Alone


The fear had been a harrowing wave, triggered by the pull of the hyperdrive lever, the jerk and twist that signaled the jump was successful. In the moment before, Han had felt ready and confident, mechanical almost, the hopelessness banished against the surety of a chance of escape. A plan. Hands flying across the console, system checks, life support tests. The engines were fine, the hyperdrive held tight with only a brief hiccup, but that was a worry for another time. Another day.

And then they were safe and the fear returned like the bursting of a dam. It flowed through every nerve, rampant in his chest and extremities like an overburdened river, soaking everything in sight, overwhelming levees and dikes with all the force of its natural, destructive energy. Nothing held against it. Leia, it shouted.

He forced himself to look at Chewie, nodding a thanks for all the Wookiee had done. "Luke," he said, because the kid was important, too, but Han just didn't have the energy for him at the moment.

I will check on him, Chewie growled. Are you alright?

He didn't answer but turned to Leia instead, found her quiet and small in the seat behind Chewie. He held her eyes and nodded to the hatch, indicating what he wanted. She stood.

"Thank you, Chewie," she said, soft and low.

Han walked her to the cabin, following her small body through the ring corridor, thinking his heart might jump out of his chest if he let it. Strict control over his emotions was not something for which he was well known. He lived and died by those instincts, the dark delight of thwarting fate in the wilderness of space.

But he couldn't do that here. He needed answers and he needed them now.

She sat on the bunk in the captain's cabin; he stood in front of her, running a medscan with hands that shook and lips that twitched downwards. Wordless, the pair of them. There wasn't anything to say yet. They'd survived but only just, and it felt like they couldn't quite communicate until he saw it in clear medical script. He'd demand to know how she felt; she'd say she was fine. There was no space in him for a fight.

The medscanner hummed in his hands and Han watched the lovely woman in front of him, cataloguing the warming pallor of her face, her steady hands folded in her lap, her eyes clear as daylight on Tatooine. When it beeped its result he was unsurprised to see her vitals in the healthy range for a human woman of her age and size.

He could ask how she felt. He could. But it wouldn't inform him the way it would with anyone else. So he cut straight to the matter at hand.

"He lured you out there."

She pressed her lips together and nodded.

Tossing the medscanner to the bunk behind her, he crouched to be at eye-level. "How?"

Her eyes reminded him of the return trip from Nar Shaddaa, the strength inherent in them but also filled with a deep concern. Leia swore to him that his eyes changed color but hers changed in scope. She saw the universe with hopeful optimism. And then, too, she saw it for all its awesome horror.

"Luke and I have been having dreams," she finally said. "Very similar dreams."

He swallowed but didn't push her.

"In my dream I'm falling. I can't find you or Luke or Chewie but I can hear a voice telling me that he has you."

"Who has me?"

"I don't know."

"Is it Vader's voice?"

She shook her head. "I've never heard it before."

He dropped his eyes, blinking at her midsection without really seeing her. In his world, dreams didn't mean shit. He had no protocol for how to deal with something like that.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Leia swallowed. The vastness in her eyes narrowed into one soft look at him. Usually when she looked at him like that—when the starfield in her gaze focused on him—he felt powerful, like he could do anything. Right now it felt hollow.

"I thought they were just dreams," she whispered.

They aren't just dreams if Luke is having them, too, he almost said, but accusations weren't going to do any good right now. There were more important things to talk about.

"What about this morning? What happened?"

"I had the dream again but this time I couldn't wake up. I was falling and falling and falling. Even when I knew I was awake, I was still falling."

"Leia." He put his hands on her thighs, trying to bridge the distance, to shrink the scope of her eyes back down to just him, only him. "Did you know he was out there?"

She inhaled and when she spoke, her voice cracked. "I thought… I thought I was keeping you safe. I felt better the more we moved."

"You weren't trying to go to him?"

Her demeanor changed drastically, the fall of the shock spurning her into anger. "Of course not."

He hated that he'd felt he had to ask, but he did. He trusted Leia with everything he had, he would do anything she asked of him. But he didn't trust this Force business. He didn't understand it, couldn't comprehend how it affected Luke and Leia with such violence. Dreams, sure. Dreams didn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place.

But what had awoken him this morning? And what Luke was feeling on the boarding ramp? That he didn't understand.

