WHO: Han Solo, Chewbacca WHEN: Early January, shortly after Chewie's arrival WHERE: 504.T1 WHAT: Han Solo and Chewbacca are reunited, after many months apart. WARNING: Spoilers for New Jedi Order-verse, which are fairly well-known in game, & talks of character death. Nothing comes up about TFA-verse, since this was written prior to Leia getting those memories / everything else in game. F for Feelings.
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Han held back, gripped by uncharacteristic uncertainty. The man who'd run headfirst into any situation had died on Sernpidal, died with the very Wookiee that now stood towering over him. They were back in the rooms that they would now share together, alone --- though, Han didn't need the Force to know the rest of his family was probably lurking somewhere, waiting to jump the Wookiee each in their own way.
Han grinned, aware that he'd been stuck simply staring at his best friend. It wasn't at all like him to be at a complete loss, but then again, it wasn't everyday that your best friend came back from the dead. "It took you long enough. I thought..." I thought I'd lost you. "...well, it doesn't much matter, does it? You're here."
Chewie had no idea how this had come to be, one minute he was standing on the surface of Sernpidal about to die and then he was waking up in some sort of an escape pod and then taken to a medical unit where they’d spent a lot of time poking things at him. The only important thing right now was that his family was here. Chewie had a wife and children on his home world but these people as well as Luke and Mara were his family too.
“I can’t get used to being able to speak your language,” he said, giving Han a big Wookiee grin. “I am glad that you’re here.” Without further ado, he threw his arms around Han and laughed, a laugh that was all Wookiee and all Chewie.
Han embraced his friend, letting go of all the worries and fears that had plagued him these past few months. It had been rough losing the Wookiee, rougher still knowing that future was some twenty years down the line for him. "I can't get used to it either. It's like you woke up in that pod and you're a whole new Wookiee. I…" Han took a step back, more thoughtful than he might have been pre-Sernpidal. "I don't know how any of that works, really. There's a lot about being here that I don't understand."
He’d been told enough when the others had come to Medical to know that they all came from a time after he’d died. “It doesn’t matter,” Chewie replied. “the most important thing is that we’re all here. Even Artoo, I understand.” He paused for a minute and looked at Han. “What about the other one?’ Chewie had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Threepio and if he wasn’t here, the wookiee wouldn’t be broken hearted.
"Threepio's not here. It almost doesn't feel right. All of us being here now. If it were possible, I bet he'd be off losing his head somewhere…" Han had a fairly vivid idea of what Threepio would say, if he'd been left to fend for himself against the Yuuzhan Vong. The old protocol droid fretted about the smallest problem; an invading army of droid-hating aliens was well beyond that.
"Not that it'll matter too much. Once we get back to our galaxy, we won't remember any of this." The going theory was that they all returned to the point that they last remembered. He looked at Chewbacca, fully aware of what that theory meant for their relationship here. It was a second chance; however limited, he had to appreciate it. "But let's not talk about the future. It all goes to hell after awhile."
“I thought as much,” replied Chewie. Things had definitely been heading straight to hell when he’d had a moon dropped on him. There wasn’t a way that things could get much better. “I’m going to be living here with you. They’ve put me in the room with Anakin. I suppose the first thing we should do is make the bed bigger.” It was easier to think about practical things than emotional things for both of them but that didn’t mean Chewie wasn’t happy to see Han, to know that they got to spend more time together, he’d take whatever he could get. The practical matter at hand though was that he was an eight foot tall wookiee and wouldn’t fit in the bed that this place issued. At least he was pretty certain that he wouldn’t.
Han looked up at his best friend, taking in the full eight feet of wookiee before him, and laughed. "You're right," he said, grateful for the more practical problem before them. "I doubt the Earth government had wookiees in mind when they built this place, although… you know, I wouldn't say they didn't completely know about wookiees." If Han had had to accept that time travel was a reality here, he'd also had to accept that he was famous in a way that he didn't entirely understand. "Not that they had Wookiees on pre-apocalyptic Earth, or anything, but there were these movies about Luke, and you and me and Leia are kind of in them peripherally…It's…weird."
There was no other word for it.
Chewie tilted his head and gave Han what could only be called a typical Chewie look. “What is a movie?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to know about their lives although he did have to admit that they’d certainly had a lot of adventures. “so that’s what the person was talking about. There was a man that left me a message and said I was a legend and he wanted my autograph. I had to ask him what that was.”
"It's like a holovid," explained Han. "They've got a whole bunch of them, telling stories about who knows what." Han had seen a few of the movies that they showed on Saturday nights, but not the ones that directly featured his adventures. He'd lived through those ones; he didn't need to relive them on a movie screen. "And about us. You don't know how many people want to tell me what they know about me…Or you. Or my kids." Han shrugged the characteristic Solo shrug. "You'll get used to it."
“We know the best stories though,” Chewie said with what passed for a smile in a wookiee. “we keep those to ourselves.” He wondered if people would start telling him things about himself, he hoped not. “let’s see if we can fix the bed and then hunt down the kids if they don’t find us first.”