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Sixty-two hours ago, the treacherous mass named the Death Star was destroyed. Its reign of terror was cut off by the small force of rebels that had dared to risk their lives against it in honor of all of the lives that would be saved. It was short of a miracle of the force that they had succeeded.
Leia hadn’t stopped moving in sixty-two hours.
Before their squadrons had landed, she’d rushed off to her father's quarters and threw everything that had ever mattered into the nondescript bags that still had his signature smell on them. Her hands had trembled and the spiky feeling of electricity began to crackle beneath her skin— only the beginning of the tenuous side effects of torture that she still hadn’t gotten checked out. Nonetheless, she’d tucked her chin down and held back her tears before tossing the bags at the door and leaving the room her father had been in so recently.
She’d celebrated with Luke and Han. She’d smiled and laughed and thrown her arms around them like she was a kid again. The memory moved in slow-motion in her mind, as if it had never happened at all.
The base had quickly been thrown into chaos as every surviving rebel put in their all to pack up as much as they could salvage of the rebellion’s supplies. Medical, hardware, engineering, rations, shelters— all of it had to be saved. Every ship had piles upon piles shoved as far as the weight limits would allow, and every person was assigned a ride out. Leia alternated between lifting crates onto the nearest ships and organizing the many groups to their rendezvous points. The rebellion was on the move as a unified front for the first time, and it turned out to be harder than managing the previous divided cells.
When her hands trembled too hard with unfelt emotion or the lightning beneath her skin made her stumble, she whacked her wrist against the nearest surface as if it was a machine to be reset by force. It probably didn’t really work, but she’d convinced herself it did, and that allowed her to keep working. Above all else, Leia had to keep working.
By some great mercy, Chewbacca took her bags onto the Millenium Falcon, a kind offer that its pilot rudely protested. Leia barely batted an eye at him as she began bringing crates of medical supplies aboard, too. He’d come back, which meant he had good in him, and now, they needed that good more than ever. Her father used to say that the war never ended, but it had officially been pushed into full swing again.
She nearly dropped a crate at the thought of her father and the feeling of static pain flaring beneath her arms. When Han narrowed his eyes, Leia spat another order at him.
Just as Han was readying the engines and expecting Leia to follow, Luke arrived, his hair matted to his forehead with sweat and his flight helmet beneath his arm. Leia should have known that Dodanna would want her with his fleet. Leia was, apparently, pronounced to be part of rebel command; she was undoubtedly the youngest member, but it wasn’t as if the rebellion kept track of those things. Before Luke could bring her to Dodanna as he was ordered— she wondered if Dodanna grabbed him because he was the first person he saw, or if Luke’s one in a million shot was giving him status already— she slipped Han the rendezvous coordinates and reminded him the cost of using them unwisely.
Luke was in the collection of x-wings following Dodanna’s flagship, the Falcon wasn’t far behind, and every single ship managed to escape Yavin-4 without Imperial collision. It seemed that losing their planet killer stunned them into slowness.
That wasn’t the end— it was only the beginning.
First, Leia was ordered into a small, stuffy room with Dodanna, Draven, and holos featuring the rest of rebel command. She refused to meet Mon Mothma’s strong gaze. She put all of her energy into focusing on every word, taking in each and every vital, life saving detail. The rebellion needed her to. There was no room for eighteen year old Leia Organa to be bleeding her emotions out as she was formally told that open warfare had officially begun. She yanked any and all emotions back and became the princess— of who?— that she needed to be.
Then, she began taking stock of the worst kind of inventory; the rebels aboard. She weaved through the halls and committed each and every face to memory, asking their names if it wasn’t somewhere on their persons. She smiled at Luke as she passed and added him to her list of surviving rebels in their group. It took hours upon hours, and by the time she sat on a small crate because her legs wouldn’t survive without it, she had a comprehensive list of all of the mouths that had to be fed.
At some point, a stray rebel handed her a pile of folded clothes, as if taking pity on the white dress that kept snagging as she walked. Leia carried them around for hours before she finally changed, moving so fast that her brain couldn’t process that she was changing out of clothes put on from Alderaan for the last time. Her thoughts screamed anyway. Leaving the fresher was like bursting a dam, her thoughts blocked behind the chaos of an organized rebellion.
More than a few people apologized to her for her loss. Leia felt herself pull out of her body, was conscious of the way her words were kind and diplomatic and everything a princess should be; it was like she flipped a switch and moved onto autopilot.
She catalogued the rations they had and contacted the teams that provided rations. She answered the same questions over and over— Is it really gone? Is the Deathstar real? Is it true we’re at war? How many are left? She gave them the necessary orders and moved on. She communicated with the other remnants of Yavin for their headcounts. She convened with rebel command once more, processing more incoming information with her full focus. Luke handed her a ration bar; it crumbled like broken rock in her mouth. Leia redid her buns for the umpteenth time, now hardly having enough pins left to keep them up, yet unwilling to change her hairstyle for a reason she hadn’t yet processed.
Leia’s feet ached in the boots that she hadn’t taken off since she left Alderaan. She’d changed out of her dress, into the Yavin-climate designed rebel uniform, but her white boots had remained. She was cold. The lightning beneath her skin had become a constant drumming in her ears. She hugged crying rebels in the hallway and promised them that it would all be okay, that the force was with them. Han passed her and told her that her hair was falling out.
