The metal-framed bunk, dominating the small room. The worn-smooth shelves, bolted above a desk that had lost its chair long ago. The wardrobe, hunched and disjointed against the opposite wall. The narrow entrance to the 'fresher, a portal to an even tinier space.
Standing in the middle of the Falcon's captain's cabin after a muted dinner with her Wookie co-pilot, Leia let her gaze drift over these furnishings. Their existence was so familiar she barely registered them anymore and yet they commanded her attention again and again.
Later, when she lay sleepless under the faded quilt, she triangulated the rest of the room from her perspective: desk, wardrobe, 'fresher; desk, wardrobe, 'fresher. Nothing new existed on those tired surfaces; nothing new except long-ago memories that rose, merged with other points in time, and settled back down in a vague mushy blend. They weighed on her, these memories, beckoning her to their seductive shores and then refusing to let her leave.
She blinked in the glow of the bedside chrono. This cabin — Han's cabin, remote and untouchable for most of the time she had known him; and then their cabin during that brief blissful period; and then passing perhaps to the ownership of Lando for a stretch, though she was never quite sure on that matter — could now qualify as her cabin. She had inhabited it on and off over the past two months while Lando solidified his role of loyal security guard to the Hutt, but she took no pleasure in that ownership. It was the emptiest of possessions, one she had never desired but couldn't bring herself to relinquish. After all, there was no one else deserving of the title.
When was the first occasion she had stepped foot in this room? Was it on the return trip from the Death Star? It must have been; she would have needed to use the 'fresher at some point during the not-short flight to the fleet, but she couldn't quite recall the details of her time in this space. Shock and grief were automatically pushed aside by the circumstances of their frantic escape, the comforting of the sandy-haired boy beside her, the terse words exchanged with the ship's captain. No matter the grief she felt for Obi-Wan's demise or the even greater grief for her planet, her people, she did not allow her focus to rest on herself. Not yet.
"Hey Your Worship, you mind leaving some water for the rest of us?"
She could almost hear his voice ring out in the night-blurred room. Her attempts to scrub off the grime, the garbage, the remnants of her ordeal with Vader could have prompted it. Or perhaps it had been a week or a month later, a different flight, a different defeat that left its markings on her body and refused to rinse away under the hot water.
He pulled up straight when he saw her emerge from the 'fresher, his expression turning sheepish. She was dressed in the clothes she came in with, her hair wet and hastily braided, her face pulled tight.
"I, uh." He swallowed nervously. She thought it was an odd motion, the bobbing in his throat. Different from reactions of other men she had known. "Didn't mean to rush you. Take your time."
"I'm all finished, Captain," she said crisply. She kept her focus on the open hatch as she strode past him, relieved to escape the close confines of his quarters.
No, it couldn't have been on the flight from the Death Star. Given the circumstances even Han wouldn't have been so hard-hearted and impatient. Or would he? He must have had an inkling of what she had endured during her imprisonment; trickles of news from other captives had made their way to Rebellion channels and been publicized throughout the galaxy. But perhaps his focus, as it often was in those days, was centered not on her troubles but on his own.
Whenever it occurred, it set a pattern for when they found themselves thrown together on an assignment. He would provoke her or she would needle him; one or the other then reacted with a series of flippant remarks, each more cutting than the last. Their final exchange, usually accompanied by a storming off, would play again and again in her mind afterward, always with a sharper comeback than the one she had hurled at the time.
"What do you mean, you don't carry bacta patches in the med-bay? What's the point of having it, then?"
"My ship, my arrangements, Sweetheart." He yanked open a drawer and started tossing its innards onto the desk. Circuit boards, faded leather holsters, crumpled flimsies. She had followed him to his cabin while Chewie manned the cockpit and Luke slumped on the med-bay cot pressing his crumpled shirt under his ribs. They would reach their next stop in less than an hour and couldn't afford to have a key member of their operation dripping blood on the polished ceramic of the governor's residence.
"It would be understandable if you had a system of organization that approached 'arrangements'," she threw at him. "But your wreck of a ship isn't fit for transporting any living being, much less Alliance pilots who are instrumental to the success of the Rebellion."
"Not this again. You ever try being helpful instead?"
"You know, Captain, if you're not going to take your contract seriously we can always find another run-down freighter piloted by a shady character."
"Out of my way." He bumped harshly against her and stalked back to the corridor clutching womprat-sized patches in his fist.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Luke protested wearily as they hovered over him at the med bunk. Han stripped the backing off of a patch and pasted it carefully onto the wound. "It's certainly not worth the two of you starting round seventeen of whatever it is you're arguing over."
