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A/N: I don't know what I think about Rey being a Skywalker. I think it's the most likely outcome, but I wouldn't mind if she turned out to be something different. That being said, this is what Leia's thoughts and feelings might have been when she hugged Rey in The Force Awakens if she was a Skywalker and if Leia knew it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.
When the Millennium Falcon flies into the Resistance Base, Leia watches as the brave stormtrooper who abandoned the First Order is brought out in critical condition. She watches as her dear friend Chewie comes out after him, and she can tell from his manner that what she felt is true. But she does not approach anyone.
Her husband is dead.
Chewie wants to be alone too, so she doesn't try to talk to him about it, despite the fact that with Luke gone they might be the only two who understood.
But when that girl Finn had been so hell-bent on saving steps out of the Falcon, radiating such sorrow and loss into the Force, Leia cannot stay away.
Because when she looks at this girl she sees more than what the light of day is showing her, more than the colours her retinas can process.
She sees a beloved face long dead.
She sees the face of one whose beloveds are dead.
Looking at Rey, Leia remembers a beautiful assassin with blazing red hair and nerves of steel looking at Leia's brother like he was all the stars in the sky. She remembers the woman when she was pregnant, face aglow and smile easy and bright. It's a girl, Mara teased Luke. I can tell. So let's call her Rey.
Luke loved the name. It was Leia who asked, Why?
Mara smiled at Luke. Because Luke means light. Rey - ray of light. My two suns. She placed a hand on her swollen belly, and beamed when she felt the baby kick. Of course, that means Luke gets first choice for middle names.
Beru, he said instantly. Rey Beru Skywalker.
They looked at each other, and Leia remembers wondering if this was what Luke had seen for all those years it was just them, Han and Chewie, with Luke more aware of his friends' burgeoning romance than they were.
Looking at Rey, Leia remembers a princess, barely a girl, with her name and her face stepping into a Rebel Base for the first time with her father, and feeling absolutely out of her depth. She remembers that same princess, no longer allowed to be a girl, stepping into a different base with a smuggler and a farm boy having watched the only home she's ever known be turned to ashes and dust. She remembers the nightmares in the years that followed, and how Han and Luke had always been there.
I'm so scared if I make another home it'll happen again, she admitted to her brother, who she did not know was her brother, once.
He was silent for a while, then said, Perhaps it will. But that's why we keep fighting, isn't it? So it doesn't happen to our new home - or anyone else's home. Maybe for revenge, too, but revenge won't bring them back. Revenge won't put Alderaan back together again. So we make a new family, and honour our old ones by keeping on living. We protect instead.
Do they teach this sort of wisdom on Tatooine? she asked jokingly, trying to take her mind off it.
He shook his head with a laugh. No. But I have nothing to go back to there, especially now Biggs is gone. The only choice I have is to keep going.
She mentioned it to Han later, who said, uncharacteristically sagely, The kid's right. I don't remember much about my family, or my early life, so I can't relate to what you're going through, but Chewie and I keep going. We're spacers. Getting to see the galaxy. . . He shrugged. I guess it reminds us that somewhere, with someone, sometime, we can find a home and settle down. The Falcon is our home for now, and it may not last forever, but we'll take each day as it comes.
She remembers how she laughed, and took the words to heart. The Rebellion was her family, their faith their blood and bones, and these were her brothers in arms.
When Han was temporarily lost to them, much like Finn is now, she had taken that as it came too.
Finally, looking at Rey, Leia remembers a farm boy and his overwhelming fear of rejection, of having nowhere to go, and his outstanding courage.
She remembers how Luke cried on the Falcon after his mentor died, how he stood awkwardly when they reached Yavin 4 and she conversed with Rebel Command and Han and Chewie looked to repairs for the Falcon, and Luke was left drifting with no one to stand with, no one he knew. She remembers their conversation on the ship, after she draped a blanket over his shoulders.
Are you alright? she asked.
I just can't believe he's really gone.
And she empathised with that. Seeing your idols die was like seeing a piece of hope die with it. It was like the loss of Ben had temporarily broken that part of Luke that made him such a dreamer, and even when he fixed it, his innocence would never be the same.
She remembers Luke after the Battle of Yavin, mourning over his friend's death, how he said to her, I've never felt so alone, and how her heart had bled for him.
She remembers her brother's cry for help, without any real faith she would hear him but with the hope he'd never lost that she would anyway, and how desperate and broken he seemed when Lando brought him down from his perch under the belly of Cloud City over Bespin. She remembers knowing that he'd lost a hand, but that he'd also lost something more, something that couldn't be replaced with a prosthetic.
Something so essentially, vibrantly Luke that she was terrified at the prospect of him without it.
Leia looks at Rey, and sees that the girl is her mother, her aunt and her father all rolled into one.
She is a girl who was denied a childhood, but can love as fiercely as ever despite it.
She is a woman who is wise beyond her years, who has faced down demons and died countless times but is somehow still standing upright.
She is a child who was plucked from a hard life on a desert planet, dragged into danger and despair because the Force willed it, and who is now so alone in the world she doesn't know where to go or what to do and will fall in with the only people who seem to be showing her kindness.
So Leia just hugs her niece, because she knows that none of the three have ever deserved this pain, and Rey certainly doesn't either.