Everybody deserves a second chance. Having recently lost our real-life Princess I wondered how I might approach her on-screen alter ego's passing. There's at least one fic on here which is so beautifully written if there was one thing I was certain of it was that I could never match that. So what began as a follow on from 'Accidents Happen' and was then titled 'A Princess, and a Guy Like Me' became this offering. I hope you enjoy.
To quickly recap though - Han, heading toward seventy, and Leia, somewhere around fifty-five, have learned they are to become parents again. Now before you mentally switch off it can happen. And did, to a very good friend of mine who thought the shock would kill her! It didn't and although the pregnancy didn't go full term serves as a reminder that there's only one sure way not to get pregnant and that's not to do the thing that can get you there.
And there's no way I'm gonna stop my favourite couple from having sex, so...
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While Jaina Solo-Fel cared for her younger brother, Jorj, Han Solo took his wife to dinner then onto the swankiest hotel this part of Coruscant had to offer. Having toured their suite, Leia had curled her arms around Han's neck and smiled up at him lovingly.
"If I'd known we were staying the night I'd have brought clean underwear. And maybe a nightgown." She breathed.
"We can always send your clothes to the valet." He offered, his hands settling against her hips.
"Except my underwear." She smiled, teasingly. "I'm not wearing any."
"Better not get this all dirty then." He leered, fingers caressing the fabric of her dress.
Leia laughed. "You always were transparent!"
"Not always. I think I hid my feelings pretty well, right up until you made me kiss you." He insisted.
"Made you!" She exclaimed.
"Well if I hadn't done it, you sure as Hell wasn't gonna! So, yeah, I still say you made me." He accused.
"Whatever." She laced her fingers behind his neck. "I'm just glad you did."
The bedroom was as tastefully furnished as the rest of the suite and contained the largest bed Leia had seen in her life. Before she could leap into it, Han helpfully insisted on loosening the braids she'd spent an hour plaiting around her head, and easing the pure white gown she was wearing from her body.
She'd never entirely gotten over her nervousness at appearing naked in front of him. As the years had given way from youth to maturity, so had her figure emerged from chrysalis to butterfly. An extra inch here and there was small price to pay for the beautiful family she had given him. And besides, she would forever be the young Princess in his eyes. The young Princess who had laid claim on him over a Prince or any other male in the Galaxy.
A Princess. And a guy like him.
It was still a source of amusement and surprise to him.
Whilst Leia slid between silken sheets Han, who lacked her sense of self-reservation, stripped out of his clothing and was soon beside her.
"Did you see the look that droid gave me when we checked in?" He asked. "When I said we didn't have any baggage I thought he was going to throw us out."
"Do droids even give 'looks'?" She queried, nestling into her pillow.
Han shook his head. "Never understood the point of droids. Never will."
"Han!" Leia chided, softly.
"Seriously, what point do they serve?" He pressed, tucking the bedding around his bare chest.
"Would you like me to answer that, or would you rather talk about what's really on your mind?" She asked. His shoulder lifted in a brief shrug and he picked at a non-existent flaw in the bedding. "You've been avoiding it all night. I know, because I saw an expression on your face I haven't seen since I told you I was pregnant with Jorj."
Han sighed inwardly. "Okay. I'm scared. There, I've said it." He admitted.
"You're scared! I'm the one who's pregnant!" She exclaimed.
"I'm the one who's about twenty years too old for all of this!" He countered.
Leia bunched her pillow and pulled herself to a sitting position, tucking the covers around her own chest. "You know my feelings. We don't have to proceed if we don't want to."
"Because it's inconvenient?" He queried. "It's not all that long ago we were trying to talk our daughter out of making the same decision we're now faced with."
"Jaina was a lot younger. A lot healthier too." Leia pointed out.
"Yeah, but her pregnancy was every bit as unplanned. Just because she was better physically equipped to bear a child doesn't mean it would be any more wrong for her to end it." He reasoned.
"You think it's wrong to terminate an unwanted pregnancy?" She asked.
"I never said this was unwanted. Just unplanned." He corrected.
"Point taken." She conceded.
"I just wish..." Han closed his eyes, swallowed and sighed. "I wish I could turn the chrono back, you know? I'm gonna be seventy soon enough Ley, seventy! Where'd the years go, huh? Can you tell me that? Where did all the damn years go?"
"Seventy...it's not actually considered that old any more, you know." Leia smiled softly.
