All the Way – Chapter 9
By Erin Darroch and Justine Graham
Stifling the urge to question Leia's withdrawal, Han flashed back to another moment much like this one in the aftermath of their last disastrous mission together, when she'd approached him here in the cockpit and offered a glimpse of her vulnerable heart—only, that time, he'd rebuked her generous overture and coldly pushed her away. Fleetingly, he wondered if that memory had also resurfaced for her, provoking the abrupt termination of their embrace, but he rejected that notion the instant it surfaced. Leia wasn't a vindictive person and she wasn't the type to play cruel emotional games.
He clamped his lips together, resolutely tamping down on the frustration he felt at her sudden hesitance. He reckoned they had made pretty good progress in their interpersonal negotiations so far, and he attributed at least some of that success to him keeping his mouth shut. Leia would tell him what was on her mind—he had no doubt of that—but she evidently needed a moment to compose herself and gather her words. In light of the monumental disclosures she had already made, and especially the confession she'd just whispered against his lips, he was prepared to wait all day.
Leia fidgeted in silence for a moment longer—plucking at the frayed seams of her snowsuit and smoothing away tendrils of hair that had escaped from her coronet of braids—all the while doing her best to hold Han's patiently inquisitive gaze.
Seeing her troubled expression and still determined to bridle his own tongue, Han allowed his thoughts to track back once again to their confrontation in the galley a few hours before, and then to the contentious issue that had sparked it—the same issue that had ignited their blistering disagreements in the wake of Ord Mantell. He closed his eyes and released a sigh, giving himself a moment to let the ambient sounds of the cockpit and the steady hum of the Falcon's engines wash over and soothe his jangled nerves. Although he was elated and profoundly relieved to know for sure that Leia's feelings matched his own, he realised now that there was something else standing in their way—or more to the point, he acknowledged, someone. Jabba.
He opened his eyes and studied her again, reading the tense line of her shoulders and the downcast but resolute look on her face. He should have known she wouldn't let the issue of his eventual departure go so readily. It wasn't in her nature to give up on anything she deemed important and, if his suspicions were correct, his decision to confront the Hutt on his own capped the list of things she was still firmly determined to dispute.
His skin crawled at the thought of Leia in the same solar system as that putrid slug. Even in a galaxy teeming with villainous criminals, the Huttese crime lord was exceptionally vile, a cruel and capricious specimen of a crook who shamelessly relished the suffering of others. The idea of Leia falling under Jabba's control was wholly intolerable, so Han knew he would have to find some way to persuade her to let him handle it alone.
He waited in the lingering silence for a moment longer and then angled his body forward, resting his elbows on his knees, with his hands clasped loosely between them. His movement seemed to snap Leia's attention back into focus. She leaned into the aisle and reached across to clasp his hand.
"You know me, Han," she said without preamble. Her voice was soft and low, and her brown eyes on his were steady. "You understand me, probably better than anyone else. And despite everything that's happened between us lately, I like to think that I know and understand you, too."
Han offered a tight smile and gave her hand a squeeze of affirmation.
"Before the mission to Ord Mantell," she continued, "I wouldn't have questioned any of that, but after…well, afterwards, I was too hurt and angry to think straight. I wouldn't let myself think about it at all for a while. I just focused on work and tried to forget that we had ever been close. I had no intention of letting you in again."
Although his neck suddenly felt as stiff as a parasteel beam, Han gave a short nod of acknowledgement. She had certainly set her deflector shields to high where he was concerned and, for two months, to his mounting exasperation, she had gone to great lengths to ensure that their paths rarely crossed. Even in the brief moments when they'd been unavoidably alone together in some official capacity, she'd aggressively rejected his every attempt to revisit the incident or its aftermath.
