Chapter Text
As an enlisted member of the Rebel Alliance, Leia was subject to a set of rules and regulations meant to shape her into a soldier worthy of the revolution she believed so deeply in. She woke with the sunrise, marched with the girls of her squadron, participated in weapons training, Imperial code breaking lessons, and base-wide strategic sessions. She ate what her fellow soldiers ate, slept where they slept, and did so with a smile. As an enlisted member of the Alliance, she was not only worthy of the cause, she was the exemplar of a rebel soldier.
As a princess, she was flailing. A princess couldn’t be just a soldier, no matter how desperately Leia wished she could be. If high command had their way, she wouldn’t be a soldier at all. Time and time again, they reminded her of her worth, at least, her worth in their eyes. She could be a figurehead, a leader, she could inspire the masses.
Leia was far more interested in being part of the masses.
These last few months, she’d grown disillusioned with high command. These were people she’d known her whole life, friends of her father, and yet she felt as if she walked amongst strangers. While the Empire clenched its fist around the subjugated planets of the galaxy, her fellow politicians still considered public address before the senate a feasible plan of attack. The time to wage war with words had passed, yet all they did was speak of rebellion, never mind the legions waiting in the wings for their command.
Perhaps Leia was naive to grow bored of waiting whilst the rest of the galaxy had violence thrust upon them, but she worried that soon enough, there would be little left to defend from Imperial cruelty. Every day they had more recruits, so many of them refugees from planets made victims of Imperial terror, beings who couldn’t return to their homeworlds if they tried. She knew she wasn’t the only one growing restless.
High command had successfully kept her grounded from the moment she’d taken residence on Yavin. Any travel she was permitted was completely official, making strategic moves to cover her tracks as she made her official senate trips between Alderaan and Coruscant. It was a miracle the Empire hadn’t let on; it was nearly public knowledge that she was in league with Senator Mothma and a larger rebel movement. The only thing keeping her safe was the Empire’s odd commitment to their own public image, a facade that was slipping more and more each day. While Leia advocated for her own permanent stationing at Yavin, high command continued to insist she keep up appearances.
At the present, she hadn’t left Yavin in several weeks. She felt an odd sort of relief at the effective lockdown. As much as she missed Alderaan, and her mother especially, growing Imperial scrutiny had made home feel suffocating. On Yavin, she had more freedom than she had in years, even as she adhered to a heavily regimented lifestyle.
Unfortunately, more time on Yavin meant growing frustrations with high command. Today, Leia had been pulled out of combat training for an emergency meeting, an alert which usually meant she had somehow earned a lecture on the importance of her ‘special position’ in the rebellion. She prepared for the worst as General Draven escorted her to central.
As they stepped into the room, a holo flickered off. Leia was met with a peculiar sight. Senator Mothma sat alone at the grand roundtable, wearing an unrecognizable expression. Before her, a datapad lay with pages of scribbled notes.
“Princess,” she greeted, her tone balanced, though her face betrayed exhaustion. “Thank you for joining me.”
“Of course, Senator,” Leia nodded. Having known Mon as long as she had, the formality between them always felt somewhat odd, though it had never been any different. While the rebellion had seemed to thaw some of their stiffness, the constant debates Leia waged against high command allowed little room for any real warmth to grow.
“I’ve just spoken with your father on Alderaan,” the senator said. “He’s recently returned from a stint at the senate, as you know.”
Leia nodded. Her father, like her, was made to travel between the three planets. It caused her constant anxiety.
“Things are worse,” Mon said simply, “Much worse. I don’t know how much longer we can sustain his presence on Coruscant. It’s apparent now we are on the brink of all out war.”
We’re already at war, Leia thought, but she didn’t say such a thing. The both of them knew it to be true, and high command had been uncertain whether or not to pull her father for months.
“I’m sure you know we’re short on weapons. Scavenging for spare blasters simply won’t cut it anymore,” Mon said.
