Star Nomad Cast (starnomadnpc) wrote in starnomad, @ 2016-02-09 09:53:00 |
|
|||
It didn't matter if the galaxy was falling apart, there would always be a cantina somewhere. Han was drawn to them, his feet carrying him away to the bar before he even really knew what he was doing. The drink was ordered and in his hand, all autopilot until he was staring down liquid in a glass that weighed heavier than it should have in his hand. He had known before Anakin touched down. Leia had felt a loss in the force, even if for some damned reason she seemed insistent that it didn't mean what he knew it did. Still her belief was almost enough to hold him up, to give him just that little edge of hope that both of his son's would come walking down the gangplank. Maybe they'd be a little banged up and worse for wear, but they'd be alive to be thrown out into the next piece of danger that the galaxy threw at them. There were eyes on him, watching him swirl the golden liquid around without taking a sip. It was a dark path to walk down again, the bottom of he didn't even know how many bottles. But what did it matter? As soon as he had seen Anakin's eyes, the color drain a little further from his face, Han had known. There was no hope, just his dead boy where he couldn't even be buried. Sure Jacen had grown up, he'd grown a lot just in this past year. But all Han could see was the child he'd watched grow in bits and pieces throughout his life. And now he was gone. Gone just like Chewie and Han couldn't do a damn thing to have saved either one. So here was his choice. Han set the glass on the counter, watching it as if there might be an answer. But there wasn't one and there wasn't going to be one. The reality was Jacen wasn't coming home. When Han had walked away Leia had let him go. Perhaps because she'd needed to hold up her youngest son, to not have both of his parents walk away on him when he came home without his brother. Perhaps because she'd needed to offer Lyric a hug to try to counter the haunted look she saw in his eyes before she'd handed over the child that she had honestly enjoyed taking care of while they had both been gone. Leia had felt him disappear, like a rug pulled out from under your feet, and she had known somehow that Anakin wouldn't come back with him, but she couldn't believe him gone. She couldn't feel Jacen in the Force. She had tried multiple times in those days between his disappearance and that moment that Anakin had walked out of the ship without Jacen but nothing had given her any hope except this sense, this hope that the baby she'd carried for nine months inside of her, was not dead - just missing. But she couldn't put that weight on Anakin, and somehow couldn't mention it to Lyric, afraid that the hope would simply tear them apart in a different way. She had already watched her son's quiet refusal to believe in Rikki's death, and what was that putting him through? When all was said and done though, she had to find Han. Perhaps the Cantina would have been the obvious place to look even had she not been able to find him through the Force. And perhaps she should be weary - watching him stare into a glass of liquor. Perhaps she should be afraid that he was going to spiral again... Yes, she could ask the question 'how many have you had', but that didn't change that she needed the hug as much as Han likely did - and if he'd had too many that would likely become painfully obvious soon enough. So instead she simply walked up to him and slid her arms around him without any words. Han didn't need the force to know that Leia was there. It had been along time since she'd actually bothered to come after him. To be fair that was his own fault. He hadn't been the kind of man that she deserved and if he couldn't be that then what did he deserve to be the person she went after? Still even after all these years, or maybe because of them, there was a certain prick on the back of his neck that let him know she was there. When her arms went around him, Han was really more surprised that she had actually come than that it was her. The glass finally left him hand, instead reaching up to grasp one of the ones against his chest. Han knew that she believed somehow that Jacen was alive out there. That belief likely was keeping her going, much like he'd watched Anakin's belief that the girl he'd fallen for hadn't been dead for months. It was denial and it'd catch up with them in the end. There wasn't much he could do about that denial though. There was a lot he could say, most of it wouldn't be good. So instead Han wised up for a moment and kept his mouth shut. He pulled away from her gently, reaching out with his newly freed arm and pulling Leia to his side. Leia didn't really know what to say. She couldn't offer any proof that what she felt in her heart was true. She couldn't offer any comfort that would make it all right if it wasn't true. So instead she simply folded into her husband's side as she tried to make sense of what Anakin had said, and what Han had left too soon to hear. It had been easier when it had been just her and a rebellion - no one else to care about except for a cause that would make the galaxy better for everyone around her. When it hadn't been her husband's heart breaking, her son's heart breaking, her heart breaking - and her son... Jacen might not be the baby that she still couldn't keep from seeing Anakin as, but she had watched him grow up in the past year. From saving her, to stepping more calmly into helping and figuring out where he felt comfortable doing so - he had