Because she liked to wake up at dawn, she did. Liked to be the first one in a room, pick the best seat, take the place in, hello. This was usual – face scrubbed raw and blemish-free, cold water clean face, skin soft and fragile and feeling like a/the baby's. Makeup in the water light, morning silver-yellow glitter. Her face, feeling like something. Her hair, slicked through with a needle-thin comb, feeling like something. Miraculously and vigorously worked through into a severe part, bound like fine twine. Her fingers had moved swift and sharp to turn tangles into crisp, intricate braids, stapled to the side of her head with an army of pins, severe, pasted, irrefutable. Modest and rigorous, post-pubescent double buns.
The baby fussed and she fed him like a job and she did it well. She grabbed a rag and she burped him like a job and she did it well.
Conversation at 0500, her in her heavy coat, the baby in its blanketed basket like a picnic, the sky still dark, everything wobbly, she's looking like she's slipping…
"Last chance. Y'sure?"
"Yes—"
"Because you don't – tomorrow's just as good—"
"But tomorrow is not today."
"But you don't have to go back today."
(How to explain: that every day she stayed confined and unbound and dizzy in the apartment she felt further and further from herself, that if she didn't go back now she never would, she would melt into something incoherent, something mommybrained that sleeps when the baby sleeps and cries when it cries, that if she didn't remember what morning was she'd probably forget everything she knew…)
"I don't want to – miss more than I had to. Have to. I don't want to – I'll be fine, he'll be fine."
"M'not worried about him, m'worried about you."
"I really am fine. I've been looking forward to this."
"What about – getting another hour or two? This whole dawn thing – you look tired—"
"I'm already dressed."
"So get undressed."
"Don't be ridiculous. Why are you - " (she yawned) "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?" he said, reluctantly, but s/he knew – she wore herself like a costume while for fourteen days she had padded around dreamy with her hair long and low and her skin clear and her robes open and her whole being resplendent and soft and dazed. And at first s/he thought – how lovely, her soft smile, the way she looked at the baby and how for once she was hushed and agreeable. And then it felt scary…
"You've forgotten how I look with makeup on," she teased, but it was hollow and bored.
He looked at her, how she still looked slight and unreadable, how she held onto the basket with a tight grip, how she still had a holster. Thought about the awkward, aping conversation with the brother – does she seem depressed to you? She just pushed a child out her body,he'd insisted, and hell, both of them almost didn't make it at that. How she looked cloudy and disinterested and faraway. Thought about grabbing her shoulders and saying clearly and simply: stay home with me. Saying you pushed a human being from your waist like what fourteen days ago, stay home. Saying undo your hair and the bra I know you hate, stay home with me.
Instead he turned away and said gruffly, "Make sure you eat, ok?"
She rolled her eyes. "Mommy," she accused, and she took the baby and with a straight back she took him outside.
Xx.
She walked with him from the (makeshift) housing units to the (makeshift) military base, everything quiet, and thought, I suppose I will have to teach you everything. She thought, I suppose I thought you would feel different, even in a basket – like my son instead of a basket, like my son instead of groceries, you tiny thing, you weight of six perfect ripe fruits.
T is for tree.
E is for empty road.
F is for first morning lights.
M is for morning clouds.
D is for dust.
Also for dusk.
There was no one else on the street, and she thought, I suppose I will have to be the one to teach you everything, because no one else is left.
It was like he heard her – he started to cry. Maybe he had heard her – could see inside her just as easily as she inside him. She let her insides cry too. They walked the empty street, him wailing. She would quiet him soon – just realized the louder the baby the realer he seemed.
Xxxx.
"Your Highness! We didn't expect you back so soon!" (And yet, here I am.)
"Is this your little one? My, he seems so sweet." (No, this is some other baby I found on my way over here.)
"Oh, he looks just like your mother…" (I highly doubt that, actually.)
"It is so good to see you, Princess, in good health. For a moment there it seemed as though things had taken an awful turn." (A turn that might have been avoided had you stationed me on a base with an obstetrician.)
"So he'll be joining you here, eh? I don't blame you. Not many new moms willing to leave their little ones behind." (Well, seeing as childcare has been determined a discretionary luxury…)
"Oh! Your – outfit." (And gestured to her long column of white, her hair.) "My – it's like meeting with a ghost."
Here, she spoke, wry, tired, the baby's anxiety about strangers rolling off of him in waves simultaneous to her own off her: "A ghost? Who died?"
Xx
(She'd yawned, delirious, highly medicated, half sedated…) And after this baby next I want to have a whole slew of babies, one each for everyone murdered on Alderaan – one baby each, for a namesake.
S'a lot of babies, Lei.
