Disaster


They were a light in the dark, a pinnacle of warmth in a sea-sky of nothingness, a lone fire on a field of cold. The universe outside their heat was a confusing starscape of things she didn't want to consider, and so she pulled him closer, held onto him as tightly as he did her.

He was hard between her thighs, slick, brisk, and insistent: a man in control but only just. His breathing was stilted in her left ear, whispers of his lips against her skin at first languorous and then short, biting. This was no soft coupling; this was hard, fast, fierce. Addictive. Overwhelming.

"Han," she whispered as she tossed her head back, as his rhythm picked up and she could feel his exertion, his desperation, his dire need to be wholly encompassed by her.

He didn't answer, but pressed into her harder, ricochets of the fullness of him branching through her veins like blood. She closed her eyes against the simple, scintillating line of his shoulder above her, the glistening column of his throat, the sweat curling the hair at the nape of his neck. Oh, but the darkness behind her eyelids was all the more riotous, because now she could see them, the pinpricks of light in the darkness, moving together even as she felt him deep within.

Closer and closer the light came, engulfing her in blinding brightness, the push-pull thrusts surging forward, as if she could be consumed entirely

I'm coming.

The words were not right. Not whispered into the crown of her head with the urgency of a lover's warning, but threatening, with such malevolence that she gripped Han's shoulder with a ferocity she couldn't attribute to sex. She opened her eyes, brown seeking his reassuring green, but instead he looked stoic, terror held on a tight leash against any kind of emotion.

"Han?"

He withdrew from her so completely it was as if he'd vanished. She tried to sit up, to reach for him, but he was farther away from her now, clothed, shackled, standing on a platform with eyes that haunted the space around them. She stood, and now she was in her snowsuit, held fast by hands against her biceps, feeling as if she might perish if Han hadn't been looking at her like she was the last thing he might ever see

"I love you," she whispered against the awful look in his eyes, the fevered farewell, the tempered desperation.

He opened his mouth to reply, to say something pivotal, but seemed to reconsider as he looked away from her, above her, behind her.

And the universe snapped in two, breaking, ripping apart at the seams, and she was falling, falling, falling, the taste of his lips on her tongue and a horrible feeling of rending, as if she would never see him again.

—0—

Leia awoke with a jolt, a hoarse name in her throat, darkness pouring in as if spilled from a bottomless cup. She shook violently, spluttering, trying to turn over to grasp onto the man behind her, to plead for him to stay, but found herself weighed down as if someone was sitting on her chest. Would she choke on these horrifying nightmares? It felt like a distinct possibility.

Han, she thought, and it circled in her brain like vultures over their scavenged prey. I need to see him. Han—

Calm, Leia.

She jerked against her invisible restraints and they slipped off her arms like oiled ropes, freeing her to roll onto her back, to face Han as he slept beside her. Watching the peaceful rise and fall of his chest, she brushed a hand against the skin of his shoulder, not enough to wake him but enough for her to confirm his reality. That this was no dream.

Calm.

She heard it again, now that her tremors were softer, now that her breathing had slowed. There was a familiarity to it, a purity that was too much like her brother to be anyone else.

Swallowing, she snuck her ankle between Han's knees and molded herself into his side, heart rate slowing, breath deepening. Before she fell back asleep she reached out to her brother, trying to assure him that she was fine, that he could return to his own sleep.

She hated that she had woken him with her nightmares.

But the voice she had heard wasn't awake. It had none of the urgency of Luke's typical reassurances. It was a mantra, a reaching-out, a reality born of their shared power in the Force. She knew it with certainty. Luke was asleep. He… he had…

She didn't have the emotional capacity at the moment to broadly consider the intriguing notion. Instead, she tripped into a soft, deep sleep, leaving behind the memory of her nightmare in the recesses of her subconscious where it could never be reached again.

—0—

Their third and final morning on Dagobah broke very differently than the others had. Hope wrapped around them all, a sense of lightening where there had been darkness and weight. Possibility sang through the corridors of the old ship, even as her occupants slipped into wakefulness, one by one, with vastly different perspectives and yet all with the same thought.

They were leaving today.

Leia awoke to the sound of Han's soft snore in her hair, the rustle of his breath and the heat of his chest. It was early but past dawn, the latest she had slept for months. The arm around her waist was heavy and warm and she felt peaceful even as she wondered what fresh trials the day might bring.

