Chapter Six
Han sat at the engineering station. He was wearing a t-shirt instead of his usual button up, exposing his upper arm wrapped in a bacta bandage. They had found a piece of paper in one of the rooms where they placed detonators, intricately folded to look like a bantha, and Han had spent the time since entering hyperspace trying to figure out the pattern. He leaned over the table, absent-mindedly eating a pear, often holding it in his mouth so he could use both hands, folding and unfolding to recreate the tiny animal.
Leia called over. "You know, you could look up the instructions?"
He didn't turn from his project. "Where's the fun in that?"
Leia and Luke sat at the games table. She was surrounded by her usual array of datapads and chips, absorbed in her work. Luke was tinkering with an old blaster and feeling restless. He always seemed to have more hard-to-sit-still energy than the rest of them. He almost always felt like there was something else he was supposed to be doing—he just didn't always know what that was exactly.
"Tell me what you're working on." He gave Leia's leg a light tap with his foot. "Maybe I can help."
"Same thing I do whenever I have down time," she said. "Looking through these old files to find some clue about Bail's accounts."
"It's not downtime if you're working, Princess." Han, speaking with a mouthful of pear, still didn't look up.
Luke and Leia smiled at each other and rolled their eyes. It was a standard reaction to Han's flippant comments.
"What happens when you find something? You'll need a password, won't you?" Luke picked up one of the other datapads in front of her. "Unless he always just used your birthday."
"That would make it easier. But I would also have to figure out which birthday he used."
"How many birthdays do you have?" Luke gave her a quizzical look.
"There's the one was celebrated in public, which was the same date as my great-grandmother's. It was an Alderaanian tradition to honour past sovereigns. Then we had the date we celebrated in private as a family."
"And that's your birthday?"
"I think so. Bail didn't have a birth certificate but he said it was the day I was born."
"So, maybe you don't know your actual birthday?"
Leia laughed at Luke's enthusiastic questioning. He really had a hard time keeping some things in check.
"That's not exactly what I said. I'm 90% sure. 95. I never asked him to verify or even how he knew without a birth certificate but I took him at his word."
"Why didn't we talk about this when we celebrated our birthdays?"
When Luke and Leia realized they were born only days apart, Chewie insisted on making them a special meal. Han grumbled that celebrating birthdays was a waste of time but also pulled out a good bottle of wine he just happened to have and somehow returned from a run with supplies for Chewie to bake a small cake.
Luke was happy to share the festivities, excited about one more connection between them. She was less enthusiastic but went along with it for Luke's sake.
"Why do you find that so exciting?" Leia couldn't help but laugh at him. Luke had a very peculiar charm about him.
"I don't know my actual birthday either. No birth certificate." Luke was all smiles and wonder. "Aunt Beru always said we celebrated the first time she held me. We were celebrating when we became a family."
"That's a sweet way to think about it." Leia smiled and realized it came from genuine warmth.
The days, weeks, leading up to this mission were difficult. It was more the timing than the mission itself. Leia wasn't ready to acknowledge that a year had passed. Her sleeping patterns were worse than normal. Her nightmares increased, grew more vivid. She tried to hide it, stay focused on work, but she found herself, more and more, seeking comfort. Not asking for it directly, of course, but letting it wash over her when she was in their presence. At some point over the past year, these three beings became her solace.
"Owen wasn't really a warm guy. His most affectionate move was a slap on the back. But Beru was full of hugs when I was little." Tatooine seemed like a lifetime ago and only yesterday. "It would be crazy if we were born on the same day. My actual birthday must be a couple of days before I got there. So, it's possible."
[That makes three of you.] Chewie entered the lounge. He slapped Han on the back then pulled a chair up to the games table.
Leia squinted at Chewie, trying to parse his growl and pull apart the words. She then looked at Han. "You don't know your birthday either?"
He shrugged and threw his pear core into a receptacle beside the table. "Not really a birthday cake kind of guy."
"So, you don't celebrate your birthday at all?" Luke found this news astonishing. "Not even an estimated birthday?"
"Nope."
"You must have celebrated one. When you were a kid?"
Han gave Luke a hard stare then returned to his folding. "Nope."
