Stop Motion
Chapter 4: Dependent
by Amy L Hull
Written for alderannianprincess in the Han/Leia Summer Secret Santa Challenge 2017.
ooo
The wall was hard against her back and legs. Leia tried to press herself farther back into the corner, but her feet dangled above the floor. She was trapped.
Nowhere to go. No way to get there.
The IT-O droid hummed forward. Her breathing grew rapid and ragged. She reached up to push at the hovering sphere, but her hands were slammed against the bulkhead and pinned in place.
No one had touched her. The Death Star Guards maintained their stance and fixed stare. Vader loomed with his armor and dark cape, one arm reaching ever-so-slightly in her direction. No one was touching her. But she couldn't move. Not her arms, hands, legs, head. Every inch of her was pressed against the wall and bunk. She could barely expand her chest to breathe.
The IT-O moved toward her and back, toward her and back. Pain burned through every nerve as it injected her in a dozen locations.
Vader's words boomed and echoed as her sense of time stretched and distorted. We will discuss the location of your rebel base. Rebel base. Discuss location. Rebel base.
Her muscles cramped, calves contracting to point her feet, abdomen and back at war, shoulders and neck pinching.
It stole her breath away.
Vader's demands and threats continued on repeat.
He would not wear her down. She would not give in. She would not betray. She turned into her mind, tucking herself away from the onslaught-
She jerked awake, gasping for breath.
All her muscles were contracting, just as they had under interrogation.
Breathe, Leia, she told herself, taking measured, deliberate breaths to distance herself from this pain.
She'd forgotten the exact feeling of turning inside, reaching away from her body. It had helped then. She turned now, both inward and outward.
There was a blue swirl, the turn of a galaxy, that reached back and enveloped her, lifting, supporting her, and suffusing her with peace. Even as it rotated, it was still.
Luke's voice echoed. In time, you'll learn to use it as I have.
Leia blinked. Or, perhaps more accurately, Leia-as-she-perceived herself blinked. This was the Force. It had to be. It was in her and around her. She could see the patterns of the stars of the galaxy, the turn of the planets, the distance between them, and the orbit of electrons as they held atoms together into the cells that made up every piece of matter.
In wonder, she found she could slow the movement, observe it more closely. She turned her imagined wrist, as she would to rotate the perspective on a hologram, and the image shifted. Like the image on a datapad, she could enlarge or shrink, zoom in or out, and alter the perspective. She could speed up the rate of energy transfer.
She looked into the quadrant where she and Han were flying, and could make out the Falcon. She zoomed in and in and in on Arkanis, finding its system, its moons, its primary continent, its capital. The pier from which she and Han had fled now held the chief emissary to the Alliance and an unfamiliar type of ship. The emissary nodded, and a heavily armored being stepped into the ship and lifted off.
The Elder House of Arkanis was sending an assassin. After them. And she couldn't fight.
Leia pulled back, heated through as if she'd been touched by the ship's engines. Arkanis was tinged red in her view. The whole galaxy was tinged red.
A new image superimposed itself over the galaxy. Lava ran hot, and above it, two blue lightsabers clashed at impossible speeds. The crackling plasma sizzled as two blond humans faced off in an impasse. One leapt away and they faced one another, sabers down. They stood, impossibly, on mining droids above the molten river.
The dark-clad man's saber turned red, and he morphed into Darth Vader, the other into General Kenobi, and they were as they had been on the Death Star. General Kenobi fell. Luke screamed. Lord Vader marched forward and swung, then he and Luke were dueling, as laughter reached around them and her.
If you will not turn to the dark side, perhaps she will.
I'll never join you!
Rage seared through her. Vader was at her back and she pushed him away. He fell from the deck of the Death Star into the river of lava, where he skittered like a stone skipped on a lake. Leia turned to the starscape out the viewport, seeing that she was suspended, bare in space just as Alderaan exploded around her.
Vader's deep voice echoed with that chilling laughter from before. Tell your sister I was right.
She recoiled as if burned. Every star, system, and fragment of Alderaan turned brown and collapsed around her like so much suspended dust caught by gravity.
She collapsed just as hard back into her own body, shaking and cold. She hurt. Everywhere.
Tears leaked back into her temples and, almost before she knew she was crying, her throat tightened as harshly as her spasming muscles.
Her face burned as if flash-scorched. As if she'd been there in her...dream? Vision? There in the Force, where there was laughter and Darth Vader, her father, declaring that he could win her to the Dark Side. Sobs tightened her chest, closed her throat. Last time she'd cried was Endor, and before that...she couldn't even remember. And now she couldn't breathe, couldn't stop crying, could barely cough. Every alarm on the med capsule was beeping at full volume.
"Leia!"
