Curling onto her side, Leia Organa pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Forcing herself away from the compulsion she had never given into: how many versions of her family, her home, lived on? Out there, beaming among the intact planets, preserved in cables of light. A past Leia could access at any time: right now, in fact, she could sit up in this frigid dark, power her datapad, and find—
When Leia felt this urge back on Yavin IV (especially after the wildly successful mission she had privately titled, with wry, riotous joy, Operation Bet Your Ass I Did, as in: Eliminate a High-Level Empire Operative; Recover an Invaluable Trove of Enemy Data; Kiss that Cocky Flyboy), there was a sure way to resist. She'd slip out of her camp cot, find with her toes the simple Alliance-issue sandals that didn't fit her, and flit through the humid jungle hangar to distraction.
Like the creature on his absurd, perfect (chest) shirt that Leia perceived as an owl, Han Solo was a night bird. Awake, alert, whenever she arrived in the hangar. Working on his ship or cooking, early in the evening; later, shower-damp hair waving at his ears, tinkering with some part or other. Leg up on the dejarik table, watching the datapad propped against his own bare ankle. It intrigued Leia to discover how much Han taught himself from instructional holos: hyperdrive specs; astrophysics; biographies of legendary starpilots. Strategic analysis of famous space battles. Leia took it as a mark of blooming trust that Han no longer hastily swatted the power button when she came over, cancelling the evidence of his restless intelligence.
Of course, there was also his soap opera.
How Han had choked on his spiceloaf sandwich when Leia appeared in time to catch a steamy clinch set to swelling strings. It was just on! Han spluttered even as the actors hurled impassioned Corellian at one another. Chewie passed by then, innocently asking if that roguish cardsharp had finally won over the brave undercover heroine. I...won't...know who you mean, Han said, neck flaming like a plummeting starship. Ever.
That soap-opera night, Leia now remembered, was the first time she'd slept in Han's cabin. Past eleven, perched next to Han on the curved couch, stealing his sandwich and fried tubers (becoming equally absorbed in the thrilling romance serial Hazard the Stars), Leia began a luxurious yawning that she couldn't summon, not tonight in her cold quarters. And Han, with his funny mixture of diffidence and bluster, offered her the small bunk that pulled out from under his own. Won't fit anyone else, Princess, he said, rubbing the back of his shaggy head. Peering between her and the tiny mattress almost suspiciously, as though Leia had sneaked aboard and installed it before they'd met. But something humble there too, hopeful, around his mouth.
Whatever Han's ultimate motivations, Leia knew, as ever, her own mind. And this little bed had made her eyes water, so fatigued was she to see it, and so suddenly. So right it was for her; how kind and peculiar his gesture. How able she was, at last, to rest.
Han let Leia go to bed first. Gruffly, he said he had work, but she understood he was giving her space to sleep without any question about sexual intent. When Han did appear, two hours later, Leia woke to find him awkwardly making his way around her trundle in faint blue light. Stubbing a bare toe on his locker—stumbling, starting that indignant squawk of fucker! with which Han treated all physical accidents and then, thinking Leia was still asleep, biting his lower lip to stop it. Instead shooting his foot the Corellian middle finger, making Leia muffle her laughter. Han looked down in surprise, then laughed too as he sprawled gracelessly onto his own bunk.
G'night, Han said in casual Basic. But later he murmured the Olys he'd pressed to her forehead in that honeymoon bed in Coronet. Of course Leia had sourced the phrase, what it meant: Sleep now, Sweetheart. Was it an order Han gave her, permission, plea? Leia didn't care, but something about the ambiguous combination in velvet native tongue made her want to crawl into bed with him. Wide awake to her own wanting.
Leia turned in her bulky thermosack. Like the sandals, issued to larger standard, the cover didn't fasten at her neck but only over her head, leaving Leia with the nightly choice to either suffocate or freeze. Tonight she chose to freeze, longing for his—her—the green blanket. But it was gone, on the Falcon.
Two days before the Alliance evacuation Han was issued an offer directly from Jan Dodonna, like an errand boy run to the shops. An exhaustive supply run, ambitious and risky even for experienced smugglers, bouncing between planets and systems. Leia was there when the communication came in, with a harsh buzz that rattled Han's datapad off the cockpit console. Not that it bothered Han when the device, battered and taped—he'd seen Han woundglue it, Luke insisted—hit the deckplates. He refused to get it a protective cover. If he did, Han said with the dry fatalism Leia now recognized as quintessentially Estok, that was when the thing would shatter.
