AN: Merry Christmas!
Shoot first. Kill it, if you have to (Time Travel, Han Solo Style)
By Indygodusk
Chapter 8 - Drunk, Charming, and Chatty
Unfortunately, the incident with Pong Krell was the last of Han's good luck. Each new mission from Anakin felt more difficult and demanding than the last and they kept coming faster and faster. Palpatine had figured out he was under attack and responded by making his defenses even more labyrinthine and vicious—not that they were easy going to start with.
Worn thin and ragged, Han had been forced to take jobs he normally would've turned down to get away from the scene of his crimes or even just earn enough credits to buy food to feed himself between blowing stuff up and running for his life. Not only was it demeaning, but it also meant a lower quality of accommodations and coworkers. Han had gotten betrayed on two of his last five paying jobs. He'd barely escaped alive and without most of the promised credits.
It was exhausting. Han was exhausted. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.
Cheek down on the sticky table in the first bar he'd stumbled into after surviving the latest betrayal, Han squinted one eye shut and counted the three glasses lined up in front of his nose. They were tricky and kept shifting between two and four, but he was sure he'd ordered three. Mostly sure. He didn't have enough credits to buy more. The screens on the walls were playing sports games and war news, but he didn't care enough to watch any of it. It was getting hard to care about anything, being a sad and lonely old man without a friend in the galaxy.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the flutter of a long dark cloak. "Anakin, that better not be you with another job because I am so not in the mood right now for anything but another drink."
"I am not Anakin," said a stilted female voice, "but I am happy to buy you a drink before discussing a job."
Lifting his head from the sticky table, Han blinked at the Mirialan female standing next to his chair. A dark cowl covered her dark hair and shadowed her face, but what he could see of her looked young and pretty, with traditional black facial tattoos on firm yellow-green skin and dark lips that looked too healthy to belong to a habitual drug user or desperate prostitute, though she could be new to the trade.
"Well?" she asked in a cultured voice, tilting her head and arching a thin black eyebrow.
"Sure," Han said, sitting up and clearing his throat, voice gravelly. "I never say no to a free drink."
As she looked around and raised her hand to order from the bartender, the hood of her cloak slid farther back, revealing more of her face. Han barely held back a wince. She looked younger than he expected from a girl trying to pick up a drunk old geezer like him. A lot younger. Closer to the Core she probably wasn't even legal to buy alcohol, much less gain entrance to a bar like this. He wasn't going to let her pick him up, he just wanted the free drink, but now he was starting to feel old and dirty.
"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" Han asked. He wasn't sober enough for an original line and she wasn't old enough for him to put in the effort. Besides, she really did look like a nice girl. There had to be a story here. Hopefully, it was entertaining, or at least interesting enough to distract him from his problems for a bit. If she needed him for a job, he hoped it was easy and lucrative.
Sitting down on the edge of the chair, she placed her hands flat on her knees and expelled a slow breath that raised all kinds of alarms in Han's brain. "Just looking to find a few things," she said evenly before shooting him a small, strained smile that looked unnatural on her severe face. "But I wouldn't think of discussing business before we've even had our first drink."
Han hoped he didn't regret this…but free drinks. "Sure, I'm Han Solo." He leaned back, put an arm over the back of his chair, and gave her a charming smile. The position put his other hand next to his blaster and moved his credit chip away from any wandering hands, but he did his best not to be too obvious about it.
"Barriss Offee," she said, bowing her head in greeting, face once more falling into serious lines. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
One drink turned into two and Han found himself bragging about making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, his long and illustrious career as an—alleged—smuggler, and lamenting lost friends. Barriss was a good listener and somehow Han found himself describing to her his first look at the Millennium Falcon. Without quite knowing how it happened, he ended up tearing up as he told her how much he loved his missing ship, which slid into hiccuping over his falling out with Lando.
As one drink turned into three, Barriss lowered her hood and sprawled more in her chair. Han was grateful since it made her easier to read. She wasn't very emotive for a teenage girl, though at least the alcohol was helping to loosen her up.
Rubbing an arm over his face, he looked over at the innocent little lamb trying to soften him up to buy herself something illegal and felt a fresh wave of tears as he remembered running cons with Lando in those early years and how it had all gone wrong. His nose started stinging with a fresh bout of tears. "Don't do it, kid. It's not worth it and it never works out the way you hoped it would."
