Leia and Han were playing cards, a simple game called Throw Down. There were cards to avoid and others desired, and the fewest points won.
She was thinking how the game was like real life, like an exchange, or the dance of a relationship. She held hers in her hand and he had his, both kept from the other. Only the cards they wanted to show were revealed; it was a careful choice, wasn't it, if one wanted to win, and then the other considered whether or not the discards would benefit them.
He wasn't talking and not really paying attention. She didn't mind. His eyes glanced after every discard to the engineering station, watching the display telling him the time to disengage the hyperdrive was drawing near. He was usually in the cockpit at such a time of flight, but Leia had the idea he was avoiding Chewie. She wasn't sure why; the closer they got to the end of their journey, the more tense everyone became. Earlier, Chewie kept pressing Han about something and from his answers- in Leia's spotty comprehension of Corellian- they were talking about Han's debt.
Leia also didn't have much to say. What was left? Nothing. She was going underground and Han was not. She was making a change and he was not. Life went on; the spell of the Death Star had evidently worn off.
But despite that it was companionable, even with those aboard the Falcon immersed in separate thoughts. This was their third game and Leia had learned Han was a better player, even at this silly game and a little distracted. He counted cards and remembered which ones had been played.
What she had determined after hours of thinking was that it was time to stop. For where had it brought her? Everyone had an uncertain future. Leia had learned that painfully first-hand. And this lesson was reinforced throughout her life, even now, playing this children's game, in the way Han nonchalantly picked up a card she threw down.
A game, Leia scoffed to herself. She didn't find it very entertaining at the moment. Real life was a game played by the gods, and they made light of everything.
She'd been competent about envisioning a future, tweaking it, aiding some things to fruition, however uncertain. But it was when she thought about her parents, her adoption, the way her mother supported democracy while her father plotted war, her past unraveled as if the goddesses took scissors to their own tapestry.
She needed more training, obviously. And if destiny had some weird hand in all this, bringing her to her parents, bringing her to the Death Star and taking everything away, then the things she encountered Since were for the purposes of more training. So she would take instruction from Han on how to be a good card player, and he wouldn't know he was doing that until she beat him.
Han had a scar on his chin and little laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. He was a man, and he was a smuggler, and he at times was inscrutable or delightful but it was never because of tragedy. The scar on his chin had come after. Tragedy had not shaped him; life had. Leia wanted the same for herself. At times it felt like she was Tragedy's public property, and she hated it.
Yes, it was time to stop feeling sorry for herself. To stop wondering and thinking about every godsdamned thing.
Leia had been given a foundation. Her mother had taught her to not fear death and how to rule
And she had followed that example. She'd led with her heart. Even as recently as Imperial City that was how she played her cards. Apparently, the Alliance didn't want her to employ that strategy. They found it too risky.
Was that what made her irritable? She'd ceded something by joining the Alliance. She was a princess. She let them dictate her future.
Leia sat back against the lounge seat. She'd told herself to stop thinking but this deserved some consideration. Han's eyes noticed her movement; she was determined to not draw him in and she kept her gaze on the lounge table, the spread of cards on the checkered surface and those in Han's hand. After a moment he put down two cards and absently she picked them up.
She'd lost Alderaan. Had she any right to demand some control? She was part of the Alliance, and she wanted to be; she would carry on her father's work. Should she expect to inherit his role, that of a founder, when she was a generation later, and only a secret courier?
It was that fight for perspective again; that's what tragedy did to her. She was both powerful and powerless.
She was going to a base, and she was ready to learn where and what it was called. She wanted to know what she was going to do there. From things Han said the base was like a card put down by the Alliance: a place hopefully undetectable or everything could be lost.
Leia decided that was stupidly dramatic and not how to win a war.
And a base wasn't a home. She would sleep there, of course, for the human body needed sleep, but it was only to be able to work again. If everything could be lost so easily then the only thing to do was work to prevent that.
But if one person looked at her from out of the veil of tragedy clouding their eyes... if they so much as imbued "Your Highness" with a weight of sadness they couldn't imagine...
