So like - people don't do A/Ns anymore. But… hi?
Anyway…
...
Chapter 21: Begin
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I took the stars from my eyes and then I made a map, And knew that somehow I could find my way back, Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too, So I stayed in the darkness with you… - Florence + the Machine, "Cosmic Love"
...
When Leia felt Luke speak in her mind as they fled Bespin, something permanent changed between them. She wasn't sure what, or how, only that it had. She had trusted him from the moment she first saw him and they had remained incredibly close, and now she felt both closer to and further away from Luke than she ever had before. Something was wrong with Luke, she knew something was wrong, could feel it in her very soul. Whatever had happened to him on Bespin left a scar that she couldn't see and he couldn't heal, and she didn't know how to tell him that she knew exactly how that felt.
Not that it mattered. Luke wasn't up for talking, only silent companionship, only her sad, solid presence next to him. Bespin had left them in a shared but separate pain. They were different. Neither of them said it out loud, but they knew they were alone except for each other - fundamentally damaged in a way that went beyond the typical damage of war. They had each other, and they had their silence, and it was all they had the energy to give.
The Rogues had refused to believe their commander was AWOL and left a bunk waiting for Luke on the barracks ship over Sullust. And Leia knew without a word that Luke wasn't ready to take it. He moved into her quarters instead. He took the top bunk and she took the bottom and they took turns waking each other from their fitful nightmares. He spent his days meditating, retreating into the Force or into himself - Leia wasn't really sure - and she dragged herself to her shifts and ignored her growing nausea and tried to will herself to care about strategic battle plans and abysmal operations budgets. She avoided her father, and Bail pretended not to notice.
On their sixth night back with the fleet, as Leia picked gingerly at her rations, Luke stood up from his place next to her on the repulsor couch in her sitting quarters and hurled his empty mug of soup against the wall opposite them. The mug shattered into a hundred shards and Luke fell to his knees and doubled over, forehead and hands against the smooth, cold floor, and began to sob. And Leia knew, just knew, and slid down to the floor beside him and gathered him into her arms, holding him and rubbing his back until he calmed. They sat on the floor together after he quieted, holding hands in silence until their legs were far past numb, and Leia's eyelids grew heavy with sleep that she dreaded, and Luke finally muttered that he was okay.
Five days later, Luke handed Leia a tray of lukewarm, grayed slop that the Alliance dared call dinner rations, and she accepted it, fingers shaking, hot, angry tears stinging her eyes.
"I hate him, Luke," she choked, her voice terribly small as she tried not to cry. She dropped the tray to the kaffe table in front of her and Luke's shoulders tensed, not ready to hear her say Vader's name.
"Leia -"
She looked up, still not crying, and interrupted him, feeling the dam inside of her break, flooding hear heart with everything she'd tried not to think about since she first saw Vader in that dining room on Bespin. She felt herself start to talk, knew she was about to admit the darkness that haunted her, and knew she couldn't stop. The decibel of her voice rose with every word, her voice tight, frustrated, until she was shouting angrily at Luke, her dear friend who had done nothing in his life but support her the best way he knew how.
"Han. I hate him. I hate him for doing this to us. I hate him for being such an idiot. I hate him for turning around at Yavin. I hate him for not taking care of his bounty like he should have. I hate him for staying. I hate him for getting me off Hoth! I hate his arrogance and his stupid ship! I hate him for suggesting Bespin! He should have found somewhere better, Luke! I told him. He said we couldn't - that there wasn't - nothing on that godsdamned ship ever works and there wasn't anywhere better. We had to go to Bespin!" She turned to Luke again, one tear slipping from her left eye that she swiped away quickly with the back of her hand. "Luke. I hate him - I hate that he's - that he might be - I hate that he could be dead and that he left me here to -"
Leia clamped a hand over her mouth then, maybe to stop herself from saying anything further, but mostly because she began to cry in earnest. Luke was beside her in an instant, circling his arms around her shoulders and pulling her into his chest.
"Hey, Leia," he whispered. "Hey. It's okay."
"No, it isn't." She shook her head, her voice muffled by the black fabric of his shirt.
"Well… okay, no. It isn't. Not yet. But it's going to be. He's not dead. We're going to find him."
She ducked her forehead against his chest, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs, and felt his presence in her mind the way she had for two weeks - there, and strong, and oh so sad.
