Notes:

Trigger warning for self-harm towards the end of Chapter 1.

This starts out pretty dark, but I promise light will break through.

Musical inspirations:

- Never Look Away, Vienna Teng
- National Anthem (Video Monologue), Lana Del Rey
- Frozen, Madonna
- Clearest Blue, CHVRCHES

Chapter 1

In the end, she'd rather they both left. She'd rather know that they existed out there, somewhere away in the void (even if that meant away from her): Luke hunting for clues on his quest to become a Jedi, Han plying his illegal trade, paying off his debts and roaming the galaxy freely with Chewie. Maybe they'd be happy. It would at least give her comfort to know that they were out there, somewhere, instead of here on this frozen hellhole, dead in the snow.

Because of me. Leia stopped pacing and closed her eyes, leaning into the familiar knife's edge, her mantra. My fault. In the end, it all boiled down to her. Her mistakes aboard the Tantive IV; the reason her friends got caught up in all this in the first place. Her convincing them to stay (didn't she coax and plead?). Her having the audacity to open up her heart and let them in, even though she knew they deserved so much more than to be pulled into her black hole of guilt and pain. Yes, she'd told herself she was just trying to retain some of the Rebellion's greatest assets, and while that was true on one level, Han was absolutely right — this was so much more. She did need them, both of them, in ways she didn't quite understand, and couldn't fully admit to herself.

Once, in the aftermath of the Battle of Yavin, while she was still in the medcenter recovering before the awards ceremony the next day, she had found herself teetering on the edge of a cliff, looking over a dark, roiling ocean that seethed with grief and despair. The Alliance leaders had saved her from falling, then, with their offer of a new home and purpose. She had thrown herself completely into her new life, dedicated, above all, to justice (and, particularly at first, revenge). Afterwards, whenever that storm-tossed swell threatened to engulf her again, when duty and purpose were suddenly no longer enough, and she caved under the weight of all she'd lost and all she continued to lose, Han and Luke had always been there to ward off the waves, each in his own way.

Now she was faced with losing them both in one cruel, needless stroke, and she felt the waters rising again.

Leia leaned back against the support of an X-wing, arms wrapped around her against the chill of the hangar. Its door was wide open to the swirling snow and the swift-falling night. The temperatures were plunging, along with her hope. Artoo and Threepio, those two faithful droids, were at the door, searching the gloom. Chewie stood nearby, now still, now pacing, a mirror image of her own turmoil. Neither of them said a word, as if some moment's lack of vigil would doom the ones they waited for.

Any moment, Leia thought, any moment now, they could come striding through the door. She seized on that image in an effort to shut out the unwanted ones. Han would probably shake his head to fling off the snow and make some quip about the cold and the danger. Luke would grin, then come over to reassure her that everything was okay. If he could be found. If he wasn't severely injured, or…. Despite her best efforts, the scenarios slipped their way into her mind, a parade of horrific images that she couldn't shut out: Crevasses. Whiteouts. Bounty hunters. Imperial discovery. Or something else, more murky: there was still so much they didn't know about their current planet of residence, and she had a feeling she couldn't shake that there was something menacing lurking beneath the endless ice and snow.

Leia fought against the rising waves, tried to will the images out of her head. They had to come back. They had to. They were hardy, they'd been through so much already, and they had so much life still to live. This couldn't be it; they had to be alive out there. Any moment now, Leia repeated to herself.

The chill grew, as did her sense of dread.

Movement on the hangar floor. "Sir, all the patrols are in. Still no sign of —" the deck lieutenant was hushed by a motion from his commanding officer. It didn't matter; Leia knew what they were saying, anyway. She stood still, willing herself not to feel, to be strong against the panic beginning to claw at her chest. She vaguely acknowledged Threepio approaching and confirming that Artoo's sensors hadn't picked up anything. The officer, Bren Derlin — a good man, who had gone on the mission to Omereth with Luke a few years ago — and the deck lieutenant, a newer recruit whose name Leia hadn't learned yet, were walking towards her. She knew what was coming, and she could do nothing to stop it.

