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Han was the one who figured out Leia was pregnant. The Force had tried to tell her, but Leia still thought the Force was strange and she wasn’t sure if she wanted anything to do with it, so she hadn’t listened.

She went about her days as normally as she could, except that she threw up every morning and fell asleep halfway through every afternoon. Once she slept through a bomb threat and an evacuation alarm. Mon Mothma thought she was being held hostage, and a strike team was assembled. Explaining herself had been awkward.

Han said, “I think you’re pregnant.” He looked remarkably calm about it, which only made Leia mad.

She scowled at him over a piece of meat as tough as bantha hide. Neither of them were very good cooks. “Don’t be stupid.”

Han rolled his eyes. “I’m the stupid one, Princess? Which one of us has been throwing up every morning and won’t go to the doctor?”

“I didn’t tell you about that,” Leia said.

“I have ears.”

“You’re infuriating.” Leia said, even though she actually did want to throw up and go to sleep. “I can’t be pregnant. A baby’s not on my to-do list.”

“That’s not how biology works, Your Highness.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Okay,” Han said, and Leia remembered that asking him to call her by name was a dangerous proposition at best. It made him alarmingly sincere. “Leia, you’re pregnant.” He paused. “I won’t leave, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You’d better not,” Leia said. “I didn’t leave you in Jabba’s palace. You owe me more than half a genetic code.” Was she seriously considering that she was pregnant? She probably ought to, since she was pretty sure she was. Stupid Force, telling her things that she couldn’t explain how she knew.

“If you want to do this, I’m game,” Han said.

Leia slumped back in her chair. Did she want to have a baby? If someone had asked her that a month ago, she would’ve screamed and run away. Still. The idea that her body could make a life was appealing. She could feel its presence in the Force already already, a tiny pinprick of light in the black hole where Alderaan used to be. Did she want to have a baby with a smuggler she’d technically only been dating for three months? Her mother would tell her not to. Of course, Leia tried not to give the hypothetical opinions of dead people too much weight. Did she want to have a baby with the man who’d thrown his body over hers while Echo Base collapsed around them? The man who came back to save her even when he wanted nothing more than to leave? I could do worse, she told her mother.

Leia’s lips curled upward in a slow smile. “It wouldn’t be the scariest thing we’ve done together.”

Han shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “How much trouble could a baby be?”

When Ben was a baby, they did not call him Ben. They called him their thermal detonator because they never knew when he would explode. Putting him down was a certain trigger, but picking him up was no guarantee of calm. He did not simply cry; he screamed, terrible wails that turned his face splotchy and split the eardrums of anyone within a five kilometer radius.

“Is it normal for a baby to make a sound like that?” Luke asked, bouncing Ben uncertainly on his hip.

Leia shook her head. “I know nothing about babies.” Why had she thought she could do this?

Han took the baby back from Luke and said, “Maybe we should get some noise cancelling headphones.”

“Are we bad parents if we don’t listen to our child scream?” Leia asked. It was a sincere question.

She must have looked at Luke because he said, “Don’t ask me.” He backed away slowly, holding his hands up. This creature is clearly your problem.

Threepio said, “I am fluent in over six million forms of communication, but I am unable to parse what he’s saying. However, I believe he is unhappy.”

Han did that threatening pointing thing he liked to do -- or he tried, anyway. It was harder with a squalling infant in his arms. “We know he’s unhappy. You point it out again, you’re going to the spice mines.”

Then Chewbacca said, “Can I hold him?”

Leia and Han both stared. No one asked to hold Ben. People were occasionally guilt tripped or blackmailed into it, but they returned him promptly, often with a haunted look in their eyes that Leia associated with soldiers who’d seen too much on the field of battle.

“Be my guest,” Han said, passing the baby over. “Keep him for the night if you want.”

Chewie nestled the baby into the crook of one furry arm, and for the first time in his life, Ben was quiet.

When Leia said, “there’ll be time for grief later,” what she really meant was that she never intended to give herself time to grieve. Having a baby helped; she could carry on her father’s legacy, and she literally had no time to herself. Once Ben could walk, he even followed her into the ‘fresher. Princess Leia could not have peed in front of another sentient being. Luckily, Leia the rebel soldier had urinated in a variety of adverse circumstances, and being stared at by a large-eyed toddler barely even registered.

Of course, the constant companionship of a small human being was not enough to erase her grief over the death of her family and her planet, no matter how often she told herself that Ben was hers, that Darth Vader was dead, and that no Imperial Army could steal him away in the night. When Han was home, she put up a brave front; when he was gone a mission to root out some Imperial holdout, she carried him through the house and buried her nose in his curls and let the weight of his arms around her neck remind her that her responsibilities would keep her alive even if nothing else did. She knew it was backwards. She wasn’t supposed to lean on the baby; she was supposed to lean on her...boyfriend? Partner? The man she loved and wasn’t quite ready to marry, because she couldn’t believe in permanent things like happiness or home just yet.

But for once, knowing what she should do and doing it were two separate things. Telling Han or Luke that she hurt was hard; carrying Ben through the house was easy, and wasn’t she allowed one easy thing in her life now and again? However cranky he had been during the day, he was always quiet in her arms on nights like these. Sometimes Leia worried that he would grow up with her grief the way that she’d grown up with her mother’s, but she didn’t know how to let go of her sadness, except to wrap her arms more tightly around him.

Well, that and run for office. She announced her candidacy for Senate in the galaxy’s first open elections after the fall of the Empire. It was three days after Ben’s second birthday, and also the day his tantrums started. Living with him was like living with a power-mad dictator: he forced her to jump at his every whim, and when she didn’t, he punished her. He wanted to wear shoes. He didn’t want to wear shoes. He only wanted to wear red shoes. Once, in a fit of frustration, Leia had thrown herself down in the park and screamed right along with him. He stopped and stared, but so did a lot of other people. An awkward holo appeared on the nightly news, and she got a panicked phone call from her campaign manager in the middle of dinner.

The next day, her poll numbers went up. Prospective voters described her as “normal” and “relatable.” Her campaign manager asked if they could stage more spontaneous photo ops with her and Ben. Leia told him to go kriff himself while Ben shrieked in the background because the house droid put dewberry jam on the left side of his bread.

Ken Statura, who apparently found parenting so easy he had five children, suggested that she didn’t fight Ben over things that didn’t matter. She decided to give it a try, and she spent two weeks on the campaign trail carrying a wild-haired toddler who wore one red shoe and sometimes a cape.

“He looks like a beggar in the Mos Eisley spaceport,” she said.

Ken shrugged. “He looks like everybody else’s kid.”

Her campaign manager took photographs and drooled.

Campaigning made her grief recede like nothing else ever had. To see his daughter voted into office in free and fair elections was her father’s most cherished dream. As soon as she’d been old enough to question the Empire, he’d ushered her into his secret library filled with texts from the Old Republic and they’d stayed up till all hours of the night reading together. He didn’t live to see the revolution, but Leia felt his presence every time she gave a campaign speech.

But Han was miserable. With every publicity holo, the light in his eyes faded a little more. He paced restlessly through bland hotel rooms and snarled at reporters who followed him to cantinas on the wrong side of town. It wasn’t right for her to ask him to stay.

She meant to say something thoughtful and polished, like I want you to be happy, so I hope you will consider smuggling some medical supplies to Tatooine.

Instead, she came back from a day in front of holocams, found Han’s socks on the floor and shouted, “Why don’t you go smuggle something already?”

Han slid off the bed quickly and stood in front of her, his chest puffed with indignance. “If you wanted me to leave, sweetheart, you could’ve said so a lot earlier!”

“Who said I wanted you to leave?” she yelled while Han stormed out the door.

Leia followed him out, then remembered that Ben was still inside, and ran back to snatch him from his crib. He immediately began to scream. Then, just when she had him calm enough that she could follow Han outside, he pushed all the buttons in the lift.

Han was halfway to the docking bay before Leia caught up.

He spun on his heel after she called his name three times, and said, “Wow, Your Highness, don’t be in such a hurry to catch up.”

Leia gritted her teeth. “I had to get the baby.”

Han’s eyes widened, and she could see he’d forgotten for a minute that they had a child. Leia couldn’t really judge; she’d done the same thing.

“We really weren’t ready for this, were we?” Han asked, reaching over to run his fingers through Ben’s hair. They got stuck in the curls, which were unusually wild today.

Leia set about freeing Han’s fingers from Ben’s hair. Ben looked displeased but waited patiently. “Nobody’s prepared for this,” she said. Then she sighed. “We may be less prepared than others. Do you have any living family capable of giving sound parenting advice?”

Han grimaced and shook his head. Leia missed her parents with sudden, acute longing -- not the whole planet and its incomprehensible losses, just them. She was twenty-five. She had a baby with a man who smuggled things and pissed her off everyday, and neither of them could stop yelling at each other because it was the only kind of relationship Han had ever seen, and Leia preferred anger to grief.