Han opened his eyes soon after she began to stretch, the tightening of her muscles near him an energizing experience all on its own. He considered hauling her against him and making his opinion of the morning quite clear. But he resisted, suspecting she might have more pressing demands on her time.

"Last day," he muttered into her forehead.

She lifted her chin to look at him, soft and beautiful, and he considered how there was not a single thing he wanted more in this life than to have more mornings infused with this peace and this woman.

"Last day," she repeated. "I'm sure you're ready to get back."

"You mean you're sure I'd like something to do rather than stare at your ass while you train?"

"You can't even pretend to deny it?"

He shrugged the shoulder open to the air of the cabin, unabashed. "I'm itching to see my people again. It's been a long time away."

"Salla's taking good care of them."

"I'm sure she is," he said. "I just want to make sure someone's taking care of her."

Han didn't know why Leia seemed to light up like a festival tree at those words. She leaned in close, brushed her nose along his, and then kissed him, pausing at his lower lip a beat longer than strictly necessary.

"You," she whispered into his lips, "are a good man."

Internally, he felt like she'd brought him to that beautifully-lit festival tree. Outwardly, he scowled and then yanked the covers from them both, exposing their sleep attire to the chill in the cabin air.

"If we weren't outlaws, I could sue you for words like that," he said, but grinned to himself as he moved to the fresher.

Thirteen meters aft by way of jury-rigged wiring and secret smuggling compartments, Luke heard the water-recycler kickstart below the deck-plates in the crew cabin, and knew it was probably time to become presentable. He had slept pretty well the night before, feeling a new sense of hope for the day. Leia's triumph had cleared the gloom from his eyes; the universe appeared so much more colorful now, more promising somehow.

Only two things weighed him down: the twin worries of Yoda's lies and Leia's mental well-being. As he broke from his restful sleep, he considered that these were important burdens to have in this time and in this place, full of noble challenges and trials. Wasn't it the kind of awareness Yoda himself had told him he lacked? Rather than extinguish them, perhaps he needed to embrace them, cull them into his own favor, reep the wisdom they sowed?

Maybe in this case he could balance those two things. Have hope for them and their journey with the Force and also keep track of the very real possibility of deception.

That Leia might need something more from their training than he did? That they might be on the same path but that the terrain was very different on her side?

Yes. Yes, he could do that.

They ate together, a comfortable silence filled with contentment, knowing it was both temporary and an improvement from their most recent mornings. Missing were the accusations, the guarded eyes, the vibrant energy of fierce protectionism...

And Chewbacca. He was nowhere to be found. Han quipped that the furball had finally broken rank and was hunting, dispelling the tension, but he kept one ear out for the hissing of the front hatch. Just in case.

—0—

Dagobah's topography would be far improved by more trees, Chewbacca thought as he trudged through the ruthless, eternal mire. The earth beneath his paws was sodden and of poor nutritional capacity, he suspected, and as such had made an ecosystem rich in moisture but lacking in anything that would allow the sprawling, incredible forests of Kashyyyk to flourish here.

It had been expressed to him—by Cub, and often—that he thought the same of most planets. Extraordinary creatures, trees. It was a shame so many planets did not have them, or if they did, they were insufficient to climb or live upon.

His hike to Yoda's homestead was lonely, dreary, and wet enough that his foul mood was worsened by the time he had reached his destination. Even worse was the fact that he had seen several animals of prey to hunt while he went but had to refrain.

Humans worried about the strangest things. Poisonous fauna! Chewbacca was not afraid of such banal things.

His old friend greeted him in the clearing in front of the small house, knowing Chewbacca would not be able to fit inside his home proper.

"Old friend," Yoda called. "Welcome. Sit, please."

Greetings, Chewbacca returned. He was still unaccustomed to the relief he felt knowing Yoda had survived, unexepected and unlikely as it had seemed. I have two questions for you.

Yoda hummed in invitation, eyes wide, ears pointing upward.

Why is Cub angry with you? And can I hunt and eat a sea-snake?

Chewbacca's human friends often liked to tease him that he was too forthright with his conversational approaches. But he had lived many cycles, and he well knew that much time was lost while humans bandied about, discussing important topics in diplomatic terms.

