Author's Note: I've updated and added to the original scene I wrote in response to the trailer, to make it fit with the context of the actual film now that I've seen it. But I'm still firm in my vision of their love story, and I think they got the short end of the stick. So this story is now officially AU, because JJ is a fan and his fiction has Disney's blessing. And their funding. And mine is, well... mine.

PS – this version assumes you've seen The Force Awakens so, proceed accordingly.

1 – during Han and Leia's first scene together in the movie

Han

Resistance fighters poured out of the transport, dispersing quickly to create a perimeter. No one paid any attention to the old man standing still, staring at the transport's open hatch, waiting.

He felt her eyes on him before he saw her, emerging from the dark interior of the ship. She strode directly to him, without hesitation, and without acknowledging any of the personnel around her. Her lips were a thin line and for a moment he braced himself for her to shout, to chastise him for whatever he'd done that didn't meet her expectations. All at once her face softened and she smiled, the precious and particular smile that was only for him. He felt one side of his mouth twist upward in automatic response and his left arm lifted, without his planning it, intending to embrace her. The arm dropped back to his side when she stopped, a few strides away from him, watching him in that way she had. Seeing all the way into his heart.

"You changed your hair." It wasn't what he'd meant to say, and her head cocked slightly to the side, the smile widening. She knew what he'd been thinking. She'd worn her hair down, brushing her shoulders, the last time he'd seen her, and covered the grey with whatever women used to change their hair color. But the soft braid wrapped around her head, shot through with grey though it was, was an uncanny echo of the style she'd worn for so long.

Behind him here was a soft snort of Wookiee amusement - ["Good one, Slick"] - which he pretended not to have heard. His eyes never left hers.

"You still have the same jacket," she gestured with her chin, and he looked down, confused at her statement. What did she mean, the same jacket? "It's a new jacket," he insisted, indignantly, although he noticed that the condition of said jacket no longer could be described as "new". He caught the sadness her eyes as he looked back at her and understood she was seeing the same echo in him, of the man who'd worn that other jacket long after it ceased to fit properly. He felt his own smile fade. Who was he kidding? He wasn't that brash young smuggler any more, no matter how hard he tried to maintain the façade. He was an old man, and running away hadn't made anything better.

Maybe Maz was right. Maybe it was time to go home.