Leia Organa Solo (worshipfullness) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-01-14 20:13:00 |
|
|||
Being a part of something a little bigger than himself wasn’t a new feeling for Han. In his line of work, one tended to skirt the periphery of some pretty thorny affairs, operating in the margins of wars, of family feuds that were centuries if not millennia old, of empires criminal and legitimate in the process of coming together or falling apart. He’d learned to ignore the larger moral implications (usually) of the mire he had to wade through to get paid. He’d learned not to think about what might stretch out ahead of him, not to look back at how his actions might have shaped something he had no reason - no practical reason - to care about. But when it was shoved in your face in the form of a princess you’d rescued, her surprise Jedi Knight brother, a Sith Lord to whom you were apparently related by marriage, and finally, just to top it all off, your daughter … Daughter. Fuck. Well. It wasn’t often he looked longingly back on the past just for something familiar to help him find his feet, but he’d have paid more money than he’d have liked to admit for Chewie to show up. Or, hell, even Lando. Someone who knew exactly as much about him as he did. But right now Leia was about as solid as it got, someone he’d talked to, someone he had at least a little in common with (for some definitions of ‘in common’), someone he even liked, a lot. He’d have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t just a little smug about the shape his future had apparently taken - marrying into Alderaanian royalty, producing at least one child who seemed pretty bright and impressive in her own right - but he couldn’t quite digest it yet. He was still swimming in it. So he might as well be swimming in something else, he figured. And here he was, at Leia’s door again, with another bottle; except this time, he got to spend his time after knocking wondering how the hell you greeted your future … co-parent. It probably took even more charm than he had to make than anything but awkward. Leia answered the door nearly the moment Han knocked, and it took every ounce of effort she had not to launch herself at him, but a quick reminder to herself that he wasn't at the same place that she was was enough to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground. "Han," she breathed, and she eyed the bottle in his hand. She knew that couldn't possibly end well, but she wasn't about to begrudge it of him (and probably of herself as well), given the circumstances. She just didn't know what to begin with, seeing as there was so much. "Come in," she said, stepping aside and letting him into her tidy apartment. She closed the door behind him and gathered her hair, pushing it off her shoulders so that it fell all the way down her back. She hadn't bothered to tie it back or twist it up, choosing instead a simple brown headband to keep it off her face. She hadn't quite gotten used to living here, and she found she was still most comfortable in flowing skirts and dresses, though she certainly didn't mind a pair of jeans every once in a while. Just not that day. "Can I get you something to drink, or did you just want to start with that?" “You know, I don’t really feel like starting slow,” Han admitted, setting the bottle on the counter and tired, anxious sort of expression. He’d probably made it clear enough by now that he didn’t put much stock in the trappings of class, and breaking out the whiskey before bothering with an apertif was pretty low on his list of etiquette violations. “Sorry. You, um …” He found himself fiddling with the cap, his eyes glued to the label, to the glass, to her countertop as he tried to think of what exactly he could say to start off anything even the least bit meaningful. But he caught himself a moment later, because that was stupid; there wasn’t anything he could say, that either of them could, that would make jumping over this any easier. So he cracked the bottle, set the cap firmly on the counter, and stepped forward just enough to set his hand at her elbow, and met her eyes again with a certain amount of resignation. “You all right?” Leia watched Han fiddle with the bottle then open it and she knew, right then, that they would both be drinking it that night. She just hoped she could either one, keep up, or two, know when to stop. Or both, rather than one or the other. When his hand touched her arm and he looked at her, she looked up and met his gaze. She started to nod, but then shook her head instead. "I wasn't completely honest with you before," she said, referring to the last time they got together after both arriving here. "Where -- when," she corrected. "When I came from, Vader had just ordered to have you frozen in carbonite and shipped off with a bounty hunter to Jabba the Hutt. Before that, we had --" No, she couldn't explain it or trivialize it, even if it did point in some way to Jaina's existence. "I told you that I loved you." Which is what was making all of this triply difficult for her; the fact that Han hadn't experienced that yet when she felt like he might be the only one to ground her amid all of the