"This ain't my wheelhouse, Sweetheart. I don't know what's going on."

"Do you think I would ever… could ever..? Han, no."

"We wound up in a fucking disaster out there," he said, keeping his voice low. "And I just want to know why."

The anger seemed to leave her then, swift and fleeting. "I would never hurt you. Not intentionally," she murmured and her eyes were like suns to him, molten and bright. "Never."

He squeezed her thighs. "I know," he whispered, trying for reassurance. "But you still took us out there. And if I'm wondering why, so will High Command."

Her anger extinguished like a starved flame, slow and resistant. When it was gone, her shoulders hunched and she put her head in her hands. "I'm sorry, Han. I'm so sorry. I just wanted you safe."

Han's chest cracked wide open at the helplessness in her tone, at the anxiety and the self-recrimination. Wrapping her small body in his, he surrounded her with the force of his need to protect her. "Don't apologize," he murmured into her hair, her ear, her forehead, anywhere his lips could reach. "That's not why I'm asking."

She shook her head but didn't push against his ardant embrace. "I couldn't, I couldn't give you up, I thought I was helping—"

Han held her as the proximity alarms announced they were ten minutes from reversion from hyperspace. He held her as Chewie roared for him to join him in the cockpit. He held her because he was so grateful for their survival and because he wasn't sure what he could do to help when there wasn't an enemy around to shoot.

"Conversation is not over," he growled into her lips. "You and me, we're a team."

Leia's eyes fell to her lap, nervous tension in her shoulders. "If you don't understand, they won't," she said. "I don't know what they are going to say."

He wasn't sure if she meant her Jedi voodoo, their relationship, or something else. Those eyes of hers were awfully expansive and he felt like a pion next to the weight of her stare.

"Hey," he said. "It'll be alright."

Han mustered a smile but he wasn't sure if it took any of that weight from her eyes when he left her to bring them out of hyperspace.

—0—

Deep in the nothing that was the Anoat system, Home One sat listless and unmoving as it awaited the rest of her contractors and commissioned fleet. For the past twelve hours ships had been slowly arriving from the other side of the galaxy, from Zone 266 and the narrow escape from Vader's clutches.

Narrow was putting it mildly, Leia thought. It was a miracle any of them had survived, much less all of them. Wedge and Salla and the Falcon, too? Not a single Alliance casualty in an engagement with the Executor; that was suspiciously good fortune.

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned into the pillows at her back, sweeping her eyes over the sterile, blinding white of the medbay hulls. It felt too stark in here, too controlled. The incongruity of it annoyed her; Home One was a veritable disaster, a barely-controlled cesspool of activity and military discipline. The fleet was cobbled together by spare parts and stolen defense systems, they weren't even eating real food anymore, and the water was recycled through the purification systems so often that it tasted like old paint.

And yet Medical gleamed.

She could imagine the chaos humming in the halls outside those thin, sterile walls. High Command had to be in total disarray. She hadn't even seen Carlist yet. The first thing she would have done—had she been in charge and not confined here—would be to order a series of debriefs. But no one had come for her. So either High Command was not functioning properly or they were still pulling together whatever facts they could find by data alone.

To them the question was real and haunting: what the hell had happened?

She felt an anxious, tenebrous energy aflutter through her veins. She wanted to escape her current medbay prison, wanted to run to High Command and think of an explanation for her actions. How it had been a rational decision to wake everyone up to fight a battle no one had anticipated just as the enemy had shown themselves. And the fact that the battle had consisted of three Alliance ships and three Imperial TIEs, inexplicable by even the most outrageous reasoning… It defied logic. It made no sense. Why hadn't the Executor deployed any reinforcements? Why had they used beta-blasts and not the usual lasers? And how had Commander Solo, of all people, managed to survive a rematch against Darth Vader?

She'd put them all in danger by withholding that information.

The energy turned sour in her stomach, rotting in her chest. There was no way to spin it, no way to resuscitate her reputation. If everyone didn't already know by now, they shortly would.

Frustration turned into anger, as it so often did, and it crept up, up, up, bitter on her tongue; she wanted to scream at her invisible captors, how unfair it all was, how she hadn't asked for any of this. How she would rather pretend she didn't have these feelings. She didn't want them, anyway. All she wanted was to go back. Back to work. Back to a more comfortable reality.

