Author's Note: Hello, everyone. I'm desperately sorry it took me so long to update this again. To make a long story short, I took on more than was strictly sane my freshman year at college, and then had to deal with the consequences. Now it's summer, though, so I should be able to update with some regularity. My most profound apologies to you all. And to answer my wonderful reviewers:

Eileen Blazer: Aw, you're so kind. I think it's probably good that you feel kind of angry at Leia. She's not doing it on purpose, but still… And I'm glad you like my portrayal of Luke. He's the one I'm having the most trouble with, so it's good that someone likes him. It's always struck me as kind of crazy that he goes from whiney farm-boy to completely-in-control Jedi in the space of four years, without even having finished his training. So I'm trying to bring up his uncertainties again. Anyway, thanks so much for your review!

GreatOne: Teehee, Han as Teneniel Djo's personal slave definitely brings some cough interesting images to mind…thanks for the review, though!

From-Heaven2Earth: Yup, well, that's exactly the feeling I was going for, so I'm glad that's what you thought! Thanks for the review and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for the rest of it!

Levisrictusias: Goodness, I hope you didn't disintegrate yet! And I definitely promise to continue this story to completion, no matter how horribly slow I am at it! Thanks so much for the review!

ME: Aw, I'm glad to hear that. Thanks!

Kalena: Aren't the movies amazing? I love them to death. I'm glad you decided to check out the fanfic, too, and thank you so much for reading mine and reviewing!

Padme: Aw, well, definitely don't let that stop you from writing your own revision, too! I'd love to read it if you do! Thanks for the review!

Freetrader: Well, I'm glad I was able to make someone feel that intensely about it! Please keep reading; it'll make you feel better (eventually)! Thanks so much for your review!

Crazytook: Yes, that definitely does help! That's exactly the problem I was having, because he seems to transition, like I said to someone else, so quickly from whiney Luke to super-calm Jedi Luke, and it kind of seems unnatural and unlikely to me. So I'm hoping to make him kind of past the superficial covering of calm Luke to a more human Luke with questions about his future. I know it sounds kind of weird to have him doubting himself again, but I explain it to myself like this: he got his Jedi powers under control with Yoda and subsequent practicing, and that made him superficially calm and collected for a while. But then the incredible responsibility of being the last Jedi really sank in, and he started doubting himself because of that. Hopefully that makes some sort of sense. Let me know! And thank you so, so much for your advice; it really helps!

Anyway, everyone, I hope you enjoy! Many thanks to all my readers who are coming back to read this after such a long hiatus; I really, really appreciate it. Please leave me comments so I can improve; it really means a lot to me when you care enough to do that! Oh, and on a side note: my apologies for the really stupid "X X X X" that I had to use to make scene changes. I've been using asterisks and dashes in the past but I just realized that ff.n doesn't pick up on those. Oops!

Chapter 10

The shock as their little ship was yanked out of hyperspace two hours early was enough to send Leia sliding off her narrow bunk and to the cold, metallic floor with a thud. The angry growls coming from the direction of what passed as the lounge of the ship told her that Chewie had probably been asleep and experienced a similar jolt. Luke must have been awake and on duty in the cockpit, because he appeared in the doorway of the bunkroom several seconds later and offered a hand to help her up.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, apart from a lovely bruise or two, I should be fine," she told him dryly, following up with a question in what Luke recognized as her getting-down-to-business tone, "but that doesn't matter- what's going on?"

"Um, we seem to have fallen out of hyperspace," Luke admitted. Chewie, with his superior amounts of experience in this department, was already expressing his explicit opinions about the ship, its makers, their parents, and all of their descendents for generations to come, in the loud tones brother and sister now heard emanating from the cockpit.

"Hey, Chewie, it was the best we could do on short notice, remember?" Luke reminded before turning to the console in hopes that it would reveal something clarifying to him, "so where are we?"

Chewie answered instead. They had all trooped into the tiny cockpit by now, and while Leia had been staring somewhat absently beyond her brother to the stars, not really quite awake enough to thrust forbidden thoughts of Han from her mind yet, Chewie had already analyzed their position. Leia snapped back to attention as she caught a few stray words in Chewie's answering growls and grunts.

"Wait, what did he say?" she asked, turning back to her brother.

"That we're about where we're supposed to be," said Luke slowly and somewhat hesitantly. Apparently he was just as puzzled by that state of affairs as she was, and both turned back to look at Chewie. He verified their understanding of his language and pointed at several key markings on the chart and navicomputer for further proof.

"Strange," Luke murmured, looking back out at the stars as if he expected them to have labeled themselves while he had been trying to determine their identity. Leia's mind was on something else entirely.

