Under normal circumstances, it took a couple of weeks of lockdown for the pilots to start to lose their minds, but this was Echo Base, this was Hoth, and truthfully, five full days of lockdown on the ice-covered planet with no end in sight was more than just about anyone was able to handle. High Command had to put on a good front, of course, but even the usually good-natured General Rieekan was looking a little twitchy after day three. The Rogues in particular were restless, needing an outlet for energy usually spent on flying and running drills, and their outlets of choice often had the unfortunate side effect of irritating others.
"Bad news," Wes Janson announced to the Rogues hanging around in the hangar after the midday meal on day seven. "Rieekan saw the skates and said they can't go within ten meters of a tauntaun even if we have the engineers confirm that they can hold the weight—"
"Shh," Hobbie said, interrupting Wes and waving vaguely to silence him. He was staring at the Millennium Falcon along with Wedge and Dak.
Wes followed their sight line and saw Chewbacca walk down the ramp and head down the corridor that led to the mess. "What?"
"This is the third day in a row," Dak muttered.
"That we noticed," Hobbie added.
Wedge caught Wes' eye. "I'm changing my bet to kiss."
Wes raised his eyebrows. He had several betting pools going at any given moment, but only one contained kiss as an option and Wedge's change would pay out a fair number of credits if he was right. "What did you see?" he demanded, concerned if the others got wind of whatever information Wedge had, he'd owe more credits than he had to his name.
"Organa has been walking with Solo to his ship around lunch. They board, Chewbacca leaves, ramp goes up," Dak said. "Three days in a row."
"They have been awfully chummy the past couple of weeks," Hobbie added. "Siding with each other in meetings."
"Who has?"
The group jerked around at the voice of Commander Luke Skywalker. He had his arms crossed and eyebrows raised, though he didn't seem particularly out of sorts.
"Solo and Organa," Hobbie said.
Luke rolled his eyes. "You're still sour about her picking his plan over yours last week?"
"No," Hobbie said so indignantly that Wes was certain he was lying.
"No, Luke, this is serious," Wedge said. "She's been going over every day and a minute later, Chewie leaves." He raised his eyebrows as if to say, What else could it possibly be?
Luke shrugged, obviously lacking a satisfactory explanation. "I'm sure they're just talking about the strategy for supplies once this lockdown's over."
"Every day?" Dak challenged.
"The situation is always in flux. They might have to make adjustments as we learn…" Luke trailed off as the ramp on the Millennium Falcon raised until the ship was closed off entirely to the outside world. "Well, that's weird."
Definitely weird, Wes thought. He needed to get more information on the sly as soon as possible. Otherwise, he might be looking at divvying up his measly salary amongst his fellow pilots for the rest of the war.
Hoth was miserable. Leia was loath to admit it to anyone — she tried to keep a positive outlook on things for the sake of morale — but in reality, the weeks spent in a frozen base on a planet plunged into an ice age were far from fun. Not that fun was the focus of this war they were in anyway, but she could admit that the few weeks they had camped on deserted beaches before being spotted by Imperial troopers the year prior had been far more enjoyable.
It wasn't a vacation, she reminded herself and everyone around her. Hoth was terrible but it was also safe. Echo Base was an engineering marvel offering almost perfect camouflage in the icy landscape of the planet, and after years of hopping from planet to planet, she was glad to at least have a place to permanently call home.
She was less glad when High Command grew concerned about an uptick in Imperial activity too near the Hoth system for comfort. After multiple hours'-long comms and a few close calls, they decided to pause the relocation of several outposts and put the base under lockdown to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. No ships were to come in or go out, no patrols were to take place, no one was to leave the base under any circumstances until the lockdown was lifted. Those on tauntaun duty could feed the animals in the covered part of the pen, but that was the closest anyone was allowed to go to the outdoors for the foreseeable future.
Leia had begun to feel antsy after a mere two days. The pilots were already acting as if they had been cooped up for months, and her only reprieve was her standing lunch meeting with Han, during which she at least didn't have to think about dwindling ration stores or the numb spot on her pinky finger that never seemed to go away outside of the warmth of the Falcon or the fact that the ice skates she had seen Wes Janson fashioning in the hangar were suspiciously close in size and shape to tauntaun feet. She had sent Carlist a comm about that last one in hopes that he'd handle it by the time she got back to her office. She wasn't sure if she was up to spending another half hour of her life convincing Janson not to do something shortsighted.
