Work Text:
The Millennium Falcon had been back on base for at least half an hour with its ramp down, and Leia had yet to see its captain. Chewie had been by with the supply manifest and said the trip had gone well with few issues, the cargo had all been unloaded by a small group of pilots with little else to do, but Leia still hadn’t laid eyes on Han Solo.
She was beginning to…not worry. There was nothing to worry about. Chewie said the trip had been fine. But Han usually found some way to bother her by now; it wasn’t like him to not leave his ship once they landed. She was accustomed to seeing him for a few minutes at least after a supply run.
Leia searched for a reason to board the Falcon without first being invited and found it in a missing signature on the manifest. She generally would have let it slide or just had Han come by her office sometime later to take care of it, but his absence was concerning enough that she felt going to get the signature right away was the only logical course of action.
She entered the ship cautiously, flimsi manifest in hand. She was at home on the Falcon generally speaking, but she also had always had a direct invitation before boarding. This wandering onboard the ship without direction or acknowledgement from captain or first mate was strange to her. But the ramp is down. Surely they expect visitors when they leave the ramp down.
“Han?” Leia called out after a moment’s hesitation. When she received no answer, she had to consider her next move. Cockpit? Does he just hang out in the cockpit when he isn’t flying? Maybe he’s repairing something? She headed toward the cockpit, unsure of where else to start looking for the missing pilot.
Han was indeed in the cockpit, though he was neither hanging out nor repairing anything. He sat reclined in his seat, boots resting on the ship’s control panel, holding a pen in one hand and a book in the other. An actual paper book. Where did he find a book? Leia wondered. She’d seen them many times in the palace library or at university, but most beings opted to store reading materials on datapads. Han himself had a surprising number of books on more than one datapad on the Falcon. Leia had read at least a couple of them on long trips over the past two years.
Leia surmised that whatever he was reading must be fascinating because he didn’t acknowledge her until she cleared her throat loudly and said his name again. Even then, he didn’t look at her, didn’t greet her with a hey, Princess; he just said, “You aren’t what I expected at all,” with a shake of his head as he turned the page.
It was only then that Leia saw the cover of the book in his hands. “What is that?” she exclaimed.
Han finally glanced up at her. “New book. Or new to me. Been out a few months apparently.” He shook his head and tsked. “Shocking,” he mumbled and scribbled something on the offending page with the pen.
Leia stared at the book cover. The girl was familiar — it was her own face, after all — but the photo was not. It was clearly a few years old — Leia couldn’t have been older than eighteen in it — grainy, and probably taken from a long distance by paparazzi. A less-than-official sketch of the Imperial crest covered one of her eyes, an Alliance starbird covered the other. Leia squinted to read the title of the book — it was printed in a garish orange, jarringly ornate script that was difficult to make out.
“Princess, Provoker, or Prevaricator?: the Unauthorized Biography of Leia Organa,” she muttered to herself.
“Fascinating read,” Han said. “Barely been able to put it down.”
“Give me that!” Leia said, grabbing for the book and dropping the manifest in the process.
Han yanked the book out of her grasp. “No can do, Princess. I’m right in the middle of a real interestin’ chapter. You can borrow it when I’m done.”
“Who wrote that?!”
He looked at the back of the book. “‘Compiled by Anonymous, confirmed by sources close to the subject’,” he read.
Leia groaned. “So, they interviewed some people who claim they knew me years ago. Lovely.”
Han raised his eyebrows and shook his head, eyes glued to the pages in front of him. “Don’t know about lovely. It is educational, though.”
She rolled her eyes. “Han, you’ve known me for over two years—“
“Thought I knew you,” he muttered, underlining or possibly crossing out something on the page he was reading.
“—what could you possibly learn from Anonymous?”
He held up his finger. “Anonymous and sources close to the subject.”
She sat in the navigator’s chair behind Han. “All ‘sources close to the subject’ are dead. You and I are closer than anyone who could have contributed to that book.”
“Are we?” Han asked, raising his eyebrows again. “I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all, Highness.”
Leia sighed softly, feeling a little hurt. She couldn’t convince him of anything. If he doubted her after all this time because of a trashy tell-all book… “I highly doubt anything in that book is even a little accurate, but I suppose you can believe what you’d like.” She grabbed the manifest off the floor and handed it to him. “If you could get this signed when you have a chance and bring it to me, I’d appreciate it.” Leia stood to leave.
“Wait, Leia.” Han dropped his feet to the ground and caught her by the wrist. Leia pulled out of his loose grasp but didn’t move. He leaned forward slightly, voice low. “We’re still kiddin’, right? Because I was just teasin’.”
