After everything is over, Leia finds her brother away from the victorious joy of celebration, in the dark broken up by the smoldering fire, breathing in the stench of molten plastic and burning flesh. Vader's pyre, and for a moment it infuriates her, that bewildered, exhausted grief she sees in Luke's face.

This is the gift she wants - her brother, her valiant brother, and the word is sweet on her tongue - and the price she doesn't want to pay, the legacy she doesn't want to accept. Her father's body is burning, and she's glad.

Luke turns to her, his face a pale smear in the dark, and she smiles gently at him, makes sure none of her vindication shows. This is the gift she can give him: standing with him in the dark, not wounding him with her elation, holding his hand.

Han finds them soon after the last embers of the pyre die away, folds them in a fierce embrace, and Luke melts into them, hides his face in Han's shoulder, holds Leia tightly.

Then, finally, the two of them can lead Luke away, back into the light.

She holds onto Han's hand, steady and callused, and onto Luke's, familiar in a way it shouldn't be, fine-boned and cold, and feels content, complete, at ease in a way she hasn't been since Alderaan scattered into stardust.

The party back at the village is still going strong, rebels and Ewoks dancing and drinking together. Some brave soul has apparently tried Ewok alcohol, a sweetish, milky brew that packs a surprising punch, and discovered that it works out pretty universally.

Leia lets herself get tugged into the swirl of laughter and hugs, twirls with Han around the village square, his hands careful and warm on her waist, heavy with promises. But her eyes keep straying over to Luke, who's settled into one of the corners with a clay mug in his hand he doesn't really drink from. In the firelight he looks like an ungainly black shadow, awkwardly stooped over, neither here nor there.

Han spins her around, leans closer, looks over her shoulder. "Is the kid alright?"

"I don't know yet."

"He's going to be," Han says, all swagger and confidence, and she smiles at him. She's still riding the high of their victory, but her exhaustion is catching up with her, bones and sinews waking up and aching, clamoring for her attention. One more dance, she thinks, and then she'll check up on Luke one more time, and let Han bear her away and deliver on what his hands are promising, and then sleep for about a decade.

Of course that's when Han's commlink chirps at him. He makes an apologetic grimace at her and lets go of her waist. Command, probably; she should ask and she doesn't want to. She'll know soon enough, in any case.

She walks over to Luke, weaving through the stumbling dancers and taking care not to step on an any Ewoks. Luke's smile for her is a slow, carefully unfolding thing, painfully different from his usual easy grin; she drops on the bench next to him, leans into his shoulder and feels the tiny tremors running through his body. He must be exhausted; the night is slowly tipping over its middle. They sit for a while, drowsing together, silent.

Finally Han ambles over, looking a bit annoyed. "Mon Mothma is calling everybody back to the fleet, they want to clear out of the system early tomorrow and start the cleanup. Guess who's the designated pilot?"

"Lucky you," Leia says, sighing. "Should we start rounding everybody up?"

Next to her Luke stirs, straightens up in the creaking way of a man twice his senior. Han glances at him, quick and seemingly unconcerned, then looks back at her and actually winks.

"It's going to take me at least three trips, you know. Nobody says you have to be on the first one, and if you go somewhere quiet and tucked away now, I just might, well, not find you two until you get back into contact."

This is a ridiculous idea and she should put her foot down right now, but… The moment she sets her foot on the cruiser's deck she'll be swallowed by the command. The logistics of what comes after the victory are staggering; she can work on them from here until the next century without stopping, and her work will never be done.
So she should get up, help Luke up, get upside with the first party of disgruntled celebrants, get checked out at the medbay, roll her sleeves up and get to getting things done. She should, but - but she's so tired she can barely think straight. Surely a bit of rest is allowed, in a wake for a victory like that?

"You're right," she says. "Luke? How about we go find somewhere dark and quiet to lie down for a while?"

"Mmm?"

For a moment Leia's not sure he even heard her, but he shakes himself before she can worry. "That would be nice."

"You do that," Han says, and ruffles Luke's hair.

Luke hums a bit in response, leaning back and closing his eyes; they'll need to find someplace to sleep quickly or Leia will have to bodily drag him to his bed.

