Disclaimer: George owns it
A/N: First go at Star Wars fanfiction. Set during ESB, the trip to Bespin. Leia, stream of thoughts. Let me know what you think.
She isn't quite sure how this thing came about, this whole 'standing naked in the middle of a smuggler's cabin, running from the Empire, again' thing.
No, Leia hasn't the slightest idea how she reached this point in her life and it mystifies her really, because she has always been very good at connecting the dots. She looks warily at the bed before her and the man asleep in that bed and finds herself shaking her head. Dressing quickly, she walks from the room vaguely wondering if this can possibly fix itself since she can't find the energy herself.
He kisses her in the cockpit when she is suppose to be on watch, catching her unaware for a moment.
He looks at her with a grin and presses a mug of slightly stale coffee into her hands.
'You left early.'
'Someone had to switch swifts with Chewbacca.'
He looks ready to argue with her for half a second and she almost wishes he would, wants him to start something so that she can finish it. Instead he only presses his lips against hers and kisses her again. She wonders if this is his way of hiding from the truth and doesn't stop him.
He is leaving.
Her life has been built on facts and this will prove to be no exception. For Leia it has never been a question of 'will he' but more a matter of 'when'. Now even that has changed as they have a destination in mind. She is forced to remind herself time and time again that this is simply a pass time they've decide to engage in until they reach Bespin and fix the ship (and he takes off for good).
She is not sure how she feels about this (not to say she doesn't know how she feels about it just that she isn't sure if it's how she should). She thinks back on all the years of training, as a princess and a double agent and finds nothing in her memory bank to help her. So she resigns herself to his bed and the fact that he is leaving.
There's a logical side of her that constantly tells her to put a stop to this. It tends to speak up whenever he is about to touch her, like now, when he is kissing her and pressing her against the wall. He has been working on his hopeless bucket of bolts again and smells keenly of oil and she can feel it on the pads of his fingers as he traces her face. 'He's making you dirty' a very Mon Mothma says in her head.
And Leia, as she always does when it comes to the subject of Han Solo, ignores it.
She wakes up to find him staring at her one night (at least she thinks it is night, she has lost track of the days since Hoth). He shrugs and kisses the corner of her mouth and says he can't sleep. There is a slip in his defenses and for perhaps the first time she can read him. Or maybe it is not so much a matter of slipping, or of her own coming to understand him, but just the fact that it's the middle of the 'night' and he's just a lousy liar when he's sleep deprived.
Not for the first time she longs for something she cannot (read: will not) describe. Leia weaves her fingers into his hair as she has wanted to a million times. 'Stay' she thinks but nothing comes out.
It never does.
It is not a question of whether or not Leia loves him, it never has been. It is only a matter of admitting it to herself now and coming to terms with it before he comes around and declares his duty fore filled and leaves her stranded on some backwater planet waiting for rescue. She has to prepare herself for the inevitable and takes to avoiding him by day and clinging to him at night, both of which are not exactly Alliance protocol. But it's no more proper to ask (read: beg) him to stay when he clearly wants nothing more than to be free of any attachments.
Once more she pushes all her emotions down into a tightly sealed box at the very bottom of her being and adds 'loving Han Solo' to the list of mistakes that continues to grow, right below 'failing Alderaan'.
It is the first night she has a nightmare since this whole 'affair' began and she sits on the edge of his bed, head resting against open palms, elbows on sheet covered knees, as unprincess-like as she's allowed him to see her (with the lights on). He walks into the room with a glass of water and tells her to drink it. She doesn't. He asks her how often things like this happen and she doesn't answer him. He puts and hand on her bare shoulder and she does not react. She is slowly closing down inside, as she always does after nights like these and he sighs frustrated, walking from the room without another word.
"Han. Stay." But he doesn't hear her.
He never does.
End