She scarcely felt like a person anymore. Everything hurt and her thoughts screamed when the noise quieted. It sounded like being tortured. The recovery would never be done, there would never be enough stock taken, and messages would keep coming. Leia was part of rebel command, and she would die before she failed to do her job. She continued to find work— not that it was hard to do. Everywhere she looked, there was something to be done in the newly compressed space. Leia would not falter.
She was in a storage room, filling the already full shelves with more crates. She and four others were breaking medical supplies up into small groups based on a system of priority Leia and a medic had created. Slowly, each of them finished their work, hurrying off to the next task to do. Leia had taken on the most, leaving her alone in the storage room. She remained laser focused as she sorted the medical supplies into their groups and packaged them in string, fitting them into the shelves to take up every patch of air.
It was only when she reached for another package and found none that it occurred to her that she’d finished. Over sixty-two hours after the battle of Yavin, she was done with sorting medical supplies in this wing of Dodanna’s flagship.
It was only then that it occurred to her that she was alone.
The explosion of Alderaan flashed in her mind, her hands spasming on the shelves, burning flares running under her skin. She twitched.
Her knees felt the cold, hard duraplasteel of the Death Star’s bridge, the way her throat might as well have burst as a painful gasp escaped it. She swore she could feel her parents blink out of the galaxy forever, along with everything else she’d ever known.
Leia couldn’t breathe. Darth Vader’s hand was around her throat.
The door opened.
“Hey, Leia, I was hoping to catch you, I just had a question about-“
She turned to Luke and raised her eyebrows; it felt like they moved in slow motion. She wasn’t sure why he’d stopped talking, but he’d completely stopped in his tracks, hand frozen from where it had been dragging on the wall. He’d finally changed out of his flight suit, donning borrowed civvie clothes.
“Yes?”
Luke’s brows furrowed, and he mumbled the word back to himself as if remembering where he was and what he’d been there for. Leia removed her hands from the shelves, absolutely full to the brim. A few weapons could be tucked in, if necessary. She mentally logged the fact for later.
“Have you slept?”
Storage logs and organization slipped back out of Leia’s mind like the waterfalls at the bottom of the Aldera Alps. She saw Luke Skywalker for who he was again, rather than another cog in the mechanism of the MC80A star cruiser that a portion of the rebellion now resided within. She saw him as the boy from Tatooine who had run into the Deathstar without a clue of what he was doing. The boy with the force, as if straight out of her father’s stories, shining like a blazing sun in the path of everyone he crossed. He saved the rebellion-- no, the galaxy singlehandedly after turning off his targeting computer, and now it seemed he’d joined their cause for good.
Apparently, along with joining the cause, he’d decided to project his kindness onto Leia, too. She recalled the ration bar and the kind smiles he’d offered her.
“Oh,” she said, a smile crossing her face; she must have portrayed her fatigue too heavily. “That’s kind of you. I’ll get some rest soon.”
The concerned look on his face deepened, his lips curving into a proper frown, now. Leia didn’t like that look. It felt too much like a warm hug or frequent check-ins from her father. Those things brought up feelings that she didn’t want to be anywhere near.
The door shut automatically behind him after being open for long enough. For a moment, Leia didn’t see the warm, comforting lights of the rebel vessel, but instead the dark and red haze of her cell on the Deathstar. She saw the door shutting behind Vader, trapping her with him and the interrogation droid that was terrifying enough on its own, let alone the fact that Vader didn’t at all need it.
Her eyes were drawn back to the bright star in front of her that made up Luke Skywalker. The threatening shadow of Vader was far away. Leia felt the touch of air in her lungs again; Luke’s frown deepened, and his hand left the wall.
“You should really sleep,” he said, seemingly unaware that they’d hardly known each other long enough for him to be giving her worried advice.
Leia sighed, some of the emotion slipping through, danger flaring in her senses. Her fingers spasmed.
“We’re at war,” she shrugged, almost sad.
Without missing a beat, “Even soldiers need to sleep.”
Leia’s head pulled back against her own will, her chest squeezing as if Luke had grabbed inside her chest and crushed her heart. Her legs were so weak. The lightning was nauseating.
It was so similar to something her father would have said. Leia was always bad at prioritizing her own needs; her mind moved too fast, always onto the next task. She was too acute of other’s feelings for her own good, and it only doubled the problem. Therefore, her father knew every trick in the book to get her to take a step back.
He would never have called her a soldier, but he would have said something akin to it. Something heavy settled in her throat. Leia breathed through it. She needed to step away from these emotions. They were too much for her to handle, and right now, the rebellion needed her more than ever.
She realized too late how long she’d been silent for.
“I actually was meaning to catch you to say this,” Luke said, interrupting the thoughts that Leia couldn’t formulate into efficient words. “I wanted to apologize. I should have realized what you were going through- when we were on the Death Star, I mean.”
Leia wanted to laugh. Her chest pressed and pressed until she was confident it would burst open in a sea of laughter.
“Oh, don’t worry, Luke. Thank you. Imperial torture was the least of our worries.”