shocks and revelations she was getting. Leia shook her head and kept talking. "I watched the movies. I don't know if you did yet but I did, and there's no mention of Jaina. They end after we destroy a second Death Star and Vader's been killed." Vader … she shook her head again. "I thought they'd help me make sense of everything, but they only brought up more questions. Being here isn't helping, because just when I think I have something figured out --" In that case, she meant her parents and Luke. "-- something interrupts it." Jaina. Han paused a beat, then raised his eyebrows - at this point, he was fairly saturated with fascinating new information, and if he hadn’t already been convinced it was time to start getting saturated with something else, that would have pushed him over the edge. “Carbonite, huh? Creative.” And that was his cue to make his way into the kitchen and find glasses. The fact that his path took him back to Jabba in suspended animation didn’t exactly do good things for his blood pressure, but it was past (or something), and the way it made his mouth go dry and his chest go a little cold wasn’t something he’d have wanted anyone to notice in any case. Busying yourself with the cupboard when a girl had just told you she loved you probably wasn’t the best idea, either, but there it was. “I haven’t watched anything, and I’m going to. Because …” He made a dismissive gesture, waving one of the glasses a bit in frustration. Because of everything she’d just said, because he really couldn’t see the point. If they couldn’t even prepare him for the next blow this place was going to throw at him, he’d rather not watch himself from outside his own body. It gave him the creeps. He poured two short glasses, rummaged around in her freezer to give hers an ice cube (some strange, stunted attempt at chivalry) and handed her her drink. “I guess the feeling was mutual,” he said as lightly as he could, trying the usual lopsided smile and finding it fell short pretty quickly. He didn’t feel confident; he felt anything but. But a little something was called for, and he knew that, and when he looked at her it really, really wasn’t all that hard to give it. His voice was quieter and he was struggling, as he always did, to get anywhere near honest emotion, but there was something there. “I’ve always had great taste.” Leia took the glass from him and looked at it then at him, blinking. For a moment she was hopeful that his 'I guess the feeling was mutual' was his way of returning the sentiment, but she realized it was instead probably just his way of acknowledging that eventually they got there, seeing as they had kids. Then her eyes narrowed at his final comment, and she drew her mouth into a tight line. That had to be something she eventually got used to, right? His inevitable need to sound so arrogant. "Here I always thought I had better taste," she bit out, and she drank the whiskey in three quick gulps, swallowing hard. She was unable to get the disgusted expression off her face as the alcohol burned its way down her throat, heated (too quickly) her stomach, and even cleaned out her sinuses. "I shouldn't have done that," she choked out, but it was too late now. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to quell the way the heat felt in her stomach and head. "Then again, maybe I should have done that the moment I found out Darth Vader was my father." It was only because of the alcohol and the situation that it came out sounding very nearly like she wanted to start laughing. “Hey - take it easy, Princess,” he said, but she was already knocking it back, and he couldn’t exactly blame her. He couldn’t help smiling, either, although of course none of it was very funny. He just took her glass from her, feeling more than a little sheepish, and settled his hand at the small of her back to direct her toward the sitting room. “That’s what I’d have done,” he said with a nod, because what the hell else did you do? “Come on, sit down.” He didn’t seem quite abashed enough to feel bad about inviting her onto her own sofa, at any rate. He brought the bottle along and let it rest on the coffee table, no doubt in his mind that he’d need it again in a minute. And when he was sitting, trying to look as relaxed as possible at the end of the couch (although he couldn’t keep his fingers from drumming against the back), he tried to look at her instead of the whiskey. “I get it. I really do. A girl like you …” he shrugged. It wasn’t the first time he’d wound up attached to someone light years out of his league. “You can’t have had your eyes set on anyone like me. I get it. But if you managed to grab me away from Jabba, which, let’s face it, sounds like something just dumb enough that you and Luke might give it a try, you’re …” He laughed quietly, his usual buffer between himself and whatever disgustingly earnest thing he was about to say. “You’re not half bad, are you.” He drank. “And,” he added, raising his voice a bit, desperate as always to leave what passed with him for a tender moment behind as quickly as possible, “I’m guessing you’re the responsible parent, since I seem to have introduced our daughter to Lando Calrissian.” Leia listened