This is the first Fan Fiction that I've posted and actually the first I wrote. I have been in love with the Star Wars universe since I was a kid and have always preferred the Original characters to the prequel. I really appreciate reviews, even if you didn't like it. I will try to update as often as possible and at least once a month.
Luke Skywalker was one with the Force. He felt everything; his X-wing's steady, almost organic, hum, the frantic crew of the Star Cruiser, the voices in the comm link headset he wore, and even the rest of Rouge Squadron outside the ship in the vacuum of space. But the only thing that he was focused on were the hostile TIE fighters attempting to blast their way through the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser's minimal defenses. He felt the unique mind of the clone pilots. He knew that it would be so easy to just take control. To just kill them from within. But he also knew the dangers that would arise from following that path, the path of the dark side. Instead , Luke fired off three shots, all hitting their mark.
"Nice one kid!" Han shouted through the comm, awakening Luke from his trance. He opened his eyes and saw the last fighter go up in a ball of flame.
"I think that's all of 'em," observed Wedge Antilles from his X-wing fighter.
"Looks like it," Han agreed from the Millennium Falcon. These small attacks by the slowly withering Empire were becoming more and more trivial every day. It had been almost a year since the destruction of the second Death Star during the Battle of Endor, and the war was all but over. Almost as soon as the reports of the Emperor and Darth Vader's deaths hit the news vids, internal power struggles began to cripple the Empire more than rebel attacks. It seemed that everyone but the Empire could see the inevitable outcome. Isn't that, though, what everyone thought about the Alliance, and they'd pulled through?
Right now, the Alliance of Free Planets, as they were now called, were based out of the Correllian System. It was considered an optimal position, centrally located and close to the Core. It was also close to Coruscant, the Imperial capitol. Luke didn't really think it mattered either way, considering the Alliance "capitol" changes every other week.
They were trying to establish some sort of of actual government for the Alliance. By "they" he meant Mon Mothma, one of the founders of the Alliance, Admiral Ackbar, the military genius behind the Battle of Endor as well as others, and his sister, Leia. Leia's adoptive father, Bail Organa was a senator of the Old Republic, and, like Mon Mothma, founded the Alliance. He was killed when Leia's home planet of Alderaan was destroyed by the first Death Star. Darth Vader had ordered the destruction after he had discovered Leia's involvement with the rebels and that she had been spying for them in the Imperial Senate. She had been devastated for months afterward and was still convinced that it was her fault. When Luke had told her that Vader was her father, she hadn't taken it very well.
Luke had spent the last year honing his Jedi skills and flying under his friend Wedge Antilles and Rouge Squadron. He was really debating on resigning and focusing all of his energy on finding Jedi prospects to train, but then he remembered that he was supposed to be teaching Leia. She was really struggling. He was really, kind of selfishly, hoping that the problem was her and not his teaching methods.
"Well you guys can fly around here all you want," Han stated, "but I'm going in."
"Alright," Luke said, "We'll call you if anything life-threatening happens."
"You'd better!" he replied before signing off. Luke smiled. Han was only ever involved in things that held his attention. As soon as he got bored, he found something else to do. His single-mindedness was what got him to stick around in the first place, only it wasn't the cause he was focused on.
"I think it's clear for us to head in too," Wedge announced.
"All the scans are coming in empty," Luke agreed.
"Okay, let's do one more sweep for good measure."
"Alright," Luke answered as he set the coordinates. A monotonous sweep would probably help clear his thoughts.
"Yeah, sure, go ahead," Han told his copilot, Chewbacca.
Chewie growled and gestured toward the hyperdrive.
"Yeah go ahead," he insisted, "just, if you think you need to fix it, just go ahead."
Han turned back to the main power couplings. There seemed to always be something on his ship to fix, but at least she always seemed to pull through when he needed her. Han had always found it easy to fix things. It was easy for him to see exactly what was wrong and how it was supposed to go. His semi-reliable- as Leia would have put it- ship provided him with endless opportunities to lose himself in mechanics.
The comm buzzed in his shirt pocket and he cursed loudly. Couldn't anyone just give him a minute?
"What?" he answered.
"General Solo," Mon Mothma responded.
"What did I not do now?"
"Nothing. At least not that I've heard of yet."
"Then what do you need?" Leia would have scolded him for being rude, but he didn't care. He was busy.
"We can't reach Senator Organa. We were hoping you'd know where she is."
"No, I haven't seen her, but I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, I appre-" Han turned off the comm before she could finish.
Han sighed as he wiped his hands on his shirt. Sometimes he wondered how they could ever hope to win the war with leaders like this. Knowing Leia, she was probably in her apartment with her comm turned off. He saw who the smarter one was there.
Oh, well. He'd been meaning to go see her anyway.
Leia's apartment was on one of the higher levels of the Alliance base. They followed Coruscant tradition here, higher level meant higher status. He didn't have to wait for her to let him in either. He'd been here enough, he knew the code.
The second he opened the door his ears were attacked by some kind of Alderaanian mainstream song with an excessively emphasized bass. Leia was sitting on the couch cross-legged with a datapad in her lap. Her protocol droid, See Threepio, intercepted Han as he entered.
"General Solo! It's so good to see you-"
"Yeah, can it, Goldenrod," Han interrupted.
"Threepio, you can go," Leia said, saving him from wasting more of his life listening to that prissy droid. Threepio wandered off to a different part of the apartment. "Hey, Han," Leia said without looking up.
"Hey," he replied.
"Did you fix the hyperdrive coolants?"
"Well, someone wants to get straight to the point."