Han pulled her unceremoniously upright, sat, and leaned her back against him. He punched at the alarms and silenced them.
"I'm so sorry. Didn't want you to wake up alone. So sorry."
She could not hear the words, but he kept murmuring into her hair. She swallowed, tried to slow her breathing, tried to wipe her face, but her arms hung, aching, heavy, and limp, and she only sobbed and coughed. He pressed a cool cloth from the med shelf against her forehead, wiped her nose under the oxygen mask, dabbed at her cheeks, then back to her forehead. Over and over, he tended her, all the while talking away.
Finally her breaths caught less raggedly, the coughing subsided, and his nonsense started sounding like words.
"-route seems clear. Sub-light is, well you remember. The trip to Bespin was almost three standard months, but this one looks to be shorter. Checked the long-range scanners as well. Still no sign they've got anyone on our tail-"
"They do."
"-so that's one less thing to worry- What?"
"Someone's following us."
"Why do you say that?"
Leia blinked. She saw it again, the emissary seeing a strange ship off. "I...just know. I saw it."
"Is this some kind of-"
"I had this same feeling on the way to Bespin. This...dread. I didn't know then what it was."
Han cleared his throat. "All right. If you know, you know." He pressed the cloth to her face again.
Her skin felt tight, but she smiled...or tried to. Her chin puckered. "Han, how are we going to do this? I mean, three or four weeks?" She blew against the air flow. She would not lose her composure again. "You can't do everything for me and fly the ship."
"I can." He kissed her hand. "And I will."
"We should have let Chewie come."
"You and I both know those snobby elders tend to be specist, and Chewie was helping the Ewoks resupply after the assault on the Imperial outpost on the other side of the moon."
"You can't fly the Falcon and carry me all over the ship."
"Sure I can. Falcon's mostly on autopilot, and you weigh next to nothing." He brought her knuckles to his lips again. "I'm gonna take care of you."
"What about when I need to use the 'fresher?" Her face flamed and her hands chilled. "Like now." Her voice was as tiny and pathetic as she felt.
Han shrugged. "I'll carry you there."
Leia nodded slowly. Han eased her back down and removed the oxygen mask and a pile of blankets Leia hadn't even noticed were tucked around her.
He watched her.
"What?"
"You breathing okay?"
Smart. Her husband was smart. She breathed. Her stomach rose. Air filled her lungs. "I'm okay."
He sighed in obvious relief, and rubbed the back of his wrist against his forehead. "Let's make this simpler. I'm going to take off your boots and that...robe-thing here."
She nodded.
She hadn't felt them come off, but the boots plopped to the deck, then Han started maneuvering her arm out of her outer robe. She was glad this one had slit sides; as few garments as the Alliance had, and as little fabric as they could come by, this had been made at the last minute for her trip to Arkanis. The seamstress had apologized for it being a touch too long and the lack of fitted arm holes, a blessing now. She avoided thinking about how Han had to undress her like a child's doll.
"You ready, Leia?"
"Yeah." She might be able to breathe, but speaking was hard without the extra air, especially with everything still puffy from crying. She wasn't going to mention that, though. There was no choice left about this.
He rucked up her skirts and slung her closer arm around his neck. His other hand slipped behind her back, then his shoulder was supporting her armpit and there was a vague sense of pressure under her bare thighs. The world spun as he tipped her into his chest.
Her right arm jutted out over his shoulder, and her left arm fell to her side and swung there, useless. Like her. This was unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. The pain was less, though, now that she'd been moved.
Han turned and shuffled sideways through the 'fresher door, easing her feet in and holding her closer. No hatch on this ship was built for two people to fit through. The 'fresher was no different. He got her settled on the head but banged her feet against the bulkhead in the process. He pulled the back of her dress out of the way, braced his side against her chest, and lifted, pulling her basics first from one side, then the other before setting her back down and easing the undergarment off.
She'd thought she'd be mortified to have him taking care of her every need, but the relief of urinating wiped away any embarrassment, even when he patted her dry with tissue.
"You mind if I get this dress off of you, sweetheart?"
"Always trying to get me out-" She caught her breath, only then noticing that her breathing was shallow and rapid, coming in little sips.
He undid the fastenings and peeled the dress over her head, tossing it to the side. Her only professional dress and he tossed it like...no, she didn't care. Her shoulders jerked up with each gasp.
"Hold on, Leia." Han scooped her against him again, and the Falcon spun around her as his long strides carried her back to the med capsule. Then the mask pressed against her face, and his other hand was tucking the blankets around her naked form. He tucked the mask elastic behind her head, kissed her forehead, and sat heavily next to her. One side of his mouth tugged upward. "You make things so difficult sometimes, Your Highness."
"I do," she whispered. After several more breaths, she whispered, "I really do," and drifted to sleep.