#queer chivalry

Enter Luke, who is her brother without knowing it, her knight without meaning to, and who loves her, loves the rebellion, loves people because he doesn't know how not to. He can't do what she does—he can't stand back from the battle and make the hard decisions, the ones that get people killed either way—but he knows it needs to be done. He protects her, and she protects all of them, and... it works. They win.

The Emperor who was not their emperor, who never belonged to them the way Leia does, dies, and the Empire crumbles along with him because he only thought as far as his reign, he only cared what happened while he was still in power. The fight to be had needs diplomats, not generals, and Leia takes to her new role like she was born to it. (She was.)

Luke leaves, because the fighting is over and his duty is elsewhere, and Leia—she understands. She knows what it is to have a legacy resting on your shoulders, a responsibility you couldn't shake even if you wanted to. She sends him on his way with her favor, and gets down to work by herself.

(Han is there, and he's... nice. She loves him. But he's flighty and she's got a temper on her and she needs someone who isn't him, someone who can ground her, who can be her anchor, who can stand behind her in the shadows and be alright with it. Han isn't that.

They break up, and make up, and break up again, and somewhere along the line Leia realizes that it's never going to work, that he doesn't want to be what she needs, so she lets him go. She sends him on his way with her favor, and tries to be okay with it. (She's not okay with it.))

Leia works. She bargains and she pleads and occasionally she threatens, and somewhere along the way she stops just being the upstart princess of Alderaan and starts being a threat in her own right. Somewhere along the way, planets start realizing that there was a reason the Empire was scared of her, that there was a reason so many admirals cursed Tarkin for destroying Alderaan.

Somewhere along the way, someone sees Leia and thinks she needs to be gone.

The assassination attempts start, and Leia hires a bodyguard. And then another. And another. But the attempts keep coming, and then one of her bodyguards turns on her and she hasn't slept in weeks and she's falling apart and she calls Luke and—he doesn't come.

(He can't, she realizes later—he has an order on his back, has children to watch and train and protect, and he can't sacrifice their lives for hers—but in the moment, it just feels like a betrayal.)

He sends along a bounty hunter instead, calls her trustworthy and says she'll defend Leia with her own life, and Leia looks at Fennec Shand and wonders what favor Luke is cashing in to get this, wonders who Fennec owes her life to and why they're letting Leia collect on the debt, but she doesn't wonder for long.

Leia falls asleep, and for the first time in months she sleeps through the night. When she wakes up in the morning, Fennec is standing in the corner, watching her like she hasn't slept. (She hasn't.)

Fennec follows her from then on. She hires more guards, of course—she can't be everywhere at once—but she vets them thoroughly and threatens them more thoroughly and she's the only one ever alone with Leia.

Leia gets used to Fennec's presence behind her desk, at her back, at her shoulder. Gets used to waking up and seeing Fennec on the couch beside her.

She wants to ask, sometimes, why Fennec is there, what code of honor is binding to her to Leia when she could so easily leave. She wants to ask, too, why Fennec doesn't resent her for the late nights and early mornings, for sleeping on the couch so often her back must hurt, for having to be there because no one else could be.

She doesn't ask, though, and Fennec doesn't answer.

And then—things change. Not really, not seriously, not in any of the heavy, obvious ways. Leia is still Leia and the senate is still the senate and their small coalition is still their small coalition, slowly growing. No planets are destroyed, no one leaves, nothing happens.

But Leia wakes up one day and Fennec is standing in the corner, looking at her with quiet, dark eyes, and maybe they're a little less distant and formal than usual, and maybe they're not, but Leia suddenly wishes more than anything that she could give Fennec's life back to her, that she could unbind Fennec and let her live her life. (And maybe, just maybe, she wants to know what would happen if she could, if Fennec would come back, would stay, not out of obligation but out of devotion, out of— but she doesn't let herself think the rest of it.)

So she asks Fennec who she owes, asks Fennec what they did to keep her with Leia, and Fennec answers. Leia bids Fennec leave for the day, and Fennec—Fennec pauses on the way out, like she's not sure she should, (like, Leia's brain hopes, she's not sure she wants to) but she goes anyways.

Leia calls Boba Fett, and Boba Fett answers with a sigh, and then she's giving him her request, offering him what she can give, and his face is like beskar. He takes the deal, and he doesn't ask her why.

Fennec doesn't come back.

Leia waits for her to, hopes against hope, against reason, against sense that she will. She stays up, tries to turn her mind to work, but she keeps looking towards the door, keeps hoping that every noise she hears is Fennec come back to stay.

She goes to bed after all the moons are set, and when she wakes up the corner is empty and Fennec is gone.

Leia knows what it is to lose people, knows what it is to grieve, and this is not the same. This is worse, somehow, and better too, because Fennec is out there and she is alive and maybe she's even happy, and somewhere along the line that started mattering to Leia, somewhere along the line she started caring about that more than she cares about herself, but it's not enough—not really, not when it means Fennec doesn't love her back.

She throws herself into work, and forces herself to ignore every little sound, and one day, months later, she looks up and Fennec is in the room, quiet and dark and serious.

"Take me back," she says, low and rough, and it means nothing, Leia knows it means nothing, but whatever she can have of Fennec she will take.

Leia nods, and offers her a job, and like that things almost feel right, almost feel okay again.

Almost.

Because Leia wonders—she can't help not wondering—why it is that Fennec came back, what propelled her to come ask for a job like it was nothing, like she could get one anywhere and Leia was just the first place she looked. Leia wonders, and she tries not to, and she tries to be okay with it all, okay with what she can have, but Leia has spent her entire life trying to be content with whatever is left to her and she can't—not now.

"Why did you come back?" she asks, late one night when everyone else has gone to bed.

"You know why." Fennec is leaning against the wall, half in darkness, but there's no lie in her words and Leia wants to cry and beat her head against her desk.

"No," she says instead. "No, I don't."

Fennec pushes herself up from her lazy half-lean, and looks at Leia with eyes the space between stars, wide and wanting. "For you. I came back for you."

And—it might be enough, if Leia were someone else. It might be enough, even, in another life, if Leia were not a princess and a senator, if her duty weighed less heavy on her back.

She stands, and walks around her desk, walks over to Fennec where the shadows of the wall meet the light of her desk lamp, and stands facing her.

"I can't—give you everything," she says.

Fennec nods, like she knows—like she's always known, and never bothered to care.

Leia reaches her hand up to Fennec's cheek gently, not because she's afraid Fennec will run, but because she can't bear to be otherwise. Slowly, softly, she presses her lips to Fennec, and they both hear the words that don't have to be spoken. They both hear But I can give you this.