She felt listless and manic, jittery but in a new, disconcerting way. Her anger and her fear rolled into one awful feeling that she didn't like at all. Where was her mental clarity now? Where was her calm, her level-headedness? All she felt was suspicion. And she didn't like feeling that way among her peers in the Alliance, didn't like the distrust she could sense in the air around her. It felt too similar to the histrionics and conspiracies of the Imperial Senate.

But... well. They'd put her in here. How else was she supposed to take it? Her and Luke, held in the medbay without their consent?

She rolled her eyes. If the situation were reversed, she would have likely done the same thing for the person's safety. If it had been Han who had gone into severe shock, if it had been Han who had barely contributed to a skirmish with the Empire, had heralded the attack with a spectacular emotional display for pilots and mechanics alike to see, she might have insisted on some tests at the very least. And they'd ran their tests: hundreds of them, it had felt like.

She tilted her chin to the ceiling, eyed the smooth hull above her as she wrangled with her own distrust. If it were Han in this position, she would have strapped him to the gurney herself in the honest belief that he needed to be there for his own safety. She would have been desperate to make sure he was in his right mind, and if not, she would have moved mountains to help him get back to himself. Knowing Han's particularities when it came to the Force, the extraordinary way he rallied to support her even against his better nature...

No, she couldn't blame anyone for her current circumstances other than Vader and the outrageous galactic irony that had made her Force-sensitive in an era of Jedi famine. More than anything, she wanted to talk to her mother, wanted to ask her father questions. Had they known? She'd been born at the height of the purges; it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that Bail and Breha Organa had knowingly sheltered and raised a Force-sensitive child under the noses of both the Emperor and Vader. It was, in fact, very characteristic of them to quietly rebel in honor of life and freedom.

But then why the secrecy? Why not tell her when she was old enough to understand? She'd been a teenaged spy in the Senate; surely by then she had been trustworthy enough to confide in about her true heritage, whatever that might be.

Her brain circled and circled, questions abound with no hope of an answer. She felt like a storm, like a hurricane of thoughts and emotions. And she felt a tiny line of self-hatred that turned to mist when she stared at it too long. A distrust in Luke that wilted under her stare. A sense of unbridled anger at Han, but what had Han done but sit in a chair next to her medbunk and show her such support it made her a little misty-eyed? He had been the absolute hero of the battle after all, and they'd only just taken him for an official debrief because he'd refused again and again to leave her side—

"Leia?"

She closed her eyes, gave herself a moment to school her features before she turned to her visitor. All her feelings fell away, the ice-cold mask of composure settling over her features like a thin dusting of snow.

Luke wore an identical medcenter gown to her own. He was standing hesitantly in the doorway, one hand on the open hatch frame and the other scratching the blonde mess on top of his head. His eyes looked darker than their usual striking blue, deeper-set: evidence of his own worry. He wore his old leggings from Tatooine under the gown—ragged, patched and frayed—and the sight of his bare feet on the deck-plates tempted her smile.

But when she found his eyes again, her mirth disappeared.

"Luke," she said, watching one of her closest friends eye her with wariness.

What a feeling that was, to feel unsure about the mood of someone who was more like family than friend to her. She had lied to him. Spectacularly. Often. He had every right to look unsure.

Leia's heart struck a beat against her ribcage that radiated a pang of guilt so clearly she was afraid Luke could hear it.

He pressed his lips together and seemed to gather his wits about him. "Can we talk?"

"Come in."

Luke nodded and padded over to the uncomfortable chair near her bed. Han had spent hours in that chair, driving her crazy with his constant vigilance, and in some ways, she wished he was here for the conversation she assumed she was about to have. His steadfastness and stubbornness would be helpful, would remind her to step outside of her own defensiveness and communicate rather than shut down.

On the other hand, it had been her decision to avoid the topic of the Force with Luke. What could Han say that she couldn't say herself? What wasn't already quite obvious to Luke now, after the latest fight with Vader?

Luke sat with a little groan, brushed his right hand over his temple. "This headache is going to kill me."

"Headache?"

"I think it's an echo," he said. "Like an echo in the Force?"

Leia tried a small smile. "Are you asking me or telling me?"

A common refrain. Luke had a habit of qualifying his uncertainties with question marks when he was nervous. His little ticks always made Leia smile, made her feel fond and protective of him because he reminded her so much of a normal person, free from the burden of constant public speaking and the need to remain impartial about everything.

