Floodgates

Han. Han. Han. Han.

Walking with calm, even steps, Leia maintained the outward facade of control until the second the Falcon's hatch closed behind her. And then, with a hiss of pressured air, she lost all semblance of authority over her own emotions. A gasping, hiccuping, all-encompassing sob took over her entire body, ricocheting outward from her chest and to her limbs like blaster bolts in a magnetically-sealed room.

Days of intense self-control, of holding onto her feelings with such a tight fist, had left their mark: they were angry, rageful things, these suppressed emotions. She tumbled into their depths and they held her fast.

She cried.

She cried for her father. She cried for Alderaan. She cried for Han and for her position in High Command and for the utter embarrassment of what she had just done, pontificating on sacrifice like she could somehow change their minds with a few pretty words. The humiliation in speaking to the injustices brought on her was so painfully royal and she cried for that, too, how it was none of their damn business but that they had intruded on her privacy so much that she had no choice but to give them everything that was left.

What was left?

Nothing.

The Alliance at large now knew her parentage; the galaxy soon would, too. She would lose the support of even her poor, displaced people. And she was alone, so utterly alone in all of this, because Han was lost to her, too.

Han.

She hadn't cried for him, either. There hadn't been time, she had had to act to save herself and Luke, and poor Han was relegated to the fringes, but now … Oh, now the loss was so keenly felt that it was like she had been dragged to a funeral.

Remembering his fate triggered more sobs, and with them came the pain of his last days. The torture, inhumane and unspeakable. His knowing eyes, holding hers until the smoke had erupted from around him. His unwavering faith that his death was a small price to pay for her life.

And he didn't even know … he didn't know it had been her father ….

"Leia."

Luke seemed unsurprised by the bitter wave that dragged her out to sea, but of course he wouldn't be. He had been helping to hold her together for nearly two days now. Their emotional link was so clear that she could tap into his energy whenever he wasn't actively shielding from her. She had to assume it was the same for him.

What an enormous drain of energy she must be for her brother, a real-life, living black hole.

"No," he said.

You don't deserve to feel this, she thought, as her body sagged, leaning against the hull and sliding down until she was huddled on the deck like a beggar on the streets of Coruscant.

You don't deserve to feel it, either, he told her.

But the only concrete words she could offer in response were: I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

This was an amplification of all her suppressed feelings since the destruction of Alderaan. She didn't even feel like herself. She felt like an uncontrolled animal, like a rabid beast, incapable of reason or thought and driven by an instinctive need to howl her pain into the void.

She wanted her father. She wanted Han. She wanted someone to hold her and tell her that she had worth, that her biology dictated nothing of her value. That she wasn't fundamentally damaged by the nature of her genetics.

Her darkest, most private fears were exploding into existence, and she had no barrier against it, Wookiee-sized waves rolling over her and bashing her against the rocks of her own terror.

You don't belong here. They don't want you. Father lied to you. Han won't trust you.

You are a monster.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry …

Stop apologizing, Luke sent. You have nothing to apologize for.

But that was patently untrue. She was the reason he had lost his hand. And Han … she was the reason he...

Han will not blame you, her brother tried to say, but her pain was so manifest, so eager to consume, that it drowned him out.

Because how could Han not blame her? How could he possibly want someone so despicably-made, so cursed, that loving her meant almost certain death? If Vader had procreated with the woman Mon had told her about—a senator, one of the original rebels—and she had wound up dead, surely that spelled certain doom for Han Solo, too?

What love could ever be worth that?

Leia, you need to control it, he yelled over the sheer might of the onslaught. Come on.

She gasped for breath like a drowning woman, clung to Luke's words like a rocky ledge.

"It's not real," he urged her out loud. "These are … they're stories you're telling yourself."

But they felt so real. The sense of doom pervaded and she fought, she fought, but nothing could save her from this disastrous feeling. The grief. The betrayal. The unfairness of it all.

