A/N: I'm sure nobody actually wants to read one of my long, rambling author's notes right now, so I'll do you all a favour and leave it for the end. Enjoy chapter three!
The first thing Ben noticed was that someone was laughing, young and carefree and happy.
He blinked slowly, and found himself in the middle of a green field, the grass around him blowing gently in a salt-scented breeze.
Fingertips shaking slightly, he raised his hand to his cheek, exhaling softly when his palm met warm skin.
Dropping his hand, he looked down at himself, wryly surprised to find that he was wearing a soft white tunic and pants much like he used to wear when he was training at Luke's academy. A quick tug at the shirt assured him that it, too, seemed entirely real.
From somewhere behind him, the laugh rang out again. Ben let go of the shirt and looked up, half-expecting to see someone appear there at the base of the hill behind him.
As though reading his mind, a person appeared just where he had expected – two people, to be precise. One was a little boy of about five years old, shrieking with delighted laughter as he raced up the hill, and the other was a woman who could only be his mother, her loose hair flowing out behind her as she chased him up the hill.
The little boy shouted with glee as his mother caught up to him and swept him into her arms, spinning him round and round as he closed his eyes and laughed. She leaned down to press a kiss to his smooth forehead, her smile soft, and he opened his eyes, looking up at her with pure adoration.
Ben was rooted to the spot, his thoughts suddenly painfully bright with loss and longing. The feeling only intensified as the mother and her little son faded away, their outlines shimmering faintly blue against the green backdrop before disappearing entirely.
"Ben," a voice said behind him, soft and warm.
He turned around slowly, already knowing who he would see.
"Ben," Leia said again, opening her arms.
For a moment he was frozen, paralysed by shock and guilt, but then his body started moving almost of its own accord. He ran into his mother's arms, and Leia drew him close, wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders.
"Mom," Ben said raggedly, taking a step back to look down at her. "Mom, I –"
"I am so proud of you, Ben," Leia interrupted, reaching up a hand to cradle his face.
"You shouldn't be," he said, voice choked with emotion. "Everything I did…"
"Is in the past," she said firmly. "However much you want to, there is nothing you can ever do about it."
She closed her eyes, and a shadow of soul-shattering pain passed across her face. "No-one can go back and change things, Ben."
"I deserve to die," he said, a fresh flare of crippling guilt flooding through him at the immeasurable grief that was etched into her face.
Leia opened her eyes and glared at him. "How can you say that?"
"I – what?" Ben blinked, dumbfounded.
His mother took a step forward, fiercely intimidating despite being a full head shorter than he was. "I said, how can you possibly think you deserve to die?"
He shook his head slightly. "Mom, do you have any idea how many lives I destroyed –"
"And you being dead, how is that going to help them at all?" Leia's eyes blazed up at him, and he saw a flicker of the princess that had stood up to Grand Moff Tarkin all those years ago.
"That's just the thing," he said wearily. "I destroyed them. I can't help them."
"You can help their families," Leia countered, her voice full of quiet force. "And you can make sure that nothing like that ever happens again, not to anyone."
Ben gaped at her, then gathered himself and closed his mouth quickly. "You really think… you think I can do that?" he stammered.
"I don't think you can," his mother said grimly. "I think you have to."
He closed his eyes, the screams of countless, nameless enemies echoing hauntingly through his skull. "You're right," he said softly, opening his eyes.
Leia's expression softened. "That, Ben, is why I'm proud of you."
He didn't know what to say. Thank you didn't seem to cut it; neither did I'm sorry or any of the thousand I should have's.
His mother seemed to sense his dilemma, stepping forward and cradling his cheek again. "Everyone makes mistakes, Ben," she said. "It's part of life. What's important is how you fix those mistakes."
"I made mistakes, Ben," she admitted, her gaze distant. "Many of them. But my biggest regret is that I made you feel, even for one moment, that I didn't love you anymore."
Her eyes found his, full of fierce love and pride and sadness all at once. "I never stopped loving you, Ben. Never. I should have made sure you knew that every moment of every day."
"Mom," he said, overwhelmed, but she held up a hand, expression resolute.
"I can't change the past, Ben, just like you can't. But I can change the future. You deserve a chance to go back and make things right – but more than that, you deserve love. You deserve to be loved, and to love in return, until the end of your days."
"Mom," he said again.
Leia smiled at him, her gaze full of love. "Come here."
He stepped forward immediately, and she wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace.
Ben rested his head on Leia's and closed his eyes, feeling her love as though it was a tangible thing in the air. It was warm and reassuring, blooming in his chest and filling him with warmth from top to toes.
He opened his eyes, and saw that he was glowing with a soft blue light. He hadn't been imagining the warm feeling at all – somehow, Leia was giving him the last of her life-force.
"Will you come visit me?" he whispered into his mother's hair, knowing he had precious little time left in this place, wherever it was.
Leia shook her head slowly, her smile sad but peaceful. "I'm not going to stay, Ben," she said softly. "I'm going to go on."
"Say hi to Dad for me," he said, pulling back to look at her for what he knew would be the last time. "And, Mom… thank you."
"Go home," his mother said softly, stretching up on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead.
The blue glow brightened and brightened, spots of white starting to form at the edges of his vision. For a moment, he glimpsed the younger versions of himself and his mother shimmering in the air a little while off on the hilltop. Leia's smile, full of warm and unconditional love, was the last thing he saw before the light swept across his vision entirely.
On the forest planet of Ajan Kloss, the body of Princess Leia faded away.
Standing by her bedside, Maz Kanata smiled.
A/N: *sighs and sniffs a little* I got waaay too emotional writing this chapter – a scene like this in the movie would have made my decade. Sadly, it wasn't possible – but that is the wonder of fanfiction. We can fix things like this, and make ourselves ridiculously emotional in the process.
Please do tell me what you guys thought! I can't wait to hear if any of you also got ridiculously emotional.