"I guess it's a date then" Leia said wryly, then looked out the window.

"Where are we going?" She asked the man, suddenly weary again.

"Don't worry, we're not going to work, we're taking you to your quarters." The man started.

Leia interrupted with a derisive snort.

"Well, it's not like my quarters aren't within walking distance of work anyways..."

"Yes," the man said, then continued. "We just decided it best to catch you and give you the intel now instead of later. You'll be summoned again tomorrow afternoon for preparations."

Leia cast a piercing stare at the man.

"And after that I'm done with work?"

He shrugged helplessly.

"Now that I don't know, Ma'am. I'm just an intel officer, that stuff is above my head."

They pulled up in front of a towering complex building that housed Leia(when she was onplanet) and many others who worked in the Republic's main center for most of it's political functions. She stepped out of the speeder and stretched again, then looked up at the tall white building, sensing Amalia come up behind her.

"Well, this is home." She said with a smile, and they entered the building, conveniently catching a turbolift on the way up.

Leia's Coruscant dwelling was a smallish suite(though still much larger and more elaborate than her quarters at the Academy, and even they were considered large for a Jedi). It was up on one of the top floors, and offered a nice view of the grand building the senate and the political hierarchy of the Republic called their workplace.

Leia entered a code into the pad on the wall next to her door, and it slid open quietly.

She lead the way through the door, right into the central room. A couch, a few chairs, and a low and long table dominated the center of the room, with shelves and a few other tables placed strategically throughout the room to make it look nice. Everything looked brand new, and there was note a dust mote to be seen anywhere.

Leia knocked on the clean surface of a table.

"Hey, it did not look like this when I left! I like clean living spaces, but there were datacards, files, stuff all over that didn't belong here and that I had nowhere to put. They must finally have decided to humor me and take my file collection back to my office where it belongs" she said with a laugh, but then rolled her eyes at some unsaid memory that must have entered her mind from last time she was here. She busied herself with opening the curtains to lighten up the room while Amalia took in her first impressions.

Amalia had only been partly paying attention to what Leia was saying and doing, too much in awe of Leia's quarters. She looked over the room she was in very carefully, no expression crossing her face. Finally, after quite a few moments of utter silence, she spoke.

"Looks...nice."

She walked over to the long table, her gaze falling onto the very well cleaned, polished table. So clean that she could see her own reflection on top of the table top. She looked onto the top of the table for a second or two, removing her gaze from there when she felt Leia's eyes on her. She smiled shyly as she looked up at Leia, who was standing at the other edge of the table now.

"Sorry, I was...just admiring your very clean table."

Her hands were now at her side, she shifted her arms behind her back, clasping her hands behind her back as she did so. Her eyes no longer seemed to be looking at Leia, but past
her, and onto the window. She walked toward the window, past Leia. She stopped just inches from the window itself, getting a better view for what was outside.

"Nice view too."

She turned, craning her neck to look at Leia again.

"So..Think the head of state can handle a good 'ol game of Divot?"

She turned around to fully face Leia now, smiling.

"I really wanted to play a game of Blast-darts, but.."

She shrugged.

"...I don't exactly have any darts handy, nor a board, but I do have some dice, so how about a game of Divot then?"

"...your very clean table...."

Leia smiled. Someone was a little uncomfortable.

Her expression turned to one of puzzlement as Amalia mentioned the game.

"Divot... what's that?"

She laughed and moved back into the room, entering the small food prep unit and retreiving a glass.

She was about to say something else, but was cut off by the door chime. She moved to answer it, leaving Amalia momentarily to herself.

Leia walked down the short hall to the door, and glanced at a nearby viewscreen mounted on the wall to see who it was. It was only one of her aides and two men with their things, and she pressed the door release and stepped back out of the way. The two men walked past her and dropped their burdens off in the main room, and the aide gave her a handful of datacards.

"Make sure you're familiar with everything on these by tomorrow"

Leia nodded, and the three were gone. The door slid shut automatically, and she walked back into the main room. Amalia hadn't moved from where she had been standing. Leia dropped the datacards on the table to be worried about later, then herself dropped onto the couch and stretched out on it's length with a neutral sigh, letting herself sink into it's comforting embrace.

"Why are you so... timid, perhaps uncomfortable?"

Amalia watched for a second or two as Leia fell into a relaxed state within the comforts of her couch and then her gaze fell onto the table, onto the datacards that lay there.

"Why are you so... timid, perhaps uncomfortable?"

Yeah, she had heard Leia address her, but she did not respond.

She kept her gaze on the datacards for a moment longer, and then her gaze slowly swept back onto Leia again, her left eyebrow shifting upwards slightly as she looked at Leia.

"Think you have me figured out, hmm?"

Her eyebrow lowered back down and she smiled softly.

