We Could Be Young Forever

A night of celebration at Echo Base is sleepless for all the wrong reasons.

Disclaimer: All proper nouns belong to Lucasfilm.

Leia sits bolt upright, smashing her head into the ice over the low bunk in her room. "Ouch!" she exclaims, rubbing the spot. Off to her right, she hears a surprised gasp as one of the guys wakes up.

"Leia?"

"Sorry," she apologizes, her face turning bright red in embarrassment. Luckily, no one can tell in the pitch-black room. "Just had a bad dream, that's all," she mutters, rubbing the tender spot again and laying back down.

There's a scuffle on the floor, and the edge of the bed sinks as he sits down. "I'd put a hand on your shoulder but I can't see it," he jokes. It's Han. From the slight snoring still coming from the other side of the room, she can tell Luke is still asleep.

"I'm alright. Really," she tells him, burying her face in her pillow and taking a deep, shuddering breath. It takes her a moment to remember what it was that scared her awake. No, not scared… but a nightmare nonetheless, about an old friend. It had been over two years since she'd seen him, but hardly a day passed she didn't think about him.

Next to her, Han sighed. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see him sitting on the edge of her bunk, near her hip, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees to avoid smacking his head like she had. He had turned his head to face her. "What woke you up so suddenly that you smacked your head?" he asked. He and Luke were both well aware that Leia suffered from nightmares nearly every night. Luke, however, was a much heavier sleeper than Han, and didn't usually wake up when she did. He told her to wake him if she needed him, but Leia was too embarrassed to ever do it.

The trio had spent the night celebrating with the rest of Echo Base. Two years ago today, the pilots of the Alliance had destroyed the Death Star over Yavin IV, and the moment had been commemorated with a night of heavy drinking. Han, Luke, and Leia had returned to her room as they often did, and the boys had pulled their sleeping bags and blankets out of her closet while Leia had curled up on her twin bunk, wondering (as she usually did) why it had to be completely surrounded by ice. Surely someone could have chiseled out more space overhead?

But it was something that happened before the Death Star was destroyed that haunted her tonight. It wasn't even the destruction of Alderaan. But it also wasn't something she wanted to talk to Han – or Luke – about. "I don't know, I just woke up. Maybe I thought I was falling." There are tears on her cheeks and her voice is shaky; there's no way she's going to trick him.

"That's not true," he sighs, pushing himself away from the bed again. "Just, try to get some sleep, okay?"

"Wait," Leia blurts, her hand shooting out to grab his wrist. "I, uh, would you – Han, stay?"

Neither of them moves for several seconds, before he slowly starts to sit back down. She scooches over to give him space, but he stops, grabs her shoulder, and pulls her back to the edge. Confused, she stays still as can be while Han moves – throwing a leg over her hips, climbing over her. She can feel his breath on her cheek as he hovers over her for a moment, then gets his other leg up and over, and settles behind her, his own back to the ice wall and his arm over her. "Good night, Leia."

"Good night," she breathes, trying to relax in his warm embrace. But her memories make that impossible.

"Shut up," she whispers, laughing. "If Dad hears you in here he'll kill you!"

Cassian bites his knuckle, trying to stifle his own laughter. "Sorry," he whispers, then bites down again as he snorts with laughter. Leia lifts a pillow and rolls over, smacking him in the face with it. This leads to more laughter, and she collapses on top of him. His arms immediately wrap around her, holding her tight to him.

They're in her private quarters on the base at Yavin. She's visiting her father and the Rebellion, and as a senator and Princess, she is always offered her own quarters when she visits the base. She didn't used to accept, preferring to sleep in the bunks with the other females, but lately she'd had reason to want some privacy.

"He is asleep," Cassian mutters, nibbling on the Princess's right ear.

"If we wake him up again, I don't think he'll believe that I tripped again," she giggled, running her fingers through his thick, dark hair. Two nights ago, she had pushed Cassian forcefully into the wall her room shared with her father's, knocking over a bedside lamp in the process. Cassian had had to hide into the closet while a rumple-haired Leia barely managed to convince her father that she had tripped into the wall, then knocked the lamp off bedside table trying to keep herself upright.

When Bail had gone back to bed, Cassian had moved the bunk to the middle of the room, far from any other furniture – just in case.

Tonight, the bed is back in its normal corner, in the back left of the room. She'd managed to get a room with a double wide bed this time, so there was more room to spread out than usual. Not that it matters now, as she is lying on top of him with barely an inch of her touching the mattress.

"Cass," she breathes, turning her head to give him better access to her ear. "Has anyone noticed yet?"

"How gorgeous you are?" he whispered, slipping a calloused hand under the hem of her shirt and sliding it up her back. "No, Princess, no one has noticed yet," he answered more seriously.

She is never entirely sure if he calls her Princess because of her status, or because he happened to like it as a pet name. Often, she suspected it was a combination of the two. "Cass, it can't escape their notice forever," she sighs, sliding off him and propping her head up on an elbow to look at him. Hiding his disappointment, he rolls onto this side to face her, mimicking her posture. "Someone is going to notice – they probably already have, and just haven't mentioned it – that you're only out of the barracks on missions, or when I'm on base. We're going to get caught."

"And what's so wrong with that?" he asks with a sigh, rolling onto his back again and staring at the ceiling. His hands are folded on his stomach, but he doesn't resist when she sits up and grabs one, holding it between her own hands.

They've had this conversation before. They had been doing – this – for nearly a year now, and had yet to tell another soul. "You know why," Leia whispers, hanging her head. "I'm supposed to marry royalty, not a scruffy rebel with a questionable past."

Cass closes his eyes. Just as often as she had told him that, he had told her this. "Your Dad won't care. He likes me. He just wants you to be happy. It's not him that's holding you back, it's you. If you love me like you tell me you do, then tell other people. Please. It will make me happy. It will make you happy."

The two sit in silence for several minutes. This argument never seems to have a conclusion; it eventually trails off until the topic turns to something more pleasant.

The bed shifts. Leia feels Cassian sit up, and suddenly his legs are on either side of hers and his hands are on her hips and her shirt is over her head and she's only wearing panties and his hands are on her chest and –

His bare chest is heaving, but that doesn't stop her from laying her head on it. His arms are tight around her, her hands tucked under his sides. "What if we knock something over now?" he teases, lifting his head to kiss her messy nest of hair. "That would be a good way to tell your dad, yes?"

Leia grunts, too tired to bother lifting her head to glare. Nestled in Cassian's strong arms, Leia drifts off to a dreamless sleep.

That had been the last night she had spent with Cassian Andor. The next day, she left for Alderaan to visit her mother before heading back to Coruscant. When she next heard from her father, Leia set off on a mission to collect Obi-wan Kenobi. It wasn't until after the Death Star plans had been handed to her on the Tantive IV that she found out Cassian had been on the mission to get them – and that everyone involved in the mission had been killed on Scarif. She had thought nothing could be worse than losing Cassian. How could it be? She never expected him to grow old, but that didn't make his death come as any less of a shock. Surely he could have made it off planet later, when the Empire had left and the coast was clear.

She thought that - it couldn't be worse, maybe he got out - right up until Governor Tarkin's words, the sentence that still haunts her dreams: "You may fire when ready."

Han's deep breathing continues behind her, a rhythmic reminder that life goes on.