"Now what?"

It was the question that had lingered with them ever since that night on Endor. He first asked it after the celebration had ended and the hazy light of dawn filtered in through the small window of the room he and Leia resided in. She was sprawled out on the bed, half asleep, but he wasn't able to drift off, not with that damn question on his mind.

"Go to bed," was all she said, but when she was finally awake, he could tell it had drilled into her mind. He had cut her happiness off short. She had spent years fighting for this, years dedicated to doing everything she could to end an enormous regime, and he should have known better than to bring it up when she was able to breathe for the first time without wondering what would happen tomorrow, but he had anyway.

He sensed he was something of a distraction for her. Rebuilding an entire republic wasn't any easier than tearing down an empire, after all, and Luke was busy himself with thoughts of restarting a religion that had been all but forgotten. And what was Han supposed to do? He had only been a scoundrel before, and it was starting to become apparent that it was all he would ever be.

Now what?

She was beautiful draped in bedsheets, and there was something that felt scandalously titillating when it was the bedsheets of a princess being shared with a man who shouldn't be there, and she smiled at him and brushed her hair away from her face while he could do nothing more than marvel back at her.

"What are you thinking?" she asked him with a dreamy grin.

How breathtaking she was, how intelligent and charismatic she was, how completely useless he was, how their lives were doomed to separate at any moment because they didn't belong together.

"These sheets are a bad color."

It was agonizing thinking he should have left all those years ago. He didn't have to follow Luke on that suicide mission to save the princess, he didn't have to come back to save him again, he didn't have to stick around on Hoth, and yet, he did, and he had gotten attached and fallen in love like the damn fool he was, and he was on the verge of losing all of it.

"What's wrong?" Leia asked him from time to time when he got to thinking too much. Sometimes he could come up with a sarcastic quip, but other times he shrugged it off, and she pinned it on his notorious moodiness.

In some ways, it was still the same - Luke was around a lot, and by extension so were the droids, and he still had Chewbacca, and of course there was always Leia. It was the same, but it was different, and he was much different now than he was before he got mixed up with the Rebel Alliance, and it was because of how quickly things like that changed that he was so uncertain and worried about what came next. He did his best to enjoy every single second of attention Leia gave to him.

"I love you," she murmured to him from time to time.

"I love you," he breathed back.

Now what?

It had to come out sometime, but he never wanted to bother her or scratch any itch that plagued him. And so he only said it through meaningless spats and pleasurable makeups, with another "I love you" mixed in here and there because he only had so many times left that he could say it, and because it was so hard not to when she had the most enchanting laugh and bewitching smile he had ever witnessed.

There were few downsides to being her lover, and he loved loving her, especially after years of having a wall constantly between them. Now he could love her freely and passionately, and he could kiss every inch of her skin and hear the soft groans she responded with, and he could hold her tightly while her chest rose and fell and she drifted off to sleep. This was all he ever wanted.

"Now what?"

He hadn't meant to ask it again, but it got away from him when she inquired what was pressing on him.

"Hm?"

He licked his lips. "What are we supposed to do now?"

They were together in bed again. She looked over at him with a questioning stare.

"What do you mean by that?"

Better to be honest at last, he supposed. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. You have the republic and Luke has the Force and what do I have?"

"Me," was her answer.

"But that's just it, before all this I was nothing but a pirate and that's all I'll ever be. I can't keep sticking around doing nothing more than this."

"Why can't you?"

"There's nothing keeping us together, Leia. We're completely different." He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

She was quiet for a moment, and then she crept up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. "You think I don't love you?"

"I don't doubt that, but I think you'll realize you have no use for me anymore one day."

"No use for you?" She let out an incredulous laugh. "Han, what do you think I mean when I say I love you? It's not that you're useful to me, it's that I admire you as a person and I want you to stay because I love you."

"But I still feel so useless," he pressed on. "I'm a scoundrel through and through."

"And what? Do you miss that?"

"It's not that I miss it, it's that it's the only thing I'm any good at."

"What's keeping you back then?"

"Losing this." He inhaled. "You, Luke, everything."

"Then stay," she said. "You're not useless, Han. You'll never be useless. We always need you around. Right now, we're sorting through a lot of things, sure, but that doesn't mean you're useless and you'll be left behind. I love you too much for that." She pressed her lips against his cheek warmly. "Hear me?"

"Yeah, I hear you, Princess."

"Then stop thinking silly things. I'd be heartbroken if I ever lost you." She detached herself from him and nestled back into bed. "Han?"

He looked back at her. "Hm?"

"I love you. Now go to sleep."

She turned over without issue and seemed to drift off in no time, but he stayed awake, thinking about all she'd said. Everything was true. It really all was his choice in the end if he were to lose them or not, and it was all just a question of if - if he wanted to leave after being so desperate to do so for years, if he wanted to risk that chance that everything could fall apart and break his heart, if he wanted to change his life permanently for what could be better, if he wanted to even believe any of it at all.

At last, he settled down next to her, overlooking her figure draped under a blanket. He kissed her temple sweetly and then rested his head upon his pillow. It took him a while to accept that sleeplessness had overtaken him again.

Now what?

A/N: It's been a while.

I began writing Han/Leia fan fiction at the age of 12. I'm 18 now. I wrote dozens of fan fictions for them, and only four of them are still surviving on this account. My interests come and go, and Star Wars was one of those, but today my friend invited me to go along with them to see the original trilogy in a theatre and I was suddenly struck with that overbearing sense of sad nostalgia one gets every so often.

I miss these two, especially after they meant so much to me in such a rough period of my life, and I hope this was at least a decent fic after being gone for so long.