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Leia looked around her new office in their new base. The advance team had carved it out of solid ice. It was small and cramped, barely enough room for the desk--rather, the duraplast folding table that was standing in for the desk. No creature comforts--if the small candle and bowl of sweets she normally had could be classified as such. And no heat or light. Leia set aside her existential crisis and began to unpack her storage cube. As a major general of the Alliance, she had the privilege of two such cubes: one for personal use, and one for her office.
During this most recent evac, she’d had only a few minutes away from the command center and had used them to grab essentials from her desk: data chips, charging cables, storage drives, files. There hadn’t been time to go back to her quarters.
It wasn’t as if there was much there, anyhow, not after someone came through for her cot and blankets. The few things of hers left would be abandoned with the base. By this point in the war, most of her things were standard issue, anyways. Her uniforms, her hair pins, even her underwear. Her dresses, her cosmetics, her perfumes, most of them had been lost now in one evac or another.
Leia tried to focus on the task at hand. They still had this--manifests and duty rosters that would have taken hundreds of hours to recreate. Attack plans. The Stardust file. She had an office, and right now, that was what she needed.
00
Carlist looked at her apologetically. “I’m sorry, your majesty, but your quarters just aren’t ready yet. There was a mix up, and the crew wasn’t alerted until yesterday that you were arriving early,” he explained.
“I’ll just stay in the women’s barracks, then,” she decided. “There’s no need for me to stand on rank.”
“I’m afraid we drastically underestimated the time it would take to prepare the barracks for the personnel we already have. We are doubling up already,” the quartermaster said, checking through her datapad for an unassigned bed.
“Very well, General. I will find somewhere to sleep tonight and we can start on this in the morning,” she replied. Carlist nodded and the deck officer saluted before leaving Leia in the hall outside the space where her quarters were supposed to be. Leia shouldered her bag containing her datapads and marched back across the dark and frigid base to her office.
Han found her there a standard hour later, clearing off her desk.
“Me’n Chewie are cookin’ up some--what are you doing?”
Leia was just unfolding a spare blanket on top of the table. “Getting ready for bed,” she answered without making eye contact.
“You’re sleeping here?”
“Clearly.”
“On a...folding table?”
“Well, there isn’t room for a cot, not that there are any to spare.”
“You’ll barely be able to stretch out. This table is tiny.”
“As, if you haven’t noticed, am I,” she shot back, fluffing a miserable excuse for a pillow and placing it at the head of the table.
“Leia,” he said.
“My quarters aren’t finished, and there isn’t any room anywhere else,” she replied in a very business-like tone. She knew what he was about to offer--how it would look to other people, even though that didn’t really matter...and how it would feel in her own mind, which was far more dangerous a prospect. She knew she would accept before the offer crossed his lips.
He reached out and gathered up the blanket and the pillow and shoved them back in the sterile pouch they came out of. “Chewie’s makin’ chili. Hot enough to curl your hair. Then you can have a bunk in the crew cabin.”
“It’s been a while since I had chili,” Leia said in a non-answer, tucking her pack safely in the corner and locking the door behind them.
00
Chewbacca’s chili was, indeed, hot enough to curl hair. It warmed Leia from the inside out, and with her finally unthawed brain, she realized how stupid her plan to sleep on her desk was.
When the meal was over, Chewie wuffed what was probably a good night and shuffled off to the hold where his hammock hung. Leia kicked her feet up onto one of the many storage cubes littering the Falcon’s decking. She glanced down to check the label, mildly curious as to what he’d freighted in the evacuation.
“Why doesn’t this cube have a label?” Leia demanded, suddenly incensed beyond reason.
“Relax. It’s not Alliance secrets,” Han argued back. “Then again, it might be,” he teased. “Wouldn’t do to advertise where we kept those, would it?”
Leia grit her teeth, too wrung out to argue.
“I will ask only once more, and I expect an answer. What is in that crate?”
Han gestured for her to open it, so Leia heaved a heavy sigh and lifted off the lid. Inside, a few carefully folded garments, a small bag of make-up, a half-empty bottle of perfume, and some data cards. Her things, her personal things from her quarters that she’d given up for lost. She examined the data cards for the labels, which were written in Alderaanian, her own cursive. Pictures. The only private memories she still had of her family.
“I...how...I never packed these,” she said. Han looked at the floor and shrugged.
“Figured you wouldn’t have time, so I sent Chewie to grab what he could.”
