It's the same key. Threepio hands her the card key, and it's the same. An Imperial officer has been living in her- her father's- the apartment her mother decorated when she was so young that she still held her mother's hand in the streets, the apartment of the Senator from Alderaan. Her planet is gone, her people scattered, she has no official title, not even citizenship of a planet, any planet, in their new republic, but the Quartermaster assigned her this apartment.
Her apartment.
The first night after Endor she falls asleep on the Falcon, listening to Lando's and Han's stories. She wakes up in Han's arms, sharing his bunk, and she doesn't mention the key. He's still protective because her arm's healing, and she's grown very fond of this particular bunk.
The second night she works so late with Mon Mothma and the rest of the fledgling Senate that the sun's coming up and Luke takes her for caf. She doesn't sleep at all, using the Force to push her exhaustion away so she can attempt to function through another brutally long day.
"You should get some sleep tonight," Luke says. "You can only cheat with the Force and caf for a day or so, then it gets weird." He smiles, and hugs her before dropping her off at the Falcon because she's lied and said her clothes are here. (they're in the apartment, but she can't.)
She can't.
Han's out in search of a sensor dish and Chewie gives her Han's spare shirt without a word.
She tells Threepio that the delivery was delayed. Construction on the street. She freshens up as much as she can and goes back to work.
Han stands waiting for her when Mon Mothma finally decides they've had enough. The sun's abandoned them but the lights of Coruscant glow bright around them.
"Nice shirt."
"My clothes are temporarily misplaced," she says, continuing the lie.
"So I heard." He hands her a bag, and it's clothes, not her clothes, but in a size close enough to hers, and a toothbrush, a comb, and neat little box of hairpins. "This should hold you over." He offers his arm next. "I'll walk you home."
She hesitates, holding the bag tight to her chest. She has options, and none of them are good. She can retreat, again, let him take her back to the Falcon and hide there for one more night. She can face the apartment tomorrow. (Is the art still there? Did the Empire take down her mother's things? That painting her father loved of the creek behind the palace must still be there.)
Leia can't come up with anything to say.
"You okay?"
"Headache."
"Not surprised," he says. Han offers his arms, letting her rest against his chest, and his chin slips onto her forehead and all she has to do is tell him. He'll have something to do. He brought her clothes. He wants to help.
(Her parents ate with her on the table by the window, talking and laughing as she reported back from her first Senate meeting as a full Senator. Her father kissed her cheek, her mother clipped the chalcedony waves around her neck because she was truly a representative of Alderaan and should look the part.)
"Come on, Lando has a new apartment and he wanted to show off by making us dinner. I'll make him turn the lights down and I'll dig you up from painkillers, okay?" He kisses her and she can't even look him in the eye, but they walk to Lando's, which is in a different district than her apartment, has a balcony and eclectic, Faeroesi art which is nothing like Alderaan.
Lando hates the thick, goopy paintings and lazily swirling sculptures and he has plans to give them all away and start over. Go legitimate, the independent consortium of cloud miners need a spokesperson for the new government and he might just-
She falls asleep on Han's lap, having never taken the painkillers Lando gave her, or even changing out of Han's shirt. She wakes up in the guest room, far past sunrise, with Han sitting on the edge of the bed, with juice and some kind of scramble that smells amazing.
"I called in sick for you," he says, stealing a bite of her toast. "Threepio's been trying to reach you on the comm since dawn, but you were so tired and sleeping so soundly that I told him you were sick."
"You didn't-"
He hands her the juice but keeps the plate while she sits up. She's in a more comfortable shirt, one of his undershirts, which means he took the trouble of undressing her and carrying her to the spare bed before he crawled in next to her. Luke said she'd be tired when she stopped using the Force. She underestimated how soundly she'd sleep.
"Threepio also said your clothing had arrived at your apartment after all, and mentioned that he's surprised you haven't unpacked anything."
"It must have just arrived yesterday."
Han passes her the plate and watches her eat, his hazel eyes free of accusation. "Sure."
"I haven't had time to unpack."
"I know," he says, nodding. "After you've eaten, I can walk you over. You didn't tell me you had been assigned an apartment yet, and I didn't want-"
"Thanks." Now her stomach knots, and she could be sick, just as he told Threepio. Handing the plate back to him, she folds her hands in her lap.
"I can even help you-"
She whispers to the sheets. "I can't."
"Leia?"
"It's a beautiful apartment,' she says, dragging her eyes up to meet his. "On the edge of the southern arts district, near the theaters and the Alderaan museum of textiles. You can see the lights of the theaters at night from the windows, and it's like they're dancing. There's a mural in the living room of the grand square in the capital city, and my mother used to joke that if I looked at just the right angle, I could see myself in my bedroom, looking at me, now."
She balls the sheets into her hands, twisting until it hurts. "I used to glance at it on my way to Senate meetings, so I'd remember why I had to keep my cover, so I'd remember what I was protecting."
Han sets the place aside and climbs into bed with her, sitting at her side against the headboard. "So it was yours?"
"It was my father's, my mother decorated it for him, so he'd think of her, and me, when he was away." Taking a deep breath, Leia can barely exhale, her chest is so tight. "I remember picking out the plants. Mother got him two ever-blooming daltaa lilies, so he'd look at them and think of us, back home."
