realizing luke was her brother meant joy. realizing vader was her father meant devastation.

her first reaction was to deny it, because certainly it couldn't be possible. not the man she had spent her life fighting against, the one who had caused her so much pain. but the more she thought, the more she felt, the more she began to understand this truth, horrible as it was.

even now, as the battle of endor belonged to another year and a different era, the revelation still felt raw. it was something she hadn't understood to be a wound until it refused to heal. she, a skywalker, a daughter of a man whose face she had never seen.

she would always be an organa. that was how she comforted herself. alderaan, though wiped from the endless sky, was still her home. those were the parents she knew. even if her blood belonged to anakin skywalker, her heart belonged to bail organa. she was the daughter of a man who fought only for peace, not the daughter of a murderer.

if only he was still around to guide her, in more than just her foggy memories. she was thinking so much about parentage, so much about the love she felt in addition to the hatred which now felt so much sharper knowing that it was aimed toward the man whose existence led to her own life.

it wouldn't matter so much if she wasn't about to become a parent herself.

with the first anniversary of the battle of endor approaching, the birth of her child was coming too. it had been months, indeed, but everything had flown by and any day her list of titles would expand to include one more: mother.

as a mother, she could only hope to follow the path laid by her own mothers. breha and padme, royal but far from aloof, who valued compassion and understanding and doing the right thing even when it was difficult. that was how she viewed her work as a senator, but somehow it felt so different to know she was shaping one boy's life instead of the curves of countless people.

he was all hers. of course others would be there to raise him, but no one else carried him inside and felt his light and his shadow like she did. he was all hers, and she wasn't sure just what to feel. joy, yes. fear, of course. confusion, most of all.

she rushed to welcome the new child to the galaxy, as much as she could manage with a baby on the way. there were so many things, ltitle things she never would've considered before, that now seemed vital. perhaps most vital of all was names.

names were strange. there were so many people that had helped her, so many that she could honor and thank. but that also meant names were important, and she spent hour after hour thinking and trying to recruit han to help her. they would have to agree on this, of course. little arguments were okay for little things. but both of them knew that naming their child needed to be a matter with complete consensus.

of course, this seemed near impossible to come by. whatever suggestions they came up with for one another seemed good enough...which meant that they clearly weren't good enough to fit their son.

aside from creating the anxieties of becoming a mother, this child meant hope. hope that she could overcome the darkness that remained in the galaxy, hope that she could be a truly good mother. so then it seemed natural to name him after who had once been her only hope.

ben. three letters, one syllable. not unlike his father's name, she realized. as soon as it came up, murmured under her breath in a brainstorming session, it only felt right. deep within she decided that would be the name for her son, no matter what han thought. fortunately, han seemed to share her devotion to the name.

so it came to be - ben solo would be his name.

with a name determined, she turned to other things. at first she scurried around, trying to collect trinkets and furniture and clothing. that made han laugh, mostly because decided half of it was unimportant. he was right, she knew that, but she just wanted to make the best for her son. han assured her that it would be fine.

finally, when she was resting after a day of trying to orchestrate this desired perfection, she decided she had done enough. if anything else was necessary, she could fetch it once ben was born. or, better yet, get han or someone else to fetch it for her. with this thought curling up the edges of her lips, she moved to a new idea, what else needed to be done before ben arrived.

in an instant, her parents returned to her mind, a usual occurrence throughout the war but now even more prevalent. something about becoming a parent herself made her own parents feel more distant even though she increasingly thought about them. primarily someone's child her entire life, now she was someone's parent. child no more.

it was time to let go of them. bail, breha, padme, anakin, vader. they had guided her enough. though they were all gone, she still felt their presence in her every action. that wouldn't change. but they would just be spirits as opposed to guiding lights.

or so she told herself. letting them go felt like her own action, her own choice. but since ben was coming, it didn't feel that she had much of a choice.

once he was born, she was certain she would lose a part of herself.