[And be just a little keyed-up until that point, neatening things up and generally doing a ship-long equivalent of pacing. Idleness--let's be honest here, boredom--feels more egregious to her when something's about to happen.]
[ true to his word (though it's closer to two hours), han steps onto the windrose from the transport. it only takes a moment or two to find leia, and he leans in the doorway of the kitchen.
[She glances up from where she's telling herself she's organizing things (she's not, she's just keeping her hands busy, but the point remains), and a little smile crosses her face.]
Took you long enough.
[There's no real bite in her voice, just fondness as she crosses the small room.]
[ a bit shrewdly, but. you know. han is in a testy mood. his ship is full of teenagers and hot messes and smol children and han doesn't deal well with any of those (or, at least, he's convinced he doesn't). but he sighs, and shrugs to himself. ]
The stupid fake show is gonna get their ratings, anyway. I better get a paycheck out of the headache -- has over here been calm?
[The Windrose is mostly full of adults and droids at this point, praise be.
But she doubts he's only here to compare ships, and there's no way she's discussing anything private within earshot of any crewmates. Leia glances down, reaching out for his hand.]
Come on, let's go somewhere with a door that shuts.
[ reasonable. han never thought he would actively miss having lando around but this is ridiculous. but at her request, his catty remark is immediately tempered, and he lets her take his hand, threading his fingers neatly through hers. ]
-- lead the way.
[ he's really only here to check on her, and to see her -- he's already vented out all he needs to vent out, but han is fairly good at reading leia. something is bothering her on a deeper level than she's willing to admit, and so he lets her lead him along, though he's curiously looking around as he goes.
[It's not a long walk from the kitchen to her bunk, and while the door latches, there's not much else to recommend the space. It's tiny, the cot is lumpy, and the only thing Leia's added to the room is a palm-sized salt statue from Arslae.
But it's what she has to work with, and Leia waves him in, taking care to shut the door behind her.]
That poor girl. There must be something more we can do for her.
[Easier to talk about than most of what's on her mind, and probably, she thinks, more productive.]
[ han is fortunate, and the huntress is heavily upgraded. leia's room is smaller than his, and his bed is bigger. but he keeps that to himself, and lets leia close the door behind them, though he soon takes up position leaning against the far wall, sighing. ]
Who knows.
[ with a slight frown ]
I got told to be patient.
[ ten points if you can guess what wise jedi master told him that okay ]
[Leia gives Han a sour expression, but it doesn't hold. With a sigh, she tips her head back, the braids at the crown of her head brushing against the wall.]
I hate thinking of a child living that way. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
[What happened to her and what happened to this girl aren't the same thing, not in the slightest, but that's what she keeps coming back to: a bone-deep sense of disquiet at the thought.]
[ and, finally, han pushes himself up off the wall to cross the room, taking a seat on the cot next to her, leaning back against the wall. he's quiet for a long moment, almost giving leia the room to talk more if she wants -- but then han decides he wants to continue. ]
He's dead, Leia.
[ it's said quietly, and he rests his head against the wall too, considering that for a moment before speaking. ]
You two shouldn't have even gotten involved in what he was doing.
[Which is to say, I know. The memory still lives inside her, though, and there are times when her skin still crawls with remembered sensations. You don't forget the texture of a Hutt's tongue that easily.]
The alternative seemed worse. [She turns her head slightly in his direction, watching him from the corner of her eye.] We couldn't have left you behind.
[ his eyes are watching a spot on the ceiling, as he talks. luke and leia really could've just left -- they just chose not to, and han is grateful for that. he knows chewie wouldn't have stopped until he found han, and he knows lando probably wouldn't have either. under threat of death from said wookiee, or maybe because he cares.
who knows. ]
But I'm glad you didn't.
[ han pauses, though. ]
He deserved worse than whatever you gave him.
[ he has no idea what happened, really, on much of that day. he had been out of it, and blind, and trying to recover in way less time than was needed. everyone was fine, in the end, but a lot of the details are hazy. and luke and leia hadn't exactly been forthcoming with the information. ]
[She had loved him, and she'd lost too many people she loved in too few years. The thought of knowing where he was and doing nothing about it--when, this time, something could be done--would have been impossible to bear.
