The ship was finally quiet.
After making their escape from the Death Star – a damned impressive escape if Han had anything to say about it, and he most certainly had – the pace of activity among the three humans had dropped from frenzied to something between moderated and subdued.
They had indulged in some casual back-and-forth chat, some recapping of their triumphant getaway, until the Princess had intervened with a rather sharp inquiry about the suitableness of their flight path. That in particular had irked Han; he knew where he was going, knew how best to get to a planet like Yavin in any circumstance much less the current one of ferrying a high-value political prisoner. He was still stung at the way she had dismissed his flying earlier. Maybe it hadn't been the most difficult set of maneuvers he had ever attempted, but dismissing their escape as easy was a vast overstatement.
And then they discovered they were hungry, so food had been scrounged from the galley's cupboards despite Chewbacca growling under his breath that there wouldn't be nearly enough to go around. Han noticed that the Princess – Leia, he reminded himself, a name he felt decidedly neutral about – ate little and Luke ate even less. They had sat together in the booth, growing quieter by the minute, companionable in their losses if companionable was the right word. Han didn't think it was.
It was clear the mutual excitement and relief of their adventure had curdled into a depressive exhaustion. Under the guise of acting the polite host, Han had urged his two guests to the crew bunks. He didn't think they would actually sleep but managed to convince them of the need for rest mostly as a way to get his ship back to himself. Chewie had complied too by wandering in the direction of his hammock, muttering dark warnings regarding his post-nap mood on a stomach less than full. Han, by now immune to the Wookie's frequent hunger pangs, had ignored him.
At last the Falcon was familiar territory again, belonging solely to him for the next few hours, and Han began to feel more and more relaxed. The prospect of a large payment couldn't help but lighten his mood. He mentally calculated how much he would give to Jabba, how much he would use on the ship, and what would be left to spend on something nice for himself.
Occupied with those happy ruminations, he dimmed the lights, walked a final check of systems, and settled into the cockpit for a well-deserved nap.
He hadn't been dozing for long when a prickly sensation on the back of his neck startled him awake. Jolting upright, he whipped around to find the Princess standing in the cockpit hatchway. Still garbed in her white dress, she was a pale wraith against the backdrop of the darkened corridor and his sense of unease only increased.
"Kriff, Your Worship, you make a habit of sneaking up on people?"
"No," she replied evenly. She took a step into the cockpit and then appearing to change her mind, withdrew her foot. "I couldn't sleep. Luke's asleep, I think, but I was awake and I didn't want to disturb him. I thought I'd do something else, thought maybe I'd –."
She paused, her gaze floating above him, seemingly entranced by the strobe light environs of hyperspace.
Han waited for her to finish her sentence until it became clear her stupor was more than just a temporary state.
"Can I help you?" he inquired pointedly.
She slowly refocused on him, her eyes large and liquid. "No," she repeated. A tremor of sorrow, the most piercing sorrow Han had ever witnessed, rippled through her briefly. "No, that's not necessary. I'll go somewhere else."
"Wait, wait." He couldn't stand being the cause, however indirectly, of that haunted look. "I didn't mean to shoo you away. You can stay here," he said gruffly. And then recalling his earlier exchange with Luke, he couldn't help adding, "You'll find I'm always available for a private meeting, if you catch my drift."
At that point any other woman would either take him up on his offer or make her escape, but the Princess proceeded to sit in Chewie's chair without even a flicker of embarrassment. Rather than responding, she let his words hang in the air until they shriveled into the weak attempt he recognized they were.
Having invited her into his space and then failing to scare her off, Han felt an obligation to a minimal hospitality. But before he could come up with a suitable topic for conversation she beat him to the punch.
"Do you usually camp out in the cockpit while in hyperspace?" The crispness had returned to her tone. "I would have thought the visual effects would be nauseating after a while."
Han shook his head. "Never bothered me. Just another part of flying." He glanced at the star trails, studying them as though he were on his first trip past lightspeed. "I've never minded anything having to do with flying."
"Hmm." It was a casual utterance. "And what in particular do you like about it?"
"Well." How to describe a part of him that had existed as long as he could remember? "The speed. The split-second decisions that mean the difference between life and death. The rush of using everything you have in you. The limits of endurance, in some sense."
"The limits of endurance." Her voice was flat.
Kriff. What a thing to say to someone who had just escaped Imperial custody. He snuck a look at her reaction before snapping to face forward, realizing he'd rather not know.
