Star Wars: A Long Drabble Ago

A Shoulder To Cry On

A/N:This piece is dedicated to my good friend morgandisney1313 who just read Mara's death for the first time. Sorry, morgan and r.i.p., Mara Jade Skywalker.

  Impatiently, a sister waited in the cockpit, her hands working feverishly across the controls, sniffling away tears as she helped set down the Falcon on rainy Shedu Maad. The sharp pain of loss continued to stab at her, but she tried to ignore it, tried to keep herself calm to better help her brother. When the ship landed, she hurried down the boarding ramp and dashed to meet Luke just outside the Jedi base. She threw herself into his arms and gave him her fiercest hug, not saying a word, only offering him comfort in this physical way. She's lost people before, too. Lots of people. And from years of experience of losing people, she knew better than to tell him sow sorry she was, knew better than to tell him to forget the pain and focus on the brighter side. Besides there being no 'brighter side', Leia knew how foolish and stupid a thing it was to say. She knew that, when one was grieving, physical reassurance could do so much more whereas a verbal comment of sorrow could often only make it worse. So, she didn't say anything, just cried with her brother and held him close.
  "You're here," Luke muttered, burying his head in his sister's long hair. "You're really here."
  "Shh," she cried. "You don't need to say anything."
  "Y-you felt it, didn't you. You had to have. You were her best friend. You were her sister. You felt it just like I did."
  "I did." Leia agreed.
  Luke gently pushed his sister back and, through tear-stained eyes, held her gaze, his broken heart showing in his blue eyes' depths. It caught Leia off guard. She'd never seen him so broken before, never seen him cry in defeat, in loss, in life. But here he was, broken as an old holo and so alone. He and Mara had been married for quite a bit less longer than Leia and Han, having married when Jaina and Jacen were nearly teens. They'd struggled through so much together in such a short time, though. It had felt like Mara's illness had lasted ages and Leia had always feared her sister in-law dying before the two could even have a single child, but Mara always had been a fighter, a trooper, a kind of warrior even Leia had to admire. And when Mara had made it long enough, when she had fought the disease back and given Leia her first and only nephew, Mara had become even stronger in an all new sense. With Ben, a softness to Mara had been found and had challenged, but strengthened, the Skywalker couple until they were as indestructible as Han and Leia. Life had seemed so little to them until pain and loss and suffering struck again.
  Whoever had done this, Leia thought. Whoever had decided to do this to her family. Whatever monster had done this to her brother, she promised herself, was going to pay . . .