Heat roiled around her, almost too hot to breathe, but Luke was striding towards her and Leia almost wanted to cry in relief, and hurried to meet him in the middle. Everything was going to be alright, it had to be. Somehow. But words not her own spilled from her lips, and the man—not Luke, never Luke—snarled and accused. He held a gloved hand out and squeezed, his icy touchless grip constricting her breaths now. She choked, the world so dark, the man darker still. Her sight shifted to the side, and it was Han struggling uselessly for breath now, clawing at the invisible hand as it crushed his throat. No. No!
"Leia!"
She jerked awake with a gasp, thrashing in tangled sheets, hands pressing down on her shoulders. One warm, one cold. Worried blue eyes set in a familiar face above her while the present settled around her. She was not on a burning world. She was in her bunk, on the Millennium Falcon. The wrong pilot at her controls.
"It was just a dream," Luke tried to soothe but Leia shook her head, eyes burning with tears.
It was more than that. She could feel it down to very core of her being. Luke let go of her shoulders and sat heavily on the edge of her bunk, dropping his hands into his lap.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice reedy. "If I'd been there—"
Leia swallowed and sat up, tucking her legs underneath her. She took his hand and held it close to her heart, wrapping both hands around it, taking comfort in his presence, his warmth proof that he was still with her.
"Then things would have ended even worse."
She would have lost both of them. Luke looked at her, so sad, but somewhere deep she could feel his hope. Battered and strained, but still there. He reached out hesitantly with his new hand and tucked her long, sleep-mussed hair behind her ear, his thumb stroking across her cheek.
"We'll save him, Leia."
Their gazes locked, she raised his hand from her chest and pressed his knuckles against her lips.
"I know."
They would make it through together. All of them. Vader would never take anyone away from her again.