She lets Han pull her to her feet, hold her for a moment. "Take care of the kid, will you," he says quietly, earnestly concerned. "He looks like he had a pretty long day."

She has to swallow around a sudden sharp fondness for him before she can tug him down into a warm, chaste kiss. "I will. Thank you."

"You're welcome, Princess. See you in the morning."

He strides off, booming at the revelers - "Playtime is over, get your asses into gear!" - and she goes back to gently shake Luke's shoulder.

He blinks up at her, takes her hand, gets up with something suspiciously like a smothered moan. She makes a note to drag him to medibay tomorrow morning if he doesn't come willingly, just in case, although it's not like anybody knows how to cure exhaustion. A night of quiet, undisturbed sleep away from all expectations will do him - both of them - a world of good.

She's planning on using one of the huts, hoping that their inhabitants won't mind, but as they make their unsteady way over there, one of the Ewoks stands in their way, chattering up at her, tugging insistently on her hand. She should maybe look for Threepio to translate, but the mere thought of it is fatiguing; instead she lets the Ewok lead the way.

They follow their guide slowly, leaning on each other; the smell of ozone in the air is becoming stronger, crisper. It's like moving through a summer dream, this slow, stumbling walk through the whispering and singing darkness towards an unknown destination, holding her brother's hand.

They end up at the mouth of the long dark tunnel, and Leia almost balks; why go in there when the huts will be so much more comfortable? But their guide talks at her again, insistently, and Leia knows the first rule of space travel well enough: when planetside, do as the locals do. So she lets the tunnel swallow them, and leads Luke through its twisting, long throat, past the branches that breathe cold, damp air at them, past small glittering caves, until they finally reach what turns out to be their destination: a large, dry cave with walls covered with some kind of softly glowing moss, filled with scattered pallets of woven grass, some of them already occupied by snoring Ewoks.

Something about the scene pings her as weird - why would everybody sleep here when there's a whole village outside, in the trees? - but her eyes are already slipping closed, and Luke is not as much leaning on her as he's asleep standing up.

She picks out a spot next to the far wall of the cave, away from the main cluster of sleeping Ewoks; Luke stirs himself awake long enough to help her drag two pallets side by side, and collapse bonelessly on the one closer to the wall, curl up on his side, cheek pillowed on his right hand.

She crawls into their makeshift bed after him, touches his cheek gently. "Go to sleep, Luke. Plenty of work to do tomorrow."

He huffs softly in response. "Can't wait. Leia, why are you here? I thought you and Han ...?"

(It's fascinating how well the man who had ended the Empire not four hours ago is able to blush, Leia thinks, and has to swallow an undignified giggle.)

"Me and Han will keep until tomorrow morning. We're having an official family sleeping time right now."

"Ah," he says, and grins at her, looking like himself for the first time since she found him at the funeral pyre. "That's what we're doing. In a cave. In the dark. Surrounded by Ewoks."

"Ours is an unconventional family," she says, primly and officiously. "Should've checked before you claimed kinship."

"I'm so glad I've found you," Luke answers at once, earnestly and easily, and it feels like her heart is bursting in her chest, overfilled with fierce delight.

"Me too," Leia whispers, and falls asleep listening to her brother breathe in the glowing dark.

She wakes up sharply, panic coiling low and hot in her stomach; the unfamiliar world around her swirls in smears of green-tinted glow; her hand goes to grab a blaster that's not there. Her palms prickle with sweaty, unthinking terror. Something is wrong.

She hears a low, ragged moan next to her; a dying animal, something in agony. Next to her. Her exhausted brain finally catches up, jolting her with a fresh burst of adrenaline.

"Luke!"

Luke moans again; she takes in the sight of him, sharp cheekbones standing out, eyes sunken deeply in their sockets, mouth twisted. When she reaches for his face, his cheek is scorching to her touch.

"Luke, wake up!"

What happened - what - she doesn't know how much time has passed, what has happened, why; the scene in front of her is so surreal she is half-convinced she is still dreaming.

Leia shakes Luke's shoulder sharply, achieving nothing but another pained groan; Luke's head lolls limply, unresisting, and his eyes remain stubbornly closed. Was he wounded up there, on the Emperor's ship - did Vader - why didn't he say anything?

