The waves were like children running playfully ahead, slapping the sand in a prank before rushing back laughing to the safety of their mother, the large green ocean.
The water sparkled in the bright sunshine. Where Leia walked the pink sand was above the water's edge, firm and wet. For a moment, faint impressions of her steps formed, and then they faded away. The wet sand told her the water was cold, but her bare feet were comfortable in the sunny air.
Leia had tied the arms of her jacket together around her waist, and she carried her shoes by their long ribbons.
Beside her, Han was Han. He had probably grown warm in his jacket, but he wore it, and his boots didn't seem to make navigating the sand any easier.
"I haven't been to a beach in forever," Leia sighed.
"Hoth's kind of like a beach," Han said.
Leia couldn't look at him, because turning her head up and to the side put the sun in her eyes and her hair blew in her face, but she smiled. "Nice try. I prefer my oceans not frozen."
Far away, it looked where water met sky, freighter boats were colorful specks. Leia counted four. Red, gray, green and white. Much closer, a swimmable distance, a large platform rose just a few meters above the waters edge, and water speeders bobbed. They were rentals, but no attendants manned the platform this time of year.
The beach was fairly empty. Far down the shore, Leia viewed others walking, colorless and small. But in her stretch of beach there was sunshine, several pods of sea rus basking, and birds overhead. They were like the boats on the water, she thought, hovering in deceptive stillness. They didn't flap their wings, held aloft by the wind, and they looked like kites.
Without telling Han, she veered upwards, high above the water line. Here, the sand was dry and rolling like the waves. It shifted under her feet and was slower going.
He followed her. The ocean turned his eyes green, and Leia took it as a sign of hospitality.
The beach was pink and wide. They had walked some distance from the public access boardwalk, and she estimated they were maybe halfway from the dunes to the water's edge. Leia sat. The sand absorbed the sun, and felt warm on her backside. She set her shoes beside her, and tucked her dress around her knees, aware of her bare legs under the skirt.
"Hey," Han said.
"Just for a minute," Leia said. "I'm tired. Chewie's coming?"
He nodded.
Their contact had encouraged them to visit the beach. "It's not the season," he said, "but you'll stick out if you don't. Everyone goes to the beach. The bedrock is only a few meters down, and in the summer just past the wave line it's a wall of ships, visitors putting down. There's a docking fee, but not this time of year. The water's too cold. Season won't start for three more months."
"He's going to land out here somewhere," Han said about Chewie. "I told him to look for the speeder dock. Hope there isn't another one three miles down the coast."
He wasn't happy about it, she knew. The somewhere part of it. He thought the contact might be setting them up, but he'd asked when they checked out of the hotel about the beach.
"Oh, yes," the clerk had beamed at him. "You must go. It's my favorite time of year. No crowds."
The significance of an ocean visit had not been mentioned to them in the mission briefing. Leia had wondered about it now, too. Perhaps it was an oversight.
She dug with her toes until her feet were covered in pink sand and rested her chin on her knees, looking out at the ocean. "Before, that gray freighter wasn't at all near the red one. They look like they're going to collide."
Han glanced out to sea. "Just looks that way. They're probably far from each other. Sharing the shipping lane."
Leia nodded. Han decided to sit on his knees facing the pink dunes, high hills of sand covered by a prickly ground vine. They had used the public access from that direction, and he was keeping watch.
"We could have docked here," Han complained.
"I think we should have," Leia said. She meant for the mission but also because it was beautiful.
"Wouldn't have to wait on a Wookiee."
The sun was glorious. During the season it apparently was a lot hotter and the water temperature warmer, but there was a sense of intimacy now which the seasonal crowds could prevent from developing. The beach felt like a personal belonging.
"Ah," she sighed, relishing the weather. "If we could bring this back to Hoth."
"Not sure the wampa would like it. Though they might eat those," Han indicated the basking rus.
Leia lifted her face and the sun's radiation was gentle. Like a hand cupping her cheek, warmth under her skin, spreading, inviting her she could be a sun too.
Her body conformed to the sand. She gave voice to a sudden weariness. "I'm tired," she allowed.
"Humans do something at night called sleeping," Han said.
"Yes, I'm aware of that," Leia said. "I'm human."
"You sure about that?" He was talking about her sleeping habits.
