They were only nightmares, she was told, but Leia had experienced nightmares before and that was simply not the case. Nightmares had the benefit of ending upon waking. Even if it took time for her heart rate to slow, for her breathing to even out, for her mind to fully grasp that the experience was over, nightmares possessed the comforting attribute of being fictional at their core. No matter how scary the monsters seemed, they were not real when she woke up.

They weren't nightmares.

They were reenactments.

Some would start as normal scenes in the palace or the Senate: having dinner with her parents, speaking to a roomful of senators, getting ready for an event with her old attendant droid, TooVee. And then her surroundings would twist and melt into her cell, and she'd be inundated with syringes filled with mystery substances designed to coax information from her exhausted mind, Darth Vader's mechanical wheezing and harsh voice, a trooper's hands pinning her arms above her head, his accomplice's fingers digging into her thigh.

Some would start on the bridge of the Death Star, Leia watching herself from a middle distance as she gave up Dantooine, truly expecting that they would travel to the Outer Rim, leaving Alderaan unscathed and giving her more time to come up with an escape plan. And then Tarkin would call for the station to fire and Leia would be forced to watch as her beautiful home crumbled into rubble and flame before her eyes again and again and again.

They all ended with Leia screaming herself awake, body trembling and skin clammy, while Shara tried to comfort her without touching her. She'd only made the mistake of trying to shake Leia awake twice, a kind action that Leia, in her terrorized state, had repaid by catching the woman's wrist and twisting so hard, they'd both been surprised Shara had escaped merely with bruises.

"You're strong for such a tiny thing," Shara said after the first time Leia woke in the middle of nearly breaking her arm. Leia sat with her face buried in her knees, mortified and guilty for hurting someone who was always so kind to her.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"It's not your fault," Shara soothed. "Have you always had nightmares?"

Leia shook her head, face still hidden. "Just since our first night here."

"Do you want to talk about them?"

Another head shake. She'd already discussed them with the therapist who had performed her psych eval. The nightmares had been deemed fairly normal considering the circumstances. She didn't know what good would come from rehashing their contents with anyone else.

She'd passed the psych eval. Sort of. She was cleared for administrative-type work, diplomatic work, propaganda production. She was cleared to run in basic drills with the rank and participate in strategy meetings. She was not cleared to fly a ship or carry a blaster, at least not until she'd had six weeks of therapy and a reassessment.

She did what she could and tried her best not to feel slighted by being relegated almost exclusively to administrative work. She delayed her decision about joining Command, concerned that if she accepted the position before her reassessment, she'd be forced into desk work indefinitely. She ran drills every morning just like the others but stepped away when they moved on to target practice. She attempted to remain inconspicuous, simply breaking away from the group without a word and heading in a different direction. No one seemed bothered by her absence, so she didn't have to address the reason with anyone.

They recorded the first holomessage featuring Leia once the big transport touched down, bringing with it the remaining outpost staff and equipment. She'd only been on Indoumodo a day and the entire production felt rushed, but they needed a something distributed quickly. It was important, they said, to get ahead of any Imperial messaging. The Emperor had already publicly declared Leia both a traitor and dead; broadcasting the Yavin medal ceremony had briefly debunked the news of her death, but there were apparently already rumors flying around about a possible lookalike, questions of what else the Alliance was hiding if they were covering up the princess' demise, damning claims that no one who'd just lost their planet would look as put-together as she had.

There would be no claims of her being too put-together now. Watching the two-week-old recording of herself numbly answering hastily scripted questions asked by someone offscreen, her first Death Star nightmare fresh in her mind, Leia had one thought.

"I look haunted," she said to Luke one evening as they sat around a campfire with a few others. He had pulled her aside to ask how she was sleeping, but Leia had quickly moved on to other topics, including showing him the recording. He'd already seen it. Everyone in the galaxy had seen it.

"You look tired is all," Luke said. "And you were."

"Do I look tired now?" she asked. She truthfully didn't feel much better than she had while making the holo, but she hoped she looked it somehow.

Luke examined her face for a moment before shrugging. "You look like Leia."

"You don't know what Leia looks like," she said, a little sharper than she meant to. "Not really."

Luke frowned. "I don't know what that's supposed to mean. You look about the same as when I met you."

Leia squinted at Luke in the firelight, wondering if the man — who was nearly exactly her age they'd discovered, but seemed so much younger in some ways — was really that naive. "You met me on the worst day of my life after I'd been tortured and kept awake for five days straight. I hope I don't look like I did then."

Luke looked at her again, this time staring with wide eyes. "They tortured you?" he asked in a low voice.

Leia's stomach dropped. She'd assumed Luke knew that much. Because everyone knew. Because spending five days in Imperial custody had certain implications for anyone who knew anything about the Empire.

But Luke didn't know much about the Empire, not really. He knew they'd killed his family, knew they were corrupt and evil enough to destroy her home planet, but he wouldn't know their standard operating procedures when it came to prisoners unless someone told him.

Leia nodded slowly.

