A very Han pose, Leia reflected. Vest, pants and boots blended in with the blackness of sea and sky. She caught a flash of white sleeve, just like she caught only flashes of goodness, and the red piping down the side seam of his pants tumbled over the top edge of his ship.
His legs were dangling, and he swung them once or twice, as if a thought demanded action. He was alone, and he looked relaxed, she would say, despite all the work that continued below without his help.
Chewie was working the unloading, stacking heavy-looking crates onto a repulsor cart, landing each one with a loud grunt. The sea carried the noise up to her. Numbers, Leia realized, delighted she recognized the sounds. Chewie was counting crates.
She observed all this from the window in her office, her own pose. The two panes were flung open outward, like arms greeting the submoon, and Leia's face waited behind them.
She didn't know what it meant to be the kind of alone Han was enjoying. On Alderaan, she never was, not even in her bedchamber because one maiden stayed with her. She'd had to steal moments, except for what happened in sleep. Run into the hollow spot of the hedge, while the maidens waited and clucked and told her to come out, Leia's knees drawn up, eyes wide with delight at her accomplishment.
That was when she was young. After a time, she grew too large to fit inside the hollow. And she grew used to her maidens. They were friendly and... clarifying.
She was envious of him, confused too, because... Because.
And she glared at him from her window spot, wondering why- whatever nonsense that encounter was- they had dismissed each other.
That was a frank and honest description, Leia thought. Dismissal.
Frank and honest had nothing to do with the two people conducting the dismissal, however. More like ridiculous.
Leia didn't like being confused, and she took herself- her work that is, very seriously- and Han Solo was work, because he was on the Death Star, which still held a prominent place in Leia's thoughts, so while it didn't give her great pleasure, she determined she would go and figure this out.
The window looked too eager, so she closed it.
She marched down the steps of the mountain to the entrance of the bridge rail, and in her mind her maidens followed in her shadow, their voluminous skirts flapping in the wind and their hands to their heads to hold their hair in place, and she wondered how she might have got away from them.
He had a good spot, she thought, to observe the submoon. High, away from anyone, with a commanding view of the sea and the activity on the landing pad.
It was his ship, but if told of her desire to taste a bit of that aloneness, would he leave?
Probably he wouldn't. He'd look her up and down, drawl, you look alone to me.
That was the problem, Leia thought. Hers was a loneliness, not the blessed peace of reflection.
She would like to tell him, still irked at the direction of their conversation, to jump into the sea. He wouldn't, but the temptation was there.
She wound her way among the repulsor carts and the unloading crew, who politely stopped what they were doing and stood off to the side while she passed. They might jump, she imagined, anything for the ghostly Princess who walked the desolate shoal.
The maidens wouldn't jump. A few would find it funny that she asked, though. Who else could she test, their fealty or fear, if she were to actually utter such a request.
General Dodonna, I am the Princess of Alderaan. I am winning this war for you, at great cost to myself, I need not remind you. I wish to sit here, by myself, for an undetermined length of time. Please go.
Or-
Soldiers. Pilots. However many of you here wish to exemplify the completeness of your convictions to the embodiment of this Princess as your Cause, I should like to see you leap from this ship into the sea.
Except you, Commander Skywalker. Leia smiled to herself. You have already demonstrated your unwavering devotion. And I do not wish to see you drown.
She'd never used the lift tube inside the Falcon but she knew where it was. It rode quietly, in a quick hiss. She barely had time to cross her arms and feel nervous for the tight space when the door opened and she was topside.
Han's face turned halfway over his shoulder. He'd heard her.
She sat down beside him, and realized he was hiding surprise that she had sought him out, and gave herself a point.
"Princess," he greeted in a low voice, face directed towards the sea.
Not unwavering devotion, but is that what she wanted? The maidens, always in her shadow, Carlist Rieekan asking to be placed there, Luke watching her holomessage...
Leia adjusted her body on the metal surface, feeling the hard edge at the back of her kneecap while below her feet hung. She tested a suitable response. Captain and they might lapse into companionable, unresolved silence. She didn't care for the tone of argument that qualified their last exchange. Nor would she allow herself to be vulnerable, so vetoed the use of his name. It had to be friendly somehow, but he was prickly. Even though he thought she was the prickly one-
Sometimes language was not communication, she thought. Sometimes it ruined a lot of things.