They were short on everything, but weapons were a particularly sore spot. Since consolidating their forces on Yavin, the Alliance had mostly relied on recruits coming with their own blasters. Their early initiates had mostly been those coming from disorganized, local insurgencies on their home planets. Others had been small-time criminals, thieves and vandals. For a while, they’d been able to maintain a decent stockpile of firearms and ammunition with no outside help, focusing most of their energy into upkeep and obsessive salvaging efforts. Now, with the influx of refugees, many of their recruits had never even held a blaster. For the first time, they had more soldiers than they could effectively outfit.
“One of our agents has a contact,” Mon said, “It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we have. He’s earned us a meeting with a smuggler, Captain Han Solo.”
The senator tapped away at her datapad, and Leia watched as holo in the center of the room flickered to life again. In the dim light, she could just barely make out the profile of the supposed smuggler, a snapshot that appeared to be captured from Imperial records. He was younger than she expected, and fairly handsome, but little could be gleaned from his image alone.
“Your father has suggested you be present on this mission, against my advice,” the senator continued. “You’ll accompany our agent to meet with Captain Solo. By no means should you deviate from the orders of your superior officer.”
Leia’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t process the weight of the task before her, and as her mouth rushed to say something to that effect, she cut herself off.
“May I ask who will be leading the mission?”
“Captain Andor. I expect you to follow his lead completely,” Mon projected his image onto the holo. Leia had seen the Captain on many previous occasions, he’d even been the one to administer her final weapons tests before she’d been assigned her own standard issue blaster. He was the star of a fair amount of gossip on base, both personal and political. According to her own bunkmates, he’d spent time as one of Saw Gerrera’s partisans, personally assassinated countless ISB agents, and seduced the wife of an Imperial moff. Whether the rumors were true or not, Leia had found him to be perfectly courteous on their meeting, and had never heard a slight against his dedication to the cause. To her, little else mattered.
“I must say, Leia,” Mon said, “I can’t understand your father's reasoning here. But I trust him, and he seems to trust you.”
Leia, admittedly, couldn’t understand her father's reasoning either. She knew he wouldn’t send her into danger without cause, but as much as she racked her brain to see what he saw, it eluded her. The rebellion had skirted a full blown conflict for months, if she was being sent to the frontlines, it must be that evading such an event was becoming impossible. Still, her father had always swayed more towards the opinion that she would be better out of direct combat. Either he’d finally granted her request, or he’d realized there was no escaping the danger he’d tried to protect her from.
“I haven’t consulted the rest of the command on this,” Mon admitted. “We don’t have the time to. It is of the highest priority that we are ready for any outcome in the coming weeks.”
“I understand,” Leia said.
Mon looked as if she had more to say, but for whatever reason, she restrained herself.
“The Captain will be waiting for you in the docking hanger,” she said. “You’re dismissed.”
—
It felt odd to fly the U-wing without K-2SO in the cockpit with him, but some unlucky sucker had been assigned the droid as part of an undercover mission. At the very moment Cassian had been preparing the ship for take-off, K2 was likely at some small imperial outpost, acquiring a data chip with some newly minted imperial transponder codes. Important work, surely, but that fact hadn’t stopped K2 from whining about the appointment endlessly.
The princess was a much quieter co-pilot than his droid companion, at least now. Cassian had known Leia to be chatty, reserved, and everything in between through his time in her acquaintance. He supposed she was generally difficult to pinpoint in any category, but such a quality may be in her favor. At the very least, he knew from first hand experience that it made for good spywork.
To Cassian, her relative silence seemed a calculated choice. In reality, Leia wasn’t quite sure what was expected of her. Though she was certain she could be of use to the mission, she worried about crossing any sort of line in the rebellion's unspoken code of conduct. It was desperately important to her that she come off as a dedicated soldier rather than the overly ambitious princess so many expected her to be.
