Part Two:
It was the most awkward flight Leia had ever experienced on the Millennium Falcon. That included her first trip, in which she'd been recently liberated from a garbage compactor and had insulted all her rescuers in the space of thirty minutes.
Walking carpet, she'd said. Leia shook her head. She still felt terrible about that particular jab.
Despite her anger and the emotional disassociation she'd felt during the escape from the Death Star, she'd recognized the forced half-geniality that permeated every corner of the ship on that flight. Each conversation she'd had was uncomfortable for a host of different reasons: simmering anger from Han, devastation from Luke and fierce self-denial from Leia. A perfect storm of emotional outbursts. It'd been awful on her raw nerves; by that point the effect of her adrenaline had faded. And though she'd tried to spit fire, her heart had been shattered. Even her anger had felt hollow.
The trip to Eretraa had proven worse in some ways. Han was quiet and Chewbacca even more so. They'd run their start-up sequence in near silence, only communicating with each other for important system checks. Gone was the familiar banter, the friendly potshot. The crew of the Falcon operated like droids, systematic and single-minded. What wasn't being said could have filled the Falcon's main hold three times over.
Strapped into the navigator's chair with Luke in the seat next to her, Leia felt at first thankful and then increasingly uncomfortable as she realized what they were projecting. Luke and Chewie seemed to be reacting to Han's guilt, doubling it and feeding it back to him in droves. Han's shoulders were curved inward and his eyes never quite reached her face.
Part of her—the ugliest, nastiest part—liked that Han Solo reacted so strongly to the awful things he had said the previous morning. It was surprising. He had so much confidence, so much bravado, that she would have expected his embarrassment to manifest in anger. His awkwardness was fascinating, one of the most genuine emotional responses she'd ever seen from him.
He should be embarrassed. Anyone with a vague sense of decency would be, too. His words had been a terrible, crude, sexist way of objectifying her, sexualizing her, ripping her away from her position in the Alliance and debasing her. There was no redemption or forgiveness for that moment and she would not give absolution for it.
It wasn't the first time she'd overheard such blatantly offensive sentiments in her life, and she'd learned to feel the hurt and then move on. She'd watched her mother do the same, and the other female Imperial senators, too. Even Mon Mothma had had a similar incident last year as she toured an Alliance base. Honestly, she'd be hard-pressed to find a woman who hadn't learned the art of outrage/move on. It wasn't a part of their DNA but definitely part of their education.
What was interesting was that Han did not seem to have done the same. She could cut the shame in the air with a knife. His response was …. Gratifying. Powerful. She appreciated it for its terrible purity, its horrified honesty. She'd suppressed so much of her own emotional responses in recent history that his discomfort was endearing.
Leia might have relieved him of its weight had she been a better person. But she wasn't. The sting of hearing those words from him hadn't been soothed yet. In time, perhaps. For now, the dam was still up.
"When will we arrive?" she asked.
Han turned his head but didn't make eye contact with her. "Three hours, give or take."
"Why give or take?" Luke asked.
"We're running through a tough area," Han answered. "The Spinal Arm has a few hot spots. We should avoid them, but it's not a given."
Leia pursed her lips. "Which hot spots? I've heard no intel about Imperials in the Spinal Arm."
Chewie grumbled, his low growls sounding accusatory. Leia watched the Wookiee shake his head and then turned her attention back to Han.
"Not Imperials," the smuggler said.
He didn't expound on his answer and Leia let it lie despite her confusion. She assumed he meant pirates—while she hadn't heard of Imperials in the Arm, it was a well-known haven for criminals—and turned back to Luke.
"Caf?" she asked, unlatching her safety harness.
Luke nodded and followed her out of the cockpit hatch without another word to their pilots. Leia pressed her hand into the braid snaking down her shoulder and adjusted her tunic. The bright blue of the shirt-dress billowed around her, drowning her in fabric but leaving her legs exposed to the chill of interstellar travel. Given the choice, she would have worn her typical form-fitting, Alliance-issue fatigues but this mission required a delicate cultural touch.
The corridor opened into the galley, bright lights dimmed to a more conservative glow, and Leia walked straight to the caf machine. Behind her Luke sat at the holochess table, easing back into a relaxed pose and watching her fill two mugs.