Blessedly, his concern faded to confusion. Leia had to wonder what mental state she was in for her to prefer confusion; that generally resulted in her having to reexplain something, which was valuable time she could be using to do something else.
Luke didn’t make her explain anything at all.
“That’s… not what I meant. I hadn’t- nevermind. I meant about your home. I’m sorry. I should have acknowledged it, but somehow I didn’t put it together, and I’m sorry for that. And, I’m sorry that it happened.”
Leia froze. The star before her had shone a little too bright, and now her walls were burnt down. He wasn’t the first person to apologize, and he was far from the first one who meant it, but something about it lodged closer to her heart. Her fingers spasmed again, sending a lightning strike of pain up to her shoulder. She saw Alderaan exploding in her mind’s eye.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t open the box. She wanted her mom. She wanted to be held and to cry and to scream until it all went away. Instead, Luke Skywalker was in front of her. Leia had met him a mere few days ago.
He was the first one to call it her home, rather than by its name or a simple planet. Somehow, that was worse. Somehow, having it come from this stranger in the form of a human sun was so much worse.
She couldn’t open the box.
“I appreciate that,” she hurried to say, the word rushed and awkward. “But, don’t worry about me. We just met a few days ago.”
His frown returned.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he shrugged awkwardly, clearly not done. “Do you have… friends? Here, I mean.”
Once again, Leia’s head jutted back without her permission. It was less from shock and the ache in her chest, however, and more from shock at the assumed rudeness of the question. It was evident Luke didn’t mean it that way, but he also wasn’t from a core world where it would absolutely be taken that way. She could have laughed.
The question weighed heavy as she struggled to find an answer. She knew so many rebels, but, as far as friends went… Most of them were her father’s friends. That wasn’t something she could stand to think about, not now.
“Do you?” She asked softly, hoping that was the end of it.
“Me? Oh, well, you know. The pilots are really nice. They’ve completely pulled me in and showed me around, helped me get settled, all that. It’s nice— really nice. But, well, I came here with you and Han. Even if it was accidental. When I look around, right now, it feels like you’re my friends.”
Leia blinked, her eyelids moving painfully slowly. Her skin hurt. Everything hurt, right up to her brain.
Luke continued, “You keep saying not to worry, but back on Tatooine, we had to worry about our friends. No one else would. And you don’t have any reason to be okay.”
Leia didn’t have any proper friends in the rebellion. She never hung out with everyone else; it was too dangerous for her. She’d had small moments with random rebels all over the galaxy, but none of them were here, and half of them were probably dead.
She had a few friends from Coruscant, but none of them really knew her, knew the work she did. The deeper she got into the rebellion the harder it was to maintain those relationships. Even on Alderaan, she’d struggled so starkly to form close friendships.
The friends she did make…
It was a miracle she didn’t burst out sobbing right then and there. There were so many people. So many, all gone. Her best friends. Her cousins. Her classmates. Faces flashed through her mind, and Leia could have crumpled to the ground.
“You need a break,” Luke said; it was unclear if he could see the breakdown threatening to approach. “Wanna go visit the Falcon?”
That was a plan. A direction. Somewhere to go other than into the downward spiral threatening to usurp Leia entirely. She nodded, lifting a foot to walk and finding that it hurt so much worse than she’d realized.
“I’m surprised he’s still here,” she grouched, trying desperately to be normal.
“I’m not,” Luke’s smile was painfully bright.
There was something comforting about the optimism. It made raising her legs for each step just a little less difficult as Luke walked slowly beside her. The hallways were infinitely more familiar to Leia, but Luke led her nonetheless, as she couldn’t quite remember where she’d caught her glimpses of the Millenium Falcon. It was tucked into the corner of the largest hangar, surrounded by x-wings and random parts that hadn’t been put away yet. Leia hadn’t even ventured into organizing the hangars; they were too far out of her depth.
Sitting on the Falcon, head poking into an open panel, was Chewbacca. Luke and Leia paused where they stood to watch him for a moment, humored. Something about this ship and group felt like finding a finslou blossom in the middle of winter.
Chewbacca made a noise to say that he knew they were there. It made Leia smile, despite the pain in her legs and her heart.
“I’ve got a friend with me this time!”
Friend. It was a matter of phrasing, but it said something to know that the concept of being friends wasn’t an arbitrary concept made up in Luke’s brain because of the norms he’d grown up with.
Chewbacca sat up, looking over at them quickly as if knowing it’d be her. He barked something akin to joy and a greeting. Leia waved up at him. She was so tired.
“Hey, Chewie,” it was her first time using the nickname, but it felt right.
He growled again, proceeding to hop down the support ladder leaning against the ship. Leia remembered seeing that very ladder in the hangar on Yavin. The base wasn’t perfect, but it had suited them well. She’d always liked how it felt. Grounded.
Chewbacca made a remark about how busy she’d been that Luke nodded to as they all headed in. Exhaustion was settling over Leia like mist in the morning, and she wasn’t convinced it would budge anytime soon. She needed to keep moving to keep going, but she couldn’t think about the future, not even five minutes away from now. Luke probably wouldn’t have been dissuaded from bringing her here, she rationalized to herself. She couldn’t handle any more guilt.
