A/N: Han's POV of some of the events in Chapter 7 of Purpose of Heritage. Also briefly referenced in Chapter 22.

Happy May the Fourth! My Tumblr followers voted on what they wanted to see today and this won, so here it is!

CW: references to past torture, specifically involving injections.

Chewie said he had caught Leia's scent, and Han was glad he was so sure, because he wouldn't have known where to begin. The swirling snow limited their field of vision so much, Han could barely see his own glove if he reached his arm out in front of him. It made him nervous. He didn't like the cold and hated snow. He hadn't had a single good experience with snow, and had had more than one memory of the stuff involving death. He didn't want another one of those.

Han had tied a cord to Chewie to ensure they weren't separated. Every few steps, the Wookiee got a little too far ahead of Han and disappeared behind a wall of white before reappearing once Han picked up his pace. His stomach sank when he thought of Leia out in those conditions for as long as she had been.

She had said she'd return after a few minutes. The kid and Antilles both wanted to go after her once ten minutes had passed. Wedge had seemed concerned about her mental well-being considering the outburst she'd had. Han had countered that Leia yelled at people who were being assholes all the time, and that Coy had more than earned it. He had convinced them to give her some space until half an hour had passed. Now, he wondered if his casual attitude about her disappearance might end up being the cause of her death.

No one's dead, he told himself. Not until we find a body.

Chewie let out a distressed roar. Han stepped closer and nearly tripped over the Wookiee, who had dropped to the ground and was pawing at a snowdrift.

"What the hell—" Han broke off when he saw a small, pale hand emerge from under the pile of snow Chewie had shoved aside. He dropped to the ground alongside his copilot, moving snow off of Leia's body until they were able to pull her free entirely. She looked…

No.

Han's stomach lurched. He had only seen skin so pale and lips so blue one other time to his recollection, and his ma had died in that condition. Shoving the thoughts of a similar fate for Leia out of his mind, he moved closer to see if she was breathing. Her chest barely moved, but she was hanging in there.

[Can you get the shelter up by yourself?] Chewie asked. [I will try to warm her.]

Han leapt into action. The shelters were pretty simple to assemble, and joining the two they had brought with them gave them enough room to pull out supplies to try to get Leia warm. Chewie's brief efforts had probably kept her alive, but she still looked near death, still felt icy cold to the touch.

They found a survival blanket first thing, and draped it over her before digging through the medical supplies, looking for anything labeled self-heating. There was a pack large enough to cover most of Leia's torso and intravenous fluids that heated up once something attached to the bag was snapped. Before Han was able to tell Chewie what needed to be done, a shaky, hoarse whisper caused him to jump.

"H-H-Han? Ch-Chewie?"

Han looked at Leia with a start. She trembled violently, which he took as a good sign; she hadn't been shivering moments prior. He moved close to her.

"Hey, Leia," he said softly. "Hey. Glad to see you awake."

She was panicking; he could see it in her eyes. She gasped out something between chattering teeth about her hands being numb and Han swore, rushing to see what sort of damage had been done beneath her gloves.

They weren't frostbitten, at least not badly. Stark white with splotches of bright red, which was concerning, but they could get her back from that. He relayed the encouraging bit before delivering the bad news that they were stuck without true heat until morning. "Stay awake for me, okay?"

Leia nodded and agreed before immediately slipping into unconsciousness. Han's chest tightened. They needed to get her warmer.

[Cub, I do not think she will get warm in her outerwear,] Chewie said.

Han swallowed, knowing Chewie was right, but concerned about the sort of panic Leia might be thrown into if she woke up again as he was pulling clothing off her body considering everything he knew she had been through. There wasn't much time to look for alternatives, though, and he was able to remove her coat and coveralls without her waking, leaving a layer of long underwear that seemed thin enough to allow heat to permeate it. He placed the activated heat pack on her chest and draped the blanket over her.

Chewie handed him the self-heating fluids and Han hesitated again. Leia hadn't ever said anything about her thing with needles, but that hadn't stopped word about her apparent meltdown during her enlistment physical from making its way around the outpost. He assumed he was one of a few who knew why she had likely reacted so strongly to the required inoculations, but knowing the reason didn't help the current situation.

He didn't want her to freak out, didn't want to be the cause of awakening memories of the interrogation droid that had been used to puncture her back more times than seemed possible. After too many long moments of hesitation, he rallied himself to do what would keep her alive. Better freaked out than dead, he reasoned, and got to work finding a vein.