"Could you bring some sweetener?" he asked, innocent blue eyes wide.
Leia shook her head, though the requested container was already in her hand. "Disgusting," she said without looking at him, shaking the sweetener in her fist. "Caf is supposed to be hot and bitter. You're missing the point by adding this."
"Give me a break. We didn't have caf on Tatooine," Luke said.
She gave him an odd look as she rounded the corner, mugs in hand and the container of sweetener tucked in her elbow. "Too hot?" she guessed.
"Wasted water," Luke said. "You don't drink dehydrating liquids in a desert."
Leia hummed and sat opposite him, pushing a mug and the sweetener across the table. "Then be my guest. Ruin your caf all you want."
Luke grinned, a pure, happy look as he poured an indecent amount of sweetener into his caf. Leia scowled but lifted her own mug to her lips, watching the shameful display in front of her. Her mug was yellow and a little broken: smaller than Luke's, smaller than any of the rest of the mugs aboard the Falcon. It had a chip on one side that she avoided; she didn't know how her mug had sustained such an injury but she thought it gave it character, a history. Like a relic from a myth or a family heirloom.
Han had given it to her last year. He'd told her someone's assigned mug should resemble their personality. She'd been delighted in his choice: small, bright and slightly damaged. It'd been a remarkably accurate representation and though she knew anyone else might be offended, she'd been pleased and had hugged him quickly in gratitude.
She paused and lifted her lips from the mug, then blinked and took another sip.
"About this mission," Luke began.
She nodded and set her mug down. "You want to know what you're doing?"
"No," he said, "I know what I'm doing. I'd like to know how to not get myself killed while doing it."
She waved a hand. "Oh, that's simple."
Luke just waited, a look of challenge on his face. She stared back, an eyebrow raised, watching as he brought his mug to his lips and, unblinking, took another sip. Leia wrinkled her nose and broke eye contact, laughing softly.
Immensely pleased with himself, Luke saluted her with his mug. "And so?"
Leia leaned back in her seat, still chuckling. "The Alliance intelligence cell is expecting you. Just avoid the stormtroopers and you'll be fine."
She was being flippant, presenting Luke's directive as a simple first-contact mission with an Alliance spy cell. Simple was not the word Dodonna had used. Eretraa was sparsely populated but those that were there were Imperial loyalists and congregated in the planet's largest city, Porte. What the city lacked in sophistication they made up for in communication-wire production: a speciality that kept the planet from falling out of Imperial favor. The planet supplied wire for nearly the entire fleet.
But Eretraa also had a small, dedicated Alliance intelligence-gathering network. The more loyal a planet was to the Empire, the more likely an Alliance cell existed there, and this one had been more fruitful than most. Trafficking in communication frequencies afforded by the newest technology available on Eretraa, the cell had sent a distress signal three days ago, claiming they needed help relocating to a more secure location.
Leia was the primary contact in the mission, experienced with this particular cell and the logistics in intelligence protocol. But Eretraa's strict patriarchy and deep misogyny prevented her from roaming around at night in Porte. Frustrated and angry, Leia had recruited Luke to be her proxy for the first contact and their scout. Once he found a reliable route into the cell, she would go and help set up the new network.
"How large is the Imperial presence there?" Luke asked.
"Not large," she said, dismissive. "A division. You'll be fine."
Luke's mouth gaped. "A division? That's a thousand soldiers, Leia."
"You'll be fine," she repeated, taking a sip of her caf. "Establish contact, find me a route in and then come back and keep Han from doing anything stupid. Easy."
"That last one might be the hardest part," he said with a rueful grin. "Are you going to let him off the hook before I go out on my not-suicidal mission?"
Leia eyed Luke over the lip of her mug, mouth hidden. He stared back, wonderfully innocent and devious all at once. She cut her eyes to the side and set down her mug, aware that Luke was watching her every move, collecting her responses.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she answered after a beat.
"Oh, c'mon," Luke said, rolling his eyes. "You're torturing him. He didn't mean it."
"Didn't mean what? The part about wanting to have sex with me? Or the part about everyone else wanting to have sex with with me?"
