A/N: I don't own any of this. Disney lets me peep in on Han and Leia and gosh, whaddayah know, I blushed. ALOT. Disney lets me share the story with you as long as we don't get paid for it. So let's keep our voices hushed and enjoy the show.

I would like to thank erindarroch and justinegraham for their eternal patience, inspiration and guidance by being my mentors as I foray into the incredible world of fanfic. ❤ Seriously luv and admire those gals… Read their stuff, it's amazing.

Warning: There is implied child abuse and rape/non-con in this chapter. Mentions of torture, violence, imprisonment, alcohol, yadda yadda. Yup, you betchya, it's angsty. Also, UnBetaed

Remember- Comments make baby Wookiees smile

Timeline: This first section is a pre-Clone Wars Force vision. Main story is Star Wars rebellion era. pre-ESB Hoth.

Grasping Perception

Chapter Four

The first thing the young child saw when he opened his eyes was an arachnid crawling across the broken skin of his knuckles a few centimetres away. Mind hazed with pain, he watched dully as the iridescent insect skittered up his index finger, paused at the gap by the knuckle and scurried out of sight, tickling over the back of his hand. The ground cradling him was soft, only a couple sharp points jabbing him in isolated spots. Tall branching shadows loomed over him in the moonlight, he felt a warmth from the softness beneath his torso that contrasted with the numbing chill that were his exposed toes. He was wet, freezing, yet not as cold as he expected to be. The surrounding landscape was confusing, nearly alien in aspect as compared to the cold worked stone of the city. He was no longer in the alleys, they were nothing like this. Not green not lush, not rich with the thick scent of humus, it was- a forest?

Han realized he was covered in leaves and... Dirt? The boy started painfully, sharp pangs shooting through his torso, as he came the conclusion as to where he was and struggled upright. It had to be one of the patches of green just outside of Coronet, he concluded. He was half buried in a loose patch of soil and autumn leaves. The rotting vegetation emitting an ambient warmth from its decay that had so far saved the abandoned youngster from the final stages of hypothermia.

"Gaahhh," he gasped. Tears streaked down through the crusted blood and filth on his face. Han sank down on his forearms. His feverish forehead cooling at the contact of the frost crusting the top of the leaf litter.

Attempting to move further, every joint seared and his head felt fuzzy and thick. His left arm lit up, white hot when he flexed, muscles twitched uselessly. There was a terrible, awful pain in his entire torso, and he wasn't wearing most of his clothes. But they were there, buried beside him and underneath. Discarded like the trash. Just like him …again.

He suppressed a ensuing wail into a low keening wheeze.

Blinking back the tears, Han attempted to recall the past few hours. From the clear point of when he had been chased down and nabbed by the beings in the street, he could remember the brothel and another speeder ride the next day. Every time he tried to make a break for it, he'd been caught and jabbed with a syringe. He recalled the swirling consciousness, the half-glimpsed memories of being carried into a plush room with several beings who stared at him hungrily. They had been garbed in expensive tailored clothes and costumes, the room around had been lush, opulent. They'd pawed at him and passed him around like meat. Each sample of the boy becoming rougher, until the viciousness included being held down while being beaten senseless. There were glimpses of things after, his near infant mind had no hope of understanding at the present; only that they were confusing, terrifying, hurt him physically and just felt incredibly, terribly wrong.

As his awareness drifted on the ache and chill, the boy dreamed of an angel floating amongst the trees. As she came into focus he realized it was only a pale dark-haired girl in a simple flowing green dress, her silhouette backlit by the headlights of a speeder. She was addressing a laconic sandy haired teen. She approached and leaned in close, eyes reminding the urchin of the colors of the mid-day sky. Her expression was shock, melding to concerned resolve. She called back to her companion in the landspeeder parked at the edge of the brush, her voice breathy, soft, yet urgent.

"Cris!, He's the same age as my little brother."

"Who cares? He's just trouble for us. Nobody cares about these gutter rats. Let's find a quieter spot." complained a nasal sounding male.

"He needs to get to a medical facility." The girl gritted, resolute. Her warm slender fingers flitted across Han's chest, moving the tattered remnants of his tunic around him.

"No! That will be a buncha attention on us and our evening will be ruined." Argued the teenaged youth.

"It's already ruined Cris. He needs our help. Oh gods, he's bleeding." The girl's hand shot into her mouth in shock, "Oh, what have they done to you. Oh little pittin -" Her eyes filled with tears of compassion.

