A relatively short one - I am cognitively impaired this week. But hopefully it's got what we all needed - some R2-D2, and some (probably frustrating) Leia and Han.

Chapter 52: Making a Living

The night passed in a sort of blur; Korkie stood on the steps of the Viceroy's house and spoke to what might have been every Mando'ad in the town square. Many shared with him their congratulations and expressed their gratitude. But no one smiled broadly, and they came also to give him their caution, to share their fears, to ask what this future could possibly hold.

"We've been married almost twenty years. But we vowed never to have children. How could we? When we couldn't ever know if we could keep them safe?"

"You never saw it, Mand'alor. The ways those bombs rained down."

"Under Saxon we had no pride. But we were safe."

But no one tried to kill him, nor even politely ask him to leave; there was a grudging acceptance of the perilous tightrope they now walked. Such a threat was not foreign to the Mando'ade.

By the time Korkie returned to the Viceroy's house, he found his companions gathered in the kitchen, the main hall hardly being a place to socialise given the presence of Saxon's body on the table still. Bo-Katan crossed the floor quickly to meet him, enveloped him in a rare embrace.

"Well done, ad'ik."

"Thanks, Ba'vodu."

"You spoke well," Fenn contributed.

He silently offered a box of rations that Korkie knew his body needed and yet could barely stomach the sight of. Sabine, instead, reached over to pick out a couple of protein cubes.

"It was a bit solemn for my taste," she admitted. "Wasn't that supposed to be a victory speech?"

Korkie grimaced.

"Well, not really, Sab'ika."

"I know the Empire will come back," Sabine reasoned. "But it doesn't mean we didn't achieve a great victory today. Gar Saxon sure as hells isn't coming back, at least."

"There's always Tiber," Tristan remarked over his shoulder, elbows deep in his exploration of the pantry.

There fell a pensive silence.

"I never knew Tiber," Ursa mused.

Her children, with their shared misfortune of Academy attendance, answered in uncanny unison.

"He's a bastard, Buir."

"He's the slimiest, slipperiest-"

"We don't use bastard as a derogatory term," Korkie chided gently. "Anyhow, he sounds charming. All the more reason not to have given a victory speech."

"I should have shot him too," Ursa muttered.

Korkie shot her a glare; Ursa raised her hands in apologetic concession.

"Not funny. Sorry."

Fenn was now pushing the box of rations directly into Korkie's reluctant hands. He accepted it and mouthed a thanks but did not eat.

"When are we going back to Sundari?" Bo-Katan asked.

Korkie sighed, set the rations down.

"There's no one in Sundari, Ba'vodu. It's just a bit of rubble in the desert."

"We can rebuild."

Churn up the earth, in which his mother's body was surely somewhere buried. Melt the sand and build a new dome in defiance of the elements that rendered the plains uninhabitable. Korkie couldn't stomach the thought of it.

"Who'd follow us there?"

He gestured to the stone walls around them.

"Keldabe is the logical capital. It's already been rebuilt."

"But you're Sundari-born," his aunt protested. "You can't seriously mean to have your capital in Keldabe."

"Temporary capital," Korkie ceded. "Besides, I was never even meant to be Sundari-born. I was supposed to be of Kalevala, like you and Buir."

Bo-Katan sighed and managed a faint smile.

"And then you arrived on your grandfather's desk in Sundari with a flooding haemorrhage and impeccable timing."

Fenn and the Wrens, who had not heard this story, looked somewhat alarmed.

"My point is, it can wait," Korkie resolved. "I'll go back to Sundari, Ba'vodu. But I'm not going until the Emperor's dead."

Kryze to anarchy to Saxon to Kryze again. Another rise and fall. R2-D2 remembered them all. He stood by Korkie Kryze, once the little boy that Anakin had called his brother, long after everyone else had gone to sleep. He would not leave his side.

R2 remembered the night on Coruscant when Anakin had not slept, when he had risen from his bed like a ghost. Anakin hadn't spoken to him, hadn't listened to him, and had instead done what he had promised never to do; he had switched him to standby, against his will, and when R2 had rebooted Anakin had been long gone. That night had been the last R2 had ever seen of Anakin, and of Obi Wan, and of Padme.

"Can't believe you're still running," Korkie told him fondly, if not a little insultingly, running an affectionate hand over his dome. "You might be the oldest astromech in the galaxy."

I'm only a year older than you, R2 bristled. And you're the one with the broken sleep cycle.

Korkie accepted the insult with good grace.

"Sorry, Artoo. Just meant to say I'm glad you survived."

His gaze fell to the floor.

