The smell of alcohol and smoke is in the air, somehow both threatening and calming. It's early, most people are still sleeping, the left overs of both the battle and the party still lying all around the place. Luke smiles.
They've won. It's still unbelievable, indescribably, to know that the Emperor is dead, that the Death Star is destroyed. The Empire still lives, but this is the victory they've been waiting for for years. From now on they are no longer the underdogs, doomed to loose. They are the winning team.
He looks around, trying to find Leia. They'd slept in the same hut, unwilling the let the other out of their sight for longer than absolutely necessary, but when he'd woken up, she hadn't been there. He needs to talk to her.
Yesterday, there had not been much time to talk, with all of them celebrating their victory and being alive, and before that there had been the shadow of Vader hanging above everything. It's only now that he can actually talk to her, talk to his sister, as unbelievable as that still is.
She's not by the fire, neither is she at the well. For a moment Luke panics, worries about escaped Imps or traitors or Vader finding her after all or...
No. He'd know if she had been hurt. He's not sure how he knows this, but he is absolutely certain that he'd have felt it.
For a moment, he considers waking Han, still fast asleep in their hut, and ask him for help in finding Leia. But no. As much as he likes Han, has come to see the older man as something akin to a big brother, this is something between him and Leia, something they have to do themselves.
Luke concentrates, closes his eyes and tries to focus on the lifes around him. Some are bright and awake, many are dull with sleep, but... there. A mind as bright as the twin suns of Tatooine, and as familiar as his own. For a moment he can't understand why he never noticed this before.
He lets the Force guide him to her, speeding up even though he knows she is safe. Suddenly, the need to see her, to make sure with his own eyes that she is alright, is overwhelming.
Leia is sitting on a rock when he finds her, eyes closed. She does not smile, but she does not cry, either, though Luke thinks both reactions would be equally called for. Before he can announce himself, he feels her in the back of his mind, a calm touch, curious, but more controlled than he had expected from his not trained sister.
It's the strangest thing, to feel her in his mind like this. What's even stranger is to realize that this is not the first time it has happened. He remembers feeling the same thing when hanging on the underside of Bespin, when he had desperately called out for someone to hear him. Considering it now, he realizes that he must have reached out for her like he does now, tapping into a bond that must have existed between them since they were born.
Quietly, he sits down next to her. He wants to put an arm around her, pull her close, but for some reason he doesn't even touch her. A sense of exitment, worry and anger and joy all mixed together, settles in his gut. It makes him want to jump, to run, to do something, but he stays where he is.
Looking at Leia, he suspects it might be her emotion more so than his.
After a few moments, Leia opens her eyes. They are swirling with emotions, though she seems to try to calm herself. It's interesting, because Luke has rarely known Leia to surpress her emotions. She's always worked with her grief, always used anger and sadness and fear as her weapons. To see her actively try to control them is … not exactly new, but uncommon.
"My mother taught me." She answers his unasked question. "Not our birth mother, my adoptive one. She always said that a princess must know her feelings and understand why she has them. It... for a long time, it was too painful for me, to use her advice. And there were a lot of things I did not want to spend too much time thinking about. I couldn't bear to remember Alderaan, to remember my parents. It didn't make sense to try and understand my feelings when I was not ready to remember Alderaan, and so I just... didn't, for a long time."
She is not looking at him, watching the trees in front of them instead, but still, it feels incredibly personal to hear her tell him all this. A bond is between them, and while it's not a new one, it's one that is strengthening, one that Luke can't possibly ignore anymore, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't.
"Aunt Beru always said that no matter what you feel, you have to make sure that there's some sort of balance. Even the greatest anger has to be tempered by something, be it your own control or another emotion, like grief or joy. Even in your saddest moment, you have to remember that you are not alone, and that there is more to life than anger." He can see her in his mind, with her warm brown eyes shining through the strands of dull brown hair, her calloused, familiar hands lying on his shoulders or cooking dinner.
"They would have liked each other, I think." Leia says, looking at Luke. There are unshed tears in her eyes, but she doesn't move to hide them or wipe them away as she usually does.
"Aunt Beru would have felt horribly out of place next to a queen. But she was warm hearted, and wise. She would have welcomed her into our home and offered her milk, even if our home was small and dirty." Luke smiles as he thinks about it. Aunt Beru had often told him about his mother, the pretty off-worlder Padme, and how she had considered Padme a friend even though they came from such different places and had only seen each other that once.
"Mama would have drunk the milk and complimented the home. And then she'd have started talking about the difficulties of raising kids, I'm sure. She always made a point to establish a common ground to start a real conversation." Leia smiles fondly, her eyes lightening a bit as she clearly remembers the woman who raised her.