Luke sounded genuinely upset. He ran his hand through his hair a few times as he spoke. "I knew they'd interrogated you, but…torture? Why would they—"

She looked him over. "Luke, what do you think interrogation by the Empire entails?" she asked, her voice low, steady. She was trying to be patient, she really was, but she needed him to think about it so she wouldn't have to talk about it.

Luke shook his head. "I don't know. Asking questions, I guess."

"And what do you think happened when I refused to answer?"

The quiet "Oh" that escaped Luke's lips after a moment led Leia to believe that some part of him had known. Some part of him at least knew that prisoners — that amorphous group of beings without any particular identity — were tortured when they wouldn't give up information, and that part of him now had to grapple with the fact that prisoners included Leia.

She wondered if the messaging in the holo had been explicit enough. She'd said she'd been interrogated for five days after being illegally apprehended; she hadn't detailed anything that had actually happened. If Luke — Luke who'd physically been on the Death Star, who'd watched Vader kill Ben Kenobi with his own eyes — if he didn't understand the implication, there were likely others who would underestimate just what the Empire put its prisoners through.

Maybe she'd need to explain. The idea made her stomach twist in a way it hadn't since Yavin. If she had to be more explicit, if she had to answer questions about methods, she couldn't be the haunted girl from the first holo. She would need the mask from the medal ceremony, the haughty you-tried-to-destroy-me-how-embarrassing-for-you expression she'd worn while being recorded that night. She couldn't talk about those five days without a degree or two of separation, and the mask offered just enough distance for her to feel in control of herself.

How would that play to potential recruits? Beings thought her cold enough to be an imposter during the ceremony; they felt sorry for the haunted girl in the holo speaking in code about what had been done to her at the hands of the Empire. Would they feel similarly sorry if she spoke plainly of torture and terror with the calm, cool demeanor of someone who wasn't bothered by it?

Technically, Mon didn't say they felt sorry for me. She'd said something like "We've won the sympathies of two of the Elder Houses", but Leia could read between the lines. People who had watched her grow from a scrawny infant war orphan into a lively, principled, beloved senator saw their idea of who she was crumble before their eyes and were convinced to join an impossible fight as a result of the difference between Leia, Then and Leia, Now. There were few other explanations that made sense to her.

"Is that what you dream about?"

Leia bit her lip, bristling at Luke's prodding. He only cared. She knew he cared, that he was worried, and that was why he asked, but the irritation that he couldn't see that he was poking at a bruise without her spelling it out coiled in her chest, raging to be let loose. She took a deep breath. He doesn't know. He doesn't understand. You haven't told him much. He just cares.

Remembering all of that calmed the irritation, but just barely.

"I dream about a lot of things," she said vaguely.

"The nightmares, I mean." Leia narrowed her eyes at him reflexively. Luke, seemingly undeterred, leaned closer to her and murmured, "A lot of us have them, Leia. It's not just you. It's okay."

He wasn't lying; she knew that — not just because she doubted Luke would lie about such a thing — but also because in the past week, she'd spent two nights laying awake on her cot, terrified to sleep for fear she'd be thrown straight back into cell 2187, and she'd heard the cries throughout camp in the early morning hours. No one screamed quite like she did, but there were soft whimpers and terrified gasps, names of dead friends and fellow soldiers said aloud. Someone had called for their mother a few nights before, a shuddery, quiet Momma that had made Leia's heart ache.

Leia shrugged, unwilling to say more for fear that merely acknowledging the nightmares would give them power over her sleep in the coming hours.

"You wanna talk about it?"

She shook her head.

Luke nodded and patted her arm. "Okay. That's okay."

Leia stared into the campfire, her mind spiraling for far too long. It took several minutes — hours? days? — for her to find her voice again. She swallowed. "You have them?"

"I've had a few since I left home, yeah."

"What are yours about?" Leia shook her head, her own question making her queasy. "Sorry, you don't need to talk about it. I shouldn't have asked."

Luke touched her elbow lightly and Leia looked at him. "It's okay. I had one about my aunt and uncle. Finding them…" He trailed off, mercifully leaving out any details. "One about Biggs, one about Ben."

Leia nodded.

"Did you know him?" Luke asked.

"Biggs?" She shook her head. "Only by name."

"No, Ben. You said he knew your father, but had you met him?"

Leia bit her lip and nodded. "I wasn't sure if he'd recognize me. I met him…nearly ten years ago, I suppose." She smiled slightly. "We had to travel together through something that should've been very frightening, but he helped make it not so bad."

"Can't imagine you frightened."

Leia stared at her hands. She'd been wringing them without realizing it. She took a breath and rested them on her lap. She wasn't sure how to correct the vision Luke seemed to have of her as fearless. He'd heard her screams at night. He'd seen her recoil during the times when her body interpreted someone stepping near her as a threat before her mind had a chance to process what was going on. He hadn't been present during her physical, so he hadn't seen her reaction to the tray full of syringes firsthand, but she was certain he'd heard about it — gossip traveled fast around base, and the Rogues were by far the worst about spreading it. He seemed to be willfully ignoring evidence to the contrary in order to believe her dauntless.