“Oh, look who decided to get her head out of her ass,” Han shouted from the cockpit after Chewbacca announced their presence.
Leia rolled her eyes just as he emerged, covered in oil stains and dust. It seemed that being grounded for some time had resulted in repairs for his tenuous ship-- those of which were desperately needed. She was half tempted to pick up a wrench and ask what was next.
“Rich words from the most self obsessed pilot I’ve met.”
Luke’s eyes followed her carefully as she took the liberty of sitting on a crate laying around. The aches in her legs weren’t relieved in the slightest, nor was the electricity bouncing around beneath her skin. She wondered if her fingers were ever going to stop spasming, or if it was simply a permanent fixture in whatever the rest of her life would look like.
Her heart dropped so far that she felt it hit her feet. She didn’t want to think about the rest of her life. Her parents. Her friends. Her home.
“Ha!” Han barked, breaking her out of the self induced terror. “You haven’t met many pilots if you think I’m bad, sweetheart.”
Chewbacca chuckled, as if there was some specific story that they were both thinking of. Leia was almost surprised to find that she wanted to hear it someday. Luke sat beside her, close enough to catch her, as if she was about to fall over.
Just how bad did she look? It couldn’t be anywhere close to how terrible she felt. There was still work to be done.
“He’s not too bad,” Luke said with a smile.
Han grimaced, flipping a wrench in his hand. His eyes landed back on Leia, and somewhere deep below the mask of impassivity and cocksureness, she saw a wrinkle form between his eyes.
“Do you ever listen to me?” He tossed the wrench on a towel, muting the clang. “Your hair is still falling out.”
She thought of how Luke described them all. They weren’t friends, but they’d come here together, even if Leia already knew where here had been. This was a different version than she’d ever known before, and she didn’t know how to navigate it, let alone begin deciding if she wanted to. These people-- not strangers, but not friends-- made it just a bit easier.
A star as bright as kyber, a boy who hid his good heart, and a wookie who’s people had been through terrors she could newly begin to fathom. Luke, Han, and Chewie. Leia could have smiled to herself, if it wouldn’t have given Han the satisfaction after mocking her.
With painstaking effort, she reached her arms up, finding the pins holding her hair against her head. They came easily, and then were the top ones, followed by the few pins remaining for all of the odd spots that never behaved. She hated letting her hair down when she was working; it was too messy, too annoying to deal with. Now, though… she couldn’t be bothered to fix it again. It fell down in tangled, separated waves around her head.
“Happy?” She looked at Han through the strands that wouldn’t stay out of her face; her arms hurt too badly to keep fighting with it.
A sneer grew on his face, but first, she saw Han and Chewbacca glance at each other. It was small, barely anything more than the wrinkle in between Han’s eyes and the lefthand white in Chewbacca’s eyes as his irises looked to the right.
“I’m just happy my ship isn’t in Imperial hands, Princess.”
“I can vouch for that,” Luke said. “I like the hair.”
Leia chuckled. It was horrible.
Chewbacca spoke up abruptly, asking a question that she’d been ignoring for… sixty-three hours, now. He was asking if she’d gone to medical since they got back-- from the Death Star, she was certain he meant.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she gave the same response she’d given everyone else.
His eyes narrowed in a way she’d never seen from a wookie before. Although, she couldn’t say she’d spent an extended amount of time with any wookies. She’d never before escaped from a moon-sized heavily armed station with one, either.
Much to her chagrin, he insisted. He was up and grabbing a medical kit before she could stop him. Luke didn’t even need a translation, not when it was abundantly clear what he was doing. The fussing reminded her of her dad. Or her mom. Or her mom’s first handmaiden who had practically raised Leia. Her posture fell slightly further.
If the Falcon even had a proper medical bay, Chewbacca didn’t make her move to it. Han continued simple repairs, remaining in the lounge with them, fixing petty breaks and wiping grime out of the cracks. Luke tried to be his assistant, to which Leia took great pleasure in the resulting bickering. They both looked over as Chewbacca held a thermometer to her mouth and told her to open up.
As kindly as she could, she took the thermometer from him and took her own temperature. She’d always been called stubborn. If she was getting evaluated, she was controlling as much of it as possible. It was better than the proper medics looking at her. They would ask questions, and that would evoke memories; Leia shut her eyes until she heard the beep of the small mechanism.
She had a fever.
“What?” Luke was the first to exclaim. “You’ve been working crazy hard with a fever?”
Han pulled his head out from beneath a shelf, “It’s a normal side effect of the drugs the Imps probably pumped her full of.”
Leia could see the interrogation droid. The doors. The cold wall pressed against her back as she made herself as small as possible. Chewbacca’s fur grazed her skin and brought her back. He groaned a question that took her a moment longer to understand; he was asking how she knew shyriiwook.
“They taught basic shyriiwook at the academy, and I got some practical experience in the Senate.”
“Even princesses go to the senate, huh?” Han asked as if he was trying to grate on her nerves.
“The Imperial Academy?” Luke said.
Leia chose to ignore Han as Chewbacca snickered. She wasn’t sure who he was laughing at as he took her blood pressure. A glance at the results showed that it was high.
