Clarity
A faint hiss was Han's only indication that the seal to his cell was dissipating. Startled, he looked up, eyes tired and wary.
He'd lost track of the time and his back was killing him. All jails were the same, he groused to himself. No creature comforts, no privacy. He had fallen asleep on the hard bench but he now sat up and leaned into the wall, ready for the next person to walk through the hatch.
He had been too exhausted to sleep deeply, caught in an endless cycle of anger, worry and then right back to anger. Exhausted and hyper-fixated: a bad combination for anyone, much less a fellow trapped in a small cell.
It had been at least 24 hours since Leia woke him up in a panicked frenzy. That was his best guess, since there was no chrono on the wall to confirm and no one had come in besides Rieekan.
His eyes took a moment to focus: bleary, watery shapes assembling into normal forms and colors. When the spinning eased, he found himself looking at the weary face of Rieekan.
Han jumped up, back protesting but the pain quickly forgotten. "Is she okay?"
"She's fine," the general said. "Being released from Medical as we speak."
Han heard the odd tone in Rieekan's voice, the stiff, halting cadence.
"But?"
Rieekan sighed. "I… she's fine. Physically, at least. Chewbacca is with her."
That was a strange way of phrasing it, although Han knew Leia had to be a hailstorm of emotional wreckage at the moment. Chewie would make sure she was okay, he was confident about that.
He moved to his next biggest concern. "Luke?"
"Him, too." Rieekan paused and then noticeably slumped, shoulders rolling forward. "Did you know she was Force-sensitive?"
A sharp inhale and then Han nodded. He'd known all along that this revelation was the likely outcome. They'd forced her hand by locking him in here. Dodonna hadn't even known what fire he'd been playing with and now he'd only managed to hurt the woman he claimed he was trying to protect.
Han watched Rieekan as he pursed his lips, the general falling into his own inner maelstrom, trying to find a center in the middle of all the chaos. Leia had told Han about her history with Rieekan, how the man had been a good friend of her father's and a staple in the House Organa. In the dearth of support from her people, he had become a kind of mentor, a father-figure. And ever since, they had toed a unique line between confidants and colleagues that Han didn't fully comprehend. He could appreciate feeling both awe for the young princess of Alderaan's gumption and anger that that gumption came from someone who was more interested in the welfare of the galaxy than her own safety.
And so Han understood Rieekan's bewilderment. No one else but Chewie and Han himself had seen what Leia was truly capable of. It had to come as a kind of shock. But Han had seen it with his own eyes, had been protected by that indescribable power.
To a man like Rieekan, however, who had watched over Leia her entire life, it must have seemed like a complete surprise.
"Do you know why she didn't tell me?" he asked.
Han swallowed, feeling the push and pull of dueling loyalties. On one hand, he had been trying to get Leia to open up to Luke about her experiences on Nar Shaddaa for weeks. In the back of his mind, he had also hoped she would confide in the general. Leia could pretend she was ice-cold strategy and bad-ass confidence all she wanted, but Han knew that her awe-inspiring confidence hid a very deep empathy and a need to keep her chosen people close. And those chosen people included Carlist Rieekan.
She'd told him about Han. That was proof enough.
Still, he felt torn about talking to Rieekan about this stuff. Han figured the general could help Leia, help her understand more about her parents and her past. But Han also knew she would find any such conversation to be deeply patronizing and unwelcome. She'd learned an awful lot of terrible things about Han's history since they'd started sleeping together and she hadn't shared any of it with anyone else. And while he didn't exactly know all the rules of a stable, committed relationship, he was pretty damned sure that blabbing about personal shit broke a few of them.
"You'd have to talk to her about that, General. I'm just the guy she's sleeping with."
Rieekan rolled his eyes at his flippance. "Sounds like it's more serious than that."
"Says who?"
"Says you," the general said, a hint of a grin at the edges of his mouth. "When you declared love while in jail."
Han tilted his head. "Don't know what you're talking about. Sir."
Shaking his head, Rieekan walked over to the edge of the cell and pressed his palm flat against the security reader at the door. "You're a pain in the ass, Solo. It's too bad you're good at your job."
Han nodded and sat back on the hard bench. "Right?"
"And since when do you call anyone sir?"
"Outside of the bunk?" he asked with the last of his humor. "I don't."
Rieekan turned back to face him as the hatch hissed open, scrunching his nose. "Shut your mouth and get through this hatch."
Han's eyes shot to the general's, then to the door, then back to the general. "What?"