Maybe, if she thought of this as a negotiation, they could survive.

“Campaigning is the most miserable thing you’ve done in your life,” she said.

Han shifted awkwardly on his feel. “Well, not the most miserable.”

Leia smiled in spite of herself. “We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?”

Han looked at her. Just looked, the same way he had when she was leaning against the shield generator on Endor, wounded but still ready to fire. Leia allowed herself precisely five seconds of sadness for that couple, who built a relationship under the line of fire and expected to spend the next five years fighting the remnants of the Empire together. Those two people had no idea a thermal detonator was about to come into their lives.

“I think you should smuggle medical supplies to Tatooine,” she said. It came out calmly this time. “The Hutts are hoarding, and the people of Mos Eisley could use a good smuggler on their side.”

“Really?” Han asked. There was more light in his eyes than she’d seen in a long time, but he still looked doubtful. He swallowed. “And after I’m through with that…”

Leia rolled her eyes. “I’m not leaving you, you idiot. I’m saying that I’m doing the thing that makes me happy, and if you go do the thing that makes you happy, maybe we stand a chance of not killing each other.”

“I love you,” Han said.

Leia smiled. “I know.”

“I’ll come back,” he promised.

“If you don’t, I’ll come for you,” she said. “Try not to become a crime lord’s wall hanging.”

Ben’s tantrums started again the second the Millennium Falcon winked out of the sky. A doctor timidly suggested that Ben would benefit from a more structured routine. Mon Mothma, never one to mince words, asked, “Is your son with you because it’s good for him, or because it makes you feel better about yourself?”

Luke, who had come to check on her after Han left, eyed Ben and stroked his beard thoughtfully. Leia resisted the urge to tell him to shave it off.

“I could keep Ben,” he said, even though he sounded a bit doubtful.

“Are you sure?” she asked. Ben was quiet for the moment, but only because he was concentrating so intensely on pulling the heads off a set of toy stormtroopers.

“Family helps each other out, right?” he said with a shrug.

“You’re trying to guilt me into becoming your Padawan,” Leia said. She knew a trap when she heard one.

Luke started packing Ben’s toys. “You concentrate on the campaign, and we’ll figure out the rest later,” he said. He knelt close to Ben. “We’ll have a good time together, right?”

Ben didn’t answer. He knew how to talk, but he rarely chose to.

“See?” Luke said, trying a little too hard to sound optimistic. “We’ll be fine.”

Ben screamed and clung to her legs when it was time to go. Leia told herself it was only two more weeks. Then she reminded herself she must have done the same to her parents when they left for state visits. When that didn’t work, she swore to gods she didn’t believe in that she’d be home more often once she took office. She still cried herself to sleep, wondering how it was possible to miss someone so much when they caused so much chaos.

When Ben turned three, Leia started building a lightsaber. According to Luke’s Jedi training manual -- which was cobbled together from fragments of moth-eaten manuscripts -- this was an advanced skill. But if Leia was going to do the Jedi thing, she wanted the damn sword. Luke saw the intensity in her eyes and backed down fast.

Not that it was easy going. First, she had to activate a crystal with the power of her mind. Or something. She dutifully carved an hour out of her schedule for meditation everyday. But no matter how hard she stared at the crystal, nothing happened. Well, nothing except that she got frustrated and thought about how much work she was missing.

Luke looked bemused at her lack of progress. “That’s not how it works, Leia. You have to give your whole self to it.”

“You want me to give myself to a crystal?” Leia asked.

He shrugged. “If you’re not ready for it…”

Leia never was one to back down from a dare. She told her assistant to spread a rumor she had Correllian flu, and she closed her office for the foreseeable future. A niggling voice in the back of her mind pointed out that she had never even considered skipping work to see Ben, and she told it to be quiet. It didn’t work. She could hear the patter of Ben’s feet downstairs and the shrieks of the mouse droid that she imagined could just barely outrun him. Finally she sighed and dropped the crystal into the little bowl of miscellaneous junk on her night table. Lightsaber be damned, she was going to spend the day with her son.

For the next two weeks, she fell into a routine. In the morning, she played with Ben, and when she put him down for his afternoon nap, she meditated with her crystal. Meditation was getting easier, and she could see that she was making progress: when she held the crystal up to the light, she was sure -- well, mostly sure -- that she could see facets that weren’t there before. But something about the house made her restless. It wasn’t just that she was missing work. It was because the house still felt like a hotel. Everything in it was new, and it contained nothing at all from her childhood, because every tangible trace of the first nineteen years of her life had been obliterated by the Death Star. When she thought about that too hard, she felt empty, and the emptiness sent dark thoughts curling around the edges of her mind that made her wonder how easy it would be to follow in Vader’s footsteps.

Leia stood up and tried to stretch out the crick in her neck. She was starting to think her crystal looked the faintest bit red, but that was probably just her imagination. What she really needed was a change of scenery. Not that that was easy to come by with a sleepy three-year-old in tow. The diaper bag days were over, but leaving the house without an assortment of toys and snacks was begging for disaster. By the time she’d packed everything she needed, the last trace of her meditative trance was gone.

Over the next few days, she tried meditating everywhere she could think of: the park, the playground, a private study booth at the library, a training room at the gym after a long, exhausting workout. Nothing happened, except that a pervert exposed himself to her while she sat behind an isolated tree. Finally, she wound up at the Falcon, which was stupid. She and Han still spent at least half their time fighting, and Han still thought the Force was a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo, even if he said he supported her.

Still, something about it felt right. She put Ben down for a nap, then she settled down on a corridor in the middle of the ship, the one that connected the cockpit to the lounge and the living quarters. Instead of meditating, she let her mind drift. She remembered watching Ben Kenobi fall under Vader’s blade, and how knowing that he’d come to help her had made the loss of Alderaan easier to bear. The night she’d spent in the smuggling compartments with Han, when they’d pretended to be space junk to escape from the Empire. Rubbing Luke’s back while he vomited because she and Han had both underestimated his exposure to alcohol. Making love to Han for the first time on the way to Bespin.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been drifting when she heard Ben’s feet patter across the decking. When he ran toward her, she held her arms open, pulled him down into her lap, and wrapped her hands around his chubby little fists.

“See if you can feel this,” she said and started meditating in earnest. For the first time, she thought it was easy. She could feel every moment of her life stretching out behind her, and the enormity of the future spreading in front of her, and running through all of it was the Force. Ben was quiet in her lap, breathing in time with her, and for the moment everything she’d lost fell away.

She wasn’t sure whether minutes or hours had passed when Han’s voice woke her.

“Hey,” he said, “are you guys praying to a purple rock?”

Leia’s eyes flew open. “It’s purple?” she asked, hardly daring to hope. When she held out her hand, the crystal flew toward her. Even in the Falcon’s artificial light, it shone.

“That’s going in a lightsaber?” Han asked, looking impressed.

Leia nodded and squeezed Ben’s hand. “We made it together.”

“And you did that here?” Han asked, waving a hand skeptically at the battered paneling and exposed wires running along the corridor.

“Of course I did,” Leia said. “It’s home.”

She married Han in the cockpit of the Falcon two weeks later.

Getting married made things easier. Not easy, she told Luke later. Just easier. By which she meant still hard, but with a clearer understanding that no one was leaving.

When Ben was four, Leia caught him slicing sausage into a hot skillet in the Falcon’s tiny galley. She scooped him off the stool as fast as she could and turned off the burner with the power of the Force, which meant that she broke the stove.

“Who told you that you could that?” she demanded. He could have burned himself, or caught a towel on fire, or sliced his finger off… The list of what-ifs was enough to make her shaky.

Ben blinked up at her and shrugged. “Daddy showed me how.”

Leia charged off down the corridor without even thinking what she would say.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” she asked when she found Han crouched over the eternally malfunctioning hyperdrive. “You thought a four year old could use a stove?”

Han shrugged. “Can’t they?”

“No. No, they cannot. Did you even think what would happen if he’d started a fire? Or cut himself?”

“Did he?” Han asked.

“That’s not the point,” Leia said. She was just starting to get warmed up.

“We didn’t all grow up in palaces, Senator. A lot of four-year-olds make their own dinner. I sure as hell did.” He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers at her. “See? Still got all ten fingers.”

“Statistically speaking, you’re an anomaly,” Leia snapped.

“Oh, are we speaking statistically now? Maybe you could have your office staff work up a few projections.”

Leia felt all her blood rushing to her face. “I’ll have you know --” she started. Then she stopped herself and took a long, deep breath like she’d been practicing in Jedi training. “We said we weren’t going to do this anymore, didn’t we?”

“You wanna call Luke?” Han asked, smiling ruefully.