But Luke was having none of it.

"Now that I know you might be feeling it, too? Yeah. I'm asking you."

She shifted, uncomfortable despite already knowing what the tenor of this conversation was going to be. Luke must have figured out what happened this morning, must have realized why Leia had sounded the alarm, why she was now locked in the medcenter with him.

They hadn't talked. The last she'd seen of him, Luke had been rushed out of the Falcon on a hover-gurney, Chewie by his side, speeding through the docking bay of Home One to the startled and worried stares of some of his pilots. She'd heard from Han that Luke had lost consciousness just after Wedge, Salla and the Falcon had gone to lightspeed, narrowly escaping the last of Vader's beta-blasts. They'd tried the same mode of transportation for Leia, but she'd flatly refused, insisting on walking to the medcenter on her own power, though she had leaned into Han's side to avoid him insisting he carry her.

Han had told her Luke's vitals were stable and that he'd regained consciousness just a few minutes after arriving in the Home One medcenter. He'd been exhausted and treated for minor dehydration and electrolyte imbalances, then rested most of the afternoon.

Leia hadn't slept a wink. She had accepted similar hydration and electrolyte drips and a blood-draw to check for infection but nothing more. She'd felt too anxious to rest. They had locked her in here and denied her request to rest in her quarters, and then, to add insult to injury, they'd fast-tracked Han's interrogation and left her alone to ruminate by herself.

She looked at Luke, trying to summon her feelings and gathering the courage to answer the question he was asking.

"I don't feel any echo," she said, deciding she had no other recourse but the truth. "But I felt the original. And the one the night before."

A long quiet descended, not uncomfortable but not particularly comforting either. It felt like a shifting, an alteration in the fabric of the universe. What had been an assumed fact—that Luke Skywalker was the last pure Force-sensitive being alive—was no longer true, and the repercussions of that new reality were staggering for both of them.

Luke pressed his lips together and nodded, eyes still troubled. "You felt him?"

She sat quietly, rested her hands in her lap.

"How long have you known?" he continued.

"Does it matter?" she snapped.

Oh, that was far too telling a response. Anger? At Luke? The gentle soul who deserved exactly none of her ire? Leia silently reprimanded herself, forcing her face to resume the cool mask of indifference. Safer. More in line with her station. The last thing this conversation needed was emotional outbursts.

She looked at Luke. His sagging posture, the frailty in his eyes defeated her. Her instinct to protect him swelled to life and she found herself answering him—truly answering him—for the first time in months.

"We figured it out on Nar Shaddaa."

I think you're like Luke. Han's voice, deep and soothing. I think you're a Jedi.

That moment felt like years ago, a time when she was unsure of her relationship with Han, when she had buzzed with memories she'd never had, like Han had picked a lock in her brain. Like she'd been looking at herself through water, wavy and distorted, until the moment when the word had rung like a bell.

A Jedi. Or Force-sensitive, at least. Freakish powers she didn't want and a layer of distrust over everything she did. No one wanted a Jedi to lead them. No one wanted a Jedi to be at the forefront of this war. The only reason Luke managed it with half the grace he did was because Luke was an orphan, was without a master. He was like a devenomized water-snake; he couldn't do anything as he was and he represented a nobler time.

But two of them? No. That was a conspiracy.

"Nar Shaddaa," he repeated. "You knew months ago?"

"I—" she drifted off, unable to defend herself. What could she say? That she was paralyzed by fear? That she worried about her peers, about Han, about the rank-and-file? That she was already so different from everyone else that she could barely tolerate it, much less now with this new angle?

And where did it come from, this power? That was the thought that had truly plagued her. Where did it come from?

"I was scared. I am scared. I have no idea what this means."

Luke's eyes were like water, soft and still. "It means we aren't alone. It means I'm not alone."

She stared at him, dumbfounded. "It absolutely means we're alone," she said.

"But what if we aren't?" he asked. "If I survived the Purge and you survived the Purge, maybe there are more of us. Maybe the Jedi Order can be rebuilt. Maybe we can defeat the Emperor without losing everything?"

"Luke—"

"Wouldn't it be worth it?" he continued speaking fast, heedless, excited. "Wouldn't it be a good thing? This galaxy could be so much better. People could be free. Isn't it worth it to you to try?"

