At the time things seemed to happen so fast there wasn't a whole lot of time to think about them. Looking back now Han could get a better perspective on the whole thing. Back then he was still new to the concept of having to look after somebody else's best interest, but it didn't take him long to figure out Charon's water phobia could easily get both of them killed, and it was a problem that wasn't going to go away, with few exceptions, there was water on every planet they touched down on.

Growing up the way he did, he'd had to do a lot of things he didn't want to do in order to survive, and so he took on one more undertaking he didn't see himself enjoying. Every time they landed on a planet that had a lake, a pond, or a bathing spring, he forced Charon to wade out into the water and tried, futilely for the most part, to teach her to swim. He figured if he could do that, she might get over this fear of drowning, and if that happened, maybe the next time they had to pay the sick bay a visit, she wouldn't freak out in the bacta tank. Personally he'd never actually known anyone who found it a pleasant experience to wake up in one of those things, but he'd never seen anyone try taking it apart from the inside out either.

Undertaking was the word, most of the times he tried to teach her how to tread water, it nearly got both of them drowned. Several times he was sorely tempted to give up and take their chances, but he knew better, so, as much as he hated it, he kept at it every chance they got. There was one instance in particularly he especially remembered.

They'd gone out to the spring and undressed and Han had started to make his way down the rock formation on the side that served as crude steps into the 90 degree water with a red hue to it, when he realized he was alone. He turned back and saw Charon standing near the edge of the spring, her feet shoulder width apart, looking like she was ready for a fight.

"Come on," he told her.

She shook her head, "I'm not getting in there."

He grumbled under his breath as he went back towards her, but she stepped back before he could reach her.

"Why are you making me do this?" she asked accusingly.

The Corellian tried very hard not to blow his top but he was very close to the line. However, he forced himself to remain civil as he answered, "So if we have a narrow escape by a body of water again, you won't drown, and I won't get killed trying to pull you out while you're flailing around like a psychotic." He took another step towards her, this time she didn't move. "You trust me, right?"

"I don't know," she said, and pointed, "would you mind standing over there for a minute?"

"Why?" Han raised an eyebrow inquisitively.

"I want to see how far I can throw you," Charon answered.

A dry chuckle worked its way up from Han's throat. "Very funny." He grabbed her hand and pulled her along, "Come on, I won't let anything happen to you."

Charon got down one step before her whole body went rigid and she pulled back, "The water's hot."

"Of course it's hot, it's a spring," Han told her.

"Forget about drowning, I'm going to get cooked to death in here," she said as she reluctantly followed him down the steps. As the water rose higher and higher around her and started to move against her, the water rippling and turning into waves, she panicked and locked her wrists around Han's throat, clinging to him.

"Get your hands off, you're choking me!" he got out in a garbled yell as he pried her hands off his larynx.

"Well you're trying to boil me!" she replied.

At the deepest point the water came up to her shoulders and Han's chest. Charon stood behind him in the middle of the spring and looked around.

"Now what?" she asked.

Han rolled his eyes and murmured under his breath, "Give me strength." He didn't know what it meant, but he'd heard it plenty of times as a kid from the adults around him. Somehow it seemed fitting now. The strength not to grab her by the neck and throttle her for driving him crazy.

Swimming was never going to be Charon's strong suit but after the span of almost their whole marriage, she finally got to the point she could tolerate being in the water, though he hated to see what she'd actually do if left to her own devices.

So he'd known very well what they could anticipate this go-round. As hard as it was to watch her struggling to get out of the tank the first time, he knew it had to happen again to know Charon would be alright. It was a simple philosophy, where there was no fight, there was no life, and he'd never been so relieved to see her trying to tear the tank apart with her bare hands. Also never felt so relieved to have a 7 foot wookiee with him who could just reach into the tank and pull her out before she did herself any serious damage.

Han was drawn out of his thoughts by a sudden sound he couldn't immediately identify, but it sounded like something in the sick bay had developed a slow leak. He looked around and realized it was Charon sighing loudly as she turned over in her sleep. The smuggler got out of his bed and went over to get a better look at her in the dark. The stitches were holding, everything else seemed normal, whatever the hell that was...so why couldn't he convince himself to walk out of the room? Why did he have a nagging feeling that the first time his back was turned, something would go wrong?

Hell, one night away from Chewie wouldn't kill him. He sat at the foot of the bed on the other side to Charon's and crossed one leg over the other, and watched Charon while she slept, and remembered everything he'd given up back then, and wondering if it had actually been worth it?

When Han woke up again it was still dark. He wondered what time anybody would be in to see how the patient was doing. Turning his head he saw Charon had turned over in the bed and the sheet had crept down past her shoulder blades.

Han Solo was usually good at resisting most things, except temptation. That was how they'd gotten in this whole mess in the first place. But try as he might, he never learned. He quietly got up from his bed and crossed over to Charon's and carefully climbed into the narrow hospital bed beside her. A deep sigh escaped him that he would swear he could feel clear down in his bones. It had been so long, for so many things. What he was looking for now was nothing physical, merely familiar. He lightly laid his hands on the back of Charon's neck and slowly ran them across her shoulders and down her back, least of all to where the sheet met her skin. He felt her skin, and felt the raised sections where the texture was different, rougher. She'd had some scars when he first met her, and she'd gotten several more during the course of their marriage. And even without seeing them, he could tell she'd obtained a few new ones in the years since. He trailed his hands up her back again and out to the sides to feel up and down the backs of her arms, he felt a couple he remembered her picking up from some scrapes they'd gotten into in barroom brawls and stowing away in the cargo hold on cruisers when they couldn't afford the fares.