"Are you resting?" she asked.
"Me?" Han let a little more surprise show. And then he smiled. "Resting?" he repeated, as if he hadn't heard correctly.
"I could wonder if you were thinking," she said slyly.
"Oh, yeah. Shudder the thought." His tone was ironic.
Thinking didn't work for Han Solo like it did most others, Leia thought with a private smile. He would say it caused problems when it was supposed to solve them. Well, it was lucky for her and Luke he thought about the Death Star's approach to Yavin and turned around, probably muttering curses all the while.
"Why are you letting Chewie do all the work?" she asked.
"My work," he said, spreading his hands over his lap. "is done. I deliver. They unload. I wait. Chewie just don't want to grow flabby."
"Flabby?" Leia actually laughed. "He worries about his physical conditioning?"
"Well, yeah. Wookiees are active."
"I see," Leia said. She let it drop; recalling from nowhere her music lessons. She had the tendency to rush the tempo and play over the rests. Her instructor had told her, "silence is music, too."
"A droid took the candles up, if that's what you're looking for," Han mentioned after a while.
He sounded neutral about it, and she was the one who made him detour all the way to Dantooine for them, so his attention to them was probably correct.
"Thank you. General Rieekan was going to distribute them. We're-" she fluttered a hand, her heart doing that familiar fail again, "It's-"
Han finished for her with a nod. "Sure it is."
Leia nodded back. "Yes." She tried kicking a leg over the edge and changed the subject. "How's the ship?"
Han's brows went up. "The ship?"
"Luke said she's taken on a few more dents."
"He said that, did he?" Han was scowling. "Nothing I can't handle."
That was a jump she hadn't expected. "That's not what I asked," Leia said.
"The ship is fine," he answered tersely.
They were edging closer to argument, but this time Leia was willing to experiment a bit. She assumed a rational pose, and held her hands together in her lap. "So the Falcon only looks worse," she concluded, tilting her head to the side.
He made a face at her. He didn't think it funny but at least he wasn't angry. "She handles as good as ever."
"Hmm." Leia somehow doubted that. "And how does her captain handle?"
He snorted lightly, and lifted his eyelids to take in more of the horizon, and decided her question was wordplay, and smiled. He finally looked at her, eyes changing from gray to green. "As good as ever," he pronounced.
Leia flicked her eyes to the corner where ship and sky met, where her maidens would be watching if she still had them. It would be almost comical now if they were alive. The lift tube would have to make several trips to fit them all up here.
And they would be scandalized. She and Han seemed to shift gears rapidly; she was keeping up, from animosity to humor, and now this, whatever it was. She didn't think she possessed it.
Leia grew frustrated at herself, at the uselessness of their conversation; it was more like... deception. For some reason a pretty frosted cake rose in her mind. Gods, what was wrong with her? Music lessons and cake and maidens that didn't exist. Memories and sensations just floated up, without connection. But talking with Han... if she took their conversation back to her office and went through it, word for word, she would have nothing.
That wouldn't do. He was not empty, not if he was here, and she would not tolerate him pretending to her that he was. The cake, she remembered, was on a dessert table at a ball. It rested on a stemmed crystal platter, higher than the other selections, and Leia, the same Leia that could fit through the hollow of the hedge, had sneaked to the back of the table and slid one of the frosted flowers onto a serving knife and eaten it.
I miss your ship, is what she wanted to say. And even that wasn't the whole truth. I miss when I spent nine days on your ship.
He was so different than Luke. With Luke, she could use language; she could say, I miss you. But she wouldn't dare say to Luke, I miss Han. Why was that?
"I came to tell you how much it means to see you working for the Alliance," she said.
"Can't work for the Hutts," he growled. Apparently this was his version of what comprised empty speech, and Leia detected a note of resentment.
"I suppose not." Leia thought about her next question. "Has your life changed much," she ventured, "since?"
"You mean the bounty?" he squinted at her. She didn't; of course she meant the Death Star and she had a feeling he knew that, but she gave it a pass. He shrugged, and his gaze went back to the sea. "The Hutts were a sure thing."