Leia furrowed her brow. She thought he’d been at least half-serious. She sat back down and stared at the book again, attempting to find the humor in it. “What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve read so far?”
He held up a finger to indicate she should wait while he searched through the pages. Han cleared his throat dramatically. “‘She had to climb a mountain in order to be coronated, the very same mountain that claimed her mother’s heart and lungs years prior. She managed it with great difficulty, barely making it to the peak.’”
Leia squinted at him. “I’ve told you about our coronation traditions before. On my Day of Demand—“
Han waved her off. “Yeah, I know, challenge of the mind, heart, body. That’s not what I’m saying.” He looked at her. “Though, if we’re being honest here, they are ridiculous requirements to take somethin’ that’s already yours.”
“It wasn’t already mine; that’s the point—“ Leia let out an exasperated huff. “Never mind. I don’t expect a non-Alderaanian to understand. What did you find so ridiculous about that passage?” It had been mostly accurate if a bit hyperbolic, so what issues Han saw with it, she couldn’t imagine.
“‘Great difficulty’?” Han scoffed. “‘Barely making it to the peak’? I doubt it.”
“It was a very difficult challenge,” Leia said, stifling the smile that his confidence in her abilities inspired. “My mother nearly died on her way down the mountain her first time completing it. And how is that the most unbelievable thing you’ve read? I assumed that book was full of salacious rumors, not actual facts.”
“You said most ridiculous, not most unbelievable. If we’re goin’ for unbelievable…” Han trailed off, first making a note on the page, then flipping through the book again. “‘There were orphans and refugees everywhere. One of the little orphan girls reached out to touch her dress and the princess flinched and told her to keep her grubby hands to herself.’”
Leia’s mouth fell open in shock. She’d expected facts to be twisted, rumors to be expounded on, but hadn’t thought there would be outright lies. “I would never—“
“Most unbelievable, remember?” Han didn’t look at her as he continued to rifle through the book, looking for another passage Leia assumed. “Ah,” he said when he found whatever he was looking for. He looked at her seriously. “Leia Organa, is it true that you ripped bantha milk ice cream out of the hands of a crying child and ate it in front of them?”
“I don’t even like bantha milk.”
“Maybe you did it outta spite, just because you could,” Han suggested.
Leia stared at him, eyes narrow. “No.”
Another note scratched on the page in question. What is he writing? “Think the most surprising thing I’ve learned so far is that…” More page flips. “‘All Alderaanian women wear wigs. They’re naturally bald. Everyone knows it but no one’s been brave enough to call them out on it. The pride they take in their hair is astounding when it’s not even their hair, but the hair of others yanked out by the root and durataped onto a cap.’”
“I’m a little concerned by that person’s understanding of how wigs are made,” Leia said dryly.
Han gasped loudly. “So it is all wigs?”
She rolled her eyes, stifling a smile. “Yes. You caught me. Securing a wig to my naturally bald head in a war zone is definitely a priority for me.”
“Knew there was something up with the hair.” He paused, made a note, and resumed looking for more passages of interest. “Now, this is where I start wonderin’ if maybe they ain’t telling the truth all the time. One person claims you had affairs with half the senators, and another one says, ‘She must be committed entirely to whatever her cause is because I asked her to dinner and was shot down without a second of consideration.’” He looked at her. “Out there breaking hearts, huh?”
“I was trying to do my job—Give me that.” Leia pulled the book out of Han’s hands and read the words herself, attempting to place the source. Her social circles had been incredibly limited due to her position and her work with the Alliance; there hadn’t been many chances for anyone to ask her to dinner. “I bet that’s Pri’m Baltura. I did say no to dinner and he argued with me to try to convince me to go. It was an embarrassing display on his part. I can’t prove it, but I’ve always suspected the reason has asked me in front of others was because he thought I’d feel pressured to say yes.”
“Had he…met you?” Han asked, amusement obvious in his voice.
“Unfortunately.” She frowned. “Not that it matters, but I had one boyfriend, and went on maybe five dates in two years once I entered the Senate full-time. My social life was very boring.”
Han handed her the pen and spoke very seriously. “Fix it.”
Leia snorted, but took the pen anyway. She wrote an amendment in the margins before flipping through a few pages, hunting for more additions in Han’s handwriting. He pulled the book back out of her hands again.
“Hey!” she protested.
“Already told you: you can borrow it when I’m done. Where was I?” Han scribbled a note quickly before turning a few more pages, all the while ignoring Leia’s scowl. “How true is this statement? ‘The entire royal family is made up of shapeshifting, venomous rock warts. You can tell because their fingernails never grow.’”
Leia rolled her eyes. “I don’t even want to dignify that with a response.” Han reached for her hand and examined her stubby fingernails. “I bite them when I’m stressed,” she said, feeling the absurd need to explain their abysmal state. “I doubt I’ve had long fingernails in five years.”
