Sometime on the way to Bespin…
"First, no computers." He powered down all the navigation monitors and system monitors. "You gotta do this blind, because that's the way it would be when you really needed this."
Dimming the lights of the cockpit, he twisted around in the pilot's seat, reaching under it, into a worn, leather satchel affixed to the underside of it. She'd never noticed it before, low to the decking and blending in with the worn material of the seat itself, but just within arm's reach of the pilot or navigator at all times. With a flourish, he withdrew two massive flimsiplast notebooks and an assortment of mechanical gadgets.
She peered at them, at least one instrument looking vaguely familiar as he spread them out on the controls in front of them, then over to the bound volumes resting on Han's thighs.
"Are those star charts?"
He nodded. "Yep. Gotta have hard copies. 'Cause doing this right means no computers."
Lifting one of the heavy volumes and pulling it towards her, she settled in onto her own lap and opened it up. "My father collected these. There was a whole shelf of them in the library. I used to love looking at them as a kid. They were so big he'd have to pull them down for me." Flipping through a few pages, she stopped, and her fingers trailed across a chart still showing the flight lanes around Alderaan.
When she looked back up at him, he had that glorious lopsided grin on his face. "You oughta be a natural at this, then."
"Well, it is why I wanted to learn."
"Then let's get started. If you hand that back to me-" She passed the charts back to him, then opened her datapad and pulled out a stylus.
"You gonna take notes, SSweetheart?" He quirked a brow at her.
"How else do you expect me to remember anything?"
With a wave of a hand, he reached towards the instruments he'd spread out in front of them. "Whatever works for you. Now, first step in figuring out where you're going is knowing where in the hells you are. What do we know that can help us figure that out?"
Leia pointed her stylus at the star charts on his lap. "We know where we left from, and where we've been, somewhat. So we can find those on a chart."
"Right." He handed her one of the other chart books. "You wanna find the Hoth system in there? And what else might the star charts tell us?"
"Our relative position to other stars." The worn pages of the book were easy to flip through, and she found the Rim charts containing Hoth with relative ease.
"Yeah, so, it helps if there's some really recognizable stuff around. Hypergiants, pulsars, nebula. Any of those in the neighborhood?"
She took a moment to study the chart. "Kiax Nebula. And The Ring is a black dwarf."
"Good. So, can we actually see any of those things out the viewport?"
"Yes." The nebula was obvious, and she pointed at it.
"Okay. Obviously you can't see a black dwarf real easy. Anything else that might stand out?"
"Varonat has a double orange dwarf star. Which..." she trailed off and gazed out the viewport again, and gestured. "Is there."
"Now for the hard part." Holding up a beautiful brass instrument, he passed it over to her. "Quadrant. Lets you measure the angle between two objects. Real old tool, from back in seafaring days on Corellia. Still works in a pinch if you're lost on the ground somewhere, too. Though maybe not this one, 's pretty heavy. Would work in a fight in a pinch, though."
Rolling her eyes at him, she hefted the quadrant, already seeing where this was going. She peered through the eyepiece, Varonat clear in her sights.
"You sure you don't wanna give up the revolutionary thing and work as a navigator? You're a natural at this."
She lowered the tool and met his smiling eyes. "Maybe I can help you navigate your way back to my revolution."
His smile faded, and he looked down at the pile of star charts for a long moment. Looking back up at her, mustered a sadder smile. "If I can come back, you can navigate me anywhere you'd like me to go."
Their eyes met, and she understood that it was as close as he could get to saying he was coming back, because they both knew that wasn't a promise he could make her. For now, for her, that would have to be enough.
"Let's get us to Bespin, first, though." He rose from the chair and moved to crouch next to her, his breath warm on her cheek. "If you measure the angle between the two…."