Plot Holes
He had screwed up. Even he knew it.
The semi-public outburst was embarrassing. Shouted accusations about him leading her on. Of being a tease. A tease. Ana storming away, everyone else in the hangar casually averting their eyes. He waved his arm with a growl of disgust and marched back onto his ship. Raised the ramp and didn't come back down until the following day.
Clearly it had been a mistake to start something on the base. From now on he'd stick to women in the ports. Some that he knew and had an understanding with; others that he had just met, but only if it were a place to which he was unlikely to return.
I don't know why we stay here if it just makes you grumpy, Chewie said.
He watched the Princess out of the corner of his eye as she stalked through the hangar. She still conferred with Wedge regularly, but he thought there was more of a separation between the two of them. Not just physically, but in her demeanor. More businesslike, perhaps.
He could envision them together, dating. Not with Luke, who had initially shown interest. But Wedge had qualities that she valued. Serious, kind, steady, hardworking. Like her. Though Wedge couldn't match her wit.
He busied himself with extra supply runs, assistance to the Rogues. He bit back his complaints and tried to get into a proper rhythm each day instead of moping around his ship. Meals in the mess with the others. Holos or sabacc games at night. It surprised him that those required an effort that was never needed before. Except for the times when she joined.
A core group slowly congealed: him, Luke, Wedge, and her. Janson, a lot of the time. Other pilots and crew shuffled in and out of their gatherings. He began to feel better. More like himself, like he had been in the good years. When he and Chewie were raking in credits and he wasn't yet under the thumb of Jabba. He had a bounty on his head by the Empire too, but this was the best place in which to hide out. Alongside people who might have his back.
It didn't escape him that she kept her distance, chatting instead with Luke and others when they were all together. He tried to rein in his impulse to tease her, especially now with her new responsibilities. He wondered if she were overworked.
One night they were watching an old holo on the makeshift screen in the hangar. Something about a batch of droids going bad and enslaving their makers. But a comedy. He couldn't make heads or tails of the plot, the shifting allegiances between different types of droids and the corresponding castes of their manufacturers. Weren't most droids created by other droids anyway? Maybe the holo itself had been made by a droid.
She joined toward the end and slipped onto the floor, hugging her knees. It was part of her usual pattern of stopping by most nights near the conclusion of whatever was going on. As if she were granting herself a brief reprieve but only for a short enough time to avoid feeling guilty. That was obviously absurd but he had thus far refrained from telling her that.
Leaning precariously out of his chair, he tapped her shoulder. "Hey." Tilted his head at the cooler behind him where the last of the bottles were sloshing around. She nodded and turned back to the screen.
He knelt beside the cooler and cracked one open. When he stood up she was suddenly next to him. Expectant.
He handed her the bottle and she took a sip. Even though he had his own by his chair he gripped another one without opening it.
"Let me guess. You're rooting for the droids."
On the screen an IG-88 unit was delivering a rousing speech to its fellow automatons. She turned her head a fraction. "It's hard not to when they're the only competent characters."
"Well, give it time. Sooner or later one of the sentient beings will locate the off switch."
He might have spotted a smile. "That seems like a pretty big plot hole."
"Shows what you know." They retreated further from the screen. "You missed the part where the droids all agreed to mislabel their circuitry. Y'know, to throw off the non-droids."
"If only it were that easy in real life."
"Let's just hope the ones here haven't thought of that."
"Too late. They've already taken over the command center."
He nodded toward the exits. "I'll cover the doors while you make your escape."
"Wouldn't it be easier to fly out of here?"
He rubbed his chin. "Huh. You may be right. That quick thinking must be why they pay you the big bucks now."
"Perhaps." She took another sip.
"Don't tell me your promotion didn't come with a raise. You want me to give you a couple of negotiating lessons?"
Even she couldn't hold back a gulp of laughter. "Captain, when have you ever successfully negotiated for anything?"
He ignored the Captain. "Well, I did get my ship."
"I said negotiated, not won in a sabacc game."
On the screen the music swelled as the final scene showed a derelict prison full of regretful non-droids. Han thought the humans looked particularly pathetic, dirt-smudged and downtrodden as they confronted their sins toward the robotic race.
"Hi, Leia." Luke approached them as the lights came back on. "Pretty good holo, huh?"
Han couldn't resist. "Didn't watch many growing up, did you kid?"
"Sure I did." Luke looked confused.
Han eyed the Princess as she fought back a smile. "Luke, you have that reconnaissance mission to Rialto tomorrow, right?"
"Bright and early." Luke's capacity for cheerfulness was seemingly infinite.
"Keep an eye out for any unusual defensive arrays or landing procedures when you arrive. We're hearing whispers that their defense minister is back under Imperial surveillance."
"Sure, no problem," Luke replied. "Want me to report in flight or when I get back?"
"When you get back is fine." Han watched as she scanned the hangar for the other squadron leaders.
"It's always business with you, isn't it?" He tried to keep his tone light but it came out as an insult. Why did he always sound like he was trying to provoke her?
"Well, we are fighting a war." Her voice was sharp, their lousy-holo-induced truce gone.
"Right this second?" He waved his arm at the hangar full of joking pilots. "You can relax every once in a while, you know."
She shook her head impatiently. "We have a new push later this week in addition to the maneuvers tomorrow." She nodded at Luke, her smile uncomplicated, and something stabbed at Han's gut. "See you in the morning."
Oh for —. "But you haven't even finished that." He jerked his head at her half-filled bottle.
She raised her eyebrow at his unopened one. "Neither have you."
Her blunt acknowledgement of his ploy to steal time with her made him feel exposed. He couldn't figure her out. No, actually he could figure her out, but she was so unlike any other woman that it was unnerving. He was routinely caught off guard by her directness and refusal to act coy despite the fact she had never behaved otherwise.
They were at a standstill, facing each other silently, each calculating the next move. Luke studied them both and then scrutinized his own bottle as if it held a solution to the sudden tension.
Han accepted that he had nothing. He had been dealt a crappy hand yet again. "I'm calling it a night," he muttered. Pivoting around the pair, he dropped his bottle back in the cooler.
Before he had taken three steps toward his ship, Wedge and Janson ambushed him to inquire whether the extra converters he had obtained for the Falcon might work in some of the ailing X-wings. Han wasn't in the mood for a conversation on ship mechanics, and anyway those sorts of questions required experimentation, a trial-and-error approach, rather than purely theoretical ruminations. But Luke would talk shop all night long and was now standing by himself, so Han reversed course and steered the other two to him before making his escape yet again. It was times like this he wished he lived alone.
"Captain." He nearly jumped out of his skin as the Princess emerged from the side of the hangar. Where the hell had she been hiding? He had sworn she had left already.
"Are you heading my direction?" She nodded toward the corridor off the far corner.
"Uh, I'm going to my ship." He managed to recover some semblance of poise.
She gauged the distance between his ship and her destination and gave a satisfied nod. "Close enough. Walk me to the door?"
He narrowed his eyes, perplexed. Was she flirting with him?
"Yeah. Sure." He started walking again, more slowly this time.
He figured she had depleted her reserves of acceptable human behavior between two people who, if not exactly lifelong friends, were certainly more than strangers because she didn't say a word during their journey. Entirely too soon they reached the door and he turned to her, unsure of what she expected. Of what he expected.
"Thank you." She inclined her head. "I'll see you in the morning. When the squadron leaves?"
He hadn't planned to be up that early, in fact had been hoping to sleep until the post-departure lull when the hangar would be quieter than usual. "Sure. See you."
He watched her glide away, the hem of her dress swirling around her ankles.
Maybe the night hadn't turned out so badly after all.