Dagobah


It was a murky brown point of light, as the Millennium Falcon reverted from lightspeed. Holding the ship in position for a breath, Han scanned the sensors, sweeping his eyes over the viewport in a wide swath that covered the planet, its star, and all the surrounding space. The freighter hung there, still and quiet, like the pendulum of an old-fashioned clock that had gone dead long ago.

He absurdly thought that if he engaged the drives, if he moved them forward, he would be crossing a dangerous, invisible line.

Are we going to approach or are we just going to keep staring at it?

The growl was playful and yet inquisitive, too. Throwing his first mate a dirty look, he toggled the control yoke.

"I'm going, I'm going," he muttered.

Chewie whuffed a low laugh and the two settled into the approach vector, a low-interval slope they often favored on planets whose secrets were still kept hidden. It gave the sensors time to calibrate and warn them of unanticipated dangers; if smuggling had taught Han anything, it was to always expect the unexpected.

As Dagobah grew bigger and bigger in the viewport, Han could hear Luke shifting in his seat, small movements of nerves and anticipation. From behind his own seat, Leia was like the planet itself: small, ominous and unnerving.

Atmosphere is breathable, Chewie noted. Heat signature shows small lifeforms but the scans haven't identified any spacecraft anywhere in the vicinity.

That was something, at least. He had half-expected their reversion to real-space to mean a toe-to-toe dance with the Executor.

"Water?" Luke asked.

Predictable question from the moisture farmer from Tatooine, Han thought, but was curious to hear the answer.

Yes, in large concentrations. Iron core, warm enough not to need EVA suits.

Approaching fast, the planet was now taking up half the viewport, and Han turned to Leia, wanting to see her reaction to the sight. Solemn and resolute, she looked prepared for anything.

Are you worried? He had asked her the night before, as they'd sat by themselves in the Echo Base officer's breakroom.

The breakroom was something of a joke among command staff; both Rieekan and Leia were known to frequent it during their free moments, and it had since been deemed a good place to be assigned additional duties by the rest of the command staff. It was therefore avoided at all cost. When Luke or Salla or any of the others wanted a real break, they sought it elsewhere.

And so it had become a haven of sorts for Han and Leia. Private. Away from the chatter of their staff. A niche of sense, hiding smack dab in the middle of a war.

I'm not worried, she had said over her mug of caf. It's a fact-finding mission. I've done plenty of those.

He had nodded and bit into his panna breadcake, not entirely convinced. Different kinds of facts, though.

It helps that it's a secret. And that I'll have you there.

At her words warmth had bloomed in his chest, but he had fought hard not to let it show. Not following her around like a pet pittin had been hard enough.

Got it bad for me, huh, Organa?

She'd set her mug down with a clunk and leaned over.

You have no idea, she had breathed against his lips.

"Any idea where this Yoda is, kid?" Han asked, too loud, trying to focus on the moment at hand, much as the memory was a nice one. "I, uh, got a couple small land masses to choose from."

"Ben didn't exactly give me coordinates."

Of course he didn't.

"You're the one leading this party, kid," he said instead. "Tell me where to go."

Luke was silent a moment, then exhaled in a rush, pointing a steady finger in Han's peripheral vision. "Go there."

Pressing his lips together and raising his eyebrows, Han complied. His ready quip died on his tongue, focusing instead on the narrowing space between the Falcon and the planet they approached. They were close enough now that his sensors were picking up endoatmospheric readings, more specific calculations about climate and meteorological abnormalities, gravity fluctuations, the works.

It felt like the whole cockpit was holding its breath, the living beings, yes, but also the durasteel and the wiring and the environmental controls, too. All of it hung on a precipice, a cliff of anticipation, of adrenaline coursing through their veins as the Falcon approached. Slowly, Han brought them into atmosphere, the strata evaporating beneath them as they descended.

And then finally Leia spoke. "Can you sense him?"

Mystified, he turned to peer behind his chair, taking in the tight coronet, the gray fatigues, the pinched expression on her face. Compared to the beautiful sight she'd been the day before, all blushed pinks and warm, glittering eyes, she now looked cold. Hard. Emotionless.

He had the insane urge to tug on her hair, like a kid with a crush, just to garner a reaction.

"Sense him?" he echoed instead.

Leia looked him dead in the eye, not a modicum of humor anywhere in those devastating eyes. "Luke can sense things that we can't."

"I don't sense anything yet," Luke said in a whisper.

Blinking, Han turned back around in his chair and focused on the planet in his viewscreen. "Okay," he drawled, letting the matter drop to where it belonged, between brother and sister. "Let's do this."