"It's gonna cost a fortune, Babe. Ya can't just drop off some half dead street kid and expect them not to question you or charge you for wasting their time with someone else's problem." Her boyfriend whinged. He studied the surface of his fingernails, feigning indifference.

"Cris, if you don't," She rose, fists balled at her hips. She twisted to affix Cris with a righteous glare and accusatory finger. "I will comm my father, and he will know about the boy I was out with tonight!"

"Okay, okay. Geez. Just wrap him up in the blanket I brought, and make sure he doesn't get the seats dirty." Grouched the teen, relenting. "This is what I get for dating a bleeding-heart senator's niece…"

The injured, discarded child was bundled into a quilt, curled up around the bundle of the remainder of his rags. Every nerve shot of his through with pain. When the teen couple placed him in the speeder, he uttered a weakened cry. The girl soothed the child, reaching back over the seat to stroke her fingers feather-light over his cheek, ignoring the protests of her boyfriend. He's got vermin… Dump him in an alleyway and be done with it.

An agonizing lifetime passed in the speeder, bouncing and turning, until they arrived at a brightly lit facility. He was hauled out, bundled onto a stretcher, unmoving, the air rasping in his lungs. The next lifetime of moments consisted of being prodded and examined. The skull-like visage of a med-droid hovered into view. It spoke to a Twi'lek intern, who pulled a selection of objects from a tray.

"Unnamed male pediatric patient's status is critical. Immediate Bacta immersion recommended. Malnourished patient has numerous bone fractures, lacerations to-"

As the droid droned mechanically, the Twi'lek moved to the other side of the gurney. Smiling compassionately, her species' head's tentacle-like lekku brushed his shoulder, she lifted the boy's limp unbroken arm, inserting an intravenous line. The now familiar medicinal smell pierced the air in the room as she did so. Struggling to rise, the panicked boy bucked on the bed. A firm hand pushed him down, strapping his torso to the gurney. The intern's tone was comforting.

"Go to sleep, little wounded alley pittin. You've got some new friends in high places."

A cool liquid rush shot up Han's arm, the droid's voice faded to a hum, and the Twi'lek's lavender features merged with the bright illumination of the room, when suddenly the world collapsed into a pinpoint of black.

He had an agony-filled dream, seeming to last an eternity. Often the pain was distant, throbbing, other times it pierced, but it always in was in the same places. Where he had been beaten, wounded, hurt. The hunger remained, gnawing at him, his most recent morsel of food days past. Every time the child came to, the setting was brilliant white, sterile and unfamiliar. At one point two droids and three beings with white masks crowded around his helpless form. There were intermittent snatches of a conversation as he futilely battered at the anesthetic haze.

"Discovered him…Laser scalpel…-oronet forest…Suction please…Expensive treatm-…Gutter rat …Hemorrhaging! …Senator Iblis's niece…Cauterize…Orphanage….Bacta suture…Third one… "

As the glare of lights and hum of conversation washed away in a gentle eroding current of anesthetic drugs, he felt himself drift away into the chill darkness.

On the frozen surface of a glacial cliff's overhang, a pair of beings nestled together for mutual comfort and warmth. Two unlikely friends in an uncharacteristic close moment, absorbing the raw splendor of Hoth's auroral lightshow in the panorama above the shadowed peaks that cradled the icefield. One half of the pair - Han Solo - lounged, eyes narrowed, the rum having dulled his senses and warmed his chest, with another comforting warmth burrowed in at his right hip. The smuggler had sleepily emerged from an unwelcome deluge of memories, likely brought on by the creeping chill numbing his feet, thighs, cheeks and nose.

Usually he kept his earliest recollections deeply buried. It was only a fathomless well of rejection, pain and anger. Sometimes it emerged in a nightmare. Occasionally it bubbled up at reminders in amoral cesspools like Nar Shadda or Jabba's palace. In the past, before his association with the Rebels, Han often found himself in those places, out of desperation, a need for a job, for money, for companionship, for food, for shelter. The Corellian pilot was always being sucked back into yet another distorted mirror of his origins, no matter how often he tried to claw his way out of it. He found himself, often cold and hungry back then, though now with a two and half meter Wookiee conscience trailing behind him, and now shivering on this iceball Hoth with the lost cause of the Rebellion.