"So where's the Falcon?" she said, her heart beating slightly faster than it had been before. She restrained herself from casting her eyes out over her brother's shoulders, as if she could find Han just by looking hard enough into the stars. Luke was silent, not wanting to say something wrong and upset her. Chewie had no such scruples, being almost as worried as she was.

"Well, the coordinates of his distress signal say she should be right around…here," Chewie said, allowing his paw to skim over the navicomp's screen to come to rest on a precise location not too far from where they were suspended among the stars. It took everyone a moment to those particular coordinates were encompassed by a planet.

"Oh. He's on a planet," Luke thought aloud, "that's good, right?"

It was Chewie's turn to be uneasily silent. Sometimes it took a longtime spacer to understand certain things…like the fact that you were just safer on your own ship, no matter how nice a planet might look from space. Leia left her concern unvoiced as well- from her point of view, it was all too easy to be yanked out of hyperspace in the middle of the night and then crash into a planet's orbit and be sucked down to the ground all before you even had a chance to figure out why you weren't still hurtling smoothly through hyperspace in the first place. She tried not to picture Han as a pile of moldering ashes mixed with fragments of his ship. No, his ship was in good enough shape to send a distress signal, she reminded herself quickly. Her head filled instead with images of Han stuck under a piece of furniture or a crate that hadn't been properly latched down, suffocating and starving before she worked up the courage to come find him. She did her best to clear her mind of those images, blinking her eyes preventatively against the tears of self-blame that threatened.

"Well, I guess we're gong to have to land and aim for those coordinates as well as possible, then," Luke said. Still concentrating on clearing her mind of unwanted thoughts, Leia nodded absently. Chewie had just begun to growl something about their method of approach when Leia remembered.

"Isolder!" she said suddenly, her eyes opening wide. Luke glanced at her, remembering their fellow traveler just as suddenly as she had. Chewie growled something none too complementary about the Hapan prince that may or may not have had something to do with him being lost in hyperspace for the rest of his days, but both twins chose to ignore him. Leia stepped over to the comm. Console and quickly adjusted it to his frequency, trying to ignore the fact that her fingers automatically brought the dial to rest on Han's in the seconds before her brain had a chance to take over. She reddened slightly, blinking rapidly to clear her head again and ducking it a little so no one would see. He answered right away.

"Leia," his voice came through the comm. It was a little crackly, but the concern was clearly audible and Leia's chest seemed to contract on hearing it, even as she cringed inside. She hadn't gotten used to his use of her first name so familiarly, yet, and here he was being concerned for her welfare on a level more personal than she was really ready to deal with yet.

"Leia," he repeated when she didn't answer right away, "are you all right?" She cleared her throat and spoke in a surprisingly distinct voice.

"We're all fine here," she said, something inside of her hoping that he noticed the change in pronouns and the reprimand it conveyed, "how about you? Did your ship come through all right?" The doubts she had been battling in the past few days flooded into her head all at once. She was considering marrying this man quite seriously and yet here she was sending him barbed comments when he had shown only concern towards her.

"Yes; it was built to stand plenty more than this, believe me," he told her, his joking tone laced with hesitation. Leia scolded herself silently. Stop being so ridiculous, Leia. Chewie growled something about the build of Isolder's ship and compared it not particularly favorably, with that of the Falcon; both twins chose to ignore him once more.

"I'm sending you my coordinates; you send me yours, all right?" he said. Luke bent over the neighboring console to initiate the transmission.

"All right, well, let's-"Leia began after having glanced at his coordinates. They weren't that far apart, and seeing concrete numbers helped the leader within her take over. Before she had a chance to finish her sentence, however, the ship lurched and Isolder's voice came through the comm, even more static-ridden than before.

"Leia! We're being sucked into orbit, and the orbit of this planet is kind of erratic according to my navicomp, so tell your pilot to-"he began, before he in turn was interrupted by Chewbacca. None of them could ignore him this time; his meaning was far too clear for that.

"I know what to do with an erratic orbit," he growled hostilely, adding a few mildly insulting insinuations about Isolder's capabilities mostly under his breath as he shoved Luke into the copilot's position and wedged himself into the pilot's seat. Leia took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to convince herself that she truly was sorry that she couldn't apologize to Isolder for Chewie's behavior at that particular moment. Luckily, she was distracted by the continual tossing and turning of the ship before that endeavor became too depressingly unsuccessful. Apologizing to the man who had come between her and Han when something might now have happened to Han was really not one of her top priorities at the moment.

