Clay and Pearl is a pre-ESB AU that will update on Fridays. As a rule, I will never reference Disney canon; I am from a long-lost era in which the pseudo-canon was the Expanded Universe. Any backgrounds, characterizations or settings will hail from that canon. Disney owns Star Wars, but they do not own my twenty-five year plus history with Han and Leia, and they can take that from my cold, dead fingers.

This fic is freely written and freely given: a present from me to you. I make no money from this enterprise. Comments are always appreciated, though I humbly request you submit them with the same sense of community and love with which I give you this story. A human sits behind this keyboard!

And, finally, I hope you enjoy. Happy Fridays, my friends! Here we go…

Prologue

The smoke stung Leia's eyes, blaster fire zipping past her ears with a wild crack and a rush of heat. She pumped her legs harder and blinked, trying to keep track of Han ahead of her. The marketplace blurred past them, colors bright and vivid as adrenaline coursed through her veins. Her lungs burned; sweat cascaded down her back.

A single blaster bolt lanced past her and nicked Han's heel. With startled horror, Leia watched as he stumbled, tried to regain his footing and then stumbled again, his knee hitting the dirt with a pained groan. Leia's heart stopped as she caught up to him, as she tried to grab his arm and pull him up.

"Fuck," he muttered. "Fuck."

She pulled on his arm again but his knee stayed pressed into the dirt. Leia gritted her teeth and glanced behind her, eyeing the incoming stormtroopers with dread running up and down her spine.

"Get up," she yelled and ducked, pulling his head to her chest as a blaster bolt whipped over them. "Get up."

The stormtroopers were fewer than fifteen meters away, armor rattling and voices rising. Their fire slowed and then stopped and Leia realized with a pang that their orders must be to take them alive. The clicks of blaster settings switching from kill to stun surrounded Han and Leia.

She turned back to look at Han. His face was splotched with mud, his eyes looking at her with such calm assurance that it stopped her breath.

"Go," he said, squeezing her hand. "Get to the Falcon."

Leia shook her head, heart in her throat, looking behind her again to the troopers as they fanned out along the street. Han and Leia had fifteen seconds before they were enclosed, before any chance of escape disappeared.

"No," she said and tugged his hand again. "Get up."

"Leia."

She turned to him, ready to beg, ready to plead with him to just stand up. This couldn't be the end for him, not here on Nar Shaddaa, not now, not after he'd kissed her and sworn he was ready to stay for her. If he could just stand, they could get away, they could run and—

"You gotta go," he said, pain etched into the line of his mouth but his eyes, oh, his eyes were so calm, so grateful and this wasn't how this happened, this wasn't how this ended, before it even started. No.

"Your Highness."

A deep bass. Harsh breathing through a mechanized mask. Leia's entire body went cold.

Vader. Her worst nightmare, the enemy she loathed and feared, the only man who inspired such dread in her. She knew what it was to be Vader's prisoner and she could not, would not, let herself be taken into his custody again.

She stepped in front of Han's crouched body and lifted her blaster, aiming it square at the scourge's chestplate. Sweat rolling into her eyes but with an arm that didn't shake, didn't waver in the slightest, she squeezed off one shot before the troopers fired at her.

Unthinking, she pulled her blaster back and straightened her left arm, fingers splayed. As if watching a holofilm, Leia observed with some distance the stun bolts hit her hand, dissipate into her glove, a sting running through her arm.

But she didn't fall.

Another stun bolt. And another. And another. All hitting their target with precision that stormtroopers only managed at point-blank range. And Leia felt them, felt the energy course through her, felt the energy nestle into her rib cage beneath her lungs and solidify in a thrumming center of power.

And still she didn't fall.

"The hell?" she heard Han say from behind her, a low note beneath the chaotic melody of the stun bolts.

Her eyes were on Vader, though, boring into his mask, feeling his automatic breathing as if it were her own, as if she were feeding off his presence and her hatred of him, of what he stood for, of how he'd ruined her and her people and the people of the galaxy.

You won't take Han from me, too, she thought.

Time stopped as the monster in front of her raised a hand, silencing the stormtroopers' blasters as quickly as if he'd spoken. Leia's hand shook, extended in front of her, and her lungs burned, her torso alight with electricity, absorbing the stun bolt energy in some bizarre, wholly inexplicable miracle of physics.

I should be unconscious, she managed to think before Vader took three steps toward her. Gasping for breath, she lowered her left hand, feeling weak and powerful at once.

The dark lord stood above her, so close she could feel his breathing in her chest. She felt Han try to stand again, manage to shift his weight onto his uninjured leg and rise behind her. She was trapped between her most intimate enemy, the vilest trash she'd ever known, and the man she loved.

Loved?

Yes, loved. Without consent and without aim, she loved him and she would rather die than let him fall into Vader's clutches. Loved. In love with.

He loves you, too.

She dropped her blaster to the ground, reached behind her for Han's hand, aware that there was no hope in killing Vader now. He was too close. All she could do was force him to kill them quickly.

He was closer to her than he'd been since he'd gripped her shoulder as her entire planet was destroyed.

Filth, she thought. Wretch. Abomination.

"Obi-Wan?" Vader said, as if to himself.

Leia closed her eyes, breathed deeply and then harnessed the energy in her stomach, the accumulated chaos of her anger and the stun bolts …

… and then she exploded.