Han's lips tugged up at the corner when he said it. But in his eyes, green on hers, Leia glimpsed his meaning. What he had gleaned about living, from a past she could only imagine after their trip to East Coronet: Han believed that the instant he proved to the universe he valued something, he would lose it.
So he whacked the Falcon with hydrospanners. Called Chewie furball, Luke kid and junior.
Your Worship. Your Highnessness.
Maybe this was why Han hadn't tried to kiss her again after Coronet, Leia wondered now, remembering him thumb the datapad on. Remembering the way that thumb sketched her cheekbone, coarse and hard as his lips were full and soft. The way his tongue—
Rolling to her back, Leia studied the ice ceiling, dull gleam in the dark. Its chilled breath tormenting her long neck. She could have had it, the exquisite wrap. Han had tried, when she came aboard the Falcon just before he left, to give it to her.
You'll need this on Hoth, Princ—Han began, moving to twine her in silken net as she stood at the mouth of the ring corridor. And something about Han's forced cheer made Leia furious and sad at once—what had she expected, from this farewell? Was she angry at her own failure? She'd refused Han's offer of a quick drink or even a seat; let his halting conversation wilt in the castoff jungle heat. Until they just...stood, near the couch where, over the last year-and-month, they'd eaten, argued and fought, sat close at thighs. Slept, gambled, drank, laughed so hard she wept and he planted a huge hand over his face. Planned strategy and tactics; checked, cleaned and compared weaponry; debated the next developments on their soap. Sat working in companionable, understanding silence. Not like that quiet, emphasized by the Falcon chirping its pre-flight checks.
Finally Leia had broken it with a stiff goodbye, her eyes cast low, on Han's thumbs hooked in his belt. The casualness he obviously felt! When she had this smooth buoy in her throat, bobbing on the surface of all she wanted to say.
Or do—
And then Han moved. Snagging the blanket from the couch, speaking brightly about Hoth. Leia's chin jerked up. When he leaned in she shoved the delicate weave back into his chest and Han froze, smile collapsing into visible hurt. But just as swiftly, understanding.
Hey. Han said it so softly, ducking his head close to Leia's though no one was nearby. Luke had already said his easy goodbye, fixing a playful flimsiplast order for blue milk (and kyber crystals, if you see any pls) to the chiller. Chewie in the cockpit, submitting the clearance manifest to the tower. Leia. I—
Leia watched Han's throat, then, not his hands. Watched it work, the angled apple; perhaps he had his own marker of rising emotion. Lifting her eyes to his, Leia caught her breath. Han looked down at her as though over a dizzying precipice. For an eternal moment, they stared, and Leia felt again the pull toward him, rushing and magnetic as...a Coroneti train.
It was Leia who retreated from the edge, and the reason was Han's acceptance of Dodonna's job. She'd assumed he was making the trip to Hoth alongside (her) everyone else—the exodus had dangers all its own, of course, but that sudden supply run...many of the destinations were occupied, and the routes between patrolled by Destroyers, TIES. Sufficient provisions were essential, though, especially since the Rebels would no longer be able to cultivate fruits and vegetables. So High Command was, as the saying went, over a barrel. Which was how any good mercenary liked negotiations.
Leia didn't know what Command had offered Han—after the success of her first mission, now just a month past, she was transferred from quartermaster's duties—but urgency always meant expensive. Needs, wants, hadn't she heard Han gleefully pricing them often enough? Han hadn't asked Leia what she thought of this run, or what she'd been counting on from him. He just scanned Dodonna's list and when she asked, Are you going to take it? Han said, Sure. A boast there, you'd have to know Han Solo like Leia did to hear it. Be there to see just the way he leaned back in his captain's seat, flashing teeth at her; gentle arch of back, splaying his knees. What did he want, praise, appreciation? Han looked then, he really looked, as though he could pat his lap, bid her sit, kiss his triumph, his takings, into her neck.
It was almost obscene. Leia wished she could stop replaying it when trying to sleep.
Money. Han and money. After Coronet Leia thought he was past it, because how else—how could he have seized her, hurled her to safety, tossed the Empire his own life as carelessly as a credit to a barkeep? How could Han do that, then relish the fleecing of—no, worse, he wished to share this pleasure with Leia, forgetting that she was the Rebellion's shepherd and not its wolf.