The descent went well until the Falcon had her struts out and was ready for landing, the only warning of impending trouble a single low whine, a proximity alarm for vegetation Han had installed years ago at Chewie's insistence, on the same day the furball had raised hell about upgrading the communications array instead of the ion cannon turrets. In this instance, the alarm was a welcome one: it meant they were able to avoid the stark tree limbs that reached for their canopy like a living, demented thing with a small course adjustment.

He jerked the yoke to the right and shot the Falcon to starboard, fighting to regain control of his baby even as she slogged through the heavy atmosphere of this dark, dank planet.

"You woulda run into that," he said to Luke, baiting the younger man and attempting humor to lighten up the atmosphere inside the cockpit.

But Luke didn't respond, Han catching the sour turn to his lips before they all stood and began their disembarking arrangements. Watching Chewie grab his bowcaster and Luke fumble for his holster, Han grabbed Leia's elbow to pull her aside for a brief check-in.

"You okay?"

Her lips quirked up on one side. "You're as bad as Carlist. I'm fine."

"You've been quiet."

"I've been careful," she corrected him.

He narrowed his eyes, too much, too comical, earning him an eyeroll. "You're gorgeous," he said, and kissed her forehead. "C'mon."

Chewie and Han took the lead position at the ramp—a guarded look shared between them that clearly told Chewie to watch Luke so that Han could focus on Leia—and they stepped onto soggy swampland.

Green. That's all Han could see. Green and gray, a misty, muddied landscape of straggly trees. An avian flew overhead with a loud squawk, a similar sound coming in response as a deciduous tree rustled nearby. The ground was stable but wet, big pools of fetid water splashing beneath his boots as they cautiously took in their surroundings.

At least there are trees, Chewie commented from in front of Han.

Han snorted. "Try and climb one, pal. Let's see how you do."

"Luke," Leia said from Han's right shoulder, unimpressed with the back-and-forth.

Turning to look at her, Luke winced, and then broke eye contact, his blaster at hand. "I don't know," he muttered. "I don't… It feels right but it also doesn't feel right at all. Something is too big here… It doesn't fit."

Han opened his mouth for a smart retort but was forced to keep quiet by a small, royal finger digging onto his side.

What? he mouthed to her.

She didn't dignify him with a worded response but smiled obligingly when he reached with his free hand to brush across the back of her thigh. Just once. Just to make sure her smile was still there.

Trudging on, their party made progress slowly and carefully, for fear of stepping on unstable ground or tumbling into a hidden bog. The dangers of any new, uninhabited world were numerous. But—

"This place is creepy as fuck," he announced thirty minutes in.

The corner of Leia's lips turned up and Chewie growled wordlessly in front of them. No one was surprised by his pronouncement, but it did crack the tension into more manageable pieces.

"You're a poet, Han. Truly," Leia said.

Completely oblivious, Luke stopped his forward trek to glance above him, at the tree limbs that clawed upwards to the dark sky like rigor mortis, and then spoke with some disappointment.

"What if I got it wrong?" he asked.

He was met with silence, though Han could tell the others were wondering the same thing. He knew he was. Information from a dream didn't seem to work well when it came to hard and fast data. Vader's attack on Home One was proof of that; no one had volunteered any real plan to him, and they'd been saved only by intuition and quick adaptability. The Force really could stand to spell things out better for everyone involved.

Luke might not have gotten it wrong, but he might not have gotten it really right, either.

I am hungry, Chewie growled ten minutes later, as the ends of Han's hair started to get wet. Was it cold? Hot? He couldn't quite tell. The humidity confused everything.

"The surprises just keep on coming," Han said dryly, with a shake of his head to clear his vision.

I cannot control when my stomach needs food.

"Try," he replied.

It has been a long time since we have eaten, Chewie complained. My hunting instincts will take over soon. I cannot be blamed if—

"Fine," Han interrupted, tired of the conversation. "We'll stop here for now before Gruesome decides to eat a sea-snake or something."

They sat on a patch of ground that was just slightly drier than the surrounding area and passed out ration bars from a bag wrapped around Chewie's shoulder. Glaring around his perch with particular distrust, Han eyed the flora with suspicion before Leia nudged his shoulder with hers.

"Lighten up," she said. "We're fine."

His eyebrows flew to his hairline. "Lighten up?" he quoted her. "Worship, you've said maybe ten words since we left the iceball."

"I wasn't sure if you could take more than ten," she countered. "You look like you're about to blast a tree."

"Do not."

"Yes, you do."

Ration bars will only stave off the hunger for an hour if I do not find some meat to hunt, Chewie warned.

Furrowing her brow, Leia bit into her own ration bar, sliding the party into silence. Another avian flew overhead, startling them all, but the effect was more lost and less menacing. The whole place felt that way, felt like they were powering through the wildlife around them by quips and trickled conversation, nervous energy keeping the chill at bay.

