In the end it's the necklace that gives it way; gives who she is (to him) away. (He doesn't tell her this but he didn't have to when his gaze lingers, glances back, and sometimes out right stares at her neck.)

She shouldn't have been surprised at all. It's what gave her away to her father the first time during that Empire Day Senate party that changed her life forever. It's what got her adoptive family slaughtered a few days before her birthday. It's what got Alderaan blown up as soon as the Death Star was finished being built.

She should have got rid of it before she was taken into custody. She hadn't though. Leia has only one tangible thing of her deceased mother and it's the necklace that she's always worn since she had been gifted it.

It was without a doubt sentimental but where did it say that a Sith could not be occasionally sentimental?

Anakin paces back and forth like animal that has been caged. Leia bites her lip until she tastes her own coppery blood. The scene reminds her so much of when her father would stride back and forth his cape billowing behind him as he contemplated who he should force choke in anger.

Her heart doesn't ache in nostalgia, is what she tells herself.

It's a terrible lie.

Finally the man her father once was (and now Vader will never be) stops his pacing.

"Who are you really?" He asks her with so many (to the point she couldn't even begin to count) emotions in his eyes, written on his young but worn face, in his voice.

"I'm Leia as you very well know." Leia. Only Leia.

She hasn't had a last name since she was only a six year old that had just watched helplessly as Vader painted her adoptive parents' (also called by her father as her kidnappers and traitors of the Empire) blood splatter to the floor and paint the walls.

Vader is - no, was her father's Sith name. Skywalker as her last name was unthinkable as keeping Organa as her last name. So Leia was either just Leia or Princess Leia.

While she was no longer Alderaan's little princess she was still a princess her father had told her that dreadful (It shouldn't be dreadful since she was rescued by her lying kidnappers but even after all these years Leia can't hate them. They had loved her like she was their own and that's why she can never find it in her to hate them.) memorable night for her mother had been a Queen of a planet and now their daughter, she, was the Princess of the entire galaxy.

And one day when Leia became a grown up she would help her father and Galen overthrow the hated Emperor and free the galaxy from him. Once they freed the galaxy from the slavery of the Emperor they would free the other slaves and they would rebuild the Empire. (Oh how she wished it had gone down that way.)

Then, Vader would make Leia the Queen of the galaxy because Vader was many things and could do many things but politics were not one of those things. Her father utterly loathed anything political.

What really mattered was that he was freed from the Emperor, he would rule with his family like it always was meant to be, and there were no more slaves.

(It could be said that by Vader teaching Leia the dark side of the force made her a slave but they obviously didn't know her. Leia was not a slave. She was a control freak, a bossy leader, a ruler since as long as she could remember and why should the dark side be any different?)

"That's not who you really are though. You're much more than that to me aren't you? So why do you keep lying?" Anakin questioned her with a snarl of anger.

Leia didn't wince or show any sign of freight. Instead she smiled (an oh so wrong, scary smile).

Her father, Darth Vader, was still there. He hadn't been erased from existence by her act of revenge. He had just been prolonged from being born.

Anakin Skywalker was close to the edge but he hadn't fallen off the cliff.

"It's bad manners to ask a question you already know," Leia reprimand him simply, casually even, as if this conversation wasn't important.

Anakin Skywalker of this timeline wouldn't fall of the cliff to the dark side in desperation. Leia would make sure of it.

No.

Anakin Skywalker would be guided into the dark side instead of falling.

After all falling made one injured and why should she let her father be injured when she could simply hold his hand and lead the way?

1.) The title is from the song Love of a daughter by Demi Lovato.

2.) The song to listen to for this fic is Heavy dirty soul by Twenty One Pilots.

3.) I've been wanting to do a time travel fic where a Sith Luke ends back in time and kills Palpatine and I did ..sort of end up writing it after all this time but it, obviously, ended up being Leia. Also, I couldn't help but throw in a part where Leia and Han are still attracted (and infuriated) to by each other even when they're enemies.

4.) Kudos if you know who Galen is without having to google it.