He doesn’t cut the string between them. That’s the cruelest part, Leia thinks—that she can still feel that cord of golden light tied around the struts of her ribs, knotted somewhere in her cardiac muscle, tying her to him. He plucks at it sometimes, and she can feel the vibrations in her throat, her back teeth. (That’s how her brother loves her, bile choking her and a blinding agony, like her heart is trying to squeeze itself through her ribs. I miss you, he whispers through the Force, through her dreams, a lover’s voice. We are all we have, Leia, why won’t you see that?)
It’s cruel, it’s cruel, she doesn’t want to feel the black mold and ice spreading out from his hands, calcifying and creeping closer, ever closer, to her. He should have cut it. He should have finished it, this, them.
But then, Leia hasn’t cut it either. She’s not sure what her reason is.
.
The hardest part is the walk.
She can choke down the greasy slop that they serve at various dodgy cantinas throughout the galaxy. She can sleep on the itchy pallet on the narrow bunk in the Falcon. She can wrinkle her nose at Han cleaning his teeth and trying to talk at the same time—both too early in the morning when she really needs the refresher—and go without a hot sanisteam for weeks. She can lie and haggle and handle a blaster, speak Huttese like an Outer Rim rube or Basic with a thick Corellian drawl that never fails to make Han laugh.
And she can do it all while quietly slipping transmissions for the Rebellion into the right hands, praying that there is someone to read them on the other end. (It’s gone quiet in the wake of Endor, even though the Emperor had mysteriously retreated and all but handed them the victory. Leia doesn’t know what to make of that)
But when she’s not thinking about it, she reverts to the princess, the general—she’s always been someone who commands attention, and it’s written in the way she holds herself, the way she walks. It’s a dead giveaway, Han sighs, exchanging a look with Chewbacca. They’ve been watching her walk up and down the hold for what feels like most of the day, and nothing seems to be working.
We could shoot her in the foot, Chewie grumbles. Or you in the mouth, it’d have the same effect.
There isn’t truly ‘night’ when you spend most of your time in hyperspace, flitting from planet to planet, each with their own orbital period. Once, Leia had been able to shut her eyes and simply know what hour it was in Aldera, night or day, wherever in the galaxy she was. Even after Alderaan was destroyed, she had been able to breathe deeply and know, absolutely know, just before dawn, the oldawu blooms will be opening, or, third night watch, the streets quiet.
These days, she can barely track her own internal chrono. They stumble from morning to midnight to afternoon to dawn and then back, into the timeless suspension of hyperspace. It’s disorienting. She think it’s making her sick.
Still, sometimes, Leia lays beside Han in the artificial dim of the cabin, and she is grateful. She is grateful. It’s easy to pretend in the no-time and nowhereness that they are just two unimportant humans, a man and a woman, hurtling silently through space as humans do. That they have not lost anyone or anything, they are not running. They are not waiting. They are not bleeding out internally, and they are not afraid.
They are just where they are supposed to be.
.
a dream: there is a boy with sand in his mouth, his lips stitched shut by cruel hands. he is heavy, he is so heavy, all the desert in his lungs and belly, burned sere and dry as bones in the sun.
there is another boy, and he is water. he is the flood. he lifts his hand and tears open the boy with sand in his mouth-lungs-belly—washes him away. it is a kind of terrible mercy to drown, the boy thinks.
right then, he is not sure which boy he is.
in this dream, there is a girl who watches them, and screams thunder when the flood runs red.
.
in another world, the boy is still a flood, but he says drink instead of drown. but that is another world. it has no bearing on this one. it’s probably best if you don’t think of it any more.
.
Is he okay? Han asks her once. Leia is sitting in the empty co-pilot seat, her feet tucked under her. She’s fidgeting with her hair—she’d cut it short, terribly short, after some smuggler in a cantina recognized her braids as Alderaanian and nearly blasted her through. (The bounty on her specifies ‘alive’, not ‘well’.) Her head feels impossibly light now, bare and hollowed-out and full of loss.
