Transitions (1/5) by Sabacc Gal
Part 1: Propriety
The volcanic island on Sladimar was barren, surrounded by lava, hot as hell, and was yet another ridiculous place to hold a summit. Not that anyone had asked his opinion.
By the time he and Chewie had delivered their cargo to the supplies hangar and he'd navigated his way out of the sweltering tunnels to the more civilized conference centre, Han was drenched with sweat. His stained shirt clung to him icily now as he strode through the climate-controlled corridors trying to look purposeful.
He finally spotted her among one of a dozen knots of guests – delegates, politicians, journalists – who were milling about the refreshment droids.
She was already looking directly at him through the mass of people. It was uncanny how she could do that. How many times, over the years, had he entered a bustling hangar, a crowded control room, a busy command center, to find her gaze fixed on him as he crossed the threshold? Other than to privately congratulate himself on her obvious attention, he'd never actually given it any thought until recently.
He waited in the shadows of the periphery. Within a few moments she was excusing herself from her group to join him in an unoccupied patch of hallway.
"You made good time," she said quietly. There was relief in her eyes.
"Yeah." He kept a respectful distance, aware of the watchful crowds. It wouldn't fool anybody but, as she'd reminded him, it was the appearance of propriety that counted, not propriety itself. So for now he played the game, though he longed to press her against the wall, propriety be damned.
The muted smile tugging at her lips told him she was onto him. He hoped she appreciated his restraint.
"Are you off-duty, then?"
He shook his head. "One of the perimeter pilots ran into problems. They've asked me to cover until twenty-three hundred."
She sighed. "Well, we're running late here, too. This dinner will likely go overtime, and I have an unexpected meeting scheduled afterwards." A soft chime sounded through the hall, and the crowds began migrating in small flocks towards a massive set of ostentatiously-carved doors. "Just come over when you're done. FJ-397."
"What do I do, toss lava pebbles at your window?" It came out grumpier than he'd intended and she frowned at him quizzically. "The delegates' wing goes into night-lock at twenty-one hundred," he reminded her in a more subdued tone. "I don't have security clearance beyond C-level."
Her expression softened. She reached into her slender diplomat's pouch and pulled out a datacard, activating a sequence before palming it to him.
He discreetly pressed his thumb against the square, waited for confirmation. "Won't that appear improper?" he challenged as he slipped the card back to her. His after-hours entry would be logged by security and tagged with her authorization.
"Yes, I'm sure it will." But her voice was warm and there was mischief in her eyes. The background chime increased in volume as the population thinned around them.
He held her gaze as long as he dared, then nodded respectfully before turning away.
Six weeks since Endor, two weeks since he'd seen her last and, unless her long-promised relief showed up, at least another week before he'd see her again. They'd had to orchestrate pretty damned hard to make even this scant meeting happen, and they both knew the game plan was about to get even more complicated.
But he wanted this to work. Wanted them to work. Not since his academy entrance exams had he been so determined.
He palmed the entry pad, thoroughly exhausted, fueled only by anticipation mixed with the satisfaction of having gotten off-duty an hour earlier than expected.
The door to FJ-397 chimed his arrival and slid open to reveal Leia, still clad in senatorial wear, sitting in the suite's lounge across from an equally well-dressed woman whose back was to him.
Damn it. Why hadn't he thought to buzz first?
His brain kicked into damage control, if that was even possible after barging in like this. He squared his shoulders and adopted a detached yet officious tone. "Urgent Priority-One message for you, Your Highness." He reached into the pocket of his vest, pulling out a scuffed and clearly unofficial-looking datapad. "I can wait outside if you need a moment."
Leia's guest had turned around. He blinked, his apprehension fading as recognition hit him.
"That's quite all right," Winter said solemnly as she stood up, betraying not the slightest hint of having recognized him though he knew that was impossible. "It's very late and I was just leaving. It was wonderful catching up with you, Leia."
