Written for the Sanctuary Moon #2 fanzine, a collection of Han/Luke stories, poems and artwork.
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Bridges
A SW fic by Morgan D.

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"Come on, brother, you have to come with me."

"I don't know, Leia..."

"King Otrezze has requested your presence specifically."

"Requested?" Luke frowned. "As in 'invited' or 'commanded'?"

Careful not to spill the swugesse wine in her glass, Leia shifted on the loveseat so she could have her legs stretched on the cloth-covered surface. "He doesn't have the authority to command you..."

"Does he know that?"

"He knows."

"Which doesn't mean he doesn't expect people to go out of their way to attend to all his non-commanding wishes," Han intervened, opening the third bottle of the night. The first two had barely lasted to the end of their dinner.

"Ah, royalty," Luke smirked. "They do have a way with people, don't they?" He took a seat on the loveseat as well, nestling his sister's bare feet in his lap.

"Don't sell them short, kid. Being royalty is not an easy task."

"No?"

"Not at all! It's not an inborn talent, you know. It's an acquired skill, the result of constant, dedicated effort. They spend literally years studying and practising to become that obnoxious."

"Well, that explains a lot then..."

"Oh shut up, you two," Leia laughed. "I'm not that bad."

Luke smiled at her, and Han suppressed a groan. He had been trying to plant a smile on Luke's face for the whole evening — a real smile, not that wan curving of the lips that failed miserably to reach his eyes. So far he hadn't come nearly close to succeeding.

That morning Han had found, in the pocket of a jacket he hadn't worn for ages, an old holo of Leia and Luke from their days in Hoth. In the bluish image, the two were hugging each other and jumping together to exorcise the cold. They looked completely ridiculous — that had been the very reason why Han had turned on the holocam at the time. And they were smiling foolishly, on the verge of chortling.

Han had gazed at that holo for hours.

Luke's cheeks had always wrinkled when he smiled, even before the attack of the Wampa Ice Creature that had scarred his face. His smiles seemed greater than life, and needed space to spread their luminous power. Sometimes the lower lip would recede a little, as if he were trying to stop himself from grinning. That would be when his eyes would shine the most, electrifying the air with azure sparks.

Han hadn't seen such smiles in years. He suspected no one else had either.

"I hope you're not planning to drink that bottle all by yourself," Leia teased him.

"And what if I am?" he countered, quickly concealing his embarrassment. How long had he stood there like a goof, staring at Luke's lips?

"Then I hope you're not expecting me to nurse your hangover tomorrow."

"Sweetheart, only one of us will have a hangover tomorrow," he snorted, pouring more wine into her halfway-full glass. "And I can assure you it won't be me."

"Then it will be Luke," she shrugged.

"Luke can do that detoxifying trick of his."

"Only if I'm sober enough to remember how to do it," said Luke.

Han arched an eyebrow. "Well, are you?"

"I think so, yes."

"Then let's remedy that," Han winked, refilling Luke's glass as well.

Luke didn't smile, but he did wink back. For a moment, Han considered holding Luke's hand under the excuse of keeping the glass steady while pouring the chilly amber liquid into it. He suddenly felt the need to reassure himself that the kid was really there, still tangible, still reachable.

Nah, there was nothing sudden about that need. It had been there for months now, growing silently in his heart, sneaking into his mind in the most inconvenient circumstances. Most of the times he had denied it fulfilment, and he would do it again now. Both Han's hands were busy anyway, one with the bottle and the other with his own glass.

He was about to turn away when he felt Luke's fingers squeezing his wrist for a fleeting, powerful second. "Thanks," the young Jedi murmured.

Han forced his mouth shut before he could say, 'You're welcome.' He feared his voice might infuse too many layers of meaning into that one line if he allowed himself to speak.

"How drunk must you be to agree to come with me to Dod'ahnnar?" asked Leia.

Luke pinched one of her toes. "I doubt you have that many bottles stored."

"I can send Han to get more. I'm sure he keeps at least one case of Commenor brandy in his apartment."

"Royalty," the Corellian spat, touching his glass to Luke's in a mock toast. "I'm afraid she'll have to practice for a few centuries more before getting to order me around to bring her stuff. And a couple of lifetimes more to get me to part with my good brandy."

Leia shook her head. "That's not a royalty thing."

"So what is it then?"

"That's putting my boyfriend to good use."

Boyfriend.

The word gave Han the chills. He hadn't called anyone a boyfriend or girlfriend since he came out of his teens. There had been relationships, there had been lovers, there had been dates and affairs and even liaisons. There had been one-night-stands and long-lasting, slow-burning passions. But 'boyfriends' and 'girlfriends' spoke to him of childishness. Transitory flames, naïve delusions, intensity turning into constancy turning into dependency turning into despondency.

Luke hadn't called Han his boyfriend. Well, Luke had never called him anything beyond 'friend', even during the two and a half years when they had been screwing each other like hoojibs. How ironic that the kid Han had repeatedly accused of being too gullible and romantic for his own good had never in fact harboured any hopes of getting the spice smuggler to fall in love with him.

How ironic that said spice smuggler had fallen in love with that kid after all.

Han supposed someone might find the story funny, with all its silly, mawkish twists. Perhaps Han himself would have laughed at the main characters' stupidity and bad luck, if he didn't happen to be one of them.

He had started flirting with Luke out of fun. The kid was funny to look at when he was all flushed and flustered, and was mostly a good sport. He had quickly understood the rules of the game and started returning the attention, keeping up the casual, humorous, uncommitted spirit that Han would then have listed as essential to a nice relationship. There had been no demands from either side, no promises, no expectations.

In a weird way, it had seemed like a mere extension of the other game they used to play then: flirting with the Princess. Well, at least for Han it had been a game. In everyone's opinion, Luke had appeared to be serious about her, his devotion to her sounding like puppy love at times, like true soul-mate connection at others; conversely, all Han wanted was to see her aristocratic manners fail her, and push Luke's buttons at the same time. Just a chaste, innocent game to drive boredom away.

Until the day he and Luke had found themselves trapped together for over ten hours in the escape pod of that Llagutropian ship, and chastity and innocence had been blown into dust.

"If you're gonna put your boyfriend to good use, why don't you take him to Dod'ahnnar with you?" Luke asked his sister after downing half his glass in one gulp.

Was it just an impression, or the kid had choked a bit on the word 'boyfriend'?

"I'd love to," Leia sighed. "But he tells me he's found something more interesting to do than keeping me company."

Han placed the bottle on the floor and found a perch for himself on the loveseat's arm, right behind Leia, from where he could play with her hair. "That's right, sweetheart. I'm trading you for seventy tons of legumes from Aitoc. Nice bargain, huh?"

"Legumes?" Luke frowned.

"Yeah, that stuff your aunt would order you to eat or you wouldn't be allowed to play with your pals," said Han, gently tugging at Leia's braids.

"I was never allowed to play with my pals anyhow," Luke groaned. "And thank you for the enlightening explanation, Han, but I think I do remember what legumes are. I was just wondering what you're going to do with seventy tons worth of them."

"Do we really want to know?" said Leia, feigning a horrified grimace.

Luke pretended to consider the question for a moment. "I might need more wine to help digest it, but what can I say? I'm curious."

"Tsk, tsk... My Jedi brother has a perverted mind..."

Not perverted, Han thought. But Luke had a fertile imagination and, once he had vanquished some of his shyness, he enjoyed using it. As Han had found out in that escape pod all those years ago, when their little game had become... physical. The kid might have had this adorable air of virginal ingenuousness — and some of it had even managed to survive the brutal transformation into the looks of a wise, experienced Jedi Knight, making a welcome appearance every now and then —, but once inhibitions were discarded, his frank passion and concupiscent creativity had literally swept Han off his feet.

And when a new opportunity arose some time later, the Corellian hadn't resisted the temptation to taste the pleasures offered by that devious mind — not to mention the delicious flesh attached to it — once more. Twice more. Thrice more. Many, many times more.

Eventually, Han had cursed himself for not seeing the obvious consequences of his self-indulgence. For a while it had seemed that nothing would substantially change between them: they were still friends, they still flirted with Leia, they still worked well together, they still respected the rules of the game. Sex was just an addendum, a slight detail, and Han made a point of keeping it fast, sporadic, unsentimental, and a secret from everyone but Chewie.

But at some point the kid managed to get under his skin. Han never quite figured out when it happened, or how. When he realised what the alien feelings taking over his heart really were, it had been far too late already. At that point, the Corellian had had no alternative but to fly away from that menace as fast as the Falcon could take him.

"Out with it, Han," Luke prompted. "What nasty plans do you have for those poor, defenceless legumes?"

"I'm sorry to disappoint your and your sister's dirty minds, but I'm just transporting the damn things. Apparently, even the population of Coruscant needs to eat." Han snorted. "Something they probably should've thought of before turning the entire planet into one urban playground."

"Transporting food? That's all?" Luke marvelled. "How very ordinary."

"How very unfitting of someone in your position," Leia groaned.

"That is my position, Leia. I'm a pilot. I own a freighter. I transport things from one place to another. Legumes might not be as glamorous as smuggled spice, but after years of being chased by Imperials and regional law enforcers and bounty hunters, I'm more than happy to have a break from the heavy action for a while."

Leia pursed her lips in annoyance. "You could be working with Lando at the Trade and Transport Secretariat."

"And spend my days piloting a desk? No thanks."

"Lando seems to like it."

"Well, good for him."

Luke gave him a sympathetic half-grin. That was something Han and Luke had always shared, from the first time they met: the vital need to be out there, behind a starship's helm, painting their own jumbled constellations, with the worlds they had been on serving as vertices. They were different in so many things, had different philosophies and approaches to life, but their love of piloting never failed to bring them together. No one — not Leia, not even Chewie — understood that facet of Han Solo as thoroughly as Luke did.

When Han had told him that he had decided to leave Hoth, leave the Alliance, leave him, Luke had also understood. He accepted Han's thirst for freedom, and hadn't tried to stop him. They had parted ways as friends, putting a definitive end to their sensual game. No demands or promises or expectations. No hugs or kisses. A clean farewell, with nothing but mutual wishes of good luck.

And from then on, everything had gone downhill.

Leia leaned back, resting her head on Han's lap and raising a slender finger to tap his nose. "Well, you have fun with your legumes then. Luke and I will have the time of our lives on Dod'ahnnar."

"Luke is not going," Luke drawled.

"Oh yes, he is," Leia returned in kind.

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

"You have as much authority over me as King Otrezze."

"I don't need authority," the Princess shrugged. "I have eyelashes."

Luke blinked. "Eyelashes?"

Han let go of the Princess' hair and moaned. "Oh no. Anything but the eyelashes..."

Too late. Leia was already batting her weapons of doom at her unsuspecting brother. "Pleeeeaase?"

The Jedi stared at her in mute shock. When he finally recovered, he hid his face behind his free hand. "You did not just do that," he murmured. "I cannot believe you did that."

"She doesn't play nice," Han sighed theatrically. "You should've learned that by now, kid."

"I didn't want to believe she'd go that far..."

"Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures," said Leia matter-of-factly.

Han sipped his wine. "Isn't despair of the Dark Side?"

Luke was still covering his eyes. "This is the dark side. I think I'm blind."

Leia was the first to give in, and started laughing out loud.

She would get what she wanted. In all likelihood, Luke had already realised that and was just protecting his pride by postponing his surrender for as long as possible.

It was one of those incomprehensible mysteries of the universe that the most famous and revered diplomat of the New Republic was in fact the worst diplomat ever.

Okay, maybe not the worst. Leia did know a lot about the culture and politics of a dozen hundred planets, she knew all about proper behaviour in formal events, and she found it easy to adapt to circumstances. But she was far too combative to be a peacemaker. Her headstrong disposition was quick to irritate the ones in disagreement with her, and the strength of her presence made it impossible for anyone to ignore her. She usually won her battles by tiring her opponents, forcing them onto their knees to beg, 'Please, we'll do anything you want as long as you shut up.' It got the work done, and for the moment the Princess's fighting spirit fitted the propaganda of the new government. Someday the Empire would be truly gone, though. Whether Leia would have learnt to adapt to a time of peace by then, that was a question Leia herself didn't know how to answer now.

Chewbacca was sure she would end up retiring when that time came. The Wookiee loved Leia to pieces, but he was also somewhat fixated on first impressions. Being called a walking carpet by the human he had just helped to free from imprisonment was a memory he wasn't all that fond of.