Luke doesn't know much about Breha Organa. He's seen a few holos in the years since he joined the Alliance and became Leia Organa's best friend, but the pictures of a beautiful, distant lady do not actually give him that much information. He does know Leia loved her though, and he knows that for this alone, Aunt Beru would have tried to become friends with her.
"I wish they could have met." Luke says, and Leia takes his hand with a sad smile. For a few moments they just sit there, contemplating it. The silence, broken only by the noises of the forest, is not awkward. It's comfortable, knowing that his sister is right next to him, safe and alive and somewhat happy.
His sister. It is still something he can't quite grasp, even though it feels so utterly right to refer to her as this. It feels as if a part of him has always known, and isn't that the strangest thing?
As if she read his mind (which, given that he can still feel her mind bright and close and open, is an actual possibility, he supposes) Leia looks at him.
"I've always wanted a brother. I had Winter, and I love her, always did, but... I wanted a brother. Someone who would play with me, who'd climb the trees and play catch and all that. Winter was always a bit too proper for that, even when we were small." She smiles as she says it, though there is an edge of sadness in her mind.
Luke has met Winter Organa exactly once. He had decided quickly that he respects Leia's sister, but they had not had the chance to become friends yet.
Slowly, he puts his arm around Leia's shoulders, and she leans into him. It's a wonderful feeling, as if a part of him finally slots into the right place. Twins are two pieces of a whole, never truly complete without the other. Amee's voice echoes in his head, and he smiles. He'd hated that saying when he was a boy, but now...
"I've always known that I'd had a sister." Luke says, and immediately notes Leia's surprise. She doesn't say anything, doesn't move, but her mind, bonded to his in a way he doesn't truly understand just yet, allows him to see her confusion. "You know, among our people on Tatooine, Luke and Leia are twin names. You don't find a Leia without a Luke, and there's no Luke without a Leia. When you do, it's because the twin has died, or was sold to live far away, not because there is no twin. That's why I always knew that at least at one point, I had had a sister named Leia. Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen didn't know anything about it, but they always assumed my sister had either been stillborn or died on the way to Tatooine, and so that's what I thought, too." He grimaces a bit. As a young boy, he'd often wondered about his sister, and sometimes he'd cried because he felt so lonely, knowing that his sister was gone. He'd gone between hating stories of twins and loving them, because he thought he would never have a chance to know whether they were true or all just pretty lies. Now, though...
"When I got to know you, there were three things that stuck out to me most: One, you were absolutely beautiful, two, you actually had an idea what to do with your life, which, seriously, I did not, so I was in complete awe of you, really, and three, you had my sister's name. I never thought much about it... well, I never thought there might be a reason for it. I did think about it a lot, because I'd always wished for a world where my sister was still alive, but I never truly thought it was you, not until a few days ago. I suppose I should have seen it earlier, but..."
"Well, if it makes you feel better, I didn't see it coming, either." She smirks, then puts her head on his shoulder. "I like the idea of twin names. I don't know that much about Tatooinian culture, but I really like that."
"What do you think our life would have been like, if we'd been together?" Luke asks. It's something he's been wondering for a few days now, ever since Ben told him about Leia.
"Well, we'd have climbed trees together. And swum in the oceans. And you'd have helped me convince Papa that we really needed that speeder." Leia says, a smirk appearing on her face. Luke can almost see it, the two of them on Alderaan, but still...
"Or we would have run around the desert together, with Aunt Beru watching us. And helped Uncle Owen with the vaporators. And sneaked away from home to win illegal speeder races." He offers, and Leia snuggles closer to him.
"Maybe." She says. "It could have been a good life. A good childhood."
"Yes." Luke sighs. "But we had good childhoods."
"We did." Leia agrees, and closes her eyes.
Luke just pulls her closer, letting his hand run over the bandage on her arm where he knows she was shot. He'll have to get her to let a med droid look it over later, he thinks, because he knows she is not going to do it voluntarily. He'll probably have to ask Han for help, there. And possibly he should let himself get looked over, too. He is starting to feel pretty much every single bone in his body, and a bit of a hangover, too.
Around them, the people are slowly waking up. Groans come from the huts and the camp as the soldiers and the ewoks stand up, fighting the hangover and the ignored injuries from the battle they fought yesterday. Luke smirks, but as he thinks about what will happen today, it turns into a grimace.
He's also going to have to explain to High Command what happened on the Death Star. He's not too keen on it, to be honest. They'll want the full story, confirmation that Vader and the Emperor are truly dead and then some. He's not sure he wants to answer any of their questions, to be honest. They wouldn't understand, and this... what happened there, it was personal. It was something between him, Vader and the Emperor. Leia has a right to know because she is his sister, Vader's biological daughter, and because Vader threatened her up there. The rest of them? Yeah, Luke doesn't think he'll ever tell them the full story.
"I love you." He tells his sister.
"I love you too." She answers, and honestly, that's the only thing that matters.