Leia rose in turn, and he noticed she was barefoot, her shoes abandoned by the couch. "Winter, this is General Solo." The laughter in her eyes, combined with her lack of footwear, confirmed that his feeble cover-up had been unnecessary.
Winter shook his hand, as perfectly sabacc-faced as he'd remembered she could be. "General."
"Hello, Winter," he nodded. "Good to see you again. You're looking well." He was careful not to look at Leia.
Winter raised an eyebrow but didn't miss a beat. "Likewise, Han." She smiled warmly and clasped his right hand in both of hers. "We'll have to catch up sometime."
He smiled. "You bet."
Winter turned to embrace a speechless Leia, and with another chime of the door she was gone.
He glanced at Leia with what he hoped was a look of absolute innocence and counted the seconds. He made it to four – possibly a record – before she spoke.
"You… you know each other?"
Even after all they'd been through, he still delighted in challenging her meticulously-ordered universe. "We were… business associates once, a long time ago," he shrugged nonchalantly.
Her confusion was obvious. "Business associates?" He could hear the familiar undertone of irritation in her voice. "Winter's been working undercover since before I met you."
Aware that he was enjoying her reaction just a little too much, he took her by the shoulders. "This job wasn't exactly above board. I'll tell you about it sometime," he promised. "But right now I'm beat, and I didn't sneak all the way over here to talk about Winter." He bent to kiss her.
She barely responded, her body stiff, arms crossed at the waist. When he drew away, her eyes were fixing him resolutely.
"Come on, it's late," he soothed. He crossed the lounge and sank into one of the overstuffed couches, motioning her over with a friendly nod.
She didn't move.
Uh oh.
"C'mere," he grinned disarmingly.
Still nothing.
He stifled a sigh and tried a different tactic. "What time's your first meeting tomorrow?" The clock was ticking on their hard-earned R&R.
"Who was Winter working for at the time?" Her voice was laced with suspicion.
"What? I don't know," he said tiredly. "Let's talk about this some other time, huh?"
"When was this, again? Because I don't recall – "
"Come on, Leia." He heard the edge in his own tone and saw her bristle. "Drop the cross-examination, okay? This isn't one of your council meetings."
She raised an eyebrow at him frostily.
He rubbed the back of his neck, realizing he was blowing it and that their carefully-engineered rendezvous was in danger of collapsing in on itself; tried to imagine her reaction if he casually scooped her up and carried her to the bedroom.
Bad idea, he decided. Even worse than spending the next hour recounting the humiliating Wukkar fiasco.
He took a breath. "Look," he explained as calmly as he could. "We worked together right after Yavin, and for a number of very good reasons she gave me her word she'd never mention it to anyone. All right? It was a business venture. And a pretty disastrous one at that," he added gruffly.
"I see," she said sharply. "It wasn't Alliance business, then?"
"What does it matter?" He glanced impatiently at the ornamental wall chrono, shook his head in frustration. "Why are we even talking about this?" Could this evening possibly steer any further off course?
"Because it's clear you're both covering up something!"
He dropped his head back against the cushions and stared up at the ceiling in exasperation.
How the hell could this be so hard when they were obviously crazy about each other? If they couldn't make these moments work, how would they manage once he was off on Cracken's unpredictable schedule?
The room was silent. She didn't move.
He closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted. Out of the blue, his weary brain conjured up her expression on that afternoon six weeks ago.
They'd been on their way to the officers' mess hall after the Endor debriefing, but had swung by her quarters so she could change out of her blaster-burned shirt.
Once inside her suite she'd paused in the doorway of the sleeping alcove, as if forgetting what she'd come for.
"You all right?" he'd asked her, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
She'd turned her head, cautiously meeting his eyes with a questioning gaze that had hammered home the realization that, for the first time since she'd freed him from carbon-freeze, they were absolutely alone: no Ewoks frolicking in the foliage, no droids prattling, no Imperials looming or generators to destroy or medics poking at his recently-thawed butt. Just the two of them, still alive against all odds, with nothing between them but a charred shirt and a long-suppressed hunger that had nothing whatsoever to do with the mess hall.