"One of these times someone's life will be in danger," Leia snapped at Han. "And then what? They'll die because you're too lazy to properly fit out your ship?"
"I can only hope it will be me, Your Highness. At least then I won't have to hear your lovely voice again." He turned heel and headed for the cockpit. "Chewie! Is she ready for the jump?"
She was certain that particular argument had occurred on the flight between Centura B and Elsotii Prime. It had been one of Luke's first missions after being promoted to squadron leader and Leia had been reluctant to risk him for a planet-side operation that nevertheless promised a rich recruitment opportunity. The argument, along with the disappointing outcome of the assignment, led her to avoid the Falcon for weeks afterwards. The next time she ran into Han he surprised her.
"Princess, you will be thrilled to hear that the Falcon's med-bay is fully stocked and operational."
"Is that so, Captain? And what does the Alliance owe you for that overdue work?"
"Your undying gratitude is the only compensation I require, your Highnessness."
As if he were doing her a favor by keeping his ship to a minimum of order.
Her mind wandered to a later operation, one that she, Han, and Chewie had carried out on Sisterna. Or was it Prator IV? Han had spent half the flight out wedged between his disassembled bunk and an open wall panel that held a critical component of the rear deflector shields. She had questioned at the time how he had missed the non-functioning system in his pre-flight check and naturally had not received a satisfactory response.
"Princess!" His voice bounced down the corridor. "Tell Chewie to shift the forward thrusters to one-quarter power while you divert the current to the aft."
"Chewie!" She relayed Han's instructions to the cockpit, and on three… two… one… they performed their actions in sync. The ship's systems swelled for an optimistic moment before fading tiredly to a dull thrum.
Weary and frustrated, she breached the doorway of the cabin. "It didn't work. We need to land somewhere safe and arrange for real repairs." She included that last part deliberately. His pride, undamaged in most circumstances, had proven brittle when he was unsuccessful in fixing the Falcon's latest mishap.
"I wanna try one more thing first. C'mere." She navigated the few steps to the opposite side of the room and scooted between the wall and the bunk. Aged dust pittens swirled around her boots and clung to her pants. "If I can splice this wire to that one, maybe the current will continue past the junction."
"Fine." She sat down next to him and watched his arms twist and turn inside the bowels of the hull.
"This is a momentous occasion for you, Your Worship." She caught his grin out of the corner of her eye. "So close to the legendary setting of passion and romance." He indicated the strewn bolts that had held the bed fast to the wall not an hour ago. "And yet, so far."
"Just the fact that you refer to it like that leads me to believe that nothing very exciting has happened here, Captain."
"Wouldn't you like to find out." Confidence undimmed, he treated her to a wink before turning back to the misshapen circuitry. "I think I've got it."
"Want me to let Chewie know?"
"Not yet. He needs a few minutes to prime the array."
"Oh." She found herself uncharacteristically nervous. Best to focus on something else. "So how does it work? The repair you're trying."
"Like this." He guided her hand inside the panel. "Here's the juncture where commands from the cockpit get routed to the forward and aft shields."
She felt a knobby curve of metal with several bundles of cables peeling off in various directions. "Why wouldn't you just wire that directly from the cockpit?"
"If we were building the ship from scratch, we would." His fingers continued to rest on hers. "But these particular shields were an optimization so we have to make do with the pre-existing wiring scheme."
The metal juncture was almost as warm as his hand. She imagined it as a living thing, throbbing with subatomic information, distributing Han's commands to every part of the ship. "Do you ever want to do that? Build a ship from scratch? Or from a hull frame and parts?"
He looked momentarily flattered. "Even I couldn't pull that off. And, no, it's not something I particularly want to do. I like tinkering with the Falcon too much." He studied her skeptically. "You really interested in this stuff?"
She shrugged. "I always enjoyed flying as a child. Who doesn't? Maybe in another life I would have trained as a pilot instead of a politician."
He laughed and she felt a flash of insecurity. "Good pilots are a dime a dozen. But good politicians are much more rare. The galaxy would be worse off if you had taken another path."
Now it was her turn to be flattered. "Thank you. I think." She pulled her hand away and rubbed the grease onto her trousers. "Should I go tell Chewie now?"
"Sure." He moved to a crouch to help her up. "Good talk, Princess. Almost as much fun as our fights."
At the time she had wondered about his statement, good pilots are a dime a dozen. Did he really believe that despite the blatant trumpeting of his own abilities? In hindsight it was another piece of the Han puzzle, one that shaded his character into something more complex than just a cocksure smuggler.
