Slow-Paced
Han passed his eye exam with flying colors and that meant they were only waiting for the Mercs to return from repatriating Jabba's former enslaved people to their homeworlds. The itch to move, to return to duty, nagged at him but it was tempered by the equally strong need to take it slow.
Because it was kind of nice, this reprieve.
This was no vacation, not with a full crew cabin and tight quarters, but it was slower-paced than he had lived since Yavin. Without the hustle of an active warzone—or the stress of the end of their journey to Bespin—the hours now lagged on and on, and he tried to fill them with as much catching-up as he could possibly do.
And that meant a lot of observation of the twins.
Watching Luke and Leia train had always been fascinating to him, but on Hoth, he had only really seen the combat drills Leia had been teaching her brother. By the look of Luke's torso, though, it was clear that the kid had been physically pushed much farther the past six months than he had been at Echo Base.
There wasn't room for that kind of training on the Falcon, so Han settled in to watch Luke and Leia train in the more invisible aspects of this newfound power.
"It's going to be quite boring," she warned him in advance.
Shrugging, he leaned back into the chair at the nav controls and put his boots up. "Not like I have much to do around here, anyway. Chewie's got the Falcon humming like a bing-tree."
Chewie and Lando, he corrected himself, echoing his first mate's comment from earlier. Not a single system on the Falcon was reading at the yellow level: not a goddammned one. This was a state of functionality he couldn't remember ever existing.
Apparently, the two men had been using the intermittent time they had alone to procure parts and install them without really ever communicating. To hear Chewie tell it, a new part would show up on the dejarik table without him ever telling anyone about it. It had taken some time to figure out who had been asking the Mercs for leads, and when Salla had figured out it was Lando, Chewie had had a conniption fit about it.
Nonetheless, his baby purred, and Han had Lando to thank for it, in part.
He needed to resolve any resentment he held for Lando quick, before they hopped back to base, because everyone told him it was a moot point now. Even Chewie, who harbored some lingering resentment himself, admitted that Lando's actions the past three weeks or so had rightfully earned a reprieve.
"I give him ten minutes before he's distracting us or moving on to bother someone else," Leia teased.
"Ten?" Luke echoed. "You have more faith in him than I do. I say six."
"Hilarious," Han said, and covertly set his mental clock to surpass the ten minute mark, just to spite them both. "Quit stalling."
The twins grinned—Leia with a wink in Han's direction—and found their stances in the small hold, Luke with eyes open and Leia's closed. Having no idea what this exercise was supposed to do, Han watched with interest as Luke seemed to grow taller, setting his feet far apart and dropping his chin. And he didn't move, didn't even twitch a finger, before Leia's left shoulder snapped back like she had been hit with a stun blast.
She exhaled in an annoyed rush, Luke laughed quietly, but no one said anything else.
Leia's hands came up, palms forward, and she bent into her back toes, setting her weight defensively, eyes still closed. Another silent second and then she stamped her front foot and her lips turned up in a smile. Luke tilted his head, exhaled, and then took a deeper breath as Leia pivoted. Countering, eyes trained on his sister, Luke used his organic hand to push down toward the deck.
Leia's front knee buckled, but she caught herself: eyes closed, grim twist to her lips.
What the fuck, Han thought.
"She's fine," Luke murmured, before suddenly ducking, the n in his last word ending in a soft whoa as Leia quickly crossed her forearms and then ripped them open again. Nothing moved in the air but suddenly a clang erupted from the far side of the hold where a hatch rattled.
Han stood to go secure the hatch on instinct, but Leia's voice stopped him in his tracks. "I'm going easy on him, Han. The hatch is fine."
Belatedly, Han realized that the two things—Leia's motions with her arms and the sound like stormtrooper armor hitting the hatch—were connected.
He sat, dumbstruck.
Luke caught his eyes, blue eyes twinkling and a rueful smile on his lips. Watch this, he seemed to say to Han, but Han wasn't sure how or why he knew it. A kitchen utensil, one of Han's sharpest food-cutting tools, rose in the air, hanging for a split second, as Han sat, mute and horrified. Then, without a single movement from either young Jedi, the tool zipped toward Leia's chest. Han's muscles jerked instinctively, protecting himself from a danger that was no danger to him at all.
But to Leia …
Her arms didn't move; she was completely still aside from the slight tension that curled her fingers toward her palms.
And the tool suddenly stopped in midair halfway between the twins, hovering like an airspeeder, poised to strike but without a single wobble.
Han wasn't stupid. He was picking up on the rules for this little training session of theirs. But the accuracy of it, the way Luke didn't have to move at all but Leia seemed to need just a fraction of kinetic energy to parry his attacks, was spellbinding to watch.
