Han Solo (whereitcounts) wrote in the100, @ 2015-04-29 22:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, han solo, leia organa |
Who: Leia Organa & Han Solo
When: Late night, April 29
Where: Their room.
What: Han gets new memories, Leia can't sleep.
Rating: PG. For sads & mentions of future character death.
Leia couldn't sleep. Tossing and turning were lightly features, but today, this evening, she could not turn her mind off. It always happened in a new place after they'd settled in. Things would begin to have their own routine, and the mind would not quiet. Back home, there was always something she could do. There were missions to plan, and funds to procure. There were people to secret away, and probes to be on the look out for. Here, she didn't know her place. Some of the people looked at her strangely, seemed to know her in a way that people didn't in their world. They knew things -- the future -- and they smiled oddly or stammered in her presence. It was all unnerving for a woman who had spent her life learning how to deal with unnerving. There was no Empire here, though. No terrible fate awaiting all of them, no battle constantly peering from around a moon. Here, there was only silence in the middle of the night. Silence and complete darkness. Leia tossed once more, fumbling with the course blankets she'd been given. She was used to less than royal accommodations, but there was something about this material that itched. What it was didn't matter. She heard harsh breathing and muttering from Han's side of the room. The partition between their beds had never seemed like enough until she could hear him struggling against something in a dream. Concerned, Leia sat up. "Han?" She waited a few moments, before she ventured his name once more. Nothing in return to indicate that he'd heard her. The mutterings were getting louder, so Leia tossed the blankets off her legs and stood up. She padded across the room to him. Once there, she thought she really ought to have thought this through. The smuggler was going to be very cross with her for seeing this moment of weakness. There'd be weeks of grouchy Han Solo. Before she could return to her bed, though, Han yelled a name. Just one single name, "Chewie!" The anguish in his voice, though, there was no mistaking that Han was in the throes of a nightmare, and if they were anything like the ones she occasionally had, he'd be grateful that she woke him. She sank down onto the bed, reaching over and shaking him gingerly. "Han! Han, wake up!" -- Han woke tangled up in coarse blankets, confused. He'd had his share of nightmares in the past: deals gone wrong, the lurking shadow of Jabba the Hutt around every corner, losing the princess. These had been different. He couldn't shake the feeling of premonition that seemed to have ebbed into the very core of his being, that these were not nightmares so as much as things yet to come. The last one in particular left a bitter taste in his mouth. He and his son, Anakin, had been on an outer rim planet. It was supposed to have been a simple favor for Lando. He, Anakin, and Chewie were to deliver the supplies to Sernpidal, a one day trip and back. He knew now that wasn't to be the case. As he stared up into the dim light around him, all he saw for a moment was Chewbacca, alone, fading fast against the backdrop of Serndipal's fallen moon. He blinked at the burning around his eyes, suddenly aware that he wasn't alone. "Leia?" He reached out for her hand. "What's wrong?" He pushed himself up into a sitting position, taking in the bare surroundings of their shared living quarters. None of it made sense. Only moments ago, they'd been together. They'd been married, and their three children were fully grown. "Is it the kids?" Even as the words left his mouth, a part of his befuddled brain realized that this was a strange question to ask. -- "The kids?" What kind of question was that? A damned odd one, that's what it was. Leia frowned, though in the dim light, she could barely make out anything of his face. She reached out a hand to his forehead, brushing his hair back from his face. A moment, and she seemed to realize what an intimate gesture that was, especially here in the dark. It was terribly inappropriate for her to even have woken him, let alone what it was she was doing. "You were having a nightmare. You said Chewie's name. Are you okay? -- Han turned his head towards her, puzzled. He couldn't make out her expression in the dark, but he knew that the woman before him was much younger than the one in his dreams. This was the woman who'd seen him frozen in carbonite on Bespin, who'd come to rescue him at Jabba's palace. Or, was that yet in her future? The timelines seemed to have blurred together in his sleep, making it so he couldn't differentiate between his memories and his dreams. "No. I uh --" He wanted to hold her hand in his, but he didn't move. "I don't think I am." He couldn't put into words what he was exactly. -- There were moments when the careless smuggler dropped away, and Leia saw the man beneath. She was all bluster and talk when she dealt with him on a regular basis. The truth was that the banter between them got under her skin more than she'd like to admit, so getting these glimpses of the man he didn't want anyone to know… Well, she was more interested than she let on. Or that she thought she was letting on. Somehow, he always seemed to read her, and that annoyed the crap out of her. This was a sobering moment for her. His voice was not what she expected. There was real anguish in it. "Whatever it is, you can tell me," she told him, her tone soft and concerned. She rarely used it, and even less with Han Solo, but her worry for him wasn't abating. "What happened?" -- "I saw the future." His voice was steadier now. His waking mind was slowly catching up with that of the dreams, parsing them into a timeline that was starting to make sense. Well, as much as it was possible to make sense of remembering the future. "I saw us. And Luke. And -- Mara Jade." That name was new. And although he knew that he hadn't met this Mara yet, he knew somehow that he would. Through Talon Karrde. On Myrkr. He looked at Leia. Even in the dark, the sense of his loss must have been written across his face. "And I saw Chewie. We were all the way out on Serndipal, and this moon, and Anakin…" Everything seemed jumbled together in his head, so that