Every so often, Princess Leia had time to reflect on her past. She often remembered late at night, while her husband was fast asleep, all the things that had happened to her. How she came to join the rebellion. How she gained a husband and a brother out of her work. How one morning, she hadn't been able to see her mother...
Leia was too little to understand entirely what was going on, and by the time that she was allowed in to see her mummy, she was gone. All her belongings were being packed up in boxes, and carted away. Leia always remembered asking if she could have her mummy's prized gardening stool. Then being taken away in a speeder to never see those appartments again.
As she stared at the celing above her, Leia couldn't see the neat swirls and floral patterns designed to make her bedroom prettier, but instead saw the plain cream coloured walls from her memory, saw in a world with hazy details, the packing up of boxes and tears running down cheeks. Heard a woman begging 'Please get her out of here.', before she was looking down on the people packing up the boxes, and flying towards the speeder -
Her memory jumped as the speeder started up and drove her away from there for the last time. She turned back in the back seat of the vehicle to see the familiar front door disappear behind trees and other buildings out of her life.
Leia's mind skipped forward. She was seventeen, still in education, and the adopted daughter of Bail and Breha Organa. She knew, despite her love for her adopted family, that she was someone else's daughter. On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she made a pilgrimage to those old rooms, stealing the keys from Bail's bedroom cabanet before leaving silently to place flowers in the old cream living room. As she moved from room to room in the dark, she remembered her few precious childhood memories before leaving.
The princess was now married, and had her own children on the way, but as she lay there, her husband on her right, that request as a four year old echoed through her head.
'Can I have this?'
'Can I have this?'
'Can I have this?'
'Can I have this?'
'Can I have this?'
'Can I have this?'
'Can I have this?'
'Can I have this?'
'Huh?' Han groaned on the other side of the sheet. 'What?' he said, turning to face her.
'What?'
'You said something.'
Leia frowned. 'Did I?'
'Yeah. "Can I have this?" or something.'
'Oh.' Leia frowned more, creating deeper wrinkles across her face. 'Just something I regret saying from when I was younger. It seems to be that I can't think without speaking.'
Three beats of silence fell between them.
'What?'
'I've learnt that it's sometimes wiser not to comment than comment. I think this is one of those occasions.'
Leia rolled her eyes. Well, at least he was learning. She thought about all the time she'd spent in the past on the Falcon, yelling at Han, trying to insult him. He used to annoy her so much. Now she was having his babies. How life had changed.
Yet each of those words ripped through her heart and she started to bleed. Leia dashed to the 'fresher, shut the door a little bit too firmly and sank to the floor. She let the pain begin to overwhelm her and watched the tears soak her pjammas as she remembered yet more of those occasions where she so wished that she had kept her trap shut.
The blinds had not been closed in the 'fresher that night, and distorted pools of the outside street light fell on the tiled floors. Using the basin as her aid, she dragged herself up off the floor and looked at her red blotched face in the mirror. There were only three words that she could think to say as she stood looking in her own reflection. Her voice was barely a hoarse whisper as she shook in the aftermath of her outburst.
'I'm so sorry.'