Sometimes Leia wondered: was it Han out to enlist her?
But could Leia blame Han, after seeing where he came from? She was aware, yes, yes, she had been raised in lavishness by any standards. Though never, on progressive Alderaan, while citizens suffered. Yet if she could, Leia would cash it all in; she would make a retroactive pact with the fates to take every comfort from her life—past, present, future—to win. To topple the Empire.
Leia had a debt to her people, and to those beings still enslaved. Exploited. Occupied. Murdered. Raped. Billions of lives lost and threatened; one chance, one chance to free them. Han had only one life to concern him; this was a luxury all its own. And so, that last night on the Falcon, money opened an unbroachable gulf between Leia and Han, tearing open their year's worth of tentative yet tensile bonding. Money, stranding them on respective ledges of privilege and desperation.
Jerkily Leia retreated from her own steep drop: he was sex, and he was money. She planted a foot, in its loose workboot—she was due to help Luke tune his X-wing for the lift to Hoth; she suspected he'd asked as kind distraction from Han's leaving—into the corridor. Han's face went smooth and opaque as Mustafaran lava rock. He straightened, crossed his arms across his chest. Rocked back on his heels in that way he'd had from the first day, leading with his hips, putting them before his heart.
Take it easy, Princess. That damned smirk! So smug about his own detachment. Just runnin' to the shops.
Take it easy! The subtext almost a chiding: like me. Leia felt her lips press hard and tight as they had ever been tender, with Han Solo. Unguarded in talk, sleep, laughter. Kiss.
Indeed. Leia said it crisply, turning her back. Striding down the padded corridor toward the ramp, both relieved and furious that she hadn't been able to speak to Han, hadn't revealed the development of this...sweet, heated heaviness in her, for him. Han followed at her heels. Wouldja wait a— Leia sped up. Tossed the phrase over her shoulder in cool Basic, as she would to any departing pilot. Just words, worth nothing. Not fears, dreams, hopes. Want. Not history, and surely not promise. Anonymous, no especial wish: Spacer's best.
Muttering a curse, Han slapped the button to seal the hatch behind Leia so fast the hydraulic hissing felt acidic. Then the ramp, grinding up and within minutes, Leia was watching the blue bar of the Falcon in departure. Green blanket with it.
And now the Falcon was late to Hoth, that was fact. Officially filed and noted. Two weeks had passed, Echo Base mostly established. Even allowing for that multiplanet scavenger hunt, often taking them out of communication range, the experienced pair of smugglers could have, should have, been back by now.
Not that Leia had worked out the astromath.
Were Han and Chewie all right? Despite whispers around base of footloose abandonment, Leia knew Han would not leave her, even if loyal Chewie wouldn't have ripped off his arms for it. Not like...that, anyway. Not abruptly, not off their almost-fight. Han wouldn't vanish from her life, not after everything, not when he knew all Leia had already—
Sex and money. Get it through your head.
But Leia saw that gentling of Han's face again and admitted he was right in his perception. To a point. She had felt, part of her did, that his giving her the blanket meant she'd never see him again. Han could not know, though, the finer print beneath her boldface fear; the subcategories of loss in which Leia Organa was now a specialist. Leia dreaded stumbling on all she treasured about Han in his absence. The large things were already well-known to her—bravery, wit; deep, savvy intelligence; stealthy kindness; oh, all right: beauty, sexiness!—but she knew, now, that the modest memories were what ambushed. Maimed. Like suddenly seeing in sunned leaves, days after the Death Star in a Yavin clearing, just the way light came through the tinted windows of her Aldera bedroom. The cushioned bay seat where she read with her pitten. Felling Leia to her knees in moss and bracken, the full force of knowing brought in on the vision: light, home, occupants, pets, gone forever. It was irrevocable. Home was over.
Enough. Leia yanked stiff mylarweave over her head. She must sleep; she would need all her patience for her appointment on another ship tomorrow morning. The Fortunas Rexi, sitting smugly next to the empty berth Leia had quietly requisitioned for the Falcon.
If Han never came back, Leia thought, closing her eyes against the notion she hadn't allowed herself to face by day, she would miss the delicious bedtime voice. That offended yelp when he barked his toe. The way she pleasantly woke, on and off, to the safety of Han breathing deep and slow in his own bunk, just above her, to her right. Edged in light, mouth gently agape, one arm flung above his rumpled head. Leia would miss the wanting, the wondering, the anticipation; the ache to get close enough to draw from Han all his commands, consents, supplications.