Head tilting, she took a small sip of her drink and gently asked, "What isn't, Mr. Solo?"
"Betraying your friends," Han said, pointing at her with his bottle. Her eyes went wide, probably at how wise and kind he sounded giving her such great life advice. "There's always new problems, but there won't always be new friends."
Looking down to pick at the label on her bottle, the corners of her mouth stiffened and her shoulders went up. "I don't know what you mean."
"Like me and Lando and the Falcon," he explained, happy that she started to relax after hearing that. She probably wanted more advice. He was very wise. Everyone said so…or at least they should.
The bar door opened, letting in a rambunctious group of men in uniform and raising the noise level in the bar by a factor of twenty. Something about them looked familiar, maybe because they all looked alike. It wasn't enough to raise Han's sense of danger and he was busy drinking with a new friend/potential client, so he decided not to worry about it.
"Let me explain," Han said generously, scooting his chair closer to Barriss so she could hear him over the noise and making sure to enunciate so he wasn't slurring. "You shouldn't betray your friends, even if it seems like a good idea at the time. Believe me, kid, it's not worth it. I mean, getting the ownership of the best ship in the galaxy was sort of worth it," he paused as he contemplated a horrible future where he'd never won his baby, but then he remembered he was supposed to be giving wise advice right now and should stay focused, "but then my friend hated me for years and pretended to reconcile with me only to backstab me the first chance he got, putting all of my new best friends in danger including my future wife, who was still pretending she didn't love me, which is a horrible feeling—both the betrayal and making someone worry that you don't love them. Don't do that to your friends and the people you love." Han pounded on the table for emphasis, knocking over the empty bottles in his enthusiasm.
Barriss gulped hard, the pulse pounding in her throat. Han worried that he was coming on too strong. That or he'd just dashed her hopes of romancing him with his talk of Leia. Oh well. "Where was I again?" Scratching his chest, Han looked around the bar.
"Betrayal, that's right." He tried to snap his fingers, but they were too slippery to make a sound. He stared at them and then realized that he didn't need his fingers to make sounds because that was what his mouth was for. "Don't ever betray your friends," he said. Barriss's blue eyes widened, looking stricken. "Don't do it." He pounded on the table again, but then he worried he might be making her uncomfortable.
Easing back, he helpfully added, "Unless it's to people you don't care about or who are bad guys and deserve it." Han tapped the table with one finger and hummed thoughtfully, "Which is another lesson on being careful who you trust and associate with and the moral compromises required in a criminal career, which everyone decent ends up regretting making their career, but that's a depressing lecture for another day and I already cried about Lando and don't want to cry about Chewie too or, even worse, Leia and Ben, so we're going to move on." Han cupped his hands around the invisible topic and lifted it up to dump it off the table, only to remember who he'd been talking about. Instead, he placed it carefully on an empty chair and gently let it go.
Turning back to Barriss, he saw that she was trembling and looking a bit orange, which was not a positive color in Mirialans. "It's going to be alright," Han said, patting the black diamond tattoos on the back of her ice-cold hand. She nodded jerkily but didn't pull away. He could see thoughts racing behind her blue eyes as she stared through him. Han patted again and gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. "Have some more to drink." He slid her bottle closer and took a sip of his own. She clutched at the bottle convulsively but didn't drink.
Saddened, he realized his bottle was almost empty and sighed. "So anyway, Lando pretended to be my friend and then backstabbed me and sold me and my friends out—supposedly to save Cloud City and his people or some greater good crap like that."
Barriss licked her lips and rolled the bottle between her hands. "Did it—did it work though? Did he save them?" She watched him with an intensity that would've felt unsettling if he hadn't been so drunk.
"No," Han shook his head, lips twisting, "it didn't work. Cloud City got destroyed anyway, we all got hurt, and I almost died hating him. I also got tortured by the man who, in another life, would've been my father-in-law—not because he actually needed information or cared about hurting me, but just to make me better bait to trap my friend Luke who could sense my pain through the Force." Slamming his fist against his palm, he glared out across the bar. "I swear I'm gonna shoot that guy someday."