"Not many of our friends did."

R2 gave a long, low whistle. Korkie's eyes shone in the moonlight.

"I don't mean to make you miserable. In fact, I've got good news. As soon as we've got some sort of stability here, I'll take you back to Anakin."

And R2-D2 was supposed to be convincing the Mandalorian that he didn't have any loose wires, that he wasn't old or senile or crazy, but he really did nearly melt down at that. He'd listened to every word, scanned everything he could. He had found that name in an online broadcast that had declared the defeat of the traitorous Jedi in their attempt to assassinate the Chancellor Palpatine. And despite all his searching, he had never read it again.

Anakin is alive?!

"Yeah. Sorry, I didn't think…"

Korkie grimaced, reached out to lay a comforting hand upon his dome again.

"I should have broken the news a bit more gently, huh?"

Anakin is alive?!

"He's alive," Korkie repeated. "Alive and well. I promise. Had to have a couple of spare parts put in, but nothing that slows him down too much."

R2 rolled back and forth a few times to expel the energy that coursed through his circuits. If Anakin was alive, what else did that mean? How much had he failed to know about the galaxy?

Who else?

Korkie sighed, his hand dropping.

"Shall we go through the list?" he asked. "Take a few deep breaths, Artoo. Or whatever the droid equivalent is."

Even in his state of emotional overdrive, R2 had the space in his circuity to quip an insult.

You're not much of a mechanic, are you?

"Not at all."

Korkie rubbed at his eyes, took a heaving breath of his own.

"Well, Anakin survived the battle with the Chancellor. Ahsoka and Yoda saved him. They're both alive too. So are Rex and Cody."

R2 repressed his shriek of joy. Korkie looked too sad for further celebrations. Which could only mean that…

"My dad died on Coruscant," he listed, with a sigh. "Padme and I escaped Mandalore. But she died on Tatooine. Just after the twins were born. The babies survived. Luke and Leia. We'll take you to see them too."

There was another surge of electricity and R2 really was going to have some sort of glitch. How was he supposed to code this? Was this grief? The sentient he had known longer and better than anyone else, longer and better even than he had known Anakin, was dead. He had expected that she had died. She would have surfaced with the Rebellion, had she survived. But it was different, to hear it from Korkie's mouth. Padme had died and the children he had known as a swelling in her stomach had survived her. Had they killed her? How much was she a part of them? If he saw them, would he see Padme again?

"And I'm sure that you know, of course, that my mother died," Korkie muttered.

And R2 did not know what to say, because he knew it far better than Korkie did; he had seen it. He did not suppose that Korkie would want to hear of what he had seen.

She was brave, R2 told him.

Korkie gave him another fond pat.

"Yeah. Thanks, Artoo. I figured. She always was."

He rubbed at his eyes again, looked up through the window at the cloudless sky. Elbows on his knees, chin in his hands.

"I wish she could tell me how to do this," he murmured.

And he had that sort of exhaustion about him that Anakin had shown on that sleepless night. The sort of exhaustion – and the sort of loneliness – that R2 knew could lead to terrible things. But he wouldn't fail again. He hadn't known what to say to Anakin, when he'd been plagued by all those thoughts he'd never shared. But he could say something to Korkie now.

I've known many leaders, R2 offered. None of them ever really had all the answers.

Korkie managed a crooked smile.

"Least of all Saxon, I hope."

Saxon least of all, R2 agreed. You'll be much better.

Korkie shook his head with quiet laughter, swung his legs finally onto his pallet and laid down.

"Thanks, Artoo. I guess you're right. I surely can't be any worse."

"Victory!" Leia crowed.

She shut off her comm and beamed at her pilot.

"Can you believe it? Korkie's got his planet back!"

Han shrugged.

"I mean, I guess I believe it. Can't say how long it'll last, but-"

"Pessimist," Leia sniped.

Han sighed. He preferred realist. His intrepid travelling companion hadn't even been alive when Mandalore had been burned to ashes and broadcast on every screen across the galaxy as a warning to those planets that might dare to step out of line. Leia hadn't known Korkie Kryze when he was a homeless teenager getting his nose mashed crooked in Rani Talapa's Iron-Cage Super-League. Who was she to say she knew about all this better than he did?

"We blow up one weapons factory and you're convinced we've won the war," Han grumbled.

Leia pursed her lips.

"Weapons Factory Alpha isn't just some weapons factory. It's their biggest facility in this corner of the galaxy. And it won't be operational again for a lunar cycle at the least."

"Can't say I can imagine a day when the Empire runs out of credits," Han sighed.

