The moment they took their leave of Rieekan, a chill settled into Leia's bones that had nothing to do with the sub-zero temperatures. There was a certain irrational quality to the fact that she only felt relief when she moved away from the man who had been her best friend since childhood. It could not be denied, though, that they had been reunited as completely different people.
The man who had been one of Bail's most trusted guards would have never sent her to kill a man, but it was entirely possible that the man who had been that Rieekan had died with Alderaan. Maybe she had simply turned a blind eye to that fact because she had desperately needed the familiar when everything she had known had been obliterated.
Certainly, she had changed in the three years since the Destruction, but she had made a serious mistake in trusting him as she had trusted the Rieekan who protected the Royal Family. The fact that she had made such a drastic error in judgment was almost as terrifying as the truth that he had concealed from her.
"You doing all right?"
She shook her head, not answering Han's question. He let his left arm snake around her waist, but did not draw her close until she allowed herself to relax against him. It was a conciliatory gesture, however, so she could avoid any further questions about her emotional state.
Naturally, since it was Han, he wouldn't take the hint. He would ask too many questions and eventually, because he would ask the same questions over and over again, she would give him the answers that he needed to hear.
"Rieekan has me bunking with the Rogues," Luke observed.
"You are their leader," Leia reminded, "even if it's been a couple of weeks since you last saw them."
She could see his slight grimace in her peripheral vision, but by the time she turned to look at him, he'd replaced it with a more familiar grin. It was, however, a forced gesture.
"Funny," he said flatly. "Feels like it's been years."
"Decades?" Han suggested.
"Exactly," they chorused.
"It feels like a completely different lifetime," Leia admitted.
She glanced down at the datapad's screen, memorizing the unit designator for her new quarters. "I'm just off the South passage," Leia observed. "Apparently, Rieekan wants me within arm's reach."
"That's nothing unusual," Han countered. "Aren't you usually close to the command center?"
She shook her head. "This is different," she insisted. "The last time Rieekan got this…overprotective, I had just returned from the Death Star."
"He worries about you," Luke observed. "Maybe this is his way…"
"Don't defend him on this," Leia snapped. "For all we know, he's expecting me to have a nervous breakdown by the time I have my first duty shift."
Han's grip tightened on her waist. "Maybe you should have one," he suggested. "It would liven things up around here."
She shrugged. "I thought that was your job."
Any response was forestalled by their arrival at her door. A warm blast of air from beneath the door itself suggested that Rieekan had possessed some kind of foresight when assigning the rooms. For all his cruelty, he had at least given her climate control enough to prevent frostbite.
"I think I'll raid the kitchens," Han said, releasing her waist and stepping back. "Luke, help her get settled in."
Leia ordinarily would have argued that she didn't need a babysitter, but held her tongue. They had determined to be honest with each other in this enterprise and denying the fact that they were all shaken at this point would be breaking the rules.
"Thanks," she responded instead, swiping her passkey through the reader.
The room was sparsely furnished as was always the case in an outlaw movement that needed to pay more for ship maintenance than creature comforts. A bed was shoved against one wall, perpendicular to a makeshift desk that was made of four packing crates and a spare section of bulkhead. The storage unit was smaller than she had thought possible, but there were storage drawers under the bed as well.
"Want to unpack?" Luke asked, settling into the desk chair as she set down her bags.
"Can't think that hard right now," Leia rejoined. "I need something to wear to bed and a hot shower at some point, but other than that, I just need to…"
"Breathe?" he guessed.
She managed to laugh as she sank onto the bed. "Yeah," she sighed, "breathing would help."
"We all need to breathe easier," he commented. "We're going to worry ourselves to death at this rate."
"Except for Han," she retorted. "He doesn't seem to worry about anything."
He gave her a knowing look, but didn't respond to that directly. "We seem to be doing it the most," he observed.
Leia nodded thoughtfully, then offered a slight smile. "Must be a Skywalker thing."
It was the first time since leaving Alderaan that she had acknowledged what they had learned there. She could have mentioned the other aspect of the Skywalker story, but she had thought too much about it since the moment that she had first heard it. Putting it out on the table would only exacerbate the situation.
"I thought," she continued, "that things would be easier once we were on familiar ground."
"They aren't?"
She shook her head. "I feel more troubled than ever," she confessed, "and that's saying a lot."
His mouth stretched slightly in an attempt to smile, but he only nodded in agreement. "It's because this isn't familiar ground," he explained. "It looks exactly the way you expect it to and all the familiar faces are here, but everything's changed."
Her nod matched his. "But we have to treat it as if it's all the same," she reminded.
"Not everything."
A knock sounded at the door and Luke crossed the room to let Han in. There wasn't much in the way of real food, of course, but it was at least edible if not palatable.
"Thanks," Leia reiterated, standing to unload one of the trays from his arms. "No problems getting in?"
