It is an odd sensation to feel the wind against your skin, the sun against your face when it had been absent for so long. It was a small source of pleasure no one would ever think someone who spent a good portion of their life on a spaceship would miss, but after years in carbonite, being a live but really living, it was quite literally a breath of fresh air.
It had been five years he was told. It didn't feel like five years; time was an odd concept in carbonite. He was vaguely aware of it passing, but it was indistinct and hard to measure. The events leading up to his capture didn't feel like yesterday, but they also didn't feel like years had gone by.
He couldn't remember many details of the attack. He knew the Imps had launched a surprise attack. He remembered Chewie's enraged hollow. He remembered a searing pain in his side. Then he remembered waking up in a holding chamber on an underground Imperial base. A doctor had the curtesy to tell him he had been shot in the side, from all who had witnessed it he was surely dead. Luckily for him, or unluckily depending on how you looked at it, he saved by the doctor. The doctor was even more pleased to inform his patient that since he was presumed dead, no one would come looking for him.
Needless to say, despite having saved his life, he wouldn't mind taking the doctor's, especially when he informed him what was to become of him. Word had apparently gotten around of Han Solo's famous capture and preservation in carbonite. And as the old saying goes if at first you don't succeed try again. So he found himself once again in the carbonite freezing chamber. And this time around he didn't even get look upon the face of the girl he loved in what, until very recently, was sure would be his last moments of true conscious life.
From what he pieced together afterwards the Imperials decided if they threw him carbonite slab somewhere in the deserts of Jakku no one would ever find him. Where he was discovered by some scavengers that were too thick skulled to realize it was more than a hunk of metal. Eventually after being traded several times he made his way into the hands of Luke Skywalker.
After being released and hospitalized for several weeks, Han Solo found himself a dead man in a very alive world. A world that had moved on, had a funeral for him even. And that was years ago. He was a ghost. A distant memory, back to haunt the living world.