They did not have the time for politeness, and Chewbacca was not keen to mother his cubs in this regard after so much conflict.

Yoda slowly smiled. "Appreciate your honesty, I do."

You might be the only one.

"Of that, I do not know," he said. "But hunt a sea-snake, you should not."

They are poisonous?

"No. Horrible, they taste."

Chewbacca whuffed a laugh, charmed by the master even as his hair began to mat to his skin. This would not make a pleasant grooming ritual later in the day; he hoped his cubs realized how generous he had been, addressing their problems to the detriment of his soft, chestnut coat. Had Malla had occasion to see him this way, she would have demanded a thorough wash before she would commune with him.

And my other concern?

Yoda seemed to age another hundred years as Chewbacca observed him now. His shoulders sank and his eyes grew dull.

"Difficult the path is, for your cub and his friends," he said at last in quiet tones. Cub would have had to lean in to hear him. "The root of his anger, it is."

Their path has been difficult for as long as I have known them, Chewbacca growled. Why is this any different?

"Tell you, I cannot."

Chewbacca stilled, suspicions raised and concern washing over him. Cannot or will not?

The old master sighed and it seemed to age him further. Chewbacca wondered how much older he could get. "Protecting them, I am," he murmured at length. "Complicated, the situation is, more so than anyone knows."

You accuse Little Princess of lying and yet you do the same?

"Lies to herself, she does," Yoda answered immediately.

Chewbacca glanced pointedly around the desolate, wet homestead, thinking hard. My memory has failed me. I do not remember your reticence to tell the truth.

"Chewbacca." His given name was uncomfortable on the master's lips, it seemed, and he wondered why. "Known these humans long, have you?"

Yes.

"Trust them, you do?"

Absolutely.

He expected the answer to quell some ongoing misgiving Yoda had about training Little Princess and Little Jedi and was disconcerted when it didn't do so. "Seen their power, you have?"

Chewbacca narrowed his eyes, unsure what information his old friend was aiming to receive. Little Jedi made an impossible shot above the skies of Yavin IV. Little Princess raised her hands and absorbed stun bolts, protecting my cub from Darth Vader. Why do you ask?

"Hmm," Yoda said. "Physical and nonphysical, both those actions are."

I do not understand. And you have not answered my question.

Yoda flicked a wrist absently. "A fundamental truth they are missing, yes. One with the power to destroy them. Best it is to allow them time to prepare. To share. To learn how to control themselves and each other."

They are not younglings, he growled, angered now.

"Easier it would be if they were," Yoda responded. "Seen them share energies, have you?"

Chewbacca could not respond to that and simply stared wide-eyed at the master, awaiting clarification.

"Been affected by the other, have they?"

He began to shake his head but was stopped by one very clear image: Little Jedi, delirious on the Falcon's ramp. The stuttering steps of Cub as he half-dragged Little Princess to their location. Their paleness, their terrified eyes, the whisper of he's here that she didn't seem to know she was saying.

"You have."

Chewbacca slowly nodded.

"When?"

Weeks ago. They were very affected by Darth Vader's presence in the system.

The change in the master's demeanor was stark. Now he was not older, he was not aging, he was instead as terrified as the twins had been, a shadow of their pain and bone-deep horror.

"Go to him, they must not," he murmured, then his eyes shot to Chewbacca's. "Prevent this at all cost, you must, Chewbacca. You must."

He thought Yoda's vehemence strange, the way his eyes grew large and his hands clawed at his walking stick, but didn't feel as if he could say no. And wasn't that one of his many goals anyway? To protect his Honor Family?

I will, he pledged. Will you tell them more about this … sharing of energies? They are stronger than you think them to be.

The master considered it, then nodded. "A choice, I have not. In agreement, are we?"

Chewbacca, wet and dirty and confused but nonetheless fervently in support of his cubs, simply nodded, uncertain exactly how his priorities might change but willing to meet the challenge head-on.

—0—

The scene was familiar. Three beings around a pile of stones, surrounded by bog and green and the heaviest mist Luke had ever experienced, though he supposed that meant next to nothing, considering his upbringing.