The cutting tool suddenly dropped to the floor and Luke took a retreating step back as his sister made a twisting motion with her nondominant hand. Luke's eyes locked into the space just to the upper right of his peripheral vision, and seemed to find difficulty in maintaining a hold on …
Something?
There was nothing there.
Han had some experience with Jedi shit like this. Vader had ripped his blaster straight out of his hand on Cloud City, and Leia had demonstrated a similar kind of power when she had shown him her lightsaber yesterday.
But this wasn't an object they were tossing between them.
"Energy," Luke answered him.
Han blew out his breath. "Cut that out."
"I can't hear your thoughts," Luke continued, though he was answering Han's unasked question, anyway. "I'm just responding to your reactions."
"I don't care. Stop it."
Luke's eyes finally came to rest on Han's, free of whatever it was Leia had been doing, and with a grin, he said, "Okay."
And then, with a suddenness that shocked everyone but Luke himself, Leia flew backward and hit the hatch behind her with enough force to make Han wince.
"He's stronger with the invisible things," Leia explained later, as Han pressed a bacta patch to her shoulder where she was beginning to bruise. "I'm better with the lightsaber."
"He didn't move a muscle," Han said, awe creeping into his voice.
"I know. Annoying, isn't it?"
Han peered at her face over her shoulder, predicting he would see a note of jealousy or anger in her expression but seeing none. He shifted to see her better as she rolled her injured shoulder back a few times and grimaced as she closed her eyes.
"Why can he do that and you can't?"
She smirked. "Why is it you can fly through an asteroid field and I can't? It's just how it is."
"You and I aren't twins."
"Thank the Force for that," she answered, kissing him lightly. "We seem to have equal power. It's just that my strengths get a little too … messy … when in a confined space and against someone I don't want to seriously injure."
"Messy."
"Um. Gory. Bloody."
"Huh."
After a quiet moment, she leaned forward, put her hands on the bunk between them, and whispered, "Does that make you nervous?"
He matched her pose, kissed her hard on the lips, and then grinned when he said, "Nervous? No."
Quieter, smoother, the next time they had time together was illustrative of how varied their sexual experiences could be. From last night to this one, the spectrum was broad, glowing: a universe of pleasure in so many hues that Leia could barely express the masterpiece they created.
Astride his narrow hips, she rocked leisurely, unhurried, watching the constellation of expressions that graced Han's face. They had left the lights on—my eyes work fine now and I wanna see, he had said, brokering no argument from her—and the sinful grin plastered all over his mouth was indicative of his playful mood.
Is it that you like me losing? she had wondered out loud ten minutes ago.
And he, crooked grin swollen from the repeated attacks of her lips, had flashed bright white teeth. Think it's the power, he had answered. Nothing better than a woman who can kill you on the spot.
She didn't doubt it—she supposed it wasn't that far from how her body responded when he drew his blaster so fast that it was an actual blur—but the praise ignited a nice, slow burn that traveled from the place they were joined up to the part of her chest that thumped.
He groaned, and she shifted to look at him again. "Okay?"
"Slow," he bit out, and he raised his chin to the ceiling. "Having trouble going slow."
Leia caught on to his meaning. "So it would be tough for you if I just … kept going … at this pace?"
Her hips undulated against his at a miraculously slow tempo, and she made it worse for him by bringing her hands up her torso to her breasts without stopping her easy thrusts. The visual seemed to take minutes off his stamina, and she laughed quietly at his faux-pained expression.
"Fuck," he swore, and then grabbed her hips tight.
Her smile softened, keenly aware of his habits, and she dropped her hands to slide up his chest and draping over him like the sheet thrown somewhere to the side in their haste. Her hips maintained said slow pace, but the power dynamic shifted as she leaned forward to kiss him lightly.
"Not everything has to be the end of the world," she whispered against his lips.
He opened his eyes, ran strained, unkept promises over her face, and nodded. "Things are okay."
Pushing on her right hip, he urged her to change positions, and she obediently fell onto her left side for him. He rearranged their legs for more comfort, and she could really see him now, as he enfolded her torso with his arms and pressed small kisses around her hairline.
"Better," he whispered into her hair, and she was so far from her heartbroken tears now that it felt like a different lifetime. A different woman entirely.
An eternity later, she fell asleep, and Han realized that even orgasm was not enough of a lull for him to join her this time. Perhaps the hours of sleep since his rescue had finally caught up to him. Perhaps his body was starting to reject the instant call of sleep when he had something on his mind.
Whatever the case, he didn't have to go far to find his prey, sitting in the cockpit with a mug of caf and a bright smile on his face when Han found him.
Dropping into the pilot's seat, he eyed the young Jedi, thinking of shields, and not the kind that deflected laser cannon bolts.
"Are you going to make this weird?" he asked: a legitimate question in this new galaxy of mind-reading twin Jedi.
"Make what weird?"