[I grew up in a large clan. We didn't celebrate individual births but our collective whole on Life Day.]
Han translated for the others at the table and Luke nodded.
"I like that. Celebrating everyone together. I used to wish for siblings. That farm got pretty lonely. Biggs was always like a brother, though."
Leia squeezed Luke's hand. Biggs was yet another friend lost to war. She noticed Han's gaze, locked on their clasped hands. He shook his head like he was knocking away cobwebs and returned to his folding.
"I had a few cousins who, at times, felt like siblings but we really lived such different lives." Leia still held Luke's hand. She needed the physical connection. "Though, by the time I turned twelve or thirteen we didn't see them much. I was too busy with royal duties by then. School. I was trying to intern for my father, too, so I devoted much of my time there."
Luke smiled at her. "Feels like we got that now. Almost siblings, I mean." He squeezed her hand then turned to Han. "You, too. Whether you like it or not."
He told Luke to fuck off but didn't sound like he actually meant it.
"Here, let me show you." Leia handed a datachip to Luke and he opened it up on the datapad. "You could look through this lot if you'd like. The tech team did their best to recover all the files from the datachips but some were too old. Corrupted. You need to sift through a lot of garbled code to find anything. And even then, it's hard to know what's useful."
"What am I looking for?" Luke scanned through a few of the open files. She was right. It did look mostly like one giant mess.
Leia explained the process. She showed him a list of names her father used for accounts and contacts. Luke should look for those names or some variation on those names. She also had a list of nicknames Bail gave her, her mother, family names, pets, favourite novels. She had spent hours brainstorming anything Bail might have considered.
"If you see anything worth investigating mark it on the spreadsheet. I can go over it later."
Chewie picked up the last datapad and they all worked in relative silence. The only noise was Luke's incessant tapping of a datachip on the tabletop until Han grunted, "Cut it out."
Leia smiled at the three beings sitting with her. A year ago, they were on this same ship, almost in the same positions, racing to Yavin with the Death Star plans and a very slim chance of stopping the Empire's destruction of the Rebellion. She knew even then, if she didn't see any of them past arriving on Yavin, they would be forever linked. Now it was something else entirely. She couldn't quite explain it to herself. It was something she felt more than she understood.
She expected Luke's offer to help. Leia didn't wonder about his reliability or commitment. He was always ready to jump in when needed. Chewie, too. The Wookiee was less enthusiastic than Luke but was never one to stand on the sidelines.
Han was more of a mystery. Despite how often he said he wasn't a joiner, thought the cause was ill-fated and he was there only for the money, he was always right beside them. Leia went back and forth on the subject. Never sure if Han was living in denial and did need and like her and Luke or if she was the deluded one in thinking he cared for anything more than his own finances. The fact that his arm was grazed while he attempted to block her from blaster fire during this last mission seemed to tip the favour toward the former.
They were sent to collect intel from an informant. They had numerous reports of a new Imperial agent working off the usual covert grid, gathering information on the Alliance, perhaps working with weapons development. Their contact decided to demand credits before revealing anything and then had very little to offer. It would have been a wasted mission if they didn't learn about a small outpost guarding a mountain pass.
They quickly revised their plan, got into the outpost, set their detonators and made an almost clean escape. They weren't walking away with the intel they needed and destroying the building might not leave a huge mark on the war effort but every little bit helped. Leia also liked knowing that one year later they were still fighting, blowing things up. Symbolic or not, Leia thought it was the perfect anniversary present.
Luke reviewed the list of possible names and nicknames again. "With everything you've said about your father, I never thought he'd be the kind of guy to have so many names for you. Almost worse than Han."
"My aunts said Bail used so many nicknames and terms of endearment because he had too many names to remember. He never got it wrong if everyone was my dear or kind sir." She found herself smiling, which was a surprise. "He didn't forget my name but he was always coming up with some new variation. It was an easy way for him to show affection. It was something he could do in public or in front of aides."
When she was very little, she didn't understand the boundaries of public and private times. She disturbed many a photo op by running in for a hug or threw a temper tantrum in front of a visiting dignitary. Her parents, or aunts, or governesses responded by calmly setting her right. Moved her to the proper position, a hand on her back to remind her about posture, a serene smile and nod of the head to indicate quiet composure. The hugs or, if need be discipline, happened behind closed doors.
