FOUR
They received R2's message as they sped away from the misty Hoth atmosphere – it was brief, but C3PO – useful for once – decoded for them.
"Master Luke has gone to the Dagobah system."
It was as if someone had slapped Leia's face, hard – they'd just escaped torture and certain death at the hands of Darth Vader, but this moment was the only one in recent memory that Han saw her looking genuinely distraught. He cursed under his breath, and not entirely because they were still being chased by a veritable cloud of Imperial Starfighters.
She didn't say a word, instead released a long, slow breath. She had plenty of temper, he'd noticed, except when it mattered. It made him ever so slightly uncomfortable.
"Look, Princess," he tried, outmanoeuvring three fighters and taking aim at a fourth.
"I'm sure he's got good reason."
What reason, he thought to himself, as her only response was a tense "Watch out!" – because clearly he usually flew with his eyes shut – what good, triple-damned reason could that farm kid possibly have to -
It ain't because she doesn't need you that you've got any right to leave, kid.
He hadn't left, after all, even though he knew, and Chewie knew, and hell, by this point the fucking galaxy knew that Jabba would have his head, or any more sensitive body part, for this. But you didn't just up and desert her Worshipful High-And-Mighty Goodness Princess Leia Organa, five-foot-nothing and fuelled largely by her very own brand of extraordinarily refined bravado.
"They're getting closer."
Shit, he really did fly with his eyes shut, apparently. Luckily she was around to remind him of these vital facts of life.
"Oh yeah? Watch this."
Han was fairly sure she thought he was just Corellian trash, but he'd show her that even trash could be damn –
And then nothing happened.
"Watch what?" she snapped, and he had no immediate response.
He tried again.
"I think we're in trouble."
The droid piped up.
"If I may say so, sir, I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to light-speed!"
You're telling me now.
He jumped to his feet.
"We're in trouble."
For once, she did not have a snippy response prepared and ready, which should've given him a great deal of satisfaction but somehow didn't. As he pushed past her, he turned and grabbed her shoulder.
"Leia, can you fly?"
He'd never said her name before, he realised, and he wondered if she did, too. If she remembered this after all this was over, he'd probably end up languishing in a dungeon somewhere for that one.
Leia nodded, her eyes steel rather than panic.
"Yes."
She jumped into Chewie's seat and grabbed hold of the wheel. If she hadn't been a Princess, he idly thought as he ran, she could've been a damn great girl – all things considered.
He'd been working frantically for less than two minutes when the ship shuddered with a familiar, and ominous, kind of shock.
"Han, get up here!"
He did, running down the length of the ship – and one glance ahead confirmed his suspicions.
"Asteroids!"
For all her talent for stating the obvious at the worst possible time, she was a damn good pilot – if she'd been half as bad as he would've suspected her to be a month before, they'd be space dust together now. He wondered, briefly, whether princesses pulverised differently from smugglers.
"Maybe you'd sparkle."
"What?"
Luckily, his next action adequately distracted her.
"What are you doing? You're not actually going into an asteroid field?"
"They'd be crazy to follow us, wouldn't they?"
He wasn't half as sure of himself as that line sounded, of course, but that was kind of the line of business he was in. They bounced around increasingly larger, increasingly faster space rocks, and he sped up.
"You don't have to do this to impress me."
Her fingertips brushed his arm, and part of him wished that, while he wasn't exactly doing this to impress her – survival would be a fine start, Princess – he'd achieve that goal anyway.
Fat chance, space jockey.
"Never tell me the odds!" he barked as that droid – why had they ended up with the useless droid, again? – once more produced a series of numbers that were about as depressing as they were likely accurate.
The good news was that the Starfighters were rapidly falling apart – in the most literal sense of that phrase.
The bad news was that, give it a minute or two, so would they. The ship shook harder and more frequently by the second, asteroids whizzing by in front of them - and he could tell even her nerves of steel were taking a beating.
Glancing to the side, he found her staring at him like he was a crazy person – which, to be entirely fair, was her usual approach to him. Oh, the stories she'd one day tell her fancy Senatorial friends, in that ridiculously maddening Core accent of hers -
"You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart."
"I take it back!"
That, too, wasn't as satisfactory as it would have been in a situation where they weren't actively engaged in dying.
"We're going to get pulverized if we stay out here much longer!"
"I'm not going to argue with that."
He was out of ideas, until he wasn't – and while this particular idea led him to believe her idea of him was probably correct, it was also the only thing that might just save their lives. Like he'd done pretty much constantly throughout the thirty-eight years of his existence, he took a chance.
As the last Starfighters exploded behind them, he pointed.
"There. That looks pretty good."
None of them got it, not even Chewie – but she did.
"What looks pretty good?" she asked, as she rose to her feet, but he knew she understood, and she knew he knew she understood, too. Maybe some princesses were notorious risk-takers, as well.
As they slipped into the depths of the asteroid, he fervently hoped he did, indeed, know what he was doing – but at least he found a place to park the Falcon, and at least they might have some respite to fix those damn temperamental hyperdrives.
There was that other thing, too, of course.
As the asteroid shook and the princess stumbled back into his arms – a lightweight, sure, but a warm, breathing, surprisingly human lightweight whose hair, after all this time, still kind of smelled like the type of fresh, snowy mountains guys like him so rarely got to see, let alone climb – he couldn't really ignore that other thing any longer.
As she informed him that being held by him wasn't quite enough to get her excited, and as he, restoring her to her feet, informed her that there simply wasn't time for anything else, and as she watched him walk away with that pale, unreadable face of hers, he knew he was indeed completely crazy, and, therefore, completely crazy about her.