The Rescue
Leia opened her eyes to see Jabba's main audience chamber as a snapshot in time: unmoving, visceral with the restrained, coiled energy of a viper about to strike.
Jabba, reaching for a button on his throne. Luke, coweled and robed, his left hand similarly extended: an unintended mirror. The audience of onlookers—vultures, thieves, slavers, all—leaning in to watch the bloodsport about to begin.
There's a trap door on the floor of the main chamber, Lando had said, breath short and voice hushed as he checked in with them just last night. He drops enemies to the rancor below using the controls on his hoversled.
How bad is the rancor? she had asked.
There had been a chorus of answers, but Salla's was loudest. Bad, she said as she picked at her cuticles with a very sharp-looking vbroknife. You could probably take it, but you would be wasting time.
They'll blast Han before you kill the damned thing and climb back up, Lando agreed.
That had settled it. Priority one was Han's safety, and therefore, they would avoid the rancor at all reasonable cost.
(Part of Leia was curious to see the rancor, though. Not because she had a deathwish, but because almost everyone who talked about it did so with hushed reverence. What sort of nonlingual creature commanded that much respect?)
(I'm losing my mind, she thought.)
Stepping closer to the block of carbonite behind her, she raised her palms as she prepared for the assault to come. The robe's unbearably long sleeves slid down to her elbows, and she thought about expressing her hatred to her brother yet again, but refrained out of common courtesy. Instead she sent a general note of greeting to let him know she had heeded his summons.
Welcome back, Luke said in return.
I take it we are doing this the dirty way?
Luke pushed with an extraordinarily powerful burst of Force energy toward the Hutt's tiny hand. A sharp crack sounded through the air—the bones in Jabba's hand splintering against the might of Luke's Force-push—and in the split second before chaos erupted, he sent her a feeling equivalent to an eyeroll.
What do you think? he said, annoyed. You made me negotiate.
She hid her smile as beings around them raised their weapons to target the two young Jedi. Time slowed down, seconds dragging into minutes, and she had less than a heartbeat until things got truly interesting.
Stalling for time, she amended his statement. You weren't negotiating.
Stalling so you could go chat with your boyfriend, he fired back.
He was in a mood. Maybe Leia's sudden lack of dismal despair was wearing on him.
We will release him on the Falcon, she warned him.
And Luke—brave, kind Luke—said: Plan B, it is.
And then chaos erupted.
Blasters fired, twenty or so of them, and Leia bared down, allowing her hands to be moved by the Force itself, relying completely on her love for the man behind her and her faith in her brother's power. Within a split second, his green blade shot out from his stupid wide-sleeved robe and illuminated the melee. In a jump that bespoke ferocity and power, he launched himself forward and attacked the first blasterfire to come from Jabba's guards.
Nice, she complimented him before turning to her own assault.
The first shots to come her way were easy to deflect, poorly-aimed and low-powered. They snapped harmlessly from the blur of her hands and bit the ground meters from her feet or sizzled in the endless pools of stagnant water that littered the palace floor. Her nose scrunched with distaste and she vowed to toss the boots she was currently wearing out the nearest airlock along with the robe.
Han, she thought, worried and giddy and focused, a whirl of thoughts and emotions bubbling to the surface. Protect Han. Get him out of here. Bring him back.
"Jedi!" a voice snarled, just before Luke cut the man down.
The comm on her belt suddenly blared an alarm regarding an incoming distress message, and she heard the somehow-soothing voice of Salla Zend erupt from her hip. The gate is down. Reinforcements in ninety.
Leia didn't respond—there was no need—but she relayed the information to her brother as another trio of blaster bolts singed the wall to her left.
He keeps trying to press the rancor button, Luke huffed, unworried about Salla's message. It's annoying.
She didn't have a moment to react as a Devonarian charged her with a stream of blaster bolts. Easily deflecting them, she sent the man flying with a slashing motion of her right hand and a Force push that felt like child's play. She watched his flailing body soar into the closest throng of Jabba's hangers-on, but then spied a familiar figure conspicuously running along the far wall toward her position.
Lando.
Luke was a blur of green and black, whirling as if on fire, and Leia barely had time to appreciate his speed before two more blaster bolts hit her left palm. She hadn't been focused and the pain spread up her forearm so quickly it shocked her. Burning, she exhaled and called on the Force to block it out.