What was important was that the base remain undetected. But that was a fool's hope, and Leia would never be a fool again. And not everything would be lost, not again, not when she was there.
A message from Mon would have been nice. Of course, Leia could only risk one comm call and that had to be to Buteral; Mon could not realistically take part in the events. But Leia got a message just the same.
You trust far too much in yourselves, Leia would tell them should they deign to hear her opinion.
The Alliance should need her, for the war. All they had to do was point to her and worlds signed up. She was the Cause, both in the before and after.
They needed her tragedy, then.
Her thoughts had meandered back to the same thing, only now had she drawn a different conclusion-
Frustrated at herself, she slapped three cards down and turned her attention to Han, because anger ought to be clear. He was holding the cards with his left hand, and compared to her own small hands they looked dwarfed. The fingernails were short, and one looked torn. His skin was darker than hers; one of his knuckles had two burn marks from recent repairs. His upper body moved a little; a dancing leg was causing a bouncing rhythm. His lips looked full and- gentle, somehow- above the jagged scar on his chin. He had passed over her discards and selected one from the deck; while he thought he arranged it with the other cards he held in his hand.
Han Solo and thinking, she remembered Luke saying, and her lower lip tucked inward a little in memory of him. She hoped Luke was okay, that, like her, he was making progress, that fighting the war satisfied something inside him.
She imagined them serving together, as they should; it had all started on the Death Star. Surely he was alive. Someone would tell her if he had been killed, wouldn't they? He was credited with her rescue- had too much time passed that the association was not as important?
Would they be afraid to tell her? That one more death would tip the scales and the Princess would wash away?
She looked at Han again, still studying his cards. "Would you tell me if Luke had been killed?" she asked him.
He looked up sharply. "'Course I would," he said in a grunt, and went back to his cards, as if her question out of the blue was completely normal.
"Would you even know?" she demanded.
"I learn a lot of things without being told outright," he said. "He hasn't been killed."
"We're stationed together?"
Han's brows lifted slightly, surprised again by her uncanny ability to guess correctly. "I don't know how you do that," he said, and tossed two cards down.
"It's obvious," Leia said. "The Death Star."
"I don't think it's the Death Star and I don't think it's obvious."
"Anyway," Leia wiggled in her seat a little, "I'm glad. That will make it tolerable."
"Tolerable?" Amused, Han grinned a little crookedly. "He'll love hearin' that."
She picked up his discards. "Don't be a gossip."
"You're not being punished, ya know. You're being kept safe."
Leia had come to the conclusion there was no such thing as safe, and thought Han shared her viewpoint. He must, from the moment he lost the little gotonga figurine when he was a little boy.
Disappointed, she said dryly, "Should I be touched? The Alliance is hiding its two most visible faces, but is it out of concern or something else?"
"Something else," Han drawled with a bit of an eyeroll. He was losing patience with all her thinking, too. "Like bein' the size of a moon and goin' up against a sun." He held up her single discard, a symbol, and arched a brow. "You and Luke are the aces in the hole there's no opportunity to use."
"Hm." Leia didn't see it. She wondered if Luke still had his questions. He probably did. But the Alliance wasn't going to solve a personal problem, even if it did involve Darth Vader.
Luke was Red Five, a commander, hero of the Battle of Yavin. Did it bother him no one saw his aunt and uncle when they looked at him? No one saw what he wanted, either: that he would be strong in the Force, a Jedi.
No wonder Han intended a bad first impression. How smart. He'd certainly made one on her, retreating down the detention cell corridor so there was no escape, turning on her in a sneer.
He had moody eyes, she decided. In both the garbage masher and Danneria's apartment, simmering anger had colored them almost black. In the cockpit, where he still felt awe, they'd been blue. Green often when he looked at her, and what was that feeling? It better not be pity. Thinking Han's eyes were true, a combination of all he could be, rendering them hazel.
She wondered how they would say goodbye this time. Was their imminent parting on his mind, too? Would he tell her to keep on being a princess? She really didn't care to hear anything, she thought; silence was best. Silence summed up everything. But she would like to hug him. One final touch. And maybe feel through the vest and shirt, know the warmth underneath, the heart.