Somehow, it made her feel a little better that Han hadn’t been the one to see the sorry state of her unmentionables, which were piled in all their standard-issue-glory at the bottom of the crate.
“I--thank you. Some of these things are...irreplaceable.”
“S’no problem,” he shrugged, shuffling over to the curtain in front of the crew quarters.
“You’ll have to take a top bunk,” he said, abruptly changing the subject. “Bottom ones have the med supplies in them. They don’t have their closets ready yet, and this stuff couldn’t just sit out in the freezing cold.” Again, Leia was hit by how dedicated to her cause he was.
“I appreciate it,” she murmured, unzipping her boots and pulling off her coat. “Give me a hand?” He knelt and cupped his hands to toss her up.
“’Night,” he muttered, switching off the lights and pulling his shirt over his head as the curtain swished back into place. Even in the dim light, she could see his muscular outline.
“Goodnight.” Maybe having to sleep here for a few nights wouldn’t be so bad after all.
00
“She stay with you last night?” Rieekan asked Han. He looked quickly at the older man, who’d dropped down into the empty place across from him in the mess hall. Carlist looked at the captain without worry or fear, just casual interest as he swirled his coffee.
Han shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat.
“Yeah,” he replied gruffly.
Rieekan smiled a little. His plan had worked.
“Good.” Han looked at him in surprise. Rieekan chuckled, seeing Han’s expression. “I know how you feel about her, and I know how she feels about you, too, even if she won’t admit it. Mothma may not be too happy about it, but I, for one, think she needs someone like you to keep her from getting her too overworked.”
“Yes, sir.”
“She goes straight from a 12-hour shift on the floor to her office for a few more hours to work, and then up to her quarters for a few hours of sleep before getting up and doing it all over again. It’s not good for her,” Rieekan continued.
Han agreed, though he didn’t say as much out loud.
“If you’re not opposed to it, I might see what I can do about keeping her out there with you for a while. At least that way, I know someone will make sure she eats something and isn’t having nightmares again.”
It really shouldn't have surprised Han that Carlist's 'The Princess needs to see you' text from the previous day was actually part of a scheme.
Han paused for a moment, words at the edge of his tongue. Time with Leia? An excuse to get her on his ship for meals, to see her in the mornings?
This morning, she'd come out of the bunk room halfway put together with her hair wound in a single braid and bare feet. He'd been surprised to see her toes painted a sultry red. She hadn't been grumpy, but she certainly wasn't the ray of sunshine Luke was when he hopped up every morning. Granted, no one should be that happy on a below zero morning.
Seeing Leia's morning routine had been... enlightening. She truly lived and breathed for the Alliance. As she slipped her kaf and pinned the braid around her head, she was flicking through night reports on her datapad. She hadn't silenced her smartwatch either, yet, and that chirped nearly every 30 seconds with an incoming notification.
Han nodded to Rieekan, trying not seem too eager.
“Don’t let her find out, or you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“She takes after Bail in a lot of ways. But that part, that scary part? That comes straight from Breha.”
Carlist set off down the hall.
00
Carlist had forgotten about Sweetest Day until the automatic calendar notification popped up on his smartwatch the day before. At home, the day would have been marked with flowers and cards and chocolates for special people. Someone on Her Majesty’s security detail would have put donuts in the breakroom, decorated with bright colors and hearts. Years ago, there would have been a card made for him out of flimsi and paste from a certain little princess. He would have had a present for her, too.
He’d been Breha’s head of security for years, even before she’d become the queen. That hadn’t changed after her wedding to Bail. When Leia had come along, they’d made him her godfather. When she’d gone into the Senate, he’d gone underground. It had always been quietly known amongst the Organa family and their confidants that Carlist hadn’t quit--he’d simply been transferred. Leia would have to go underground eventually, and when she did, he’d be there for her.
Sweetest Day. Hardly something they could have celebrated properly during a war...but still, she couldn’t spend it alone. The superstition was that anyone who spent the day far from the company of others was doomed to 10 years of being alone. It wasn’t that he truly believed in the old superstition, but he didn’t totally discount it, either.
When he heard her quarters wouldn’t be finished, he hardly needed to scheme. Just get a quartermaster to tell her there were no cots available, and send Solo to her office right about the time she’d undoubtedly try to curl up on her desk...and they’d be off to the races.
He’d heard rumblings of a betting pool that had originated in the Rogues...perhaps it was time to invest a few credits and cash in on what was surely the inevitable.