In the years that followed the Battle of Endor, it became an old argument between Luke and Leia, one that often went on silently and out of the hearing of anyone else.
-Come back and train with me. I need you.
-I have more important things to do than to spend my time trying to lift rocks with my brain.
At first, Leia did work with him. She let him teach her the basics. From somewhere, he found (or possibly made) a pair of practice lightsabers, not powerful enough to cause real damage in a novice wielder. Leia knew without being told that they used to be given to the children the old Jedi were training. Working with a child's toy didn't exactly inspire her to work hard at her skills.
Then too many other things intervened: ending the war, starting the New Republic, having a baby… the only real part of Luke's training that Leia continued was the meditation she practiced daily, even just a few minutes if that was all she had.
It was easier to let Luke believe she had other priorities. The truth was something different. She wasn't like him. She'd watched him go through hell and come out of it with the same gentle smile, and that sort of strength just wasn't in her. She went through hell and came out burning: with rage, with hatred, with a desire to work her will on the galaxy, to remold it into her own vision.
She knew enough history to know where that path could lead.
So she put aside the practice lightsaber and never considered finding her own real one. The grip of even the child's weapon felt too sweet in her hand. Too right. Luke could wield his knowing he was fighting to protect, to shield. Leia held the pale imitation of the same weapon and knew she would fight to destroy, for revenge.
That wasn't to say she never used the Force. She did. With the training she now had, she realized that she had been, her entire life, and never known it. The strength in her arms when she'd strangled Jabba the Hutt had not been hers entirely. The deadly accuracy of her blaster aim, remarked on by countless Alliance soldiers, was not just luck and skill. The way she was able to coax a table full of politicians around to her side was not just the result of Bail Organa's endless lessons in diplomacy.
The Force was a part of who she was, and she'd accepted that, but she'd also accepted that reaching for more power with it was a fool's game.
Leia thought that right up until everything fell apart.
She was one of the first people to reach the remains of the Praxeum. One of the first to see the aftermath.
In the years after Endor, Luke had confessed to her—slowly, painfully, in bits—what had happened on the second Death Star. How close he came to joining their father. How it still haunted him.
Leia didn't know the man she found kneeling in the ashes that day. She had seen Luke angry, but she had never seen him bloodthirsty before. He'd flinched when she'd touched him, his hand going to his lightsaber. Even when he saw it was her, Leia looked in his eyes and still saw the urge to strike out. At someone. Anyone. Everyone.
At first she thought she'd lost him—that they'd all lost him—for good. She'd ordered him to the ship, made him hand over his lightsaber and blaster. There was enough of her brother left that he recognized what she was doing and gave in rather than fight her. She was profoundly relieved; if he'd decided to fight, there weren't enough soldiers with her to win against him.
With Luke's lightsaber in her hand, she finished her examination of the scene, sick with relief and dawning horror over the one person missing from the dead. The reason for Luke's blind fury came clearer than she wanted it to.
The soldiers she brought with her wound up on mortuary duty instead, and along with the bodies, they collected the lightsabers of the fallen Jedi. Some of them were real; some of the children had grabbed their practice weapons in a desperate bid to defend themselves.
After Luke vanished, Leia kept the real ones, safely locked away. They called to her. There was no other description for it. Maybe something of the spirits of their owners remained, maybe it was the Force itself, but before long, she'd selected one of them, or maybe it selected her. She wore it with her, hidden beneath her clothing. All she knew of the owner came from the feeling she got when she held it in her hand: a young Togruta girl, her head filled with stories of the Togruta Jedi that had come before her, determined to live up to their legacy.
Leia stole time out of her busy schedule to practice again, this time with the real thing humming in her hands. Some days she trained for so long the bright white of the blade seared an afterimage before her eyes. What she was training for, she didn't know. It made her feel closer to Luke, she supposed. And in a way, closer to her son.
If she had trained before, the way Luke had wanted her to, could she have prevented what happened? Han, who knew her even better than Luke in all the ways that mattered, said no, but he was always quicker than she was to displace blame onto someone else. Han was the only one who knew she was using a lightsaber again. It was one of the (many) things they had to fight about these days.
But she trained anyway—when he ever been able to stop her from doing anything?
It was easier now. Some of her rage had drained away with time. She could reach inside and find the calm she found while meditating. Now she could turn on the training remotes and lose herself in deflecting, dodging, redirecting bolts of energy until she dripped with sweat.
After Han's death, she spent more and more time in the training room. It was less of a secret. Those who knew about the general and her hidden weapon said nothing, not to her or to each other, but she felt the change in how they looked at her, a faint hint of awe that hadn't been there before. It annoyed her. She hadn't changed at all, and she'd be damned if she'd let people put her on the same mystical bullshit pedestal Luke was on.
After she'd sent Rey off with the map, it only got worse. Ironically, that drove her to practice more, just to get away from prying eyes. Her aides had strict instructions not to interrupt her practice for any reason smaller than an imminent attack on the base.
Rey's return was deemed a smaller reason. So Leia was deep into her second hour of practice when a voice interrupted her.
"That was Niriian's," Luke said. "A good choice for you. She reminded me of you, a little. You'd have liked her."
Leia turned off the lightsaber and turned, feeling a little as if she'd been caught doing something wrong. The feeling went away when she saw Luke's smile. Years fell away from both of them as they met in the middle in a long hug. Later she'd yell at him, she'd probably yell at him a lot. He might even yell back. But for now there was only joy and relief.
Luke shrugged off the awful, grotty cloak he was wearing (she made a mental note to have someone burn it as soon as possible) and took his lightsaber off his belt. "Good against remotes is one thing," he said, and she felt the echo in his words and in his sudden grin.
"You just came back after all this time and the first thing you want to do is spar? I mean. You really want to stand there and let me come after you with a live weapon? Because I've been pretty pissed off at you for a long time now, you know." She couldn't help returning his grin though, she never could.
The familiar green of his lightsaber blossomed up from the hilt. "So you're saying you're afraid."
Leia laughed. "All right, but the last time we did this I had a weapon that wasn't real. Don't blame me if you get hurt."
As they started to step through the forms, it was obvious he was going easy on her. Green collided with white, snapping and buzzing as he let her drive him back. Both of them were smiling, but there was a seriousness there too.
Leia felt something rising from within that she hadn't realized she'd ever lost. Hope.