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White. It was the color of innocence. Safety. Purity. Light.
If you looked at the stars long enough they seemed to be white. A vivid, ‘so bright you have to look away’ white. But Han Solo didn’t want to look away. He liked to look at them for as long as he could stand it. While he stared he would find himself losing touch with everything around him. He would forget where he was, who he was, even for a small moment. Then he would finally look away.
Han Solo was doing fine. Him and the white stars. Sure, he was in desperate need of money. Sure his only companion was a wookie. Sure he really needed work. But being alone. That was something Han had gotten use to.
He could look at stars all day while traveling about them and never get tired of it. Sometimes Chewbacca would grumble at him, saying they were just balls of gas.
But there would be no life without life. How could something so beautiful be so simple?
She was wearing white the first time he met her. It covered her body completely. Leaving just her face exposed. Her dark hair was done up on the sides of her head and her cheeks pink with excitement. Though the dress was a bit dirty from the time spent in her cell, the Princess’s white dress was still vividly white
Pure. Like her. He thought. She was royalty. The daughter of Alderaan. She did not need him. He should not have even been here. It was a job, the need for money and the want of excitement.
But Leia could handle herself, Han soon learned. She spoke up and gave orders and Han was amazed by being in her presence. The leader of this rebellion. Fighting for a cause so much bigger than her. Than him, and Luke. He almost wanted to join her cause. But he was not fit for this life. He flew the millennial falcon. He lived amongst the stars.
She was beautiful. He’d give himself that much. Light seemed to follow her. Like a sun.
White, Han noticed, also stood for coldness.
He tried to recall the last time he had not been cold. The last time the sun’s heat had actually reached him. But he couldn’t. He didn’t have the energy anymore.
Hoth was the coldest place Han had ever been. The snow was deep and the stars were too far away for him to reach. He had learned, if he looked at the snow and how it almost seemed to glow in the light, it was almost the same as looking at stars. It was not the same though. He never forgot who he was. Or why he was there. This was the site of the Rebel Alliance's Echo Base. And he had followed them here. The Princess. Leia.
And Luke. Who had left the base and whom Han had to drag back half dead. He was fine. Already fighting the Empire off from the sky. With Leia giving the orders back on the frozen ground. Meanwhile Han, with his newly repaired ship, was also ready to bid this cold misery of a planet goodbye. The fighting had come too close to him. He was not apart of the rebellion.
But then he heard. The command center of the base had been hit. Leia. He had to get her out of here. He traveled back through the tunnels of the site. The fort was built out of white snow. The closer he got to her, the colder he seemed to get. But he had to get her to safety. The first thing he noticed once he reached commands were the ruins that remanded. Sparks, light, popped from places where the wires were broken. Almost all the staff had evacuated, and rapidly Han found Leia and C3PO hunched over a computer.
She would not leave. She had to keep giving commands. She had to keep her men safe. She could not protect her own planet, her own people anymore. But she could protect the fighters and pilots of the rebellion. They were all she had now. She gave her life to this cause. And Han found himself willing to give his life for her.
He got Leia off Hoth. But he did not get her to safety. Not really. The dark side seemed to follow them wherever they went. Leia was the sun, but the world around her was the shadow.
She was dressed in a white snowsuit. Her braids wrapped around the crown of her head.
He could not see anything. He felt frozen. Were his limbs still attached? Han could not recall where he was. His memories started returning to him. Darth Vader had frozen him in carbonate. Darth Vader. The Empire. Leia. Luke.
There was nothing but darkness around him. He was drowning in it. He had forgotten what the sun had felt like on his skin. He needed to see it. See the light. The brightness of the world around him. It had to be hidden away somewhere.
He could hear a voice. Her voice. Leia. Although it was still dark, Han felt the light creep into him.
She had come for him. He loved her. He had come to realize that a moment too late. But he had always known. And she had too. Or else she would not have come. She was brave. She had always been brave. Breaking into his cell and freeing him seemed like something Han Solo would do. Han knew she had a bounty on her head as well. He had to keep her safe.
They weren’t safe yet. Lando was there, and Luke too. There was fighting. Noises. Death. Han could feel the sun’s heat reflecting off the desert’s sand. He was almost there.
Although his sight had not yet returned, he imagined her hair in a braid and wearing white. His heart broke when, much later on a different planet in a different time, Leia finally told him what she had actually been wearing in the moments prior to the death of, and their final escape from, Jabba the Hutt.
White was the theme of wedding. It was fitting. Seeing as the light side had prevailed in the end.
He asked her to marry him shortly after the war had ended. She agreed, nodding and beaming. Han had never seen something so beautiful.
As they said their vows, not the real ones Han had read to her that morning with tears in his eyes, she laughed but he knew she would morn over the empty chairs that night once the guest were gone. Her parents. Her real parents. Friends made and lost during war.
He would be there for Leia this time, and every time from here on out. To help her morn. He would keep her safe. He would talk her out of the nightmares.
