1I don't like to think about it, but I always do. That's what the spice, among other things, is for. To keep the daemons away.

I thought I'd known what scared was when, eighteen, I'd found Leia crying, curled into a little ball outside, at the party after the award ceremony at Yavin. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong, and like the good little boy I'd been, I took it on faith, and looked after her as best I could trying to make her feel better. She finally, days later, told me that she was pregnant. I was devastated–it meant that there was someone else, as it certainly wasn't me. But there wasn't anyone else. It was common knowledge among Rebels that Imperial Stormtroopers sometimes didn't see women for months, even years at a time, an as there was no code of conduct when dealing with a Rebel prisoner, it was no surprise that Leia had been mistreated the was she was.

However, it was such a surprise to her, that, aside from the initial crying, she didn't address the issue until she started to show. Then she finally told everyone. It was too late for an abortion.

I was loyal to her through all of it. I took care of her, doing little things like rubbing her tired back and bringing her lunch when, true to Leia fashion, she was too busy or preoccupied to remember to get food herself. And meanwhile, the crush I'd had on her since the first day I saw her–in that message that Artoo invaded my life with–became unfaltering, unquestioning love. I thought that she looked beautiful pregnant. She was luminous during the moments that she was able to forget the gravity of her situation, as well as the war, and pause to talk with me, joke, and feel her baby kick. Sometimes, after her work for the day was done, I'd go to her quarters. She'd cuddle with me and talk about the future in as positive a manor as she could. She was determined to make a good life for the two of them. And I'd be damned if I wasn't going to help her.

Han, in the rare moments that he was around–he couldn't quite make a commitment to this "idealism thing," nor could he stay away–would call the baby mine and Leia's, though he knew what had really happened. He just did it to rile me, to poke fun at how much time we spent together, at how worried I always was about her, but it put ideas into my head.

One night in Leia's room, I kissed her. I'd held out for as long as I could, but I knew that it was then or never. She kissed me back–oh, why did she kiss me back?–and I ended up spending the night. I asked her if I could be the baby's father, and she said, "I'd been counting on it."

We weren't even nineteen yet, but it made sense to me that if we were going to have a baby, we ought to get married. I didn't think that we had to or anything, I just thought that it would be best. And I wanted to marry her–so badly. I got home from a month-long scouting mission with Red Squadron and ran off to find Leia, who, I'd been told, was ordered my Mon Mothma herself to take a month or two off. She was asleep in her room, but woke up when I came in. She was eight months and so big that I couldn't believe my eyes, but I kissed her and gave her the Alderannian engagement brooch I'd found in a flea market on Sullust. She said yes.

Mon Mothma married us two weeks later, and Leia looked radiant in blue gown she'd had made, a gold circlet on her head. As of late she'd been tired and complained about being swollen, but that day...I will never get that image out of my mind. She looked like some combined goddess of beauty and fertility, her hair falling in ringlets about her face, her eyes bright, the folds of her vine-silk gown draping from her shoulders, falling loose and regal about her wrists, and accentuating the full curve of her stomach.

Our honeymoon was spent with the Alliance, but I was given a week off. The other pilots kept teasing me about being a married man, but I didn't mind. I had Leia Organa Skywalker to go home to–something I knew they all envied.

The baby was born before our honeymoon was over, almost two weeks early. It was the most stressful day of my life up to that point. But when I looked into Ben–Leia had consented to naming him for my mentor–Skywalker's dark, dark eyes for the first time, it didn't matter that I'd been up for thirty hours, or that our honeymoon got cut short, or that he wasn't really mine. What mattered was that I had a son every bit as beautiful and amazing as his mother. I couldn't believe how much I loved him.

"Luke," Leia said, waking from a soft dose on her meddward bed and turning to me, a few hours after Ben's birth, "I have to tell you something. Don't hate me."

Nothing could make me hate her, or Ben. She knew that.

"It wasn't a Stormtrooper, Luke. It was Vader."

Again, I thought I knew what scared was, but I promised her that it didn't change anything, save that now Vader had even more to answer for. Ben was mine now, after all.

Little did I know that it changed everything.

I shut my eyes against the memory, and a hot tear falls down my cheek. I wipe it away angrily. Clenching my teeth, I rush inside to the drawer in the kitchen where the spice-sticks are. Gone. Blast.

I slump against the wall, breathing deeply against the withdrawal that's already beginning. I'll take a shower, I think. A hot one. It'll warm me up and make my tense muscles relax. Then maybe I'll go to the cantina down the street–I can get more there. If I can't wait half an hour, then I have a bigger problem than I thought.

I go to the balcony once more and look towards the Palace. I suppose I worry about her still. I wonder if she's doing as badly as I am, but I don't think she is. She has the rare power to turn dark into light. I used to be good at that, too.

Besides, I know she tries to be strong for the kids. They don't know why I left. They never will.

I sigh and slide the door shut. Han takes care of them, I remind myself. He promised he would.

"Yeah," I murmur bitterly to myself. "I bet he takes real good care of them."