What had she done to deserve this?

"Nothing," Luke said. "You did nothing."

Then why did it all feel so overwhelming? And why was she always losing? Her life was nothing but an endless parade of ghosts, one by one by one, leaving her with their memories as caretaker, stumbling along, trying to avenge them?

Han, Luke said.

Shaking her head, she exhaled, the tremors so powerful that her back shuddered under Luke's palm, and she could feel her brother's worry, the way he was grasping for anything to pull her out of this magnificent deluge.

What is going to help Han?

Action, she immediately thought. Careful forethought. Strategy.

But what if they saved him and he … and he couldn't …?

Luke chuckled darkly. There is nothing in the universe you could do that would make Han stop loving you, Leia.

She pictured him that last night on the Falcon, how sure he had been that his life was easily forfeit for her cause. That he would rather die than abandon her to her fate. She thought about how he had been willing to sacrifice his own happiness to keep her safe, as misguided as it had been. How she was loved so completely. How Han Solo, of all people, had found something in her that was worth his pain and his death when his life had taught him nothing but to scrabble for one more breath.

We will save him together, Luke said. But you need to come back to me. Right now.

Forcing a deep inhale, she pushed against the wave with all her might. Luke needs me, she thought, and that was her lifeline. Luke needs me. Han needs me. Chewie needs me.

The uncontrollable feelings loomed, but she redoubled her efforts, repeating to herself that she was needed, that she had work to do. That whatever this pain was, it was temporary. She could feel it, but she couldn't let it take over. With her power, with her parentage, she had to be able to feel her emotions and then let them go.

Repression had caused this episode. Why had she let herself get to this point in the first place?

Because she had been afraid of exactly this. The dam breaking.

"The dam broke because you tried to hold onto it for too long," Luke whispered to her.

I don't know how to do anything but repress.

"Yes, you do," he said. "You do, with Han."

A flash of light behind her eyelids and she realized the truth of that statement. She had learned how to feel emotions and not let them take over. That had been the entire path their relationship had taken: from fear of vulnerability to the embrace of it. Creating a safe space to be human. Finding time to feel those emotions and then let them go, massless memories.

The deluge tried one last time. Can you do it without him, though?

But the Dark Side—and she named it, because that was exactly what it was, this tidal wave of pain threatening to drown her—it was tinny now, with a sliver of the power it had previously held over her. Breathing deeply, she pushed back. What a stupid fear that was. Han had helped her learn to feel her emotions, but she was responsible for them now, and she was smarter, stronger and better equipped for the fight than she had ever been.

Opening her eyes, she looked at her brother.

"That's it," he said. "There you are."

Tremors broke though her, but they were manageable, and she swallowed around a very dry throat.

"Thank you," she managed.

He offered her his sunny smile, tempered for the moment, and squeezed her shoulder.

"You saved me on Bespin," he said. "It was my turn."

Exhaling the last of her panic, she tried to clear her brain, and a name rose to the surface.

"Chewie," she murmured.

Her first priority had to be Chewie. He would find out their paternity before anyone could privately disclose it, and the Wookiee had such a deep, painful reason to hate Vader as personal as hers. And while it wasn't the overwhelming tsunami of pain that threatened her when she thought of Han's reaction, Chewie's refusal to accept her back into his Honor Family was its own separate horror.

But he deserved … he deserved to know.

"I need to …" she tried, failed, and then tried again. "Chewie—"

He already knows, rumbled the Wookiee in question, suddenly appearing in the middle of the bend in the corridor with sad, helpless eyes, outlined in a warm, orange light.

Cold washed over her, like she had jumped into Aldera Lake in peak winter. Biting, painful grief nipped at her heart. Jerking her chin up to look at Chewie, she wondered how the Wookiee could have learned of their secret so quickly, holed up here in the Falcon.

"I told him in Medical," Luke said out loud, for the Wookiee's benefit. "Switched off the cams real fast."