Gods, she missed him.
The numbers on the chrono blinked forward, mocking her attempt at sleep. Turning onto her side, she recalled the period the fleet was stationed on the jungle base. The second one, not the first. The living quarters' environmental controls shorted frequently enough to drive her to the Falcon for a less sweltering temperature. And it wasn't just her; pilots, support crew, even Rieekan on occasion gathered on the Corellian freighter for a cold drink and a desperately needed change of scenery.
"Let me guess, Your Highness. Kachtos soda, splash of whiskey, lots of ice?"
"Thank you." Referring to him as 'Captain' at this point in their friendship felt idiotic, but she was equally uncomfortable calling him 'Han.' He had accrued no other designations; every nickname the Rogues threw at him bounced off merrily without leaving a mark.
The lounge area was filling up fast with sweaty soldiers searching for relief. Hobbie's voice floated above the din, "And that's when I told him he had another thing coming," before lowering to reveal whether his interlocutor had managed to avoid that unfortunate fate.
Leia wound her way through the corridor nodding hellos, reserving a lengthier greeting for pilots newly returned from assignment. For a while Han was nowhere to be seen. She finally spotted him outside his cabin in a tight formation with Wedge and Lieutenant Gulliy. Han was gesturing exaggeratedly, perhaps relating one of his tall tales from his smuggling years, and Esree laughed loudly in return. Leia approached casually only to have the conversation shift to polite chitchat. Moments later Wedge and Esree wandered away, the latter a little reluctantly, Leia thought.
"Are they together?" she couldn't help asking.
"I'm working on it. Can't quite tell if she's into him or not. You know how hard women are to read."
"I don't think it's Wedge she's interested in." An unexpected stab of jealousy lanced through her. "Besides, I've never thought of you as someone who played matchmaker."
"Only for fellow Corellians. And only fellow Corellians who spend their off-hours on my ship whining about their luck with women."
"Oh."
She stared at her drink. The ice had nearly melted, leaving the liquid a sickly shade of brown.
"Those plans," she said looking up. He regarded her blankly. "For the upcoming mission to Lunera. Did you have a chance to review them?"
"Uh, a little." She thought he looked disappointed. She was only trying to extend the conversation. Wasn't that what they both wanted? Maybe she was misreading things. Maybe he had never been seriously flirting with her. Or he flirted with her but also flirted with other women. He was just one of those harmless flirts that up until now she had been able to ignore.
"I did have one thought." He motioned her into his cabin and retrieved his datapad from a bedside shelf. She noted the shabby quilt, the strewn clothes, the metal cup perched on an alcove before turning her attention to a schematic of the Lunera orbital array on the screen. "The risk is in the approach given their defense systems. But if you jump directly here," he indicated with his finger a nook sheltered on three sides, "you'll have your best shot at avoiding detection. Of course the calculations have to be precise and that's where the challenge lies given the random rotation of their array."
"I see." She leaned in closer and made a mental note of the coordinates next to his finger. His breath was warm on her neck. "We'll run it through our simulators and see what they come back with. It's possible that —"
"Han? You here? Oh, sorry." Luke appeared in the doorway and Leia took a step back instinctively. "Do you know where the blender is? We're running out of drinks."
"I got it." The Corellian tossed the datapad on the bed and headed out the room with Luke close behind.
Alone in his cabin, Leia did another furtive sweep of the space. The half-open wardrobe was a jumble of shirts and dark trousers. The bunk was devoid of further clues. She turned her attention to the desk. Nav charts and jump calculations littered the surface. She tested one of the drawers. Not locked. Heart skipping, she pulled it open and poked through its contents: rolls of flimsies, spare bolts, and a leather-grip multi-tool. She tried the lower drawer, also unlocked, and at first glance infinitely more promising. Floating face-down over a dusty circuit board was a stack of curled holo prints. She picked them up and turned them over. One of Chewie mock strangling someone she didn't recognize with an onlooker reacting in horror. One of Han and two women, sisters perhaps, all of them dressed as if in a historical holo-drama, their expressions clearly staged. And one of her and Luke, taken on Yavin IV soon after the medal ceremony. Luke, still flush from his triumph, was grinning broadly; her own face was slightly blurred and in profile as she spoke to someone outside the frame.
"Find something interesting?"
She straightened abruptly and hit her head on the overhanging shelf. Han made no move toward her. "No. I was just —." Feeling slightly ashamed, she rubbed her head and dropped the holos back in the drawer. "I was just about to leave."
He watched her intently as she moved around him toward the door. There was no Luke standing at the entrance to defuse the tension. Han looked as if he were restraining himself from saying something, something not entirely friendly. "I wasn't prying," she offered lamely.