Han, on the other hand, couldn't imagine the Republic without her. If he were asked to explain how her knack for being so extraordinarily annoying could be a good thing, he would find himself at an utter loss for words; but that was what had won him over on that long, adventurous trip after they left Hoth. After all, without Luke around, there shouldn't have been any reason left to keep up the flirting game. Why go on competing if your competitor isn't there?

Nevertheless, when she looked at him with those challenging brown eyes, Han couldn't keep himself from rising to the bait. He just had to go and get back at her, retort to every snap, smirk at every growl, raise the bet and call her bluff. Force of habit, perhaps.

And without Luke to mess up the stakes, Han had easily won that hand. Without Luke to remind Leia that there were decent men in the galaxy, she chose the scoundrel. Without Luke to take Han's breath away with his soul-piercing eyes and mind-blowing kisses, the Corellian fell into a trap much more dangerous than the one he had escaped when he had fled Hoth.

It might have been easier for Han's heart if he could label Leia his 'second choice', or if he could believe that he had been hers. But that wouldn't be the truth. Since the first time the three of them were put together in the same space, Han had felt the contention of forces linking him to Leia, a strife of attraction and repulsion, and Luke had been the bridge between them. And like a bridge, Luke made a stable connection possible, but also maintained the notion of two different sides with an obstacle to keep them apart. Once removed the bridge, the stability of their link had evanesced, and the two sides had collided into each other in a messy earthquake. Their coming together had not been subtle, gracious or tender, as the poets would demand a blossoming romance be. It had been brisk, rough and clumsy, but also very, very real.

Leia was still laughing at their banter, and Han was soon laughing with her. Her laughter was contagious, even more than Luke's.

The young Jedi silently emptied another glass.

"You are coming to Dod'ahnnar, aren't you, Luke?" Leia insisted, partially regaining her composure. "Please, I'd really like to have you with me."

Luke moaned, admitting his defeat. "Only if you give me your word that you'll never use the eyelashes on me again. That has to be a Sith technique."

"Probably how Palpatine manipulated the Senate in his time," Han suggested.

"Do not underestimate the power of the eyelashes," Leia boasted, picking the bottle from the floor and making sure everyone's glasses were filled to the top.

"I've already agreed to go," Luke said. "You don't need to get me drunk any more." He didn't try to stop her, though.

"I still have to convince you that going to Dod'ahnnar will be fun."

Luke threw his head back, a look of agony in his face. "Ooohhh... Will the torture never end?"

Leia raised a foot from his lap to kick his chest lightly. "Stop being so negative, Luke," she chided him. "Think about the good things we'll get to do there."

"Like what?"

"Saying goodbye when you finally get to leave," Han offered.

Leia rolled her eyes. "Han..."

"On second thought, farewell ceremonies can be a pain too." Han feigned a worried frown. "All those speeches and bows and waves to the crowd... Better concentrate on finding nice souvenirs, kid. What are the Dod'ahnnarian specialities?"

"Carnivorous plants," Luke winced.

"Argh. Never mind then."

"Han?" Leia muttered.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Please. Don't try to help me."

"Whatever you say, Your Worship." Han winked at Luke again, but this time the kid looked away.

Humour evaporated into thin air, and the Corellian started wondering if Luke had real reasons for wanting to stay out of that trip. As far as Han knew, he had never gone to Dod'ahnnar or met its sovereign, Otrezze. The Republic representatives would be going there simply to sign a peace treaty whose terms had already been discussed and agreed upon without much of a diplomatic struggle anyway. It was one of those 'for-the-press' missions: no challenge, lots of visibility. But the way Luke was staring at the bottom of his glass — how could it be empty again?! — made it look like he was going back to the war front. Or being hauled to a slaughterhouse, as the cattle.

"What's troubling you, Luke?" Leia asked him. "You've been on dozens of missions like this one." Apparently, she had caught onto the change of mood too. She would, of course.

"I don't know," Luke shrugged. "Maybe I've been to one too many."

"I've made sure our party will have a loose schedule," she said, "with plenty of time to do some tourism on our own. Time to spend together, you and me."

"That'll be nice." But Luke's tone lacked enthusiasm.

"And you'll get to know lots of new people too."

"Yeah..."

Han turned his gaze to the floor. He usually managed to keep his cool whenever the topic of Luke-meeting-new-people arose, but he was feeling a little light-headed tonight. Hopefully it was just the wine. Hopefully it wasn't the vulnerable look in Luke's eyes, or the way the dim light of the room struck the dark sandy hair. Just the wine.

"The Dod'ahnnarians have a tradition of admiration for the Jedi," Leia went on. "I'm sure there'll be a crowd of young men and women fighting for the chance to get a glimpse of you."

"Right," Luke muttered. "A glimpse of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight, Hero of the Republic, Gallant Extraordinaire."

Han arched an eyebrow. "'Gallant'?"

Luke's smirk was cruel, self-scornful. "People have strange expectations."

"That, they have," Leia sighed. "But it can't be helped, can it?"

"What if I don't meet their expectations?" Luke asked. "What if I go all the way there just to disappoint them and ruin their illusions? What if they don't like me?"

To her credit, Leia's reply was immediate. "Their loss."

Luke's smile came so close — so damn close! — to being sincere this time. Han didn't know if he wanted to kiss Leia thanks or strangle her for being more successful than he had been all night. At any rate, her words had been right on target. Only imbeciles could fail to appreciate Luke for what he was, and imbeciles did not deserve him anyway.

Han Solo felt very much like an imbecile himself.

Oh, he could appreciate Luke all right. Probably much more than would be considered appropriate for the so-called boyfriend of his sister. Still, he had let the kid go, when all he had wanted was to scoop him up in his arms like a child and make him promise he would never leave his sight again.

Still, no matter how many times Han examined the past, he couldn't figure out what he could have done differently at that point. He had just been roused from his carbonite sleep by this beautiful princess that promised him love and warmth, while Luke was so changed in his brand-new Jedi outfit. Distant. Cold.

Maybe not cold, not really. But the contrast between past and present had been so sharp that Han had found himself staring at that new Luke — the fully-grown man, the Jedi — and wondering where in blazes his Luke could have gone.

It was pointless to conjecture if Han could have made a different choice then. No choice had been offered to him. Luke had been his friend and his partner in that sexy, nameless game of theirs, but when they met again on Tatooine, they were both changed. Those changes made it hard for their friendship to be easily restored, and the game had already been terminated by mutual agreement when they went their separate ways; now that Leia had chosen Han, it wouldn't make any sense to restart it. Luke seemed to graciously accept that the two people he had flirted with for years had become a couple, and that should have been the end of it all.

Only it wasn't. And ironically, it had been Leia who had kept things from falling apart. She might have chosen Han, but nothing would make her exclude Luke from her circle. Allowing the two men in her life to drift apart from each other was also out of the question, so she had put every diplomatic skill she had in her into rekindling their friendship. She pointed out to Han the little signs that proved that the old Luke they had known was still there, buried under the polished manners and preternatural powers of that new, carefully crafted self. She reminded Luke that even a Jedi Knight needed friends to rely on, encouraging him to return to the familiarity and fun of their togetherness.

Their dynamics as a trio had been profoundly altered, and now it was Leia who had become the bridge that linked Luke and Han together. A stable connection. Safely apart.

"You have nothing to worry about, Luke," Leia smiled encouragingly. "Maybe a few of the Dod'ahnnarians will be upset that you don't look the way they had imagined you to be. But most of them will be gasping and yelling just before fainting in shock, 'My goodness, she's so short!'"

"And she has the tiniest toes too," Luke added, tickling her feet.

"No, no, no, no, no!" Leia giggled, standing up in a tottering leap. "Enough Sith techniques for one night."

"Spoilsport."

"I have to be. That's an inherent trait of royalty."

That won a chuckle from Han. "Never thought you'd admit it."

"I'm drunk. I'll deny it in the morning." She stretched her arms lazily, and placed her glass on Han's hand. "Speaking of which... I'm beat. Guess it's time for bed."

Luke moved to stand up as well, taking the statement as that of the host calling it a night.

However, Leia grasped his shoulders firmly and pushed him back on his seat. "No, you stay here. Han needs someone to listen to the stories of his exciting adventures transporting legumes throughout the galaxy, and I just don't have the patience for it." She gave him a chaste peck on the lips. "Good night, brother."

"Sleep tight."

Han gave her an inquisitive look when she turned to face him. Since someone would have to lock the door after Luke left, Leia's early retiring to bed automatically established that Han would stay the night. Not that big a deal, but he had spent the last three nights with her, and before Luke had arrived for dinner Han had mentioned his intent to go back to his own place this time.

A quick movement of her eyes toward her brother served to discreetly convey her intentions to the Corellian. 'Talk to him,' those eyes were saying. 'Draw him out.' After a brief kiss, her actual words were, "Don't you dare switch the lights on when you turn in."

"Night-night, Your Worshipfulness."

Han watched her make her way to the bedroom in what was almost a straight line... and he kept gazing at the door for a considerable while after it slid closed. The kiss she gave him hadn't been that different from the one she gave Luke. Well, some would frown at the sight of two siblings kissing like that, but on Alderaan those little pecks had been common among family members — and maybe Leia felt it would be somewhat hypocritical to deny Luke that now, as she had at least once given him a full-fledged kiss on the mouth, back when they hadn't known of their kinship. So an uninformed witness might have thought that Leia's kiss equated Luke's status to Han's, while Han knew for a fact that it did just the opposite.

"More wine?" Luke had picked up the bottle and was holding it over the empty glass in Han's hand.

"That's Leia's," said Han, showing his, still full.

The younger man shrugged and replenished his own. What was left in the bottle after that wouldn't be enough to fill another.

Han leaned over to place Leia's glass on the floor, using the movement to conceal the worried scowl on his face. He was too used to being the one draining the bottles and getting the twins to fret over him, and he wasn't sure he enjoyed the turn of the tables.

"When are you leaving for Aitoc?" asked Luke, sitting sideways on the loveseat, his left leg folded under him.

"Tomorrow."

"How long will you be away?"

"Sixteen days, if everything goes well."

"Leia and I will be on Dod'ahnnar by then."

"Guess I'll see you both when you get back, then."

"Want us to bring you some souvenirs?"

"What would I do with a carnivorous plant?" Han snorted. "It'd either eat me or wither from lack of proper care. I ain't really a plant person."

"That's a shame, some plants seem to like you a lot. Remember that giant creeper on Endor?"

"I'd happily forget it if you didn't make a point of reminding me of it every other week."

Han wished the frisky vines that had played with him as if he were a rag doll were the only unpleasant memory of Endor that Luke would force him to relive over and over. At least the jokes about the creeper were deliberate; Han knew he just needed to talk seriously to Luke to get him to stop, if they came to annoy him that much.

But the kid never did anything — not consciously — to remind him of the last conversation they had had before the attack on the Death Star and its shield generator. Quite the contrary: Luke clearly preferred to pretend that that conversation had never taken place at all. Han felt it was his sole and exclusive fault if he could not forget it.

Then again, how in blazes do you forget the time when the man you love tells you that he has been hopelessly in love with you for years?!

If every tree on the Sanctuary Moon had suddenly raised its roots from the soil to dance the quick steps of the Tarri-Tita, Han wouldn't have been as shocked.

It could not be, he had tried to tell himself. Luke had been with him to forget Biggs Darklighter, his first boyfriend, who had perished during the Battle of Yavin. And then Luke had fallen in love with Leia. That had been Han's reality for so long, and reality could not shift into honey-sweet hallucinations in a split second — that's why people called it 'reality'.

However, once the words had been uttered, the Corellian could not believe he had not seen it before. Of course Luke loved him. What other explanation could there be? It had been love behind those mesmerising gazes, those burning kisses, the tender caresses, the feverish whispers, the endless craving for more... and even behind the noble capitulation when he saw the man he wanted in the arms of the Princess.

It was true. And yet the timing couldn't have been worse. Han was with Leia. The stage was then ready and the curtain was just about to open for the most crucial battle against the Empire, a battle Luke firmly believed he would not survive. Luke's belated confession was but a tribute to their past. Any seeds of a future had long waned and died, encased in ice during a Hoth blizzard.

That was why Han had let Luke leave that night without telling him that his feelings were returned. It would have been cruel for all three people involved, or so he had felt then.

