THREE

In the end, the comm link remained dead even as the Princess remained awake - and, shortly after a nervously-awaited dawn, Leia sent a contingent of speeders out into the ice plains to find the missing men. The droid kept reminding her, of course, of the astronomically terrible odds, but she was too experienced a politician to let that wear her down. (Additionally, she could locate his off-switch with her eyes closed.)

She was there as the speeder carrying them flew into the hangar, and as Han – irritatingly okay, barely ruffled Han – stepped out of the doors, she strode closer, then halted abruptly about a foot away. Thank the gods, she thought. Thankthegodsthankthegodsthankthe-

"Reporting for duty, Your Highness." he said with a mock salute and his characteristic half-smirk.

She wanted to slap him into the next solar system, and instead opted for the next best thing, hugging him suddenly and fiercely, feeling his arms tighten around her for just a moment. He'd almost become one of her shapes, her shadows – her past – her memories, of which she already had too many for one life.

"You're late." she responded coolly as soon as they'd let go. The corner of his mouth twitched, and she knew she'd smile back if she wasn't careful.

"Where's Luke?"

He nodded his chin at the second speeder.

"In there. Unconscious and smells like shit, but he's alive. Brought him back to you in one piece."

Leia would not quite have phrased the matter in the same way, but she had to admit his statement was accurate, and only once Luke was safely in medical hands – and in a giant tube of bacta – did she inquire how, exactly, the smell had happened. He responded succinctly, as she supposed he always would. She looked at him sideways.

"Good work. If you weren't such a mercenary, we may yet make a rebel out of you."

He looked surprised, and she smirked.

"What, Captain Solo, you think I've never spent a night in the freezing cold, heated solely by the guts of a freshly killed animal?"

In fact, she hadn't; although she had had more than enough life experiences for a woman thrice her age, that was a new one even to her. Still, she liked the faint trace of doubt in his eyes and didn't mind keeping it there a while longer. Your Worshipfulness, indeed. I can crawl inside a tauntaun with the best of them, Solo.

"I woulda thought you had your servants for that, Your Highness," he drawled, but it came a beat too late. Leia loved, loved, how easily she could throw him off sometimes. It was childish and ridiculous and completely and utterly below her, but God, it felt nice, and it compensated somewhat for his impossibly rakish smile.

Of course, he could fluster her just as easily, as he demonstrated mere minutes later.

His implication that she wanted to keep him with her, that the thought of letting him go was in any way painful to her, was laughable, of course, but when he implied she had in any way confessed her true feelings for him, she exploded. As if she would ever confess to such a thing.

"Why, you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking – nerf herder!"

Even if she'd lost her temper, she'd been rather proud of the barb itself – although kissing Luke, she realised in the very middle of that particular action, was probably not her best ever follow-up.

Han could take her taunts and her temper and emerge relatively unruffled – besides, he deserved them, both of them, because he was a mercenary and a smuggler and definitely, definitely a scoundrel – but Luke could not. She'd seen the look in his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking; she'd seen it in men's eyes before and classified it generally as a great big nuisance. Encouraging Luke was unnecessary and, frankly, counterproductive.

Han was different. As frustrating, as infuriating as he was, he gave as good as he got, and that was at the very least interesting to someone so firmly used, since her early teens, to being taken seriously.

And of course when he wasn't busy being utterly unreliable and mercenary, he was a pretty useful person to have around. It was he who went to check out the mysterious droid, and it was he who reported to her, over a comm link, on its probable origins. It was he who watched her give orders to her men once the attack had started, from high up where he was working on the Falcon and, for once, his response as she looked up and caught his eye was simply a nod. He was a laser-braised flyboy, sure, but he understood danger in a way she wasn't entire sure Luke did.

Less than two hours later, the base was collapsing around her and she knew, with the sharp instincts of someone who intimately knew failure, that all was lost, again. She crisply gave him clearance to leave over comm; he was not in it for her cause, and he was not in it for her, so he might as well get out with that rusty wreck of his relatively undamaged.

When he came running into that control room less than five minutes later, she looked up just enough to bark "Why are you still here?!" before turning back to her screen. Only as a voice announced that Imperial troops had entered the base, he took her arm.

"Come on, that's it."

His voice was quiet, his face earnest. He had dust in that absurd mane of hair of his, she noticed absent-mindedly. And he was right.

"Give the evacuation code signal."

As he led her away, she looked back.

"And get to your transports!"

More good men and women would die that day and had already died that day, and she wondered, briefly, which faces she would see again, and when, and where.

They reached the Falcon as the footsteps of Imperial Stormtroopers echoed through the base. She was exhausted and frustrated and quietly, helplessly furious.

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?!"

"It might!"

In the end, that was not quite necessary, and that bucket of bolts he optimistically referred to as his ship decided to cooperate at last.

"See?"

She sighed in relief and in exasperation all at once. Was it just his face that did these things that made her want to smack it? Was it a smuggler thing?

"Someday you're going to be wrong, and I hope I'm there to see it." she snapped at his shoulder as the ship gathered speed. He ignored her.

And as they shot into space, she thanked the gods of her parents that he had not been wrong - and that she'd been there to see it.