The temptation to hike back to the Falcon and blast off-planet was strong, but he realized Luke and Leia needed time here. And who knew? Maybe a Jedi master really did live on this muddy rock. Maybe this wasn't a trap—after all, nothing had happened yet and he couldn't imagine how much longer someone would wait to spring it on them if it was—and maybe answers could still be found. He would handle general creepiness to give them that.

He was just glad to be here with them, happy they had all agreed to work together. And if Leia was teasing him, she really was fine for the moment.

"Luke," Leia said into the quiet. "Do you feel anything?"

He seemed to struggle, sandy hair flopping onto his forehead and hands clenched around a ration bar. "There's something familiar about this place."

"Familiar how?" she asked.

"I feel like… I don't know."

Annoyed, Han looked away in the direction of the Millennium Falcon, far enough away now for the swamp to have obscured her. Luke's feelings made zero sense to him. He understood Leia's Force sensitivity—at least, he thought he did—because it was more visible. How she did the things she did was a mystery, but what she was capable of doing? Oh, he understood that perfectly well.

But this hidden talent of Luke's, the colors and the perception, that was the kind of shit he couldn't understand and didn't try particularly hard to understand, either. Leia seemed to see value in it, but in a fight Han would bet on Leia over Luke any day. That didn't make the kid any less important—he was a hell of a pilot and had done his fair share of heroics—but if he understood their dynamic right, Leia was the one who could tip the scales in a brawl.

"Feel like what?"

The voice came from behind him and Han whirled, blaster out in one swift movement. Chewie roared in surprise, Leia gasped and for one brief, chaotic moment, the world became movement and color, lasting until Han could get his eyes to focus down…

Down.

Down.

"Like we're being watched," Luke answered.

Small, green, ancient, dressed in rags and leaning on a walking stick, the creature was standing five meters away from their circle. Compared to the rest of him, the eyes that looked at their group were enormous, wide and unblinking, intrigued but without fear. Han couldn't place the species; he'd never seen one before.

"The hell?" he breathed, unsure, DL-44 still pointed squarely at the creature. He was awfully small to be much of a danger to them but caution wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Han had seen plenty of small things take down larger ones.

"Away put your weapons, I mean you no harm," the creature said. "I am wondering, why you are here?"

Han's eyes ticked over to Chewie's. The Wookiee's warrior stance was already more relaxed than it had been a moment ago, Luke had his blaster at his side, and even Leia had taken her finger off the trigger, a questioning look in her eyes.

"We're looking for someone," Luke answered.

"Looking?" the creature replied, amusement coloring his tone. "Found someone you have, I would say, hmm?"

"Who are you?" Han asked, annoyed with the whole conversation so far, but a little less worried than he had been about the creature's motives.

"Someone," the creature joked.

Leia snuck closer to Han, dropping her blaster to her side. "We're looking for a great warrior," she said. "A Jedi master."

"Ahh! A warrior." With some difficulty, the creature stepped into their circle, Han moving back to make room. "Wars not make one great."

They did for you.

The Wookiee's rumble was low, soft, so different from what Han was expecting that he turned to face Chewie. His eyes tracked from his best friend to the creature and then back again, a circuit that only served to confuse him more. The recognition in the Wookiee's tone…

Grabbing for his wrist and pushing his hand down, Leia hummed softly under her breath. Han let her, his eyes glued to the scene playing out in front of him, the way Chewie towered over the creature and yet looked at him with a softness belying his size.

"Old friend," the creature said, a hint of a smile on his face. "Good to see you, it is."

Chewie crouched down low, reducing his height by at least half to peer down at the being in front of him. It has been a long time.

"Continue the game you should have."

The Wookiee's soft chuckle was warm, warm enough to force an exhale from Han and for Leia to let go of his hand.

I admit I am surprised, the Wookiee growled. I wasn't sure Little Jedi had been right about you.

"Yoda," Luke murmured reverently, and even Leia looked taken aback in light of the revelation, brown eyes wholly focused on the creature.

Han tried to understand what he was seeing. It wasn't often that Chewie referenced his past; it was an awful, painful existence to be a lone escapee from an enslaved planet, and so he often left important details of his life unexplained, creating moments of inexplicable depth that didn't surprise Han anymore. After the first couple of years, he'd gotten used to the Wookiee's quirks and idiosyncrasies, his penchant for both wisdom and fierce instinct.

It wasn't the fact that Chewie knew a Jedi master that stopped Han cold; it was the size of said master and the sudden realization that Luke had been right.

For the second time in a year, dreams had proved to Han that more controlled their lives than simple coincidence.

"How you get so big, eating food of this kind?" the creature asked, pointing toward Chewie's ration bar with his walking stick.