“No, of course not. The Academy of Aldera.”
She barely got the name of her native city out before her throat seemed to close. She kept her eyes ahead, unwilling to see what the two men who barely knew her saw on her once passive face. To survive in the Empire, one had to be good at masking their emotions, and she was an expert at it. It was a testament to her state that she was failing. She supposed she could blame it on the fever.
None of them seemed to know how to respond to that. Leia hated it. She bit her tongue until she tasted metal.
Chewbacca’s hands were warm and comforting as he took the rest of her vitals. The needle in her finger was small and nearly painless in comparison to the Imperial torture droid, and Chewbacca’s careful warning before injecting it was enough to sooth the memory. She was still biting her tongue when she tried to apologize for the way her hand spasmed.
The longer she sat, the more the pain and exhaustion settled in. Leia couldn’t let her mind rest, though. She was running out of time. She was reaching a breaking point.
Chewbacca drew her hair back with his large paw, clearing her dim vision. It drew her out of her frantic thoughts and alerted her that he was done.
“Oh,” she looked up at his smile. “Thank you. That was very kind.”
The resounding noise told her that there was no need for thanks. If she had the energy, she might have smiled more. Her shoulders had officially slumped and her arms hung limply between her knees, hair still a tangled mess, albeit out of her face. Her white boots were covered in dirt.
“You’re a mess. You need proper medical attention,” Han said from down the hallway.
Leia couldn’t be bothered to look over at him, so instead she looked up at Luke, narrowing him with a gaze that portrayed her annoyance well. He covered his mouth to stifle a laugh.
“I really couldn’t care less what you thought.”
Luke failed miserably at hiding his laugh.
“I didn’t ask you to!”
It might have gone on if Luke didn’t come over, standing right beside her as if prepared to help her up. The floor felt so far away. Her body hurt so much, it had practically settled into the crate. She didn’t think there was a single ounce of her that was painless.
“You do really need to rest, though,” Luke said, much softer than Han. “Han said you can use one of the beds here.”
The betraying omission of Han’s sincerity made her smile. Luke smiled back. There was a loud hiss from some sort of pipe down the hallway, right in Han’s direction. Chewbacca voiced his agreement with Luke’s statement.
It was so kind that Leia’s eyes nearly stung. If she caught her breath, if she took the chance to rest that she desperately needed, she was going to break.
She didn’t want to be around anyone when it happened. She couldn’t. It felt like her throat was trying to leave her body and every thought made her chest squeeze. These people had already saved her once; she didn’t want them burdened with her planet-sized grief.
“I appreciate the offer, but I can get settled in my room. I was designated a small personal one.”
Luke nodded hastily, “Okay, yeah, no problem. Where at?”
“Top floor, the left wing. I can find it on my own.”
A single glance up and down and the narrowing of his eyes proved that he wasn’t going to let that happen. A strand of annoyance snapped to life in Leia the way it would with her doting family members. She hated being watched over like this, even if Luke had no way of knowing that. For some reason-- probably the Imperial drugs in her system-- she felt like he should.
“Fine, then, let’s go,” she didn’t bother leaving the annoyance out of her voice.
“See, Chewie, even Luke can annoy her,” Han said, intentionally loudly.
“Goodbye, Han,” Leia projected her voice as loudly as she could.
Luke laughed at the mess and tossed out his own farewell to the copilots, hovering right beside her with his hands in his pockets. Leia braced her hands on each side of her and prepared to push. She was hardly certain if her legs would support her at this point, but there was no chance of her admitting it aloud, so the only way to find out was to try.
She stood on soles that had been worn into the ground. Her legs screamed in pain, lightning and sores and bruises alike coming to life in agony. Her face scrunched, her vision grew blurry, but she remained standing.
When she opened her eyes, Luke had a hand on her arm. Leia shrugged it off. She was the worst patient ever.
They started their way across the ship-- not too far, as Luke had already said twice by the time they reached the hallway. They were walking even slower than they had on their way here. It felt like a lifetime of agony had passed between then and now, every moment stretching on for so long in the wake of her loss. She looked beside her, finding Luke’s radiant smile. It was too bright.
They found the room, her bags from home already in it even though she’d never once unlocked the door. She was thankful for whoever had done that. Her legs were ready to collapse under her. Leia was lucky they hadn’t.
“Thank you for coming with me,” she said, hearing the weakness in her voice for the first time.
“Of course. That’s what friends are for.”
She looked over at him with a smile and the raise of her brows. His smile grew despite the concern across his face.
“I suppose so.”
“I meant what I said earlier. I am so sorry, Leia.”
Her hands were shaking, and not because of the torture induced spasms. Leia nodded, refusing to break her mask, refusing to fail. It was as if Darth Vader was still in front of her. She still had to keep going. For the rebellion.
She nodded, because words would have failed her.
“Let me know if you need anything, please.”
“I will,” her voice came out as a whisper as she forced her legs to move into the room, flicking the lights on. “Thanks.”
He whispered back, “Of course.”
The door shut before he took a single step away.
Leia looked at the small room. It was smaller than her father’s room on Yavin, the one which he’d obtained a second cot to let her into, as well. The bed was built into the wall, a single multi-purpose table and shelf built into the other. The small empty space was smaller than her armspan, if she’d had the strength to stretch them out so far. It was so white. So untouched. New.