He tried, anyway.
"We'll get him back, Leia," he whispered. "I promise. We're going to. For both of you."
Leia froze for a beat, then stepped quickly out of Luke's arms, glistening eyes red-rimmed and wide.
"How - how did you know?" she stammered.
Luke gave a small shrug.
"The Force, I guess. Everyone has a distinct… signature. Or, I dunno, presence?"
Leia raised an eyebrow.
"Anyway, you've got, well, you've got two, Leia. Presences. Yours," he glanced at her midsection, "and your baby's."
"I -" Leia started, then stopped, closing her mouth. She sank down on the couch behind her, her eyes still locked on Luke's. "I wasn't ready to tell you yet. I'm sorry."
Luke gave the best smile he could muster, which wasn't much given the dark cloud that had settled in his mind in the previous days, and he wondered if he had only managed to look deranged.
"I know. That's okay. I'm really happy for you. And Han." He chuckled and shook his head. "Han is going to be thrilled."
He sat down next to her and she wiped the tears from her face with both hands.
"Gods, Luke. Look at us. What in the nine hells happened?" She smiled, but it was bitter.
"We're pretty pathetic," Luke agreed.
"No kidding."
They sat in silence for a long moment. Leia's eyes traveled to the star system beyond outside her viewport, and Luke watched the emotions play across her face, sadness and fear and anger swirling together in the silver light. Luke could feel her turmoil, and he shared his own.
"Did you know that Han once told me he was in love with you?" he said, breaking the silence. He didn't really mean to say it, but he knew that it was exactly what Leia needed to hear.
Leia looked at him, startled.
"What?"
Luke smiled, maybe his first genuine smile since they were all together on Hoth. It felt like so, so long ago.
"I mean we all knew."
"All?"
"Yeah, you know, the Rogues, and me, and Rieekan… well, pretty much everyone on base, really. For a while. Since Santee, if not before."
Leia rolled her eyes, trying to ignore her memories over the last three years and the gnawing reminder that she spent precious days angry with Han that she could have spent loving him.
"Great."
"You two weren't exactly subtle." Luke shrugged again as Leia tried and failed to come up with a rebuttal. He was right.
"Anyway," Luke continued, "It was right around the time we moved to Hoth. Remember how it was so cold in the very beginning that they hadn't gotten the insulation on the power cables right and we kept having blackouts because things kept freezing? So you and I stayed on the Falcon with Han and Chewie since it had power?"
Leia nodded.
"And heat," she added, remembering the chill that cut through every layer of clothing she'd managed to pile on herself in the Alliance's early weeks on Hoth.
"No kidding," Luke agreed. "So there was that one night where Han got out the whiskey because he said that it would keep us warm, and we wound up cutting up a couple ration bars to eat since we had to be careful with our supplies and we played holochess half the night. Do you remember that? You had at least four glasses of whiskey and just beat the hells out of all of us."
Leia chuckled. She did remember that night, though it was tinged in that redgold, fuzzy-edged haze that all drunken memories tend to have. She'd played the game particularly boldly and she'd awoken late into the next morning on one of the portable cots they'd crammed into Han's cabin, sandwiched between a snoring Han in his bunk on her left and a drooling Luke in his cot on her right, and she was tangled in her own sheets and immediately grimacing under a splitting headache.
"I had to avoid Threepio and Dodonna all that next day because I couldn't take the noise."
"You do that anyway," Luke noted, and Leia couldn't argue. "So after you won, you went to bed, and Chewie did too, and Han and I stayed up and finished off what was left of the Whyren's. Han was telling some story that had to do with about thirty Nubian hens and the dorm room of this guy down the hall from him that he hated while he was at Carida, and he just stops. Mid-sentence. He's talking about sneaking all these chickens onto base and then trails off and he looks in the direction that you went about an hour before. And then he looks at me and he says, 'I'm in love with her, kid.'" Luke paused. "And then he shook his head and said, 'Godsdammit.' And I know he was drunk because, well, he couldn't not be after all we'd had, but I remember thinking that it was the most serious I'd ever seen him."
"What did you say?" Leia asked, trying to ignore the way her heart tightened in her chest.
