Written as a treat for an exchange, had been sitting in the back of my head ever since I saw the movie (which had been a while, haha). Not wholly sure how canon-compliant, but the request said ignoring additional material was okay, and I'm okay with it, too ;)
Leia Organa thinks of her son, and her heart aches hollowly.
She remembers.
The moment when her little Ben first ran up to her in tears, terrified out of his wits, yet still harbouring the implicit trust that in his mother's arms no whispers from the dark could ever reach him; Leia took his fears for mere nightmares, comforted him and lulled into sleep – and again, and again, until first Han, and finally she herself grew weary of it.
(You're a big boy, Ben, how long are you gonna run to your mum every time you have a bad dream?)
In time, Ben stopped coming; but as he did, he turned restless, and shadows deepened in his eyes. When Leia realised, at last, the dark nature of the presence looming over her son, the boy had already despaired of finding understanding or help, and now she found that the lone battle she fought for her son felt like it was not only against the presence, but against Ben himself.
(And she feared she was losing it, each day a little.)
Then came the time when she first saw in him the man she had hated for so long, not knowing his true name or face; unlike her brother, Leia never accepted the thought of Anakin Skywalker, father, who had once been a good man and according to Luke died a good man, and the shadow of Darth Vader marring the face of her child terrified her.
(His grandfather, says her memory, they both carry the blood; she hoped he would not have to share the burden of this knowledge.)
What scared her next was her very thought; she refused to allow the memory of Vader to affect her view of her own son. So she shut it away; and in convincing herself she was not letting the association to alter her perception of Ben, was she being too lenient towards him instead? Was she too soft on him, in fear of being unfairly harsh?
Or was she, perhaps, being too lenient for a much simpler reason – to make up for the fact that her presence in his life was less than satisfactory, and Han's even less than that?
(She loved him with all her heart; and yet sometimes she felt she hardly knew him, when she finally returned from another Senate meeting and was greeted by an empty look of his dark, brooding eyes.)
Ben did not want to go to Luke's Academy, and for the longest time Leia did not insist.
(Was she wary of his potential in the Force, and where it might take him?)
(She would have been right.)
It was Luke who convinced her, in the end; she was ashamed to admit there were times when Luke managed to get to Ben in ways she never did, let alone Han, and hoped her brother would reach her son and dispel the darkness from his mind.
And so Ben left, reluctantly, with a betrayed look in his eyes; and she never saw him again. Only news reached her, and then the worst news – even though she had already felt.
And ever since then, every minute Leia fails to fill with work, she thinks it over, over and over again – from the nightmares, to Vader, to her absence, to Luke's insistence – when did she lose him, what was the last straw? When could she have done something to stop it?
Can she do something still?
Does she want to?
(Yes, she does.)
No-one ever repeated to Leia Organa the last words of her mother; unknowingly, Leia repeats them herself, sending her husband to his death.