Gifts


The real-water fresher was the best improvement Lando had made to the Millennium Falcon, by far. Much of what he had done had been luxurious and therefore ridiculous: an autovalet with a delicates cycle, cushioning that was fashionable but uncomfortable, large lockers intended as closets (though Han had found use for those as makeshift smuggling bins for smaller and more fragile cargo). These were refurbishments that wouldn't serve him any better than a kyber-encrusted blaster.

Expense just for the sake of expense. Credits down the drain.

But the water fresher was something else.

Sighing, Han felt the heat of the water beat down on the knots in his shoulders, easing some of the tightness but not all of it. Much of that pain was bone-deep and a product of too many years on the run; nothing was going to touch it except maybe some spice, which he adamantly refused to take. But the superficial knots surrendered to the heat with an ease that still surprised him.

The hell have I put myself through?

The question was not worth dwelling on, too ambiguous to really pinpoint why he suddenly felt like one of Chewie's dejarik pieces. Stress. Adrenaline. Hair-trigger instincts. And then, finally, a flashback in front of Leia.

He leaned against the wall and put his head in his hands, trying to quiet his brain. It was tough shit, the come-down after an attack like the one he had just suffered in the galley. The frenetic need for movement was gone; what was left was a gaping lack of any energy whatsoever, a full-body lethargy that consumed every part of him. Lately, he had taken to the ritual of a warm fresher to try to wash away some of the emotion that clung to him, but it only marginally helped. He wasn't sure why he compulsively did it anymore, why the retreat to his fresher was an inevitable part of this awful scene. But it was and now was not the time to flip the script.

In some ways, the recovery was worse than the inciting event, because there was shame after the weakness, and that might be the bigger sin.

Would you call me that? Weak?

No. But that was Leia. And Leia had much more of a loss to grieve than he did. Weakness wasn't weakness if it was about the loss of an entire world.

She's your world, and you've lost her.

Weak. Pathetic. Helpless and scared. What the fuck had happeed to him? Where was the careless son-of-a-bitch who had done the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs? Where was the hardened smuggler, the ne'er-do-well, the brash braggadocio who did everything and felt nothing? Where was he?

Lost somewhere between Ord Mantell and the frozen tundra of Hoth, when her heart had stopped.

Leia.

Gratefulness and embarrassment came in equal measure to him tonight. Her presence in the galley had mitigated some of the worst of the episode, but it had come at the cost of her seeing firsthand just how frail he truly was.

Would you call me that? Weak?

Pushing off the wall, he swiped at the controls, watching the water trickle to a stop and the enviro-shield shimmer into nothingness. This was useless. He was clean now, and he wasn't frozen on the galley deck anymore. That was progress, at least. He would just have to be more careful about those triggers in the future.

She's one giant trigger, pal. How are you gonna avoid her for three weeks on a ship the size of the Falcon?

He dried his aching body, dressed in sleep-pants and an old shirt with the faded emblem of the Guild on his chest. More clothes than he typically wore to bed, of course, but he couldn't just wander around shirtless, now, could he? He muffled a self-conscious laugh at himself as he glanced in the fresher mirror—he looked like shit and he knew it—and then he ambled his way into the main hold, where Leia, Chewie and the damn droid had all agreed to wait for him.

His copilot's eyes tracked him carefully as he entered, matched by the princess's cool gaze. But it was Threepio who voiced the thought on everyones' minds.

"Oh, you look much better, Commander Solo," he cried.

Han rolled his eyes, already annoyed. "It was a fresher, Goldenrod, not a brain transplant."

Could we do one of those as well?

"Fuck you," he answered Chewie as cheerfully as he could.

And then the moment of truth. He turned to Leia with an awkward sheepishness that didn't sit right on his face but was the correct emotion to display. She hadn't treated him the way he had treated her, with emptiness and cowardice. The least he could do was show her his genuine gratitude. She deserved much more than that, but this was all he could offer her at this point.

"Thanks. For that."

She didn't react, the nonchalant look of strength plastered all over her face, though he could tell exhaustion weighed heavy on her, too. Arms crossed, she looked like she was unsure how to handle him, like he was uncharted territory that could hide friend or foe or something terrifying in-between.