Yet before Leia started school, she was walking precisely alongside her parents at the required number of paces apart. Her hands never went in her pockets. She bowed her head to say thank you for bouquets and curtsies. She used proper titles when addressing others. She never extended her reach beyond a gentle touch on the arm.
When she and Pyrtor started dating, parental expectations, family duties, public personas were something they had in common. Their circumstances weren't entirely the same but he was a good sounding board and understood what it was like to be scrutinized through a very public lens. He also knew how difficult it was to trust anyone, especially when it came to sex and definitely where love was concerned.
Pyrtor ran a charitable foundation and sat on the board of several others. He was interested in politics, civil and beings-rights bills. He had no love for the Empire, though he was careful to never say such things in public. He was seven years older than her, tall, blond, and very handsome. Leia could easily recall the flutter of excitement she felt in those early days.
Still, she wasn't willing to make much time for him in her busy schedule. There never seemed to be the space for him. He was mostly understanding when her work took precedent and, thankfully, didn't ask too many questions. Looking back, having the advantage of hindsight and a year living underground, Leia could see how often she used Pyrtor as a shield for her work with the Rebellion.
"I had a couple nicknames growing up but nothing really stuck. Or not anything I'm going to bring up." Like Wormie. Luke was happy to leave that one behind. He started tapping his toe against the floor since he was denied access to the datachip. "Han, you must have had a lot of nicknames."
Han didn't look up. "Not sharing."
"What a surprise!"
He gave Leia the briefest of glances, almost a smile.
"Do you and Pyrtor have nicknames for each other?" Luke finished with one datachip and inserted another into the datapad. "You call Han Flyboy or Hotshot. I occasionally get Moon Jockey, Farm Boy. Must be something for Pyrtor. Oh, but, if it's some personal, cute thing, I don't want to know."
"Correction." Han pointed his finger at Luke then Leia. "If you've got some mushy sweet name we don't want to hear it. But if you've named body parts, don't hold back."
"Body parts? What kind of name…" Leia stopped short and her face immediately went red as Han lifted his eyebrows in a suggestive leer. "You're an idiot."
"I'll share those nicknames. Do you want to know what a particularly enthusiastic barkeep called my…"
"No!" Both Luke and Leia shouted at the same time. Luke went so far as to hold a hand up like he could shield himself against the words.
Han chuckled and turned back to his folding. They all worked in silence for a few minutes until Luke needed to fill the space again.
"I used to try to get Uncle Owen to tell me stories about my father but he never liked talking about him. He didn't really know him, I guess. Owen talked about my grandmother, though, so sometimes bits came out that way. She used to call my father Ani."
"That's a sweet name." Leia smiled at Luke. "Jedi Master Ani."
"Well, at the time, I thought he was Clone War hero Ani but yeah, it's a good name."
As the three of them made their way through the lists and the datachips, pausing occasionally to add notes into the spreadsheet, Luke entertained them with Tatooine and farm stories. Most of them involved his pretend adventures fighting krayt dragons or alongside his father in battle and they all ended with some embarrassing scenario of Luke knocking down a display in a store or making a fool of himself in front of a cute girl or breaking his arm when he fell off a vaporator. They were all examples of a lonely kid filling the silence and empty spaces and never feeling daunted enough to not make the leap the next time.
Leia noticed that Han offered a question or comment in response but didn't share his own stories. He was leaning back in his chair, feet resting on the engineering station, laughing and relaxed. The table was strewn with a number of failed bantha attempts. She'd known him for the same amount of time as Luke but Leia still knew next to nothing about Han.
She was fairly sure he was about ten years older than her and Luke. He was from Corellia. If he had a family, he never mentioned them and didn't have anything to do with them. He learned to fly in the Imperial Academy so he was probably a TIE pilot. He was kicked out or maybe court martialled or possibly ran off after charges of insubordination. He saved Chewie from slavery. Somehow. He earned Corellian blood stripes. Somehow. He knew how to cook, could fix just about anything and might actually be the best pilot in the galaxy, though she had no intention of admitting that to him.
In all that time, Han had revealed only one real story and she was almost in a state of shock when he let it tumble out.