I'm sorry I didn't wait for you, Luke told her silently. But he deserved to hear it before High Command did.

She agreed wholeheartedly. "Chewie―"

Before she could finish the apology on her lips, he crouched down, wrapped her in his arms and picked her up without a single word. Feeling like a child, she clung to him, desperately in need of validation and sorely missing Han's familiar embrace. He throatily rumbled comforting things to her that she couldn't understand, unsure if it was actually meant to be understood at all, and carried her through the ship.

This changes nothing, he said to her. Your roots grow deeper than your sire.

How could he so casually accept it? How? It made no sense to her, but then again, nothing made sense to her at the moment. Exhaustion settled in. She receded from her humanity into something that simply observed the beings around her without engaging with them. It was easier that way. Emotions were vital animals, and she could barely summon a critical thought to corral them.

Leaning down, Chewie placed her on a soft surface, and it was with some surprise that she realized he had taken her to the captain's cabin. She sniffed indelicately, struggled to regulate her breathing, and fruitlessly wiped at her eyes.

"You've been compartmentalizing so much," Luke said, out loud so that Chewie understood. "This reaction makes total sense."

The theory of the Jedi was that personal attachments corrupted the desire to serve, Chewie rumbled next to her as he sat on the bunk. Perhaps that is … incorrect.

"Yoda says—"

"Yoda is a hypocrite," Luke said in a cold, no-nonsense tone. "He called you a liar, and then turned around and lied to us about Anakin."

So did Obi-Wan, Leia reminded him.

Shaking his head, he fought the twin betrayals of Yoda and Obi-Wan—the two mentors he so desperately thought he needed—and Leia considered that Luke, too, felt the sins of his father-figures deeply.

Ben didn't raise me, he answered her privately. You shouldn't have to compare your relationship with Bail to mine with Ben. It's not the same.

True, but the feeling had the same bite, the same sting.

Once again, thinking about someone else's pain helped her handle her own. Still a type of compartmentalization, but one that had the added bonus of grief-sharing, not a sparing of the pain of the self, but a dual commiseration.

"Trifecta, really," Luke said, looking at Chewie. "Yoda made you promise not to let us near Vader. He put that pressure on you without telling you why."

Turning to the Wookiee in shock, Leia felt her heart break again. "I didn't know that."

It was not important for me to tell you. I did not mean to tell Little Jedi. He just … hears things.

Luke waited until Chewie finished his growls, then said, It was the first thing he thought when I told him about Anakin. No rage, no revulsion. Just sadness and a feeling of betrayal by Yoda.

Leia's eyes filled with tears again, this time for the pain and love of Chewie, how completely they all shared this nightmare. All three of them, mourning the loss of their innocence and the man who brought them together, sitting in a stark bunkroom and hiding from the galaxy that didn't understand them.

"I'm so sorry, Chewie," she whispered.

Predictably, he said, It is not your fault.

It was, though. Unarguably, it was their fault that he was tangled in the Jedi again, stuck in a cycle of perpetual betrayal of generation upon generation. The Jedi, in their quest for spiritual perfection, had hurt so many people, had destroyed so many lives. She had called their ways elitist before, but it was becoming clearer and clearer to her now that the Jedi weren't exactly absent from the human condition. They were, simply put, foolish, and countless people had suffered for their misguided erasure of their sentience.

Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie were just the last in a long parade of victims.

"I know her name," she said.

Luke didn't need clarification, having gone down her mental journey alongside her, but he clarified for Chewie. "Our mother? How?"

"Mon put the pieces together for me, though I believe her when she says she only now understands the full scope of it all. Her name was Padmé Naberrie. She was a senator."

Queen of Naboo, Chewbacca added with complete confidence, then looked confused when the twins stared at him in shock.

"Mon said senator," Leia said.

Yes. And a queen. My memory is not as short as a human's, Cubs, and my people remember very well how the Separatists came to Kashyyyk.