Her heart did something funny. It felt as though it truly flipped in her chest, spasming just like her fingers. Her lip wobbled and the room felt small. She saw the prison cell, her room on Alderaan, and her planet exploding, all at once.
Sixty-four hours after the Battle of Yavin and seventy-eight hours after she watched the Empire destroy everything she had ever known, Leia’s knees gave out. She slipped to the floor, knees hitting the metal as an inhuman noise escaped her. It was something between a shout, a sob, and a wail. She might have made the same noise when she watched Alderaan be destroyed.
Deflection was impossible. It all washed through her, a wave of grief as heavy as her home, her hands clawing at her chest as if she could let it out. She keeled over as loud, hitching sobs left her, hot tears warming her hotter cheeks.
It was all gone.
Her father. Her mother. Her home. The flowers. Aldera Alps. Rillo. Her cousins. Zurea. Her people. Her traditions. Her life. Everything she’d ever owned. Her parents.
Her parents.
Leia’s chest caved in and her vision cut out as her body screamed for her to unfurl. She screamed for the loss. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. They were supposed to watch her become queen. They were supposed to make sure she didn’t work herself into a fever. They died thinking she could have been killed on the Death Star. There would never be people as good as them again.
She would never get to climb the Aldera Alps and rule Alderaan. There was no Alderaan to rule. There were no people to rule. For three days, she’d been called the princess, but there was nothing out there. She was a princess of nothing at all, and there were no kind words her parents could give.
All she wanted was a hug from her parents. She wanted them to engulf her in their arms and whisper that it would all be alright. Her mom would braid her hair and her dad would massage her hands, her knuckles, her temples. He would whisper words that he was always so good at forming and her mom would reassure her of her own strength. They would promise that it would all be okay.
They were gone. Gone. She couldn’t believe that they weren’t anywhere in the galaxy. It simply wasn’t fathomable. None of it was fathomable. It wasn’t just them-- it was her whole world. The night sky she once looked up at was gone; the things they always said could never be taken had just been destroyed.
She wanted her parents. She couldn’t do it without them. There was no living in a galaxy without them, without her mother’s handmaiden, Reih. Leia had always been called mature for her age, strong, capable, but none of it meant anything without her parents to remind her of her strength. They’d remind her to eat, to take breaks. She could rant to them. She wanted to tell them about Luke, about the boy like the sun who had just decided he was her friend. He would fit in with their family. They would hate Han on the surface, but they’d see him for who he was. She wanted to tell her father the rebellion had just won their first open battle.
It was like another punch to the chest to realize that he’d never know the planet killer was destroyed. Leia’s fingernails broke as she clutched at the gaps in the metal panels of her floor. Her voice was frail. Her hair was in her face again.
Leia had seen people’s worlds be destroyed. She always thought she was conscious of the possibility of it happening to her.
She hadn’t been.
She never thought this could happen.
It hurt more than anything she could have ever imagined. She was three days into a life without everything she’d ever known, and she already missed it more than she thought anyone could ever miss anything.
She had no idea how much time passed as she wailed on the floor. She ended up on her side, shoulder pressing into the metal, hair sticking to her face. There was snot below her nose and dried tears everywhere. She felt puffy and gross and the most pained she’d been since she was actively being tortured.
She didn’t want to move. It felt pointless. Everything was gone. She was far from the most capable or vital rebel. So much of her purpose was linked to her father, and without that, she was simply this puddle of mush on the floor.
Leia, all things considered, did not want to ever move again.
It was all too much. She couldn’t handle it.
She laid there, eventually slipping into a fitful sleep. She dreamed of her parents in a nursing home, perfectly alive, eating the fruit from the gardens her father grew up with. Her cousin, Niano, had gone with her to visit them. When she woke, she cried all over again. Her fingers wouldn’t stop spasming.
She slipped back away. At some point, she pulled a blanket off of the cot, shivering beneath it. Her arms wrapped around herself, and she pretended it was her mom giving her a hug.
She was climbing the Aldera Alps. She was to become the next Queen, and for her people, she would complete this trial of hardship, just as her mother did. She would serve her people, keep them safe in a galaxy that wanted to destroy them. She’d promised her mother that she wouldn’t endure the same injuries, and she held that close to her chest as her finger caught on the rock. Her left side was so cold.
Yet, when Leia looked up, just about to reach the peak, the sky had turned green. She heard her parents yell her name. The mountains exploded around her, and she landed on a hard metal floor. Leia threw up, then, just barely dragging herself to the metal trashcan attached to the wall in time. The ration bar had tasted like broken planets, and it was even worse coming back up.
Leia just wanted her parents.
Her forehead touched the cold floor, sweaty and warm. She was taking up a valuable room. She was a princess of nothing. Her parents couldn’t hug her.
She thought of the last time she saw them together. They’d been in the hallway of the castle, just outside of the landing platform. Her father was leaving for some diplomatic work-- which, recently, had become code for Yavin. Sometimes it wasn’t, and her and her mother would laugh at night when they saw him on the holonet walking outside of the Senate. Her mom would put her hand on her own chest, over the mechanical lungs breathing for her, and Leia knew that she was relieved for his safety.
