This is a challenge fic from Echo Base. The story is to be inspired by a song and be titled the same as the song, one scene must be in a restaurant, Leia must use the Force for something, at one point Han has to wear something other than his usual pants/white shirt/dark vest combo, and someone must say "Will this day just end already?".
I'm a tad nervous about posting which song I actually based this off of. If you wish to know, review and ask for it and I'll message you. It really is a gorgeous song. I'm just worried about the whole songfic policy around here.
The five notes hung over the restaurant, cutting through the macabre lilt that had preceded it. The place was a dive, with dirty glasses and darkened corners, and she'd avoided touching anything too suspiciously dank to belong indoors. The walls were covered in crimson-tinted holos of old celebrities, a few whom still worked, most of whom worked at being dead.
Fiddling with the flimsy in her jacket pocket, she used her other hand to pull her hat further down over her eyes and flung her ponytail around to rest against her other shoulder. It would be hard to explain why a senior cabinet member of the New Republic was slumming in one of Fondor's lesser-known eateries; she'd therefore prepared for this small rendezvous nearly four months in advance, when Han had just shipped out and she'd decided that a public reunion was not what she wanted. They had decided that they would meet here, immediately after his tour was done.
Fondor was not an attractive planet. It was an industry-based war machine, capable to producing and exporting incalculable numbers of warships to feed the Republic's hunt for Zsinj. The brightness of the system's star was a byproduct of centuries of production gasses slowly eating away most of the cloud cover and ozone. The result was a planet that was pitifully mechanical against the backdrop of a brilliantly bright star. It was said that the best way to make an entrance on Fondor was to show up pale or wet, as clouds and rainstorms required a staggering amount of coincidence to amount to anything as substantial as rain.
She turned towards the window, reaching behind her to tug at her collar. It was difficult to feel much of anything when Han was away. It made her excellent at her work, as her emotional capacity suddenly squared itself away, and she began to take little offense to, or get angry at, anything that was said to her. She simply didn't have the energy to invest much into anything other than work.
"You want another?"
She shook her head and looked up at the squat figure of the barkeep. "No, I'm fine."
"You look a little peaked."
"I'm fine." She'd be damned if she let a bartender see how she felt at the moment. "Just waiting for the day to end."
"I hear you," he choked back a laugh, then turned and bellowed, "Will this day just end already?" To the un-amused stares he received, he hunched his back and waddled out of sight, grumbling under his breath. Leia watched him pad away, thinking to herself that others obviously reacted differently to that infernal period of waiting.
The first time she'd felt like that, after Yavin and before she had Han to throw a little chaos into her life, she hadn't been sure what she was waiting for. She existed and breathed and worked like she knew she should, and she had thought she was functioning as best as she could.It didn't seem to leave her head, though, that something was happening behind the scenes, something that would make her flat existence three-dimensional again.
Was the barkeep healthier, then, for being able to joke about it? She wasn't so sure. All she knew was that she needed the chaos back in her life badly. She functioned better during chaos, she balanced things better, she saw solutions more quickly when she was involved in a chaos situation.
Deciding to trust Han with her future had been the riskiest thing she'd ever done in her life. It wasn't easy or simple when he was around: he made her step back and take a look at the bigger picture. He shone so brightly as a chaotic soul that it had been hard to not see him as the attractive, unstable element that she so needed in her life. Unlike her, he didn't hide himself under mountains of responsibility; he rose to the top of them and then moved to conquer the next.
She glanced out the window again, noted the sunshine had started hiding behind a row of darker clouds, oddities in and of itself. Most of the patrons in the restaurant didn't notice the strange weather, involved as they were with themselves. Leia shoved her hand below the table, towards her knapsack, called it to her hand as she reached the other hand down and removed her chrono from the front flap. It read 1138.
He should have docked already, she thought. And he was walking to this very spot, wanting to see her as much as she wanted to see him. Four months straight of stability had to have been driving him as insane as it had driven her. They were, at the cores of their beings, very similar people.
A loud, preternatural boom shook the restaurant, and Leia gripped her blaster as she slid out of the booth. The patrons had stopped talking as they had done with the five staccato notes just a few minutes ago, and a few clambered towards the window. Leia looked. Dark, sweeping clouds had stormed the sunshine, blocking it entirely, and the faint sound of pinging echoed from the roof to the attentive listeners below it. There were muffled exclamations of shock and delight as the clouds obscured most of the daylight, and Leia moved out of her booth and to the door, boots clicking, hair whipping behind her.
It wasn't truly raining yet, but the sky was trying, large droplets occasionally falling onto her cloak. She checked her chrono again. 1143. The tiniest shot of adrenaline cascaded through her system as another thunderclap sounded above her, and the people in the street began to seek shelter from the slight rain as it fell. They tugged shawls and capes closer to their bodies, ran beneath storefronts and some sun-umbrellas, heads up in wonder as they surveyed the sky.
Leia looked up as they did, spread her arms a little bit, loving the feel of the slightly heavier rain as it tumbled down onto her cap. Her hand flew up and tugged the hat off, flung it to the ground. The drops fell to her hair and she let herself smile just a little bit as a purely uninhibited feeling cascaded through her. A fork of lightning illuminated the dark clouds above her and the people under cover ducked, not used to the thrill.
She brought her hand to her bag one last time to check her chrono. 1145, it said, the rain, heavier still, landing on its face. She looked up, around, and a spear of excitement shot through her chest. A lone figure, dressed in military fatigues, with an overnight bag thrown over his shoulder, walked steadily to where she stood, boots splashing against the puddles of rainwater that had already formed on the ill-designed street.
Leia smiled as his face came into focus, rainwater dripping from his short hair, down past his smooth cheek. In a fit of humor, she pointed to the sky and laughed, feeling her heart try a little harder to beat in time with the raindrops now cascading through her ponytail, down her neck. When he was close enough she reached out a hand, as if to test the rain, her smile large and completely uncontrolled, and she felt like shouting out loud, felt like dancing, felt more alive than she had felt for four months of controlled stability. Here was chaos; it reminded her of why she bothered.
Han grabbed her hand and kissed her, smiling against her mouth as his hands slid up her torso, past her neck, to her face. She broke apart to favor him with her biggest smile, then brought her arms up around his neck and kissed him again, feeling herself lifted up, secured by Han's arms, feeling the rain wash away all the dark desires of her mind, feeling as if she understood why she needed him, why she tried so hard for moments like this, when it was nothing but them and chaos, happily existing right square in the middle of their relationship. Exactly where it was supposed to be.
They happily stood in the rain, in the middle of the open square, frightened residents scurrying in and out of view. And Leia had just one thought rebounding through her head, past the excited shivers running up and down her spine, past the inexplicable happiness bubbling up. There was one thought that just rolled, nonstop, through her head, and she loved it and held on to it for dear life. I know it's good to be alive.