"That wasn't very fair, was it?" Luke sighed.

For a moment, Han feared the Jedi had been prying into his thoughts. "What do you mean?"

"Leia. What she said. What she did."

"Ain't following you, kid."

"You probably do need someone to hear about your adventures with the legumes. And I'd love to, actually, as weird as that may sound. But instead she charges you with the task of figuring out what is wrong with me."

So the look Leia had given him hadn't gone unnoticed by her brother. Hardly a surprise there. "Is there something wrong with you?"

"Besides being eager to hear about you and the legumes, no, not really."

Han slid down from his perch on the loveseat's arm to the spot Leia had occupied earlier. "That is probably reason enough to get her really worried."

"So let's not make her totally freak out by telling her that I envy you."

"Because of the legumes?!"

"Because you've found yourself again. Everything has changed around us, we have changed, and most of us are still trying to find the slot where we fit into this new thing, trying to understand what we are when war and death aren't hovering just over our heads... and you did it."

Han felt a warm rush of gratitude towards the kid. "Wish Leia would see it that way," he admitted.

"Oh, she will," Luke assured him, "when she manages to find herself again."

"And what about you? I thought you had found your slot in the universe when you became a Jedi."

"Thought so too. Guess knowing what I am doesn't quite tell me what I should be doing. Somehow I don't think parading for royalty and regional governors is the answer. And aside from the occasional trouble with the Imperial Remnant, that's all I've been doing since we left Endor."

With not a small amount of bitterness, Han couldn't help wondering if Luke's teachers had even considered the possibility that their apprentice might survive his final test. He had witnessed but a few days of the training administered by Kenobi during the trip from Tatooine to Alderaan, but something about the way the kid talked about the old man and that Yoda of his caused him to suspect that they, like Luke, had foreseen nothing beyond the confrontation with Vader. It made sense, in a twisted kind of way: if you teach a boy to jump headfirst from a cliff five hundred feet over the sea, why bother teaching him how to swim? It wasn't like he was going to need it.

On the other hand, who was he to judge them? True, he had been absolutely certain that Luke would return from the Death Star, and that was why he had chosen not to give the kid false hopes by revealing his feelings. But had he really thought of what things would be like after that?

When Leia told him Luke was her brother, Han had thought that that was the best piece of news ever. That would solve everything, providing the perfect resolution to their triangle. If the unwavering love between the young Jedi and the Princess could so easily mutate into sibling affection, surely Han's longing for Luke could similarly shift into a platonic, brotherly bond, right? Leia would be able to keep both men, if in different ways. Han would have Leia, and he wouldn't have to see Luke disappear from his life. It all fitted in a miraculous way.

Yeah, right.

"I'm an incurable misfit," Luke murmured, tapping a nail against the side of his glass. "That's what my uncle used to say."

Han offered him a tight grin, trying to ignore the lump in his throat. "That's what everybody used to say about me throughout my life. I still feel like one at times."

"Not when you're flying."

"No, not when I'm flying." He felt horribly misplaced now, sitting on that loveseat and chatting with Luke under the pale light of Leia's apartment.

"I do envy you, Han. But you know, I'm not really worried. I will find my place eventually. Some answers we have to hunt for, others must come to us on their own. I have the feeling that this is one of the latter. I just need to be..." He grimaced. "...patient."

"And the Force will lead you there?"

"Something like that, yes."

"So that's not what's troubling you tonight..."

"I think I said nothing was troubling me."

"You did. I didn't believe you."

"Ah." Luke ran a hand through his hair. "Just because Leia thinks there's something, it doesn't mean she's right."

"Just because I can't feel any Force leading me around, it doesn't mean I'm wrong." Okay, so Leia had nudged him into this, sensing that something was distressing her brother. But it wasn't like Han had needed Jedi powers to notice Luke's dejected mood. He had seen it right when the kid had stepped into the apartment sporting his now trademark let's-pretend-you-can't-see-how-miserable-I-am grin.

On the other hand, would he have taken the initiative of reaching out to Luke without Leia's encouragement — or in other words, without being sure of her approval? Han didn't know. He remembered the old days, when offering Luke a comforting hug had felt natural and uncomplicated. A time when Han wouldn't have felt the automatic need of Leia's permission to do whatever he wanted.

A time when Luke wouldn't have known how to fake a smile.

"Tell me about Aitoc, Han."

"Not until you tell me what's wrong."

"It's not worth telling. It's something pretty trivial, to be honest."

"More trivial than legumes?"

"There's nothing trivial about legumes. Not when Han Solo is involved with them anyway."

"You know, if you're gonna be this stubborn, I can wake up Threepio and have him bring my case of brandy over."

"You don't want to waste your precious brandy on me."

Their eyes met, freezing the air between them, burning that moment in time. "It wouldn't be a waste."

Han's mouth was dry. So many times he had pictured himself staring into those blue eyes and making the forbidden declaration... and every time his tone of voice had sounded just like that: hoarse, quiet, dreamy. How could the Jedi fail to listen to the truth beneath his words, so obvious to his own ears?

"Seriously, Han, it's not a big deal."

"I'd rather be the judge of that, thank you."

"It's getting late anyway. We should call it a night..."

"I'm not letting you run away."

"I'm not running away. You're leaving for Aitoc tomorrow, you should get a good night's sleep..." Luke started to get up.

Han grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. "It's either the brandy or the eyelashes, Luke."

"Alright, alright, I'll talk!" the younger man sniggered. "I'll tell you everything you want to know! Everything! Just please don't hurt me!"

"That's a good boy," Han grinned.

And Luke responded with a beautiful smile. Still a pale shadow if compared to the life-encompassing smiles of the past, but still holding a tender fire no one had seen in a long, long time. "You just never give up, do you?"

Han felt slightly woozy at the sight, at the rich sound of that voice, at the sudden realisation that he was still holding Luke's arm.

He did not let go.

"I hope you're still wide awake," Luke whispered. "It's a bit of a long story."

"Go for it."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Luke..."

"Okay, okay, here it goes..."

Luke took a deep breath. Jests aside, it was clear that this wouldn't be easy.

"I've met a girl," he said at last, biting his lower lip. It was a gesture of the old days, when the kid tried to muffle his goofy grins in an attempt to look older and mature, succeeding only in making himself look even younger and more endearing. But his face was pale, without a trace of the cute blushing that in the past would have necessarily followed any words referring to romance.

"That's great," said Han, just as he had the last dozen times Luke had made a similar announcement. The Corellian wondered if one of these days he would actually mean it.

"It didn't go too well though."

"Oh. Sorry to hear it." More words they had been repeating over and over for the last nineteen months, more words Han wished he could be honest about.

This was probably a new record: less than ten seconds between 'I've met someone' and 'It didn't work out'. It was a relief, in a way. At least this time they would all be spared from watching the sad process in which Luke's forced hopes of 'This might be the one, you know?' turned into hesitant statements of 'I do think I could fall in love with him/her, given some time', then into desperate self-recriminations of 'He/she is perfect! Why can't I make this work?', and finally into the lonely laments of 'It wasn't meant to be. The one for me is still waiting somewhere out there; I just hope we'll find each other before the stars turn cold.'

The more time passed, the more obsessive Luke grew about finding 'the one'. At first, Han had been sure he was the only one to realise that the kid's behaviour had little to do with loneliness per se. Now even Lando had been dropping witty remarks about how dating seemed to have become the primary duty of the last of the Jedi. And if Lando had seen it, Leia surely had noticed it as well.

She had never brought it up, though, to Han's great relief. He didn't know what he felt about it himself.

The night after the second Death Star was destroyed, Luke had solemnly promised him that he wouldn't stand in the way between him and Leia, and he was clearly working very hard to keep his word. Consequently, too often Han would find himself thinking of Luke with barely repressed anger. Why was he angry? Because Luke tried so hard. Because he tried all the time, even with people Han would have labelled beneath Luke's attention, even with people Han knew the kid didn't feel attracted to. Because Luke kept on trying and trying, until the other person dumped him. Because Luke completely failed to make his efforts look effortless. Because it was impossible for Han not to feel unbearably guilty, watching Luke's desperate, disastrous attempts and knowing that it was for him alone that Luke was doing all that, to prove to him that, despite his declaration on Endor, he knew it was all over and was moving on.

Because Han hated himself for feeling such a relief whenever Luke came to inform him that another relationship of his had met a bitter end.

"Her name is Nymëa," Luke told him. "Short black hair, dark eyes, a cute snub nose on this perfectly round face. And tall. Maybe even an inch taller than me."

"Kid, that's not tall."

Luke ignored him. "She works for the Justice Office. Junior secretary to the assistant of one of the sectorial prosecutors."

"Ah. A normal person."

"We don't get to see much of them any more, do we?"

"Some of them come attached to the legumes, so I can't complain," said Han. Another reason why he felt uncomfortable with Leia's insistence on finding him a 'relevant' job: military and high society would never be his environments of choice.

"She told me she's from Chandrila," Luke went on. "Came to Coruscant about three months after we took over the capital."

"One of the pioneers of the Reconquest?"

"Yeah, she thought that a new government would need all the help it could get, so she wouldn't have any trouble getting a job, even with a poor resume. She never finished her studies."

"Poor family?"

"No, she dropped out of school when she got pregnant."

"She has a child?!"

"A ten-year-old daughter," Luke nodded. "Vènnl. Absolutely adorable."

Han forced some swugesse wine down his constricted throat. "You're seeing a woman that has kids already?"

"She only has Vènnl. And Nymëa had her when she was really young, remember? I didn't ask her age, but I doubt she's any older than myself."

"But she has a child!"

"And what's the problem with that?"

Words deserted Han instantly. The problem was that you don't date men or women with children, period. They wanted commitment, they wanted a new parent for their offspring, they wanted serious relationships leading to formal wedlock. That was Han's experience anyway. And the way Luke jumped into his relationships nowadays... "Maybe you should slow down a little with this one, Luke."

"I've already told you it didn't go well."

"Good."

"Han!"

"Don't look at me like that," Han said defensively. "You don't fool around when there're children involved in the equation."

"I'm not fooling around. I don't want to fool around. I want the real thing, Han. I want what you have."

All that wine started a little seaquake inside Han's stomach. "All the more reason to be careful. A poor single parent shows up looking for a daddy for her lovely daughter and just happens to find you, young famous bachelor..."

"It was nothing like that!"

"I'm just saying you should be careful."

"Don't you think maybe you're being just a tiny bit judgmental?"

"What?!" Han gasped. "I'm not judgmental. When have I ever been judgmental?"

"When it comes to the people I go out with, you're always judgmental."

Uh-oh.

Fine, so he didn't like most of the folks Luke had dated since Endor. Erase that; he didn't like any of the folks Luke had dated so far, from Gaeriel Captison to Hayes Tewls, and this new lady wouldn't be an exception. But he had intended to be subtle about it. He had been trying to be supportive, or at least pretend he was. "Can't have been that bad," Han murmured, mostly to himself.

"Believe me, you have. Remember Ian? First time I brought him with me for our weekly dinner, you started scowling at him from the moment he crossed the doorframe. I doubt Imperial Intelligence is as thorough in their interrogations as you were with him."

"He was a slaver!"

"He was the son of a slaver, and he stopped assisting with the family business when he came of age. If you're gonna start blaming sons for the acts of their fathers..."

Han tightened his grip on Luke's arm. "You know better than that. I just wonder why he waited so long to stand up to his old man."

"You didn't seem concerned about that when you introduced him to me."

"Because I didn't know he'd come on to you like that!"

"Exactly. You thought he was perfectly acceptable company until he showed interest in me."

Things were getting seriously out of hand, in Han's view.

"Admit it, Han. If you could have your way, you'd have shooed away most of the people I've gone out with before I even had the chance to know them."

He would, wouldn't he?

"And I know why you're like that," Luke asserted.

Damn. "You do?"

"Yes. I'm sure that even when we are both old and grey you'll still be calling me 'kid'. I'm resigned to that. But honestly, Han, you don't need to be so overprotective. I can take care of myself."

The Corellian didn't know if he should thank the gods for Luke's bizarre inability to see the obvious, or whack him on the head for the very same reason. The boy was a Jedi, for crying out loud. Where was his celebrated insight, his mystic clairvoyance, his alleged deep understanding of life? Leia, despite her little training, was always sharp to guess what was going through his mind...

