The Awakening

They lay on their sides in the bunkroom they shared, mirroring the haunting image of their older selves. The air was cool and the bright lights probably hurt Leia's eyes, but she didn't complain. Feeling heavy—and light, and loved, and lost, all at once—Han tried and failed several times to make himself ask a few very serious questions.

How long have I been gone?

How did you survive Bespin?

How did you kill Fett?

How did you rescue me?

Why do I remember conversations I swear we never had?

The last burned bright as a candle behind his dark eyes. They were so real, these memories. He could remember the tenor of her voice, how she had cried and raged and despaired, the words she had spoken. And he remembered not being able to answer her, even feeling a faint indifference to her pain at the time, as if he had been erased but his body had remained.

Which was ludicrous. His body had been in carbonite.

There hadn't been enough time for these ghostly, one-way conversations. He knew that. He knew it. But he obsessed over them the way he obsessed over hyperspace navigation. Nothing in the galaxy made any sense to him, either, but at the very least time trudged on. It was predictable. His perfect internal clock might have been stopped for awhile there, but the laws of spacetime hadn't changed.

Had they? No.

Then how did he remember her crying for him with such clarity?

It was something Force-related, he bet. It had to be.

Reaching out a hand, he traced her cheek as he had seen his older self do, and thought maybe his vision was improving even faster than Aaya had predicted. He could see the outlines of her face, the beloved margins of her skin against the dull chrome of the bulkhead. Her eyes were big, dark eddies in a beige seascape of blush and features, and it frustrated him that he couldn't see more or better or fully, but what was he gonna do about that right now? Let Aaya mess around with his corneas?

Hell, no.

"You should sleep," she whispered into the void of questions he wasn't asking and answers she wasn't providing. "Aaya has always thought you might need to sleep."

"She thought I was gonna be brain-dead, too," he countered.

"She's a medic. They're trained pessimists."

"She's a medic. They're trained idiots."

"Han," she admonished, but there was playfulness in her tone, so he knew he wasn't truly annoying her. "You survived something no one else has survived in a century. Maybe we should listen to the one person prepared to handle your care?"

He considered it, then decided he might let Aaya do what she needed to do later. He would let Leia push him for it a bit longer before he acquiesed out loud, though. He had to at least look like he was fighting her. "Still not tired."

He couldn't tell for sure, but he thought she might have narrowed her eyes at him. "Your body needs to heal."

Rolling his eyes—then wincing when it triggered an instantaneous headache at his temples—he scowled. "Nah. I'm good."

"Sure you are."

"I will be," he amended. "Once you start answering my questions, I'll be at a hundred percent, no problem."

She paused long enough for him to send her a pointed look, and she laughed quietly. He thought about how her laughter sounded unused, as rusty as his vocal cords had been when he first started talking on the medbunk, and while part of him knew he wasn't ready to know how long he had been in carbonite, it must have been longer than a few weeks.

Leia seemed … steady. Calm. Concerned, sure, but not worried.

In the years he had known her, calm would never have been his first descriptor for the former princess of Alderaan. She was ruthless and ambitious and sometimes insane and always the most interesting person in the room, but calm?

No.

It itched at him, this flagrant display of change. She had evolved sometime during this unknown span of time.

Without him.

What have you done, Leia? What has been done to you?

Do I still fit in?

A sliver of self-consciousness nudged against the base of his skull, but he fought the instinct to let it stab any deeper. She had saved him. She loved him. People didn't risk the wrath of Jabba the Hutt unless they really, really, really needed something from him.

It's clear as the nose on your face, he thought, then chuckled when he remembered that his nose wasn't at all clear to him at the moment.

"What do you want to know?" she asked.

He considered various questions for a long, long time before he arrived at the one that was bothering him the most. Not the most relevant. Not the most urgent. But the one that had baffled him since she had unfrozen him nearly an hour ago.

