Star Wars: A Long Drabble Ago

Last Thoughts

She wasn't okay. She wasn't okay and that was enough to put him into a heart attack. She wasn't okay and Bail didn't know how he could possibly help his daughter. When he looked up to his wife who stood beside his desk, they shared a look of grief and a tint of guilt. Guilt? Oh, yes. As much as they wished, as long as they had been pretending for the last nineteen years, Leia was not really theirs. She was Padme's, Anakin's. An heir of the Force, not a princess in line for the Alderaanian throne. And when Bail had taken her in, asked Obi-Wan and Yoda if he could take that precious baby girl home, he'd committed himself to a very important responsibility. He was to care for a little girl who would one day be the hope of the galaxy. No pressure. 

However, Bail had quickly fallen in love with the girl as her father. He'd come to feel like the title 'adopted' was not appropriate, it didn't correctly explain their relationship as father and daughter. Leia was his daughter, and he her father. She was his only daughter, his only child, and he had raised her as though she were really were. Because that was how he loved her. Like she was his. And it had been his and Breha's responsibility to care for her and keep her safe until she was to go out into the galaxy and keep them safe.
Bail left his advisers to walk outside of the palace with Breha. He took her arm into his and, quietly, they walked out in front of the palace, their gazes going up to the brilliant night sky. Stars glittered the black canvas, but in their midst hung a gigantic, imposing, gray ball with a crater in its top half. Vader's Death Star. Bail shuddered. He looked down to his wife, squeezed her hand gently. "She's going to be okay," he smiled sadly. "She has left, facing far less danger than we do."
Breha looked up to him, sharing that kind of sad, tortured smile. She squeezed his hand back and responded, "It's okay, Bail. She's tough. She can handle herself."
"You can see right through me, can't you?" He chuckled softly.
She laughed back, folding herself into her husband's side, forcing her eyes to look away from it. Instead, she kept her eyes on her planet to which she'd remained loyal since her marriage to Bail Organa. "Perhaps. You know, B, I worry too, but she's never been a proper Alderan princess. I hate to admit it, but she is her parents' daughter."
"Yes," Bail agreed, looking out onto Aldera City in all its shining splendor, enjoying the view for as long as it would last. "Gladly so. This galaxy needs her. It needs her to change them like she changed us."
A heavy silence hung in the air then and the two watched out upon their beautiful home until Breha realized she had one more thing she needed to say before the day was over. "Bail, thank you for bringing her home. I loved her. She was a joy."
"I loved her too," Bail said, forcing his eyes to remain on his city even as a heat began to warm his skin until a flash so quick took him away. And they died, dreaming of all the things their daughter would do to make things right, to avenge this day, this dreadful moment. But, they . . . couldn't be prouder.