Barriss's eyes looked wide and wet. Chewing on her lower lip, she looked down and hesitantly asked, "Your Luke's a Jedi?" Her fingernails picked at the edges of the bottle label, peeling it off in small strips.
"Yep," Han said proudly. "Best Jedi there ever was!" He took another sip, tipping his bottle back to get the last few drops.
"So there I was, fresh off being tortured when—" he stopped to hiccup, noticing that the orange had started creeping back into Barriss's cheeks. It was sweet of her to get so upset over his welfare. Where was he again? "Vader! That damn Vader froze me in carbonite, forcing Leia to watch, and sold me to the Hutts." He pounded his drink down on the table so hard it knocked over onto its side and rolled off onto the floor. "I do not recommend it!"
Belching, he pounded on his chest a couple of times and then cupped a hand around his mouth, leaning close to her ear to share a secret. "Though if it happens again, I'm gonna see if that Erso guy is still there and get him to help rescue us. Way I see it, he owes me one for finding him a job."
Without knowing quite how it was happening, Han found his chair moving away from Barriss and the table without his feet ever touching the floor. Holding his hands in front of his face, Han rotated them back and forth. "Huh, did I just fly? Am I a Jedi now too?" Looking at Barriss plaintively, he whined, "I don't want to be a Jedi."
She moved a hand over her mouth and coughed to conceal a laugh. How rude. Cute, but rude.
"Commander, is this man bothering you?" a deep voice asked.
Looking over his shoulder and up, Han saw an athletic-looking, stern-faced human male with light brown skin, dark curly hair buzzed short, dark eyes, and a scar curling around his left eye. In the dim bar full of alcohol fumes, Han blinked at the uniformed man in surprise and rubbed his eyes, but the vision didn't change. It was Pathfinder Rex from the Endor campaign! Though he looked quite different out of forest camouflage and without his white beard.
Nevertheless, it was definitely Rex. He had a distinctive face. (Something about that was funny, but Han was too drunk to remember what.)
Han might not remember the joke, but he did remember that Rex was fun to drink with. The man removed his hand from Han's chair and stalked around to stand protectively between Han and Barriss—his new friend and potential employer. Smiling up at him, Han clambered to his feet and cried, "Captain!" Grabbing Rex by his arm, Han went in for a hug.
Before he could make contact, he was blocked from coming closer by a stiff palm to the sternum. His hand was then forcefully removed as Rex stepped back. Confused more than offended, Han frowned and tilted his head as he looked Rex over. "What did you do with your beard? Were you always this baby-faced under that gray hair?"
Looking unamused, Rex gave him a dead-eyed stare. "You're confusing me with someone else, perhaps one of my brothers. I'm Commander Cody of the 212th Attack Battalion. You should back up. Now." Despite his tough words, he looked exhausted, with shadows under his eyes dark enough to be worn as a cloak by Anakin black-is-my-favorite-shade Skywalker. Han could relate to the exhaustion, even if not the cloak.
"Cody, huh? Never heard of ya." Han hiccuped. "Or have I?" He scratched his head, the name starting to ring a bell. "I don't like cloaks, but nice to meet y-yah," Han hiccuped and enunciated to prove he could, "yo-ou. Cody."
Cody looked over at the Mirialan, his lips tight as he inclined his head and gestured toward the door. "Commander, perhaps I can escort yo—"
Realizing he was being rude, Han looked over at Barriss too, interrupting Cody to tell her earnestly, "Oh, you too, kid. Did I not say that? It is…has been…a pleasure…." Nodding and blinking several times, he tried to make the room stop swaying. Not wanting to offend Cody since the soldier looked like he could break Han in half with his pinkie, he pointed at him and added, "To meet you…both." Opening his hands and holding them out, he gave them each a slow regal nod copied from Leia at her stuffiest.
The room settled and Han realized his glass was long empty and the others didn't even have glasses. Barriss had only bought bottles and most of them were on the floor and empty. How sad, he thought mournfully.
"Let's drink together, shall we?" Han smiled and threw his arms around their shoulders. Friendly people got free drinks. Sure, it helped to be young and pretty in addition to being friendly, but old and charming could work too.
