#59 - You own my heart, asked by otterandterrier.

Rest

Now, on late nights, when he takes a turn tending to the new baby, walking in slow circles around their whole place because like her mother she can't rest easy unless she knows she's headed somewhere, he finds himself thinking back, way back, well what feels like way back and actually was breathtakingly recent. Thinking as he walks around this room, of pacing back then, raking his hands through his hair, waiting for Leia and this girl, their daughter, the girl who would be their daughter. (Well, their first daughter – because waiting for their second had been something else altogether.) It was killing him, Leia not letting him take her there on the Falcon, but the girl – Lynnie, calling her "the girl" felt not right, he'd have to stop that – hadn't flown before, and Leia thought commercial might be less intimidating, more like a ride on a speeder than zipping through hyper, and also she was used to Leia and when they both came it sometimes proved overwhelming.

Overwhelming. Like he wasn't overwhelmed. Kissing Leia goodbye late yesterday and knowing she would come back with a child, their child – the child who would live inside their home – he was overwhelmed. Thinking of Leia flying commercial, seat next to her empty, baby snuggled up on her lap. Whispering in her ear about taking off, about the stars, about home, in the soft voice she used lately, at night, when they were spent, saying to him and you're going to love her, and she already loves you, and I can just see it, how you'll be perfect and lovely and kind. Pointing out each constellation to the girl who'd never flew, Leia the mother, knowing all the right words.

Pacing, waiting for the door to move, what would he say, what the hell came next – and then, suddenly, in a clamor of noise, it did, and there they were.

There they were – Leia chattering brightly in her native tongue, pushing open the door with her hip, somehow rolling two suitcases while also holding the impossibly tiny hand of the impossibly tiny girl he remembered, who stepped inside and clung to Leia's leg like a magnet and looked up at him, and looked, and looked.

He automatically stepped closer to take the bags and then she was pointing at him and whispering something he couldn't understand to Leia, who smiled and petted her hair and said something he couldn't understand, and the girl was nodding a little and staring at him, removing one hand from clutching Leia's leg to stick her thumb in her mouth. Leia said something else, then his name, and then surprised him by kissing him suddenly, smiling against his lips before dipping down to engage Lynnie, explaining, "Je l'aime, je l'aime beaucoup."

Lynnie nodded, reaching out to touch Leia's braids briefly and then blushing. Whispering after a moment, "Marié?"

"Mmhm, oui. Marié. Married. Remember?"

He remembered shifting awkwardly, clearing his throat. "I can – d'you want me to bring through the bags – she hungry or anything?"

And Leia, looking up from her spot on the floor and smiling brilliantly at him. "You can ask her, you know. I'll translate for you."

Frowning a little but bending and looking at her, his voice going to some soft and gentle place he didn't know existed within him, the vocal equivalent of a tip-toe. "You – are ya hungry? C'I get you something?"

And how sweet Leia's voice sounded, the delicate, swirling language tumbling from between her lips, smoothing over the baby's hair as she presumably translated.

"Non, merci," Lynnie said to Leia, her voice sort of hushed, and Leia tapped the baby's nose and indicated him and then she was looking up at him, her little teeth visible from the way they came down on her lip, somehow, improbably, just like Leia. Her little voice even sounding like Leia, just a bit, husky but girlish, as she looked right at him and said again as if making an offering, "Non, merci."

"Peux-tu dire no thank you, 'loved?"

"Non tank you," she said after a pause, still looking at him as if trying to place him – her forehead rippled like Leia's did when up against a particularly challenging bit of political maneuvering.

"You remember me?" he teased gently, and Leia murmured a translation beside her, her voice still in those dulcet mommy tones he'd never quite get used to.

And the baby frowned and whispered, "... je cwois…" I think so. Giving him a look like her not-too-great toddler memory was presenting him as some ghost from another life, a piece of her personal history that felt right and familiar but for which there was no linearity, no fact.

Sometimes, now, he wonders if there is another kind of inheritance that exists, outside of biology, the kind that made her come into their home already having Leia's mannerisms and had folks who didn't know them note sweetly that Lynnie looked like him, had his eyes. If it was the type of magic that works twice, would bless this second one too, with a love of service and deep-rooted loyalty and the Alderaanian accent that had re-entered Leia's vocabulary this past year and a fascination with the stars and the sky. If it could pass through the cord he'd cut or if it was limited to some sort of faerie-foundlings, the kind that crawled into your lap rather than passing through a lover's body, originating there and taking root, nothing into something. What the baby – not the baby, this was the baby – what the first one, then, had been so fascinated by, always up in Leia's space to pat or ask questions or whisper or press kisses, asking as though she thought she might be being tricked, a baby, there? Wanting to know, she know who is me when come out? Will she love her automatically, Lynnie loved her sister automatically, and he loved the new baby automatically, at first sight, had bitten down hard on his knuckle to keep from gasping, and Leia loved Lynnie once she saw that she'd made a home of Han.