Han narrowed his eyes, trying to determine if Luke was playing him, and decided the kid was being honest. "Never mind. What're you doing up here?"
"Thinking about Bail Organa."
Sitting back, Han ran his tongue over his teeth and stared uncertainly at Luke. "What about him?"
"Has Leia told you about our mother?"
Han nodded, remembering the pertinent facts. "A queen of Naboo," he dutifully answered. "Explains how Leia wound up where she wound up."
Luke took that in quietly, then shifted his gaze away from the stars and to Han. "Why didn't he take both of us?"
That was a really good question, Han had to admit. He had always assumed that Bail had had a good reason for splitting up the twins, something to do with protecting them from Vader. But Luke shared his father's last name. Was Skywalker a common name on Tatooine? Han had never met anyone else by that surname, but that didn't always mean something important.
If Vader had ever thought to search some database with his former last name, would his son have popped up?
Even with Ben Kenobi lurking around, ostensibly to protect Luke from Vader, the kid's childhood had been isolating and desperate and, it seemed to Han, haphazardly planned.
"I mean, Bail presented Leia to the Imperial court as a kid," Han finally answered. "It's not like that was any safer an option."
Luke nodded. "Leia said Mon had known Padmé was pregnant, but not that she had been pregnant with twins. It's possible no one had known, so they split us up to make sure that if they found one of us, they wouldn't think to look for a second."
Meaning if they searched Skywalker in the database, they could find and kill Luke, and ignore the little princess from Alderaan who looked just like the former Queen of Naboo.
And vice versa.
"Well, that's …" Han trailed off, then continued. "I was gonna say fucked up, but that would undersell it."
"And maybe I didn't mean anything to Obi-Wan, but I think Bail really did love Leia, based on what she's told me."
Han's fists squeezed without his permission, indicative of the deep-seated anger he still felt whenever he considered Bail Organa's actions, but he didn't reply to Luke's musings, sensing the kid was coming to some vital point.
"So which one of us was the sacrificial lamb?" Luke asked. "Which one of us was the Empire supposed to find to keep the other safe?"
"As long as they had one of you, it wouldn't matter who got taken out as a kid," Han finished the thought for him.
The cockpit grew silent, and Han considered the fact that it was damn near a miracle that both Luke and Leia had survived to adulthood with the deck stacked so horribly against them. In their own separate ways, all three of them—Han included—had suffered at the whims of a heartless galaxy that only really benefitted the most powerful beings out there.
Leia had been raised in privilege by a man who had adopted his dead friend's daughter, and instead of hiding her and letting her live a normal life, he had made her into a weapon on every single front there was: politics, combat, fucking swordsmanship. Han could only think that this man was such a political zealot for the cause that he had groomed a child for a destiny he didn't even really understand.
Luke had been raised without privilege but with the invisible burden of a last name that meant he had been in danger every second from birth until Leia had been steered in his direction. And worse, Ben Kenobi had been hovering, manipulating, protecting him from close by.
What the hell had Luke's often-praised aunt and uncle known? Could anyone answer that question?
And Han … Han hadn't had a childhood to speak of at all. At least Luke and Leia had had some kind of support system, even if it had been propped up with mono-tape and plastex glue. He hadn't even had that much support. Sold to a child-slaver so young he couldn't remember much before that except a woman's name and the feeling of being cold, there was nothing there to recall fondly.
All pawns in a reality in which people didn't matter, where power-brokers play for keeps and everyone else suffers alone.
He had always promised himself that if the Alliance somehow did win, he would try to do some good for the little guys who couldn't fend for themselves. Knowing now that one reality existed somewhere out there where he grew old enough to have gray hair, he doubled-down on that promise.
"At least Bail tried to prepare her," Luke spoke into the solemn quiet. "I'm learning all the relevant skills now."
Han thought about Luke's sad hours with the training stick at Hoth before they had met Yoda, and huffed a sardonic laugh. "Remedial hero school."
"Shut up."
"You could only have gotten better," he added, twisting his thumb into the wound. "No way to get worse than the worst."
Rolling his eyes, Luke made a rude sign with his hand. "I was the only one to come to the party with basic emotional intelligence, so I would be really careful if I were you."
"I'm intelligent."
"You spent eighteen months pining after a woman who didn't want you, Han. That is not intelligent."
"She wanted me," he protested.
"Not then," Luke said. "I'm pretty sure you just wore her down."
Despite the insult, Han laughed again. This humor, while always a part of Luke's personality, was coming out stronger now that he had some confidence in himself. It was … nice, this familiar banter.
Han paused.
It hadn't occurred to him yet that if he and Leia wound up together in the blue white room, older and wiser, there was a good chance Luke was a part of the whole thing, too. Not a part of the room, necessarily, but that if Han and Leia built a life together, Luke would become something like a brother to him, too.