"The room you showed me when I woke up, the one by the ocean. I've been there before."

She paused, but didn't seem surprised by his first question. "Yes."

"What … is it?"

Hesitating again, she seemed to struggle for an answer, but then landed on the one she felt he would accept with minimal sarcasm. "During your scan grid sessions on Bespin, Luke was helping to calm me down through the Force."

"Uh-huh."

"He … kind of screamed at me to meditate."

Confusing, but alright. His experience with meditation—in for five, out for eight—hadn't been enough to block out torture, but what did he know? Maybe it would be for her.

She continued. "The image I showed you? That was what the Force showed me in that moment. It helped. A lot."

"I bet," he said. "Is it real?"

Leia didn't answer for a minute, a full sixty seconds, and it felt like an eternity. He thought about the peace of the crashing waves and the visceral way he had been able to taste the salt in the air. Senses he didn't need his eyes to experience. Ambient sensations that somehow reminded him of home, even though he had never lived on or near an ocean.

"I'm pretty certain it's a vision of a possible future," she finally said quietly. "I'm sorry. That might be … does that upset you?"

Did it?

He considered it carefully, trying to gauge his feelings on the matter. A vision of the future was weird shit, no doubt about that. It was the kind of thing he would have balked at before he had met the twins, before he had decided that life was infinitely better with them than without them, and this felt like an extension of that faith.

Did it upset him? Commitment? Family? A future with her?

"Probably should, huh?" he answered with a lopsided grin. "Guess not."

White appeared, and he thought maybe she was smiling, but he couldn't be sure. "Did we unfreeze the right man?" she joked. "That's quite a leap of faith you just made there, sir."

"Don't call me that. And there are a lot worse futures we could have."

The room drifted to him again, but this was his memory, now, not her interference. He focused on the salt-and-pepper-haired man, smiling so big he looked almost comical. Laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, leaner in the face, a slight rounding of his shoulders, but otherwise a good-looking man, healthy and happy, clearly used to the odds running in his favor. And the woman—Leia—was stunning in her maturity, unbelievably gorgeous, holy shit, how in the worlds had she managed to look better than she did in the present?

Not that looks were everything. Not when it came to her.

But damn.

"We're older in that room," he said.

"Yes."

"We look … it looks good."

"Yes."

"Do you know anything more than that?" he asked, carefully. "Where we are, when it is, what we've been up to?"

Kids? His brain supplied but he was not going to start that conversation now. Nope. No no no.

"Sorry, flyboy," she answered him. "I don't have any secret information for you. You've seen all that I've seen."

"So we win the war?"

"I don't know."

"If we wind up there, we must have. Right?"

Shrugging, she didn't answer. He knew her casual response did not indicate an actual carelessness about the Alliance, and then he thought about the million—billion? trillion?—scenerios that could land them in that dreamy room, alone and happy, thirty or so years from now.

What triumphs had those two older versions of them seen? What losses? What struggles, what choices, what failures, what had they done to wind up there?

And then yet another humbling thought came to him.

"It's not for sure, is it?" he asked slowly. "It's not guaranteed."

"No."

Exhaling, he took that in, recognizing the twin gift and curse she had shared with him. In some mysterious universe, that blissful room existed, but they didn't have a roadmap to get there. The trick was going to be in doing everything right, everything just so, in order to make the stars align and bring it to life. They wouldn't know until they walked into that room together that they had succeeded. It was going to hang somewhere ahead until one of them died or they found themselves in the exact moment she had been shown.

"You see the problem," she murmured, and ran her fingers up and down his arm, from shoulder to wrist and back again.

Comforting. Real. He appreciated the contact more than he could express to her.

"Better than the alternative, though," he countered, as he trapped her rogue hand with his and brought it to his lips. "Everyone's always worried they might be doing the wrong thing. At least we know one version of us managed the right one, instead."

Her smile lit the space between them again. "True."

"And, knowing that, you put me in there. You did."