"The charges against you have been dropped," Rieekan said in a much more even tone. "You are free to leave."
"Just like that?" Han asked, standing up.
Rieekan shrugged. "Jan is many things, but he isn't stupid."
"Are you sure?"
"Fairly sure. He can also only focus on one scandal at a time."
Han stood frozen, wondering if this was some kind of allegiance trap. He wasn't a paranoid man by most measures, but he sure as hell had been put through the wringer the past couple of days. He was tired, he was worried, he felt the familiar bone-deep weariness he always felt after a tough battle. And he didn't fully trust himself not to fuck up.
His indecision must have been obvious. "It's not a trick, son. Her Highness told Jan what happened, her dreams, her… abilities. Why she acted the way she did before the evacuation."
A flutter ran through Han's chest at the idea of getting out of here, of seeing Leia sooner than he had anticipated "Where is she?"
"I'll help you find her if you cut out the smart remarks about my princess."
Han grabbed his jacket and rushed to the hatch, eager to leave the cell and try to alleviate the tension today had held over all of them. "Your princess," he muttered under his breath, missing the grim smile Rieekan gave to his back as he followed him out the hatch.
—0—
Leia had fallen into herself, descending into a place no one else could reach. A chasm had appeared beneath her cool facade and she had plummeted—the human woman with substance and thoughts and feelings—while above the mask remained in place. Down she'd fallen, down, down until she wasn't sure if she could crawl her way back.
She was here and yet she wasn't. A dichotomy of wavy lines, her mind a thousand parsecs away but her body taking up space in the docking bay deck. The area was busy, mechanics buzzing, checking ships, readying them for the cold horror of Echo Base. They'd make landfall in a few hours and then they could finish the work of the advance team. The excitement of a new base, of being planetside, floated through the air as if it were alive.
But she wasn't there yet. She wasn't sure if she would be for a while.
Twin. The word hummed, underlying everything, underscoring the business at hand. She didn't have a role here, now. She only had a twin brother and what the hell did that even mean?
Leia turned to look at him. Luke, who gazed around the steady movement in the docking bay, whose blue eyes settled on hers when he realized she was staring at him. She catalogued his features, the nose that wasn't like hers at all. Maybe the shape of their eyes was similar? Their mouths definitely weren't. He was taller than her, but everyone was taller than her anyway. Where he was blonde and cool and composed, she was dark and fire and movement.
Twin.
They should look alike, shouldn't they? They should have similar life-days, similar names. How did Owen and Beru Lars and Bail and Breha Organa wind up with a set of twins? Where was the connection between them? And why hadn't Leia known, how had she not figured it out? If she'd shared a womb with this boy, shouldn't she have known?
Why had no one told them?
She hadn't had a clue. There was a connection between them, of course, but she'd always thought it was friendship that bound them together. She had trusted him so fast, but then again she'd had to; they had met in the bowels of a giant, planet-killing space station hours before her slated execution. Their lives had depended on immediate trust, but then why had it mattered that his life be spared? Billions had just perished on Alderaan: why was the farmer from Tatooine any different?
Daddy, she thought. Why didn't you tell me?
Nothing made sense to her now and the constants were crumbling. Who knew what the fallout from her revelations would be? If there'd been any way to keep it hidden, she would have buried it so deep no one could find it. She would have clawed her way through the mire on her own if it hadn't been for…
Han.
Tall, rangey ams, long legs, chaotic flop of hair over a chiseled jaw. At first she thought she was imagining him, not a hallucination but a figment of her desperate wish to see him. She didn't trust herself to know the difference. Truth didn't seem to have a whole lot of meaning to her anyway.
But then she caught his eyes and the look she found there was of such enormous relief that she kicked into instinct. Before she knew what was happening her feet were moving, running, the loose set of fatigues clinging to her body as the boots hit the deck at a stray clip. She launched herself into his arms in plain view of everyone, wanting nothing more than to hold onto the one constant she had left.
"Leia," he murmured into her hair and his arms were so warm, the heat coming off his chest soothing in the most ridiculous way. Her feet dangled off the floor and she was making a spectacle of herself but she didn't care, she didn't care, she was a knot of emotions and she needed… she needed…
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry, Han. I'm so sorry."
"No," he said as her boots touched the ground again.
"It's my fault—"
"Doesn't matter," he said, leaning down to catch her eyes and framing her face with his hands. "You okay?"