The last time, no such thing happened. Her parents hugged in the hall as her mom complained about the Imperial police station in the North. She was to travel there to calm the people down, to ease their nerves and talk the Imperials out. Her father was making jokes-- well aware that no one but their own family and beloved staff would hear him-- about going there and kicking them out himself.
They both told her never to do anything they would do, and she reminded them that she was going to do exactly what they would do. Her mom kissed her forehead and her dad squeezed her hand.
Leia had no more tears, but she sobbed silently anyway.
The last time she’d seen her father had been in a horrible rush after her mom had gone off to the North and her father had unexpectedly arrived early. The radio was frantic as the rebellion scrambled with the news of a weapon that Leia had not yet heard the name of. Jedha had been destroyed. She didn’t even know about Scarif yet.
Her father spoke swiftly yet lovingly. He held his hands below her shoulders with all of the love in the world and made her promise to be okay. He apologized that he couldn’t do this himself. She reminded him that she was eager to be part of the fight.
They hugged, and then Threepio was whisking her away. Artoo was the last one to beep at her dad as the shuttle doors shut and she was taken away from him, and her home, forever. The air had smelled cool with the approaching winter, a mist settling over the mountains.
Leia sobbed again.
She had three bags containing her and her father’s only remaining belongings. That was it. That, and…
Another sob.
When Leia pushed herself up, the world rocked around her.
The rebellion was her father’s life’s work. He’d started it. He never said it, but she knew it. Him and Mon Mothma and Senator Amidala before her death. They’d started it, and it was real. It was big enough for war. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a stand against the tyranny of an Empire that would destroy an entire planet, and Leia would die before her father’s life’s work was wasted.
She never wanted to get up again, but she had to. She told him she was eager to join the fight, and in that moment a whole lifetime ago, she’d meant it.
One last tear slipped down her dry cheek. Leia hurt so badly. She needed a real medical assessment. She needed the drugs flushed out of her system. She wanted pain medication.
She wanted to keep fighting. For her dad. For Bail and Breha Organa.
For Alderaan, and all of those who could not.
Leia looked around the room, daring to pull up her aching arms and drag her hair out of her face. It pulled, stuck to her cheeks, but it gave eventually. The mass of tangles fell behind her shoulders. She reached a hand onto the cot and found the folded bunch of her white dress.
It was the clothes she’d been wearing when she was tortured. It was the dress she’d put on her last morning on Alderaan, just before she said farewell to her mother for her journey to the north. It was the dress that had seen the metal floor of an Imperial bridge on the Deathstar when she collapsed after watching everything she’d ever loved get destroyed. It was one of the few pieces of Alderaanian fabrics left in the universe.
She held it to her face and breathed it in. Her shoulders shook.
Her comm fell from the dress to the floor, nearly rolling away. That was what she’d been looking for. She nearly collapsed as she leaned over to grab it, but her elbow caught her, and she was back up again. She’d always been stubborn. Apparently it applied, even in the wake of the loss of everything she’d ever known.
Leia pressed the simple button on the side with her trembling, spasming fingers and opened her mouth to speak.
A horrible rasp came out, and then, she was coughing. Concerned beeps responded. The Academy of Aldera had been so culturally adept that it taught binary, too, so she understood Artoo’s question as he asked where she’d gone off to.
She cleared her throat and held the comm back up, “Artoo. Can you come to my room?”
She didn’t have to say another word before she heard him rushing off. The comm went silent, leaving Leia in the bright, white room. She shut her eyes and pretended that she was leaning against the bed she’d grown up in, but it didn’t feel right. Her floor hadn't been so cold. Her head was pounding so hard it was threatening to burst.
Artoo rushed in without knocking, startling her into dizziness. Leia blinked through the spots as Artoo slowed down, frantic beeps turning sad, metal retractor reaching out for her hand as if it was a human hand holding her own.
Leia held it. She squeezed it until it hurt. She looked into the droid’s photoreceptor and wondered for the first time when he joined her father. He felt so sad.
She wanted to say something, but there were no words. She simply hadn’t wanted to be alone. She grieved beside Artoo, tearless and with a heaving chest. She wrapped her arms around a metal dome because it was the closest she would ever get to a hug from her parents again.
In the end, her forehead rested against his metal dome, his retractor tapping rhythmically on her leg. Artoo wasn’t her droid, but she’d always been around him. He was in the palace or the senate or the rebellion. He spun in circles when she was little because it made her giggle, and then her parents would pat his dome fondly. She thought she remembered once hearing that he’d belonged to the Naboo-- Senator Amidala, then.
More time passed. Leia had lost all track.
Artoo beeped quietly, asking if she wanted an organic being to come over. She did, so badly, but the ones she wanted were dust in space. The thought hurt so badly that it ached.
He quietly informed her that Luke had accompanied him over and was lingering outside. For some unexplainable reason, Leia laughed, having a strong feeling that she was never going to get away from him. She supposed that was a good thing, him being the sun, and all.
