This is a birthday gift for the incredible, unparalleled Cicatrick! Here's to good friends who understand the value of quiet gifts! *cheers*
Alone in the chilled dark of her office, Leia Organa sat at her desk. Scrupulously clean, neat and orderly, the desk was topped with stacks of datacards and flimsies, organized by date and by order of necessity. In one corner sat a cold cup of caf, the steam long-since dissipated into the filtered air of the Rebel Alliance's newest disaster of a base. An unopened ration bar lay on the floor, forgotten hours ago. And in Leia's hands were the latest inventory projections, abysmal by any standard.
She set the datapad down and put her head in her hands.
The Rebel Alliance was broke. There was no other way to interpret it. Their steady donors were already being stretched far too thin and the flood of investments they'd received after the destruction of Alderaan had proved insufficient to sustain their forward momentum. Every known pocket had been picked, every illegal source of profit had dried up. And so the revolution lulled, cut back and underfunded, while the Empire licked its wounds and shored up their own resources. Less than a year since their great triumph, the Rebels were poor, hungry and complacent.
If only High Command would let her campaign for them publicly. If only. Leia had been an outstanding fundraiser, one of the best in her class of senators. She had value, name recognition and contacts across the galaxy. She knew she could be a vital fundraising tool if they gave her the opportunity.
But they'd denied her last six requests on the basis of her essential role within the ranks. Leia rolled her eyes. She was about as useful to the movement as a droid. Threepio could do her work; Artoo could do her work, and quicker than she could, too. There was no reason for a human to be comparing data columns and spreadsheets, particularly one with a terrible story to tell and a history in public speaking. What maddening stupidity to be sidelined in such a way, particularly if it was in service to some high-handed idea of keeping her safe.
Safe! In an Alliance base! Sometimes she wondered if High Command truly understood irony.
Leia rubbed her eyes and looked at the time function on her datapad, grimacing. She'd missed dinner again, lost in the data that made her heart ache. She was supposed to have eaten with Luke tonight; he'd made her promise yesterday to come find him in the mess after she'd finished for the day.
She sat back and mindlessly examined the ceiling, trying to decide if it was worth it to comm him and apologize or if he'd show up to her office to give her his patented i'm disappointed in you look with his sad, blue eyes—
The door to her office whisked open and there stood Luke Skywalker, as if summoned by her thoughts alone. His hair was a messy mop on top of his head and his eyes were a little too wide.
"Leia!" he said, breathless and intent. "Where were you?"
She held up her hands. "I'm sorry, Luke. I only just noticed the time. I was just about to comm you."
He stepped into her office. Leia expected him to take a seat in the chair across the desk from her but he surprised her by rushing to her side. "C'mon," he said, taking her hand.
Leia let him pull her out of her chair but dug her heels into the floor. "We can eat together tomorrow. I'll have Threepio remind me—"
"What? No," he said, tugging on her hand. "Don't worry about it. There's something you have to see."
Leia let him pull her with him, puzzled. No one had commed her to tell her about any disasters and Luke wasn't in the habit of interrupting her work short of something truly important. Was their comm system out again? It had been several days since their last outage; she supposed it was about time …
"Do I need to contact High Command?" she asked, ready to veer off into the closest emergency notification bank.
Luke gave her an odd look over his shoulder. "Why would you do that? They would just shut it down."
Leia blinked. "That's the only way to reboot the comms, Luke. If we don't shut them down, we could overload the whole system and we can't afford to rewire the entire base again—"
"Oh, for Force's sake," Luke said, squeezing her hand as he hurried his pace. Leia had to run to keep up with him. "The comms are fine."
"Then why are we running—Luke, slow down!"
He didn't reply. They took the next corridor at a torrent, arriving at the mess hall: cavernous and cold. Leia was surprised to see the doors flung open and the overhead lights turned on to full. The mess had strict hours of operation and the last rotation had cycled through an hour ago. There was no need for them to waste power running lights for an empty ….
Oh, she thought. Not so empty.
At least twenty beings were congregated in the mess hall, flight suits and uniforms unzipped or unbuttoned, hair mussed and cheap plastic cups in hand. Leia spotted Wedge Antilles bootless and running from one side of the hall to the other, his socked feet slipping on the tiled floor and arms waving wildly. In the corner was an old shipping container, upended, the topmost side sawed off and a spigot fused on the bottom.
And it was loud. So loud that she automatically turned her head to the corridor behind her as if to check and see if anyone could hear them. Raucous laughter rose from the group, jeers and good-natured ribbing.
"What's going on?" she asked Luke, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.
"It's a Life Day party," Luke said. "For Han."
