Again, heartfelt thanks to my betas jublke and statsgrandma57 for their invaluable help. And an equally heartfelt thank you to everyone who's read, reviewed, and followed the story so far.

What Makes A Hero?

Chapter Four

"Why do you let him call you that?" Astin asked Leia. "Doesn't it bother you?" They were alone together in the Millennium Falcon's lounge. Han and Chewbacca had gone back to the cockpit, readying the ship for the short trip to Thyferra.

"What?" Leia looked up, startled. She hadn't been paying any attention to her old friend; her mind was obviously focused on something else.

"That Corellian. He calls you your Worship and other very disrespectful names. Why do you allow it?

Leia smiled. "It bothers me a little, I suppose. It used to annoy me a great deal more, but I'm accustomed to it now. I don't know if it's disrespectful or not. It's just the way Han is."

"But you're a princess," Astin objected.

"But I'm not his princess."

"You're his boss then!"

Now Leia laughed. "Trust me, no one is Han Solo's boss but Han Solo!"

The young man nervously fingered at Leia's bag, which was still sitting on the game table.

"What's in here?" he asked, changing the subject.

Leia reached in and pulled out an item; it was a rather old and battered datapad. Her finger slid over the power toggle and with a faint whine, it came to life. Wordlessly, she slipped it across the smooth surface of the table.

"The Grazers in the Grass," Astin read. "I haven't seen a copy of this in years. My parents didn't go in much for children's poems, or anything that wasn't built on a solid foundation of facts. " He ran his fingers lovingly over the first illustration. "Where did you get it?"

"Those of us who are survivors, we get together sometimes, and just talk about things." Leia shifted in her seat, as if the bench had suddenly become uncomfortable. "We've gathered together all the things we have left—it's like a memorial." She smiled shyly. "I brought a few things with me, just in case you wanted to…remember. This is one of them."

"Thank you," Astin answered solemnly.

"Okay kids, strap in. We're ready to lift off." Han's voice crackled out of the ship's comm speaker, situated high on the bulkhead over the holotable. Both passengers dutifully fastened themselves in. Astin looked a little nervous when the deckplates vibrated as the Falcon's engines revved up.

"Is this ship really safe?" he asked, looking around the rather shabby looking hold.

"It's safe enough—and it's the fastest ship around," Leia explained, a tiny note of pride sneaking into her voice.

Astin reached for the datapad again as the ship took flight. He read silently for a minute, then stopped to wipe at his eyes. "They're all gone," he murmured, "all of them."

"No, not everyone." Leia reached for his hand and squeezed it encouragingly. "There are more of us than you would expect. And we keep discovering more survivors every day."

The young man continued as if he hadn't heard the princess. "My parents are dead, yours too." He didn't notice the pain that blossomed on Leia's face. "The people we went to school with, worked with." He looked up with grim eyes. "Even my two assistants are gone, killed by the Empire."

Leia focused her attention on Astin's last statement. "Your two assistants, they were with you here? Well, on Thyferra," she corrected herself, "where you were doing your research?"

He just nodded.

"What happened to them?"

"They stayed behind to act as decoys so I could get away with my notes. I saw two stormtroopers go in, I heard the shots. Now they're gone, too."

"You saw the stormtroopers and you didn't even try to help them?" Leia's eyes widened in disbelief. "You just let them get killed?"

"They stayed behind to make sure my research didn't get taken," Astin explained. He tried to look defiant, but only achieved defensive. "What was I supposed to do? I'm not a fighter!" His eyes shifted toward the Falcon's cockpit. "Or a killer."

Han's not a killer!

Leia thought it, but she didn't say it. Why? Because it wasn't true—exactly. Han Solo had taken more lives than Astin Kierinan could dream of, Leia knew that. Certainly, they both had, in the heat of battle. Even barring that awful necessity, it was different, somehow, when she thought of Han. When he killed, it was self-defense, or more likely, in defense of someone else. To Leia, it never seemed unthinking or callous.

She didn't know what to think about Astin. Leia was used to Luke, Han, Chewbacca, Wedge Antilles—and hundreds of others; fighters who wouldn't dream of just walking away and letting someone else die for them. She looked thoughtfully at her old friend. She didn't think she'd ever known a more harmless individual, careful at all costs not to injure another living thing. But somehow, he hadn't thought twice about the fate of his two co-workers. It was something she was having a hard time comprehending.

Astin was a genius, smarter than anyone Leia had ever known, but his life had been very sheltered. Even more sheltered than her own had been, though that hardly seemed possible. His parents had been brilliant, driven researchers, and they had instilled that obsession in their only child very early in his life. It seemed to Leia that he hadn't learned about anything outside of the laboratory. When other adolescents had been worrying about friends and grades, Astin had been hard at work on life-saving research. He didn't appear to grasp empathy, or even dealing with people outside the research environment. There was his work, and there were the people whose job it was to help him do it. That was all he knew. Even worse, as she saw it, was the fact that he didn't seem to understand that he had a responsibility to the people who worked for him. As a member of the royal house of Alderaan, Leia had learned that lesson very early in her life.

Leia knew that it wasn't her place to judge him, but she could guide him. Astin was, by nature, a sweet and gentle soul. He couldn't possibly have not cared about his assistants—look how upset he seemed about their deaths now. No, he was just too inexperienced with life to understand. But she could help him see.

"Leia." Astin's quiet voice brought her attention back to the present. "Those are just two more Alderaanian lives to add to the billions the Empire has stolen. They need to pay for every one of them." Astin squared his shoulders. "I have the way to make them pay."

"Pay?" The princess looked blank.

"When I was working on the bacta, after…after the Death Star, I found a way to infiltrate some of the bacta with a certain microorganism." He paused to marshal his thoughts. "If someone uses that particular bacta strain, they'll be exposed to that organism. It effectively blocks the efficacy of the bacta. There is no cure. All we have to do is make sure the Imperials get that strain of bacta. That's really why I need to get back to those samples—to make sure the Imperial's get the modified strain," he confided to her.

The Princess was silent, speechless, for several long moments. "You mean you contaminated the bacta? You poisoned it?"

"I suppose you could say that," Astin said, sounding like a sulky little boy. "But it's for a good cause!"

"No, it's not, Astin! What you're suggesting is mass murder."

"So is what they did to Alderaan, Leia!" Astin grabbed at her hand. "They murdered four billion innocent Alderaanians! What's wrong with killing a few thousand of them?"

"What's wrong is that it's murder. And how do you know that the poisoned bacta won't go to the wrong people? Or that the organism you put in it won't find its way into other strains of bacta? If the Alliance did what you're suggesting, we would be no better than Tarkin and Vader."

"I'm not talking about billions of people, a whole planet, like the people they killed. It'd probably be just a few thousand. It would be enough to weaken their fighting forces, and give the Alliance the upper hand. It would give you a chance to win."

For just a minute, Astin's argument sounded so rational to Leia, so reasonable, that her own reaction scared her. A lot. She chose her next words very carefully.

"Do not include me—or the Rebel Alliance—in any of this. You are talking about mass murder." Leia held up her hand to stop Astin from voicing his objections. "The Alliance is fighting to end atrocities and terrorism like this, not to perpetuate them." She lifted her chin and straightened her spine, looking every bit the princess she was. "And if you try to do this, I will do everything in my power to stop you."

Astin's answer, you can't stop me, was lost in the whining of the Falcon's repulsors. Whatever Leia was going to do, either try again to talk sense into her old friend, or tackle him and lock him in one of the ship's smuggling compartments, was going to have to wait. It really had been a short trip: they were already landing on Thyferra.