Subject: o-story
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 19:40:50 -0800
From: The Browns <winston@apex.net>
To: kbrown@bach.mursuky.edu
CC: winston@apex.net

                            Interlude on Fallia
     It was well past the middle of the night on the barren
planet, and Leia Organa was freezing.  "I thought desert planets
were supposed to be hot?" she grumbled, pulling the light wrap
more securely around her small frame.
     The Alliance had just finished its most recent "base-hop" to
the outer rim planet of Fallia.  The planet offered relative
safety from Imperial notice, but that's about all it had going
for it.
     Another stiff breeze wound it's way past her small frame and
she huddled a bit deeper into the fuzzy, woven wrap that she had
borrowed from a certain Corellian.  The garment still carried
the scent of him and she inhaled a little deeper, shaking her
head as she remembered the blistering argument that they had
yesterday afternoon.
     Then again, their tempers had been more frayed than usual
lately, the constant hounding by the Empire notwithstanding.  The
challenge of keeping a passionate affair secret was daunting
within the confines of such an incestuous group as the Rebel
Alliance.  People talked, having little else to do during those
long stretches of tedious boredom that separated the brief
moments of sheer terror--life in the trenches.
     "Be discreet!" her father had always reminded her during
those rare father-daughter chats while she's served in the
Senate.  "What the people do not know, they will not miss.  What
they miss, they will not question."  And of course, therein lied
the problem.  Han was by nature demonstrative--in fury, in
frustration and in passion.
     A sly smile creeped across her face at the thought.  In
spite of everything, he was proving worth the risk of discovery.
He had ways of keeping her warm that had nothing to do with
climate or time of day.
     Eying the bed, she blushed...remembering...he had ways
indeed.  Another current passed through the room, blowing in
sand.  Her interest in the desert night vanished instantly.
"Close windows," she ordered, causing the opaque doors to slide
over the opening.
     Warm air replaced the frigid winds, making the tiny room
much more hospitable.  If only she could sleep.  Insomnia...or
rather, Han.  She had at least one bout per month.  He would
invade her dreams (whenever she slept enough to have them); even
then she was given no rest. There were times when she felt unable
to endure the merciless teasing any longer, but there was no
doubt about it--she needed him.
     Exhausted and weary of thinking, she reclined on the
mattress, waiting for sleep to come.  It did not.  Her thoughts
drifted once again to yesterday's bickering.  The fight itself
concerned her very little; she and Han crossed wires
repeatedly.  It was nothing new.  Come to think of it, she
couldn't recall the topic of their argument.  What preyed on her
mind was the comment he had made earlier that day.
      "You know, sweetheart, you're shaping up to be one of the
best lovers I've ever had."
     On one hand, Leia knew she should take that as a compliment,
but on the other, it bothered her deeply, and she really wasn't
sure why.  Oh, she knew there had been others in Han's life; she
would have been shocked if there hadn't been.  But there was
something about when and the way he said it that just didn't sit
right with her.
     Maybe if he hadn't dropped that little jewel of information
immediately following a particularly...athletic bout of
lovemaking, she wouldn't be quite so peeved.  Maybe.
     She sighed and burrowed deeper under the blanket.  She'd
hoped that Han would come to her tonight, but the prospect was
looking less and less likely as the evening wore on.  They hadn't
officially "made up" since their argument the previous day, and
there was, after all, nothing like good make-up sex.  They
should know; they'd had more than their share of practice.
     Which brought her right back to the source of her
discomfort.  "One of the best," eh?  Why thank you, Captain Solo,
for your considered and expert opinion...damn him, anyway.  Where
was he?
     There was a sound at the door.
     Leia rose from the bed.  Instinctively she reached for the
blaster left on the makeshift nightstand, a supply crate.  As her
hand caressed the gun's cool metal, she asked, "Who's there?"
     "It's me, Sweetheart," replied a familiar voice.  "Let me
in."
     Gathering the blanket around her, Leia opened the door.  Han
pushed past her, desperately trying to flee the desert's biting
night winds.  Leia closed the door, turned and said, "Where have
you been?  I didn't think you were going to show."
     "Afraid I'd left you for good?"  Han asked, a smirk on his
lips.
