AN: RIP Carrie (and Debbie too) – I'm still crying about it. I decided to make this fic a two-parter in her honor.

"Heart of a Princess"

By EsmeAmelia

Chapter 2

"Daddy, why's that machine beepin'?"

"Well Hanna, that machine helps us keep track of your grandma's heartbeat and make sure it's beating regularly. That way if something goes wrong with your grandma's heartbeat, the machine lets us know right away."

Leia slowly opened her eyes to the voices of her son and granddaughter, a yawn stretching her lips. "And the beeps are really annoying," she said in a sleepy voice.

"Mom?" Ben exclaimed. "I'm sorry, we didn't mean to wake you . . ."

"Grandma!" Hanna shouted before her father could finish his apology. The five-year-old went running up to her grandmother's bed, her arms outstretched, her black curls bouncing. "You were sleepin' a lot!"

Leia smiled at her granddaughter. "Well I'm awake now. Come here, why don't you give your grandma a hug?"

Hanna didn't even wait for Leia to finish talking before she jumped onto the bed and threw her arms around her grandmother.

"Be gentle, Hanna," Ben reminded. "Remember your grandmother's been very sick lately."

"I know," said Hanna, planting a big kiss on Leia's cheek. "Grandma look, I made you something!"

"Really?" asked Leia. "What is it?"

"Daddy's got it!"

With a slightly embarrassed expression, Ben placed a homemade book in his mother's lap. "Ara helped some too."

"Mommy put the book together," Hanna quickly intervened, "but I wrote the words and drew the pictures myself!"

Leia felt like her grin wouldn't fade even if she had a second heart attack. "Well thank you so so much, this is a wonderful present. Why don't we read it together?"

"Yeah!" the child exclaimed, snuggling up to her grandmother's side.

On the book's cover, Hanna had written "The Brave Princess" in her lopsided handwriting, a few of the letters written backwards, but that only made it more charming to Leia's eyes. Underneath the title was a doodle of Leia wearing that white dress and those big hair buns over her ears.

"The Brave Princess," Hanna read, pointing to the words as she said them. "Come on, open it!"

Leia did so, and there was a drawing of her facing against a stick figure Vader, both figures full of coloring freely outside the lines. "Once upon a time," Hanna read, "there was a brave princess. She was so brave, she wasn't even scared of Darth Vader!" She pointed to the Leia drawing. "See, that's you."

"I see," replied Leia. "It looks just like me."

"Yeah," said Hanna as she turned the page, revealing another drawing of Leia – this time holding up a blaster drawn in thick lines of black crayon. "The princess could shoot many, many stormtroopers at a time!" she read. "And she never missed!"

Leia gave a tiny snicker. "Well, I don't know about never missed."

"Well you didn't miss much," came Han's voice from the doorway. Leia looked up and there was her husband giving his trademark grin that never faded with age. "Hanna," he said in a pretend-scolding voice, "did you start reading Grandma's book without me?"

Hanna giggled up at her grandfather. "C'mon, Grandpa! You too, Daddy! Let's all read together."

Han and Ben obeyed the child and leaned against opposite sides of the bed while she turned the page and revealed a drawing of Leia giving a speech in front of a bunch of stick figures. "She was a great, great leader," Hanna read with gusto in her voice. "She helped blow up two Death Stars!" She turned the page and there was the word "BOOM!" written in giant red letters. "BOOOOOOOOM!" the girl shouted, almost loud enough to drown out the heart monitor.

The adults burst out laughing, though Leia had to stop after a few seconds to calm her heartbeat. "Careful, Mom," Ben said, patting her shoulder. "Careful."

Leia took a deep breath to suck in the laughing. "I'm fine, Ben."

Hanna was patting her grandmother's arm, her eyes suddenly wide. "Don't get sick again, Grandma. It was scary when you wouldn't wake up."

Leia found herself gulping as she squeezed her granddaughter. "I'm sure it was, honey. Come on, why don't we read some more of the book?"

