Write a vignette entitled "All or Nothing" that includes one female character, one male character, a piece of jewelry, and the words "You know I'd fight for you, but how can I fight someone who isn't there?"
"Where is the Rebel base?"
It must be the hundredth time Vader has asked. Leia lies at his feet in the cell, weak with torture. She can hear the droid humming somewhere behind him. He bends low over her, so that she sees her own eyes reflected in the visors of his mask. They waver in her vision, the brown turning to blue—Luke's eyes, she knows now that he has Luke's eyes—and back again.
"You don't want to see, do you?" he taunts her, his gloved hands grasping her aching arms."You will see!"
He drags her to her feet and out of the cell. This time, she knows what is going to happen, and fights every inch of the way, but he forces her, makes her turn to the viewport. Alderaan, like a perfect jewel, unreachable, helpless, faces her. She tries to hide her eyes so that she won't have to see, again, but he seizes her wrists and makes her look. And she is two, the Leia in Vader's grasp and the Leia standing by the controls.
"NO!" she screams, trying to stop her alter ego, but she is pressing down the switch, and her eyes slew to Alderaan, the sickly light of the superlaser bearing down on it, and someone is shaking her shoulder and calling her—
"Leia! Sweetheart, wake up—Leia!"
Leia jolted upright with a little half-sob, panting.
"No, no, no—"
"Sweetheart, it's okay, it's a dream, I've got you, it's okay—"
She let him pull her into his arms, trembling from head to foot. The sheets were wound round her and soaked in sweat. Han crooked her legs over his, rubbing her back, rocking her. She slid her arms round his waist. He was very big and warm and solid.
"Han," she said desolately. He was making inarticulate comforting sounds, soft crooning noises. She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder, making her breathing go back to normal.
"The usual?" Han asked, dropping little tender kisses across her shoulder.
"Yes—Han, I'm so tired! Make it stop—fight him for me!"
"Oh, sweetheart. You know I would fight for you, but I can't fight someone who isn't there."
"He is there—he's looking over my shoulder all the time! Always, Han!"
"You mean that—that Force ghost thing Luke says he sees?" Han asked uncertainly.
Leia sat up, wriggling off his lap.
"No—I mean he's here and here—" she struck her forehead and chest. "And he won't go away, he never goes away."
"Do you want him to?" Han asked unexpectedly.
"Of course I want him to!" Leia exploded. She tried to jump out of the bed, but the sheet was so knotted round her ankles that she didn't get far.
"I meant—maybe you have to let him go before he'll let you go."
"You've been talking to Luke," Leia spat. She reached up and grabbed her necklace—her mother's jappor snippet and the Alderaanian pendant Luke had given her for her twentieth birthday, strung on a leather thong. She gave it such a sharp tugthat the knot at the back of her neck parted, and flung the trinket violently against the wall.
"No, I haven't," Han protested. "Vader's dead, Leia. He's not in your head, and Luke's ghost doesn't want to hurt you."
"Oh, Luke! I don't know what mental contortions he goes through to—to love him! Luke's mind never did work like anyone else's in the galaxy—"
She sniffed angrily and disentangled herself from the sheet. She stamped her way to the window, and stood fidgeting with the controls to the blind. Han was watching her, his face in shadow, but she could sense his anxiety.
"The way Luke talks, you'd think he was thinking about—about forgiving him for, for not taking me to the swoop races when I was little or something!"
Han got up and came behind her, big hands massaging her tense shoulders.
"And I am trying, but—the Death Star. Luke. You. That's the worst, what he did to you."
"I've heard about fathers-in-law from hell, but that was going too far, I gotta say," Han said.
Leia laughed shakily, and turned in his arms to face him.
"Han, I love you."
"I know—I think you mentioned it before."
He ran his hands through her loose hair, tipping her face up to his. She rose up on tiptoes to meet his kiss, playing with the rumpled hair at the nape of his neck. Nothing ever seemed so bad when she was in Han's arms and she suspected that he knew it.
"Better?" he asked, studying her face in the twilight. She nodded.
"I'm not going to let him hurt me anymore," she said fiercely. "Not tonight."
"That's my girl," he said.
She switched on the lamp before she got back into bed, peering into the corners of the room.
"What are you looking for?"
"My necklace..."
She found it beside the wardrobe. Her mother and Luke and herself and Anakin, all bound up together indissolubly. It was all or nothing. She sighed, and re-knotted the string, pulled it over her head.
"If I could forgive him once and have done with it," she said, climbing onto the bed beside Han, "but when it's again and again and again—it's like climbing up a sand dune."
Han grinned. "Luke's rubbing off on you. But are you getting nearer the top of the dune?"
"Yeah—" She hooked a knee over his legs and curled up against his chest. "—that's not the only thing I'm getting on top of."