She put her hands over his and looked at those beautiful eyes, deep into the unfathomable green, over to the grim set of his mouth. "No," she said and was shocked to discover the truth of her answer. She felt nothing. Her brain whirled at a thousand kilometers a second but she felt nothing aside from her need to make sure Han was okay. "Are you?"
He looked at her for a moment, still unreadable, still as unfazed as ever, and then bent to press his forehead against hers. She closed her eyes, aware that this was more intimate than if he had kissed her there in front of gods-knew-who, aware that everyone had heard about the assault allegations and was deconstructing every single thing they did here, now, in a moment of such relief and exposure.
And yet.
Why did it matter?
Nothing mattered anymore.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped closer to him, unhurried, unworried, and for one simple, pure moment as she pressed her lips to his, she let the galaxy go.
—0—
Inside the Falcon, around the dejarik table with the light low and the air crowded, five figures sat in silence: Han, Leia and Rieekan around the holochess board, Luke and Chewie—leaning on the nav station—holding cups of caf. Leia's cup of tea was cooling, untouched, and Han's left hand was hidden from the others, cradled as it was in both of Leia's and sitting in her lap. She couldn't seem to stop touching him and he wasn't sure if it was for his sake or her own.
"Twins," he said into the stillness.
No one answered him. He swallowed, throat thick, trying to put the invisible puzzle pieces together in order to see the whole picture. It didn't make much sense, no matter how he switched angles or tried to shove the pieces into the wrong spots. The puzzle was impossible to understand, so he asked the next logical question.
"How?"
"We don't know," Luke said. "That's kind of the long and the short of it."
"The blood tests confirm it," Rieekan said. "I was furious when Jan looked at them—"
The lowlife, Chewie interrupted.
"—but there really isn't any doubt about it," he finished.
Han looked at the general for a moment, then turned to Luke. "Did you know?"
The kid seemed taken aback. "What?"
"Did your… your mumbo-jumbo… tell you about any of this?"
"No," Luke answered with eyes that looked as big as Home One. "I had no idea."
Han exhaled and focused on the last person in the hold. She gripped his hand tightly, like a lifeline, and he hated that he had to ask. "Did you know?"
She shook her head, eyes far away and… he didn't like the word empty, but that's how she looked to him. Empty. Like their expansive scope had whittled down to nothing. She was either too large or too small for this moment, he wasn't sure which, but the vacancy was terrible and terrifying.
"It explains a lot," he said, trying to lighten the mood. "You being twins."
Leia didn't turn to look at him but Luke did. "What?"
"I mean," he began, trying not to disclose how much he'd watched their interactions before the mission to Nar Shaddaa. "You both do that thing with your fingers."
It was bait and she had to have known it, but looking up at him, Leia fell for it anyway. "What thing?"
"The thing," he said. "When you're stressed or, or—"
Overwhelmed, Chewie supplied. Tired. Under pressure. Sometimes when you have not eaten.
"Yeah. The little finger maneuver. Like this."
He performed it for them then, a little show, albeit much slower than either of them did it. Like a wave from littlest finger to thumb. A quick snap-roll, like when Luke turned on his father's lightsaber or when Leia set up for a tough shot with her blaster. Barely noticeable but, well, Han had spent a lot of time noticing Leia and it was a quirk that humanized her. It happened so fast that hardly anyone else would see it; too vague to be a tell but too often reoccurring for it to not be.
Leia squeezed his hand but didn't answer. Luke, however, was fascinated and leaned so far over his perch that Han was afraid he'd topple over. "That's incredible. I never noticed that I did that."
"It's also why you can't bluff to save your life."
Han noticed Rieekan had not said anything and directed his next question to him. "Ever notice that they both eat slower than a bantha in summer?"
The general looked startled. "How slowly does a bantha eat in summer?"
"Slow," Luke answered. "I'm not that slow."
Yes, Little Jedi. You are.
Han nudged Leia's shoulder with his own, hoping to unlock her enough to join the conversation. "How many times have I had to kick you two out of my ship because you took too long with dinner?"
Han expected a quick, biting retort. He'd kicked Luke out of the Falcon before but never Leia, having given her free reign of the ship even before they had started their sleepovers. She had slept in the crew cabin before; she had used his hot water 'fresher on more than one occasion and he had even let her sneak caf from the galley because she preferred his to the sludge the Alliance served.
How they hadn't figured out he'd loved her was beyond him.
Leia didn't answer him directly. She didn't point out his flagrant attempt to mischaracterize their habits. She didn't smile or scowl or do anything except say one clear, heartbroken sentence.
