All those around her were thinking, The fight is over! We've ended this war! But she - while applying mild pressure to the bandage on on her arm - couldn't stop thinking about something else. About someone in particular, a scar far more meaningful than her blaster-wound would ever heal to be.

He was dying. She could feel it.

His organs were weakening, heartbeats were rare, and nothing seemed so strange to Leia as the moment of Anakin's last breath.

Leia stared at the blue Endor sky; the universe looked overwhelmingly large to her from below, so foreign...as if the war had clouded that perception of the galaxy for her, causing her to believe everything to be so small.

A twitch in the branch below her on the ground startled the woman; it was Han, and he had returned to give her some water. Of course, he had brought himself a glass, too. Raising his, he announced, "Here's to peace."

Their glasses made a clink, and Leia smiled warmly at him. But she still had her mind on Vader, and on Luke.

She had not been stricken by the news that Vader was, in fact, her father: only changed by it. It had changed her perspective of that shadowy figure of a man who had, at one time, loved. Who had married, who had wanted to become a father. It's a shame he didn't accept until the end that he had two children rather than one, thought Leia sadly.

But for another reason, she felt proud.

...

"He died as Anakin Skywalker, the noble Jedi Master and father," Luke was telling her later, during the all-night victory celebration. Leia studied the wanness of her brother's face, realizing that he had also been affected by the turn in events. Specifically involving their father.

And then Leia felt like talking. "I hate to admit it, Luke, but... I was insane for a time, because of what he did. And for too long - for much too long - I feared he had no humanity in him."

"But you lost those thoughts later," Luke continued for her. His sister nodded.

Han and Lando were fast approaching them, whereupon Leia spoke quickly. "I guess I realized...somehow...that he had to have become whom he was for a reason. Something from his past turned him against himself..."

"Hey, you two," teased Lando with a chuckle, "you're disappointing everyone by straying from the party. Come and join the others."

Before Leia or Luke could explain anything, Han went up to Leia and extended his arm, wanting her to take it. "Care to dance?" he invited.

"Not at the moment," confessed the woman plainly; she turned back to Luke, who was grinning.

"You shouldn't decline his offer, sis," the Jedi advised. "After what you two have been through, I think you both deserve it."

Why are you doing this to me? Leia's expression screamed to her brother; but Luke was enjoying the look of approval on Han's face, as he took the initiative to lock arms with Leia. "Seems your brother has stuck you with me," he sighed, beaming at her. "You two can talk any time. Now's the time for celebrating."

"You mean, 'for getting drunk'," corrected Leia, cringing in advance as if expecting the Corellian to playfully shove her. But he let it slide, admitting, "You know what, if you hadn't saved my body from being eternally frozen in that carbonite -"

"Han!" exclaimed Lando suddenly. "Let's not bring up the war. Come on, both of you..."

As Lando steered Han and Leia away from Luke, the young woman seized the minutest moment to connect with her brother through the Force - something she did upon instinct, and with success - and told him, gratefully: Thank you for what you did for our father.

It wasn't all my effort, Luke responded. He told me that you, also, helped him. Leia turned back to locate him, but masses of Rebels and Ewoks had crowded the area behind her. Wondering whether she could communicate with Luke just once more, she closed her eyes momentarily and focused upon a sentence:

He always had a flare of good in him. It was manipulation and hatred that hindered it for so long.

Right you are.

Leia froze. The frequencies of the music died down in the world that was her head, and she felt all motion decelerate to a stop as the source of that internal voice became clear to her.

Father - she began.

Silence. Father? tried Leia once more, hoping and aching and fearing all at once to hear that voice in her mind. The Force was presently all she cared to reach: she had halted in her footsteps, had shut her eyes, had almost stopped breathing...

And then, her reward:

Never allow anything to make you forget what you have proclaimed about me, because it is true. Anakin Skywalker's soft tone resonated perfectly now, his closer presence practically tranquilizing to Leia. She, the daughter of this man she thought she knew (perhaps she had known him for partial seconds, but Vader had prevailed to exist whenever the woman had confronted him), could not bring herself to reply. After all the arguments, the torture sessions (both direct and indirect), the interrogations, and the unpleasant encounters, Leia Organa truly felt scared to speak through the Force to this voice.

But Anakin's was a different voice, one that Luke alone had heard organically, prior to the former-Sith Lord's final exhalation. And so Leia could only wait, could only dream of the next words that he would confess to her... She thought she sensed a final message from her father, but Han and all of reality snapped right back into place and the young woman once again felt insignificant among the cheery, yet unsatisfying, congregation.

I love you, my daughter. Leia.

THE END