"I told him that if he thought that was news to anyone, he was a krethin' idiot. Except maybe you. It probably would have been news to you," Luke said with a shrug. "And then Han paused for a second and said, 'She can't know.' But before I could ask him why, he was back talking about how his roommate was worried they were going to get caught with the chickens, so the guy started trying to kill them by swinging them around by their necks."
"That is…" Leia frowned. "That is bizarre on so many levels."
"I know," Luke agreed. "About the chickens, of course. Not about Han."
Twisting in her seat, Leia drew her legs onto the couch, hugging her knees to her chest. She all of a sudden looked very small to Luke, almost childlike. The light in her cabin had dimmed at some point at the beginning of the night cycle, and the pale blue starlight streaming in from her viewport danced across her face. She sighed heavily, resting her chin on her left knee.
"He tried really hard to protect you," Luke noted. "I think sometimes he wanted you to hate him so it would be easier on both of you when he left. He didn't want to offer you the promises of a dead man."
Leia felt herself get frustrated. Han had done it, anyway.
"I know," Luke said again, sensing her thoughts. "He did do it anyway. But come on, Leia. You love him, too. Do you really regret it?"
She sighed, then shook her head.
"No."
They fell quiet for another long moment, this time both watching the swirling light of the star system outside the viewport. Leia studied the view, and in the stars she saw again the flash of light and then the nothing where Alderaan used to be, and she saw the sparks from the scan grid burning against Han's chest, and she saw Luke's broken body reflected in the setting sun beneath Bespin, and she felt her breath snare in her throat. When at last she spoke, breaking the silence between them, her voice hard and tense.
"He took everything from me, Luke."
Luke felt himself go cold, felt the all-too-familiar nausea settle in his stomach again. He knew what she was about to say, and he knew he wasn't ready to hear it.
"Vader," she bit, the name dropping like acid from her bloodred lips. "What a monster."
Luke looked at the floor, unable to meet Leia's eyes.
"Leia -"
"He took everything from you, too," she interrupted, insistent. "Your father, your aunt and uncle, Kenobi." Her words were cutting and dark, and Luke felt Leia's twisted anger sparking electric all around the room. It would have been unnerving, the sudden virulence emanating from her, had he been able to block the sickness and the despair he felt every time he thought of Vader - his father - every time he thought about what it meant that he was the offspring of the purest evil.
"He did," Luke managed to whisper, opening and then clenching his prosthetic hand into a fist that would have been white-knuckled had any blood been flowing beneath the synthskin. He felt acrid bile creeping up his throat.
"I want to see him burn," Leia hissed, venomously.
Luke's eyes shot to Leia, startled by her expression of vengeance, so unlike anything he'd ever heard from his noble, peace-loving friend. Her face was shadowed and her eyes were cold, as though cast in stone, and staring ahead at nothing. He inhaled sharply.
"Leia."
She looked at him.
"You're telling me you don't?"
He shook his head and swallowed thickly.
"It's not that. It's just - you, this isn't like you."
She narrowed her eyes at the viewport and pursed her lips.
"When I was a senator, I thought he was different. We spoke a few times - my father never liked it, but it was important for us to remain above suspicion, so there was nothing he could do about it."
Some of the venom dropped from Leia's tone, and Luke found himself suddenly, desperately, wanting her to share more, to give him some other picture of his father than the sinister figure that he knew. In that moment, he needed Leia to give him hope, hope for a shred of decency within his own genetic makeup, hope that Vader wasn't a complete monster, hope that he himself wouldn't become what his father had.
"What did you talk about?" Luke asked, hoarsely. Leia lifted an eyebrow, but she still looked so, so angry.
"Slavery, mostly. He didn't support it. I was writing a bill to officially outlaw it in the Middle Rim colonies." She paused and laughed, bitterly, shaking her head. "I was so naive. I thought I could change it from the inside…"
Luke could only frown. His own naivete still felt so fresh; in fact, he learned on Bespin just how naive he truly was. He'd believed so many, many things that he thought were true in the years since his uncle purchased two carbon-scored droids from the back of a sandcrawler - that Obi-Wan Kenobi had been there to help him, that he was capable of taking up his mantle of responsibility and becoming a Jedi Knight, that he could trust his mentors, that his long-dead father had been a good man, that he could save his truest friends, really the only family he had left.
Leia continued. If she noticed Luke's distress, she did not show it.
"When I was drafting some of the language, he told me about common slave practices, helped me fill in some gaps. He seemed to know a lot about the industry."
