Plan of Action
Quicker than lightning, Leia's eyes shot open, focusing into the darkness of the cabin in full night-cycle. She couldn't place what had awoken her, only that she had been tugged out of sleep with all the subtlety of an Imperial air raid. For a moment, she imagined that that had been the culprit, but no sirens wailed and her comm remained silent on Han's desk on the far side of the cabin.
They hadn't made it back to her bunkroom the night before. The chilly trek had seemed an insurmountable obstacle in her need to hold him after he'd been away for ten days. He had rushed back, too, exhausted as the Falcon had touched down and so she had simply led him by the hand, back to the ramp and the captain's cabin. They'd tumbled into bed and fallen asleep right away, a testament to how elemental their need for each other had been.
She never slept well when he was away. He had admitted the same. And even though she couldn't put her finger on why, that confession held a certain vulnerable power over her.
Blinking into the dim light, Leia resumed her search for what tremor had tugged her out of sleep. She didn't feel the same terror she had experienced when Vader had attacked: no urgency, no need to move or protect or attack. This felt more like an itch, a mild awareness of something else, a nagging thought that she had forgotten something...
Turning to her other side, she examined Han's relaxed, sleeping features—the deep rise and fall of his chest, the slightly-parted lips—and then snuck out of the bunk, throwing on one of his old shirts and a pair of her too-long fatigues.
Barefoot, she crept into the main hold, feeling encouraged by the bright lights and the smell of fresh caf. She found Luke leaning against the galley's small counter with a mug in hand and a filmy, tired look in his eyes. His hair stuck up on one side, making him look boyish and innocent, but a soft irritation lit in her chest nonetheless. She had been sleeping so well, a respite from the loneliness, the prospect of a quiet morning with Han now utterly dashed by her brother's presence.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her annoyance easy to hear.
She didn't have a problem with Luke staying on the Falcon, but she felt a little too exposed this early in the morning. She fiddled with the hem of Han's shirt, the ends of her loose hair.
He looked up quickly, as if he hadn't known she was standing there. "Morning," he mumbled. "I, uh… slept here last night."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why? I just did. It's warm."
Leia maintained her irritation, fed it like timber catching fire. "Did you wake me up?"
"Me?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes and moved toward the caf machine, elbowing her way past him with all the lack of finesse she currently felt. She should be asleep. Why wasn't she asleep?
"I don't know," Luke said. "I had nothing to do with it."
Her hands stilled on the dispenser and she turned a slow, careful look toward him. Babyish in the bright light, squinting eyes held up by pure stubbornness alone, his forehead creased as he sipped his entirely too-sweet caf.
"I didn't say anything," she said.
He froze, cup to his lips, and held still for a moment, breathless tension drawn in his every line. "You asked me why you weren't sleeping."
"I didn't."
"I heard you," he accused, setting his mug down. "I heard you ask me—"
Disturbed, she shook her head and brought her mug with her to the holochess table. "Luke. I didn't."
He shut his mouth, furrowed his brow, and followed her to the booth. Leia was wary, uncomfortable, unsure how to process these new revelations. Reality felt disjointed this morning. She wanted to crawl back into bed with Han, let him envelop her in his ridiculous Corellian heat and go back to sleep. Her first meeting wasn't until 1100 anyway and Echo Base had been largely well-supplied by the Mercs' valiant efforts the past few months. There was nothing—absolutely nothing—that should be occupying her attention right now. They deserved some time. They had earned it.
And Luke was ruining it.
"Huh," he said. "Do you think it's a… a twin thing?"
She put her head in her hands. "Just drop it, please."
Quiet settled between them, flimsy and tenuous, and Leia thought that if the air between them had a color—like what Luke claimed it did—it would be a thin orange, like smoldering embers that could leap into flame at the barest hint of oxygen.
"Have you ever heard of a planet named Dagobah?"
She leaned her temple on her fist, grateful that Luke had dropped the subject and happy for the distraction. "I don't believe so."
"Huh."