Funny. This was very like Nar Shaddaa.
At the time, it had felt like doom incarnate. Vader. At least ten stormtroopers. An enclosing circle. Han, injured behind her, idiotically trying to sacrifice himself to save her life.
The similarities were startling, and yet she felt no sense of panic. No flood of fear. No last-ditch need to expend any and all resources on survival, because here she had very little doubt about said survival. The galaxy had been upended since then, and she had come through with more strength than she could have possibly dreamed of in those fateful moments before she had performed what at the time had felt like a miracle and then later had felt like a curse.
A curse? Ha.
The Force flowed in her like a raging river, and it brought her a deep sense of balance, a foil for the constant anger that burned in her like an inferno. Her fury quenched, the river had nowhere to go but up and through her outstretched palms. All she had to do was direct it mindfully, with intention, and she and Luke would deliver Han safely back to the Falcon.
Han was older in the blue-white room. He would survive to old age if she kept herself in check. She had no doubt.
With a small smile, she opened herself fully to embrace the sheer, breathtaking power of her birthright.
It wasn't easy. But the burning was minor, alleviated the second she let the energy spring back toward its original blaster. She couldn't simply absorb the energy—that was a feat so far beyond her that she couldn't imagine anyone able to accomplish it besides maybe Vader himself—but enabling it to ricochet back to the shooter was nothing but a swipe of her hand and a steady focus on the Force.
How unbelievably powerful she felt. How capable. How resilient.
I'm going to get him out of here, she thought. Whatever happens to Han, it won't happen here.
More blaster fire. Her right hand crossed her body, deflecting it to sizzle harmlessly at the dirt at her feet.
"Go Group Two! Go, go, go!" she heard and suddenly the firefight was complete, confounding chaos. The din of the firefight—and Luke's exertions on the throne with Jabba's closest minions—suddenly leapt into nearly unbearable volume, and the six Mercs who had been able to gain entrance to Jabba's palace the night before sprang to the fray,
Now it was blaster smoke that filled her lungs instead of the cloying masked mildew of before, and Leia wasn't sure which was worse.
You need a second wave of attack, Salla had offered a week ago. Or you'll have some of them escaping and causing the Falcon problems while the go-getters try to gun you two down.
There will be no problems, Chewie had growled. We have many guns.
Salla had looked less than convinced by the Wookiee's comment. Fine, she said. You need a second wave of attack to clear the way for Lando and me to get the carbonite out, if it comes to that. It's gonna be one hell of a kill box. She had turned impatient eyes to Han's first mate. Is that better?
Yes, Chewie answered, and the thought of the Wookiee's confidence almost made Leia smile now. Salla hadn't been wrong: the second wave of attack was much appreciated. Organized chaos was par for the course with this group and by now she was so used to the Merc's barely-legal tactics.
Chaos is good, Han had told her once, early on in their relationship. They lay together in sated companionship, sequestered in her quarters on Home One and away from prying eyes. As long as you know what you're doing, chaos keeps the other guy busy while you're getting the real mission done.
Today's real mission? Quite important.
I'm going to see him again.
Someone hissed near her, and suddenly there was Lando.
"Stopped to get caf, did you?" she shouted to be heard over the noise of the Mercs.
This man, who had been in some ways responsible for the nightmare of Bespin, had her full trust after months of effort. His debonair attitude was at times amusing, and he often expressed the dark futility of their clandestine meetings in a way that she could appreciate. Gallows humor. Fashionably nihilistic.
Because it was insane, wasn't it? All of this?
They had left Home One without express permission, though Giad knew the basics of the mission, and they would return with the man the Alliance unironically loved to hate. Half of the Mercs were with them today, and waiting on the Falcon was one of the Alliance's best medics to help with the unfreezing process.
Was one man worth all this effort?
To them, yes. Who among them didn't owe Han Solo his or her life?
Lando threw her a wounded look, eyes full of betrayal. "Do I look like I've had a decent cup of caf in the past six months?"
She took him in, his dusty armor, the tusks of his protective helmet, the staff he jabbed into the hover controls of the carbonite slab, and pursed her lips.
