His voice is deep, clipped: consonants trimmed neatly into deadly, imperious edges. Biting, like teeth in flesh. "Good morning, Your Highness," he says.
"Good morning, General," I reply. Automatic, instinctive. Unkindly, too, without passion or warmth. Part of me is saddened to realize how easy it is for me to be cold. It's a far cry from the woman I always thought I was.
But this is war. War changes people, even—and perhaps especially—the idealists.
Shifting in my chair, I eye the man in front of me. A former Imperial, a defector to the Alliance. A self-righteous, privileged, Corellian elitist. I rallied against his admittance into High Command a year ago on the basis of his late defection but I was outvoted. And now here I am, sitting opposite Crix Madine at an interrogation table. How the mighty have fallen.
His face is the kind that dictated his career in his youth. No pedant has a face like this, no physician or lawyer, no businessman. Madine's face was made for the stringency of military life: cutting cheekbones, pronounced scowl. Cold, narrow eyes. He was wooed into command by mandate of his genetics. Even his token Corellian rebelliousness has a calculated edge to it, as if he weighed his odds before defecting to the Alliance and somehow decided that they were in his favor. Madine's pragmatism rules his soul, not hope or idealism.
"You know why we're here?" he asks.
"Actually, no. I was under the impression there was a war to fight. Did we win while I was away?"
Madine rolls his eyes. Ah. This interrogation is only being recorded in audio then. He wouldn't allow that break in decorum to be viewable to anyone in High Command. "Unfortunately, no."
"Pity."
"Indeed." He looks down at his datapad. "Your previous interrogation wasn't satisfactory enough for me."
"Hmm."
Amusing. I would have called my interrogation a debriefing, but clearly nuance is lost on Madine. That, or he feels Carlist didn't delved deep enough into the wonder of my escape from Hoth and the subsequent journey to Bespin.
"I have a few supplemental questions," Madine says.
Of course you do.
I spread my hands wide. "I'm happy to clarify any confusion."
What precisely is so confusing about spending two months on a tramp freighter to unsuccessfully elude a Sith Lord?
I know what he wants. He wants details. He wants loyalty. He wants to know that I haven't been infected by Han's particular brand of riotous apathy. He wants to know what Han said while on the scan grid.
He's also a nosy bastard who probably wants to know how far a smuggler can get with a woman in such circumstances.
Madine sits back and folds his arms over his chest. "You have reported that you and Captain Solo evacuated from Echo Base by way of the asteroid field outside of the system."
"Yes."
"How?"
"Aboard his ship."
That was perhaps more sarcastic than I needed to be but I am out of the business of caring. My priorities have come into sharp relief in the past two days since arriving at the fleet without the man I love. I have neither the time nor the patience to worry about Crix Madine's opinons.
"Yes, I understand." Madine's eyes are pinpricks of fire. He wants more. He wants me to report incompetence. He wants the intellectual high ground by which to collect dirt on Han. I have plenty of dirt but no inclination to disclose it. It's mine.
When I don't reply, he pushes. "Please explain what you mean by that statement."
It's a shame Madine has so little imagination. He can't fathom how far his Corellian pride is about to fall. "Captain Solo flew into the asteroid field to avoid capture by the Executor."
"Impossible."
I tilt my head but don't say anything more. Let him try to figure out the brilliance of a man he does not trust.
His eyes narrow further. "Your Highness, please. He flew into an asteroid field?"
"Yes."
"That was … an exceptional risk."
Of course it was. Who do you think we're talking about?
"We survived." I pause, reading Madine's stubborn eyes. After a moment I am suitably armed with the perfect words, like a personalized venom. "Captain Solo is an exceptional pilot. The best I've seen by quite a wide margin."
"Was," Madine says. His face reveals nothing but the ugly tone of his voice says plenty. I've hit my mark and he has struck back just as ruthlessly.
His word is a ploy, of course. Simple tricks: I expected this. But it still resonates. My chest tightens, my heart squeezes. Past-tensing Han is the quickest way to loosen the ice in my veins and I suspect Madine is well aware of that fact.
Perhaps we are nearing the point of this conversation.
"Is," I correct. "He's not dead."
"That seems to be a matter for debate." There's an audible scratch as he pushes his datapad to my side of the table. I notice that his cuticles are scrupulously clean. "I've taken the liberty of researching carbonite hibernation in humans. Have you read any of this?"
Oh.
To not look at it would be childish and avoidant, though that doesn't stop me from wanting to be exactly that. I don't want the past-tense. I don't want the memory. I want a living, breathing, fighting Han Solo.
But I am better than these fears; I will face my demons head-on. I pull the datapad closer to me, scan the research. Blindness. Cognitive debilitation. Systematic nerve failure. Respiratory failure. Cardiac arrest. Nothing I haven't already read. Nothing that wasn't already sitting deep in the heart of my anxiety.
Unbidden, an image of Han comes to mind. A beloved face in warm colors, smiling, teeth gleaming. Wolfish, I suppose, and yet also adoring. Endearing. Affectionate. That handsome dissonance, with scars and pure intent. He's so clear. I want to reach out for him. Feel the stubble on his jaw, run my fingers over his skin and hair, brush my thumbs over lips that I miss desperately.
The ache is so strong. My ribs cage in heavy arcs of hopelessness. Will I see him again? If I see him again, will he be the same? What if I rescue him and he doesn't survive? What if I can't, what if he doesn't, what if we aren't ...?
But I'm the goddamned daughter of Bail and Breha Organa. No one is going to break me like this.
With Han's image held dear in my mind I say, "We won't know his condition until we find him. But he's alive."