a determination that meant that she had at times wanted to smack him, and at times she had just been so proud of him. And if he was alive than he was behind enemy lines and in who knew what condition. She couldn't blame Anakin for leaving him behind. Anakin had needed to think about the rest of the team and the mission and from everything he had said had he gone after, Leia would likely have been grieving two sons. She wrapped an arm around Han and she looked up at him. "Han..." she started but she had no idea what to say to even begin the conversations that needed to be had. The one about Anakin, about Lyric, or Derek, or what Jacen would not have wanted either of them to do even were he truly gone. "Lyric took Derek back with him," she finally said instead. It was informational and nothing more, but it was informational. Where were they supposed to go from here? Their son was dead, even if Leia held onto that belief and Han knew she did. Grief did funny things to a person and given his own reaction to Chewie he could hardly blame Leia for her immediate need to believe that somehow Jacen was alive. That hope was like a punch to the gut though, with little reminders that no he was gone and somehow he had outlived one of his boys. That wasn't how the galaxy was supposed to be and yet here they were, mourning a body they'd never get to bury. "Huh. Makes sense." Han looked at Leia for a moment before looking back to the drink. While he wouldn't admit it the child had been a strange but welcomed burden. Ben being around made it all a little more familiar, but Derek was a little older and had a little more of a personality to him. Despite his dislike of why the kid had been placed in their care, he couldn't deny the fact that having a kid around away had been a pleasant sort of feeling. Jacen was growing up too fast was all. Or he had been. Han got up from his seat, arm still around Leia. "Let's go." Han's motion hadn't been remotely what Leia had been expecting although it occurred to her that perhaps it had been. Han being on the move, not being able to sit still through his grief - that wasn't new, and if he was bringing her with him, then that was an improvement over Chewie's loss, a loss that Leia knew still grieved him every day. She stepped aside to keep up with him and looked up at her husband's face. "Go where, Han?" "Haven't decided yet." Han's frown felt melted into place on his face. He had no idea what he was supposed to be doing, what he could do. There was no ability to run now, nowhere in the galaxy was actually safe enough to do anything. Instead there was only the ever shrinking expanse of the galaxy as the Yuuzhan Vong continued to cut his family down until eventually there'd be no one left. Except he'd likely still be around, somehow cursed to watch the people he loved fall because it wasn't as if he hadn't lived through that enough times already. So where would they go? Leia would go where what was left of the New Republic would send her, working to try and push through her own denial until maybe she would just be numb. For Han numbness had come at the expense of a drink that seemed to never end, one that he couldn't risk falling back into but was more tempting than he wanted to admit. At least oblivion hurt less. His eyes were straight ahead and he just kept walking. Part of him wanted to return to the Falcon but right now he couldn't look Anakin in the eyes again. The loss, the blame and guilt that seemed to glimmer in Anakin's eyes, Han couldn't make that better and he couldn't set it aside. That made him a weak man and a terrible father and Han knew it. "Just away from here." he finally clarified. One thing Leia had learned over the years is that Han didn't do sitting still and grief. To be fair she didn't either, but their pulls were always so different. He to the galaxy at large, while she would turn back to the Galaxy at large in a different way. She tried to fix everything, while he tried to find something better. Perhaps that wasn't an entirely fair assessment, but it was close enough for now. She knew that tomorrow she would need to pull herself back in the work. She couldn't escape it and right now the Republic needed them both more than ever. But not right now. In the moment she could allow herself to be pulled to her husband's side and follow him somewhere. She needed to be held by him because even if she was right, what she felt in the Force was true, she still ached for her son. "This war has changed him," she said quietly, hardly meaning to say it aloud and she didn't know whether she was taking about Jacen or perhaps Anakin, or perhaps Han too... She wrapped her arm around Han's waist as she followed his lead for once instead of trying to pull him back into a fray. "They weren't raised for war." That was a bitter realization that wouldn't go away. Even with his children being off with the Jedi, moving further and further away from him, Han had held out the hope that somehow the galaxy would actually stay together. His life had been one of almost endless war and really there was never truly peace in the galaxy. But he had a naive hope that somehow his children would be spared from it. Instead they'd had a war brought upon them darker than anything he'd ever faced. Anakin was younger than Luke was. At least they'd managed to avoid raising them in a war like Leia had been. Except maybe that would have served them better than what they had gotten. Leia was here there, her belief and touch buoying him in place despite the fact that her denial made it that