Han blinked. "It's not like we got a lot of other options, small guy."

The creature—Yoda, Han corrected himself—turned his gaze onto him, and he felt suddenly judged and condemned, deemed unfit and disposable. "You," Yoda said. "Put your weapon away, you must."

"No," Han groused.

"Often do you harm unarmed beings?"

"No," he said again, and turned to his companions. Expecting support, he was surprised when Luke and Leia both said yes in clear tones of certainty. At least Leia had the decency to look guilty when she said it.

He scowled but continued nonetheless. "This slimy mudhole could be full of things that want to eat us—"

"Mudhole?" Yoda said, offended. "Slimy? My home, this is."

"Yeah, well, your home is terrible."

"Mmm," Yoda said, tone lowering. "A skeptic, you are. Afraid. The place for you, this is not."

Han crouched down as Chewie had before and pointed his left index finger. "You got a problem with me? Take it up with these two over there."

Yoda held his steady gaze for a long moment, then turned away to gesture to the larger group. "Answers, you seek. Yes. But now we must eat. Come. Good food. Come."

He began a slow trek in the opposite direction of the Falcon and Han shared a warning look with both Luke and Leia before glaring at Chewie.

"You couldn't warn me your friend was a real piece of work?"

He was nothing but kind to me, Chewie rumbled with a soft chuckle. Perhaps you deserve what he says to you?

Han fumed to himself but followed them as they walked after the creature, unsure what lay ahead of them but determined to keep all of them safe.

—0—

Luke couldn't think fast enough.

His thoughts flew by in torrents without any context and his emotions followed in a rush, strong enough to feel them and then move onto the next. He had been thrilled, terrified, ecstatic, curious. Over and over again, the emotions bashed him against the rocks of his own concern. Like the horrific power of the sea: unfathomable and all-powerful and constant.

Sitting cross-legged outside Yoda's homestead, he snuck a look at Han and Leia, sitting on his left and talking in whispers too low for even him to understand. Han's shoulders rose, as if ready to attack, his posture clearly demonstrating his distrust of the small creature inside the hut. He hadn't exactly been quiet about it, either; in typical Han Solo fashion, he'd led with angry and petulant as his dominant personality traits—an unfair representation: Luke would better describe him as brave and loyal to a fault—but there was no dismissing the line of protectiveness he had drawn between Leia and the world.

And Leia… she was a mask of nothing. A blank slate, a total nothing where his robust and magnetic twin usually was, he couldn't even read her with his other senses.

"Rootleaf I cook," Yoda said, coming out of his hut with small bowls for Luke and Leia. Han was summarily ignored and Chewbacca was waved to serve himself. "Good food. Hot."

Luke tried a spoonful, winced at the sour taste and then set down the bowl. "Do you know who we are?"

"Chewbacca, I know," he said. "Should I know you?"

"I am Luke Skywalker," he began in earnest. "This is my sister, Leia, and our friend, Han Solo. We have come to learn from you, Master Yoda."

"Not me," Han muttered. "I've learned enough, thanks."

Luke ignored him and continued. "We were sent here by Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"Mmm. Obi-Wan. Powerful Jedi, was he. Powerful Jedi."

Luke's heart burst into galloping beats of joy to hear a connection between Yoda and his first master. It had been so long, so long, since he had felt such affirmation, since he had found such a clear path to follow. The past years of wayward study—and the more recent combat drills with Leia, too—had been mired in the feeling of uncertainty, reticence.

But now… Now there was hope in the form of a small, inexplicable godsend of an exile on an unknown planet. The morality play was back on track; he had a path, and nothing filled him with as much warmth as the idea of fulfilling the destiny his father had set out before him.

"So you are a master, then?" Leia asked, unsure.

Luke was startled by the question, the uncertainty in her voice.

"How can you ask that?" he whispered. "Of course he is."

How could she still doubt it, even now? Yoda had been exactly where Ben had told him he would be. The most ridiculous coincidence yet, and she chose doubt instead of faith? How could she have so much hope for the Alliance and such little hope for the Jedi?

Leia turned wide eyes to him. "It's a good question."

"Can't just go along trusting everybody, kid," Han added.

"And we have plenty of reasons to be suspicious," she finished, and then turned back to Yoda. "Answer the question, please."

Yoda tilted his head to the side and his long ears twitched. "A Jedi I once was, yes."

Luke's heart fluttered in his chest, excitement building upon excitement. "Will you teach us?"

"Teach you? Why?"

Chuckling darkly, Han said, "That's the best thing you've said yet, short stuff."

