Disclaimer: Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa, and all other thus-related characters, places, and events are not mine, and never will be. Unfortunately.

Rating/Warnings: Teen; no warnings for this chapter - the rating is for later chapters

(Chapter) Time Frame: two days after the end of Return of the Jedi.

Notes: There will be a total of eight chapters, each inspired by/written using a line of lyrics from the song "Hey Brother." Lyric credit goes to Avicii.

written for siths-sirenia on tumblr.

i. hey brother, there's an endless road to rediscover

Leia is there when Luke wakes in the infirmary on Home One, silent and still in slumber, curled into an armchair that looks as if it had been stolen from one of the briefing rooms. She is holding his hand-his left in her right, as seems to be their wont-their fingers twined and tangled together.

Luke looks at her for a long moment, blinking slowly, blue gaze blurred from the fog of whatever sedative the doctors had given him. Her dark hair is arranged in its usual crown of braids, and she is dressed in the same standard uniform he has seen her in a thousand times-but too he can see the dark shadows hollowing her closed eyes, the sharp jut of her cheekbones, the way her shirt hangs loose over her shoulders as she curls over herself.

This war has taken so much from her, Luke thinks, and a sharp pang of sorrow lances through his heart. Oh, sweet sister, and Luke relishes the taste of that thought-sister, sister his heart sings, over and over again, as if by repeating it a hundred times he will understand better the full meaning of that precious word-I wish I could give you some of the peace I've found.

As if she had heard his thought, Leia stirs. She blinks, coming slowly back to wakefulness-and then she bolts upright when she catches sight of Luke watching her, soft smile curling his lips.

"Luke," she gasps, and in another instant she is sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand still in his. She smiles at him, brilliant and full of an emotion Luke can't quite seem to place, and for a heartbeat she is neither war-torn leader nor half-broken woman, but rather simply Leia, unadulterated and unburdened-just Leia, in all of her fire and iron and . "We were really worried," she tells him, and reaches up to smooth the hair off of his forehead. "When you collapsed on our way back from the clearing, I thought..." She takes a deep breath and shakes her head, as if to clear her thoughts.

"Sorry," Luke says, hoarse and thick, with a half-crooked grin. Her touch is soft and cool against his temple, and his eyes close against his will, the siren song of the sedatives surging as his walls lower and his strength fails in the wake of her soothing-and dare he say healing?-touch. Yet Luke fights to stay conscious, prying his eyes open to look at his sister once more, a sudden question burning in his mind and fumbling on his lips in his desperation to speak. "Father's ashes?" he asks, quiet and half-slurred.

"I have them," Leia reassures him gently. "Now sleep," she tells him softly, seeing his drooping eyes and feeling him relaxing beside her. "Don't worry," she adds, when he struggles to look at her and his fingers tighten needily around hers, "I'll be here when you wake up."

-x-

Leia is there when he wakes again, just as she promised. This time, however, she hears the shift in his breathing and looks up from her datapad as soon as his eyes open. "Good morning sleepyhead," she teases gently, even as she moves to sit on the side of his bed once more.

"Morning," Luke mumbles. His tongue feels thick and swollen, his mouth stuffed with cotton.

Leia grins, and without prompting stands and goes to fetch him a cup of water. "Here," she says, sitting down once more. Bracing the back of Luke's head, Leia helps him hold the cup steady as he takes a long drink. "Better?" she asks, after she pulls the cup away from his lips.

"Yeah," Luke says, coughing once. He winces, a faint twinge of pain arcing through his chest.

"You okay?" Leia asks, frowning.

"Yeah," Luke says again, and lifts a hand to massage at his sternum.

"Luke…" Leia begins, before trailing off. She looks away after a second, her gaze falling to the mattress beside her knee.

"Hmm?" Luke asks, trying to gently urge her on. He reaches for her hand.

"What...what happened?" she finally asks. After another long second, she turns her gaze back to him, and her darkdark eyes meet his desert blue. "On the Death Star," she clarifies, "when you went to face Vader and Palpatine."

He had known this was coming, Luke thinks bleakly. There was no way around it. He had just hoped she would wait a little longer before pressing for details.

He had already told Leia some of it, back in the pyre's clearing, when they had gone to collected Vader's-their father's-ashes. But even then he had only told her little fragments of pieces: that Vader had killed the Emperor to save him from death; that, in the end, it had been Anakin that had died in his arms, not Vader. He had not yet told her of the duel he had fought with Vader before casting aside his weapon in a blind show of faith, or of the torture he had suffered at Palpatine's hands.