But there was no point in thinking that, either. This was going to be a long war, and she recognized the duration couldn't be fought aboard a dilapidated freighter. Nor was it wise to fight it alongside a smuggler whose troubles predated the Death Star.
It was getting harder to hold all her cards. She glanced at Han's and saw he had far fewer; he was close to being out, she saw. Still, she added his two discards to her own and shuffled them around.
She'd lost her place, that's what happened. Everything she'd done so far had been for Alderaan. To honor the dead, to call attention to the crime. To get others to join the war, yes. Her mother hadn't prepared her beyond home and people. The queen did not serve war. But her father had been putting pieces into place. He'd visited Yavin. Perhaps he'd been to this base, her new station.
The Viceroy and his Just War. An Alderaani title, like Leia's of princess. If he were alive when war broke out, he might have been titled something different. He might be a Minister, like Mon Mothma. But he was so distant from it. He really had no idea, did he, Leia thought. He called for a fight but he had no idea what it meant to be in the fight, brutalized and scared, hard fingers digging into shoulders, the lasting cost of loss.
He'd intellectualized it. Thought about it, like Han and which cards to throw down. It's time to stop thinking, Pati. Time to fight.
Leia was still the Princess, where everyone else was the Major, or the Commander, or the pilot. An ace in the hole.
And Han would fly away, and all kinds of things would happen to him, all kinds of life. He would laugh, with that full heartiness that greened his eyes.
And the bringing her away from her people- whom she resisted at first, she remembered with deep irony- was...Leia couldn't help but take it as a disapproval, a judgment on her character. As if she ruled on impulse and feeling, and they needed her to be different. For her own safety.
But there was no such thing. Ever. Not when she played hop toad while others danced, not when she swiped frosted flowers off of uncut cakes. There were brief, flaring moments of fun, playing at a ball or listening to a smuggler who leaned backwards over a counter, telling stories.
"Got something to throw down, Highness?" With a start she saw he might have been waiting a while, and she hoped he hadn't been able to read the silent play of thoughts across her face.
"Oh, yes. Sorry." She plucked three from her hand randomly.
Han clicked his tongue as he scooped one up. "Didn't you notice I was collecting these?" He spread his cards face up on the lounge table. "Been waitin' on that one."
Leia threw her cards down in surrender. He had scored a Wipe, and had all fourteen undesirable cards. "Did you cheat? You couldn't know I had it." She thought she'd been clever, forcing Han to take the undesirables.
"I knew I didn't. I'm a patient man."
Leia gathered up the game. "At cards, anyway."
She saw him in a new light. Han Solo and thinking was a joke between Chewie and Luke, when all the while Han observed, Han reasoned, Han played to stay in a futile game as long as he could. One day his streak would end. "The gods cheat, you know," she told him in warning.
"What gods?" He stood and with a last glance at the engineering station declared, "I'm going up front. No more fun and games, Your Heightness."
The Falcon possessed an excellent star chart. The navigational map was beautiful; it unrolled like a scattering of gold dust, stars; the physical items were tiny holographic images one could spin, like a god's version of space travel, and they were colored according to a key of their primary core substance. Leia was also able to touch an icon and get information on atmospheric conditions, topography, climate, gravity and air quality.
Leia admired it, sweeping her hand through the glowing holographic display. Han seemed almost embarrassed to have such a nice thing. "It cost a lot," he explained, "but it's come in real handy. Smugglers gotta be sneaky; they use the land."
Leia gave him a polite nod, but she barely registered he'd said anything. The galaxy expanded underneath her finger; she was gazing upon territory so far from the Core Worlds she had no idea where she was.
He continued, "Plus, it's fun to read, when you got nothing else to do." Chewie roared agreement, and Han said, "Right."
"This is the Hoth system?" Leia pointed at an edge of the diagram. They weren't there yet or even quite close. They had been directed to a checkpoint. The Alliance was very careful about who it allowed access.
"Yeah. Your baby is the sixth from the sun. Also called Hoth."