"This is… sensitive, I know," Madine says, and his abrupt change in tone signals a change in tactic. Father used to say it was a signal to attack; a mind that changes course so quickly is not on firm ground. "But I feel it is important to ask: what is the nature of your relationship with Captain Solo?"
Finally. The minute this man walked through the door, I knew he would go this route. This is not about me. I don't honestly believe that he doubts my fitness for command.
This is about Han.
Crix Madine is, at his core, a well-bred Corellian who can't fathom that his breeding is no factor in his usefulness to the Alliance. Without a foil like Han Solo, Madine is in a position of notoriety as the great Corellian hero of the Rebellion. Win or lose, Corellia will know his name.
With Han Solo on our side, Crix Madine is a footnote.
I've been questioned about my relationship to Han before. Multiple times, by Carlist, by Mon Mothma herself. Never with such poorly-disguised morbid delight. I remember replying with indignation. I remember loud declarations. I remember acting as if being associated with a man like Han was anathema to my position in the Alliance.
But there is something so abhorrent in that thinking to me now because it undermines the very reason we're here. Isn't the Alliance intended for men like Han? Isn't he the ideal base, isn't he the everyman recruit, isn't he the very foundation of who the Alliance claims to want on their side? A nobody, a disreputable former Imperial, a passionate man of enormous skill and talent?
Someone who will fight until his dying breath for what he believes is right, even if the entire galaxy opposes him? Like me, like Luke, like Chewie? All hopeless romantics with sniper eyes?
And now, faced with a man I don't respect, I find myself heartbroken and angry enough to say exactly what I think, diplomacy be damned.
"General," I begin, and it is a beginning. Not an answer to a question. "My relationship with Captain Solo is none of your damn business."
Madine blinks. I continue.
"I should perhaps disclose—again—that I intend to use Alliance resources to find and rescue Captain Solo immediately. And I expect to be questioned by people who are responsible for such funds, and that is fine by me. But not by you and not for reasons of your personal intrigue."
His eyes are hot, burning. Inflamed. Wounded pride sneaks into the skin around his mouth, tightening. A less-experienced diplomat wouldn't have caught it—he's capable, of course, and experienced in these games, too—but I can see in Crix Madine the kind of anger that pushes men to lash out. Violently.
"Solo is not an official member of the Alliance," Madine snaps.
"He is the reason we have an Alliance. Or have you forgotten Yavin so quickly?"
That was coldly delivered, the sting of ice on unprotected skin.
Perhaps I overplayed my hand. But my anger shines bright at times like this. It always has. What I said to Madine was an affront, an insult: he had not yet defected from the Imperial Navy when we destroyed the Death Star. Reminding him of that fact had been foolish.
I need to tread more carefully.
"No, Your Highness, I haven't forgotten. But I question your intention to use Alliance funds to retrieve an unallied pilot based on misplaced emotional attachments."
Misplaced. No.
"Even if that unallied pilot has a history of cooperation with us? If his capture was in service of my protection?"
Madine's mouth screws up in a sneer. "In service of his own protection. Solo was a mercenary."
Past-tense. The ice in my chest cracks.
"If so, he is the worst mercenary in the galaxy. We hardly pay him anything."
"His situation is not the Alliance's responsibility. There are other pilots, other smugglers."
"Other pilots capable of surviving an emergency flight through an asteroid field?"
I have to laugh. I can't help it.
"Once," Madine barks.
"Once more than anyone else," I counter. "His value is incalculable to the war effort."
His eyes narrow, the harsh line of his jaw shifts, as if he's gritting his teeth. Gnashing, perhaps. A sign of an angry predator, his prey allusive, his pride decimated in the wake of a larger, stronger alpha.
"Your Highness," he says, condescension etched into every syllable. "Leia. You are smarter than this. No one person is worth this expense. Not me. Not you. And especially not Captain Solo."
I feel the tear in my chest deeply as the ice cracks, the fissure running between my ribs. The sting is sharp, lancing through my lungs as I take a shallow breath. For all my posturing, all my strength the past two days, I am still unequivocally grieving. And his faux gentle tone penetrates my defenses as surely as a vibroblade.
Han's face flashes in front of me again, ghostly, as I last saw him alive, moving, animated. His eyes, focused and clear, with all the indefatigable bravery that made him the man he was.
Makes. Is.
"I'm going to find Captain Solo," I say, and my voice is low and threatening and I don't care—I don't care. For the first time in years, I don't care. "And I will do it with or without the Alliance's help."
"Your High—"
"No, you've said your piece." I can't let him interrupt me. If he does, I will think about what I am saying. I was raised to think about what I say. But I don't want to think. I want to do. "I have asked for nothing from High Command. I have worked tirelessly for this cause, without complaint, since I was seventeen years old. And I refuse to be told that all that sacrifice deserves your petulance and condescension."
Madine's hard-lined face is still.
"You do not get to tell me who is worth my time and who is worth my resources. I am the Alliance. So either sign my requisition form or get the hell out of my way, Crix."
The room is silent but for my heavy breaths. I can't feel the usual thrum of Home One's engines beneath my feet. The room feels too small. I feel bigger than the space between these hulls. I feel enormous, towering. Perhaps even righteous and that is terrifying. But once again I find that I don't care.
Han needs me. And I won't let him down.
I want nothing to do with this man in front of me. I want to plan. I want to prepare. I want to train and fight and do what this rebellion has taught me to do: survive.
Without another word, I stand up, turn my back to the still general and walk out the door.
I don't have time for this. I have a rescue to organize.