And that was the inventory of just one night.
Leia squeezed her lids tighter, the stinging pressure behind them a penitent offer to the universe. Need, not want. Let herself sigh it aloud for him where she couldn't for home, what she couldn't say before Han left, standing before him on the Falcon's decks. What Han couldn't call after her, either, as she strode down the ramp.
Please come back.
XXXXXXXXX
Prixati Rell was Corellian. This was not a detail a sophisticated diplomat forgot, yet Leia kept being surprised by it. He was so unlike Wedge and Han, who themselves were markedly different men yet shared a certain cultural shorthand. Indefinable, but there in the way Wedge automatically handed Han spiced ale from the many bottles of many worlds cobbled together by the Rogues. The way Han lent Wedge a CEC-issue wrench when most who asked got only mass-produced. And sometimes, in the last days on Yavin, just after their return from Coronet, Leia noticed Han speaking a couple words, with Wedge, in their shared language. A subtle shift, and different accents—but again, there.
Not there, with Prixati Rell. Wedge spoke affably enough with the recent recruit, but only in Basic, and with a kind of restraint. Han? It wasn't accurate to say Han avoided Prixati—Han would not change his own flight plan, once decided on, for just anyone—it was more, Leia thought, that he deleted him upon arrival. Han could do that, coolly remove unwanted beings from his worldsview. Another luxury, that, Leia sardonically thought as she endured Prixati's tour of the Fortunas Rexi. Maintaining Command outreach to enlistees was part of her personal mandate.
She wasn't sure quite why Han had taken intense dislike to Prixati Rell (Luke simply smiled enigmatically when she asked in a way that didn't betray too much interest). Class was large part of it, and Leia could understand that, after close-up view of the Coroneti gulf between poor and rich. It angered her too; it piqued now as Rell trailed his fingers over Selonian marble counters, not crass enough to speak expense, but illustrating it with his touch. All Leia could see, in the luster, was a gangly, lonely, hungry Estok boy in too-short trousers.
Yet Han did not resent her upbringing. Leia could feel he didn't. He marvelled at it, sometimes, yes, but that broke no rules, so did Luke. So did she! They all liked to hear about Chewie's tree house on Kashyyyk, too, or Luke and his endless womp-rat battles. Han's stories were all dated A.B.: After Bloodstripes.
What had Han said, in their shared hotel bed? People come up how they come up. Leia had the feeling Han would not mind, so much, a rich Coroneti who had truly defected from his wealth. Embraced the cause, though Han Solo judging that was a laugh.
It wasn't that Prixati was lazy. He volunteered for all manner of projects Leia was also on. He was decent at hand-to-hand combat, a good shot, a competent mechanic and pilot, quick with numbers in the briefings. But he seemed a visitor on Yavin, a supervisor even, engaging in the Rebellion as though it were a favor. He wore his class like a speeder feature, factored into his overall value. A bemused tolerance of Rebel privations: jungle weather, hard manual labor. Here on Hoth, though, Rell's attitude was curdling, Leia sensed: the novelty blowing off in savage windchill, flaking away in powdered rations.
Dilettante. That was the word, Leia heard it in her mother's gleeful voice, solving one of her crosswords puzzles. And that: the sense of hobby, where both Han and Leia saw only survival, for their own sometimes clashing reasons, was what provoked them both about Prixati Rell.
But Rell had enlisted, whatever his motives, and so he was Leia's responsibility to retain. He was also Corellian, that was fact. And so when in his glossy galley Prixati offered Corellian Breakfast tea, Leia didn't bother to prepare her tastebuds the way she used to before countless formal dinners, to avoid betraying dislike of a spice or flavor. She knew she liked the brew: Wedge had first hooked Leia on it, and Han, despite vocal hatred of plantwater, immediately stocked it on the Falcon then acted like it had always been there.
Leia almost pulled a face with her first sip. No, she did; she couldn't help it, the minute twist of her lips. She liked Wedge's tea very much, slightly creamy, slightly sweetened. And Leia loved Han's, he made it for her the way he made kaffe: brawny, scalding, black. Just right. Prixati Rell's version was viscous with honey, and only just-heated. Leia wasn't spoiled, yet she discovered that having taste set for one thing and receiving another provoked a childish but irresistible disappointment. Also, more personally, a missing of Han, all over again. One of those facets of him, lying in wait.
