light as the breeze

“When do we tell Han?”

“It’s a little late now, I think.”

Han knew about the two of them linking up after Endor — half the planet probably knew, the two of them disappearing for days at a time. Luke had told her everything. And the grief had let up after a while, long enough to swap growing-up stories and chatter about the times they must have known, or at least suspected, that they weren’t only children after all. Leia had been a real-deal princess with security clearances and a seat in the senate when Luke was still dragging his feet on the way to check the mineral traps in the family vaporators. She told him about Alderaan, about what she missed there, all the things they haven’t been saying. He told her about Anakin and the emperor and about how they died. And — it hadn’t stayed at just talking. Luke has never been good at keeping his big mouth shut.

(The sadness had only kept off for so long, he could feel that tiny flame of cultivated Jedi discipline flickering on the verge of going out, he’d been so tired and so lost and so grateful to have her—

Well. A kiss for luck is nice and all, but they’re going to need more than luck.)

Here in an alcove long enough to fit maybe one of them generously, and two of them if they’re willing to be friendly — their naked feet bump together in a tangle at the end of the standard-issue mattress. Luke says, “Well, who else knows?”

It’s bound to unravel sooner or later. Luke isn’t good at keeping secrets, and Leia is too good — she wouldn’t have survived this long if she wasn’t, she’d brazened her way past Vader and lived to tell the tale. But there never was any Vader — there was only their father underneath it all.

Their father, mighty and ruined, terrible and pitiful. Luke’s bones still ache sometimes with the memory of lightning.

Luke can honestly say this is the kind of quandary all the patient moral lessons of his aunt and uncle haven’t prepared him for. They hadn’t known, and now they know too much.

She’s a beam of sunlight here beside him, tumbled into bed half-dressed again — naked to the waist with every freckle showing like a star and her ankle crossed over her bent knee, wearing sand-colored pants with the knots in the drawstrings and ragged stitching on the seams. Luke’s cast-offs. They hang loosely off her — everything does out here, without her usual tailor or whoever was responsible for the things she used to wear — and Luke rests his hand on the shadowed delineation just below her soft navel, where the folded-over cloth stops. Just there, on the borderline. It’s lucky neither of them is all that tall, or this cycle of swapping jackets and belts and undershirts would be even more conspicuous than it is. There’s a world outside their bunk, but neither of them wants to look it in the eye.

She’s still the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen — something darkness could never touch, hard and resilient, armored. And he’s still in love with her — maybe he always was.

Apprehension crosses Leia’s luminous face, just for a moment. “It doesn’t matter who knows. People are going to find out.”

What people? From who? From Leia’s murdered family, or from Luke’s? Their father is dead.

“Then I’ll tell him, from both of us. I don’t think he’s easy to shock.”

Luke presses his mouth to her shoulder. Leia weaves a hand into his hair. She wants to kiss him, badly. He can feel it — he can feel it clearly, like a twinge, an echo. But she just turns her head to look down at him instead, huge dark eyes beneath her mass of untied hair.

Brother and sister. No one else will understand. What’s there to understand? The two of them there at the end of everything. At any rate, it’s difficult to believe that at no point in his storied sexual career spanning the galaxy has Han Solo knowingly bagged twins. Maybe there’s still hope for their friendship yet.

Leia rolls over, and Luke eases back under the comforting weight of her against his chest. If you think about it, they don’t even look that much alike. Not that much — Leia with her laughing eyes and serious mouth, the smooth curve of her cheek resting against Luke’s collarbone, her dark hair in soft ripples from her braid. Her mouth covers his, and Luke closes his eyes.

The two of them together, orphans at the tail end of a short, hard war — maybe what comes after this is peace.