"Do you feel any better?" she asked.

No. Of course not. There was no relief from the crux of the problem in a fresher. Not with her onboard, not when every centim of her body was a reminder of his failure.

Holding her would make him feel better. Telling her that he loved her would make him feel better. Apologizing would make him—

"I'm fine," he answered instead.

She tilted her head and he suddenly felt like he had said all of those stupid fantasies out loud. Either she was getting better at the invisible Jedi stuff that Luke took to so easily or his personal defenses were as shoddy as Hoth's had been.

Dropping his eyes, he took a deep breath and then scanned his available crew. There were very real problems they needed to solve right now, before anyone took to their bunk, and he was still the captain of this ship. This he could do. This he knew how to navigate. Leadership had never been his problem.

"We need to sort out roles. Sleep rotations. Watch schedules."

If the Falcon's emergency systems went out, then none of this would matter anyway. If Vader popped up with an interdictor, all this longing and pain wouldn't amount to much. They were remote possibilities at this point, but the stakes were high enough as it was. No need to tempt fate any more than they already had with that escape through the asteroid field.

"The ship seems quite stable," Goldenrod said, obviously on a completely different track than Han. "I think it would be appropriate for me to man the helm while the three of you rest—"

"No," Han interrupted him.

The problem wasn't a lack of trust in Threepio, although he had plenty of that, too. And it wasn't that the Falcon was in such poor shape that she really truly needed a pilot to man her. The droid would be a capable watchman. Good enough, anyway.

The issue was far more fundamental than anything to do with astrophysical engineering or the impending Imperial threat. There were only two designated sleep spaces aboard the Falcon—Chewie's hammock and Han's bunk—and there was no way Han would subject Leia to sleeping with him in his quarters.

He couldn't imagine the pain for her, and, frankly, he didn't trust himself not to have another breakdown if they shared the bed. Without him there, she should be able to get some rest.

"I'll take the first shift, you two rest," he murmured. "I'm wired anyway."

A lie, of course, but he would be fine with some caf. Chewbacca shrugged but didn't argue, slipping out of the hold without another growl. Poor guy had to be exhausted. Han felt some sympathy for his friend; he knew exactly how trying this whole situation had been on the Wookiee. The fact that he hadn't offered an argument was testament to that.

"Night, pal," he muttered after him.

Leia's big eyes followed Chewie until he was out of sight and then found Han's. "May I use your fresher first?"

"Of course."

She nodded, turned, but then stopped. "Do you still have my things?"

"Yeah, it's all in there. Some clothes, too. I laid them out for you."

It was like someone was prying wooden sticks under their fingernails. So much awkwardness. So much to remember and regret with just the simple idea that he hadn't tossed her hair-wash or clothing away. He played it off like he hadn't had the time, when in fact he had gone searching for those items, held them close in the worst of the hours, when all he had wanted was her, with him, holding him together as he fell apart.

How many times had he drifted into a fitful sleep holding a shirt of hers to his face? One that smelled like her? Flowers and soap and Leia? Like she could save him from himself?

Pathetic.

"Thank you," she said and then left the main hold, the sway of her hips disappearing around the bend in the corridor

"Okay, Professor," he said after an awkward moment of staring at nothing. "Let's talk macrofusion."

—0—

Entering the captain's quarters was worse than Leia thought it would be. Memories flooded by her in waves—some that weren't even a month old—and it was jarring to see a place that held such comfort and such horror in equal measure.

The bunkroom looked exactly the same: a small private space that, on the surface, one might expect to be haphazard or untidy. But like Han himself, appearances could be deceiving. The bunk was made with fresh sheets, the makeshift desk was meticulously sorted, and the closet in the corner would be almost ceremoniously organized. There was a utilitarianism here that overshadowed any creature comforts: minimalist and, yes, sterile. The personal touches were well-hidden, like that box in the bunkside table with a trove of carefully curated momentos. Or the crate of holos that he had never let her see, but she knew contained at least some of his history in the Navy.

But yes. It was all here. Every memory. Every moment. And it hurt so deeply that she wanted to cry.

If she was being honest with herself, she had known he wouldn't change anything, that it would look exactly the same as the last night she had been here, hours after their arrival back to Hoth from Ord Mantell. As he had held her so close to himself. As he had pressed kisses into her hair and murmured nonsense into her ear.

