Binary
In a galaxy that worked on a binary—light and the absence of it, good and evil, right and wrong—the sheer scale between the twins was enormous. One trained alone, submerged in emotional conflict and yet striving for the eye in the hurricane, the strength her brother possessed so easily. And the other was on the other side of the known universe, returning to a master who spoke in half-truths and full accusations, working on training the physical, striving for control the likes of which his sister had learned years before.
A binary. The scales balanced with each on the opposite end of the spectrum. But, the Force whispered, what happened when they met in the middle?
The answer was simple. Strength. Symbiosis.
Power.
—0—
Blue eyes flew open with all the softness of a blaster bolt to the stomach, and Luke was awake before he could even process why. Something had felt very important in his dream. Something impactful, some truth he couldn't quite grasp as it slithered away through his wasn't an unusual occurance for him: his dreams were often ambiguous things, full of challenges and hopes, but without form.
What bothered him most was the wisps of Leia that had brushed by him as he awoke. He hadn't been looking for her, had been trying to keep his worries about her safety carefully controlled around Yoda. The Jedi Master's incessant talk of removing attachments had sounded somewhat pointed as of late, and Luke wondered how much Yoda actually knew about Leia's current emotional situation.
Alone, you are, he had said upon Luke's return.
He had shrugged, unbothered by the slight accusation inbred in the tone. We got split up. I'm sure she'll find me soon enough.
Yoda had dropped the subject rather too quickly, and that made Luke nervous. Had the master expected Leia's absence? Luke didn't know. His underestimation of Yoda's abilities and hidden knowledge had yet to find a high-enough bar.
Work fast, we must, he had said. Prepare you, I will.
In the present, Luke blinked heaviness away and found form to the drab world around him. He was expected to be ready for training when the murky dawn light broke through the ever-dull clouds of Dagobah, and if his chrono was any judge, he would barely make it.
I have to learn everything I can so I can teach it to Leia later.
The motivation worked, as it had every morning so far. Leia would surely be working on her meditation, wherever she was, and he had the added responsibility of honing his combat skills and wringing information from the only known surviving Jedi in the galaxy. And if nothing else, Luke was very good at learning more than his teachers ever expected him to learn.
Like Yoda, he was chronically underestimated.
And yet his dream tugged at him, a flicker in the back of his mind. Something felt like his sister. An echo of a scream, but without the visceral pain that he knew meant imminent danger. She was safe. Of that he was absolutely certain. He could feel her in quiet moments, could feel her attempts to meditate, her growing presence in the Force, and the always-looming phantom of Han in her thoughts.
So he sighed and flung his feet out of the nest of blankets and the odd animal skins Yoda had offered. Readying himself for the painful hike his master had told him was coming, Luke put his sister out of his mind and prepared himself fo the day ahead.
—0—
Days drifted on for Leia, less a slog now and more a steady rhythm: a drumbeat with which to judge the passage of time. She found the routine of ship life somewhat reassuring now after the chaos of Echo Base. On Home One, the monotony had nearly led the crew to mutiny; now, near the half-way mark on their journey to Bespin, the daily tasks helped ground her. The always-useless watch at the helm, some caf, a cold, dry breakfast of rations.
Routine was helpful. It provided a contrast to the … less-predictable elements in her life.
Do you mean Han?
Yes, of course, but what of him? What had she just been thinking of?
Oh, yes. Training. Hours of it, some in maintaing her skills in weaponry. She knew the heft of a lightsaber hilt now, and that was a new question to consider. She had never seen a Jedi weld their lightsaber aside from a flash of Obi-Wan Kenobi against Vader on the Death Star. She didn't have the faintest idea of how to wield one herself, should it ever come to it again. One hand or two? Like her old impotent epee or more like an ancient broadsword?
She had always thought of the lightsaber as Luke's weapon, but if it was a family heirloom—and if she was pursuing this journey unironically, as it appeared she was—then she best be prepared.
The lightsaber had felt so right in her hand, too. There was that one unmistakable revelation to come from the evacuation of Hoth.
Nonetheless, she had more than simple physical training to consider. Telekinesis was coming easier and easier to her, though she still required small taps with her fingers to see any corollated movement with the objects she tried to manipulate. Improving as she was, she had resorted to newer and more creative forms of distraction, evolving in the process of honing her craft. She tried every possible scenerio with every single combination of variables. Han, Chewie and Threepio were all good sports with the incessant commands—Han, you talk while… Chewie, would you mind throwing these utensils at me? No, I promise they won't hurt me at all—but after a few days, the possibilities became numerable and then totally useless.
