AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just a cute Han and Leia spec, tying in some knowledge we've gained from Ep. I. No real spoilers, though. I've always wondered how Leia would deal with her parentage, and how Han would react to it. I've read lots of good speculation, but I refuse to believe Leia could blindly hate or forgive anyone. I also don't believe Han would have such a careless attitude about the man who froze him in carbonite. I think that the general way for sentient beings to deal with unwelcome news is disbelief, mourning (of innocence or ignorance, usually), and -- gradually -- acceptance.
SUMMARY: What Luke started, Han and Leia must finish. A journey of all sorts follows in ridding the galaxy of Darth Vader.
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Han Solo tapped at the familiar black armor gently with a fallen twig. Aside from being covered and filled with ashes, it was virtually the same. The helmet and mask rolled off the pyre and crumbled into black powder.
So this is how things went.
And with a sigh, he collected himself and stepped forward to inspect the body. Not Darth Vader, but a body, dead as dead. Dead as he would be someday. He felt more sorry for it than anything else.
Beneath where the fearsome plasteel mask had been, charred breathing apparati and a vocoder lay unmoved from where they had been for nearly as far back as Solo's memory went. A vocoder? He could hardly keep himself from laughing in shock. Somehow he'd always assumed that powerful, trademark voice was Vader's own.
Why, if that wasn't Vader, what was?
Struggling slightly, he plucked it from its resting place and shook it out over the armor, held it up to his eye. Didn't look damaged to him. But, he supposed, the second-in-command of the Empire could have had the resources to have everything indestructible but his own body. He turned it over in his hand a few times, then placed it along with the food rations and other survival items in a compartment on his belt.
That damn Luke, he thought. What the hell has he done?
Han pulled a few rocks from the outer edge of the pyre and placed them over the empty shell. Section by section, Darth Vader disappeared.
He took a moment to steel himself, then headed back to the Ewok village. The sanctuary moon was dying, and what had to be done almost didn't *have* to be done.
Death everywhere. But still, in the distance, Han Solo could still hear the sound of jubilation.
"Leia."
Han's voice was warm, soft ... she drifted from a black, dreamless sleep slowly. It was only Han, not yet another Ewok, not a pilot. She couldn't help but smile.
"We've got to go."
She knitted her eyebrows in confusion. Go? He had just left.
"What did Luke want?"
"He's going to be in trouble if we don't go, Princess."
Okay, this was serious. She crawled out of her hut and came to a standing position on the bridge outside. They walked for what seemed to her like an eternity before finally she spoke up.
"What do you mean, trouble?"
Han stopped and pulled the vocoder out for her to see. "All that's left of Vader is a pile of black plasteel dust and *this*."
Leia watched, frozen, as Han put the vocoder back. If that was supposed to wake her up, it certainly worked.
"The celebration's over, Princess. Luke did what he had to do and now two governments are going to go after him. One for desertion--"
"And the other for murder," Leia finished. They continued. "He killed him?" Her tone was incredulous. Without any more words, it was understood who she meant.
"I guess," Han sighed. "But he brought him here, to this moon, and there's an Imperial shuttle. Questions are going to be asked."
"Vader's shuttle," Leia realized. "You can't seriously be planning on getting rid of it?"
Han turned back to eye her strangely, then continued on, pushing away some brush over the path. "Well, what are we supposed to do, hand it over to Mon Mothma? Where did we get it? Then we have to tell her that Luke left, and the rest of the story, and we destroy the Jedi again."
Leia grinned. "I thought you didn't believe in the Force."
Han shrugged. "I don't think I do, but does it hurt to have a guy around who can swing a lightsaber? Besides, he's your brother. He's family."
"You're right," she agreed, fighting to keep up with Han's obsessed stride. "Except for one thing."
"What?" Surely not the brother part. That was the best thing that had happened to him since Jabba's palace.
"I don't think we *could* tell her the rest of the story, even if we tried."
Images of black, powdered plasteel filled his mind.
"I agree with you there." He pulled back another branch to reveal their destination. "Where to, Your Highness?"
"I don't know," she replied, her voice distant. "We'll figure it out."
Tentatively, they climbed the ramp and soon disappeared into space among the shrapnel and bones of the second Death Star.
He loved her.
He couldn't stop himself from thinking it, just as he couldn't stop his eyes from following her fingers as she braided her hair into a halo around her head, a few loose, long, wavy tendrils flowing behind. She sat in a corner, afraid to sit anywhere the Dark Lord might have touched. Han, however, did not plan on spending an entire trip standing or on the floor, so he willingly took domain over a couch.
How many other men had loved women the way he loved her? He didn't want to think anyone could, but the idea was ridiculous. There were too many people in the galaxy for that.
How many other men had thought that? And how many more would think it? Would he have a son that loved a woman like that? Would he have a daughter to be loved like that? Would she be as brave and daring and beautiful as her mother?
Was it all the same story hidden behind other names and positions and credits?
She had a brother, and he was not an Organa. Before, the name Leia Skywalker scared him, but now it made Solo stare into the stars and wonder. The people closest to him -- well, not counting Chewie, of course -- were siblings? Twins? They hadn't been raised similarly at all, not at all, but he'd be damned before he'd say they weren't the bravest, most honorable, most trustworthy people. And that's where the real question lay, in the parents neither remembered.