...which implied that she would have noticed Han's hostile feelings towards Luke's dates and figured out the reason behind such hostility.

Great. Just great.

"Please, don't think I'm not thankful," Luke was saying. "I can't tell you how much it means to me to know that you care."

No, he couldn't tell. The two of them — or perhaps the three of them — had been long living in this deceitfully cosy cage where they were forbidden to speak the truth. And maybe Luke had found a way to keep himself from listening to it as well.

So often Han had found himself fearing that Luke would use his powers to read his mind or intrude on his privacy... What if that risk had never been real? It was inconceivable for Luke to be so blind, unless the kid had been deliberately screening his own perceptions. For Han, that would be the only logical explanation: in order to keep his own feelings in check, to keep things as they were, Luke had raised some sort of barricade between them. A really strong barricade, from the looks of it. Maybe the Corellian could even hold Luke into his arms and yell 'I love you!' right to his face, and the kid wouldn't even notice it.

Not that Han understood how those Jedi powers operated. He wondered if there was a way to query Leia about it without giving away too much.

Probably not.

"Han, I know you just want the best for me, but... I'd rather if you weren't so demanding. I'm trying not to be so demanding. Not everyone can be as lucky as you are."

Ouch.

"I just want to find someone I can put up with that will put up with me too," said Luke with a shrug.

"You deserve better than that," Han muttered. But he stopped Luke from arguing the point. "Alright, enough of this. Tell me about this Nimue of yours."

"Nymëa."

"Right."

"Okay." Luke took a sip of his wine, maybe for courage. "I was in this new music store near the central spaceport, looking for some of those rare collections of Alderaanian pop songs... You know, stuff you can't pull down from Coruscant's computer systems. Suddenly I..."

"Wait," Han interrupted him. "You were looking for a present for Leia? Am I missing any festive date here?"

"No, no special occasion," Luke assured him. "I was just bored out of my mind and thought of giving myself some impossible mission to keep my sanity until dinnertime."

Han sighed in relief. A few months before he had had to face a very cranky Leia after forgetting her birthday. Which automatically meant that he had forgotten her twin brother's as well, but Luke didn't seem to mind that kind of thing so much. "Fine, go on. You were in a music store..."

"...and suddenly I noticed this woman standing outside, staring at me through the window. Not only staring; more like examining me. I moved from shelf to shelf, to see if her stare would follow me, and it did. So I turned and looked straight at her, and she didn't look away."

"A woman who knows what she wants," Han groaned.

"You can say that again. I was so surprised, for an instant I was afraid she meant to attack me... But I could sense her mood clearly, and there was no anger or malice. She was intrigued and excited and worried... and she was definitely glad to see me."

"And you'd never seen her before?"

"Nope."

A total stranger, and Luke could read her. But him... Oh well. It was for the best that he couldn't, right? "So what did you do?"

"Uh... nothing."

"Nothing?"

"You know I'm not that good at taking the initiative..."

Han rolled his eyes. "You just need to work on your pick-up lines, junior..."

Luke snorted. "Tell me about it. I guess my most successful one is still 'I'm Luke Skywalker and I'm here to rescue you.' It did work anyway."

"If you call swimming in a garbage compactor with your twin sister a successful date..."

"I know, I'm pathetic," Luke laughed. "Anyway, the pick-up line was not a problem. In fact, she was the one who came inside the store and picked me up. And her line was irresistible."

Han wondered if Luke would resist any line nowadays. "What was it?"

"'Listen, pal, I'll pay you three hundred credits if you agree to pretend you're Luke Skywalker for the next six hours.'"

"What?!"

"She told me her story really, really fast, and some details I only learned later this afternoon. To make it short... Nymëa came alone to Coruscant, not knowing what she would find here. She left her daughter on Chandrila with her parents. Her idea was to either make enough money to bring them all to live with her, or go back to Chandrila and get them a new home there."

"Typical Reconquest pioneer's dream."

Luke nodded. "Nymëa couldn't afford frequent holonet calls, so she kept in touch with her family by exchanging regular holo records through the public spacemail services. Vènnl always wanted to hear stories about the great capital of the galaxy..."

"Some stories mummy must have told her then," Han muttered. The battle for Coruscant had annihilated about three-fifths of the planet. The so-called Reconquest, still in progress and with no expectation of being concluded any time soon, should have been, in Han's opinion, called instead the Reconstruction, or merely the Rebuilding.

"Well, mummy didn't have the heart to tell her the truth," said Luke. "So she kept making up stories about going to the Imperial Theatre..."

"Half of which is in ruins."

"...and to the Galactic Museum..."

"In whose place only a giant crater was left."

"...and she kept sending Vènnl old tourism holos of the planet from before the Reconquest."

Han held his tongue. What would be the point of commenting on the woman's dishonesty? He would only be accused of being judgmental again...

"I'm sure you understand that," said Luke. "Remember when we went to Mon Calamari and I was eager to see the crystalfish shoals, and you didn't have the courage to tell me that they had all been killed when the Imperial Fleet bombed Tuover-Ram? You kept saying they had migrated to the southern regions..."

Han bit his tongue. Hard.

"Anyway... you know how it is with little lies," Luke continued. "One demands another for backup, and that one demands yet another..."

"...and before you realise it, you're swearing on your mother's grave that crystalfish turn into ghalulas when they go to the southern regions," Han growled, self-conscious. "I know."

Luke pulled his arm from Han's grip and squeezed his hand instead. "You didn't swear on your mother's grave."

"Whatever. So this... Nymëa... she made up to her daughter that she knew you?"

"She made up that I was her fiancé."

Han gaped. "You're kidding."

"Apparently that part of the story started as a joke," said Luke. "She did tell Vènnl that she had met me, and Vènnl made all kinds of questions, and Nymëa said I was... I don't know... good-looking, or something." He shrugged, as if the idea were ludicrous. "And Vènnl started sending her mother advice about how to... you know... win me over."

"Let me guess... Nymëa didn't want to disappoint the little girl, so she told her that her advice worked."

"I fell on my knees and proposed right away," Luke smirked. "Must have been one mind-blowing piece of advice."

Han's eyes were drawn to their joined hands as he remembered a curious expression used by the human elders in his home planet: 'ask one's hand in matrimony'. As a boy, he had puzzled over it, wondering how one could marry only a person's hand and ignore the whole rest. As a teenager, he had had some naughty ideas about how that could have worked. Eventually, he understood it was but a figure of speech, product of courtship rituals that time had erased from the population's memory.

He could hold Luke's hand without attracting suspicious glances; it might be too intimate a gesture for the average friend, but most people saw them as almost family. Surely that was how Luke saw things too.

Nonetheless, the ignorant child had been the wisest: the hand alone was not enough.

"Nymëa told me that her original idea was to give Vènnl a few weeks of that fantasy," said Luke, "before telling her family that we had broken up."

"And what would she tell them then? That you were cheating on her with the curator of the Galactic Museum?"

"I don't know, I didn't ask. The point is, the whole thing was meant to be only a temporary farce to entertain her daughter. But then Vènnl somehow convinced her grandparents to let her come to Coruscant for a visit."

"To meet her future stepfather."

Luke winced. "Yeah."

Han could easily see where that story was going. "Couldn't Nymëa have told the little girl not to come?"

"I think she tried. Like I said, I don't know all the details. She gave a really brief summary of the situation while dragging me into the spaceport dock where the shuttle Vènnl had come in would land."

"Crazy woman..." Han raised his glass to his lips. "How did she expect to keep up the charade if you hadn't shown up?"

"She had planned to tell Vènnl some really complex story about how her fiancé had been summoned by the Provisional Council to a top secret mission so unfortunately he wouldn't be around for the next weeks and would miss Vènnl's visit entirely."

"But then she spotted you at the store and thought, 'Hey, that guy looks just like my fictitious fiancé!', and invited you to meet her daughter."

Luke grimaced. "Actually, she thought I was too short and my hair was too dark and my chin looked nothing like Skywalker's, but since her daughter isn't that attentive to details, I'd probably be able to pull it off, as long as I didn't stand too close to her."

"I can't believe you agreed to it!"

"Did I mention I was bored to tears? Anyway, Vènnl is in school, she would only be in Coruscant for two days before going home, so if I could pretend to be myself for one afternoon, Nymëa thought she'd be able to play it up for the remaining time of the visit."

"Wait..." Han frowned. "Wait just a sec. 'Pretend'? You didn't tell Nymëa who you were?"

"Well, I tried... She asked me, 'Can you pretend to be Luke Skywalker?' So I told her, 'I am Luke Skywalker,' and she patted my arm and said, 'That's the spirit!'"

"I guess you sounded pretty confident," Han laughed.

"And after that she didn't really give me the opportunity to explain anything. She shoved one hundred and fifty credits into my pocket, promised to pay the rest after I had done my job, then grabbed my hand and hauled me to the spaceport."

"Where you met the daughter."

"Yes."

"Did the little girl buy this ridiculous fib about you being Luke Skywalker?"

"Surprisingly, yes."

"My, my, aren't there some gullible people out there..."

Luke's hand felt abruptly cold in his, and for a second Han thought the micrel power supplies in the prosthetic mechanism must have gone dead... until he realised it was his friend's left hand he was holding.

The absurdity of the situation Luke was describing might be humorous, but a shroud of anguish and solitude fell heavily on the kid's shoulders, threatening to knock him down on the floor, taking Han with him. Something had happened. Something bad enough to cause the guy who never gave up a potential relationship until it blew up on his face to concede defeat after only one date. And as much as Han wanted to indulge himself with the idea that Luke had found the woman dislikable, the way he kept justifying her debatable actions proved that couldn't be the case at all.

"I'd expected to feel awkward in front of the child," Luke confessed. "But I didn't. She didn't give me the celebrity treatment, possibly because she'd never met a celebrity before. And Nymëa was pretending to know me intimately, so... it was all very casual between the three of us. Not casual like you, me and Leia, of course; but it was nice. Clearly it wasn't the first time Vènnl was introduced to a boyfriend of mummy's, and she was actually trying to put me at ease, telling me not to be nervous, that she wouldn't bite me."

Children... Han never thought much about them, never had seriously considered letting one into his life. Leia never mentioned them either. Come to think of it, they seldom discussed what the future might bring them.

Listening to the fondness in Luke's voice made it unnecessary to ask him how he felt about it.

"You know, it's not easy to fly over Coruscant and avoid the wreckage areas," said the Jedi. "Nymëa must have spent a long time planning that itinerary. We took an aircab to the Solfenai district, and we had to fly low and always west to the Jollma condominium so Vènnl wouldn't see the ruins of the Ubkap Stadium. And when we passed over Gloss Park, Nymëa kept urging the girl to look at the Maranai Mountains on our right, because if she had turned to the left she'd have seen the five-mile-long chasm where the Merr-Sonn factories used to be."

"I don't suppose Nymëa showed her daughter where she works," Han muttered, thinking of the three defaced skyscrapers that hosted the Justice Office.

"We stuck to Solfenai, mostly. Landed for lunch at a newly rebuilt restaurant called..." Luke faltered. "I can't pronounce it."

"What kind of food?"

"Bpfasshi."

"Then it was probably called Gkuhhf-something," Han smirked. "All restaurants on Bpfassh are called Gkuhhf-something."

"Does 'gkuhhf' mean food?"

"I think it means moss."

Luke arched an eyebrow.

"We probably don't want to know," Han shrugged.

"Especially not after I wolfed down every crumb in my bowl," the younger man murmured.

Han had to smile at that. Luke's appetite on an ordinary day could make Chewie run to fill his own plate first. "You enjoyed it, it didn't kill you, so don't fret over it."

"I might have enjoyed it a bit too much."

"What do you mean?"

"Nymëa was upset. When I was halfway through my third serving, she leaned over to kiss me..."

Han gritted his teeth. "That is her way to show she's upset?"

"...and whisper in my ear, 'You're a Jedi now, not a starving beggar.'"

"Ah," said Han, somewhat relieved. "So you failed to mimic Luke Skywalker's impeccable table manners. Shame on you, kid."

Luke sighed out loud. "I've heard that Skywalker was raised as a poor farmer. Guess it's just a myth."

"Well, I've heard that Skywalker was once defeated in a spear combat and knocked down into a pool of mud by a yearling Ewok, so I guess you can't believe everything you hear."

