"From This End"
KnightedRogue
Author Notes: Post-DT duology, pre-BP NJO ficlet from the first-person perspective of a slightly depressed Princess.
It's been three months.
Three months and I can still feel his voice. Wrap myself in his smell. Hear his presence.
I can do these things because I'm insane.
Because who can feel the voice of the absent? It's not a sound – not the same as when I listen to the message on our apartment comm. I haven't changed it. You still hear our voices, together, as they were nearly seven years ago when we bought the thing. It's not like that. This is a feeling, like when you feel the bass of a loud song played over the net. It starts small, a ping, a sudden awareness. Then it grows until it's a thundering, overwhelming presence inside my chest. It knocks the wind out of my lungs, contracts my diaphragm. Closes my eyes. It's not in words, either, and not as formulated as Luke's silent voice. It's not feelings. It's a presence. I can feel it.
He'd say that it's insane. I would have believed him.
I can remember his smell, too, though I doubt he'd dismiss that so easily as delirium. He said once that it had taken him nearly a month to get Bria's perfume off his shirt the first time she'd left him. It's been three for me. Perhaps the droids have cleaned the sheets enough that no biological fragment of my husband is left, but I still smell him everywhere. On his robe, hung on the hook next to mine on the door. In his closet, where clothes are organized in orderly fashion, after my own habit. If Han were home, it'd be in complete disarray. On his pillow, his side of the bed, where I still can't lie. The smell's too strong, that comforting bit of Han that I can't forget.
Han eventually spaced the shirt with Bria's smell on it.
I've clung to his pillow every night since he left.
It's been three months. And I'm insane.
I can hear it when he thinks about me. Sometimes it's so clear, like a bell, I could swear he was right next to me thinking out loud. Three times, I've looked over my shoulder, caught up in the sensation. I get traces of guilt at times, snatches of anxiety. Others it's desire. Once it was nostalgia, reminiscence. I couldn't discern whether it was a memory from the far past, a whim of isolationism from the years before me, or a more recent recollection.
I've called him twice. The first time I expected him to answer. The second time I needed to know what he thinking. Since then, I've decided it wasn't a good idea to obsess over it.
Over it.
Not over him.
I don't think I could stop obsessing over him even if I desired to do so.
Between my ability to hear Han's voice without him speaking to me, smell him without him being near me, and know him without knowing who he is now, I'm tempted to diagnose myself insane. I'd have to be, to be so dependent.
It's been three months. And I'm losing it. I'm so tempted to sleep this nightmare away, all of it: the desire is almost overwhelming. But that requires the courage to give up, the energy. I'm not sure I have any left.
It's been three months. And it might be three more until I can control my lungs or toss his pillow or tune out his thoughts. And it might be another three before I can finally accept what I'm so afraid of.
But it's already been three months.
And I don't know how much more I can take.
Would much appreciate some feedback . . . even if it takes you five seconds to say you despised it. Thank you!
KR