a/n: some familiar words, again. leia's perception of the corridor argument.
relapse: epilogue
She could feel the eyes of everyone in the command center deliberately focused away from her. They had all heard Han, and she knew it, and she also knew they weren't looking at her because somehow, they must feel for him; it didn't really matter that they had no idea what her side of the story was. They couldn't; she barely understood it. She closed her eyes for a brief second, and then abandoned her station, storming off after him. She ignored the troubled look Carlist Rieekan threw after her as she slapped her palm nervously on the control panel and flew out the door down the hall.
"Han!"
She shouted his name, hoping her voice didn't shake too much. She didn't even know why she was - or what she was going to say - she just - she didn't want him to leave; she really didn't want him to leave. It just seemed - pathetic, somehow, to beg him to stay - and to stay for her, when the Rebellion was so much bigger than two people, and she was too fragile to take risks, anyway.
She skidded to a stop as gracefully as possible, her hands clenching at her sides. He turned sharply, raising one hand in a dramatic mockery of deference.
"Yes, Your Highness-ness?"
She winced at the bitterness of his words; the extra derision he inflicted on her title said so much about how he was feeling. She was hyper-aware of their location - exposed. The argument could be easily witnessed, the idea of which horrified her, despite her chasing after him. She could feel herself shutting down, and she tried to resist it - no, she thought, keep him engaged - toe to toe, she faced him, tilting her head up.
"I thought you had decided to stay," she said coolly.
She held his haze intently, challenging him - hadn't he? Had she misunderstood? When he hadn't taken off after the debacle with Chewbacca, and everything that happened on Kashyyyk - when he didn't even take payment for the mission that ended with them stranded on Ord Mantell and the, and the bounty hunter - after everything that happened on Ord Mantell, he couldn't possibly still be planning on leaving, and if this was another threat...if this was another manipulative threat, she just couldn't take the mind games anymore.
His lip curled in a sarcastic sneer.
"Well, the bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell changed my mind," he snapped.
She parted her lips, almost able to feel the cold, reptilian metal of Fett's glove against her throat. The back of her head ached, remembering the feel of the blaster muzzle, and the stricken, pale look on Han's face as he dropped his blaster and knelt across from her, placing his hands on the back of his head - surrendering. The way he'd - seemed cool, collected, telling the bounty hunter -- easy, easy, don't hurt her. Don't hurt her. If Luke hadn't come charging back, having heard Leia's yelp -
"Han, we need you!" Leia barked.
Didn't he understand that Ord Mantell had scared the hell out of her, too? Up until that moment, she'd thought she'd be okay with dying during this war, she'd thought that - maybe, she wasn't suicidal, but she wasn't that driven to survive, either - but when Fett put that blaster to her head, the desire to live was so strong it almost drove her to tears - and to see Han give up like that, without a fight, his freedom for her life - if it scared him enough to make him run, why didn't he understand it scared her, too - ?
His eyebrows flew up and he jerked back a little, swallowing hard.
"We need?" he quoted, raising his hand.
"Yes," she said urgently.
He curled his fingers into a fist and pointed at her, his knuckles turning white.
"Oh," he breathed, almost mocking. "What about what you need?" he demanded.
His eyes flashed, and Leia was overwhelmed for a moment with the intensity of his emotion, conveyed solely through the tightness of his jaw, and the turmoil in his eyes.
"I need?" she questioned lamely, hating - hating herself for it - and in her head, she could hear the whispered words from Ord Mantell - This is what you need?And her response -Yes, yes, mmm, yes.
His hand lingered close to her face, menacing, his expression impatient, tense. It lacked all the softness and intimacy she'd seen on Kashyyyk, and it even lacked the hopeful heartache she'd seen on Ord Mantell, and she was screaming inside herself, a small, long-suppressed part of her throwing a fit and kicking at the cages in her heart in soul -let me out, let me out, I want him, tell him you want him- she struggled to listen to that part of her, but the idea of love, of having someone to love, and to love her, seemed so much more terrifying than fighting a war. And she had lost so much -
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said stiffly.
The words burned her lips as she said them, and Han clenched his fist hard, tilting his head, and sucking his tongue between his teeth aggressively.
"You probably do," he ground out between clenched teeth - and whipped around on his heel, storming off.
Leia's heart leapt into her throat, even as her stomach dropped to her toes, and her boots crunched in the snow as she instinctively went after him. Her head was a mess. She could barely make sense of why she kept chasing him, when all she kept doing was hurting him - as awful as it was, his repeated empty threats to leave had taught her he was one of the very few constants in her life, that he'd be there while she was able to get herself together, and faced with losing him, instead of finding it in her to tell him in plain words she did need him, she retreated, foolishly telling herself she was right; see? He will leave, you will lose him, you knew it -
"And what precisely am I supposed to know?" she burst out.