Quiet again, but this one too uncomfortable. Luke's need was like a flood-light shining into her eyes; it made her blind to everything else.
"Why?" she asked, despite herself.
He eyed her skeptically. "You don't seem like you're in the mood."
"I'm not in the mood," she agreed. "But you look like you might combust if I don't ask."
His self-conscious smile broke through, and it ignited her own. Funny how he had that power over her.
"Ben spoke to me in a dream. He said that we need to go to Dagobah and meet someone named Yoda."
A muffled thud behind her, then the sound of a rushing Wookiee and a too-loud growl. Moments later, Chewie swept into the galley, leaning his considerable height toward Luke, blue eyes peering beneath wild chestnut fur.
Repeat that name, he growled.
"Yoda?"
Leia put her hand on Chewie's forearm. "Is something wrong?"
I know that name, he said, and his eyes turned far away, looking into a past neither Luke nor Leia could understand. From the war.
Luke nearly fell out of the booth in his excitement. "You know who this Yoda is?"
"You fought in the Clone Wars?"
Leia was mortified to realize she had never considered that Chewie might be a veteran of the Clone Wars. It made perfect sense, of course; Kashyyyk had been a major battleground in the conflict, and a Wookiee lifespan far exceeded a human's.
He helped defend my homeworld, Chewie said. I had heard that he was killed during the Purge.
"Ben said Yoda trained him," Luke continued. "That Leia and I need to go to a planet named Dagobah to learn from him."
Leia's jaw dropped. "Learn?"
Breaking eye contact with him, she pushed herself away from the dejarik table and walked over to the engineering station, bringing up the search function for Dagobah. When the navicomputer had a listing for a small, swampy Outer Rim planet of the same name, she exhaled in a rush, inexplicably relieved.
"You found it?" Luke guessed from across the room. "It's real?"
She nodded. "It's real."
"Then we need to go!" he said. "There's a master alive who can train us, Leia!"
His smile catapulted the room into uneasiness for everyone except for himself. Leia caught Chewie's eyes, the caution and worry there mirroring her own feelings. She had a list of misgivings a kilometer long and she had just opened her mouth to share it with him when a very tired, very annoyed Han Solo stumbled into the main hold, bare-chested with beltless trousers hanging low on his hips.
"What the hell are the three of you doing in here?"
Chewie and Leia turned guilty eyes on the Corellian, but Luke's excitement couldn't be contained. "We found a master to train us, Han!"
Han stilled, frozen like a statue, his eyes ticking from one person to another, studying each of them in turn. "How?"
Interesting. That was her biggest question, too, the most probable source for her unease. How could a master have possibly survived the Purge? How could Vader find them in the middle of nowhere but not find a master hidden on an obscure world?
How?
Although that too was interesting: Obi-Wan had done the same thing.
"Ben came to me in a dream," Luke said, taking Han's question much more literally than Leia had. "He said that Leia and I should go to Dagobah and learn from a Jedi master named Yoda."
Leia's deep apprehensiveness dissolved into dark mirth as she watched Han take that in. His mouth opened, shut, then opened again with a furious shake of his head.
"Uh-huh. You're kidding, right?"
Over Luke's shoulder Leia shook her head, silently communicating to him that Luke was very, very serious. His eyebrows rose and he shifted his stance, ready to come down squarely on her poor brother, still bright and oblivious in his enthusiasm. Leia sensed where he was going, the protectiveness and anger that was about to be turned onto Luke, and felt tired, drained, and unable to handle the confrontation that was about to erupt.
"Ben said—"
"How do you know that it's him?" Han interrupted. "How do you know it wasn't Vader again?"
Leia's mood darkened further. The thought hadn't crossed her mind, either, caught up in the ridiculousness of the situation, four grown adults in their sleep attire arguing over Jedi masters at, what was it? 0000? A ludicrous hour to discuss anything of importance, never mind the fate of the nonexistent Jedi Order.
"It wasn't Vader," Luke urged. "It was Ben. And Leia checked: the planet exists."
"That doesn't prove anything, kid."