They were in the cockpit, watching the hyperspace display through the viewport. She was talking because that's what she too often did when they were alone. It wasn't like Luke's need to fill a void or ensure that connections weren't lost. She found it easy talking to Han and the pattern was long set before she noticed she told him things she didn't say to anyone else.
Maybe she realized a man who never talked about himself wasn't going to talk about her either. Or maybe she liked the way he listened. He let her words unfold and held on to the anchor points, mapping things out even when she thought she was rambling. He asked questions, drawing out details and finding new angles, and it almost never felt forced.
If she asked him anything, he deflected, gave one-word responses or silence. It was a part of their routine and she found it alternately amusing and frustrating. So she was surprised, when she mentioned the faded scar along his forearm, that he reacted with a laugh. He then regaled her with a rather long story about being a young teenager and seeing a street performer doing elaborate knife tricks.
Teenage Han was mesmerized. He saw the hat full of credits in front of the performer, the crowd of beings, most notably smiling and eager young women, and watched for hours, memorizing every move, twist, turn and toss of the knife. It took a while for him to get a similar knife, though he didn't elaborate to Leia how exactly he managed it. The important piece was that as soon as he had said knife, and had the time to go through the routine, he almost immediately gave himself a deep cut along his arm.
"Didn't occur to me I'd have to work up to those tricks." Han laughed. He looked over at Leia sitting in the co-pilot's chair, his eyes twinkling at his own arrogance. It wasn't quite a vulnerable moment but one of the first times that he admitted part of his act was bluster. "He made it look so easy I figured there wasn't anything to it."
Seeing those moments behind the bravado were a revelation to her. He rarely drew back that curtain, let anyone see past his well-practiced persona, and Leia knew she was one of the only beings who ever got a glimpse. Like when he let her fly the Falcon.
Once again, he surprised her. She expected him to be more abrasive. He threw in the occasional inappropriate comment but he didn't make any moves. All flirt, no action.
At first, it was little more than guiding the ship through empty space where there wasn't anything to hit. Leia wasn't too proud to admit there were some bumpy moments during those early rides but she had improved. Considering that he called the Falcon his baby, his one true love, he was a trusting tutor.
Han wasn't prescriptive, didn't give her instructions of minute details and precise order of events. He told her what each button and lever did then let her figure it out. He didn't leave her alone—he wasn't insane—but he was very slow in correcting her. He trusted her to know what to do or to ask for help. He squatted beside the pilot chair, watching her, sometimes putting his hand on hers to demonstrate how to slowly raise and lower levers, and as she improved, he moved to Chewie's seat and let her do her thing. He even let her land the Falcon on base a few times.
Leia regretted that these lessons happened so rarely, always waiting for him to offer when there was time on missions. She often wished she had the nerve to ask to go up some afternoon when things were slow on base. But it was difficult for her to ask for a favour that wasn't directly Rebellion-related, which is why she used the excuse of a bet in the first place. Also, if she made this request then she might have to admit how much she enjoyed the lessons.
It was intimate and she liked it. She felt safe. Although Leia knew it took practice to acquire a skill—she never would have assumed those knife tricks were easy—she didn't risk failure in front of others. She practiced on her own. She perfected any maneuver before performing in front of others. But she knew she could learn, make mistakes and recover, in this instance. There was a trust between them, unspoken and unacknowledged, that was new. Something she had never experienced before and suspected the same was true for Han.
Leia wandered how different things might be if Pyrtor wasn't in the picture. Or if Han knew the last few times she saw Pyrtor, meet ups she delayed and avoided, nothing happened. She still had to officially end the relationship but it was long over. If Han knew there was no romantic attachment would his hand over hers guiding the Falcon to a docking bay mean something else? Would he want more from her? Did she want there to be something more? Leia felt her heart rate speed up, colour rising in her cheeks.
It was something she wasn't entirely comfortable experiencing. It felt wild, unknown, uncontained. Her life had always been about control. Intentional acts. Measured responses. Her focus was the Rebellion. She wanted the space she was creating with Han, craved it, and knew it could easily consume her. She needed to find balance, a buffer, something that let her wade in and kept her from drowning. She was being drawn in and wasn't sure how to stop it.