The smuggler had agreed to meet them on Nar Shaddaa, the crime-infested moon of the Hutt homeworld. The Y’Toub system— along with the rest of Hutt space— was a far shot from Yavin. Typically, this was a blessing, but when the rebellion needed to deal with the seedier parts of the galaxy, an accessibility issue arose. Not only was the moon over a days trip away, Imperial checkpoints had forced them to account for additional detours.
Cassian and Leia spent the first few hours of their journey going through the motions without a hitch, but the ease of working together could not fully dispel the palpable anxiety surrounding the imminence of their mission. While they knew each other well enough, they had always maintained a distance that now seemed both necessary and impossible to overcome. Among their many differences, the most pressing to Cassian was the incongruence between the life of a soldier and that of a politician. As much as Draven irked him, Cassian could respect his position as a military leader more than he’d ever been able to understand even those politicians he’d liked on a personal level. The most tolerable of the politicians on the rebel council still seemed to make decisions that baffled him to no end, while his disagreements with Raddus, Merrick, and even Dodonna could usually be boiled down to a begrudged mutual understanding.
Leia defied most of what Cassian understood about politicians. Though it was obvious that she stood out amongst the novice class of recruits she’d been inducted into, it would be ridiculous to claim she was any less of a soldier for it. While Senator Organa carried the air of a military general on his best days, his daughter embodied a zeal that could compete with even the most devoted of Saw Gerrera’s partisans. In a way, she reminded Cassian of Wilmon, gifted with every ounce of his wit and overenthusiasm, but, to Leia’s credit, a far more defined sense of discipline.
It was with this knowledge that Cassian had crafted their cover, in full confidence that Leia would have the ability to perform her role flawlessly. Cassian would be Keef, the de facto patriarch of a small village on Zemlya, whose people had been partially wiped out by a disease incurable with their local technologies. Captain Solo would be told that he was smuggling medicine for villagers, and it wasn’t a complete lie. The medicine would be every bit as useful to the friendly people of Zemlya as the blasters stored under it would be to the rebellion.
Leia would be posing as his younger sister. She was to be quiet and reserved during the negotiations, wear a mourning hood, and only give up information on her profile if she was made to. Her name would be Keela.
The pair had launched hours ago, but the initial hyperspace jump out of the Yavin system had proved to be a rocky start to their journey. Only now had they found the time to go over the forged identities Cassian had put together, steadily cruising along one of the few hyperspace lanes not monitored by Imperial patrols. The names Cassian had chosen were foreign to Leia, who had studied galactic etymology in a nearly obsessive manner as a teenager, as was Zemlya itself.
“It’s only a few parsecs away from Yavin,” Cassian explained, settling in the captain's chair with a hot cup of caf, “But still far enough to be safe. We’ll have the captain make his drop off there. After it’s been inspected and secured, our own operatives will bring it to the base.”
“What about the locals?” Leia asked.
“The locals operate in primitive tribes, they’re terrified of any kind of spacecraft or tech, but we’ve been able to establish some semblance of diplomatic contact,” Cassian said, neglecting to include that it had been him to first suggest reaching out to the people of Maridun, as well as lead the first mission the planet. “The empire has no presence there, though it’s not hard to imagine why.”
“And that’s because..?”
“Zemlya is prone to wildfires, more so than any other habitable planet I’ve encountered. Beyond that, it’s home to some of the most vicious creatures I’ve ever seen,” he said, “But most importantly, there’s not a single natural resource left for the empire to plunder.”
“How can it possibly be habitable to humanoids under those conditions?” the princess asked. She’d studied her fair share of treacherous worlds, but Zemlya seemed particularly unsuitable to humanoid life.
“It wasn’t always so harsh. The planet has seen a complete shift in climate in the last hundred years,” Cassian said, “It’s a small planet, it doesn’t take much disturbance to upset the balance of the ecosystem. We’re not totally sure, but a large enough settlement of miners on either of the poles may have thrown off a delicate equilibrium. It was a slow enough change that the people could adapt, but it’s unlikely they’ll be able to sustain their population for much longer. When the war is won, they’ll have to be relocated.”
