Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [91]
She took one last look at him, lying there, with a small glow lamp casting golden highlights into his dark hair. Some bruising discolored his face, and scratches marked his forehead and neck, but otherwise he looked remarkably hearty. She’d watched a 2-1B droid work on him cleaning and closing a variety of cuts he’d earned in his running battle with the Yuuzhan Vong. Bacta patches had been used on the cuts and abrasions. When the droid set his wrist fracture from the final fight, a light splint to help immobilize the wrist was all that Anakin needed. Leia knew Mara had been similarly cut and wounded during their escape and had been treated by droids for her injuries. Leia awaited word from Luke on Mara’s condition.
Leia ducked her head beneath the edge of the tarp used to fashion a simple lean-to shelter for Anakin, then held it up as R2-D2 rolled in to keep an eye on the boy. She smiled at the droid, then let the tarp flop back down. The sun had not yet risen, but the winds from the north were picking up. She could see distant hints of clouds on the far horizon and assumed that by the next afternoon the showers that had plagued the northern continent would sweep down on them. We go from being hungry and miserable to wet, hungry, and miserable.
Elegos approached her and offered her a ration bar. “It would not do for you to faint from hunger.”
“Well, that ration bar will certainly kill my hunger.” Leia accepted it gratefully. “Anakin is sleeping. I don’t think he had much more than a couple of hours while on the run. If they’d not had the Force to sustain them . . .”
“Your son must be very strong in the Force to have done what he did.”
“Yes, I think so.” Leia felt a cold shiver run down her spine. “He’s so brave and was determined he’d not let his uncle down. He would do anything to make Luke proud of him.”
The Caamasi’s eyes slowly closed. “Perhaps you fear that with so much of the Force in him that, if frustrated, he might follow the path of his namesake.”
Leia glanced down, not daring to voice the answer to that question.
Elegos kept his voice low and soothing. “I have wondered, in the past, why you chose to name him after your father?”
She sighed. “My father, Anakin Skywalker—not Darth Vader—turned against the Emperor and was the agent of his death. He atoned for the evil he had done—perhaps not all of it in the eyes of some, but he prevented future evil being wrought by the Emperor. Part of me wanted to name my son for him to redeem the name. At least, that is what I told myself.”
“You have come to think differently on it now?”
Leia looked up at him. “You Caamasi are fortunate in that you can share memories between you. I have no clear memories of Anakin Skywalker—and my memories of Darth Vader are still the stuff of nightmares. I know that I contain part of Anakin in me, and I think it is the good parts of him that came through in Luke and me. But, I also know the darker parts of him are there, or could be there. In naming my youngest son for him, I was putting an innocence behind that name. All the things I saw in Anakin, I could imagine having come from his grandfather, through me.”
“You sought to purge your fears of Darth Vader and what you inherited of him by looking at Anakin as being what your father could have been and perhaps once was?”
She nodded. “Does that make any sense?”
“It does, very much. Countless are the parents who, because they were disappointed in their own parents, vow to bring their children up right. Perhaps you are trying to prove to yourself that under different circumstances your father never would have become Darth Vader.”
“You see a problem with that—”
“As do you.” Elegos smiled at her carefully. “If you didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“If I ever figure out how you get into my