Leia nodded and reached for her holophone. Neither she nor Han were exactly sure what constituted a normal childhood. Han thought anything short of begging in the streets was fairly luxurious; Leia knew that most children did not have personal valets, private courtyards, or their own stables, but she was hard-pressed to say what a child should have. When she and Han disagreed, they called Luke, whose childhood had been fairly normal so long as you discounted the evil biological father lurking in the background.

Luke did not necessarily appreciate his role in solving their disputes.

“Hey, kid, solve a problem for us,” Han said, sounding studiously casual.

Even on the low-res holo, Leia could see Luke wince. “Really? Again? Do I have to?”

“It’ll only take a minute,” Leia promised.

“We just need to know if four is too young to make some food,” Han said, trying to sound all guileless, like he’d just asked Ben zap a plate of leftovers in the warmer.

“Get the story right,” Leia snapped. “Cooking on the stove, over a flame, with a sharp knife.”

Luke looked uncomfortable, which he always did in these situations. “Sorry, Han, I gotta go with Leia on this one.”

Han looked wounded. “What’s wrong with a kid learning a little independence?”

“Um, I think the flame and the knife are wrong,” Luke said. He looked over his shoulder at something Leia was pretty sure didn’t exist. “Wow, did you see that? Looks like an emergency. Gotta go! Bye!”

Han leaned against the wall and sighed. “Alright, tell me, can he make anything? Honest question, I swear.”

Leia considered. She hadn’t cooked anything at all until she joined the Rebellion. Nineteen, obviously, was too long to wait, and four was definitely too young for fires and sharp objects.

“Toast?” she suggested. “Maybe cereal if the milk jug isn’t too heavy.”

Han nodded. “Sounds fair.” He broke into a grin. “Hey, how about that? Only a minute of yelling, two minutes tops. We’re getting better at this.”

They high fived and went to work on the hyperdrive together, which meant that Leia handed Han tools while he told her about the year he’d spent working for a traveling magic show. All in all, they were feeling very self-satisfied, until they carried Ben to bed and he said, “I’m sorry I made you fight..”

“No, kid,” Han said quickly. “We’re the ones who have to do better.”

They let Ben sleep in the big bed between them while they talked all night about how to become the sort of people who resolved disagreements without any yelling at all -- or, in other words, how to change their entire personalities. They didn’t find an answer, so they did what they always did: they asked Luke.

Luke said, “You should try yelling at each other in the closet.”

Han said, “What?”

Leia said, “You’re the weird twin.”

Luke shrugged and said, “That’s what my aunt and uncle always did.”

Han said, “If you figured out they were fighting, it didn’t work.”

Luke said, “No, it did. Until I was ten and I started eavesdropping, but then I heard them doing something else in the closet, so I stopped listening after that.”

Han frowned and said, “That might be worth trying. What do you think, Leia?”

“Closet sex?” Leia asked. “We’ve defiled every other surface in the house. Why not the closet?”

Luke said, “I am not part of this discussion anymore.”

For a single guy who appeared to have no interest in romance, Luke gave annoyingly good relationship advice. The closet thing worked. By the time they actually got into a closet to yell at each other, whatever they were angry about was usually funny instead. Occasionally, they actually did fight, but then they had makeup sex afterward (to deter eavesdropping, of course). Either Ben didn’t listen or he learned a great deal about the facts of life -- but Leia was betting on the former, because he didn’t apologize for their arguments anymore.

This left Leia with just one problem: the damned lightsaber. Somehow she’d imagined that making the crystal was all she had to do, but no, a lightsaber had wires and circuits and dozens of other tiny, fiddly electronic things that Leia had never even heard of. Luke had suggested she start by taking his lightsaber apart and putting it back together again. After the third time she broke it, he downloaded a basic electronics textbook for her instead, which she tried valiantly to read during her non-existent lunch breaks -- by which she meant, she stared at it guiltily once a week while thinking about how much she hated it.

For weeks, Han watched her spread out dozens of tiny parts on their kitchen table after Ben went to bed. He pointed out wires that she might want to use, patiently explained why everything kept short circuiting, and poured her endless cups of caf when she thought she couldn’t stay awake anymore.

Finally, he slid into the seat next to her and said, “Come on, Senator, let me try.”

She rolled her eyes. “I hate it when you call me that.”

Han smirked. “No you don’t. You gonna let me try or not?”

“You can’t,” Leia said. She felt impatient and exasperated and all sorts of things that were probably of the Dark Side, and she tried valiantly to push them down. “You have to use the Force.”

“I don’t give a womprat’s ass about the Force, Leia,” Han said, ignoring her pointed look. “This is a machine. I can do machines.”

And then he leaned over her and started snapping wires into place, all the while talking about focused light beams and other things she didn’t understand. Ten minutes later, he screwed on the cover. Leia looked back at him skeptically, but there was no smoke and no sparks, so he’d already done better than she had.

“Come on,” he said, looking smug. “Try it out.”

Leia held out her hand and the lightsaber leapt into her outstretched palm. She could feel everything humming inside it, although she couldn’t say how, and more than that, she could feel Han’s presence in it. She stood up slowly and took a breath, then pressed the ignition. There was a familiar buzz, and a second later, the kitchen was filled with a soft purple glow.

Han wrapped his arms around her waist, and she leaned back against him, still holding the lightsaber in front of her. Part of her wanted to yell that she could’ve done it on her own -- but the closet was too far away, and anyway, she’d needed the help.

“Not bad,” Han said, staring down at the lightsaber in her hands.

She looked up at him. “You do have your moments.”

Very carefully, she shifted the lightsaber out of the way, stood up on her toes, and kissed him.

When Ben was five, Ken Statura arrived in Leia’s office holding a glass jar filled with plastic heads. On the outside was a label that said HEADS OF MY ENEMIES in childish scrawl.

“So your kid gave this to my kid,” he said, depositing the jar on her desk. “I gotta ask - is it a threat?”

“Shit,” Leia said. She’d forgotten to buy a present for Ben to take to the class gift exchange. That’s what the blinking red reminder light on her pad was for. “This is my fault. I didn’t pick up a gift, so he improvised. Ken, I’m sorry. It’s actually his most precious possession, so I don’t think he’s threatening to decapitate your children, but I’ll make sure he drops off something more appropriate. With an apology, of course.”

Ken shrugged. “Happens to the best of us. I told Rylee to pack her own lunch yesterday. Teacher called and said she brought a can of Phibian beer.”

“Well, at least she has good taste,” Leia said. The truth was, she wished Ben was interested in the liquor cabinet. Instead, he bit the other children when they got too close and borrowed older students’ textbooks without asking (which the indignant EDU-C8 droid reminded her was actually stealing).

Some of her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Ken leaned over and clasped her shoulder. “It gets easier, I promise. Ten years from now, this’ll be one of those things you look back on and laugh.”

When Leia came home, Ben was playing war games with his headless stormtroopers.

Han said, “Well, at least he decapitates the bad guys. If it were the rebels, I’d be more worried.”

Leia said, “He’s bored at school. How could he not be? The other kids have hologames, and he’s been sitting in the copilot seat of the Falcon for the last year.”

Han shook his head frantically. “Leia, I swear, even I know that’s not appropriate.”

“I know. Chewie does it when you’re not there.” She sighed. “I tried talking to him about it, but he just howled piteously. I couldn’t tell him to stop.”

Han was doing a terrible job concealing his excitement. “He’s actually flying?”

Leia shook her head. “Just pushing buttons sometimes. The right ones, I gather, since he and Chewie are still alive.” She flopped down on the sofa and put her feet up on the coffee table, the one Han had built from scraps specifically so that she wouldn’t feel guilty about putting her feet on it.

Han sat down next to her and handed her a sandwich. He always had a snack ready when she came home from work, which she appreciated, even if it was mostly a matter of self-preservation. He knew how dangerous she was when she was hungry.

“Do you think we should get him a private tutor?” he asked.

Leia stared. “You, Han Solo, are suggesting we pull our son out of school and get him a private tutor?”

Han dug around in his back pocket and pulled out a sheet of flimsy covered with mathematical notations. “Look, I told him how to square a number yesterday. This morning before school, he did all this. He’s bored. It’s not gonna get better.”

Leia eyed the jar of plastic heads peeking out of her bag. “If we take him away from the other kids, he’s going to get weirder.”

Han said, “I don’t think he can get weirder.”

“You may have a point.” She smiled. “Who gets to keep the jar of heads?”

“If you think I’m letting you keep that, Senator, you’re wrong. The Falcon needs some sprucing up.”

Leia snorted. “You need a decoration? Trade negotiations start this week. I need to send a message to my actual enemies.”

Han scooted closer to her and tried to steal a bite of her sandwich. She yanked it away, then surrendered when he shot her a wounded look.

“Alright, you keep the jar of heads this week. I get it next week,” he said.