"To be fair, you don't look like you've had a decent fresher in all that time, either," she remarked.
Lando's lip curled in self-assured amusement. "Your Highness," he said as he stomped on the fuel line leading to the framework of the block of carbonite. It gave way with a satisfying crunch. "Between me and this pirate, here, I would dare say I'm the clear choice."
A whine sounded from behind her, and she turned long enough to catch sight of the barrel of a quad gun trained on Lando's flank. She inhaled and pushed down hard on the gun with the Force. It fell to the ground with a clank and a sputter of energy that shocked its owner.
"It's Plan B," she said, turning back toward Lando.
Chewie and Salla would arrive within a minute, she guessed. The question had always been whether they would release Han here or move him to the safety of the Falcon in his carbonite prison. Plan A had involved her receiving any indication while inside the blue-white room that Han would be physically able to handle a firefight immediately post-release. Chewie could carry him if necessary, but an unconscious or sick rescuee would divide everyone's focus.
Since he hadn't awoken in the room, she had moved them to Plan B: evacuate him frozen to the Falcon and unfreeze him where Aaya could be present to help.
"You mean the harder one?" Lando answered her, but immediately darted to closely examine the hover controls to the side of the block's mounting. "Fantastic."
"How long?"
"Forty-five seconds," he yelled to be heard over the din of blasterfire.
She gritted her teeth as another three blaster bolts hit her palm. "You said twenty seconds a week ago."
Shaking his head, he fiddled with the hover controls on the carbonite mounting. "It would be easier to unfreeze him here rather than reconfiguring the hover controls—"
"No," she interrupted. "We unfreeze him on the Falcon."
"Then it's going to take me a little while, Your Highness. The controls are corrupted."
She swiped a hand over her forehead, feeling sweat and stray hairs, and decided that she was done playing nicely. Fuck this, she thought with a full dose of Han Solo-esque irreverence. With a flourish of her hand she swept the robe over her head, revealing her much more comfortable short-sleeved black fatigues and illuminated her lightsaber into the dark space around her.
Glorious.
It burst to life with a beautiful blue that sizzled and hummed with power and utility, and she felt like she had just stepped back in time, to the balcony in the Summer Palace where she had trained so hard with her epee in twilight obsession. The hilt sang in her palm, like her blood ran through it, too, and her confidence grew and grew and grew.
I'm going to see him again, she thought. Today. Soon.
Allowing the Force to take control, she swung the blade in a heavy arch to catch the errant bolt above her head, and then used momentum to slash the air in front of her to counter the twin bolt aimed for her chest. The large movements felt like catharsis, felt like home, and she did not have to fight for the calm she needed to fight at her best.
It was right there, in her fingers.
Don't get cocky, Han would have said, though he never followed his own advice.
Smoke filled the chamber, and it became difficult to see anything. Somewhere to her left, a Merc clicked a percussion ray across the room to target Bib Fortuna, Jabba's second-in-command. Glancing to the Merc, she caught Frali's eye, who grinned with an almost wild glee before turnint to fire another ray at a second batch of combatants.
You waited too long to ignite your lightsaber, Luke admonished from somewhere to her left.
How had he wound up there?
Some of us have been fighting, Leia.
She found his annoyed humor rather funny. Some of us don't need to use our lightsabers right away, she said back. Some of us appreciate a little foreplay.
Gross, he said.
She ducked without thinking, a bolt slicing through the space where her head had been milliseconds before, and then rolled over her shoulder to press still closer to the block of carbonite.
Stop playing and get to it, her brother reprimanded. Fett is to your left.
Boba Fett.
They had known he would be in the palace. Slave 1 was currently docked at the spaceport in an outrageously expensive open-air bay, and Lando had spotted the bounty hunter multiple times while he went about earning trust among Jabba's guards.
Can you do it? Luke had asked her three days ago. Can you kill him without resorting to vengeance?
It was a good question. Was she angry at Fett for his role in Han's imprisonment? Yes, of course. Had he been instrumental in hounding Han's life in those last weeks at Hoth? Yes.
Had he shot her through the abdomen with a pellet gun on Ord Mantell and caused her intense and lingering pain?
Gritting her teeth, she accepted that Luke had a point about vengeance.