Yoda sighed into the silence that had prevailed after his outrageous explanation, involving Force-bonding and energy-sharing and a plethora of unintelligible misplacing of verbs. Luke hadn't understood most of it; Leia had looked similarly confused, though her eyes remained sharp and challenging, her chin held high.

"A demonstration, you need?"

Of course I do, Luke thought but kept it to himself, simply offering a nod instead.

"Levitate a stone, young Skywalker."

Yes!

He was eager to attempt it. After Leia's successes of the night before, his hope had been renewed and he had felt like it had simply been a bad night. He had been feeling down, jealous. He knew he shouldn't make excuses but sometimes a student had to fail for them to learn and grow, and he had keenly felt that failure.

Closing his eyes, he welcomed the rush of energy that flooded his senses, coasting over him like a flowing tide, soft but ever-present. He exhaled as the heady feeling of surrender overpowered his sense of self. He didn't feel like Luke anymore; he was a pocket of Force-sensitivity in a warm, wet world teeming with it. He still didn't quite understand what Yoda meant when he talked about calling it to him or commanding it, what he felt was more organic than that, more foundational. He felt like he was tapping into the deepest, most secretive river, one that flowed through every single thing around him.

He wrapped it around himself and imagined the stone in front of him as an extension of his own energy, his own presence in the Force.

"Luke," Leia whispered.

The awe in her voice, the encouragement, told him that he had been successful. Overcome by excitement, he cracked open an eye to see one stone hovering before him, floating in midair as if held by an invisible cable, completely motionless.

"Focus," Yoda said. "Only the stone, you see."

Doubling his effort, he grew single-minded and patient, drawing his breath in cooling inhales of peace and calm. It was easier now, this extraordinary skill: the attention it required suddenly felt much more attainable. More natural.

"And now you," Yoda said.

In one corner of his mind, Luke knew the master was addressing Leia but he was not to be bothered. He was sparing limited brainpower to a second stone, feeling it tremble under his considerable field of perception.

The second stone wobbled and then rose, and in his peripheral vision, he saw a third stone—Leia's— gracefully lift off the pile, with a soft swing that differed from his very controlled, motionless objects.

"Good," the master said. "Now…"

Luke braced himself for more direction but was startled when he felt a sharp nudge in his right side, just under his ribcage. Jolted, he saw all the levitating stones hit the mud—his and Leia's, all—in a sloppy, splattering sound of failure.

"Hey!" he said.

He expected to see Yoda with his walking stick upraised and pointed at Luke, the obvious instrument of his distraction. He rubbed at his injured side and glared, unsure what lesson was to be taught through bodily harm. That was more how Leia taught lessons, not Yoda.

But when his eyes cleared, he witnessed a surprising sight. The master's walking stick hovered near Leia, its end extended to her, not to Luke. She was glaring and rubbing her side in a twin image of Luke himself.

"That was unnecessary," she muttered.

"Cause her harm, I did," Yoda said. "Lose your concentration, you both did."

"That's never happened before," he said. He had felt Yoda's nudge, as surely as if the injury had been inflicted on his own side. It still resounded, the waves radiating throughout his body.

"That's not strictly true," Leia said quietly.

He thought back, unwilling to speculate in front of Yoda, and found himself arriving exactly where Leia's thoughts were. The cold that had settled in his chest after the Mercs' party, how the ramp of the Falcon had wavered and then disappeared, the odd sense of dissolution. How he could hear her voice, calling to him. How he had felt connected, strapped to the medbunk, how he had spoken just loud enough for Chewie to hear his urgent messages about Vader's whereabouts...

Oh.

"Unusual, it is," Yoda said into the quiet. "Careful, we must be."

Leia stood quickly, a riot of movement, so fast Luke had trouble keeping his eyes on her. Now that they had discovered the peculiarities between them—the vast divide between how he saw the Force and how she did—he could easily see her need to expend energy when she became anxious or needed to process new information.

"This is a problem," she said, still moving, a blur of burgeoning scarlet flickers. "It's a big problem."

"Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad," Luke defended.

"Correct, your sister is. A liability such a connection could be."

Walking over to him and stepping over the pile of stones as if they were nothing, she laid a hand on his shoulder. "Luke. You remember what happened on Home One. This is dangerous."

"The Force seeks balance," the master agreed. "If one of you pulls the other into darkness…"

He trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished, leading down a path of misty destruction, unformed but possible. Luke struggled to grasp the larger picture they both seemed to envision.