But Luke's thoughts were whirling again, a cyclone of perceptions and ideas. Why? Because Ben had said so! Because it was how this story went, wasn't it? Wasn't this what the Force was telling them all? The dreams and the colors and the inconceivable insanity of Leia being his sister? Didn't it all lead here?

"So that I can be a Jedi, like my father before me, " Luke answered, but his voice had none of that confidence that he heard in his head.

He turned to Leia for back-up, for confirmation and assurance, but was met with her blank stare, her pursed lips, the stillness and coldness of someone who hadn't yet made up her mind. Still hidden from him, he could nonetheless feel her discomfort, see the impatience, in her posture and the set of her shoulders.

"And you?" Yoda asked Leia, leaning on his walking stick. "Why train you, I must?"

Leia's eyes were cold, as cold as Hoth, and Luke knew what she was going to say before she said it, his stomach tumbling down to the soggy ground. "You shouldn't train me," she said. "But you should answer some of my questions."

"Answers, you seek. Yes. Sure you are that you will accept them?"

The air cracked in two. As if a sharp clap of thunder and lightning ran under the ground, all of them recoiling collectively, but for different reasons. What Luke could only describe as energy sparked beneath his feet, in the mud and soil, through the trees.

Han stiffened and Luke's eyes shot to Leia. The ice was melting, and quickly, too, which was terrific and terrifying in equal measure. The avalanche was building in strength, the flood originating here. Now.

She was a live wire, magnificently red and billowing with power. Luke was drawn to her like a magnet seeking its opposite, like she was summoning him. And all the while her face remained unchanged, not a muscle or a hair out of place. Calm. Cold. Perfect. The only change was in her eyes and in the unfiltered power raging around her.

"If you have them, then yes," she answered Yoda.

Unlike the rest of them he seemed completely unaffected; his ears swept down and his lips turned into a grim expression, but nothing else changed. Serenity seemed to wrap around him like a cloak. Serenity and confidence. Luke envied him.

"Desperate, you are," he said, drawing out the first word. "Angry."

She shook her head. "No, I—"

"Anger, yes," Yoda continued, heedless of her reaction. He sounded like he was talking to himself, like the rest of them weren't there at all. "Anger and fear."

"I'm not afraid."

It was as if Yoda had been waiting for these exact words from her, like he'd been searching for buried treasure and had found it in Leia's tight, pinched response.

"You lie."

Another crack in the air around them, but this one filled Luke with dread in sudden waves, like a horrific riptide pulling him away from the others. You lie echoed in his ears, and when he had the sense to look at his sister, he saw the complete obliteration of her composure. Her mask down. Her veins open as she bled.

"Leia, don't—"

"No," she said over him, fully angry now. "This isn't about you, Luke."

He blinked, stunned. "Not about me?"

His destiny. His story. His path forward. This was as much about him as it was about her.

Her eyes alighted on his and he had the strangest sensation of disassociation, in which Leia's looked more golden-brown than her typical caf-colored gaze.

"We aren't here for the same reasons," she said, and it was if she'd stabbed him in the heart. "I've tried to tell you—"

"We're here to train," he sputtered. "We're here to learn how to fight Vader, how to make things right again."

"That's why you're here."

"—we can save people, we can be Jedi Knights, like our father—"

"I had a father."

Silence. It pooled around them like the swamp-water nearby, like the heaviness in the air. It was as if his throat was filling with water, choking him, pressing down on his chest. She'd stolen his voice as surely as if she'd wrapped her hands around his neck.

"You don't even know who our father was and you're rushing off to become just like him. How could you possibly think that's a good idea?"

And that was enough to strike Luke's own personal match. Now his chest burst into activity and he was boiling, a ramshod ruckus of molecules moving at lightspeed, under distress and pressing against the confines of his skin.

"And you won't even consider it? You can't see past your own hang-ups long enough to think about the larger picture?"

"I want more information before I go rushing off making decisions that I can't take back. Like a rational person. Like an adult."

"Then what are we doing here, Leia? We're just wasting our time!"

A sigh. Luke heard it but was so focused on his sister's face that he didn't see Yoda turn away. He struggled to control himself, to cap the flame, to soothe the burn. He chased his calm like a child with a loose ball, running after it, failing completely as he watched Leia burn brighter still. His complete opposite. His inertial equal. His permanent magnet.

"I cannot teach them."

The voice was Yoda's but it was etched with such weariness that Luke tore his eyes from Leia's to make sure another being had not entered the homestead. Flushed now, he saw the watercolor nature of the trees around them solidify, found their physical forms in the chaos of his emotions. He saw Han's red-studded presence wrap around Leia like a blanket, saw the sparking, hissing boundary of Leia's pure power recede back into herself.

And then he saw a small, tired Jedi master speak into the ether, as surely as he spoke into the smoke of the fire.