Of course Prixati noticed her reaction, brief though it was. He noticed everything about her, it seemed; his scrutiny made Leia jumpy, though she'd been galactically famous before she was conscious of her own name. Always compliments, then those expectant eyes, like he'd presented her with a costly trinket. Not for the first time, Prixati reminded Leia of petulant princes, and so she gave him the smile she gave them, fortified with courtesy. Cordiality. Distance.
"Have you...tried Corellian Breakfast tea, Your Highness?"
"I have."
Prixati waited, amused skepticism in his face.
"Perhaps I had a different brand." Leia said, calling on her training in tactfulness and tolerance. "Wedge and Han—"
"Allow me to guess. Builder's tea," Prixati winced and smiled at once, as though at the clumsy antics of children. "So strong you could stand a spoon up in it?"
"I enjoy—"
"Actually." Prixati began, and Leia nearly winced herself. Was this the way of all condescension? Not even found in the word, actually, but the speed with which certain beings seized it. The way they made of opinion a terminal statement. "Even most Corellians do not know this, and while I am sure you have sampled the custom of more worlds than I can imagine," Prixati observed an interval of measured respect, "preparing tea is an art, requiring objective methods."
Leia restrained her own flat declaration: art and objective methods were not congruent on any planet.
"I have followed the correct method: loose leaves. Never bags. Vashkan honey. Water warmed, not boiled. And not too hot!" He swallowed with holoadvert appreciation from his bone-fine cup. "Estok will set one's mouth afire."
Leia nearly choked on her polite second sip. You have no idea. She found herself conjuring it in the twining wisps of steam from Rell's ceramisteel teapot: the train. Han alive, whole, unshot; he came back, when she'd seen him lost and there had been only one way to express it, the overwhelming joy, relief. Need, want. In high-speed, deep, urgent kiss.
And hot. Hot, yes.
"You seem galaxies away, Princess."
No. Not this address, in Prixati Rell's voice. "Please. Call me Leia."
Acutely schooled in interaction, Leia caught Prixati's own responsive flicker at her distraction—or her correction in title: peevishness. It was the same look she glimpsed in the hand-etched 'fresher mirror when he'd shown her around the Customclass. She'd failed, obviously, to live up to some expectation, to be impressed. To, herself, adequately reflect.
Leia set her jaw. She had seen this before, so many times. It was her fame that did it, that made others grovel. And the grovelling entitled them to something of her, caused this troubling mixture of drive to please and possess when they met her. Then the inevitable resentment when Leia couldn't, wouldn't give it, the piece of herself that they wanted.
And something more, often, when the seeker was male.
Suddenly Leia wanted to plant her elbows on flawless marble like she did on a scratched dejarik table, leaning in with pure sabacc. Han's face blank but his green eyes dancing, delighted when she won, and now she won often. Yes, she wanted to call on Rell: what would he have Leia do? Fall to this polished larron-wood and weep? Did he think he was restoring it, what a Princess missed: lifestyle, refinement? Did he think this was what she had lost, what had been torn from her heart, what she mourned? When Leia was weighing what it all converted to, in the only market that mattered. Food. Bacta. Heaters. Blasters. Time.
"Forgive me," Prixati confided, then. A pause masquerading as hesitance, and Leia almost snorted. This was the disclaimer that exempted rudeness from consequence. "You look lovely, as always—"
What a fucking relief.
"But—again, if you'll permit me—"
With a droll arch of eyebrow, Leia inclined her hand.
"So tired. Exhausted! Rather too..." Prixati's pale blue eyes crawled her cheekbones. "Pallid, and—"
Leia saw Han again. Han on the Death Star; when, in her most regal, senatorial and military tones, she'd ordered him to do what he was told, he gaped in outrage, not abasement. He thought she should know who he was. Han in the Falcon's cockpit after their escape, radiant with self-satisfaction. Stripping off his gloves with the languor that Leia immediately pegged as contrived. Flirting in terrible, awkward fashion, so handsome everyone let him believe himself suave. Spending a year sallying into debate, banter, fights with Leia at a moment's notice. He went too far, sometimes. He'd said things that hurt. Han could put a sneer in Princess, he could be reckless with his tongue as he was with his blaster in the trash compactor.