"It explains our power, too."
Han shut his mouth and looked to Rieekan sitting across from him. The older man didn't seem to know how to reply to her, either. Luke sure thought he did.
"Speaking of that," the kid said. "You said you learned you were Force-sensitive on Nar Shaddaa?"
Leia nodded.
Rieekan leaned in. "What happened? The report didn't mention anything about that."
Han thought she might not answer or that he might have to urge her on. This new side of her was confusing. Shock, yeah, he understood that. But he suspected the best thing she could do would be to talk about it with the people she'd chosen to trust with her real self. The whole issue the past few months had been that Leia was not meant for secrets—she could do it for the sake of the cause, but this wasn't for the survival of the Alliance.
He slipped his hand from between hers and wrapped it around her lower back. "Ah, hell. Just tell 'em, Sweetheart."
"I stopped stun bolts in the marketplace, in front of Vader," she said, propping her clasped hands on the holochess table.
"With her bare hands," Han added.
Luke and Rieekan were silent. Han normally would have laughed at the hushed eagerness in Luke's demeanor, but now was not the time.
"It's not something I particularly want to revisit," she finished with a little less rigidity, with a little more of the Leia-strength he adored. "I still don't know how to feel about it."
"Like… you put up your hand and deflected them?" Luke asked. "Can Jedi do that?"
They all turned to Chewie and Rieekan, the two oldest beings in the group. Shifting his weight, Chewie softly growled: I saw Jedi do much that I could not explain. It did not surprise me to see Little Princess's abilities.
Rieekan did not seem to totally understand Chewie's Shyriiwook. He shrugged. "I heard rumors but never met any Jedi before the Purge."
There is a holo, Chewie offered.
Han shifted, uncomfortable. The holo had been an accident, one that Han had felt bad about keeping, one Leia knew existed and had not told him to delete. He'd known that there would come a day when Leia's Force-sensitivity would be made public, or at least more public than she wanted it to be, and something in him had felt it was important to have it safe and secured in the Falcon's databanks.
Maybe it'd been a kind of pride, too. He didn't know.
But Leia only shook her head and said, "I don't want to see it. Not yet."
Han shared a worried look with his first mate. Leia's reluctance to accept her abilities—or potential or sensitivity or whatever she wanted to call it—was uncharacteristic for her. The whole episode had been that way and they didn't know how to help her. She had proven to the entire galaxy that she was the kind of person who got things done, often to her own detriment. And so her avoidance now was concerning.
"Can I see it?" Luke asked.
Han wanted to smack him. Not for wanting to see evidence of Leia's power, but for the ruthless eagerness that he showed, even now, even as she struggled with who she was and to whom she was related.
Luke caught his glare. "It's just… I struggled with the physical stuff Ben made me do. I could do it but not like... that."
"Physical stuff," Leia quoted back to him and her tone was so dry, so dispassionate, that Han squeezed her hip instinctively. A kind of warning hastened by a flicker of annoyance.
The tone was enough to adjust the kid's approach and he turned as cold, as clinical, as Leia. Han wasn't sure that it was an improvement.
"Have you heard voices before?" he asked.
Han cocked an eyebrow but that was mostly instinct kicking in. Luke hearing voices tracked with the picture Han was forming. Now that he knew they were siblings, a lot of seemingly-unrelated things had started to make sense. And while he had always known that Luke and Leia were diametric opposites in nearly everything but their willingness to protect the innocent, he hadn't realized how… how that could be a good thing. How his eagerness and her confidence supplemented the whole.
"Except for the dreams, no."
Luke leaned forward. "I can hear people sometimes, when they are angry or excited. And I can see their colors, like… how they feel?" Luke continued, struggling to maintain his objectivity. His voice once again verged dangerously into enthusiasm, despite what looked like his best efforts.
"Your processor is broken, then, kid," Han butted in. "Leia and I had to tell you about us."
He recalled the anxiety Leia had felt about the easier of her two revelations and it put some things into perspective even as it still angered him. He accepted that Leia was fiercely protective of her personal life, that her childhood and adolescence hadn't allowed for an easy introduction to sex or relationships. Han had had the opposite problem: indiscretion was a way of life on the streets. Honestly, who cared about who was sleeping with whom?
But there was a part of him, a very small, bitter part, that still didn't quite understand why it had taken a week to tell Luke and months to tell everyone else.
"I knew something was going on. I'm not that clueless," Luke defended.
