A sudden jerking sensation woke Han up and he found himself in his quarters on the ferry. As his eyes adjusted, he heard Chewie somewhere nearby grunting and growling.
"What's going on? What time is it?" he asked as he started to get up. His head felt foggy, and he knew he'd been out of it longer than he'd planned.
Chewbacca answered and Han did a double take, suddenly awake now.
"Already? Taking off again? For where?"
"Gentlemen," Charon addressed her crew as she handed out the credits, "We've pulled in as much of a profit as we could all things considered, the ferry is now officially docked on Ginj for five days for the course of your leave, so go, recuperate, have a good time, just don't catch anything and bring it back on board when we leave."
"Yes, captain," the men took the money and headed to their quarters to change and prepare for five days on the planet, eager to take in the hot sunny weather and the exotic native women.
Charon laughed as she watched them leave the main hold, then turned to Han and asked, "Bring back memories?"
"Let's face it, the women are what make this planet the tourist hub it is," he replied, "you can get hot sun, beach sand and watered down drinks anywhere in the galaxy, but those women-"
Charon slapped him in his side.
"What?" he asked, feigning innocence.
Chewbacca entered the room behind Han and came in on the conversation.
"You don't really mean to say you'd prefer one of them over me, do you, cowboy?" Charon asked teasingly.
"Well to be honest I always preferred tall blondes, which you never were, but-"
"Hey," Charon grunted as she hit him again.
This time though, something else hit Han and his head was killing him and his ears were ringing. He realized at the same time Charon had slapped him on the chest, Chewie had slapped him in the back of the head. Turning to his hairy navigator, the Corellian smuggler told him, "I was joking!"
"Hey Chewie," Charon changed the subject, "it doesn't look like you guys will be leaving before tomorrow, you got any plans for the night?"
The wookiee chattered in response, to which Charon answered, "Yeah, they got those here. There's a cantina nearby that has about 10 Dejarik tables, they hold tournaments."
"Why did you have to tell him that?" Han wanted to know.
Charon smirked at him, "I thought you couldn't wait to get off this ferry."
"Yeah but not standing around a cantina all night keeping him from ripping people's arms out of their sockets when he doesn't win," he replied.
"I'll catch up with you later, Chewie," Han said, figuring they were in a good enough spot to test the Falcon and make sure it was in full working order, or spend the night working on it if it wasn't, "you go on ahead, just remember, no biting, and no ripping any arms out."
Chewbacca snarled in response. Han sighed in exasperation, "I've told you before, it's not always cheating when you don't win."
Chewie growled at him, Han responded sarcastically, "I love you too, you big hairball. Get out of here, have fun, and don't kill anybody."
He watched as Chewbacca headed down the boarding ramp with the members of Charon's crew, all of them thrilled to finally be docked and looking forward to a night on the town. Han chuckled to himself and then went to head down to the storage hold.
A sudden sound made him freeze in mid-step, something familiar, something from long ago, it took him a few seconds to realize it was music. In that moment his brain couldn't grasp a concept like turning around and heading back, so instead he walked backwards in strides even to the ones he'd taken forward, until he backed up to an open doorway and looked in.
On luxury cruisers a room like this might be called a promenade room, but on a ferry it was just a big room with little furnishings, a place for people to go to stretch their legs during a long trip, a place to move extra cargo when the storage hold was full or the entryway down was blocked...and apparently this was where the droids got shut up when they weren't needed. He didn't know where they'd been put away but Charon was knelt down in the middle of the room in front of an antique R2 droid who was playing a hologram tape of a band from a cantina they used to frequent many years ago. Acting more on a mechanical impulse than any conscious decision, Han felt one foot move in front of the other, then the other, and another step, and another, until he was in the middle of the room just a few feet from her.
The ferryman stood up to her full height, turned to the Corellian smuggler and said, "How about it, cowboy? It hasn't been so long that you forgot, has it?"
He felt himself smiling just a little as he responded, "No...no, I think...I think I remember."
One of the best things about being young in love was not knowing anything, and not knowing enough to know you didn't know anything. When they'd gotten married in that temple, they'd planned to cut and run as soon as it was official, they hadn't known that a dance around the room was part of the required ceremony before they kissed. When they heard this they looked at each other with just a slight expression of panic since neither one of them knew how to dance, and wordlessly agreed to fake their way through it by joining hands and going around in slow circles. It seemed to please the officiate and it wasn't a bad experience in itself, it was almost kind of fun.
It was a forgotten event for a couple months afterwards, until one night in a cantina, there was a live band playing a slow song, and they'd had enough drinks that it seemed like a good idea to try it again. They stuck out between the other couples like a broken appendage, but they didn't care. The times they had to live in a room over a cantina, the music would usually pipe through the thin floors and the nights they were restless and couldn't sleep, but too broke to go out and do anything, they'd turn down the lights and dance the same way around their room. They could do it in a crowded bar with enough liquor in their system, but it was a far nicer experience when they were alone and no one was watching.
Despite how many years it had been since they'd done this, it felt like they'd never stopped.
Han felt a sigh deep in his chest. The Millennium Falcon would always be his home, but right here, in this moment, it felt like this was where he belonged.
"It's been a long time."
It took him a minute to realize Charon had even spoken, let alone what she'd said. He nodded, "Yeah."
"I've missed this," she told him.
He nodded again, "Me too."
"I've missed you," she added.
"Same," he said around a lump in his throat. Where the hell did that come from?
