine was a useless excuse to your brother who could sense your emotions. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“You’re my sister, yes, I do,” Luke smiled with a slight shake of his head. After a breath, e leaned down slightly, trying to better enter Leia’s pointed-down sightline. “Hey, if you want to leave, I’m sure we can come up with some urgent New Republic excuse.”

Leia was the far better liar, but Luke had the added advantage of being one of the only Jedi in the galaxy. If Leia didn’t come up with some political excuse, Luke could always make something up about the force that nobody could refute.

Luke shrugged. “We’ve been here half the day, anyway, I’m sure they won’t take it personally if we miss one last course. There’ll be other--”

“No, no, I want to stay,” Leia shook her head with a sure furrow of her brow. “Really, I just needed some air. I don’t-- I can’t leave this.”

Luke nodded, hoping she didn’t notice how thankful he was that he didn’t have to go.

“It’s a nice night to be out.”

“Mm. Naboo’s temperature is quite agreeable,” Leia said, her voice growing politically hollow.

What were they doing, talking about the weather like they were at some stunted party? Luke wanted to say Leia, we both know I’m bad at this not-talking-about-feelings thing, please just tell me what’s on your mind, but he knew his sister well enough to know a brute-force question like that wouldn’t get much out of her. He needed to wait and let her talk on her own terms. So Luke left a gentle space in the air between them, one that Leia could fill when she was ready. Only quiet night birds and the faint rustle of garden trees were so brave as to interrupt it.

“Maybe I came out here for more than air…” Leia mumbled, predictably rewarding the silence after some long moments. “It's only that they’re so… I don’t know how to say this.”

“It’s okay, you can say whatever it is,” he managed through the slight panic entering his mind. Did Leia not like their new family? But they were so nice! They were perfect!

Clearly noticing the worry knotted in his brow, Leia held her hands up. “No, no, it’s nothing against them. It’s barely even about them as people, it’s just…”

Luke only watched for her continuation, aware all he could do was try to project his own comfort through the force.

Leia forced a deep breath in and out, clenching her eyes shut for a short moment. “When I lost Alderaan, I lost everyone. I lost my father, my mother-- anyone I’d so much as briefly considered family. I had nobody to call my own. Nobody. And I thought that was going to be it, forever. I thought that I would never have any family ever again.”

“But then,” a smile crept onto Leia’s lips as she gave Luke a short glance, “you came blasting into my life and you told me about everything, and suddenly I had family-- I had a brother!”

“Blasting is a bit of a strong word…”

Leia levelled him a raised eyebrow. “Is there a weaker word you think fits better, then?”

Luke huffed out a chuckle, remembering how quickly their first meeting had devolved into a blaster fight and a narrow escape of death. “I guess blasting works.”

Leia let out a quiet sigh, her presence brightening. “And suddenly it’s not just you, it’s our grandparents, our aunt, our uncle, our cousins, and it’s all…” Leia trailed off.

Luke nodded slowly.

Finding the Naberries had been very different for the two of them, but only now did he appreciate the true difference in what their new family meant for them both.

He’d had little cause to think of what new family meant to the two of them before, given how easily she accepted Luke as her brother, and how resolutely she refused to accept Vader as her father. Luke had thought it was so simple; that it was just Luke was good in her eyes, Vader was not. He saw now that it ran deeper than just Vader’s evil.

Luke loved his aunt and uncle, but they’d never claimed to be his parents. They had always left room for Luke to long for a mother and father, to dream of the people they never spoke about. He had despised the reality of his father at first, but come to accept that while Vader was not the father he dreamed of, he was Luke’s father nonetheless. However awkwardly he had filled that lifelong gap.

To Leia, Vader was not only a villain, but an invasive species. A predator, encroaching on the still-sore memory of Bail and Breha Organa. He could not be her father; that position belonged solely and permanently to Bail and nobody else. Vader would only ever be relegated to a ‘birth father’ -- and that was only on days that Leia felt particularly merciful.

The Naberries, on the other hand, didn’t stand to replace anyone. Padmé Amidala, their mother (force, that was weird to think), may have stood too close to Breha’s position -- but Luke suppose finding out your birth mother was your childhood hero and a founder of the rebellion was very different to finding out your parent was the Emperor’s genocidal attack dog. And even then, she was gone now. She could play little part other than a puzzle piece and a forgotten memory; she did not threaten to take a dead parent's place like the living Vader had once done.