I'm frightened all the time, she wanted to say. Every moment of every day, I'm frightened. But she couldn't bring herself to say it, not to someone whose view of her would be entirely devastated with the revelation. She was supposed to be more accustomed to at least the idea of rebel life than Luke; verbalizing that she was frightened might shake his trust in her, might shake trust in the Alliance in general.

Any good Alderaanian knew that weapons and violence were not to be solely relied on for security. But any reasonable Galactic citizen knew the inevitability of the need of a means to defend themself. Leia was hardly an exception to this, and operating on a militia base in the middle of a jungle that purportedly had wild animals the size of dogs roaming about without any way to defend herself aside from her own hands began to rub her nerves raw after a few weeks.

To her knowledge, no one knew the reason she didn't carry a blaster aside from the generals on base and the Alliance therapist who'd issued the restriction in the first place. Leia hadn't told anyone — her hope was that, after her six weeks of observation, she'd be issued a weapon and wouldn't ever have to talk about it. No one seemed to take particular interest in the fact that she ran drills first thing in the morning with some of the rank but disappeared as soon as they headed to the target field, or if they did, they hadn't brought it up to her. This left her free to act as if it were perfectly normal behavior to bail on military drills the second a weapon was visible; she didn't have to address the why behind her behavior with anyone.

Well, she didn't have to address the why with anyone other than nosy smugglers who were still hanging around despite their own protestations, picking up supply run jobs, and vacillating between getting on Leia's last nerve and being helpful in their own way. She knew it was unfair, the getting on her last nerve. Han teased and poked but didn't seem vicious unless heavily provoked. But ever since divulging details of her capture to him the night of the evacuation, she'd been waiting for him to leave. Knowing what he knew served as a constant reminder of occurrences that she longed to forget. She'd only opened up to him because she'd been promised that he would soon disappear and take her secrets with him.

But he hadn't. He stayed and stayed, and four weeks in, Leia was halfway convinced he was a lifer whether he knew it or not.

She watched target practice from afar one morning, ducked behind some termite mounds that sat at the dividing line between jungle and the clearing where targets were set up. She desperately wanted to correct Col's stance. What he was doing was fine standing stock-still, but—

"If he has to move a millimeter while shooting, he's a goner."

Leia glanced behind her, where Han had been standing for a few seconds. He hadn't startled her this time; she just hadn't acknowledged his presence immediately. She nodded in response.

"Why aren't you out there showing them what's what?"

She shrugged. "Why aren't you?" she countered, hoping to divert from the subject of her restrictions. "You're a sharpshooter if half of your stories are to be believed."

"I ain't a part of this operation."

Leia raised an eyebrow. "Mmhmm."

That seemed to rankle Han. "I'm not. I'm outta here soon as I have enough to pay off some debts. Don't answer to your rebellion."

"We paid you an obscene number of credits for your initial job. I'm surprised that doesn't cover what you owe."

Han smirked ruefully. "Yeah, well, I got an obscene price on my head."

Leia turned her attention back to the troops on the range. "What'd you do? To have such a large bounty on your head?"

The captain was quiet a moment and Leia assumed he'd walk off without saying anything more or at least refuse to answer. He apparently decided to surprise her instead. "Got boarded by Imps during my last spice run and I dropped my cargo. Buyer wasn't pleased."

She nodded slightly, though she didn't say anything more about it. She watched Luke fire a few bolts at a target — his aim on the ground wasn't as precise as his aim while flying, but he still wasn't a bad shot. "I haven't been issued a weapon," Leia said finally, her voice quiet. "Or been given clearance to fly." She looked at him again. "Apparently the concern I might break is now medically official. Though if they think not having a blaster on a militia base is in any way helping the jumpiness…" She shook her head. "I'm being observed before they decide what to do with me. Four weeks down, two to go."

The admission brought with it some degree of relief, though Leia didn't understand her own choice of confidant. He'll be gone in a few weeks and then it won't matter what you told him, she reminded herself. Things will be better then.

She watched the targets as Col shot again. Tycho had given him some instruction and he seemed less rigid, able to move more fluidly. She felt rough fingers brush against her elbow and looked up at Han.

He stared out at the clearing when he spoke. "They say anything about blades?"

"Who?"

"Whoever said you couldn't have a blaster."

She snorted. "No, but considering the restriction is because they think I'm unstable, I'm sure blades are included."

He shrugged. "Maybe not. Can't do as much damage with a blade as quickly as you can with a blaster."

"I imagine I could kill myself rather efficiently with either."

There was a long pause. When Han spoke, his voice was quiet, serious. "That what you have planned, Princess?"