The lunch meetings had been a nuisance at one time, months — maybe close to a year? — back, but Leia hardly recalled why she had found them annoying at first. They started when she and Han had received an assignment to attend some formal event undercover and he needed coaching on the local customs they would be expected to know, including some formal dances. Leia had taken it upon herself to teach him. It had been unexpectedly fun — an hour or two of her day when no one knew where to even begin looking for her and she could engage in a meaningless pastime from her old life — and Han, without an audience to perform in front of, was actually pleasant to be around. Once the mission had wrapped, they continued with lunches most days. They had no more need for dancing, but they found other reasons to meet: familiarizing themselves with a few phrases in a new language for an upcoming meeting with a species that didn't have the vocal chords for Basic, Han teaching Leia how to play a particular variant of sabacc that would surely come in handy if they ever needed to infiltrate a casino, ensuring they were up-to-date on the latest episode of a Corellian holodrama that was popular enough galaxy-wide to be a topic of conversation with outside contacts.
There was always a very good reason to meet, and though Leia might eventually admit it was possible that their shared activities' relevance to Alliance business became less-obvious over time, she maintained that the projects always bestowed some benefit on the participants. Han showed Leia how to bake a few desserts ("We're exploring different cultures that we might encounter on missions through a variety of foods."), Leia taught him a handful of painting techniques ("One never knows when they might have to camouflage themselves using only…a…watercolor set."), and they both, somewhat inexplicably, already knew how to knit mittens, which turned out to be an appropriate project for the month leading up to the move to Hoth ("Our fingers were most definitely in danger of frostbite without the extra layer of protection."). Most recently, Han had found a book on folding pieces of paper into creatures and flowers in one of the cargo holds and, since a crate of the stuff had been mistakenly included in a supply delivery instead of flimsi six months prior, he and Leia had plenty of paper to practice with ("…perhaps not everything needs to be Alliance-centered," she would finally concede).
Chewie didn't participate in their ever-changing hobbies, but he did usually join them for lunch. Unfortunately, Leia had been the one to season a large batch of nerf chili several days prior and she had mistakenly chosen a bottle of Corellian spices that the Wookiee couldn't stand the taste or smell of. They had used the last of the meat in the Falcon's conservator, so while she and Han ate their way through leftovers, Chewie had been eating in the mess hall. There were only a couple of servings left, though; she and Han would have to start eating in the mess hall soon as well unless he found something hidden in the back of the conservator or High Command lifted the lockdown and allowed him to go on a supply run.
The latter was what Leia hoped for. "Lockdown is driving me insane," she admitted to Han as they ate their lunch, both sitting in the booth in the lounge of the Falcon.
"I kinda gathered," he said without explanation.
Leia wasn't surprised. The day they had cooked the chili — day one of lockdown — she had arrived at the Falcon so on-edge from listening to everyone's complaints and frustrations for over three hours straight that, every time the sound of anyone's boots hitting the ground near the opening of the ship could be heard, she flinched. Chewie finally shut the ramp, blocking the noise of passersby and helping Leia relax at least for the short time she was aboard. Shutting the ramp had since become the standard practice when she came to the Falcon for lunch, at least until lockdown was lifted and everyone stopped lobbing their complaints in her direction.
"The Rogues are acting like we are personally targeting their happiness by continuing to keep them grounded with everyone else."
Han took a bite of chili. "I can probably talk some sense into 'em if ya want. At least tell them to rethink any brilliant ideas they might be havin'."
Leia covered her face with her hands. "Wes was fashioning ice skates for a tauntaun this morning."
"That's—" Han broke off. "Honestly, I wish I could see how that played out."
She laughed softly. "If it didn't mean likely injuring a poor animal, I would too."
"Can't you get Luke to get 'em to knock it off?"
Leia grimaced. "He's nearly as restless as the rest of them." She leaned toward him slightly and lowered her voice conspiratorially. "I had to give him a lecture this morning about leading by example."
Han snorted, a grin widening on his face. "How'd that go over?"
She shrugged. Luke had received it well enough and had been appropriately mortified by his behavior. Unfortunately, Leia had found herself nearly shedding tears of frustration in the middle of what ended up being a hybrid lecture and venting session. They had both left the meeting feeling a bit sheepish for entirely different reasons. "About as well as me lecturing him ever goes," she said vaguely before adding with a soft laugh, "I nearly cried from frustration and it made things very uncomfortable, so I imagine he'll do anything in his power to keep that from happening again."
There was a long stretch of quiet that Leia didn't feel inclined to break. Han was thinking, trying to decide whether he should say something, and she didn't have the energy to try to guess what it might be.