"I would never go dark," he assured them, passionate and certain. "I couldn't."

A dull silence followed his earnest exclamation. Where were the avians? It suddenly felt as quiet as a crypt.

And then Leia's voice, soft and sure, as if she felt a depth to her words that he couldn't possibly fathom.

"It's not you he's worried about."

—0—

Grasping the controls with an eager relish often reserved for the smooth planes of Leia's body, Han wasn't particularly bothered by the grimace that clouded Luke's expression. He just plain didn't care. Dagobah had been… not a disaster, no. He wouldn't classify it that way, because he hardly knew what had actually happened there.

But the impact on Luke and Leia had been marked. He knew what it was like to question the world around him; he had done it when he had first met Luke and had been suddenly willing to sacrifice everything for the Alliance. He had felt it again when he had admitted to himself that he was in love with Leia. Rolling with the punches was a practiced skill of his, something he took pride in. It was how he had survived as long as he had.

Watching Luke and Leia do it? That had been much harder.

And so he was happy to leave Dagobah in the dust. He just hoped the emotional toll wrought by Short Stuff had been worth it.

"Let's get outta here," he muttered, sparing a glance toward his copilot.

At your command, Chewie rumbled.

The controls beckoned, the stars called. They breezed through their start-up procedures as surely as they breathed, effortless, in synch, so tremendously easy that he grinned to himself. The crew of the Millennium Falcon couldn't levitate rocks worth a damn but they were singularly skilled in this, in defying gravity in their own way, no less magical for being based on engineering instead of an invisible Force.

The wet landscape of Dagobah fell away and they rose into the skies above. They hit the atmosphere at speed, pushing into the exosphere and then pure vacuum within moments, all too ready to be rid of the misery of the world below them. The cockpit was quiet but not hushed, different from their initial descent in that Leia was contributing to the process, asking for coordinates, assisting Chewie with the navicomputer. The two bandied about comments, slight teasing, the kind of conversations they often had nowadays to the exclusion of their Corellian.

He didn't mind it one bit. It warmed some small place in his chest to see a relationship develop between his two partners, though he would never reveal it to either of them.

And even so, not everyone felt as excited to leave. Luke had taken over Leia's heavy silence, the foreboding sense of doom she had wrapped around herself during their stay on The Big Swamp. He hadn't said a word since the siblings had boarded, tracking mud and rainwater as they went.

Han glanced behind him and took in the younger man's eyes, the wariness in the line of his mouth, and felt a stab of concern. He looked lost, untethered, like he'd forgotten to dock his X-wing upon arrival and was watching it drift away from him in a slow, awkward tumble. It was so similar to Leia's past expression that his instinct to protect kicked in without any conscious thought.

"Hey, kid," Han said. "What's got you all locked up?"

Chewie and Leia stopped their soft chatter about the night's food supply and watched for Luke's reaction with inquiring eyes. And he took his sweet time in answering, too, considering his words in a careful way that made Han uncomfortable.

"We have a lot of work to do," he murmured. "I'm just trying to process the path ahead."

Leia caught Han's eye, then reached over to grab Luke's hand for one quick squeeze. "It's okay," she said in answer, her voice strong and sure. "We'll be fine as long as we're together."

"Yeah," Han jumped in. "There's a ton of shit to levitate in the base training rooms."

Luke didn't seem to hear them, wrapped up tight in his thoughts and staring somewhat blankly out the viewport. An uncomfortable silence pervaded what Han had thought would be a great moment, an easing after the difficulties of the past week. It should feel like a celebration, he thought, a homecoming.

Funny. Calling Echo Base home was a laughable concept, but that's exactly what he was doing.

"Just one quick stop to refuel and you'll be back to your ice," he said.

For his part, Han couldn't wait. He was ready for some normalcy. Or… well. What counted as normalcy in the middle of a war, anyway. He wasn't picky; he just wanted his Wookiee, his princess and his farmboy safe. That's about all that mattered in the long run, and for once, it seemed he might get his way.

—0—

He should have paid more attention.

He should have thought it through, taken a moment to consider his options. Been more careful with the lives aboard his ship as they hurtled to a bustling junkheap in the Mid-Rim he had been to dozens of times before, but which spelled heartache on that particular day.