“That’s terrible,” Leia said. “Losing their home, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“They’ll rebuild,” Cassian said simply. “We’ll help them as best we can. I only fear how difficult it will be for them to accept.”
Leia nodded, taking a moment to consider all he’d told her. The captain spoke as frankly as her mother, a trait she admired. To speak around such issues was pointless, but his candor also revealed a certain intimacy with the topic.
“You seem to know a lot about Zemlya,” she said, though her tone betrayed less of her curiosity than it did an acknowledgement.
“I have an interest in the area,” Cassian affirmed, and then, a beat later, added, “The Republic conducted mining operations in the majority of the sector.”
Zemlya marked a midpoint between Yavin and Kenari, one he’d discovered pouring over galaxy maps in a weak moment just after Bix had left. When he’d found his resolve again, Zemlya had become an internal compromise with himself, the closest he’d ever get to home, now that both Kenari and Ferrix were impossible for him to return to.
Cassian had found that the tribes of Zemlya were not unlike those of Kenari, but the discovery gave him little comfort. Here was just another people suffering at the hands of outside invaders, and even though their tormentors were long gone, their impact lingered like a cancerous infection, growing until it would push the Lyudi from their home. It was a miracle that the Empire hadn’t disturbed them, and Cassian found solace in the fact that their final decades on their ancestral lands would be free from further tyranny.
“The Republic did so much damage here,” Cassian thought aloud, “The Empire has only finished the job.”
Leia held her tongue for a moment. She wasn’t completely naive to the crimes committed by the Republic, but to hear it compared to the Empire was a new concept. The senators she had been brought up by, though progressives, yearned deeply for their Republic days, at least those before the Clone Wars.
“The way you speak about the Republic wouldn’t be appreciated by command,” Leia noted, not as a threat, but an inquiry.
“That’s why I don’t speak to them this way,” Cassian said, “We are the Alliance to Restore the Republic. I can only hope it won’t be the same when it’s rebuilt.”
“I think we agree,” Leia said, “The politicians that make up command are well intentioned, but they know nothing of the galaxy beyond the Core Worlds. If we want to be better than the Empire, we must fight for representation of every known planet.”
Leia really did sound like Wilmon, or maybe even Nemik, when she spoke like this. Cassian couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips.
“Don’t laugh,” Leia frowned at the captain’s expression. “You know that if the New Republic is to succeed, it’ll have to be just that, new.”
“I’m not laughing, Princess, I promise you that,” Cassian said. “Being born on a Core Planet usually impairs the ability to see the importance of the Outer Worlds, but you don’t seem affected.”
“I wasn’t born on a Core Planet,” Leia said matter-of-factly, without even thinking. “At least, I wasn’t born on Alderaan. I’m not sure where I was born, really. My birth mother died just at the end of the war.”
“My birth parents died just before the war,” Cassian said. Leia looked at him curiously, she hadn’t known he’d been an orphan.
“Because of the Republic?” Leia guessed. The captain glanced at her briefly, before settling his eyes back on the hyperspace lane paved in front of them.
“We were from Fest,” he said. It wasn’t an answer. Leia knew Fest well. The Empire had brutalized the population there, and Yavin was practically flooded with refugees from the planet. It felt odd she’d never realized it was his homeworld.
“You should get some sleep, Princess,” Cassian said, interrupting her thoughts. “We’ll be landing on Nar Shaddaa in seven hours.”
Leia nodded, and quickly retired to the cramped sleeping quarters in the back of the ship. As she tried to sleep through the occasional turbulence, she considered their conversation. The Captain was different to any other rebel she’d known, far more radical and secretive, yet she couldn’t bring herself to be suspicious of him. Perhaps she should be, her father certainly was, and some at command alleged he was in league with Saw Gerrara, or worse. Everyone had an opinion, but to Leia, Cassian seemed to be the kind of man worth trusting. Even if she was sure he was lying to her.