"You don't understand—"
"And who the hell is this guy anyway?" Han asked, a freighter set on its course. "Let's say it's all true. You go out there for Jedi School, trusting that this guy knows anything about a group of people who were killed off before you were even born?"
Luke shut his mouth, finally sensing Han's extreme opposition to the idea. Leia would have been kinder to him, had she had the sense to fully warn him that with a half-brained plan like this, he would experience the worst of Han's stubbornness. And while she would normally cut that rabid protectiveness of his down to the quick, she had a larger consideration than just her pride.
Han was right. They didn't know anything about this Jedi. For all they knew it could be a trap.
If this is the same Jedi Master I knew on Kashyyyk, then he is trustworthy.
Chewie's low growl surprised Leia, the faces of the other two humans in the hold painted with similar expressions. The Wookiee spoke quietly, a sign of his complete reverence and honesty and Leia felt her disquiet return in big, crashing waves.
Han glared at his first mate. "You're friends with a bunch of Jedi now, are you?"
Wordlessly, Chewie gestured to Luke and Leia.
"Okay, fine," Han responded, ire fully redirected from Luke onto the Wookiee like a fickle dinner guest. "You just wanna ship them off to your secret friend, the Jedi master who let the galaxy tear itself apart?"
Luke opened his mouth to reply but Leia beat him to it. "No one is going anywhere right now," she said, hoping to prevent another frosty bout between friends. "We will talk about this later, when we've had some sleep and can discuss this calmly."
"But—"
"No." Leia cut off Han's sharpness with her own, assuming command with one word, summoning every bit of the monarch she had once been. "Now is not the time to discuss this."
Han's eyes were hot on hers, but he shut his mouth and nodded once in agreement. She turned to her brother, his demon not anger or protectiveness, but overenthusiasm. She saw it clearly in him, so slow to judge, so quick to act.
Considering his eager, sky-blue stare, it occurred to her that as much as she fondly dismissed Han's well-known penchant for foolhardiness and his willingness to jump into any fray he came upon as characteristic, Luke's reactions bothered and worried her more. Out of the two of them, who was more likely to walk into the docking bay, rev up his X-wing and fly to a planet they knew nothing about on the basis of a dream?
"Luke," she said, gripping his shoulder, trying to imbue him with a sense of comfort. "Go back to sleep. We'll talk about this in the morning."
She could see the struggle in his eyes, the fierce desire to fight for what he thought was right, but also the clear need to listen to her words.
"Give me time to process and talk with him," she continued in a softer tone. "This affects us all, and we need to think about this carefully."
Luke pursed his lips but nodded. "Okay."
They abandoned their mugs, letting the wisps of heat swirl in the air as each of them moved back into their sleeping quarters. Han and Leia were the last to go, her hand in his, waiting until the cabin hatch hissed shut behind them to continue the discussion they both knew was coming.
"You're not going somewhere I can't go."
Biting back a quick retort, she turned to him and to the anger in his eyes, anger that hid both worry and fear. She could see it so clearly, the way he would leap into his protectiveness at the barest hint of danger, the way his first instinct was to step in front of her and take the blaster bolt in her stead. She loved him for it, loved the ferocity in his eyes, but she also knew she needed to make sure he understood one very clear thing. Not a command. Not a decree. Only a simple tenet of trust.
"That is not something you can demand of me," she said, quiet and hushed, even as she squeezed his hand. "It isn't fair and you know it."
"Yeah, but—"
"But nothing. I make my own decisions."
He stared at her, ready to fight, the fire in his eyes so hot it was almost as if she could feel the heat. Stepping into his space, she brushed her fingers softly up his biceps, shoulders and then back down again. A soft refrain. Soothing. A tad manipulative, perhaps, but this was a boundary she needed to set and one he needed to respect.
"I am not impulsive enough to blindly rush off to a planet I know nothing about," she murmured.
"Never said you were."
She accepted that with a nod. "I don't know that I would go even if we knew it wasn't a trap."