Meditiation was easier than it had been, too, but not nearly as restful as she would prefer it to be. Now that she had discovered the link between physicality and her control over the bobbing and hovering objects at her command, the mystery had fallen off it. The shine had worn down. She understood it with her fingers, knew the shape of the power by the blood in her veins.
But meditation still felt enshrouded to her, felt fathomless and inexplicable. She could quiet her mind enough to feel the bolstering nature of the Force, the healing touch, the permanence and flunctations and dichotomies inherent in it. Unlike telekinesis, though, there was no physical link with which to ground her, no trick to make it easier.
It was work, and time, and effort, and she had plenty of all of those.
Sighing, she blew the stray hairs out of her eyes. It was late for her designated ship's cycle: her watch was due to begin in six hours and she should probably be asleep by now to feel any sort of restfulness. But her brain wouldn't shut off. Thoughts tumbled like sickle-wasps from a hive, and she jumped from thought to thought as they stung at will.
Luke.
She missed her brother and desperately wanted to be reassured of his safety. She couldn't reach him electronically and she feared Vader was hunting him and would intercept any mental call she might try to make, even if she was improved enough to make such an effort.
The Alliance.
What were they doing? How many lives and how many resources had been lost on Hoth? Had Carlist made it back to the Fleet, and if so, did he know the Falcon had escaped? Was she listed as MIA or presumed dead?
And Han. Han was as much a mystery to her as her brother's whereabouts and the fathomless boredom of meditation.
Case in point: he would often come to her assembled nest of blankets on the medbunk around this time in the ship-cycle. She didn't mind and she also did not return the favor: the only time she entered his quarters was to use the water fresher, and even then it was without a glance to her surroundings.
Han was fighting his own battle, waged under the line of consciousness that she didn't want to pierce. Colors or no, it was obvious that he was searching for meaning even as he dealt with his triggers in obstinate Han Solo-esque rugged individualism. He might think he was handling it well, hiding it from her, maybe, though she recognized what was happening when he froze and stared at the holochess table for minutes at a time. Or when he jumped at an unexpected sound. Or when his hand would shake, even as he tried to hide it.
All were obvious and classic signs of trauma. She knew them well.
He wasn't scratching the surface of his actual pain, of that she was certain. He still struggled with the idea of her death, as if that was the core problem and not something a little more infinite, a little older, something entirely different and outside of his control. Ord Mantell had clearly been a trigger for a deeper wound.
Abandonment.
"Still awake?"
Startled, she looked up from her place on the medbunk blearily, eyes tired from their sightless survelleince of the deck-plates just beyond her knees. Han stood in the hatch, limned in the harsh, yellowish shipboard lighting of the corridor, propped on his left arm and right hand on his hip. He looked far more alert than she did, and a glimmer of a self-satisfied smirk sat at the corners of his lips.
"What did you do?" she accused without answering his query.
The smirk bloomed into full wattage, and he was so damned attractive in that moment that she wanted to kill him. "Been working on the comms."
Perking up, her spine straightened and she forgot about her losing battle with sleep. "And?"
"Got an encrypted call off to SFC."
Her heart leapt into action, the beats loud in her ears. "And?"
"Rieekan made it off-planet. So did Salla and some of the Mercs. Luke, too, though he's not with the fleet. He hit lightspeed off to parts unknown, though I bet we both know where he went."
Her breath left her in a rush and she sagged against the shell of her bunk, back thumping against the hull, spine dissolving with the pure relief that rushed through her veins. "Thank the Force."
Nodding, he shifted and turned, his back to the hatch-frame and one booted foot kicking the opposite side of the jamb with a listless kind of fidgit. "You can stop beating yourself up now."
A flood of relief swept through her entire body, an alien thing. Like a fist that hadn't unclenched in years, some stubborn muscle relaxed and then the rest followed suit, a drifting ease of mind from one connecting tissue to the next.
She offered a small, almost-watery smile, and patted the bunk beside her. They were past such hesitations now, and he settled next to her with a twin sense of ease. She leaned her head on his shoulder without thinking: an instinct, and probably grossly inappropriate. But the relief was so profound, so immersive, that she just wanted the old Han back long enough to feel it with him. The Han who had hauled her brother to this very medbunk from the Falcon's boarding ramp. The Han who had laughed with her in the middle of the night, had held her fast against him while the galaxy spiralled into disaster around them.