Luke could not help but wonder what this meant. Had Vader been a slave? Had he owned slaves himself? Did he still?
"And then…" Leia trailed off for a moment, and when she spoke again, the razorsharp edge was back in her voice. "I, well, I found out the truth about him. And after everything he did to me…" She shook her head once, as if steeling herself. "The worst this galaxy has to offer wouldn't be good enough for him."
Her words hung in the air like a verdict, and Luke felt himself grow cold, nauseated. He wanted to apologize to Leia, to do something, anything to atone for the sins his father committed against her, but to say so would be admitting out loud what he was still not yet ready to accept.
Leia reached out and grabbed Luke's left hand, her cool fingers drawing him back to the moment. He realized that he had been staring across the room at nothing at all.
"I'm sorry, Luke," she said, a look of concern crossing her face. "It was callous of me to bring that up so soon after what you went through."
"It wasn't," Luke replied, trying to force a smile. "You're right. He should be stopped."
Leia nodded, and Luke wished that he didn't know what stopping his father looked like, and wished even more that he didn't have to be the one to do it.
...
Four weeks after arriving at Sullust, Leia was exhausted. Emotionally drained, of course, but she spent most of her days feeling physically spent. Tuck had warned her that she would feel tired in her early pregnancy, but she was unprepared for what she began to experience. Always one to work into the late evening hours, especially after Alderaan when she so desperately craved distraction, Leia found herself ready to call it a day by early afternoon. But her dreams were restless and anguished and despite her weariness she often found that sleep eluded her. She kept her datapad on the table next to her bunk so that she could research the possible side effects of carbon freezing when she startled awake at different odd hours nearly every night. She'd read them over and over again and knew them by heart within a few days, but the details were strangely comforting. She was able to mentally plan everything she would need to bring with her to treat Han once they rescued him.
On the third morning of the fourth standard week without Han, Luke left the quarters early, well before Leia felt like getting out of bed. Bail came by a little later offering her a mug of greenginger tea, and he took a seat on the couch as she braided her hair at the small mirror over her sink. He smiled, a ghost of sadness in his dark eyes.
"You used to hate it so much when Tia, Celly, and Rogue braided your hair," he said.
Leia smirked. It was true. She recalled many fights with her aunts, Bail's younger sisters, who clung fast to Alderaani customs of fashion and took it upon themselves to usher their rebellious niece into a proper royal adolescent after Breha died. Leia never won, of course. She always found her hair perfectly plaited by Celly and her dresses carefully designed by Tia and her chin constantly tapped upward by Rogue's index finger as a reminder to hold her head high. The memories used to be painful for her. She used to berate herself for not being nicer, for not appreciating their efforts more, for not learning how to create the more elaborate hairstyles herself. Her aunts were passing on to her customs that she took for granted, that she was sure would always be there until all of a sudden they weren't. Over time, though, she began to treasure what she remembered of her aunts. With every elaborate hairstyle or outfit or etiquette lesson after all, came a story about some relative or tradition and even, occasionally, an anecdote about her aunts' own rebellious streaks. The pain was still there, and she still missed her aunts and her home and Alderaan terribly, but the edges had dulled and the memories were ever-so-slightly cushioned in warmth.
"I considered it a win when I got Aunt Celly to stick to ten-minute hairstyles," she smiled. "I think she might have had a bit of a stroke."
Bail chucked.
"Yes, she was not very happy about that. But with you, I think she knew she had to take what she could get. You were a master negotiator even at eight years old."
Leia smiled and tucked a final pin into her bun, then down on the other side of the couch with one leg folded beneath her. She accepted the mug of tea from her father.
"Thanks."
Bail nodded, regarding her closely as she took a sip of the hot tea.
"Leia, how are you feeling?"
She looked up at him over the rim of her mug, lifting an eyebrow.
"I think you know." Leia lowered the mug and pursed her lips, deciding her best move here would to just be honest. "I'm tired. So tired."
"Luke says you aren't sleeping well."
"Wamprat," she muttered under her breath, making a mental note to remind Luke that he wasn't helping her pretend to be fine. "Did he tell you that he isn't, either?"
"I gathered as much," Bail replied. "I'm worried about both of you."
"We're fine," Leia lied, knowing her father didn't believe her for a second. "We're just processing."
