Tess watched Luke's body convulse with blue lightening as he cried out.
"Tess, please!" he screamed. Tess tried so hard to jump in between Luke and the cloaked torturer, but she was frozen still. The torturer looked up with an all too acquainted cackle.
But the face was not what Tess expected. The face was a wrinkled, grotesque version of Tess herself…
"NO!" Tess wailed, awakening from her nightmare. The first thing she noticed with her consciousness was a painful, constant, shock-like tingle in her fingers. She winced and pulled her hands out from under the covers.
The room suddenly lit up with an electric blue. Tess' heartbeat raced. Both of her hands shook with the jolts of Force lightening. It seemed like the power was coming from her, yet she couldn't make it stop. The realization only heightened her horror, which in turn made the lightening worse.
Tess leapt to her feet and raced to Leia's door. She raised a fist to knock on it, but as soon as her hand neared the metal, the lightening reflected back, throwing Tess to the ground.
Whimpering and wishing this was still part of the nightmare she just woke up from, Tess stumbled down the main corridor and into the empty cockpit. The lightening was starting to burn her, which she didn't even know was possible.
Tess scrambled into the pilot seat, bringing her knees to her chest. Her hands convulsed at the wrist so violently that she feared they would sprain themselves. With a short cry of pain, Tess clapped her hands together. She weaved her fingers and focused hard.
"Stop…" she ordered herself in a whisper. "Stop. Please, stop…"
Tess couldn't tell if the lightening spasms were getting better or worse. She could see burnt skin under the blue glow. It stopped hurting, but that was probably because the burns had numbed her. The smell of her own searing flesh made it all the more real. Tess tried to adjust her fingers, but somehow the skin now stuck together.
The fifteen-year-old broke into more sobs, dropping her head to her knees and keeping her hands at as much of a distance as possible.
"You're not him…" she murmured. "You're not him…you're not him…you're not him…"
Tess kept repeating those words to herself over and over again. The hard part believing them, but she tried.
All of a sudden, a series of sharp, crushing smacks between a fist and a nearby wall snapped Tess' head up. Across from her, a livid Han punched the wall. Dark red blood started trickling down to the floor. Tess was too surprised to say anything.
A sudden crack echoed through the cockpit and Han finally stepped back from the wall. He turned around. The smuggler nearly jumped a metre when he saw Tess sitting there.
"Kriffing sithspawn…" he gasped, catching his breath.
Tess bit her lip, wanting to keep her mouth shut, but she couldn't help laughing at the irony of someone saying 'sithspawn' around her. Han wasn't amused.
"You can't just sneak up on people like that!" Han snapped. "What the hell are you laughing at?!"
His obliviousness only made Tess laugh harder. Finally, Han caught on and managed a smile. Tess noted to herself that if this were to become a regular inside joke between them, they should probably keep it away from Leia. She wasn't likely to find it as humorous.
At that, Tess noticed that her lightening spasms had stopped, but they left nasty burns on both hands as a parting gift. Unfortunately, Han noticed, too.
"What…?" Han sat in the seat opposite the teenager and reached out to examine her hands. "How did you manage to do that?"
"Would you believe I Force-teleported to Mustafar?"
"Maybe," Han scoffed. "If Force-teleportation was actually a thing." As Han turned Tess' hands over to examine the damage, he was reminded of his own injuries. Tess winced. At least her burns were numb—Han looked like he was in quite a bit of pain.
"Can we just establish that this is mutual blackmail so neither one of us tells Leia?" Tess suggested hopefully.
"You got it, kid."
The two made their way into the kitchen, where Han grabbed a bowl of water and Tess found a medkit in the cupboard. Though it clearly hurt for Han to move his fingers, he insisted Tess get bandaged up first.
"Maybe she'll sleep all day again and she won't notice," suggested the current patient. Han nodded, wordlessly confessing that the same thought had crossed his mind. He carefully cleaned off her burns and wrapped a bandage from the medkit around each of Tess' fingers, then moved to her palm and wrist.
"So…why were you punching the wall?" Tess queried.
"Oh…" Han said in a low voice. He clearly felt stupid about it. "Your sister, she uh…she had another one of her nightmares, and…"
Tess nodded with understanding. She, Luke, and Han were the only people who knew how strong Leia was, and how painful it is to see her hurt. She had stayed solid for all of them so many times yet when she was the one in need, she would rarely let anyone in to help.
Clearly not wanting to think about that anymore, Han turned the question on Tess.
"Seriously though," he asked her, referring to her burns. "How did this happen?"
Tess tried to regulate her breathing. She didn't want it to happen again as she explained it.
"I don't know…" she muttered. "I mean…I just woke up, and my hands…"
"Were burned?" Han finished, finding that hard to believe. Tess shook her head. She wished that were the case.
"It was the lightening thing I can do," Tess explained to the best of her ability. "But I couldn't control it. It was going through my hands and I couldn't make it stop." Tess sniffed away any incoming temptations to cry.
"Kriff…" Han mumbled. "That sounds…terrifying." He finished bandaging Tess' left hand and motioned for her to hand him her right. "Does it normally hurt when you use it willingly?"
"If it does, I don't feel it," she confessed with more honesty than she expected of herself. "I can't feel much of anything physical when I tap into that…side."
Curious, Han raised an eyebrow.
"What do you feel?"
"Invincible."
Tess trembled as she said the word. It was in no way a good kind of invincibility. She couldn't explain it. Nothing felt good with the Dark Side of the Force and the powers that came with it.
When it became Tess' turn to wrap up Han's hand, she realized she couldn't yet feel her fingers. Instead, Han managed to wrap his own hands while Tess' sat under a frozen nerf steak.
Finally, both sets of hands were bandaged. Han grabbed a ration bar from the pantry, struggling with the packaging. Tess stood and crossed over to him.
"Thanks," she said simply.
"We're even," Han reminded her, holding up his bandaged hand.
"No," Tess clarified. "Not for that. For not treating me like a kid or a detonator."
Han raised an eyebrow, evidently unsure of what she meant exactly. Tess tried to clarify.
"You know. Leia treats me like I'm five years old, and even since I found out I was…well, sithspawn—literal sithspawn—Luke has been acting like I could turn around and kill him at any moment. But you just treat me like…a person, I guess. Normal."
Han smiled slightly.
"Well, you look pretty normal to me."
Tess grinned back at him and gave him a hug.
"Thank you," she said again. She felt Han hug her back.
"Anytime, kid."
Instead of waking up with the jolt of a nightmare, Leia surprised herself by waking with plain old discomfort. Or at least, it seemed like plain old discomfort until she awoke enough for the headache, the sweatiness, and the full-body ache set in. The princess suspected earlier that she might be getting sick—though it was hard to tell because she almost never did—but now she was sure of it. She rolled over.
"Han?" she whispered. He wasn't there. Suddenly, Leia was overcome with nausea. She pulled herself to a stand beside the bed, planning to cross the hall to the 'fresher.
Leia was only a step away from the door when the room began to spin. Dizziness drowned her and sent her collapsing into a heap on the floor.
(Hope you enjoyed today's little marathon of chapters! I had been meaning to do some Han/Tess scenes in the previous part to the story but never got a chance besides the brief locker room thing. Hope you liked it! I'm done for the night.)