Princess Leia Organa: Approach to the Senate

Chapter 16: Lost

Princess Leia scrambled to her feet and looked around frantically for anything that would indicate her location. A light, a building, a body of water, anything! But alas, she found herself in the middle of a dark forest. All she could see were shadowy outlines of trees surrounding her.

"O-Oliver?" She quivered. Maybe he had tried to follow her and he was close by. "Oliver!" She gained no response.

Leia began to walk briskly between the branches of the trees, her face, arms, and legs getting scratched by the branches she could not see. She was panicking even more now, her breath hitched and her pace quickening as she ambled blindly through the forest. After a few minutes, Leia knew her efforts were futile and she slid down the trunk of a tree sobbing even more than she was before. "Mama!" She screamed, although she knew no one would hear her. "Papa!" She screamed again, her voice reaching a high-pitched shriek. Right now she didn't care about being grown up, she just wanted her parents. Leia let herself cry until she couldn't any longer, then she straightened her shoulders and thought, All right, I need to be reasonable. I found a way into the forest, there has to be a way out.

Regardless, Leia's thoughts did nothing to calm her nerves as she heard twigs snapping around her. She hadn't even considered what creatures could be lurking in the forest. Now the forest was not only overwhelming, but also menacing. Leia curled her knees up to her chest and decided that she would have to wait until morning.

~~~

Leia's eyes flew open to the sound of a lightsaber humming. Where am I? I'm still in the forest.... She picked herself up and she yelped when she saw a man draped in black standing before her, with a bright red lightsaber. Darth Vader.

"W-what do you want?" Leia stammered. Vader said nothing, merely stood there breathing in and out. Suddenly, a voice resounded in her head. "You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor! Take her away!" The forest disappeared and Leia was being pushed down a stark, white hallway.

Next she was in a cold prison cell. "And now, your highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base...." Leia was confused. What hidden rebel base? She wasn't even part of the Rebellion. "Dantooine. They're on Dantooine." Leia was in shock. What? I betray the Rebellion! No, that's not possible...

Leia found herself back in a hallway, yelling, "Well somebody has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, flyboy!" Who was she talking to? She couldn't make out any faces of the people surrounding her.

Leia was whisked to another place, and all she could feel was heat. There was smoke everywhere. A man's voice said desperately, "The Princess. You have to take care of her. You hear me?"  Who is that? I feel like I love him. Is it Oliver?

She was being pushed by a different man and she screamed, "Don't! It's a trap! It's a trap!"

Finally, Leia felt like she was thrown back onto the ground of the forest as Darth Vader's voice faded into a distant echo in her head. "If you will not turn to the Dark Side, then perhaps she will."

~~~

"Leia!"

The princess whipped her head up from a deep sleep. Her dream, or vision, whatever that horrible experience was, was still vivid in her mind. Was it happening again? Or was she just hearing things because she was officially delusional? Leia noticed that the Sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon.

"Leia!"

There was no doubting her father's voice. Leia leapt up and shouted, "Father! Where are you?"

"Where are you?" Her father replied.

"Here!"

The two continued shouting at each other until Leia saw her father fifty feet away. She ran straight into Bail's arms and held him fiercely. "I'm so sorry, Papa, I'm so sorry..."

Breha came up behind Bail shortly after and folded Leia into a tight hug. She took Leia's arms in her hands and yelled, "Don't ever run away like that again! Ever! You understand me? You had me so worried!" A few tears fell from Leia's eyes. She nodded and fell back into her mother's embrace.

Later at the palace, Leia was staring out her bedroom window, watching rain patter against the glass. She was trying hard to process everything that happened last night, from Oliver to her vision. She heard a knock at the door and saw her father standing in the doorway.

"May I come in?"

Leia nodded and turned her head back towards the window. Bail sat down on Leia's bed and asked, "Is there any particular reason why your mother and I found you alone in the woods after a whole night?"

The princess stayed silent for a moment, then responded, "How could you ask Oliver to join the Rebellion? Without even talking to me about it first?"

Bail was shocked that his daughter found out. "I only mentioned it casually to him, I merely saw his potential. I suppose he took it seriously already?"

Leia turned to face her father, a coldness in her expression. "Yes, Father, he did. Now you've planted ideas of glory and change in his head, and he'll probably get himself killed doing it."

"That's never worried you before. About me, about you. Why is it bothering you now?"

"You lead the Rebel Alliance, I know I could never change that. And because I care about Oliver's life more than my own."

Bail could see a hint of sadness in her eyes, longing. He decided to a breach a touchy subject with her.

"Do you...have feelings for Oliver?"

"I don't even know! Everyone is springing tons of information on me within twenty-four hours and I don't know what I feel anymore! I do, however, know that he loves me. He made that perfectly clear last night."

"He told you he loves you?" Bail exclaimed, trying to feign surprise. But Leia was too keen not to notice it. She gasped.

"You knew?" She said in a near whisper. "You knew all this time and you still offered him a spot in the Rebel Alliance? Knowing that the Rebellion could snuff his life and his love for me in a second?"

"I only had a suspicion, and I thought it was only a crush! I did not think that his joining the Rebellion would affect your relationship this much. You're thirteen, for galaxies sake! You're barely a teenager, I had no idea that you felt so seriously about him."

"Well, it's time for me to 'grow up' as Oliver so kindly told me. I'm not a kid anymore; I can't be a kid anymore. The Empire is becoming stronger with each day and I have to become stronger with it."

"Leia, that's not a solution. You aren't going to take down the entire Empire by yourself-"

"I have to be stronger! I had a vision in the woods. I BETRAY the Rebellion, I crack under the pressure of Darth Vader! Vader tries to turn me to the Dark Side. I need to become stronger so that I can prevent this from happening, so that I can withstand Vader!"

Bail realized he was shaking, his face ghostly white. Her words closely paralleled her biological father's thirteen years ago. He couldn't let her fall to the Dark Side, he had to tell her how her perspective was dangerous and wrong. But he was too late. Leia had already stormed out of the room, heading to Oliver's house.

A.N. Quotes during Princess Leia's vision taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.