There isn't much evidence of Leia being injured, but she spent enough time with Luke and Han – she probably couldn't avoid it from time to time. ;-)
Wishes
Leia was vaguely aware that it was night and the visitors who had kept her company had gone for the day. She was still hazy with drugs, but not really sleepy. Everything seemed pleasantly blurred and calm.
Was there someone new sitting beside her bed? She looked sort of like Leia's mother, except that Leia couldn't really remember her mother. The next minute Leia decided no one was there. It would have been nice, she reflected, if her mother could have been here. She would have liked that comfort, at least. Family was hard to come by for an Alderaanian these days.
The shadowy face (that didn't exist) offered her a soft, wise look. Strangely, she reminded Leia of another, less important figure.
Padmé Amidala. Queen of Naboo. Senator.
Did she have a family? Leia liked to think so. Her husband was tall and handsome. He loved her more than anything and his smile told her secrets. Two children – a boy and girl. They sometimes fought, but they were best friends and nothing and no one could destroy that.
Childish fantasies brought on by the musing of an injured, drugged Leia, who should still know better. Even never having been in love herself, Leia knew that in all likelihood the former senator from Naboo had never married. Never had children. She had been in office during the Clone War – she'd more important things to worry about than romantic droolings.
Senator Amidala had faded into obscurity and no one had ever been able to tell Leia how she died, or even if had done so. Seemingly she had just disappeared into thin air one day. Her family had never been there to be able to disappear, in the first place.
Had anyone loved her? Had anyone cared?
It wasn't unheard of for a politician to have no one close to them. Even more common for royalty to be alone, and Amidala had been both at one time in her life. So maybe there were no recordings of Senator Amidala because there had been no one who was interested. Not even in the woman who had started the process that had landed Palpatine so firmly on this throne.
**A young woman sat alone in her tower. She had a staff, but she didn't really care for them. As most of them were rotated regularly, none had the time to become familiar or comforting – it was better this way. Years ago, in a freak storm her parents had been killed and she had no siblings. She had never married it. Had considered doing so, but knew it required more compromise than she could afford to give. Duty, not love, filled her time.**
Nobody loved Leia. She didn't think of it with self-pity, though, only with an aching emptiness that refused to be filled. No husband, no siblings and no parents. Only a blue-eyed farm kid, who was strangely powerful; and an unreliable smuggler with a touch of brilliance.
Nobody was ever going to love Leia. Not like a husband loved a wife. Leia didn't have time to let them. There was an Empire to fight and when she was done with that – and she would be done with that – there would be a government to build. Other worlds to save – I couldn't save Alderaan…
Unsatisfying. That's how that vision turned out. Or not so much unsatisfying as unfinished. Can you help me? She silently asked the invisible woman who sat beside her bed and had a husband and children, and was beautiful, but strangely sad nonetheless. What else is there? Can…might…is…is it possible for me to have a family? The woman who wasn't really there, that Leia had never met anyway, reached out and gripped her hand.
And somewhere, distant in time, a man gave a woman a smile that held secrets, and told her that he loved her.
*****
A/N: Yeah, tell me what you think. What you really think. I'm not sure about this one.