"And what's this?" There was nothing to see out the cockpit but stars, their light from years away, but the map indicated a large field of something in between the fifth and sixth planet. "Is it a nebula?"
"Asteroid field." He read her mind. "It's bigger than the Graveyard."
Chewie yowled something and reached out a claw to spin the moon of the sixth planet.
"What am I seeing?" Leia asked him through Han.
"He's saying how it's wayward; the pull isn't strong enough. Look at Hoth's moon, completly rock-marked." He pursed his lips and nodded to himself. "When you're making a stand, it's good to have something like that on your side."
"It limits the enemy's movements," Leia understood.
Chewie added a comment, and Leia thought she recognized a word, warrior.
"You're saying the asteroid field helps fight?" she asked uncertainly.
"Well," Han grimaced, "kind of. He's sayin' it's an entity. You can use it to your benefit but it'll wreak havoc on you same as it does an enemy."
"I suppose that could be true," Leia said. "And an asteroid field is impartial. It's not interested in the battle taking place, is it." Leia looked into Chewie's eyes and he woofed softly. "Not like the battle gods on Kasshyyk."
In Leia's Shyriiwook lessons of weather terms, Chewie had explained that wind and rain were battle gods, prayed to for favor.
"See, that Force stuff that dazzled Luke wasn't anything new. Just one more example of all the crazy ideas I've heard," Han said, shaking his head at Chewie. "I'll take impartial. The gods are gonna cheat anyway, right?"
Leia looked at him, at the knowing smirk and waggled brows that was gearing up for a debate. He was throwing her earlier comment back at her to start something. It wasn't to cause harm, like the rocks he threw at windows as a youth. Once she thought he did it because he was bored, or maybe he actually enjoyed hearing ideas. But now she suspected he did it for her, because for just a moment she could forget her questions, and her pain, and her spirit returned. Her fiery answers made him happy.
She didn't rise to his challenge this time. This wasn't about him. Another game, she thought. To be a princess, in a universe where gods cheated- she believed that, thanks to that god of irony and truth- was just... tiring. Instead she lowered her eyes back to the star chart and tapped on the sixth planet which was known as Hoth.
The amount of information surprised Leia. It had an iron core but was mostly water. The climate, from a human perspective, looked barely survivable. The solid ground wasn't actually land but ice. "Has it been settled?"
Han shook his head. "Categorized when they did the Exploration Initiative six hundred years ago. See-" he poked a finger at the screen. "- deemed uninhabitable. Lucky for the Alliance humans can live just about anywhere. Even places they shouldn't."
Han even argued with himself when he talked, Leia thought. She was still working out whether he was admiring or disparaging the Alliance when something dinged. Chewie made an announcement.
"Maybe it's the Checker," Han suggested.
Leia had dealt with Checkers as a courier. They made sure any information, personnel, or transport had not been compromised before allowing further contact with the rebellion.
"No?" Han said to Chewie.
The Wookiee shook his head and pointed at Leia.
"You're gettin' a transmission," Han translated needlessly.
"Oh," Leia said, pleased at the attention. "Maybe it's-" but she swallowed Mon's name, not wanting Han to witness her resentment, "- Luke."
Han found that funny for some reason. "It's not Luke," he said. "Let it finish downloading and you can read it back there," he indicated the engineering station with a toss of his head.
"Don't read behind my back," Leia warned.
"I don't understand princess-ese," Han rejoined testily.
Leia gave him a dirty look and left the cockpit.
It was only from Dr. Renzatl. Leia questioned her own disappointment, swiveling the seat away from the screen to calm a nervous heart.
Leia was the one who initiated contact. A response was customary. She'd even had idle moments of imagining the doctor's answer during the many hours of hyperspace travel. So what exactly did she want?
A tiny voice inside her answered, come home. Just someone to gently say, come home.
More idle thoughts. Worse, a useless daydream.
Her hands shook as she read. It was a good letter, things she knew, things she hadn't realized she wanted to hear, things she didn't want to be true. Your journey was always there.
And more tragedy.