"I was playing with him," Luke told him for the nth time since that particular incident. "I let him win. I fell in the mud on purpose."

"So the myth goes," Han grinned, intertwining his fingers with his friend's.

Luke made a valiant effort to glare at the Corellian, but somehow the effect wasn't that convincing. "You gotta be the most annoying person in the galaxy, Han. I hope you are, because I'd hate to meet someone who's even worse than you."

"Hey, you're the one who brought up that damn creeper just a few minutes ago! Enough side-tracking anyway, go back to the story. Nymëa didn't think much of your table manners..."

"And she didn't think much of my inability to speak Bpfasshi either. Even if out of the three of us, Vènnl was the only one who could pronounce the restaurant's name."

"Kids have really agile tongues," said Han without thinking.

Just the very wrong thing to say on a night full of dangerous memories. Han could remember a bunch of times when he had made more or less the same remark in a very different context, and apparently Luke remembered it too, judging by the throb he could feel through their enlaced fingers. Damn, the kid's heart had to be nearing lightspeed to be pumping the blood in his veins that violently.

Luke had rested his glass on his knee, and now was spinning it distractedly. "Those problems aside... we had fun through lunch. Vènnl was doing most of the talking, telling us about school and her friends and her grandparents... and then we started talking about childhood in general, which was more or less a safe topic for everyone. Well, Nymëa was a bit miffed at the idea of Luke Skywalker putting lizards inside the pants of the obnoxious bully that kept tormenting him for no reason, but Vènnl was delighted to hear it."

"Hasn't anyone told you that you're supposed to set a good example for the new generations?"

"That was a good example."

"Did that bully... Was that Fixer?" Han had heard over a hundred stories about the older boy that had harassed Luke throughout his childhood and teen years. "Did he stop bullying you after you put a lizard in his pants?"

"No, he beat me up and locked me inside a box of polyoxide-carburetors."

"An empty box of polyoxide-carburetors, I hope."

"No such luck," Luke grumbled. "Then again, I was small."

"Was?"

"Shut up."

Han did his best to suppress a chuckle. Sometimes he thought Luke had been traumatised for life by Leia's observation about him being too short for a stormtrooper. "Side-tracking again, aren't we?"

"It's your fault, you know. You keep interrupting me."

"Sorry, then. So lunch was mostly okay..."

"Until dessert, it was."

"What happened at dessert?"

"Vènnl asked me to do 'something Jedi'."

Of course she did, Han mused. Even some adults weren't too shy to approach Luke to ask him for a special 'performance', as if Jedi were some sort of circus artists.

"Nymëa scolded her pretty harshly," Luke told him, "saying a Jedi could not use his powers irresponsibly and frivolously... Sure, she thought I didn't have any powers to show off, and that was the main reason why she came up with that speech. Still, it was a really impassioned speech about how a Jedi should behave..."

"And you in fact were willing to do 'something Jedi' to please the little girl?" Han ventured.

"Something small and silly," Luke agreed. "Levitate her spoon, or ask her to pick a number and guess it."

"Or produce a credit chip from her ear?"

"I know those are cheap magician's tricks, Han, but where is the evil in making a child smile? Yoda once told me that becoming a Jedi takes the most serious mind... I'm not trying to contradict him or anything, but... it seems to me that a Jedi that takes himself too seriously can be just as dangerous to other people as one that acts irresponsibly."

Han took Luke's hand to his lips, kissing it gently, refusing to consider the propriety of the gesture. It was an apologetic kiss, for that period of time, right after his rescue from Jabba's palace, when he had thought Luke had grown into a monk or a monster, aloof and too holy to be touched. He shouldn't have needed Leia's intervention to see that the kid was still the kid, still thinking with his enormous heart, still putting people above abstract philosophical issues. "I like the way you see things."

"Really? I thought you'd scold me for wanting to show off my powers."

"If showing off had been what you had in mind, yeah, I'd have scolded you," Han admitted. "But you don't do that very often."

Luke flinched. "Meaning that occasionally I do show off?" he asked ruefully.

"Don't worry, I'll whack your head flat if you ever start making a habit out of it."

"Thanks," the young Jedi nodded, very serious despite Han's flippant promise. "It's good to know I can count on you to keep me on my toes."

The words injected more guilty feelings in Han's mind. How many times had Leia urged him to spend more time with Luke, insisting that her brother needed his input, his down-to-earth perspective of things to keep him from skywalking too much? And how many times had Han excused himself from the task, fearing his own reactions to the kid's presence? At once, he was guilty of not being there and of being there too much. "So... did you do 'something Jedi' for the little girl?"

"No. Didn't seem like a nice thing to do, contradict Nymëa in front of her daughter. I remembered how my uncle hated it when Aunt Beru contradicted him in front of me, and it wasn't a nice picture."

"Too bad. So Nymëa came out of that restaurant still thinking you were just some guy she hooked in a store."

"Some guy in desperate need of learning table manners and Bpfasshi dialects too," Luke nodded.

Han quaffed the rest of his wine. "Can't ya do anything right, kid?"

"I paid for the meal. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to, but Nymëa didn't complain. So I guess that was one thing I did right."

"Did you use the money she gave you?"

"Of course not! I used my own money. And later I returned every credit she had paid me, too. You didn't think I'd keep it, did you?"

"Guess not," Han shrugged. "You're not me."

"You wouldn't have kept the money either," Luke said confidently.

"You obviously don't know me so well," Han grunted, marvelling at the irony of his own words. Luke did know him very well, of course, but at the same time managed to ignore so much...

"Oh, I know you all right. You're not that greedy about money around people that need it more desperately than you do. You're a nice guy, Solo."

A nice guy. Sure. Would a nice guy be holding hands with his... eurgh... girlfriend's brother, staring at his delicious lips as they got drunk and thinking about how much better swugesse wine would taste inside that mouth? "I ain't nice, kid. Don't ever underestimate my greediness."

"Okay, sorry, Mr. Greedy," said Luke, pouring what wine was left in his glass into Han's. "Have it all then."

Han frowned at the glass in his hand, now containing ten more sips than he had intended to drink. "What did you do that for?"

"'Cause I don't have any money with me right now, so that's all I can give you to satisfy your unrivalled greediness." Luke leaned over, almost resting his head on Han's knees, to lay his empty glass on the floor, beside Leia's.

The Corellian felt the air in the living room growing very hot all of a sudden. "There're a few drops more in the bottle, if you want."

Luke shook his head. "Thanks, but I'd hate to fall out of a window while trying to get back to my apartment." When he sat back on the loveseat, the two men were much closer than before. Their joined hands lay on Han's thigh.

"Tell me more about your date," Solo urged the other, hoping that hearing more about Nymëa's cute snub nose and adorable daughter would help to hush the voice of his greediness, which now sang loudly and angrily in his mind. "Where did you go after lunch?"

"To a market. A small one by Coruscant's standards, but still big and crowded enough to leave Vènnl open-mouthed."

"Like you, the first time I took you to a real city?"

"Probably worse, since Vènnl wasn't trying to play it cool."

"You were playing it cool?" Han chuckled. "You were so dazzled you couldn't walk three steps without stumbling over something."

"I'd have stumbled at every two, if I weren't playing it cool."

"A considerable difference..."

"Well, thankfully, I've become much more sophisticated since then. Only markets with indoor waterfalls make me stumble on things nowadays. I assure you that I looked positively unimpressed by the one we visited today."

"I suppose Nymëa liked that. It fit her ideal of Luke Skywalker, the great, refined knight?"

"I think so. On the other hand, Vènnl didn't understand how I could be unmoved by all that beauty. I'm afraid she thought I was dull and stuck up."

"Won points with the mother, lost points with the daughter."

"Exactly. And then the beggar showed up."

"Beggar?" Coruscant's population had always included an immense legion of mendicants, and the destruction caused by the battle to take the capital from Imperial control had increased their number even further. The laws confining them to the city's lower levels had been removed by the new government, and now one would find all kinds of beings wearing rags and supplicating for alms at every corner. Han wondered what imaginative story Nymëa would have told her daughter to reconcile that image with that of the shiny, dreamlike metropolis.

"A male Snivvian, bald, with most of his teeth broken and white spots in his eyes," Luke described. "He approached us all courteous and humble, talking in rhymes and asking for just enough to buy his children a decent meal."

"In rhymes?!" Han twitched. "Irk. Every bit of Snivvian art I've ever come across was depressing enough to bring tears to a Hutt's eyes."

"This guy was incredibly cheerful, though. He praised Nymëa's beauty, Vènnl's smile, my... uh... virile constitution... If you laugh, I'll kill you."

"I'm not laughing," Han said earnestly. He hadn't had a chance to see Luke naked since Hoth, but had seen enough to notice that the training to become a Jedi had gifted that once scrawny body with a finely built musculature. Even now it was hard not to notice the sinewy arms beneath the dark blue tunic...

"But you're right, witty rhyming does sound weird coming from a Snivvian. And I sensed something off about him too, so I thought I should probe his mind a little, just to figure out his intentions." Luke raised his free hand to rub his temple. "I had to break the contact after two seconds. I thought my brain would melt and gush out through my ears."

"Why? What happened?"

"Spice. Heavy stuff."

"Ouch."

"Yeah, ouch. I guess I don't know Snivvians well enough to tell by their appearance. If he were human, I don't think he'd have a tongue any more. It was that heavy."

"I don't suppose he really had his hungry children in mind when he asked you for money then..."

"He certainly didn't."

"So what did you do?"

"What could have I done?" Luke asked helplessly. "I told him I would not aid him to destroy himself."

Han wanted to reach out to brush Luke's hair away from his eyes, but again both his hands were busy. "That's all you could've done, kid."

"I wish I could do more."

"I know."

"I wish I could've dragged him to a hospital or something... I mean, I could have, if I wanted to..."

"And where would you go from there? Baby-sit every creature in the galaxy, keep them from screwing up their own lives? Is that your mission as a Jedi?"

"No. Of course not." Luke closed his right hand in a tight fist, then strained it wide open. "I don't have the right to dictate anyone's path. Good intentions can lead me to the Dark Side just as fast and deeply as selfish ones. But Nymëa..."

Han rolled his eyes. "Oh, I know. She did expect the great Jedi to take on the burden of the responsibility for everybody's lives."

"I don't know what she'd expect from the great Jedi. But I can tell you what she expected from the guy she was paying to pretend to be a great Jedi: she expected me to look kind and generous in front of Vènnl and give the guy a couple of credits."

"Didn't you explain to her...?"

"What? That he would spend every chip on spice? How could I know something like that? I'm just an impostor, it's not like I have any telepathic skills."

What a mess... "So you came off like a total jerk."

"And it only got worse when Vènnl decided I was being a jerk and offered the beggar some of her pocket money."

Han threw his head backwards, letting out a sympathetic growl of exasperation as he pictured the scene in his mind. "Please tell me this is as bad as it got."

"Oh come on, Han!" Luke exclaimed. "You know me! Things can always get worse when I'm around."

The kid noticeably needed a hug. The Corellian really wanted to give him one. "How much worse?" Han asked, his eyes glued to the ceiling.

"The guy recognised me."

"The Snivvian?"

"Yep. It's one of those incomprehensible things, you know. No one at the restaurant recognised me. Not one vendor in the market recognised me. Nymëa just thought I looked remarkably, but not accurately, like myself."

"But the stoned, partially blind beggar did."

"Naturally."

"And how did that go?"

"Well, suddenly the rhymes and cheerfulness were replaced by this screeching howl of, 'Hey, you are that Jedi guy! What's up, Jedi? Too important to care for the poor? Too busy to waste your precious time with a nobody like me?'"

"Good grief..."

"He went from nice and pleasant to incensed and menacing in two seconds. Nymëa was terrified, and Vènnl was hiding behind her. Thankfully, the Snivvian's attention was all on me. I tried to calm him down, but he wasn't listening to a word I said, and his mind was sort of blocked to me."

"Because of the spice?"

"I think so. Could be an interspecies incompatibility too, like when I tried my powers on Jabba."

"Great. So what happened?"

"He kept yelling at me," Luke shrugged. "Attracting a considerable crowd around us."

"And you did nothing?"

"I stood there and listened."

Solo shook his head in dismay. "Why do I think the guy didn't take it as a friendly gesture?"

"What would you have done, Han? 'Cause Obi-Wan tried the let-me-buy-you-a-drink tactic in a similar situation, and the results were not exactly satisfactory."