When he finally spoke, his tone was serious and kind, almost gentle. It made Leia's stomach flutter. "Hey, when was the last time you had a whole day off?" He rested a hand lightly on her shoulder
She let out a laugh and shrugged, entirely unsure of the answer. "Before we moved here for sure," she said. "I don't know. Parts of that last supply run we did almost felt like a vacation—"
Han shook his head. "You were on a supply run. That don't count as a day off."
Leia shrugged again. "Ah, I got that flu a few months ago and they accidentally overlapped doses of something in the med center and I slept for fifteen hours."
"Being accidentally drugged don't count either."
She took a final bite of chili and continued to stare into her bowl. She wasn't really hungry any longer, but the warmth of the food was so comforting, she almost wanted more. Leia lifted her gaze and gave Han a small smile, covering the hand he rested on her shoulder with her own. "I take a day off an hour or two at a time by coming here most days."
"'m flattered that you're spending your only off time with me—"
"And Chewie," she added hastily. Admitting that she was there primarily for Han felt a little…dangerous. "The last few days being the exception obviously."
Han rolled his eyes, but his expression remained concerned, soft. He squeezed her shoulder gently. "And Chewie. But, you're gonna burn out without some rest. You can't focus on war a hundred percent of the time, Leia; you'll lose your mind."
She nodded. She knew. But…"I can't afford to think about that," she said. "Maybe once we lift lockdown. Maybe." Before he could jump in with more logic, she poked the book on paper folding sitting on the table between them and added, "I think my primary priority right now is figuring out how to alter the instructions for the varactyl into something resembling a tauntaun."
Han laughed and appeared to concede to her implied request to leave the topic of her lack of leisure time alone. "I'll get the paper."
Chewbacca knew nothing. Or, that's what Wes thought, anyway. He didn't actually know much Shyriiwook, so asking the Wookiee about what, exactly, Solo and the princess were up to when the ramp was closed on the junky freighter didn't result in much as far as new information went. He said something about an unpleasant odor and Wes was pretty sure Chewie pointed at his mittens a few times, but deciphering the meaning behind that gesture without outside help was borderline impossible. And Wes quite literally couldn't afford to ask for any more outside help. Too many bets had been switched to kiss that afternoon for him to cover them if his worst fears turned out to be true.
He never thought Solo would actually win Organa over. The man had made an attempt at awkward overtures for a couple of years and, from what Wes could tell, hadn't really gotten anywhere with her. True, they were chummy in meetings; Hobbie wasn't wrong about that, bitter though he might be about his own plan being shot down by the princess while Solo's was chosen that one time. But she had certainly not shown any obvious romantic interest in the former smuggler.
Then again, Leia Organa had the sabacc face to end all sabacc faces. For all Wes knew, she could have five boyfriends and a twice as many husbands and a pet bantha with each one of them, and he would never find out if she didn't want him to.
He wasn't going to get anywhere without doing some independent sleuthing. Which was a problem since getting details out of Solo or Organa directly wasn't going to happen, and gaining entrance to a closed and locked Falcon by himself was out of the question.
It took mulling over the issue an entire night and thinking through every possible angle before Wes had the most inconvenient revelation: he was going to have to enlist some help for his independent sleuthing.
All it took was a little lie. Luke believed what he wanted to, and he generally liked to think that the Rogues meant well. And Wes did mean well. He was simply in search of the truth. There was nothing sinister about the truth.
"Han really wanted to see the skates?" Luke asked as they approached the Falcon shortly after they left the mess post-lunch. The rest of the Rogues were still eating, but they didn't have much time.
"Yeah, he said he might not be around, but I could just leave them on the dejarik table," Wes lied easily — so easily that he briefly wondered if his lack of remorse was indicative of some sort of psychological abnormality; the princess had said as much on more than a few occasions. He didn't have time to think through the implications of his possible psychopathy right then, though. He had a romance to disprove. Or prove, and then hide the evidence of long enough for at least half of the kiss bets to change their minds. "He said you had the code to the ramp."
"It's ridiculous he didn't just give you a temporary code if he's going to be gone all day," Luke grumbled good-naturedly.
Wes shrugged. "It's Solo. I'm sure he has his reasons."
Luke rolled his eyes, but didn't disagree. He keyed in the code Wes knew Solo had given him years prior and the ramp to the Falcon began to lower.
Wes walked after Luke, somewhat concerned that they were about to have a minimum of two blasters pulled and possibly fired at them — the princess had an itchy trigger finger and was a crack shot even with meters between her weapon and her target, and Solo had the quickest draw of anyone Wes had ever seen. They'd at least be less likely to shoot Luke on sight, even if he was interrupting something romantic in nature.