Funny how everything else in their relationship was rife with hurdles, but that pivotal moment had been entirely uncomplicated.
The cushion shifted beside him, jarring him back to the present. Had he fallen asleep?
"You awake?" Her hand was warm on his arm.
"Depends," he mumbled. Was that conciliation he heard in her voice? He rubbed his face wearily, saw her looking at him with concern.
"I don't know if you knew this," she said quietly, "but Winter and I grew up together. We were like sisters."
"Really. I had no idea you were so close," he commented, merely to say something, mostly just grateful for the shift in her mood.
"We were. So I find it a little strange that, all evening, she never mentioned having met you before."
"Why should she?" he shrugged. "Was I the topic of conversation?" He raised a suggestive eyebrow.
Leia met his insinuation with a challenging gaze of her own. "As a matter of fact, yes, you were."
He was taken off-guard by her admission. "Anything I should know about?" he grinned to mask his surprise.
She smiled thinly. "We haven't seen each other in ages. I was… filling her in on what's been happening in my life, that's all." She looked down at her clasped hands. "She never mentioned working with you, though. Or even knowing you, for that matter."
He watched her, intrigued with the idea of Leia telling her old friend about him. As far as he knew, it was the first time she'd outright announced their relationship to anyone. He was oddly pleased by the air of legitimacy it evoked.
"Or course," she was saying, still studying her hands, "something that happened years ago is, naturally, none of my business. And, certainly, I wouldn't hold it against either of you."
Her words struck him as suspiciously rehearsed, and her enunciation and formality had lapsed into what he'd long-ago labeled her Senatorial Dialect. Something about it triggered alarm bells in his mind. "Wait a minute. What are you saying?"
She looked up at him with an expression of sudden defiance.
He gaped in astonishment as understanding dawned on him. "You're suggesting Winter and I…?" he continued. He felt a smile tugging at his mouth.
She hesitated just a moment too long. "Of course not." But he'd caught the flash of relief in her eyes before she'd hurriedly looked away.
He gazed at her in amused wonder. "But that's what you thought."
"It most certainly was not," she countered curtly.
"Come on, it was, admit it." He grinned. "You were jealous…"
She sat up regally. "Don't be ridiculous."
"Sure looked like it to me."
"Absolutely not. Especially not over something that might have happened years ago."
"Okay," he conceded with a smile. "What was it that had you so riled up, then?"
She hesitated. "I was merely concerned that…" She faltered.
"That what?" he pressed her, wondering if he looked as smug as he felt.
"…that my oldest friend had possibly gotten herself involved with… with a scoundrel," she finished self-righteously.
There was a moment's pause, during which he stared at her incredulously before he burst into laughter.
Damn, he loved her.
In one impulsive motion he pinned her to the couch with his forearms, her body caught snugly beneath him. She made a point of resisting, doing her best to glare at him through the embarrassed laughter in her eyes.
"You know," he warned, his voice low and dangerous, his face millimeters from hers, "the story of how I met Winter is a long and incredibly pointless one, and rehashing it isn't anything close to what I'd planned on doing tonight." He shifted his weight against her suggestively. "But if that's really how you'd prefer to spend the next few hours…"
She stopped squirming, seemed to be considering her options, and for a moment he wondered if she might call his bluff. Her eyes were locked stubbornly on his in good-natured challenge. But he recognized the familiar flame in their depths, felt his blood quickening.
"That won't be necessary," she relented with dignity. "You can keep your secrets for now."
He grinned, kissed her at last.
Something clattered on the stone-carved floor, startling them both. He peered over the edge of the couch, reached down to retrieve the now-cracked datapad that had tumbled from his vest pocket. He looked the unit over carelessly, then tossed it aside.