"I mean —." He proceeded more cautiously. "A lot of it's dull, by the book. You know, plotting courses, checking jump calculations, those sorts of things. But even routine tasks have an element of uncertainty. You never know what's gonna happen. Crazy things happen all the time."
He felt rather than saw her nod. "It does seem rather an interesting career. And I expect traveling through hyperspace is a draw for any pilot."
He shrugged. "It's not hyperspace itself that's interesting. It's the right before and right after."
"The sublight?"
"Not really." He struggled to find the right words. "It's those few seconds when you're goin' in or comin' out and pushing the ship just the right way. It's like —." He fumbled blindly, trying to articulate thoughts that barely qualified as thoughts. "You're seeing the edge of something, something that normally you can't see at all. Or maybe you've never seen it but you can perceive it. It's a destination you want to get to but can't quite reach."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her fiddle with her sleeve. "Can you ever reach it?"
"Depends. Depends on what you mean by reach. You can never grasp it, never hold onto it completely. But if you're lucky you can touch it, just the barest touch. And then it's gone until the next time you fly."
She sat quietly, no longer moving. Surely, he told himself, she was only asking questions to distract herself from what had happened.
Against his better judgment he kept talking. "The only other part that compares to it is flying sublight as fast as you can. You're runnin' from someone, using evasive maneuvers, going faster and faster but never quite reaching lightspeed. Everything around you, even you yourself, converges onto a – a – a thread or something, the thread that holds it all together: the ship, the flight plan, the circumstances of the escape. It even holds you, the pilot, together." He stared at the blinking lights on the console that had long ago blended into the background, rarely registering except in an emergency. "I've never been able to describe it or even completely understand it. But it's real. And it's addictive."
"It's like a high, then."
"Maybe. Sort of. But a high refracted through motion. It's not something you can replicate with spice or any other substance. Only flying can create it."
"So you've done spice." Was that a tentativeness he detected in her voice? Or interest?
"Yeah. Of course." He felt a little awkward admitting it. He didn't imagine she was naïve, exactly, but he would soon be accepting credits from her or from someone else on her behalf. Did the reward come with any stipulations or requirements for above-the-board behavior? If so, he'd have to move quickly, collect the payment and get out of there before anyone started asking questions.
"When I was younger," he said vaguely. That was technically true at least. "I'm not – not an addict or anything. Not even close."
She didn't respond and in her silence he began to grow more and more uneasy. He was afraid he had scared her, though when he thought about it for more than half a second he remembered she obviously wasn't scared of anything. He wondered whether she had absorbed anything he had said. Something told him she wasn't unfamiliar with longing or adrenaline or the despair of nearly losing everything in a single moment.
Of course she isn't, he reminded himself. Forget about coming close; mere hours ago she actually had lost everything.
He stared at the console willing a distraction, an alarm to ring, an interruption to sever the tension, anything to rescue him from this conversation that had become disturbingly one-sided.
What did he have to go opening his big mouth for? Couldn't he have just kept to the flirting, the innuendos, the well-worn insinuations that drove women like her, serious, accomplished women, far away from him? He didn't have any need for her or her rebellion. He was sure of that twelve hours ago and he was even more sure of that now.
He chanced a peek at the co-pilot's seat. She had drawn her knees up and was curled half on her side, angled toward his chair. Her eyes were closed and judging by her breathing she was asleep or nearly so. He found himself momentarily flummoxed at having bored her into slumber and was surprised by an urge to keep talking to an unhearing companion, to tell her more about flying and the freedom and limitations of the peripatetic life he led. But what were those limitations? He had never recognized any before but now he wasn't so sure they didn't exist. The freedom to do as he pleased without constraints had been his aim for so long. Wasn't he living his life exactly the way he wanted?
Pushing those nagging thoughts aside, he stood and crept out of the cockpit. If she were right, that his ship was being tracked and the Imperial fleet was following them to the rebel base, she would need her rest. He could just as easily hunker down in the booth with a drink and revel in the peacefulness of a quiet ship. It would only be another hour or two until they reached Yavin anyway. And then he would collect his reward and be on his way, unencumbered by stubborn passengers entangled in political causes: just him and his co-pilot and the next destination, flying fast and free and chasing the high he knew was out there waiting for him just out of reach.
"The straights don't count, the straights are just there to join the corners. But in the corners there is something to see, sometimes."
- Stirling Moss, Formula One driver