The heats went well, tight and fast. Kes had hit the plywood target three out of five tries. The hill soon filled with spectators; word had spread about the race, and it seemed that all of New Hope was curious about the young ragtag pack challenging the yoke of the town's elite. Leia was soon subsumed into a group of Lando's friends who'd brought alcohol in early preparation for his birthday bash that night. Leia didn't normally mesh gracefully with strangers, but today it was easier for her to be around them than it was to be around Luke, and especially Han—these people didn't know Leia well enough to understand that her emotional state was badly skewed. They didn't have Luke's intuitive insight into her, or Han's shrewd devotion. These people Leia had never grown up alongside, never kissed. These people, she could never hurt, or lose, or miss.
A bottle circulated among the group. Leia hadn't planned to drink, but she felt so cold, frozen from the inside out, and she remembered that after Starwood, Han's flask had helped. Leia accepted a whiskey and Coke in a paper cup, so harsh she choked, but at lease it was a corrosive allay of her numbness. As she drank, Leia watched Han clear that rise in Millie, again and again, to meet with Luke in R2. She was beginning to perceive the mechanics of it now, their fleet exchange, even as she grew booze-fuzzed. Every time, at the very last moment, as the billboard loomed, Han eased Millie minutely to the left, drawing Luke into a sort of middle wake. There Luke and Han let themselves fly on a current of their combined speed, carving a space both blazing and eternal enough to let Chewie and Kes complete the catch. If she was asked, Leia wouldn't be able to explain in words how it was done, but she felt it, understood it, all the same.
The crowd was buzzing about Luke and Han. The way they drove together, Han's cocksureness, Luke's unshakeable faith; money was changing hands, bets laid on the outcome of the race. Over the waxed rim of her cup, Leia watched Han stride about on his long legs, supervising engines, calling strategies in his powerful voice. Leia felt a fierce wave of pride, then a physical ache for her own young man. As though he felt her possessive thoughts, Han glanced up the hill and winked. A sudden sting threatened Leia's eyes, to think that Han was not hers for long. Leia bit her bottom lip to stop its shake—she'd thought she'd got her tears under control last night. Of course this maimed her, how could it not? To have to re-route her emotions in these tortured, strangulated ways, emotions that others indulged in, forsake experiences that others took as their due. As they should, too. As they should—Leia wasn't a petty woman; even in her own grief, she didn't begrudge others their gifts. But it was just—oh, it was just—what Leia wouldn't give for just a little more heat, with Han. A little more youth.
More of a life.
Leia shivered. The only heat her body retained, right now, was generated by sense-memory of the strong hard size of Han against her. What Leia wouldn't give to have Han, just once, that way. Couldn't she? If only once? Leia closed her eyes, petitioned the universe. Once, and then she'd let him go. She'd mapped Han last night, most of him, but she craved the translation of his secret symbols. Like the look he got, for her, when they came close, the blended predation and tenderness. The way Han's voice had gone ragged when he begged her to stop, on Millie's front seat, as though her body had dangerously abraded his self-control. That furrow in the forehead he got when he kissed her—what would Han's face reveal as she took him inside her? Leia wanted to track that sweet twisting ache she'd felt with Han when he'd kissed her so fully it was like he was trying to absorb her, when he'd rocked himself tight and slow against her. Leia wanted to track that spiral to its end, with him. You owe me that, Leia screamed in her mind, screamed out to silent, insensible space.
Leia didn't think of how this could hurt Han, to draw him so close, only to drive him immediately away. She didn't imagine what such abandonment could mean to a man who was once an orphaned boy. But Leia's normally acute empathetic sense felt encased in some wall of ice, leaving her inaccessible, even to herself. As though she was marooned alone on some arctic base, a frozen outpost. All Leia could think of was Han as a man, approaching her with the sure male heat he carried in his eyes, his voice. His walk. His touch.
When the bottle came around again, Leia accepted.
XXXXXXXXXX
Leia was giddy on the ride home. Usually her happiness, her humor, delighted Han, but this was a false gaiety. He'd seen her sitting with those friends of Lando's up on the hill, didn't like leaving her, like this, with a group of near-strangers. Han hated unknown factors, and that's what last night and today felt like, to him, a foreign trip with one surreal, unreadable map. Luke didn't like it either, but what could they do? They didn't know, of course, what Han knew now that they were closer: that Leia had spent the hours he and Luke were practicing for tomorrow afternoon's race getting tipsy on cheap scotch whiskey.
Han coughed into his fist. He felt a telltale pinch in his chest, that mean holdover from the hypothermic campaign at Frozen Chosin. The chills and aches could crop up sometimes when Han got tired, stressed. Especially when he got too cold. Usually it came on in winter, and he'd hole up for a day or so, long hot showers and sleep it off, but there was no time for that now: today there was Leia, and tomorrow the race. Han kept his eyes on the road as Leia chattered and bounced. She turned the radio up and sang along with "Party Doll," a song Han had never liked, and which now magnified his headache. He bit his tongue, he bit the inside of his mouth, but finally his voice grated forth: "Leia. What is going on with—"
"What do you mean?" Leia giggled, fizzily evasive. "I'm excited, I guess. For the party tonight. I've never been to Cloud City before, but..." she curled against him, under his arm, "I hear it's a...good time."
Leia's stagy purr, so unlike her normal directness, gave Han pause. Right, Lando's party tonight. Fuck. "I dunno, Sweetheart, d'you think the party is a good plan, after yesterday?"