Barriss slipped away from his touch like she was made of smoke, willing to take a pat on the hand but not a full-on hug. Before Han could decide how to react to that, Cody stepped into him, grabbing Han's wrist and twisting it into a painful submission hold, using it to maneuver Han so he was hunched over with his hand up in the air behind his back. "No touching," Cody said curtly.
Remembering the trick to it, Han quickly broke out of the submission hold and stepped back, rotating his wrist to ease the sting. He felt smug at Cody's look of surprise at his easy escape. "Yeah, you're related to Captain Rex. He must've taught you that one too, huh? Which proves we're not strangers by association. Same associate. You know."
Cody's eyes narrowed. "You know Rex?" He looked down at his empty hand and then back at Han. "How?"
Barriss leaned around Cody, "Do you know Ahsoka too?"
Han rocked back on his heels and then had to grab the nearest table when he almost toppled over. "Whoops!" Laughing, he dropped down into a seat and scratched his head. "Only Ahsoka I know was a padana- padawoohoo-" Han waved his hands and released a gusty sigh, "Force person."
Barriss shifted and touched a tube on her belt, making Han realize she had a hidden lightsaber. "Oh, huh, like you I guess."
Pursing his lips, he gave her a significant look. "I guess you already know she's training under Anakin." Barriss and Cody exchanged a look.
Leaning forward toward his new friends, Han looked around to make sure no Force ghosts were lurking before whispering, "Poor kid, he's gonna break her heart when he goes Dark, though what can you do?" Shrugging, Han sat back, grabbed his glass, and raised it to his lips, pausing to say, "His breaking the Force and leaving it to his grandson to fix is definitely worse, but I'm working on that." Tipping the cup up over his mouth, he whined when nothing came out, having forgotten that he'd drained it ages ago.
Eyes dilating, Barriss looked up and around the room before turning back to Han. "Why does the Force react like that when you speak?" she asked in a hushed voice, shivering.
"Like what?" Cody asked, the bones of his cheeks sharpening as he looked around too, dropping a hand to his side where a holster might normally be if he wasn't off-duty.
"He's not a Force user," Barriss muttered under her breath as her eyes stared right through Han creepily, "more like he's being used by the Force, but that's not how the Force works." Blinking as her eyes came back into focus, she abruptly grabbed Han's wrist. "What do you mean when Master Skywalker goes dark? What do you know? What have you seen?" she hissed.
"Ah, kid, too much," Han said with a heavy sigh, suddenly wishing he hadn't drunk so much. He patted her hand again. The black diamonds on her hand were pretty. She was so young and earnest-looking with her pale yellow-green skin and big blue eyes. "The galaxy is going to chew you up and spit you out," he told her sadly, feeling old, wise, and unexpectedly charitable, "just like it did with Luke, Leia, and Ben. Don't be so tender-hearted."
"Commander Offee," Cody said, watching Han warily as he hovered protectively over the girl's shoulder, looking like he wanted to push Han away from her.
"Tell me," she said, turning her hand and tightening her grip around Han's until it became almost painful. "Please. I think it's important."
Han scoffed, wishing he was drunker for this conversation. "Of course it's important, but you can't do anything about it."
Instead, everything depended on Han. His mood blackened. What idiot had made that decision?
Ben. It had been Ben. Stupid kid, screwing up and making bad choices like a true Solo…just like his dad.
Time and knowing Ben regretted going Dark had helped Han forgive Ben for what had happened, but he still didn't know if Ben had forgiven him for his failures as a father. He didn't know if Ben still cared. Han would always love his son no matter what, but he missed Ben too. He missed the boy who'd always tried so hard, funny and heartbreaking by turns. He missed being looked at with love, trust, and hope. He missed talking to his son. He just…he missed him.
Eyes stinging, he yanked his hand away, looked around wildly, and grabbed an abandoned glass of purple liquor from a nearby table. Slamming back the drink, he gasped and wheezed at the burn of alcohol traveling down his throat. Better to cry from alcohol than melancholy. Hopefully, that wasn't one of the drinks toxic to humans. Or maybe he should hope it was toxic since he'd been running around for years trying to take down Palpatine without much to show for it. Maybe almost dying would force Anakin to be useful for once and help Han finally meet up with his son and kill the Emperor.
As the floor turned into ocean waves rocking him back and forth, Han released a heavy sigh and rubbed hard his face. "You'll probably be dead within the year anyway when the chips in the clones get activated," he said regretfully. It was a mistake to talk to her. He shouldn't have gotten involved in this conversation.