Leia grasps Luke's shoulder, steeling herself against another cry of agony, and rolls him onto his back. She leans over him, going for the fasteners of his black tunic. Her fingers tremble, and she stops herself to take a breath, another, a third; she can't afford the panic. In, out, in, out, again; do it right. She can do it right.

The black cloth parts, revealing skin, and she gasps in horror: silvery burns branch from Luke's throat, twining all over his torso, hugging his ribcage, reaching down. Like lightning etched into his skin. He's burning up, but when she touches one of the scars, it's cold, almost freezing under her fingers.

She can't deal with it here. She fumbles for her commlink, the words already on her lips when she realizes that the line is completely dead.

Frustration grips her so strongly she's tempted to scream, but it won't do. They're pretty far underground; there must be interference, too much stone and dirt over them, whatever. She'll get a signal at the mouth of the tunnel.

It takes an almost superhuman effort to leave him lying alone on the pallet, twitching and twisting, completely helpless, uncovered. She grits her teeth, annoyed with her own irrationality, squares her shoulders; she's better than that. Luke's as safe where he is as he's going to be; she'll be back with help before he knows it.

Leia strides towards the entrance tunnel, stepping over the sleeping Ewoks, and almost doesn't notice their guide from earlier before he practically smacks into her midriff.

She's so caught up in the force of her movement that she spends several moments trying to go around him like he's some kind of an inorganic obstacle - a stalagmite or a tree rather than a living being - and when she snaps out of it she realizes that he's trying to stop her from leaving the cave, waving his paws at her frantically.

She's been trained by and with the best diplomats and politicians in the galaxy, and that's why she doesn't throw her hands up and scream at him.

"Listen," she says placatingly, "I need to go out," and he warbles and chirps at her, sympathetically, she thinks, but doesn't move.

She can overpower him, but there's a lot of Ewoks with them in the cave right now, and as adorable as they look, she's seen enough empty Stormtrooper helmets around the village to attest that appearances can be deceiving. If she's breaking some taboo by trying to leave, some religious ritual…

Leia swallows, kneels down to be on the Ewok's level. Says, aiming for the correct intonation rather than meaning: "We need help." She tries for a pantomime - Luke, convulsing, her, walking towards the entrance and calling for help, the ship, swooping down.

The Ewok watches her avidly, with such bright comprehension on his face that she begins to hope - and then shakes his head, a compassionate, gentle gesture that makes Leia want to grab him and shake him out of his fur.

Damn it all, there's no time. "I'm still going," she says, getting up briskly, and the Ewok - steps out of her way.

She hurries down the tunnel. It's full of the sharp, cold wind whipping up her hair and clothes, howling in the outlying branches, the wind that wasn't there when they went to sleep. The Ewok is hurrying after her the best he can, wringing his paws in what looks like genuine distress There's a rumbling ahead of her, a heavy, continuous sound that lodges itself in her teeth and vibrates in her ribcage, interspersed with heavy crashes and bangs.

She's almost at the mouth of the tunnel when she realizes where the wind and the roar were coming from: instead of the night sky she's expecting there's a swirling, howling maelstrom of water and flying debris, stitched together by long strokes of lighting.

Oh. Oh. She remembers the pregnant stillness of their evening, the electric tang in the air; that's why the Ewoks had brought them into the cave instead of staying in the huts, that's why...

She tries the commlink again, and instead of the silence there's a crackle of static, a buzz of straining connection.

"Han," she says desperately into the link, "Han, come in! Can you hear me?"

Did everybody get off the planet before the storm hit? Leia doesn't even know what time it is. Did the Ewoks shelter any remaining rebels? She tries to remember if she saw any of her people during her mad dash to the surface.

"Han," she says again, louder. A heavy gust of wind whips into the tunnel, bringing the storm with it, drenching Leia in frigid water. "Han!"

The Ewok is tugging at the the hem of her tunic, trying to urge her back into the tunnel; she plants her feet, shakes her commlink as if it will help. The roar of the storm outside is overwhelming; it's so loud it registers almost like a silence, a sound too vast and terrifying to fit into her ears. "Han," she says again, "come in. Answer me."