"Whatever you say," Han said. "The betting pool doesn't lie."
Luke scowled and Han tried to suppress his grin. Even now, with the fucking mess they'd all lived through the past twenty-four hours, the kid was fun to tease. Different from Leia—she fought like hell to win—but still fun.
"It is fascinating," Rieekan said into the charged room. "If you don't mind, Princess, I would like to see the holo."
She pursed her lips but nodded.
Follow me, Little Jedi, General. I will bring it up for you. It is grainy and the footage isn't the best. Our belly gun holo-recorder is outdated but you should be able to see it well enough.
Once the three of them had left the hold, Leia exhaled and leaned back into his arm as if defeated. Han let her sit there for a moment, content to listen to their friends' voices as they disappeared around the bend, the slow quiet descending as the cockpit hatch hissed shut behind them.
"Bed?" Han offered.
She turned to look at him, eyes big and the questions in them even bigger. Her spine straightened as if she was sitting against a wall, her breath becoming shallow until she inclined her chin in agreement. Princess habits. A picture of infallibility and invulnerability.
He didn't buy it for a second.
"You're tired," he urged. "I'm tired. Let's go forget about the galaxy for a bit."
"I thought you might want to be alone tonight."
He blinked in confusion, thinking there was something important that he was missing. He was too tired to think in more than one direction and Leia, with her expansive eyes, sometimes pushed him farther than he could handle.
"C'mon." he said, standing and leading her by the hand to their bunk.
A short walk, silent, more real because of her hand in his. He felt raw, wrought: like a fraying rope or a rusting rivet. His mettle wasn't strong enough for discussions or revelations right now, when he was so tired. He didn't need complexity; he was cut down to his most basic needs. Sleep and Leia. That was it.
And yet Leia didn't seem to be of the same mind.
"They'll wonder where we've gone," she protested as she sat on the bunk, though he noticed she had started to remove her boots.
"No, they won't," he answered.
If he was this tired, Chewie and Rieekan must be, too. Luke might have some endless supply of energy—and had had a nice day of rest in the medcenter, too—but even the kid would realize that everyone needed some shut-eye. Let them chew on the holo and then come back to assess it later.
Han turned to his bare-bones closet and quickly changed into a loose set of sleep pants. He preferred sleeping naked when Leia was around, but he didn't think now was the time for any more mixed messages. He wanted to sleep and he wanted to wake up and have her there, warm beside him. And then he wanted to find out what the hell had happened with the twin thing while he was waiting in the brig.
But his brain was not going to function well if she started talking before he slept. There was a very distinct possibility that she would—
"Han."
Damn it. He knew that tone. He'd heard it before and it never inspired a ton of confidence in him. It was Leia's oh shit I fucked up voice and he didn't like it, didn't want it.
"Leia," he said, turning to her, mimicking her sad tone, trying to lighten her mood the same way he had annoyed Dodonna in the interrogation room. It didn't work.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Instinctive deflection, as old as his bones and born from his poor-as-shit childhood. The way he said that phrase felt off, even to him. There was a layer underneath the words that was barbed, like a blanket covering a vibroknife, like danger under wraps. All seemed okay on the outside but the daggered tip was right there, hidden and waiting.
"You aren't—you don't think it's strange that Luke is my… my—?"
"Brother?" he interrupted. "Nah, that's fine."
He could've kicked himself for the dismissive tone, the old, heartless bastard. But he just didn't have the mindfulness to be concerned about familial revelations at the moment. He had survived a battle, been arrested and held under enormous pressure and then had this thrown at him, too. He was falling asleep just sitting here and he didn't want to talk about any of it. Honestly, why the fuck did it matter?
She paused, waiting for more from him, but as far as he was concerned, he was done.
"Fine," she repeated.
He walked over to the bunk and collapsed onto his back next to her, his legs dangling off the side. "Yeah?"
"It is not fine!" she said as she turned onto her hip to look down on him. "How is any of this fine?"
"I mean, it's weird. It's a giant-ass coincidence, I'll give you that."
He looked at her, the fatigue starting to drag him down and the knife's edge poking through the blanket. Her mouth hung open, her eyes fiery and intense.
Expectation, that was it. She expected something from him. And, oh, hell, he was tired enough to fall into the trap she was setting for herself.
"What do you want me to say? You want me to yell and scream with you about this shit?"
"Surely it bothers you," she said.
