From a Certain Point of View
Han swallowed…hard. He swallowed his urge to say yes, along with his urge to kiss her or to get up and flee. With a deep, calming breath, he took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze as he said, "No," with as much force and conviction as he could muster. "But let's treat the rest of your wounds first, okay?"
She smiled and sighed as she shook her head in agreement, seemingly relieved at the prospect of a short respite from her story telling.
He tended to her cheek first and then dabbed bacta on the remaining cuts and scratches. When he finished, he placed everything on the table and then stood.
She looked up at him, puzzled and he held his hand out to her and said, "C'mon. Let's get comfortable."
They walked over to the living area and sat down on the lounger. Leia drew her legs up underneath her and they both slung their arms over the back cushions, angling their bodies so they faced each other. Her cheek was still swollen and now the shiny sheen of the bacta gel drew Han's attention to it even more. She was watching him, her eyes wide and patient as if waiting for a signal to continue.
There was a transformation taking place before his eyes. Han guessed it had been happening slowly while she spoke but the small break and perhaps change of venue had now made it too pronounced to ignore. Not sure how to describe it, he studied her for a moment in the silence. She was becoming less one-dimensional, less princess or politician or woman…and more all of it wrapped up into one.
His eyes followed the curve of her body on the lounger like a speeder blazing a path along a long, desolate stretch of highway; the silky, smooth lines of her skin broken up with patches of bacta like speed bumps for his eyes. At the end of the journey, her bare toes stuck out from where her legs were tucked underneath her and Han rose and left the room without a word. He returned with a blanket from his bed and draped it over her. She smiled and clutched it around her shoulders and began to speak as if the gesture was an invitation for her to continue.
She told him that she had had difficulty locating the Rebellion once she left Dagobah and that the destruction at Hoth had decimated the troops both in number and morale. He watched her face and her eyes as she spoke, he watched her make sounds out of memories he could clearly tell she had never before formed into words.
Once she rejoined the Alliance at Sullust, she told him, plans were already underway for what Leia herself described as a suicidal mission involving yet another Death Star. She smiled when she told him that she had been sworn in with the Rogue Squadron and commissioned to fly Luke's X-wing in the assault. Han didn't know exactly what expression he offered on his face in return. He felt shock and admiration all at once and wasn't sure which had won out.
Leia breathed out through a small smile, appreciating Han's reaction, whichever one she recognized. "There were actually very few people left to tell me no." She smiled again, the half-smile afforded by a comedic anecdote wrapped in the middle of a tragic story. "And it was either…die on the bridge of some Alliance freighter, or die fighting in Luke's X-wing. Either way…I guess they thought it was only fair to let me choose."
No trace of her smile remained.
She described the chaos that ensued once the assault team exited hyperspace to find that not only had the forward mission failed, but that the Empire had clearly been prepared and expecting the surprise attack.
"We engaged in battle anyway, we had no choice. And then it happened again. The deep, painful pull I had felt on Hoth came back…ten-fold." She sighed. "I knew what it was…who it must've been."
"The Emperor's calling card?"
Smiling, she nodded at him.
The very idea of another Death Star was enough to make Han's stomach turn.
Leia seemed to read his thoughts as she continued. "I can't tell you how it felt to be back on the Death Star. It was a strange sort of reckoning, as if everything had come full circle." A smile crawled across her face. "I thought of you and Luke, believe it or not." She shook her head, shaking the smile away as she did. "But I knew there would be no rescue this time."
He could only look at her through the ache of guilt that wracked his entire body. He just wanted her to stop talking as if ending the story here would erase anything that she had yet to tell him…that he had yet to hear.
If he had only been there. The words stabbed at him in accusation. Every muscle in his body clenched, fighting the desire for movement. He wanted to rescue her, but it was his punishment to sit idle and let whatever was going to happen, happen.
She studied him for a moment. "It almost felt like…I don't know how to describe it. Like the piece of me that I lost or had left on that first Death Star…like it was calling to me and that this was my chance to reclaim it, to become whole again. To set things right."
She took Luke's lightsaber with her and was escorted by Vader himself to the Emperor. Vader and the Emperor argued while Leia watched on. The floor and bulkhead of the Emperor's bridge shook with Vader's anger. Most of their conversation had sailed over her head at the time, only later had she been able to make any sense out of it.
"He was angry at the Emperor and Bail and Ben Kenobi. He couldn't believe I had been paraded under his nose my entire life. I had no idea at the time why that would have mattered to him."
The Emperor ordered Vader to strike her down, but Vader refused. She said Vader stared at her with his eyes that weren't eyes at all and said that all he could see was her and that he could not hurt her again.