"Lock down the stabilizers," came Chewie's voice through the haze of her mind. It was to Han's credit that her eyes flicked automatically to the area of the console where stabilizers were supposed to be. She thrust forcefully out of her mind the fond memory of Han running his hand through his hair in annoyance after trying to teach her some basic knowledge of mechanics and only half succeeding.

Luke had flipped the switch to lock down the stabilizers, and the ship had stopped jolting quite so much. It did make it easier to think, that was for sure. She glanced at the location screen and noticed what Chewie was doing. It tore at her insides, but she made herself say it:

"Chewie, just try to land us in one piece so we can use this ship to get back off this planet. It won't be worth it trying to land close to the Falcon if we're going to be dead or with no means of getting out of here when we do find it." She didn't quite manage to make herself tell him to try to follow Isolder. Hopefully Isolder would have the good sense to follow them. He did have the superior ship, after all, making it his responsibility…sort of. Chewie growled his assent, probably realizing that it had cost her as much to make the suggestion as it was costing him to follow it.

Leia tensely did her best to steady her breath and focused her mind in its entirety on watching Chewie bring the ship carefully down through the planet's atmosphere as if she could lend him her concentration just by watching him. She wished she knew more about this sort of thing so that she could offer more concrete help. Luke sat almost as motionless in his seat, all of him straining to catch Chewie's next curt order, and then to comprehend it and act on it as quickly as possible. Chewie, for his part, seemed to be watching both the scene outside the transparisteel viewport and the navicomp's screen with a calm possession of himself that belied the adrenaline rushing within. His large furry paws moved over the console with a dexterity that would probably have surprised those who didn't know him as well as the twins did, and slowly the ship came down to settle safely, if a little bit roughly, on the vegetation-covered ground.

Leia let out a quiet sigh of relief and wiped the sweat that had beaded on her upper lip away quickly. She offered Luke a shaky smile in return for his attempt at a reassuring one and Chewie twisted in his seat to look at them both as if challenging them to find fault with his skills.

"That was excellent Chewie, really amazing," she said, and he grunted his appreciative response. Something beeped on the console and all three turned to look at it. A small white blip appeared on the graphical interpretation of the surrounding area.

"Looks like Isolder made it okay," Luke said, making his tone as completely neutral as he possibly could in order to avoid upsetting either of the ship's other occupants. Leia nodded equally neutrally and Chewie, for once, refrained from commenting. It was possibly because he was already checking over the ship's fuel reserves and other mechanically related things as thoroughly as he could without actually going into the ship's belly and examining the state of things for himself. That could wait until after they had a bite to eat, he decided. He didn't kid himself that they were going to meet up with Han and be ready to take off again within the next ten minutes; that was for sure. No, they probably were better off having a proper dinner and even getting some much-needed sleep before they ventured outside to start looking for Han, he reflected. He wasn't sure he'd be able to convince the Princess of that, though. For that matter, he wasn't even really sure he'd be able to convince himself.

"Okay, well, our ship doesn't seem to have atmospheric sensors so we'll take your word for it," Luke was saying into the comm. Leia was nodding anxiously behind him, eager to get started.

"Isolder, your ship wouldn't happen to have those newer life-sensors, would it?" she asked, referring to one of the more recent and impressive technological developments. These had taken some time in getting approval from the relevant Senate committee on the grounds that they might in some way be used to discriminate against particular species, especially since their ability to differentiate between humanoids and other broad categories of aliens had been one of their most highly advertised features. If Isolder's managed to install one on his ship, though, I'll make sure they get to the top of the pile, Leia promised silently, thinking of the huge stacks of issues the Committees were constantly besieged by.

"Well, yes, but I don't think it's going to help us," he said in a regretful tone that Leia had to give him credit for, "I'm detecting humanoids all over the place...kind of in clumps."

Leia took a deep breath, trying to get over her disappointment. Though she didn't want to admit it, she had been half expecting to be holding Han in her arms tonight. The disappointment was almost more than she could bear, but she fought it back with the thought that she wasn't supposed to be contemplating Han in her arms, not if she was going still planning to even consider marrying Isolder. With all of the other thoughts churning around in her mind, she didn't pick up on the fact that she had referred to it as merely considering, not concretely doing.

Instead, she let a silent, but no less anguish-filled for its silence, yell of Oh, Han, escape from her mind, forgetting for a moment that she and Han were not alone in the universe. Luke winced from where he was carrying on the conversation with Isolder as his sister's anguished cry reverberated in his mind.

"Okay, we'll see you in a few minutes, then," he said into the comm, concluding his conversation. He came over to stand by his sister.