It’s a kind of vicious equivalence to it, she thinks. Everything about her is full of loss.
I mean—Han starts, but she cuts him off.
I know who you mean.
(If she began spooling that golden thread around her fingers and followed it, to where her brother stands waiting for her in the dark, she knows Han would follow. He would. And he would love the thing she became, however terrible, just as he would love whatever monstrous remnant of Luke they found. She’s not sure he’d even see the ice and black mold growing in the cracks of the people he once knew—she and Luke could blind him with a sharp needle and kiss him after, pet his hair, and Han would be secretly glad, grateful to be wanted, to be allowed.
Sometimes, Leia cannot breathe with how much faith Han has in her, in them. She doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve it.)
Well? Han asks. His voice is soft. Is he okay?
I don’t know how to answer that, Leia says.
.
There was talk of a rescue, in the wake of Endor—Lando and Han in particular, still tired-eyed from the battle but upright, warming their hands over the ewoks’ fire. They talked about storming the Emperor’s star destroyer like it was Jabba’s palace, like Luke was trapped in carbonite somewhere and all they had to do was—
Leia had bitten her tongue until it bled. She was in too much pain, her connection to Luke howling, the whole Force digging its claws into her skin, her skull, that the blood in her mouth offered some relief.
At least it was real. She was still real, here, human, and not dissolved into light.
Leia! Han said, when she spat onto the grass. (She had still felt it, the red staining her lips, the corners of her mouth. Every atom in her body was screaming for Luke, her heart pulled against her ribcage like the string might snap if he went any further—)
We can’t rescue someone who doesn’t want to be saved, she’d said, and that was the end of it.
.
another dream:
why? the girl who is a storm asks the flood. tell me why and maybe then I will understand, maybe I will come.
I am so tired, the flood says. aren’t you tired?
they are standing in a charnel-house. she is not the reason for all the bones that lie here, but more of them are at her feet than his. (‘skywalker’ is scored into all of them with an uneven hand.)
that’s not a reason, the storm says. that’s an excuse.
.
They’re in some nameless place that serves nameless food, smoke-filled and seedy, when the grav-ball match cuts out. There’s a collective groan from the assembled criminals and riffraff when the Imperial sigil fills the viewscreen—Han’s good at finding planets, places, where there’s no love lost for the Empire. Leia shoots him an amused look; he shrugs, grinning.
Her humor vanishes when a soft-spoken voice says, My name is Luke Skywalker.
The viewscreen is old and grainy, marred by a spiderweb crack at one corner, but Leia can still see that his eyes are bloodshot, orange-red and unsettling. They seem to find her in the crowd, piercing her through and pinning her to the grimy wall. The nameless food roils in her stomach.
His smile is the same, she thinks. A crooked, farmboy smile, undimmed; almost a smirk but meaning-well.
He smiles as he recites the death toll from some ‘uprising’ the Empire ‘cleansed’. Leia barely makes it to the refresher before she’s sick over her boots.
.
can you come back? the storm who is also a girl asks. if there’s a chance, any chance—
you cannot stopper a flood, the boy says, and turns away.
.
Han finds her in the refresher, sobbing, blood in her ears, her nose. I’m sorry, she chokes out. She gets blood on his cheek but she can’t seem to stop pulling him closer and then struggling away, clawing at his shirt. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. I’m sorry.
It’s okay, Han says, gathering her up, holding her close. After a minute of struggling, she goes still, like a bird with a snapped neck. (He wishes he had a different metaphor.) Hey, hey, talk to me, Han breathes, stroking her shoulder with his thumb. Tell me what’s wrong, maybe I can help. I can help.
I cut it, Leia whispers. I cut the string out. I didn’t have a reason, I just had an excuse, so I cut it out of me. I think I’m bleeding, Han. I don’t think I’ll stop bleeding.
Han exhales. Okay, let me get the medkit, it’s just—
I’m so tired, Leia says, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She’s clinging to him weakly, and there’s blood in hair. I’m so tired.