"Uh huh," Bail said, obviously not buying her act.
Leia sighed.
"It's not easy," she said, resigned to honesty with the one person in the galaxy who could always read her so well. "I don't know what happened between Luke and Vader, or what Luke went through after Hoth, but he's different. He's hurting and I don't know how to help him."
Bail nodded, and Leia noticed a shadow cross his face.
"Confronting Lord Vader does not leave one better off," he replied. "You know that all too well, my dear."
Leia took a sip of her tea and swallowed thickly, trying to ignore the memories that came rushing back. She gripped the cup tighter and nodded.
"I do."
"You're a good friend to Luke, mi querida. You two are very lucky to have one another." Bail smiled, wanly. "I'm sure you're doing more to help him than you think."
Leia shrugged in response.
"And how are you feeling?" Bail asked again, knowing very well that Leia did not fully answer the question earlier.
She gave her father a pointed look.
"Tired. Like I said." Leia paused, and when Bail did not say anything, she knew she had to continue. "I'm feeling more and more nauseated. I'm not looking forward to that getting worse, though it's probably inevitable."
"I'm afraid it probably is," Bail agreed.
"And I'm anxious that we haven't heard anything from Chewie," she admitted.
"You will," Bail replied. Leia let her but how do you know linger unspoken, lest the question border on childish. "I think Captain Solo is far too stubborn to let something like this come between you two."
Leia couldn't help but smirk. Far too stubborn was an apt descriptor for Han Solo, and her father's words reminded her of what Han had promised back in their cell on Bespin. The memory both stung and filled her with hope all at once.
"Have you given any thought what you might do when you go to Tatooine?"
"Yes," Leia said, a note of defeat trickling into her voice. "But it's hard to make a plan until we know what we're up against. Lando thinks that if Fett is smart, he will leave Han in carbonite until he delivers him to the Hutt. He was hoping they could intercept them before Han gets turned over, but if they can't, it's anyone's guess what happens next."
Bail frowned and took another slow sip of his tea. Leia got the very distinct feeling that her father was about to ask her some difficult questions. She was used to it, of course. Bail had never been one to shield her from hard things, and his questions always forced her to consider and prepare for worst case scenarios. It was a helpful strategy for military action, but she had been running over every horrible ending to Han's captivity in her head since they left Bespin, and she wasn't sure she was ready to talk about it out loud.
"I know that Jabba the Hutt is fond of torture," Bail said. "From what I understand, his methods are more primitive than the Empire's, but no less barbaric. Does that worry you?"
Leia inhaled slowly, fighting back a sudden wave of nausea.
"Yes," she admitted carefully, trying not to think too much about the hells Han might be enduring. "Which could work in our favor, because at least we could find him alive."
"And what if you don't?" Bail's question was gentle, but it still cut Leia deeply. She dropped her gaze to her teacup, clutched in both her hands.
She didn't have an answer.
...
Chewie's message came eight days later. It was coded, short. Luke had given Chewie and Lando the coordinates to Ben Kenobi's old homestead before they left, and now Chewie wanted Leia and Luke to meet him there so they could make a plan. Leia let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding as she read the decrypted message. Chewie needed their help, which could only mean that Han was alive.
She nearly ran to find Luke.
...
Leia paid little attention to the discussion in the morning's Command meeting; instead she spent most her time running through her arguments for leaving in her head and forcing herself to still her nervous, bouncing leg over and over and over again. Luke shot her several reassuring smiles throughout Dodonna's droning, and once Bail put a gentle, calming hand over hers, alerting her to the fact that she was tapping her stylus against the table. She managed to still her fidgeting, trying to will the seconds on her wrist chrono tick by faster as the brass ran through all the items on the agenda.
And finally, they were there. Wes Janson, who had somehow managed to snag a seat in Alliance Command meetings by serving as the official recordkeeper, read the final bullet point.
"The last item for today is the rescue effort for Captain Han Solo, hero of the Battle of Yavin, and one of the best pilots the Alliance has ever seen," he said, with far more pomp than necessary, though Leia was quietly grateful all the same.
Dodonna arched an eyebrow and fixed a pointed look on Leia.
"Rescue?"
Leia nodded once.