Just when she's ready to lose hope, her commlink comes to life, spluttering with discordant tinny noise. She has to practically mash it into her ear, and even so it's like she's imagining the broken up bits of the words rather than hearing them.

But it's Han's voice; her legs nearly give out in relief.

"..ia! ...n't get you! … storm fries th… ...stems!"

The message, muddled as it is, is clear enough: they're on their own until the storm clears. She closes her eyes and allows herself exactly ten seconds of complete despair; here and gone.

"Han," she says into the comm as clearly and loudly as she can, over the howling of the wind, "Luke is sick, we need pick up as soon as the storm is over. Ewoks know where we are. I repeat: Luke is sick, we need pick up…"

Judging by the burst of profanity that - of course - makes its way through the interference loud and clear, the third repetition does the trick. Leia clicks the commlink off, turns her back on the stirred-up world outside, and lets her agitated guide bring her back.

Dread seizes her just before the entrance to the main cave. What if - what if Luke already - it's a small pause in her step, one that would be practically imperceptible to an outside observer, but Leia knows herself and knows the moment where, if she allowed it to herself, she'd just - stop. Refuse to enter and find out altogether.

She can't hear him any more. right now she'd prefer the sounds of his agony

It's unfair, something inside her wails desperately, it's unfair, I've just found him, we didn't even have time.

("Don't expect fairness, Leia," her mother would tell her. "Work with what you've got.")

She makes her way over to Luke's pallet, steeling herself. There's an elderly Ewok - she can't tell at a glance whether male or female - sitting by his side, stroking his hair gently with a withered paw. He's still unconscious but breathing. Ragged, pained exhalations, their rhythm stuttering and wrong, but breathing.

She crashes to her knees at the edge of his pallet and allows herself to lay her forehead against Luke's hand.

His skin isn't hot to touch any more; it's cold, just as the burns were cold, and she's knows that's not a good sign.

"Luke," she says. "Luke, please."

She turns to the elderly Ewok, points at Luke, mimics drinking; whatever they have here, some medicine, some - the Ewok shakes their head, sadly, and gingerly pets Leia's hand. They warble something at her, low and sorrowful, and then snap a louder command at one of the younger Ewoks, who jumps to attention immediately and scurries away. Leia holds her breath in hope, but the only thing the youngster brings back is a bowl of water and some rags.

She thanks the elder on autopilot, dips the rag into the bowl, clears the cold sweat off Luke's face with gentle, tiny motions. He stirs under her touch, mutters something unintelligible. The speed of his deterioration is terrifying: he needs to be in the medbay right now, evaluated, diagnosed, treated, maybe even put into bacta again - and she doesn't even have anything to give him for pain.

"Come on," she whispers, "Luke. Wake up. There's such a storm outside, you've never seen so much water at once. We can go watch the lighting, listen to the rain, wait for Han to come back. Come on."

He doesn't answer. His breath is becoming shallower, quieter; she can feel him escaping her grasping fingers, quietly slipping away.

The moment she curses this tranquil retreat, it changes. Luke gasps, shockingly loud in the murmuring quiet of the cave, and arches up; a long, agonizing convulsion ripples through his body, and then another, and a third. She holds onto his shoulders - and it's Alderaan all over again, scattering stardust in the viewscreen, soundless and sterile and unbearable, and she's helpless, helpless - only that time she's here, holding onto him, digging her fingers into the steely knots of his shoulders; she can smell the pain rolling off him, the sweat, the desperation, she could swear she can hear his heartbeat, thundering without rhythm or reason. She's here and still useless, useless, she -

- everything stops.

Luke is frozen mid-movement; she can see the Ewok elder behind his shoulder, mouth open in a perfect bewildered "o" of panic; the strands of Luke's sweat-soaked hair are motionless in the air.

"Child," the voice says behind her, unfamiliar without the respirator whine and yet so perfectly, so intimately familiar - her nightmares, over and over, impassive questions repeated over and over and the whine of the interrogation drone, and the pain, and the pain, and the pain - she whirls around, and sees him looking at her, an old, scarred, white-faced man in plain robes, outlined in faint blue light.