much more bitter. He wasn't going to run away this time though, not form her. Their son was gone and he knew that he couldn't be alone in this. Leia's hand tightened on her husband's side reflexively. Han was right. Despite the war with the Empire that had still been in the background of much of their children's early childhood, they hadn't really been raised for war. They had been raised to be Jedi, to understand politics, to give their all to the galaxy, but most importantly for peace. They had been raised to make things better in times of peace, because truly that was what Leia had hoped they would be doing. "Every parent wants a better life for their children than the one they had," Leia said aloud finally. "I had thought that there was the chance that they would have it." Before Sernpidal. Leia had watched the three growing, and she'd thought that the galaxy was mostly peaceful. There had been cracks, of course. Some public disagreements with the Jedi, an anger at human populations from non-humans that considering the atmosphere they were coming out of with the Empire was not unreasonable. They were the sort of cracks that could be worked through and potentially repaired before anything terrible happened. She had expected that for their future - not this. Not watching her youngest son struggle with guilt and shame and depression and the knowledge that decisions he'd made had caused the death of his father's best friend, and for all any of them knew for certain, likely his older brother now too. She had watched Jaina throw herself in, perhaps feeling like the most solid of the three - but Leia worried about her. Leia knew how deeply she had thrown herself into the Rebel Alliance and how many people she had cut out of her life to do so. If not for Luke and Han after Alderaan, what would she have become? And Jacen... Jacen she had taught how to negotiate peace but not how to navigate a peace with an enemy that would not negotiate. She knew it had eaten at him - for all she had been unable to see in the past two years - she had not been blind. Tears sprang to her eyes. So many times over the past year that she hadn't been able to be with any of them to help them through the challenges. They were just kids, all three of them still and she couldn't protect them. "I'm going to check on Derek in the morning," she looked up at Han. She would be checking on Lyric too but she didn't know how to tell Han that she had no intention on letting the boy slip out of their lives completely. There was a lot they had hoped for when it came to their children. Instead all those hopes and dreams had been thrown into their face, held out just far enough that they could never be reached. As much as Han's instincts were to distrust the streetboy that Jacen had fallen in with, even Han couldn't really deny the fact that Jacen had seemed more at ease with himself with Lyric around. Whether that was a good or bad thing now they'd never get to know, because Jacen was lost to all of them. "Of course." The agreement was gruff but he understood it as well. The baby hadn't done anything in its life except be left behind. Jacen and lyric taking him in was foolhardy but it seemed like something Lyric had already done with the rodian girl Elix who Han would not admit to also being fond of. His grip around her shoulders tightened slightly. "He's a good kid." At first Leia wasn't certain if Han was talking about Derek or Lyric. Both were true, although Leia suspected Han would not so easily admit it in regards to Lyric. So Derek then, but he wasn't wrong about it. "He was too young to have a child to take care of, but I can't help but be proud of him for wanting to do so," Leia said softly. "Derek's been... a joy. I'm going to miss having him around." And perhaps even more now. There were so many times when she had been forced to put her children to the side. The years that Jacen & Jaina & Anakin had spent with Winter, and nowhere that Leia could find them. She stopped, turning to face Han, and pull herself into his chest. He smelled faintly of the grease he used on the Falcon, but most importantly he felt like home. "Han - I... just -" Han's arms wrapped around her on instinct, holding her close. Part of her believed, Han knew that. But maybe reality was starting to sink in. And that reality was a bitter truth that he wished that he should shield her from. But there was no hiding from the fact that Jacen was gone, that part of their hearts would never fully come back. "We could steal him." Han offered, voice gruff despite the attempt to alter the mood. His hand pressed against her hair gently. "We might have some resistance there though." Leia's lips quirked up in spite of herself. Although it was a short lived humor considering that she wasn't certain how much Lyric would resist right now. Would he fight more fiercely, or would he just give up? Neither thought was particularly pleasurable to consider, but Leia didn't know him well enough to be able to say which outcome was more likely. She had done her best as time allowed over the past few months, to try to get to know the young man that her son loved so deeply, but Leia didn't feel that she'd succeeded very well at all. "I'd rather not it come to a blaster fight at Nar Shaada," Leia said softly, referencing a scene from a popular holodrama that could all but have come from her husband's youth. She could hear Han's heartbeat, and she didn't need Force sensitivity to feel the pain he was struggling with. "But I'll check in on him anyway. Jacen would want that." |