Chapter Text
She's sitting in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, waiting for Anakin to get out of the Halls of Healing so that Leia can get an update when she realizes exactly why this particular version of panic feels so familiar.
She immediately crushes the thought (and banishes the memory of brown eyes), reminding herself ruthlessly that Obi-Wan is a good friend and that she worries for everyone when they walk onto a battlefield.
Or get brought off it on a stretcher.
"Remember that one time," Luke says mercilessly, "when Han and I almost died of exposure in an overnight blizzard and came back smelling like wampa intestines?”
"How could I forget?” Leia mutters, eyeing the room around her to make sure no one is close enough to listen.
"Remember how you and Han got in a fight?”
"Which fight?"
"When you were visiting me. And you kissed me full on the mouth to make Han shut up about how amazing he was and how much you were in love with him."
"Is there a point to this exercise?" Leia asks, also shoving those memories aside.
"Maybe don't kiss Anakin just to prove a point to yourself this time."
If he wasn't dead, Leia would kill her brother. "I am not—“
"Do you really want to have this fight with me? I was there the last time you inconveniently fell in love."
That was different, Leia wants to say. Han was different. He'd pushed into her life with all the energy and enthusiasm of a man who'd been ready to die at any moment for at least twenty years.
Obi-Wan's affection and friendship are different. Subtle sometimes, more academic in some ways. He doesn't push in all the ways Han had. At least not as often. He’s just there, at odd times and in odd places.
There’s the shared trauma too. Sith lords had, in various ways, crawled around inside their minds and left deep wounds. Hesitations and uncertainties. Helplessness.
There’s love, certainly. But in love?
"He's pretty attractive," Luke points out.
But that doesn't mean in love either.
"If you had to tell him how you feel, what would you say?"
"We're friends."
"How you feel. Not what relationship you have."
How she feels? If she has to say it?
"Nothing," Leia whispers.
"I love you," is Han's. It belongs to the man who had given up his life for her cause and her friends. To the person who had stood between her and Vader, without thought or hesitation, and who had been brave for both of them when she'd thought she was going to lose him. If she says it, she’ll be waiting for, "I know," and she doesn't want to hear that from Obi-Wan. She doesn't want him to step into the place of the man Leia had been about to marry and just…steal it. She wants her scoundrel, her scruffy looking nerf herder, to be the only one she loves, because if he isn’t…
Then he’s really dead. And she’ll really never see him again.
Luke's sorrow and understanding nestle against her aching mind, driving tears closer to the surface.
She does love Obi-Wan. She does. She finds him handsome and funny and provocative. He’d been the reason in another life that she had met Luke. He’s been the reason in this one that she really started to understand the Force. To accept that it’s a part of her and she can wield it in spite of her fear. He’s kind and vicious and cunning and patient. He’s done his best to raise Anakin.
He has a target on his back as large as a moon sized space station, and loving him is just begging for Leia's heart to be broken all over again, dreams ending in laser blasts and fire and darkness.
"Leia?"
Anakin is here. He seems hesitant, but not anxious, which means he probably has good news. Or as good as news gets right now.
"How is he?"
"Fine. Annoying the healers. Going back in bacta tomorrow. Unclear if that's for his current injuries, or because someone in the Hall is going to try and kill him."
Leia smiles, because that was a joke and the last thing she wants is Anakin asking questions. But she feels the emptiness at her side as they walk together, all of Anakin's interest and exuberance only emphasizing the ghosts where love should be.