The past months, and settling into her new sibling relationship with Luke, had felt innocent and somewhat natural to her. Safe. The stakes were not as high when they were discussing the past or speculating about their shared history. There was comfort in knowing that there wasn't a possibility of actually doing anything with the power they shared. It was an oddity. Impotent. Unimportant.
But the prospect of training to use it was a different matter entirely.
Han's shoulders relaxed under her fingertips, the fire smothered though she knew no fight was ever completely finished when it came to this man. Settling his hands on her hips he tugged her closer, until she was completely surrounded by him, until his arms had wrapped around her and he placed his lips a breath away from her ear.
"I worry about you," he whispered. "And I don't like worrying."
She smiled and pressed her nose into the warm skin of his chest. "If you wanted easy, you should have stuck with your portside harem."
Chuckling, Han lowered his voice into that enticing bass, the rumble in his throat comforting and somehow still exciting, even now, even when she was tired and held captive in a mental fog.
"Nah," he said. "I like a good challenge."
Breaking free, she once again grabbed his hand and tugged him back to the bunk. They fell, together, and Leia felt her heart explode into pure, unbridled adoration for the man in her arms, his unceasing ability to make her feel safe and heard and human. She pushed him to his back, climbed atop him, and brushed her lips to his, resolving to remind him how much she needed him when the rest of the galaxy looked jumbled and senseless, when she didn't know what the future held, when she remembered to learn from her own trauma and embrace the good things in her life.
"Leia," he whispered against her lips.
"Han," she agreed, and the galaxy finally went quiet.
—0—
Standing in front of a massive holoprojector, Han tried to push the early-morning conversation from his mind and focus on the briefing he was currently conducting. Usually, he didn't have trouble concentrating at work: this was fun to him, a kind of mix between smuggling and actual military strategy and he liked the idea of solving problems, of finding creative solutions and helping his pilots cut their teeth on tough runs that he knew all too well. Like bragging without the actual bragging, he'd admitted to Leia a few weeks ago. Showing 'em who's the boss but still helping them stay alive.
Idealism wasn't his strong suit but the Alliance sure as hell needed his pragmatism. Usually, he was happy to provide it.
But today just didn't feel right. He was disturbed by the wake-up call of Luke's nearly-unstoppable need to do stupid shit in the name of the Jedi. It had been like a bad dream—all of them in their sleepwear, yelling about a planet none of them knew anything about—and it still bothered him, even now, hours later. He hadn't expected life to always remain exactly the same, but he'd been hoping to at least know the general idea of where Leia was at any given time.
If she went hunting for a Jedi master out in the far-flung wilderness of the Rim, who knew what trouble she'd find or what trouble would find her?
Ah, but that was pointless, too. Leia could handle herself just fine, had proved it a million times over. It wasn't fair to force her into a life of some perceived safety that didn't actually exist for his peace of mind, while he went in and out of Hutt Space. She wouldn't have made him do that and he didn't want to do that to her, either.
"You all understand your assignments?" he asked the room, trying to pull himself back to the present. Get your head back in the game, Solo, he ordered himself.
It was kind of a useless order. He never completely forgot to worry about Leia in some way.
A chorus of nods answered him, followed by the usual rustle of the Mercs standing up, stretching, and conversing loudly to each other as the meeting ended. Salla was on a run at the moment and so it was just him and the kids. They'd decided early on that one of them would remain on-base while the other was away for purely managerial reasons; someone needed to be here to cool them down or make them do their scheduled sims. It was like being a parent, he'd decided, or at least what he thought that might be like.
The hustle and bustle of bodies moving out of the theater lulled him into a sense of ease, allowed him to focus on cleaning up the mess he'd made with the projector, the supply-run schedule behind him written in Aurabesh on an old-fashioned white board. The theater was cold: not all tech had been insulated, and more rudimentary tools were occasionally used, but Han was just grateful the Alliance had found this set-up at all.
He turned his back to the emptying theater to stare at the shipping schedule, the black squiggles and dotted lines that charted who was going where and what they would be picking up. He was so invested in his survey that he didn't catch the voices behind him until they were suddenly too loud to ignore.