He had not even told her their father's final words. She would reject them, he knew-he knows-both the revelation and the pain their father had dealt her over the years still far too fresh and bleeding of wounds on her heart.

Luke takes a deep breath, and looks into his sister's eyes. "I'm fine, Leia," he tells her, and tries to smile reassuringly.

"That doesn't answer my question," Leia says tartly.

Luke sighs, and looks away, his gaze drifting to the off-white ceiling above his bed. "Fine then. I don't want to talk about it," he says.

There's a half second of silence, and Luke thinks that Leia is going to let him have that. Then, "You're about as good of a liar as a nerf," she tells him bluntly. "I can…" And then she trails off again, her words sliding into confused and startled silence. It is enough of a surprise to hear that Luke looks quickly back at her, his eyes going to her face. She is frowning, and her own gaze is curiously unfocused, as if her attention is drawn elsewhere other than the room before her. "I can feel it," she says at last, after the silence has dragged out for one, two, three long seconds.

"And I could feel it before, too," she goes on abruptly, and her words tumble out in a long, rushed stream that somehow-in a way Luke is fairly certain only Leia could manage-does not actually sound harried or fumbled. "After we blew up the bunker and took down the shield, there was a second-a few seconds, maybe, except it felt like a year-where I could feel you." She takes a breath, and she blinks and looks at him, their gazes meeting once more. "I could feel your pain, Luke, as if it was my own. I could feel it burning in my bones, searing and scorching, and I could feel you screaming-us screaming, because suddenly it wasn't you and me anymore it was us. And gods, Luke, I tried to help. I could feel the darkness, and I tried…" She closes her eyes, and turns her head away.

"Hey," Luke says softly, cutting her off as at last her words fail and she fumbles, trying to speak and breathe at once. "Leia, look at me."

She does, her dark gaze turning back to him.

Luke tightens his fingers around hers, and then with a second thought covers their joined hands with his right, mechanical hand. "When I was on the Death Star," Luke begins, speaking slowly, carefully, testing and trying each word before he lets it fall from his tongue, "Palpatine tried to turn me to the Dark Side." Luke hesitates, and Leia is silent, waiting for him to find the words to continue. "When he realized he couldn't turn me," Luke continues on at last, after taking a deep breath and swallowing hard, "Palpatine tried to kill me. He was torturing me-shooting me with some sort of Force-controlled lightning. He was laughing as he watched me die," Luke adds darkly, like an afterthough.

"Luke," Leia breathes-but there is iron in his name when she says it, iron and flame. And just as she had been able to feel his lie before-and just as Luke had been able to feel her pain on Endor when she had been shot in the arm; just as he had been able to feel her terror, her nightmares in the darkest hours of many midnights; just as he had been able to feel her anger and her exhaustion whispering in secret corners of his mind since that fateful encounter on Bespin-now he feels her worry and concern crawling in alongside the fury that rushes through her, sudden and red and scorching.

He moves without thinking, reaches without thought or conscious effort, as easily as if he had done it a thousand times. Soundless, motionless, sightless, he stretches out his heart and his mind and brushes against the blazing sun and towering mountain that is Leia-that is his sister. He touches her mind, his own thoughts little more than a soft whisper on a summer's breeze.

Leia, he murmurs, perhaps even chides.

He feels as much as sees her tense beside him, her fingers tightening white-knuckled around his, her teeth clenching and her eyes flashing. For half a breath-half a heartbeat, half a flicker of thought-Luke sees as much as feels her adamantine walls rise around the fortress of her mind, all steel and ice and impenetrable heights.

Leia, he calls again, and brushes against the light of her mind once more.

Fear, uncertainty, and what almost feels like desperation swirl together, hot and cold and five thousand shades of rose. She is a tempest, a maelstrom of indecision-a labyrinth of shadows and voices and death, of gateways long locked shut tight by men Luke will never know, of bridges burned by men Luke knows too well.

Leia, he whispers. Leia, it's me.

The tempest calms. The shadows fade to gold. And her walls-all steel and ice and bitter mortar, which had kept even Vader, their father, from her entering mind-turn to mist before him.

Luke, she whispers, and her voice is a burning flame and a whispering wind, rain mixed with stone.

Luke lifts his right hand, and cups Leia's cheek. I love you, little sister, he tells her, smiling softly, happily, contentedly.

I love you too, Leia replies. Then her smile slides sideways, falling into a crooked grin. But I'm older.