"The boy has no patience and the girl has no faith."

They will learn.

Luke's eyes snapped back into the physical world as Leia gasped. He saw Han scan their faces, unsure, watching as the rest of their party heard a familiar voice without a familiar body to accompany it.

And still, Yoda didn't react.

It had sounded like Ben. It was the old man's cadence, his inflection, the coreworld accent that tugged at the ends of his words like Jawas at a piece of metal buried in Tatooine sand. Luke couldn't help it. He turned to look around the homestead, knowing even as he did so that he wouldn't see anything.

"Hmm," Yoda said. "Much anger in them both. Like their father."

Was I any different when you taught me?

Luke caught the widening of Leia's eyes, the look she shared with Han, but he was already moving in a flux of fluttery excitement, missing Han's very loud why's everyone getting so excited?

"They are not ready."

"I am ready!" Luke said, the words flying out of his mouth in a rush. "I… Ben! I can be a Jedi. Ben, tell him I'm ready!"

Returning to the circle with three small bowls of rootleaf stew, Chewbacca appeared at Luke's right. Why is Little Jedi—?

"Something's going on," Han interrupted him.

He made to turn to Leia for an explanation, quiet but vibrating in her anger, seeking clarification, but she was just as concentrated as Luke was on the ghostly voice.

"It's Obi-Wan, I think," she said, brittle and hollow. Dispassionate.

The air turned cold, Luke's skin bursting into a shiver as Yoda reared on him, his eyes heavy and silencing. In his peripheral vision he could see Leia startle as well, and Han absentmindedly reaching for his blaster.

"Ready, are you? What know you of ready?" he said, power lining his words. This was the voice of a being who would not be trifled with, and Luke realized entirely too late that Ben showing him the way to Dagobah did not entitle him to the training he so desperately wanted.

"This one a long time have I watched," he continued, not to Luke, not to Leia or Han or Chewie, but to the specter of Obi-Wan, invisible to all. "All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon."

Luke opened his mouth to disagree but the tide changed again.

"And this one," Yoda indicated to Leia. "So much anger in her, tragedies that have made her fragile. Wants to destroy, she does, not to create. A liar, she is."

Han's reaction was swift, faster than anyone else's. "Shut your goddamned mouth."

His words were so low, so threatening, that even Luke felt another chill go down his spine. Leia was speechless, stricken by Yoda's assessment, and Luke could suddenly feel it in big droves: wave after wave of her hidden emotions. Like a door had been blown open, insecurities, fear, disbelief and horror, all of it rushed over him, and... he suddenly wanted to apologize to her. He reached out and grabbed her hand, wanting to anchor her to himself or to Han, the two men who loved her most.

"Adventure. Heh!" Yoda continued. "Vengeance. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless."

Chewie growled deep in his chest while Han's jaw dropped. He flared into bright, blistering red plumes, coalescing around Leia, tendrils sweeping to Luke, too. Had he not been so shocked, Luke would have been touched.

So was I, if you'll remember.

Yoda's tempest seemed to change then, a slight shift in the fabric of his careful facade. Luke didn't see it so much as feel it: a turning point, a transference of pressure. Nothing Luke or Leia had said had put a dent in the master's resolve, but it appeared that Ben held all the sabacc cards while the living played for broke.

Something felt staged here, Luke realized with a sudden jerk.

"Will they finish what they begin?"

Careless and eager, Luke answered immediately. "I won't fail you. I'm not afraid."

All eyes turned to Leia, locked up tight in her fortress of unparalleled strength. There was no reaction, only silence, and the impact was even more poignant. For someone like Leia to have nothing to say she had to have been completely overcome.

"You will be," Yoda replied to him, ignoring Leia completely. "You will be."

—0—

"Leia," she heard.

A warm hand on her wrist, stopping her from straying too far. She turned to face Han, his handsome features, the concern etched there, the depth of his worry. She tried to focus on his eyes, the hazel that looked so dark today that it could be the color of hers, at least in the dark light of the captain's quarters.

The familiar cabin didn't settle her nerves, didn't expel the horrible rupture of faith inside her stomach. The hulls, with their graceful arcs. The deckplates, littered with items of clothing. The bunk, half-made, one pillow hanging haphazardly on Han's side, ready to fall at the slightest disturbance. It all existed in a universe outside her own torrid, unravelling one, the one in which past and present clashed and left her feeling lost and humiliated and… and seen in the worst possible way. If being loved by a man as invested as Han Solo had been terrifying, this was like a roundhouse kick to her solar plexus.

Han swallowed and squeezed her hand, pulled her back to herself as surely as if he'd lunged for her.

"We can go, if you want to," he said. "Right now. Give me a few minutes to warm her up, and we can blast jets outta here..."