Hanna nodded and turned the page. This time there was a doodle of Leia holding hands with Han, both with large smiles on their faces. "The princess was also very nice," Hanna read. "She married a nice man named Han and they had a baby." She suddenly pointed up at Ben. "That's you, Daddy!"

Ben grinned down at his daughter. "Yes, I know."

"And you're still our baby," teased Han, making Ben scrunch his face in embarrassment despite trying to keep his professional demeanor.

Hanna giggled as she turned the page again, this time revealing a doodle of Leia with lines in her face next to a doodle of Han with silver hair. Next to them was a doodle of Ben, his black hair almost obscuring his face, with a doodle of his wife Ara next to him, her brown hair drawn in long crayon strokes, and a little stick figure tucked between them. "Then the baby grew up," Hanna read, "and had his own baby. Now the princess was a grandma!"

Leia felt like she couldn't stop smiling if she tried.

Then Hanna turned to the last page, which showed Leia inside a giant heart. "The princess was very brave, but best of all, she had a GREAT BIG HEART!" She closed the book. "The end!"

Great big heart . . .

Now her granddaughter was looking at her with wide, expectant eyes. "Well, did you like it?"

Leia couldn't speak. She stared down at the book in her lap, blinking rhythmically. Great big heart. How much did Hanna understand about what happened? Great big heart. The beeps that measured her heartbeat kept drumming on, showing that she was alive.

Alive even though her heart had stopped.

Her gaze drifted up towards her husband, who had given her his oxygen so she might live long enough to be treated. Then her head slowly turned to face her son, who had dedicated his expertise to saving her.

"Well?" Hanna pressed. "Grandma? Do you like it?"

Leia couldn't stop her eyes from welling up. She could have been dead right now and Han would have lost his wife, Luke his sister, Ben his mother, and Hanna her grandmother. And where would she be? Would she be a ghost, watching her family in grief and unable to comfort them?

"Grandma?" Hanna's voice was worried now. "Are you okay? Don't cry."

Leia sniffled, wiping her hand over her eyes, though the tears still blurred her vision. "I'm . . . I'm sorry . . . I just . . . I nearly died . . . I guess it's hitting me."

She felt Han's strong arms wrap around her and his chapped lips kiss her forehead. "It hit all of us, sweetheart," he whispered. "These last few days I couldn't stop cryin'. And Ben – well he had to hold it together in order to do his job, but you could tell that inside he was breaking down."

Leia tried to respond, but only sobs came out. Why did this happen? How did it happen? Could it happen again? Why did a simple trip to spend Fete with her son and his family end up with her almost dying?

And why was it affecting her so strongly now? Hadn't she faced death in battle so many times already? She had been shot at and shot before, after all. But this . . . this was different.

This time her heart had actually stopped.

"How long was I gone?" she found herself whispering.

"What?" asked Han.

Leia swallowed, wiping her hand over her eyes. "How . . . how long was I gone? Not unconscious . . . gone?"

Han was chewing his lip. "Well . . . technically you were gone twice. You first stopped breathing on the Falcon about ten minutes before we landed, but after I performed the CPR you started breathing again. Then . . . well Ben, you can tell her the next part."

Ben cleared his throat as though struggling to maintain a professional demeanor even though he was talking to his mother. "You went into cardiac arrest shortly before you were brought to the hospital and . . . it took about twenty minutes to get your heart beating again."

Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes with no heartbeat. Twenty minutes when she had been where? Had her soul simply been resting during that time, or could it have left her body? Would she remember if it had left her body? Why was she even asking this?

"Grandma?" Hanna was asking. "Do you wanna read the story again? It might help you feel better."

Leia took a deep breath, filling her lungs, bringing a bit more pain to her chest. "Yes, why don't we?" She glanced up at her husband and son. "All of us?"

Hanna and Leia scooted closer together so the men could sit on either side of them while Hanna read the book a second time. When she got to the end, both Han and Ben shouted out "but best of all, she had a GREAT BIG HEART!" with her, making Leia blush. She didn't know why she had so narrowly escaped death, but she knew that she would make the most of that fact.

THE END

For Carrie.