A/N: A little explanation before the story begins. I am not a huge Star Wars fan, I have seen A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back both exactly one time. After seeing A New Hope, I wanted to do a story with Han Solo, but didn't know enough about the canon universe to come up with anything. After seeing The Empire Strikes Back, the urge to actually do a Star Wars story came back with a vengeance. For this story, I took a lot from Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs and reworked, reshaped, twisted and mangled it to fit in the Star Wars universe. Readers will not have to be familiar with this story to understand what's going on here. I'm not overly familiar with the language and terminology used in the Star Wars canon so if I get anything wrong, please bear with me. All standard disclaimers, don't own so don't sue. Hope you all enjoy, please read and review.
The Unholy Three
"What do you mean I shouldn't have taken that left?" Han Solo demanded to know as he navigated his ship through an asteroid field. Every so often he could hear one hit the side of the Millennium Falcon and every other so often he could feel a bigger one hit the side of the ship, but thus far they were staying the course, "Once we get out of here we're going to be halfway to our destination."
Chewbacca snarled his disagreement from the seat next to him in the cockpit.
"The sooner we can get this cargo dropped off, the sooner we get paid, the sooner I can get Jabba paid back for that shipment I dropped," Han replied as he absently ran one hand across his throat, "He's not the kind of guy you want to keep mad at you. I'm sure right now he'd love nothing more than to have my head mounted on a barbecue spit."
The wookie grunted a response, to which Han slightly cringed as he added, "Them too." He sat slightly straighter as he realized, "Hey it's clearing up, I told you we'd get out in no time."
The whole ship jolted to one side as a larger asteroid hit it.
"Don't-say-a-word," Han warned Chewbacca.
Another thudding sound got both their attention, but for a different reason.
"That's not an asteroid," Han said, "That came from inside the ship."
He didn't like his friend's opinion and defensively replied, "Don't be stupid, nobody could be in here with us, we haven't touched ground for..."
Chewbacca howled in response.
"The hatch was not open," Han insisted.
They argued for a couple more minutes before Han finally got fed up and told him, "Alright, alright, if it'll make you happy, we'll look." He set the controls for auto-pilot and got up from his seat. "Let's go."
Whatever the noise was, it hadn't reoccurred, but that still didn't get Han out of searching every inch of the ship. They were getting closer to having combed over every section of the Falcon when they reached the crew quarters and discovered something seriously out of place.
"What the hell?" he asked in disbelief at the sight of a human body in the middle of the floor dressed in a sleeveless purple shirt, dark green pants and tan boots, the skin was similar to his own. The back of the head was covered with short red hair that stood up in small wavy spikes.
It didn't move. He nudged it with his foot, it still didn't move. He nudged it a little harder just incase it was some kind of sneak attack, it still didn't move. Crouching down beside it, he grabbed one of the hands and felt the wrist, there was a pulse. He pulled on the arm just enough to turn the whole body over.
It was a young woman, if even that much, Han wasn't a good judge of ages but she looked fairly young. Fresh bruises were starting to form on her arms from being bounced around during the trip through the asteroid field, by all rights she should already have been killed not being strapped in during that little detour.
"Come on kid, wake up," he tapped her cheek a couple times before flat out smacking her, and that made her eyes open.
The girl's eyes moved every which direction as they tried to focus on something, and then finally she looked straight up at the two males hovering over her, and in a dazed voice she asked, "Mom?"
Han and Chewie looked at each other with very similar expressions, then Han looked back at the girl and told her, "Get up." He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. Once she stood up he discovered she was nearly a foot shorter than him.
"What's going on?" she asked as she slowly looked around.
"I'm asking the questions," Han told her, "starting with what the hell are you doing here?"
"Where..." she turned her head and looked one way, then the other, "Where am I?"
"Onboard the Millennium Falcon, I'm the captain of this ship, and you're a stowaway. There are serious consequences for breaking and entering a private ship," he said sternly.
The girl blinked a couple times, then rotated one shoulder until it popped, and replied simply, "It's not breaking and entering if the ship's not locked."
"How the hell did you get in here?" Han asked her.
"The hatch was open."
Chewbacca grunted.