Wanting to have sex with me, Leia thought. What an odd re-phrasing. He'd said fuck. But saying that word in front of Luke felt low, felt too base, even though he'd been there to hear the original sentiment straight from Han's lips.
Her heart twinged. She ignored it.
"Leia," Luke said, softer now. Gentle. Good, kind Luke. "Han was reacting to something I said and the guys were all over him. I'm sure if you talked to him, he could explain—"
"I have no intention of letting him explain," she interrupted.
"No, I know. But Han wasn't being… He wouldn't hurt you."
Leia nodded. "I know that. That's not the problem."
Luke closed his mouth and tilted his head in question.
Leia sighed and tried to find the words she wanted. "Luke, I've done a great deal in my life to be taken seriously. And I would argue that it's taken me more time and more energy than any of the men I've worked with simply because I'm a woman."
He dropped his eyes.
She continued, softening her tone. "And no matter how much I do, I can never escape the men who only see me as a sexual object. And it's worse when the people I trust underscore those same views. I'm used to it. I can handle it. But it never stops being hurtful."
"So it's not the words themselves?" Luke asked, looking up. "Its because Han said them?"
Leia didn't react. She took another sip of her caf and watched Luke's eyes. They moved side to side, as if he were reading. Unfocused, his gaze slipped to the hull behind her shoulder. She sat back and let him absorb his own thoughts while the edge of terror creeped into her calm. Surely she'd been better at hiding her pain than that? Of course she had; she was no novice to this.
Leia shook her head and took another sip of her caf.
"I want to ask you something but I'm a little scared you'll misinterpret it," he said, breaking the pregnant pause.
Leia leaned back, ran one thumb over the other and waited, offering no guarantees.
Luke took a breath. "Is it possible that you might have feelings for Han? And that's why it bothers you so much?"
She froze. The durasteel in her spine went rigid, the ice in her veins crystallized, her lungs seized.
He knew.
In her quieter moments, nestled into herself and with all her wants and fears enwrapping her like a shroud, Leia could acknowledge that, yes, she had feelings for Han Solo. Fiery, obsessive, possessive feelings. Feelings that sat in the lowest part of her stomach and raged at her better nature, sending gaping holes up through her body and into her chest.
Dangerous feelings. Treacherous feelings.
Rationality didn't intrude in that space. She was sensation and desire and nothing else. And to that Leia—the dim, dark one of selfishness and gross freedom—the spectre of Han loomed large. His hands, the rippled skin of his arms. The long expanse of his neck that she wanted to taste. The rolling swagger in his hips as he walked away from her, engendering terrible mysteries about thrusts and sweat and the power of his lips. The hoarse depths of his voice: what could she make him say? What beautiful sound could she elicit, could she feel with her mouth pressed against his throat?
Those feelings were animalistic, her lowest consciousness. She understood them, had experienced them before. Human nature, hormones and the product of her species' desperate cling to survival. Nothing to fear.
But that didn't explain the most horrible of realities; when Han looked at her, smiled at her, talked to her in a calm, friendly voice, the reaction reversed itself. Pangs of longing struck the inner walls of her lungs and shot down to her belly. That was not a primal genetic imperative. That was connection. Fierce, consuming attraction to his mind, his perspective. Admiration for his strength of spirit. A nettling fixation to understand his history, his personality, the sharp edges of his psyche and the softer lines beneath them.
And if her sexual attraction to Han was dangerous, these feelings were fatal.
"What makes you ask that?" she replied. Repress. Move on. Hide.
Luke shrugged. "I don't know. I just—"
Heavy footfalls echoed around the area and Luke stopped mid-sentence as Han stepped into view, wiping his hands on his pants. His hair, while always mussed, was particularly insubordinate today, tufts sticking up at the crown of his head and near his temples.
"We're clear," he said. "We'll reach Eretraa in three hours."
Leia nodded, tipped the rest of her caf into her mouth and then left the hold without a word to either Luke or Han.
XXX
It took him longer than she expected to seek her out. She sat on a cot in the crew cabin, eyes on her datapad, craving solitude and a modicum of personal space. On this freighter both were a rare commodity and she knew someone would eventually interrupt her.
