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“Wait a minute,” Luke says. “You— you actually met Ben?”
Leia blinks, a little confused at the question.
“Yeah,” she says. “I was kidnapped. I rescued him. He gave me my first Blaster holder.”
Han scoffs.
“No Blaster?”
“I could have beat you where I stood right then,” Leia replies, not missing a beat. She doesn’t know what it is about Han that gets her so frustrated. She usually doesn’t get snippy mad, except occasionally while fucking around as a young Senator.
(Those days already feel so far away, but maybe it’s just that she knows there is no going back. Not for her.
There is no Alderaan. There is no Senate. She’s taken over a good chunk of her father’s network, but even that is a mess in the aftermath.)
(When she was a child, and Obi-Wan saved her, wanting to go home was something achievable.)
“Princess, I’m—”
“I mean it, I could have beat some lowlife like you as a child, even if you were probably a slimy teenager by then,” Leia says, pointing a finger right at him, fittingly like a gun. Han raises his hands.
“Sure, Princess,” he says.
Chewbacca laughs. Good.
“I just—” Luke stammers. “I think I’d remember him leaving. I mean, Ben would visit us at least once a month, when I was a kid. Ever since… one Tusken raid. Hey, when was this?”
Leia rattled off the date. Luke pauses. Hmms.
“That… is around when he started coming by,” he says. “Weird. What did you do to him?”
“Torture, probably,” Han says. “I bet you were a much better behaved kid, Kid.”
“Hard to top running away from home for the afternoon and ending up on another planet,” Leia says. It’s still a fond memory, despite what happened, or what came after. The kidnapping. The torture.
But she got to know Obi-Wan Kenobi, and she finally felt…
Alderaanian.
Luke, probably because he’s a Jedi, but mostly because he’s Luke, seems to notice the change in mood instantly, and he takes her hand. Leia smiles at him. If Han drives her crazy, Luke makes her feel safe. It’s such a natural connection.
He’s quickly become the person she trusts most in this world. Her best friend, but that never quite feels right…
(A thought: twice now she met Jedi, here to rescue her. She didn’t know it either time. But Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi both found her and felt like family. )
“Oh yeah?” Han says. “Sounds like you needed to get rescued then, too.”
It was her own thought but it’s annoying out of his mouth. Leia huffs.
“Believe what you want,” she says, and she leaves it at that. “But I did meet him.”
She leans against Luke, and she shakes off the memories.
The past is a painful place.
It’s several years later, and Leia is thinking back. Back when she was a girl, and she asked. Couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
“Father, how did Obi-Wan know my father?”
“…They were family.”
“But weren’t Jedi taken from their families?”
“…It’s more complicated than that, if you see them. If you could see them together, speaking to each other…”
Obi-Wan Kenobi trained Anakin Skywalker. He called her passionate like him. Like she was wonderful like he was.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was killed by Darth Vader, the man who held her in place as Alderaan was blown to nothing.
She isn’t like Luke. She can’t forgive that monster because she had a father, a father who begged Obi-Wan Kenobi to save her. Not a father who tortured her.
But Luke is her brother.
Maybe… it’s easy enough to think that Obi-Wan was family, too.