She missed him so much.
Sliding his arm over her back, he held her to his side exactly as he used to. Heartbreakingly authentic and just as wistful as she, he wrapped her up in his warmth and the reassurance that he had always offered her.
One thing they could agree on, regardless of any other: Luke needed to stay safe.
"How did you do it?" she asked.
"Well," he began, sheepishness lacing his tone, and she started to worry, "Chewie accidentally threw power to the comms and it … kind of supercharged the thing."
She blinked. "You accidentally unfried your fried comms system?"
"For a few minutes, yeah," he said. "Long enough for our message to get out and for them to send one back. The comms are fried again, now, so don't get any ideas."
"Was that wise?"
"Probably not, but I had a feeling it might help."
To know that her brother had made it off Hoth? Of course. She hadn't truly thought him lost, but reassurance was in short supply in the Alliance ranks, and she would take what she could get. And then Carlist and Salla, safe at the rendezvous, wondering where they were...
"It does help," she said. "Thank you."
Turning her face up to his, she offered a soft smile of gratitude. He returned it and she was struck by how familiar the whole thing felt, how natural.
She settled into his side and thought about how stupidly complicated they were making things when it seemed so simple in the quieter moments.
—0—
"Now the stone. Feel it."
Luke was done with this session. Sweat dripped into his eyes as he worked to remain upside-down in a handstand that had become steadily easier in the past months, first with Leia and now with Yoda. Still, his shoulders screamed in effort, and while the stone rose, it wobbled precariously.
And next to him was Artoo, who typically observed these hard sessions with the bland dislike he offered most situations but who was currently tweedling with anxiety and alarm.
"Concentrate."
Well, he was trying to do exactly that, but his astromech was currently having some kind of—
With a gurgle and the sound of weight slipping into mud—a squelch, yes, that was the word he had learned only after leaving moisture-deprived Tatooine—his X-wing slipped beneath the surface of the bog that had helpfully served as his docking bay for the past two weeks. Artoo's screech almost felt like an afterthought next to the plummeting of his heart into his stomach. His handstand broke and he fell to the ground in an exhausted a heap.
Rolling to stand, he observed the submerged ship, only half of the canopy visible above the brackish water, and felt like some important thread had been severed.
"Oh, no," he mumbled. "We'll never get it out now."
He had never seen anyone levitate anything as large as an X-wing before. Not even close. And it felt impossible, too, the effort too massive for him to comprehend. He was able to lift rocks, sure, and in the heat of battle, he had been able to manipulate several small items simultanously, but volume wasn't mass and this was not that.
Quickly, his mind turned to solutions to the problem at hand. He didnt want to use his emergency transponder. He was as likely to be found by the Empire as by the Alliance. And, too, they had been very circumspect about Dagobah in the first place; if he somehow had to be rescued here, he would have so many questions to answer that implicated Leia and Han, too.
He was startled from his mental quandry by the angry rustling of his master, who looked pointedly at Luke with an expression bordering dangerously on disappointment.
"So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done..."
But Luke was tired of his master's incessant rebukes, the constant iterations of his faults and shortcomings, as if Luke himself wasn't already fully aware of these things. And, too, Leia's words rang in his mind, about liars and conspiracies. Weeks of this double-handed training was making him suspicious and angry.
"Fine," he spat. "I'll give it a try."
"No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."
Rolling his eyes, he tried very hard not to laugh and vowed to throw that line at Leia the next time she gave up after trying to clear her mind.
Maybe I'll try to put you on the mat, then. And he smiled sadly, helplessly thinking of his sister and what she might be doing in that exact minute.
—0—
"You okay in here?"
No. She was frustrated with herself. The day had been utterly worthless, lost in a series of failed attempts to find peace in a maelstrom of negative emotions. She hadn't slept well the night before and boredom was setting in. Emotional minefields littered the space around her steps, too; she was worried she would say something unfortunate in Han's presence. She had hit a plateau in what was becoming almost an obsessive need to train, one that sang so deeply to her that she felt nervous and uncomfortable when she wasn't actively working.
Was it simple transference? Probably. It was either wrangle with the Han situation or with the Force, and the Force didn't threaten to leave when pressed.
Damn. She felt such old wounds profoundly today.
And then a conversation with Chewie, one that had ended with her angrily leaving her shift early after he had innocently but pointedly asked when he could introduce her to his mate and cub.