"—watched him work out in the gym lately? He's in there all the fucking time, man."
Curious, Han strained to listen even as he ejected his data pad from the sensor and the hologram disappeared from behind him.
"She's better than he is," a second, female voice, said. A pause, then: "More fun to watch, too."
Instinct told him not to react even as he realized who they were talking about. Eyes glued to the screen in a pantomime of concentration, he focused on his datapad.
"I've never met a Jedi," the first voice said.
"No one has, idiot," the second scoffed. "They're all dead."
"I haven't seen them levitate anything. They just do hand-to-hand drills. Do you think they do all that Jedi garbage when no one is around?"
"Levitate? Hell, I'd be fine if that's all they were doing," she said. "I heard back home that Jedi can control you with their minds."
Han's anger rose as if he was in a quickly-flooding room: from his boots up his legs, hips, chest, shoulders, swelling, bubbling, vicious rage. He tried to corral it into shoving his datapad into the storage sack at his hip, unsure if he ought to react or to keep up the facade.
"Ah, c'mon," the first voice said. "That's some Imperial propaganda bullshit."
Oh, he wanted to rip them a new one. Not just for flagrant disrespect of a senior officer, but for the completely idiotic idea that Leia would ever—could ever—be such a monster. His searing anger was turning septic, poisonous; he would be damned if one of his pilots said anything that unfair about… about her, about Leia, the whole reason they were all here in the first place. Did they forget who they were talking about? Did they really think she could ever—?
A hairy paw landed on his clenched fist, stopping him in his tracks.
The woman responded, unaware how closely she had come to being redressed by her commanding officer. "Maybe it is bullshit. But do you sleep well at night thinking that it might not be?"
Cub, Chewie growled, low.
Han grit his teeth, turned furious eyes on his best friend. "They're talking about—"
I know. But they are allowed their opinions.
"You're insane," the man said, and the voice sounded farther away, like the pair was walking out of the briefing theater. "I don't think—"
Wait, Chewie urged. Wait until we are alone.
The voices faded, and Han stepped away from the Wookiee's paw and glared at him once the hatch had closed. "You shouldn't have stopped me. I have every right to—"
It is idle gossip.
"It's insubordination."
It is about your mate and her brother, Chewie growled, louder now. You would not have taken offense if it had been anyone else.
Frustrated, Han looked away, his eyes cutting to the snow-packed walls of the theater. Of course he wouldn't have been as angry if they had been talking about anyone else. But that didn't stop it from being wrong, disrespectful and worth at least some KP duty or training runs or maybe even grounding them for a month or two.
That is not even the worst thing someone said during this briefing, Chewie added.
Han turned to him so fast that his neck popped.
You should be very grateful for your poor hearing.
Fury settled into his gut and he balled his hands into fists, angrily throwing his storage sack into the secure locker where he kept his confidential data. Fucking morons, he thought as he keyed the lock, as he kicked the foot of the locker for good measure.
Chewie's voice was low. There is more to your anger. What is it?
"Ah, go play therapist somewhere else," Han bit out over his shoulder.
It would be better to let the wound breathe here rather than take it with you to Little Princess, he growled.
Han couldn't argue with that.
Tell me what is bothering you, Chewie offered again.
He wanted to let it go. He wanted to stomp out of the room and go find Leia and forget all about the day he'd had. First, an early wake-up call courtesy of the Jedi Dream Express, then a boring meeting with Rieekan, a holocall with Salla that had only solidified the worry in his gut, and then this: this blatant disregard for his friends, this squirming unfairness against Leia.
All day he'd been wound up tight, a trap ready to spring, the pistons firing at full capacity for the unbelievable length of fourteen hours. Every meeting he'd been in, every conversation he'd had, every training sim and departure and arrival, all of it had been one wrong word away from an explosion and he didn't know why.
That was a lie.
He knew exactly why.
"You knew this Yoda person," he ventured, turning to face Chewie.