"Me? I'd have stunned him at the first insult."

"Oh, very civilised. Leia would've been thrilled."

"She should," Han scoffed. "That's the civilised me. In the old days, I'd have had my blaster set for kill." Ah, the good old days, when every problem had been so much easier to solve...

Oh, who was he trying to fool? The easy part about the old days had been having little to care for, to fight for. Taking risks is much simpler when you have nothing to lose. Did he honestly wish he had never met Luke and Leia?

Hell, no.

"Well, standing there and listening eventually paid off," Luke told him, "although not in the way I thought it would. When he noticed the crowd forming a circle around us, he started ranting to them about me. And then he started talking about celebrities in general. Then about the government in general. Then he compared the New Republic with the Empire. Then he started reminiscing about his home planet, Cadomai."

Han let out a dry chuckle. "That's what you get when you try to hold a conversation with someone high on spice. Attention span: zero."

"In five minutes he had forgotten all about me," said Luke. "I stepped back very slowly, moving away from the centre of the circle, and got in the middle of the crowd. He didn't even see me leave."

"You took Nymëa and the little girl with you?"

"Of course."

"Did they appreciate the rescue?"

"I don't think they felt rescued at all. Vènnl asked me why I didn't just slay him with my lightsaber. That's when she noted I didn't have any lightsaber hanging from my belt."

"You didn't?"

Luke disentangled his hand from Han's to extract the weapon from inside the baggy sleeve of his tunic. "Only reason I went out this afternoon was to stretch my legs and shop for a present to my sister. I didn't want to attract attention to myself."

"You should've worn a wig," Han murmured, gazing down at his abandoned hand. His skin tingled, aching for the missing touch.

"I'll take that under consideration next time," said Luke with a half-grin. He clipped the lightsaber to his belt and entwined his fingers with Han's again.

It felt like going home. "Did you show Vènnl your lightsaber?"

Luke shuddered. "Man, that always sounds so pornographic..."

"Not intended," Han assured him, despite his own less-than-pure thoughts at the moment.

"No, I didn't show her my lightsaber. At that point, I didn't know if it would be a good idea. Children aren't afraid to be straightforward. When she didn't see a lightsaber on me, she looked me in the eye and asked me if I was indeed a Jedi. She was starting to suspect the truth... or rather, the lie." Luke's brows knitted together in confusion. "I mean, she was starting to suspect that her mother had lied, and that I wasn't Luke Skywalker... which is true, even if it's also true that her mother lied. Or maybe she was starting to suspect that I had lied to her mother about being Luke Skywalker, and that her mother was telling the truth, even if what she was saying was in fact a lie... No, wait. It wouldn't be a lie, because I am Luke Skywalker..."

Han was chortling already. "As long as you don't forget that last part..."

"I'm trying not to, but it's not as easy as it sounds."

"Did you at least explain to little Vènnl why a Jedi shouldn't go around slaying beggars?"

"I did. She didn't look very convinced, though. I'm afraid she thought I was a fraud giving her a lame excuse for not showing off my non-existent Jedi skills. Which is really ironic, because I am a real Jedi, I have the skills, I have the saber, and I gave her the real reasons why a Jedi shouldn't do what she wanted me to."

"Reality stinks," Han sighed. "What about Nymëa?"

Luke's eyes widened, staring at his friend as if he had never seen him before. The intensity of that gaze startled Han, but the kid soon broke that contact, looking out the large window behind the loveseat instead. "Do you really think so?"

Han blinked. "What?"

"That reality stinks?"

The question caught Han by surprise; his comment wasn't meant to imply any deeper meaning than his usual contempt about the little exasperating ironies of life, and yet Luke reacted now as if a condemnatory verdict had just been announced.

"Never mind," the Jedi said, dismissing the issue before Han could inquire about it. "You asked about Nymëa. She wasn't happy about the way I dealt with the situation. She muttered in my ear that none of it would've happened if I had just given the beggar some money in the first place. And when Vènnl asked about the lightsaber, that was the last straw. I was only good for her as long as I could persuade Vènnl into believing that I was... me."

"Didn't you have your ID with you?"

"To prove to them that the ill-mannered, ignorant, stuck-up, tight-fisted, cowardly guy they had spent the afternoon with was really Luke Skywalker? Would that have improved my situation?"

"You're none of that! You just had to explain..."

"Yeah, I could explain," Luke huffed. "But I don't think I could make them like me any more. I had my shot, and I flunked it."

Dejected silence fell over them, and Han realised that despite the briefness of that relationship, Han had not in fact been spared from watching the customary process, as he had imagined at first. Luke's tale had gone through every phase: the hope that the weird encounter would turn into something meaningful, the optimism born from a bunch of pleasant moments, the self-recriminations when things began to turn sour, and now the despondent loneliness that crowned the end. Luke's love life in a nutshell.

The glass felt heavy in Han's left hand. Since the kid had filled it with the wine that had been in his cup, he hadn't drunk a single drop, afraid to let his lips touch the liquid that had brushed Luke's. He took a sip now, wishing the beverage could quench the thirst for his friend's intoxicating kisses.

It went down the wrong way, and he choked.

"You okay?" asked Luke, concern rousing him from his depression.

Han coughed and cleared his throat. "Fine. Guess I've had enough too." He laid the glass on the floor with the others, felt the room swirl around him when he moved his head. So much for his legendary resistance to liquor.

Or perhaps it was time to start being honest with himself and admit that the wine had nothing to do with it. "Was that the end of your date?"

"Pretty much. Nymëa pushed us into a boutique, found a skirt for Vènnl to try on, and took me back outside while the girl was in the fitting room. She put one hundred and fifty credits in the palm of my hand and told me she no longer needed my services."

"And you?"

"I apologised and returned all the money."

"Apologised?!" Han gasped. "I understand the money part, but why the hell did you apologise? For being you and not some crazy fantasy she had in her mind?"

"Yes."

"That's ridiculous!"

"It's not. It was my mistake. I didn't understand what she wanted from me. I thought she wanted me to be Luke Skywalker, and I thought, 'Okay, I can do that.' But no, she wanted me to be her dream boyfriend. And I've made enough attempts at being other people's dream boyfriend to know that I suck at it."

Han finally had a free hand, and used it to caress the warm skin of the kid's cheek. "If you're trying to be perfect and not succeeding, hey, who ever does? You had nothing to apologise for. You went out of your way to help her with her crazy scheme. She should've shown you more gratitude."

"She showed me her gratitude. She thanked me, many times, very politely. She paid me, and offered to reimburse me for the restaurant bill. She didn't censure me for anything that happened, just said that my job was done and that I could leave. She was really nice, all things considered." Luke gave him a weak grin. "You're being judgmental again."

"Someone has to be. You're way too tolerant." Han drew his hand back in a huff, but it unintentionally dropped on his friend's knee. "Okay, so she thanked you and paid you, and you apologised and returned the money. What next?"

"I asked her out."

"WHAT?!"

"Actually, it was when I returned her the money. I told her that I had a great time, that I thought she was wonderful company, that Vènnl was the most adorable kid I've ever seen, and that I didn't need to be rewarded for the privilege of being with them. And then I said that I might not be her dream boyfriend, but that I'm a decent man and that I wished she'd give me the chance to prove it, by going out with the real me on a real date."

The Corellian found himself gaping at the young man before him. Hard to believe he had just a few minutes before joked about Luke needing to work on his pick-up lines. "And what did she say?"

"She said no."

"No?"

"No."

"Why?" How could she have said no to that? To Luke?

"She said Luke Skywalker was her dream boyfriend not because of his looks..." Luke grimaced. "...but because of the values he represents: justice, kindness, courage, honesty... she mentioned a couple of others I can't remember now. She said she'd always be looking for those in any man entering her life, because Vènnl deserved nothing less for a stepfather."

"And even then you didn't tell her who you were?"

"I did, sort of. I asked, 'What if I told you that I'm the real Luke Skywalker?' And she gave me this don't-be-absurd look. She said, 'The real Luke Skywalker would have never agreed to lie to a child.'"

Han was livid. That had to be a joke. The whole tale had to be a joke, and that last sentence the punch line. It surely hurt as much as an well-aimed punch in the gut. "That's gotta be the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard."

But Luke was shaking his head. "I don't think it's really hypocrisy."

"Blast it, Luke! Stop defending her! What a nerve to say that to you, when she was the one lying through her teeth to her own daughter!"

"But we all do that, Han, all the time."

"What in blazes are you talking about?"

"We all do things now and then that don't make us very proud of ourselves, things we think a better person wouldn't do. If you think about it, what she said wasn't that different from you saying that, if it had been you, you'd have kept her money, because you're greedy, not nice, and not like me."

Han glared daggers at him. The kid seemed to have a special liking for making him bite his tongue.

"You see, Han? The problem here is that Luke Skywalker was not the better person Nymëa thought I was. As I demonstrated today, I'm perfectly capable of lying to a ten-year-old child."

"You were just trying to protect the girl from a big disappointment," Han mumbled, knowing that he would end up cornered by his own argument. Nymëa and Luke had the same objectives there, so it would be hardly fair to condemn one and excuse the other.

Luke's crooked smile gave him the creeps. "Protect her from the truth, you mean. Like telling a boy that his father was a navigator on a space freighter or a dead Jedi Knight, when he was in fact a very much alive Sith Lord."

"You wouldn't have come up with a lie like that on your own, kid... The lie already existed when you entered the picture."

"That's what I keep telling myself," Luke sighed. "That ultimately there was nothing I could do, Vènnl was already set to be disappointed, and Nymëa and I gained nothing from lying. It was merely a choice between revealing the truth this afternoon or in a few days, what's the big difference? If the result is the same, why not let the girl enjoy the fantasy for a while longer?"

"You don't sound very convinced..."

"I'm not. I wish I was a better person and hadn't done that. I wish I was a wiser man and had found another way out."

Squeezing Luke's hand so it wouldn't escape his grip, Han turned to sit sideways as well, his right leg bent and pressing the back of the loveseat. That way he could look his friend straight in the eye. "Listen, Luke... it's sad that the girl had been living an illusion... but when you were shown the problem, you couldn't undo what had already been done."

"No, but what if I've made things worse for her, feeding more firewood to the fantasy Nymëa created?"

"But that's the point, Luke, you didn't feed her fantasy. Well, maybe you let her believe that you had something with her mother before, but... You were trying to have something with her mother anyway, weren't you? And you showed her the real Luke Skywalker."

"And they hated me," the young man croaked.

"As Leia put it so judiciously, their loss."

Blue eyes shimmered in the dim light, suspiciously damp. Han reached out to grasp Luke's other hand.

"I was hoping they would like me," Luke murmured. "I was hoping Nymëa would give me a chance, hoping we would get to know each other, be together, maybe even turn the fantasy into something real with time."

"Only neither of them were very interested in reality."

"As you put it so judiciously, reality stinks."

Oh. So that was how Luke had interpreted what he had said earlier. He should have known. "I'm a realist, kid. That means I like reality. Even when it stinks."

And suddenly, there it was. The sorely missed smile, greater than life, turning night into bright dawn even through the mist of unshed tears.

Han's breath caught in his throat.

"Promise you'll remember that next time we fall in the garbage compactor?" asked the Jedi, his voice softly blowing like a fresh, sweet-scented breeze.

It felt so natural to pull Luke into his arms then, so right and simple, that only after he saw the lean body half-lying between his legs and the blond head resting against his chest did Han realise the magnitude of what he had done.

Just a hug, he told himself. The two of them had hugged each other dozens, hundreds of times, even after Hoth. Nothing wrong there. Nothing to feel awkward about.

And if Han's heart was beating faster and louder than ever, that was okay. His left hand lay on Luke's neck, right above the jugular, and the drumming he could feel there was just as frenzied.

"Do you think I should do something, Han?"

"Like what?"

"Like go and look for Nymëa?"

Han gritted his teeth. "Why would you want to do that?"

"To make sure that Vènnl is okay."

"You're really feeling bad about that, aren't you?"

Luke took a moment to reply. "I don't know... Actually, it's more like I feel I should be feeling bad."

"Because a better person would be feeling bad about it?"

"Something like that. Nymëa had no choice but to confront Vènnl with the truth, and I just left. I came to the Palace, and sat on the roof watching the city traffic until it was dinnertime. I didn't even say goodbye to Vènnl."