"Chips?" Cody asked sharply.
"What chips?" Barriss demanded simultaneously.
"The control chips in the clones' heads, don't you know about them?" Han said despite his intention not to get more involved. "Everyone knows the Jedi knew but just didn't think it was a problem until it was activated and the clone troopers were forced to massacre their Jedi Generals." At least, that was the rumor he'd heard after meeting Rex. "Maybe they didn't tell the kids though." He shrugged and rubbed his chest. "Or maybe the Jedi really didn't know. Hypocrites or fools...either way, you're all dead." Han gave a mirthless laugh and looked down at the worn table, tracing a scratch in the surface with his fingertip. "Ghosts…I can't escape them." Han fumbled for his drink, but it was already empty. Looking around, he saw that they were all empty. Gone…just like the Jedi.
Brackets lining his mouth, Cody put a hand on Barriss's shoulder. "The old man's spouting lies and nonsense, Commander. We'd never do something like that. Don't let him upset you. You should leave." His eyes narrowed at Han, "Or I could make him leave." It didn't sound like an idle threat. Cody's fingers twitched.
A warning jolt went through Han, sharpening his senses. Over the noise of the crowd, he could hear a ballad sung soulfully over a staccato beat, some dance remix of an old folk tune. His heart pounded in his throat. Raising his hands and leaning back, Han placed the toe of his boot on the bottom rung of a chair just in case he needed to kick it in front of Cody to slow him down while he ran away. Despite his efforts to stay focused, he could feel his clarity quickly slipping away. Seeing Cody up close was making memories of Pathfinder Rex flood Han's brain, which was already feeling pretty sloshy.
"Hey, you don't believe me. I get it." Han nodded wisely and snapped his fingers, pointing in the vague direction of Cody as the song overhead made a scrap of conversation abruptly bob to the surface of his mind. "Nobody believed Fives about Tup and the chips either—I remember Rex saying that in his cups the last time we got drunk together, though he was crying at the time and it rhymed and was set to this same tune," Han gestured at the speaker overhead, "where he rhymed Cody with lonely, which is how I just remembered it on seeing you, though I'm not gonna sing it for you cause I don't want you to start crying or punch me in the face." Han hiccuped and squinted at the three Codys suddenly dancing in front of him, trying to make them into one person again. "I don't care if you cry, but please don't punch me in the face. I'm just a harmless old man and I break easily. Also, I might throw up."
Han tried to look pitiful and not worth bothering, but he got distracted by the scar cutting across Cody's face over his eye. He held up his hand and squinted so it disappeared. "If we got rid of that scar, you really do look like a younger Rex without a beard. All of you do, I guess, being clones." He nodded sagely and dropped his hand, feeling so smart for remembering the joke.
Cody stared at Han. The pulse in his neck was visibly throbbing, harder than his calm demeanor would suggest. "Rex hasn't ever grown a beard," he said slowly, tipping his head and watching Han from under lowered brows, "though Fives and Tup do serve in the 501st with him."
Han winced. "Vader's Fist, huh? Wait, does that mean Rex worked for Darth Vader in the 501st?" Eyes darting around, his mouth fell open as his stomach filled with acid.
Barriss jolted forward. "Isn't Vader the one who tortured you? Darth is a Sith name. Is Ahsoka in danger?" Barriss looked stricken. "Who is Darth Vader?"
"Who's Vader? Why, he's An—" Han's words choked off as Anakin's ghost appeared right in front of him with a face like thunder and a pointed finger.
"Don't. You. Dare." Anakin growled as his glowing finger jabbed right into Han's right eye and presumably out the back of his skull. He couldn't feel it, but seeing it was nauseating.
Han probably threw up after that, but he wasn't quite sure. The rest of the night was pretty much a blur. At some point, he must've passed out.
When he woke up the next morning, he had a killer headache on a ship he didn't recognize, having signed up for a job he didn't remember. His body felt like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe after wading through a swamp. His mouth tasted worse.
"Is this your doing?" Han looked around with squinting eyes, waiting for Anakin to show up.
No one answered.
AN: Thank you for reading and commenting. I love and cherish every review!