He wouldn't change anything because this space belonged to him before her and now after her, too. She knew she was the only partner Han had allowed in his quarters, and yet still, she was but a blip on his radar. And that pain nestled so close to her recently-knitted rib that she could willfully pretend it came from physical trauma and not heartache.

Walking into the fresher, she quickly divested herself of her snowsuit and found that, yes, Han had folded a soft pair of shorts and a training tank on the vanity. And then, under those, one of his much-larger long-sleeved thermal shirts. The gesture pierced her armor and her lips twitched into a self-conscious smile that lasted only seconds.

He knew she would freeze with only her own clothes. The offering was mindful and caring and exactly the kind of thoughtfulness that she had loved from him when they had been together.

Damn it.

Her smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. It didn't mean anything. It didn't change anything. She had to get that through her head before she said or did something ridiculous.

Like what? Kiss him?

Right. Yes. That.

Laughing darkly to herself, she turned on the water and commanded her feet to stay solidly on the ground. The deck-plates. Whatever. Stay in the moment and survive the next three weeks.

The fresher helped—as they often did—and when she emerged in a billow of steam, she felt more like herself. In control. Analytical. Prepared. Grabbing the spare blankets from the closet, she hefted their bulk in her arms and stepped into the ring corridor, ready to try to make a comfortable nest in the medbunk as she had done at least a dozen times before. On how many missions had she slept in that medbunk? More than a few, for sure. It was far from the worst place she had ever tried to get some rest.

Dropping the blankets onto the bunk, she took stock of her surroundings. It was cold, of course, but the extra thermal layer should help and the blankets were self-heating. The medbay wasn't a bay, at all; it was one hard cot set into the bulkhead, surrounded on both head and foot ends by lockers of medical supplies. A basic oxygen mask hung from above, and the whole area was spartan, stripped and clearly designated as other by the crew.

She remembered the first time she had seen the medical capabilities of the Millennium Falcon, as the friendly Wookiee copilot had helped her treat the chemical burns on her back from her interrogation on the Death Star. How she could understand nothing of what he growled, but how guilty she had felt about her walking carpet jibe earlier in the day. How her apology had earned her a soft smile and the kindness of a one-armed hug. How she had her first stirrings of acceptance in what would become a found family, so different from the one she had lost.

Hmm. Might want to stop thinking that way, Leia.

Frustrated with herself, she focused on the task at hand, bending to arrange the first blanket, activating its magnetic seal and covering the bunk's old and fraying cushion with something that wouldn't catch on the skin of her arms in the middle of her sleep-cycle. Then a top layer, and then a second top layer, because she slept cold and the blankets were available for her use. She knew Han didn't need them and wouldn't mind her making use of whatever she could find.

As she was completing the task, she heard footsteps but ignored them. Han had the good sense to leave without comment, didn't he?

"What are you doing?"

"Apparently not," she whispered, before turning around. "Making my bunk."

Standing in the hatchway, his surprise was obvious to her quick inspection. Eyebrows up, brow creased and a hand on his hip: she would hesitate to say he looked angry but that was the first word to come to mind. Crestfallen, maybe. Definitely uncertain. Confused.

"Why would you…? Oh, c'mon, Leia."

"I've slept here before. It's fine."

He shook his head, still wet from his fresher. "You don't sleep well here."

True enough, though she was tired and would probably be able to sleep well in the navigator's chair at this point. She refrained from saying so. "Focus on yourself, Han."

"I understand not wanting to sleep with me."

With those intense eyes on her, she suddenly felt defensive. Anger roared to life in her chest, magnificent and ferocious, but manageable for the moment. "I should hope you would."

A flash in the hazel, but it was quickly smothered. "But I'm not gonna be anywhere near my bunk for another six hours. There's no reason for you to sleep here. I won't bother you."

"It's not you," she replied, and how had he not already realized this? "It's the bunk itself."

She looked away from him and adjusted the top blanket. It was almost painful to admit, but, honestly, what did she have to hide? She had promised herself that she would treat him like an adult, and even barring his obvious trauma, he had hurt her. Deeply. One good thing to come out of the ashes of their relationship: she felt no shame in her emotions. He had encouraged it and if it stung him now, well, so be it. At least one of them had come out of the past year a little more self-actualized.

