Ever since Alderaan, Leia leaves the door open. Actually, she is not sure which it is. It could also be ever since the Death Star, or since her imprisonment, or the torture. But they all amount to the same ending, and Alderaan is an excellent summary. "Oh," people say when she says it, Alderaan, their eyes downcast, and there is nothing more to add.
Any door; office, quarters. "Get out," she tells the Captain when she needs the 'fresher. It's through his quarters.
"Why?" he demands of her.
She needs to get over this thing about doors because the Captain's mouth needs shutting.
When she sleeps she doesn't. Not because the door stands open but because she has to be ready for what can come through. She expects every morning to see it blown apart: wood splintered or durosteel bent and twisted, but it's not, it never is. Instead it's open but also gently brought to- almost latched.
She sleeps, she realizes, and promises herself she won't.
Sometimes she dreams she is a child and she is home, playing a game. The object is to find her friends and she dashes through the royal residence. She flings open a door, and she feels this excited anticipation of a waiting friend, but the room is always empty. Undeterred, not disappointed- and the residence is so large it will take time to search past every closed door- Leia keeps playing.
Once it is her father in a room, and Leia jolts awake, sure he is a warning and she has caught the door tender. She jumps out of bed, barely aware of the cold, and holds onto the door as she stares first left, then right down the icy corridor of Echo Base. But it is quiet; silent, except for one departing occupant, the Captain. He is sauntering as he turns the corner, so full of himself, so cocky, and her heart beats fast because she doesn't know what she will do once she has caught the one who shuts the door.
So much time goes by and she looks at the open doors, wondering why. It is a custom now, a tradition, and she is afraid to break it. Sometimes it is comical, like the time Luke walked in on her in the 'fresher through the Captain's quarters, and he flung up his hands to his face as if the sight was wrong, as if a princess didn't use the sani, and complained loudly, "Leia!" as he backed out.
Sometimes the Captain sets his long frame against the open door of her quarters and drawls, "this an invitation?" and her response is to get up and shut the door in his face. She can hear his chuckle from the other side, and it is a traveling echo around the walls of the closed-off room.
She learns to skirt her own unbroken rule. From the cockpit of the Captain's ship, space stretches infinitely, doorless; stars glow their pale light and it is beautiful. The ship seems to float among them, and she is reminded of her dream, the one where she sought, only her friends are not hiding from her and they smile in tender reunion. She does not shut herself away behind an open door where horrors can enter but remains where the Captain can find her. She has learned the secret to his mouth and when she needs the 'fresher she brings the door to, almost latched, so as not to wake him.
When Luke comes to visit, she tries to be the one to open the door. It is important to her, though her children don't know why and they race her to it, wanting to be the first to greet their uncle. Inside, it smells like sticky fingers and cooking, earth and laundry. Her Captain may drift out of any room, a smile on his lips. "Hey, kid," he welcomes.
The children are full of life. They are loud. Leia had forgotten life could be loud. They laugh and yell and race and sleep, with such an intensity it takes her breath away. She winks up at the stars, and they laugh how the 'fresher door is rarely shut because her children follow her in.
AN: Written for the prompt Home/Going Home