Chapter Text
prologue
There are five steps in a fairy tale: boy meets girl, they fall in love, boy and girl are tragically pulled apart, true love conquers all, boy and girl live happily ever after. Five steps to a blushing bride and a magical wedding, five steps to true love’s kiss and everlasting happiness.
But some rules don’t apply to Leia Organa and Han Solo. This is one of them.
It might take them a while, but they’ll get there.
Eventually.
(Sometimes, five steps aren't enough to get a happy ending.)
(Such a shame no one told them it was supposed to be easy.)
i.
It starts like this:
Once upon a time, there was a princess with a fiery spirit and a quick tongue who found herself, through a series of bizarre twists of fate, in need of rescuing. This isn’t to say that she is your ordinary, run of the mill damsel-in-distress, oh no. In fact, she would have stared you down with daggers in her eyes and a look that have made great men squirm and lesser men weep had you suggested such a preposterous thing.
Because this princess, although a damsel and in distress, is never a damsel-in-distress and these, she wishes to point out, are two very different things.
So yes. There is a princess. There is distress.
Despite her circumstances and the threat of impending doom hanging overhead, she expects no prince on his mighty steed to come to her rescue. She can find a way to get herself out of this mess (eventually), thank you very much, although some help will be much appreciated and welcomed.
Through a series of even more bizarre twists, she finds herself facing her cavalry, which arrived in the form of a pair of knights in not-so shining armor, barrelling in through her dungeon cell with a barely thought out plan.
Had this been an ordinary fairytale, the princess would have swooned and stood back as her knights did their rescuing and waited until they could all ride off into the sunset.
But this is no ordinary fairytale and though they did ride off into the sunset (that part comes later), there is no swooning. There is, instead, a good deal of eye rolling and witty repertoire.
This is some rescue! You came in here and you didn’t have a plan for getting out?
Maybe you’d like it back in your cell, Your Highness.
There is also a whole lot of (ungrateful, one of the knights thinks, understandable, says the other) sneering and instead of standing by and showering them with gratitude as princesses were wont, she scowls, grabs a blaster, and joins the fray.
What the hell are you doing?
Somebody has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, flyboy!
ii.
Leia tries to thank him later, because as unimpressive as their half-assed, half-planned attempt at a rescue was and as inept as she initially thought them to be, she is grateful that he helped save her life.
Yes, she does have a heart buried under all that ice.
Not a bad bit of rescuing, huh? You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.
That doesn’t sound too hard.
And then he opens his mouth.
iii.
He is, she soon discovers, an arrogant, cynical, money-loving scoundrel.
It’s amazing how despite how little they know about each other, despite not even knowing his name, he annoys her more than anyone she’s ever met in her nearly two decades of existence.
It’s not over yet.
It is for me, sister. Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution, and I’m not in it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid. I’m in it for the money.
She doesn’t know what exactly it is about him that makes her want to fight him, to contradict him, to prove him wrong.
Is it that self-satisfied smirk? His smug, conceited tone? His cheeky rejoinders? The cocky, impertinent air about him? His insolence, his lack of respect and courtesy towards her and her station? The fact that he sees her as nothing more than a hand to sign his pay check?
All of these and more, of course. But Leia has met many a man as ill-mannered as him. Some even worse than him. And yet for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why he can make her temper flare so easily, can make her lose her composure and forget all the lessons on etiquette drilled into her head since childhood, with just a few words and a quirk of his lips.
She’s known him for all of an hour, for kriff’s sake.
You needn’t worry about your reward. If money’s all that you love, then that’s what you’ll receive.
Leia makes sure every word bites and cuts through him, every syllable poised to hurt, and shoots him a glare that only ice could rival in coldness. He deserves it.
iv.
Your friend is quite a mercenary. I wonder if he really cares about anything . . . or anybody.
v.
She learns his name later, perhaps much later than she should have.
(He did save her life after all.)
(Stupid nerfherder.)
Han Solo.
vi.
I really thought he’d change his mind, Luke says, with a wounded look in his eyes.
I thought he would too, Leia wants to tell him, but he looks like a kicked puppy, so hurt and disappointed and earnest, that all she wants to do right now is comfort him and wipe that look away.
He’s got to follow his own path, she tells him instead. No one can choose it for him.
She believes this, kisses Luke’s cheek, and tries not to dwell on her own disappointment.
vii.
She looks for him with the intent of convincing him to stay, if only for Luke. It takes Leia a while to summon all her patience, knowing that a conversation with him will undoubtedly lead to her wishing she was still aboard the Death Star. Or, better yet, that they left Han there instead.
But by the time she composes herself, she sees the Millennium Falcon flying into the distance. She stands there, watching until it is nothing more than a speck she can barely make out, and wonders why she thought, even for a moment, that she could have persuaded him to stay.
Leia wonders why she expected him to.
