The Millennium Falcon sped away from Cloud City, with C-3PO, Chewbacca, and Princess Leia safely aboard. Relatively safe, at least, because at least fleeing TIE Fighters rather than stormtroopers gave them a little bit better odds. Still, the chill air of the Falcon's recycled atmosphere was only that much more oppressive because of what they had lost.

Han.

Leia shuddered, and felt her throat tighten at the thought of him being carted off to Jabba the Hutt aboard the Slave I. There was so little she could do, with the Dark Lord of the Sith laying a trap for Luke, and Han being frozen in carbonite before her very eyes. And now, aboard han's ship, she was running from the Empire, just like she had run from Hoth, along with the rest of the Rebels.

At the mere thought of the planet Hoth, a chill washed over Leia. She wrapped her arms around herself, and frowned, her eyes glazing over and becoming distant. This wasn't just the cold air aboard the Falcon, it was something else. Something foreboding. Something involving Luke.

As the visions hit her, she inhaled sharply and arched her back slightly. A great darkness swirled around Luke, and she saw him standing beside Lord Vader, as though they were together. She had tried to warn him away from the trap, but she thought Lord Vader had meant to kill Luke. She didn't know how, or why, but for some reason she knew that Luke was no longer the young farmboy who saved the Alliance. Luke was...a traitor.

She could hardly believe it. Luke, a traitor. She was hurt, and angry at the same time. She couldn't believe that after all they'd been through, Luke would choose to serve the Empire. She had heard that Vader had the power to affect peoples' minds, but she couldn't fathom Luke letting the Dark Lord do that to him. Two close friends, lost to her in the span of mere hours. It was something she had been prepared for as a member of the Alliance, but this was a crushing blow.

Hours later, sitting in her cabin aboard the Redemption, Leia lifted her head at a noise. At first she thought her weariness was causing her eyes to play tricks on her, because she would have sworn that she could see the outline of a man standing in her room.

"Leia," spoke the apparition.

Quickly blinking the sleep away, she rubbed her eyes and pressed herself against the wall. Her eyes weren't playing tricks on her, there was a semitransparent older man standing in the doorway to her room, glowing a faint blue. He had a beard, and looked almost like the hologram of herself she'd stored in R2-D2's databanks. She thought she recognized him, impossible as it may be, as General Kenobi, who had died on the Death Star.

"Leia...you cannot stay here. He will seek you out, and he will destroy you."

"Who?" she responded, filled with fear and confusion.

"Luke. He has given himself over to the Dark Side, and I cannot turn him back."

Leia felt the heavy weight on her heart increase dramatically. This...hallucination must be caused by her recent anxiety. She decided that she simply needed more rest, and rolled over to get some more sleep."

"Hear me, Leia Organa, you are in grave danger. You will go to the Dagobah system."

"Dagobah system? I've never heard of it."

"There you will find Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me. He will teach you the ways of the Force, which will save your life. It is your destiny, Leia."

"I don't believe in destiny," she muttered, clutching her blankets over her head. When she finally rolled back over, the apparition was no longer there. She remembered their conversation clearly, and found that she knew exactly where she could find the Dagobah system. She closed her eyes tightly, and let exhaustion take her.

After that, Leia dismissed her vision as a fevered dream, and went about the grim task of leading the Rebellion. Soon thereafter, rumors leaked from high in the Imperial ranks that the Emperor was dead, and that Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader now ruled the Empire. It would remain little more than rumors until almost two years later, but by that time the Rebellion would already have crumbled.

Only weeks later, the Imperial fleet descended upon the Rebellion with deadly force. Leia, and Chewie, found themselves caught up in an ambush over the planet Sullust, where the last few ships in the Rebel fleet were destroyed. Aboard the Falcon, the pair faced off against Star Destroyers at point blank range, sustaining heavy damage, and a deeper wound when they learned who was leading this assault, Baron Administator Calrissian... Now, an Imperial Moff.

"I am sorry, Chewie." he told them, with a smile, "But unlike Solo, I know that sooner or later, the House always wins."

With the Rebellion shattered, and its leaders dead, frozen, or defected to the Empire, Leia and Chewie were forced to end their overt opposition to the new Empire and go into hiding. Seeing no other choice, Leia reluctantly traveled to the Dagobah system as the phantom Kenobi had instructed.

Half-surprised that the planet actually existed where she thought it was, she guided the Falcon to a rough water landing. Leaving the ship, she felt herself drawn strongly elsewhere. There, in the swampy marshes, she met the elderly Jedi Master who Obi-Wan had sent her to meet. Yoda's disposition was as grim as ever, but eventually he relented and agreed to train Leia in the ways of the Force.

