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When Luke braids her hair his hands are unusually hesitant. He was never much given to self doubt to begin with and as the years since their first meeting have passed he has found some deep well of tranquility in himself that still escapes Leia.
She knows, though they have never spoken of it, that he is remembering his family - his real family, the one she isn’t a part of. She knows, in the way she has always known more than she is supposed to, that he has been reminded of the simple, utilitarian braids his aunt used to wear when she was young. That has led to him remembering being a child and watching the daily ritual of his uncle running the one hairbrush they owned through his aunt’s long, sun bleached hair, smoothing out the tangles from the night before.
It is a memory that is drenched in yellow sunlight and warmth and the idea of what love is to a version of Luke that was still too young to imagine himself anywhere but his uncle’s moisture farm who thinks one day I’ll stand in the kitchen of a farm like my uncle and I will brush the hair of a beautiful woman like my aunt, and that is what love is.
Now his fingers shake as he attempts the intricate twists of the Alderaanian ceremonial braids in the galley of the Falcon. His feelings are all tangled up, like her hair is fast becoming. He is thinking of how much he loved them and he is missing them so much it overflows him and he is trying to tell her he loves her in a language she shouldn’t know.
“You’re making a mess,” Han pushes Luke out of the way. His deft fingers untangle the knots that Luke has made and start the loops again.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Luke asks, in awe.
“Who do you think keeps Chewie looking so fine?”
It is a lie, and Leia can feel the sharp edges of loss around it. There was someone he did this for and he misses them with a dull aching bitter regret. Leia can sense it as the memory of running his fingers through someone’s hair bubbles up in him. It isn’t as clear to her as Luke’s. The bond she and Luke share is deeper than anything else could ever touch. They are twins. They have never been alone. Even with galaxies between them, they have always known each other.
Leia closes her eyes and remembers watching her mother sitting still in a chair as a whole fleet of people busied themselves fixing up her hair for a special occasion. The galley of the Falcon is hardly the beautiful open dressing room of her childhood, and neither Han nor Luke can recreate the work of an army of people who have trained in this art. But it is all she has left and it is warm and it is bitter and it is beautiful and it is home.