After a botched passenger run from the planets Tatooine to Alderaan went sour almost three years prior, the smuggler was dragged into a half-assed rescue attempt of a snarky pint-sized teenaged princess. The girl had just been captured, no doubt tortured and had her home destroyed by the battle station that she was incarcerated on, Han would learn later. But the little spitfire took charge of her own rescue, snapping at the men, piloting the Falcon through a TIE fighter attack, and then delivering the plans to destroy the most fearsome weapon ever built. And that wee slip of a girl had inspired in Han a rare selfless act, hold full of his reward money from the princess and on his way to settle his outstanding debt to Jabba, Han had felt a rare, grinding emotion; guilt churned at his gut. The fleeting image of that wide-eyed blonde farm kid Luke and the deceptively fragile-looking Princess Leia had passed in his vision each time he flipped another switch to prepare his exit from the Rebel base on Yavin IV. When Chewie gargled at Han something about it being a shame that the kids had stayed behind, Han had swallowed a curse, cut the hyperdrive countdown and veered around just in time. He'd saved the farm kid from a trio of TIEs on his X-wing's tail, and the kid took an impossible shot, wiping out the Empire's greatest weapon.

He felt a twitch at his right side and looked down. The girl had been forged into a young woman, her features hardened by years of war, loss and the genocide of her people and world. Leia's sculpted brow was often furrowed by concentration or worry. She habitually worked herself to the point of near-collapse. No-one had the courage to suggest she might need some rest, take a break once in awhile. She was a Princess after all, a member of the high command in the Alliance, and now at the age of twenty-two, the commander of the Rebel's secret base here on Hoth. Leia, surrounded by the airs of nobility, exuding an aura of command, kept at a distance by the awe of her peers and subordinates; the young woman had few friends. She was as famous a face as the Rebellion had, yet it was this fame that kept most beings who knew her at bay. It became her durasteel armor, encasing her so rigidly, that she became as crystalline as ice. Crystal white, pure, beautiful, brittle – Cold.

And not a whit of that dissuaded Han Solo.

To the Corellian smuggler, Leia was all those things. But cold? Never. That armor shielded a fiery heart, the flame of the rebellion, and more, Han knew. Often, he'd catch her staring at him out of the corner of his eye. The Princess would bite her bottom lip, clutching her datapad protectively to her slight chest, her bright kaffe-brown eyes both confused and hungry. That is, until he turned, acknowledging her, then the Princess's armor clinked back in place.

Yet… Han scrubbed at his jaw thoughtfully, blowing on his hand to dispel the pins and needles of the cold.

Leia would be the first to meet him at the ramp of his ship. Not with a kind word for him. Not quite. Asking how the mission had been, she would touch his arm, her pale fingers cool, contrasting against the heat of the taut bronze muscle of his forearm. As if speaking in code she would step in close, her perfume, light, floral, heady on the sub-zero air of the hangar, asking him polite, pointless questions. Was the contact there? How was the flight? Any news of -. And on and on. A pre-debriefing that really meant, Are you okay? Were you in any danger? Han still awaited for what he suspected was her real question, what he anticipated would be her request one day. Will you stay? – For me? Or hope against hopes, Han, I need you.

The Rebellion's hired smuggler too felt drawn to Leia's orbit, relishing when he could extract any, any reaction at all from the haughty noble. Han sought to disarm her with humor. Often, he strove for a smile or a laugh, usually getting an amused eye roll as a reward, an unfamiliar thrill tugged at his chest as she did. If he misjudged, or if he let her get to him first, their subsequent argument would echo through the base's halls. Leia so easily lost it around him. Moreso if her personnel happened to be present. The push and pull of their drama made for wild gossip and betting pools among the staff. Audience be damned. It was a rare occasion when both of them let guard down at the same time. Then, a spark, a flare of attraction, a stare held too long, a wandering inquisitive touch. Han rarely resisted his urges, but Leia suppressed, no… punished herself for the feelings that tempted her. Drawing back as if burned, or sharply deflecting his hand with a wounded look, snapping at him, at herself.

"Damn," Han muttered, shivering. He could barely pull himself out of his thoughts of Leia these days. If he had been more pragmatic on Yavin and just paid off his debts to Jabba, he would not have to endure suffering through this ridiculous yearning and potential heartbreak.

Heartbreak?