"Anything about me?" Han- Leia figured he was pretending he had something to do- was teasing, serious, funny. It belonged, to her and to him, but not elsewhere, and Leia kept her face passive.
"She's immune to your charms."
"Is she, now. Impossible. Who's this?"
Now she did smile softly. "Major Renzatl." Leia heard herself omit the doctor's title. "From Buteral. I've been working with her."
"Ah. What'd she say?"
Leia was lost in her own thoughts. "She wants me to get a medscan."
Han frowned. "A medscan. Something wrong? You know I got one. Why didn't you say something?"
Leia waved a hand. "It's old business. You remember, from Yavin."
"Yeah, but." Han was looking at her, still frowning. "Why's that being discussed now, from Buteral?"
"It's nothing, Han."
"Not so sure about that. Didn't you get one?"
"Maybe she forgot."
"Or did you?"
Leia shook her head, and a real taste of bile was in her mouth, though there was none to swallow. "I'm fine," she said. "Maybe my body wants to remind me to feel."
"So it gives you pain?" Han shook his head, looking a little troubled. "That's not very nice."
"And racing heart. Maybe indigestion. Everything around this part of my body." Leia made a circle around her entire front torso.
"Well, if it's gotta remind you to feel, it should give you nice feelings, too. Ever get those?"
She met his eyes; they were green, the color she inspired. "Yes," she said truthfully. "I'm not... I'm a... "
He didn't know how to grieve, he'd admitted to her. Too young to even remember who for. He'd flown through her tragedy for kriff's sake and she couldn't even piece his together.
"I'm fine," she said firmly. "I've had to make adjustments but I feel I've gotten a handle on that. I do have nice feelings. I'm not one dimensional, you know. You may try but I don't."
His head cocked. "One dimensional?" he repeated, in the same tone of voice that invited her to go back to her cell on the Death Star. "May I remind you, Your Highness, that you are on my ship."
"Which you carry around like a turtle," Leia returned with cold heat. "So you can slam shut and crawl back inside."
She got scared for a moment because his eyes darkened.
"I came to tell you the Checker says you can't land until you have proper gear," he said tersely. "A snowsuit or something." He turned to stalk back toward the cockpit. "You know," he said, pivoting to her again, "this turtle made room for you. Lots of room. Lots of time." His anger was growing the more he thought about it. "Used my fuel." He touched his chest. "My fuel. I'm gonna bill the Alliance. My food. Lost opportunity. Don't go telling me about shutting up."
Leia gripped her hands as he muttered himself away. "And now I gotta make another stop so you can get a damn snow suit."
You picked the wrong card this time, Leia thought to his retreating back.
Dr. Renzatl had made reference to Han several times in her letter. In hindsight, Leia was a little chagrined she mentioned him too often. What did he have to do with her recovery?
Nothing, Leia answered herself; she was on her own. But the same small voice that asked for a home could be heard, reminding her meekly and clearly, he was there.
They made a stop on Tethi IV. Han and Leia were together but silent. She wasn't angry with him and didn't think he still carried his own anger. They communicated with looks and gestures, and she no longer wondered how they would part. They were both just stubborn.
Han knew of a distribution center- of course he did- Leia would roll her eyes if his trivial knowledge of things wasn't so damn useful- that let a customer select off-season items in minimum quantities, and they stood side by side. She relied on him to watch for signs of trouble while she quietly perused the catalog screen. He leaned his elbow on the counter and his hand dangled unworried.
The distribution center had seventeen styles available. Leia took her time and looked at each one. If she couldn't land without one the temperatures must be dangerously low on Hoth.
By her reckoning they were all mostly the same, of an industrial fabric developed for the clone army during the Clone Wars. One had a pretty quilting stitched in a diamond pattern, and it came with snow boots and gloves, too. A plus.
The purchase page prompted Leia to select a color. They weren't very attractive, she thought. The red, yellow and blue looked very washed out. But anyway there was no contest. White is what she wore on the Death Star.
She took the parcel from the droid and faced the exit, her chin held high.
Princess Leia was ready to go to Hoth.