"No," she whispers. "No. You don't get to come to me. You're gone."

"Child," he repeats, stretches his hands towards her - in supplication, she supposes, and the hate she feels is so strong her jaw and her clawed fingers are aching with it. "I have no right. I make no claim. But my son - your brother. Luke. He won't live to see sunrise."

"You're lying," she spits at him, and knows, despite herself, that he doesn't. Whatever happened to Luke up there, between him and the Emperor and Vader, is killing him now, and the storm is making sure help won't come in time.

The ghost doesn't even bother to refute the claim. "You share his legacy in Force. I can show you…"

The surreality is staggering. She recoils from him, almost tripping over Luke's pallet. "No. No. You're not teaching me anything. I don't want you here, I don't -"

"Please," he says. "Please. For his sake. There's no one else."

She's shuddering, breathing too fast, in panic and in rage; Alderaan is splintering before her eyes, her failure, her mistake. Her fault, his fault, her father's who's not her father. Alive or a ghost, here or everywhere, if he touches her again, she's going to shatter.

And if he doesn't, Luke will. The gift she wants, the price she doesn't want to pay.

Work with what you've got, her mother whispers again, and Leia Organa, queen of a dead world, squares her shoulders and meets her ghost's gaze.

"This will be the last time I see you," she says. "Just that once, for Luke's sake. I don't want to know you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't want your Force, you will go away. I am his sister, but I am not your daughter."

"I know," he says, and she discards the grief in his voice, in his scarred face. "I agree. Take my hand, Leia."

For an agonizing moment she just can't, her body seizes up with wild terror - the drone whirrs and hisses - she can't - but Luke, but Luke, slipping through her fingers. She grits her teeth, turning her will against her own body, unfreezing her muscles, one by one. Stretches her hand towards the ghost and forbids herself to recoil from his cold touch.

The Force rolls through her, a great plummeting wave, painless, horrible; she's reminded of the storm outside, so vast its roar turns into the silence. The ghost guides their joined hands towards Luke, and she splays her palm against his frozen chest. She sees him as two things at once - his living body, filthy, covered in sweat and scars, arching up in stilled agony, and the universe just under his skin, a whole cosmos of smothering darkness with a single flickering spark somewhere deep.

"Find him, Leia," Vader says into her ear, "fall," and she leans her forehead against her brother's, and falls, and falls, and falls.

...she chases a laughing boy through the dunes, his hair glittering in the harsh light of two suns, her steps leaving tiny footprints in the sand...

...she chases a laughing boy through the gardens, under the sparkling arches of the fountains, slipping on the wet stones…

...she chases…

...she chases…

...She finds Luke on the outskirts of the farm, kicking the stones resentfully into the wall of the water collector, shoulders hunched.

She hops up on the low wall of the farm, swings her legs idly. "You know it'll just end with you having to fix it, right? And grounded?"

"Shut up," he mutters, but stops anyway, comes over to lean on the wall next to her. "Do you know he's never going to let us go? It'll be "next year, children" until we're old and useless."

"We'll be eighteen in little over a year, you drama queen," she says. "Then we'll enroll into the Academy and nobody will be able to stop us."

"No we won't, because I will die before then," and here it is, a proper authentic whine instead of the real tension she hates seeing on his face. His shoulders are already relaxing, and something within her unwinds in turn.

"Somehow I think you'll survive," she says, and combs her fingers through his hair.

"Leia," he says, "stop being such an adult about it, you're ruining it. Let's, let's just run away, -"

"- and go into town and steal us a spaceship and just fly away," she picks up, a familiar cadence, worn with years and use, "and become famous - "

" - adventurers, and nobody will ever catch us," they finish together. They look at each other and burst into laughter.

"Come on," Leia says, jumping off the wall. "Dinner is getting cold," and Luke obediently takes her hand and follows her home…

...she chases…

...Luke finds her in the gardens, resentfully throwing stones into her mother's favorite decorative pool. He goes to sit on the opposite edge of it, dangling his bare feet in the water; the settling sun catches in his hair, making it shine like a halo around his head. She hates him, just a little.