"I'm not uncomfortable, just quiet. Not uncomfortable though. I have no need to be uncomfortable...No..."

She smiled, but it turned into a half smirk, kind of like an unsure smile.

"...I was just thinknig some, that's all."

She reached back with her left arm, rubbing the back of her neck, seeming to pause a bit.

"Well, it's just that I.."

She laughed slightly.

"..eh, never mind."

She looked to the floor and heaved a light sigh.

"..I don't really want to be here, Leia...Now that I know you have work ahead of you. Plus, I wanted our time together to be different this time. What I mean by that is, we usually always talk about me, and well, I really don't want to do that any longer..."

"...I don't want to be isolated. In a way, I guess it makes me feel like a child..."

She shook her head a little.

"...It never used to be this way for me, I never used to be so wrapped up, too into things. Before, I just went with the flow. I cared before, just as I do now, but I was never so wrapped into things like I am now. I miss that part of me, I guess. It is the part of me that people used to like about me, and this new part of me, well, it's not me, it's not who I used to be, carefree, happy go lucky. "

She lifted her head back up, looking at Leia once again. She shrugged.

"So there you have it, that's one of two things I've been thinking about."

She walked around part of the table, to sit down in a chair.

"The other, you.."

She smiled a little.

"Trying to figure out what makes you crack. I mean, what gets you to speak...to talk about you. I find that I'm always choosing my words carefully when around you, and I think too hard about what I say, but it's always me that comes out. You, well, it's not really you that comes out when you speak to me, it's more of a..."

She tilted her head, the thinking process evident on her face.

"...There is a shield there, Leia. A mask you use, I guess you could say. It's you, but yet, it's not you. You keep some things hidden, and I...I don't understand why? I could understand if it were someone you've not known for a long time, but you've known me a while."

Amalia noted that she was repeating herself from previous conversations, having being said before, and she frowned.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, is that, it's very difficult for me to tell when you may or may not be trying to open up. It's really hard, I can't get through to find out about you. I've done all I can, to try to get you to talk about yourself. I guess there is something I am missing, but I am determined not to give up."

Amalia looked down at her hands, she was rubbing her hands across her legs, as one would do when they were trying to warm their legs. A new habit she had picked up within the recent few months. She laughed, unexpectedly, thinking about what Leia had said earlier.

"Uncomfortable...No, just frustrated, and lost."

Edit: making something more clear, didn't mean in just this convo itself.

Amalia was repeating herself, and not even just within the conversation at hand. What she was saying pretty uch stuck to being the same thing she had said earlier on one or two occasions.

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--> She must really miss that something...<!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->

Leia frowned.

Amalia sat down, and Leia turned her head to look over at her.

"Now that I have work ahead of me?

We both have work ahead of us. That is life. I grow weary of it sometimes, because it dominates my life, but I would have it no other way. It may kill me one of these days too, but I was destined to fill this position."

She quit talking, and a silence ensued, which Amalia did not seem apt to break.

"You feel I've shut you out" Leia said simply. Amalia did not respond, and she continued, her gaze averted to the ceiling.

"I've always been independant. I had to be, my upbringing demanded it."

She smirked.

"So did my style of living. It still does, even."

Her gaze on the ceiling intensified.

"Back in my early adulthood, many great burdens and pains were suddenly placed on my shoulders."

The first Death Star entered her mind, and her entire body shuddered, just thinking about it.

"My friends... my brother... when they first met me, I was weak and sick from torture, locked up in a dim cell, devoid of all hope of living. Devoid of all reason for living. I was ready to accept death.

But that short stormtrooper came stumbling in, said I'm here to save you, and something warmed inside me. I came back.

I depended completely on my ability to swallow my own emotions and go on, attending to others first. To have me break and talk was for me to completely break.

It still was that way until that trip to Endor. I am learning that I haven't even discovered half of the changes that really took place inside me...

But out of many things, during that trip I learned to talk again.

You may wonder why, then, are you still having difficulties?

Because it is still hard. I had to redefine boundaries within myself. And my instincts still tell me to lock down all of my emotions, only let that filtered self show.

That whole internal conflict has made me a little difficult to be around for those who have been asking questions, because I had to have two answers, and those two answers had to be hand in hand, or I knew there was a problem still.

One was for myself, the harder of the two, and one for the questioner."

She finally turned to look at Amalia again, and she smiled.

"At any rate you shouldn't have to deal with that, the storm has passed, you could say."

Amalia smiled lightly, finding that leia repeated herself from titme to time as well, though not as often as Amalia did. Heck, Amalia did not even know why she repeated herself, maybe she could find no other way of saying what she wanted.

"This is business for you, Leia, this trip. I'm not as busy as you often are, my role, quite different from yours. I meant, that I was hoping for once that this would not be a business trip. However, you're right, it is life."

She looked at leia thoughtfully.

