Title: Nicks and Scorches
Author: knightshade
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: Leia closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of the Falcon - spilt oil, metal, and scorched electronics. Along with the leather of his vest, they were smells that Leia associated entirely with Han.
Leia and Chewie at D'Qar.
Author's Notes: Own them, I do not. It is Disney you seek.
They really should have had a moment. So here it is.
Rest in peace, Carrie Fisher. She drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
Nicks and Scorches
Leia reached out and ran her hand over the white durasteel, felt the nicks and scorches, saw the bubbles, scratches, and gouges. It felt alive under her hand - a creature to be wooed. One that only faintly remembered her. The landing lights were dimmed and the nearby forest leaves were encroaching on the Millennium Falcon. Leia hesitated. This afternoon and evening had been a whirlwind of activity, of people coming to express their sorrow, of arrangements and communiques, and saying thank you. The pageantry of grief. But this, this was the grief that was going to haunt her. The grief that had stopped her heart and taken her breath away before anyone else at D'Qar base even knew. This was a deep, black pit. And it scared Leia more than she wanted to admit.
The hatch was closed, the gangway retracted, everything buttoned up tight. Leia reached up to the control panel and punched in a series of numbers. The date the Empire fell. The date they had celebrated with the Ewoks on Endor. The date when everything had felt possible again. The gangway came down, the hatch opened, and Leia felt the crush of their shared past. Her past with Han. She still knew him or maybe he just hadn't changed as much as he might have. Nothing else had come along that was as powerful to him as that date. At least nothing he wanted to be reminded of.
Leia took her time climbing the gangway, feeling weighed down, heavy. She was feeling the Falcon's sole occupant. His grief matched hers, was as overwhelming, if not more so. Leia wasn't sure where her emotions ended and his began.
She thought about announcing herself when she entered the ship, but it was too quiet, too funereal. Her voice felt strangled in her throat. She took her time, overcome with nostalgia for the years this ship had been part of her life. She ran her hand along a cooling pipe as she followed the curve of the ship around to the cockpit.
The door was opened. Leia peered in and saw the dark of the sky through the viewport, the shadow of leaves above them, and the pinpricks of light from the stars overhead. The consoles were dark, the ship solemn. Leia closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of the Falcon - spilt oil, metal, and scorched electronics. Along with the leather of his vest, they were smells that Leia associated entirely with Han. Leia stole slowly into the cockpit, careful not to disturb the Falcon's only other occupant. Chewbacca was sitting in his copilot's seat, leaning forward, his head bowed in front of him.
Leia again thought about announcing herself, but decided that Chewie had to know she was there. She slowly came up behind him and rested her hand on his shoulder. Chewie raised his head slightly and let out a mournful keen.
Leia lowered her head and said softly, "I'm sorry, Chewbacca."
He let out a low whimper, offering his condolences back.
Leia eased herself into the pilot's chair, allowing her hand to slide down from Chewie's shoulder to his forearm, never breaking the contact. "He loved you, you know. You were his best friend, his partner in crime. He wouldn't have been the same without you."
Chewie barked quietly. He had, of course, left with Han after Ben. Leia had had little opportunity to practice her Shyriiwook since. She was rusty but she was pretty sure that he had said something to the effect that he had failed Han.
"You did not," she said forcefully. "Chewbacca, you stood by him so many years. You helped save his skin countless times. He never would have lived as long as he did without you. You more than fulfilled your life debt to him, Chewie. He would want you to be free, truly free, not feel that you had failed." Leia knew that Han had tried to release Chewie from his life debt long ago. He did not want Chewbacca to be obligated to stay with him. Chewie, however, would have none of it. A Wookiee life debt was nothing to be released from.
Chewie rowled gently and put his other hand on top of hers. Then he grumbled softly.
"Rey told me," she answered. Rey had told her how Han died, who had killed him. Leia's heart was broken in so many ways. How could they have failed so thoroughly as parents? She didn't want to think about it too deeply. Not now. Instead she held to the practical, as she had always done when things got too overwhelming, too emotional.
"Chewie, I'm sure that Han has paperwork on the Falcon … somewhere." Leia looked around the cockpit. "She's yours. If for any reason she's not, I'll make her yours."
Chewie shrugged.
"He'd have wanted it that way. He didn't have much in this world but he loved this ship and you were the only one he truly trusted with her. It wouldn't be right if she wasn't yours." Chewie shrugged again and Leia felt his despair. "Unless you don't want her…"
Chewie rumbled again, noncommittal and Leia told herself that as soon as everything was settled she would take care of it. As soon as the …
Leia closed her eyes, all bravado gone again.