Leia ignored the use of her old title entirely. It was a battle she'd slowly stopped fighting with those on base. Han had picked up on her dwindling regard for what people called her and seemed to find joy in adding nicknames as he'd called them to his repertoire. Her titles bothered her less in his mouth, in part because he really did use them as nicknames rather than vehicles for misplaced reverence. Princess coming from him carried as much weight as sweetheart or Your Worshipfulness; they were all nonsense, filler words that she was fairly certain he used so he wouldn't grow too fond of any one person's actual name. It reeked of emotional distancing to Leia — Luke was Kid, Carlist Rieekan was The General as if he were the only general on base despite Jan Dodonna's presence, Wedge was some Corellian word that Leia hadn't learned the translation for, and Leia was whichever of the half-dozen nicknames the smuggler decided he preferred that day.

Despite the attempts at emotional distancing via nickname, he did seem genuinely concerned by her flippant mention of suicide. Leia felt the need to quickly quell whatever worries were in his mind. She shook her head. "No. No. I—It's honestly not even crossed my mind unless someone else has brought it up. It's strange. I feel like it should've. Not that I want to feel like that, but just given everything…" She squinted at him and shrugged. "I really haven't thought about it. I just know it's what's on their minds."

He nodded. "Good. Good." Then, "'m just sayin', if you feel unsafe without a way to protect yourself, I could teach you to use a blade—"

She raised her eyebrows at him. "What makes you think I don't know how to use a blade?"

He finally looked down at her, his expression skeptical. "In a fight?"

She shrugged. She'd been trained in hand-to-hand combat both without and with handheld weapons well before she'd been allowed to even hold a blaster.

"You Alderaanians are some of the strangest pacifists I've ever encountered."

Leia scoffed. "I was kidnapped when I was ten from the woods behind our palace. I started learning self-defense after that." She met his gaze. "Even if we weren't at war, there are still threats, even for pacifists."

"Self-defense with knives?"

She rolled her eyes. "They didn't hand me a knife at age ten and tell me to have at it, but by fourteen, sure."

"Obviously," Han said in a tone that indicated it was anything but obvious. He paused, seeming to give her some consideration before adding, "I got extra vibroblades. You could hang on to one 'til I leave if you want."

Leia knew accepting his offer wasn't within the spirit of her restrictions even if vibroblades hadn't been specifically forbidden. She also didn't much care. She was used to having a concealed blade, was used to being able to defend herself if necessary. Having to live and work and sleep with no weapon within reach on a militia base that had the potential to fall under enemy fire at any time was nerve-wracking at best. She didn't even feel safe taking quick walks to clear her head — a standard coping mechanism for her in the past — because of the rumors of dog-like creatures that wandered the jungle. There was no indication one way or the other of their friendliness or willingness to attack, and Leia didn't want to risk an encounter with a strange animal unarmed.

She met Han's gaze and nodded once, trusting he caught her response.

"All right," he drawled softly. "You got it. Stop by the Falcon later. We'll get you set up."

"What'll I owe you?" Leia had to ask, though she felt she could predict the answer. A small part of her took pleasure in reminding him at every turn just how terrible he was at the being all about the money business.

Han scoffed. "To borrow a blade I ain't using for a coupla weeks? Don't worry about it."

A couple of weeks. Was that a countdown to her evaluation or to his planned exit? Leia hoped it was the latter, if for no other reason than so she could move past everything that had happened surrounding Yavin.

She needed a fresh start. That's what she'd told the outpost therapist, though the words had felt like a betrayal of everything and everyone she'd ever loved as they'd exited her mouth. She didn't want to forget her life before — she couldn't have even if she had wanted to — but she needed a stark delineation so she wouldn't spend every spare moment wasting away in flashbacks and fantasies. Since arriving at the outpost, she'd demonstrated a disturbing tendency to get lost in thought, to zone out at the most inopportune times at the tiniest hint of a memory. The only thing keeping her in the present was her fresh start: the work that differed entirely from senatorial work or palace work; the friends she'd made, like Luke and Shara, who knew little of her past and thus couldn't reasonably expect her to act like Leia, Then; the environment outdoors, which was so drastically different than those of Alderaan or Coruscant, falling into the past was near impossible as long as she was outside. That was one of the reasons she left her cot at night if she couldn't sleep: inside the tent, she could be nearly anywhere; sitting in the muggy jungle-swamp air by the night watch's campfire under strange constellations, she knew she was on Indoumodo.

Han Solo did not fit into her fresh start. He knew enough to have expectations of her — whether those expectations were that she was particularly strong or on the verge of breaking at any moment didn't matter. The mere thought that he might have an idea of who she should be now kept her fresh start from fully taking hold, and Leia begrudged him a bit for it.

Still, she'd take his extra blade if he really wasn't using it. She found time shortly before the evening meal to slip away to the freighter the captain and Wookiee called home, glancing around surreptitiously to ensure she wasn't being watched before walking up the lowered ramp to board the ship. She paused at the top of the ramp and knocked lightly on the ship's hull before calling out to alert whoever was on board to her presence.