She was quiet for a moment as he trailed off, his supportive words dying in the space between them. She had no idea how to even begin unpacking that conversation with Yoda, a self-professed Jedi master who had so quickly validated every dark fear she had been harboring these past few months, ever since she had admitted to herself that she was Force-sensitive. She knew she had to say something, had to do some work before she could sleep, knew Han needed her to communicate what she was feeling.

But the memory of how precariously she had held onto herself, sitting around that fire, how precipitous it had been, how she had suddenly been perched three thousand meters above the ground and listing side to side. How the air had felt thin, how she had been gasping for breath, for big lungfuls just to keep her from teetering off.

She stepped into Han's space instead, deciding what she really needed was his arms around her, his reality, the tight grip he kept on her even in light of all the evidence to the contrary. And his arms wrapped around her like she knew they would, warm and secure as she disappeared into his shirt.

Crushed to his chest, she finally whispered, "What was that?"

Humorlessly and wordlessly, he laughed into her hair.

"He's powerful," she whispered. "And Obi-Wan knew him."

Putting his hands on her shoulders and pulling back, he ducked his head to look her in the eye. "So he's the real deal and you're hearing ghosts."

"Just another day at Jedi school, I guess."

Her voice was so frail that he shook his head and led her to the chaos of their bunk. Once she was settled on the edge, he leaned in and kissed the top of her hand, laying it flat on his thigh.

"I don't like him," he said, as if giving up a secret.

She smiled, charmed by the understatement. "I doubt you would have liked him even if he hadn't called me a liar."

"He's rude," Han agreed. "Kind of judgemental, too, for a guy who lives in a swamp."

"You're calling him rude? You?"

He shrugged. "Maybe a good stun-bolt nap would improve his personality?"

The easy humor was so unfailingly consistent that she kissed him, as much to reassure herself that she was okay as to reassure him, for all intents and purposes. His jokes were performative right now, meant to ground her, and she knew it because the tension still lined his arms and shoulders, the way his big hand swallowed hers on his thigh, the way his eyes tracked her every movement like he was recording them for posterity. He was trying to gauge her reaction to Yoda, to the entire situation, and in the meantime he was going to fight his own anger with gentle, sardonic humor.

Goddess, she loved him.

"A liar," she murmured, looking down at their hands. "I've been called a lot of things before, but never a liar."

She still couldn't figure out how that one word had struck her so deeply, how Yoda had so carelessly thrown out the very deepest, darkest insecurities she had and shed light on them with all the finesse of a bantha. It wasn't as if she was oblivious to her own faults. She well knew she could be stubborn and self-sacrificial, that she often bottled up her own emotions in favor of cool command and control.

But a liar… she would have never seen that in herself, not in a thousand years. She was a lot of things, but at the very least she was honest. To a fault, some would say; to the point of being brutal. Not cruel, never that, but just to the edge of it.

No one walked away from her unsure about where she stood on a matter.

"Everyone's a liar," Han answered her. "You think you're so special?"

She smiled ruefully at him but only because he was handling this ridiculous situation with the only grace he had. This entire idea—the concept of seeking counsel from the dead—was so far outside Han Solo's orbit that he might as well be pulling the hyperdrive lever without coordinates in the navicomputer. His humor masked a severe unease, she knew, and she was grateful for the effort to be there for her, for them both, when he probably felt like running for the hills.

"He has the answers I need," she admitted.

"Yeah."

"If I came here for answers, I can't just give up when he proves to me he has some kind of… insight."

"Yes, you can," he said. "But you don't want to."

She swallowed, feeling transparent now but in a much more agreeable way than she had with Yoda. "I need to know what my father knew. I need to know why they adopted me."

"You need to know that it was all real."

She sucked in a breath, teetering between relief at Han's insight and shock that it came to him so clearly. That was it, exactly.

She needed to know that her father had let her sit on his feet below his desk in the Winter Palace during his conferences because he wanted her there. She needed to know that her mother had loved her so much that she would let her run for the senate at an entirely too-young age, despite her severe misgivings.

She needed to know that she had been loved. Everything inside of her screamed that it had all been real, that they had loved her completely and without an agenda. Every memory and every lesson, every careful word and moment of trust… Before all of this had started, before her parents had been so horrifically stolen from her by Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin, she would have staked her life that she had had the most ideal family in the galaxy.

But if she hadn't...

"My father told me to take the plans to Obi-Wan Kenobi," she murmured. "He said he would meet me there. That he wanted to be there for me."

Han hummed low in his throat. "Sounds like a guy who loved his daughter."

"I want to believe that, but—"

"—but he lied," he finished for her. "And it's making you doubt him."