As if that was such an easy thing to ask of her. Ask your captain, she had thrown over her shoulder, and that had been petulant, far beneath her ingrained sense of dignity and poise. But the darkness was thick enough to choke on today, and she had very little resistant to its sweet call.
So when she lifted her eyes to the human in question, it was with some embarrassment. "I owe him an apology."
Han shrugged and sat down next to her without invitation, the medbunk sinking beneath his additional weight. "Nah," he answered. "He doesn't understand, but at least he knows he doesn't understand."
She had to agree with that assessment. Chewbacca lived in a galaxy in which entities mated for life, in which permenance range meant something true, like Wookiees growled it into existence and that was that. He never spoke of his bond with words like debt, and didn't talk about whether or not it was worth the effort.
Ouch.
A slip of pain sliced through her abdomen, phantom throbs without source and without culmination. She shifted, uncomfortable with the way her body betrayed her. It was too on-the-nose, too obvious a slight.
Maybe it's not worth it.
She wanted to laugh. Was she still holding onto that? Good goddess, but that was so dramatic. She had been called terrible things, had suffered so deeply and for so long for the Alliance, that it felt ridiculous to still be wounded by the obvious lie the man sitting beside her had muttered almost a month ago. Get over it, she urged herself. Grow up.
And with one big lurch she realized why she was so angry at Chewbacca, connecting the pieces together like a child's puzzle. It wasn't the suggestion of meeting Malla, or her general helplessness in the situation to which she found herself aboard the Falcon. It wasn't the endless stretch of days, or lost time with her brother.
It was envy, pure and simple. She envied Chewbacca his confidence in his mate, the sense of harmony he carried with him about his place in the universe.
"So?"
Frowning, she looked up. His eyes were jewel-green, bright in the low lights, and she marvelled at how his eyes could change colors, seemingly at will, though she knew that was ridiculous. "So, what?"
"Are you okay in here?"
She didn't answer and he nudged her shoulder with his to spur her on. "C'mon," he urged. "Don't pull your punches."
But she didn't want to answer that question, so she she leaned against him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pressed his nose into her hair, and was it better or worse?
She had no idea.
"I'd like to meet Malla someday," she whispered.
He stiffened but didn't loosen his hold, and she wondered what he would choose to do in that moment. Casual touches were commonplace between them now, some instinct neither could suppress, but they were a placebo for the conversation they needed to have before he actually left. And time was running out, and today had been hard, and she felt so useless all of a sudden, a leader without any followers, a princess on the run. She was trying so hard—
There is no try.
An odd intrusive thought, but not completely wrong. There was nothing she could do. It was fruitless to try. All she could do was soak up the time she had with him.
Making some kind of decision, Han kissed her forehead and said, "She'll like you."
She hummed in response, more interested in the tense he was using than the meaning of his words.
"She's like you," he expounded. "A tough one to crack, but once you figure her out, she'll jump in front of a blaster for you."
"So she's loyal," Leia said. "Tell me more."
They shared a beat of silence, and then he opened up, painting a picture of a loving maternal figure who had adopted him the minute she had learned the circumstances of her mate's life debt. Warmth bloomed in Leia's chest listening to him, the way he so clearly loved Malla, the long years of friendship that connected them.
And she fleetingly wondered if Malla was the first to occupy that maternal role, or if maybe the story he had told her of his past—the vaguities, the one-liners—hid the secret to that one word his colors had screamed to her at the onset of this journey.
—0—
A cave.
Cold. Death.
Luke was rattled to his bones, a sliver of warmth in a cold, mysterious world that hid secrets upon secrets.
Is the dark side stronger?
Yoda's answer had been too quick, and Luke struggled with the only refrain he could muster: Leia's voice whispering in outrage.
Liar, liar, liar.
Something was wrong. Something was so wrong. He had to warn Leia.
—0—
He draped his body on the hatch like a predatory animal, dangerous with his intentions and that fast, easy smile. She knew exactly what was about to happen, felt it in her bones. She just hadn't known how she would react to it.
"Still awake?" he drawled.
But it wasn't the drawl of her Han, the Han from before. It was a charismatic chronotype, missing some fundamental darkness. Too bright. Too much.
"Yes."
Sitting by her, he folded like a piece of paper, and she thought about concessions, how much he was really willing to lose in service to his fear. She couldn't see his color, so this was a different warning, some niggling worry in the back of her mind, like she was staring down into the uncanny valley. Some unnerving facsimile that did not belong. A front. A facade. Han, but not Han.