Chewbacca emerged from the direction of the cockpit and grinned at her, offering a friendly greeting that made Leia feel genuinely welcome. She found herself smiling at the Wookiee and asking how he was doing before mentioning that she was there to see Han. She didn't mention the vibroblade, though she was sure Chewbacca would find out one way or another. From what she'd observed so far, there didn't seem to be many secrets between captain and copilot.

Chewbacca retrieved Han from somewhere beyond the main hold. "Thank you, Chewbacca," Leia said. He said something in response that she didn't quite catch aside from the word friend, and she found herself looking to Han for interpretation.

"He wants you to call 'im 'Chewie'. Says you're enough of a friend that he'd prefer it."

Leia bit her lip, her ribcage feeling a little too small for her heart and lungs. She smiled. "Of course. Thank you, Chewie."

The Wookiee grinned again and patted her hair in response. Han indicated she should follow him and led her to his cabin.

It felt strange, standing in the small cabin alongside Han, and Leia realized they hadn't actually crossed paths in the room the entire trip from Yavin. She glanced around as he pulled out a dilapidated trunk, noting that her vandalism still graced the bulkhead next to his bunk. They'd landed before she'd had a chance to cross out the final numbers, leaving the princess two days away from breaking indefinitely. Feels about right. She wasn't weak; she wouldn't break. But she felt perpetually on the precipice of such a state regardless.

Han set five vibroblades of varying sizes and materials on top of the trunk he'd pulled them from and took a step back to allow Leia the space to examine them. She picked them up, one by one, feeling their weight and balance. She looked over the only piece with a retractable blade with curiosity.

"This is illegal on fifteen Core Worlds," she murmured. Fourteen, she corrected silently, her heart twisting in her chest.

"So're you," Han countered good-naturedly. Leia shot him a wry smile. "'f you like it, you can borrow it."

She shook her head and set the knife back down. She didn't want anything with a hinge or a spring — nothing with a mechanism that could fail. She returned to the second weapon she'd considered, a fixed blade with what looked to be a veda pearl handle and a leather sheath that was clearly made to be hidden in a boot. It was sturdy, small enough to fit well in her hand, and unabashedly feminine. "Where did you get this?" Leia murmured, more to herself than actually asking a question of Han.

"Honestly don't remember," he answered, startling her out of her close inspection of the blade. "People leave things on the ship sometimes, and they go in the trunk."

"It just doesn't look like your style."

"That's why it's not on me."

Leia swapped the blade between hands a couple of times before giving him a nod of approval and sliding the weapon, sheath and all, into her left boot. "This'll do."

"Suits you."

She tilted her head. "Thanks?"

Han chuckled. "Just an observation."

Leia nodded again, feeling oddly conflicted by the observation. She liked the idea of being seen as someone who could take care of herself, but the idea of a weapon appearing natural in her hands was somewhat off-putting. She was Alderaanian; she didn't pick up the means to harm others lightly. Prior to grabbing the stolen stormtrooper blaster on the Death Star, she'd never aimed a weapon not set to stun at anything other than a target. She'd trained with blades, but she'd never actually had to hurt anyone with one.

She recalled earlier conversations with her parents about the inevitability of violence in any rebellion, the infighting amongst Alliance leaders that she'd been made aware of a few years prior about whether preemptive attacks were justifiable. Leia had always landed on the side of wanting to limit harm, but she knew that she'd need to be ready if harm came looking for her.

She didn't want a knife to suit her she decided, but she was confident wielding one. There was no getting around that.

"Have you seen the dogs?" Leia asked abruptly, wondering if having a blade would allow her to take walks. "In the jungle? Wes and Hobbie said they saw one a few times."

Han looked at her skeptically. "You sure they aren't messin' with you?"

"I don't think they would…" Leia trailed off, thinking. She didn't really know Wes Janson, and it seemed as if he was consistently embroiling himself in pranks and drama. She just didn't think anyone in the rank would mess with her specifically. You want to be treated like all the others. Maybe they're actually doing that.

"They would," Han assured her. "Janson especially. Doesn't know when to quit."

"Wes seemed kind of scared."

"That doesn't mean anything. They're pullin' your leg, sweetheart. Haven't seen anything out there like that an' Chewie would be able to smell a dog a klick away."

Leia nodded, still uneasy at the idea of unidentified creatures lurking about. But, Han was right about Chewbacca — he had senses superior to those of humans. He'd surely have caught some indication of wild dogs at this point. Still, just thinking about the creatures unsettled her, and she kept a careful eye on her surroundings as she headed back to camp for dinner just in case.

Breakfast came early for many of the rank, but Leia was already up. She'd tossed and turned for much of the night, wired and unable to sleep. When she'd finally drifted off, it took a mere two hours for mechanical wheezing and syringes to wake her again. She at least hadn't screamed.

