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Five years after the end of the war, Leia retired. The third Republic had taken its first, tottering steps with her hands as a careful guide. There were others, younger and less full of old regrets, who would make excellent caretakers, nurturing this brave, new galaxy into a proper civilization again. She spent three more years acting as a consultant to anyone who asked for her advice, and to a few who didn't but needed the push.
She considered staying longer, was planning on staying longer, until she received the letter.
"You coming?"
As elegant literary masterpieces went, it lacked. Tucked in with the flimsy was a set of pictures. Three showed a landscape that stole her breath: rolling green meadows racing to the foot of tall, snow-peaked mountains, and a lake so pure and blue the sky reflected in a perfect mirror. The last showed a small house, curved and cozy, perched at the edge of the gleaming water. There were a set of coordinates.
Eight years without a war, and longer without peace. There were words Leia never said, and names she refused to speak. Her friends had all drifted one by one into their new lives as civilians, as servants of the Republic, as free citizens. She fought battles inside her heart, mostly with the past.
"You coming?" She reread the message again, knowing the scrawling handwriting anywhere.
It took a few months to settle her debts and shuffle the last of her burdens to stronger arms. She didn't need to carry the Republic. She did need a shuttle, and she needed to say her goodbyes.
"You're running away." Leia went to defray his suspicions, but Lando was an old hand at seeing through lies. They hadn't spoken much since.... Since. She needed to see him one more time.
"I'm going away. I'm not running."
"The last few years have been hard for us all. You can get past this, Leia." He smiled. "You're everyone's rock."
"What every girl wants to hear." She kissed his cheek, and she wrote down the coordinates. "Don't hand this out. You can come visit us."
"Us?"
"I'll see you," she said, instead of goodbye.
It had been decades since everything she owned couldn't fit in the cargo hold of one small ship, and she'd given away or sold most of that in the last month. She packed warm clothes, and light dresses, and she packed a good supply of the medication she took for the aches that had nothing to do with her heart. She'd been travelling enough recently that another departure in her shuttle was only noted by the Dock Master where she kept her ship.
"Another holiday?" it asked, stamping electronic approval with a cheery, programmed smile.
"The best kind."
The trip took three days. Leia reread two of her favorite books, and frowned briefly as she had to adjust the resolution on her datapad to make the text a little bigger again.
She found the house without much trouble. There was a landing pad down the road, big enough for her shuttle and not blocking the view. The trees weren't a variety she knew, but they whispered to her as the leaves brushed hands in the light wind. She'd expected to be greeted, but then, she hadn't sent her reply. She'd assumed he knew.
"You're late," Luke said, as he'd said dozens or hundreds of times back before everything went bad. The three of them had their little place together, and rattled around one another, and Luke would cook and tease her about coming home late to supper.
He sat out in front of the house, a wooden chair holding him as he leaned over a bucket of what Leia would soon discover were beans. His strong hands pulled them from their pods, dropping the husks in a sack on the ground. He didn't stand.
She tried to remember what she used to say. "I had work to finish."
"Anything interesting?" He didn't look up from his work, picking up another handful and separating out two and three beans from each pod. The pile of husks filled the sack. He'd been at this for some time.
"Nothing you'd like to hear about. Politics. You know."
He nodded. There were more lines on his face than the last time she'd seen him. He carried the same griefs she did, but where Leia was stone, her twin was sand. She expected him to blow away from her. He had left again, after everything. But he had found this place that reminded her achingly of her first home, and he had called her here.
"Want help with that?"
"I've got it. Did you bring much luggage?" His eyes flicked up to her now, and she could feel the sudden flutter of his heart. He played at their old routine because they didn't have a new routine. He didn't know if she was coming to visit, or to stay.
"Everything I own. Not much. I travel light these days."
Luke dropped the last of the beans into his bucket and carried it to a handpump a few steps away, where he cleaned off his hands and poured water over the beans. "These will need to soak tonight."
Of course. Or not. Leia didn't know much about beans. Food was something she bought hot from a seller, or ate cold off a tray. The peculiarities of meal preparation had mystified her as much as her laborious regimen with her hair pins had mystified Luke and Han both.
"Can't you, you know, just cut it off?" Han had asked her once when she'd roped him into helping and gotten stabbed in the scalp twelve times as a result.
"No."
She wouldn't ask about the beans. Possibly they were magic.
Han wasn't here, and Leia had a contentious relationship with the concept of ghosts. "Luke?"
He dried his hands. "I wasn't sure you'd come," he said, his voice catching. "I didn't know if you were angry with me for leaving again. I was angry with me."