Yeah. Certainly, if Han left now, perhaps only he would be… But knowing how Leia really felt about him, she would…

"Aargh," Han scrubbed at his face in frustration, pinching his brow. Any happy future for him, he envisioned involved being with her. Imagined scenarios that involved commitments that he would have scoffed at only a few years before. The other lifepaths without her appearing more and more desolate, pointless, - lonely. Ah, if only they didn't drive each other nuts!

Sometimes though… Han grinned, decidedly impressed with himself at the recent turn of events, gently squeezed the slim hand sheltering with his in his pocket. Steeling himself, he dared to lean down to the dozing Princess.

"Ah someday, you might give in Princess. I know I did the day I met you." He whispered. When she didn't stir, Han took a deep breath, hesitated, then ever so tenderly his lips brushed her temple. He wondered at not his boldness for violating her space, but at the fact he felt guilty for it. He resolved to not push those boundaries again until she was aware. Hell, she might even reciprocate, he mused.

Han yawned, shifting on his rear to dispel an ache in his spine. Gently disentangling his fingers from Leia's, he extracted his hand from his pocket. Reaching behind his head through the collar of his parka, he pushed at a crick at the base of his neck. The star-pilot's face angled skyward, absorbing the change of the pattern of the shifting auroral light. Brilliant lurid red streaks dueled with azure lances. Han swallowed somewhat uncomfortably at the clashing forces of the geomagnetic phenomena, not entirely sure why.

"No," Leia's brow furrowed, she shuddered, seemed to hold her breath and then whispered, "Noh, uhl nhar!"

Han retreated from Leia, disengaging from their near-embrace, allowing her space. Kicking her white boots, Leia whispered the Corellian phrase repeatedly. No. No, the darkness! She pushed at Han's hip, dislodging herself from the resting place at his side. Quickly realizing that the Princess was suffering another one of her violent nightmares, Han retreated from her slight form as she struggled against the demons that had tormented her since her imprisonment and torture by the Empire. Leia's cries became more desperate, further incoherent. Pleading in a half dozen languages, she cursed at the darkness, the cold, the pain. As her palm left Han's arm, she calmed for a half moment, then the petite woman arched her body and gave the big Corellian a hard shove. She slid a few inches back on the snow, turning onto her side in a semi fetal curl. Han, who easily was twice the princess's mass, was relocated into the cusp of the snowdrift that supported the pair. Leia gasped and clawed at the air, the ice, and him. It was at that point Han noticed her eyes were wide open, yet sightless, terrified, consumed.

"Leia?" Han's concerned baritone was a little higher than he'd regularly affect. Her episode appeared to be more severe than the previous incidents he had witnessed in the last three years, either aboard the Falcon, on assignment or on base. She tore at his hand, arm and side, pushing herself away. In his peripheral vision, Han's sight caught the crisp edge of the precipice, a mere meter away from Leia's rear. Urgently now, he reached for her, trying to dodge her erratic flailing. " Leia!" The Princess's legs kicked savagely at some unseen foe in her nightmare, the edge of her foot jostled the rum bottle they had been imbibing, sending it careening across the ice behind Han.

Han rose to kneel on one knee, the other foot planted firmly in the snow at the Princess's side. Leia was so close to the edge now. Her round, beautiful features contorted, painted in stark hues of crimson by the magnetic light storm overhead. Han's heart sat in his throat. All because she had to take pity on him after he'd sought solace in a bottle after yet another argument. He'd let her sample his rum, which must have finally made Leia succumb to exhaustion. Solo, you idiot. A traumatized war orphan that weighs less than fifty kilos, and you fed her spiced booze? Han silently berated himself. This was a nightmare she did not appear to be waking from easily any time soon.

Timing his next move versus Leia's terror induced struggles, Han's heart crept into his throat, he narrowed his eyes, concentrating. Judging at what he thought was an opening, he made a grab for her shoulder and belt to haul her away from the drop behind her. She slipped away from the shoulder grab but his long fingers caught the fabric near the front buckle of her white snowsuit's belt.

"Godsdammit Princess, wake up!" Han bellowed now, a sickening sense of dread creeping up on him. He cursed himself for leaving his comm at the ship in the hangar far below. Might need a hand here.

Leia yelped, a high-pitched rasp that put a shiver of sympathy down Han's spine. The Princess's brown eyes were wide open, yet they held no recognition. As he tugged to pull her out of danger, Leia's right leg swung out unexpectedly and the thick padded front of her boot slammed against Han's temple, and the Corellian pilot's world lit up into a million brilliant dancing starbursts.