"Your Highness," Major Derlin said gently, "There's nothing more that we can do tonight. The shield doors must be closed."

No. Please. Not now, not yet. Leia felt half-crazed. She wanted to scream, wanted to order them to keep it open all night, regulations be damned, even if it cost them valuable supplies and froze all the fuel and them, too. She found herself nodding instead.

Duty. The Rebellion had to come before personal interests. She knew that, believed it; she'd had a lifetime of training for it. She'd ordered men and women she cared about into battle, knowing that they might not make it out alive. Many hadn't. She'd been ready to give up her own life, too, time and time again. Anyone involved in the Rebellion knew the risks. But that didn't make the cost any easier for her to bear, nor did it make this moment feel like anything less than a knife to her chest.

The doors began their creaking and groaning. Leia stood frozen, watching their slow progress as they shut out the icy night gales and the two people she loved most in the galaxy. As they shuddered closer and closer, she suddenly had a strange feeling that she was watching them close not only on her friends' lives, but on her own as well. Her future dwindled down to just a sliver, then disappeared with a clang: sudden, inevitable, and horribly final. She stood for a moment, numb, then turned and walked blindly back to her room.

The door swished shut behind her, and Leia collapsed onto her cot. She lay there unmoving, staring blankly at the ceiling, the waves of her emotions buffeting her full-force now. She had shut out Luke and Han, left them to die out in the night's storms. They might still survive, of course, but, as Threepio had so helpfully indicated, the chances were very slim.

She was going to lose them, too.

In the space of a second she was back on the bridge of the Death Star, held fast by an iron hand clamped on her shoulder, watching as her planet erupted into flame and dust. She couldn't breathe. She felt the explosion mounting inside her once more, the panic finally tearing its way free. She was shaking, gasping for air; all things faded but the images of her home's annihilation and Han and Luke, frozen in the snow. She sat up and swallowed down bile, fighting the waves of nausea, and tried to steady her breathing.

She would not think of them dead. Leia choked back a sob as she put her head in her hands, still shivering despite her efforts at control. She remembered Luke's face as he came to retrieve her from her cell on the Death Star, all hope and youthful exuberance, the first friendly face she'd seen in what felt like a lifetime. How they had shared some of their grief with each other on the trip back to Yavin IV, taking comfort in one another's understanding and presence in a way she was still surprised at. While Luke could sometimes be a little naive and caught up in his own world, they'd had many moments like that since — finding strength and solace in their shared loss and common purpose. She felt such a strong connection to him; so much so that it sometimes unnerved her. It was like she had always known him, somehow. And while she felt his admiration for her sometimes bordered on worship, she relished the much-needed consistency of his friendship. He was a rock of pure goodness; a beacon of hope in the midst of the swirling uncertainties and the darkness of their time.

Han, on the other hand, had irritated her to the core with his continuous threatened inconstancy. But despite his words, he had stayed with them for most of three years, and she had come to rely on his presence in her life, too. Underneath the aura he gave off of devil-may-care rogue, she had discovered a depth of sensitivity and caring that few might suspect (and which she occasionally questioned herself, when he was being particularly difficult). Whenever she or Luke were having a hard time, Han would always be there to help however he could, whether through humor, fun, a comforting hand on the shoulder, encouraging words, or offers for them to dig themselves deep into his treasured stash of Corellian ale (this she had refused — aside from the questionable propriety of a princess in wartime getting drunk, she feared losing control, particularly in the presence of Han, however tempting it might be to escape everything for awhile). Swashbuckling scoundrel Han might be, but he had a heart of gold, and he had proven that time and time again with his actions, always coming through when they needed him.