I'll have to tell you in the moment, she had answered him. And while she hated the fact that she couldn't say whether or not she would be able to follow the correct path when presented with that particular fork in the road, Luke and Leia were existing in a gray, nebulous kind of galactic question mark at the moment. The children of pure evil, selfishly devoting most of their energy to rescuing their friend, they regularly left the Alliance when it suited them and pledged allegiance while doing it.
It wasn't like they totally existed in the light.
And so here she was, turning to see the armored visage of Boba Fett cocking his arm back to toss a thermal detonator toward the center of the chamber. All her thoughts swirled, like a strong wind feeding the wild flames, and she had milliseconds to decide how she would handle the situation.
Han, she thought.
She pictured the last time she had seen his eyes. She saw his throat work, his Adam's apple bobbing, as if he swallowed down sentiments neither of them could bear to admit.
It was worth it, she had said.
So much to say, and no words to express it all. She had never in her life felt so utterly devoid of vocabulary.
It always was, he had answered her, and that was what helped her decide that in this moment, now, in Jabba's palace, she could kill Boba Fett without losing herself in the process.
Not for vengeance, but because the situation called for it. If he hadn't been here to gloat over his grand bounty, if he had left Tatooine for parts unknown days ago, she would not have followed him. But he was here, and he posed a danger to herself, her brother, and everyone who had sacrificied so much to rescue Han.
Catching the thermal detonator in a Force-grip, she launched it towards the far wall and then heard a loud bang as it detonated, crushing two bipedal Groncks under a meter of durasteel beams.
Returning her gaze to Fett, she watched him assess her position and come to a decision. He stepped closer to her sphere of protection, and Leia realized she had to choose between engaging him first and taking the aggressor role or remaining in place and continuing to cover Lando.
"You said forty-five seconds!" she yelled behind her.
Warm air hit her back, and she heard yet another sound, some kind of humming as the carbonite descended to hover centimeters off the ground. She turned in time to catch a stray bolt that was aimed for Lando's head. It glanced back and struck a Falleen in the corner.
"It was an estimate," he grumbled, but he was moving the carbonite into a parallel position.
Yet another boom sounded, louder and clearly emanating from the front entrance, and Leia shouted to Lando, "Looks like your escort has arrived. "
Calvary's here, Luke agreed.
Keeping an eye on the slowly approaching bounty hunter, she strained her Force senses wide and caught the always-furious blush of Salla Zend mowing down all resistance with an illegal pulse blaster. Blohm-blohm-blohm-blohm, the gun fired, again and again, and while she could feel the victims' deaths in the Force, it was simply a blip on her radar, barely worth noticing.
And then Salla was safely ensconced in Leia's bubble. "Hi," she said, too-brightly for their surroundings. "This looks just like you two."
Leia kept Fett busy by tossing a trio of ricocheted blaster bolts into his armor, though it did nothing to stop his slow approach.
"It's nice of you to join us," Leia joked, but kept her eye on the bounty hunter.
"This is two Hutt crime dens we're been in together, Princess," Salla said.
Leia didn't take her eyes from Fett, but managed to say, "Blame your commander," before swinging her saber to cut through the shoulder joint of a Gamorrean guard. He cried in shock before a stray blaster bolt put him out of his misery.
Taking a second to breathe while simultaneously keeping an eye on Fett, she took stock. Now was the hard part. Keeping a perimeter of safety around first the block of carbonite and then Lando had been relatively easy. She had prepared as well as she could for this endeavor, and trained for it with a fervor that bordered on obsession. Days and weeks and months of preparation, to keep these people alive.
Carefully considering the circumstances, she looked between Fett and the carbonite slab hovering just to her right. She couldn't follow them and provide cover as she had originally intended: not with Fett right there. He could easily throw another detonator just to watch the carbonite turn to dust, and she would not let that happen.
So.
How's it going? she asked Luke.
With a flash, she saw through Luke's eyes as he advanced on Jabba's hoversled. Her brother had picked off the Hutt's protection—or they had deserted, she wasn't sure which—and he seemed to be steeling himself to kill.
Do you need me to do it? She asked him, knowing his answer, knowing that that was not a feasible option.
No, he said. I got it. There isn't another way out of here.