"Oh shut up," Han told him. He looked at the girl and demanded to know, "Who are you?"
It took a couple seconds for her to respond, as if she hadn't understood the question right away. Very simply she answered, "I am Gwynplaine."
"Gwynplaine what?" Han Solo asked.
She shrugged her shoulders and answered just as simply, "Just Gwynplaine."
"No, who's your family?" he asked.
"Don't got a family," she replied.
The smuggler paused for a moment, then he asked the girl, "How old are you?"
She didn't answer him. Instead she raised one hand in front of her face and began counting on her fingers.
"Never mind," Han dismissed the question. Some of the initial shock and anger at somebody stowing away in his ship left him, but he was still chock full of burning curiosity. "What're you doing here?"
"Just trying to get out of that place," Gwynplaine answered.
"What place?"
"The place you were docked at," the redheaded girl answered.
"You were there." Of course it had to be the last stop they'd made. They'd just collected a shipment of weapons to smuggle, and had to make an emergency landing on the first planet they found to do some quick repairs to the ship. That had cost them precious time to deliver the load, that was why after fixing it again he'd decided to try their luck zipping through an asteroid field. Though it had taken a couple hours to get out of there, Han could hardly even remember the name of the place. It was little more than a stopping through place from mission to mission, he'd been there a few times but it wasn't much different from a dozen planets across the galaxy.
"Is that where you live?" he asked.
Gwynplaine looked at him as if she didn't understand the question. "I live wherever I go."
"I mean that's where your home is."
"Don't have a home," she answered.
Han sighed, he was getting a headache.
"We're not getting anywhere," he murmured to Chewbacca as he sat down. "You live with somebody, right?"
"I did," she said in a tone that almost seemed timid.
"Who?"
He was met with silence.
"Come on, kid, I don't have all day," Han sniped, "Who do you live with?"
"A group of gypsies," she finally answered.
"I don't have time for jokes either," Han told her.
"It's true," she replied quietly but firmly. "We never stayed anywhere too long, here today, gone tomorrow, the next day, the day after...just pick up and travel all over the galaxy."
Han sucked in a noisy breath as he looked for the strength to not throttle this kid for stringing him along and wasting his time. "Right, so these gypsies are your family."
"Don't have a family, I told you," she responded.
"Then why were you with a bunch of gypsies?"
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, "Just always have...as far back as I can remember they were just always there. I don't remember anyone else."
Slowly it started to dawn on Han Solo that this could actually be real, that this kid could actually be telling the truth.
"So what're you doing here?" he asked.
"There was a sandstorm shortly after we landed and I got lost. By the time I got back, they had gone," Gwynplaine answered.
"There was no sandstorm," Han told her, "we were there."
She shook her head, "No, this was days before you got there. I waited at first and thought they'd come back, they didn't. So then I tried to figure out how to get out of there. There wasn't a lot of traffic, when you arrived, and I saw the hatch was open, I thought I could at least get out of there."
"And you about got yourself killed because of it," Han remarked.
"I didn't want to stay there, the people there were horrible," Gwynplaine said.
Slowly Han tried to put all the pieces together in his head but something wasn't adding up. "They had to know they were a head short, and they didn't come back?"
The girl shook her head.
"Why were they there in the first place?" Han wanted to know.
"They'd stop anywhere they could for a day or so, make some money, move on," Gwynplaine explained.
"And what'd you do during all this, just follow them around?"
She shook her head grimly, "No, I had my own role in it. People always have their prices, always have."
The statement itself was cryptic and grim at the same time, it was ambiguous but something about it still sent a slight chill through the smuggler's blood. He could sense he was dangerously close to having to care about somebody else's situation instead of just his own, and he hadn't stayed alive this long in the business he was in by getting involved in other people's affairs that didn't concern him.
"Do me a favor," he told the girl, "don't tell me about it, I don't want to know."
Gwynplaine slightly nodded and said cynically, "Of course, why should you be different from anyone else?"
He ignored that comment. Instead he ordered her out of the quarters, and when the three of them reached the lounge, he pointed and told her in a commanding tone, "Go sit down."
Half to his surprise, she obeyed without a word.
"Strap yourself in," he told her, "we got a long way to go and it's gonna get bumpy."