He eyed Leia's rising disdain with caution.

"But hey!" he protested, before she could speak again. "You're right. Two small victories. Better than losing, at least."

She seemed disarmed by his agreement. Han couldn't explain why he did it except that she had a nicer smile than a scowl.

"How'd'you like to celebrate?" he asked, flipping open an overhead cabinet. "Something Corellian? Or something less likely to burn a hole in your throat? I've even got-"

Chewie roared his endorsement of a Blue Moon and Han pulled the bottle from the shelf.

"You've got expensive taste, my friend."

Leia watched the fluorescent blue liquid with both caution and intrigue.

"Better looking drink than a Sunriser."

"Better tasting, too," Han remarked. "Who taught you to drink Sunrisers?"

"Guess."

Han shook his head with faint laughter. It checked out, somehow, that Prince Korkie would have a taste for a sweet, cheap, teenager's drink.

"You old enough to drink this?" Han asked.

Leia mounted a phenomenal scowl.

"You know I am. That joke's not funny anymore."

"You got the tolerance to drink this?"

"I've already had tihaar. Sort of."

Han pondered, briefly, whether it was very wrong to pour a Blue Moon shot for a nineteen-year-old rebel leader who bossed him around like he was some kid in school. For a nineteen-year-old who wasn't just too young for him but too beautiful for him, too righteous for him, too good-hearted for him. He never had the chance to reach the conclusion of his musings; Leia snatched the bottle from his hand.

"After the Rebel Alliance has provided you with all these rations and tanks of fuel," she declared, "the least you can do for me is share a drink."

Korkie had been wrong about tihaar. It wasn't unparalleled in its potency; the shots of Blue Moon felt disastrously similar. Leia felt the room begin to spin and wondered why she was doing this. It wasn't about Korkie's victory, she knew. It was not even about the Weapons Factory Alpha burning on Cymoon. It was about Han, and the way she could never speak to him properly because she was always somehow angry at him, and her anger was gone now and there was just warmth, which was all she had wanted, maybe, in these weeks flying in and out of frozen Hoth.

"D'you know my mum?" Leia blurted, sipping the mandatory cup of water Chewie had placed in front of her.

She was starting to learn words of Shyriiwook now; they'd travelled together long enough. The water was, Chewie advised, for her head. If she didn't drink it, she would be sad. Han was looking at her, perplexed.

"Seeing as you were probably a kid, or something, when she died," she elaborated. "But I was only a newborn."

Leia hadn't thought to ask Chewie what the water would do for her if she was already sad.

"Who was your mum?" Han asked, with a frown.

"Senator Padme Amidala. Of Naboo."

Han blinked his surprise.

"You knew her?" Leia pressed.

There was something thoughtful in Han's eyes.

"Knew of her. She was famous. Famously… good."

Leia watched the skin crease between his brows as he weighed up his words.

"'Course, I can't say I paid all too much attention to the Senate as a kid."

Leia felt that bit of hope flicker and fade in her chest. Famously good. She wanted to ask a hundred more questions but he wouldn't know the answers any better than she did. She reached out, probed in the Force in the way that Luke had always told her was rude, tried to see what Han had once seen. A snatch of a feeling, a moment of grudging admiration. Then nothing.

"You don't strike me as someone who pays too much attention to the Senate in your adult life either," she grumbled.

Han conceded the point with a good-natured shrug.

"Didn't really reach me in the shipyards."

He looked like he might have elaborated but instead chuckled to himself.

"So, you're the daughter of a famous Jedi General and the most righteous politician in the Senate," he mused. "Checks out why you're such a blasted high-achiever. And optimist."

He usually said that word like an insult; optimist might as well have meant idiot in Han's lexicon. But tonight there was a softness to him. That warmth. The gift of the stupid Blue Moons; they'd somehow never managed to find it within themselves.

"I just want to do something nice for her," Leia professed.

She'd spent so many dawn and dusk hours of her childhood, scouring the sands for gifts for her mother. A stone particularly smooth, or pleasing in colour or shape, or a shard of coloured glass, to decorate the place where she was buried. Such an empty act of love. It had never been enough and never would be.

"I don't want to have let her die for nothing."

Han's fingers drummed gently against the curve of his glass. His hands were adorned with burns and nicks, nails ragged but clean. Leia felt a start in her own hand, and pulled back.

"What about your parents?"

Her voice echoed brash and loud in her own ears. She wished he could read her as she read him. That they could just sit in silence and know each other. That they could touch, and understand.

Han shook his head.