"We've received confirmation that Captain Solo's location has been determined and are requesting that a small extraction team including Commander Skywalker and myself be dispatched to Tatooine - "
"You and Commander Skywalker just got back," Dodonna protested, interrupting Leia's request. "You were MIA for over a month and Commander Skywalker is lucky he wasn't declared AWOL. And now you're asking for another leave?"
"We're asking to be assigned to the team that assembles to extract Captain Solo as part of our official Alliance capacities. No one is suggesting a vacation here." She paused, frowned, then added, "Sir."
"Nothing is official about this, Princess," Dodonna countered, his use of her title a not-so-subtle reminder that he thought that maybe she didn't quite belong in the room. "The reality is that we can't spare six of our best assets and a ship to come to the aid of one man - a civilian, mind you, as Captain Solo never formally accepted his commission. I cannot approve - "
"Not official?" Leia interrupted, incredulous as to what she was hearing. She felt the air leave the room and she couldn't bring herself to care. "Captain Solo has been vital to the survival of the Alliance since Yavin. None of us would be here if he hadn't been flying with Commander Skywalker against the Death Star, and he has time and again proven his commitment to this cause through his selfless leadership and expert piloting."
"He is not a member of this organization and we do not have the resources to spare rescuing every ordinary citizen that falls afoul of an intergalactic gangster," Dodonna said, cooly.
Leia felt her blood boil and the edges of her eyesight went red. She opened her mouth to bite back a reply, but Mon Mothma silenced her before she said something worthy of a court martial.
"Jan, Leia is right, Captain Solo has proven invaluable to our survival and it only follows that we would dispatch a rescue."
"Captain Solo is not a high-value target and any mission would put a strain on already-stretched resources."
"I would argue that Captain Solo is an incredibly high-value target," Bail interjected, again before Leia could snipe at Dodonna. "He's sat in on more High Command meetings than I have in the past three years, and he's served as Leia's guard for almost all of her missions. His knowledge of our Inner Rim allies alone is worth millions to the Empire."
"He was her bodyguard," Admiral Ackbar interjected. "That doesn't qualify."
"We completely re-strategized our Middle Rim campaign based on his knowledge of Imperial tactics," Rieeken argued. "We're seeing unprecedented success as a direct result of his guidance."
"He is an incredibly high-value asset," Mothma agreed, glancing briefly at Leia.
"Jabba the Hutt didn't get to where he is because he's stupid," Bail added. "It won't take him long to figure out what Captain Solo would be worth to the Empire. He will be sold and tortured for information and we must act quickly or our entire operation will be in danger."
"He was just a prisoner of the Empire and was not tortured for information," Madine countered from his seat next to Dodonna. "The Empire has no use for him. They let him go."
"He was tortured at Bespin," Luke whispered, his head bowed. The arguing ceased and all eyes in the room fixed on him. He looked up, then at Leia, holding steady her pained gaze as he spoke. "He was tortured. Just not for information."
"Then why - " Madine started.
"Me," Luke said. "Vader was trying to get to me."
Leia swallowed thickly and nodded.
"Vader didn't want intel. At least not then. Captain Solo was given as payment to the bounty hunter who tracked us, but we were all supposed to be taken to the Executor with Commander Skywalker." She pressed her lips together in a thin line.
"Opportunities for intel would come later," Mon Mothma supplied, and Leia nodded.
The room was silent for a moment as the weight of that thought sank in.
"We can't afford what Solo will fetch," Rieekan said at last, breaking the silence. "He received training at Carida to withstand torture, but eventually…" He trailed off and glanced at Leia. She scowled, and Luke turned a little green.
"We can't afford to let our best assets leave for a dangerous civilian rescue mission with absolutely no plan," Dodonna countered. "We cannot authorize this effort. We don't have the capacity."
Leia felt something within her snap. She wanted to stand up and scream, but kept her voice level and calm.
"If you do not authorize this effort, General, Commander Skywalker and I will go AWOL. You will have no other option but to court martial us for desertion. You will have to kick us out. And you're not ready to lose your best pilot or one of your top strategists. You can't afford to say no."
There was an audible murmur of shock around the room and Leia fixed her gaze on Dodonna's, daring him to call her bluff. The general scowled at her and opened his mouth to retort, but Luke cut him off before he had a chance to say a word.