So many things, that he wanted to say, that he wanted to tell her, but he knew it wasn't in either of their best interests to do that. Meeting up here and there for a couple days at a time, unbeknownst to anyone else in the galaxy, that was one thing, that was acceptable, but he knew it couldn't go further than that. What they had once, they didn't have anymore, and would never have again, no matter how much he wished it could be otherwise, how much he wished he could go back in time and strangle his younger self for screwing this up.
"I..." he felt like he was literally choking on the words, "love you."
"I know," she replied. "I love you too."
They danced around in a slow circle for a minute before Han decided it was worth taking a chance and asked, "Charon?"
"Hmm?"
"What would happen, if I kissed you?"
Her answer, and the way she said it, indicated she'd already given it some thought herself. "That's not a good idea, and you know it, Han."
"I know," he nodded. All the same, he tipped his head and lightly kissed the hair on the side of her head. Things would never be for them what they used to be, but when he left here and returned back to his regular life, he was going to take some memories with him worth having, that hopefully would help him last until they met again, if and whenever that was.
Han laughed as he poured two more glasses of star brandy. Long after the hologram tape had run out, he and Charon had retreated to the galley and made themselves comfortable at the table as they had a few drinks, and as the potent liquor took effect they both loosened up and started regaling several events from their short time married.
"Do you remember when we crash landed on that place, what was it? Gree-Gree or something like that," he said.
"Oh yeah and we caught that plague and our whole bodies broke out in those horrible black boils," Charon remembered.
"Oh yeah, that hurt like hell," Han recalled as he capped the bottle again and took a drink, "and we get quarantined in that sick bay with 20 other people all crammed side by side in the beds."
"Yeah and then we had to keep kicking and punching each other awake every hour to make sure we hadn't died in our sleep," Charon added, laughter breaking up the sentence every few words.
They both laughed so hard they about fell out of their chairs. There had been absolutely nothing funny about it at the time, but having lived through it and still being here over 10 years later, it was something they could look back on in amusement.
Charon laughed particularly loud and added, "Damn but love sure is violent when you're young, must be part of what keeps it exciting."
"Oh?" Han raised an eyebrow, "You got something to compare it to now?"
Charon looked across the table at him and looked like she was struggling to hold herself together as she responded, in as even a voice as she could, "Oh honey, trust me, after you, every male in this galaxy is just a dead bore."
He laughed at first, then got stuck in a long pausing thought, and concluded, "I don't know whether I should be insulted by that or not."
An hour passed, and became another, a few more drinks were had, and the mood became a more somber one. The two captains sat at the galley table in an uneasy silence, neither looking at the other, neither seemed to be looking at anything in particular, just sitting there quietly, and processing everything.
It was Charon who finally broke the silence.
"You know..."
It was all she said at first, but it was enough to get him to turn his head towards her. She looked at him and tried again, "You know one day that bucket of bolts of yours is just going to quit altogether and you'll have to get another ship."
"Never, going, to happen," Han said slowly, emphasizing every word, "The Falcon is my ship and I'm not replacing it."
"You can't keep fixing it, Han."
"I've managed fine so far, and don't forget that bang-up job your navigator did on it. So it ought to be good for about another 200 light years."
"One day you won't have a choice," she told him.
"That's okay," he replied, "I plan to be dead before that happens."
The look Charon shot at him when he said that spoke volumes to what she wasn't saying.
"Sorry," he sheepishly replied, knowing neither of them liked getting into those sorts of conversations.
There was a pause between them before Charon offered out of the blue, "I worry about you."
"You do?" he asked with wide, confused eyes.
She shot him a 'well duh!' look. The drunk Corellian made a sound in his throat before he told her, "You're the only one who ever has."
"That's not true," Charon replied.
"Oh no?"
"No, now I split that job with Chewie," she answered.
The two of them looked at each other for a minute before they both busted out laughing.
"You sure you got everything?" Charon asked the next day as Han was preparing to board the Falcon.
"Yep, everything except one giant fuzzball," Han answered, "where is he anyway?"
"He's coming," she told him.
"Well...thanks for...everything," Han figured it'd be easier to gloss over the details and get straight to the point. "It's been great seeing you again."
"Trust me, cowboy, that's mutual," Charon said.
They stood a few inches from one another and just looked at each other. These never got any easier, all these years later Han still felt like he was being disemboweled through his navel when they had to say their farewells. He finally made the first move and put his arms around his former wife and hugged her, wishing this didn't have to end, and knowing he possessed the strength to end it when the time came, and if he didn't, Chewie would.
"Keep yourself alive, Han," she said.
"Hey, you too," he told her in response.
Charon pulled back and sarcastically replied, "Oh please, you know nobody ever bothers the ferries."
Chewbacca came up to them howling amiably.
"Say your goodbyes, pal, we gotta get moving," Han told the wookiee.
"It was great seeing you again, Chewie," Charon said as she hugged the giant beast. She leaned in and said as close to his ear as she could reach, "Keep an eye on him for me."
Chewie grunted in affirmation and wrapped one giant arm around her back and pressed against it a couple times, not enough to choke the air out of her but close.
Han Solo and Chewbacca boarded the Falcon, made sure everything was ready for takeoff, and with one last look to the ferryman standing below, Han got them off the ground, and before too long he kicked the ship into hyperdrive and they were on their way.
They'd traveled through the galaxy in total silence for a while before Chewbacca grunted questioningly.
Han turned to him and half scowled, "Don't start again."
Chewie snorted in response.
"I told you before, there's nothing to tell," Han insisted, "we were together once a long time ago, and now we're not, and that's all there is to it."