The Hands of Fate

The Iron Strength of a Princess

Leia Organa had been silent the entire flight back from Bespin. The stars were dancing off in the distance, their light dimmed against the shadow of the window. They were constantly speaking and plain for the galaxy to see but barely ever understood. There was a pain she felt, watching some flash and blink as others stayed constant and true. She looked past those stares and instead into her own reflection, tracing the angered lines in her skin, trying to figure out what brought her to this path. She shouldn't have survived. Leia should have been with her parents, her friends, her people in their dying moments. She should have been executed by imperial decree on the Death Star. But here she was: the princess of a destroyed planet and a symbol of hope against the tyranny of the Empire.

She had surpassed her own limits. Inside the politician, there was a budding strategist that understood the dual consequences and thrill of battle. The flame of leadership rose to its head against the most trying moments of her life. And, indeed, these were not the events she expected of her life.

In some ways, Leia enjoyed war. Not the gruesome parts of it – man and woman torn to bits, the loss of life from more friends, the financial stress of both wins and losses – but others sated an appetite that she craved. They gave her an opportunity to express the rage and frustration that she kept bottled up inside and never dared to open in public. They gave her a common enemy to fight against.

If there was one enemy that Leia Organa was certain she hated the most, it would be Darth Vader.

The man had been around since she could remember. He didn't have a major public role for most of her life but she could remember the warrior that followed Emperor Palpatine like a dog, always on his leash, only willing to bite and bark when he had been left to himself; always hidden in the shadows.

Vader might not have made the order to destroy Alderaan but he was just as guilty all the same. She remembered the inhuman grip on her shoulder as she was forced to watch everything she loved be ripped to pieces in an instant. She remembered the calm and empty breathing filling her deafening ears as she let out her final cry. The man reveled in her pain.

Not three years after that, he took Han Solo from her.

Leia bit her lip and paused. Her head was still spinning after the events that took place. She tried all this time to not think about it but there it all was again, swimming back and eating away the insides of her brain. She remembered his snarky grin, that know-it-all arrogant grin, that just made her fume. The freedom of his walk dazzled her and sometimes even influenced her to distance from her own beaten path. His final words were whispering to her ear..

She loved him.

Damn it, she was furious. Leia continued to follow asteroids and stars with her eyes, gazing emptily into the vast universe that contained hundreds of trillions of individuals (if not more). She thought of those souls, pondering and weighing her personal struggles with the fate of the everyday citizen. The cruel fate of authoritarian power controlling the livelihood of so many felt so distant at this second; for this moment, this very moment, she'd rather be in the arms of a certain smuggler. His smell, his touch, it lingered in the air of the cockpit... but she couldn't. Now was not the time. Those seconds, the moments, that was all they could be.

The Princess felt so stupid as she looked back at the past three years and wondered just how much she had wasted away. There could have been more times, more kisses. Leia remembered the heat of his body against hers and noted just how suddenly cold it had become. Maybe they wouldn't last. But those intimate moments she shared were some of the greatest she had ever experienced.

Was he alive? Han had to be, she repeated to herself in her head, bound and determined to save him. The smuggler had told her many tales about Jabba the Hutt and the idea of him being hung up in his palace like – like some kind of decoration infuriated her. She would save him. After all, she owed it to him. He saved her from death not too long ago. There was hope.