An image, unbidden. A glowing city, bursting with light. A temple of ancient stone in the middle of a bustling metropolis, a testament to culture and tradition. An order of people, robed and noble, ready to defend the light with their lives, if need be.

"That is what the Alliance is doing," she said, the image dissipating like smoke.

Luke nodded. "Yeah, but we could do it so much faster—"

"The Jedi existed to protect the Old Republic," she interrupted him. "And it still fell."

"Because the Emperor hunted them down!" Luke's voice rose in volume and pitch, desperate. "He targeted them because they could stop him!"

"And they had been trained from birth to defend it," she replied. "Who is going to train us, now that General Kenobi is dead?"

Luke opened his mouth, shut it a few seconds later.

"There is no great Order, Luke. There is no one else. We are alone and we are vulnerable."

Sinking, desperate fear. The crux of all her trepidation, all the plaguing torrents of anxiety since Han had said those fateful words, since he'd picked that lock. Leia was alone in everything, an orphan, too, like Luke, but without even the comfort of an existing homeworld. She had no people, had no culture, had no one except Luke and Han and Chewie. No one to stem the power, no one to teach her how to wield it.

Alone. Utterly alone.

At least in the Alliance she had someone to lead, a short-scale placebo for her chronic desire to champion the rights of a people. She'd been bred for it, could not remember a time when she hadn't worked for the good of a larger group of beings. To lose that would be… would be…

Leia Organa would not survive that.

"The Force can do amazing things," he tried again. "It helped me at Yavin."

"Because of Obi-Wan! Because he spoke to you!"

Finally a spark in those beautiful blue eyes. "Yes! He was there! He helped!"

Leia shook her head. "Where has he been in the past two years, Luke? Where is he?"

He grew quiet, then shifted uncomfortably.

"We have this power and no one to train us. And we are vulnerable without training. He found us because of what we are," she said and then paused, centering her focus squarely on him. "We brought him to us."

Months of worry that she had accidentally tripped into her last days, that her life was narrowing into one dark, bloody end. Everything she fought for, sacrificed for, was in danger because of a demon who wanted her dead not just because of the war she waged against him, but on principle. This power, untrained and unruly, would be her end, and even worse, it would be the end of the galaxy's only hope for a better future, too.

"He found us, yes," Luke said. "But we also heard him coming. Leia, we saved everyone today."

"They wouldn't have been in danger in the first place if we hadn't been here."

Luke scoffed, and the sound was more Leia than Luke in that moment. "You don't know that."

"Yes, I do—"

"No, you don't. We stumbled over an Imperial probe yesterday. We should have started evacuation the second we saw its manufacturing stamp. Some stupid High Command bull, I bet."

She winced, but didn't respond.

"And if the Force hadn't warned us, he would have ambushed the fleet. We would have been lucky to have any survivors, much less the entire group! We were an asset today, not a liability. We were the reason everyone's alive. Why don't you feel happy about it?"

Leia tried to hold it in, tried to spare Luke the full weight on her shoulders. But she couldn't. The words tumbled from her like a morbid song, lightless and twisted. "He allowed us to be warned, Luke. He wanted us out there. He lured us."

Luke opened his mouth to interrupt, but she held up her hands.

"Han says the TIEs were using something called beta-blasts, a pirate strategy to capture vessels in space. Vader wanted you and me out there so he could capture us."

"That's not—"

"Yes, it is," she said. "It is our fault that he came at all."

A slow silence descended like tar, mucking up the connection between them. Luke's light seemed to fade and that made her feel awful, made her feel like a destructor instead of a constructor. Why did she feel the need to tear him down like this? Even in their worst moments, she hadn't actively sought to hurt Han. And here she was, deliberately hurting Luke?

"I don't understand why you hid it from me, Leia," he said, deep and hushed. "When I've been the only one for almost two years. When we could have been doing this together."

"It has nothing to do with you," she whispered in her defense, a murmur in the face of Luke's loud truths.

"When I was telling you about my dream in the training room?" he prompted. "You knew then."

She didn't answer. Couldn't.

Luke pursed his lips and nodded, eyes falling to the deckplates of the medbay beneath them. "Okay, then," he said. "You come talk when you're ready."