She was quiet, obviously aware of where he was going with this comment. He let the silence linger, running his thumb up and down the beautiful line of her throat and thinking that he had never in his life imagined he would believe someone when they said they could see his future.

But.

"I didn't do it on purpose," she finally said, and there was the sorrow he remembered from those missing conversations, etched into the very bedrock defensiveness of her voice. "I couldn't let you go. I'm sorry. I just …"

Pulling her toward him, he worked hard not to show the burning that ran up his injured chest with the movement. Instead he marveled at the way her hand crept instinctively into his hair and how much he had missed the contact, despite being unable to miss anything while in carbonite.

"Leia," he murmured. "Don't apologize."

"I would talk to you," she continued. "For hours. Hours. I would sit on the bed with you and talk and pretend that you were really there, listening to me, that maybe I could get you to hang on until I could find you—"

Ah, he thought. There it is.

"I know you would," he interrupted. "I remember."

She inhaled sharply, rendered mute in the prime of her bedraggled, strained monologue.

"I think you kept me sane," he continued, heedless of her reaction. "I was remembering all these conversations we had had that never happened, and it was driving me nuts."

"You remember?" she asked.

"Not what you said, just that you were there, keeping me together. Reminding me of who I was. What I was waiting for."

Her kiss was salty through her tears, but it was perfect, and Han slipped into rest despite all protestations that he didn't need any such thing. He felt safe, and protected, and cherished for the first time in what he was beginning to suspect was months, and it was alright.

She would look out for him. She would keep him safe.

When he fell asleep, his poor body drained of energy from the initial shock of being unfrozen, she meandered through the Falcon in search of caf. Instead she found Chewie at the dejarik table and already nursing his giant mug.

Little Princess, he greeted. Cub is resting peacefully. I am glad you are taking a moment for yourself.

Nodding, she filled her chipped yellow mug—saved for her by the crew of the Falcon years ago, before she had fallen in love with her captain—and moved to sit gingerly across from the Wookiee. "Your hearing never fails to amaze me."

A gift and a curse with you two, he joked. Do you need to eat?

"Not right now, thank you." She sipped the caf and took in the Wookiee's expression: his tired eyes and the stoop in his wide shoulders. "What do you need?"

Why do you think I need anything?

"Because your cub was just returned to you after months apart, and that must be a very difficult mix of emotions to process."

Narrowed blue eyes took her in, and she smiled encouragingly toward him. He seemed to take her sincerity in stride, and then turned inward with a tilt to his head and a deep exhale. She gave him space, thinking that everyone involved in the rescue probably needed some time to come to grips with the enormity of their success.

He was alive. He was sleeping in the room just behind her. He was cracking jokes and adjusting and surprising her with the depths of his inner life. He was not introspective—no definitely not—but he was always wrestling with big questions, fighting demons and figuring out mysteries in the privacy of his thoughts where no one could overestimate his intelligence.

Stupid man, she thought. Stupid, brilliant man.

Sipping from her mug thoughtfully, she waited Chewie out, thinking that everyone expected the opposite of him. Everyone in their circle recognized the wisdom of the Wookiee's words, and sometimes she felt like maybe he needed to express simple, slightly unreasonable things, too.

She would happily give him that opportunity. It was the absolute least she could do.

I am very happy, he said into the silence. And I feel vulnerable to predators in the open skies.

Understanding the colloquialism, she nodded and set her mug down. "Me, too."

There is nothing I want more than to protect my Honor Family, and this success only seems to remind me that I will never fully be able to do so.

"Suppressed emotion from Bespin?"

Considering that, he was silent for a long while. When he next spoke, it was in a lower register than she was used to and with a tone she did not recognize.

I must learn the same lesson that you and Cub have learned.

Chuckling softly, she could only shrug. "I am beginning to think everyone at some point has to be confronted with the fundamental problem of vulnerability. I don't know that it is the exact same lesson for you, though."