—
Nar Shaddaa was reminiscent of Coruscant. Not the Coruscant Leia knew, with the Senate rotunda at the center, encircled by rows of shops, restaurants, museums, and galleries, but instead, the Coruscant Cassian had grown familiar to in his time living in Luthen’s safehouse; the world that lay below the upper levels of the city. In the lower levels, crime and poverty ran rampant, an open secret that hadn’t been addressed in the planet's history. Still, Coruscant had its redeeming aspects– its atriums, pleasure gardens, and the like– while Nar Shadda was nothing but the worst of humanity, all encapsulated into one small moon.
Dominated by slums, nightclubs, and less-than-legal activities, Nar Shaddaa was ruled by the scummiest of the Hutt Clan, but even their tyrannical rule was defied by the smaller crime lords and common criminals that conducted their business there.
Cassian had visited the moon a handful of times, never of his own volition. The rebellion could conduct their own business there as well, without fear of the Empire, but that kind of freedom from Imperial scrutiny came with its own obstacles. He’d had more than a few close calls with bounty hunters under Imperial payroll, and even more with those who couldn’t care less whether he was a rebel or not. Here, everyone was out for themselves.
It seemed the worst place to take a princess who had never once been on a field mission of her own, but Cassian had no other choice. Captain Solo had set the terms of their meeting, and it was in the best interest of the rebellion to go along with his wishes, at least in the opinion of high command.
To conceal her identity, Leia would wear a large, dark cloak, with the hood pulled far over her head; traditional Lyudi mourning attire. The material was heavy, but clearly cheap, so that no one would risk tearing it off her, especially not with Cassian’s blaster clearly visible on his hip.
“That’s not standard placement,” Leia had said as she watched him shift the holster to his side.
“It’s easier to see,” Cassian said. “Less trouble for us.”
Cassian wore a simple farmer's jumpsuit in a khaki green, but elected to keep his face visible. It was unlikely he could cover his face without compromising his own vision, and the two of them walking around in cloaks would only draw more attention. Besides the blaster on his hip, he’d tucked a smaller pistol into a slip on the inside of his shirt. His comm he kept in his chest pocket, easily accessible.
After fixing his own clothes, Leia allowed him to adjust her cloak. Beneath it, she wore a jumpsuit similar to his own, in which she carried her own comm.
“Here,” Cassian opened the cloak to point to an inside pocket, so discreet Leia hadn’t even noticed it, “You’ll have a pistol. Emergencies only.”
Leia nodded steadily, but she could feel nerves creeping up on her. While she’d faced her fair share of danger, she’d never run into it head first like this.
“You’ll be fine,” Cassian said, somehow sensing her anxiety, though Leia worried he was reassuring himself more than he was her. He pulled her hood over her face and held out his arm, “Hold on to me, you won’t be able to see very well under there.”
Cassian was right. Leia could see little more than the tips of her own shoes. She hooked her arm into the crook of his elbow and followed his lead down the gangway.
While Leia couldn’t see the city, she could certainly hear it. As they walked down the street, all sorts of alien dialects passed through her ears. What she did understand, she wished she hadn’t. Conversations ranged from drunken arguments to apparent muggings, and it took all of her willpower not to lift her head and inspect the unscrupulous scenes.
As they made their way through indistinguishable alleys and merchant centers, there were a few instances where a fellow pedestrian would jeer at them, almost always in Huttese, to which the captain responded in a language Leia couldn’t quite recognize. The sound of his voice, gruff and intimidating, was so different to the man she’d spoken to just moments before. It almost made her jump out of her skin. Though her cloak may have done its job of hiding her face, it became apparent how weak a disguise it was in comparison to Cassian’s ability to camouflage into his surroundings. He hadn’t altered his physical appearance much at all, yet his demeanor had almost completely changed.
At Cassian’s quick and steady pace, it was a short time before Leia found herself escorted into what she could only guess was a dingy cantina, based on the low lighting, sticky floors, and the sound of glasses clinking together. He unhooked their arms and gently guided her into a booth.