His first mate's eyes were a clear blue, unfazed and discerning. Han knew that Chewie had already lived a full human lifespan by the time they'd met, knew that his friend was a war hero in his own right before the Alliance had even existed. He'd seen a government rise and fall. He'd seen the Emperor's rule and the torture and enslavement of his people first-hand. It was easy sometimes to forget his depths, how much he'd seen and experienced long before Han had come along.
I did, he answered.
"How could he have survived?"
The fall of the Republic. The Purge. Twenty years of Imperial rule. How did a Jedi Master survive all that and then just sit around and wait for Luke and Leia to show up, so that they could do the dirty work he and Ben Kenobi should have taken care of decades ago? Until they could sacrifice everything for the good of the galaxy they seemed to love so much? Until they were ripe for slaughter?
Han knew the stories. Even in the mean streets of Corellia, Imperial propaganda had been rampant. The Jedi had been insurrectionists. Traitors. Worse yet to the orphans and urchins, they'd been elitist, ugly exclusivists, far out of the realm of real people and real problems. Like everyone on Coruscant, they'd been handed their silver spoons and left none for the rest of the galaxy.
Young Han Solo had grown up distrusting authority, never putting much stock in those stories, but he'd also never thought the Jedi had been anything other than an order of monks with an attitude. Now he understood so much more about the Force, about its potential for destruction, its power and necessity. And he had made his peace with Leia having access to its secrets; he trusted her more than anyone else, partly because she herself was terrified of it. She and Luke were the only people he would ever feel comfortable wielding the Force like a weapon, because they were more like mythical beings, as far as he was concerned. A little better than the rest of them.
I do not know how he survived, Chewie said after a moment. I witnessed a clone trooper attempt to kill him. He was very quick, very skilled.
"I thought the clones were your allies?"
They were. The Purge came from the Jedi's trusted friends.
Running a tired hand over a tired face, Han grimaced. "Sounds familiar," he said, thinking of the conversation he'd just overheard. "This doesn't feel right, pal. Their dreams caused a whole hell of a lot of problems the last time."
Those dreams also warned us about the problems we were about to have.
Han opened his mouth to counter Chewie but found he didn't have a good reply. He'd said the same thing to Leia.
I know this is hard to understand, Cub, the Wookiee growled. But this is not a situation of which we can have an opinion.
"Oh, no? Watch me."
He was damn sure going to have opinions about Leia gallivanting off into a trap and no amount of Wookiee nonsense was going to fix that. This was his heart on the line here, not just a goddamn fight between good and evil. Jedi or no, Luke and Leia running off by themselves on what could be a suicide mission was not what they needed to be doing...
Oh.
Like the lighting of a match, a thought struck Han with the speed of an explosion of sparks and electricity.
His problem wasn't necessarily the running-off-to-a-mysterious-Jedi-master-in-exile part; it was the by themselves part that incited his fury. But if he could accompany them, if he could help them check it out… Well, that was a different story.
"I have an idea," he said, and sprinted away from Chewie without waiting for his response.
You always do, he heard from behind him, but Han was already through the hatch.
—0—
Leia's office was on the other side of Echo Base and Han didn't feel like running. The icy corridors were a minefield of Rogue and Merc pranks and he was in no mood for shenanigans. So, despite feeling like he'd crossed a great, troublesome impasse, he steadied his feet, taking his time.
He was wound up in a ball of protectiveness and fierce distrust and he knew it, too, which was an interesting development. Leia had been working hard on giving names to the negative feelings she felt, so maybe she was rubbing off on him. The next step was probably to ask why he felt the way he felt.
But fuck that. Too easy a question to ask and too hard a question to answer.
Waving the hatch open with impatient grace, he stepped through without preamble. Leia looked up with tired eyes, chin on her fist, scrolling through a datapad with what looked like a string of numbers on it. Coordinates? He couldn't quite read them.
"I'll take you to Dagobah," he said.
Eyes widening, a small crease appeared in her forehead. "What?"
"I can take you both. That's the only way I'll feel good about it," he said in a rush. "Compromise, right?"
