#i've never seen a fic where Leia actively pursues a relationship with Vader like Luke does

[tranakin-skywalker]

WIP Wednesday

I Wonder Which One Has My Eyes

Bright gold caught her eye like a flicker of a star behind a telescope. Not unexpected, given the event Pooja Naberrie was attending. There were plenty of people dressed in gold here. It was, after all, a senatorial event, and gold was so often the color of wealth.

(Not on Naboo, though. Her homeworld held the color equal with things like loyalty, and promise, and devotion.)

Pooja blinked, and took a small sip of her drink. Non-alcoholic. Alderaan, it turned out, had different opinions about fifteen year olds drinking than Naboo did. It wasn’t that Pooja liked the taste, but she had fond memories of her grandparents letting her sneak sips of their wine at dinner, the warm taste of spiced mead before the ancestors’ altar. The time she’d stolen a gulp of her aunt’s drink, only to realize it was something much stronger than a six year old could handle, spitting it out like poison. The sound of her uncle’s laugh.

With thoughts like those, no wonder she was seeing familiar gold. Memories had a funny way of haunting the present like that.

And perhaps she would have brushed it off as nostalgia tainted with the taste of wine, in another world, another life. Had she, the story would have gone very differently.

But Pooja glanced again toward the gold, and nearly choked herself on her drink. She was surly haunted, she thought to herself, coughing up what she had accidentally inhaled. The woman she’d been chatting with put a concerned hand on her arm, asked something that Pooja couldn’t hear over the roaring of blood in her ears. She waved the woman off, gave her some assurance and begged her excuse as Pooja stepped away. Her eyes haven’t left the golden protocol droid across the room.

It can’t be, a part of her thought, denial fighting with hope as she stalked her way toward the droid. It can’t possibly be him. After all, protocol droids all look so similar. After all, he’d disappeared after her aunt’s death. After all, what are the odds?

Then she got close enough to hear the droid’s voice and oh, she could never forget that distinct voice that had told her and her sister bedtime stories, that had fretted at their hijinks, worried for their safety while he ran after them as quickly as fused joint legs would let him.

The melancholy longing hit Pooja like a blow to the chest.

“Threepio?” she called out, and the droid turned to her and it was like she was eight years in the past and just a little girl again, her world safe and her family unbroken.

“Oh! Hello!” he said and he was just like she remembered him. “How can I be of assistance, miss…?”

He didn’t recognize her. It was crushing, the realization he didn’t recognize her. That even this was taken from her.

Someone had wiped his memory. (she remembered, her uncle telling her and Ryuu how he’d never had Artoo’s memory wiped, no matter how many military secrets the little astromech held. He said wiping a droid was something like murder.)

“My apologies,” she told Threepio, and it felt like talking to a stranger. “I confused you with a droid who once belonged to my aunt. My mistake.”

He waved one of his stiff arms and it was so familiar it hurt. “No need to apologize, miss. It is an easy mistake to make, I’m sure. I’m sorry I’m not the droid you’re looking for.”

Oh, but you are. Pooja biteher lip.

“Well, if you don’t need my assistance, I must return to my charge,” he told her, shuffling away. Toward the young princess of Alderaan, and a little blue and white astromech.

For a moment, Pooja felt like she couldn't breathe.

It hit her, suddenly, that Leia Organa was soon to celebrate her eighth birthday. That Leia Organa was the adopted daughter of Senator Bail Organa.

That Bail Organa had been the last person to see her aunt alive. Her very pregnant aunt.Oh, she thought, the pieces falling into place with all the inevitability of gravity.

New thing I think I'm going to do where I'll post snippets from one of my WIPs on Wednesdays, for funzies.

This one's inspired by this fic, where the Naberries are aware of Padme and Anakin's marriage. As soon as I read it it got me thinking of an au where Pooja realized who Leia was, and what chaos might ensue.