fic: Between

[splinteredstar]

Leia, the night after everyone returns from the Starkiller base. (Almost everyone.) 

Canonical character death, slight hand waving of force abilities, brief Obi-Wan. Han/Leia.

 

Leia Organa does not publicly mourn. She has her duty, and while the destruction of the Starkiller is a victory it is not a decisive one. She pushes her feelings aside and spends hours sorting through the intel and organizing observation runs – doing what is necessary, as she always does.

From her office, she can feel the news spread across the base, the girl telling people what she saw. Leia’s instinctual connection with the force is enough for her to track the knowledge from one soul to another by the rippling shockwaves of disbelief and grief and rage. Every now and then, someone stops at her door with a variation of “are you okay?” on their lips, but she waves them away each time.

(Dameron stops by three times.)

(He’s a good kid.)

Late at night, when the thrum of life has slowed as much as it ever does, Leia lays down her data reader, rubs her eyes, and knows, suddenly, that she is not alone.

She stiffens, her mind scrambling. Did she miss someone coming in? She isn’t that tired. (Is she?) Her senses flare out – Luke? No…

“Hello, Leia.”

Her shoulders drop and she turns in her chair to face the glowing outline of Obi-Wan Kenobi. He appears for her less often than he does for Luke, but this is not the first time. She musters up a smile – unnecessary, from the sympathy in his eyes, but she tries anyway.

“Hello, Obi-Wan.” He doesn’t ask if she’s okay, for which she’s grateful. “I take it you’ve heard?”

A hand, translucent and tinging, rests on her arm. There’s no weight to it but the faint pressure of force energy, but the gesture has a weight of its own. It doesn’t fix anything, not with everything she’s not letting herself think about, not with the gaping holes in her soul where her husband and son and brother should be – but it’s nice, regardless.

“Han has joined the Force,” Obi-Wan says with a nod.  A very Jedi answer, Leia thinks with something approaching bitterness but not quite reaching it. She half expects a Jedi proverb next, something about “and so the force is in us all” or something about the inevitability of death, and fully plans on throwing something at his incorporeal form if he does.  But instead, the hand on her arm squeezes, very gently. 

Leia covers the spot on her arm where it rests with her own hand. It’s not quite as comforting as living touch would be, but it’s more than she’s allowed herself so far, so it’s better than nothing.

(She is the anchor holding everyone in place, she is the lighthouse to guide them home, she is necessary to the survival of the galaxy and everyone in it. She hasn’t broken yet, and damned if she’s going to let it happen now.)

(Sometimes, she thinks becoming a Jedi is the easy way out.)

“How is he?” It slips out before she can stop herself, even though it may be an impossible question. As far as she understands, only those strong in the force maintain any sort of self-identity after death, and even then only as long as they want to. She never asked after her parents, or any of her childhood friends, or the comrades in arms that she’s lost through two brutal wars.

But she feels Han’s death like a vice on her heart, like a hole in her chest, like the blade struck her instead of him. Every other loss in her life she was able to /use/, strike it like a match and set fire to the pool of rage she kept tucked behind her breastbone like a fuel pod. Every other loss gave her an enemy, a target, something to /fight/ - except this time the only target in sight is Ben, her son, and her pool of hatred has too much love mixed into it for the sparks to catch.

(Maybe this is all her fault, after all. Hatred is no tool of the Jedi.)

(There’s more than one reason she never trained with Luke.)

Obi-Wan sighs, not unkindly. “He is grieving,” he says, finally, making Leia look up. She hadn’t expected any answer at all, much less that one. Obi-Wan catches her expression and almost smiles. The expression makes him look younger, but only barely. “It is unusual for someone who is not trained in the force to maintain themselves after death, but he is… strong willed.”

She huffs a laugh, a familiar bubble of relief-exasperation-love in her throat, a combination of emotions she’s long since just labeled “Han.”

“He is, isn’t he?” Trust her smuggler to ignore the rules. Another impossible question presses against her lips, but the hole in her chest keeps draining all of her energy and she’s much too tired to try and keep it in. “Can he appear– like you?” She waves a hand to indicate his form.

Obi-Wan blinks. Leia likes to think that he would have offered by now if it were possible, or Han would just have appeared himself. Then again, he’s always appeared on his own schedule. (She can’t tell if that thought is bitter or fond.) Then the old Jedi tilts his head.

“I am not certain if it possible,” He says, and Leia doesn’t let herself be disappointed. “To manifest this way requires a great deal of force energy…” But there’s a spark in his eyes, something of the young man her father told her about sometimes, a Kenobi who was more than duty and grief bound together, who was able to smile without the shadow of mourning. “It might be, yet. But I will need your help.” Leia nods, because of course she does. “Focus on him.”

She follows his lead, focusing all the energy she has left into the broken connection inside of her head, into the place that Han is supposed to be – The energy sparkles along her skin, warm and sweet – and then twists, solidifies into –

“Han,” Leia breathes out.