"I went out of my way to hold on to my anger," she said, "because it helped me avoid thinking about what had happened between us. When you tried to speak to me about it, I shut you down, tried to pretend I'd felt nothing. That it meant nothing…." She trailed off on a pensive note, looking away and biting her cheek against a bittersweet smile. "But you and I both know that isn't true and I'm embarrassed now, to think about how I acted and some of the ridiculous things I said to you. I was just so…afraid. And I turned my fear into bitterness toward you, instead of seeing it for what it truly was."
Han's heart clenched as her solemn gaze met his once more. He'd always known that Leia possessed unparalleled powers of communication—her diplomatic work with the Alliance was ample testament to that. He'd witnessed how effective she could be when making the case for rebellion against the Empire and he'd seen her recruit whole populations to their cause. Her unrestrained honesty and passion had both rallied and inspired multitudes across the galaxy. To have the full power of her impressive arsenal levelled in his direction now, firing truths at him like so many missiles while her own shields were down, filled him with mingled shock and awestruck admiration. As tough as it was to hear her painful reflections, he knew it was doubly difficult for her to voice them, unspoken and deeply buried as they had been since the dreadful events that had caused them. Any verbal response he could muster seemed wholly inadequate, so he settled instead for gripping her hand a little tighter. She returned the warm pressure and gave him an understanding smile.
"But yesterday," she said, and then stopped short as her eyes widened on his. "Goddess, was it only yesterday? When I saw you there in the Command Centre, trying to reach me…." She shook her head. "I realised you were there in the middle of chaos, trying to save my life at risk of your own—and not for the first time—and...and something changed."
Han lowered his head for a moment to escape the focused lens of her observations, inwardly squirming under her relentless scrutiny. She was right, of course. Something had changed on Hoth, and not only for her. He recalled the exact moment when he'd heard the first shouted reports that Imperial forces had ruptured the outer defenses of Echo Base and they were all on a short countdown to destruction. Rapidly calculating the implications of the breach, he'd felt a rush of emotions barraging him all at once, an overwhelming volley of blows he'd been helpless to deflect: anger and cold fear balanced on a high, taut wire of alarm, which had quickly given way to blind panic—all driven by the one emotion he'd gone to extraordinary lengths to repress. That long-buried but powerful sentiment had erupted again in an instant, tense and urgent, propelling him into frenzied motion without any conscious thought at all. He'd simply acted. And, by doing so, it seemed he had unwittingly offered Leia the final card to complete the hand that she was so deftly dealing back to him now.
"I was baffled, at first," she said with a one-shouldered shrug. "Because if you were a self-serving man, as I had tried so hard to convince myself you were, you would have been light years away and safe by then, and I would've been dead or captured." She levelled her warm gaze at him again. "But you weren't worried about being safe, you were worried about me. I saw you there at my side and I...I understood you then. Really understood you, for the first time, I think. And I just...I couldn't deny it anymore. I knew then, without a doubt, that you loved me, no matter what you said or didn't say. And I've been thinking about it ever since." She tilted her head and regarded him with a contemplative air. "More than just thinking, I've been remembering. Mulling over all the time you've spent with the Alliance. With me. We're going on three years now, and what I've realised is that there has never been a time in our entire history together that I've had to face a problem alone, because you've always been there for me. You made sure of it."
"Sweetheart, I—."
She stopped him with a small gesture and he fell silent once more, reminding himself of his earlier vow to hold his tongue and give her time to articulate. She was leading to something, that much he could tell—and when she spoke again, her words landed squarely at the heart of the issue that had distracted her and disrupted their embrace.
"What I want—" Her throat caught on the word and she paused, swallowing hard. "What I need is to be there for you, too. In all things. To dofor you what you do for me, every day. That is all." She took a deep breath and then released it in a rush. "But...it is everything."