“And we’ll trade monthly thereafter?” she asked, snatching the sandwich back from Han before he could devour the whole thing.

“Deal,” he said, throwing an arm around Leia’s shoulders. She leaned her head against his chest, and eventually, Ben came downstairs and put his head in her lap. Nobody ate anything nutritious for dinner, and they all stayed up far too late watching holos.

So what if their kid was a little weird? Leia thought. They liked him the way he was. And anyway, she really couldn’t judge anyone for being an argumentative student.

Luke kept trying to march her out in the woods to learn things, and Leia wasn’t having it. There was a perfectly good training room at the back of her house, and Leia had never agreed to become the kind of Jedi who went on quests. That didn’t stop Luke from asking her to do stupid things.

“You want me to stand on my head and make a pile of rocks?” she asked, surveying the large, mossy stones scattered across the floor. “Why?”

“It’s good for focus,” Luke said implacably. Leia glared at him and he added, “I think that’s what it’s for. Look, we can’t do lightsaber practice everyday.”

“I don’t see why not,” Leia said. “Unless you’re tired of getting beaten.”

“Teaching can be a mutual transaction. I’m happy to learn from you.” He sighed. “Cut me a break, alright? My parents didn’t give a martial arts instructor for my thirteenth birthday.”

Leia rolled her eyes. “They didn’t give me an instructor. They weren’t slavers, Luke.”

“Lessons. Whatever.” He gestured at the rocks. “Are we going to do this or not?”

“No,” Leia said. “There’s plenty of things on my desk that need stacking. You can throw things at me while I do it if you want.”

The truth was, Leia wasn’t sure why she was Jedi-ing. She had no intention of living a quiet life of contemplation, she didn’t have the time to fight the remnants of the Empire, and it seemed like the Force was mostly useful for retrieving things from high shelves -- like, say, if Han had hidden the best snacks out of her reach, as he was wont to do. For the most part, she figured her job was to help Luke refine his teaching skills, which she did by telling him when he was being ridiculous. What do you mean, Luke, there is no try? How else does anyone learn things, if not by trying?

So when the Knights of Ren showed up and she had to actually do Jedi things, it came as a surprise.

They looked like a bunch of low-rent Vader wannabes, so Leia focused on their masks and jittery lightsabers instead of asking herself how the hell they got through security. By the time she considered that they might actually be a problem, Mon Mothma was almost dead. First, she reached for the non-existent blaster at her hip. Then she called for her lightsaber, and she actually thought she felt it answer, but it was in her office, and it would probably smack someone in the head long before it sailed into her hand. So she did the only thing she could think of: she flung all the energy of the Force toward the one who was choking Mon Mothma to death. He reeled backward, gasping for breath. Leia took a step toward him and stared down into the black void of his masked eyes. She could feel the life draining out of him, and she didn’t stop till it was gone. When she looked up, his two compatriots had vanished.

Luke stared at her over the body on the floor.

“You did this?” he asked. “With the Force?”

She shrugged. “He was trying to kill the President of the New Republic.”

Mon Mothma nodded, still rubbing her neck. “If Senator Organa hadn’t been here…” Her voice was still raspy, and it trailed off before she could finish the sentence.

Luke nodded. “Could I speak to my sister alone?”

Mon Mothma vanished with a conciliatory nod, and Leia took a moment to appreciate his quiet power. The President of the Republic left her own office because he asked.

“What was I supposed to do, Luke?” Leia burst out as soon as the door had swished shut. “If I’d shot him -- or it, or whatever -- we wouldn’t even be having a conversation.” She poked the Knight with her toe, and its armor clunked dully against her boot.

“It’s not like that, Leia. You have to be careful with the Force,” Luke said. The helmet on the floor reflected his concerned gaze back up at them. “Once you start down the dark path, it will control your destiny forever.”

Leia sighed. “Luke, I’m not some dark knight. The President was threatened. I kept her safe.” She shrugged. “And if protecting the Republic costs my soul, so be it.”

She drew herself up as regally as she could and swept out of the room before Luke could answer.

Han only shrugged when she told him what had happened. “A weapon’s a weapon, right?” he said. “As long as you don’t start choking people for no reason, I don’t see the problem.”

Still, his eyes looked wary. She thought she could feel fear radiating from him. But maybe that was only her own turmoil. Hadn’t she gotten over this in her first days with the Rebellion? Touching a blaster had made her skin crawl once, but after Alderaan died, she shot to kill.

That night, when she couldn’t sleep, she crept out of their bed and padded into the training room at the back of the house. The meditative trance that had come to her so easily before felt elusive. All she could think was how badly she wanted to talk to her father. Just one minute would be enough. She shut her eyes as tightly as she could and tried to tell the universe that she needed him.

When opened them, a man she’d never seen before hovered just outside the window, trimmed in wavering blue light. He looked terribly sad, and his hair curled like Ben’s.

“Who are you?” Leia asked, but as soon as the words left her mouth, she knew. She asked to see her father, and this was what the Force gave her: a murderer, a torturer, a destroyer of worlds. Yet somehow Anakin Skywalker -- Darth Vader -- lived on in the Force, while her true father was scattered among the stars, lost to her forever. And her son looked just like him.

She slammed the doors of her mind shut as hard as she could and ran from the training room, only slowly her gait when she saw Ben staring down from the top of the stairs.

“Are you alright, Mother?” he asked, impossibly formal for how tiny he was. He sat on the top step, wrapped in a blanket from her bed. How had he gotten it without Han hearing? It made him look impossibly small, much too small for the worried frown that creased his face.

She climbed the stairs two at a time and pulled him into her arms. He tucked his head under her chin, and his tangled hair felt silky against her skin. It reminded her of all the months she’d carried him through the house when he was a baby, grieving for Alderaan while he slept.

“Of course I’m alright,” she murmured. His breathing was already evening out. “You’re here. That’s all I need.”

She trained less often after that. Excuses were easy to come by: an infrastructure project in the Hosnian system, a trade dispute with the delegation from D’Qar, the intelligence report on the Knights of Ren. The truth was, she felt betrayed by the Force. She’d thought it was making her stronger; instead, it had connected her to Vader. Worse, she thought Luke was jealous that she’d seen him.

Now when she tried to meditate, the stillness prickled her skin and sent her thoughts flying in a dozen directions. On the rare occasion she managed to let the Force flow through her, Luke would say something terrible, like “The true Jedi renounces all attachment to the world,” and her hands would clench into fists so tight her fingernails dug into her palms.

Hadn’t she given up enough? Her parents, her home, her planet, everyone she’d loved for the first nineteen years of her life. The peace Luke described evaded her; her body felt weightless and hollow. On the rare occasion she could meditate, she saw nothing but an endless expanse of snow. In the vision, she draped herself with cloaks but the chill never left her bones. Anger was the only thing that warmed her. Who was Luke to tell her to let go? Luke who had only lost two people, Luke who could return to his world any day he chose? On the other side of the anger was power. It whispered to her, promised that she could keep everything she wanted, that she would never have to let go again.

Glass shattered, and when Leia opened her eyes, the windows of their training room were broken.

“This is not a good idea,” she said firmly.

“What are you talking about?” Luke asked, as if he couldn’t see the splinters of glass littering the floor.

“I don’t want to be a Jedi,” Leia said. She waited for some terrible sense of sadness and loss, but it didn’t come.

“Leia, it’s okay,” Luke said. He didn’t sound like an ancient Jedi master anymore, just her brother, who was a nice person and wanted to believe the best about people. Especially his sister. “Look, I’m not going to pretend it’s not a little disconcerting, but these things happen. You just have to learn control.”

“No. Things like this should never happen.” She inclined her head toward a particularly large shard of glass, but she wasn’t thinking about the windows; she was thinking about the blankness, and the rage.

“We’ll learn together,” Luke said. Leia didn’t miss the undercurrent of pleading in his tone. He wanted to be a good teacher.

Leia shook her head. “I don’t want to renounce my attachments, Luke.”

She didn’t have to be hollow; she had a husband and a son, she wielded power only so long as the people allowed it, and she had a brother who needed her -- whether or not he wanted to admit it. She stood up and unhooked her lightsaber from her belt. She didn’t know what she was going to do with it, but it didn’t feel like it belonged there anymore. Maybe it never had.

“When shall I expect you to dissolve your attachment to me?” she asked briskly. “Is there a formal ceremony, or will you simply disappear one day?”

She had more sharp comments, but she could feel her throat getting tight and tears pooling in her eyes. For four years, she’d thought her whole family was dead. Then she found out she had family after all -- just one person, but he was enough. If he wanted her to be a Jedi, she’d damn well try, even though she thought twenty-eight was far too old to learn, and it didn’t seem like her destiny anyway. She hadn’t bargained for all this talk of renouncing attachments.