Waiting for the opportunity had been bad enough. She can't count how many times her thoughts strayed to him during Operation Yellow Moon.
Leia's lips press together into a thin line, her gaze shifting away from Han's profile into the middle distance.]
He was never going to pay for the things he did.
[A new bitterness slides through her voice. Jabba the Hutt had years to indulge his gluttony unchecked, and the number of lives he'd ruined--or snuffed out entirely--must have been astronomical. As thoroughly as Leia believes in her ideals, she doesn't think there's any punishment possible to balance the crimes he committed or the slaves he kept.]
Choking him with the chain he put around my neck will have to be good enough.
[ there's a silence, at that, and han looks over at her, his brow furrowed.
chain around her neck? was that what jabba had done with her after capturing her? put a chain around her neck and... done what, exactly? did what with her? or to her?
the urge to be angry is pretty compelling, and he is -- furious, that jabba had thought it was acceptable to treat her that way, but anger won't help leia now. instead, han gently pushes himself closer to drape an arm over her shoulders. ]
Should've dragged his body behind the Falcon for a few thousand miles.
[Leia can guess what he's thinking--not in detail, but that dark little comment doesn't come out of nowhere, and she knows Han. If he'd seen her at her most humiliated...
She'll never stop being grateful that he didn't. That Luke had to is bad enough.
When he puts an arm around her, she doesn't shrug it off, but she doesn't curl into his side like she usually does, either. The cot's not all that stable--that's the excuse if she needs one, though she doubts she does--and Han's warmth is no protection from the facts of the matter.]
You worked for him.
[Not accusatory, just a statement of fact. She doesn't meet his gaze.]
You know how he treated his...
[Slaves.
She doesn't want to have to say it aloud. The fact that she was counted among Jabba the Hutt's personal possessions--the fact that his includes her, if only for a few days--churns her stomach.]
[ han is quiet for a long moment before heaving a sigh. ]
-- Jabba picked me up after he heard about the Kessel Run.
[ it's not often that he talks about his past (and even now, he's leaving a lot out), but han feels like leia, of all people, deserves to know how han wound up working for jabba in the first place. ]
He paid well, and he paid me... a lot. But I got boarded one run by the Empire, and I had to drop the cargo, 'cause I made the stupid mistake of thinking Jabba might want his best man not in a jail cell, but turns out he got pissed when I couldn't reimburse him for what I had to drop, and put a price on my head instead.
[ which is pretty common knowledge, in the underworld. when jabba the hutt got pissed at someone, the entire galaxy tended to know about it, especially when that person was han solo. ]
When Kenobi and Luke found me, I was trying to get out of it. I figured if I could pick up a few more jobs, i could pay Jabba off, and get the hell away from him -- but Ben promised me seventeen thousand credits to bring them to Alderaan. Which was what I needed. I was gonna use it to pay Jabba back, get away from him... [ han exhales, puffing out his cheeks slightly as he considers it. ] Which obviously didn't happen.
[ han had come back for luke, and then they had relocated to hoth. and when han tried to leave, the empire had found them. and then... well, the rest leia knows. jabba is dead, but there's alway going to be scum like jabba in the world. and han considers that before continuing. ]
There's a difference between... robbing people who deserve it and then there's people like Jabba, who deserve to get lobbed into the nearest black hole. He's got nothing worth saving, or adding. I used to want to rip out his tongue and feed it to Chewie, but I didn't want to poison my first mate.
[For this, she does look over at him. So much of Han is expression that if he's going to tell a story--or part of one, as the case might be--she wants to watch.
And she's silent, letting his words unfold as they will without interruption. He needs to account for himself as much as she needs him to explain, she suspects. It's a story that's easy enough to imagine: Han, hungry for greater glories and beginning to put his trust in someone whose concerns are too selfish to justify it. And it twists into the story of something larger, the story of them, and larger still into the story of the war.
When he finishes, she waits a moment or two. First, to make sure there isn't more to come, and then, to find words of her own.]
It's a good thing you didn't. I doubt his tongue tasted any better than it smelled.