She'd woken itchy and in pain, a handful of angry blisters having appeared on her legs during the couple of hours she'd been unconscious. It had only taken a few days with the vibroblade in her boot for Leia to feel bold enough to go on walks in the jungle where, she assumed, she'd walked through either a nest of invisible, biting insects, or some sort of plant that she was allergic to. She checked her sleeping bag and the tent she shared with Shara to be sure she hadn't been attacked while she slept, but found nothing aside from a couple of dead leaves. Shara shook her head when she asked if she had any blisters at breakfast, so the jungle seemed the most likely culprit.

Leia sat on a log near a dying campfire, eating her breakfast and inhaling caf while chatting with Luke, Wedge, Shara, Han, and Chewie. Wedge was halfway through a story about a mission he'd run with Bail when Han interrupted him all of a sudden, speaking slowly. "Leia, do not move."

His tone was deadly serious. Leia froze, mug of caf lifted halfway to her lips. Han fired his blaster at the ground near her feet.

Leia gaped at him, jerking her feet off the ground and splashing hot caf on her pants in the process. "What are you doing?"

Chewie and Han ignored her outburst completely, both dropping to the dirt and examining the spot Han had shot. Leia didn't understand the words Chewie said at all, and Han's answer was nearly as unintelligible.

"Yeah, kriffin' kouhun."

Leia looked at the ground near her feet and saw a large, pale insect with dozens of legs, or what was left of it, writhing in the dirt in two halves. Han's blaster bolt had cleaved it straight down the middle.

Han looked up at Leia, eyes wide in a way that worried her. "Did you get stung?"

She rolled up her pant legs, revealing the blisters that had appeared overnight. "These are from my walk last night, I think." She peered at the red, angry skin. "I don't think it got me just now. I didn't feel anything."

Han looked at Chewie. "I don't—Do you know if they're painful?"

Chewie gave a frantic answer that Leia couldn't translate word-for-word, but she understood the sentiment: he was worried.

"How fast does it—"

[…doctor now…]

Han looked Leia in the eye and pulled her mug out of her hands. "C'mon, you should go to the med tent just to be safe."

More confused than anything, Leia reached to take her mug back absently, but Han held onto it. "What—I need someone to tell me what's going on," she insisted.

"Those things will kill you if they sting you. Are you sure none of those bites are new?"

Leia shrugged helplessly, looking with wild eyes at Luke, Shara, and Wedge. They all seemed equally unsure of what to do. Head swimming and heart pounding, she followed Han toward the medical tent, Luke and Chewie trailing behind her.

"Only seen 'em in person once. Never seen 'em in the wild. They're a favorite of the galaxy's most inefficient assassins."

"Assassins?"

Han nodded. "No signature of any kind, can't be traced. Just inject you with neurotoxin and—" He broke off, apparently thinking better of finishing his sentence.

Luke hurried to catch up with Leia and slid his arm around her shoulders. "I'm sure you're fine," he said, giving her a squeeze. "You probably would've felt something."

Leia wanted to agree with him, but Han and Chewie's reactions had overridden every bit of logical reasoning she possessed. She'd never seen the smuggler scared before. She'd never seen Chewbacca frantic. Leia wondered how long she had before they knew. What'll happen? Will I have a seizure or something? Or just keel over?

There were no sentients on duty yet, only a lone medical droid who informed Leia and her worried entourage that the sting of a kouhun would likely kill her within ten minutes, but could take up to an hour. There was no readily available remedy and little information on what the stings looked and felt like. The only suggestion the droid had was to wait in the medical tent for the aforementioned hour to see what happened. They might, it added in a tone a little too cheery given the content of the message, be able to restart her heart if the venom did indeed kill her.

"Kriffin' useless," Han muttered as the droid left the group of four sitting in a row of chairs.

"He only has the information he has," Leia said, though she made a mental note to let someone know that his bedside manner could use some calibrating. If I even live long enough to pass the message along. Leia rubbed her temples. She'd developed a headache, and no one could tell her whether or not it was a symptom of dying of kouhun venom.

"This planet is cursed."

Leia narrowed her eyes at Han, feeling more exhausted than seemed reasonable. Maybe the venom will make me so tired, I'll fall asleep before my heart stops. "We find one assassin bug and the entire planet is cursed?"

Han shook his head jerkily. "I saw a snake yesterday."

"We're living in a jungle, Han. Snakes are inevitable."

"I don't do snakes."

"They're more scared of you than you are of them," Luke said.

Han looked at the younger man, pointing a finger in his direction. "That's what they want you to think. They're shifty."

"Didn't realize the great Han Solo had any fears," Leia said in a teasing tone.

"'s'not a fear, sweetheart. 't's a realistic understanding of the way the galaxy works. No one should be messin' with snakes."

Leia closed her eyes and groaned. "I cannot believe I might be dying of assassin bug neurotoxin as we speak and this is the conversation we're having."

Luke patted her shoulder. "You're not dying."

"You don't know that." Leia heard the tremor in her own voice and cringed. She knew she wasn't dying. Probably. As long as none of the dozen blistering spots on her legs were actually a kouhun sting.

