A/N: I'd been wanting to write something around the rescue of Han from Jabba's and then realized that one of the May prompts for the Year of the OTP Collection is literally something Han says after being released from carbonite, so this worked out quite well.
Written for The Year of the OTP Collection - May prompt: "Who are you?"
She came back different.
When she heard the phrase whispered after the first time her world was ripped away from her, it felt like an indictment. Unintentional as it was, the sense of disappointment in her inability to continue on exactly as before was palpable. She tried her best to pick herself up and make those she'd lost proud, always falling short of what she deemed acceptable, never quite enough to make up for losing them.
When she heard the phrase muttered after the second time her world was ripped away from her, it felt idiotic. As if it would be reasonable to expect her to return from that experience unscathed. As if she could continue on exactly as before, pretending like she hadn't undergone a great loss, acting as if her every thought and motivation wasn't consumed with how to get him back.
Leia didn't know if the phrase would be uttered again if her world was ripped away from her a third time. She didn't intend to find out. The plan was to rescue Han or die trying.
She'd been in the armor for far too long and was getting a headache, but she was certain she was being monitored even in the sleeping quarters she'd been offered in Jabba's palace. She didn't know if refusing to remove the helmet in private would rouse suspicion, but she didn't think it mattered. Boba Fett suspected something. She wasn't sure what exactly, but she could feel that something was off almost as soon she'd accepted Jabba's offer. The feeling hadn't lifted.
She could practically hear Luke in her mind, repeating what he'd said over and over again the past few days: Don't do anything impulsive, Leia. Stick with the plan. Even if things seem dire, stick with the plan. She wanted to follow his instructions, wanted to stick with the plan. But the plan hadn't taken into account her being detected by Boba kriffing Fett.
The sight of the bounty hunter had caused Leia's head to buzz and her breath to catch. She'd been grateful for the helmet, grateful for the protective layers that hid her face and body. She had been able to hold the thermal detonator with a steady hand despite nearly every other part of her body trembling beneath the thick plates of Ubese armor. She wasn't afraid of Boba Fett, but the only other time she'd encountered the man, he'd been accompanied by Vader. The only other time she'd encountered him, she'd been made to watch and listen as Han was tortured.
His screams still filled her head regularly, though after nearly a year, they at least relegated themselves to her dreams rather than haunting her every waking moment. What she thought of more often than the screams now were the moments after. After the torture, after the scuffle with Lando, when they'd been left in that cell to await the next horror meant to draw Luke in.
Han stared at Leia, then Chewie, then Leia again, face pained and eyes shining. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, voice thick with emotion. "I didn't—I'm so sorry, Leia."
Her lungs wouldn't expand all the way and her stomach churned. She'd never seen Han so close to tears, never heard such a fatalistic tone in his voice. He was the optimistic one. Cynical in his own way, yes, but still generally confident in their ability to make it no matter the odds.
She slid her arms around his torso carefully, ever-mindful of the wounds he'd sustained from the scan grid. He held her tightly, ignoring the pain that she knew fired through his body, and kissed her forehead.
"We never should've come here," he murmured, running his fingers down her back.
Leia traced the line of his jaw with her thumb. "We didn't have much of a choice," she reminded him.
"Shoulda found someplace safer for you," Han said, leaving logic unacknowledged. His voice cracked. "You don't deserve this."
"Neither do you," she said, brushing his hair off his forehead gently. Han remained quiet and Leia rested her cheek against his chest, hoping the contact would strengthen them both.
After a few minutes, she felt Han exhale a shuddery breath. She pulled back abruptly, concerned that she'd hurt him somehow. He looked pained, tears in his eyes and his face twisted in an agony that seemed to reach beyond the physical. Leia found herself tracing his jaw again, dropping brief kisses on his lips, chin, and cheeks.
He shook his head, the movement slight and stiff. "Sweetheart, I'm so sorry."
Leia cupped his cheek in her palm and looked him in the eye. "Han," she said, her voice low and serious, "this isn't your fault."
Obvious in his unwillingness to believe her, he took a deep breath and pulled her close again.