"You tell my bones that when they get up outta the Falcon's chair sometimes." He argued.
"Maybe that's the Falcon rather than your bones. They certainly seem agile enough when they're jumping mine." She suggested.
"Next you'll be telling me plenty of guys my age get to be new parents." He said.
"Some, certainly. I'm not sure I'd say plenty, but then I haven't actually researched the figures." She told him, reaching out to take his hand. "I think the first thing we should do is go to the medical centre. Have the pregnancy confirmed and a probable birth date. Then...well, then we'll know for sure what we're dealing with."
"I thought you were sure. I mean...you peed on a stick!" He stated.
"I just mean we'll have a more definite time frame." She snuggled back down under the covers, Han following her lead.
"There's no easy answer is there." He added.
He was brooding again and, Leia guessed, not just about the baby. So many people over the years had told him he was a useless, worthless piece of rock. Han's bravado was a force to be reckoned with, but Leia had a way of seeing past it to the lonely soul that inhabited Han's innermost thoughts. There was something inside, something he needed to talk about but didn't want to say. Something from his past. As these kinds of things almost always were.
"Tell me." She whispered. "Please."
There was nothing he couldn't tell her. He knew that. Just as there was no secret she couldn't share with him in the safe and certain knowledge that it would stay exactly that, a shared experience in the rich tapestry of their life. With an intake of breath, he told her.
"The only woman I really loved apart from my mother and later you, was Bria Tharen. I made no secret that we were lovers or that she betrayed me and lost her life." He turned his face toward her. "What I didn't tell you was that I got her pregnant."
Suddenly it wasn't Leia he was looking at, it was her. Bria. The woman he had foolishly allowed to enter his heart as well as his bed.
The room they were in was similar, although considerably less opulent, as was the bed. They were both naked, Bria proudly displaying herself to him with none of the reservation Leia so stubbornly clung to.
They had been at the foreplay stage of intercourse when she had told him. Now as he gazed at her, the lips he'd just been kissing her with were still glistening with their saliva. "Pregnant?" He'd asked, a smile breaking across his lips. "Wow! That's wonderful news."
Her eyebrow had arched, curiously. For him, it had felt like all the fighting and the lying and the hiding had finally served a purpose.
"Really, wonderful news." He had repeated.
Bria, meanwhile, had risen from the bed and stalked over to the 'fresher. The door remained open while she urinated, then washed her hands and returned to their bed, hips swaying.
She lit a slim cigarra before reclining beside her lover and blowing a plume of smoke into the air.
"I'm gonna teach him to fly. Podracers first. He'll master those easy enough an' then we'll move on to bigger an' better craft." Han had grinned as he'd laid on his back, staring up at the ceiling, his future playing out across it's contours.
"They come in two types you know. He could be a she." Bria had pointed out.
"Even better." Han had exclaimed, excitedly rolling onto this stomach and helping himself to the cigarra she held. "An' these things are bad for your health. Not to mention his health. Or hers."
"So's alcohol. Didn't stop you plying me with Corellian brandy not more than half a standard hour since." She retrieved her smoke and enjoyed a long pull of it's tobacco.
"That was before." He'd explained and wriggled over to hover above her abdomen. "About how big is he?"
"A fingernail maybe, I never asked." She's shrugged.
"Hey there son. I'm your papa." He spoke against her skin.
"It doesn't have ears yet." She'd told him.
"So you didn't ask how big he is but you asked if he'd got ears?" Han chuckled.
"Maybe I didn't want it hearing you mumbling." She suggested, exhaling another plume of smoke.
"I'm only mumbling..." He mumbled, lips puckered to her flesh. "'Cos I'm sending him all these kisses."
He lifted himself to cover her body and grinned at her sloppily. "Any reason we can't..you know..celebrate?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and she shrugged her shoulders with little interest and less enthusiasm.
His grin broadened and his head dipped to kiss a trail from her neck, between her breasts, across her abdomen to culminate between her thighs where he skilfully brought her to orgasm.
Then he'd held her while he kissed her abdomen repeatedly, telling her how great it was going to be; how they were going to be the best parents, so much better than his old man had ever been for him; how the future was going to be bigger and brighter and more fulfilling than either of them had ever imagined.
And that was when she'd told him she wasn't keeping the baby.
He'd frowned at her and asked if he'd heard her right. She had repeated herself and stubbed out the nub of her cigarra.