Still…Just in case…She looked at Luke. "Will you make sure Evaan gets my mother's necklace? The one I wore at the medal ceremony. She's Alderaanian and she knew her. She'll appreciate it. And if—"

"I don't want to talk like this," Luke interrupted. He looked from Leia to Han back to Leia again, obviously bewildered.

"Neither do I, but if there's a chance…" She trailed off, not really wanting to finish the thought. She looked at Han. "You can have my vibroblade."

"The one I loaned you?"

She laughed despite herself and nodded. "See? You're getting it back."

The group was quiet for more than a few minutes. Leia covered her face with shaking hands, mildly embarrassed by how dramatic the entire situation had become. Han tapped her knee until she dropped her hands to her lap and looked at him. "Look, you can't die."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence, Han, but I think I'm roughly as mortal as every other human on base."

He looked her in the eye and shot her a half grin, clearly trying to calm the panic that he'd caused in the first place. "I'm sayin' you can't die like this. You survived the Death Star, five days of interrogation from Darth Vader himself, genocide, Luke's entire rescue plan, and now you're gonna be taken out by a bug? That's just embarrassing. You can do better. In fact, I think you're obligated to do better."

Leia chuckled, desperately trying to ignore the worry lodged in her gut.

"My plan was not that bad," Luke muttered, more to himself than anyone else. Leia linked her arm through his in solidarity despite the fact that they both knew his plan had been careless at best.

The silence that followed was fraught with tension, Leia still thinking circles around whether she felt like she was dying, what feeling like dying even meant. She'd technically been slated for death on the Death Star, but she hadn't been in the process of physically dying, so she couldn't really compare the two. Interrogation had made her feel as close to dying as she'd ever felt, but she didn't think she'd actually been on death's door; it had been an effect of the injections. She didn't know what dying from kouhun venom felt like. She might be in the midst of it.

She turned to Luke again. "If I die—"

He stared straight ahead. "I already said I don't want to talk like that."

"But—"

Han interrupted Leia without warning. "I ever tell you two the story of how Chewie an' I met?"

Leia and Luke shook their heads in tandem.

Han leaned back slightly, resting his ankle on his knee in a posture somewhat adjacent to relaxed, though he still seemed on-edge to Leia. "I was in a cantina on some backwater planet you've never heard of—"

"Like this one?"

He shot her a look. "No, at least someone had heard of it."

"Like Tatooine, then," Luke cut in.

"Sure, exactly like Tatooine, 'cept not Tatooine. Can I tell my story now?" Luke and Leia nodded. "So 'm in this cantina, tryin' to relax after a job, and I see someone outta the corner of my eye who I know ain't happy with me. I need to disappear quick, but I'd walked to the cantina from the job and the place I was stayin' was too far away for me to run to quickly."

"Bantha fodder," Leia declared. She'd gotten the distinct feeling that he was making this up as he went. There were too few details — he was never this vague when telling a story. Han raised his eyebrows at her. "Where was the Falcon? You don't stay anywhere else if you can help it."

"Didn't have 'er yet." Han shook his head in what Leia knew was feigned exasperation. "Anyway, I need to disappear quick and I see flyers all around that that very night, the cantina's doin' an open mic night. And wouldn't you know, it was just about to start. So I sneak backstage real stealthy like—"

"You've never been stealthy a day in your life," Leia quipped.

"I made an exception this day. Can I tell my story now?"

She laughed quietly and nodded. "You may."

"I sneak back stage and there's a band preparing to go on. I'm looking for a way to hide in plain site so this being who has it out for me will think I left or somethin'. The band is all Ragoons — they're real short, so I can't really blend in — except the trumpet player, who's a Wookiee."

Leia looked at Chewie, eyebrows raised. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, but didn't say anything. Bantha fodder for sure, Leia thought. She let Han continue regardless.

"I know some Shyriiwook—"

"How did you learn Shyriiwook?" Luke asked. Leia glanced at him and nearly laughed. She was fairly certain he was trying to get on Han's nerves.

"Different story. I'm tellin' this one now. So, I know some Shyriiwook and I say, 'Hey, pal, I gotta make sure this guy don't see me. Any way you can help me out?' And he says, wouldn't you know it, their lead singer just got sick like two minutes ago, and they need someone to fill in or they'd get booed off the stage—"

"Wouldn't your friend have recognized you immediately?"

Han glared at Leia. "I'm gettin' there." He looked to Chewie and shook his head dramatically. "Patience of infants, I swear." He turned back to Leia and Luke. "He said that their lead singer's thing was that he always wore a mask. No one knew what he really looked like. So I just had to borrow somethin' to cover my face and I was good to go on. I find—It doesn't really matter what I find, I can't remember—I get somethin' to cover my face and they play their set and I sing. Brings down the house. Everyone's cheerin'. The person who was lookin' for me leaves, and after, the Wookiee trumpet player says, 'That was amazing. My name's Chewbacca, but you can call me Chewie.' And I said, 'Well, pal, I think you just made yourself a new best friend.' An' we've been running together ever since."

