"You don't believe in the Force, do you?" Luke asked, reproachfully, as he got back up.

"Kid," Han said, shaking his head. "I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff. But I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny."

Ben chuckled.

"What?" Han asked. "It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense."

"How old are you, Han?" Ben asked. "You strike me as a mature man of the galaxy."

"Oh, ouch," Han winced. "I'm not that old, I'm thirty-two."

Ben smiled faintly. "Just asking," he said. "I suppose that must mean you were between nine and twelve when an army led by the Jedi Knights defended the Republic."

He shrugged. "But, well. Maybe you don't think that was anything real."

"Hey, it was all politics," Han said. "And you see a lot of things on the Holovid when you're young that don't turn out to be true."

"Oh, not this again," Chewie grumbled.

"You're making a noise now?" Han asked. "What is it, Chewie? You're not telling me you believe all of this?"

"I was a friend of Jedi Master Yoda, during the Kashyyyk campaign," Chewie said. "I saw things there that prove the Force is real, let alone in the decades before then."

"My word!" C-3P0 marvelled. "Did you hear that, R2?"

"Of course I heard it," R2-D2 replied. "You might understand six million languages, but I'm the brains of the outfit."

"How rude," 3P0 complained.

"The totality of the Emperor's attempt to wipe out belief in the Force is quite astonishing," Ben mused. "It can only mean that he's afraid."

"Afraid?" Han asked. "Of what? A kid who gets shot in the butt and falls over?"

"Afraid of the potential of the Force," Ben answered. "Of something he cannot control. The Emperor naturally wields the Force with great proficiency, for he is a Dark Lord of the Sith, you see. And Darth Vader is his strongest enforcer."

"You know, if you keep talking about him that way you're just going to confuse the poor boy," R2 beeped.

"What, the Emperor uses the Force now too?" Han scoffed. "This is turning into a real conspiracy theory, old man. Next you're going to tell me that everyone's tightly connected. I bet the farm boy here's Darth Vader's kid or something…"

R2 made a beeping noise.

"Stop giggling, R2," 3PO complained. "This is no laughing matter!"

AN:

The prequels kinda made Han's disbelief in the Force… a bit less reasonable?