"You're scaring the fish, you know," he says, mildly, and she throws the next stone onto the bank next to his knee.

"Shut up," she mutters, but drops her handful of gravel anyway. "They will never let us actually do anything useful for the Alliance, you know? It will be "it's too dangerous, children, you're too young," year after year until the Empire falls by itself, and -"

"Perish the thought," Luke says, and smiles at her, gentle and steady. "But they're letting us learn, remember? You're getting this military camp training thing you wanted in two months, although why you'd like to play in the mud voluntarily for two months is beyond me."

"It's not playing, you need grunt experience before you can command," Leia says hotly, and Luke laughs at her, raises his hands in surrender.

"I know," he says lazily, stretching and leaning back on his arms, "I know, don't glare at me. You do your thing, and when you're a General of the Resistance, I'll leave the grunt work to you and dazzle the world with my diplomacy skills. Zero mud mucking involved."

"Your diplomacy skills," she says, "astound me right now," and does the only thing possible under the circumstances, which is to jump into the pool, drenching him head to toe with the resulting wave.

"Leia! Damn you, we have reception with Mom's guests in an hour!"

She's laughing too hard to care, on her knees in the middle of the pool with her white dress floating around her like a giant flower, and he looks at her and starts laughing too; they try to stop for a couple of times, then look at each other, equally wet and disheveled, and set each other off again. In about thirty minutes, Mom is going to be furious.

Finally Luke gets himself under control, and leans over to help her out of the pool; she swallows the last of her laughter and grasps his hand and follows him home…

...she chases…

...She kneels in the sand, retching helplessly; the stench of burning bodies is thick and horrible in her nostrils, in her mouth. She can't tell which body is Uncle Owen's and which is Aunt Beru's. She turns her head and Luke is staring at her, and she sees her reflection in his face, the dull disbelieving shock of it.

"Luke," she says, "Luke, what do we do now," and he opens his hands to her. She buries her nose in his neck, desperately inhaling the familiar smell of desert and machine oil; his hands tighten convulsively around her shoulders.

"We bury them," he whispers into her hair, fiercely, "and we'll go with Ben, and we'll find the people who did it and they will pay, we will make them," and she nods but doesn't let go, not yet….

...she chases…

…"No," Luke says, "no, don't, I told you where the base is, you promised," and she hates the way his shoulders tremble under her hands, from horror and the residual pain; Tarkin laughs at them, and in the viewscreen their home ceases to exist, unfolding into nothingness like a blooming flower, and her heart goes along with it.

"Leia," he whispers later, bewildered and broken, "Leia, what do we do now," and she holds him to her in the narrow bunk of their prison cell, fiercely, and whispers into his hair, "we'll get out of here, we'll get to the Resistance, and they will pay, they will pay, we will make them," and he clutches at her and believes her and doesn't let go, not yet…

...and she chases…

...and she chases…

...and she catches him, deep in the dark waters of the Force, drifting with his eyes closed and his hair floating around his face like a corona of light, and when she grasps his cold hands he opens his eyes and holds onto her tight; she holds him back, she's never letting go again, and she brings them home.

"Farewell, child," the ghost says, already fading away. His voice has no power over her; she feels him go without relief or fear, gratitude or hate.

Under her hands, Luke is stirring softly, the terrible corded tension of his body smoothing into normal stillness. He opens his eyes.

"Leia," he breathes into her ear, quiet and full of wonder, "I remember you," and she drops her face into his chest, presses into him - alive, alive, warm again, alive, her brother, her brother - and cries, or laughs, she can't really say.

His hands come up, circle her shoulders, hold her to him as if his body knows years, decades of doing just so, and she clutches him back and doesn't let go.

"Tomorrow," she says into his chest, "I'm going to kill you for not telling me you were hurt. Don't you dare do that again."

"Okay," Luke says, fuzzily, "okay," and hides his face in her hair, and they both fall asleep, just like that.

When panicked Han bursts into the cave the next morning, he finds them still asleep, curled around each other like exhausted children in the dark. He catches his breath, touches Luke's forehead to check for fever, strokes Leia's hair softly; then smiles at them, drops his jacket over their shoulders, and settles next to them, keeping watch.