The rest of the Naberries were purely happy additions to their family. There was no limit to how many aunts and uncles and cousins you would have, and neither twin had ever had grandparents before. Their family had become so full and so big with only a chance meeting of Leia’s old Senate colleague Pooja (and some intervention from an unsettling resourceful woman named Sabé). It had all happened so fast, and it was so wonderful… and so easily overwhelming.

Even Luke struggled to get his mind over all the sudden expansions to his once-thought-gone family, and his grief over two family members and strange hermit mentor was hardly comparable Leia’s planet-sized grief. He knew it wasn’t, because he had felt the difference for himself, every time she saw a certain plant or a heard a certain phrase. Such little things would bombard their force-bond with the soul-crushing grief that had hit Leia out of seeming nowhere.

Luke stretched the force out to Leia now, focusing on her shields as uninvasively as he could. Her heavy mantle of grief lay near-dormant, at least, but it was still present in the back of her mind.

Leia glanced up at him from the flowers, perhaps sensing his search despite her lack of training. If she did, she made no comment.

Luke put his flesh hand on her shoulder.

Leia delicately rested her own hand on it, bringing her eyes to firmly meet his. “I am okay. It’s just… it’s…” Leia -- the princess whose educated words never faltered, the general who could muster the greatest of speeches out of thin air -- stuttered.

“It’s a lot to deal with,” Luke offered.

Leia gave him a nod.

“But you're not dealing with it alone,” he said, turning around to face Leia in full. After a moment of quiet staring up, she turned to face him too. “I know this isn't all quite the same for me. I know it’s… a different kind of difficult. Still, I’m here. I’m always here for you. And I’m sure all of them are too,” Luke said with a nod back to the house.

Leia hummed in agreement-acknowledgement.

“I don't think they're expecting you -- expecting either of us -- to be completely and suddenly okay with this. I’m sure it’s almost as much for them as it is for us. But they're our family. We may not know each other very well yet, but they already love us so much.”

Luke knew it so certainly; he could sense all the Naberries’ love for the twins, as strong as the heat of the suns on a Tatooine noon. Mottled by cloudy grief in places, but always oh-so present. It radiated off each of them in waves whenever Luke and Leia were around.

“I think I’m just trying to say it’s okay,” Luke concluded, losing steam in his speech. “However you’re feeling now, it’s gonna be okay.”

Silence drifted between them, entirely comfortable and nothing like the eager, questioning one Luke had left earlier.

“Thank you,” Leia smiled finally.

Luke shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

“No, really, thank you. I don’t think I say it enough, but I love you Luke. I’m-- thank you. For being my brother.”

Before Luke could even think of replying, Leia crashed into him, wrapping her arms around his robes and shoving her face into his shoulder. Luke caved into the hug, pulling his arms tight around his sister in return.

“I love you too,” he replied softly.

They stayed like that for a good few moments, fused together like twin stars, basking in each other’s presence as if they truly were so. The galaxy seemed so utterly at peace in the garden around their tight-armed cradling, like it had never faced a single war or fight, like Luke and Leia had always been one and never been ripped apart by the tragedy of circumstance.

Luke sensed Pooja’s presence -- joyous, if a little timid -- before he heard her treading over the grass towards him and his twin. The two of them pulled apart to face Pooja at the same time, arms still half-pressed together.

Pooja came to a slow stop as they did, standing still in the bright square of warm window-light. It painted the the cream of her dress a loving orange and made her half-up curls near-glow with its source behind her.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt…” she started serenely, half-smiling at her cousins standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the blue near-dark.

Leia shook her head, moving towards Pooja. “We were just about to come back in anyway.”

Pooja brightened, bringing her hands to an almost-clap. “Perfect timing! I came to tell you Grandma’s about to serve up dessert. It’s cake, her speciality.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Luke’s mouth watered at the thought of more of Jobal Naberrie’s cooking, despite the protests from his already-full stomach.

“Not as wonderful as it tastes. Now come on!” Pooja over-gestured. “If we don't hurry, Ryoo will have eaten all of it before we get there!”

Leia laughed with all the gentle warmth of the Naboo sun. “We’re coming Pooja, don't worry!”

They followed their hurried cousin back to the nearby door, forming a line as they reached the portico of the entrance.

“I'm so happy we found you both,” Pooja admitted quietly as she held the door open for her cousins. The two of them stepped back into gentle embrace of the family home, something sweet hanging in the warm air.

Leia gave Luke a quick glance before she turned to Pooja; “I’m happy we found you too.”

#luke skywalker #leia organa #pooja naberrie #sola naberrie #jobal naberrie #ruwee naberrie #ryoo naberrie #darred naberrie #star wars #potes wrotes #skywalker twins #space twins #skywalkers & naberries

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