The scene played in her head three, six, fifteen times a day, and every time, Leia wished she had some significant words of comfort or support to offer the Han in her memory, to change the trajectory of the conversation, to somehow let him know for sure and for certain that he wasn't at fault. He'd been so distressed in those final hours before they'd been led to the carbon freezing chamber, so convinced that there existed something he could have done to prevent Leia and Chewie's capture. She wished she'd been able to console him more than she had.
The guilt in his eyes as he'd stood on that platform haunted her with as much frequency as his cries of pain. He'd made an attempt at an unwavering front, but Leia knew him better than just about anyone. She'd seen the sorrow, the remorse. She'd wanted to tell him again that it wasn't his fault, that he shouldn't carry the weight of actions that he'd had no control over, but time had been limited. She'd wrapped the absolution and assurance into three words and hoped he understood the entire message.
She was nearing the limits of her patience. She knew the plan, knew what Luke would say, knew she was supposed to wait in the background as back-up just like Lando, but the nod Boba Fett had given her, the way he'd conferred with Jabba right after she'd handed Chewie over…She couldn't risk sticking around much longer. Something was very, very wrong.
A year. We've waited nearly a year. I can wait another day.
The year that had passed had been borderline torturous. Leia had caught up with the Alliance, a horribly injured Luke in tow. She'd had to explain why she'd been out of contact for so long, why Lando was present. She'd had little explanation for Luke's condition — he wouldn't talk about it aside from occasionally choking out "Vader" before dissolving into hysterics, which was roughly her own reaction for the first three days whenever anyone asked about Han. General Rieekan had finally asked if she could write out a statement rather than attempting anything verbal, had compared her written report with Chewie and Lando's interviews, and never asked her to speak about Bespin again.
She did speak about it, but in her own time and using as few words as possible. No one knew the depths of her agony. No one even officially knew she and Han had been involved, though at this point, anyone who claimed to be unaware was being intentionally obtuse. They'd remarked on how she came back different, watched over the months as she lost a visible amount of weight, went full days without uttering a word to anyone, had days where she could barely dress herself and reweaving the braids she'd slept in had felt like entirely too much. She'd spent more time on this rescue plan than on any Alliance business for the past eight months, and she'd gone on leave for the past two. If anyone was still in the dark about how she felt about Han Solo, they were choosing to stay there.
I love you, sweetheart, she thought, visualizing the eerie, pain-filled expression frozen on his face as he hung on Jabba's wall. She felt as if he called to her, as if…as if…
She needed to see him again.
She wasn't going to do anything, but she needed to see him again, to look at his face, to make sure she had a good idea of the layout of the space around him so they could make a quick exit. It would be good to have a rough plan for where to lead him since Han would more than likely need assistance to leave the building.
Leia had spent nearly a year researching every known fact and even more conjecture about surviving extended hibernation in carbon freeze. Only a handful of humans had been put through the excruciating ordeal; less than a handful survived the initial freezing and even fewer survived the first month after being released from suspended animation. The long-term repercussions varied wildly, but nearly everyone experienced blindness, weakness, and extreme cold sensitivity upon release. The blindness alone would require someone to help Han while leaving; if his legs were weak, he might need help moving. Walking the routes they might take ahead of time seemed like a necessity the more Leia thought about it.
When she opened the door of the cramped sleeping quarters she'd been placed in, she was hit by how quiet the building was. Guards of various sizes and species wandered the corridors seemingly at random — though Lando had reported that they actually had a pretty strict schedule — but those beings aside, Leia didn't see or hear anyone. It was a stark and unnerving contrast to the loud and obnoxious revelry she had experienced when she first brought Chewie in.
Her mind flitted to Chewie briefly, wondering how he was doing. She wished she could visit him, wished she could hug him. He was, at this point, one of her dearest friends, and seeing him in binders — even binders applied with her own gentle hands — had caused her chest to feel tight. It had reminded her of Bespin, of the carbon freezing chamber, and she'd had to take a moment before they set off to get in the right headspace again after being thrown backward in time by the visual.
Leia made her way quietly to Jabba's throne room. The helmet she wore limited her field of vision and warped her hearing; she wondered how Boushh had managed to evade death for so long in the getup. It didn't help that the area was nearly completely dark. Leia crept along the corridor, using the wall to guide her and committing every possible exit to memory as she walked. When she bumped into the wind chimes near the entrance to the throne room — Really, who has wind chimes deep in the bowels of a grimy palace? — she silently cursed Boushh and his abysmal helmet once again while attempting to quiet the chimes.
