Dreams start a couple of years after Endor.
They come in a scattered patchwork of visions, too random to make any sense at first, too disparate to fit together. Yet they pierce her mind like a thousand shuttered pieces of transparisteel, settling somewhere deep inside, so deep that she keeps hearing their phantom echoes during the day, sickening premonition settling somewhere in the pit of her stomach.
A smiling toddler learning to walk on his unsteady, chubby legs, Han sweeping him off his feet, laughing, swirling him around.
Luke, standing over a boy's bed with his lightsaber in hand.
Luke, broken and disappointed, hiding Force knows where, she cannot reach him through their bond, no matter how hard she tries, no matter how desperately she calls him.
Han, always somewhere but never where she needs him to be.
Feeling of loss creeps up in small chills, it grows, gains strength, numbing, freezing her in loneliness like in carbonite.
Dreams shiver into a million splinters of prismatic colour.
Chaos rising, engulfing the New Republic she fought so hard to protect. She argues, she plots, makes countless speeches, strikes deal after deal, yet finds herself trapped in never-ending squabbles between factions, corporations and corrupt politicians. She briefly regrets she cannot throttle them right here and there, and the thought startles Leia like a blaster shot. For she remembers all too well the last man (she still cannot call him father) who used to deal with his enemies this way.
Sometimes, and those times rattle her most, blurry kaleidoscopic images are replaced by sharp, clear, impossibly vivid snippets and scenes, so real that she can remember every minute detail, every sound, every shadow and expression next morning.
"We can still save him. Me. You."
"If Luke couldn't reach him, how could I?" Han's aged, tired, yet achingly familiar face comes into view, it tugs at her heart, feelings of affection, friendship and shared loss binding them tighter together than love ever could.
"Luke is a Jedi, you are his father."
A desperate, angry young man facing Han, a twisted mirror image to her first vision, marred and distorted by darkness. Yet, a stubborn hope flickers and grows. There is still light in him, she knows it, knows it, knows it.
"Take off that mask, you don't need it!"
"What do you think you'll see, if I do?"
"The face of my son!"
"Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him!"
The two keep talking, yet the meaning escapes her, Leia feels the world slowly crumbling, piece by piece, bit by bit… she is powerless to stop it, trapped in these dreams with nothing left but watch.
A red blaze slices through Han, disbelief and anguish forever frozen on his face.
"Thank you, father."
She screams and wakes, body heavy and numb at the same time.
Sometimes she sees her own death, but that one is surprisingly anticlimactic, somehow it doesn't scare her nearly as much as other visions do.
Logically, she knows she needs to talk to someone, yet the choice of confidants is predictably limited. It is not about trust per se… Han, Winter, Mon… however well-meaning, they would not understand. There is only one other matching half of her soul, only one person who can slip into her mind and hear the echoes as clearly as she does. Luke.
Yet, their meetings are few and far between these days. Both are too busy fighting the war that should have ended years ago, both still stuck on their respective battlefronts – hers slowly, but surely moves solely into the Senate, his remains on the frontlines. The New Republic keeps sending Luke to solve every single crisis of the day, from one planet to another, like a bacta patch. Needless to say, she doesn't want to share anything too personal in holo massages, encrypted or not.
Then, prompted by Grand Admiral Thrawn's unexpected return, the New Republic comes precariously close to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, so nightmares and premonitions become the last thing on her mind.