"I knew the guards on duty," he said dismissively. "What's the topic of conversation?"
"Adaptation," Leia stated.
"The whole playing dumb thing?" he postulated.
"Exactly," Leia confirmed.
"Well," he grunted, setting one of the other trays on the desk and moving to sit on the bed next to her, "here's a change of topic: how exactly are we going to do what we came back for?"
"I was hoping you'd have an idea," Luke said to Leia.
"I'm not the Jedi," she retorted. "If you need some strategy on how to ambush him or a diplomatic envoy who won't hesitate to pull out a blaster when necessary, I'm your woman. I just have no experience with thinking under the influence of the Force."
"Not that you're aware of," he commented. "I think you've got more experience than you'll ever realize."
It was the same sort of thing that Obi-Wan had alleged after her discovery of her powers in the first place, but Leia shook her head.
"Either way," she commented, "I can't see our path here."
"And you could in the past?" he challenged.
Leia smiled slightly as she reached over to squeeze his arm. "I left that to you, brother dearest."
He finally grinned, but Han waved a hand to catch their attention. "Next point," he interrupted. "How careful should you guys be about the whole family ties thing?"
Luke shrugged. "In a perfect galaxy, we wouldn't have to be careful."
"Yes," Leia agreed, "but in this imperfect galaxy, Vader has been hunting you down for three years. Moreover, there's a good chance that we know why."
"But he doesn't know that you're a Skywalker," Han informed Leia. "At least that we know of."
She didn't want to contemplate the idea that he might have willingly performed her torture even if he knew that she was his daughter. Then again, it might not have made a difference.
She did not speak of that, however, only nodded in agreement. "On the one hand, he might go after me if he knew."
"On the other," Han retorted, motioning with his hands and raising a brow significantly, "he might go after you if he knew."
There was something in that statement that made her want to be violently ill, but Han was saying it as if it was the only logical option. Given the fact that he usually had the planning skills of a drunk Gamorrean, it was undeniably a bad plan. Only Han Solo, the man who would willingly taunt a rancor if he had the chance, would think that drawing the Dark Lord's attention could end well.
"Bait," she guessed. "Why do I always end up bait?"
"Because you're usually the one to get yourself out of trouble," Luke explained. "If we were bait, we'd be pretty doomed."
"Besides," Han soothed, sending a wink in her direction, "you're such a beautiful bait."
She shook her head emphatically. "I'm not willing to beautifully put the rest of the Alliance at risk, no matter what good it would do."
"Me either," Luke agreed.
For a long moment, she refrained from speaking. Her eyes burned both with frustration and exhaustion, but she managed to keep her gaze fixed on her hands. Apparently, Han and Luke were looking to follow her lead at the moment. That was at least a good sign.
"All right," she said at last. "I can't think about this any more tonight and we won't win or lose this battle by getting a night's sleep."
"I thought you said sleep was for mortals," Han teased.
She could barely remember the person who had said that, much less why she had ever believed it. She wanted to give him a smile for his efforts, but she could only manage to turn a look on him that was probably as haunted as she felt.
"I let myself become much more vulnerable since then," she confessed.
Han's arm slid around her waist and she let it stay there, a comforting weight against her ribs. "I never said that was a bad thing," he assured her.
"I don't think I could have cared if you did," she rejoined wearily.
"Anyway," he continued, "we all need a break from thinking about this sort of thing."
Luke nodded in approval. "My pilots will want to publicly lynch me for leaving them behind while I went off on another one of my adventures," he commented. "I'd better give them an early start so I can recover by tomorrow."
Leia pushed to her feet and followed him to the door, where he clasped her in a firm embrace and turned to go. As if caught by a second thought, he turned back to face her, a strange look on his face.
"It's going to be all right," he said cryptically. "You know that, right?"
Leia finally managed a wan smile, leaning against the doorjamb. "As long as you don't expect me to know what 'it' is, I'll believe it."
His mouth twitched, but he shrugged. "We'll hammer out the details tomorrow," he promised.
Leia turned back to Han as Luke disappeared down the corridor. He was watching her with an expression that was just as curious as Luke's.
"Are you sure you're..."
"What I am is ready to discipline the next person who asks me that," Leia said with only partially mock severity.
He grinned, pushing to his feet. "You're acting like yourself again," he reasoned. "I think you'll be just fine given some time."
Leia nodded once in confirmation. "I'm glad one of you realizes that."
"Well," he reminded in a quietly conspiratorial voice, "you've been treating your oldest friend as an enemy of state. It had us all worried."
"We have too much to worry about to keep paying attention to what any of us are feeling about the matter," she insisted. "If you can find a way to break the news to my brother, I'll be forever grateful."
He leaned in, letting his lips touch her cheek for just a moment before he pulled back and dipped his head in deference. "I'll work on that."