Star Wars_ Episode VI_ Return of the Jedi - James Kahn [28]
“Vader humbled you when first you met him, Luke—but that experience was part of your training. It taught you, among other things, the value of patience. Had you not been so impatient to defeat Vader then, you could have finished your training here with Yoda. You would have been prepared.”
“But I had to help my friends.”
“And did you help them? It was they who had to save you. You achieved little by rushing back prematurely, I fear.”
Luke’s indignation melted, leaving only sadness in its wake. “I found out Darth Vader was my father,” he whispered.
“To be a Jedi, Luke, you must confront and then go beyond the dark side—the side your father couldn’t get past. Impatience is the easiest door—for you, like your father. Only, your father was seduced by what he found on the other side of the door, and you have held firm. You’re no longer so reckless now, Luke. You are strong and patient. And you are ready for your final confrontation.”
Luke shook his head again, as the implications of the old Jedi’s speech became clear. “I can’t do it, Ben.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope.”
Luke reached for alternatives. “Yoda said I could train another to …”
“The other he spoke of is your twin sister,” the old man offered a dry smile. “She will find it no easier than you to destroy Darth Vader.”
Luke was visibly jolted by this information. He stood up to face this spirit. “Sister? I don’t have a sister.”
Once again Obi-Wan put a gentle inflection in his voice, to soothe the turmoil brewing in his young friend’s soul. “To protect you both against the Emperor, you were separated when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, that one day, with the Force on their side, Skywalker’s offspring would be a threat to him. For that reason, your sister has remained safely anonymous.”
Luke resisted this knowledge at first. He neither needed nor wanted a twin. He was unique! He had no missing parts—save the hand whose mechanical replacement he now flexed tightly. Pawn in a castle conspiracy? Cribs mixed, siblings switched and parted and whisked away to different secret lives? Impossible. He knew who he was! He was Luke Skywalker, born to a Jedi-turned-Sithlord, raised on a Tatooine sandfarm by Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, raised in a life without frills, a hardworking honest pauper—because his mother … his mother … What was it about his mother? What had she said, who was she? What had she told him? He turned his mind inward, to a place and time far from the damp soil of Dagobah, to his mother’s chamber, his mother and his … sister. His sister …
“Leia! Leia is my sister,” he exclaimed, nearly falling over the stump.
“Your insight serves you well,” Ben nodded. He quickly became stern, though. “Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor.”
Luke tried to comprehend what his old teacher was saying. So much information, so fast, so vital … it almost made him swoon.
Ben continued his narrative. “When your father left, he didn’t know your mother was pregnant. Your mother and I knew he would find out eventually, but we wanted to keep you both as safe as possible, for as long as possible. So I took you to live with my brother Owen, on Tatooine … and your mother took Leia to live as the daughter of Senator Organa, on Alderaan.”
Luke settled down to hear this tale, as Artoo nestled up beside him, humming in a subaudible register to comfort.
Ben, too, kept his voice even, so that the sounds could give solace when the words did not. “The Organa family was high-born and politically quite powerful in that system. Leia became a princess by virtue of lineage—no one knew she’d been adopted, of course. But it was a title without real power, since Alderaan had long been a democracy. Even so, the family continued to be politically powerful, and Leia, following in her foster father’s path, became a senator as well. That’s not all she became, of course—she became the leader of her cell in the Alliance against the corrupt Empire.