- this is your self-fulfilling prophecy, Leia, she thought.
"Come on," Han shouted, his back to her. He lost some of his finesse, his volume rising with his anger. "You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me!"
Leia gained on him, arguing her party line, despite the storm inside her -
"Yes! You're a great help to us; you're a natural leader - "
She was glad he chose then to turn around aggressively, towering over her, cutting her off. She didn't even want to finish her empty sentence, and as she reared back, startled by his closeness, her heart sped up painfully, and she asked herself why, why, why was it so easy to be physically intimate with him, and so impossible to let herself feel. It shouldn't even have been easy to - to sleep with him -
"No," Han barked firmly. "That's not it."
Leia took a step back as an ensign cut between them, and her faced paled, reminded that they were in public. She stared at Han with wide eyes, concerned, for a moment, that he might shout the explicit details of their nights together for this whole hallway to hear. She saw his expression darken considerably as she worriedly looked around them, and remembered, with fresh shame, his questions back on Ord Mantell - you don't think I'm good enough for you, do you?
"Come on," Han snapped again, gritting his teeth hard. He waited, and Leia said nothing, her lips parting anxiously. "Ahhh," he teased harshly, biting back a smirk. "Come on," he coaxed again, softly.
She wanted to slap his hand down - in the middle of the hallway, Han?
"You're imagining things," Leia spat.
She shoved her tongue against her teeth as she clenched them, her pupils dilating in shock. He reared backwards, eyes darkening bitterly, and blinking, as if he was shocked himself. He looked as if he would slap her, and she didn't think she'd be surprised if he did. She almost flung herself forward and caught his hands, and begged him to ignore what she'd just said - of course he wasn't imagining - Kashyyyk hadn't been a dream, neither had Ord Mantell, those experiences were so precious to her -
"Am I?" he snarled. "Then why are you following me?"
His eyes raked over her with violence, and so little compassion.
"Afraid I was going to leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?" he taunted.
Leia was silent, her ears ringing. She bit down on her tongue, lowing her head a little - she was afraid of that; she was also afraid of never seeing him again, and she was afraid of a man who would lay down his life and his freedom just so she'd be safe, because she had so much responsibility, and she didn't think she could return the favor for him - she had to live, and now she knew she wanted to, but her mission in life, her purpose, was seeing this war through - and would he understand that? Did he know what he was getting into - that it would always be a deeper commitment than just committing to her?
He stepped closer, his voice lower.
"Why'd you do this to me, Leia?" he demanded, words husky, and thick.
Her eyes stung, and she blinked back tears, shaking her head. There had never been any malice in her intentions - he had come to her on Kashyyyk, and she'd let it happen because she wanted it, and things were so beautiful there; she had run to him on Ord Mantell, and maybe, if that bounty hunter hadn't shaken them both to the very core, they could have talked, like he'd said they would, and she'd have been able to say -
"You're as cold as this planet," Han accused hoarsely.
Leia swallowed hard, trying to keep tears at bay.
"And you think you're the one to apply some heat?" she asked shakily - her voice cracked; why did he persist? Why did he think he could handle her, and everything that came with her? It was a miracle that both nights she was with him, he hadn't seen her wake up shrieking, bathed in icy sweat and tangled in her sheets, crying for her mother and her father and for the pain to just stop. That wasn't beauty, that wasn't the dream he thought she was -
"What do you think I've been trying to do?" he asked.
He swallowed hard, not giving her a moment to answer.
"I'm not really interested anymore," he bit out harshly. He clenched his fist, and clenched his teeth, and leaned closer. "I told you to stop me. You should have stopped me," he hissed, and he sounded bone-tired, soul-tired, and devastated. "If you didn't want me - you didn't have to do this."
Her breath caught in her throat painfully. She bit her lip until it felt numb with the sharp twinge, and he stared at her, waiting, waiting, his eyes searching hers - while she forgot how to speak; was he really declaring that he was done, or was he trying, as a last desperate attempt, to get her to say something more real than - the things she whispered to him in bed.
He turned on his heel, and stormed down the hall.
"Han," she called, her voice breaking, - her voice soft, and more intense.
He did not turn around, and she closed her eyes, turning to lean against the icy wall. It burned frigidly into her back, and she felt as frozen as the world around her, as trapped, as imprisoned as their little band of Rebels - all the loss, and all the violence, had ruined her somehow, broken her; she had thought trusting him with her body might make it easier for her to trust him with her heart, but she was still so guarded - and she really thought, this time -
He wasn't coming back for her.
the end
- alexandra