He turned, the set of his shoulders low and heavy. Leia's heart twisted again to look at him, at the dejection he so obviously felt, but she couldn't think of anything to say that was the gods-honest truth. She had known and she hadn't considered his feelings at all.

As Luke left her room, Leia sighed and curled up. Bringing her knees to her chest and tucking her head down, she was unable to watch him leave with such sadness.

Alone, she thought.

Even when I try to keep them with me, I always wind up alone.

—0—

"Commander Solo."

Han jumped, startled from his impromptu nap in the small interrogation room he'd been led to a half hour ago. He'd been left alone too long, nodding off as he leaned his chin in his right hand on the bare table in front of him. He'd had little sleep in the past day, rudely awoken by Darth Fucking Vader and then camped out by Leia's medbunk to keep an eye on her. Couldn't blame a guy for catching some shut-eye.

Leia had been a mess, stuck in her own head and not particularly communicative. Han hadn't pushed her, relieved she was talking at all, but he could tell she had rolled herself into a tight ball of worry. Still her vitals had been good and she was conscious, more herself than she'd been the morning before, and so he'd tucked his concerns in his pocket and saved them for another day.

And she'd been in better shape than Luke had been, though that wasn't saying much. Luke had been freakishly pale and unmoving when they'd taken him from the Falcon, and Han had given the medcenter staff clear orders to update him on the regular as he sat with Leia. The kid seemed to perk up the minute they started treatment on him.

Once he had been sure Luke was in good hands, he'd enlisted Chewie to help Salla track the Mercs as they staggered in from their random routes to the rendezvous point. That meant he'd been able to spend almost the whole day in the medbay with Leia, standing between her and any and all Alliance personnel like a drogan standing over his hoarded gold.

A whole day spent getting no sleep and trying to keep Leia from freaking the fuck out, that is.

Han focused on the asshole in front of him, unsurprised to see Jan Dodonna conducting his interview. He had suspicions about who was going to be in charge of the Alliance after the events of the morning, since he had assumed Rieekan and Ackbar were tracking the arrival of the Fleet and setting up a plan for settling Echo Base.

"General Dodonna," he mimicked in the general's annoyed tone.

"Can I trust you to remain awake during your interview?" Dodonna asked.

"Suppose it depends on how long it takes."

Dodonna hummed and shuffled his stack of flimsies on the table in front of him. "Funny. I should think an Alliance commander would want to inform his superior officers of the events of the past fourteen hours."

Han clasped his hands. "You aren't my superior officer."

"I am a member of High Command. I am everyone's superior officer."

Han tried very hard not to laugh. Dodonna was posturing, clearly trying to assert authority, and while many of his compatriots might have quailed in front of ol' Dodders, Han only saw insecurity. It was what he respected about Leia and Rieekan: real important people didn't need to tell everyone that they were important.

"Where's Rieekan?" Han asked. "Thought he'd be doing the honors."

"General Rieekan is being debriefed by another member of High Command. We have questions about his conduct, too."

Han nodded, his suspicions confirmed. "So you and Ackbar are in charge now."

Dodonna's wintry eyebrows furrowed. "How do you mean?"

"Ackbar's interrogating Rieekan because he… what? Listened to his junior officers and made a good decision to order the evac?"

"Not an interrogation. A debriefing."

"And since Leia and Mon Mothma are out of the picture at the moment, you and Ackbar are the ones doing the interrogations—"

"Debriefings."

"—so you guys are the ones who get to decide who was right and who was wrong. That puts you in charge."

Han sat back and tapped his clasped hands on the table twice, proud of the shocked look on Dodonna's wrinkled, ancient face. The constant joy he took from flustering the general was reward enough for whatever bullshit he was about to have spouted at him.

And it would be bullshit, of that Han was certain. The circumstances preceding the evacuation had been so muddled and mysterious that it would be easy enough for these two puffed-up morons to twist the facts to blame Rieekan, or Han, or Luke, or even Leia. The truth was a terrifying combination of a lot of factors.

For Han, though, there was only one definitive pathway forward. He would not spill Leia's secret. He was of the opinion that she should've told a few people the truth long before now—Luke and Rieekan, for sure—but it wasn't his secret to tell. And he'd be damned if fucking Dodonna was gonna be the first to know.

"Nothing could be farther from the truth, Commander," Dodonna was saying. "There are real questions about the security of our fleet during the evacuation."

"Like what?"