“Hmph.” He released her hand and wrote what had to be close to a paragraph in the margin of the book.
Leia watched curiously as he flipped through a few more pages. Han’s brow furrowed suddenly, all humor drained from his expression. To her shock, her ripped the last dozen or so pages from the book entirely.
“What in—”
“These,” he said, waving the pages in the air so frenetically that she couldn’t make out a single letter on the pages, “are garbage. Don’t worry about ‘em.”
“Because everything you just read to me is the pinnacle of quality journalism,” Leia said flatly.
“Here.” He thrust the book in her direction. Leia took it, grabbing for the loose pages at the same time. Han attempted to tighten his grip on them, but she had caught him by surprise and they slipped from his fingers. “Leia, don’t—”
“It’s about me. I have a right to know what it says,” she said testily. She looked at the offending pages, wondering what could possibly be more outrageous than the claim that her entire family was made up of shapeshifters.
Disloyal Royals: Who Holds the Blame for Alderaan’s Annihilation?
Leia bit her lip, stomach twisting. She didn’t make it through more than a couple of libelous sentences about her parents before handing the pages back to Han. “Here,” she whispered, any humor she had previously had about the book gone.
“Garbage,” he repeated.
She nodded and stood, glancing at her chrono without reading the time. Her head swam. She needed to go…somewhere else. Somewhere private. “I need to go,” she told Han. “Just bring the manifest by my office when you get a chance to sign it.”
“Hey,” Han called after her. Leia turned to look at him. “We all right?”
“Of course,” she said, straining herself to maintain an even tone.
He frowned, creases appearing between his eyebrows. “I’m sorry—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she interrupted, words a little too clipped to sound natural. “I just need to go is all.”
“Okay,” Han said, nodding, though he didn’t sound convinced.
Leia bypassed the Command Center entirely and headed straight for her quarters, aware that she needed to get ahold of her emotions before sitting back down at her desk. She made it all the way to her door before she realized that she was clutching the book to her chest.
She tossed the book on her bunk as soon as she entered the room and paced until the anxious energy that had coiled itself inside her at the sight of that last chapter title finally dissipated. She checked her chrono — she had an hour before her next meeting — and sat on her bunk, curiosity about the book eating at her mind. She didn’t need to know what they’d said about her; they clearly had no desire to know the truth. But Han had written things and scratched out others, and that intrigued her. She resisted opening it for several minutes before the desire to know what Han had written won out.
She chuckled when she read the title page. He had surrounded the word Prevaricator with question marks and scribbled This is the most pretentious word I’ve ever seen. No one in the history of the galaxy has ever used this word. I bet you haven’t even used it.
Leia considered who the you he referred to was briefly, but decided to continue on before she’d thought about it too long. She came upon the recounting of her trip up Appenza Peak. Han had circled the phrases great difficulty and barely making it to the peak, noting Doubt it! in the margin. In the chapter containing the falsehood about her shooing an orphan away from her dress, the words, You get your hands grubby more often than this imaginary orphan does I bet spilled across the top of the page in his messy scrawl. Leia bit her lip when she realized that the notes were written to her. She felt silly for taking so long to piece it together.
The book was full of messy annotations that only Han Solo could write. When she found the paragraph detailing Alderaanian women’s alleged natural baldness, she smiled upon reading, Do these “sources close to the subject” know you at all? You aren’t even Alderaanian by blood. How’s that work? You go bald by absorbing the genes in the room with you?
Leia’s alteration of the paragraph containing the quote likely from Pri’m Baltura remained as she had written it, but Han had made his own addition: an arrow pointing to the quote alongside the words This guys sounds like a tool. You obviously already figured it out, but you can do better. Leia laughed softly, tracing his pen scratches with her index finger.
She flipped through a few more notes that made her laugh before coming upon the last one he had written next to the absurd idea that her family was made up of shapeshifting rock warts. First, he’d scribbled I’ve seen holos. You Organas are all too pretty to be rock warts in disguise, apparently ignoring the shapeshifting portion of the accusation. Leia covered her mouth with her hand bashfully, as if he had said the words out loud. Then she saw the note next to the remark about their fingernails not growing.
Hate that you were so stressed even back then. Hope I’m not the cause of too much of your nail biting now. You should be able to grow em out. You deserve enough peace to grow talons. Like a galaar.
Leia laughed, her chest tight with emotion. That final sentiment was so sweet and earnest and terrible at the same time — wishing nails for her like the talons on a bird of prey — it seemed to almost embody Han. Her laughter calmed down after a few seconds, but then she read, You deserve enough peace to grow talons. Like a galaar. again and she couldn’t help but chuckle.