"No one is taking anyone anywhere right now, Han, that's what we decided."
The door swooshed closed behind him, leaving them alone and hidden from any passersby. The air felt colder now as the ice walls crept in on them, as the air turned cold and bitter on the exposed skin of his face. How did she work in here all day? He could probably jury-rig a small personal heater for her from some spare parts, if she'd let him.
"We can make it part of a supply run," he said, interrupting his own thoughts. "That way me and Chewie can go with you two and no one else has to know except maybe Salla."
"You'd be lying to Carlist."
"We can tell him when we get back," he offered. "Check it out first. If he's real, we'll tell anyone you wanna tell."
Shaking her head, she pursed her lips. "I'm not going to ask you to do that."
"You aren't asking. I'm offering."
"I don't even know if I want to go chase this Yoda, and you're already making my travel plans?" she asked, a hint of annoyance coloring her voice.
"No," he stated, a full sentence of fact.
"Then what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that this is a way that makes me feel a little less nuts about you going. If you want to go. This is me offering a plan we can both live with."
"This is ridiculous."
"No. This is an option."
Han could see the struggle behind her mask, could sense the line of stubbornness that would send them straight into conflict, and tried to determine what her reaction revealed. If she didn't want to go, she didn't have to. Simple as that. What was the hang-up here?
"I think I'm… overwhelmed," she admitted, answering his unasked question, naming the emotion. "This whole thing has been too much for me to handle."
"Too much for you?" He laughed. "Sweetheart, join the fucking club."
Her small smile was a victory in and of itself, a sign that they had made enough progress not to jump all over each other for attempted humor.
"Do you know what really bothers me?"
He shrugged. "Your man-of-the-night keeps flying around the galaxy while you're stuck on a frozen iceball?"
"Well, yes," she said. "And I'm sorry I ever told you about that conversation."
"No, you aren't."
"No, I'm not." Exhaling, she leaned back in her chair and looked to the snowy ceiling. "Luke seems destined for all this Jedi stuff. He talks about it with an inevitability that I just don't feel."
"Destiny isn't real," he offered. "The kid's still young."
"He thinks that it's real, and maybe he's right. A lot of coincidences have happened to us in the past two years. It's hard to argue with him on that front."
"Coincidences," he said. "That's all it is."
"Destiny is a hard pill to swallow," she murmured.
"That's what Luke thinks. But what do you think?"
"That is exactly my problem," she said. "I don't know what to think. Luke is so excited about every single revelation. He finds family, I find out my family lied to me. He finds a master to teach him, I have to leave my life's work to learn with him."
She stopped, her eyes on his, her expression forcing a chill down his spine, the seriousness and the pain there, relics of a trauma that would never leave her. He wondered then what her eyes had looked like before he'd met her, when she'd only been a princess and a senator and a spy. He couldn't picture her as careless and free and that bothered him somehow. When did that crown get planted on her head?
If they were adding up mistakes Bail Organa had made, Han had a few he'd like to bring up.
"I don't feel any such calling," she admitted.
He wiped a hand over his mouth. "Never felt anything like that, either. Maybe not all of us have destinies. Maybe you get to make your own choices as an adult, Leia."
Breaking their eye contact, she looked away, but he continued talking.
"Maybe you can say no to Luke if you want to."
"But then I would never know."
"About what?"
"About what my father knew," she answered. "About why he lied."
That he understood. He'd dealt with that feeling before, the questions about where he had come from, how his life had wound up being this hard, this painful. And he understood that he had never dealt with that question in a beneficial way. He had moved on and done something good with his life, that was what mattered to him. Where he was going, not where he'd been.
But Leia had come from something. She'd come from more than one something, it turned out. And so maybe that was her calling. Finding closure for the mysteries of her past.
She made far more sense to Han than Luke did, that's for sure, and so he redoubled his efforts to give her a viable option if she wanted to take it.
"So you want to go," he said.
She pursed her lips, all the answer he needed, and when she finally did speak, the ice was back in her eyes, the chill of her control so inescapably present that it triggered his lopsided smirk. That's my girl, he thought.