Leia proved to be a better student than Luke ever was, despite the fact that she was not naturally gifted in the Force. Years of working for the Imperial Senate, and then as a leader of the Rebel Alliance had taught her self control, patience, and above all, the ability to believe in something greater. Learning was slow, but eventually her sensitivity to the Force grew and she learned to master her powers. Though Yoda was a hard taskmaster, Leia felt no need to rush, knowing that she and Chewbacca were all that was left of her life, and that there was more for her on the Jedi path than there was elsewhere. Eventually, the Force filled her life, patching up the holes left by the losses she'd sustained. In time, she learned to accept that she could never be with Han, as much as it pained her, and she began to have new goals, new ambitions.

A sense of dread began to pervade Leia's actions after almost a year and a half of solid training. Yoda sensed it as well, and confirmed her suspicions that Luke had finally mopped up the last cells of resistance and began to turn his sights back to the last threats: Leia, and her Jedi Master. Yoda instructed Leia to go to Tatooine and return to Obi-Wan's homestead to complete her training. Confident that her skill with the Force and mastery over her emotions was complete, she set off for Luke and Anakin's home planet, determined to finish the journey to Knighthood. There, finding Obi-Wan's journal, she learned many secrets of the Jedi, as well as how to construct her own lightsabre. As she prepared to leave Tatooine, she felt a great wave of pain wash over her, and she knew that Yoda had died a premature death, which only strengthened her resolve.

One last thing needed to be done before she could continue her quest: she had decided to give the Falcon to Chewbacca, who she had left on his home planet of Kashyyyk during her time on Dagobah. Little did she know, though, that she had made a horrible mistake. The Empire appeared in the skies over Kashyyyk, and in a swift strike fell upon the Wookiee population with the full might of the Dark Side. Chewbacca and Leia fled together, barely escaping in time, and parted ways soon thereafter. Leia knew that Chewbacca held no animosity for her, however she never could escape the feeling that it was she who brought the Empire to Kashyyyk, and she who was responsible for what happened to it. It would be over a year before she would see Chewbacca again, and when she did she could not bring herself to help him. Instead, she would send Mara Jade with him on his mission to rescue Han, and regretted that decision forever after.

For many years, Leia lived an underground existence. She learned, through Obi-Wan's journal, how to mask her presence from the Force, but even then she knew she had to be careful. She always remained one step ahead of Darth Vader and Luke, now called Darth Gadrel, despite their best efforts to detain her. On Nar Shaddaa, she encountered an old crone who gave her a holocron, further expanding her knowledge of the Jedi. Old feelings returned to her, and soon she began to focus her efforts on re-establishing the Jedi Order, one member at a time.

Leia took individual apprentices, never more than a single Padawan in her tutelage at once. Over the years, she trained at least ten beings in the way of the Jedi, instilling in them the value of secrecy, and of keeping a low profile. They trained to fight the Empire, and she only chose those of the purest heart and strongest will as her Padawans. In turn, those Jedi Knights took their own Padawans, following the same rules that Leia herself had used when training those other apprentices. She lost a few to the Empire, but only one to the Dark Side. In the hard times presented by the newer, more powerful Empire, she considered herself lucky to have that good of a success rate. Though her failures stung deeply, she knew that it was her duty to pass on the Jedi way.

This new sect of Jedi, who numbered nearly thirty by the time of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, had remained silent and invisible right under the noses of Gadrel and Vader. There were more secretive than the Black Sun, more hidden than the Mistryl, and devoted to righting the wrongs the Empire imposed upon its citizens. Their philosophy of one-on-one training bled over into their activism; by refraining from large undertakings (a method that Leia remembered bitterly from her days with the Rebellion), the Jedi were able to remain hidden, yet help protect the lives and freedoms of the innocent. Additionally, these Jedi acted as a counterweight to the Empire's Inquisitors and Dark Side Adepts that flourished during Gadrel and Vader's reign.

When the invaders from beyond the Galaxy arrived, the Empire engaged them in a series of bloody battles from the start. Leia siezed her opportunity and, during the conflict, used the Sith Lords' distraction to infiltrate the Darksabre and proceed quietly to the meditation chamber of Lord Vader. It was there, in a room fashioned in a similar manner to his chamber aboard the Executor, that father faced daughter in a dramatic conflict.

Lightsabres clashing, Leia and Vader went through a grueling fight that wearied both of them. Leia had been forged into a warrior by Yoda, as Luke had been, but had the power of youth and the experience of a Jedi Master on her side. Her yellow-gold blade intercepted every stroke the Sith Lord made, and as Vader began to slow, she siezed her opportunity. With emotionless determination, Leia drew the duel to a conclusion, batting away his lightsabre blade and bisecting his body with a diagonal slash that ended his life within seconds. Amid a torrent of Dark Side energy, Leia stood grimly above the body of one of the two most dangerous men in the Galaxy, and knew that she had succeeded in bringing the Force one step closer to balance.