So why shouldn't he know how deep the hurt was? That it extended to the reality of where she would sleep? She had no ground here, quite literally; he was everywhere in this space, and the least he could do was respect the uncomfortable position she was in. Give her a little space of her own. Be respectful of the wavering line of her presence on this ship: from welcomed guest to awkward outcast, from crew to other.

"Hadn't considered that," he admitted.

She looked up and caught his eye, then sat down on the newly-made bunk. "I'm surprised you can sleep well in there."

Unexpectedly, he barked a disbelieving laugh. "Are you kidding? Of course I can't."

She leaned back against the bulkhead and watched him wipe a hand over his face, breaking the tension with the smallest human gesture. Gratification breezed through her, an ugly emotion that she did not like. She didn't want him to suffer, either. But there was just … something in her that liked the idea of him being unable to escape the consequences of his choices, even in sleep.

Terrible, she knew, and probably of the Dark Side. But oh, so human, too.

"Haven't slept well in two weeks," he continued.

"Talk about sleeping in the bed you made," she quipped.

He froze and she worried that she had somehow just made the situation even worse than it already was. But then he huffed a low laugh, pursed his lips and nodded. "You can say that again."

They were quiet a moment, the only sounds from the environmental control system. And the itch to ask a bold question started to take over her concentration, until she felt she might burst from it.

"Why did you have me sleep with you that night?"

She meant the night after the shooting, after Medical had stitched her up and sent her to her quarters to rest. She meant the night he had held her so close that she worried he might irritate the stitches. That night, when it had just been sleeping, not sex, when she had been vulnerable in the most fundamental of ways.

Why hadn't he sent her away? If he had known what he was about to do to her, it would have been the kinder choice.

So many parts of this ridiculous circumstance were unfathomable to her. She had spent hours alone at night pondering his motivations, but new ones kept coming to her in quiet moments. This one, now, was not one she had considered before, but if given the opportunity, she wouldn't pass on trying to understand.

Even if it was hurtful. Even if it was insane and completely misguided on his part.

Luckily, he didn't seem to need elucidation. "Hadn't made up my mind yet."

"To leave?"

"To leave the Alliance," he clarified. "I'd already realized I had to… that we couldn't … that you were safer if I…"

He trailed off, uncomfortable, and Leia let that sink in, the upsetting detail she hadn't figured out yet. "So that was your goodbye, then."

Closing his eyes, he looked miserable and this time, Leia didn't feel powerful. "I'm sorry."

"You should be sorry," she said, but without accusation. A simple fact. "You should have told me what you were planning the minute you made up your mind. It would have been a mercy killing, not a murder."

You might have saved me a whole universe of pain, she thought, but immediately tried to breathe through the anger, tried to harness her peace. What would it do to be angry? If he had made a decision that early, then there had been no rescue for them anyway. All her attempts to pull him back to her had been wasted moments, humiliating scenes of desperation. When she had confronted him in the corridors, when Salla had come to her and she had been so sure he wouldn't leave.

Breathe, she instructed herself.

"You knew you were going to hurt me and you held me anyway," she whispered. "You let me believe everything would be fine—"

"Leia."

Staring at her with earnestness, he looked almost like his old self, the way he said her name without the line of regret undermining every letter. And this, she could tell, was something he meant, something honest, something he needed her to know, and it helped stem the tide of her anger, helped her to breathe.

"I wanted to believe it, too," he said.

She didn't know how to respond to that. She was tired, overwhelmed, angry, confused, and utterly surrounded. Helpless. And she felt like all she had done was worry about him, concern herself with what he was feeling, help him through his own struggles, when she had more to say, too.

"If you were planning on sacrificing me for Jabba, the least you could have done was tell me so."

She had phrased it too kindly there, and regretted it immediately. What she had been trying to say was more horrifying, more petrifying. Like some terrible monster from under the stairs, he had crept around and avoided her, even as he haunted her at night. A phantom she couldn't escape.

What she should have said was: if you felt you had to leave, why didn't you just leave?

"For Jabba?"