Leia tilted her head, tempted to ask about a dozen more questions of Han, but thought better of it and turned to Chewie. "Is any of that true?"

[He sang at a cantina once…kicked out.]

She laughed while Han affected an affronted air. "Cannot believe the lack of trust in this group," he said, hand on his heart.

Leia laughed again and Luke joined in chuckling. There was a beat of silence before Leia looked at Han. "How many assassins do you know to know all about these stings that are supposedly killing me?"

He grimaced. "None, really. People talk when they drink is all."

"You said you'd seen one before. A kouhun."

Han shrugged. "People also brag when they drink. And sometimes they wave weapons around like idiots. Had a bounty hunter go on about 'em for awhile one night and then he showed 'em to me." He leaned toward Leia, voice slightly lowered. "Didn't even ask him a single thing about 'em. He just had a coupla whiskeys and spilled trade secrets." He shook his head and spoke seriously. "Don't get drunk around strangers. Never know what you'll end up sayin'."

"Noted," Leia said dryly.

The silence that followed was less tense than before. Leia still had her arm linked through Luke's, contact she found comforting, but she found herself longing to bring Han and Chewie closer as well. Her family had always been generous with physical and verbal affection and she had always been similarly generous herself; it felt normal to her. She knew Han and Chewie would be leaving soon — the smuggler reminded her of that daily — and Han's presence made her fresh start survival plan far more difficult, but she had still grown fond of them.

Chewie was too far away, seated on Han's other side, but Leia was able to reach out and touch Han's wrist. He didn't acknowledge her touch, but he also didn't pull away, so she left her fingertips resting lightly against his skin and leaned her head on Luke's shoulder.

Han glanced at his chrono. "Nearly been an hour," he said. He looked at Leia. "Feel like you're dyin' yet?"

Leia pulled her hand away from his arm so she could look at her own chrono. He was right — between walking to the med tent, talking to the med droid, assigning recipients of her possessions, and Han telling his story, it had been probably over three-quarters of an hour since the kouhun had been shot. She shrugged. "I feel okay, I think. Still have a headache."

"Probably stress, right?" Luke offered, obviously looking for an answer that wasn't Leia is dying of assassin bug venom.

She nodded, extracting her arm from Luke's and sitting up straight. She didn't think she felt like she was dying. I'm small. Surely if it was going to kill me by now, it would have, she mused, and it felt like the first reasonable thought she'd had since breakfast.

The med droid returned a few minutes later, declared Leia out of the window of risk when it came to kouhun venom, but insisted she endure a med scan as a precaution. She looked at her companions as she stood to follow the droid. "I'm okay. You don't need to wait on me."

Luke glanced at his chrono and frowned. "Drills start in a couple minutes." He met Leia's gaze. "Are you sure?"

She nodded and smiled at him. "I'm fine. Thank you for staying as long as you did." She paused as Luke stood and gave her a quick hug. "Will you tell Shara and Wedge I'm okay? I—I don't know if they'd worry, but just in case."

"'Course," he said before turning to leave.

Leia thanked Han and Chewie for everything they'd done before following the med droid behind a curtain. The scan didn't take long and didn't reveal anything she didn't already know — her temperature was normal, her ribs were only partially healed, the cause of the blisters on her legs was unknown but appeared harmless — but Leia felt a strong sense of relief all the same. Satisfied with the scan results, the med droid released her to leave.

Leia was surprised to see Han and Chewie still sitting when she emerged from behind the curtain. "All right?" Han asked as soon as he saw her.

She nodded. "Everything's as expected."

"Told you you could do better'n death by bug."

Leia laughed softly. "You didn't have to wait for me."

He shrugged. "We got nowhere else to be right now. Chewie wanted to make sure you were okay."

She looked directly at Chewie, touched by his concern. "I'm all right, Chewie. Thank you for acting so quickly earlier."

The Wookiee stood and gave Leia a hug so gentle she wondered if he was worried about breaking her. She smiled and returned the affection with a light squeeze of her own.

"You mushballs ready to go?" Han asked. Leia rolled her eyes, but followed him out of the tent along with Chewie.

"Thank you for staying with me," she said as they walked closer to where they'd sat for breakfast. "I think I would've felt a little crazy waiting by myself, and Luke and I were obviously not helping each other stay calm."

Han grimaced. "Well, it was my fault gettin' you two all worked up over nothin'."

"You didn't know it was nothing." Leia studied the man's profile thoughtfully. "Did you tell us that story about meeting Chewie just so we'd stop spiraling?"

She thought she saw a hint of a smile cross his face. He turned to her, eyebrows raised. "It work?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I think so. For me, at least."

"Good."

They parted ways, Han and Chewy saying the needed to prepare for the supply run they were going on in the afternoon, and Leia heading directly to the small temporary building that acted as a shared office for both the generals and her. She needed to find out as much as she could about these kouhun insects before they caused actual trouble on base.

A/N: In keeping with attempts at a 2-week update schedule, the next chapter should be posted on April 21, 2023. Thanks for reading!