He was right. If they left and either Fett or Jabba remained alive, Han would not be safe. And Luke had a virtuous right to Jabba, too, as a citizen who had lived beneath his reign of cruelty and degradation as a child, who had seen firsthand the horrors of slavery. It wasn't that Luke was weak in his ability to kill, but he wanted to exhaust all options before resorting to death.
She admired that about him, but didn't share it. Somehow, pacifist Bail Organa had raised a killer.
I'm sending Salla and Lando out, she warned him.
Luke was quick with a response. You're good to take Fett?
Stepping back to parry a quartet of blasts aimed for her abdomen, she pushed with a hand to knock over a Twi'lek coming at Salla with a vibroknife. The Twi-lek fell to the floor and then stared back as if in a daze, just before Leia redirected a stun bolt into her head.
It's time, Luke.
He sent her an agreement, and then refocused on Jabba, leaving her to deal with Fett.
The bounty hunter's armor was dusty, a casualty of the desert terrain, but the visor's strip of black around his eyes was spotless, with a clear view of his intended target. For a moment she considered Vader's tactic of using the Force to crush windpipes. A much more elegant solution to this problem, she thought, but one that was rife with implications.
Just the thought of doing anything the same way Vader did threatened her gag reflex.
Taking a deep breath of the ever-present smoke, Leia set herself into her best defensive position. Wide feet, soft knees, lightsaber in her right hand in a crossbody grip, left hand to the side to help ward off aggressive attacks and any stray bolts.
Fett fired his handcannon, and she caught the electro-pulse with her lightsaber. It rattled in her grip and flickered. Gritting her teeth, she tried to wave the next pulse away from her with her hands, but only managed a slight shift in vector, catching some of the pulse in her left arm. A whisper of pain threaded through her woven focus, and she exhaled a low oath under her breath.
"You okay there, Leia?" Lando asked from behind her.
"Fine," she bit out. "Go. Chewie will be getting impatient."
Salla was the one that answered her and Lando pulled a blaster out of his belt and offered some cover for Leia as she recovered from the blast. "Copy that," she said. 'Get your ass moving, Calrissian."
Leia caught the mechanized whirring of a repulsorlift as it kicked to life, and her heart fluttered in anticipation as she refocused on her enemy. Knowing that Han was on the move now, she advanced on Fett, her left arm hanging limply at her side.
He didn't backstep, and she had to admit that was a sign of real bravery. She imagined she looked quite the sight, lightsaber ready to slice through anything he could offer.
There was no hope for him now. He should have left when he had the chance.
He tried the pulse on her again, but she easily swung in a downward arc, catching the weapon clean through the middle. It hissed as it fell in two halves from Fett's hands.
Quick as lightning, he drew his blaster and fired, but she was close enough now that she hardly had to move to parry the bolts. This time the lightsaber held strong, no flickering in its deadly utility. He fired again, and again, and again, and she advanced smoothly. The sounds of blasterfire around her had quieted significantly, the smell of charred flesh and smoke from detonations making it difficult to breathe, but her focus was narrowed to a pinprick.
Not in vengeance, she chanted to herself. Not for fear or in anger.
It was dark, but she could see the Mandolorian reassess his position. His visor looked between her lightsaber and her face, and Leia suddenly realized that he might not have recognized her in the chaos of the moment.
She must look so different to him now.
"This would have been helpful on Ord Mantell," she said, indicating the lightsaber.
There was no reaction from the visor, of course, but she thought she felt a wave of shock from him. Anger beckoned, the seductive siren call, but she fought against it, ever-present control engaged and keeping her safe.
"Princess," he said with a nod.
She lunged, aiming for a kill strike at the throat, but he sidestepped, narrowly avoiding her blade, Another stab at the chestplate, but he moved again, quick enough to only leave a charred line where she had grazed him. But the force of his pivot had left his side exposed to her, and she darted the hilt of her lightsaber into the vulnerable space between armor plates at his ribs. He wheezed and tried to roll away, but she was quicker, flipping the lightsaber over and finding the vulnerable spot again, this time with the lit, hissing blade.
He fell. She pulled the lightsaber back, circling it behind her to reset her grip, and waited for him to recover.
He didn't.