“Now what?” she asked quietly.
“We wait,” Cassian said. Leia could hear the faint tapping of his boot against the floor. “Captain Solo will be here any minute now.”
With her obtrusive hood, Leia could see little more than the filthy plasteel floors surrounding their table. She focused her eyes on an abandoned koja nut just left of Cassian’s feet, doing her best to ignore his incessant tapping. If she didn’t know any better, she would think he was nervous, but the sensation seemed so incongruous with his demeanor that she couldn’t imagine it under any normal circumstances. Either it was part of his act, or she was really that much of a liability. She chose to believe the former.
Leia watched as a pair of shiny boots entered her line of vision, crushing the koja nut beneath them. Beside her, Cassian stilled.
“Captain Solo!” he said, though he spoke in a voice that wasn’t quite his own. His own shoes, dusty and worn, creased as he stood. He slotted his feet nearly between Solo’s, and their hands clasped together audibly. The stranger shuffled ever so slightly away, nearly imperceptibly if Leia hadn’t been staring so intently at his shoes, trying to discern everything she could from his micromovements.
“It’s Keev, right?” Solo asked as he slid into the seat opposite of their own. From this angle, Leia could no longer see his shoes, and she’d yet to catch a glimpse of his face. She redirected her attention to his hands, which were folded before him in a relaxed manner, and Cassian, who radiated a palpable anxiety beside her.
“Uh, yes, Keef,” he corrected gently. “It’s good to finally see you in person.”
“The feeling is mutual,” the captain said. His demeanor was growing more and more relaxed as Cassian wound himself tighter. Solo didn’t seem to take notice of the finer details of Cassian’s movement. Either he hadn’t noticed Cassian’s hand resting just inches from his blaster, or he’d been fooled well enough not to care.
“And who is this?” Solo gestured towards Leia.
“Keela,” Cassian answered. “She comes as a fellow representative of our village.”
“So she’s here to make sure you don’t screw this up?” Solo asked with a smug laugh. Cassian laughed along with him, though the sound was strangled and unpleasant, as if he didn’t know how.
“You could say that,” he said.
“And can she talk?” the captain probed further.
Cassian began to answer, something about the mourning traditions of the Lyudi, invented or true, Leia couldn’t be sure, but the princess cut him off.
“Only if I wish to,” she said. “I haven’t yet had the desire.”
The two men were quiet for a moment, neither having expected her to say much of anything, let alone such a rebuke, but of course, Cassian was quick to recover.
“As I said,” he sighed, “We’re all in mourning. It’s been difficult for everyone.”
“I see,” the captain said curiously. “And she’s your wife? Or your sister?”
“No,” Cassian said bluntly. Apparently, the brother-sister angle of their cover wasn’t something he was quite ready to divulge yet. Leia couldn’t rationalize it at the moment, but she didn’t fret. It seemed he had a reason for everything he did, however nonsensical it seemed to her in the moment.
“Alright,” Solo conceded, though he didn’t sound at all convinced. “How about some drinks for the table?”
“Whatever you need,” Cassian said, “But you must understand we are very anxious to see this through. I’ve already stressed to you the severity of the situation, and it has only grown more desperate since our last communication.”
“Look, I want to help you, I really do,” the captain lifted a hand from the table, signaling an order to the barmaid, “Do you want anything?” Cassian shook his head. “And the lady?”
“I’d like you to get to the point,” Leia said harshly. “We did not come here to court you, Captain. We came to make a deal.”
“Oh, but how I wish you had,” he chuckled, then called out, “Just one for me, then.”
“You’re not a very serious man, are you?” Leia scoffed. Under the cover of the table, Cassian clutched her arm in a gentle squeeze.
Reel it in.
“I’m very serious, sweetheart,” Solo said, his light tone gone from his words, “And I’m the only pilot in this hellhole that can get you what you need.”
“I highly doubt that,” Leia said quietly, unable to help herself, even against Cassian’s warnings.