I know, she'd said seriously. It'll be hard work. But I can do it.
(He'd chuckled.) I don't know. See how much trouble this one caused?
We all make sacrifices. I will have to build a bigger house for them, though.
Whatever you say, sis.
She'd sat up, then, even though she wasn't supposed to – her pale face, her open gown, her tired eyes. When I die, will you name a baby after me?
I honestly would except I really think you're going to live forever.
She'd nodded, like she'd thought about it and made up her mind that immortality was an unavoidable responsibility. Yes, you're right. There's still so much work to do…
Xx.
It worked in hour-long or two-hour-long bursts – he slept like a miracle or an innocent thing, tucked on the floor beside her chair and snoozing through meetings, held tight to her chest and bounced out of crying jags while she gives presentations, changed on a spare blanket spread out while she kneels on the floor. But he also needs to be fed and for that she excused herself, said hello to the stainless steel public bathroom, the last stall a familiar alter, for many months she knelt there every morning and prayed to be back in the meeting soon, for no vomit in her babyhair, or her high collars, for no comments about the Princess's daily purge. Now she sat on the seat instead, felt absurd as the fabric of her dress hits the steel seat, tried not to jostle the baby as she locked the door in front of her. Little space. Tiny spaces. Escape pod, cell, water shower box on Yavin…
He was so angry, this crying was angry and she wanted to cry too, cry angry, cry I'm sorry, cry tell me, cry I know – this loaf of bread, this mewing pup, this soft small thing that curls up on her chest like a pet or space debris or a blaster.
This is life now – sitting in huge, impromptu meeting spaces with her ankle nuzzled against the baby's carrier, trying to take notes, to speak clearly but not so loud she wakes the baby, to take lunch alone as the cafeteria was too loud, to doze softly during briefings and, of course, to nurse her breadloaf son while sitting on a dirty public toilet seat. Deft and distracted, she unbuttoned the top five of her white dress, detangled herself from the bra. (Sometimes, these days, she dreamed only of better bras not so ill-fitting – a luxury rather difficult to find on any makeshift military base. For now, the same old standard-issue compression mess remained strapped onto her – her attempts to stitch together a bigger band were so-so.) She tried to smile at the baby, the loaf of bread, the blaster. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. She felt him and he felt scared – like he was born with her anxiety about tight, tiny space, like she gave it to him. Shh… he latched to her and she felt the tremble fade and she thought, Did I do that? The crying gone – did I do that? The loaf of bread baby – its warm blaster body – did I do that?
(Did we do that? In the med center, her split limp body, the ten-second-blue baby – before merciful, merciful crying – her whole body aching – did I…?
The quiet exertion – the pain & thrill of purposefully doing, making – of an end goal – newborn babies like fully functional governments or exploded Death Stars, something finished –of being tough, toughing it out – he was so frustrated-bemused with her – her tight grip on his leg, her held breath, her five-minute-apart-contractions-that-she'd-been-through-quietly-in-a-meeting, amniotic fluid pooling neatly in her chair, oh, I'm sorry! – and in the center too, silent, staring pointedly in one prefixed spot the way you do for pirouettes, focusing – frustrated/bemused because You know you can make sounds, sweetheart, don't most women make sounds?
Well what did he know about most women? & anyway, had he done this before? She did it silently – and then like an awful mimic, the silent baby…)
Her thoughts were very frayed, she knew, tangents that bled into each other and never resolved themselves, open parentheticals, and she suspected it was the baby, both the lingering hormones but also their connection – he was so open, so trusting, but also so shockingly intense and visceral and confused, wails and gurgles like huge bright colors, the drama of discovering everything for the first time, it was like he wanted to share it with her, she knew that was silly he couldn't help it but it was almost like he wanted…––
Was he sleeping? He was sleeping, his tiny 2-week head hot against her breast. She shut her eyes, brushed against him inside her…he was content but cold, a little scared but buckling through… some tiny a martyr…
(Luke didn't know of any force sensitive mothers who'd given birth to force sensitive beings, was curious, if he was curious than she'd tell him, it was being one person & sliding into another always, when he grew up he would learn to enforce boundaries, let there be something between them but for now she felt dewy, gooey, slipping into the colors & gurgles & wails… she wanted to sleep when he slept, cry when he cried…)
Oh bread/Oh Ben…
The stall was freezing. She should button her dress, but didn't want to disturb him, take the heat of her pale body – now she finally got how it ached, to love someone pale. If Han found out about this again he'd be angry – she'd be – he'd be – he'd been so angry, that Command was haughty about her puke-slash-bathroom-breaks months ago – livid about her aching feet – her feeding his (their – her) child on a dirty toilet seat in a stall like a bad cell, or a bad dream.