He didn't know when he knew he loved Lynnie but it wasn't the first time he looked at her, not like the new baby – and that felt wrong, somehow, something Leia had brought up, how it felt sort of wrong to love their second from the very first moment, like it was unfair to Lynnie, an uneven distribution of parental affection they could never make up, could never go back and love her since she was born – but maybe it had always been there, even before? How Lynnie asked, how she know get big now?, a question they eventually understood to be based on the assumption that a baby had always been inside her mother but was waiting for its cue to take root and take shape and kick against her sister's hands and make her squeal. Like his love for Leia, or even kind of like how she talked about her relationship to her brother: somehow he knew it had always been there. A love for Lynnie like a cosmic calamity he'd been carrying around, waiting for the right signal to grow inside him. The lack of sleep was making him delirious, sentimental.

The new baby likes to move so he holds her close and heads towards Lynnie's bedroom, which is starting its process of becoming Lynnie et Ana's, as the very elaborately glittered flimsi now taped to the door announces. Carefully, he opens the door, then leans against the doorframe. There she is now, curled up small, the guardrail never necessary since she sleeps sweet and still but making her feel more secure nonetheless. Her hair in the nighttime braids Leia had done while nursing the baby, the lot of them in their bed, Lynnie and Leia in those white nightgowns and the baby wrapped in a white blanket, three girls like a single set, girls that were his, his stomach had been doing this surreal thing recently of sort of dropping deeper with the weight of affection just when he thought it was deep as it could go, wouldn't he reach a point at which he stopped finding new reasons to love Leia, wasn't this getting a bit ridiculous? They were both sleep-deprived, and they were getting ridiculous, today Leia had called him Hana and Lynnie her mother's name. But there'd been a time when saying her mother's name unexpectedly would have sent her into a state and now she just laughed, and that was love and also growing, love was a kind of growing, things didn't grow if they weren't loved.

How she know get big now? Because she heard her sister saying je t'aime soooo much that she said that's it, that's that, I've got to meet her as soon as possible and tell her I feel just the same way. And that's how gwow? And that's how she knew to grow, mhm.

Something, maybe, about being awake beside another person who was sleeping. Here, now, watching Lynnie sleep, holding the new baby and hoping she'd tilt into sleep, there was something like love in that. Lynnie'd met the new baby for the first time when she was sleeping, and when Leia was out too, actually, had hovered over the baby and though he was ready to warn her not to mess with her had only looked and looked. He'd said, well, whatdaya think? Still love her now that she's on the outside? mostly meaning to tease. But she'd whispered, all hushed and totally serious, Yes.

Back to that first day, then: she hadn't wanted anything to eat but she had yawned during Leia's sweet little hushed-voice tour, and all of the sudden she was going to take a nap, and Leia was slipping into her bedroom with her, promising, from what he could tell, to sit beside her while she slept. And from what he could tell she had, lying next to her on the bed until she drifted off, stroking her hair, kissing her nose. Waiting until she was certain the baby was out before tiptoeing out – only to be sitting with him on the couch, two minutes later, when they heard the anxious cry from her room – Maaaaa-aaaaa-aaaa-maaa…

And what had she been busy with? Work, some work thing, something she hadn't been able to wrap up before her leave started, something that had to be finished right then, because suddenly she was rushing into Lynnie's room, negotiating something, and then hurrying back out to him. "Can you just lie there with her?" she asked him, biting her lip like the baby, who did it like her… "I need to just get these signatures out right now – she just doesn't want to be left alone."

"Dunno how we'll do without our translator…"

"She'll be out in minutes, she just likes the company, you know. She's a kid, she's nervous about being in a new place."

"Yeah," he said, "I know."

He remembered knocking on the door and feeling a little ridiculous for doing so, but not wanting to spook her; taking the Alderaanian he didn't understand as a come in. She was under the covers, her eyes wide, but they seemed to soften when she saw him. Her thumb in her mouth. Looking at him.

He remembered feeling weird about getting into bed with her, about crowding her, so instead he made a big show of stretching out on the fluffy blue rug beside her bed, resting his hands behind his bed and miming at going to sleep. Stayed there for moments that felt like years, listening to her breath grow slow and steady with thinly-concealed anxiety. Thought you own my heart, you've got my heart in your hands – let me make you feel safe. Peered at her just slightly and found her fast asleep, thumb in her mouth, blankets pulled up to her chin, face smushed against the guardrail. Trying to get closer. Affection being something like being awake while someone else was sleeping. He stretched out his legs on the rug and made himself comfortable.

The rug is sort of faded now, glitter and crumbs clinging to its floofy surface – it's due for replacement, not durable enough for a creative, curious kid. Yesterday before the table had been set up it's where Leia had laid out an old stained towel and changed the new baby, Lynnie peering over her shoulder and whispering in Alderaanian. The towel from the Falcon that might've been the one Leia wrapped her hair in when she'd showered between the Death Star and Yavin, the rug he'd napped on and felt something inside him like whatever came before love for this kid he barely knew. He remembered looking at the towel once she discarded it, teasing her about how could hair possibly hold so much water in it, and feeling something in his stomach when she'd said something about it being longer than he'd ever know, something about wanting to know her more, something like whatever came before love. Cosmic something. Three girls of a single set. Leia's kid before she knew Leia, adoring a sister before she was born. Things take love to know to grow. A life can unfurl in every possible damn direction and it still manages to follow the right one. The new baby is sleeping, now, warm and safe in his arms. Maybe she's wary of this new place, but something about them – about him, and Leia, and Lynnie too – set her at ease enough to look so sweet and trusting. Maybe he should get some rest, too.

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