Family.
A flutter of fear ran through Han's chest at the word, but he didn't let it show and instead worked through why the emotion came out like that. Why did it trigger fear and not, he didn't know, excitement or warmth?
Stupid, he scolded himself. You don't have the foggiest idea of how to have a family.
Of course that freaked him out. But hadn't he just been thinking about how unprepared all of them had been for what was happening to them now?
He hadn't known how to love Leia, either, and had made some pretty epic mistakes along the way as Luke had just pointed out. But he had the hang of it now. He could recognize when he needed to curb his own protective instincts and let her do her thing. He was able to adjust course when he had the urge to lock her away and never let her out, because he knew that competence was a fundamental part of what he loved about her in the first place.
And if they could navigate those treacherous starcharts, why couldn't they figure out how to build a family unit, too?
"Hmm," Luke said, looking back out at the stars in front of them. "You figured something out."
"Stop reading my mind."
Luke held up his hands and forewent the usual response about how he was reading auras, not minds. "Do you need to share?"
He considered, then figured what the hell.
"The only brother I've ever had is Chewie," he answered.
Luke looked over sharply, having not anticipated where Han had been heading when he had prompted him to share. It put a pretty big dent in Han's theory that Luke had been lying about the extent of his covert mental espionage campaign.
"Oh," he said.
"You and me, we're gonna be brothers," he finished, choosing violent emotional honesty with a glare that seemed perfectly in place for the moment.
Luke kept his face neutral, and Han suspected his honesty had been surprising. But here was the thing: if Luke had been in Leia's head for the past six months while Han had been frozen in carbonite, then he knew how serious they were about each other. And if Luke could read auras like they claimed he could—and it had been proven pretty spectacularly for Han since his rescue—then there was no reason to keep his cards hidden. What could be gained from trying to pretend that this new possibility of a family among them all wasn't at the very least a little interesting?
"It caught me off guard, too, a few minutes ago," Han explained to the silent Luke. "But you're right. I figured out that I could do that, too. Have two brothers. Have a family."
Luke looked down with a soft smile, and Han knew then that the kid was processing the new reality just as much as Han himself was.
"I suppose you're right," Luke finally said. "That's big."
Shrugging, Han brought his foot to the seat beneath him and rested his elbow on his upraised knee. "Not such a bad thought, is it?"
Luke laughed. "I only discovered I had a twin sister after being orphaned twice," he said. "Why wouldn't I gain a brother shortly after figuring out my father was Darth Vader?"
Han joined him in laughter, and the two men sat back in their chairs, thinking about how strange the galaxy's timing really was.
Leia awoke to a feeling of sharp dichotomies. On one hand, she was wrapped in Han's arms, his exhales troubling the hair above her neck, his knees crooked behind hers. She felt protected and beloved and safe, and it was glorious, the way he was so viscerally there when she awoke. The months of his absence made these moments spectacular.
But there was also a deep disturbance, a resonant flat-lining groan that undercut the beauty of it all like vibroknife.
She jerked awake, and thrust her legs out of the bunk before she could even register she was about to do it. Han, disturbed by her sudden movement, sat up and blinked to clear his eyes.
"What do you need?" he asked.
"Luke," she said, standing quickly before stooping down to gather her strewn clothing around the cabin.
Han climbed after her, finding his own sleep pants and hauling them on without another word, and Leia was grateful for his complete, unwavering support. He had to know this was Force-related, and instead of questioning her, he trusted her implicitely.
They were out of the cabin in a flash and Leia led them straight to the main hold where Luke had been sleeping since they had left Home One, giving Aaya the medbunk. He wasn't awake yet, but his forehead was creased and his lips were turned down in a frown.
Kneeling on the cold deck, Leia shoved his shoulder. "Luke. Wake up."
Blue eyes opened, but the frown lines didn't disappear. With a sigh, Luke blinked any residual sleepiness away and found both Han and Leia quickly.
"What was it?" Leia asked for Han's benefit, though she already had an impression of what had been bothering Luke. She had seen it, too, a fuzzy: wavering vision of Yoda lying ill on his bed.
"I think he's dying," Luke answered, seeming a bit shocked by the news himself. "We need to get to Dagobah as soon as possible."
Author's Note: We have basically caught up to the end of my prepared chapters as of now, and I need to beg for your forgiveness as I'm going on a short hiatus for this story. I am going to take a month to write a few more chapters so that I can comfortably start posting weekly again, and then be back to posting on Fridays starting March 1st!
In the meantime, I'm in desperate need of some motivation and inspiration. Since saying goodbye to my pup, I've been in a bit of a writing slump and I welcome Han/Leia fanfiction recommendations. What are you reading? What are you writing? Help me find my spark again, and I will be so grateful to you!
I will see you March 1st!