He should have known better.

He should not have gone to Ord Mantell.

—0—

It reverberated through the corridors of Echo Base like the cries of the tauntauns in their pens: loud, disruptive and hard to miss. It was shouted through the mess hall, down the South Passage, up through the command center and into the landing bays, where Salla caught it from a passing dispatch from one mechanic to another.

The Falcon was returning, and they were returning with either an injury or a casualty.

She was fairly sure it was the former and not the latter; by procedure, Alliance ships called ahead for immediate medical attention on approach. There was no such emergency call for the dead, so she assumed that was more a byproduct of gossip than truth.

She hoped, anyway.

You couldn't just come back to us safely, could you, Slick? Her silent accusation was mean-spirited, even if wasn't outright unreasonable. Han had a nasty habit of ignoring his own safety in favor of stupidity and courage, and she could imagine all manner of ways he could have managed to injure himself. And he would be the injured party, of that she had no doubt.

Considering who had accompanied him on this trip. Considering what they all meant to him.

Sprinting, she made it to the other side of the docking bay before the ship even touched down, settling on her struts with a shaky kind of rush that sent alarm bells ringing in her ears. Han was not at those controls, which meant his injuries were grave enough to take him out of the pilot's seat.

She swallowed her worry and focused on the problem at hand. How to help. How to fix. How to solve.

The Falcon's ramp lowered and the medical team rushed into the ship, Salla at their heels. She ran toward the cockpit first, ready to lambast Han. but was intercepted by Chewie in the ring corridor. He ignored her questions and passed by her, more urgency in his lumbering steps than she had seen from him in months. Following the broad line of his back, she entered the galley and fought to see behind the four members of the medical team, a visibly shaken Skywalker and the larger Wookiee's frame.

Idiot men, she thought as they stood there, useless. Scowling, she moved to the side, until she could see…

Oh, fuck.

Blood. A compression bandage stained reddish-brown, wrapped around a small female torso. Big brown eyes set in a concerningly pale face. Lips that trembled as she tried to speak, halting words with an unmistakable tenor of pain.

"I'm okay," Leia Organa said. "Please. It looks worse than it is."

Her voice was like a hydrospanner thrown through glass, shattering the uneasy silence that enveloped her sorry state.

"When was the compression bandage put on the wound?" one of the med techs asked.

"We put it on as soon as we left—"

Another med tech leaned toward her, eyes trained on the bandage. "How long ago?"

Seeming a little confused by the question, the princess looked around the space as if she were searching for someone in particular, ticking by them one by one. She caught Salla's eye last and the lieutenant was disconcerted by how big her pupils looked. She was in shock, Salla realized.

Leia needed help now.

"I'm not sure," she finally admitted. "I've lost some blood, my head is a little ... Han?"

Some blood. Considering the stain on that bandage and the horrorshow smeared on the deck-plates beneath their feet, the princess had lost more than simply some blood.

The med team seemed to agree. "We need to get you to Medical, ma'am."

"In a minute. Han?"

Salla turned, scanning for the Corellian and hoping she could speed up Leia's capitulation to go with the med techs. But when she found him, the image stopped her as surely as the sight of Leia's blood had.

In the far corner of the hold, away from the bustle of the med team, stood an empty, shallow silhouette of a man that had all the markers of Solo but none of the brash bravado. Everything about him was a washed-out mess of coldness and paralysis: lips drawn into a flat line, unclenched jaw, sloping shoulders into motionless hands. The only sharp parts of his image were his eyes. laser-focused on the princess. Dully, Salla noted the dried blood on his palms and fingers that matched the soiled compression bandage.

His expression sent chills down her spine. He was vacant, uninvested, like he was peering into the dramatics of a bad holo.

"No, Your Highness. We need to go now."

"I'm fine," she said, surprising no one. "The blast missed the vital organs. It's just some blood loss and tissue damage—"

Chewie growled, interrupting her protests, and suddenly there were six people talking at once, all attempting to reason with the stubborn patient. The voices dispelled some of the grotesque enchantment of the scene, and Salla took the opportunity to slip closer to Han.

"She needs treatment," she muttered.

He nodded but didn't move a muscle otherwise.