"Like why there was an evacuation in the first place," the general answered. "Lives could've been lost with a sloppy evacuation like the one you bungled. And the last thing we need now are casualties in a battle we didn't know was happening."

"Sure," Han said, nodding genially before his voice turned falsely mournful. "We lost so many people."

Dodonna's lips became one thin, bloodless line. If he didn't know better, Han would have sworn he was looking at the face of the D'uoth Demon, a street-urchin tall tale on Corellia. The Demon had terrified most of the kids he had known; Han had found it kind of funny.

"Cost is not always measured in casualties," the general bit out. "How did you know the Executor was in the system?"

Han shrugged. "A hunch."

"A hunch."

"Yeah, a hunch," he repeated. "Something about the probe didn't feel right. Woke me up out of a sound sleep. I grabbed Antilles and we went to do a survey sweep."

"Why Antilles?"

Han leaned over, put his chin in his hand in a coquettish manner. "Because Antilles had left the party in the port bay and was the most sober out of anyone I saw."

Dodonna's eyes narrowed. "And if I ask Antilles about this so-called survey sweep? He will corroborate your story?"

Han nodded, though he kicked himself for not reaching out to Wedge earlier to get their stories straight. He probably should have thought of that while he waited for Luke and Leia to get checked out in Medical.

"Yup," he lied. "Ask him."

Dodonna nodded, suspicion everywhere in the set of his shoulders, the long sweep of his nose and the restless movement of his hands. "Don't worry, Commander. I will."

Han spread his hands in an obnoxious display of cockiness. "Great. Can I go to sleep now?"

"One more thing," Dodonna said. "I have a report from Ensign Inding I wanted to confirm with you." Dodonna turned to a piece of flimsy in the middle of his stack, flipped it to face Han with a kind of controlled, vicious glee. "Inding was in the starboard docking bay when you arrived at the Millennium Falcon early this morning. She reports that you came running in, dragging Princess Leia along as if she was drugged or otherwise impaired."

Han's brain couldn't register that word. "Drugged?"

"Yes," Dodonna said. "Inding claims the princess was crying, shaking, clearly in distress."

A flame sparked in Han's chest, the beginnings of real anger, true anger, among the shock of Dodonna's almost-accusation. "She wasn't distressed."

"Reports from Antilles also back up her allegations," Doddona said, narrow-eyed and with a papery smile.

So he has spoken with Wedge, Han thought. "You're out of your damned mind if you think I would do anything so fucking—"

"Language, Solo."

"—stupid to anyone, much less Leia. Are you kidding me?"

The general leaned forward. "I'm inclined to believe Inding's report unless you can offer me a convincing reason not to?"

Outrage unfurled in Han's blood, the deafening sound of his own anger filling his ears. They believed he'd drugged her? That he would harm a hair on that woman's head—any woman, in point of fact, but particularly the person he loved—was ludicrous.

"I don't drug people," he bit out.

"Inding's report says otherwise."

"Inding doesn't know what the hell she's talking about," Han protested. "I'd rather jump in front of a blaster rifle than hurt Leia."

"Princess Leia," Dodonna softly reprimanded, and something about his tone inflamed Han, the presupposition that Han was taking liberties with titles. The general didn't know the extent of Han's relationship with Leia, at least Han didn't think he did, but even before the radical shift in their sometimes-friendship, he'd done nothing to deserve to be treated like a monster. Mercenary, sure; Han would deal with Dodonna's elitist bullshit as it came, but not… not this.

"Ask her," Han urged. "Ask Leia before you go accusing people of shit like that. I would never do that to her."

Dodonna didn't respond, just stared placidly at Han as if he already knew the truth and was waiting for confirmation.

Han eyed him for a moment, then dropped his eyes to the report in his hands, figuring he might as well read what was in it so he could stamp out the smug expression on Dodonna's face. It was a damn sight better than shooting him, Han reasoned.

The report was a short document, only a few hundred words, but it detailed with excruciating precision the scene in the docking bay, replete with Chewie tending to an unconscious Luke on the Falcon's ramp and Han and Leia's dramatic arrival. The report focused on Leia, since Inding seemed to have concluded Luke's condition was the result of intoxication.

Princess Leia Organa appeared distressed and incapable of supporting herself on her own power. She was wearing one of Commander Solo's shirts and pleaded with him many times as they travelled through the docking bay.