Perhaps not.

"It is okay to feel too many emotions at one time," she whispered. "I certainly do."

He reached over and placed his paw on her shoulder, and she remembered the countless times he had done this in the months they had suffered alone together. How often Chewie had been her only real confidante, a fellow beloved of Han Solo, grieving the man only they really knew. Luke had been a balm for her soul, and Chewie had made sure her heart still beat somewhere beneath the icy exterior she showed to the galaxy.

I do not like it, he growled. I do not like feeling this way. It feels … juvenile.

"Tell me about it."

At least I am not hollering at the tops of my considerable lungs, he offered. You two are so loud.

She laughed again, tilting her head to lean her head on his paw. "I suppose it was a pretty miserable time for everyone, hmm?"

He grinned for the first time, showing massive fangs in an expression that would have scared others but sent warmth up her spine. Remembering such things was only amusing now that Han had been rescued and the pieces had fallen spectacularly well.

Remembering the dark was so much easier in the daylight, when said darkness had lost its power.

She sobered immediately with the thought of darkness.

Vader.

"I have to tell him about my parentage," she whispered, dropping her eyes to the dejarik board as his paw slipped from her shoulder. "I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet."

That seems simple.

"It does, doesn't it?" Looking into his kind eyes, she recognized patience and support in the light blue. "And yet."

Chewie softened his expression into understanding. Cub will not care. He does not know who his sire is.

"I would much rather not know, either," she joked.

But he continued as if she hadn't spoken. The people from Corellia do not put stock in blood relations. Cub will be more alarmed that you thought he would react badly than upset at your lineage.

She knew that, too. It was a feature of their relationship, not a bug. Out of all the revelations they had had together, the identity of her father was simply the last in a long line of obstacles to overcome.

And yet.

"It kind of feels like a final exam," she said at last with a small smile. "After failing all the tests before, I should know how to handle this one, shouldn't I?"

Chewie rumbled a laugh, and she felt better just listening to it, anchored and ready to prove that she had indeed learned her lesson.

Han awoke to a blue-tinged captain's quarters, settled and calm. Lying on his back, he feared the burning sensation on his chest that he remembered from two days ago on Bespin …

And then he remembered that it had most likely been more than two days.

"How do you feel?"

He hadn't noticed her next to him, but he shouldn't have been surprised. She had been here with him while he had drifted off to sleep despite his best intentions, and he suspected she was still pointing medical equipment in his direction when he wasn't looking.

Proud of the fact that he hadn't jumped out of his skin, he turned his head to check his vision.

Soft brown eyes set in a beautiful oval face. If he looked hard enough, he could see the shadows under her eyes that told him she had not been sleeping well, and the hard lines of her cheekbones that told him she had also not been eating well. She looked tired and desperate everywhere he looked at her, like she hadn't really been alive, either.

And still, even then, she was the most incredible thing he could imagine seeing when he first realized that he could indeed see.

"Not bad," he said, answering her question and finishing his train of thought at the same time. "Eyes are working better."

Nodding, she held up two fingers. "How many?"

He grabbed her hand, pulled it between them and out of the way, and lunged for her lips. She tried to pull away—probably to scold him or threaten an exam by Aaya—but her heart wasn't in it, and he coaxed her to relax against him, lips warm on his, breath sweet on his tongue.

They spent a few moments simply enjoying the contact, and then he broke away with a soft nip to her bottom lip. Closer now, he could see her eyes as they took him in, ranging across his face like he was uncharted territory, looking for any sign of sickness or infirmity.

"I'm fine," he assured her unspoken thought, "but you look like you need a good meal or two."

She scowled adorably, and it earned her another brief kiss. When he pulled away again, it was to run his index finger down her cheekbone, noting its sharp edge.

"Not on purpose, right?" he asked.

She pursed her lips. "No," she said. "I wasn't suicidal, Han."