He spoke words in his low timbre, and she didn't register them outside of the tone of his voice. Something about seeing how she was doing tonight?
"Fine," she murmured. "You?"
"Bored."
She nodded and tucked her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. Her posture was not defensive, exactly, but it wasn't displaying comfort, either, and as predicted, Han noticed.
"What's wrong?"
She wished she knew. Her discomfort ran through her fingers like the silk edges of her blankets on Alderaan. The darkness bore down on her constantly now, too heavy to sustain for such a long journey. Nothing he had said or done should have triggered this kind of reaction, but here it was. Abject fear and absolute stasis, both at the same time.
She wanted space. Now.
It should have been so easy. Please leave. The words were right there, on the tip of her tongue, ready to go. He would be unsettled but would respect what she said. He always did.
But that is not what came out of her mouth. Instead it was anger, and sadness, and questioning, like an eruption from a volcano. Completely out of her control. Some kind of inevitability, the causes running along elemental lines, more about freedom and less about intention.
"What is this?"
His eyes seemed to swallow her whole: the golden flecks, the obnoxiously long lashes, the stunned width that only seemed to echo the one word he could say. "This?"
"This," she said. "Us."
And, oh, that did the trick. How on earth was he supposed to answer her in any kind of satisfactory way? She knew he didn't know. She didn't, either. Clearly the one entity that seemed to have any idea on the subject was the Force, who spoke in mysteries and one-word puzzles. Abandonment? Ha. What kind of answer was that to the essential question: are you still leaving?
He didn't seem to be on the same page, though his cocksuredness dissolved away. "I don't know."
"Don't you want to know?"
"C'mon, Leia," he hedged. "It is what it is."
The match struck, the fuse that could light Coruscant if she let it. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this conversation was it. This was the end of the impossible waiting. Either he would break her or she would break him, there was no other possibility. The way forward was out of the darkness that plagued her, and she would follow the path ahead, like coming out of a subterranean cave and into the light.
"Why do you come here every night?"
Every night for the past fourteen days, some ritual he had ordained. And there had been no reticence from her until precisely this moment. Because she genuinesly wanted to see him, to recapture the man she loved, one shallow conversation after another. The playful repartee. The teasing. The soft touches and the warm pillow of his shoulder.
The onus was on him to explain why they couldn't be that way again.
"I…" He trailed off. Tried again. "I thought … Hey, look, I can go."
Exactly as she had expected him to do. Remove himself from the situation because he was hurting her. It seemed awfully predictable. For a man who prided himself on being creative—an original, some kind of rogueish savant in the cockpit—he could be counted on to always react this particular way. A flaw in his admittedly remarkable design.
"I don't want you to go to Jabba, and I don't want you to leave now, and it's for the exact same reason," she said. His eyes widened and suddenly he looked like the trapped animal. "But let's start with the easy one. Why do you come here every night?"
He shut his mouth, obviously rattled, but tried. Goddess, how he tried. "It's nice, talking to you."
"Makes you feel better," she clarified for him. "Assuages your guilt."
Shifting uncomfortably, he offered a feeble defense. "I'm just checking in on you, sweetheart, that's all."
"Do you even feel that? Guilt?"
Dead silence. She let it stretch between them, gaping and loud, because she had finally said what she had wanted to say.
"So what is this, Han?" she pushed when her point had been made. "What are you hoping to accomplish, coming in here every night?"
"You want me to go, I'll go," he offered.
But she wasn't going to allow him that reprieve again. She shook her head and didn't let him stand. "I don't want you to go. I want you to ask yourself why you need to convince yourself that I'm here every night before you can go to sleep."
He jerked, and she laid her hand on his thigh to steady him, feeling the red-stained urgency slip out of her own discomfort. Her fingers stroked the inside of his knee, and if she had been more aware of how it looked, she would have removed them. But she felt the facade slipping, like watercolors fading down a canvas, and she felt like she had one chance to make this point clear.
"It's the same thing, isn't it?" she whispered. "You can't rest until you know I'm safe."
There, that look in his eyes. That was what she was after, the dawn of realization, maybe some severed thread he had recognized in himself, but not the full scope of it. A weaving of complicated origin: pulling it apart, line by line, knot by knot. An unravelling.
He swallowed, and she she slipped her hand into his hair, pulling his forehead to hers. He was so much bigger than she was that he dwarfed her, and she was more in his lap than out of it. She had always liked that about him, how he completely swallowed her, made her feel protective and protected, both. And he smelled like home, not Alderaan but a newer home, a safe space, with family and purpose and people who loved her for who she was.