She should have known better than that.
(All for Luke, Leia says when she asks herself why she wanted him to stay. For Luke.)
viii.
You’re all clear, kid! Now let’s blow this thing and go home!
She looks up when she hears his voice and, inexplicably, she smiles.
ix.
She is grinning ear to ear, practically bouncing with excitement when she hears the cheering.
Luke! She runs to him, hugs him like she almost lost him (she almost did) and laughs as he spins her around. She can’t remember a time ever feeling this deliriously happy. Not since the war, not since the Rebellion.
And then Han is there, in three easy strides, grinning just as wide. Well, I wasn’t going to let you get all the credit and take all the reward, he tells Luke, but his face is alight with cheer and there is no truth to his words.
Without even thinking about it, Leia puts her arms around him and hugs him just as tightly as she did Luke.
I knew there was more to you than money, and she looks up to see him smiling so brilliantly that if she wasn’t so elated, she would have blinked, taken aback by his shining eyes, and tried to find her bearings.
x.
When she tells Luke and Han about the medals they were to receive for their heroism, their reactions are exactly what Leia expected.
Luke stares at her in awe and blushes, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. She can’t help but find it endearing.
“Wow, I mean – gee, you don’t have to do that,” he says, looking up at her with those eyes again, all wide-eyed innocence.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Luke,” she says, shaking her head. “Of course we do. You saved our lives! I don’t know where the Rebellion would be without you.”
Luke blushes even harder, ducking his head and murmuring, “It’s not a big deal,” so softly that she almost doesn’t hear it.
Han, predictably, smirks and wears a smug, self-assured look on his face as though he doesn’t expect anything less than an award ceremony in his honor, and he tells her so.
“She’s right, kid. They’ll be lost without us,” he drawls and Leia is sure that her scowl will be a permanent fixture on her face if she insists on talking to this arrogant bantha-head for more than five seconds a day. “They ought to give us a kiss for our good deeds while they’re at it, don’t you think, Princess?”
He winks and leans back on his seat with a devil-may-care manner about him that she’s sure he thinks is attractive.
(It is, damn it.)
Leia lifts her chin and stares him down, an act she would have done just as easily had he been standing.
“I suppose we can find someone who’ll stoop low enough to do the job,” she says coolly.
Luke snickers and Han looks up at her in mock hurt.
“You wound me, Highness,” he says, clutching his chest dramatically, “and here I thought you were warming up to me.”
“Not yet, flyboy.”
“Then what do you say if I help speed up the process? Say . . . after lights-out tonight?”
Luke sputters indignantly on her behalf, but Leia’s blood is too busy boiling under her skin for her to notice. Leia stands still, mouth hanging open, before finding enough of her voice to bite out, “You have a vastly over-inflated opinion of yourself, Han Solo, if you think any woman will ever consider that offer!”
She doesn’t wait for his ego to deflate before stalking out of the room, visibly shaking as she imagines with every loud stomp of her boots Han Solo’s face beneath her feet.
xi.
She is walking to General Willard’s office, trying to compose herself, when she hears him approaching her from behind.
“Avoiding me, are you, Princess?”
Leia doesn’t answer and keeps her head resolutely forward, refusing to give him the satisfaction of an acknowledgment.
“Guess I’ll just have to walk with you until I get my answer then.”
She ignores this, fully expecting him to walk away muttering under his breath about the mystery of women and ice princesses who can’t take a joke (he’s just the type, isn’t he?), but he’s still walking silently by her side thirty seconds later, hands in his pockets and looking like he has no care in the world.
Leia holds back a sigh and tries not to show her exasperation. (Curse Willard and his office. There was simply no good reason for it to be on the other side of the base.)
This is, she’s sure, the most silent Han has ever been. The quiet between them has gone on longer than she ever thought was possible and for some reason, this vexes her even more.
“I’m impressed,” she says at last, stopping in front of him. “you do know how to keep your mouth shut.”
Han proves her wrong, damn him, by sending her an infuriating smirk.
“I’m sure I can find other things to impress you with.”
“I’d rather you don’t,” she retorts without missing a beat. “Now, if you would be so kind as to leave – I have other things to attend to and the corridors aren’t wide enough to accommodate your ego.”
“I’ll tone it down if it means you’ll let me walk beside you,” he says softly, in a way that sounded so genuine that Leia is caught off guard. His face has melted into a look she hasn’t seen before and for once there’s not even a shadow of a smirk.
She struggles to find her words for a minute, but only a minute because then she notices the flecks of gold swimming in his eyes and she has the inexplicable need to see if they’ll sparkle as brightly as the real thing. She looks away, settling for a mute nod and deciding that she is out of breath from the unexpectedness of his request and not the realization that they do.
Accepting the closest she’ll get to an apology, Leia lets Han walk her to Willard’s office. They are both quiet the entire way, but now she finds the silence strangely amiable and – dare she say it – even tolerable.