Han was tall. Taller than Pyrtor. Handsome in a way that was both obvious and unique. She knew his hands were rough and calloused from those times he touched her face, her hands, her bare arms. He probably brushed his hair at some point but it always looked ruffled and askew. His eyes were mostly hazel, sometimes green, occasionally almost golden. He had wrinkles that were only visible when he laughed and then radiated around his eyes like an explosion.
Leia didn't realize, as her mind wandered and Luke and Chewie searched through the datachips, she was staring at Han until it clicked in that he was staring back. There was a flash, a moment, when she thought she should turn away because he was obviously going to say something rude or smartassed. But he didn't. He seemed surprised to find her staring back at him and one side of his mouth turned up in a half-smile. Their gaze was broken by Luke's voice cutting in.
"This seems like it's too easy to be true."
"What is?" Leia looked at Luke, not sure if he was referring to the datapad or her and Han's lingering stare.
"There's an account for a company called Aiel Anagro." He turned the datapad toward her and she grabbed it from his hand.
That did seem too easy to be true. And far too risky.
"Sounds more like a trap." Han looked suspicious. "Anyone know we went looking on Abottin? Any way that got leaked to the Empire?"
Leia shook her head. "Anything's possible but I didn't even tell Rieekan till we got back. It's possible but this information would have to have been planted a long while back with the hope we would someday find it. Maybe through the foundation info we got from Pyrtor."
"Don't underestimate the long game, Sweetheart."
Leia read through the company description then lifted her eyes to look at Han again. "It's a charity that raises money to send girls to train for non-traditional occupations." She read from the datapad. "In particular, aviation, mechanics and politics."
"That seems like a random list." Luke sounded confused. "And women already do all those things."
"Not a real charity, Kid." Han didn't look at Luke but kept his eyes on Leia. The slight smile was back.
Leia could feel tears brimming. "I think you really found something, Luke."
Han stood up from his table and walked out of the lounge as Luke slid closer to Leia.
"Seriously? What do you think it is? Are there actual credit accounts attached to it?"
"I don't know yet." Leia continued to stare at the datapad in disbelieve. She'd been looking through these files for weeks, every chance she got. Had she already looked past that name? There was a part of her that was disappointed she wasn't the one to discover it. "It looks like it's made up of subsidiary companies. Maybe they're individual accounts? It's still going to take a lot of sifting through but it will hopefully connect to info in the other files."
Han returned to the games table with a bottle of whisky and glasses.
"Ever wonder why all these old donors never came looking for you?" Luke moved back to his old spot.
"Not like they can knock on the Rebellion's door and offer money." Leia continued scanning through the account on the datapad. There was a lump in her throat. What if there were other messages from her father in here? "We got a lot of new recruits after the Death Star." She didn't mention Alderaan. Sometimes it was too hard to say out loud. "But the Empire paid closer attention to the money. Harder to move, easier to detect."
"I can't imagine it was ever easy," Luke said.
Han filled the glasses and pushed them toward the others.
Leia laughed. "Are we toasting the fact we maybe found something that might lead to more information? And might not."
"Yup."
They all raised their glasses.
"And," Han spoke before anyone could take a drink. "To fast ships and good shots."
There was a celebration on the Chomre base, probably happening at that moment, that they were all avoiding. As much as they appreciated, understood, the significance of destroying the Death Star and their individual contributions, it wasn't all joyous. Luke and Leia both had loss and trauma associated with that time. Han and Chewie wanted no part in celebrating past events. They preferred looking forward, hoping for more reward than loss.
They all clinked glasses then drank. Han reached into his pocket and tossed folded animals toward both of them.
Luke looked at the bantha. "Hey, you did it! I'll put this in my X-Wing. Like a good luck charm."
"Only someone from Tatooine would think a bantha brought good luck." Han stretched his legs out in front of him and poured himself more whisky.
Leia picked up her folded animal. It was a thranta. She held it by the base then pulled on the tail. Its wings stretched and flapped like it was in mid-flight. Leia marvelled in the easy movement of her thranta, Han's deft work with his hands, his persistence in discovery and design. She looked at the three beings who now made up her family, who relaxed into each other's company, and was very surprised that she didn't cry.