"Never knew my mum. And my dad… he was alright. Not my hero. Taught me who I didn't want to be. A creditless mechanic stuck on a planet like Corellia with a kid he can't provide for."

Leia blinked her faint surprise.

"So you chose this life?"

"I chose to get off Corellia," Han told her. "That's all I chose. All I knew I wanted. The rest of this life chose me."

Leia smiled.

"Chose you and brought you all the way to the Rebel Alliance."

I chose you, she wanted to say, but did not.

Han snorted.

"This is the last thing I would have planned."

"And yet you're so good at it."

"I'm a good smuggler," he corrected her.

Leia waved off his protest, let her hand fall upon his shoulder.

"We're a good team. Revolutionary heroes! Bet you never thought you'd be that."

Chewie roared his affirmation. But Han was circumspect.

"I just think we'd both be a whole lot happier if we forgot all about being heroes in a war we can't win," he muttered. "I'd rather be free than a hero. That's all I wanted, when I left Corellia."

Freedom. The drinks had left her spinning and loosened her tongue but had not robbed her of what she could feel in the Force. Had allowed her to reach further, feel deeper. She saw freedom in Han's own eyes. She saw a kid watching his friend leave Corellia in a ship that bunked two. Felt the ache of someone else's freedom, of being left to wait. Felt the ache of every debt owed, of every tracker on his ship.

"And I know you think you're too good to chase credits, Leia," Han went on, "but that's how you buy freedom. Not in a fight like this that leaves you with nothing."

He so seldom ever called her by her name. Leia was struck by the sudden feeling of wanting to cry. She wanted to be by his side and hear him call her by her name forever. But she couldn't be here with him and believe those words. They were a betrayal of everything she stood for.

"Buy freedom?" she repeated. "For myself? And let the rest of the galaxy live imprisoned?"

Han's eyes were glazed and devoid of their spark. He had continued with the Blue Moons, after her switch to water.

"Let them rot in this stinking galaxy?" she pressed.

Still, he said nothing.

"You make me so angry," Leia muttered.

She rose from the table and made for her bunk; her feet carried her on teetering arcs as though their ship was tossed upon waves and not gliding faultlessly through space. It wouldn't do to let him see her cry. She didn't even know why she was crying. For the mother who would have known so much better than this, who she'd never honoured the way she'd meant to. For the man who'd never known his own mother. Who had never known any better than this.

She collapsed into her bunk and felt the tears on her cheeks and wished she had her brother here with her, just to tell her she was being an idiot. Or that she had her Aunt Beru, who she'd left behind on Tatooine to be killed by stormtroopers. Beru had stroked her hair, on nights like this. Patted the tears from her cheeks.

It isn't an easy thing, Beru had told her, when she'd cried for her brother's broken leg or her father's broken heart, loving as hard as you do.

"The humiliating defeat on Mandalore, my Lord… I await your instruction."

Sidious beheld his insolent apprentice, kneeling before him. Darth Gelid was obviously not content to wait his instruction, for she had come before him and reported the problem herself, as though it had perhaps escaped Sidious's notice and he required her prompting to make a decision on the matter.

"Tiber Saxon has escaped the capital," she went on, lifting her chin to look at him now. "But he has not yet come to us crying for help in the manner that his brother often did."

"A small blessing," Sidious muttered.

Darth Gelid looked at him in appalled disbelief.

"The Imperial forces fled with barely a fight," she stressed. "It is unacceptable. The galaxy will think us weak."

Sidious restrained himself from demonstrating his lack of weakness upon her windpipe.

"I am quite disinterested in the matter," he confessed. "The rebels had the gall to attack the Death Star already. The failure on Mandalore makes no difference. Our rebels are confident. It is a weakness. It is not an illusion we need to dispel."

Mandalore, they could have. In the era of Satine Kryze and her Council of Neutral Systems, its destruction had been paramount. But there was nothing left to it now. Nothing left to destroy. Korkaran Kryze was not the leader his mother had been. He knew the Empire's might as well as anyone. He would be cautious after the Night of a Thousand Tears.

"I have located Skywalker," Sidious informed his apprentice. "He is freeing slaves on Tatooine."

Darth Gelid rose to her feet.

"I will ready the fleet for Tatooine, my Lord."

Sidious waved a dismissive hand, pressed her down back into a kneel.

"You will do no such thing. You are heavy-handed and foolish."

He sat back in his throne, allowed a faint smile.

"His children are not with him on Tatooine," he mused. "There has been much talk, Darth Gelid, I am sure you have heard, about the power of his son. His son, the magnificent pilot who destroyed the Death Star. But I do not want his son. It is Anakin that I want."