"It's their issue to settle, kid, just between the two of them."

"Vènnl must think I'm a dirty bastard..."

"Vènnl will never know she's met you, Luke!"

"Gee, this is too confusing," the young man grumbled. "Even by my usual standards."

"I'll say," Han snickered. "Do me a favour, will ya? Never talk about yourself in the third person again. It was giving me a serious headache."

"How come it is so hard to figure out the right thing to do? Shouldn't I know what to do to make things better? I'm a Jedi, for crying out loud!"

"Were you trained to deal with that kind of situation?"

"I was trained to duel with Sith Lords," Luke vented. "I've never read the Jedi Manual for Daily Life."

Han rubbed his chin on the top of his friend's head, enjoying the feel of the sandy hair's soft texture against his skin. "Don't you think you too are raising some strange expectations about yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

"No manual of proper behaviour is valid for all situations, kid. Supposedly, obeying the rules is always the right thing to do. But what was the Rebellion if not stubborn defiance against the established laws? We were criminals, breaking into government facilities, destroying government property, killing enforcers of law and order... and we did it all because we thought it was the right thing to do."

"Sometimes we wonder if we should've done things differently," Luke countered.

"Yes. Because there are no perpetually correct answers. Generosity is good, we are told; but every time you're confronted with a beggar you'll wonder if giving away your money is the best way to help him or if it'll only make things worse. A manual preaching that lying is bad and truth is good simplifies matters too much to be really useful."

Luke's eyebrows arched in faint amusement. "I was hoping the Jedi Manual would be more complex than that..."

"It'd never encompass every single question you'll have. No one has all the answers."

"Not even Jedi... Is that your point?"

"You're a good person, Luke. Really, you are. But I'm afraid you will spend the rest of your days half-blind, reaching out with your hands to feel your way, trying to figure out what is the best road and hoping not to fall over a cliff... Just like all of us, poor mortals."

Han felt the body in his arms being jolted by a nervous shudder. "I am a poor mortal myself," said Luke defensively. "Am I coming off like I have a superiority complex here?"

"Nope, you're coming off like you have a frustrated superiority complex," Solo snorted. "You try too hard, kid. You're always trying too hard. Just be for a change, okay?"

Luke's arms tightened around Han's torso. "I'm afraid that will mean spending the rest of my life alone..."

With considerable difficulty, Han reminded himself to keep on breathing. "You will find someone."

"Finding isn't that hard, not any more. Keeping is the real trick."

What could he say to that? It wasn't the first time Han had found himself in the uncomfortable position of having Luke ask him for advice regarding his love life. It was a mystery why the kid did that, considering he had already caught Han's habit of being overly critical of his dates. It was an even bigger mystery why Han insisted on listening to Luke's reports on his relationships, digesting every detail with mixed feelings of guilt and jealousy. Morbid, that's what he was. Morbid and masochistic.

No, not masochistic. He stayed there and listened and put up with all that because pushing Luke away would be much more painful. In the end, he was just trading an unendurable grief for a slightly milder one.

And when the kid sat close like that, so close that he could sense the balmy scent of his hair, it almost paid off.

"You know that saying, 'The more things change, the more they stay the same'?" Luke asked. "On Tatooine, Biggs was the only one I could be with, because we were the only ones who dreamed of more than spending our entire lives fighting the desert for enough moisture to feed the crops. Everyone else expected me to be a pragmatic, unambitious farmer, so they saw me as a big failure. Now, everyone expects me to be this sort of perfect deity, and they get me instead. Again I'm a failure, a disappointment."

"You're none of that!" Han objected fiercely.

"In their eyes, I am. Every person I've been with has left me for that reason: because I never manage to meet their expectations. Not to mention the people I never quite got to be with, like Gaeriel. People that have heard all kinds of horrible things about Jedi and expect me to be this evil sorcerer, and won't give me a chance until..." Luke sighed, exhausted. "Either way, I always end up having to fight my reputation."

As much as Han wanted to challenge that statement, all he had witnessed for the past nineteen months conspired to confirm it. No wonder Luke had been so reluctant to accept the invitation to go to Dod'ahnnar, especially after Leia said he would 'get to know lots of new people' there. Dod'ahnnarians and their awe of Jedi were the last thing the kid needed right now.

"It's funny, Han..." Luke's voice was almost inaudible. "You were the one person that... you know."

"What?"

"Well, we didn't really have a real relationship, but... You knew me. And you never expected me to be any different from what I am." The young man tilted his head, and snickered. "Scratch that. You did expect me to become more sensible, less prone to get both of us in trouble, and less talkative."

"Good thing I didn't hold my breath..."

"Anyway, you know what I mean. You knew exactly what kind of man I was, and we stayed together for as long as our being together worked for both of us. You didn't leave because you were disappointed in me, or because I wasn't the way you had fantasised. You just decided that I wasn't what you wanted, plain and simple. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm thankful to you for that."

It was Han's cue to tell the truth, to hold that sad face between his hands, stare deep into his azure eyes and tell him how badly he wanted him, ached for him. To reveal that the real reason why he had called the end of their relationship in Hoth was because he had found himself so utterly in love with Luke that he couldn't think straight any more.

The truth, however, wasn't ready to come out yet.

"I don't know, maybe Nymëa is right," Luke breathed. "Maybe I'm too short to be Luke Skywalker."

"The same way I'm too much of a freighter pilot to be Han Solo?"

"That's different."

"Why?"

Luke remained quiet for a couple of minutes after that, and Han rejoiced at the notion that he had made the kid bite his tongue this time.

"Okay, you're right," Luke admitted at last. "It's the same thing. You're a freighter pilot, no matter what others say or expect you to be." He looked up at Han's face, his lips twitching in a bitter grin. "And I'm short."

"I think you measure up just right." Didn't Luke fit just perfectly in his arms? Han brushed his thumb over that tempting lower lip, willing it into another real smile. Everything would be all right if he could make that smile gleam through the darkness once more.

Han wished he could say it was all Luke's fault. It would be so much easier for both of them if they could blame the Jedi's gloomy mood for everything. But not even the best liar in the galaxy would be able to convince Han that it had been anyone other than he who crossed the final limit, leaning down to join their mouths in a gentle kiss. And no excuse would convince anyone of the innocence of the gesture when, two seconds afterwards, Han's tongue slid in between Luke's lips.

It didn't feel quite real. Perhaps because his memories of the kid's kisses were so vivid and intense, and this evening had gradually turned so dreamlike that Han feared a pinch on his arm would cause the illusion to evaporate into thin air.

Luke didn't offer any resistance. Nor did he offer much of a response either. He barely breathed as he allowed the tentative exploration of his mouth, which to Han's mild surprise didn't taste of the wine they had drunk all evening, but of the swugesse fruit the amber elixir had been made of, ripe and juicy.

Han tried to sustain the contact for as long as he could but, stupidly, he had forgotten to breathe. His head was spinning from lack of oxygen when he finally broke the kiss with a little smack.

The expression on the young man's face was now even sadder than when he had stepped into the apartment before dinner. "You didn't have to do that."

The reaction was so not what Han would have expected — if he had stopped long enough to consider what Luke's reaction would be. He sat there, paralysed, watching the blond detach himself from their embrace and rise to his feet, putting a safe distance between them.

"That's why I didn't want to tell you about Nymëa," Luke whispered, combing his hair with trembling fingers. "I didn't want you to think you had to do something to make me feel better."

Han stared at him, open-mouthed. Did he think that had been a pity kiss? "That's not..."

"It's okay, Han, really. I'm not giving up on love yet, so there's no need to remind me of what I'd be missing. Believe me, I know what I'm missing. That's why I keep looking for it, no matter how many times I get dumped."

"Listen... Luke..."

"Don't worry about me, okay? I mean it. This thing with Nymëa hit me hard, I admit it. Not so much because of Nymëa herself; after all, I barely know her. But the way it all happened, the doubts it stirred... I guess I'm seeing the real size of the challenge before me for the very first time... and it's scary."

Han stood up as well, chased him across the room and held him by the shoulders. "Luke, please..."

"You're the best, Han," the Jedi murmured with a shy grin. "I couldn't have hoped for a better friend. Thanks for letting me wallow in my self-pity for a moment, for putting up with my whinging and everything... But when you fall off the dewback, the best thing is to get back on right away."

"Kid, I'm trying to tell you something here!"

"What?"

What, indeed? It wasn't like he could reveal anything of what was really going through his mind, could he? He was Luke's friend, and that was all. Anything he said now would have to sound like something a friend would say in a moment of sorrow, nothing beyond that.

Taking a deep breath, Han said as calmly as he could, "You will find someone."

But somehow the last syllable ended up being blown inside Luke's mouth as they kissed again.

Caution was sent to the winds, and so were all signs of rationality. Han squeezed the smaller body against his, hindering it from any chance to escape, forcing the younger man to hold on to him to keep his balance. He roughly stroked Luke's tongue with his, demanding acceptance and retribution.

And he got it, eventually. After an instant of perplexed immobility, the Jedi closed his lips around Han's tongue, sucking it hungrily. Still, indecision guided his movements. The Corellian felt Luke's palms against his chest, trying to push him away even while his fingers pinched his nipples.

In Han's mind, they were carried back to Hoth, to that fateful night they had spent in a tent outside the protection of Echo Base. Then he had held the kid tight, desperately trying to keep him warm and alive, and blurted out the words that had finished their game and their chances, desperately trying to keep himself safe from the caging bonds of loving someone. That was when he had made the critical error, wasn't it? That was the point in space and time he had to go back to in order to make everything right. Maybe if he could hold Luke as tightly as then, but also keep on kissing him on and on so neither of them would get the opportunity to say the words that would drag them apart...

Luke's knees buckled under the pressure of Han's grip, his own rampaging emotions, and the force of gravity, which seemed to have grown five times stronger in a couple of minutes. Mouths were inevitably separated, and eyelids burst open.

Han could see sense returning to those blue eyes and decided he would have none of that. In a swift move, he turned them both around and pinned the Jedi against the wall to keep him standing. Almost accidentally, Han's thigh ended up between Luke's. Almost accidentally, Han's lips collided with Luke's again.

Very deliberately, they held onto each other, letting the friction grow as their kiss deepened more and more.

Conquered by the Corellian's merciless fire, Luke returned the caresses with doubled passion. His arms went around Han's waist to roam over his back, knead his shoulder blades in a vigorous massage, and slide down along his spine to seize his buttocks, nails clawing at the flesh even over the fabric of his pants. Han moaned into their kiss, and took revenge by capturing one of Luke's earlobes between his thumb and index finger, remembering perfectly well how once he had made the kid come just by fondling, licking and biting his neck and ears. It was Luke's turn to groan, and demand more.

Were meteorites sentient, that was probably how they would feel while burning through the atmosphere: free, powerful, exhilarated, scorchingly alive, and yet doomed to crash on the ground.

Han tried to make a decision on how this would end while he could still think with some clarity. Flipping Luke around or raising him from the floor to fuck him against the wall seemed like the natural course, but the touch of those avid hands on his hips reminded Han of how long it had been since the last time he had been taken. All he had to do was pull them both to the floor and coax the kid inside him... That would be so fucking fantastic...

But even as his mind feasted upon possibilities, he realised the only likely outcome at this point was keeping on with their present activities, kissing, rubbing and humping each other into climax, as neither of them seemed to have enough co-ordination left to deal with the fasteners of their pants. The way they were going, they would be done in a couple of minutes anyhow...

It was over way before that. In a blink of an eye, Han found himself sitting on the floor ten feet away, his back sore, his lust unsatisfied, his arms empty. It took him a moment to realise that Luke had used his powers to push him away.

Neither the deadly cold of Hoth nor the eternal suffocation of carbon freeze had tormented him this badly. His limbs physically ached, as if they had been separated from Luke's by the cut of a vibroblade. As if they were in fact one sole body suddenly ripped in two.

His pain was mirrored in his friend's face. Luke stood unsteadily with his left shoulder against the wall, his eyes firmly shut. His hand caressed the smooth surface as he whispered, "I'm sorry", over and over.

For one surreal moment Han thought he was apologising to the wall for some dent they might have made in it — that wouldn't be that much more surreal than some of the stuff Luke did on a regular basis. When he remembered who was behind that wall, it shocked him to no end.

He loved Leia. He did.

But for long and many minutes he had forgotten about her entirely.