"The slave uprising!" The murmurs stopped and Luke looked pointedly at Leia. She studied him for a brief moment, confused, but then his intended plan came into sharp and sudden focus. She remembered that Gavin Darklighter, a cousin of Luke's old friend, Biggs Darklighter, had come back from shore leave earlier in the week with the rumblings of a slave revolt on Tatooine. Luke lifted an eyebrow, and she felt that same pressure on her mind that she had as they were fleeing Bespin and she could just hear him screaming for her.
And now she knew exactly what he wanted her to say.
"That's how we go," she said, glancing around at other members of the brass. "We arm the slaves."
Dodonna let out a skeptical huff, but Leia continued without giving anyone the chance to interrupt her.
"We'd only need a small team - six at most, including Gavin Darklighter - to drop supplies and weapons. Blasters, detonators, medipacks, hydration pills, rations. One ship. Darklighter can run the op. Between him and Commander Skywalker, we'll have enough connections to get everything out quickly, and the team is off planet in less than a day. Commander Skywalker and I will stay on Tatooine, rendezvous with Chewbacca, and come back on the Falcon after we've retrieved Captain Solo."
"One ship, four additional soldiers, and four days," Luke agreed. "We're in a holding pattern for at least another three weeks until we get word from the Bothan system. This is an easy decision."
"Tatooine is Hutt-controlled," Madine argued. "It's not part of the Empire, and it won't be part of the Republic should we win this war."
Leia was seething, and she found herself unable to keep the ice out of her reply.
"The Alliance is opposed to slavery in all its forms. We are fighting this war for freedom for all beings, not just those who present a strategic advantage to our cause. Tatooine will likely remain an independent planet long after we're all dead, but we've got no less cause to help those suffering under a system that rips families apart and mercilessly destroys sentient beings. I have - we all have given up everything for this cause, and if we do not fight for those who cannot fight for themselves because it doesn't suit us, then this has all been for nothing. We're no better than the Empire."
She looked from Dodonna to Madine to Ackbar, then glanced at her father. His face remained emotionless, but there was a twinkle in his eye.
Ackbar cleared his throat, breaking the silence of the room, and gestured towards Leia and Luke.
"You've got two days to organize your team and load your supplies, and your team has another five to make the drip and get back to the fleet. A Gamma-series cargo runner should give you all the space you need, but they're to maneuver clunky in the atmosphere, so try not to engage on-planet."
Leia bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
"Yes, sir."
Dodonna sighed and reclined in his chair, then waved a hand, dismissively.
"Motion to close."
...
Leia and Luke didn't need two days. They barely needed two hours. Word had gotten out about their mission by the time they'd left the briefing room, and Leia suspected that it was in no small part due to Wes Janson. The pilot and typist for the brass (how he'd wrangled that job away from a droid, much less why, Leia had no idea) was officially required to keep mum about what was discussed in meetings, but she was so glad he'd decided to ignore that order this time. Gavin Darklighter had already assembled Tycho Celchu, Janson, and Wedge Antilles to join them on Tatooine by the time Luke and Leia reached him to discuss the mission a mere ten minutes after the meeting adjourned. Procuring their ship and payload was nearly as effortless, but it wasn't until a deck officer nodded to her and asked her to bring Captain Solo back in one piece did Leia realize exactly how much of an impact Han had on the Rebellion.
She was determined to bring him home.
Bail met her at the base of the cargo runner as the team prepared to depart mere hours after their mission had been assigned. He smiled warmly, and then took her into the hug that she remembered sharing with him before every mission she'd ever embarked upon. She felt secure and small, and she felt emboldened.
He released her from the hug, but kept his hands on her shoulders, a concerned look crossing his face before it was replaced by the warmth with which she was most familiar.
"Be careful, Lelila. You've got a lot at stake."
Leia nodded.
"I know. I will. I promise."
Her father smiled again, seemingly satisfied.
"Then clear skies. I'll see you in a week."
She reached a hand up and squeezed his fingers in reassurance, then turned and walked up the ramp. She found Luke in the pilot's seat, running through the pre-departure checklist, and flopped down in the copilot's chair.
"Well," Leia shrugged. "Here goes nothing."
Luke raised an eyebrow as he brought the engines online.
"It's not nothing," he said, turning in his seat to look at her. "Arming the slaves is an important step, but if we're going to guarantee their freedom - and Han's freedom - we've got to take it a little further."
Leia exhaled slowly as she realized exactly what they had to do.
"We're going to kill the Hutt."