She was frowning in feigned concern as he buried himself back into the depths of the couch with her. "Was that my Urgent Priority-One message?"
"What time's your first meeting tomorrow?" he mumbled into her hair.
"I don't have one."
"Huh?"
"You were in such a rush that I never did get a chance to tell you." Before he could dispute her recollection of events, she wriggled around in his arms to smile at him. "Winter was sent to relieve me for the remainder of the summit. That's why she's here, Han. We're off on assignment in the morning."
He was suddenly more awake. "We?"
"You and I, together. And Chewie, of course. I barely had to pull any strings for this one. HQ felt it was up your alley and they've cleared you to accompany me."
"Doing what?" Though, admittedly, after a string of clandestine encounters amidst high-security summits, to be off on their own in the Falcon sounded pretty damned good no matter what the mission.
"A contract negotiation for the X-wing targeting system upgrades."
"You knew this already when I saw you this afternoon?"
"Mmm hmm. Though I hadn't briefed Winter yet."
"Still, we could've spent the night on the Falcon instead of hanging around this hunk of rock," he noted accusingly.
She tousled his hair. "Maybe I wanted us to have a quiet evening together," she said, settling against his shoulder.
"You sure could've fooled me."
She harrumphed in reply.
He held her contentedly. This was the best news he'd heard in a while.
He sat up with a start, suddenly and fully awake. All he could recall was being trapped inside the void, looking out into darkness, frozen in time and space where nothing existed except the knowledge that Leia was watching over him from somewhere outside, his only hint of comfort in the entire universe.
She stirred now beside him. "Hey," she murmured. "You all right?"
"Yeah." He lay back down, nestled closer to her warmth. She experienced far worse dreams, he knew.
"You're still having nightmares…"
He ran his hand lazily over the curve of her hip without comment. In the diffused volcanic glow of morning his fingers looked strangely bronzed against her skin.
"How frequently are they occurring?"
He leaned in to nuzzle her neck. "They're not nightmares. Just dreams. And if you need to be asking me this, then we're obviously not spending enough time together."
"Seriously, Han. I think you should at least schedule a consultation with Too-Onebee."
"Now that'll give me nightmares for sure," he grumbled against her throat, then leaned back with a frown: something was bunched into his side. He reached down to tug at the crumpled silk camisole and evaluated it approvingly. "Were you wearing stuff like this to bed all these years?"
She eyed him defiantly. "When appropriate."
He raised his eyebrows. "Define appropriate."
"Certainly not Hoth." She shivered visibly at the memory.
He laughed, nibbled her shoulder. "What was appropriate sleepwear for Hoth? That little zippered snowsuit?"
"I thought we were talking about your sleep troubles," she chided.
"We are." He kissed her collarbone. "I had a dream about that snowsuit."
"Last night?" She sounded baffled.
It had been back on Echo Base, actually, but he didn't bother clarifying. Instead he lowered his mouth and began a leisurely meander towards the apex of her breast.
"What was it about?" she prompted him.
He grunted in reply as his mouth found its goal, accompanied by her soft intake of breath and the echo of his own response stirring against her thigh.
Her hands slid up to cup his face. "We're running late," she murmured regretfully into his ear as she shifted, gently disengaging herself. "I'd like to shower, housekeeping will be here any minute and we haven't had breakfast yet." With a graceful movement she wriggled out of his arms.
"Hey," he protested as she moved out of reach. "I thought you wanted to hear about my dream. It might reveal something significant."
She smiled knowingly. "Yes, I'm sure my snowsuit will prove to be significantly revealing."
Busted. He grinned and made a grab for her but she deftly evaded him.
"Actually," he grumbled as she made her escape, "all those little zippers kept getting stuck. How's that for significant?"
He heard a sympathetic chuckle as she headed toward the fresher. "Have some breakfast," she suggested over her shoulder.
Chagrined, he flopped onto his stomach, his face sinking into the pillow. The beddings were scented with tantalizing traces of their recent activities.