"Sorry, I didn't know that was a sensitive topic," Leia's voice dripped with sarcasm as she didn't look up from her datapad.
"I'll have you know that I have fixed the hyperdrive coolants."
She finally looked up and raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "No you didn't," she decided, returning her gaze to her work.
"What makes you think that?" Han defended.
"Two reasons," Leia began typing, "One: I don't think it will ever be fixed. Two: You're a terrible liar."
"Isn't that kinda a good thing?" He asked, smiling.
"I suppose so," she said, smiling back, "Now, what do you want?"
"I came to see you," Han said sitting next to her. "I haven't seen you in a while."
She put down the datapad. "Yeah a whole forty-eight hours."
He kissed her once on the cheek and tried to move towards her mouth, but she pulled away.
"Okay," she said obviously trying to change the subject, "why are you really here?"
"What, you don't believe me?" he asked innocently.
"I told you. You're a terrible liar."
"Fine," he said, throwing up his hands in a sign of defeat, "Mon Mothma is looking for you."
"Yeah, I bet," she muttered.
"What happened?" he inquired.
"Nothing," she defended, "I just-"
He gave her a look that read "I know you're not telling me the truth and I'm just going to bother you until you do".
She sighed. "Alright, fine. I've been doing some," she paused, searching for the right word, "research on some things that might finally help us end this war."
He smiled playfully at her, "What did you do?" When Leia wanted something, there was nothing in the galaxy that could keep her from it.
She smiled back. "I told you- research." She moved so he could see her datapad. She touched a couple different icons and pulled up a holomap. "Tell me what you see."
Han looked at the map. He touched the holo and zoomed in on the part he thought he recognized. There were four planets. Three of them he knew very well. "That's Hutt space," he stated. "There's Nal Hutta, Nar Shaddaa, Ylesia. And I think that's Toydaria."
"Exactly. What else do you see?"
This was an area of the galaxy that Han knew very well, and didn't have very fond memories of. If Leia was trying to show him something out of the ordinary, he should have seen it by now. Then he noticed something in the shadow of Nal Hutta. Something that definitely shouldn't be there.
"Star Destroyers? Is this recent? What's the Empire doing in Hutt space?"
"That's what we wanted to know too. So, I took the liberty of figuring it out on my own, which Mon Mothma probably isn't very happy about. I've been trying to read this damned transport record for an hour now, but it's not getting me anywhere."
Han watched her read. Her brow was furrowed with concentration, and her dark eyes shone with intensity. Her long hair was pulled up in to a simple yet extravagant braid. Most people didn't get to see this side of her. The side that wore a casual white tunic and loose fitting gray pants. The side that went out of her way to get exactly what she wanted. The side that Han was in love with. He put his arm around her and this time she didn't pull away. Instead, she leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder.
"You know," he stated, "I should probably be trying to stop you."
She looked at him. "And why aren't you?"
"Mutual curiosity," he answered.
She turned back to the datapad. Han understood most of what she was reading, but he didn't think he'd be able to give too much valuable input. He was having a hard time trying to keep up with her scrolling; she was either skimming it, or she was an even faster reader than he thought.
"Are you even reading all that?" he asked.
"Yeah," she stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Oh, this is interesting."
"What?"
"Look. There was a old Clone Wars age transport supposedly taking weapons out to the Republic base at Kuat. Now it'd probably take a ship like that, what, a week to make it out there, plus another back?"
"Yeah, about."
"Well this says that it made there and back in six days. There's no way it could ever do that, at least not without some major Falcon-style modifications."
"I'm going to take that as a compliment," he stated.
"Maybe it was intended to be," she added.
"Was it?" he asked.
"I'm not telling."
"Okay, fine. But what does this have to do with Imperials in Hutt Space?"
The excitement vanished from her eyes as she noticed the lack of a connection. "I don't know," she sighed, sitting up to the datapad down on the small table in front of her. She put her head between her knees, exhausted.
"Hey," Han said, awkwardly trying to comfort her, "even if it doesn't connect, it's still probably something." He rubbed his hand between her shoulder blades, trying to coax her into straightening.
She sat up and said, "I know, it's just, I feel like I'm doing everything I can, but it's not doing anything."
"I know," he said, "I know." He pulled her in for an awkward sideways hug. He wasn't very good at this boyfriend stuff that Leia needed.
"I love you," she whispered.
"I know," he said. This time, when Han went to kiss her, she let him. Han felt her relax, probably for the first time in two days, and kissed her harder. She kissed him back. He could have stayed there with her forever. He wanted to stay there forever. He pulled her closer to him. He took her lack of usual hesitancy as an invitation and made his move to go a little farther. As soon as his hand touched her skin, however, she tensed in his arms and pulled away.
"No," she whispered, "I can't." She stood up and turned away from him. He knew from past experience that if this hadn't been her apartment, she would have left. He always did this too. Always did something stupid that made their normal awkward atmosphere return.
"I'm sorry," He apologized, standing. "You should probably talk to Mon Mothma, it might just be important." He started to walk to the door when she stopped him.
"Hey," she called. He looked over his shoulder. "I'll see you later?" she asked, apologizing in her own way for her reaction.
"Yeah," he assured.
Leia watched him leave, silently cursing to herself. Why did she always do this? Why couldn't she just accept his love? She could tell he was trying to make her happy. He always did. She knew she loved him too, she just couldn't bring herself to accept it. She hated making him leave like that. Part of her wanted to chase after him and never let him leave her side again. Another part hoped that he wouldn't come back. And another part was still working on processing all of her emotions.
She sighed and pulled her comm out of her pocket. Maybe it was important.