"Chili's gone, Chewie!" Organa's voice sounded through the ship. "The smell won't bother you any more, I don't think."
Relief washed over Wes. Surely if they were expecting Chewbacca, they weren't in the middle of anything that would require he sell everything he owned to pay off debts.
Before Wes could stop him, Luke called out, "Leia?" curiously as they headed toward her voice and the Falcon's lounge.
There was some distressed whispering that stopped abruptly right as Luke and Wes entered the lounge. Princess Leia Organa sat on the deckplates of the room surrounded by dozens and dozens — hundreds? — of tiny paper creatures. Wes couldn't make out the variety of animal — lizards of some sort judging by the way the feet and tails had been folded — but a few looked almost like tauntauns. Solo was settled on the stool at the dejarik table, a similar paper menagerie on the tabletop near him and lining the seat of the booth. The princess' shoulder was pressed against his knee, but aside from that benign contact and the matching expressions of horror they wore when they saw Luke and Wes, there was nothing to indicate that their relationship was more intimate than Wes had originally assumed.
Princess Leia slowly lowered the creased piece of paper she held in her hands to the deckplate beneath her, an indecipherable expression on her face. "Oh," she said, her cheeks suddenly pink. "Hi."
Wes had never seen Organa speechless, and he desperately wanted to revel in the novelty of it, but Solo spoke before he was able to truly enjoy the sight. "What the hell are you two doin', bargin' onto my ship without warning? It's a good way to get yourselves shot."
"With what?" Luke scoffed in amusement. "Paper krayt dragons?"
The princess looked up at Solo. "I told you the horns and arms weren't the right proportions." She focused back on Luke. "They're supposed to be tauntauns."
"They look like tauntauns," Solo assured her, nudging her shoulder with his knee before narrowing his eyes at Wes and Luke. "Still haven't answered my question: what're you doin'?"
Luke glanced between Solo and Wes, bewildered. "Wes said you wanted to see the skates he made and that he should leave them in here since you wouldn't be around. But clearly that wasn't true, so…" He shrugged, absolving himself of any crimes and throwing Wes entirely under the speeder bus.
Solo narrowed his eyes at Wes, who suddenly felt entirely exposed. "What gives, Janson?"
Sputtering for more than a moment, Wes first lifted the tauntaun ice skates he held as if to back up the story he had told Luke before finally choking out, "I could ask you two the same thing!" Solo and Organa continued to stare at him wordlessly, and Wes was reminded with biting clarity just how intimidating they both were on their own, much less when they were united by the same cause. "Disappearing every day this week in a climate-controlled ship while the rest of us are suffering in lockdown," he added, trying desperately to distract from his actual motives in coming aboard the ship.
Organa's solemn expression wavered — she nearly flinched — and Wes felt a momentary sense of accomplishment before meeting Solo's stony gaze. "No, that ain't—" He pointed a finger at Wes. "Your lot have been driving the rest of the base up a wall since day one of lockdown. You got no right to try to shame anyone for needin' a break from your whiny asses."
"Hey," Luke said in his high-pitched, annoyed voice. Organa shot him a withering look and he grimaced. "Okay, okay. I hear it. But, Wes is right: it doesn't seem right, you two disappearing every day to—" Luke looked around the lounge seemingly with new eyes. "What is this?"
"Tauntauns," Organa said without further explanation, her voice back to its standard cool and unquestionable tone.
"We got hobbies like anyone else," Solo added after a long silence, as if that explained even a fraction of what Luke and Wes were looking at.
"Hobbies," Luke repeated.
The princess shrugged. "We can't focus on war one hundred percent of the time, Luke. We'd lose our minds."
Luke took a moment to survey the hundreds and hundreds — there really might have been thousands, the longer Wes had to look — of paper tauntaun-adjacent creatures before looking at Leia again. "And this is you…not…losing your minds?"
Organa tilted her chin up haughtily. "Yes."
"We got hobbies," Solo said again, shining no additional light on why their joint hobby appeared to be folding the same tiny paper animals a million times over.
Wes couldn't stand the uncertainty any longer; he needed his own question answered so he'd know just how screwed he was. "So, you two just get together and fold paper animals?"
Organa nodded. "This week, anyway. We rotate activities once we get bored."
"Uh huh," Wes said. "And this isn't a—" He broke off. There was no way it was a cover. They hadn't known Luke and he were dropping in and the paper creatures were everywhere. But still, he had to be sure. "You two aren't—involved? Romancewise?"
Luke swung around, glare focused on Wes. "Oh, c'mon, Wes. Is this about those stupid bets?"
