Leia pressed a kiss to his knuckles, leaving their fingers intertwined. He gave her a goofy, wide-eyed grin, and she couldn’t stop the chuckle that rose from her chest. He really was an idiot. But maybe the most beautiful idiot she had ever seen.

“Sweetheart,” Han mumbled, racking his brain for the right thing to say. He couldn’t tell her it was okay, it wasn’t. He shouldn’t say that he was there for her, she knew that. It didn’t bring her people, her planet back. So he just held her, muffling her sobs against his chest.

In the Falcon’s main hold, Luke’s eyes fell on Han and Leia, speaking in hushed tones in front of a long-abandoned game of dejarik. Han’s hair was in her hands. His wounded expression told Luke that she was making fun of his scruff, but the look in her eye told a different story.

“I didn’t know your parents, but I know you’ve got their intelligence, and their resilience. Their kindness. All the stuff that makes me think that maybe this rebellion of yours isn’t such a fool’s cause.” Han stopped abruptly, as if he’d said more than he meant to.

She knew people talked, about her and Han. Usually, she cared. But not today. Today, she would sit with Han in the medcenter until he woke up, holding his hand between her smaller ones. And if anyone had anything to say about that, they could say it to her face.

She studied his face; his brow furrowed in focus, the pins from her hair between his teeth, his hands uncharacteristically gentle in her hair. He was just so cute, Leia thought, tackling him to the bed and pressing unrelenting kisses to his cheeks and nose.

“I could get used to you defending me,” Han said, trying not to laugh at the shocked expression that fell over her flushed face. Leia hadn’t known that he’d overheard her conversation with the general. “I was just being fair,” She admitted, but he was flattered nonetheless.

“They would’ve liked him, Leia,” Mon said as she took the princess’ hands into her own, admiring the ring that now glittered on her finger. Leia would be lying if she said she hadn’t wanted that reassurance just hours ago, but now it seemed needless. “They would’ve loved him.”

When he saw her again, the anxiety within him unraveled itself, and with it went every part of him, until he was left standing with his arms and heart wide open, just for her.

It was hard to exist in the rebellion without being in Leia’s proximity at some point. She made it a priority to know the beings behind the cause as if they were the subjects she’d never gotten the chance to serve. Han could see how she was meant to be a queen, everyone could.

It seemed selfish to love Han, but, for the first time since the war had started, Leia couldn’t find it in herself to care about what was selfish.

When Ben looked in the mirror, his mother’s eyes looked back at him. And when he spoke, he could only hear his father’s voice.

He was drawn out of his seat, transfixed. Han had always loved space. Stars and planets and systems shone, but Leia saw them only through the reflection in his adoring eyes.

How many times had Han promised to leave? How many times had she told him to go? Leia never imagined it would actually happen, and she certainly never expected that he’d be ripped from her embrace by Vader himself. Now he was just another thing the Empire took from her.

Leia carried the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders, the least Han could do was let her rest on his.

“It’s alright, Ben, I’m right here,” Han whispered to his infant son as he held him close to his chest, rocking him slightly. “I always will be.”

Luke watched as the newlyweds shared their first dance as a married couple. Despite all their bickering, he couldn’t remember a time where Han didn’t look at Leia just as he was looking at her now.

There was something so solid about Han, so uniquely present. His eyes promised himself to her with a hard, determined look, and yet Leia couldn’t bring herself to touch him. She knew how quickly something could be taken away. Especially when that thing belonged to her.

She wondered if Han resented the disparity between their childhoods. He grew up dreaming of a single trip in space, while she had galaxies at her disposal since birth. She asked him, once, and he quietly confided that he couldn’t stand the idea of her ever having anything less.

Leia was avoiding him again, he expected. Always ready to pull away if he saw too much. It exhausted Han, who was begging her to realize what he had always known, what he had learned from a long, lonely life: no loss could be worse than the pain of never being loved at all.