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"They can’t expect me to wear that."
"Leia—"
"It’s contemptuous," she snapped.
Han scratched the side of his head. "It’s a dress," he said, shrugging.
Leia glowered at him. Her eyebrows had drawn together into a thin, menacing line, but she didn’t say anything else for now, only crossing her arms tightly over her chest. She wrinkled her nose as her gaze drifted back to the source of her disgust, and Han’s followed.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her arms uncross again, slack at her sides for a beat before pressing against her stomach instead. She took a deliberate step backward, away from him, away from the bed, the… dress.
Briefly, he wondered if she might get sick now. Question remained, why should she?
It was just some stupid dress. Definitely not worth the fuss. And not like Leia, anyway, to get so worked up over something as… as mundane — he couldn't think of a better word for it right now — as what someone else wanted her to wear. The Leia from when he’d first met her might have struggled with that, but not this Leia. Not post-rebellion Leia, not her.
He glanced up at her. She did look a little ashen, especially around the eyes.
It’d been a while since he’d last seen her like that. On the verge of…
Han opened his mouth, closed it again. The line between expressing his concern and making her feel as though he was patronizing her was thin, non-existent on bad days, and he was still, after all these years, learning how to keep his balance. He’d hate to topple onto the wrong side of her mood right now and push her away.
His eyes settled back on the dress, joining Leia's. If looks could burn, he was sure the fabric would already be littered with holes. Perhaps their bedroom would already be on fire, and they with it. The curtains looked easily flammable, and so did their sheets, and surely Leia’s hair would—
Han frowned at his own train of thought, throwing it off with a rough shake of the head.
He reached for the pile of fabric she’d tossed onto the bed beside him, let the upper layer of it glide through his fingers. The fabric was smooth, delicate, silk perhaps. But then again, everything she wore felt smooth against his rough, dry fingers, hands more used to the jagged handles of tools and the bumpy, uneven metal edges of the Falcon.
Honestly, he couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Except maybe that it had a bit too much fabric for his taste. It would hide all of her cleavage, climbing all the way to her throat. He'd never liked those parts of her dresses. They made her look as though she couldn’t breathe, as though they were choking her. Couldn’t be comfortable.
But Leia had never complained before.
"I am not going to wear that," she insisted, disappearing into the adjoining bathroom.
She didn’t slam the door. Wasn't her style.
Han sighed. He rubbed a hand through his damp hair before pressing the back of his head deeper into the pillow. Through the door she’d left ajar, he listened to her shove cosmetics around in the drawers. From the rumbling, increasingly erratic sounds, she seemed to do so with little sense, anything to keep her angry hands busy enough. Still, it was good to hear her make noise again, he figured; loud Leia was generally in a better state of mind than quiet, serene Leia.
That one still crept the hell out of Han sometimes, even now. Though he’d never admit it.
She was so hard to reach when she was quiet. She was in a part of her mind even he had only limited access to. So he was grateful for every fresh wave of sounds flooding through the gap in the door, assuring him that she was still in there, and he stayed as patient as he could, picking at his torn cuticles and the seam of the discarded dress still pooled in his lap. Leia deserved a moment of privacy, a moment to come to terms with whatever was bugging her so much.
Sometimes it was just one bad day at the Senate or one inconsiderate comment from a persistent reporter that set her on edge. About the latter, at least, Han usually knew already, because the gossip channels on HoloTV broadcast that kind of thing immediately, and those smears had a way of reaching even him, even when he was halfway buried in the depths of the Falcon. And he couldn’t remember hearing anything today. He scratched the side of his neck. Or had he?
A vague line of blathering garbage flitted through his mind. This nonsense about her wearing part of her hair down meaning she’d abandoned Alderaanian culture altogether. No, that had been last week, if he remembered correctly. At the time, Leia hadn’t wasted a word on it, and he wondered if maybe that was what was cooking up now, a belated reaction to something her former ignorance had implied she didn’t care about.
Han wouldn’t put it past her. She was good at repressing things. Too good, if you asked him.
Whatever it was… Han figured she’d have to come back eventually, and maybe then she’d tell him herself, wrapped in his arms in the impartial darkness of night, as she so often did. But even after the sounds from the bathroom faded into thick silence, she still didn’t reappear.
It was eerily quiet now, and Han sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the plain bed frame.
The mattress croaked, already missing him.
He resisted the pull to lie back down and stretch out his tired legs.
"Sweetheart?" he called, tapping his knuckles against the bathroom door. "You okay in there?"
She didn’t answer, so he pushed the door open with the back of his hand.
Leia had both her palms pressed flat to the counter, on both sides of the basin, and she was slumped over it, her back slightly arched. Her face was face-to-face with her own in the mirror. It was blank until she narrowed her eyes, tunneling her vision on him. No, not him, Han realized. On what he had in his hand.
Han stared down at it himself, realizing he’d brought it with him.
"You too?" Leia scowled.
"Kriff, no," Han grumbled, dropping the piece of clothing as if it’d personally offended him.
To emphasize his point, he deliberately stepped on it as he took a step towards her.
"But, hey, c’mon on. What’s the problem here? I mean… just put it on. Show me. Just me. I’ll tell you how it looks. I’ll be honest." He lifted both his palms, showing them to her. "You know me. ’s just a dress, sweetheart."
Leia’s face hardened and he instantly knew he’d said exactly the wrong thing.
