Chapter Text
The trees of Endor swallowed the last of the evening light quickly.
Leia walked beneath them alone, arms folded against the chill, the hem of her borrowed gown brushing through the grass around her ankles.
She had discovered, in the days since the battle, that quiet was not always peaceful.
At first she had welcomed it.
No alarms.
No briefings.
No evacuation orders or casualty reports.
No desperate calculations about where the Empire would strike next.
For the first time in years, there was time.
Time to breathe.
Time to sleep.
Time to imagine something beyond survival.
And, inevitably, time to remember.
Leia slowed beneath a break in the canopy.
Above her, the first stars were beginning to appear.
She stopped.
For a moment she was somewhere else.
A field of tall golden grass.
The skirts of a child’s dress brushing against her legs as she ran.
The smell of spring flowers.
Home rising in the distance.
Someone calling her name.
Leia closed her eyes.
Father.
The memory disappeared.
She tilted her face toward the stars.
Somewhere beyond them was a place where Alderaan should have been.
She knew exactly where.
She always knew.
“Where were you?”
Her voice barely carried beyond the trees.
Leia swallowed.
“It was night.”
She tried to picture it.
The palace dark except for the lamps along the corridors.
Her father still awake over some document because Bail Organa had never learned when to stop working.
Her mother reading beside him.
Or sleeping.
Or perhaps they had been apart.
That thought hurt more than she expected.
“Were you awake?” she whispered. “Were you with Mother?”
Her throat tightened.
“Or were you alone?”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
Leia did not wipe it away.
“We did it.”
The words broke around a small laugh that became something dangerously close to a sob.
“We actually did it.”
The Emperor was dead.
Vader was dead.
The second Death Star was gone.
The Empire had not vanished with them, Leia knew that. There would be battles ahead. Governments to rebuild. Worlds to liberate. Grief enough for generations.
But the thing Bail had fought for all those years...
The thing Breha had quietly sacrificed so much to protect...
It had survived them.
Leia pressed her lips together.
“You were right.”
The forest answered with nothing more than the wind moving through the branches.
She let herself cry.
Not for long.
She had become very skilled at that.
A few minutes stolen here and there. A locked room. A darkened corridor. The silence after everyone else had gone to sleep.
Enough to remember.
Never enough to drown in it.
Her parents would have hated that.
Not the grief.
The surrender.
Bail and Breha Organa had not raised her to live looking backward.
Leia wiped beneath her eyes.
For years she had wondered how much of herself had come from them and how much belonged to people she had never known.
Now she had some of those answers.
More than she had wanted.
Blood could explain some things, perhaps.
Temper.
Instinct.
The strange power Luke insisted lived inside her.
But blood had not taught her what justice looked like.
It had not taught her compassion.
It had not sat beside her through tedious lessons or corrected her when certainty became arrogance.
It had not taught her when to fight and, just as importantly, when to listen.
Bail had done that.
Breha had done that.
Whatever else she might be, they had made her Leia.
Footsteps sounded softly behind her.
Leia did not turn.
A moment later, two familiar arms slipped around her waist.
She leaned back immediately.
“You okay?”
Han’s voice was quiet against her hair.
Leia nodded.
He didn’t ask again.
That was one of the things she had begun to understand about him.
Han could be relentless when she was hiding something from him.
But when she truly couldn’t speak, he somehow knew the difference.
She turned in his arms and rested her cheek against his chest.
He smelled like smoke, leather, and the forest.
Alive.
Leia closed her eyes.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
She could hear his heartbeat beneath her ear.
“Just thinking,” she finally said.
Han kissed the top of her head.
“Dangerous habit.”
A weak laugh escaped her.
“About my parents.”
His arms tightened slightly.
Leia pulled back enough to look at him.
“My father would’ve liked you.”
Han’s eyebrows rose.
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“The senator?”
“The prince consort.”
“That makes it worse.”
Despite herself, Leia smiled.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
She studied his face.
“My father was stubborn.”
“Already like him.”
“Opinionated.”
“Better and better.”
“Impossible when he thought he was right.”
Han grinned.
“Princess, I think your old man and me would’ve gotten along great.”
Leia laughed softly.
Then her smile faltered.
“He was good,” she said. “Strong. Fair. He believed people could be better than they were.”
Han’s expression softened.
“And my mother...” Leia stopped.
For a second she could see Breha perfectly.
Her hands.
Her smile.
The way she could make an entire room quiet without ever raising her voice.
Leia looked down.
“My mother would have loved you.”
Han was silent.
When Leia looked up again, his thumb brushed gently beneath her eye.
“I would’ve liked to meet them.”
Simple words.
No reassurance.
No attempt to tell her they somehow knew, or were watching, or would be proud.
Just the truth.
Leia nodded.
“I would’ve liked that too.”
She moved back into his arms.
Han held her beneath the trees while the last light disappeared from Endor.
Above them, somewhere beyond the canopy, there was still an empty place in the stars.
Leia knew it would always be there.
But for the first time in a very long while, when she thought of home, she could remember more than how it ended.