"Okay," he said, accepting that easily. "Then don't break it to me gently. How long have I been gone?"

She hesitated.

"C'mon."

It hadn't been years, of that he was certain now that he could see her face. Changed, yes; harder and thinner than her usual look, but not older. Longer than she wanted, he would guess, based entirely on her refusal to answer the question immediately.

He steeled himself.

"Six months," she finally replied.

He let that sink in, unsurprised but resigned. Half a goddamned year, he thought. Some beings grew offspring in that amount of time. Some planets rotated around their stars with less time than that. Inexorable and predictable time was, yes, but for him it was just … lost.

"Huh," he said, unsure what else to say.

"If I could have…" she began in a tone that sounded a bit frantic, but then immediately cut herself off to start over with a deep breath. When she spoke again, it was calmer, more certain. "No. We got to you as quickly as we could with an acceptable amount of risk to ourselves."

His eyebrows shot up, impressed with the answer, but he moved on regardless. "Who all was put at risk?"

"You have a lot of friends in the Alliance, Commander Solo. It was a group effort."

"Specifics, Organa."

"Luke, Chewie and me. Salla and about half the Mercs. And Lando."

Lando. Fuck, that was a name he hadn't expected. "What'd you do, stun him and leave him for bait?"

She laughed, and the sound was like the sweetest music in the world, as healing as the bacta on his chest.

"Not as bait, no, but he was stunned once when he made someone very angry."

He wondered briefly why she was referring to herself in the third person, then realized that if Leia or Chewie had had their way, Lando would probably be dead by now, not participating in his rescue. He flipped through the list of suspects, and landed on the most likely culprit.

"Sal."

Still smiling, Leia nodded. "Got it in one. She is not his biggest fan."

"Get in line," he grumbled, but countered his grim tone with a sweep of his left hand over her side. "Why are you wearing clothes?"

"Shouldn't I be?"

"No," he groused, but settled for sliding his hand between her torso and her fatigues, then pulling her into his side with only the barest hint of pain from his wounds.

"What else would you like to know?" she asked, as she kissed the bare skin of his shoulder.

He thought about that. There were starfields of things he wanted to know about the past six months. He wanted to know about the Alliance and the Mercs, about her training, about his rescue and what had happened on … had it been Tatooine? He felt like someone had said Tatooine. Vader, Fett, Jabba.

But there was one thing that was more important than anything else to him.

"What's bothering you?" he asked.

She was quiet, shocked into silence, though he wasn't sure why. Of course he would notice her careful phrasing, the way she held herself in tight control as if she were afraid to startle him or herself. He had spent hours trying to understand her mind, and they had been together for a year now …

Well. The counting was a bit fucked up now, he supposed.

Still. He knew when she was worried about something.

"Can't fool you for a second, can I?" she finally asked, and he was relieved to see a small smile on her face.

He shook his head and ran his hand in circuits up and down her back. "Talk."

Nodding, she set her chin on his shoulder. "It's bad," she whispered.

It always was, so he nodded but just stared at her until she sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Luke arrived just after you were frozen," she began. "Vader's plan all along was not to kill us, but to get us to join him."

That didn't make much sense to him, but he didn't want to interrupt now that she was cooperating, so he kept his mouth shut for once.

"We fought him as best we could, but … Han, he's unbeatable."

He opened his mouth to retort, then closed it when he remembered being choked from a table-length away. Not unbeatable—no one was unbeatable—but it had probably felt like it for the two young, barely-trained Jedi.

"He kept coming at us. Everything we tried, he blocked or anticipated or countered like it was nothing. I've never seen anyone with such power. I don't think he has ever let us see how strong he really is in the Force."

"Showing off to get you to go with him?" Han guessed.

"Maybe," she said. "If it had been just me, it probably would have worked."

That made him laugh out loud. "Yeah, no."