"I will be fine sleeping here," she said, suddenly very worried about what she might say to him if given the chance. The Dark Side was about anger, and resentment, and fear, and those were all in heavy supply in her chest. She was furious at him, she wanted him gone. "Please go."

"I didn't—not for Jabba. For you."

She laughed. "For me? You think this is better for me?"

He held her eyes and she felt it there: all of the regret. All the pain and want and need coursing between them, and there was just an unanswered call for help that hung like a banner without a steady wind to make it fly.

"I don't need you," she said. "I never did. I am fully functioning without you, Han. But I sure as hell wanted you. I wanted to do it all together. I wanted to face this galaxy with you, and you crumbled at the first sign of trouble."

There. Those were the cards on the table. That was the ugly truth, the one that needed to be exorcised, like a demon.

Betrayal. He had betrayed that promise of a future, and now she was back to her life before. He had taken away exactly what he had worked so hard to show her in the first place. That happiness was possible for her. That she could trust him to help her build something beautiful. That life meant something more than just war and death and tragedy.

"Yeah," he said. "But there isn't a together when one of you is dead."

"I'm looking pretty good for a dead woman, I'd say."

"You were dead, sweetheart. I was there. I held you—"

"—probably just lost consciousness, I don't remember—"

"No. I couldn't find a pulse. You were dead."

"I was on the holochess table! Maybe if you had brought me here, to the medbunk, you would have detected a heartbeat with the—"

"No. How many fucking times do I have to tell you? You flatlined on my watch, on my ship, and it was my fault. I should have never let you..."

He trailed off, and the deepest sense-memory bubbled in her mind. A voice not unlike her father's, the hint at a seam in the makeup of a person. A weakness. A nerve.

He was admitting to something that he hadn't admitted to before and she could either pounce on it or ignore it graciously. Yoda would probably tell her to leave it be, let the Force work as it should, not to press. Luke would say that the consequences of pushing Han might blow up in her face, that tinkering with that vulnerability might show her something she didn't want to see.

But her father said otherwise. Her father had understood people, in a way that she suspected the Jedi Order had not. Exclusionists. Elitists. Separate.

"Let me what?"

She was not going to be like Yoda, or Obi-Wan, or even Luke. She was already attached to people in a way they weren't. Her brother had been raised away from civilization, had learned earnestness and compassion from afar, in a theoretical sense. But Leia was thick with the truth of people. She knew their ugliness, and their light. The bonds of family and the horror of war. She had seen society crumble into fractions. Had seen the poison of autocracy. And now she understood what it meant to be so hurt by another that she had questioned everything about herself.

She could not be like the others. There was already darkness inside her, but it was the darkness of knowing, and that wasn't a sin, was it? To understand reality? To have the stain of experience on her heart before any of this incredible knowledge had fallen into her lap?

Seeing Han now, silent and struggling, bridged something that had been at war within her soul for awhile. The fight between what she knew of the Jedi and the torment she had lived through. What got results in this chaotic, insane galaxy? What spurred revolutions that led to change?

It sure as hell wasn't passive resistance.

Fundamentally, she wanted to push. To understand. To let the hurt come, if it was going to come, because that was life.

How could you love everyone if you didn't truly love anyone?

"Finish your sentence," she ordered. "You owe me the truth."

Swallowing, he looked down and took a deep breath, and her heart squeezed for the pain in that gesture, the way he seemed to despise the words he spoke. Clearly, he was fighting the same battle as she. The difference was that, for the first time in his life, he had allowed circumstances to decide his fate and she had not.

"I should have never let you in. This is what happens when people get too close."

Surprised, she paused, let his own words sink in, then pressed farther. Truth was never a bad thing. "And what do you mean by this? What happens?"

"They get hurt. They leave."

Click.

The bay suddenly burned bright blue, a beautiful cerulean, honesty and truth released like the breach of a levee. For one incredible moment, she understood Luke's colors, the complexity and horror of them, the insight they afforded him. The power of perception, and she recognized that this wasn't her gift, but with a man she loved, a man who was so tied up with emotion for her, she could see it, could see the universe in a way that was usually blocked from her eyes.