He heard the muffled spray of water, pictured her slender form stepping into the shower, water cascading over her skin. He rolled over and sat up; glanced with indifference at the dome-covered breakfast tray which had been delivered some time ago.
Wisps of steam began to roll invitingly through the fresher doorway. He yawned and scratched his stomach, wondering how determined she really was to rush out of here.
Worth investigating, he decided.
Having pursued her and encountered resistance for so long, the recently-discovered privileges which he'd been granted still occasionally amazed him.
"There's no time for that now," she reminded him, a touch accusingly, as he peeked under the tray's thermo-dome. The generous spread provided for the delegates looked infinitely better than the slop he'd been served in the subterranean mess hall yesterday afternoon.
She waited by the open suite door, travel-case in hand, lips pursed impatiently as he hurriedly dumped an assortment of breakfast pastries into the tablecloth pilfered from the serving cart.
"For Chewie," he shrugged defensively. "He loves these little fancy things." And a peace offering couldn't hurt after keeping the big guy waiting so long.
Out in the hallway, the housekeeping droid blinked the time at them in silent reproach.
"These techs are definitely a paranoid operation, judging by the difficulty we had in coordinating communication," Leia briefed them as they sat in the Falcon's lounge. "But apparently they're pros. They're also sympathetic to our position, not to mention our current financial constraints, and they're willing to negotiate."
Nice to know the Alliance's dwindling funds weren't being entirely squandered on fancy breakfasts for self-serving politicians, Han thought as he finished off a savory Belthusian bun. He reached for another from the pastries piled atop the smuggled cloth which now graced the dejarik table. "Does this paranoid outfit have a name?"
She glanced at her datapad. "It's run by a man named Vandangante."
Chewie woofed appreciatively.
Han nearly choked on his pastry. "Doc."
"You know him?"
He nodded, chewing and swallowing violently as he leaned in close to look at her datapad. "He's the best. Chewie and I dealt with him before. His people did some major work on the Falcon over the years."
"Are they trustworthy?"
"Absolutely. In fact," he mused, "I might take the opportunity to have them swap out that dish. Our old ANq-51 came from them, and, no offense, but what Procurement slapped on last month is a security fiasco waiting to happen."
Leia considered this, lightly tapping her fingertips together. "If we can work out a solid deal within our proposed budget, I could approve your new toy coming out of Alliance coffers."
Han glanced happily over at Chewie. "Think Jess can hunt down a qv-63 for us?" This assignment was getting better all the time.
"Jess?"
"Jessa Vandangante. It's a family operation."
Across the table, Chewie muttered a Shyriiwook proverb into a flakey Arduinian puff-bun.
Leia looked quizzically at Chewie, then back at Han.
"Just some old Wookiee poetry," Han said dismissively. He frowned at Chewie, though he doubted Leia could translate the archaic phrasing, let alone begin to decipher the arboreal metaphor aimed at Han's supposedly feeble understanding of sentient females.
"Poetry?" Leia looked back at Chewie, intrigued.
"Yeah, he gets all cultured like that sometimes," Han grumbled. "Must be this fancy food. Just ignore him."
Chewie chuffed scornfully at Han through a mouthful of puff-bun.
Han ignored his words and brushed at the lounge-seat with impatience. "Look at this, you're making a mess."
The Wookiee rumbled menacingly, fluffs of pastry fluttering from his whiskers.
Leia looked back and forth between the two of them.
"I think I'll go and review my notes," she stated drily, blowing crumbs off her datapad and heading to the cockpit.
After she left, Chewie grumbled a low, lengthy warning at him.
"What are you talking about?" Han challenged, though he was now running the simulation of Jessa meeting Leia and feeling a little uneasy.
Chewie shook his head in reproach and reached for the tray.
"Hey!" Han frowned at the rapidly diminishing spread. "Save some for the rest of us, you big bantha."
Chewie eyed him calmly and helped himself to two of the remaining pastries.