Han distinctly remembered the keening, Leia's soft, troubled words, as they'd rushed to the docking bay. Please, please, please, she'd said. We need to go, we need to go...

"I wouldn't do this," Han said after he'd read the report through twice. His voice sounded rough even to his own ears. Hoarse.

"So Her Highness wasn't incapacitated prior to the evacuation?"

Han worked very hard to keep his features calm. He had considered this question in the medbay, and had come up with enough of a reply to stave off basic questioning.

"Leia called me to her quarters. She was having one of her reactions, you know, from the interrogation drugs on the Death Star. So I took her with me to get help."

It was a feeble explanation but it was all he could offer. Every now and then, Leia did have residual chemical reactions from the drugs Vader had used on her, but none that looked anything like what had awoken her the night before. And it wouldn't hold up against someone claiming he'd fucking drugged the woman he practically worshipped.

Dodonna sifted through his stack of flimsies again. "Her bloodwork didn't come back with chemical markers of any such reaction."

"Did her bloodwork say she'd been drugged?"

The general pursed his lips. "I understand such chemicals are often engineered to metabolize quickly. Perhaps we didn't get her sample fast enough."

Han's anger flared again, white and hot. "And why did they give you her medical reports in the first place? That's private."

"I'm conducting debriefings. I need such information."

"Both of 'em?" Han asked, fury dripping from his tone, because he knew Leia's system would be drug-free. Luke's though… he'd been at the party. There was a good chance his bloodwork might show some intoxication, though that wasn't the source of the confusion in the loading dock, nor the strangeness of Han's movements against the Executor.

He had a striking, awful thought then, invading and horrible.

Could a blood test reveal Force-sensitivity?

The report from Inding didn't explain why Luke was in a similar state to Leia's. It didn't explain anything about the evacuation or the reason for Vader's attack. It didn't explain most of what had happened. Han had already assumed Leia would have to divulge her secrets to High Command after this, but it was looking like the time was coming faster than he'd thought.

And if they could figure it out by a lab test…

His chest squeezed tight, kicking himself for saying anything about it. Shit shit shit.

Dodonna blinked. "Is there a reason I should look at Commander Skywalker's medical report?"

Han didn't move a muscle, sick with fear and anger at himself. "No."

The general stared at him, eyes calculating and sharp, and Han's stomach dropped. For a brief moment he considered escape, considered blasting Dodonna right then and there. But he couldn't do that and remain with the Alliance, remain with Leia, fight the fight he knew was coming when Vader found them again. He needed to lead the Mercs. Needed to do what was right.

"Langrog?" Dodonna called. The room's only hatch opened and in walked a tall, solidly-built human male. "Escort Commander Solo to the brigg for detainment until further notice."

"You're making a mistake, Jan," Han said, holding onto his composure by a thread. "I didn't do anything."

Dodonna smiled, hard and awful. "I believe the mistake was made when we offered you a commission. Be grateful you aren't leaving here in stun-cuffs."

Han swallowed hard. Glancing at the guard, he decided he had better let Leia fight this battle herself. And if he blasted either of these smug pricks, she wouldn't be able to do a damn thing to help.

"Fuck you," he said and stood up, walking toward the guard with all the anger he felt in his bones.


Author's Note: I hope April finds you all safe and healthy. I know many of you (like me) use fanfiction for escapism, and we desperately need some escapism right now. As such, I am staunchly trying to maintain my posting schedule. Fair warning: I work in healthcare and will do everything in my power to get a new chapter to you on May 1st. That's my plan.

But my first priority will be my hospital and its caregivers and patients. And if things turn dire in my neck of the woods, I will respond to your reviews to the April chapter to let you know if a May 1st update will be postponed. I can't figure out how else to let all readers know, particularly my beloved anons, but I'll do what I can. Chapter 8 is written as of right now; AmongstEmeraldClouds and I will be in close communication to get it posted on time. But I wanted to make sure all readers took the May update with some grace and flexibility.

Thanks once again to my editor extraordinaire, AmonstEmeraldClouds. It feels better to call her an editor than a beta: this story is written like an actual novel and she puts in such good work. Without her, there is no C&P2, and so we should all be grateful!

Thank you, my friends. Stay safe, stay home, and stay positive. I'm with you and we'll be okay. - KR