to everything he was saying through a bit of fog. It was true that the few swallows was certainly not that much, but the fact remained that she wasn't one to drink that often, so when she did, it went right to her head. "It was ingenius, really, us getting you out though it looked like it had the most to do with Luke and his ability with the Force." An ability, if Leia stopped and thought about it, she had too. Her daughter obviously had it ... At the mention of Lando, Leia scowled. "Lando's worse than you," she said. She would have pointed out that he'd agree with her if only he had watched the movies, but she refrained. If Lando hadn't sold them out to Vader... Oh that was the worst of it, really. Vader. "Han, stop being flippant about it all, will you?" Han snorted. “I know he is.” Honestly. But what else did he know, what else in this had so much as a straw he could grab onto? He drew himself up a little, uncomfortable and just a bit indignant, but conscious that this was something he couldn’t afford to screw up. “Look - what do you want me to say, Princess?” He reached out to push a strand of hair behind her ear, a nervous, almost involuntary gesture. “It sounds like you saved my life - probably more than once,” he conceded, just for good measure. “And you’re a - a Jedi, apparently, and for some unfathomable reason you still wind up stuck with me, and we have …” Kids. That was harder to wrap his head around, but this was no time to be shy. “We have a family. And I don’t know the first thing about any of it, except -” He had to force himself, almost physically, to keep talking. This was a part of him he’d only ever bared once, maybe twice before, and both times it had ended in a fucking scrap heap, a catastrophe of pretty epic proportions. It was probably only the fact that some of this was already proven to be carved in stone that let him admit to another person that he wanted something other than money and independence. “Except I think I like it.” He let his finger run along the corner of her jaw, reminding himself that it was beyond stupid to fear rejection when their genetic material was already running around as a fully-formed human being. “I really do.” "I'm not a Jedi," she said quickly, almost by habit, though it wasn't like she'd ever had any need to say something like that any other time in her life so far. Leia shrugged away from him, just an inch. "Stop it," she said half-heartedly. Because she didn't mind that he was touching her face. What she did mind was this sudden feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was just saying all these things now that Jaina was around and Leia had admitted what she admitted to him. "Don't say those sorts of things unless you mean them." “What makes you think I don’t mean it?” There was nothing defensive in his voice, although he could feel something uneasy starting in his chest. He wanted her and he wanted what the universe was apparently prepared to give him with her, and admitting that felt like asking for it - and asking was something he didn’t do. Asking was putting yourself on the line. Asking was … well, it was asking for trouble. He let his hand lie still, resting against her shoulder, his fingers curling slightly around the back of her neck. “Listen, maybe it doesn’t seem like me, but -” But she’d known him for three years, hadn’t he? So he decided to take a chance, to trust himself to have done something during their long acquaintance - and three years for him was long - to prove himself. It sure as hell wasn’t a sure thing, but he didn’t see what he could do now that would be more convincing. “You know me, right?” he offered gently, looking down into her face. “So tell me what you think. Tell me you think I don’t mean it.” Leia did know him. Or at least she knew a later version of him, but that was two years more than the Han in front of her. Of course there was no reason to think that he wasn't that same person and she just didn't know it yet. But there was also the fact that people changed, that Leia herself changed in the time she knew him, that Han changed, grew up … who's to say he wouldn't here, too, just differently. "We have a daughter, Han," she breathed out, shaking her head. "I can't wrap my head around that." Yes, she was ignoring what he asked of her, but she had to get this off her chest, too. "I couldn't understand how Padmé felt, when I arrived, but now I do. At least a little more than before. I don't want this to be something we forced only because we were told it happened that way." Wasn't she being unfair? To her … father? She wasn't giving him a chance simply because he one day became Darth Vader. She saw that he was fated to become that, and she didn't want anything to do with him. Here she was doing the complete opposite. It was all so confusing. "It's not that I think you don't mean it," Leia said carefully, but she trailed off and glanced away from him. “Well - what do you want?” He couldn’t keep all the frustration out of his words; for him it was pretty simple: something had been handed to him, and he liked it, and he saw no reason to reject it or do anything but pull it on like a good pair of boots. When you were given