Work Text:
Soon
Coruscant had a way of making everything feel urgent.
Three meetings before midday. Two briefings postponed from the night before. A treaty waiting for her signature and three separate messages marked priority blinking on the corner of her desk.
Leia ignored all of them for another few seconds.
Her eyes had settled on the holo beside her terminal.
Han was leaning against her, one hand resting casually on her thigh, his smile tilted toward the camera as though he knew something everyone else didn’t.
Nearly three months.
Leia looked away.
That did not help.
She could still feel his hand there if she let herself think about it.
Han had an extraordinary talent for turning ordinary things into seduction. A glance across a room. The low rasp of his voice when he was tired. The faint curve of his mouth when he knew he was getting to her.
His hands.
Especially his hands.
Leia exhaled and pulled another report toward her.
This had not been how she imagined victory.
For years, she had believed the end of the war would mean freedom.
She had simply failed to consider how much work freedom would require.
The Empire had fractured, not vanished. Systems needed governments. Governments needed treaties. Supply routes had to be restored. Refugees resettled. Alliances negotiated.
And Han...
Han was good at what he did.
Far too good, unfortunately.
While Leia spent her days helping build a government, Han spent his helping finish the war that had made it necessary.
She saw his name more often than she saw him.
Mission reports.
Fleet manifests.
Dispatches from systems she had to locate on a map before she could sleep.
Sometimes, late at night, she projected the galaxy across the wall of her apartment and found the sector where he was supposed to be.
She never quite knew what she expected to accomplish by staring at it.
Nothing, presumably.
Still, she did it.
She had begun seeing him everywhere.
A tall man disappearing around a corner.
A familiar walk across a landing platform.
Dark hair in a crowd.
Never him.
Leia signed the treaty waiting on her desk.
Another small piece of the galaxy put back together.
Her comm chimed.
“Organa.”
Static answered.
Leia reached for another document.
Then:
“Leia?”
She stopped breathing.
The datapad slipped from her fingers onto the desk.
“Leia, can you hear me?”
Han.
She turned instinctively away from the open office door.
Her hand rose to her mouth.
She smiled before she could stop herself.
“Han.”
More static.
Then his voice again.
“Don’t have long.”
“I don’t care.”
A soft laugh crackled over the connection.
Leia closed her eyes.
Just hearing him laugh made something inside her unclench.
“Honey, I miss you. That’s all I called to say.”
Her throat tightened.
Three months of restraint disappeared in an instant.
“Come home.”
Static swallowed part of the sentence.
“What was that, sweetheart?”
Leia gripped the comm tighter.
“I said come home.”
Silence.
For one ridiculous second, she let herself imagine the answer.
All right.
A course change.
The Falcon turning toward Coruscant.
Han walking through her door in however many days hyperspace required.
Then he gave a quiet, unhappy laugh.
“Wish I could.”
Leia shut her eyes.
She could picture him anyway.
One hand dragging through his hair.
That crooked, apologetic smile.
A cockpit or briefing room somewhere impossibly far away.
“Leia?”
“I’m here.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
A lie.
Not entirely.
He was on the other end of the comm.
For now, that was enough.
“We’re giving ’em hell out here.”
“I assumed you were.”
“I’ll be home soon.”
Leia swallowed.
“Promise.”
She looked toward the open doorway of her office.
People moved past outside, carrying datapads and messages and another dozen things that apparently could not wait.
“I know.”
She hesitated.
Then, quieter:
“I love you.”
The static hissed.
“Love you too.”
Her eyes closed.
“See you soon.”
The connection began to break apart.
Leia pressed the comm closer to her ear.
“Soon.”
Something that might have been Solo out vanished beneath the static.
Then silence.
Leia remained still.
The comm was warm in her hand.
Nothing had changed.
Han was still wherever he was.
She was still on Coruscant.
There were still meetings waiting outside her door and wars refusing to end cleanly and a Republic that seemed determined to require every waking moment she possessed.
And yet something had changed.
Leia looked at the holo on her desk.
Soon.
A small word.
An imprecise word.
Potentially a very irritating word.
But Han had said it.
And Leia had spent enough of her life waiting for things she had no reason to believe would ever come.
This was different.
Han was coming back.
Not today.
Probably not tomorrow.
But soon.
Leia set the comm down.
She picked up the datapad she had dropped and straightened in her chair.
The next meeting suddenly seemed survivable.
So did the one after that.
Outside her office, someone was waiting for her.
Leia smiled.
“Send them in.”