"What's your plan?" she asked.
Han's grin slithered into mischief.
—0—
Crossing her arms, Salla looked like a skeptical mother interrogating her children. The tilt of her head, the suspicion in her eyes, the way her hair was harnessed into a tight bun on top of her head. No-nonsense. Tough as nails. The XO questioning her commanding officer because that was her job, particularly because of who her CO was.
"You're asking me to lie on the shipping manifests."
Her tone was not questioning. She was stating a fact, and Leia could sense the first notes of amusement snake through her as she watched the conversation unfurl.
"Not lie," Han hedged. "Just skipping some details, that's all."
"Like the fact that you're hauling the two Alliance darlings along with some simple base freight?"
He grimaced.
"Huh," Salla said, staring at him for a moment, then turning to Leia, all business. "What's the cover?"
Leia clasped her hands behind her back, falling into the same tone of voice she used when she was giving orders to any junior officer or infantryman. "There is a snap-fusion scientist I met in my time with the senate, a Twi'lek named Gly-Mol. The last I heard she had settled back on Ryloth, working on a way to split energy with more efficiency, a culmination of decades studying the quantum fields of—"
Waving her hand, Salla interrupted Leia. "Science. Great. What do you need me to do?"
"I already added the mission to the docket," Han said. "All we need you to do is treat it like any other supply run."
"And you need Skywalker there because...?"
Han looked at Leia, who turned toward Salla and shrugged. "Because I need additional protection."
"Bullshit. You're up to something."
Leia paused and was about to deny it, but then reconsidered and nodded in agreement. "Luke and I need to go somewhere. It's about the Jedi."
Still and quiet, Salla took in the news with all the stubborn finesse of a shrewd businesswoman scouting new obstacles to tackle. Or perhaps she was just considering tackling them. "Figured it was something like that."
"One week, Sal, just so we can go investigate this lead," Han said.
"We would owe you," Leia added.
Outside the bubble of their conversation, the loading bay was bustling with activity, pilots and mechanics buzzing with hunger: it was nearly time for the mess hall to open for the endshift meal. The Merc's hard work the past few months had provided a stable supply of food, and there was a tight excitement in the air after Ryian had scored a fresh batch of Soccoran bread-cakes earlier today.
No one was listening to the conversation the three of them were having beneath the ramp of the Starlight Intruder.
Salla's serious expression continued for another moment, a moment out of time compared to the busy clamor of the bay. Until she finally broke. "You think I'm really gonna tell you you can't go on some great Jedi quest?"
"You'll help us?" Leia asked, relieved.
The XO laughed. "Of course I will," she said. "Not everyone hates breaking the rules, Princess."
Leia smiled as Han rolled his eyes, one step closer to a knowledge she wasn't sure she wanted but felt she needed nonetheless. She hadn't yet made up her mind about training with Luke: that was a separate matter and not one about which she would make a conclusion until she knew more about General Skywalker.
But she needed to know about her parents' secrets. She needed to know why. And if Carlist and Mon Mothma didn't have those answers, she was going to do whatever she needed to do to resolve this abyss growing within her.
She had told Han she was overwhelmed, and the one thing she had learned over the past few months was that when she ignored her own misgivings, things tended to turn septic. So she wouldn't do that again. And if that meant a one-week trip to some backwater world, she would do it.
For Han.
For Luke.
And for herself.
Author's Notes: FFN apparently made the first posting of this chapter invisible, so I'm trying again. I suppose if you're seeing this now, it means I was successful the second time.
Happy Election month and Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans! Thank you for continuing your support for this story; both AmongstEmeraldClouds and I appreciate your kind words more than we can express. Special thanks to the woman herself, AEC, for the hours of editing. It's a collaborative couple of weeks before posting day, and she is doing far more than just adding commas.
The next chapter of Specter will post Tuesday, December 1st. Keep your eyes out for a special little outtake to drop sometime this month, too: a present for my dear editor. And thank you again! -KR