Leia frowned at him and then glanced around the hall. She spotted Ver Daylk, and Meewhl. Closest to her were two females she didn't know and, yes, there was Wedge, now standing on a table. But no inerrant Corellian smuggler. Maybe she was missing something?
"It's Han's Life Day?" she asked.
"Well, we think so." She turned to look at Luke again, sure now that the tall, lanky, infuriating man wasn't in the hall in front of them. Luke shrugged. "He let it slip this morning."
Suspicious, Leia raised an eyebrow and waited.
Luke grinned, unapologetic and—she was now certain—at least mildly drunk. "He hinted at it and Chewie confirmed. We're having a party to celebrate."
A loud whoop came from the hall and Leia turned her head in time to catch two pilots start what looked like a complicated game of hand signals. She had no idea what the point of the game was, except that both beings looked unsteady on their feet and ridiculous with the top halves of their flight suits hanging down near their hips. "And why did you drag me here?"
It was not her habit to socialize with the rank and file of the Alliance. Her father had always spoken of the House Organa as a pillar of brutal civility and unquestionable moral leadership. And while her family was dead and her planet destroyed, she was the last member of House Organa. She would continue that legacy of leadership.
No one wanted a moral leader around when they were having a good time. It would be best for her to leave them to their own devices.
"Han won't come to his own party," Luke said, pulling her focus back to him. "We've been trying to get him here for the past half-hour."
Leia laughed indelicately. "You have women and alcohol. I assume you've told him that?"
Luke nodded. "And snacks and Sabacc. And all his friends."
"He doesn't have friends," Leia said.
"Fine. All his people are here. But he's just ... holed up on the Falcon. I was thinking maybe you could help."
Leia took a deep breath, knowing instantly what Luke was about to do. "No, Luke. I'm not going to fetch Han for this," she waved her hand in the direction of the gathering, "whatever this is. Go talk to him yourself."
"I did. And Wedge did, too. Even Chewie. But he's stubborn. Told us to leave him alone."
Leia exhaled and considered Luke carefully. She was loathe to get in the middle of this situation. It just didn't seem like her place. She was exhausted and had far too much work to do. But Luke's eyes fairly pleaded with her, soft and blue an entreating. And though she had very little emotional space to care about Han Solo, she would do anything for the sweet, kind man in front of her. He had brought her trouble before and she knew he would bring her trouble again, but she was almost genetically unable to resist Luke when he looked at her like that.
With a scowl, she pointed her finger at the mess hall and ordered, "Quiet them down before Jan hears them."
She caught his wide grin as she turned on her heel and trudged down the corridor toward the hangar bay in which she'd last seen the Millennium Falcon. She would try, for Luke, but she wasn't going to put much effort into this. And her quarters were just past the hangar bay. She'd tell Captain Solo to rein in his devoted followers and then try to get a few hours of sleep.
The Falcon was berthed on the far side of the bay, hydraulics hissing and the faint scent of grease in the air. The boarding ramp was lowered and Leia headed to the cockpit, figuring it was the best place to start her search for Han. With another heavy sigh, Leia programmed an alarm on her comm. She would spend no more than ten minutes on this ridiculous mission, and then she could feel confident in defending herself to Luke if need be.
Not that Luke would say anything. But she would feel better with the alarm nonetheless.
Slouched in the pilot's seat, knees spread and head tilted to the side, Han Solo sat quietly in his own sanctuary. The fingers of his right hand tugged on a loose thread on his pants. While she watched, he sighed and leaned his head onto his fist, shifting carefully around the controls before him.
"Captain," she said.
He started and Leia was shocked to realize that he hadn't known she was there. The itinerant spacer, the man who lived life on the edge and defied death on a regular basis had been caught unaware.
He twisted to look at her, blinked, and then settled back into his casual pose. "You," he muttered. "Luke's getting desperate."
Leia wanted to be affronted, but the aged exhaustion in his voice was as unexpected as the party itself had been to her. Han Solo lived his life wearing a blase attitude, with one hip cocked and a rough grin on his face. In the past six months since she'd met him in the perfect storm of her rescue from the Death Star, she'd only seen glimpses of a man beneath the facade. And though she'd suspected it was a false front since the moment the Falcon soared back into the Battle of Yavin, she had received no confirmation since.
She took a step into the cockpit, intrigued despite herself. "If it's any consolation, it sounds like he tried his entire roster before me."
Han grunted and waved a hand. "Alright, Worship. Let's hear your pitch. Why should I go to the mess?"
Leia narrowed her eyes but stepped toward the copilot's seat. "I don't have a pitch."
"Sure," he said, turning to look at her as she sat in Chewie's chair. His eyes were red, tired, the laugh lines around his mouth pulled tight. "You just came here to say hello?"
"I'm on my way to my quarters."