If she hadn't been loved or wanted, if this had all been a facade to protect a potential new generation of Jedi… She wouldn't handle that well at all. She had already lost her past once; she wasn't sure she could do it again.

"Maybe we should enroll you in Jedi School," she retorted with some sad humor. "Reading minds like you do."

He leaned back on the bunk in an awkward angle, feet still on the deck-plates but long torso crossways against the precarious pillow. "I don't read minds. I just know yours."

She raised her eyes to his, a lump in her throat and a terrific feeling of nakedness spreading over her whole body. A stubborn lock of hair had fallen into his eyes, rebellious in the chaos of Han's general appearance. His shoulders were relaxed now, his body absent of its natural frenzied energy. He let her look at him without protest or quip, allowing her to lay down beside him and take stock of his perceptiveness and care, the way she could feel how much he loved her in how he did nothing in this moment.

Still. Quiet. Supportive. A mathematical constant. Invariable and permanent.

"What would you do?" she asked into his duracrete soul.

He thought about it for a long moment, and when he spoke his voice was deep and confident, a bassline drumbeat for forward progress. "I'd drill him for all the answers he's got."

"Even if the answers are difficult? Even if it makes me question everything I know about myself?"

He looked like he was about to laugh and then changed tactics and shook his head instead. "The answers are going to be difficult, Leia. You said it yourself. People don't form conspiracies for no good reason."

Dropping her eyes, she looked for something to do with her hands, finding it in pulling his shirt from the waistband of his trousers. She swept her fingers under the fabric, brushing up his stomach to his chest and then back down again, an absent route that she'd done a hundred times before, but nonetheless served to anchor her to the moment.

"So you do listen."

"Funny, Worship," he said, waving away the barb without any bite. "You knew it was gonna be bad. You wanted to come anyway. You said you had to."

She had. And she still felt like she had to. But the prospect of the endeavor was different from beginning to undertake it. She could speculate about her and Luke's past, what tragedy must have befallen their biological parents to have earned this much attention from two Jedi masters and two Republic senators. But discovering the actual answers was a wholly different task, one requiring sterner stuff than she felt capable of after the loss of Alderaan.

"Even on a bad day you can outthink that little lizard," Han added, and that triggered a full laugh from her, a pause in the constant forward motion of her thoughts, the plans she made that would disappear when the world changed, when the universe turned itself upside-down in front of her.

"Call him that to his face," she said as her hand slipped down his chest to fiddle with his belt buckle. "I dare you."

"Done. And in the meantime..." Han trailed off with a mischievous glint to his eye as he rolled onto his side and trapped her beneath him, her hand sandwiched between them.

She rolled her eyes but her smile didn't feel like a lie at all. "There are ghosts here, you know."

His lips immediately moved to the sensitive brush of skin behind her ear, and her other hand swept up to the back of his neck, holding him there in complete disregard to her own words.

"Apparently there are ghosts everywhere."

Laughing at the muffled sound of his voice, she squirmed beneath him and freed her hand. "Luke and Chewie are here, too."

His lips traveled a quick path from her throat to her cheek, kissing her chastely even as his tone dipped into the most unchaste weapon in his arsenal.

"Then we'll do this real quiet-like."

He kissed her smile and Leia let herself get pulled under by his unceasing ability to aggravate almost anyone, by the spark of blithe disregard that lit his path. Pulling her into his own world of crooked charm and happy permanence, he took control, freeing her of her clothing in record time, eager to distract her—and himself, too—from the utter berserk reality that awaited them outside the safe confines of the Falcon's hull plating.

—0—

"Dangerous, they are," he said, lying in his hard bed when Obi-Wan reappeared to him hours later. "So certain you are that they can be trained?"

We don't have another choice, Obi-Wan said. Anakin and the Emperor must be defeated.

"Create another, younger enemy we could."

That won't happen.

Yoda narrowed his eyes. "So sure you are. Happened once it did."

The Force is starved for balance. The Skywalker children could bring it.

He breathed deeply, feeling the years weigh heavy on him, the sins of the past and the horrors of the present. "Believed that once before, we did."

Obi-Wan couldn't reply to that, and Yoda sighed deeply. To be wrong, to be manipulated into one's own destruction… this had the potential to be a cyclical event, if he wasn't careful. Much must be prepared, he thought as the dwelling disappeared under the heaviness of his old, tired eyes.

He would not fail the galaxy again.


Author's Note: Happy December, Specter fans! Special thanks to AmongstEmeraldClouds for her discernment and her attention to detail. And thanks to each of you for sticking with this story during this rollercoaster of a year. Our next chapter will be posted Friday, January 1st, 2021, in celebration of a year we all will be glad to see behind us! Happy Holidays and please remember to be safe and smart, to wear your mask and wash your hands and stay home! - KR