As they cut the cake, a real white cake with real sugar they had so long been denied, he remembered one of Leia’s wore outlandish dreams. Her screams and cries echoed off the walls of the millennial falcon. Names of people Han would never know rolling off her tongue. She was sweating as he picked her up and took her to the captain’s chair of and sat with her in his lap. She awoke to Han whispering the names of stars to her as he planted kissing in her hair.
How, he wondered as they danced to a slow song Luke had requested, had he gone so long in life without being at her side? He looked down at his new bride, his hands around her waist and his ring on her finger. She did not need him. But she wanted him. Forever. And that thought alone was enough to have him seeing stars.
When Leia finally looked up at Han to see him already staring, she smiled.
She wore a long white gown, the most beautiful gown anyone could ever imagine, and there were flowers in her hair.
The doctor said it had all went well. The newborn and mother were both perfectly healthy. Han let out a deep breath he felt he had been holding in for nine months. The doctor, smiling and congratulating them both, handed the white bundle of blanket, of nothing but pure innocence and perfection, to Leia.
Han, who yet wanted to see their baby, could not seem to tear his eyes off of his wife. She was crying, but he had never seen her look more perfect.
The baby, a boy, who was already fast asleep inside the blanket, looked like the perfect mixture of the two of his parents. Han hoped he got Leia’s smile. While she hoped he got Han’s eyes.
Han, with tears in his eyes sat in the bed with his wife. He had one arm around her and the other supporting their son.
Their son.
Han imagined how differently wonderful his life would be now. He had quit running ages ago. And looking at the tiny nose and lips of their son he knew he could never do it again. He would keep them both safe. Leia had her life. And Han had his. But they could raise their child to be the best of both of them. He could know how to properly speak in the senate while being the best pilot in this side of the galaxy. It would be good.
The sun was already rising and peaking through the windows by the time they had chosen a name for him. The light filtered in through the curtains, casting shadows on the equipment around the bed and up against the walls. But the light still crawled towards them, reaching them and engulfing them in a hug. Like the sun was trying to congratulate them.
Han smiled as Leia kissed their son’s forehead. Inches above him, she whispered, almost too softly for Han to hear, his name.
Ben.
She wore a white robe and had her hair in a bun at the top of her head, but pieces had started falling out and outlined her face.
Han Solo could not stare at the stars anymore. They hurt his eyes. Han would tell Chewbacca the world did not seem as bright as it once was. Chewbacca would say it was just his horrendous eyesight.
He was too old to be flying around, picking up monsters and searching for his falcon. But he did it anyway.
Han Solo was too old for this. These kids, fugutives, stormtroopers, Rebel Alliance members or whoever they are seemed to have trouble following them wherever they went. Not that trouble had not always followed Han. But he was younger then.
He had somehow ended up back in the life of fighting and while trying to find Finn a ride and clues to find Luke. Just like old times. The darkness always just one step behind them.
The sky above him seemed to be raining with rays of light from the different sides firing at each other. He watched pilots weave their vessels in and out of the light beams. It was then he saw a familiar ship coming in for landing.
Time seemed to slow down. He could hear Finn in the background, screaming for Rey, hear a fire crackle to life near a wrecked x-wing, and yet it did not matter. She was here, he knew. As the door lowered, members of the Alliance got out quickly, scanning the ground and raising their weapons.
He had not seen her in ages. And then she appeared.
Quietly, almost out of nowhere. If Han had not been watching for her, she would have seemed to be nothing but pigments of light all coming together at the proper moment. The world got brighter, time went back to normal, and Leia, he knew, would always his light.
Her hair was still fixed on top of her head. But she was no longer dressed in white
He would bring their son home.
Ben.
Leia.
What he would not give to hold her once more, to watch her fix her hair in the mornings, to listen to her ramble about the other senators. He loved her. If only he could tell her once more. But she knew. She had always known.
Han taught him the names of the stars. Before he could talk, Han had his son sit on his knee and point at the balls of light. They had always been just fire.
But even all the stars in the sky were not enough to keep their son in the light.
Now, as they stood on a bridge in a base on a planet that held the fate of many lives, Han cursed at himself. How could he have let this happen?
The sun outside, being used to power this machine of death, was dying. The light was going out.
But its brightness still peaked through the window slots. As if even the rays of light were trying to give him lasting strengths of courage and hope. Shining on his son. He saw Ben’s face, felt it under the worn palm of his hand and begged him to fight it. And he did. For a second. Han could see it in Ben’s eyes.
Then the light hit him. Not the sunlight, that was gone now, but the lightsaber of Kylo Ren.
The light went right through him.
But it did not stand for hope, or happiness or warmth.
As Han fell towards his death, towards the darkness, his last thoughts seemed to run together.
She felt it. Deep inside her, Leia felt the unrest. Like her heart had plummeted floors below her body.
Han. He couldn’t be.
They had been through so much together. They deserved a happy ending.
Although she was surrounded by people, she had never felt more alone. She was in a dark, damp room planning out battles for a fight she had already lost. Many times over.
If only she could tell him she loved him one last time. To dance down the corridors of the falcon once again with him holding her and a far away look in his eyes. To have him call her ‘Princess’ in that tone of his she hated to love.
She was safe. But her heart, her soul, the light in it, was gone.