For the first time in five years, Solo wished that old fossil Kenobi were still alive. The disappointment had been written all over
Leia's face when she told him she didn't know her father, didn't really remember her mother. Kenobi seemed to know more than he was letting on.
Leia continued to stare at the walls, as if they held some sort of answer to the questions she couldn't bring herself to ask. She had long since stopped braiding.
"You okay?" he offered, wondering if she had read his mind, if she'd always had some Jedi abilities.
She sighed. "I'm just tired."
He almost suggested she find somewhere on the shuttle to rest, but he bit his lip before the words could leave his mouth. The idea of anyone sleeping in Vader's bed was enough to make him vomit, much less Leia. He flashed a warm smile at her.
She continued to let her eyes wander around, bouncing from Han, to a wall, to the control panel. To a door, that inevitably led down a corridor that neither of them wanted to traverse. And where would that lead? To more pain? Or to happiness?
Darth Vader was dead. Her father was dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. She would have died herself to see that happen a few days before. Now, she wasn't so sure -- good in him? Good in the man who held her back from ripping Tarkin's face off when surely he deserved it? Good in the man who knowingly amputated his own son's hand? Who froze Han in carbonite?
What possessed Luke to bring his victim's body to a proper burial, besides a streak of insanity that had so far proved hereditary? What made Darth Vader deserve cremation after what he'd done? If disposal by explosion was good enough for Bail Organa --
But it was daunting, because if it was hereditary, it could be her next. She fixed her eyes away from the door.
She thought about the ponds she'd played in as a child, how she always pretended they were shored by a traditional sand beach. How Luke had grown up in a vast beach and had probably longed for a pond.
And then, she wandered into sleep.
Han, however, fought off the sleep and fell into a paranoid wakefulness, thoughts bouncing off one side of his skull to the other as frantically as they were borne.
He stared at one particular green orb with intense jealousy, as it grew in size, and then was immeasurable and immense, then grew tiny in sight. Naboo.
What sort of name for a planet was that, anyway?
He knew that's where Luke was, didn't know why, really. Luke just said his father told him to go there.
Wasn't Luke's dad dead?
One of those Jedi things, Han guessed. Luke's father, Leia's father -- did they really even have a *mother*? Or was that another Jedi thing? Did Jedi Knights have to pull children out of their asses because of that "there is no passion" clause of the Code?
That would be the only foreseeable way for Luke to ever have children, he smirked to himself, if he didn't drop that stupid Code like a bad spice shipment.
Leia, however, was a different story altogether. Sleep didn't sound so bad, if he could wrangle up a dream about her and her defiance of her Jedi blood. Except for maybe levitation.
He went off in search of a blanket.
And maybe a pillow.
"Hello."
There was no question of 'who are you' from this child, or 'where am I' from Leia. She was sitting in a shop, on a counter. Various mechanical parts here and there, a sandy floor below her feet and adobe walls and ceiling crowning the space. The blond, towheaded boy was all smiles as he sat next to her, a calm transcending the room unlike she'd ever felt before. Outside, she knew there was a city, but it was a very quiet one.
For a moment, she wanted a mirror to see if she too were a child, because he looked very much as she'd always pictured Luke to have looked, right down to the Tatooine dress he'd worn when she was 'rescued' from the Death Star. But one look down quelled that.
She grinned at him. "Hello to you, too."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're very beautiful."
She laughed. Maybe Luke had a fling when he was younger, maybe some things *were* genetic ... like insanity ... . "You're not so bad yourself."
"Do you want me to show you around, or do you want me to just compliment you?" he asked, not derogatorily, actually seriously.
"If I can't have both," she sighed playfully, "you'd better show me around."
He held one small, sandy hand out to her, and she wrapped her much larger hand around it, thinking of what snide remark Han would have to say about this.
"Where *is* Han?" she asked the boy as he led her out the door and into the sweltering street, surprised at how detached she was from what she usually would have felt with such a memory loss. Panic. Fear. All other things. But gradually, things became less surreal and vague and more material. Instead of feeling like she was floating along, she felt her legs pushing against the sand. Instead of feeling disconnected, she could feel the grit and grime transferring itself to her hand.
"Captain Solo is still aboard the shuttle."
"Oh." She looked around, absorbing the sights and sounds of the city. Mos Espa, the words filled her mind very suddenly. So this *was* Tatooine. "Are you taking me to him?"
"You have to do that, Leia," the child replied, very seriously, and began pulling her along. He broke into a run, and then into laughter. "*We're* going home."
"You know my name! That's not fair!" she laughed. "I don't know who you are!"
He whipped his head back as they weaved through a steadily growing crowd. "My friends called me Ani," he replied.
"Called? What do they call you now?"
"I have no friends," he stated. No questions, no regrets at all, just the simple truth. Just Leia and Ani.
"Home?"
They continued on wordlessly, fighting the streets of this city. Mos Espa.
A thought not her own crawled its way into her brain, synapse by tiny synapse, just a flash of a wince, after she noticed her young companion had referred to Han as a captain and not a general.