"Bets?" Solo barked. "What bets?"
The princess watched as Wes made excuses and skirted questions, Luke lobbed accusations, and Solo made the same inquiries over and over again for a solid minute before interrupting, brows raised. "Let me get this straight: you thought we were having a secret affair, and with that knowledge in hand, you felt the best course of action was to interrupt while we were alone on a closed and locked ship?"
Luke's eyes widened, the implication of her carefully worded sentence washing over him all at once. He shot Wes the dirtiest of looks before addressing Organa. "Leia, I swear I didn't know—"
"There's nothing to know," she interrupted quickly, pink crawling up her cheeks again. She gestured stiffly at the paper creatures placed all over the room. "It's just tauntauns."
"Tauntauns," Solo confirmed with a single nod.
Relieved that he wouldn't be paying out on a dozen bets with twenty-to-one odds, Wes took a step toward the exit of the Falcon. "Well, that's all I had. We'll let you get back to your…" He waved vaguely at the trillions of paper animals.
Solo walked Luke and Wes to the ship's exit. Before they could leave, Solo caught both their eyes and spoke in a low voice. "Look, she doesn't get breaks 'cept when we do this kinda stuff, but if people know where to find her, they'll start ambushing her here. So, if anyone asks if you've seen her…no, you didn't." His tone carried enough of an implied threat that Wes and Luke agreed to his request before heading down the ramp. Solo waited until the two Rogues were in the hangar before saying, "I'm changin' the ramp code," and hitting the button to raise the ramp right then.
"I know you won't actually," Luke called out to Solo. "But I wouldn't blame you if you did."
Han walked Wes and Luke out, leaving Leia to her thoughts. She had lied a little just then, or she thought she might have. It was true that there was nothing for them to know; she and Han had actually spent the bulk of two lunch hours and part of the evening prior perfecting the folded paper tauntaun design by combining several techniques from the book, and the fruits of their labor were scattered around the lounge for anyone to see. But the paper tauntauns weren't the only reason she found herself drawn to the Falcon, nor was the ship's climate control or the often-superior meals they managed to scrape together using whatever Han had been able to find on supply runs. She had long admitted to herself that she liked being around Han most of the time — when he wasn't being intentionally difficult, which was a habit that had decreased in its frequency over the years. But something different had been stirring in her heart and mind for awhile, and she was certain that she had, in fact, told them all a lie.
When Han returned to the lounge after securing the ramp, he sat next to Leia on the deckplates in silence, seemingly unsure of what to say. She focused on a difficult fold in the paper she had been working on for a moment before dropping the half-folded animal entirely. She looked at him, really watched him as he carefully picked up a completed tauntaun — one of the earliest models that looked far more like a varactyl than anything else — and twirled it by its tail.
"It's not just tauntauns," she blurted out. Han jerked to attention and looked at her, eyes some conflicted mixture of warm hesitance. "Not for me, anyway," Leia continued quietly. She felt her cheeks grow warm for what felt like the thousandth time that hour and looked back down.
"Me either," Han said after the briefest pause. She felt his hand slip around hers.
Leia raised her eyes to meet his and smiled.
Lockdown was lifted after two weeks with no major incidences or injuries, though it took a full week of freedom for Echo Base to feel normal. The pilots were finally allowed to run drills and fly nearly every day, contractors were able to go on supply runs again which meant better food in the mess and an overall increase in morale, and, best of all, Wes Janson didn't own anyone an egregious number of credits.
The Rogues stopped talking about bet swapping after Solo stopped putting the ramp on the Falcon up at lunch. The practice had apparently had been a short-term thing. Wes and Luke didn't share a word about Solo and Organa's strange habits — Luke, probably in the name of friendship or something, and Wes because he didn't want any more speculation about the pair's relationship on the off chance that they ever got together and he had to pay out on the kiss bets.
He was pretty sure he'd never have to do that, though, considering the bickering arguments Solo and Organa seemed to pick with one another in just about every public place. The friendliness they had previously shown to one another in meetings evaporated almost immediately after Wes and Luke had stumbled into their paper tauntaun den and their fights were becoming over-the-top — almost theatrical in nature. When he heard the smuggler tell the princess that he would rather have his tongue freeze to a tauntaun foot than run a simple errand for High Command, Wes knew he wouldn't have to worry any time soon about any Rogues coming to collect.
And if Wes happened to notice said smuggler hide a grin behind a well-placed hand when said princess managed a particularly amusing insult during one of their tiffs or notice her reach over to tuck a mittened hand into his as they surreptitiously walked together in the corridors late at night…
Well, no he didn't.