"Don't I get a say in this?" He'd growled.
"Not unless you plan on giving birth to it." She'd replied coolly.
"This kid could be a real turning point for us." He'd argued.
"You turning legit?" She'd queried.
"You know what, I just might!" He'd barked.
She'd laughed. Actually laughed at him over that.
Their war of words had continued, but the outcome had remained the same. Bria Tharen had no intention of continuing with her pregnancy and nothing Han had to say was about to change her mind.
"What happened? I mean, she went ahead with the termination I presume?" Leia asked.
"We went our own way for a time. When we next met was when she double-crossed me and best I could tell she wasn't pregnant then. If she was, she hid it well and it wasn't so long after that that she was killed." He answered and fell into a silent reflection before heaving a huge sigh and turning a bright smile on Leia. "Never figured I'd find myself in that position again." He made a clicking noise behind his teeth.
"You're not. I'd never make a decision like that without you." She promised, reaching out to stroke his cheek. His hand covered hers, drawing her palm to his lips and placing a soft kiss there. "You know something? I can't remember the last time I lay in a bed as soft as this."
"I did good?" He queried, smiling.
"You did better than good, you did great. It's like being wrapped in a cloud." She smiled back.
"No more than my Princess deserves." He told her.
"After all those months curled together in your bunk, you know what I really want to do?" She asked.
"I'm going to guess making long, slow, intensely passionate and incredibly satisfying love with your older, yet still unbelievably sexy and outstandingly appreciative husband isn't top priority." He stated.
Leia laughed lightly and confirmed. "You'd be right. Do you mind?"
"Nah! That's the thing with you an' me, there'll always be tomorrow." He said.
"Hey." Her eyes held his and she mouthed 'I love you'.
"Yeah." He replied, mouthing 'I know'.
Leia's eyes closed as she nestled into her pillow. The dreamy look stayed on her face long after her hand slipped from his cheek, a sure sign that sleep had claimed her.
Han watched her sleeping, listened to the soft inhale and exhale of her every breath. Pregnancy had a slowing effect on her body. It accentuated her need for sleep, for which he had been all too grateful when she had been pregnant with their twins and with Anakin. She'd worked too hard back then, too many hours at the call of the New Republic's punishing regime had been taking it's toll. And he felt the shame of shock wash over him once again. That this beautiful creature, this Princess, had chosen him to make a life with.
Leia didn't stir when he slipped his hand into hers and placed it between his pillow and his cheek. In the morning he would race her to the 'fresher, make tender love to her beneath the shower's spray and carry her back to the bed where they would lie, drying against the sheets. That would give the cleaner droids something to puzzle over later!
Tonight though, he wanted to feel her close to him. To know that she was really real. That the last thirty years hadn't been a dream.
He didn't know what woke him, only that his eyes flew open and his body shuddered as though a chill had washed through him.
His beautiful Leia lay exactly where she'd fallen asleep.
Almost exactly where she'd fallen asleep. Her head had slipped along the pillow, lying at an uncomfortable angle. She'd have a stiff neck by morning, Han mused. He'd have to help her with that, massaging the knots from her shoulders was one of his favourite pastimes.
Something nudged him to edge closer to her. To feel her breath against his skin. To know she was really...
She wasn't breathing! Leia wasn't breathing!
Everything became a blur after that.
Shaking her to try to wake her. Throwing back covers and pillows and summoning the concierge to get medics.
Han administered resuscitation, as best he remembered it, until the medics arrived and he was pushed aside. Stumbling out of their way, while total strangers touched her in ways he believed only he had the right to do, Han tried to answer their questions.
No, he had no idea how long it had been since she'd stopped breathing.
Yes, he had called them immediately he had discovered her unresponsive.
No, he couldn't recall what she had eaten at dinner but didn't believe her allergic to anything specific.
Yes, she was physically fit. No, they had not argued. Yes, they were happy.
No, he could not explain the blood. There'd been blood?
Then yes, yes he could. She was pregnant. Had been pregnant.
She'd lost the baby. Their baby. The one he hadn't even been totally sure he wanted them to have.
And that was when he realised that this really was real. That it wasn't and couldn't be a dream. Because if it had been, he would have woken up before he'd had to watch his wife being carried on a float cart to a waiting transport to the local hospital while medics continued to try to coax her back from over the brink.