Leia set down the datapad and sighed. She had a hunch that Han would try and defuse some of the awkwardness between them before they landed. Despite his posturing, he'd demonstrated a clear head in times of stress and nothing endangered a mission faster than a lack of trust. They had a long history of terrifically compromised missions together and she knew he would never purposely put her or Luke in harm's way. If he had ever harbored a secret desire to see her hurt or killed, it would have happened already. Her physical safety was guaranteed.
She swallowed, the rising tide of hurt threatening to overwhelm her.
Leia trusted Han with her life with complete conviction and trust. There was no doubt that he would do anything to ensure her safety. The entire galaxy was filled with unknown questions but she would confidently stake her life and reputation on Han's protection. He fulfilled a very specific purpose and she would be grateful for his assistance. That was it.
A traitorous tightening of her stomach. You lie to yourself, Leia, she thought.
"Hey."
She looked up to the open hatch where Han stood, hands on his hips and a pinched look on his face. His hair fell into his eyes and he seemed to be forcing himself to stand still. Untapped energy ran under his skin, volatile but restrained by sheer force of will.
"Hello," she answered. "Can I help you?"
Oh, but her tone was perfect. Equally cold and weighted: consonants clipped, steady and true.
"I wanted to talk to you," he said.
She regarded him for a moment, already knowing she would let him speak if he wanted but tempted to let the tension eat him up a while longer. She nodded slowly and he walked through the hatch until he stood above her, towering. She held his eye and he seemed to realize that his position wasn't right, a little too intimidating or forceful and totally inappropriate for the subject he was there to discuss with her. Pressing his lips together, he sat too far away, nearly off the end of the cot, and put his elbows on his knees.
"About yesterday," he said. He turned his head to look at her but didn't say anything more.
She waited for him to continue, silence twisting between them like a live wire. When he didn't continue, she crossed her legs and said, "Yes?"
He clasped his hands between his knees. "I think I owe you an apology. What you heard wasn't, uh, pretty. Or good. Or whatever."
She hummed but didn't give him any other signals. He was a smart man; he needed to figure this out on his own. Her job was to present the right facade, and she could do that expertly.
"Look," he said, opening his hands and starting to gesture in wide, unnecessary movements, like he needed something to distract her from what he was saying. "That was shit-talking, that's all. The kind of thing guys say when they're around other guys. And you snuck up on us and didn't let me explain—"
"I thought this was an apology?" she interrupted, gritting her teeth against a ready diatribe about what human male shit-talking could do. As far as she was concerned, civilized adult men should know better. Even out of earshot. Even while drunk. Period.
He groaned. "You aren't making it any easier on me."
On him? Leia wanted to laugh. What about the past day had been hard on him? Was it terribly difficult to be free and sarcastic and irreverent? Was it so difficult to be adored by males and females alike, to walk around base as if all eyes were on him all the time? To have names of people on a list to fuck while Leia's own had only one name, underlined four times and desperate with silent longing?
"Me? What did I do?"
He gestured again, left hand flying in her direction. "You're being …. You."
Leia furrowed her brow. "And who would you like me to be, Captain? What would make this easier for you?"
She tried to keep the mocking tone out of her voice but failed miserably.
"See, that's what I mean! I'm trying to be nice here and all you do is give me hell for it."
She scoffed. "Are you being nice? Or are you trying to placate your own guilt?"
He exhaled and tilted his head to glare at the ceiling. "God damn it, you're impossible. I didn't mean it."
Leia's chill melted with devastating force, the dam breaking in one swift rush. Blood sang in her veins and she wondered why she even bothered to be sensible with this man. I didn't mean it was emblazoned on her mind like a brand. Fury swelled, hot and angry and completely out of her control.
"I'm impossible? You come in here to apologize for an awful thing you said and you have yet to acknowledge that you were wrong," she said, voice rising. "You've offered no apology, no regret. There is nothing in what you've said to tell me that you understand why you should apologize."
"Obviously it was wrong!" he said. The volume of his voice ticked up a notch. "I didn't think I needed to spell it out for you."
Immediate fire. Flames as high as the Falcon, all-consuming, and Leia knew she was about to be burned alive. The dim desire in her heart inflamed as if torched: swift, boundless power outside of her careful mask. She didn't understand what she was feeling or how she was capable of such utter hatred for a person. Weren't her emotions destroyed with Alderaan? Wasn't she ice?