"I listened, not understanding but I was also watching. They left Luke's lightsaber on the armrest of the throne and as they bickered and argued they walked further and further away from it. I had it in my hand and ignited before they even knew what had happened. I swung at Vader but he stopped me, even his defensive parry nearly jarred the lightsaber from my hands. I knew straight away that I had no business wielding a lightsaber against two Sith Lords."
She fought with Vader as the Emperor watched on. Vader defensively blocking her attack, but never attempting to strike her.
"When he cut my hand off I think he was as surprised as I was and if I didn't know any better I think he felt my pain as his own.
"The Emperor was screaming for Vader to finish me and I looked up to him - to his masked face and he was staring at me. The Emperor called my lightsaber to his hand and lunged at me. I didn't move, I didn't even flinch. I wanted it to be over and I wanted him to watch. But Vader stopped him…
"I scrambled for Luke's lightsaber and stood before Vader over the Emperor's dead body. He told me that he would not fight me. I swung at him, several times and I knew I would never win against him. I deactivated my lightsaber and asked what he and the Emperor were talking about. Powering down his own lightsaber and clipping it to his belt, he proceeded to tell me that he was my father.
"He spoke my name. I can still hear that haunting sound. The sound of my name on his lips. It was revolting. I could feel my blood turning to ice in my veins." She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and shivered. "I whispered the only word that I could form on my lips, 'No'. And he said…" She stopped and her stare peered through him. He could tell that although she was looking right at him, it was not him that she saw anymore. "He said I didn't have to believe it for it to be true."
Vader told her he was Anakin Skywalker and that he had been a Jedi Knight. And that he was most certainly her father.
"I knew with every fiber of my being that it just could not be true. That Bail would've told me, prepared me, he would've never kept me in the dark about such a thing. And then Yoda, Yoda wouldn't have sent me to face my father blindly. I refused to even entertain the thought."
Han had not thought much about the rumor that Darth Vader was Leia's father since back on that morning when he had first read about it. Even when he had seen her later that same evening, he never looked at her as anyone but the person he had met all those years ago, the Princess of Alderaan. Although she hadn't said it yet and although she still seemed primed to deny it, something snapped inside of him at that moment that let him know that it was true.
If it should have mattered to him, he wasn't sure, but it didn't. Han had a father that he had no love lost for and spent his life trying not to become. Looking at her now, he could not discern much difference between her predicament and his, along with millions of other sentient beings in the galaxy.
"He approached me and I let him. He was talking about my mother and her eyes and…" She turned away from him as if she could not bear witness to his reaction. "He never even knew what hit him."
The first thing Han did was look at her tiny fingers clutched around the edges of the thick blanket. They were so delicate and fragile-looking yet they had brought down the most horrible figure to rein terror over the galaxy in Han's lifetime. The pained look on her face made him feel guilty for his admiration.
"Nothing I have ever done felt so wrong and so right at the same time."
Han's admiration morphed into relief. This must've have been the worst part of her story and he had mentally prepared himself for far worse. So she had killed a Sith Lord that just might be her father. "There is nothing wrong with what you did. They were both maniacs who deserved to die."
She looked at him as if he had grown another head. "Not that way! Don't you see? I'm no better than he was. I became exactly what I loathed, what I lived my life to fight against. I cut down a virtually unarmed man who was…who was confessing…" She was shaking her head, her face contorted in confusion, disgust and regret. Once again her stare seemed to shoot straight through him to somewhere beyond and she whispered, not to Han it seemed, but to herself. "I tipped the scales, but in what direction?"
Her eyes refocused on his and seemed to silently plead for him to answer her. His own fatigue swelled as his mind scrambled for the right words to say. Giving up he pulled her to him and her body collapsed against his. Burying her head on his chest, she lay quietly in his arms, the warmth of her tears saturating his shirt, the only indication that she was crying.
He ran his hand up and down along her back and she pressed herself against him in return. Their body heat radiated from underneath the blanket and there was the scent of her essence mixed in with his. It was musky and floral at the same time, grounded and light, and Han closed his eyes and inhaled it.
She turned her head and rested her ear against his chest as if trying to find his heartbeat. One of her arms pulled the blanket up and over so that it covered Han as well, his one leg jutting out underneath as it stretched lazily to the floor.
When she spoke it was in a low voice of someone who might be half asleep. "I had wanted to become whole again, but all it did was destroy what was left of me."
The minutes ticked by slowly, like the years she had just bridged between them. Her breathing became slow and steady. He didn't want to wake her so he sat there with his thoughts and let the exhaustion creep back into his bones. His eyelids became heavier, the pull of sleep overtaking him. Kissing the top of her head, he tightened his arm around her and surrendered to his unconsciousness.