[Or felt. Or looked. She wouldn't feed Jabba's remains to a dianoga.
A long pause, one she spends the whole time on the verge of speaking, changing her mind, and getting ready to speak again.]
[ it's said quietly, and han lets his eyes shift down to his hands settled in his lap. he's not really sure what to say after that -- i know you don't, but you should? i know you don't, but if it weren't for me, you wouldn't have been involved in the first place?
how would that have worked? if han had just left and never come back -- paid jabba and gone along his merry way. he would've been miserable. alone. luke might have died. leia, too. the torture and the carbonite and all of that was worth it, in the long run, because he had them. and her. so, in reverse, all of them had to suffer to get what they needed in the end.
still. ]
I got involved with him because it was what I was good at, but...
[ han trails off, trying to figure out what to say. he's excellent at getting what he wants out of people, and sweet-talking his way out of certain death, but talking about your feelings is a lot harder. or talking about your past. your motivations. what drives you to do something versus what doesn't. ]
I didn't have anyone before it caught up to me.
[ jabba had nothing to use against han to get what he wanted, except his own life. ]
[Leia waits, sensing the way he's still drawing up the words, however slowly. Once, she would have called it intuition, and perhaps that's part of it, but now she suspects it's the Force, too. Wait, listen, let him find his way on his own. That quiet sense
She reaches over to take his hand, her slender fingers curling around his. For a moment, she studies his knuckles, her thumb brushing gently over them, letting a response of her own come to her.]
And when you did, he lost everything.
[Whatever else happened, the fact of the matter is that Han will never have Jabba breathing down his neck again. She hopes his bloated body rots away to nothing.]
If I could do it over again, I'd come up with a different plan. [She doesn't know what it would be, but ideally, certain things would go very differently.] But I'd never leave you behind. I never will.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2016-01-11 11:23 pm (UTC)You're always welcome over here.
[Read: Please come see her later.]
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Date: 2016-01-11 11:28 pm (UTC)Give me an hour or two, and I'll be there.
[ he has to ensure greed isn't, like. doing anything stupid. ]
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Date: 2016-01-11 11:32 pm (UTC)[And be just a little keyed-up until that point, neatening things up and generally doing a ship-long equivalent of pacing. Idleness--let's be honest here, boredom--feels more egregious to her when something's about to happen.]
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Date: 2016-01-11 11:55 pm (UTC)throat clears. ]
I like your ship.
{ he's made an attempt. ]
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Date: 2016-01-12 12:01 am (UTC)Took you long enough.
[There's no real bite in her voice, just fondness as she crosses the small room.]
The Windrose is all right. Good people on board.
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Date: 2016-01-12 02:48 am (UTC)Well, nobody shot me when I came on board, so I guess that counts for something.
[ lightly, and han pushes himself up straight. ]
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Date: 2016-01-12 02:57 am (UTC)[Ah, bickering and back-and-forth. Something to take some comfort in.]
How're things over there?
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Date: 2016-01-12 03:15 am (UTC)[ a bit shrewdly, but. you know. han is in a testy mood. his ship is full of teenagers and hot messes and smol children and han doesn't deal well with any of those (or, at least, he's convinced he doesn't). but he sighs, and shrugs to himself. ]
The stupid fake show is gonna get their ratings, anyway. I better get a paycheck out of the headache -- has over here been calm?
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Date: 2016-01-12 03:31 am (UTC)[The Windrose is mostly full of adults and droids at this point, praise be.
But she doubts he's only here to compare ships, and there's no way she's discussing anything private within earshot of any crewmates. Leia glances down, reaching out for his hand.]
Come on, let's go somewhere with a door that shuts.
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Date: 2016-01-13 04:08 am (UTC)-- lead the way.
[ he's really only here to check on her, and to see her -- he's already vented out all he needs to vent out, but han is fairly good at reading leia. something is bothering her on a deeper level than she's willing to admit, and so he lets her lead him along, though he's curiously looking around as he goes.
the ships are different, as it were. ]
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Date: 2016-01-13 04:28 am (UTC)But it's what she has to work with, and Leia waves him in, taking care to shut the door behind her.]
