This fic was originally posted on Tumblr for Scoundress Saturdays, following the prompt "Colour."

Color Study

White

"Your autovalet is broken," the Princess said flatly, appearing in the doorway. She was still dressed in the clothes she'd borrowed to wear while her dress was being cleaned. She must have taken him up on his offer to use the shower; her hair was again in the large buns on either side of her head, but it looked darker, still wet.

Han had to chuckle as he followed her down the corridor. Even in that old blue robe—a leftover from Bria that Chewie had pulled out of some compartment somewhere—and those ridiculously too-big pants (rolled over three times at the waist so that they didn't immediately fall off her hips), the Princess walked like there was an invisible crown on her head.

"Y'know," he warned gently, "It ain't built for big-time cleaning. That doesn't make it broken." He'd already told her that getting the stains from the garbage masher completely out was probably not going to be possible, and to his surprise, she'd just said, "I know."

Now she stopped and looked back at him, one eyebrow raised. Yep, definitely a Princess. "I understand," she said, as if she were speaking to an especially stubborn child. "But I don't think this is going to help with the smell." She indicated the autovalet with a flourish of her hand.

No, it was not. Grey water was backing up into the machine, meaning that pure white dress, stained by wet garbage, was getting even dirtier now. Not to mention smellier. "Chewie!" he barked into the comm. "Shut off the greywater pump! NOW!"

Purple

They'd found her another snow-white dress, this one with a plunging neckline and sheer fabric on the arms. The jewelry did a good job of covering up what the makeup or the dress couldn't hide: the purple bruise on her wrist, and the other marks on the back of her neck, where they'd done the injections.

"How did you know?" she'd asked softly, as he'd helped her clean the wounds and applied bacta and healing salve to the worst spots.

After Luke had gone into the shower and gotten over the initial shock of water! pouring down on him! Han had discreetly pulled the Princess aside and offered to help her get her injuries fixed up, including offering for Chewie to chaperone "in case you can't trust a mercenary like me."

"No," she'd said, "I trust you," and oddly enough, it seemed that she did. So it hadn't been too much of a leap for him to admit why he knew so much about Imperial interrogation procedures.

"Was one of 'em, once," he'd said. "Long time ago. Another life."

"Another life," she'd repeated. She'd looked so young, and so small, in that moment.

Now, standing on the stairs ahead of them, she looked a million feet tall, like the goddess at the crest of a mountain, bending down to bestow wisdom and medals to the mortals below. Her smile was glossy, dazzling, and she wielded it graciously.

But Han couldn't help wanting to see the human woman again. After she rose up from placing the medal around his neck, he winked.

For just a flash, he saw the corners of her eyes crinkle up as she smiled.

Red

Everything on Hoth was white. Everything, everywhere. It was like they'd taken Leia's old senatorial dress (which was never quite the same after the Death Star and the faulty autovalet) and laid it over the entire landscape, made it into uniforms, carved it into dwellings and a medbay, a hangar and a command center. The only bits of color were the shocking orange of the x-wing pilots' flight suits and the vaguely brownish protein sources that passed for meat at the mess.

And, of course, Leia's red lipstick.

It wasn't true red; it was some sort of rust-red hybrid, dark but not bloody dark, distinctive but not garish, applied faithfully like another part of her uniform. And it stubbornly invaded Han's world, painting itself on kaffe cups in his galley, going head-to-head with him over breaches in protocol and differences in strategy, turning up in a weary smile as he appeared in that painfully white command center to bring her dinner. Once or twice, it left a mark on his cheek during a rare tender moment, though she always carefully wiped it away.

When they left the garment of white for the uncertainty of asteroids and stars, Leia and her red lips had come along for the ride. But after the first day of their journey to Bespin, the red lips disappeared.

"What?" she said, sipping her kaffe from a mug with no stain on it.

Han realized he'd been staring. "Nothin'," he said. "Just not used to seein' you without the lipstick."

She smiled, and Han didn't miss the red anymore.

Blue

"Thank you," Leia said, shrugging on the t-shirt with obvious relish. "This is much better."

It was his favorite, the Corellian Dreadnoughts shirt that he'd worn into a comfortable softness over the years, but Han didn't mind. The dark blue was beautiful against Leia's pale skin, and if it meant she could stop wearing that old robe, all the better. Let Chewie give him hell about it later; he was done caring about that now.

"I'm sorry, I just felt weird in that robe," Leia admitted. "Like it was for—someone else."

"There's no one else," Han said, bringing Leia and the softness of his old shirt back to his skin.