“That’s not what’s happening, Leia,” Luke said.

She glared at him skeptically.

“Look, maybe I don’t have to be a perfect Jedi. I can have one attachment,” he said. He took her by the shoulders and said, “I won’t leave you. I swear.”

So she shoved the lightsaber in the back of a drawer and didn’t look at it again -- well, not until Han made her anyway.

“Are we going to talk about this?” he asked, gesturing toward the back of her underwear drawer.

Leia was sitting at her dressing table, wiping off her mascara. She didn’t look away from the mirror. “What is there to talk about?” she asked.

Han leaned against the wall next to her, the lightsaber dangling from his hand. “You can fool a lot of people, Princess, but I’m not one of them. What happened?”

Leia stiffened her shoulders. “I told you. Nothing happened.”

The worst part was that she knew exactly how Han would react: first the wounded look, then the exasperated sigh, and finally the moment when he gave into anger.

“Just out of curiosity, Your Highness, is there some point where you let me in? Will it take another decade, or do you think another five years would be sufficient? Maybe you could have your aides call me and let me know.”

“I’ll have them comm you tomorrow,” she said. Usually yelling relieved tension, but this time, it only made her feel nauseated. She was hurting her husband to make herself feel better.

Before she could figure out how to apologize, Han spun on his heel and walked out of their room. She heard the front door slam downstairs.. Ben watched it all from a crack in his bedroom door, his eyes wide and his face pale.

Leia knelt on the floor in front of him. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t realize we were yelling so loudly.”

It was ludicrous to have to apologize to a seven-year-old this way, she thought -- but the consequences of failure were ugly, she supposed. And she was failing right now, at marriage and at motherhood.

“It’s okay,” Ben said hastily, and Leia forced back a sigh. By apologizing to him, she was forcing him to comfort her, which was even worse than leaving him to witness a fight in the first place.

“It’s not okay yet.” She stood and kissed his forehead. “But it will be soon.”

She caught up with Han on the gangplank of the Falcon. He could hear her footsteps, she knew, but he didn’t turn around. When she saw him reach for the switch to retract the ramp, she called out, “I saw my father.”

Han stopped, and she forced herself to push on, hating the way her voice wavered. “My real father, I mean.” She shook her head. Bail Organa was her true father. How could she have spoken otherwise, even for a moment?

“Vader?” Han asked. He was walking toward her now, the wounded look gone from his eyes.

Leia nodded. “I wanted to see my father. And that’s who came.”

“Vader has nothing to do with you.” Han was still standing at arm’s length, but she could tell he’d reach out for her if she let him.

“If he doesn’t have anything to do with me, why was he there?” She clenched her fists as tightly as she could, but she still couldn’t stop the shivers running down her spine. Suddenly Han’s arms were around her, and she leaned in, burying her face in that stupid, ancient jacket he never ever washed.

“I don’t know,” he murmured into her hair. “But I know you, Leia. You’re not like him.”

Leia stepped back, shaking her head. “I feel so angry sometimes.”

Han shrugged. “So what? You’ve got reason.” She looked at him skeptically, and he nudged her in the ribs with his elbow. “Hey, how many people have you shot in the back?”

“None. Obviously.” Leia rolled her eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“How many people do you think I’ve shot in the back?”

Leia snorted. “I don’t actually want to know the answer to that question.”

“Good, ‘cause I never actually counted. The point is, Princess, we all got dark sides.” He looped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in tight. “Yours isn’t worse than anybody else’s.” He pulled back slightly, his eyes going dark. “You could do me a favor and talk to me sometimes, you know.”

Leia nodded. “I could try to do that more often,” she conceded, tucking herself back beneath Han’s arm. Of course, try and succeed weren’t exactly the same thing, but she could do better -- if she didn’t, she’d only hurt Ben.

The next five years passed uneventfully -- by Leia’s standards anyway, which meant there was no war and she and Han limited themselves to a single apocalyptic fight per calendar year. Not trying to be a Jedi left her with time for novel new experiences, such as getting eight hours of sleep at least once a week. Life was easier without the nagging fear that one misstep with the Force would turn her into a Sith lord hell bent on galactic domination.

Slowly the holocube on her desk filled with name days and vacations: the pangalactic library at Coruscant, the Rogue One memorial, the safari for loth-cats and nexu for Ben’s twelfth birthday.
If she thought about it more carefully, she might have realized that the holocube couldn’t record all the blank spots between special occasions - her long diplomatic trips, Han’s journeys to the Outer Rim. Maybe she should have worried that Ben and Han could never seem to smile in the same picture. Ben got a second-degree sunburn on the safari; Han had fallen asleep in the library. And as Ben got older, in every image on the Falcon, his grin grew more and more strained.

But Leia didn’t notice. When Ben was twelve, she had no idea she’d spend the rest of her life scouring her memories for signs she’d missed.

When Ben turned thirteen, he grew lanky and sullen almost overnight. It was like he was a toddler again -- wild moods and unpredictable explosions. He used to calmly collect her travel itineraries, mark her return dates on a calendar, and ask to visit Kashyyk while she was gone. Now he watched from her doorway while she packed her bags, radiating anger.

“You’re always leaving,” he said, trying to look impassive. The mask didn’t help much - she could always sense his feelings.

It probably didn’t help that Han was gone now too. Smuggling something, she thought, if he hadn’t taken Ben with him. Not that she’d wanted to ask. They had an arrangement: Han required a certain number of illicit adventures each year, and she, a respected Senator, did not particularly need to know about them.

The familiar conciliatory speech sprang to her lips. It’s only a few days, Ben, and you have your schoolwork. But she shook her head and glanced at the chronometer on the wall instead. “Well, if you want to come with me, you’ve got thirty minutes to pack.”

Ben’s face split into a wide grin - a rare sight these days. He remembered himself and squashed it fast. “I”ll be ready in fifteen.”

The truth was, she was glad for the company. Alderaan Remembrance Day was approaching; she was certain someone had scheduled some godawful ceremony where she would have to be the figurehead. By now, she could reel off all sorts of platitudes on short notice. My parents would be grateful and proud to see you all assembled here under the banner of peace. She appreciated the endless gestures of solidarity, but eulogizing her homeworld only made her feel hollow. Ben, on the other hand, was the continuation of her parents’ legacy -- or at least, his existence was the proof that she could move on. She’d like to have him with her.

“You know I’ll be back late most nights,” she said when they’d settled into their cabin on the consular ship.

“Of course,” Ben said, but he didn’t look angry. In fact, for the first time in ages, he was sitting next to her on the couch. Of course, he’d given up snuggling ages ago, but just having him within arm’s reach was quite the novelty. Then he actually smiled at her. “I’ll stay up and wait for you. If you tell me what happened, that is.”

Leia shook her head. “You want to hear about trade negotiations?”

“Of course I do,” he said, flicking open a file on his datapad. Realism vs. Neoliberalism: Competing Theories of Interplanetary Politics, it said. She’d barely had time to process that her thirteen-year-old was reading political science texts before he started flicking through screens too fast for her eyes to follow. “See, I’ve got more of them. I had to get a dictionary for a lot of the terms, but my tutor helped me put together a vocabulary list.”

He looked up at her expectantly. She could feel his longing for approval radiating through his flimsy attempt at a mental shield.

“I don’t imagine many mothers are lucky to have sons so interested in their work,” she managed. She wondered if he could sense pride and shame warring within her - he was brilliant, and she could see now how long he’d been teaching himself, hoping to be worthy of this kind of attention. She and Han would need to talk about how much time they were spending away from home, but for now, she could give Ben a taste of what he so clearly wanted: to be treated like an adult.

“The negotiations are very sensitive, Ben. They’re not classified, but I’d need your assurance you won’t share what I tell you with anyone else.”

Ben shrugged. “That’s easy. You know I don’t have any friends.”

Leia inhaled sharply. She had known, of course. Unfettered by grade levels and age groups, he had surged ahead with the help of his private tutors. Yet for all his brilliance, he crumbled when confronted with a task he wasn’t immediately good at. Her efforts at getting him to join sports teams or group music lessons had utterly failed -- and his chances of normal adolescent relationships had faltered right along with them. But it was different to hear him say it out loud.

How she wished that negotiating with a teenager came to her as naturally as settling trade disputes and writing defense treaties. She knew she was on shaky ground. Ben lashed out and withdrew the second he felt vulnerable -- and she knew exactly who’d taught him that particular skill.

Finally, she settled on the only response that she thought might make his life a little less lonely. “Would you like to travel more often with me, Ben?”

His smile was her answer.

True to his word, Ben was awake when she came home after midnight, carrying her uncomfortable shoes in her hand. As she’d predicted, there had been an uncomfortable ceremony in remembrance of Alderaan. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop trying to picture what she’d been doing on this exact day seventeen years ago, but her mind came up blank. She’d been home, with no idea her world was about to end.