"Are you really that dense or are you simply pretending, Han?"
Han snorted, not terribly wounded by the words. It was the tone that worried him.
"You’re still insulting me, though, so, hey, can’t be that bad, ri—"
"It’s not about the dress," she snapped, cutting him off. Her eyes were blazing and he was about to open his mouth and tell her she was confusing the hell out of him when she lowered her head again and added in a more thoughtful, quieter tone, "It’s about the color."
"The color?"
Han frowned. It didn't stir anything in him. He couldn’t even remember what color it had been until he glanced back at the crumpled shape sprawled out on the tiles. Black. That was what it was. What was wrong with black? A second later, he knew it, intuitively, the moment he met Leia’s eye again. She held his gaze for no longer than a handful of seconds, her lashes trembling against the undersides of her eyebrows.
Then she stared back at herself in the mirror, idly drawing a hand down her own cheek.
"I know exactly how it will look on me, Han," she mumbled bitterly. "It’ll make me look like him, Han. All they will see, now that everyone knows, is his daughter wearing his color, and I can’t—"
"It's just a color, Leia. Just as he was just sperm. Neither defines you. Colors are just colors. They don’t mean anything."
"Yes, they do," Leia retorted, voice sharper than any of the knives in their kitchen drawers. She brushed her temple with one hand, grimacing. "On Alderaan they do. Did. Even here they do." She waved around with one hand. "Or have you seen anyone on Coruscant dressed all in black?" She sighed, shaking herself. "Most people don’t wear it. It’s— it was his— it means no good."
Now come to think of it, Han was fairly sure he had never seen anyone wearing black on Coruscant. Not that he ever paid much attention to the way other people were dressed. But even so, he would rather bite off his own tongue than admit that now and reinforce her thinking even further.
He took another careful step, placing a palm on her shoulder. Leia reacted by tilting her head to the side, pressing her cheek to his knuckles for a beat, then withdrawing with one jerky motion.
"My father would turn in his grave if he saw me wearing that." She paused. "If he had a grave."
Han sighed, hanging his head.
"Sweetheart—"
"How can Mon even think I would wear something like that?"
Han thought about the package that had sat on their doorstep, about the note attached to it which had unleashed all of this in the first place. He wouldn’t admit it now, but he found it strange too, how Mon Mothma had suddenly decided to meddle with Leia’s choice in clothes when she’d never found a reason to complain about it before. To be fair, he didn’t know much about appropriate clothes or traditions. Leia, however, knew all about it, could've dressed herself in all the right ways even in her sleep.
"Maybe she, uh, wants you to set an example. Show the people that it doesn’t matter—"
"I never wear black," Leia rushed ahead, not even listening.
"You do wear black underwear sometimes," he felt like pointing out.
"No, I don’t."
"Yes," Han drawled. "Pretty sure you do."
"I don’t," she snapped, sending him a withering look. "I don’t possess any black underwear, Han. You can check the drawers."
"Well, uh, I mean, I prefer you without any anyway, so that’s not my, ah, main focus most of the time."
Leia rewarded his attempt at lightening the situation with a weak roll of her eyes. She turned, pressing her back against the counter and reaching for his arms to pull him closer. Han wrapped his arms around her waist and her forehead slumped against his chest.
Against the fabric of his shirt, she muttered, "I don’t want to wear that, Han."
Han put one hand against the back of her head, his fingers trailing down the tight structure of one of her braids.
"Then don’t," he said. "You could give that speech naked, for all I care."
She laughed softly, and Han smiled as well, glad to see her loosen up, even if only for a second.
"I think you’re the only one who wouldn’t care," she mumbled.
"Can you imagine the look on Mothma’s face? And the kid’s?"
"Luke’s my brother, Han. I’m really not trying to imagine how he would—"
"Hey, you kissed him once, though, remember?"
Leia groaned, poking her nose deeper into his flesh. Lightly, she boxed him in the back. "Don’t remind me."
She leaned back slightly in his arms then, pulling her face from his chest. Blinking up at him, she was a sight Han couldn’t resist. He kissed the side of her face, her temple, her cheek, drawing closer to her—
"Aren’t you afraid sometimes?"
Han paused, his lips still on her skin.
"Of what? You?" He grinned, winking at her. "All the time."
He tried to kiss her again, this time closer to her lips, but Leia tilted her head back, fixing him with an accusing stare.
"I’m trying to be serious here, Han."
"Okay. Sorry. Hit me."
She lifted a brow, a small, tired smile tugging at her lips. "Literally or not?"
Han laughed. By the time he wanted to answer, she’d apparently abandoned her own line of banter again, meeting his grin with stiff, tightly knit brows.
"Aren’t you afraid that… that I might turn out like— like him? Someday? Me, or Luke, that we will just…" She snapped her fingers.
"Nah. Never."
Han reached for a loose strand of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. He smiled at her and she stared back at him, unconvinced.
"But if… I'd just blame it on the day you started wearing black underwear. That’s where it all went wrong."
Leia rolled her eyes, groaning again as he started to laugh, tugging her closer.
"You’re too silly," she muttered, pushing lightly against his chest.
But she was smiling again, and that was something.
"Forget about that stupid dress," Han said, pulling her back against his lips and this time she let him.
Kriff you, Vader, he thought, not for the first time. For ruining even something as simple as a color for her. That, and so much else.