"Uh-huh."
It wasn't a big deal, she told herself as she made her way to the drink table. What did he expect anyway, hosting a party on his small ship? Besides, it wasn't as if she had found anything incriminating.
Looking back, she wondered if she would have behaved differently knowing what was to come on that long trip to Bespin. At the time she had felt no inevitability regarding the two of them, only obstacle after obstacle, one on top of another, so that rather than energized she was frequently exhausted by her longing.
"I don't know why you didn't just ask me to fly you there. What did you expect from a rookie?"
"Han, I just —." She was tired, so tired, of the relentless back-and-forth between them. "We ask a lot of you." I ask a lot of you, she added silently. "I was trying to spread the wealth."
"There's no wealth in hearing that you almost got killed," he spat out. "What in nine hells were you—." He stopped and breathed deeply. "It doesn't matter. It's done." He rose from the table. "I received some intel before you left. It might have been useful to you."
Her pent-up frustration threatened to boil over. "Then why didn't you tell me at the time?!"
"I would have if you had asked me to fly you!"
She stalked after him as he strode into his cabin. "Han, we need to communicate better. Even if —"
"Even if what?"
When she just glared at him in response he spun around and dug through one of the desk drawers. "Here. I wrote it down since the message was set to expire."
She took it and read it. "Yes. This would have helped." Even to herself she sounded cold.
He grabbed her arms and held onto her tightly. "Leia. It's not worth it if you don't make it back. Do you understand?" He swallowed, looking pained. "It's not worth it."
Visions of him leaning closer and closer until she threw up the white flag and met his lips with her own were replaced by nightmares of Alderaan splintering into pieces. "Maybe it is to me," she whispered.
That exchange was their most painful one yet. It was also the first time that Han didn't speak to her until she gave in and requested he fly her to Ord Mantell. Given their stand-off after that disaster, followed closely by the evacuation, she would have been an emotional wreck if they hadn't finally found a release valve for their attraction in the ship's circuitry bay. It happened so unexpectedly and yet so naturally that her explanations of why they had resisted for so long disintegrated into a puff of smoke.
It was late, their attempts to stick to some sort of routine failing yet again. She was coming out of the 'fresher when he returned from drinking or playing sabacc or whatever he did with Chewie in the wee hours. She was wearing one of his shirts and he caught her fingers and swung her around in an impromptu twirl.
"Should've impressed you with my moves at that party a while back." He pulled her close in a lazy sway and dipped his nose into her hair.
A rare base social that happened to coincide with a period of harmony between them. Her nerves were on overdrive that night, trying to ignore the faint promise of romance. "I felt overdressed," she admitted. The stiff high collar, the tight bodice, the scratchy fabric of a dress designed more for warmth than comfort.
"You weren't. You were beautiful." He ran his hand up her back under the shirt. "Think you're overdressed now, though."
"Don't tell you need my help with this particular problem also." Han had been gleefully filling their hours spent outside his cabin with long-delayed repairs.
He fingered the hem of the shirt fluttering around her thighs. "Nah, I can handle this one on my own."
Memories from that trip cascaded over her, tumbling one after another. Endless hours under the sheets as he covered her body with lazy kisses. Laughing every time he tackled her from behind and scruffed her neck with his prickly stubble. Late-night conversations recounting their pasts, sharing stories she had never revealed to anyone. His blurred reflection in the mirror as he pulled her out of the shower, tossing aside the towel before she could finish drying off. His eyes, hooded and watchful, as she rose above him, her hands covering his, directing where she wanted them to land.
And now alone in the cold bunk, his smell long gone, her fear of the task in front of her creeping closer and closer.
A soft knock on the door. Chewie. They would be coming out of hyperspace soon.
She stood and belted her robe and slid open the hatch. The stolid Wookie let out a soft rumble.
"Time to get going?"
He nodded in confirmation and warbled again, this time a question.
"I'm all right." She gripped his arm and peered up at him, searching his face closely. She suspected his nights were just as disturbed by painful memories as her own. "How are you holding up, Chewie?"
A shrug and a head tilt, something that had always struck her as faintly comical for such a large being. A surge of optimism rose in her and she stepped closer and hugged him tightly, her arms barely reaching all the way around his trunk. A furry hand patted her head gently and the gesture almost made her laugh, almost made her forget the burdens that had weighed on her for all these long months.
"Come on." The time for self-pity was over. She drew away and smiled at her friend, their friend, a genuine smile that held the promise of more memories to come. "Let's go get him back."