He looks – good. Younger than when she saw him last, without the weight of years on his face or the dip in his collarbone from an old injury. He’s transparent, slightly more than Obi-Wan is.  Han looks around, blinks once, and –

“Leia.” A blur of blue and then he’s kneeling, hands wrapped around hers in a haze of sparks. She absently notices Obi-Wan disappearing, but hardly cares because Han, /Han/. His soul presses against her – all his grief, all his regret, all the things he would have said if he’d known he wasn’t coming back. “Fuck, Leia, I’m so sorry, I-” He breaks off, and suddenly Leia realizes her eyes are burning.

She hasn’t wept today, she hasn’t /let/ herself – but she is weeping now, thick and ugly sobs tearing out of her throat. Han blurs and she looks away, trying to wipe at her eyes. A translucent hand touches her cheek, and she turns back.

“Careful, Princess. Keep that up and I might start to think you missed me.”

Leia hiccups, batting her hand at him and smiling through her tears. “Can’t have that, can we?” She swallows and wipes her eyes again, the bubble of emotion in her throat near bursting. “You might start to get the right impression of me.”

Han – her husband, her love, tied to her by a string stronger than the force or distance – grins at her and kisses her hand, making her skin prickle. Then he leans his head against her hand for a long moment in silence, and reality pushes down around them once more. This is not a happy reunion, as much as the hole in her chest feels smaller now.

“I’m so sorry Leia,” Han whispers, still not looking up, “I…I couldn’t bring him back, I tried, I’m, fuck.” He heaves a breath that he probably doesn’t have to take, and Leia curls her hand around his half-sold one.

She doesn’t say that it’s okay, because it isn’t and might never be again. (Luke was her hope. Luke was /everyone’s/ hope, and she only sometimes blames him for running from that.) So she just shrugs and says, caught somewhere in that gaping hole between fondness and bitterness, “I know.”

This time, it’s Han who makes a noise that’s not quite a laugh. He looks up, and she knows that the grief in his eyes matches hers. She can’t blame him for failing. She had expected it, in a way, and so had he. They both accepted the risk. It had been her last selfish option – she couldn’t go after Ben herself, because the resistance needed her in a way that it did not need Han.

(Always the resistance, always her duty. People need her here. She cannot abandon the many for the sake of the one.)

(But he is her /son/, and oh, this is definitely her fault.)

“He didn’t want to do it,” Han says, something almost like pleading in his voice, and she almost hates him in that moment for trying to make excuses – except that she can’t quite manage that, either. “He – thought he had to, he didn’t want to, he was /crying/,”

She strokes his transparent cheek. “You’re still dead, Han.”

It’s the argument she had with Luke about their father, in one form or another, across the years. Yes, he saved Luke’s life, and she is grateful for it. Yes, there is every reason to believe that the emperor was controlling him a great deal. Her home world is still gone and her parents – the people who /raised/ her – are still dead. Suffering that could have been prevented by him wasn’t. It’s an old battle.

It turns out there are some fights even she tires of, eventually.

Han shrugs, not interested in having that fight either. They might not have time for it – she can feel his spirit being tugged away from her, back towards whatever after there was. She’s pulling him to her, with all her focus and strength and fury and love – but that’s not going to be enough for long, and they both know it.

(It turns out that wanting something doesn’t make it possible.)

(It doesn’t stop her from trying.)

So she swallows down what she knows she doesn’t have time to say, everything she should have said before, and touches his face. Her fingers tingle, and she doesn’t take them back.

“There’s still good in him,” Han insists, just like he had before he left, “I know he’s – ha,” he looks down, presses a hand to the spot on his chest as if feeling the lightsaber pierce him yet. Force knows Leia’s chest still aches. “I know what he’s done as much as anyone, and.” He runs a hand through his hair, looks away, fidgets. His knees would be aching if he were alive. “I don’t know if he can be saved, but,”

“I’ll try,” Because even now, she can’t do anything but. Her mouth twists with some relative of grief. “No promises, though.”

Han nods, and shuffles to his feet. She follows before he can try to tug her up – she’s not sure it would work, and doesn’t quite want to find out. She kisses him, properly, and if she closes her eyes she can pretend her lips don’t tingle. She wraps an arm around him, willing him to be solid a little bit longer even as his spirit starts to dissolve in her arms, even though they both know they’re running out of time.

(They have always been running out of time.)

(At least this time they’re aware of it.)

“I’ll try and stick around long enough to meet you at the gate,” he whispers into her hair. Han pulls back, and there’s something of the rakish smuggler she fell in love with four decades ago in his grin – and there’s also something of the man who said, quietly, that he would try and bring their son back. “But, you know, there’s no need for you to rush.”

She snorts and nods into his shoulder, and pulls back so that she doesn’t have to feel him dissolve. She still watches it happen though, holds his gaze as he holds hers, as he dissolves into energy and spirit and dust. Soon, there’s nothing left of Han except the faint smell of engine grease.

Leia breathes it in, holds it in her lungs for a moment, and then exhales and turns back to her desk. She still has work to do.