"You kept me up with your snoring," she lied.
"My snoring," he declared, "plays a lullaby."
Leia watched the boats, the birds. The sea rus nuzzled each other and growled, and the speeders bobbed. The wind moved her hair and the sun was addicting.
She thought how she liked Han's nonsense here but not on Hoth. Why was that? Here, in a dress, she felt different. Her bare feet in the sand, the sun on her throat. Not less soldierly, or more feminine, but... different. Graced by nature? Was it that simple? Maybe the fatigue was more than emotional; maybe it was physically real. The idea of resting was enticing.
"What if we didn't go back," she fantasized.
"To what," Han questioned, "Hoth or the war?"
Leia didn't answer right away. She hadn't known she had a choice. She didn't really; the war was hers. Actually, it wasn't; no one should own a war, but maybe it was kind of like the sun here. She shared a closeness with this war others didn't.
"We could bring the war here," Han mused.
Leia looked at the rus and the green ocean. They had brought the war to Hoth. Set up a base where they were hidden from the Empire, hollowed out a cavern. Caused all sorts of environmental issues, like melting ice, domesticated tauntauns, and hungried snow creatures.
"No," she told Han.
Han kept up his imaginary scenario. "You could sell the war to the Minister here, get it out in the open instead of sneaking around meeting contacts. We'd wear shorts and sunglasses; race speeders on our days off."
It sounded nice, and the horrible thing was she could picture it. "And when the Empire attacks?" she asked, turning her head to ask him over her shoulder.
"Then we fight, same as the other places."
She couldn't answer, not even nod. The day to day sameness, the loss of joy, the gradual slipping of herself so she didn't even recognize who she was anymore: she was bone weary.
"Would ya?" Han had half-turned in the sand and his left side sat lower in the sand than his right. He sounded very curious. "Quit?"
"I'd sooner lose than quit." His back was touching her shoulder. She asked, "Would you?"
He laughed at himself. "I try every day. Don't I."
She smiled sadly, because this was true. "Why is it you can't, then," Leia said. She wasn't pushing him at all. The sunshine had her take a different approach. Instead of holding him at arm's length it gave her the courage to try and get to know him better.
He picked up some pink sand and let it sift through his fingers. "I'm safer with the Alliance. You guys are hiding same as me. Least I can do is help out a bit."
"But you talk about leaving your hiding place."
"Yeah. I talk. Truth is, I'm not ready."
"You don't have enough to satisfy Jabba yet?"
He smoothed the little mound of sand he had made. "Don't think I ever will." He squirmed a bit and tried to smile into her eyes. "Not what you pay me."
She didn't smile. She was trying to understand what it meant, to hide inside a war, and wondered how he wasn't bone weary too.
"You haven't had a furlough since the Death Star, have you," Han observed.
Leia shook her head. "I get away though."
"Get away working."
"What about you?" she challenged but he was no longer listening. Something had caught his attention.
He raised his comm to his lips, eyes sparkling like sun on water. "Hey, buddy. You close?" He kept his voice casual but Leia noticed the rus lifted their heads. A few made for the water. She took her feet out of the sand.
"Sooner," Han said into his comm. Leia could hear Chewie's rumbling language but couldn't make out any words. "Yeah, the downtown access."
Leia stood, and sand stuck to her skirt left as the wind caught it in the breeze. "What is it?"
He pulled her down by the wrist. "I heard speeders pull into the public access lot. Sounded like a few."
"What's the plan?"
"Get to the water." His blaster was out. "Can't quit now, Princess."
She trotted a few paces as he said, "Go!" then looked over her shoulder as she heard other voices. She couldn't make out words, but somehow it wasn't friendly. She sprinted.
The sand, pink and soft, was slowing her down. An engine throttled. Han fired his blaster.
She watched her feet. The wind took the noise of the blasters. They sounded like toys. She hit the water line and moved much surer on the firmer sand; Han, with his long legs and sense of urgency passed her, raising his knees high over the water as he ran. The speeders covered the span of dunes quickly and were soon on the beach. Han made a shallow dive, letting the water hide him. Blaster bolts raised droplets of water and steam.
The water was cold. Too cold to swim probably. The frigid temperatures seized her, clenching her jaw and holding her rigid for a moment. A blaster bolt zinged by her and Leia fell under the water, holding breath she didn't have, it was so cold, clawing pink sand to move her forward.