Han's funeral.
She would have to decide about Han's funeral. He'd always said he wanted her to pitch his body out an airlock or scatter his ashes in space. He had no sense of nostalgia or concern about the way things should be done. He cared nothing for protocol. That had always been her realm.
Well, he'd gotten what he'd asked for. His ashes were scattered among the stars, his body lost on a planet that had been vaporized.
Killed by the hand of his son.
Killed by Ben.
Which made this her fault. The evil tied to her family's damaged legacy. Leia couldn't help the choked sob that came of its own accord. She had passed that on to her son. Vader was the curse on her family, his evil rising again. But Leia still couldn't accept that Ben was lost to the dark side, not even after all he'd done. In her mind's eye he would forever be an adorable 4 year old, launching himself into Han's arms, racing Chewbacca up trees, and resting his head against her shoulder when he was tired and didn't want to admit it. That was Ben. Not a tool of the dark side. Not a murderer.
She had doomed her family. She was a product of Vader and his evil had caught up to all of them. Leia pulled her hand out from under Chewie's and pressed the heel to her lips. She didn't want to cry. She was afraid that if she started, she wouldn't be able to stop.
Chewie rested a giant paw on her shoulder while she hitched and beat back the sobs. She turned and tried to smile at him through her teary eyes. Chewie waited patiently and then let out a set of soft staccato barks.
"I know, Chewie. If I had any clue where Luke went I'd find a way to get a message to him." She knew Luke would want to know, would want to be here. In fact she had been closing her eyes at random times and trying to will him to hear her. "Come home," she'd said 50 times in the last few hours. Surely if she felt Han's light wink out, his soul darken and leave the universe, surely Luke had too. He was so much stronger in the Force. But she had loved Han through and through, been unable to move on even after he left. They were tied together, linked in the Force, or whatever held souls together, for all time.
"But he has to know," Leia said softly, twining her fingers into the fur on the back of Chewie's paw.
Chewie let out a short bark.
"I don't know," Leia said honestly. Right now she really wanted her brother to come home. It had been too long. He had spent too much time away, brooding she assumed.
Chewie was quiet for a few minutes but then he sat up straighter and pulled his paw away. He began toggling switches, pressing buttons that seemed far too small for his massive paws, bringing the Falcon to life. Leia leaned back in her seat, watching him. He carried on with his methodical work until the ship had been called awake and was rumbling deeply beneath them. Then he glanced her direction.
"Sure," Leia said. It seemed right and fitting that they take the Millennium Falcon for a ride.
Leia strapped in as Chewie activated the thrusters and they gently rose above the ground and then angled up sharply to climb out of the atmosphere. They skirted a bank of clouds, arcing smoothly along its edges. Chewie flew the ship with a grace that was surprising given that both Wookiee and ship had such gruff exteriors.
They climbed out of D'Qar's gravity well and Leia looked through the viewport at the bright planet beneath them, the nearby star that was this planet's sun, and the sequins of light on the black velvet of space. It was beautiful and lonely, stunningly vast. Han's home.
Leia sat mesmerized by the view in front of her. Chewie stopped actively piloting and leaned back in his seat, also admiring the view. Leia closed her eyes and tried to listen for something, some echo of Han, some message from Luke, some sense of remorse from Ben. But there was nothing. Space was silent and cold on all those fronts.
After a while, Chewie put his paws back on the board and slowly swung the Falcon around toward D'Qar. Leia watched it fill the viewport as they entered atmosphere again. Chewie barked at the watch command and soared over the base to land in the same spot. He set the Falcon down expertly and Leia felt the pull of gravity – not the force but the feeling. The short trip had grounded her. She was still filled with a deep melancholy but she wasn't quite as overwhelmed.
Chewie left the engines running and they sat in the cockpit, both staring out the viewport. Then he slowly flipped a switch and the Millennium Falcon's engines spun down, the gentle rumble dying away, the metal issuing a few final pops and creaks before it fell as silent as space. There was a rustle as Chewbacca unbuckled his harness and stood. Leia followed suit and Chewie rested one hand around her shoulder. Then he wrapped her in a powerful but gentle hug. His pelt was warm and silken against her cheek. Leia closed her eyes and they were back on Bespin, back when she had first admitted to herself that she had fallen in love with Han. Back when he had been so brutally taken from her. From them. But that had been reversible. Jabba they could overcome. This they could not. This was final.
Han was gone.
Leia closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of Chewie's massive presence and the depths of her grief. Chewbacca let out another long, soft whimper and Leia finally let herself cry.
Han was gone.
Her universe wouldn't be the same without him.
-knightshade
September 10, 2017