A/N: Mark Hamill was probably joking when he said that finding out his first love was his sister messed Luke up a little, but I can't stop thinking about it. So here we are. But I don't actually ship it. The title is taken from a May 17, 1819 letter to Augusta Leigh from Lord Byron.
One
Leia knows Luke has feelings for her. He doesn't try to hide it and, really, she doubts he ever really could if he did try. For a time she did consider putting a stop to it, tell him there is no room in her life for romance, not with a war to fight and a galaxy to save; but she can't do it. She looks at him with his dreamy farm boy eyes, his sunny blonde hair, and his seemingly perpetually rosy ears, and just can't find it in herself to break his heart any more than it already has been.
He did help rescue me, she reasons with herself. He is brave and kind and funny. He is going to be a Jedi and is already a good man.
He blushes. A lot. For the first few weeks after the awards ceremony on Yavin, all Luke seems to do is train and blush. He blushes when she gives him a kiss on the cheek, when she hugs him, when she gives him a compliment. Hell, he blushes when she just looks in his general direction. He ducks his head, his ears turn pink, and his eyes shine just a little brighter.
She thinks it's adorable.
"Aw, Princess, don't tell the kid that!" Han says over a bundle of wires that apparently belong somewhere within the belly of the Millennium Falcon.
"Why not? I find him adorable. It's a compliment." She really doesn't know how they got from discussing his possible recruitment to the rebellion to Luke's flushed face.
"Look, a man doesn't want to hear a woman say they find them to be 'cute' or 'adorable.' Those are words used to describe small children and baby animals." He puts a set of burnt wires down and leans towards her. "If you want to pay Luke a compliment, tell him you think he's handsome or charming." He winks. "Sexy is a good adjective, too."
She smirks. "Why do you care about Luke's feelings so much?"
"What can I say? I got a soft spot for the kid," he says with a shrug.
Her smirk turns into an appreciative smile as she slowly eyes his form.
"What?" he asks with an almost leery grin.
"Nothing. I just think that you wanting to look after Luke is…"
"Chivalrous? Thoughtful? Sexy?"
She shakes her head and leans in close. "I think it's adorable."
Two
Luke stops blushing after a while.
Well, he stops blushing as much as he used to.
He's still has a crush on her. She can tell by the way he says her name. At first he only addressed her as 'Princess' and said it with a reverence that made her heart ache just a little. She had hoped that convincing him to call her by her given name would do away with some of his infatuation and, she thinks, in a way it has. Although there are still notes of devotion in how he says 'Leia', he seems to find it easier to talk to her now. They are better friends without titles and honorifics between them and she is glad for that.
That said, he still looks at her like she hung the stars and moons, and sometimes she feels like she just doesn't know what to do with that. Other times she finds that she actually doesn't really mind it as much as she thought she did.
Han, on the other hand, refuses to call her anything but 'Princess' and any and every butchered version of all of her titles. She can feel his eyes on her long before he yells out "Hey, Your Worshipfulness!" from across the hanger bay or the mess hall. She discovers that it's easy to hide how his constant gaze sends shivers up and down her spine with quick wit and scowl on her face.
Three
Leia realizes it's more than a crush when they move bases for the second time.
Now they're on a moon of a planet whose name no one can pronounce without accidentally offending someone that seems to be nothing but green fields and rolling hills save for one massive mountain range that offers a sizable amount of protection. A month after establishing their new base High Council allows for a night for celebration. "To boost morale", they explain to her. There is music and liquor (definitely contraband) and food (not rations). She decides to wear a dress instead of her usual fatigues and laments not having anything to adorn her hair.
Luke asks to accompany her to the party and she agrees. He gives her half a handful of little white and purple flowers when she answers her door and seems very pleased with himself when she puts them in her hair. He surprises her with his ability to dance a Coruscanti waltz.
"I had Han teach me how," he explains, pulling her closer when the song changes to a ballad with an air of confidence that has been steadily growing in the two years since she met him.
"How is your training coming along? I've been told you've been practicing with your lightsaber."
"It's going as well as it can be expected without a master to teach me. I've found some old documents the Empire seem to have overlooked."
One of her father's old lessons makes its way to the forefront of her mind and she bites her lip. "My father fought alongside Jedi in the Clone Wars. He said they held a vow of celibacy. Will you do the same?"
His quiet laughter and the tenderness in his eyes when he answers "No" sends a shot of some painful, nameless emotion through her heart. A distant part of herself wants to call it dread.
When the song is over she excuses herself and wanders over the hastily-made bar where Han has stationed himself for the evening with his whiskey.
"Nice moves out there. I see the kid gave you the flowers," he says with an amused grin. "You know he spent a solid thirty minutes looking for those. I didn't have the heart to tell him they were weeds."
"Luke told me you taught him how to dance."