Standing over him, she expected to feel something. Pride, maybe, or perhaps residual anger. Something, This man had haunted her as much as Vader had; the catalyst for not only her current heartbreak but also the weeks before it. Shouldn't she feel some glimmer of emotion for vanquishing an enemy that had caused her so much pain?
But she felt curiously dim and clear, battle-haze nonexistent. Her lungs worked and none of the insistent self-doubt crowded into her chest at all.
Balance.
Peace. She felt at peace.
Satisfied, she tried to shake her left hand, see if any lasting damage had been done, and felt a throb of pain as her fingers flexed. An improvement, she thought.
The audience chamber was the scene of a massacre, bodies strewn everywhere and a giant hole in the far wall where she had tossed the thermal detonator. Several Mercs were gathering weapons from the dead, and she caught Kral squatting beside a shivering Twi'lek, speaking in low, comforting tones.
The pilot felt Leia's eyes on her, and turned. "There are slaves beneath us, in the dungeons. Oola here can get me down there."
"Good. Comm the Mercs at the spaceport and order them to evacuate the others. We can decide later how exactly we will get the enslaved back to their homeworlds."
Kral replied with a nod and no argument, and Leia turned one last look around the chamber, stopping at the figure of her brother. Lightsaber deactivated and hanging off his belt, he stood in silhouette against the enormous bulk of the dead Jabba the Hutt. She swallowed around a suddenly dry throat and approached him, squeezing her left fist over and over again, trying to bring feeling back to it.
You okay? she asked.
Without turning to look at her, he nodded. We didn't act in anger.
No, we didn't, she agreed.
Han?
"Lando and Salla got him out of here. I can feel them on the Falcon."
With one last look at Jabba, he reached down and grabbed his discarded cloak from the ground. "Well then," he said, shaking it off. "Where's yours?"
I'm leaving it here where it belongs, she thought at him, and he snorted as they walked side by side out of the audience chamber and into the waiting boarding ramp of the Millennium Falcon.
He crouched, as if he were locked in a small storage container. It was dark, and it smelled of metal and chemical processing, a dull burning lining every sensation he could feel. Cold. So, so cold.
Alone.
There were no soundly-crashing waves at regular intervals, no comforting tang of salt in the air.
Worse yet, he knew precisely where he was and what had happened. The beautiful oblivion of days or weeks or hours was suddenly gone, and he was fully aware of his confinement. His lungs kept trying to breathe, but there was no air. He was thankful that he had closed his eyes at the precise moment of freezing, because at least he had the occasional self-delusion that he wasn't slowly suffocating to death in a metal prison. If he tried, he could pretend this was some kind of sleep-paralysis from which he would eventually be rescued.
Rescue.
Leia, he thought.
She had just been here, moments or hours ago. And if she was nearby, she would be fighting like hell to free him. There was nothing in the galaxy that would stop her from getting him out of here if she was that close.
Leia.
"Han?"
Like she spoke on the other side of a wall, her voice was low and skewed, and he wondered if that was the real world. Shocked, he focused on trying to be clear with his thoughts, like he could shout to her without making a sound.
No, right? She couldn't hear his thoughts?
Leia, he thought-screamed. Hurry. Hurry.
Suddenly, it felt like his body was trying to release all manner of fight or flight chemicals all at once, and that was impossible because he was frozen but he swore he could hear his heart hammering in his chest. The confinement paralysis had been bad before but now it was like he was getting input from every sense he had. He couldn't ignore the fact that he couldn't move, and his lungs weren't breathing, and he had something stuck in his throat, and fuck, he wasn't breathing.
"Get him out now," he heard.
Another female voice, nearer than Leia. "I haven't finished the diagnostics yet, Princess—"
Leia interrupted her. "He's awake in there. He's listening to us."
Silence, then a rush of movement as the magnitude of it all settled into whomever it was on the other side of that wall. The second female voice uttered a low oath as Leia leaned directly over him and said, "Five seconds, Han. That's it."
Five seconds, he thought, but it felt like even that would take too long. He hadn't breathed in so long, surely he was about to die. The pain from his lungs was not a dull roar anymore and had fanned into a full inferno, flame upon flame with hurricane-force winds, and it didn't take long to burn someone to death with a temperature this hot, did it?
Now.
Now?
Now, she confirmed, a soft whisper against his ear. Wake up, Han.