She was ragged…
Split and ragged and it still hurt, just a tad, to walk when she did it too fast… and she loved to walk fast…
(& the first night home, with the loaf of bread and her ragged Luke-done braids, they'd climbed into bed with the loaf between them and he said sweetheart, when your thing went crazy and you screamed that one scream – so she had screamed once, a single scream, which did seem worse somehow – and he came out quiet sweetheart I swear I saw my whole life flash in front of me. Or something like that? And she remembered thinking how sweet and marvelous it was that he could form sentences when she felt so slurred, still… - he said something like that, something about her limp and sweaty and burst and losing consciousness – the split ten-second-silent baby. Her thin slick hands. How they whisked them both away, leaving him alone in the room…)
(The bathroom was cold…)
And was the baby cold? She couldn't remember. She wanted to take him back inside her. He was small, and delicate, and thin, too-early, negative weeks old, his would-be birthday still in the future, and he folded up perfectly, fragile, like a nestling crown of twigs against her but with the heat of space debris, heat of a blaster, small fish bones.
He was depending on her. She was twenty-four and he was helpless. And he was cold and he was helpless. And when he was hungry she would have to feed him in the bathroom stall with the shit smells and the urine and the small and the cell and the cold.
(When she first held him she thought he was the second boy unrelated to her to see her with her hair down. And then she remembered that they were related.)
And the small, the stall, the smell…
She reached to unhinge the door and for a flickering moment was afraid it would not open. But it did and she held him close and she left the stall and felt cold. And she did her slow, wounded, heading-back shuffle, the careful-not-to-wake-the-kid shuffle, and she decided she would be practical first and modest second, and that she would never keep her child in a small, closed room.
Xx.
I heard you became much more… familiar with the rest of Command today?
I can't just be running in and out of meetings whenever he fusses.
True. And kid's gotta eat.
Anyway, they can't have it both ways.
How d'ya mean?"
They can't make me pull all this for the sake of my child nonsense with diplomats and then be irritated when I actually have a real, living baby with needs.
And a real, living husband…
(This is how she imagines dinner unfolding as she takes the baby for a walk around 1800. In her imagination, the baby is in the other room, sweet and sleeping, and she is wearing a real bra, and they are eating real food and everything is clear, some things happen and then others happen as a result, everything is linear like it was before, sentences.
She doesn't go home.)
Xx.
At 2100 the building was empty except for two, who worked on the floor – Ben in his carrier and his mother in the middle of a big meeting room beside him, crosslegged, her dress spread out all around her like a safe-zone or a cape.
The baby fussed and she fed him. He felt tired and lonely. She felt tired and lonely.
What are you still doing there, said the voice in her head, come home.
What was she still doing there? What was she ever doing there? -Fighting back against slavery and genocide and authoritarianism, advocating for diplomacy, for female suffrage, for her few remaining people, didn't he understand that the work didn't end just because she was stupid enough to have a baby a year after a very tenuous ceasefire?
I suppose I will have to teach you how to work hard and be noble and make sacrifices. I suppose I will have to teach you everything.
She squinted at the datapad and the lights, the automatic motion-sensor type, flickered off due to the stillness. She kept reading.
It was a report about the widespread practice of female sexual slavery a few systems away. It was far away and extremely important. Her brain was a soup of details. Could the baby see them? The images in her head when she read? Could he hear her even now, thinking about whether or not he could hear her?
He fussed, and she rocked the carrier lightly, eyes never leaving the report. He was the only person to ever like her voice, she was sure of it. "D is for darkness. C is for carpet. N is for nighttime. S is for stars. B is for baby… bread… blaster… Ben…"
And then suddenly like lighting the doors opened enormously, and light flooded the room, and the baby screamed, and there was Han.
"There you are! Do you knowwhat time it is? I've been looking for you everywhere, what the hell Leia you scared the shit out of me!"
The baby kept screaming. Han looked at her expectantly, eyes searching and angry and hurt, then scooped him up and tried to soothe him. She looked on skeptically.
"I had some work to finish."
"You didn't think to let me know?" (The baby kept screaming, Han looked more frantic, she felt only calm.)
"I lost track of time."
He just looked away, kept trying to bounce him.
"Let me do it."
"No, I got him."
"Han, let me do it." In her head she said shh, shh, I've got you and she tried to make the inside of her mind feel safe and warm and like a mom.
"No, I got it – see?" He looked proud of himself, then looked at her. "Wait – did you do that? Did you—" He gestured vaguely to his head.
She shrugged. He looked cheated.
"Don't do that to him."
"It's not as though it's a choice. He just – reaches for me."
He reaches for me, and I say, yes.