He shrugs. "Just the waltz. Surprised a low-life criminal like me knows a high class move or two, Princess?"
Leia shakes her head. "I read your dossier, Captain; and I'm not surprised someone in the Imperial Navy taught their recruits how to dance a number or two."
He grins and convinces her to allow him to demonstrate his training first hand and in private. Really, though, it doesn't take much convincing and an hour after Luke walks her back to her quarters and leaves her with a chaste kiss on the farthest corner of her mouth, she quietly makes her way to the Falcon and spends the rest of the evening stepping on Han's toes and laughing more than she has since she left Alderaan.
In the morning she sees Luke's bright smile and discovers that she doesn't feel nearly as guilty as she thought she would.
Four
Leia realizes it might be a slight problem when Luke starts to get jealous.
They are playing card games on the Falcon and Luke, ever the gentleman, keeps what he feels is an appropriate distance. Han, on the other hand, has no problem sitting close enough to oh so casually lay an arm around her shoulders. Leia has no real problem with it either because she doesn't bother pushing him away.
About two hours into their card game, and about five minutes after Han starts playing with the end of Leia's braid, Luke announces that he's tired and does his best to not sulk out of the ship after she declines his offer to walk her back to her quarters. A half hour after Luke leaves Han tells her the farm boy is jealous. She rolls her eyes, rests her head very comfortably on his shoulder, and denies it.
She has a hard time denying it when she wakes up in the Falcon's living space and is greeted with Luke's half-hurt, half-concerned face looking down at her. She looks up at him in sleepy confusion, her face quickly transforming into an expression of sheer indignation when Han walks in with two steaming cups of kaffe.
"Why didn't you wake me?" she half shouts as she shoots up from the booth. "AND WHERE ARE MY SHOES?"
"Your shoes are under the table. You took them off halfway through our third game," he explains in an increasingly irritated voice. "And I didn't wake you because you looked peaceful and I know you don't get as much sleep as you should."
"Well, y-you should've woken me up anyways," she sputters in response as she tries to work the kinks out of her neck, clearly not expecting his answer to be what it was. "Or, at the very least, you could have helped make a little more comfortable."
"I triedto move you BUT YOU KICKED ME!" He lifts his shirt high enough to reveal an angry bruise in the approximate shape of one small princess sized foot on his left side.
Leia catches Luke's sigh of relief as he backs out of the ship and tries to forget about it as best as she can.
It catches up with her when Luke runs into her on his way back from patrol.
"What do you think of Han?" he asks her quietly, as if it were a secret just between them, as if he has never asked Han about his thoughts about her.
"I think he's smarter than he wants people to think he is and he could be a great leader if he wanted to." She looks at Luke and immediately hates the pensive look on his face. "Han's an ass."
They stroll back to base arm in arm, taking their time as they talk about nothing and everything. She likes talking to Luke. Talking to Luke is easy in a way that isn't with anyone else, dead or alive. Sometimes she catches herself, recalling a memory she thinks they share because it feels like she's known him her entire life. It's in moments like this, walking through a sweet smelling patch of woods, talking about some book neither has read in years, that she looks at him and thinks that she can see herself with him for the rest of her life.
But then they come back to base and she sees Han and he smiles at her and her heart does this funny skip/flip thing she thought only happened in romance novels and she realizes that they're all kind of screwed.
Five
Leia doesn't realize the depth of his feelings for her until she tells him about Han.
Han is gone, surely in Jabba's custody by now, and they're on another frigate awaiting word from Lando and Chewie. It's been a month and she misses Han with a fierceness she didn't think was possible even with everything else she has lost.
Not long before Luke leaves once again for Dagobah, she has a moment of doubt, and he assures her that they'll get Han back, swears it on his life. She looks at him and feels her heart is filled to the brim with something she can't quite comprehend. She apologizes to him, cries for him, tells him she that does love him but not like she loves Han and she never meant to hurt him. He wipes her tears away, takes her hands into his and kisses her palms.
"All I've ever wanted is your happiness."
Later, much later, after the Emperor is dead and the war very nearly over, he calls her "sister" with a voice filled with an equal measure of sadness and joy.
"I've decided to follow the old Jedi code of celibacy," he tells her, his voice low, as if his decision were a secret just for her to hear.
Her voice matches his. "You don't have to, Luke. Surely, you'll find someone to give your heart to."
He smiles and traces the veins on her hands. "It's already gone."
One
Han is gone. Ben is gone. Rey brings Luke back.
He looks older than she expected him to and the beard doesn't do him any justice, but she doesn't care because her brother is back, by her side, where he is supposed to be.
The night he returns they retreat to her quarters and he kneels before her in tears. He begs for her forgiveness, for Ben, for Han, for leaving. He kisses her palms and looks at her with eyes filled with such unrepentant devotion that she just doesn't know what to do with it.