     Curse that Corellian for the power he held over her!  Even
now, angry at him still for his "compliment," she wanted him
right then and there.  Well, she was going to show him she wasn't
just "one of the best."  She WAS the best.
     "Shut up and take your clothes off," Leia said in her best
command voice.  She dropped her blanket and strode confidently
toward him. Before Han could say another word, she captured his
mouth in hers with a kiss hot enough to warm the cold night.
     Breaking the kiss, Han looked down on her as he said with
pride in his voice, "I guessed you missed me!" Leia was not going
to let his tone drive her away from what she really wanted.
Slowly she pulled shirt from pants as she kissed his chest. "Yes,
I missed you. Do you think I would stay alone in a place like
this waiting for anyone but you?"  She unbuttoned his shirt and
slid her hands up his back. The hard muscles under soft skin
delighted Leia's fingertips. In every way he was everything she
wanted.  If only he wouldn't talk so much.  She reached up
to kiss him again as she fumbled to undo the front of his pants.
     Suddenly, the buzzer at the door sounded. Instantly and a
bit guiltily, both heads turned towards it. "Was there anyone
behind you?" Leia asked, a bit irritated.
q"Give me some credit, would you?"  Han muttered, just as
irritated at the interruption.  "Who's there?" he called.
     "...Your Highness?"
     Leia pushed Han away from her, grimacing in dismay. She
feigned a dry cough. "Ensign Anrison? Is that you?"  The comlink.
She'd turned it off. Someone in the command center must have done
a pinpoint search.  Han had retreated to a corner near the front
of the room, one where he couldn't be seen from the door. She
tried not to look at him.
     "Um, yes, Your Highness...are you all ri--" The junior
officer started momentarily as she opened the door. She added a
few more coughs for effect. "I'm fine, Lieutenant. It's a...a bit
dusty. You have something for me?"
     "Oh, yes Your Highness," Anrison handed her a datacard, she
offered a couple of mumbled pleasantries, and the lieutenant was
gone as suddenly and quietly as he'd arrived.
     Leia stole a glance at Han.  He'd remained utterly silent
throughout the brief exchange.  Now he was leaning sideways
against the side wall, arms crossed, staring at the floor, at
nothing.  He hated her need for secrecy, tried to respect it but
didn't understand it.  It was the one argument they'd never
settled, the one that wouldn't go away.  She was ashamed of
him.  Or so he thought, and so he'd accused her, in so many
words. She tried to ignore that, these days.  Because she didn't
know how to fight it.
     She retrieved her portable viewer from the nightstand,
inserted the datacard.  The encoded message began its startup
sequence; in her peripheral vision, she could see Han turn his
head fractionally in her direction. "So what's so important?" he
asked, trying to sound casual, his voice unnaturally loud in the
uncomfortable silence that had sprung up between them.
     Leia regarded the message before her for a long moment.
Finally she looked up from the tiny screen in her hand. "What do
you know about a place called Ord Mantell?"
     "Ord Mantell ? Your kiddin', right Leia"  Han drawled with a
sardonic grin, though silently hoping to himself that it wouldn't
be the new destination for their next 'base-hop'
      Han's reply did nothing to ease the bad feeling welling in
Leia's stomach.  "Tell me about Ord Mantell, Han..Now!"
      "Hey, Don't get all excited, Princess.  It's just another
smugglers' lair.   You'd like it. Why, what's goin' on."
     "Surely you can tell me more than that Han.  You must have
been there before.  Did you ever notice anything out of the
ordinary?"
     "Yeah, the whole place is outta the ordinary, Leia. It's
more of a stop-over planet. You know, like a big starship Stop n'
Go.  I've really only stopped there to refuel and meet
contacts.  There's no real social structure or anything.  It's
not the sort of place you go and make diplomatic speeches or
anything.  So what's the big interest all of a sudden.  Tell me
what's goin' on?"  The casual air he had tried to maintain
suddenly disentigrated as a suspicion entered his mind.  Hey,
you'd better start talking, because there's no way, your gonna go
there without me.  It's full of bounty hunters, smugglers and
other types that you don't wanna just waltz in on and start
messing with."