He might as well be bleeding. Light and contrast dripped to the deck and exploded into the filtered air. She felt such compassion for him that she swallowed her instinct to prod a little more and instead marveled at the pure light of understanding as it came to her, as she saw for the first time the tight, rock-solid knot at the center of Han Solo that had been as hidden from her as it had been hidden from every other creature who had ever known him. A knot that was probably hidden from Han himself.

Abandonment.

The word was clear, written into the light as surely as if they danced on the waves. Fear, yes, but stemming from the loss of one locus of control, one very brutal event somewhere in the past. She couldn't see where it originated, couldn't see the story, but she saw its impact, the need to be separate. The hard lines that rebuffed everyone else. The scar it left. The reason for his suffering, and hers, and theirs.

Click.

The medbunk fell back into normal color, normal light, normal pain. Han stood there in front of her, ashamed of the episode in the galley and now the desperation for her to understand that had led to this revelation. The vulnerability he had displayed not once but twice today.

She opened her mouth to explain to him what she had just seen, and then closed it just as suddenly. Her insight did not change the reality of their situation. Telling him how exposed he had actually been would only serve to make him seal up tighter next time.

But she knew what he needed.

Briefly, she checked in with herself, made sure she would be safe in doing what she wanted to do, what he clearly needed from her. It was not her job to heal him, that was out of her reach. And she was not ready to forgive his actions of late; that was another matter entirely.

But when she had been bleeding, he had held a compression bandage to her wounds and told her to hang on. And she felt safe in doing the same for him now. There was no difference between the two. Triage was triage.

Standing, she stepped toward him, maintaining eye contact, and moved slowly. So slowly. As if he was some kind of wild animal who might be scared away. The part that amused her, even now, was that he might indeed be skittish around her, but he was not afraid. Whatever else he was—a bastard for hurting her, at the very least—and despite her claims to the opposite, he was no coward.

It took a lot of bravery to say what he had said, even outside what he had unknowingly revealed to her. A lot of strength. And she would respect it.

She reached a hand toward his forearm. When the contact didn't make him run—or trigger her own fears, either—she wrapped her arms around his waist. He froze, obviously confused and with good reason: hadn't she just been angrily arguing with him about the severity of her wounds?

But then he sighed and, for the briefest of moments, let her hold him as they waded the storm of his own making. His arms pulled her closer and she felt him exhale against her hair with defeat and acceptance, a surrender to the pain that tied them together.

"Shouldn't have said that."

His voice was so quiet that she barely heard him.

"Yes, you should have," she replied.

Shaking his head, he started to loosen his embrace, but she held on a second longer. A hunch that if she let him go now, he would interpret it as justification for his embarrassment. There was no need for that.

She didn't feel uncomfortable in his arms and he clearly needed to be touched. It didn't feel sexual or romantic at all. It felt … it felt how Luke felt to her, when she tried to reach out to him unsuccessfully in the Force. Like a gem of goodness. Like a beating heart. And how could she deny the insight she had just been afforded?

"For what it's worth," she whispered, loosening her arms and placing appropriate distance between them again, "I didn't leave you."

He tried to pull the mask back into place but was having a difficult time of it. His hand twitched and he swept it through his hair to hide it. "Still got hurt."

Funny, she thought. While his grim words were reminiscent of his brooding, stubborn behavior for the past weeks, she detected the smallest bit of defiance there, too. Like a personality lurked beneath the surface. Like the brash, confident man still lurked in the mire somewhere, in the same way the clever, loud-mouthed senator had lived in the frozen shell she had been after Alderaan.

She didn't know what to make of it, but decided to try it herself: brittle words with the smallest tinge of playfulness. "Me or you?"

Grimacing, he nodded and tapped a quick two-fingered salute to her. And then he was gone as quickly as he had come, obviously rattled. She felt lighter and a little darker, too: some great cavern in-between, where light and dark mixed and shadows harbored friends and enemies alike.

I need to meditate, she thought, pondering the wildness of what had just befallen her. What she had just experienced—the depth of his emotion and her ability to see it as Luke described it—was a monumental leap ahead in her understanding of the Force. And perhaps, coupled with some kind of peace between herself and Han, she could find the center she desperately lacked herself, the fear and anger that looked so indistinguishable from his in some terrible ways.

