The morning of the joint briefing, Han still didn't have a shuttle command crew for his mission.
He'd been putting it off. He knew whom he wanted. He knew they'd do it if he asked. But he didn't want to ask. Not after all Chewie, Leia, and Luke had sacrificed to bring him back.
He wanted the choice to be theirs. If Leia wanted to stay behind with Lilya and prepare for the next phase of the Alliance, she could do that. If Chewie wanted to go home for some long-overdue time with Malla, he could. If Luke wanted to…go off and do whatever the hell it was the Jedi do, he could do that.
Han had decided to leave it open until the joint briefing. If they volunteered, he had the crew he wanted. If they didn't, he'd draw from the squads he already had on the strike team.
What had clinched his decision was the conversation he'd had with Leia when she returned from her meeting with High Command yesterday.
She'd arrived at the Falcon with Lilya, smiling, but a little subdued. His casual question about her meeting had been met with an expression best described as sour.
"What happened?" he'd asked.
She'd tried to shrug it off. "Oh, nothing."
"No, c'mon. What is it?"
She'd sighed. "I think they're trying to put me back in the bunker."
It was an old fight, one Leia clearly thought she'd won.
After the awards ceremony on Yavin, Leia was supposed to go underground, for her own protection. She was supposed to be a princess, figurehead of the Rebellion, inspiration for the troops. She wasn't supposed to become a warrior herself.
Someone had forgotten to tell her that. Well, actually, they hadn't – she just hadn't listened. She'd spent much of the time on their first base frustrated; when she wouldn't just go into hiding, they'd made her a Commander but had given her only the most ceremonial, trivial assignments, when they'd given her assignments at all. She was still included in High Command meetings as the surviving ruler of Alderaan, and in deference to her father's role in establishing the Alliance, but rarely was she given anything of substance to do, despite her having regularly run missions back when she was serving in the Imperial Senate.
So she'd fought to prove herself. She'd taken on jobs nobody asked her to, volunteered herself for missions, drawn up strategies, identified diplomatic opportunities, turned her personnel roster and supply inventory assignments into a procurement operation for the base.
Han had, of course, given her no end of grief for it at the time. If he wasn't making fun of her latest softball assignment, he was wondering why she insisted on staying in the command center long after her shift should have ended, or taking her serious commitment to the Alliance as a serious commitment to being a stick in the mud.
But he'd also been one of the few people who would treat her like an equal, let her pull her own weight on missions, argue with her when he disagreed, remind her that she couldn't subsist on kaffe and sleeplessness.
Eventually, her responsibilities and influence had started to match her considerable skills. Things had gotten significantly better with Rieekan in command; he'd not only recognized her value, but had practically made her his second.
Now, after all that, she was being denied a role in this latest offensive, arguably the most important initiative since Yavin. And several members of High Command had suggested that perhaps this was the time to go back into protective custody.
"It's not that I want to leave Lilya," she'd said to Han, "but I feel like they've already decided for me." She'd gotten quiet. "This is the fight, Han. I can feel it. If they have another Death Star, there will be another Alderaan. I want to stop it this time."
Luke was grateful for the long flight from Dagobah to Sullust. When he'd been learning to fly, Biggs had warned him how important it was to keep his mind on what he was doing, but not too focused on what he was doing. Too many pilots crashed either because they were preoccupied with something unrelated – what they were going to do when they landed, the fight they'd had with their girlfriend, what they'd had for breakfast – or because they were so focused on their task that they lost perspective and overthought their every move.
That balance had never been a problem for Luke. He found that flying actually helped him quiet and focus his mind, his thoughts still there, but not bombarding him the way they often did after he landed. Of course, he'd gotten much better on that front since he began his Jedi training, but it was like the Force had always been with him when he was in the cockpit.
He was also grateful to have somewhere to go, somewhere he'd promised to be. Yoda's confirmation of Vader's revelation was not a surprise – if he was honest with himself, he'd known it to be true for the last year – but it had thrown too many things into doubt. As long as he could remember, he'd yearned for a father, longed to at least know more about where he came from. To have that yearning answered with this was like some kind of cruel trick. Frankly, without his friends waiting for him back at the fleet, he would have been tempted to throw himself into the swamps of Dagobah and be done with it all.