     "I'm quite capable of looking after myself, Han." Leia
retorted, though inwardly she decided that she would have to
confide in Han.  After all, she admitted to herself, she was
going to need his help and expertise for this one.  "Very well
then Han, I'll tell you."
     Leia sat on the bed with a solemn face, "Han...." Just as
she was about to start, she heard another knock at the door.
     She looked quickly at Han.  "Who is it?" she called.
     "It's me, Princess," Luke Skywalker's voice sounded rather
muffled through the door.  "Can I come in?"
     "Open," Leia said.  Shivering, Luke entered.
     "Leia, about Ord Mantell.... Oh, Hi Han." Luke said, looking
back and forth between the princess and the smuggler.
     "Hey kid," Han said as he got up to greet his friend.
     "No, that's alright, sit back down. What are you doing
here?" Luke asked, noticing his two friends were sitting
together on the bed.
     Leia quickly stood.  "I called him over to give
me some information on Ord Mantell.  I thought it would help."
She remembered some of the Jedi mind tricks Luke had told her
about, and she hoped his Force awareness wasn't strong enough to
sense her nervousness.
     'Damn, Luke thought. He tried the excercises to read minds
that Ben had taught him, but no such luck.  He shrugged,
realizing they must get back to the business of the trouble on
Ord Mantell.  "Leia, Han, we're all going to have to work
together as a team if we want this mission to work," he said
gravely.  "It's not going to be easy."
     Leia, remembering the trick Luke and Han had pulled on
the Death Star asked,  "Will it involve any Imperial disguises?
I'm sure we could find stormtrooper armor somewhere."
      Han glared at her. "Disguises aren't going to be enough.
Your Worship.   They've got officers from all sorts of
affiliations stationed all around there. Last time I tried to a
little sneaking around on Ord Mantell, they damn near caught me,
and it wasn't pretty. I was trying to..."
     Leia groaned,  "Han, no more pirate stories, please!" Luke
silently agreed. Realizing that this must be kept between the
three of them, she said, "Lock doors and windows." They obeyed
her commands.  Then the three of them sat discussing the plans
for their rescue mission to Ord Mantell.
      They had barely gotten down to the fine details of their
planning when Luke was called away to the Command Centre.  Leia
turned on Han as soon as Luke was gone.
      You should have left with him.... do you think he suspects
 anything ?"  Han looked at her, eyes blazing. "I don't care what
he does or doesn't suspect, Leia.  I am getting very tired of
your need to hide me away, to hide us away.."
      Leia paced the room as the tension and frustration with the
whole situation reached breaking point inside of her.  "And I'm
tired of you comparing me to past lovers... maybe I should get a
bit more experience and see how you measure up!"  she retorted.
      Han stared at her, not quite believing what he'd heard.
"You do that Sweetheart if that's what you want. I'll measure up
fine, don't you worry!  I'm sure there are plenty of pilots out
there just dying to sneak around and promise secrecy for the
pleasure of a quick "fix" with Royalty.  In no time they'll be
queuing outside your door....I'll take a rain-check though,
thanks all the same... I've had enough of sneaking around.  I'm
finished!"  With that he was gone slamming, the door behind him.
     "Idiot," Leia muttered fiercely, directing the comment more
at herself than Han.   Why had she said such a stupid thing?
Swearing under her breath, she opened the door and plunged into
the cold night air, moving swiftly to overtake Han.   She
could make out his form ahead of her, striding with quick and
angry purpose, his hands clenched into fists.  She called
after him.  He stopped and swung around to face her so quickly
that she nearly ran into him.
      "Now what, Your Highness-ness?" he growled, more angry with
himself than he was with her.  What was it about this woman that
always made him so hot tempered?  He knew even before he asked
himself.  The answer was that she was a constant reminder to him
that he was not the type of man who could carry on a relationship
with a lady like her.  He was not the gentleman he had wanted to
be when he was a younger man with his sights set on the Imperial
Navy.  He was someone she felt she had to hide away from the gaze
of others.
     "I'm sorry, Han," Leia said quietly.  "I didn't mean...  I
shouldn't have said that.  I didn't mean it."