Leia sat up, narrowing her eyes. "Everyone is going."
Han gave a hard shrug. "Yeah, 'cause you do what everyone does so often."
She blinked, then scowled. "Well, maybe I want to start."
Han swallowed a retort rooted in frustrated anxiety. This was starting to feel like the day of the gold bikini—full of fraught, unknowable emotional traps. If Han hadn't felt so disturbed, worried, teetering on the edge of sickness, he would have followed the shiver in his gut that expanded on this connection.
"Maybe I want to be like everyone else," Leia went on. "Have a little fun, for once." The sudden depth of her belligerence made Han start. Oh, shit, Han realized: Leia's not just a little lit. Leia's really...Leia is drunk. He thought at once of the story Luke had told, of the night of the beach brawl, how she'd been drunk: wild, grieved, not herself. Walk easy, Han's mind-voice screamed. Walk easy, you big damn ox.
"Okay," Han said, carefully. "Okay, we'll go have fun. Sure. Good."
But the feeling Han had was decidedly bad, and now it was rising to his heart and lungs, his throat; almost choking him, like the invisible grip of some dark force.
XXXXXXXXXX
When Han came into the cabin from the Falcon's shower he thought, for a hopeful instance, that Leia had returned to normal. She had the radio on, humming along with the Big Bopper as she heated canned soup for dinner. Han watched Leia, his heart aching, as she chopped a yellow pepper on his new maple countertops. Tonight, Leia looked staggeringly beautiful. She had changed into the black sweater he'd bought her, those fitted black pants, the wee red flats. Leia's hair was arranged atop her head, both architectural and sexy, emphasizing the delicate, artful structure of her face. Her upper eyelids were winged with black liner, making her huge brown eyes even more affecting. After they ate, when Leia turned to pile their dishes in the sink, Han saw for the first time the way that sweater actually looked on her: that low V revealing the creamy, sleek plain of her bare back.
Jesus Christ.
It was true, Leia had never looked better; she laughed with Han, she was witty, jesting. But still not right, Han admitted to himself, not her. Not Leia, with all Leia's curious pauses and playfulness and thoughtful depths, her collection of facts; her way of looking at him so truly and levelly that Han felt irreplaceable in her sight, in her heart. Tonight, Leia was dazzling but hard, like a sharp-cut gem. She'd found an old bottle of brandy somewhere in the cabin, was nipping at it. Han accepted a single drink, hoping that brandy would bite back at his brewing cold, but that was it. He wanted all his faculties about him at Cloud City, with Leia like this.
As they left, Han took Leia's kiss; he couldn't help it, even eagerly returned it. But his instincts, never dull, were screaming now of imminent threat.
XXXXXXXXXX
Cloud City was packed, wall to wall, throbbing with smoke and sound. The Rogues were already there, without Luke. He'd said he would catch up later.
A couple hours in, Han tugged at his collar. He was sweating, and not only because the bar was crowded and loud. This was fever-heat, rising from the inside, from some nasty viral engine. As the evening wore on Han felt hazy, almost drunk, though he wasn't drinking.
Leia was drinking enough for both of them.
None of their friends shared Leia's manic verve. The Rogues were too keyed up for tomorrow's race to be their sociable, rowdy selves. Shara said the smell of alcohol made her queasy; Chewie had stayed home, not being one for parties. Luke still wasn't there at all. For a time, Lando joined their table, and he was happily drunk himself. He and Leia fed off each other, their quick exchanges making each other and everyone else laugh. Shara watched her friend with a portion of Han's wariness. Underneath her dutifulness and reserve Leia had always been funny, Shara knew, and fun-loving, too—but tonight her liveliness had a desperate edge. It seemed, to Shara, that Leia was trying to cram too much fun into one night. She thought of a condemned prisoner, and shuddered. Han didn't seem well either, pale under his natural tan, his hairline damp, his eyes fiery on Leia when they weren't scanning the bar, scanning, scanning.
Shara took Leia aside, to the women's bathroom. "Lei. Listen. Are you all right?"
Leia fixed her lipstick in the mirror with a glassy assuredness that Shara had never seen before from her soulful friend, as though surfaces were all that existed. "Sure thing. Fine." She lifted a teasing eyebrow at Shara's middle, only just beginning to dome underneath her yellow dress. "How are you?"
Shara rolled her eyes. "Sick as a dog. Sick as a sick dog. But that's not the point. That's normal. And you, Leia, are not acting normal. So spill, girlie."
Leia shrugged, popping her lipstick into her pocketbook. "Maybe I'm just trying to live a little," she said, with a lightness that held a warning edge. "Before. You know. We all have to grow up." And she stole another look, now apprehensive, at Shara's belly—not malicious, Shara knew it was probably unconscious, but still it stung the pregnant girl. As Leia moved off into the crowd Shara narrowed her eyes, with what Leia called her laser brain revving to full incisiveness.
XXXXXXXXXX
At some point in the night, Donna launched into a slow, throaty version of "Save The Last Dance For Me." It sounded, to Han, almost keening. And Leia went dancing. She didn't ask Han, didn't ask anyone; just drifted out onto the floor, swaying in the confetti lights, graceful hands opening in the air. Man after man looked at her, stepped subtly into her gorgeous orbit. Leia favoured none with even a glance, no word, no touch. She just swayed, alone, her eyes closed and brow knit, face almost pained with feeling. Han's heart cramped so hard he swore it folded in half. Leia looked so young and beautiful, and so tired, all at once.