"Han!"
Leia called after the retreating man in the snowy passage as she stalked out of the room behind him. She wasn't sure if she was more panicked or more angry at the moment; it was taking half of her effort to simply keep up with him and his longer legs.
"Yes, Your Highnessness?" Han spun around to face her, and she decided it was very much anger she was feeling.
"I thought you had decided to stay?" she inquired icily, drawing herself up to her full height and looking him straight in the eye.
"Yeah, well, that bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mandell changed my mind."
Panic. "Han, we need you!"
His face twisted into an expression of mock surprise. "Oh… 'we need you'?"
"Yes."
"What about 'you need'?"
"I need? I don't know what you're talking about," she insisted, trying to ignore the accusatory finger pointed at her chest.
I don't believe in anything but myself
But then you opened up a door
You opened up a door
Now I start to believe in something else
"Would you please stop calling me that?" She hated the nicknames. Almost as much as she hated the fact she had just pushed him off of her once again.
"Sure, Leia."
She stopped struggling with the Falcon for a second and sighed out of exasperation, but a chill ran up her spine at the sound of his voice saying her name.
"You make it so difficult sometimes," she said, not even truly knowing what exactly she was referring to herself.
But how do I know if I'll make it through?
How do I know? Where's the proof in you?
She listened to Han's gentle assurance that he would talk to his friend about Threepio and softened for just a moment, still feeling his lips on her forehead.
"I don't trust Lando," she snapped and pulled away from his hands. Not knowing where to go but not wanting to go far, she let herself fall back onto the sofa and glare up at him reproachfully. In typical Han fashion, he spread his arms and looked aggravated.
"Well, I don't trust him either." He sat down on the edge of the sofa, his face softening as it was inches from hers once again. "But he is my friend. Besides," he countered, moving his hands to touch her once again, "we'll soon be gone."
She stared at him for one hard moment and thought about Alderaan, thought about her family, thought about everything she had loved. You let them take all of it from you, that voice in the back of her head nagged, why don't you let yourself stop another thing you love from being taken away this time?
She barely had time to realize what she had just confessed in thought.
"Then you're as good as gone, aren't you?"
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
But it can be won
She hadn't told him, and now he was being taken from her anyway. It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair.
It was all she could think as she stood looking up into his face.
She clung to Chewbacca, for once just wanting someone to hold her up instead. Oh gods, did she want someone to hold her. It wasn't fair.
Han suddenly lowered his head and kissed her, and for the first time, she let everything go. She barely registered the fact they had torn him away from her when she found herself leaning into the spot where he had just been, finding words on her lips but being unable to speak them.
She thought she had known pain when she was tortured in her cell on the Death Star, or when Alderaan was destroyed in front of her eyes – but this was a different pain, not an immediate hurt but a more subtle one that crept around the edges of her insides and tore her apart as she stared at him in the center of the platform. It wasn't fair, she thought for the hundredth time.
And then, she told herself to stop thinking.
"I love you."
I sit in the back of a bus watching the world grow old
Watching the world go by all by myself
I took a faith full leap and packed up all my things and all my love
And gave it to somebody else
Even though her eyesight was somewhat obstructed behind the mask, she could see him blindly palming the air and then panic when he came in contact with where her face should have been.
"Who are you?" There was suddenly fear in his voice that hadn't been there in his previous questions. She shouldn't have done it, it wasn't part of the plan, Luke would certainly kill her, but she broke.
She let him go only to raise her hands to the bottom of the mask and pull it off, finally looking at him with her own eyes. An overwhelming crash of relief hit her like a sucker punch – he was alive, after months of worry and pain he was with her again after all – and she was certain Han would have teased her about the expression on her face had he been able to see it.
"Someone who loves you."
She had imagined this scenario playing out in thousands of different ways. But none of those scenes in her head compared, nothing that her daydream Han-out-of-carbonate said to her compared to all of the emotion he put into one simple word.
"Leia."
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
But it can be won
It took all of her self-control not to let the laugh bubbling up inside of her escape, already unable to control the upward tug on her lips.
"It's not like that at all," she said, putting her hand on his shoulder and drawing herself closer to him. "He's my brother."
She saw the words 'your brother' forming on his lips as he turned his head to the side, and she moved her hand up to his cheek to draw his eyes back to hers. It looked almost as if he didn't believe her and with no other way to explain herself, she moved her hand to the back of his neck and drew his lips to hers.
Han was the one who broke the kiss first, and his smile combined with the look of palpable relief on his face was one of the most endearing things she had ever seen.
This time, Leia let herself laugh.
And so it goes, this soldier knows
The battle with the heart isn't easily won
The war is won