Lost
Echo Base was colder than she remembered after only a few days away.
The assignment had been a disaster. Perhaps an overdue disaster, she thought; after all, how much luck could she reasonably expect given the circumstances of her life?
She struggled to coherently piece together the events of their trip. The bounty hunter. The narrow escape. The shouting match while they waited for Chewie to arrive with the ship. Even worse, the stony silence on the flight back, neither of them willing to take the first step to break the impasse. She knew now that they were both too prideful, too arrogant, to be able to exist in harmony for more than a few days at a time. How could she ever have thought otherwise?
She made it through the next week solely by habit. She carried out her duties unfailingly as always, words and actions arising automatically. Underneath she was a mess. And then his announcement in the command center that he was finally leaving spurred one more push within her. Her last-ditch attempt in the icy corridor to convince him to stay, the final opportunity as she saw it, ending in failure.
The only question was why had she had expected anything different.
It's over. Done. The words vibrated through him hour after hour, day after day, a background soundtrack that dripped with guilt and self-loathing.
Over before it even began.
He asked himself why was he so sure of it now. After all, there had been numerous starts and stops between them for more than two years. But what was obvious in retrospect — and even at the time — was that those interactions had been building toward something solid, something permanent. And now, in the span of a few days, that carefully-erected structure had been blasted to pieces.
Maybe it was what he saw in her eyes when the bounty hunter confronted them. Fear, yes, but also anger, and not directed solely toward their foe. Anger toward him.
Or her accusation, which he couldn't fully refute: If you had accepted our help, this wouldn't have happened.
Back on Hoth they couldn't completely avoid each other but he had no clue how to act in her presence and careened helplessly from one encounter to the next. Once or twice he fell back into his old ways, needling her unnecessarily just to provoke a reaction. Like he had in the early days when they were still figuring each other out. But this time the recoil was sharper and he had to admit that he deserved it when she kissed Luke. What had he been thinking?
He had to get out of there. Away from her. Away from his regrets. Only to be followed by new regrets, something within him whispered.
He banged on his ship to drown out those voices. Banged on it so hard that they were long past their scheduled departure and he still wasn't confident they would make it off the planet. Chewie was yelling at him yet again when his comm beeped.
Beneath Rieekan's habitual calm was an undercurrent of panic. She hasn't met up with us yet, Solo. Last I saw she was in the command center. You know how stubborn she is.
So Han promised that he would find her. Get her off Hoth and get her back to the fleet. He owed her and Rieekan and the Alliance that much.
And then he would make his escape to Tatooine.
But when he found her bent over the terminals barking orders at the terrified ensigns, he saw evidence of the familiar spark. Even among the chaos of the retreat he noticed the way her eyes flashed at him. Something of the flame she once had, that they once had. Before the current stalemate anyway.
And yet he didn't trust himself to hope.