She had been upset about the torn-out pages, the twisted accusations of intentional harm caused by the two people she loved the most who weren’t even alive to defend themselves. She still was upset if she was honest with herself. But whoever had written those pages, whoever had written the entire book — Anonymous and sources close to the subject — they didn’t know her. They had proven as much by what had been recorded and published.
Han, as frustrating as he could be at times, knew her. Han had shown through quips and jokes and scribbled outrage on her behalf that he was her friend, really and truly.
She found him after dinner, outside the Falcon. When he saw her, book in hand, his eyes widened and he shifted nervously. Leia smiled at him in an attempt to reassure him.
“You all right?” he asked warily. He shoved his hand in his jacket pocket and sat on a crate, giving Leia the rare opportunity to look directly into his hazel eyes without having to tilt her head up.
She nodded, reaching out to straighten the collar of his jacket that had folded in on itself and allowing her hand to linger. “Perfectly fine.”
“Look, Leia, I didn’t know—”
Leia shook her head sternly and cut him off. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Han.” She dropped her hand from his jacket and rested her fingers lightly on his arm, her gaze softening as she examined his face. “A lot of it made me laugh. I know you wouldn’t have shown it to me if you had known about those last pages.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t’ve,” he muttered, staring at her hand on his arm. “You wanna get rid of that thing? We could burn it or somethin’.”
She furrowed her brow and shook her head. “No, I read through it. I want to keep it.”
Han’s brows shot upward, eyes skeptical. “You’re—You read it already? The whole thing?”
Leia chuckled and shook her head again. “Not the whole thing.” She squeezed his arm before letting her hand drop to her side. “Just the good parts.”
“There were good parts?” he asked in disbelief.
She bit her lip before offering him another smile. “The annotations have some merit.”
Han ran his fingers through his hair absently. “Oh.”
“In fact, I was hoping to have more added.” She lifted the book for emphasis. “With my help, of course. Can’t trust you to not go completely rogue.”
He chuckled softly. “‘Course. We’re better together anyway.” He paused before rushing back in with, “Our work, I mean.”
Leia smiled, though she didn’t dare confirm his statement out loud.
Years after the final shot was fired in the final battle of the war, Princess, Provoker, or Prevaricator? stood on a sparsely-populated shelf in a quiet apartment alongside a similarly annotated first edition of Hero, Henchman, or Hustler?: the Unofficial Han Solo Story. They had heard whispers for over a year of another unauthorized book existing — this time featuring both the Princess and the Hero — but the rumors had amounted to nothing, and after months spent glancing over book sellers’ stalls at foreign markets and combing the holonet for it, Leia assumed the reports regarding the existence of such a book were entirely made up.
Until…
“Finally found somethin’ you’ve been lookin’ for,” Han said as he unpacked his bag one evening. He had just arrived home from a short trip off-planet, and Leia was more than glad that they had planned to stay in.
“What’s that?” she asked from her spot on their bed. She watched him, the relief that he had made it home alive and well never seeming to diminish no matter how safe the trip allegedly was.
Han tossed a book onto her lap and Leia snorted when saw the cover. The artist’s rendering of their faces was the best yet, though Leia thought it fairly obvious that whoever had drawn them had used the arrest photos that had accompanied their Imperial wanted notices as inspiration for their facial expressions. This time, the letters that made up the title were raised and colored a shiny, gaudy gold. The Princess and Her Con[artist]sort: the Definitive Account of a Wartime Romance
Leia shook her head. “They’re really starting to reach with these titles,” she murmured. “This one doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Think it’s a play on consort,” Han offered, shoving his bag into their closet.
“Oh, I understood that. It still doesn’t make sense,” she said as Han sat close to her. He rested his chin on her shoulder and examined the book cover with her. “You weren’t really what I’d call a con artist, anyway. That’s a vocation requiring a bit more…”
“More what?” Han demanded, though Leia noticed he didn’t move away from her the way he would have if he were truly offended.
She shrugged slightly. “Finesse? Subtlety?” She turned her head enough to plant a kiss on his stubbly cheek. “I like that you weren’t a con artist. I always felt like I could trust you because you were honest with me.” She opened the book about a third of the way through. “Or were you?”
“I’m honest with ya,” Han said seriously. “Always have been.”
Leia raised her eyebrows and shook her head playfully, using a fingernail to flip back to the list of chapter titles. “I think we need to see what the book says before we go making any claims of honesty. It’s the definitive account of our wartime romance after all.”
“Think it’ll be better than mine?” Han asked, gesturing to the shelf that held their other books.
“Undoubtedly,” Leia answered. “We’re always better together.”