For a flicker of a second, Han saw the problem from her perspective, and a glimmer of apprehension began to trickle through the crack. All this time, he'd believed he was pursuing her—flirting, teasing, coaxing and goading her with not-so-subtle attempts to provoke the confession he was certain she was holding back. In the first few months of their acquaintance, he had wrestled with his own wrecked state of mind, angrily scoffing at Chewie's amused but shrewd observations, and vehemently denying any and all attachments. But afterwards, once he'd privately surrendered to the truth, he'd latched on and held fast to the notion that the only snag interfering with their progress was her. He told himself that she was just too obstinate or too afraid to admit her true feelings, but the truth ran deeper than that—deep enough for him to dismiss, but shallow enough for Leia to see it, even through the shields he had used to conceal it from her and from himself.
He met her eyes once more and felt his heart lurch at the unguarded candour in her solemn gaze. There was no veil between them now, no barriers except for those of his own making—and the outpouring of Leia's heart had just eroded the foundations of those defences and swept them away. Understanding washed over him with all the force of a gravitational wave. Maybe Leia had been too afraid to bare her heart—hells, she'd just admitted as much—but the same could be said of him.
He was afraid.
No, he corrected inwardly, make that fucking terrified.
With an unpleasant jolt, he realised that he'd been right about one thing: there was someone standing in Leia's way. Only it wasn't some lousy Huttese gangster from the Outer Rim—it was him. He was the one who'd been holding back, warily keeping parts of himself in reserve, all this time. After Ord Mantell, he'd told himself that his withdrawal was necessary to protect Leia from harm—and that was true—but he'd also done it to protect himself from harm of a different kind.
Yielding to the truth, he bowed his head over their joined hands and silently berated himself. He didn't need her to spell it for him. As she'd so astutely observed at the outset of this discussion, he knew and understood Leia very well—well enough to put the pieces together without further explanation. She never did anything by half-measures and their future relationship—if there was to be one—would be no different. If he committed, as she was tacitly asking him to do now, it would be on the basis of a new foundation, a solid one that brooked no reservations or inequalities, no immunities and no self-deception. All the way or not at all. He could refuse those terms and lose her heart, or accept them and possibly risk her life.
The agitation roiling within him rose to a fever pitch. His brain felt chaotic, flipping wildly from one worst-case scenario to the next. To have her, he had to be willing to lose her, and what the hell kind of choice was that? Fucking impossible, he decided. The options she presented, though offered now with love and patient hope, felt like the emotional equivalent of being trapped between a Rancor and a Valath—similarly fraught and equally terrifying.
Frustrated and tense to the point of near-panic, he let go of her hand and gripped his armrests instead, digging his fingers into the thin padding as he dropped his head to the back of the chair. Sightlessly scanning the overhead panels, he released a groan that sounded tormented, even to his own ears.
"Gods, Leia…. If I could go back. If I hadn't been so fucking stu—."
"You made a mistake, Han. That's all."
He kept his eyes trained on the lights above, but the visions in his mind made him momentarily blind to anything other than his own distress. After the fiasco of their last mission together, he had faced the devastating realisation that what he wanted with this extraordinary woman was never going to happen—that bad luck, unfortunate timing, and his own poor choices had forever wrecked his chances with her, and he was a damn fool for ever thinking otherwise. Not only that, but when the bounty hunters in pursuit of him had almost cost Leia her life, he'd finally seen the folly and futility of it all. He had made up his mind then to cut ties and walk away. Remembering the look on Leia's face when he'd conveyed as much to her put his stomach in knots, but that was nothing compared to the horror he felt at the prospect of her falling into the scaly, slimy hands of a deranged and malicious Hutt. The idea that Leia might meet such an end due to her association with him made him want to vomit.
With a jerk of his head, he put an end to his dire ruminations and then straightened up in his chair and tried to give the princess a miserably apologetic half-smile that he couldn't sustain. "So many mistakes, Sweetheart."
"But we all make mistakes, don't we?" she countered softly.
Perched on the edge of Chewbacca's chair, she reached for his hands and he sat forward to let her take them, relishing the soothing contact of warm skin on skin. At least they were still talking, he thought with a glimmer of gratitude. No one was shouting or stomping or heading for the exit, so maybe he hadn't completely screwed it up yet. He let his eyes roam over her, taking in her ready posture, the slim, straight shoulders, the determined chin. Above all, he lingered on the warm and level gaze that rested on his own. In those deep brown eyes Han saw no anger or impatience, no recriminations and no judgement. Only warm encouragement and fervent hope.
