Prompt: Someone's greatest fear [pre-ESB]

Hurting

Leia had never seen Han like this. Not even her wildest bouts of imagination could have conjured up the vision of the smuggler as he was right now in her reality: his hands trembling as they clutched one another, his jaw clenched, eyes staring blankly at some spot on the medcenter's floor. He looked as if he was using every ounce of his strength to keep himself from coming apart. She hadn't heard him speak in hours, not since the last time a medic had come out of the room where they were treating Chewbacca and he'd sat down on one of the hard benches in the hall outside. The only sign he'd given to acknowledge Leia's presence had been a nod when she had told him she was staying with him.

That was why she wasn't sure at first if he was talking to her now, or even if he was talking at all and it wasn't just a delusion of her exhausted mind, when he said in a hoarse voice, 'You should get some sleep.'

Leia straightened up in her seat, realizing her eyelids had been slowly closing for the past minutes.

'I'm fine. Can I get you anything? Some caf?'

'Yeah, sure,' he mumbled, and as she stood up he added, 'Thanks.'

The walk to the kitchens shook some of her stupor off, which was one of Leia's reasons for going to the kitchens instead of flagging down a droid. Her other reason was that she wanted to have the coffee made extra strong. Neither of them had slept a wink in two days, but Han wasn't going to move from outside Chewie's door, and she wasn't going to leave him alone. At least not until Luke came back from debriefing and it was her turn to retell the catastrophic turn their mission had taken.

Back in the medcenter, she handed Han his caf and sat down.

'You don't need to stay here, Leia,' he said to the cup, his voice still painfully raw. ''M not gonna yell at the medics again, if that's what you're worried about.'

'I'm not. I can't go. Unless you want to be alone.'

Han looked back at her, and Leia noticed his green-grey eyes were bloodshot.

'No.'

'Good,' Leia told him, sipping her caf, 'because I would have only moved across the hall.'

The corner of his mouth turned up in a half smile as he brought the cup to his lips and drank, but the gesture was gone when he lowered it.

'Malla will kill me if—if anythin' happens to the big guy,' Han said, staring down at the dark liquid. 'Or maybe she's always expected it, ever since he got the bad habit of followin' me around.'

'You've said she's very fond of you,' Leia remembered.

'Yeah. Real loyal beings, Wookies. You do something nice for them once and they'll never leave you alone.'

'Must have been an awfully nice something you did for Chewie,' Leia said quietly. Han had never told her the full story of how he and Chewbacca had met. He had only said once that it had been during his years as a cadet in the Imperial Academy, but he didn't seem to like talking about that part of his past. Since the Empire wasn't in the habit of hiring non-humanoids, Leia had conjectured that Han had gotten the Wookiee out of some scrape and earned his own dishonourable discharge.

Still, all he told her now was, 'Not as nice as what he's done for me. He's all I got, y'know.'

Leia laid a hand on his arm and tilted her head to meet his eyes.

'You have me, and Luke.'

Swallowing hard, Han nodded and covered her hand with his own. Leia leaned her head against his shoulder, and they stayed like that until, finally, the door in front of them opened and a medic stepped out.