He was still angry with Ben, although he was trying to let go of that anger, like Ben, ironically enough, had taught him. "What I told you was true, from a certain point of view." Han would rightly call that "a royal crock of bantha shit." He smiled, thinking of his friend, then chuckled a bit, thinking of the fact that Han would have been introduced to Lilya by now. Wonder how that's going.
He suspected Han would actually be a lot better at fatherhood than one might expect, once he got used to the idea. And Lilya—well, how could Han not fall in love with Lilya? First of all, she looked just like her mother, except for that little Han curl in her lip. Everyone was drawn to her; Luke could feel that her light in the Force was especially strong. And she was a living sign of Han and Leia's love.
Not that they needed one, necessarily. Luke had been able to feel the bond growing between Han and Leia in the Force for some time. He had to admit, sometimes he was jealous of it, even when he saw how much pain it caused them when they were apart. He wished for that kind of pain for himself, sometimes.
He'd been in love with each of them for awhile, but in both cases his feelings had resolved into a different kind of love. The closest comparison was to a sibling bond, but it was deeper than that. Almost like a platonic life partner.
Of course, with Leia, he now knew that it was literally a sibling bond between them. A twin bond, no less. He was still struggling with how and when to tell her about that. On the one hand, he was eager to be officially her brother as well as her friend. On the other…Vader. How to break that news? So, the good news is, you're my long-lost twin sister! Bad news is, remember that guy who tortured you and has done any number of unspeakable things to you and the people you love, not to mention the galaxy? He's actually our father!
He was feeling a little resentful of his Jedi masters, to be honest. They couldn't have told him before he went to face Vader? They had to wait until he got blindsided? And although they'd warned him not to go, if he hadn't, where would Han, Leia, and Chewie be now? Would Vader just have killed Han, instead of using him to test the freezing chamber? Would Leia and Chewie ever have escaped? Wouldn't Vader have eventually sensed Leia's power in the Force and gone after her too? Would Lilya even have been born?
He decided to put all of that to the side for now, and concentrate on helping the Alliance. There was time to tell Leia everything she needed to know. And if he needed to face Vader again, as Yoda had advised, it's not like he needed to do it right this second. He sensed that he would know when it was the right time.
As he approached the docking bay at Sullust, he was reminded of another landing, almost a year ago, after a few days away on a mission. Leia had been there to greet him, which wasn't unusual, especially since their return from Bespin.
What was unusual about Leia that day was that she had looked happy, for the first time in weeks. Since Bespin, she'd put up a brave front, and it had probably convinced most people she was okay, but it hadn't really been holding. Luke knew from their frequent talks that her time with Han had changed her, had taken down some of her walls. With Han lost, possibly forever, Luke had seen her desperately trying to put them back up. But not that day.
"What is it?" he'd asked, after greeting her with a hug.
She'd smiled at him and said, "In a minute," indicating that she wanted to wait until they were away from the rest of the ground personnel.
When they were alone, he asked her again, and she'd responded in an uncharacteristically rambling sort of way, shaking her head.
"It doesn't really make sense that I'd be happy about this. It's terrible timing, and we don't even know where Han is, and we're in the middle of a war, and I don't know what I'm doing, and—"
Luke stopped her gently. "Leia? Tell me."
She looked at him and smiled like she was trying not to, but couldn't help it. "I'm pregnant."
So that's what it was. Since Bespin, Leia's presence in the Force had felt different to Luke, but he hadn't known why.
"And you're happy!" It was a statement, not a question. Luke could feel Leia's happiness radiating from her. There was still sadness, and worry, and definitely a cloud of fear in there too. But hope and happiness were leading at that moment.
"For no logical reason," she'd replied. Ah, yes, there's the overthinking.
"Because you're having a baby!" Luke had grinned, but part of him wanted to shake her. Sometimes it's right, even if it doesn't make sense, Leia.
Her smile had grown. "Because I'm having a baby." Luke had heard her unspoken words: Because I'm having Han's baby.