"Honestly, Sweetheeart, I've had a fucking day," he said, wiping a hand over his eyes, feeling like he'd aged a decade in the past few hours. "I could care less about Luke being related to you. Not right now."
He didn't imagine he would care once he was more awake, either, but he knew enough about Leia to realize that he couldn't lie and say he was fine if he wasn't. He'd spent a year and a half accusing her of doing that same thing to him and she wouldn't let him get away with it now.
Then again…
Han looked at her, really looked at the frenzy in those eyes, at the dogged obsession, and realized that Leia was absolutely not here with him. She was spiralling. His chest cracked even as the embers of his anger smoldered in their nest.
"The odds of it—"
"Leia."
"—why didn't we know? How could they have left us in the dark this whole time?"
"Leia."
"I'm furious, Han. I'm absolutely enraged by this whole thing—"
He'd had enough.
He thought about all the things she could be angry about. He thought about losing her homeworld, being tortured, fighting what felt like a righteous and endless war. He thought about how she lived her life, the tenacity he loved, the strength he admired and the humanity he cherished. And yet what was it about this Force shit that made her act so damned strange? Something about it made her isolate, made her avoid, made her forget that she was part of a group, part of a family who cared for her.
Something about it made her selfish.
The word bounced around his head like a smashball in an empty court. Selfish was the last word he would choose to describe her. She was acting like a martyr, stoic but alone. It was sickening, sometimes, the way she forgot that she was a person underneath that mantle. He never understood it. He couldn't fathom how much others mattered to her.
But the Jedi thing was different. Something about it had always made her clam up tight, like she couldn't trust anyone to help her. And being alone had always been the issue with her: she made her worst decisions when she felt like she had to keep everyone out. Maybe she hadn't always been like this.
It didn't matter. This was selfishness, pure and simple, and the realization stopped him short, got his brain spinning out like a kid's toy.
"You're furious? You?"
The question spilled from him in uncontrollable plumes, like dark smoke. Anger crushed logic and he couldn't stop the words from spewing forth: magma from a volcano, the tip of the vibroblade revealed. He didn't yell, but the weight of his words was heavy and a very small part of him was shocked by the vehemence of his tone.
"Yes!"
"And how was your stay in the brig, Worship?"
Pausing, she brought her eyes to his, still as a statue. And that somehow made it worse.
He was done with selfishness. He was done putting it aside for another day. If they were going to do this now, they were going to do this.
The fuck you doing, getting mad at her?
But he knew. He knew exactly what this was. He had lost the fight with his control after being pushed to the side again and again, after doing his damndest to be a good commander, a good partner, a good support system. He was tired. His body ached from sitting on the hard bench for hours. He was fed up with all of it, all of them, the whole situation.
She hadn't wanted to tell people about them. And that had hurt him more than even he had realized. The fear that he wasn't good enough, that he didn't measure up to her ridiculous heritage, had crept in and sat patiently in his gut. It was stupid, he knew. Leia didn't care about any of that, but by ignoring it they'd only created a larger monster. And then his arrest had unleashed it all.
He didn't like that Leia only paid lip-service to his hurt. He knew she cared, cared deeply. He knew she loved him. That was a fact. In her right mind and beyond the blindness of her shock, she would have been more mindful of his needs. But at some point—at some point—she had to realize that what she'd been doing was causing him pain. He hated that it was happening now, his exhaustion like an accelerant to the fire. But it was happening and there wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could do about it.
Leia looked stricken, the fire in her eyes snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. "Han," she tried, but nothing else came from her lips. She looked... lost. And he hated it, but he hated that feeling low in his stomach even more.
She hadn't listened and look what had happened. Look what had happened to them.
Look what had happened to him.
"I just don't understand," he continued, and while his voice had never been loud, it dropped even lower. "Dodonna was gonna do whatever he wanted. That's not on you. But the rest of it? We could have dealt with all this shit so much better if other people had known."
"They don't get a say about us," she said, nearly mumbled, her voice so hushed, so full of self-pity. "That's why I didn't tell them."
"Yeah, I get that," he said. "But not everything happens like how you want it to happen."
He saw the embers ignite, saw the hard-edged woman who was almost a stranger to him now. "You're telling me that life isn't fair? Me?"
"Yeah, if it's what you need to hear."
Her jaw dropped and Han was shocked to find her speechless. Before all of this had started—before twins and the Force and even before they'd admitted how they'd felt about each other—Leia would fight tooth and nail for the last word. She was a well-trained diplomat; words were her defense as much as his blaster pistol was his. Never, never, had he managed to silence her.
