a/n: what's this, a vignette? a little late for Valentine's day, but a little love story nonetheless! based on rose cousin's song "The Swimmer (to be an old man)".
to be an old man
Sometimes, she would watch Han sleep.
Sometimes. Or often. It depended on how one defined the two words. Leia had trouble sleeping, and it wasn't always a restless, chaotic, screeching insomnia; sometimes it was just quiet wakefulness in the darkest hours of night.
She didn't always want him awake to talk to her or hold her, or comfort her; she was occasionally content to be alone with her midnight thoughts. They were almost always about him, her thoughts, on night like this.
For someone who could be fully alert at the slightest provocation or hint of a threat, Han was a pretty heavy sleeper, and for someone who hadn't always had the softest, most privileged life – he seemed to always, for the most part, sleep well.
She would lie next to him and study his slumber, the open, honest vulnerability of it, and ever since she started sleeping next to him, since it became more and more permanent, she would stare at him, and two emotions would leap up from the depth of her mind and clobber her, squeeze her heart and take her breath and threaten to overwhelm her.
Two emotions: terror, and love.
Love was obvious, love was easy; she loved Han so much she sometimes struggled to find words for it, not that he needed them from her when he read her so intuitively. Of course when she looked at him she felt absolutely bowled over with love; how could she not? He'd seen her through the worst days of her life, he'd promised to be there for the bad ones to come – without any idea what that might entail. He'd made her laugh when she'd thought nothing would ever be funny again, he'd made her furious when she'd thought the only emotion she had left was numbness; nothing.
Terror…snuck up on her. It dwelt in her soul in a cage unlocked only in the dark – this terror at least, this specific terror, attached so intricately to her love for him – because where was everyone else she had loved her whole life?
They were ash; not even buried; fine dusty ash obliterated into the stars. Without exaggeration, everyone she had once loved was gone, lost, dead. She loved some still living, of course, but never had she loved like she loved Han – the only thing that had come close, ever, was the familial love she'd felt for her parents, the platonic love she'd felt for her best friends – and they were all gone.
So she would lie awake, in the dark, on any given night, and stare at the rise and fall of Han's chest, the shadow blooming on his jaw, the slight little flutter of his eyelashes, the sleepy muscles of his neck, shoulders, hands – she would stare at everything about him and focus all her energy on a fierce, fierce wish, a wordless prayer screamed into the void of the universe:
Do not take him away from me.
The new world was just beginning and it had been brutal to build; it had been bloody to wrench the victory of this war from the jaws of the Empire, and the thought of losing Han – in some accident, in some skirmish, in some way, frightened her to the core. Despite all the pain that had become a part of her since the violent end of Alderaan, she had taken the risk let herself fall, she had chosen to love him, and she wanted everything that fairytales promised with no holds barred.
She wanted him to propose in some silly, roguish, Han way, a proposal she never thought she'd have. She thought he would, maybe – no; she knew he would – he had a ring, she'd found it three weeks after Endor, so why was he dragging his feet? She wanted a wedding with an unbelievable dress, a dress like she hadn't had since before the war, she wanted a honeymoon and she – someday, even, if she ever coped with the things she needed to cope with, she wanted – that is, if he wanted, well…
She wanted all of those things and still she knew how fragile life was, she knew how quickly, how suddenly, it could all be ripped away, and so on nights like these she willed her desires out into the ether and she imagine him old, and herself old with him – old, old as dirt, decrepit in a way that was only romantic because it meant she got to have her forever with him.
Han would sleep like a rock, and Leia would lay awake imagining life with him and thinking, thinking, please live to be an old man – we have so much to do.
Once, he opened one eye lazily, and smiled at her, as if he'd known she was watching all along – as if he always knew, and he asked quietly, gruffly, his voice thick with sleep:
"What are you looking at?"
She reached out and touched his face, tracing her fingertips along his jaw lightly, and she said, with optimism:
"The next fifty years."
please live to be an old man
to be an old man, to be an old man
please live to be an old man
-alexandra
story #407