"Ah," he said, sounding as if he'd solved a great mystery. "That makes more sense."
Quiet. Soft quiet, the whisper of enviro-controls, the hum of the Falcon's electrical grid.
After a moment, she said, "Luke threw you a party. You should go."
"I don't want to go."
"He's very upset," she said.
He shrugged. "I don't want to go," he repeated, lower now.
She didn't want to ask. She wanted to get up and go to bed. She wanted to put this man out of her mind, this man with the staggering smile and the furious eyes. The king of incongruities, the criminal with questionable morals but a hint of conscience beneath it all. She didn't care about Luke's party, she didn't care about Han's bitterness toward the gathering. But she cared about hurt people and this man beside her seemed hurt.
"Why?" she asked.
He glanced in her direction and held her gaze, then turned to look out the viewport. Leia watched his eyes shift into a dull glare, a still kind of passive acceptance. Ramparts crumbling in front of her eyes.
"You're adopted, right?" he asked.
She pressed her lips together, paused, and then nodded.
"Do you know your real Life Day? Or did they pick one out for you?"
Leia was caught off guard. She had never told Han that Bail and Breha Organa had adopted her, though it had been public knowledge on Alderaan. And the thought that he had looked into her history should have made her angry but sitting in this dim cockpit and in the presence of a reserved and contemplative Han Solo, the circumstances of him knowing her background didn't matter to her.
"We celebrated my Life Day on my mother's," she answered. "It's fairly common practice for Alderaanian adoptees."
He hummed. "Guess that's the difference between Corellia and Alderaan."
Leia's heart squeezed at the implications of his quiet comment. "You're an orphan?"
Han shrugged. "Happens to the best of us."
Despite herself, her pain, the depth of the burden on her shoulders, she couldn't hold back her little smile. "Indeed," she said. Then, suspecting there was a bridge between the party being thrown in his honor and his sudden question about her past, she quietly asked, "Do you know your Life Day?"
Another pause, then a low no.
Leia looked away from him, the staggering despair she felt swallowing her whole. What a small, horrible ugliness, to not know when to celebrate one's birth. Her own Life Day had never created such a terrible feeling—sharing Breha Organa's day had felt more like a connection, like an honor.
She didn't expect him to say anything more and was shocked when she heard his voice again.
"When you enlist in the academy, they make you record a date of birth. I got a fake citizenship ID from a guy on Coronet and traded favors with an old pal to forge a work history. Covered my ass the whole way. Passed the physical, passed the written test. Aced the interview."
Leia nodded, trying the hide her surprise at the influx of new information flowing so freely from him.
"And I get to my goddamned commission, the last step until clear skies to learn to fly, and I almost fucked it up with a birth date. I wrote down a random date and shipped out."
Nodding, Leia took a guess. "Today's date?"
He blew out his breath and pursed his lips. "Yeah. Doesn't mean a damn thing."
She sat back in the chair, thinking. It was one thing to have a home and lose it. The pain was bone-deep, harrowing. Nothing tempered it, nothing blanketed it. The good only meant the hollowness of knowing the good was gone.
But was it any better to have never experienced the good in the first place? She couldn't imagine.
"Never saw much of a reason to celebrate a fake day," he finished.
She turned her body to face him, tucking her knees beneath her and leaning an elbow on the armrest. "You could start now?" she asked. "Today? There's a kid from Tatooine that wants to celebrate it."
He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "No point. They can party all they want. I'm just gonna sit here alone on my ship."
She nodded and turned her head to look out the viewport. She'd stumbled onto Han at his most vulnerable, in his home, remembering the blistering wound of being unwanted and the effort he'd made to earn respect and control of his own destiny. She was confident that it had nothing to do with her, that if Luke had sent Wedge or Dak, Han might have spoken of his past the same way he had to her. But he wasn't an egotistical blowhard now and she wasn't a privileged member of the Ruling Houses.
They were the same. And she intimately understood the desire to be quiet on days that showed your own humanity to you. She wasn't sure that she'd want to attend a party under the circumstances either.
"Well," she said, "if you're interested in being alone with someone else ...?"
He snorted. "That's not being alone."
"Actually, I think it's the best kind of being alone," she shot back. "I'll comm Luke, get him off your back. What do you have to drink on this rust-bucket?"
A bark of laughter. "I got what you need, Princess. And I like where you're heading with this."
He stood up and ambled out of cockpit. With a quick shake of her head, Leia sent a message to Luke and then disabled her alarm. She could share a drink with Han, even if it was silent and sad. She couldn't change his past, couldn't change her own. Couldn't fix the galaxy or prevent this sad acceptance from overtaking anyone else.
But she could be a friend. And that was worth something. She understood that sometimes you just needed quiet and someone to share it with.