Han heaved himself on the speeder platform. Leia was trying not to draw a target on herself. She kept her head under the water and didn't splash.
"Come on!" he yelled at her, impatient and rude. He shot a release panel that tethered two rental speeders, and they started to move away from the platform, floating away on the current.
Han jumped on one, kicked the starter, and splashed unexpectedly back into the water. It stalled.
Leia had reached the platform. Blaster bolts were coming in earnest now and she felt exposed. Han surfaced, blowing water out of his mouth and cursing. He got back on the rental speeder, kicked the starter again, and this time the engine caught. He steered it around the back of the platform, behind a shelter where the attendants would wait, and Leia sprinted to him. He stretched out a hand and she took it with a leap, surprised at the strength with which he wrenched her in front of him on the seat.
"Fly, sweetheart," he said in her ear, and gripped her waist with his left arm.
How warm his voice was, his breath against her ear, she thought. Like sunshine. She switched the throttle to high, and they sped away. "Where's Chewie?" she hollered into the wind.
He said something, but she couldn't hear what. Over the open water, there was no cover, and she heard speeders behind them.
Decisions raced through her head. The platform afforded a barrier, but there were four of them. Behind them was the city. The boats were too far away. Up the coast was an outcropping where an old, eroded building had collapsed. The heads of rus bobbed and barked in the water.
Han alternately fired his blaster or curled into her trying to make himself small. Twice he said, "Ha!"
Leia turned inside the cove of the rubbled building, and turned the speeder around so Han would have a forward shot. She lowered her body under the duroplas shield.
Three now; one of the land speeders was sinking. Its rider was clumsily running through the water back to shore.
A shadow landed on top of the green water; Leia looked up and saw the Falcon. Only after that did she register the noise of the freighter's engines. Landing thrusters extended and Han shot the one driving the lead speeder in the chest. The rider splashed into the water, and the speeder jauntily cruised away by itself.
Two. Leia kept her speeder in motion, flying in an unpredictable pattern.
The freighter's ramp yawned open, water lapping at her edge. Leia steered around the ship, then raced towards their pursuers, and without needing to give each other a signal both she and Han jumped off when the ramp was near enough.
She didn't notice the cold this time. It felt almost exhilarating.
Chewie was in the cockpit. Leia could hear him roaring, and he fired a volley from the Falcon's guns. The two speeders scattered.
Han and Leia dragged themselves on board. Chewie appeared, still roaring and trying not to get his feet wet but he grabbed Han's shoulder and pulled him so the ramp could close. Leia hit the control. Rivulets of water streamed from their clothing. Han's was red.
"You're hit," she cried out.
"Thigh," he grimaced from the floor. "Knocked me off the speeder."
He was propped up on an elbow, not pale; just not ready to try standing. Chewie was having a fit.
"Chewie," Han yelled. "Finish gettin' us out of here and you can have the damn rescue!"
The Wookiee stalked away, still making noise. Han and Leia panted at each other.
"Well, Your Highness," Han said. "Still tired?"
"Wide awake," Leia answered grimly.
"We managed a get away together," he leered at her.
She smiled. "In more ways than one. Let's get you fixed up."
"Better you than Jabba," he winced, using the wall to pull himself up, and then with Leia's help he limped back to his quarters. "You know?"
"I'll remember that," she said. She went to the medbay to gather supplies to treat his wound and blankets for their wet clothes.
The Falcon had left the ocean waters. Leia remembered her shoes on the beach.
Han still had one boot on; that's how she knew it hurt. She helped him undress and she treated the wound, noting the healthy firmness of his muscle, the amount of watered down blood, and how golden brown his skin was under his clothing too.
Through the intercom system, Chewie informed them he was engaging the hyperdrive. "Back to Hoth," she told Han.
"With a hole in the thigh and a promise for some ion cannons," Han agreed. His head sagged back against the pillow.
She gave him an analgesic, and soon he was asleep on his bunk, snoring his lullaby, whatever that was. She took off her wet dress, and put on one of Han's warm sweaters. Then she lifted the blanket, and joined him on the bunk.
They hadn't brought the war to the beach, she reflected. It was already there. Even the sea rus knew it, skulking into the sea.
She settled in beside Han for a long nap.