"Yeah. I guess we do." His throat was tight and his voice sounded hoarse. "Just so happens that one of my mistakes was doing business with a bloated, four-meter-long, slime-covered, corrupted asshole." He gave a dry snort. "Just lookin' at him is enough to make you sick."
"Good thing I have a strong constitution, then," she said softly. "My point is that no matter how awful our mistakes might be, we all regret them. What matters most is that we try to correct them, where we can." She let her words linger for a moment. "I guess you could say that I'm trying to do that myself. One of my biggest and worst mistakes was not being honest with you sooner. Not being honest with myself." She looked down and studied their joined hands, and gave a contemplative hum. "When I say I want you, Han, I mean it. But I want all of you. Not just the parts you deem 'safe' or 'worthy'."
Worthy. The softly spoken word almost made Han laugh out loud. How could he ever truly be worthy of this bold, brave, beautiful woman sitting across from him with her small hands in his, offering the whole of her heart and asking for his in return? She wasn't blind to the risks; he knew that now. She saw them and she accepted them. She neither wanted nor expected any guarantees—though Han would have sold his soul to be able to give her one. Worthy. He wanted nothing more in that moment than the chance to earn that status.
The force of that heartfelt wish seemed to shift something inside, as if a rusted lock embedded deep within him had finally tumbled to her patient key.
"All of me, huh?" he asked. He licked his lips. "You sure about that?"
Leia gave a solemn nod. "I am."
He kept his eyes on hers while the inveterate strategist in the back of his brain measured up what he had to lose versus what he had to gain. It was a brief reckoning. The outpouring of Leia's heart had been an unexpected but surpassingly precious gift and he would not waste it. He could not possibly repay her honesty and vulnerability with anything less than his own. If facing his abject terror of losing her was the price he had to pay for being with her, he reasoned, so be it.
Take the risk or risk losing the chance.
He turned one of her hands over in his and then lifted it to his lips, pressing a reverent kiss to the soft skin of her palm.
"Okay," he said decisively, lowering their joined hands to his knee and meeting her eyes once more.
He felt a cool rush of exhilaration and relief, as if he'd just done the Kessel run backwards with his eyes shut—and survived.
Leia's eyes widened and she gaped at him for a moment. "'Okay'?" she echoed incredulously. The smile in her voice also danced in her eyes, but Han could see an earnest question there, lurking behind mingled exasperation and amusement.
He gave a short laugh, suddenly conscious of how unequal he was to the task of pouring out his own heart. He didn't lack for words. They were all there, and perhaps he would say them in time. But he didn't need them now—he had only to look at her to see his own heart mirrored in her shining eyes. She understood.
Still, it seemed she wasn't above a little good-natured ribbing. "'Okay'?, she repeated, rolling her eyes and weighting her tone with mock indignation. "Look, Flyboy, I know you like to try and maintain an air of cool mystery, but seriously…."
"Well…," he drawled, stalling for time as he searched for a more satisfactory declaration. He tried a crooked smile and a shrug. "What I mean is: I'm in."
She laughed again. "In?"
"All in."
"Oh, you're overwhelming me with your loquaciousness now. And the business with Jabba…?"
"We'll figure something out."
"Together?" she prodded.
She stared at him expectantly, and he could feel the warm radiance of her fervent hope. He let it sink deep into his bones and, for the first time in as long as he could remember, dared to allow himself a glimmer of optimism. Facing Jabba would not be an easy task, but he never doubted that the princess could do anything she set her mind to. And maybe—just maybe—with Leia by his side, so could he.
"Together," he promised solemnly, and tightened his hands on hers. "In everything. From now on, Sweetheart. Together, all the way."