That poor girl. There must be something more we can do for her.
[Easier to talk about than most of what's on her mind, and probably, she thinks, more productive.]
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Date: 2016-01-13 04:31 am (UTC)Who knows.
[ with a slight frown ]
I got told to be patient.
[ ten points if you can guess what wise jedi master told him that okay ]
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Date: 2016-01-13 04:41 am (UTC)For the moment, Leia takes a seat on one end of her cot, back against the wall.]
It's not bad advice [these things take time, after all], but I don't want to sit around and do nothing.
[A glance over at Han.]
How are you doing?
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Date: 2016-01-13 05:01 am (UTC)You first.
[ c: ]
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Date: 2016-01-13 02:52 pm (UTC)I hate thinking of a child living that way. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
[What happened to her and what happened to this girl aren't the same thing, not in the slightest, but that's what she keeps coming back to: a bone-deep sense of disquiet at the thought.]
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Date: 2016-01-13 06:49 pm (UTC)[ and, finally, han pushes himself up off the wall to cross the room, taking a seat on the cot next to her, leaning back against the wall. he's quiet for a long moment, almost giving leia the room to talk more if she wants -- but then han decides he wants to continue. ]
He's dead, Leia.
[ it's said quietly, and he rests his head against the wall too, considering that for a moment before speaking. ]
You two shouldn't have even gotten involved in what he was doing.
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Date: 2016-01-13 07:08 pm (UTC)[Which is to say, I know. The memory still lives inside her, though, and there are times when her skin still crawls with remembered sensations. You don't forget the texture of a Hutt's tongue that easily.]
The alternative seemed worse. [She turns her head slightly in his direction, watching him from the corner of her eye.] We couldn't have left you behind.
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Date: 2016-01-13 07:22 pm (UTC)[ his eyes are watching a spot on the ceiling, as he talks. luke and leia really could've just left -- they just chose not to, and han is grateful for that. he knows chewie wouldn't have stopped until he found han, and he knows lando probably wouldn't have either. under threat of death from said wookiee, or maybe because he cares.
who knows. ]
But I'm glad you didn't.
[ han pauses, though. ]
He deserved worse than whatever you gave him.
[ he has no idea what happened, really, on much of that day. he had been out of it, and blind, and trying to recover in way less time than was needed. everyone was fine, in the end, but a lot of the details are hazy. and luke and leia hadn't exactly been forthcoming with the information. ]
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Date: 2016-01-13 07:34 pm (UTC)[She had loved him, and she'd lost too many people she loved in too few years. The thought of knowing where he was and doing nothing about it--when, this time, something could be done--would have been impossible to bear.
Waiting for the opportunity had been bad enough. She can't count how many times her thoughts strayed to him during Operation Yellow Moon.
Leia's lips press together into a thin line, her gaze shifting away from Han's profile into the middle distance.]
He was never going to pay for the things he did.
[A new bitterness slides through her voice. Jabba the Hutt had years to indulge his gluttony unchecked, and the number of lives he'd ruined--or snuffed out entirely--must have been astronomical. As thoroughly as Leia believes in her ideals, she doesn't think there's any punishment possible to balance the crimes he committed or the slaves he kept.]
Choking him with the chain he put around my neck will have to be good enough.
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Date: 2016-01-13 07:49 pm (UTC)chain around her neck? was that what jabba had done with her after capturing her? put a chain around her neck and... done what, exactly? did what with her? or to her?
the urge to be angry is pretty compelling, and he is -- furious, that jabba had thought it was acceptable to treat her that way, but anger won't help leia now. instead, han gently pushes himself closer to drape an arm over her shoulders. ]
Should've dragged his body behind the Falcon for a few thousand miles.
[ it's said under his breath.
-- maybe a little anger. ]
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Date: 2016-01-13 07:59 pm (UTC)She'll never stop being grateful that he didn't. That Luke had to is bad enough.
When he puts an arm around her, she doesn't shrug it off, but she doesn't curl into his side like she usually does, either. The cot's not all that stable--that's the excuse if she needs one, though she doubts she does--and Han's warmth is no protection from the facts of the matter.]
You worked for him.
