It's the quiet that haunts her. Most of her life has been lived in between the chaos, snatched and cradled between calamity. Something more important or pressing always ending any peaceful moments much too soon, until the quiet became something uncommon.

As her sins collected, her regrets gathering like a weight on her shoulders, the quiet became less wanted. It allowed for time to remember, for the weight to crush.

Yet she doesn't know what she would do different, if she could do anything different. All of her choices seemed right when she made them, which leads her to believe that maybe it was always going to be like this. A thought she had almost managed to erase once upon a time. They'd come so close and had been so happy for a time, it had perhaps blinded her to their real destiny.

Sacrifice. Duty. Honor. These had been drilled into her as a child. The good of all over the happiness of one. So she had given more of herself to building a new government. Maybe if she had given into his pleas for ten more minutes in bed things would have been different, but she is doubtful.

She is a Skywalker by blood. Blood that haunts and binds her to a road she never chose. Tainted by a force she can't fully control or comprehend. It makes them powerful, but she wonders if it will always be their downfall. She doesn't want to believe that. She wants to believe that they can overcome the darkness.

But she felt it. Her breath stuck in her throat. Her heart shattered as if he had stabbed her instead. Now part of her wants to lay down and never get up again, maybe part of her already has.

She's faced life without them before. In fact, most of her life has been lived without them. She's given up her lover time and again. Sacrificed her brother with no goodbyes before. She's even sent her son off alone. But it has never been like this. When she faced Han uncertain if he'd live through the carbon freeze, when Luke went off to confront their father, when Ben... it was different.

There was hope.

Now as the quiet descends on her again all she feels is empty. Alone. The blanket of grief feels like it will strangle her and hold her forever it it's bitter embrace. Like so many times before, as she feels the crystal drops stream down her cheeks she wishes for her lover's embrace, her brother's calm, her little boy's smile. And just like those other times all she gets is silence.

She has always been strong though, and she knows that she live through this too. She is still their leader even if she may have failed as a wife, sister, mother... There will be other fires to put out, even if she's grown weary of the flames. So she won't allow herself to linger in this darkness for long, just for a moment.

In this quiet in between.

It's where she loved him. Where they had their child. Where they were happy. The only place she's ever lived. The only place she's learned to hate. So it's only fitting that here is where she honors them.

Her tears reserved for silence and memory alone.