He hardly knew her, yet he felt so bad for failing to take into consideration that the prisoner he was rescuing had just lost her planet. He barely knew her, but he wanted her to be okay, and she assumed that the same applied to everyone who Luke Skywalker decided to bond with. He would have fit in well with the Organa’s.
She took a deep breath and looked at the door. She didn’t know Luke that well, despite how kind he was.
Leia needed to go to the medbay. First, however, she needed to avoid getting stared at and pitied by every rebel on the whole damn ship.
“Luke,” she raised her voice, practically feeling him out there, now that Artoo had told her.
“Leia?”
“Can you get Threepio?” Her voice broke on his name; she hoped Luke didn’t notice.
“Of course!”
It was a job Artoo could have done, but she liked having him beside her. His gears whirred quietly every once in a while. Leia decided that she liked noise, where she used to prefer silence. Silence was like a cold cell on the Death Star. Silence was like the noise on the bridge as the Imperials witnessed their first true destruction of a planet.
Soon enough, Threepio was outside of the door. Luke let him in, not even trying to look in, and Leia was grateful. She didn’t want to know what she looked like, she decided. Threepio’s fussing was quiet for the first time ever as he gave her a stiff, metal hug.
Leia had him get her most practical outfit from her bag. She had him brush her hair. She asked him to do his damndest best about the mess on her face, and he certainly tried. His small quips of concern and thought were a light in the roaring waves of her thoughts as her brain processed through the unprocessable. Artoo reminded Threepio to be quiet every few minutes.
Once she’d changed, pulled her hair into a loose, low ponytail, and was confident that her eyes weren’t as puffy anymore, she opened the door. Her arm was wrapped against Threepio’s, the metal cooling against her skin as he helped her stay up. Luke stood from the wall that he’d been sitting against ever since Artoo got here.
“Thank you,” she said, and she had to hope that he felt the weight behind it.
He looked surprised. She wondered how often Luke was thanked, back on Tatooine. Rebels were always thanking each other.
“Oh, no thanks needed,” he said, a small smile growing on his face. “Where are you off to?”
There was no way he didn’t see that she’d fallen apart and had Threepio put her appearance back together, but he wasn’t acknowledging it.
“The medbay,” she sighed, giving in.
“Finally!”
Leia didn’t have it in her to laugh, but she switched her hold to Luke’s arm rather than Threepio’s-- partly because she didn’t trust him not to go crashing down. The two droids scattered, although Artoo kept appearing in the hall around them.
She didn’t look at the rebels they passed. She simply walked. It was easier to look at her white boots-- she put them on atop Alderaanian soil. She’d have to take them off soon.
The medics seemed relieved to see her there. They all recognized her. She got a few more apologies for her losses and words of gratitude for her strength, and instead of letting it wash over her and to the floor, she felt it all in her chest. Her lip wobbled, but she nodded and gave the strongest thanks she could.
Leia didn’t feel very strong. The only thing keeping her from collapsing right about now was Luke’s arm, strong from years beneath the sun and working on a farm.
She was given a bed. She was assigned to change, a task that she managed on her own despite the pain. A needle was inserted into her arm with a lot of verbal preparation and several bags of fluids were set up for her. Luke lingered, Artoo eventually joining him. Leia shut her eyes as much as she could.
At some point, she fell back into her horrible sleep. She woke up to the door opening and her fingers spasming painfully. She’d been dreaming again.
When she painfully craned her neck, she was faced with Mon Mothma. They must have convened with another rebel ship if she was here. Leia didn’t think it was safe for her, nor was there anyone who she absolutely had to be with. She should be with a safer fleet. Even crippled by grief, her mind was working the numbers of rebel tactics.
It turned out, there were no rebel tactics at play.
Mon Mothma was a former senator, a speaker of freedom, and a founder of the rebellion. She was also Bail Organa’s close friend.
Leia saw the tears in her eyes and the open stretch of her arms before she could react, and then, Mon Mothma was halfway on her bed and holding her in a mother’s grip. Leia had never hugged her before. She was familiar with her, comfortable, even, but it ended there.
Not anymore. Not now. Not now that she’d lost everything.
“I am so sorry, Leia,” Mon said, and for the first time in days, Leia heard someone else’s voice break.
She started sobbing all over again in the arms of one of the closest people she had left-- even though she previously wouldn’t have considered her close at all. She opened her eyes over Mon’s shoulder to look at Luke, who gave her a reassuring smile as he moved to leave with Artoo.
She didn’t know him well enough to cry to him, but maybe someday she would. She almost wished that she did. In another lifetime, perhaps.
For the moment, Leia squeezed Mon as tight as she could and buried her head like a child. This would end, eventually, but she indulged herself. She couldn’t survive if she didn’t.
Mon didn’t whisper platitudes or lies that they both knew weren’t true. She knew that there was nothing that could be said. The hug and the comfort, the knowledge that there were people Leia still had, was enough.
Leia’s parents would be glad to know that someone was there to take care of her in the closest way she could.
She was thankful for their diligence.
Over three days after losing her home, Leia finally fell into a proper sleep beneath the watchful eye of Mon Mothma. She dreamed of finslou blossoms in winter. Somewhere deep within, she’d made the choice to keep living.
She owed it to her people and her parents.
Someday she would understand that she wanted to live for herself, too.