Han Solo stretched out on the living room couch as much as it permitted. With Tess occupying her old room and Leia in the master bedroom, he had apparently drawn the short straw of sleeping arrangements without realizing it.
Though it smelled funny, was too short for him, and had uncomfortably coarse fabric, none of those factors were the worst part about being stuck on the couch. The worst part was listening to Leia fight through nightmare after nightmare and not being able to console her afterwards. Their first night in the cottage, he had peeked in after hearing the princess scream herself awake, but she waved him off with a gut-wrenching "I'm not your problem anymore."
He doubted he was the type to talk or cry out in his sleep while battling a bad dream, but Han had definitely suffered from his share of nightmares these past two months. Most of them were flashbacks. He relived the decision to land on Teyr, and the ambush on the Falcon, and sometimes the day Leia broke up with him. Each time he did something different to change fate. One night found a nearby planet that wasn't Teyr where they were welcomed as heroes of the rebellion and they restored Leia to health. Another Han grabbed his blaster just in time to shoot Zkab between the eyes during the ambush. And last night Han answered Leia's angry lashes of blame by wrapping her in an embrace, and she didn't pull away; instead they made love and everything was alright again. Then of course he would wake up to reality.
Everything was just so wrong. Tess was the kind of kid who couldn't sit still, and Han watched her lie as still as death for two months. Leia had practically planned how the New Rebellion would run, but now she couldn't be a part of it. Luke used to actually be part of the gang, but now he was just this ominous ghost of a presence that only made contact when there was trouble. And Han—well, Han was living in a cottage with his ex and her post-comatose kid sister.
Sleeping on the couch.
Tess promised herself that tomorrow, she would try to ask Leia what happened on Teyr. It was driving her crazy. Obviously she was rescued at one point, but how long was she with Zkab and his entourage before that happened? And what put her in a coma? Tess had inspected her body for bruises or scars as evidence, but if there were any, they had healed while she was unconscious.
Still, there was something different when Tess looked at herself in the mirror. Naturally, two months asleep had made her paler and thinner, but it was more than that. The veins in her forehead popped out like spider legs from her scalp, blue and slightly raised. Her skin had a sort of transparency with sickly yellow undertones. She remembered her eyes to be dark brown like her sister's, but now there was a strange golden color surrounding the rim of her irises.
For all Tess knew, this was just what people looked like after waking up from comas. And if it weren't for the nagging of Force-sensitive intuition, she would probably let it go. But that intuition had saved her life too many times to be ignored.
The sixteen-year-old rolled over in her bed, pulling the covers with her.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. I'll ask her.