Han was jerked out of his sleep by the sound of someone screaming. It took him a few seconds to even remember where he was, then it all came rushing back to him, but the sudden silence threw him off as to what was happening or even what had woken him up.
Then it started again, he could tell it was Gwynplaine, and he jumped to his feet and took off running to see what had happened.
He was mildly relieved to see she was still in her bunk, but a few seconds later she shot up with another scream, then moved and fell out of the bunk and suddenly she was on the floor scrambling around.
"Whoa!" He found himself throwing himself on her to pin her down before she did something stupid and hurt herself, under him he could feel her struggling to get loose and also felt the vibrations of her screaming and the short ragged breaths escaping her. He grabbed her arms and used his weight to immobilize her, she was pressed flat against the floor and still screaming as he tried to talk her down.
"Calm down, calm down!" he all but screamed at her, trying to be heard over her screaming. Her own screams quickly gave way to sharp, short breaths as possibly, hopefully, she started to realize where she was. She'd stopped struggling, and the vibrations running from her body against his had mostly stopped, he took that as a sign of improvement, but continued to talk her down as she lay hysterically gasping and wheezing under him. "Take it easy, just breathe, breathe in, breathe in, kid, out, breathe out, okay, good."
Somehow in the midst of all this, Han just knew that this didn't have anything to do with the procedure he'd had her subjected to earlier that day. And he had a good idea he knew what it was. The whole time she'd been riding with them, all the times they'd nearly gotten killed, this had never happened, but as the memories from the day before came back, he felt a familiar crawling sensation in his own skin as he remembered the Vomanor family.
He felt like his brain was functioning on auto-pilot, that the words coming out of his mouth were more a reflex response than anything he was consciously thinking of as he told her, "Alright, it's alright, it was just a nightmare, it's over." He could feel the breaths in her body rippling against her back and subsequently against him, and he could feel when they got longer, slower, more drawn out as she finally started to calm down. "You're okay, just take it easy."
After a couple more minutes he heard and felt that her breathing had become more controlled and evenly rhythmic, it wouldn't surprise him if she actually fell asleep like that on the floor then and there. Before that happened, he told her, though it sounded like he was asking her a question, "You're okay now?" he took her steady inhale and exhale as an answer, "Okay." Taking some of his weight off her, he patted one side of her back and told her, "come on, let's get you back in bed."
He helped Gwynplaine off the floor and got her settled back in her bunk. Now that the fight or flight sensation had left her, it appeared so had all her energy and she could barely stay awake. For some reason she pulled the sheet up clear over her head, he wasn't going to question it. Feeling exhausted himself after that ordeal, he turned to leave, and had moved a couple steps when Gwynplaine pulled the sheet back down and tiredly called over to him, "Captain Solo?"
"Yeah, kid?" he turned on his heel back to face her, not even realizing what she'd called him.
The redhead looked at him for a few seconds and finally asked him, "What were those horrible creatures?"
He walked back over to the bunk and looked at her for a minute as he tried to think how to answer her. Ultimately he told her slowly and somberly, "One of the galaxy's mistakes."
Gwynplaine couldn't keep her eyes open now but she responded, "They really were monsters."
"Yeah," Han bluntly replied as he nodded, "They were, but that's over, we got away from them, so you..." he glanced down and saw his hand on her shoulder but he didn't remember putting it there, he pulled it back and told the girl, "You just...try to put them out of your mind."
Gwynplaine was asleep in a couple minutes, and once she was, Han took the time to examine the final product now that he could. He stood hovering over her for several minutes trying to actually find where the incisions had been. The scars that ran from the corners of her mouth up to her cheeks had been hard enough to find before, they were damn near impossible to find now. A sigh of relief escaped him.
Even though he wouldn't admit it to anybody out loud, he felt a torn sensation about what he'd done. No matter what, the fact remained that Gwynplaine had been born a Vomanor, it was her birthright, and to deny that right to her, her family had had her mutilated beyond their form of recognition. Sure, the end result had turned out well enough, she looked 'normal', she looked like any other human, and as unsightly as her family's features were, one could argue she got the better end of the deal with the way she looked now. But none of that could take away the fact that this was not how she was supposed to look, by the standard of her own kind, she had been butchered, deformed, and what he'd done was just a further mutilation, even though it had been in her own best interest. The surgery had provided a practical purpose on top of a symbolic one, now she could eat, drink, like any other being, no leaks from the incisions. But the true reason he'd had it done to her, for her, was because of the simple truth she could never claim her rightful title. If she ever set foot on Alavak again she would be killed, this was indisputable. So what good was her birthright, her legacy, when she couldn't benefit from them? It was obvious that the kid didn't even realize her connection to the royal family, and it was obvious she was better off as she was, not knowing, never figuring it out. And thus, for the first time in her life, she truly did look just like everyone else.
It wasn't always the worst thing in the universe to officially have no past, no place you came from, no family you could claim part of, if you started out in life with a blank slate, then you got to decide who you were, where you came from, and what you became, an opportunity that most life forms would actually jump at.
But, he also knew, in the moment when it actually happened, it didn't feel like the opportunity of a lifetime. Instead it felt like fate itself had disowned you. And it was obvious from the time they learned of the Krull's fate, that's exactly what was going through her head.
The events of the last few days played over in his head. He could still feel her breath on him when she saw her family and declared them monsters. After the fact it was almost humorous the way everything played out, it was obvious that the Volamors were not accustomed to being insulted, and the realization that one of their own had said it, that was rich.
As he looked down at the kid, something dawned on him. If, Gwynplaine had been left alone and accepted by her people, she would look exactly like them. And maybe if she'd been raised by them, she would've turned out to be just like them, but he wasn't sure. He suspected there was at least a part of this kid that would've still shined through had she been raised in her rightful environment. Which meant even if she looked exactly like all the rest of them, she would still stand apart from ones she called 'monsters'. Their physical appearance was enough to make someone stare, but it was their disposition to lord themselves over anybody in their jurisdiction and kill anybody who offended them that were enough to undo a person's nerves. And, he reminded himself, he went in with the knowledge of what they'd done to her, that alone validated Gwynplaine's title of 'monsters', even if she didn't know about it, she was dead on the money with that comment.
If there was any justice in the universe, she truly couldn't remember anything from back then, but as he recalled Deno's excruciating details of what Hardquanonne had done to her, it seemed impossible that she would've been able to block everything out. For her sake, he hoped she could, just hearing about it was going to give him plenty of nightmares. Now there was one planet he wouldn't mind seeing the imperials turn into space dust.
Han dragged himself back to his own bunk and crawled in, and though he was sorely tempted to go back to sleep he realized he was still stuck with his original dilemma: what to do with the kid, who would take her, where could she go, where in the galaxy would she actually belong?
Han didn't turn his head, only moved his eyes to look over at Gwynplaine, who had just realized something was different as she ate. Without making it obvious he was watching her, he watched as she poked along her mouth and jaw with her fingertips, looking for something that wasn't there. He turned his head only enough to get Chewbacca's attention, and shot a silent look back towards the girl. Gwynplaine tapped along her mouth and her jaw, first one way, then the other, and slowly came to the realization nothing was leaking out. It was obvious from the look in her eyes that she had no idea what had happened.
"Something wrong with your food?" Han asked in a tone similar to the argument they'd had the first night about dinner.
She jumped in her seat and looked over at them and after a pause she said slowly, "No...nothing's wrong."
"Then eat it already," he said, sounding for all intents like a hardass, but he turned back towards the wookiee with an oh so slight beaming look of amusement in his eyes and just a hint of a smile.