“Oh yeah?” Solo said, incredulous. “You guys are asking me to risk my life and my ship picking up a med supply on Humbarine. That place is crawling with stormtroopers, and not a single one of them would hesitate to blow my ass sky high if they suspected anything out of the ordinary.”
“But you’ll do it, won’t you?” Cassian asked, nearly pleading. Leia couldn’t understand how he’d managed to make himself sound so unabashedly desperate in the face of such an unbearable man.
“You’re just so lucky you happened upon the only pilot this side of the mid rim willing to make a run like this,” Solo said proudly. “I know you aren’t stupid. These other pilots are cowards and thieves. They’ll take your money and leave your entire village for dead.”
“How do we know you won’t do the same to us?” Leia asked, even though she could feel Cassian silently begging her to keep quiet.
Solo was silent for a moment. He clicked his knuckles against the table one by one, deep in thought. The barmaid came back, and set his drink in front of him without as much as a word in his direction. Corellian whiskey. A classic amongst the elderly at any lesser senate party, Leia knew exactly where in the palace her father had stashed the unopened bottles he’d been gifted from colleagues over the years. Apparently, it tasted like hyperfuel. But she wouldn’t know.
“We both have a lot on the line here, don’t we?” Though Leia couldn’t see his face, she could hear his smile as he spoke. “You’re asking for an expedited shipment, but I know you can’t pay the fee that comes with that kind of service.”
“We’d agreed to–” Cassian began in his dramatized tone, but a trace of sincerity was beginning to come through to Leia. Their situation really was desperate, after all.
“I want to help you,” Solo cut him off. “So I’ll offer you a deal. The shipment, at the price you agreed to, with no more tricks. All I’m asking for is a little collateral.”
At first, Leia couldn’t possibly understand what the captain wanted from them. Unable to see his face, she couldn’t grasp his meaning as his gaze shifted towards her. But Cassian did.
“No,” Cassian said, his voice hard and serious. The facade he’d worn had been torn away so quickly, Leia could almost feel as the air stilled between the three of them. “That isn’t in the question. I will accompany you as planned. She goes home.”
“Slow your roll, cowboy,” Solo sounded nearly offended. “I don’t know what kind of show you think we’re running here. You’re both coming with me. I know that blaster on your side isn’t just for decoration. If things get hairy, I want an insurance policy.”
Cassian grabbed Leia by the arm harshly, ready to make a quick exit. His other hand rested on his blaster.
“We’ll be leaving,” he said, leaving no room for negotiation. Captain Solo didn’t seem bothered by the declaration. Leia was. She hadn’t come this far for nothing.
“It’s a deal,” the words left her mouth before she’d even tried to say them.
“What was that?” Solo asked.
Leia tilted her head ever so slightly up, allowing the hood to slip back just enough to reveal her face. Cassian looked as bewildered as a hunted animal, eyes wide and flickering as he took in the extent of her insubordination. Embarrassed, she turned her gaze to Captain Solo. He was much more handsome in person than he had been in Mon’s holo. He seemed nearly as stunned as Cassian, though there was something charming in the way he drank in her image, a certain boyish curiosity she hadn’t seen in some time. If this had been her first impression of him, maybe she’d have tried a bit harder to like him. Now, he seemed to be little more than a nuisance, and it was hard to believe he could be any real help, no matter how highly recommended he came. But a mission was a mission, and Leia was determined to see through the end of her very first assignment, even if she gave Cassian an aneurysm in the process.
“I said we have a deal,” Leia said again, and Han grinned. It was a nice look on him. She hated that. Cassian probably hated it more, if his clenched jaw and hard stare were any indication.
“We have to return to our ship before we depart,” he said, not even looking at Leia. At least he wasn’t picking a fight yet.
“Alright,” Solo agreed. “But no funny business. Meet me at loading dock 109 in an hour. Don’t be late.”
“We won’t,” Leia promised, and with that, the captain was gone.
—