Is everything a lesson?

Maybe to the observant student it was.

Falling backwards onto the bunk, she slipped her legs beneath the double-layered bedding, and attempted to clear her mind before sleep took her.

—0—

Han tinkered. He cleaned and inspected and tested. And he reflected on the day's interactions with Leia.

Nothing had been resolved. She simply might have been feeling badly for him after the twin episodes of uncontrolled emotion. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that she had hugged him out of pity. He hated that idea, but at least she had been graceful about it.

But there was a question embedded here, too; the biggest question of all.

How did they move on from here?

Now that he had said something so dark, so hidden, that he hadn't known he had needed to say it to her? And then rather than telling him to shut up and pull himself together, she had hugged him. Held him. Allowed him his moment of weakness.

Ah, fuck. Whatever. He didn't have much in the way of dignity to tarnish anymore, did he?

Would you call me that? Weak?

Powerful words, those. He couldn't escape them now. Anytime he thought of himself that way, she would undercut it as surely as if she was standing there in front of him. And all from the grace of his memory.

Typical Leia. Of course she found the right words to cut him to the quick. That didn't surprise him in the least.

What had astonished him was the humor.

Several times today they had interacted at a distance, painfully careful with each other, but that distance was punctuated by periodic moments of dark humor. And that was not new, but it was surprising. Her quick remark about him sleeping in the bed he had made had been so terribly on point that he couldn't help but laugh.

What could he say? That was precisely what he had done.

He didn't know what it meant, but he hoped it signaled some kind of truce. Some mending. If he couldn't be with her, he absolutely wanted the future to look brighter for her than for him. His was in shambles, but hers held possibility. Promise.

His misery didn't want company. His misery wanted Leia safe, whole and happy. And if this was what it looked like, well, hey. Three weeks of barbed jokes wasn't exactly uncharted territory between them.

Refocusing on the macrofuser in his hands, he flipped his goggles to full power and tried not to dwell in the sweetness of her body pressed against his.


Author's Note: Thank you to every single one of you wonderful readers. You mean the world to me, and I am so grateful for your friendship and support.

I need to give a quick announcement here and I hope you beautiful people will be kind enough to hear me out. As I've stated before, I work in healthcare, in a trauma hospital. Now, please don't think I'm on the floors, or intubating people, or seeing the horror firsthand. I'm not an RN or an MD. I work in comms, as an operator. There is distance between me and the hellscape that is our now three full ICUs. There is distance between me and the eighteen hour waits in emergency. There is distance between me and the helicopters and the tents and our full-to-bursting morgue.

Just wanted that to be clear. Please don't call me anything but what I am. I'm safe in my bulletproof glass cage from the worst of it.

What I do want to express though is how now, even one floor down from the largest of our covid units, I am exhausted. The codes, the funeral homes, the obviously sick people calling and begging for help… Jesus Christ. I can write a hell of a lot of words about Han and Leia doin' it, and I fail to have the words to describe the constant onslaught at work. The words just don't exist. There aren't enough adjectives for the horror of the coughing you hear on the other end of the line. Or the four code blues that I called to the room of one 30 year old covid patient on Friday. Or the fact that I took that patient's post mortem sheet later that day and talked to their loved ones about their choice of funeral homes. That I shrug when called a bitch for the sixth time that day because people still. Fucking. Believe. It's a hoax. That I drove through an antivaxxer protest yesterday as I left my shift, because our hospital's vaccine mandate goes into effect on Wednesday (I'm writing this on Sunday, Aug 29th), and these caregivers seem to think their rights have any sway whatsoever against the torrential downpour that is a deadly contagion in our community.

Sorry. I digress.

I am going to do everything I can to have the next chapter of Specter ready for you on Friday, October 1st. But my hospital is set to hit our biggest peak yet sometime in early September, and I want to warn my faithful friends to please give me a little benefit of the doubt if Friday turns into Sunday or Monday of that next week. It might happen, and I need you all to be patient.

I'm here on PM if you need to check in, and on Tumblr, too. I'll be working hard on writing, I promise. Help me out by getting vaccinated if you haven't already and for fuck's sake, wear your goddamned mask. I love you and hope you and yours are safe. - KR