"We'll find him," Luke said, putting a hand on her shoulder and bending his head down slightly to look into her eyes. Like most people who offered reassurance in difficult situations, he wished he could convince himself of what he was saying. Leia nodded and smiled, being strong for her brother the way he was being strong for her, both of them pretending for the sake of the other and both aware of it. She took a deep breath.

"I'm going to go look up how long planetary rotation is here," she said, half meaning it and half using the words to cloak her need to leave the room and compose herself. A swipe at her eyes administered with the back of her hand and two deep breaths later, she flipped on her datapad and her usual sense of calm determination returned to her…or, as much of it as she could manage, given the situation.

And that was just it, wasn't it? When the situation concerned Han, how could she possibly be calm, any more than she had been when it concerned Alderaan, or any more than she would be if it ever concerned Luke? She sighed deeply, understanding the truth in the core of her being, hidden there, waiting for her to uncover and accept it.

Well, it's not like it matters right now, she thought with a mixture of wryness and sadness, it won't really matter that I love him if we never find him, will it?

X X X X

When she emerged from her cabin, she was her usual composed self once more, and Luke breathed a sigh of relief. In the eight years (had it really been that long?) that he'd known his twin sister, he'd grown used to her being the strong, calm one, so that he could be the idealistic, somewhat brash young Jedi (well, brash until he had realized how much he could influence the course of future events and grown to doubt every possible action). It was unnerving to see her so affected by something so…human. Well, obviously she's human, he thought, scoldingly to himself, shaking his head.

"The night cycle starts in less than an hour," she told them despondently. She took another deep breath, "so I guess we'll have to start looking tomorrow." Luke nodded.

"Guess so," he nodded, then did his best to bring a brighter expression to his face, "that gives us more time to plan out exactly where we want to start looking, right?"

Chewie growled his assent, crossed the small main cabin and leaned over the twins' shoulders to peer at the map Leia had brought up on the screen.

X X X X

Han, not wanting to admit that he was completely spent, but desperately in need of a break all the same, stopped and leaned, after checking for noticeable danger, against the trunk of a tree. Yes, that was right: a tree. How this planet had managed to go from desert to jungle-forest within an afternoon's walk, he wasn't quite sure. He was sure, however, that it was a welcome change. Or, at least, the shade had been, until the jungle had produced a bunch of roots for him to trip over. As a result, he'd been marching carefully for the past hour and a half (or so he estimated), lifting his feet absurdly high to avoid tangling them in the roots of the great trees that towered above him now and fervently hoping no one he knew would pass by and witness it.

He leaned over, his hands on his knees, and took a few moments to will his breathing to slow back to normal before straightening up and looking around. Yeah, 'go where want' is all well and good, he thought sarcastically, but it doesn't change the fact that this damn planet has no damn stars to navigate by and too much jungle for them to do any good even if they did exist.

Having traveled just far enough to collapse in the shade of the nearest rock in the desert-like landscape near where Teneniel Djo and her fellow clan-mates or whatever they considered themselves, and slept for most of the previous day and night, he had awoken just before dawn and noted that there were no discernable guiding sort of stars visible. He'd started off in what he really hoped was a straight line, and then just continued in that (hopefully) straight line until now. It had led him through the desert-like region and then through a rockier passage which had opened up into this jungle. And he was fairly sure he had landed the Falcon on something resembling plains…something he definitely hadn't encountered yet.

One more look around and upwards led him to conclude that it was definitely almost night again. His experienced side told him it was better to be spending the night somewhere sheltered and hidden, like this, where no one was likely to find him. And yet he had felt more secure on the open desert, where he would have been able to see any attacker from miles away. Of course, if he was asleep, that didn't really mean much, and being able to see the attacker wouldn't really help either, since he didn't have any weapons to speak of. It didn't stop a vague uneasiness at having to sleep here from creeping over him, though.

Sighing grumpily at this turn of events, he started clearing a space between two roots of branches and other debris before lining it roughly with the large leaves of some nearby plant (he really hoped it wasn't poisonous). Finally, he lay down uncomfortably in his nest of leaves (was he just imagining that itch on his bare arms and neck?) and reflected that, upon consideration, it was highly unlikely that anyone he knew had even heard of this place, let alone come close enough to see his marching antics. In fact, if anyone he knew had been there, he probably would have fallen at their knees and kissed their feet and begged for transport off this stupid rock.

Solo, you're sounding completely ridiculous, he thought to himself just before drifting off to some much-needed sleep, if Leia could hear you now, she'd definitely go running in the other direction…even if that direction did lead to some soppy prince from gods-know-where.