Still, she tried to paste a smile on her face. Ben had always been sensitive; she didn’t want him to imagine she was unhappy to see him.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. He was curled in the corner of the couch, framed in a circle of lamplight, data pads and a few books on real flimsy scattered around him.

“Do what?” she asked absently, reaching up to unpin her hair.

“Pretend to be happy when you’re not,” he said quietly.

Leia’s eyes widened. “Ben, I’m not --”

“It’s alright,” he said, his voice level. “You’re sad, deep down. I can feel it. I’ve always been able to, for as long as I can remember.”

Leia sat down heavily on the couch, letting out a shaky breath. What was it she had told Luke about their mother? She was very beautiful. Kind...but very sad. And her son had grown up with her own grief, just as surely as she had grown up with her mother’s.

Ben was sitting next to her now, peering up at her with worry in his eyes. He looked much older than thirteen. “It’s alright, Mother. You shouldn’t feel bad about it. You just don’t have to pretend for me, is all.”

She looped her fingers through Ben’s, and for once, he didn’t flinch away. “You don’t have to pretend for me either,” she said. They sat together in silence for a moment, and then she tugged on his hand. “Deal?” she asked, nudging his ribs with her elbow.

Ben ducked his head, but he nodded. “Deal.”

Leia took Ben with her on a humanitarian trip to Naboo without question. A once-in-a-century storm had overcome their antiquated WeatherNet, and a tidal wave had crashed into the tightly-packed buildings along the coast. Ben asked to come, and Leia agreed - he could volunteer in one of the refuge centers, and it would be good for him to see how the rest of the galaxy lived.

But when she came back to their quarters that night, Ben was lying facedown on the floor. Fighting a wave of panic, she pushed her mind out to meet his. A torrent of tangled emotions flooded her, and her knees went weak with relief. He was alright -- physically if not mentally. Now that she was kneeling beside him, she could see his shoulders trembling faintly.

“Ben, tell me what happened,” she said, wincing at her tone. This was the voice she’d used to talk to Rebel soldiers on the battlefield, not the way a mother should speak to her son.

But Ben lifted his head. His eyes were swollen and his face was splotchy. “They’re too loud,” he said.

“Who is?” Leia asked, but she already knew.

“Everyone here, all their pain. The water was like a wall. Hands reaching out, lungs filling up, children carried away. I can’t - I can’t shut it out.” With that, he collapsed on the floor again, covering his ears as if it would drown out the voices inside his head.

Extending her mental shields to cover Ben was easy, and his body went slack with relief. She pulled his head into her lap and ran her fingers through his sweat-damp curls.

“This used to happen to me, you know,” she said. “No one knew what it was. It was terrifying.”

Ben’s head popped up. “Really?” he asked. His voice was still hoarse, but his eyes looked clear.

Leia nodded. “I thought I was going crazy.” She paused. She’d never told anyone the next part. “My parents were terrified, but I didn’t understand why. I would get these wisps of thoughts -- that I could never know the truth, and that something -- someone -- terrible might find me.”

“What happened?”

Leia shook her head. “I learned how to control it, somehow. I think I blotted out a lot of the memories, actually. It just...got better in bits and pieces every day.”

Ben swallowed, looking down at the floor. “I feel so weak, and I hate it.”

“It’s not a weakness, Ben,” Leia said, catching his hand. “Feeling other people’s pain -- it makes you compassionate. It makes you a better person.”

Ben didn’t look convinced, and Leia sighed. She’d spent half of her life trying to avoid feeling vulnerable, even to her husband. No wonder her son despised any hint of weakness.

“I can teach you to control it,” she said. “It’s not difficult, I promise.”

Ben looked back up at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Are you going to send me away to training?”

She could feel fear rolling off of him: fear of her rejection, fear of being sent off into the unknown with yet another group of children who probably wouldn’t like him.

“I see no reason for that,” she said, and Ben rewarded her with the ghost of a smile. “There’s no need for you to go halfway across the galaxy to learn what I already know. And anyway, I like having you here.”

Of course, Luke did think that Ben ought to go to training.

“There are children like him here, Leia,” he said. He scooted away from the holophone so she could see the training ground stretched out behind him, filled with teenagers stacking rocks with the help of the Force.

“Children who read interplanetary relations journals and perform hyperspace calculations by hand?” she asked.

Luke frowned. “You know that’s not what I mean, Leia.”

“It’s not the Force that stops him from fitting in, Luke.”

“And that’s not why you don’t want him to go.”

She sighed. “I don’t care about Jedi tradition. Thirteen is too young to leave home,” she said firmly. Out of the holocam frame, her fingers clenched her datapad so tightly her knuckles turned white. Ben was her son, almost her only family. She wasn’t kicking him out of the house so he could wander in the wilderness and forsake all attachment.

Luke shook his head. “We’ll talk about this when I visit. It’s dangerous for him not to get training. You know that.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you,” she said. “Even if we are going to have the argument to end all arguments.”

Her afternoon meeting arrived, and Leia had to end the call. It didn’t matter what Luke said. Ben wasn’t leaving. If the Force had connected her to Vader, it could connect him too. Better that he do as she’d done, and build a life where anger couldn’t warp him and wound the people he loved.

And besides, she wasn’t ready to let him go.

Then a strange thing happened: Ben made friends. They were two sixteen-year-olds who’d somehow talked their way into the Starfighter Cadet Corps, which probably should have made Leia nervous -- but then, she’d given up on Ben having normal friends the day he’d given Rylee Statura a jar of heads. Slightly too old with dangerous jobs was as good as it was going to get.

She came home from work to an unfamiliar sound: laughter in the kitchen. She’d sworn she’d never be the kind of parent who eavesdropped, but then, she’d never been much of a rule-follower, even when the rules were her own. She leaned against the wall in the entryway, just out of sight of the kitchen.

“Where’d you find this kid, Jess?”

“Well, see, I was getting ready for my landing approach, and this idiot swoops in right in front me and does a barrel roll -- you know, the kind of thing they tell us will get us killed? And then he just goes right on flying like it’s nothing, so of course I had to force him down. I’m thinking I’m going to get him busted for reckless flying, but then out pops this thirteen-year-old freak of nature --”

“So naturally you decide to sneak him on base --”

“Where he did my astronav homework for me --”

“And now we’ve both got demerits because I helped you hide him --”

Leia stepped around the corner, and the conversation stopped abruptly. A female cadet with thick black hair blanched at the sight of her.

“Senator Organa?” she breathed. “I’ve seen you on the news holos. Everyone has. Because you’re famous. I’m Jessika Pava, by the way. You wouldn’t know me. Obviously. I, uh, just want you to know that your son definitely wasn’t flying an X-wing. I mean, no matter what you heard. Thought you heard, because of course he would never, ah, borrow a starcraft and I would never conduct unauthorized intercept maneuvers --”

The other cadet, a boy, shook his head frantically and Jessika stop talking abruptly. Leia turned to inspect him. Olive skin, curly hair, and yes, his mother’s eyes.

“Poe Dameron?” she said, unable to stop herself from smiling. “I haven’t seen you since --”

“The funeral,” he said quietly. Leia opened her mouth to apologize, but he shook his head. “Dad kind of went off the grid for awhile. We lost touch with a lot of people.”

Leia nodded. “Your mother would be happy to see you in uniform. And I’m happy to see you, even if the circumstances are...unorthodox.”

She looked back at Ben, who was staring at her imploringly. Please don’t ruin this for me.

She shot a thought back. Make no mistake, we’re going to talk about the X-wing later. Then she smiled. “Will your friends be staying for dinner? I can order out.”

“Our son did something wrong?” Han asked, staring at her incredulously. They were eating a Dantooine flatbread on the floor of their bedroom, having ceded the downstairs to Ben’s new friends.

“He stole an X-wing,” Leia said, still feeling faintly shocked. Ben had never even uttered a profanity in her presence, even though she studded her own vocabulary with expletives as soon as she left her office.

“When did he learn how to lie to you?” Han asked, and Leia’s stomach twisted with worry. Was this what Luke had warned her about?

She sighed. “Teach a kid to shield his mind, wind up with a normal teenager,” she said.

Han shrugged. “He is a teenager. A weird one, but still…had to happen sometime, right?” Then he laughed. “You know, I was starting to think we were never going to have a conversation like this.”

Leia couldn’t help but smile back. It was reassuringly normal. Most kids sneaked out of the house for parties and girls. Ben’s reasons were slightly different, but really, he was just acting his age. For once. Still, they couldn’t let their thirteen-year-old dart across the planet -- or the galaxy -- in a high-powered starfighter. “So what do we do about this?” she asked. She was beginning to think that parenthood consisted of feeling alternately proud, overwhelmed, and alarmed, usually in five-minute cycles.