Struggling, Leia fought for her words. "Apparently she was a good friend to both my father and Obi-Wan, and was inextricably linked somehow to the Jedi."

"And she's dead?" Luke asked.

"Killed sometime during the Purge. Mon didn't know the details."

It explains how you were raised by the people who raised you, Chewie rumbled, a kind tone weaving through his words. It does not explain everything.

"Like why you kept the name Skywalker," she said. "And why I was presented at court right in front of Vader's eyes. Apparently, I look just like her."

Luke sat quietly for a second, absorbing the salient facts, then asked, "How much did Bail actually know?"

Shifting uncomfortably, Leia fought to hold back the instinctive flare of anger that sat in her sternum anytime she thought about her father. "From what I can tell, he knew everything. He even told Mon to make sure I found you before I went to get the Death Star plans."

Oh, Little Princess.

She smiled sadly when Chewie's paw slid over her shoulder to bring her closer to his side. Luke took in the additional news with a grim set to his lips, then shifted his weight to his left foot and sucked in a breath, as if he had just made a decision.

"I need to meditate," he said, but Leia implicitly understood he meant I need to see if I can talk with Ben.

Leia nodded. "Do you want me to—?"

But he interrupted her. "The best thing you could possibly do for me right now is sleep, Leia. You are the only one of the three of us who hasn't had a moment to rest since Bespin."

But—

"No," he cut her off. "Your only responsibility right now is to take care of yourself. We will need you at your best when we start planning Han's rescue."

Opening her mouth to further argue against him, she almost pushed back but then thought better of it. Her emotions were completely out of control. And whatever Luke was going to do was something that needed patience and balance.

She had neither of those.

I wonder if you would be able to rest in the room with Han? Luke asked, though she got the feeling it was less of a question at all and more of a heavily-weighed suggestion. I wonder if that might help you find your center again?

The thought was a tempting one. Sleep, surrounded by that future-fantasy image, where the air was clean and cool and where Han was close enough to brush her fingers over him. Sleep, where she could restore some semblance of her wit and skill. Sleep, where she could abandon all images of Vader, and the faceless Padmé Naberrie, and focus on the certainty of what Han brought her.

Patience. Balance.

"Okay," she agreed. "I'll try."

There is no try, her brother thought with a sly wink, and then he and Chewie left her alone to invest in her own well-being.

Ben didn't answer his calls, but Luke wasn't exactly surprised. If he had had as much to account for as the dead master did, Luke thought with some humor, then he might have chosen to hide from others, too.

At the very least, he took the time to appreciate Leia's calm as she gave herself the space and resources to heal. For a woman who cared so deeply about the needs of others, she was remarkably bad at taking care of her own, and he had frankly expected much more of a fight from her than he had received. It was a testament to how exhausted she was that she had agreed to his request so quickly.

He lay on the medbunk, trying to get used to his prosthesis and considering the nature of attachment and the frank self-deception by the Jedi.

One thing remained clear to him: Leia's attachment to Han felt far more healing than dangerous. Perhaps it was the deep loss she had already sustained, but even at her worst, his sister was focused on the safety and care of others. Breaking down after losing her position on High Command, torrent after torrent of pain washing over her from all sides, and her first concern had been to make sure Chewie knew about Anakin.

That was not the sign of a monster. That was the sign of a deeply compassionate person. And maybe that was genetic, maybe this woman—Padmé, he remembered—had been the source for their shared need to help others. Or perhaps it had been Bail Organa's influence? Maybe Luke's isolation had bred purity and innocence while Leia's had given her a zeal for the people?

He had already accepted that they were some kind of cosmic partnership. He had already accepted that her physical skills and his emotional ones balanced each other out for their combined strength.

But now he needed to meditate on the possibility that everything in their lives had been manufactured to do so, and that was the deepest conspiracy he could possibly imagine.