Chapter Text
By the time Leia Organa was 29, she was already a former General of a Rebel Alliance, retired Senator of Alderaan, and decorated hero of a Galactic Civil War. That was not the end of her career—there was still so much more to do, so much policy and infrastructure and trust to build, that she could have had her hands full for another twenty-nine years. But instead, as her thirtieth life-day approached, Leia found herself informing her friends in the New Republic that she was taking an extended leave. Private business.
“The Republic won’t collapse the moment you take your eyes off it,” Mon Mothma reassured her. “If it does, that’s a bigger problem in itself.”
Mon was a pragmatist, adaptable where Leia was willful. The ebb and tide of allies being absent or at hand was a pattern she was experienced in navigating.
Han was another story. For a free-wheeling smuggler, he hated not knowing where his friends and loved ones were.
“It’s not forever,” Leia told him, leaning up for a kiss.
“Better not be,” he said. “Pretty sure I can’t wait that long.” But he didn’t try to stop her, or insist on coming with her—neither of which she would have allowed anyway.
She waved at him from a porthole as the passenger liner took off, him in his ratty old vest, her in a cool gray silk robe. She felt oddly civilian, a luxury she’d never had as a child or young adult, not even when undercover. A normal human woman, off to meet an old family friend on the other side of the galaxy while her lover stayed home.
The Mos Espa market on Tatooine was hot and colorful: more species and languages than the Galactic Senate, and nearly as much swearing. The locals weren’t nearly as interested in gossip as in turning a profit. Leia dodged a job offer to become one of Jabba the Hutt’s “special aides,” but got conned into buying a half-dozen shriveled kiwaps twice as expensive as they were worth.
“Kiwaps, hard to grow,” warbled the fruit seller. “No water.”
“I’m not looking for kiwaps,” said Leia. “I’m looking for a Jedi. Goes by Ben Kenobi.”
“No kenobs, kiwaps,” insisted the fruit seller, gesturing sharply with two left claws. One of the claws knocked a few fruits off the stand, and the fruit seller bent over, grumbling, to scoop them into a little bag, which ze then forced into Leia’s hand. “Ten trugguts.”
Leia paid the ten trugguts.
It wasn’t like she expected Ben Kenobi to be easy to find. Most of the Jedi of the old Republic were like that: if they were traceable, they were dead. If they were alive, the only news came from rumors.
In the years following the Empire’s defeat, Force-sensitive refugees began to reveal themselves, but paltry few of them had ever been part of the Jedi Order. Fewer still had been adults when the Empire sent troopers to gun them down. Leia remembered meeting a young Wookiee Jedi who said, I haven’t seen my Master for over twenty years. Hearing the banked hope, how that translated to, She could still be out there.
“Why are you looking for a Jedi on a dustbowl like Tatooine?”
Leia turned to face her interrogator. “Who’s to say a Jedi can’t be on Tatooine?”
The other was a woman with bitter eyes and a mouth that looked like it rarely smiled. She was clad in a trim, dark outfit that screamed Empire, but a distinctive hilt hung from the side of her belt. When Leia’s gaze caught on the shape, the woman clapped a hand over it as if in reflex.
Jedi, thought Leia. Or not?
“You know where he is,” she said. “You wouldn’t have approached me if not.”
“Maybe I just wanted to see why a fancy princess would come sniffing around this old wasteland.”
“I have… a connection to him. My father was Bail Organa, a friend of the Jedi—”
“I don’t know who that is.”
Leia’s lips pressed tightly, feeling some of her stubbornness rise up to meet the other woman’s own. For a split second, she saw a large wave in her mind’s eye, looming dark and heavy. If she let it crash down on her, it would break her in half.
At length, the woman said, “Obi-wan doesn’t want visitors. He’d rather hide from the galaxy being pathetic instead.” She gave Leia an unreadable look.
“Follow me, but don’t get your hopes up.”