Han's arm goes around her shoulder, then another slips around her front and she's in his arms, in his lap, wrapped up inside of him, and the comforting scent of engine grease and Wookiee. "It's all right to miss them."
"They wouldn't-"
His chin rests on her head and she's not sure when they became something she needed so much, but Leia's heart stops pounding quite so angrily. "They wouldn't want you not to grieve. Don't dwell, don't beat yourself up, but that doesn't mean you can't miss them."
"I can't." Missing them means acknowledging the hole in her heart the destruction of Alderaan made. She pushed it aside, fought in the war, saved him, brought him back, waited for the Empire to be gone.
"You can't what?"
"Miss them," she starts. Leia rests her hand against his chest and shuts her eyes. "I can't just miss them, not there. My mother chose all the furniture. I helped her put the plants on the shelf by the window. The bathroom has red towels because I loved red when I was eight, and she let me pick the colors. I can't even look at the card key without thinking of them, because they died, and I don't even know if they were looking up at the sky, or asleep, or sitting in their box at the orchestra."
They had a whole life, rich and vibrant, and the ghosts of them, of her planet, hang over her like scars. Her life was torn so quickly that it's healed, misshapen. The scar tissue's too tight to let her breathe.
Han holds her, stroking her head when her stories fade into sobs. Sitting with her in silence, holding her close, he waits. Her mind supplies a thousand more stories, and that the dishes in the cabinets are probably still the china her great-grandmother used in the palace.
"Can I come with you?"
She nods, blowing her nose on the napkin. Her head aches from crying while she gulps down her cold breakfast because she's too hungry to bother reheating it.
"Okay," he agrees, kissing her cheek. "Whenever you're ready."
Her fingers tremble so much with the card key that she hands it over to Luke. Han holds her, keeping her close. Her things sit neatly in crates in the middle of the front room, surrounded by the past.
Han keeps his arm around his back and Luke holds her hand as they tour her old life, like visiting a tomb. The artefacts aren't precious metals, but the table that used to sit in her mother's office, and the bed frame that was designed by a student at the far southern university of design.
The towels in the bathroom are still red because nothing else would look good with those floor tiles, and Luke remarks on how many months it would have taken to collect enough water for a bath on Tatooine. Han likes the mural in the bedroom of the star dancers of Alderaan, ships of legend that performed for queens of Alderaan long before the modern age.
The daltaa lilies by the window droop, just a little, because in her absence, no one has water them. She kneels beside them, stroking a long pale leaf. Han presses water into her hand and watches while she tends to them.
"Threepio can send your things whenever you'd like them to go. The Falcon, Luke's apartment, storage, another place-"
She nods. That's what she needs, another apartment, far from the streets that whisper of her parents with each step she takes.
"The old Jedi quarters are in the east," Luke suggests. "The furniture's pretty bare, and most of the artwork is basic, but it won't look like Alderaan. We could be neighbors."
There's a landing pad there too, so Han-
"I'm sure we can get you a bathtub," he says, interrupting her thoughts. He packs up the two lilies, cradling them into an empty crate. "You'll put them on the window in your new place, and they can remind you of your parents."
Because now they're the absent ones.
Han's still holding the lilies when she starts to cry again, and this time Luke embraces her, whispering how he took nothing from Tatooine when he first left, but later, he took things from the wreckage of Obi-Wan Kenobi's hut.
"Silly things, part of a medal he was given by the Jedi Order, a box, and a sketch he kept framed near the window. I don't even know who the woman in it is, but he thought she was important." He brushes her hair out of her face. "I didn't take anything from Tatooine when I left the first time, and it haunted me until I left the second time, because it was home, an imperfect one, but the only home I'd ever known."
"Home's a powerful thing," Han adds. He leans on the wall next to the painting of the creek behind the palace, hands in his pockets. "I still haven't fixed the hum in the Falcon's left engine because I'm kind of fond of it now. No other YT-300 makes that sound."
Luke scans the room with his eyes, following her gaze. Their eyes land together on the small painting of the star dancers.
"Your father liked that."
"He did."
"Think he'd mind if we took it?" Han asks them both.
Luke nods, and smiles in that way that suggests he knows what she feels without her having to put it into words at all, not even in her own mind. "He'd be honored."
They take both, the simple painting of water and trees, and the more ostentation star dancers. Han and Luke stay with her, flanking her while she chooses one of the old Jedi apartments, because the colors of the decor, the very lines of it are foreign.
She's travelled half-way across the galaxy on humanitarian aid missions that covered her early work supporting the Rebellion, but the Jedi were already outlawed.
The first night in her new apartment, Han holds her while Luke straightens the paintings on the wall in the living room. Luke joins them on the sofa and they talk, first about her parents, then Luke's aunt and uncle. Han's quiet, his head against hers, until Luke asks him about learning Wookiee, and he shares stories of growing up with pirates.
The first morning, the sunlight glimmers on her daltaa lilies, making the leaves glow green and the three of them slept tangled together on her sofa.
She whispers a silent good morning to the lilies, thinking of her parents. They'd appreciate the peace they've won, the negotiations that continuously work towards freedom for more planets, and the men sitting with her. She squeezes Luke's hand, kisses Han's cheek and gets up to start the day.