Shrugging, she didn't reply but the silence felt like a preamble, and so he waited for her to launch into her great recitation. When she didn't, he nudged her.

"There's something else, isn't there?"

"Yes."

"And it's bad, and you're scared to tell me?"

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and Han's trepidation mounted. Whatever this was, it was worse than bad. The woman had survived a genocide. The fact that she could feel anything close to this level of avoidant fear was something else, entirely.

"I don't want to tell you this," she finally whispered, "but you deserve to know, and we can handle it."

He wasn't sure if she was talking to him or to herself, so he sat quietly and let her fight her own battle without comment.

And then suddenly her eyes locked on his and she spoke with a glimmer of fear and a whole lot of strength.

"He's our father, Han."

He blinked once, twice, and then his brain completely evacuated the ship as he tried to comprehend what exactly she had just said.

"Who is?"

"Vader."

Vader? But they knew who their father had been. General Skywalker, hero of the Clone Wars.

They hadn't been able to figure out how exactly he had died.

Vader?

No.

"That can't be right," he said. "Who—?"

"He did," she interrupted before he could finish. "He told us on Bespin."

"He lied."

Easy. The Dark Lord of the fucking Sith. Of course he lied. He could summon Jedi from across the galaxy and stalk ships through hyperspace and crush windpipes with his bare fists. Of course it was a lie.

Leia's hand on his chin, pulling his broken eyes to hers, full of dread and tears. "It's not a lie, Han," she said. "He's our father."

But—

The monster who had tortured them both, who had destroyed her planet and haunted her for years.

No.

Luke and Leia, the dynamic duo of the Alliance, who had been the force for his own redemption back on Yavin. If there was a conscience inside a person, they would find it and exploit it for all it was worth. Sure as the winter was cold on Corellia and fire-explosions occurred on Mustafar, the twins were the purest form of good he could possibly imagine.

The children of Darth Fucking Vader. How the hell did that add up?

Simple answer. It didn't.

"I know you want to deny it," she whispered. "I did, too."

"Because it makes no fucking sense, Leia."

She nodded slowly but didn't move away from his touch, and he belatedly thought about how sincere she looked, how patient. How she seemed to need his skin on hers when she said these things. Touch-starved, he thought, but this was more about comfort than anything else, and why did she need to be comforted?

No.

"It's a trick," he said, like an offering to the gods he didn't believe in. "He's manipulating you…"

He trailed off. She didn't say anything else, and that was worse, that was so much worse, because now it was like she was waiting for him to do something, and he didn't know what to do.

He tried again. "He would say anything to get to you, Leia. You know that."

Nodding, she sniffed and licked her lips. "I do. But he was telling the truth. We know it."

"How?"

"You know how."

The Force. Fuck.

Silence. Terrible, empty silence, and he suddenly wondered if maybe Leia had been crying about something else when she had visited him in the oceanside room.

Dread seeped into his stomach, through his organs and up to his throat, and it was suddenly very hot in this cool bunkroom of theirs.

She looked so small there in his arms, watching him digest something he just didn't want to accept. And he felt bad, he felt like he should be offering something other than his silence, but it was now a possibility that …

She was Vader's daughter?

Her incredible power. The ferocity with which she countered him at every turn. How she had been raised with Bail Organa organizing everything, from fencing lessons to astronavigation to hand-to-hand combat to languages no self-respecting princess should ever be taught.

Hadn't he already realized something was wrong? Hadn't he already considered that Bail had been lying about a whole lot of shit when it came to his daughter?

He was protecting her, Han realized. He wasn't forging a weapon for the Alliance. He was trying to give her every chance at survival that he could.

He had known what his daughter would face. He had willingly risked everything to keep her safe, had died protecting her secret, and Han couldn't begin to imagine what that had been like.

It was true.

Oh shit. Oh shit, oh fuck, oh shit—

"Leia," he whispered, watching her carefully.