He was pliant to her as he closed his eyes. She nudged his nose with hers, tightened her hand in his hair.
"Yeah," he whispered. "It's the same thing."
The need, the fear. The threat that loomed over him, that she would leave him, would be taken away from him. Abandonment, the word that had risen from him like the dead.
One of his hands held her lower back, to keep her fast to him or to support her, she didn't know which. She slid her hand to the bare skin of his collarbone, felt the hammering of his heart beneath her palm.
"Do you think it's any easier for me?" she murmured. "To think that you could be taken from me?"
If anyone was in danger of being ripped away from the other in violent conflict, it was him. He was in far more danger than she was at any given moment, debts to crime lords or no. And she had struggled so profoundly with that sense of future-loss, too, the desire to prevent the pain from coming, to protect herself and wall her emotions away. But that prevented the joy, too, the feeling of belonging to a larger purpose.
His voice was hushed, deep. "No."
"Then why are you so afraid?"
"I'm not afraid."
"Yes, you are."
She pulled back from him and watched his eyes. He found hers, and they told her the story in light, blurry terms. Whomever it was who had been lost to him, whatever damage that loss had sustained, it had created a space in his brain like a parasite. She wasn't going to be able to destroy it: it was part of him. He just needed to shed a little light on it, that's all. Bring it forward. Usher it into the space between them so that she could help him understand.
"You don't have to go. There are other solutions."
He shook his head. "He'll find you. He'll kill you."
"Maybe," she said, nodding. "But you're tearing yourself apart trying to... what? Bend destiny to your will?"
He rolled his eyes, and she was gratified to see it, smiling at him softly.
"At least let me help you," she finished. "I'm the Jedi here, after all."
She almost laughed when she heard that alien phrase come from her lips. Declaring it so boldly as that was new to her. But it was true, regardless of her feelings on the matter.
"Not sure I'm worth all the trouble, Leia, honestly."
Nonsense. Absolute bullshit, as he would phrase it. And she refused to let him entertain a fickle, ugly thought out loud.
"You are worth it to me," she whispered. "This time with you? It's worth it to me."
Opening his mouth, he looked ready to say something but reevaluated. His eyes dropped to her hand, pressed to his chest, and minutes stretched by them. It took so long that she felt a stab of fear that she hadn't gotten through to him, that this final conversation on the subject was going to end like all the others. A sad refrain, a nail in a coffin. An ending, rather than a stuttered beginning with a lot of baggage to sort through.
And then the change. The concession. The light in eyes that turned tentively hopeful as they met hers.
"If it comes down to it, I will do whatever I need to do to protect you."
She caught her breath, hardly able to contain the rush of heat that bloomed through her body. These were familiar words but in this context... "But you'll let us help you?"
"Yeah."
"And you'll stay? With me?"
A crease in his forehead, the slightest hint of his lingering worry, and then the words she needed to hear. "Yeah. If you want me."
She kissed him. There was nothing else to do. No manipulations, no charge, no storming of defenses. Brushing her lips over his, she tried to comfort him, encourage him, make him understand that while she despised what he had done to them, she understood where it came from. It didn't forgive his coldness and his callous words, but the root of it all was a root she knew intimately. She had toyed with the same one for years.
He followed her lead, kissing her back, pulling her body close to his. It was sweet, and sad, and slow, and she focused on how much she wanted him to understand how much lighter a burden it could feel with another sharing the weight.
"Leia," he said into her lips and the galaxy could have imploded in that moment and she wouldn't have minded a single bit. That was her Han, the stubborn, irreverant, confident man who knew her so well—and loved her so completely—that he would do anything for her, including fighting his own demons.
She pulled him closer and deepened the kiss, feeling some semblence of the peace she had been searching for right where she had last enjoyed it.
Author's Note: Quick shoutout to Erin Darroch and Justine Graham, for the idea of Han fixing the comms during the TTB. I didn't realize I had stolen it until I saw it in my own draft. Thank you, my friends!
Additionally, this chapter is dedicated to my dear friend, The Chin, who celebrated her birthday recently. You told me this chapter would be enough for the event, and I'm happy to oblige. Happy Birthday!
And a very happy holidays to all who celebrate, and a wonderful month to those who don't! I hope the season is a joyful one and full of loved ones and happiness. The next chapter of Specter will be posted Saturday, January 1st, 2022! -KR