When they reach her destination, he swings the door open and bows grandly. The crooked smirk is back on his face and Leia rolls her eyes, trying to hide her smile as she turns to greet General Willard.
xii.
It sinks in much later, at the most inopportune time.
After the award ceremony, Rogue Squadron decides to lead their nth victory celebration with shots of cheap whiskey and asinine re-enactments of their battle against the Death Star. There are, of course, drinks all around, as is the custom of victory parties, and everyone, not excluding the stiff-shouldered Mon Mothma, is in a perpetually jubilant mood. Triumphant battles against evil empires are known to do this to a person.
Leia is perhaps the only remaining sentient still sober on Yavin IV. Even Luke, despite all slurred protests to the contrary, is as roaringly drunk as the rest of them. Still, she sits with the Rogues, alternating between laughter and eye rolling, and tries not to seem too amused by their raucous antics.
And then, for the first time since she escaped her cell on that blasted space station, she thinks of her father and what he would have thought of their merry band.
This is the galaxy’s last hope? he would have said incredulously if he could see them now, the Alliance’s heroes in all their red-faced glory. And then he would have laughed, because he could never stay serious when surrounded by so much merriment, and joined the festivities with a glass of too-sweet Alderaani champagne in hand.
Leia has always hated that champagne, but it’s her father’s favorite and he never fails to keep a bottle on hand for impromptu celebrations like this. What she wouldn’t give to be drinking that with her father now, instead of nursing her half-empty glass of Nabooan wine.
Grinning his lopsided grin, Han leans his elbow on the table in front of her so his face is level with hers and she has no choice but to look at his eyes. He says something, another inane remark made, no doubt, to needle her as usual, but she is suddenly overwhelmed with a deep and debilitating sadness.
She means to shake her head at him, to tell him to leave because she isn't in the mood to listen to his taunts, but she finds herself staring at the medal around his neck and whispering quietly, “My father should’ve given that award.”
For a moment, Leia is convinced that no one heard her, but then Han stands, pulling her up by her shaking hands, and suddenly her vision is too blurry for her to care about the arm wrapped around her trembling shoulders.
A part of her wonders where he’s taking her as she feels the startled looks boring into her back, but soon they are standing outside, in the dark, beneath the star-strewn sky. She looks up to where her planet should be, the realization that there is one less shimmering dot in the sky crashing into her like a tidal wave, and all she can think of is her father and how he can’t be something that exists in past tense, he can’t, and her mother and her friends and Alderaan, how it should still be up there, in its place in the sky.
Trembling gives way to sobs and she can’t believe Han is still there, circling her into him, her head tucked under his chin, his hand rubbing her back. His shirt is stained with tears, but he doesn’t seem to care, holding her close as she tries to suppress the heaving sobs rising in her throat.
xiii.
Her initial assessment of one Han Solo had been wrong. He does care. There is more to him than money. He is capable of being more than a foul-mouthed, uncaring scoundrel. She sees it when he's with Chewie, with Luke. And, sometimes, even when he's with her.
Leia has to remind herself of these more often than she likes, when Han is being exceptionally infuriating and she has to stop herself from pulling his hair or, worse, hers.
(To do so would be foolish, she has to tell herself, and destroying her neat braids would be decidedly un-ladylike of her.)
Because as insensitive as Han Solo can be, these things do hold true and there is something worth seeing under all that bravado – no matter what that space pirate says.
xiv.
They argue. They bicker. They squabble like children.
At first, it puts the rebels ill at ease and they give them a wide berth, pretending that all is normal, as they should, and that they’re not listening in. They watch them warily as if waiting for either one of them to blow up and make the ground shake.
Luke eyes their matches back and forth, like he is watching a tennis game and can’t miss a second of it. He doesn’t even bother to pretend that he isn’t listening, but the two of them are always so caught up in their arguments to even pay attention to him.
But soon the bickering becomes normal, routine.
Luke rolls his eyes when they’re at it again. Everyone else just ignores them and goes on their merry way.
Normal.
They fight, Luke sighs, no one cares, they carry on.
xv.
The first time Han returns from a mission sporting more injuries than a few cuts and bruises, he is more than a little worse for wear. To say that the mission hadn’t gone smoothly would be an understatement, from what Leia is able to gather. Han had to be carried back to base, unconscious as he was, his arm broken and his lip split.
So Leia hides her concern the best way she knows how – with snark, yelling, and loud, biting reprimands about recklessness and idiots and honestly, Han, what were you thinking, yelling and charging at those Stormtroopers like a madman? Have you lost your mind?
Han, that stupid, careless, idiotic nerfherder, is laughing.
“Aww,” he says, leaning back on his bed with smiling eyes. “Admit it, Your Worship, you do care about me.”