Han drummed his fingers against the floor. “You got any idea who would teach him how to fly an X-wing?”

“Luke would never,” Leia said, still feeling faintly guilty that she’d considered him the first culprit. “On the other hand, Ben does have a large, hairy friend who can’t say no.”

“And has the pass code to a lot of flight simulators,” Han agreed. “I’ll talk to Chewie.”

“And Ben?” Leia asked.

Han smirked back. “Trust me, Princess, I got it under control.”

Leia snorted. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Yeah, me too,” Han said, repeating their old refrain.

They confronted Ben together -- or, more accurately, Leia stood half a pace behind Han and hoped to hell he really did know what he was doing.

“Listen, kid, we’re not stupid enough to think we can stop you flying around if you really want to. Hell, I’m kinda proud that you can,” Han said, grinning.

Leia watched a faint pink flush spread across Ben’s cheekbones. It had pained him to hide his skills, she could tell.

Then Han shook his head. “The thing is, it’s illegal. And if you get arrested for some laser-brained maneuver, it’s on you. We’re not fighting the charges. Hell, we might not even post bail for a few days.”

Leia nodded. “And I hope your scan is excellent.” Ben frowned, and Leia raised her eyebrows. “Your scan? How quickly you can look back and forth from the sensor panel to the viewscreen? I imagined a pilot as experienced as yourself would know the slang. Regardless, if you’re not talking to air traffic control, then you are solely responsible for avoiding collisions. Which I’m sure you realized, because it would be terribly embarrassing to have to tell your new friends you rammed a school shuttle while you were out joyriding.”

Ben was looking pale now. His shoulders, once proud and straight, were slowly slumping, though he refused to lift the smirk from his face.

Han started toward the door, then paused and added, “If you do get busted, try to ditch torpedoes. But don’t be obvious about it. I mean, fire them casually and maybe you can avoid the weapons charges.”

“But don’t arm them before you fire them. You do know how to use the weapons system, right?” Leia said. When Ben blanched, she shrugged. “Of course, if a launchkey were to appear on the table tomorrow morning, your father and I would be happy to retrieve your uncle’s old X-wing from wherever you’ve hidden it. As a favor, naturally.”

When they were safely back in their bedroom, Han grinned. “We’re really pretty good at this, you know?”

Later, Leia would wonder if the stolen X-wing was a warning sign she shouldn’t have ignored. But the launchkey appeared on the dining table the next morning, and she didn’t think about it again.

Winning the argument with Luke was easier than she thought. They stood on the terrace, watching Ben and Poe and Jess work astronav problems by the side of the pool. Well, Ben was working problems. Poe and Jess were trying to distract him by tossing popberries into his hair, but it wasn’t working. Nothing could distract Ben when he had a problem to solve.

And anyway, the berries weren’t sticking. They came close, and then bounced away as if they’d hit an invisible shield.

“Did you teach him that?” Luke asked, tugging on his godawful beard.

Leia shrugged. “We all do things instinctively, don’t we?” She had been able to sense other people’s emotions for as long as she could remember, and she’d honed the talent even though she hadn’t understood what it was. If Ben had some instinctive ability to protect himself, she wasn’t complaining.

Luke looked at her gravely, and Leia shook her head.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, gritting her teeth. “If something about letting go of attachments is about to come out of your mouth…” She didn’t finish the sentence. She could not and would not kick her brother out of her house, no matter how much his Jedi calm rattled her.

“Letting go of attachments doesn’t mean we don’t love people. It means we don’t let those feelings get in the way of the greater good,” he said implacably.

“Can I speak to my brother please? Not the Jedi Master?” Leia snapped.

“I don’t have that luxury. You know that,” Luke said. He looked exhausted, and Leia felt a stab of pity. Since he’d started his training camp, he thought of nothing but duty and obligation. It didn't mean she was going to go easy on him.

“Whether you want to hear it or not, I’m talking to my brother about my son. He’s happy, Luke. He has friends for the first time in his life. I’m not sending him away from here. I gave him my word.” She lifted her chin and dared him to argue back.

Luke sighed, still watching the berries bounce away from Ben’s head. “You know I can’t win an argument with you. Just promise you’ll think about it please?”

“Of course,” Leia promised, even though she’d made up her mind long ago. Then she turned to conversation to old times, when she and Luke and Han had raced across the galaxy on the Millennium Falcon.

That night, her father appeared in her dreams. Not Bail, of course; the universe wasn’t that kind. The man in her dreams was her other father, the one who called himself Anakin even though he was Vader. He had some kind of warning for her, something about Ben. Waves of his fear washed over her mind. But when he tried to speak, the words faded in and out.

You have to want to hear me, he said.

Even in her dreams, Leia’s resolve was ironclad. I don’t accept advice from people who tortured me, she thought as hard as she could. Don’t come back.

The dream left her uneasy for weeks, but she pushed it to the back of her mind. She didn’t allow dead Sith lords to control how she felt, much less the way she raised her child.

If Leia had any doubts about keeping Ben with her, her father’s next name day erased them.

Han was gone, off dealing with some business with something called the First Order, a troublesome remnant of the Empire she’d been keeping an eye on -- even if everyone else in the Senate thought she was paranoid. He’d offered to stay behind, of course, but she’d wanted the intel too much to miss the opportunity. Or she was still terrible at leaning on people, even after all these years.

She padded downstairs early, planning to give herself a few minutes to remember before she went to work. Her eyes lingered on the door to what used to be her training room. Now it was a guest suite. If she started meditating again, would the Force show her her true father? She shook her head and curled her hands more tightly around her tea mug. She’d left all that behind, and with good reason. There was no going back now.

Footsteps on the stairs startled her. Ben stared down from the landing, his hair a disheveled mess.

“I was trying to wake up before you,” he said quietly.

“What for?” Leia asked, taking a sip of her tea, even though it was still too hot. The sharp heat washing across her tongue felt good, which probably didn’t say anything good about her frame of mind.

Ben shrugged. “You know why.” He looked down at the floor. “I know what day this is, even if you never talk about it.”

“Are you sure you’re thirteen?” Leia asked. “You’ve been acting awfully old for your age. Practically an adult.”

“I’d rather be one. I like them better than teenagers. People my age talk about such stupid things.” He settled on the couch next to her. “And you’re trying to change the subject.”

Leia snorted. “Is this what I get for taking you with me on diplomatic trips?” The Yaltans think they’re very clever, always trying to change the subject when they get uncomfortable, she’d told him. She remembered her father complaining of the same thing.

“You’re still doing it,” Ben said, looking pleased with himself for having noticed. “You think I like to talk about myself -- how much I’m learning, how much smarter I am than other people my age.”

“You do like talking about that,” Leia pointed out. It was almost insufferable, but then, Han had never been short on bravado. Of course Ben had picked it up.

“When someone tries to change the subject, a skilled negotiator always changes it back,” Ben said, and Leia rolled her eyes.

“I didn’t intend for you to use your training against me.”

“It would be stupid not to practice against the best,” Ben said. He shook his head. “Flattery would never work against you. Too obvious.” He picked up his data pad from the coffee table and passed it to her. “Anyway, I made a file about Alderaan. Pics, holos, interviews with the diaspora. I know it’s tedious, always having to explain to other people where you’re from. So I made sure I’d understand, if you ever wanted to talk.”

Leia smiled wryly. “It seems I trained an adversary I couldn’t beat.” She slid Ben’s pad into her lap and traced one of the pics with her thumb. It was a map of Aldera. The palace rose on a hill in the middle of the island, and the rest of the city sloped downward toward the blue water of the lake. She zoomed in on a warren of narrow streets near the docks. “There,” she said, pointing at a strip of low-slung brown buildings. “That’s the cantina I used to sneak out to when I was fifteen.”

Ben grinned. “You used to sneak out?”

“All the time. I could always sense it when my bodyguards were distracted. And there were these tunnels under the palace -- old emergency escapes, I suppose. I used to slip through them at night.”

“Tunnels? I didn’t know about those. Where were they?” Ben leaned over so he could see the map too. His body pressed against hers, just like when he’d been small. He used to fall asleep with his head in her lap while she worked late into the night.

Leia zoomed in on the palace so she could find the courtyard where some long-forgotten gardener had hidden the tunnel’s entrance. Suddenly she could see the whole palace as it was when she was fifteen -- flags flapping in the wind, the stable hand who used to take her out secret rides, the exact expression on her bodyguards’ faces when she came back from her secret explorations.

“How did you know I needed this?” she asked.

Ben didn’t look away from her, the way he usually did when they spoke about anything emotional. “I can remember when I was a baby, you know. When you used to carry me through the house when you were sad. I know I shouldn’t be able to, but I can somehow.” He smiled faintly. “It could still be that way, if you wanted it. But better. Because I can talk now.”

