Just a little something.
Hand-Me-Downs
By the time Lynnie comes along, finds her way to them, they're no strangers to repurposed things. In fact they're accustomed to it – military life and royal life and smuggler life had that in common, actually, so it's a near-habit that their belongings are both worn and unsentimental, all these years later. Even now Han has to remind her that it's alright to buy new things, yeah? And the only thing that keeps Leia from doing the same is that now that she's explained what bleach is his shirts aren't nearly so nasty.
But he's used to having nothing and she's used to losing everything – they only know how to dress functional, how to make do. And even before that – Leia never dressed herself, always wore what was traditional, and in turn unflattering, because everything traditional was designed for princesses of ages past, hardier and darker and taller, so she was always dressed in little girl clothes even when she was at least a tween, which she hated – didn't know her favorite color because she just knew wearing white – didn't think of her clothes as her own because they were really loaners anyway. Her best friend Amilyn always sporting some badazzled glittery shift of so many colors, whenever they saw each other as young women – Ami, you make me feel like I'm wearing a curtain because she very often nearly was – expensive white curtains, too big, making her look like a ghost.And then in the war, losing everything with every evac, taking in the smallest men's things, making it work. Alienated from her appearance so much so that when it comes time to pick out her wedding dress she doesn't know what she wants at all and just picks the cheapest, simplest, least revealing thing after having a teeny-tiny panic attack in the shop. Long slim column of dark green faux-velvet, ankles to wrists, black lace veil, practical, very warm. Serious, severe.
But Leia thinks what if Lynnie isn't the type of girl who wants to be practical. Part of her wants to indulge her as much as possible, the way she would want to buy Han everything if she were still wealthy – smother her in everything she never had, every frilly thing, the loveliest dresses, all princess pinafores, like a fantasy. Going from having nothing to something. On the other hand, though, she knows that being taken into their home would be a life of possibility, not pampering – a life where she had options, where she could do anything, be anything. Which is how she found herself lost and wandering and overwhelmed, walking awkwardly around a children's clothing store, trying to figure out what clothes were sturdiest, the most movable, the best for playing, the brightest colors, because when Leia was a kid she'd always wished she could wear the brightest colors. The first time in this whole time that she'd felt overwhelmed – all those options.
Lynnie too – at first, Leia assures her that she can wear anything she wants, whatever she wants, even if it clashes – again, things she would've wanted as a child. But no – Lynnie's overwhelmed by options too. Clung to Leia's leg and shook her head when Leia said you pick, saying back tu pick tu pick and insistently nuzzling Leia's knee with her cheek. Her only preference – j'aime bien ta robe Maaaama – being for the dresses that Leia wore whose skirts she could hide beneath.
Lynnie not wanting to pick her clothes out like her mother trying to choose a wedding dress. Something that should be happy made paralyzingly difficult. They had that in common, then. All three of them really. They were recovering, coming back from some other place where they had to go into a kind of low-power mode, conserving all energy, getting by on rations of being alive. And then trying to learn how to let themselves be full people again.
But oh, that's another question – one that comes up immediately, the first night she's home. Learning how to move on means – moving on, means – as she delicately helped Lynnie undress for the first time, she held up her durable starched uniform – grey dress, white apron – and thought – huh. She had to wrangle a little, to make bath-time work – Lynnie was used to standing up while bathing, apparently that's how it had been, all the little girls lined up with cups of water poured over their hair by a nurse walking back and forth – et teniw les mains et non pweure mais pweure un petit mama mama – but that was cold and unsustainable, so for the first few weeks every time she drew a bath she sat in it too, stripped with the baby in her lap, frowning at her contemplatively – how do I help you? How do I make you feel okay?
A problem, but not the problem. The problem was what she had in her hand, when she finally managed to get the baby to sleep and joined Han at the dark kitchen table. The little dress, the little uniform, scratchy and overwashed and overmended. "What do we do with this?" Leia asked seriously.
"Whadaya mean?" Han asked, yawning – the little dress was probably the least stressful thing he could think of.
"I mean, do we keep it? Do I wash it and put it back with the rest of her things?" She ran her fingers along the worn out edges, frowning. "She doesn't need it anymore." Frowning further, confessing, "I think I'd be heartbroken if I saw her wear it again. Though I suppose it must be what she'll find most familiar..."
"Huh," Han said, taking the little dress.
"But I don't want to just – throw it away… I want her to have a history. Did you––?"
"Nothing. Never even saw a holo. Not sure I ever even was a baby," he added, giving her a melancholic half-grin.
"My mother saved all of my baby things. They're lost now, but I remember looking at all of them…"
"Yeah?"
"Yes. Surprised that I had been so small, skeptical that I'd ever want a child of my own. She kept this blanket..."
"Blanket?"
"The one they brought me to her in, from my birth mother. I used to – it's silly. I used to smell it, though, and try to remember the somewhere else I came from."
"So… keep it?"
"But where I came from was a mystery – I don't want to build a monument to something sad…"
"Tough things have happened, though. Don't have an option to forget."
"She does – she's a child––"
"Don't want to, though. I mean it – s'how I met you, how she came to you, right?" Brushing her hair back behind her ears, still a little damp from her improvised bath. "You should keep it, sweetheart."
The box, then, of sentimental things – the velvet wedding dress and the scrap of fabric that was the hood from her dress from Alderaan and Han's old Alliance metal, few things they kept with them. With the little dress and the pinafore. Tactile story book that she's been wanting to look at more and more, recently, because as her mam's explained soon they'll have to add the little outfit the new baby'll get from the hospital. Some hat and blanket Leia can't control, which feels more comfortable, more secure, not having to make those choices. One month left and they still haven't a stitch of baby clothes – maternity things mostly borrowed anyway, what's the point in buying things I'll never wear again, I'm not kidding around Han, after this I'm getting fixed.
So part of it's like family tradition, then – the baby'll wear what it gets when it comes out, a wardrobe assembled from every survivor of this war they know who's had a baby, hodge-podge things. Leia remembers the paralysis of the dress shop and the children's store and even now Lynnie still doesn't like making choices.
If Lynnie didn't stop and tug and point at the storefront with all the tiny baby things as they walked home from daycare, she probably wouldn't have noticed it. And even then, inside Leia feels something like panic – too many things, too many factors, too many options, too little time. How did she go from responsible for the lives of soldiers to the lives of children, and how did it happen so quickly, and how could anyone expect her to choose this onesie over that one, what makes them different, that old panic rising again, she's trying to very subtly sink to sitting on a bench far off in the corner of the shop–––
There's the baby, then – not the baby, the big girl – commanding the attention of a shopkeeper, pointing at wares up high. Dis one et my sister is like dis one because is stars's et is like stars's et socks pah-que feet small-small-small et dat pah-que j'aime blue and j'aime my sister and––
Turning back to Leia, grinning brilliantly, grown up and taking care. Family is something like telling the same story again and again, Leia knows this very well – the blanket, the hooded dress, the velvet, the smock. But always with the glimmering possibility of another kind of ending.