But no. There was no moving on from this. Passionate fury, unfurled heat, unbridled life sprung around her in pinpoints of electricity and for the hundredth time Leia wondered how the hell an empty shell of a woman could feel hurt and anger so very deeply.
"Apologizing is not spelling it out for me," she fired back. "Why was it wrong, Han? Do you even know?"
"Because I don't want to fuck you, Leia! It was a stupid challenge and a stupid comment. Are you happy?"
Instant pain spiderwebbed through her chest. Cracks in the ice, shards in her heart. She blinked, startled by the depth of her reaction, before carefully resuming her normal repression techniques.
His voice was so loud that it echoed around the cabin, from the light banks above their heads to the hulls and the deck beneath their feet. Leia's breath caught, a terrible hitch in her chest, as her eyes took in Han's stricken expression. He seemed nearly as dumbfounded at his outburst as she felt. The flames felt so real, encircling them, choking the air with smoke. Her eyes burned.
Again: silence. And his eyes, wide and frozen as she watched them. And his hand, still splayed on the cot next to his thigh. And his chest, rising and falling with quick breaths.
It was easier to look at him than it was to understand this mix of horror and hurt that ran through her body without her consent, sneaking past her emotional guardrails and ambushing her pending vulnerability. Something vile was erupting under her skin from the center of her rib cage. Clawing through her organs, swimming through her bloodstream. Hurt? Betrayal? Some devious mix of the two, insidious and poisonous?
What did you expect? The voice in her ears was lower, darker than the one that came from her mouth. This is what happens when you let yourself feel.
Repress. Move on. Hide.
"Well, that's a relief," she said. "We're on the same page."
Han closed his eyes and the last shred of horror on his face dropped like an anvil. When she next saw the green they were cold, confident, proud. "Great," he spat.
"Good," she agreed.
He nodded once, stood and walked out the hatch without another word, leaving Leia unfathomably hurt and without a shred of understanding why.
She pressed her lips together and looked blankly at the hull in front of her. She simmered, smoldered, the fire changing shape. More subtle now, quieter. Contained, maybe. She didn't understand and didn't have the fortitude to try.
Her palm came up to a spot on her chest, between her lungs, where a small knot of rejection tightened into a hard ball. The tunic felt cool against her fingertips, but beneath it her heart was pounding. Loud and insistent.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luke peek around the hatch and then walk to her side, sitting so close to her that her bare thigh touched the fabric of his pants. Leia focused on absorbing the energy Luke brought, the lightness of being he projected. Anger didn't deserve a place at the table with Luke Skywalker.
If Han and she had fire between them, Luke brought water. Peace. Tranquility. Love.
"I heard yelling," he explained.
She nodded and turned her head to squint at him. "Apparently it's my fault that he's an idiot."
Luke blew out his breath. "Makes you wonder why you care, huh?"
Leia watched Luke's eyes: the kindness, the gentleness, the good. He was exactly the man he presented himself to be. Compassionate, brave, loving. No hidden motives, no aggressive masks. An uncomplicated heart with no scars, no blemishes. The exact opposite of his friend, the unpredictable smuggler of a thousand faces.
She knew she was somewhere in the middle, that she had her own masks, her own blemishes. Like the mug Han had given her, she was fundamentally broken. If they were a spectrum, Luke would be on one side and Han on the other, and Leia would be somewhere in the middle, wobbling violently side to side and caught in a fight between the light and the dark.
A swell of gratitude overtook her and she leaned into Luke's shoulder, resting her weight onto his as he wrapped an arm around her. Luke extinguished the fire, calm and sure, and Leia was left with one awful truth.
"You were right," she whispered. "I have feelings for him."
Luke sighed and nodded against her temple. And Leia began to settle into a fundamental truth that she hadn't let herself confront before this very moment: what she felt for Han Solo was not simple attraction. It never had been. Fire didn't burn without a flame; she could no longer pretend that it did. She hadn't smothered the embers fast enough and now here she was, unable to move on.
What a colossal mistake you've made, she thought helplessly. What a complete and utter mistake.