IV inserted and body covered, Han and Chewie had little to do aside from wait to see how Leia would fare with warmth and time. Han watched her pale face, her blue lips, and wrapped his fingers around the hand without the IV to try to warm her fingers quicker.

"C'mon, Princess," he said quietly.

[I think we found her quickly enough.]

Han couldn't pull his eyes away from her slight form, but nodded, hoping Chewie was right.

Seconds bled into minutes bled into an hour, then two, and Leia regained color bit by bit. Her lips weren't blue any more at the very least, though she was still too pale for Han's liking and she hadn't regained consciousness.

C'mon, sweetheart. Wake up.

He cared more than he had ever expected to. Leia had been a pain in the ass ever since finding out he was planning on taking off soon, but he still liked her, and the idea of her dying disturbed him. And the fact that it disturbed him also disturbed him.

"Better her than me," he'd said on the Death Star. A part of Han assumed that he had retained some of those self-preservation instincts, despite the princess insisting for months that he was 'the worst mercenary I've ever encountered'. But, his own reactions had proven his assumptions entirely wrong. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't felt that cavalierly about Leia's life for…awhile. Even as early as Yavin, he recalled being somewhat offended when her response to his urging her to get to a damn medic after being tortured half to death had been some quip about him being worried the Alliance would ask for a refund if she died.

And now…Well, now…

He just wanted her alive; that was all.

Leia whimpered softly, a small crease appearing between her eyebrows. Han squeezed the hand he held instinctively. She gasped, seemed to hold her breath for a moment, then her face crumpled and a sob shook her entire body.

Han moved closer and spoke quietly to her, hoping a familiar voice might soothe her. "Leia, you're okay." He squeezed her hand again. "'t's just a dream, Princess."

A shiver traveled down her body and Leia opened her eyes, blinking slowly before sniffing and screwing her eyes shut again without responding.

[I don't think it's just a dream, Cub.]

Han glanced at Chewie, who stared at Leia with concern. "Oh," he said. Right. He knew about the nightmares. Everyone on the kriffing outpost knew about her nightmares, try as she might to downplay them. She certainly wasn't alone in having them, but Han couldn't think of many who had more reason to suffer the nighttime horrors than Leia. Standard Imperial interrogation was near-traumatizing just to watch, much less experience first-hand, and she had endured some form of special torture at the hands of Darth Vader on top of everything. And that was before they made her watch the destruction of her home planet.

He focused back on her and squeezed her hand again. "Wanna talk about it, sweetheart?" he murmured.

Leia shook her head, but opened her eyes and glanced around bleary-eyed. Recalling her alleged response to injections again, and unsure if an IV fell into the same category, Han covered the entry point for the tube on her hand with his own.

She pushed herself into a seated position and pulled the hand with the IV line in it out from under his. She looked at his rushed tape job on the tube and blinked slowly.

Han felt the need to explain why he'd been hiding the IV entry point from her and settled on a simple, "Wasn't sure if it'd bother you."

Leia shook her head slightly. "It's not the tube that bothers me; it's the needle. Once it's out, I'm fine."

Of course it's the needle. Memories of the few interrogation sessions he had viewed as a young officer flooded his mind, shoving visions of injections followed by the prisoners shrieking in anguish to the surface. Their few injections hadn't been remotely close to what he knew Leia had experienced; she'd had to rows of evenly spaced injection marks running down the entire length of her spine. Of course she had reactions to needles. He wouldn't be surprised if she experienced those reactions for the rest of her life.

She still looked a little paler than he liked, but she was sitting up and alert. He reached toward her and touched her chin, tilting her face gently to get a thorough look at her. Her lips weren't blue any longer at least, and Han felt relief as he realized she likely wouldn't suffer the same fate that his ma had.

He reported what he saw to Leia and she quipped something about being taken out by "a little weather" being a bit embarrassing considering all she'd been through, a variation of a joke Han had made to help calm her down when they had been unsure if she had been stung by those murder bugs on Indoumodo. He laughed and agreed, glad to see her at least making an attempt at humor.

As he and Chewie answered Leia's questions and exchanged banter with the princess, Han couldn't help but think about how grateful he was to see her awake and alert and alive. The jarring realization that she was, in fact, someone he cared about quite a bit — his friend, even — hit him like a freighter full of duracrete. Han wasn't sure what to do with that information, but he figured he could sort it all out later. In the meantime, he was certain of a couple of things: Leia was going to make it, and he was very glad.