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Growing up on Tatooine is hard. The sand cuts you and the sun burns. Leia Skywalker knows this better than most. She also knows that she will never leave; this cursed, wretched planet is hers. It belongs to her and her ancestors. She knows that when she dies her body will be swallowed up by the sand and her bones will rest with her kin.
Leia had a father once, or she’s told she did; Anakin Skywalker exists as nothing more than ghost to her. Her uncle and aunt don’t mention him often, but Leia doesn’t mind all that much, she doesn’t care for ghosts; ghosts are just grief, and Leia has nothing to grieve.
Leia Skywalker competes in pod-races. The feeling of air rushing past you, the weightlessness and the freedom, is like a drug. Theres a certain comfort in knowing if she makes a mistake, she’ll die. It’s the certainty, Leia thinks.
Leia first feels true anger when she is 9 years old. A pilot got lost on his way to Mos Eisley and she gave him directions. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing in the desert?” the man asked her. Leia ran.
This was also the day she felt true fear. The anger came later, when she was safe.
She is still 9 years old when she goes to Ben Kenobi. He’s looking at her like he’s seen a ghost. Leia, predictably, doesn’t react well to that. She has little love for ghosts.
“You were a soldier in the Clone Wars.” Leia states.
“I was.”
“Teach me to fight.”
Ben Kenobi freezes at that. “Why do you need to fight?” he asks her, something guarded in his tone.
“The galaxy isn’t a very kind place.”
Ben Kenobi acquiesces. They meet every day at the top of the canyon.
Leia is 16 years old when she buys a pair of droids. They ask after Kenobi, and she brings them to him.
Leia is 16 years old and the prince in the message has captured her attention. He feels like a puzzle she doesn’t have all the pieces for.
Her and Ben Kenobi leave immediately. They meet a smuggler in Mos Eisley. They board his ship.
(Leia doesn’t discover the body of the only parents she’s ever known.)
Leia boards the Death Star and immediately runs into Darth Vader. She stares at him. He stares back.
Ben Kenobi comes running into the room and Darth Vader’s attention is no longer on her.
“STOP.” She yells, and miraculously, Darth Vader pauses in his attempts to kill her teacher.
“Who are you to command me, puny girl?” Darth Vader rasps out.
“My name is Leia Skywalker, and you need to leave my teacher the fuck alone.” She tells him, trying to sound braver than she is.
The room is quiet after that. Ben Kenobi panics silently and Darth Vader is staring at her again. Then he turns to Ben Kenobi who can only nod. The air in the room turns murderous. She prepares herself to fight, just as the smuggler yells that they’re leaving.
Leia grabs Ben Kenobi and fucking sprints towards the Falcon.
The prince’s name is Luke Organa.
“I gave them the name of a planet to spare my own.” He confesses to her while they are on their way to the rebel base.
“Did you save your people?” she replies.
“Yes, but—” he starts, before she interrupts him.
“There is no ‘but’. You saved your people. Now you live with your guilt.”
“How?”
She’s silent after that.
The Alliance is now the possession of the plans to the death star. Luke is back with his parents, who started fussing over him the second they saw him.
Leia asks who stole the plans originally. She is met with solemn eyes and handed a file on Rogue One.
Leia Skywalker destroys the Death Star, but one of the Imperials nick her ship and she’s impaled on her own ship. She closes her eyes.
She wakes up in a med-bay with a bright faced Luke above her and Han Solo asleep in the chair next to her cot.
She was given a blood transfusion and Luke was the only available person to give it. Their DNA matched.
Leia Skywalker has a brother.
She corners Ben Kenobi and asks what the fuck he thought he was doing on the death star.
“I was helping you, young one.” He replies.
“No! you weren’t! you were trying to get yourself killed!” she yells, and for the first time in 7 years, she feels tears stinging her eyes. She blinks.
It is not Ben Kenobi who tells her the truth of her father, but Breha Organa. She sits down in front of Leia and changes her life with a sentence.
Luke Organa does not come see her after he is told.
Ben Kenobi says he will not hide anything else from her and she demands that he teach her the ways of the force. He looks stricken at the idea, but he acquiesces.
(Ben Kenobi will never be able to deny Leia Skywalker. She inherited his undying loyalty.)
Leia Skywalker is angry. She can feel her hatred festering inside her. She can also feel her fear clawing its way through, past her rib cage and into her heart. Fear and anger have always been a pair, for Leia.
She tracks down Luke and demands he spend time with her. They play cards and they laugh and for a moment she is 16 and the weight of the galaxy isn’t on her shoulders.
She finds Han Solo and kisses him.
Leia Skywalker steals a ship and sets a course for Coruscant.
When she gets close, she tries to reach her father through the force. He responds.
He meets her at the base of the Imperial Palace. They walk in together.
Palpatine dies at her father’s hand and then she kills her father.
In the end, her doom is from the Palace collapsing.
Leia Skywalker died at 16 years old. She will never grow older, and she will be remembered by the galaxy as King Luke Organa’s dead sister.
Luke Organa feels it the moment his sister dies. He runs to Ben Kenobi who is already on the floor. Amidst his silent tears he chokes out, “you were born first.” And Luke Organa’s heart breaks.
Ben Kenobi felt Anakin die. His brother is dead now. The final blow, that will ensure Ben Kenobi never recovers, is the death of Leia Skywalker. The little 9-year-old girl who demanded he teach her is dead. The galaxy had never been kind to Skywalker’s, but he had hoped. Oh, how he had hoped.
Han Solo finds out along with the rest of the rebels and something in him cracks.
(Leia Skywalker’s bones were never left to rest in the desert.)
The future is an everchanging thing but here is a glimpse of the galaxy, Post-Leia Skywalker:
Luke Organa is crowned at 27. He meets his wife at 24. He marries his wife, Mara Jade, when he’s 28. On his side of the aisle, there is a seat saved that no one dares sit in.
His first child is named Skye.
(He still cannot bear to say her name.)
Han Solo never fell in love with Leia Skywalker. They just didn’t have the time, he knows he would have though.
If Leia Skywalker had lived past 16, Han knows he would have loved her more than anything in the galaxy.
But they did not have the time, and Leia Skywalker did not live past 16.
It doesn’t mean he ever fell in love with anyone else though.
She was it for him, he knows that.
Ben Kenobi fulfils a wish he made to a much younger Leia and visits Ahsoka.
(“You have family somewhere. I know you do!”
“Maybe but I do not know them anymore.”
“So, get to know them idiot.”
“Mhm.”)
It is Ahsoka who restarts the Jedi order. She teaches compassion and love and listens to anyone who asks to talk. She never lets any of her students have no one. She listens to them, and she pays attention to their visions.
This is the future Leia Skywalker will never see.