he had to pause. It was one of those rare moments in which Han didn't quite know how to process what was going on inside him. "Chewie dies on some outer rim planet, and I can't do anything about it." -- "Who's Anakin? Who's Mara Jade?" Her eyes never left his face as she talked. This wasn't something entirely new, a side of Han she'd never seen before. But the future? Was he sure that it wasn't just a nightmare? How could it be anything but his imagination? Still, something nagged at her. The Jedi had been powerful and so at one with the Force they could often see things before they happened. Maybe… Leia moved her hand to the side of his face, cradling him. Chewbacca had grown to be a friend of hers, and if what he said was true, then he would continue to be so in later years. Between her own unease at the idea and Han's sadness, Leia was speechless. She'd been inconsolable after her parents had died in Alderaan, but there wasn't time to grieve. The rebellion still had to move forward, and Leia was a strategic piece of that. But she remembered what it felt like: the helplessness, the aching regret that you couldn't do something more. Even thinking about it now, Leia felt the blossoming sadness spread from her heart. -- Han sat in silence for what seemed a long time. He saw himself in the pilot's chair of the Falcon, circling around the now dead planet of Serndipal. The last place he'd seen Chewie alive. It was like a bubble bursting. Suddenly, all of his carelessness, careening off into asteroid fields or into the detention halls of a Death Star, all of it seemed unnecessarily dangerous. "They're friends of ours," he said, finally. The words came only with effort. He didn't know how to answer her questions. He knew whatever answers he might give were inevitably going to sound crazy. How had he seen the future? He had no gift for the Force, and even if he had, he didn't believe in that nonsense. There was what was right in front of him, his own instincts, and nothing more (except Luke, Luke was the exception). "It feels crazy. But I saw it, and I knew them. Somehow…I don't know. It's got to be something about this place." It had to be. Nothing else explained why he was having visions of his world falling apart. -- "Maybe," she answered non-committally. She couldn't see into his head, had no idea what was going on or how he could say they were friends of theirs when she had no idea who he was talking about. Maybe he was ill. Leia's hand turned over, feeling his cheeks and forehead for any sort of fever. She had difficulty though; he was clammy and sweaty from the nightmare. She could tend to him, but as for figure out what was wrong? She wished an FX-7 or a 2-1B were around. They were more trained to figure out what was wrong with him, and get him stabilized. This was out of her league. "Han," she whispered into the darkness. "Han, I need you to slow down and explain what actually happened. You were asleep one moment, and the next you were -- you were screaming. Did you -- how did -- did you go somewhere?" -- Han brushed aside her attempts to tend to him. Comforting as it was to have her at his side, he needed to focus. Whatever had happened to him was as difficult to put into words as it had been to experience. "No. I don't think so. They were just these dreams, and I just get this feeling that they're more than that." Frustrated with himself, he added, "Look, it sounds crazy when I say it like that. Hell, I think I'm going crazy. But I saw our future. I saw us on Tatooine. I was blind, and you were --" He shook his head, unable to express his displeasure at seeing her with Jabba dressed like that. It made him want to choke the slimey slug himself. "Well, it doesn't matter. You were there. We were all there, and it matches what… what everyone else says about us." The movies were a subject that he'd carefully avoided since his arrival. But the unwanted stares were more difficult to avoid, the looks of astonishment and then familiarity that seemed to follow him every time he introduced himself. He knew she must have experienced the same, even if they didn't really talk about it. He took her hand into his, speaking more softly now. "I didn't mean to worry you." -- He sounded so sincere that Leia felt a strange fluttering in her throat when she tried to speak. Her fingers clutched his tighter before she tilted her head. They'd had a moment like this when she worried over C3P0 back on Bespin, and it had been her who had initiated the intimacy of the moment. Just a few moments longer, if Lando hadn't come in... No time to think about that now. "You think they were prophetic dreams? Or -- what -- memories?" Not a hint of sarcasm could be found. "Have you heard of anyone else experiencing the same?" -- "They were like, future memories, yea." He looked down at her, remembering what had been said on Bespin. Remembering, too, that they were married. But whenever he tried to voice that particular detail, he felt his throat tighten. This wasn't the right time. It was never the right time, really. If they were different people, if this wasn't the apocalypse… "Of anyone other than Luke? No, not exactly." He hesitated. "But...do you remember a few weeks ago?" He didn't know if she'd heard them, too, but he'd heard the sounds coming from Mal's quarters. And if what Leia described to him was accurate, he was already starting to put together that maybe what had happened to him had also happened to their cellmate. "Maybe the nightmare droid's making its rounds of our quarters." -- Future memories. Leia had a bad feeling about that. Their futures were murky and uncertain. Everything after C3PO disappeared in Bespin was a mystery, and Leia wasn't sure she wanted to know what happened. Wouldn't that change things? Her knowing? Them knowing? It was why she stayed away from a lot of the people in this bunker. They all knew too much about her. "Yes, I remember a little. He said something similar. Memories of the future." Leia shuddered. "Do you want me to get you anything? Some water? Another blanket?" -- Han shook his head, all too aware now of how unsettling this new world could be. He could as much forget what he'd seen as he could erase his feelings for her. Feelings that, considering the circumstances, were starting to seem all too obvious. He held onto her hand. His voice softer still as he said, "Just stay with me for a little while." |