Maybe he was doing this whole relationship thing wrong. Maybe he was fucking this up. But he'd swear up and down that part of being a good partner was making sure that one didn't get lost in the mire of their own mistakes.
"We should've told Luke," he said, starting small. "That's all I meant."
"I think you meant a lot more than that."
He licked his lips, nodded. "Maybe I did. Maybe I'm tired as hell and could use about sixteen hours of sleep and a hot fresher and this whole thing is screwing up my plans."
Her face didn't change. Not an iota, not a twitch of muscle. He'd never seen her look this way and it terrified him. He couldn't read her at all. This was like a mask of a Leia he didn't know.
"I'll go," she finally said.
She got ready to stand and Han's heart nearly ripped itself to shreds. A thrum of panic swept through him, a deep fear being realized, like his lungs had forgotten how to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide, like his veins had run ice-cold. Essential truths of the galaxy were being torn apart and he couldn't handle that.
Suddenly everything was spinning out of his control and he grabbed her hand—not to stop her so much as to reassure himself of her permission to do so.
"No," he said.
There were a million things he wished he could have said in that moment. The words were there, on his lips, but they turned to vaporous mist when he tried. All he could do was say no. Not a command, not an ultimatum. Just no.
"If you don't want me here—"
"I want you here," he said. "I'm tired and pissed. That is not the same as not wanting you."
He was about to add here, but stopped himself. It was truer without it. Being angry at her and her stupid decisions did not mean he didn't want her.
The fire in her eyes, the hurt, seemed to grow larger. And then his words sunk in, penetrating that awful shroud of protection that he'd fought like hell to break through.
"You're not okay," she said.
"No," he answered. "I'm not. But I want you here until I am."
She sat down as he sat up and it was like they were finally—finally—speaking similar languages again.
"You have every right to be angry," she whispered.
Han nodded. "Yeah. And you got every right to be confused. Just don't take it out on me."
She dropped her eyes only to look back up at him, a request in that beautiful face that had returned to a normal spitfire, confident expression. And there was another plea. He needed sleep and so did she, but it looked to him like she also needed to clear her mind. The difference was that now she was asking him if he wanted to do the same, and it reframed the conversation enormously. Now it wasn't her concerns against his. It wasn't her fight and confusion against the slights made against him.
It was a kind of reckoning.
So he started small. "Why didn't you want to tell Luke about the marketplace?"
"I don't know how to deal with it," she admitted. "I'm afraid that everything will change."
He scooted close enough that their knees touched. "No shit," he murmured.
"I've spent my whole life being one thing and now I'm not that thing anymore. I'm not a princess. I'm not a daughter or a senator or even part of a culture or a people. I'm this... this aberration. The outlier on the map."
"And the Jedi thing makes it worse."
She nodded. "And you make it worse, too. Because here you are, an outlier yourself but you somehow make it look easy. You're the hero mercenary who became the hero commander and I... I'm lost on my own journey. Failing at my own journey. And I don't fail."
"Bullshit," he said, firm and uncompromising.
"It's not bullshit," she argued. "That's what it feels like."
"Okay, fine," he said. "You aren't a princess. You don't have a planet. But what's this about not having a people?"
"Alderaan is gone."
"You have an Alliance full of people. The hell do you think they're fighting for?"
She pursed her lips but didn't answer.
"They fight for you," he said with absolute conviction. "Words aren't gonna make people willing to die for a cause. They need a person to believe in. They aren't here for Mon Mothma or Rieekan or fucking Jan Dodonna. They're here for you."
"They don't know who I am."
This was the crux of the problem, he realized. This was the hurdle, the barrier she kept butting up against. Leia knew she was the Alliance's talisman. Or, rather, she knew the tragic warrior-princess was.
But Leia wasn't tragic and the princess mantle meant less than nothing now. She'd started to find a new kind of normal for herself, had started to feel things again after the monumental loss of Alderaan. She had let him in. And maybe that she could have wrestled with, but then being a Jedi, too? And now a long-lost twin?
"Do you think people won't follow you if you're sleeping with me?"
He knew the answer to this question: he believed her when she said that she hadn't wanted to tell High Command about them because of her fierce desire for a private life unsullied by politics or opinions. And as much as he hated that he'd been arrested for something that was a stupid result of her silence in the matter, it hadn't bothered him that it had happened. As he'd said, Dodders was going to do what he wanted to do.