Jabba's throne room was dark, but Han's agonized form was illuminated by some sort of light. Leia froze upon seeing him again. She was just here to look for escape routes, just to get more familiar with the palace so their plan could go off without a hitch the next day. But seeing him again, seeing his pain-filled face, the way he'd apparently reached out in desperation as he'd been encased in carbonite, she couldn't just leave, could she?
She was thrown back to the cell on Bespin again, Han's mouth near her ear as he held her, apologizing over and over for putting her in danger.
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I never wanted any of this to happen. I'm so sorry."
Taking responsibility for actions he had not committed, for motivations that had nothing to do with him personally. Vader wanted Luke; Han's involvement had been incidental. Vader could have swapped Han for anyone else as long as Luke cared about them enough to go after them. Han in particular hadn't been targeted because of his past actions or the bounty on his head. It had nothing to do with what he had or hadn't done, but convincing him of that was fruitless. Leia resigned herself to holding onto him, hoping her physical presence helped more than the words that seemed to fall on deaf ears.
"Shoulda just gone straight to Jabba's alone," Han said, regret evident in his tone. "You wouldn't be in this mess. Chewie wouldn't be in this mess. I might've gotten captured, but you coulda kept going. You'd be—"
"Dead," Leia said flatly. "In the Echo Base Command Center." She pressed her palm to his stubbly cheek and kissed him quickly. "Let's get some things straight, hotshot: you saved my life. If you hadn't come back for me, I'd have either died when the base collapsed or died in a blaster fight, because I wasn't going to let them take me alive. And if you think for a second we would have let you get captured without coming after you, you're horribly mistaken."
Chewie warbled his agreement and Leia smiled at him fondly. Han closed his eyes. "I ain't worth that trouble, sweetheart. Not when I've caused all of this."
Leia ran her thumb over his cheekbone and shook her head. "I don't think you understand how important you are to us."
"The Alliance?" Han asked drily, lifting his head and looking at her with the faintest hint of mischief in his eyes.
Leia swatted his shoulder, steering clear of the spots where he'd said he'd been wounded. "Yes, the Alliance. But also me. Chewie. Luke. Me."
He pressed his lips to her temple, the smallest hint of a smile on his face. "You said 'me' twice."
"I meant it twice." She pressed her ear to his chest, listening for his steady breathing, the predictable beat of his heart. Leia ran her fingers down the back of his neck and closed her eyes. She felt tears squeeze between her lashes and roll down her cheeks a couple at a time and hoped desperately that Han didn't notice. She cleared her throat softly, fingertips still brushing his neck in a slow rhythm.
He had told her he loved her already. Dozens of times in words and actions. The long trip to Bespin had been difficult at times, but they'd had time to talk, to settle, to be vulnerable with one another. One day, two weeks before their arrival, he'd just said it apropos of nothing, like it was a part of their morning routine, and he'd kept saying it ever since. Leia hadn't been able to respond in kind, not yet.
It suddenly seemed very important that he know. Leia felt the sense of urgency deep in her belly, practiced the words I love you in her mind a few times before speaking again. "Han, I—" She broke off, her throat constricting. There was a sort of finality to her telling him, as if admitting that she loved him meant that the end for both of them was near. She shook her head, unable to utter the words.
"Sweetheart, I know," he said softly, pulling her closer. She wondered how he could possibly know when she hadn't told him. Then again, he wasn't one for words over actions; talk was cheap and Han had an almost preternatural ability to notice shifts in behavior and attitudes — a skill leftover from growing up on the street he said. It was why his insistence that Lando would treat them well had been odd to Leia. For once, he'd seemed to trust the general idea of friendship and someone's words over the strange and sometimes alarming actions that Leia knew Han had taken note of.
She wondered if he'd similarly taken note of some shift in her, if something she'd done had tipped him off to the fact that she loved him without her ever uttering the words. She was about to insist on making herself speak, on forcing herself to verbalize it, but he just touched her cheek and said, "I know," again.