It was all so wrong that it sickened him. They were in Leia's apartment. She was sleeping in the next room. She had left them in each other's company, believing her brother would feel more comfortable to open up if he were alone with his best friend. Implicitly trusting them. Trusting him.

And if Han felt this nauseated about doing this to his girlfriend, the Force only knew what Luke felt like, having done it to his sister, the person he loved the most in the entire universe.

When did things get so horribly out of control? Han rubbed his face with rough hands, willing himself to wake up from that delirium. The kid was off limits. The only way to reach him was through Leia's bridging, with Leia's consent and approval, under Leia's eyes. Friendship and brotherhood were allowed; everything else was forbidden. Either Han accepted the rules, or he would lose them both.

His own choices had created this mess. He had to live with it now.

"Did I hurt you?"

Han opened his eyes to find Luke standing right in front of him, offering his hand to help him onto his feet. He was ghostly pale and his lips were swollen, but other than that he seemed... normal.

"I'm sorry, Han. I didn't mean to... I lost control for a moment."

Of what? The Corellian wanted to ask. Of his powers? Or himself? "Lucky I have a fat ass to land on," he muttered. Common sense would suggest that rear-related quips were not ideal in this situation, but he knew that look on the kid's face too well, didn't like it one bit, and couldn't stop himself from challenging it.

Predictably, Luke didn't even twitch. "Can you stand?"

Han accepted the offered hand and got up, stubbornly suppressing a groan at the effort. He would not sound like a rheumatic old man. "I guess we went a tad too far," he said sarcastically.

"My fault. Exclusively my fault."

"'Exclusively'?" Han frowned. "You weren't exactly raping me there. If there was anyone forcing things..."

But Luke was shaking his head with conviction. "You just wanted to restore my confidence. I was the one who got carried away."

That was like saying that Jabba's mission in life had been protecting other people from the perils of owning too much money. And that the filthy slug had died because of his own clumsiness, getting himself tangled in Leia's chain. Several times he had heard Luke say — with poorly concealed bitterness — that the truths people clung to depended greatly on their own point of view. But this? This was ridiculous!

"I apologise. It's been a while since..." Luke trailed off, making a vague gesture with his hand. "I guess I'm feeling lonely... and a little depressed. And maybe I should have stopped drinking two bottles earlier."

Everything coming from Luke now — his calm voice, his self-conscious humour, even his reticent gesture — felt contrived, deliberate, unnatural. He had regained control and now presented himself to Han all formal, solemn and carefully composed. All Jedi.

Han wanted to scream.

Instead... "You will find someone," Han repeated. He stood there, staring at the broken figure before him and listening to the echoes of his own words, wondering if he had indeed had the nerve to say them.

"Yes," Luke nodded with a tight smile. "Yes, I will. If it's the last thing I do."

And that left them exactly where they had started, didn't it? So fucking adequate.

So pathetic.

Luke found his jacket on the low table beside the apartment's door and put it on. "I'd better go, it's late. See you tomorrow, I guess?"

"I'm leaving for Aitoc tomorrow."

"Oh yeah. You mentioned that. Clear skies, then."

"Same to you."

The young man blinked. "Me?"

"Dod'ahnnar?"

"Right! Dod'ahnnar! Of course. With Leia."

Han felt genuinely sorry for the kid. That trip to Otrezze's kingdom promised to be the most awkward experience ever. "Don't bring me no souvenirs, okay?"

"Best regards to your legumes," Luke answered in kind.

They exchanged a final look, and Han was sure they were thinking the same thing: they usually hugged each other in brotherly fashion before parting in different errands, like the good friends they were supposed to be.

Perhaps there was something positive there if neither of them could muster enough hypocrisy for that now.

Luke left without another word, letting a freezing breeze in before the heavy door slid close behind him. It was like saying goodbye on Hoth all over again. Han kept gazing at the door controls, knowing he was supposed to lock it down, lacking the strength to do so.

"If your plan is to drive him insane, you're coming close to succeeding."

Startled by the voice he knew so well, Han braced himself not to jump and spin on his heels like a guilty child caught stealing cookies from the jar. Even if he was guilty of doing much worse than that. "Still awake, sweetheart?"

"Seems like it, doesn't it?"

He turned very slowly to face the Princess, his next wisecrack dying in his throat when he actually saw her.

Leia stood completely still under her bedroom doorframe, arms folded, managing to look regal in an old night-gown whose white lace had seen much better days. A convenient shadow fell over her face, hiding her eyes and giving her visage the hardness of a theatre mask, exquisite but impassive.

To Han, she looked now about three feet taller than she really was.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," he said, irked by the nervous stutter in his voice.

Leia arched a cynical eyebrow. "I'm glad at least you know that."

"Listen, I'm sorry. I really am. We were just talking, and he was telling me about his last date..."

"An unsuccessful one, I presume."

"Well... yeah."

"He's had many of them lately, have you noticed?"

Han fidgeted. Apparently everyone and his long-lost cousin had noticed. "He's trying."

"Indeed, he is."

Implying that Han wasn't? That wasn't fair, was it?

"Am I being unfair?" she asked, as if reading his thoughts. "He's making an honest effort to move on. And the more time passes, the more obsessed he gets about it, the clearer it becomes that this is very hard for him, and the less helpful you prove to be."

"Now wait a minute! I've been as helpful as I could. About a third of his dates were introduced to him by me."

"And then they all fell victim of your rather suspicious faultfinding, just like the other two thirds. If that's as helpful as you can manage, I'm afraid it's not remotely enough."

"Do you wanna see your brother married to the first nobody that figures out that the quickest way to turn into somebody is starring in the galactic press as the consort of the last of the Jedi Knights?"

"I want to see my brother happy," Leia said in a low, grave tone. She stepped forward, away from the shadow.

Han was taken aback by the sadness he could see in her face. "I'm sorry. I didn't plan it to happen. I wish it hadn't."

"Do you? Do you really?"

Fair question, Han had to admit, and one he wasn't certain he could answer to Leia's content. When he had had Luke returning his kiss, clinging to him, moaning at his touch, he had been sure that he wished for nothing else in the universe.

"I've been supportive of this 'dating fever' of his because I thought it would do him good to meet new people, to expand his horizons, to contemplate different possibilities," said Leia. "But you need only a sideward glance in his direction to sabotage him."

"I'm not trying to sabotage him!"

"Then why do you take an opportunity to listen to his problems and help him out, and use it to bind him even tighter to the past? Why do you keep tempting him? Tempting yourself?"

A wave of irritation rushed through Han's veins. She knew he and Luke had a history of sorts together, and yet she had left the two of them alone with their turbulent feelings in the living room. So who was the one playing with dangerous temptations there?

"Han, you can't keep on hiding behind my skirts every time he's around. You two should be able to be by yourselves without me as a mediator. Or a chaperon," she added tartly.

There it was again: his unspoken thought hanging helplessly from Leia's fingers. If she could do it, why couldn't the one who had taught her the trick do the same?

What the hell, gone was the time for subtlety anyway. "Is Luke blocking me?" he asked bluntly.

Leia nodded once.

So he hadn't been imagining things... "How long?"

"Since before I learned how to sense those things."

"But why? Why is he doing it?"

Her smile was strange, bitter, but also imbued with infinite fondness. "It's not easy to look into the heart of the one you love and find someone else living there."

Never before had Han wished so badly for a black hole to devour him and his whole existence.

"It's getting worse. This..." She gestured to indicate the room and everything that had passed between the two men since she left. "...was much more than mere blocking. It was vehement denial."

"He apologised..." Han mumbled in astonishment. "He apologised to me."

"Oh, he's very creative," said Leia, sarcasm and tenderness giving her tone an uncanny edge. "He makes up excuses for you whenever something feels off, and he believes them. So if your purpose with this whole activity is to find out how far you have to go to make him see how you feel, I can spare you the trouble. You'll have to flat out tell him."

"That's not what I..."

"So what do you want, Han? I need to know. Because Luke and I are going crazy here, waiting for you to figure it out."

He gazed at her small figure, deceptively fragile, ethereally pale but glowing in the darkness, framed by the mantle of long, glossy hair that fell loose around her body. Her beauty was one that could never be properly copied in portraits or holograms, because it stemmed less from her harmonious features than from her striking presence, her endless vitality, and her indomitable spirit. "Leia, I love you."

"I know," she shrugged. "But then what?"

It didn't end there, and they both knew it. For Luke's beauty wasn't any less alluring. Force aside, the kid had the strength to move planets out of their orbits, and the smile to seduce them back. When he smiled. When the galaxy wasn't conspiring to turn that dazzling light out and, moreover, when Han Solo wasn't assisting this vile conspiracy by messing with Luke's head.

Luke was the irresistible trickster that had turned his life upside down, dragging him into trap after trap, rescuing him just as swiftly, luring him into doing things he would never do for anybody else. Somehow the kid could at the same time nudge him into becoming a better person and urge him to never forget what he really was. Luke was a dream chaser, a light seeker, a fire dancer, a sky walker. He was unforgettable.

"Luke once told me that true love is forever," Han murmured distractedly.

Leia rubbed her naked arms, noticeably resenting the cold of the night. "Telling when love is truly true is the tricky part. Who was he talking about exactly?"

"Camillia."

"Who?"

"His favorite tauntaun back on Hoth," Han grimaced. "He was joking. I hope."

He expected a harsh rebuke for drifting away from the seriousness of their conversation, but Leia actually grinned. "So he traded you for a tauntaun? I knew my brother had good taste."

She wouldn't ask him to make a decision tonight, and for that Han was immensely grateful. Even if he felt unmistakably pulled in one of those two directions, right now he had too much alcohol in his blood and too much guilt on his shoulders to think straight. He couldn't afford to be any less than absolutely careful about the path he would take from there.

However, he knew Leia well enough to know that she would bring this up in the extremely near future, and that a definitive answer would be required then. And more importantly, Han couldn't stand the thought of putting the three of them through a reprise of this night.

"Look, I know you've been trying to do the right thing, for the three of us," Leia conceded. "But I guess it's time to admit that it's not working. For any of us."

"It's not working," Han echoed. "Believe me, I've noticed."

"So have I. And Luke just won't."

"Vehement denial." That was more than a little spooky. Han had seen Luke using his mind tricks on others a few times. Like when he convinced a stormtrooper that he wasn't wearing his white armour just by waving his hand and saying so. This blockade thing sounded a lot as if Luke had waved his hand to his reflection in a mirror...

It had to stop. If that meant coming clean about what he felt about the kid, so be it.

"There's something you must understand, Han. He's my brother. My only living family. I've been robbed of his presence for far too long, and I almost lost him again less than a day after gaining him back. He means too much to me..."

Han shook his head, raising a hand to interrupt her. "Listen, if you're warning me not to hurt his feelings..."

"I'm not," she assured him. "I know you want that even less than I do."

"So what're you saying?"

Leia took a deep breath, and waited until she was sure to have the Corellian's undivided attention. "I love you, Han. I really do. Even now, when all I want to do is kick your sorry ass out the window. But you need to know this." A salty drop glinted at the corner of her eye, but her face remained calm and stern. "I might be able to forgive him if he costs me my lover. But I'll never forgive you if you cost me my brother."

She stared firmly at him, until he nodded his understanding. The statement, painful to digest though it was, did not surprise him. The twins would never allow anything — or anyone — to separate them a second time.

Leia switched off the light of the living room and disappeared into her bedroom, leaving Han in the dark between two doors. The one before him lay open, and led to a place he was so familiar with that he could easily find his way around without any light, to a cosy niche of comfort and love only five steps away. The one at his back was closed but unlocked, and would take him to a myriad of winding roads — and if one road might send him to warm memories he longed to relive and dismissed dreams he yearned to rescue, all the others would lead him to an even lonelier darkness than the one he breathed now.

Despite all that had just happened, Han was sure Leia would welcome him into her bedroom and let him stay; she would have shown him out otherwise. He could follow her inside and apologise once again for his idiotic behaviour, his courtship of betrayal, his lack of consideration for both her and her brother. He wouldn't dare offer her any promises at this point, but he could be there for her. He could climb into her bed, and...

And nothing. Like Luke had said, some answers would come forward on their own, while others had to be hunted for. Han might be the only one in that threesome that couldn't feel the Force guiding him, but he knew his answer couldn't be found here.

Choosing the other door, he left the apartment.

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