Also — Leia couldn't hold back tears from her eyes at the thought of it — Han saw her, the real her. While others tended to hold her at a distance due to her title, and even Luke put her on a pedestal, Han had dispensed with the formalities from the start and treated her as an equal, a peer. This was shocking, occasionally annoying, and overall incredibly comforting. She'd had very few people in her life outside of her family who had looked beyond the royal title to see just her, the real Leia, and this was like a breath of fresh mountain air. Han saw her, and by now he knew her better than anyone else still alive — although Luke was a close second.

Then came the undercover mission to Ord Mantell, and everything had changed. She still remembered how close Han had been that night at the resort in the mountains — had it only been a few weeks? His eyes were soft and open as they talked over dinner, and afterwards, on the veranda, his arm was around her waist, and his other hand was reaching up to brush a lock of her hair aside, slipping around the back of her neck, drawing her closer, closer — then came the commotion, and the sudden agony in her arm; the bounty hunter had missed Han and shot her instead. They had escaped, and her arm had since healed, but that was the turning point. Han's walls had come up again (and she supposed hers had too — it wasn't like they needed much prodding), and he had been insufferable ever since. She felt like he was playing some sort of game: There were times when he softened again, just for a moment, and a version of the man she had come to rely on (love) before would show himself, but those times were growing less and less frequent. More often he'd make some inappropriate comment or try another one of his ridiculous attempts at flirting, only to lash out at her the next moment. Their fights had become epic; she knew they were the gossip of everyone on base, and yet he set her off in ways she couldn't seem to control. She was losing him; she was sure of it: He had always talked of leaving, had even followed through once for a short time, but now it looked as if he were really going to go for good.

She thought about their last fight, just that afternoon, in the south passage. He had abruptly told her goodbye and then stormed off, and she had followed, heart sinking, repeating her same old pleas for him to stay. He wanted more from her than that, though, more she wasn't sure she had left to give, especially if he was eventually just going to turn around and leave. The last thing she had said to him was "I'd just as soon kiss a wookiee," and that was a lie, and oh how she wished she could have left him with something else, something that might keep him here, but no, she was too broken, and she knew it. She was a center from which suffering radiated outward. People died because of her, and really, she was already dead, too. She had no future beyond the Rebellion. Why would she, how could she possibly convince anyone to stay for her own sake?

In the beginning, her drive for justice had kept her going, kept the ocean of grief at bay, kept the fissures of despair from opening up and swallowing her whole. She still believed in the cause of the Rebellion as much as ever, was just as committed to the fight, but time had chipped away at the floodgates and revealed the fault lines, and lately it had been harder and harder to control.

Now the cracks were wide open, and the dark ocean was frothing at her feet, and there was Alderaan again, engulfed in flame, and she was being tortured, writhing on the floor of her cell, and Han and Luke were pale and stiff, eyes glazed over and frosted, and her breath was coming ragged again, and there wasn't any other way out, and what hope did they really have anyway? Everything inside her was screaming, and she was furious at the galaxy, furious at the Empire, furious at the gods (if they even ever existed), furious at herself.

Turning towards the wall beside her, she reach out and touched it, acknowledging its smooth, icy contours, then pounded her fist into it, hard. She winced with pain, but she punched it again, first one fist, then the other, until her knuckles were red and bruised and she fell back on her bed, spent. After a breath, she rolled back over to the frozen surface and pressed the backs of her hands into it, letting the ice send its sharp tendrils of pain into her skin; pain which soon turned to comforting numbness. She breathed in and out slowly, trying to regain control. The familiar locks clicked back into place in her chest, taming the panic, stowing away her anger and grief. She hid her dreaded visions of Han and Luke beside the image of Alderaan's demise and tucked them back into a far corner of her mind, where they'd be harder to reach again for the present. Wiping her face clean of tears, she sat up slowly and grabbed her datapad. She felt emptied out. There was nothing left to feel now, and there was nothing left to do but work, and wait, in the darkness.