But never competing this way, with Leia, mean and cheap. Even when Leia cut Han just as deep, and knew it. Never sought to seed doubts, in a female head, about attractiveness. Condemnation sheathed in concern, it fit the rules of engagement for duels between men and women. As though that was all Leia cared for, any women could care for, the vulnerability at the core of all female existence. Will I please him, does he want me, do I please his eyes?
"Would you accept an omelet? I have gizka eggs, chives—"
I'd rather accept another probe droid in my spinal column.
"No." Leia allowed herself the rare luxury of curtness. If Prixati Rell thought he was afforded critique of her body in turn for his service, if he wanted her to sit here admiring his largesse, he was welcome to desert. There would be no more effort from her. Cutting her eyes to the seastone chrono on the silkflimsied wall, Leia rose. A mercenary herself, when you pushed her. "I thank you for the tea."
"Oh, I meant no offense." Prixati stood too, startled, dismayed. "Please. I fear I've caused you harm—"
"Not at all, Captain Rell," Leia said. Her smile was severance. "You could never."
XXXXXXXXX
It was an interminable day, after that. Leia spent it preparing for the next morning's breakfast briefing. Not really a briefing—it was an informal meeting with refreshments, open to all Rebels, to be held in the recently hacked-out-of-a-cavern conference chamber. A High Command initiative to boost morale, frankly sagging since the move to Hoth. Leia had suggested alternatives—early morning was not the best time for positivity; though many delayed transports had come in while she was aboard the Rexi, (not the one she wanted, not that she was checking) food was not in sufficient supply to lay on a spread. Privately, Leia felt commissioning the Rogues to build a still from spare parts and ferment...permafrost was the best cure for flagging spirits.
Breakfast Briefing. She'd been at it for hours and now, ten at night—she'd just missed the third dinner shift she'd meant to catch—she trudged the large space, back and forth, setting up chairs and tables, electronics. A little delirious with fatigue and hunger, Leia kept thinking it in jaunty holocaster tones. Breaaakfast Briefing. It sounded like the title for one of those Coruscant pre-dawn shows, beaming automatically into her senatorial apartment as Leia blearily sipped her kaffe, bound her hair. The strangest mix of pep and nihilism: Welcome to Breakfast Briefing! Is your air filtration system trying to kill you?
Countless mornings Leia almost muttered it through the pins in her teeth, the rumored blueprint: Have you heard of the Death Star? But Leia Organa was no fool. She never found any bugs, but she never spoke secrets in that apartment.
She'd hoped to see Luke, here, setting up, but he'd clearly been assigned somewhere else. She missed his easy company; they'd become so close, understanding, humor, support, empathy fluent and quick between them. Telepathic, almost. The uncanny sense that she'd known him all her life, this farmboy from Tattooine who was never so green as he liked to seem. Different, so different than Han or...Han-and-her.
What? I can say that, Leia cut in on herself, on her knees, wrestling a starkraken made of cords. Han-and-I. It doesn't mean—there's me-and-Chewie, too. And I was just thinking about me-and-Luke—
Yes, the wire tentacles whispered back, waving around her face with the force of her effort. And you spend just as much time picturing the no times you kissed them.
Leia scowled. The cords were staying in their knot just to defy her. No one could undo snarls of wire like Han. Those long, strong, clever fingers just—
What was that? The cord-knot chuckled. Clever fingers? Remind me—where else have you pictured those? And when?
"Fuck off, knot," Leia hissed, her face growing hot.
"Pardon me?" Wedge Antilles bent over her, pressing his hand to his chest. "A Corellian obscenity, Your Highness? I'm frankly shocked."
"Fuck off, Antilles," Leia said smartly back, and Wedge laughed as he swapped her datapad, neglected across the room, for the mouthy knot.
"I'll take over here. Just coming on-shift, and you were off two hours ago." Wedge shrugged, inclined the datapad in her hands. "Anyway. Hear you're wanted elsewhere."
Leia creased her brow in confusion. Glancing at her screen, she missed the smile Wedge tucked into his insulated collar. She felt all the breath, held for weeks, swell her chest when she read the message buzzing and rattling from her fingers. Fingers squeezed her heart. Painful, ecstatic, cold and hot at once.
No picture, just typical blunt text.
Hey Princess. I'm back.
She was off, trying not to run, so fast she missed something else: Wedge Antilles observing as he murdered the knot, "Eh, it's probably nyiad, too."