Leia stared at the block that had held the man she loved prisoner for nearly a year, focus narrowing to see him and only him. She'd read anecdotes from survivors about how painful being suspended was, how some alleged that they were halfway conscious the entire time they'd been frozen. She couldn't leave him, go back to her dingy quarters and get sleep while he adorned Jabba's wall like the most gruesome of relief casts.
Don't do anything impulsive, Leia. Luke's words from the morning prior were as loud in her head as if he were speaking them in her ear. They were truly memories, not live thoughts delivered via the Force the way she'd experienced on Bespin. She'd worked to shield those out ever since, uncomfortable with the idea of anyone — even one of her best friends — being able to poke around in her mind the way Vader had attempted to. She wasn't sure how she did it exactly, but it had worked on the Death Star; it certainly worked with Luke.
Don't do anything impulsive, Leia. This wasn't impulsive, she decided. She'd scoped out the palace, she had an exit strategy…sort of. And it had been nearly a year. Nothing that took a year could be called impulsive.
Leia crept silently to the wall where Han was displayed. Her surroundings were quiet; everyone that had filled the throne room earlier was either gone or sleeping somewhere in the shadows she reasoned. She eyed the controls next to the block of carbonite — the whole team had been briefed on how to operate those because they weren't totally sure who would be closest to Han when the time came. Leia had tried to insist that she be the one to release him, that she knew the most about hibernation sickness, that, aside from Chewie, her voice would be the most likely to keep Han calm if he couldn't see, but she'd been told the plan had to remain flexible.
The plan was still flexible. It was going to have to be if Leia went rogue. Not impulsive, she tried to convince herself. I'm not being impulsive. I have a plan, mostly. This is just…opportunistic.
She located several yellow, illuminated buttons next to the heavy block that she was fairly certain controlled the lift that kept him in place on the wall. She deliberated only a moment before choosing a button to push. When the lift lowered, she felt a surge of confidence. That had to be a sign, that she'd guessed right about the button's purpose. Working quickly, she switched the dials and watched with bated breath as the carbonite fell away, revealing a face she thought she'd never see in person again. Han's entire body crumpled to the ground.
He landed on his stomach, limp and heavy, as if he were…No. Leia knelt next to him, heart racing and stomach churning. She was shaking again, trembling beneath the heavy armor, but she couldn't help it. He looked dead.
Rolling him onto his back was difficult but doable, and she listened carefully for breath as she moved him. The helmet obscured or warped half of her senses. She couldn't detect breath, but she wasn't convinced that meant anything.
Han came to in a near panic, shivering and talking far, far too loudly. He asked question after question and Leia kicked herself for not thinking to remove the damn helmet before freeing him from the wall. The voice modulator was unnerving at best, and Han was already entirely disoriented and frightened.
She'd thought often over the months what the first thing she'd say to him if she ever saw him again would be. The imaginings hadn't been practical — she hadn't planned to answer a series of medical questions or to speak to him as if he were a stranger. She'd been sure, given his mindset before being ripped away from her, that he'd still blame himself for the mess they'd all ended up in, that he might have a hard time believing they'd all dropped everything to save him — that they'd wanted to. She'd been sure, in all the self-doubt he seemed to experience moments before being forced into that freezing chamber, that he'd need some sort of reassurance.
He was shivering and blind, his voice filled with notes of panic Leia had only heard a few times, when someone he cared about had a brush with death. She wished she'd ripped the gloves off, too, wished she could touch his skin and convince herself this wasn't a dream that would soon end, convince him that she was someone he knew, someone he could trust.
He reached for her face, his fingers brushing against the helmet, fear and suspicion evident in every syllable when he said, "Who are you?"
Leia couldn't stand allowing him to sit in terror and distrust any longer, couldn't stand the idea that he might think himself alone and being rescued by a stranger, that he might think for even a moment she hadn't cared enough to look for him. She pulled the helmet off as quickly as she could, wisps of hair falling in her face, and murmured, "Someone who loves you."
A/N: A few months ago, I read something online where the person who wrote it was like, "There is absolutely no way Plan A was to have Leia free Han that way." and, honestly, I have to agree. I think our girl went rogue. And if she didn't, I need to know what the plan was supposed to be because it seems absolutely awful overall. What do y'all think?
Thanks for reading!