Tears falling down her cheeks, she nodded and he understood what it meant to be completely, utterly surprised into silence.

So much he should say. So much he should do, to try to help. And not a single goddamn thing came to mind.

She was the daughter of Darth Vader.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I could never decide the best way to tell you."

And he realized that this woman—this incredible woman—had spent the last six months trying to figure out how to walk him through this revelation carefully. And then he realized that she had never once pulled away from him in the telling, had never tried to protect herself from his potentially hurtful words if he had taken the news badly, had never brought the walls up against her own vulnerability.

She had trusted him so very much in the past few minutes.

"I wish I had been there," he said, because that was all he could think to say.

He wished he could have been there to help shoulder the burden of this news together. He wished he could have responded when she had raged and cried in the blue-white room. He wished he could have wrapped her in his arms and let her be as broken as she had needed to be in order to come out the other side stronger. She had done all that herself, and he was humbled at the enormity of the task she had undertaken.

Furrowed brow, confused expression, tears brightening her eyes like faraway stars. She shook her head. "You weren't there because he took you from me. That's not your fault."

"And you got me back."

"Han—"

"Leia," he interrupted. "You're looking at me like you think this matters to me at all, and it just … doesn't."

Not in that way, at least. It only mattered because it was clearly still hurting her, six months in.

"How is that possible? How?"

Narrowing her eyes, she seemed almost angry, and it ignited his humor. This was insane, all of it, and she looked like she was about to fight him on the grace of his reaction alone.

"Why don't you tell me what should be bothering me about it, since you seem to be full of ideas?"

Her mouth dropped open, disbelief evident in the slack-jawed, wide-eyed expression she gave him now, and it did nothing to stop the laugh he tried so hard to keep to himself.

"Let's start with the fact that he tortured you."

Nodding, he said, "You, too."

"He cut off Luke's hand."

The hell? He had missed that one. His eyes had been bad before, but he was pretty sure all limbs had been accounted for. The kid must have a prosthesis on him now, and Han resolved to take a look at that engineering schematic when he had a moment alone with the kid. Artificial limb technology was fascinating.

"Sucks for Luke, but I'm not sure how that is supposed to matter to me."

But she was on a roll, hot and animated, and he provoked her by running his fingers through her hair. He would take her anger over her hurt anyday.

"What about the fact that we have the same potential for evil as he does?" she continued. "Why doesn't that scare you?"

"Do you know why he fell?" Han asked.

Startled, Leia stopped, her lips pressed together in thought. After a moment she shook her head.

"And do you think Luke is gonna fall?"

"Absolutely not."

Immediate confidence, and he let the moment linger, sensing they were coming to the crux of the matter.

"Then why do you think I should be afraid of you, specifically?"

Silence followed his last word like a pitten followed his owner. She had no answer for that, and he knew it. There was no logical reason why she was more destined for darkness than Luke was. She had had this power her entire life, and she had never used it against anyone else. And even now, when she had all the reason in the galaxy to want to destroy, she had chosen to put her rage aside to rescue him.

Yoda had called her a liar, and Han supposed now he understood that the master had been warning her against a possible future and not her past. But instead of a warning, Leia had taken it for a prophecy, and it was only hamstringing her now.

His hand slid up her spine and settled on the back of her head, pressing her into his arms so fully that he surrounded her exactly the way he hadn't been able to on Bespin. He could only imagine what the past six months had been like for her, a unique hell where the bane of her existence turned out to be her father.

"Tell me again," he whispered into her hair. "Where did the room by the ocean come from?"

Muffled by his chest and possibly obscured a few tears, her voice was quiet. "The Force."

"You saw our future and you kept me safe there."

A broken sob and the shaking of her shoulders in his arms, and his throat burned for the emotion that rose in him, too.

"I'll take my chances," he said, and it was honest, and true, and important.

Author's Note: this chapter is dedicated to Luv15. Rest in peace, dear friend.