"Get off of me you pervert," Charon grumbled with her face half pressed into the pillow, "and stop tickling me!" she turned over to hit Han but in the process she kneed him in the gut and it knocked him off the bed entirely and he fell on the floor in a heap.

He groaned as he straightened his spine and pulled himself up and asked her, "How long have you been awake?"

"Since you started breathing down my neck," she answered, "you know I always hated that."

He snorted in response, "Yeah, because you're so delicate."

"You wish," she sneered in response.

He was tempted to make a remark about she must be feeling better since she was trying to kill him, instead he opted for a slightly more sincere, "How's your head?"

"How do I look?"

"How do you feel?"

"How do I look?"

"That good, huh?" he replied nonchalantly. He looked around and asked, "where is everybody?"

"The medic droids are old, they charge all night if they're not needed, you know how it is, either you don't need them or everybody gets sick at once and you need them threefold the number and power they actually have," Charon told him.

His brain was like a switch, in a split second he became more serious as he asked her, "Can we talk?"

Charon groaned and pressed her face back in the pillow and said, "This couldn't wait until morning, could it?"

"Nah, that'd make too much sense, move over," he told her as he parked himself on the edge of the bed, uncomfortably but there he was, and there he was going to stay until he told her what was on his mind.

"Alright, what is it?" she asked as she turned over to face him.

That was the kicker, now that he had her attention, he froze on what he'd planned to say. After a few seconds he tried again, and told her, earnestly, "I realize it's a few years too late to really apologize about this, but I'm sorry about the whole mess I got you in...got us in, by taking that money."

She just looked at him, and it drove him nuts. He hated when she did that, he hated when he couldn't get any kind of read on what she was thinking. He resented it when she was understanding, and he didn't know why. He always tried to avoid the overly emotional women who got worked up into frenzies at every little thing...and every big thing too for that matter, but he had no idea how to respond to a woman who didn't yell at him and try to hit him.

Finally she responded a quiet, simple, "I know."

He figured that was as far as they were going to get on the subject, and she surprised him by adding a moment later, "But I'm not."

"What?" he looked at her.

Charon shook her head, "Don't get me wrong...we could've been very happy all these years...or we could've been very miserable because we never got the hell off Tarfooth...or we could have both gotten killed because neither of us could've left the other behind in any situation...I know I give you a hard time about that tin can of yours but you never would've gotten the Falcon if we'd stayed there, and you know it, and you never would've been satisfied until you got it away from Lando." She sat up in the bed and told him, "Hell, look at everything we've both done because we weren't banded down with one another...leaving our home, and you, and our whole life behind...that was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and I hated it...but in the long run, it was the right decision, it was the best thing for both of us. Not easy by any means, but nothing with us ever was."

"Hm, that's true," Han remembered. It suddenly dawned on him why at the time their marriage had seemed so ideal, they never had any real fights between them, because they were too busy fighting every son of a bitch they came across, and there had been no shortage of them. Somehow when you were young and stupid and in love together, that just seemed like a normal part of life.

Charon made a sound in her throat that gave way to an amused smirk, and it piqued Han's curiosity. "What?"

"Oh," she answered, struggling not to laugh, "I just had another thought why it's really a good thing we didn't stick together."

"Why?" he asked.

She looked at him and said point blank, "Look at you and look at me, think how ugly our kids would've turned out."

It came out so suddenly, and with such a deadly seriousness to it, Han busted out laughing, and did so until he fell off the edge of the bed and landed back on the floor, still laughing despite the pain.

After five minutes of laughing to the point he couldn't even make any sound, let alone hardly even breathe, and pounding the floor with his fist, Han finally managed to calm down, and pulled himself back up onto the bed beside Charon.

"Okay, let's try this. Honestly?"

She shrugged, "Never was our strong suit, but what the hell? Shoot."

"Maybe you're right and we're better off the way we ended up," Han said. "But honestly...do you ever wish things had been different and we had stayed together?"

Charon looked at him with a poignant expression in her eyes as she answered, "About every day. You?"

"Same," he answered simply. "You ever wonder if we...you know, if we tried it again now..."

He already knew what the answer was before he finished getting the question out. He knew Charon would never give up the ferry, and he wasn't going to quit his line of smuggling to ride with her, and he didn't see a relationship that long distance actually working out.

"Sorry," he said.

"I wish it would," Charon answered, "but I know we can't...we may be too much alike but we're both going in completely different parts of the galaxy and it just wouldn't work now. I know I have to settle for seeing you whenever we just happen to cross paths...and I'll be honest, I wish they were more...but I'll take what I can get, 2-3 times a year, an hour, two days, a week, it'll work simply because it has to. As long as I know you're alive, the universe manages to make sense."

"And you call me egotistical," Han said teasingly.

Charon grunted and jabbed him in the side. Neither said anything but they stayed that way for a couple minutes before gradually leaning against one another, Han slipped one foot under Charon's leg and she pressed her head against his shoulder, and in time they fell asleep.