something good, you ran with it and didn’t ask questions. Especially when it fit so nicely with what you already had and already liked. “We’re not forcing anything. It’s there.” And maybe it was the nudge he’d needed to push himself to recognize that he did want this, at the very least, but he was sure a nudge was a good thing. “The last thing I expected was for some kid to sweep in and tell me I’m her father, especially one who’s not a total screw-up, but it’s a good thing, right? And you …” She was someone he’d already wanted, and wanted now, and if the thought that he’d been happy with her long enough to produce a child who didn’t seem to hate him made her that much more attractive, well .. why wouldn’t it? “Come on, Princess. You have to give me a chance.” It was hard for Leia to resist that. In truth it was hard for Leia to resist Han, period. "I want to see if this really is meant to go somewhere," she said softly, lifting her gaze to look at him. She felt vulnerable inside, eaten up as though she wasn't sure what was right or wrong anymore. She licked her lips. "Don't you dare be a scoundrel about all of this, Han Solo, do you hear me?" Han watched her for a few seconds, feeling like he was foundering in open space. “Yeah, all right,” he said, pulling his hand back from her to let it rest between them on the sofa. It stung in a way that was too familiar, in a way he’d told himself multiple times over the years that he wouldn’t let happen again - but he always did, didn’t he? He didn’t know how to say this was as far from ‘scoundrel’ as anyone could ever get, how to explain that wanting a future full of people who actually seemed to give a damn about him was so beyond the pale of how he usually set himself out to be that he’d have been loath to even admit it to anyone else. “So - how do you know what’s meant to go somewhere, then? How are you supposed to tell with all this … this stuff floating around?” Leia was at a loss as to how to answer that, so she simply let her shoulders rise and fall delicately at first. After a moment, she reached out and touched his hand where it sat on the sofa. "I suppose we could just -- get to know each other all over again? Personally, I think it would be easier if we were on the same page, but that would require you to watch the movies, and if you don't want to …" She let her words fall away. She looked at him. "Different situation, different circumstances, different actions," Leia continued confidently. "Let's have that mean we take it one day at a time and if it works out, then it's meant to be." “I already know what I need to know.” He’d rather get on the same page just reading the damn stuff than watching it; he could do more of that, he supposed. Neither solution would replace the years she had that he didn’t, and … that was probably the real problem. He couldn’t blame her for sticking on that, as frustrating as it was. “One day at a time, then.” He tried a smile, and more or less pulled it off, although he’d never been all that good at faking his way through cheerful conversation. “I can drink to that.” And he did, downing most of his neglected glass before setting it back down again on his knee. At that, Leia pursed her lips and frowned, chin tilted down. But only for a moment. Though her head was certainly clearer now than it had been right after she threw back her drink, she wasn't completely clear. She reached out for her empty glass and held it out. "One more for each of us?" she asked. “One more, sure,” he agreed, with a shrug that said why not but a smile that spoke at least a little more strongly of actual optimism. This he could do - both the drinking and the slowing down, if that’s what she wanted. He’d been living one day at a time here since he’d arrived (and, really, for a hell of a lot longer than that even back home). The only difference here was that he had a little more insight into what was meant to happen to him. Knowing you probably weren’t going to have your head blown off should provide some stress relief, right? So he poured, set the bottle aside again, and touched his glass to hers. “Might as well start things off right.” Leia smiled, diverting her eyes from his for only a moment, and tapped her glass against his when he offered. "Cheers," she said quietly, and this time she sipped the drink instead of knocking it back. "Thank you," Leia offered a moment later. "For calming me down." Well, as much as she could be calm right then. "And for being calm, really. I don't know how you managed not to overreact about the entire situation." That was nice, he thought, and it made him settle a little - calm as he might appear, because this wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted to seem upset about, he felt … tense. The way he always felt when there was something he wanted to reach for but couldn’t. “If I was going to overreact, I’d have done it when I got here, I think. It’s all right.” Coming here was the worst surprise he’d had; everything after that had been easy in comparison. And he knew the same couldn’t be said for her. So he just tried a cocky half-smile, took another sip of his drink, and settled back into the couch again. “Glad to help.” |