Leia can’t decide if she wants to punch him or hug him or just walk away from him altogether. One would think that, having woken up after a near-death experience, Han would be a little less insufferable. And yet, seeing him there, awake and well and galling attitude still intact, she feels a wave of relief wash over her.
Leia doesn’t tell him this. She doesn’t tell him about the crippling sense of helplessness she felt when she saw Chewie carrying his unconscious form as he descended the Falcon. She doesn’t say anything about her worry, how her stomach had sunk through the ground when she inexplicably thought, for a seemingly endless moment, that he was dead, that he was gone, just like her father and her mother and everything she has ever known –
And she most definitely doesn’t breathe a word about how her stomach returned from whatever pit it sank to, only to somersault when he smiled at her, how seeing him seemed to lessen the weight on her shoulders and made it more bearable.
What she does do is what she normally does when confronted with his smart mouth.
“And you’re as delusional as ever,” she says, scowling.
Unaffected and grin still in place, he answers, “Not gonna ask how I’m doing? I’m hurt.”
Leia finds herself softening and silently curses his stupid, lopsided grin. “How are you feeling?” she asks, her worry so palpable that there is no point in hiding it.
“Doin’ okay. They fixed me up all right,” he says, shrugging. “Could’ve been worse.”
Her hackles rise at his nonchalance. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.” Her voice sounded harsh and brittle, even to her ears.
“I got the job done, didn’t I?” He stiffens, meeting her glare with his own. “Didn’t think you’d care ‘bout how I went about it.”
“That’s not the point, Han. What you did – taking on those men when you were outnumbered – it was suicide! If backup hadn’t arrived, you – you could have died.”
“So what if I did?” he snaps, voice rising, words dripping with sarcasm. “Didn’t think you’d miss me. Scared you were never gonna see me again?”
Leia knows that he’s only saying this to get a rise out of her, that he doesn’t actually think that she doesn’t care about him at all (Han does know, doesn’t he? Surely, he knows.), but her heart is pounding in her chest, her breath caught in her throat, and all she can do is stare.
For too-long, breathless seconds, they stare at each other, the silence ringing so loud that Leia doesn’t know how to break it, and then Han’s face melts into an expression she’s seen before, but can’t read.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, his voice so quiet, so serious, green eyes soft and earnest that Leia believes him. There’s a promise there, she sees it, and she couldn’t have doubted him if she tried.
She can’t find her voice at first, can’t keep looking at his face when he’s giving her that look that she can’t explain.
(She hates things that she can't explain, this look especially. It makes her stomach flutter, makes her words fly out of her brain, and she doesn't understand why.)
Leia is exceptionally adept at schooling her emotions into neutrality, but with him, she forgets how to keep it all hidden and there’s always something that slips when she is around him. Still, for her sake, she keeps up the facade, because Han can see right through her in a way no one else can and she doesn’t know what to feel about that.
So she looks up at him, face decidedly impassive, and nods. “Good,” she says tersely, and he nods back, expression slowly fading to blankness.
She should leave now, she knows. Now was as good a time as any. But she’s smiling at him, a small smile, and her mask has slipped before she can stop it.
“I won’t have anyone to argue with if you did,” she hears herself say.
Laughing eyes. A charming smile. “Can’t live without me, can you, Princess?”
Before Leia can think of a witty comeback (because yes, she could have, and no, his smile isn’t distracting in the least), Luke is there, flanked by Chewie and the droids, eyes wide and worried and panicked, and Chewie is roaring, and Threepio is blabbering, and –
She leaves before she can convince herself otherwise, and wonders if her heart will ever go back to its normal rhythm.
xvi.
Because here’s the thing, perhaps the only not Rebellion-related thing Leia Organa will never admit even under the threat of death or Darth Vader’s brand of torture: she cares about him.
(No, not like that.)
In the short time she has known him, he has proven himself to be conceited. And arrogant. And vulgar. And insufferable. And other unpleasant adjectives that are simply too many to list.
But he is also kind, putting his arms around her when he sees the walls about her waver, lends his shoulder for her to cry on without hesitation, smiles at her with his eyes and a tiny upturn of his lips. He has seen her at her most vulnerable, her defenses down and her icy exterior nothing more than a puddle beneath her feet, and has not once said a demeaning word against her for her weakness.
Leia will deny it vehemently even on her death bed. She will never admit it – she hates admitting it.
But Han Solo has become a constant in her world of perpetually changing destinies, an anchor for her to hold on to when the current is too strong and the ocean too deep.
This isn’t to say that Luke isn’t a constant, because he is. He is her whole world now, him and Han and the Rebellion, all she has left to live for, and she will hold on to them as firmly as she is able.
(It's sad, really, how her world has been reduced to two men and a seemingly hopeless cause.)
But Han is different. Han, with his (sometimes) kind eyes and (rare) honest smiles.
She just doesn’t know how to explain it yet.