Work Text:
Leia is sitting at the kitchen table with a cigarette dangling from her painted lips when Luke arrives. He’s carrying a toolbox and his footsteps are heavy as he shuffles from the entryway to the kitchen. As he comes through the doorway, he pauses to set down his tools and looks up to find his sister wearing a face as cold and unyielding as marble.
“Are you alright?” he says softly, taking a few steps towards her. The linoleum floor is thick with grime and the soles of his shoes stick as he walks across it.
Leia’s throat bobs, but she nods regally and crushes the cigarette out in the ashtray before standing from her chair. She’s wearing a short summer dress in Marian blue that contrasts sharply with her dark hair and eyes, but the set of her shoulders and upright posture make it into armour.
“Get over here,” she whispers, and gestures at him with a limp hand.
Without hesitation, Luke goes to her and opens his arms to allow her to tuck herself against his chest. His hand comes up to cup the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair which is tied back in a neat braid.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asks at last, prompting Leia to abruptly pull back from him and turn away her face.
“It was nothing, honestly. I only called you because I need that fixed.” She points to the other side of the small room where the afternoon sun streams through the window above the sink. The shattered window pane gapes open like a ravenous mouth and light glints off the glass shards left around its edges that protrude like jagged teeth. Luke notices that none of the broken glass has fallen onto the sink or surrounding countertops.
"So, can you do it?" Leia prompts, watching him closely as he surveys the damage.
"I'll need to order a new pane — that could take a few days — but for now, I can clean it up and cover the gap with some plywood,” he explains. “How long do I have before Dad gets home?"
"Two hours if you want to play it safe," Leia says after checking her wristwatch. "He's at the hospital."
Luke's eyes go wide. "What—"
Leia holds up her hand to silence him. "He's fine. It's just a routine check-up."
"Oh," he mutters, letting his shoulder drop. Up until a few months ago when he’d packed up his things in the middle of the night and left without a note, he had been the one to accompany his father on hospital visits. His sister was devoid of any bedside manner and loathed spending any more time with Anakin than strictly necessary.
Reading the guilt in his frown, Leia asks, “Can I get you anything?” Then, with a wry smile, she adds, “A beer?”
“A glass of water is fine,” he says, ignoring the challenging tilt of her chin.
“Do you want ice with that?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Leia fills a glass with tap water, cracks in some ice from a tray in the freezer and hands it to him without saying anything more. Her red mouth is set in a flat line as she returns to her seat at the table and crosses her arms over her chest defensively.
“Thanks,” Luke says absently as he wanders over to stand by the broken window. It looks out onto the overgrown wilderness of the backyard and as he peers through the gap, he spies a spray of glittering glass shards nestled amongst the grass and garden weeds. Turning around to lean against the counter, he stares at Leia, who has evidently chosen to feign ignorance.
“Dad threw something at you,” he states, and he's gone slightly pale.
“No,” she says evenly. “He threw something at the window.”
“Were you in the vicinity?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t get hit.”
“Sounds like you got lucky,” Luke points out.
Leia chooses not to dignify this with a response and instead reaches for the cigarette case in the pocket of her dress to fidget with the fastening, snapping it open and closed repetitively as she chews on the fleshy inside of her cheek.
“Look, I’m telling the truth: nothing happened. I don’t know what more you want,” she tells him flatly. By her tone, she’s frustrated, though Luke does not find this display at all convincing. If he did not know her so well, he might well be tricked by her performance.
“I just want you to be safe,” he reminds her.
“I am safe here. It's where I belong.”
Luke sets down his glass on the kitchen counter and walks over to crouch down in front of her. He takes the cigarette case out of her hands, cool to the touch, and holds them in his while looking directly up into her face with his eyes as wide and blue as the open sky.
“I've asked before and I'll ask again. Come and live with me. You know you’d be more than welcome,” he offers, voice full of pleading.
Leia’s expression is unreadable and she says, very quietly, “It’s not a good idea for me to move in with you and Biggs.”
“Why not?”
She tears her hands out of his grip and they close into fists on her lap. “You think I want to stay here, in this rotting house with that rotten man? I’m doing this because it's the best thing for both of us. I don't get to be selfish.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Leia,” Luke argues, raising his voice. "How can us being apart be for the best? How can you being here, alone with him, be for the best?"
“You didn’t see what dad was like when you left. I had to stop him from going after you as soon as he realised you were gone — you know the kind of trouble he would have made trying to find you — and for weeks after I had to keep him drunk enough to forget you even existed. If I had gone with you, even if I left now, there’s no telling what he might do. And he still has that police-issue pistol, I can’t risk him using it. On himself, or on us.”
Her brother shakes his head. “It’s not your job to sacrifice yourself, not for my sake and certainly not for his—”
Leia cuts him off, bright-eyed and wrathful, “Listen to me, I figured out a long time ago that he doesn’t love me," Luke looks ready to interrupt but she forges on, "That gave me all the freedom in the world. There’s nothing he can do now that will hurt me. I’m invincible because I do not care .” Her gaze finds his face and seems, momentarily, to soften. “You, on the other hand, have a big, foolish heart. Like our mother did. He loves you for that, so he’ll never stop hurting you.”
“You’re wrong. He loves you too, I know he does, and it doesn’t have to be this way: one of us doesn’t have to stay in the shadows so that the other can live in the sun,” Luke murmurs imploringly.
“That’s exactly how it has to be.” Leia pushes back her chair and stands. “Until we have both left this wretched town behind.”
“But—” he starts to say.
“You should get to work sooner rather than later if you intend to be gone by the time Anakin gets back,” she interrupts once more. “I’m going upstairs to get ready. I'm seeing Han later.”
Luke says nothing more, just watches with silent grief as she disappears through the doorway and down the shadowy hall.
She doesn’t look back.