Dalia plops herself down.

Snuggle! And she pulls out her own pad.

Time for work.

Work cuddles are excellent.

(Leia keeps to just the most boring parts of her work, things her father's office is known to be interested in enough to set a junior aide to researching them.)

(She isn't as tense around Vader as... Anyone else, actually, though there's a sense that she's paying very close attention to the Sith in the room.)

And then about an hour in, she stiffens suddenly, her muscles twitching like they want to jump, startled, but she's controlling herself too much.

((Her gaze very, very carefully doesn't cut over to Vader.))

Hrmm.

After about another fifteen minutes, Dalia carefully (she's not very good at this yet) reaches out to poke her mama. 'Everything okay?'

'...Things are progressing well.'

A sense of unease - and a larger sense of exhaustion. (Vader is sick of feeling unable to trust her daughter - of feeling like she has to watch every word even here, because she can't let herself believe it won't just be reported to the Emperor - of having no one to be honest with - )

(Dalia gets the edges of that, and gets flickers of that often enough to guess at what Vader's thinking anyways.)

'They are - not yet okay, though.'

That thought slips across their bond before Vader can stop it. 

'I love you, mama.'

'I love you too, dear heart.'

That's honest, deep, whatever else lies between them - but it feels more raw, right now. 

Dalia looks up and flashes her a quick smile.

The answering flare of emotion is - surprisingly strong, actually. A wave of fierce love than rockets down their bond. 

(Vader's felt love this strongly at Dalia before - it echoes the intensity Vader felt in some of Dalia's earliest memories, after she was rescued from the people who stole her away from her rightful place in the Empire when she was an infant, who tried to hide her from her mother - but Dalia's ability to sense and identify emotions had been fledgling, then, and that Vader had been scared and angry and drowning in with her love.)

(The Vader Dalia's known for over a decade is still scared and angry, but it's grown increasingly muted over the years, and nowadays she's more depressed and grieving more than anything.)

(But this feels almost like hope.)

Seems like a good thing!

Leia gives Dalia a bit of a curious look, picking up on... Something.

Whoops she forgot about controlling her face. Smile for Leia then back to work.

Smile.

Though - they don't spend the entire time on the couch, and at one point, when Vader has left the room to take a call, Leia murmurs in Dalia's ear, voice low enough that mics might not catch her words, "What was that about?"

Dalia play dumb. She's pretty good at that.

"What was what?"

"You and Vader earlier."

"Just smiling at my mama. As a daughter does."

She raises an eyebrow. "Alright..."

Quick kiss.

Kiss!

Excellent distraction, A+ thinking Dalia.

Leia's eyebrow says she's not really distracted, she's just backing off to be polite.

(And to kiss Dalia.)

The outcome works, so she's okay with that.

Leia does seem content to just snuggle and chat lightly the rest of the evening.