"Trust me, I've been too busy being angry with myself to bother with anyone else." Someone had to say it first, and he was too nervous, the same as he'd been the very first night after their very first victory when he'd tried to ask her for a dance at the celebration. He had that same fearful, hopeful face he'd worn as a boy, and again, he left the words to Leia. "I missed you."
"I missed you more."
She had to say the words but neither of them paused now as they met in the middle of the space between them for an embrace. He was as solid and as fragile as she remembered, his grey hair smelling of woodsmoke and the good, fresh scent of the clear air around them. She felt his arms take in the changes in her since they last hugged this hard, the places she'd grown harder and where she'd grown softer. She could feel the edge of his mind, not open to her yet, not ready, but close and warm and radiant with love.
Luke always gave the best hugs.
His eyes were wet when he finally pulled back enough to see her face, and she would never admit hers were, too.
The floodgates open, they walked together into the little house, Luke showing her every room with a sweet pride. The planet, the world, that hearkened back to every story she'd ever told him of her childhood, but this squat home, filled with comfort and utility both, spoke of his own. He'd already cooked another meal, which kept warm in the oven, just enough for two.
"I felt you coming, but I wasn't sure when you'd arrive. I thought you'd be earlier, then I wondered if you'd set down in the village. It's not far. I've been meeting people, and I can get in any supplies you'd like."
"Did you tell them you were going to have company?"
His smile was cagey. "I said I was expecting a guest. I never once said when or who."
She was hidden here, then. Away from the spiral of galactic woes, away from the last few living enemies who still carried enough of a grudge to want her dead, away from anyone who knew who she was.
Leia relaxed, and ate her supper while Luke told her all about the planet.
After dinner, she went back to her ship and he helped her bring in her things. Stuffed inside Luke's spare room, it looked like more than she remembered stowing onto her shuttle, but that was usually the way. This side of the planet was going into winter. She could put away her summer dresses into the wardrobe all along one wall. She hung up all but one.
Leia emerged from the guest room wearing her favorite blue dress, simple and hanging and comfortable. Luke startled at her clothing change, which was funny because she'd had so many more clothes back when they'd been young.
"I like that one," he said.
"So do I." She kissed him, simply and quickly. She felt his intake of breath, saw the worry on his face, felt the last of his regrets bobbing at the top of his mind, and she kissed him again until he turned his head.
"Leia," he said, his breath ragged. "I didn't invite you here expecting anything. You don't have to."
She smiled at him and rubbed his head with her knuckle. "You've known me how long? When have you ever known me to do something I didn't want to?" His mind remained closed to her. "Unless you don't." She leaned back, just a space, allowing him room to flee.
In the old days, the three of them had tumbled into bed casually in pairs and together with the unspoken agreement it was all just a friendly means of keeping warm at night. She'd known even then Luke was more than a little in love with her, and looking back, she understood Han had been in love with both of them. Talking was hard. Resting between disasters snuggled in the middle of two men she wasn't ready to admit she loved was easy.
That was all a long time ago. The end of the war had changed Luke, and he'd pulled away from them. Perhaps he was still pulling.
His good hand found her face, and he stroked her cheek. She felt the locks in his mind open, allowing her inside, allowing her to see through his eyes the woman he'd always loved. He had never stopped wanting her back in his arms. She kissed him again, and felt the enfolding joy in his thoughts as he returned her kiss.
Winter passed slowly here. Leia loved nothing more than staying in their nice, warm bed half the day, watching the snow drift outside and wondering if the lake would freeze solid enough to coax him out to skate. She would risk a broken bone for the chance to see Luke sliding on ice. The village had winter carnivals, and a festival to celebrate the darkest night of the year. Leia attended each among people who didn't know who she used to be, and who treated her like anyone else.
Towards the end of the winter, as Leia was in the village purchasing supplies and catching up on the news, a woman whose name she didn't remember took Leia by the arm. "You must promise me that your husband will bring his preserves to the opening of the spring festival."
The word startled her. Han was her husband, for good and bad. She'd been widowed, not divorced. Despite the quiet conversations Luke had sometimes with entities she couldn't see, Leia felt Han was no longer here with them. He might rejoin them someday when she and Luke both passed on into the Force, and she would be glad for it. But this stranger, she didn't know Han, didn't know what had gone wrong with Ben, didn't know anything save that the cantankerous old man who lived alone by the lake was no longer alone. All she could see, all any of them could see, was two middle-aged people who had known each other forever, and who had loved each other all their lives, and who intended to spend the rest of those lives together in a house that was everything either needed of home.
If that didn't make Luke her husband, nothing would.
"He will. I'll make sure of it."