[Not accusatory, just a statement of fact. She doesn't meet his gaze.]
You know how he treated his...
[Slaves.
She doesn't want to have to say it aloud. The fact that she was counted among Jabba the Hutt's personal possessions--the fact that his includes her, if only for a few days--churns her stomach.]
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Date: 2016-01-13 08:26 pm (UTC)-- Jabba picked me up after he heard about the Kessel Run.
[ it's not often that he talks about his past (and even now, he's leaving a lot out), but han feels like leia, of all people, deserves to know how han wound up working for jabba in the first place. ]
He paid well, and he paid me... a lot. But I got boarded one run by the Empire, and I had to drop the cargo, 'cause I made the stupid mistake of thinking Jabba might want his best man not in a jail cell, but turns out he got pissed when I couldn't reimburse him for what I had to drop, and put a price on my head instead.
[ which is pretty common knowledge, in the underworld. when jabba the hutt got pissed at someone, the entire galaxy tended to know about it, especially when that person was han solo. ]
When Kenobi and Luke found me, I was trying to get out of it. I figured if I could pick up a few more jobs, i could pay Jabba off, and get the hell away from him -- but Ben promised me seventeen thousand credits to bring them to Alderaan. Which was what I needed. I was gonna use it to pay Jabba back, get away from him... [ han exhales, puffing out his cheeks slightly as he considers it. ] Which obviously didn't happen.
[ han had come back for luke, and then they had relocated to hoth. and when han tried to leave, the empire had found them. and then... well, the rest leia knows. jabba is dead, but there's alway going to be scum like jabba in the world. and han considers that before continuing. ]
There's a difference between... robbing people who deserve it and then there's people like Jabba, who deserve to get lobbed into the nearest black hole. He's got nothing worth saving, or adding. I used to want to rip out his tongue and feed it to Chewie, but I didn't want to poison my first mate.
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Date: 2016-01-13 11:00 pm (UTC)And she's silent, letting his words unfold as they will without interruption. He needs to account for himself as much as she needs him to explain, she suspects. It's a story that's easy enough to imagine: Han, hungry for greater glories and beginning to put his trust in someone whose concerns are too selfish to justify it. And it twists into the story of something larger, the story of them, and larger still into the story of the war.
When he finishes, she waits a moment or two. First, to make sure there isn't more to come, and then, to find words of her own.]
It's a good thing you didn't. I doubt his tongue tasted any better than it smelled.
[Or felt. Or looked. She wouldn't feed Jabba's remains to a dianoga.
A long pause, one she spends the whole time on the verge of speaking, changing her mind, and getting ready to speak again.]
...I don't blame you.
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Date: 2016-01-14 04:59 am (UTC)[ it's said quietly, and han lets his eyes shift down to his hands settled in his lap. he's not really sure what to say after that -- i know you don't, but you should? i know you don't, but if it weren't for me, you wouldn't have been involved in the first place?
how would that have worked? if han had just left and never come back -- paid jabba and gone along his merry way. he would've been miserable. alone. luke might have died. leia, too. the torture and the carbonite and all of that was worth it, in the long run, because he had them. and her. so, in reverse, all of them had to suffer to get what they needed in the end.
still. ]
I got involved with him because it was what I was good at, but...
[ han trails off, trying to figure out what to say. he's excellent at getting what he wants out of people, and sweet-talking his way out of certain death, but talking about your feelings is a lot harder. or talking about your past. your motivations. what drives you to do something versus what doesn't. ]
I didn't have anyone before it caught up to me.
[ jabba had nothing to use against han to get what he wanted, except his own life. ]
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Date: 2016-01-15 12:07 am (UTC)She reaches over to take his hand, her slender fingers curling around his. For a moment, she studies his knuckles, her thumb brushing gently over them, letting a response of her own come to her.]
And when you did, he lost everything.
[Whatever else happened, the fact of the matter is that Han will never have Jabba breathing down his neck again. She hopes his bloated body rots away to nothing.]
If I could do it over again, I'd come up with a different plan. [She doesn't know what it would be, but ideally, certain things would go very differently.] But I'd never leave you behind. I never will.
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