"Who said you had to let work dominate your life? No, you want it that way, don't you? I think you do."

She shrugged.

"I don't have to tell you what you already know, but...that's not all there is to your life, yet it seems to be your main purpose, where you place yourself most of the time. I suppose that is where you and I differ. My work is one thing, but living my life is another. I don't wish to have my work take me over, to take over my life, to where I don't have the free time, to rest, to do..whatever."

Amalia went silent for a very long moment, putting together all the things that Leia had said, that all in all, seemed to be Leia, though mostly the Leia she was trained to be.

She seemed to be in a daze for a bit, her mind off elsewhere. Finally she looked back onto Leia.

"I already know..."

She paused.

"In a way, I know the person you show on the outside. You seem to be insistent in telling me about that part of you.."

She smirked, shaking her head a bit.

"...Well, that's not what I want to hear about. So I guess it is time I start asking the questions, the real questions, the ones you don't want me to ask, the ones I shouldn't be asking because I'd be prying..."


"What happened to you on Endor, Leia?"

In a way, Amalia felt like she was being nosey, and she most probably was. However, she had tried everything else, nothing seemed to work for her, so now she had no choice but to be nosey.

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--> Repetition....

That was what it was taking to make progress.

Progress on what?<!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->

Leia winced inwardly. She still wasn't sure yet.

"What happened to me on Endor...?" Leia echoed.

"Well, many things. I came to terms with my past, most specifically Dar... Anakin Skywalker, my father. That had been haunting me ever since my last trip to Endor, and I had been ignoring it, choosing to just.. pretend I had never heard Luke when he told me that. I had been putting it off, for too long. But I couldn't keep it blocked from myself much longer, it is a part of who I am, a part exactly like what you search for in me now.

I met the Ewoks there too. Their simplistic, laid back style of life.. it was soothing, peaceful. I was able to hear myself think. Huh, I was actually willing to hear myself think.

Then there was my somewhat insistent travel companion, flagged me down out of the blue just before I was about to step foot on my ship. It was through him that I let down my guards for the first time in... forever. Tyscio Korban, was his name..."

She snorted.

"Haven't seen him in a while, but I probably should. Explaining to the portmaster alone how we crashed the ship we got there on was not one of my better experiences, though certainly not one of my worst..."

She nodded.

"All in all, I would say it was time getting the recreation that I place second to work, unlike you. Yet it was sorely needed.

So now, I'm just restless, I guess. Not physically, but mentally"

Amalia for some reason or another, winced when Leia mentioned her father's name. She had forgotten about Anakin Skywalker and the part of him that involved Leia, and Luke for that matter.

Amalia suddenly bursted out in laughter, it was beyond reasoning for that matter, and just plain...odd.

"Yub Yub..."

She laughed again, but cut it short, waving a hand.

"Ah, ewoks are nice, wonderful creatures, I think."

She cleared her throat when she saw the odd look Leia was giving her. Her smile turning into a slight frown.

"Um, sorry, I am listening, sorry.."

She smiled just slightly at the mention of Tyscio Korban.

"Ah, would you find it hard to believe if I told you I met him, on Tatooine of all places. Very nice guy, full of plenty of insight, friendly...No, I haven't seen him for quite some time myself, who knows if I ever will, but I was glad to have met him."

Her smile faded and she went to thinking once again, looking away from Leia for a moment and onto the table top, looking at her own reflection once again. Thinking back to something, something that reminded her of a glass of water.....clear.....

She shook her head rather quickly, as if to get the picture out of her head and then looked up from the table top and back at Leia.

"Uh, er, sorry, I was thinking back to something."

She smiled warmly and then gave Leia a thoughtful look.

"I've always wanted to ask you something, but I never knew how to ask it, so I'm just gonig to ask it. You don't have to answer it if you don't want, it's not exactly one of the best questions in the world..."

"It's about your home planet..Al.."

She hesitated, and spoke of the planet in a rather soft manner.

"....Alderaan...what was your favorite experience while growing up on Alderaan?"

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--> Alderaan...<!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->

Leia's breath caught in her throat, and she was quiet for a considerable amount of time. Probably almost enough to make Amalia start regretting asking the question.

Finally, Leia's blank expression was replaced by a faint smile. She started talking a few breaths later, in a soft voice, as if in fond reminiscence.

"Everything... I loved everything about Alderaan.

It's rolling hills, it's elegant cities. It was all so beautiful, so peaceful, pure.

I never would have thought..."

She trailed off rather abruptly and turned once again to meet Amalia's curious yet slightly. Her voice was still soft, though now a hint of curiosity became evident.

"Why do you ask?"

Amalia shrugged her shoulders.

"Not really sure, just curious, I suppose."

Amalia stood up, gestured toward the datacards that were on the table.

"Well, I suppose I should let you get to those...."