When Luke came next, she said that Ben wasn’t leaving, and that was that. She hadn’t started training when she was thirteen, and neither had Luke. They hadn’t turned to the Dark Side, and she didn’t see why her son should be any different.

When Ben was fourteen, she and Han caught him sneaking out again. She told Poe Dameron in no uncertain terms that Ben wasn’t old enough for whatever Naval cadets did at night, but Poe swore that he hadn’t even seen Ben -- not that night, and not on any of the other nights her security cam recorded a stealthy window exit.

When they confronted them, Ben only sneered at Han. “I thought disappearing with no explanation was a family tradition.”

Han’s mouth opened and closed. He swallowed. Finally, he said, “I’ll be home more often. All the time, if you want.”

Ben shrugged. “Play father as much as you like. It won’t make you one.”

When he swept out of the room, neither Leia nor Han tried to stop him. Leia was transfixed by the pain on Han’s face. She knew a hundred variants of that expression - the wounded look in his eyes, the way his jaw set when he was angry, all the leaning and pointing and yelling that were meant to cover up when his feelings were hurt. But she’d never seen him like this: naked, and too hurt to even try to hide it.

“He didn’t mean it,” she said reflexively. “He’s angry, and he’s a teenager and --”

“He meant it, Leia.”

She waited for him to lash out and steeled herself not to fight back. This time, she would take it. But Han didn’t move; he just perched on the arm of the couch with his shoulders slumped, looking off into the middle distance. Slowly, as if she were approaching a wounded animal, she settled onto the sofa, leaving some space between them. When he didn’t run, she looped her fingers through his and tugged him down toward her. He fell heavily but righted himself just before he toppled her over. She leaned against his chest, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her head under his chin -- as if he was the one comforting her. But if pretending to be strong was what Han needed, Leia was more than willing to give it.

Finally, when the light was fading from the sky, he said, “I really fucked up, didn’t I?”

Leia carefully disentangled herself from his arms so should could look at his face. “I don’t think you have the monopoly on that one,” she said, thinking of all the years Ben had weathered her silent grief.

Han just snorted, and Leia sighed. Platitudes weren’t going to solve this one.

“Truth?” she asked, squeezing his hand. Han nodded warily. “You’re gone a lot. We both are. But you go places he can’t follow. I know that’s who you are, but he doesn’t. He thinks you’re leaving him.”

“He hates the Falcon,” Han said. The words fell from his mouth heavy as lead.

“The Falcon is dirty,” Leia pointed out. “Have you noticed how perfectly clean his room is? All right angles, nothing out of place? He likes places that are predictable and safe.”

“He’s your son, Leia,” he said. “He’s ten times more educated than I’ll ever be, and then he goes on these diplomatic trips with you…”

Already she could feel the defeat seeping through him. She hardly needed the Force to hear all the old insecurities bubbling up to the surface. A princess and a guy like me…

“I’m not the one who taught him how to fly,” Leia said firmly, and Han managed to give her half a smile. She swung a leg over him so she could sit in his lap and look down into his eyes. Even now, underneath all the defeat, she could feel appreciation rush through him. This woman is in my lap. She swallowed against the feelings threatening to overwhelm her. “You get a choice, Han. You can leave, and it’s ruined forever. Or you can stay and make it right.”

Han staying did not make it right, though he tried valiantly -- home cooked dinners, flying lessons, whatever Ben wanted. None of it seemed to make a difference. Privately, Leia thought Ben intended to reject his father as often as he had felt rejected by his father, as if he’d kept some secret tally in his heart. It would be many years before she realized exactly what Ben had done: he’d changed the subject, permanently. Everything was about how often Han left home. Nobody ever asked where he’d been going or who he’d met on all those nights out.

Maybe that was when they started to lose him.

The lightsaber was the final straw. Well, that and throwing a man into a wall. Leia discovered both on Ben’s fifteenth birthday.

When she opened her underwear drawer, it felt too light. She opened and closed it again, trying to figure out what was missing. Then she realized her lightsaber was gone. She hadn’t used it in years, but she’d grown accustomed to its steady, reassuring heft in the back of the drawer. Now the thought that it was gone filled her with dread.

Closing her eyes, she focused in a way she hadn’t in years. She could still feel the lightsaber out there waiting, and she almost called it to her -- but no, she needed to see where it was. Still focusing as hard as she could, she climbed the attic stairs two at a time. There was a strange barricade of boxes in the corner, and behind it was her lightsaber. Or rather, the components of her lightsaber, laid out on an old blanket, beneath a stasis field to keep out the dust.

Before she could even process what that meant, her commlink chimed. Poe’s voice was calm and measured. Do not panic, he was trying to say. A strange man had tried to grab Jessika Pava on the street, and Ben had flung him through a plate glass window. The man was alive,and the police weren’t filing charges, but Leia could hardly hear him over the panic rising in her chest.

She wrote Luke a one-sentence message and knew he’d understand: I’m bringing Ben to you now.

Asking Han didn’t even occur to her. When she told him what she’d done, he left. No hot-headed retorts, no angry finger-pointing, just a dry swallow and one sentence.

“He’s my son too.”

She could feel the terror rising in him: he was losing his child into a world he couldn’t follow. It was a betrayal, she knew. Less than a year ago, Leia had sworn that Ben belonged equally to them both, but she’d just decided his fate on her own. Beneath all of that was anger. You can’t control me. He’s mine too and I’ll get him back.

There were a lot of things Leia should have said: that she’d had the dream about Anakin again. That something happened inside of you when you used the Force to hurt someone, and Ben couldn’t do it again. That if she hesitated for just one moment, she wouldn’t have been able to send him away. But right then, at that moment, she could feel nothing except the incessant buzzing of her own fear that their son would be lost forever if they couldn’t let go of him for a little while.

So she said the only thing she could think of: “If you try to bring him back, I’ll stop you.”

Han left. No yelling, no pointing, just hollow steps down the stairs and out the door. In the silence that followed, she told herself that Han would be back. He always came back. He would see that Ben was alright with Luke and he’d understand what she’d done. Then he would come home.

But Ben wasn’t alright, and Han never did come home.

Afterward, Lor San Tekka offered her a death certificate and a body to bury, so Ben could start a new life with a new name when he came home.

“Don’t you mean if?” she’d forced herself to say, but he’d only shaken his head. Leia thought she’d never known a greater kindness, but she refused the offer all the same. Ben could have no redemption without facing what he’d done.

She had no answers, except that she felt something snap between her and Ben the moment she sent him away. Maybe he’d been teetering before. Maybe he’d found a master of his own already; maybe he’d stumbled into darkness while teaching himself. She could see now how vulnerable he’d been. The resentment over his father’s absences, carefully tucked away. The loneliness of being so brilliant and so young, the brittle longing for praise stoked by a master who only ever told him what he wanted to hear. And her own terrible example of Jedi knighthood: that a person could take what they wanted from the Force and leave the rest, use the powers while abandoning the philosophy, build lightsabers on a whim.

But always her mind circled back to that moment when she’d told him he had to leave. His mental shields had dissolved, and a tangled mass of feelings washed over her: rejection, betrayal, anger. Then their connection snapped. That was the moment he made his choice, she was sure.

So she tried to tell him that he could come home, whatever way she could. Every year on his name day, she transmitted whatever he might like to read to the furthest corners of the galaxy: interplanetary relations journals, scientific research studies, excerpts from novels that he’d loved, and pieces of poems she’d found at the bottom of his desk drawer.

He only answered once, on the day the whole Hosnian System disappeared from the stars. His mind brushed hers, and she felt his relief that she was alive. She pushed all her senses out at once, trying to tell him she loved him still, but he was gone too fast.

Fifteen years after Ben’s betrayal and twenty-four hours after Han’s funeral, Leia went back home. Dust muffled the sound of her footsteps. The mouse droid sat motionless in a corner, its batteries long since dead. Ben’s room was exactly as she’d left it. Schoolwork and novels still lay on his desk, printed on flimsy because he’d loved old fashioned things. She’d never touched any of it, just in case he came home.

The attic stairs creaked under her feet. In the back corner, behind a jumble of boxes, her lightsaber still lay disassembled on the floor. No dust here - the stasis field had kept it clean. She reached out to touch the crystal for the first time in almost twenty years. She’d failed the last time she’d tried to build a lightsaber. Now she had no choice but to succeed. Legs crossed, hands on her knees, she closed her eyes and let the light in. All those years, and still it came back to her. She felt the past stretching out behind her and the future spread in front of her -- shorter than it used to be, but still there -- and this time she picked up the right parts and snapped them into place, just as thousands of men and women before her. When she pressed the ignition, a dim purple glow filled the attic, and she could feel Han’s presence in it.

Maybe she should be angry with Ben. Maybe she should hate him. But mothers don’t have those luxuries. She was the last person alive who loved her son, and she was going to bring him home.