"Has it been hard to get work?"
"Trouble is contagious. The Hutts Curse. That's what they- not Hutts, everyone else- call it. Once you're marked, no one wants to touch you."
"That's why you took on the job for General Kenobi." She nodded to herself. It made sense. "You were approaching destitute."
"Destitute," he repeated dryly, and grimaced with his lips. "I'm not destitute. Hells, I'll never be destitute."
She nodded her approval. "That's good."
"You?" He had turned back to her.
"No. If I'm not now, then I suppose I'll never be."
"Yeah," he said. He sounded regretful.
Leia hesitated only a moment. "But of course my life has changed," she added.
Han kicked a leg. He grew uncomfortable, she saw, as everyone she spoke with did. Everyone except Carlist Rieekan, because any Alderaani created that effect. "I know that," he said.
Leia persisted. It was hard; Alderaan had the effect of sinking a conversation like lead. She could feel herself dragging, but if she kept saying it, maybe someday someone would stay afloat. "I don't mean the obvious. I mean things you don't think about."
"Like what?"
"Like," suddenly Leia didn't want to talk about the maidens, or cake, or music, and she was sorry she had brought it up. To her, Alderaan wasn't just a heavy, weighted topic: it was suck sand. "I don't know." She fluttered her legs a few times. "Swinging one's legs." She spoke off the cuff, just to say something.
"Alderaani swing their legs differently?" Han said innocently.
It made her smile, and she demonstrated for him. "No, in that regard we do it the same as other humans."
Han answered with a swing of his own. His legs were long, Leia realized; practically half her own height.
"Yup," Han confirmed. "Looks the same as how Corellians do it. But- " he showed her his palm, asking her to continue.
Memories, she wanted to say. "Did you have a swing when you were a kid?"
Han shook his head.
"Or a park, where you could go and swing?"
"Uh, no."
"There was a huge shade tree," Leia reminesced, "off by itself. A gift from Chandrila, more than a hundred years ago. Someone put up a rope swing. I don't think it was for me; maybe when my mother was a girl."
"Yeah," Han prompted.
"It had gown so tall, too tall to climb. But I would kick my feet, and swing really high, and imagine flying off to land in the high branches, where I could finally climb."
"Sounds fun."
"And it was a favorite spot," Leia said. "There was no room for the maidens on the seat-"
"Maidens?"
"- and they had to stand out of range and just watch."
"A good memory, huh."
"But, you see, the act of swinging now can't be done without thinking of swinging then. And not just swinging, but the swing, and the tree. The loss isn't a planet; it's all the little things on it you met."
Han was nodding, lips pursed. "Still, there's being's who can't remember nice like that."
She hadn't gotten through. "I'm not talking about my childhood; I'm talking about the tree."
"Right, I hear you." But he didn't see: she'd managed to convey the tree but not its loss.
Anyway, she was done. Sunken. Now she had to claw her way up. It would be helpful if he were there to offer a hand, and that's why she had taken a seat beside him. "Do you think it would be different if I hadn't had a good childhood?"
"Oh, then you'd be really fucked up," Han said, and gave a serious laugh. "Wonderin' if it's twisted, feeling bad about the place that made you so unhappy."
His coarse language was unpleasant for a moment, and then she realized it was because no one spoke to her like that. Sometimes, for him language was a place he could hide under; at least with her it was unfiltered.
She didn't want to talk anymore, but their silence wasn't as companionable.
Leia finally stood. "I suppose I should try and get some work done. I wanted," she stopped as he twisted to peer up at her from his sitting position, lips parted and interested. She decided admitting what she wanted was not the way to handle Han Solo.
"The Hutts Curse hasn't reached the Alliance," she told him.
"Not yet," Han said darkly, "but I gotta do something."
Leia expected that one, and gave herself another point. There was something of her he didn't possess, and it was regality. "For yourself, or the galaxy?" she posed to him, and turned for the lift tube before he could answer. The maidens, stuck topside, would have ruined the moment, and as she made the quick trip down couldn't decide how to feel about that.
Chewie straightened over a crate and yowled a question at her.
"I'll be back for liftoff," she called over her shoulder to him.