     "Didn't you?" he asked roughly, immediately cursing himself
for a fool.  The woman was apologizing to him.  Why didn't he
just accept her apology and be done with it?  Why make things
harder...for either of them?
     "You know I didn't," she retorted, trying not to get angry
with him again.  "You have to understand... I can't be public
about this because..."
     "Because you're ashamed of me," he finished for her quickly,
his hazel eyes blazing in the dark.
     "No," she said quietly, almost sadly.  "Because I'm a leader
of the Rebellion. Because they've set me up as an icon... a
symbol.  And symbols aren't supposed to be human.  They're
expected to be above human needs and desires."  Looking away for
a moment, she added softly, "And griefs."  When she turned back
to him, there was another look in her dark eyes that Han couldn't
quite place.  "I'm not ashamed of you," she told him gently.
"And I'm not ashamed of what we share between us.  But I can't go
yelling it out to everyone on the base.  Not because of who I am,
but because of what I represent.  You just have to accept that.
But you don't have to agree with or understand it;  I don't
expect for you to.  And I don't expect you to make yourself
miserable for my sake.  If you'd really rather stop this
than go on in secret, then we can stop.  But it has to be this
way, Han."
     "You're that willing to give up everything else for the
Rebellion?"  Han demanded, his tone coarse, and his eyes blazing
angrily.
     "Everything else?" Leia asked back.  "What else is there?
The Rebellion is all I have now, Han, and you know it.  It's all
that's left for me."
      He moved closer, his body almost touching hers as he stared
with hazel eyes down into her upturned face.  The words which
issued from his lips were a deep rumble in his chest that
Leia could almost feel, despite the small amount of space
which separated them.  "Is it?" he asked.
    "You know it is," she managed with some difficulty.
    He moved closer still, watching her intently.  "Only because
you make it that way," he told her.  "It doesn't have to be the
only thing you care about."
     Leia stood straight and looked directly at him when she
said, "That may be true.  But it has to be that way for the time
being.  I can't risk anything more than that right now."
     He looked away from her, scowling.  It was obvious he did
not like the idea.  But he reminded himself that Leia had lost
everything she ever cared about, nearly every single person she
had loved in her youth...all in one moment.  Worse, she had been
forced to watch as it happened.  No, he could not blame her for
shutting everybody out. But he could not help but wonder how he'd
ever get past the barrier she had set up to protect herself from
further heartaches.  Or why he cared to, for that matter.
     After a moment, Leia added quietly, "Maybe, when the war is
over, when we have time to ourselves... time to *be*
ourselves..."  She trailed off, almost sadly, looking away as she
hugged her arms tighter around herself for warmth.  She had,
after all, left her quarters without the blanket she had so
willingly wrapped herself in earlier... the blanket which
smelled so much like Han that it had made her warm by thoughts of
him alone, not by the weight of the material.
      Han moved forward, taking her hand in his as he started
back for her quarters. "Come on," he ordered, still growling in
essence, though more softly this time.  "Let's get you back
indoors before you freeze to death."  They walked in silence back
to her small room, but once they reached it, Han turned to face
the princess, his expression unreadable. "Listen," he said
quietly, "I don't know how I feel about this yet.  But there's
something you have to understand.  I'm not going to change, Leia.
I like the way I am, and I'm not changing for you or anybody
else, got it?"
       Leia squeezed his hand warmly.  "I understand."  She
waited a full two seconds before asking, "But are you willing to
accept the same of me?  Are you willing to deal with the fact
that I'm not going to change either?"
      After a long moment, Han finally nodded his assent,
managing to mumble an adequate response to the princess's quiet
thanks as she opened her door.  Taking his hand in hers, she
pulled gently, and was relieved to find that Han did fight her as
she led him back inside the small room.  Once the door was closed
behind them, Han pulled her into his arms, capturing her mouth
with his own as he delivered a blazing kiss upon her
lips.  A fraction of a second later, Leia's arms wrapped around
him and she returned his passion.  When they broke apart long
enough for air, Leia looked up into Han's rugged face with a
smile.  "I see you remember where we left off," she said quietly.
     "Hush," Han ordered as he swept her up into his arms.  He
carried her over to the bed and gently laid her down, adding, "We
can argue in the morning."