in a queer galaxy

Like, Bail Organa, bless his poor poor soul, tried to politician the Vader out of her. He tried SO FUCKING HARD. 

Leia, though. Leia is very much Anakin’s child. She is the one with the deep anger in her. She is the one who will bring peace to her new empire freedom and justice back to the galaxy whether the galaxy wants it or not. She is the one who commands armies and amasses followers as easy as breathing. She joined the Rebellion while she was in her teens. She is the one with the spirit of a warrior.

Don’t get me wrong; Bail Organa did his damnedest to raise her in the mold of her mother, fighting her battles in the halls of power with words as her weapons. And she was very good at it. But unlike Padme, Leia’s words always had an edge to them, her tone and meaning always a little too sharp, a little too angry. 

“If you will not turn to the Dark Side, perhaps she will.”

Luke’s island is idyllic. 

It’s got green hills with the sea crashing underneath and some cute bird things and the bluest sky Han’s ever seen and everything about it gives off a peaceful sort of loneliness.

Han hates it.

This shit is what Luke trade them all for? What a goddamn lunatic weirdo.

He treks through the grass feeling it itch at his ankles, the salt in the air making his scar ache with a dull needling pain, and he grumbles about it as they make their way uphill, seagulls and whatever those wide-eyed creatures are chatter around them, making the whole place seem to buzz with life. 

Again, Han hates it.

And while there’s no way Luke missed the Falcon landing on his deserted island, he doesn’t come to greet them, oh no, of course not, that would be too damn easy. No, Luke waits for them at the top of a hill, staring at the open sea with sad melancholic eyes. 

Luke looks like the exact same drama queen as always. He’s got a kriffin’ cape on, come on.

Behind him, Han waves off Chewie’s placating warnings and Rey’s noise of surprise, striding purposefully to Luke like he’s on a warpath, like he’s about to throw him off the cliff, and Luke has the gall of turning around and smiling at him like he saw Han coming, like he knows Han would never, like he has any right to stand there and say stuff like hello, old friend, and I missed you, and it’s good to see you, when he was the one who ran away, not Han.

For once, not Han.

So Han walks and seethes and misses Luke, okay, things have been so shitty, and half the shittiness is because Luke wasn’t there to say his cryptid bullshit and use the Force, or whatever. 

Or whatever.

“Hello, old friend,” says Luke, and Han hates him, wants to throw him off this goddamn idyllic cliff, wants to scream until his throat is raw, wants whirl around and march all the way back to the Falcon and leave this godforsaken place– instead, he settles for glaring fiercely and slaps him upside the head like he’s done a dozen times when they were younger and Luke was being a brat, “hold on, Han–”

Luke never finishes his sentences but see if Han cares when he’s got his best friend back after a whole decade, when he’s been missing Luke like a lost limb, when he’s promised Leia to bring her brother home and he’s not breaking another promise, when he’s got so little family and Luke is right there, at the center of it, when they both saw a revolution come and go and lived long enough to watch another start.

No, Han doesn’t give two craps about what Luke has to say, he just gathers him in his arms and hugs him to prove to himself this is real, this is really Luke, they’re both there and alive.

They’re both so old and so tired, but soon Chewie is there, wrapping himself around both of them, and Han thinks about walking into the Falcon after so long and saying we’re home.

He thinks he might have been half-wrong, then.