He had just wanted to deal with it together, not against each other in a war of who was suffering the most. He had just wanted her to listen.
She shook her head. "I don't care what they think."
"Do you think they won't follow you because you're Luke's sister?"
Leia winced but took a second to think about it. "No," she answered. "They might even like it. I can see it being a nice story, from a political angle."
Han agreed. He wasn't an expert on people, not by a long shot, but the twin thing was more a key that unlocked a door rather than unleashing the monster behind it. Answered some questions, created a lot more, but none of that was inherently dangerous.
Still it led to the last and most difficult question. "Do you think they won't follow you because you're a Jedi?"
A sharp inhale. He could see the struggle in the line of her shoulders, in the way her spine became rigid and her posture slipped into princess perfection. Carida had taught him a phrase that seemed to apply to Leia right now: batten down the hatches. Some ancient stupidity that had zero relevance to his life until this very moment. Like an old seafaring ship, she was protecting herself from the storm outside.
"Yes," she whispered. "That's what I think."
"Why?"
"Because most people struggle to understand the physical world: what they can see and touch. An invisible world predicated on the whims of a select few genetic abnormalities? No one will understand that."
"The Rogues follow Luke," he countered.
"Luke is Luke," she said. "Luke is ephemeral and naive. He comes from a place of want, not privilege. His story is heroic."
"And yours isn't?"
She shook her head. "Mine is tragic. I serve the Alliance best as a figurehead, a morality tale for those who think they can cling to their passivity in the fight against the Emperor."
"No one sees you and thinks passive, Leia."
"Well," she said, and waved a hand. "They don't see me and think Jedi, either."
He tried humor. "The old man was pushy and annoying when it came to doing the right thing. Sounds awfully familiar to me."
"What am I going to do, Han? Everything I do ends up hurting you, or Luke, or interferes with my work with the Alliance."
He chewed on that for a moment, not wanting to diminish what her decisions had put him through but not wanting her to beat herself to death about it, either. She couldn't predict what people would think about her newfound power, and stressing about that was a recipe for disaster, as they well knew by now. Who could say that being a Jedi would change anything at all? It wasn't like she could train. It wasn't like she could find a lightsaber and go off cutting people's arms.
She talked about dark wells of power. He just didn't see how she could possibly fall into one.
"Listen," he began. "I think you've tied yourself in knots keeping things from people and that's most of the problem. You ain't cut out for lying. And you don't do so hot when you're alone, either."
"I use to be a spy."
"You're a tiny, little thing and people underestimated you," he countered. "That's how you got away with it. Not because you're an A-class liar."
Her expression didn't change but her shoulders softened and her hand found his on her knee. She squeezed tightly, and then interlaced their fingers. "I'm so sorry you were arrested. I'm sorry I had a part in that. It wasn't fair to you."
He thought about clearing her of all responsibility again, of pushing her behavior under the rug, of elevating her concerns over his. He thought about it, and then realized that they were better when they were honest with each other.
"Thanks," he said. Then he raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers in a gesture that echoed tired genuflection but sitting here, on his old bunk, after the events of the past day and a half, had far more meaning. He just wanted her near him, wanted her genuine smile and her confident heart bare.
"You need sleep," she said.
He raised his eyebrows in an expression that clearly said no shit. "Best idea you've had in about six months, Worship."
He helped her undress, shedded the sleep pants he wore because he needed the skin-to-skin contact, and collapsed back into their bunk. Breathing in the fragrance of her hair, he felt the smooth warmth of her abdomen under his fingers, the rise and fall of her breathing against his chest, feeling the worry slip out of him as the moment stretched peacefully.
It'd be okay, he thought as he drifted off to sleep. They'd be alright.
—0—
He wasn't certain when he became aware of Obi-Wan's presence. Meditation dulled the senses as it expanded them, created and revealed some truths even as it shadowed others. He could taste the humidity of the environment against his skin, could feel the creak and moan of tired bones. And, too, he saw possibilities, endless possibilities, a galaxy of pain and joy and darkness and light.
And then Obi-Wan, full of old heartache and drowned hopes. Disappointment in every molecule of the dead man's spirit.
"It is time," Obi-Wan said. "You must help them."
The tired bones whispered their truth, the air swallowed him whole and he knew, he knew, the Force agreed.
"Time, it is," he agreed.
Author's Note: Chapter ten will be posted Wednesday, July 1st! Special thanks, as always, to the incredible AmongstEmeralClouds for editing and holding strong on the posting schedule. -KR