Annoyed, Salla reached up and smacked him on the back of the head. "Asshole. Go convince your girlfriend to let the docs work on her."

Han blinked as if startled but found his voice. "What do you think I've been doing for the past two hours?" he asked. "Damn woman would argue with me about the color of the sky if I let her."

"So you're just gonna let her bleed out in the main hold, huh?"

Han brushed a hand over his mouth with a grimace, then seemed to make a decision and pushed through the assembled crowd to stand in front of the princess. Crouching to be at eye-level with her, his hands brushed from her knees to her thighs and he peered at her with a slightly-warmer expression. .

"Leia," he said softly, just loud enough for Salla to hear. "Go with them."

"I'm fine, it's nothing, really—"

"Nothing? A few millimeters to the left and they'd be carting you off to the morgue."

His voice was utterly without inflection, dry as a Nar Shaddan flowering plant, and Salla became very, very worried. It was a familiar tone, one she'd heard often back when she'd been in love with him and he hadn't felt anything of the sort for her.

This was Han Solo very dangerously on the precipice of shutting down entirely.

"And what about you?" Leia asked, hearing the same tone in his voice that Salla had. "I won't let you sit here and blame yourself. I know that's what you're doing."

He tried a cocky grin, but it failed miserably. The confidence was nowhere near his eyes. "Give me a second to run diagnostics on the ship and then I'll be right there."

She didn't seem terribly convinced by this and Salla couldn't blame her. That grin without a spark? The higher pitch to his voice? Something was very wrong.

The princess opened her mouth in what looked like a sharper response, but Skywalker interrupted her.

"Come on, Leia. It won't be any better if you pass out and hit your head on the holochess table."

"Again," Han muttered to himself. Then louder he said, "Go."

That seemed to settle the matter, though Leia's eyes tracked Han carefully as the med team stabilized her on a hover-gurney. Urgent voices spoke medical gibberish as their footsteps echoed down the corridor—hypovolemic shock the most concerning as they disappeared—until it was silent in the ship. Deafening silence, like the hold had been over-pressurized and the crew had all been killed in one fell swoop.

"Chewie," Han said into the quiet. "Can you—?"

He didn't need to finish the sentence; the sentiment was obvious to all of them. The Wookiee growled in agreement and then hurried off to follow the med team.

Then they were alone, and Salla didn't have the faintest idea how to deal with the situation. It was an uncomfortable silence, teeming with emotion but so unbearable that it felt like she was treading wild terrain with boots that were far too small. Every breath was strained, every movement catalogued and analyzed. They were not brothers the way Han and Chewie were, and they were not in a committed relationship the way Han and Leia were. They were ex-lovers and now partners in leadership of an Alliance squadron.

Any relationship they now had was built on her pushing him and him pushing back. That was how they operated, why they had been successful. But Han was not pushing. He was immobile, paralyzed. She just didn't know how to help him like this.

"He knew we were there," he mumbled.

Salla couldn't remember a time when his eyes had looked so cold. It was like staring at the tundra outside the base walls. Unsettled, she swallowed and waited for the shaky, trembling ground beneath their feet to settle.

"Came right up while we were refueling, when I wasn't looking. Squeezed off three shots before I even knew what was happening."

"Who?" she asked.

He shook his head and took a seat at the holochess table near where Leia's blood had pooled on the deck-plates. She had an odd feeling, like he didn't want to answer the question.

"Who was it, Han?" she prodded.

She feared the worst. A dark demon in black armor, voice hissing from a speaker, with the senseless use of powers no one understood. Vader had come for them twice now, and if he'd found them again...

"No, not Vader," he said at last, and it felt like it killed him to admit the truth. "Fett."

And it was like a match had been lit, illuminating the scene in ruthless beams of light. She understood now why he didn't want to answer her, why he seemed so rudderless and adrift. Why it was so easy for him to say the first name but harder for the second.

Vader was everyone's demon, but Boba Fett was Han's alone.

"I did this," he whispered, broken. "This is my fault."


Author's Note: Thank you so much for your support and reviews, my dearest readers! I am blessed to have you on this journey with me! This chapter is being posted without editing beyond my own; all mistakes are mine.

The next chapter of Specter will be posted Thursday, April 1st, with all the joy that drama brings me and without any of the trickery of April Fools Day. Thanks again! -KR