Anakin, who had been saved once by Obi Wan Kenobi. Anakin, who had no protector left to do the same again.

"Just as the path to Anakin Skywalker was once through his wife, it is now through his children."

Darth Gelid nodded but this time had the good sense not to rise.

"I will find them, Master."

Sidious gave a delicate shrug.

"You will find his daughter," he corrected her. "She has made a name for herself, already, as a rebel leader. His son, I cannot trace. But that is of no consequence. You need only find Leia Skywalker. The others will follow closely behind."

Leia woke with a splitting headache and a terrible heaviness to her limbs but remembered enough to be embarrassed and thus angrier still. She couldn't bear to travel with Han all the way back to Hoth and figured he didn't have any reason to insist on the matter anyway, so confronted him – when he finally rose from his bunk several hours after Leia had woken from her own restless sleep – with a new set of map coordinates.

"You can drop me at Caluula. No sense in having you take me to Hoth if you don't want to do this anymore. I can go straight to Mako-Ta from there."

Han rubbed at his brow and looked vaguely – and only vaguely – remorseful.

"Guess not. You sure you can make it to Mako-Ta by yourself?"

"Don't insult me."

"I was asking a question."

"I can make it to Mako-Ta by myself."

It would be easy. The Noonian sector was perpetually abuzz with traders and the Imperial redeployments in the wake of the Death Star's destruction would grant sufficient chaos to make it a low-risk journey. She needn't arrive in style; she would reunite with her allies in the Rebellion – not this useless pilot she'd been dragging around the galaxy – and would have all the supplies and transport she required from there on out. Leia rummaged through the Millennium Falcon's storage compartments, packing up the traces of herself that she'd been foolish enough to pretend had a place there.

"You, meanwhile, can get back to…"

She shoved her favourite mug into her satchel with more vehemence than was probably necessary.

"…whatever it is that you do."

Han scowled.

"I'll go back to making a living."

Leia should have ignored him – had made up her mind to ignore him, not to be baited – but felt the words bubble forth.

"What's a living, Han?" she demanded. "You are living. This is living. We feed you, huh?"

Han turned away from her and dropped his gaze to the ship's controls.

"I'm still a wanted man," he muttered.

"And you're afraid of that?" Leia scoffed. "I'm wanted too. We all are."

"Not by Jabba."

"Is Jabba more dangerous than the Emperor?"

"He's up there."

Leia yanked at the straps of her satchel, closing it tight.

"Mighty smuggler," she muttered. "So karking afraid. You've lost my respect, Han."

The pilot, who had seemingly been making an effort to disengage from the argument, abandoned his work at the ship's controls.

"Did I have it?" he challenged.

"Yeah. You did. When you cared about your friends and you did something for someone other than yourself."

When he'd appeared in the dog fight over the Death Star. When he'd rescued the rebels on Cyrkon, when he'd ushered through the Kupohan refugees in the Llanic system. When they'd blown up the weapons factory on Cymoon and she had seen – she swore she had seen – true pride in his eyes. When he'd told her that her mother had been famously good.

"I'm the same person I've always been," Han told her, voice low and determined. "I told you one more mission and I meant it. You're the one who kept asking me for more. I didn't ask to be a hero of the rebellion and I never asked for your karking respect."

They were drawing nearer to each other now, like some disastrous asteroid collision.

"Because you don't care for it, huh?" Leia demanded. "All you ever wanted from me-"

She steeled herself, took a deep breath, but still could not bring herself to say it. What she'd seen in him but never been brave enough to name. What she knew she couldn't have. She was such a fool. Such a hells-damned fool.

"Fine," she sighed. "You know what, Han? That's all fine. Take me to Caluula. I'm done."

He looked at her like she'd slapped him. She would have liked to slap him.

"You're sure as hell taking this pretty personally," he grumbled, as he stalked back to the controls.

"So what if I am?"

"I just don't see why you should be."

Leia barked out a laugh.

"Oh, sure you do, Han. And I'll be angry if I want to. Take me to Caluula."

"We're going!"

Chewie groaned his exasperation but did not argue the point. The Millennium Falcon shot through the Outer Rim, as quiet onboard as it had ever been, and quieter than it ever would be again.

Just be nice to each other! Big sigh. I'll sort them out, promise.

Forgive me for inebriating Leia - was so sleep-deprived I had to bring her into my headspace.

Thank you again for keeping me going in the reviews. It means a lot.

Next chapter... I think you can guess that Leia runs into a bit of trouble on her very straightforward journey to Mako-Ta.

xx - S.