He took three big strides forward, gathering the princess up and planting a lingering kiss on those ruby lips. He'd promised himself he'd do that before anything else--figured it'd break the ice and anyway, if he didn't do it straight away, it may well be days before she'd let him near her again.
For a second, she leaned in to him, as eager as he was, then she pushed back, her hands to his chest, flustered and embarrassed all at once, big brown eyes glancing about the crowded flight deck.
"Ah, don't worry, sweetheart, I'm kissin' the Wookiee next," Han assured with a grin, turning to Chewie but keeping his arm to the small of her back.
"Chewie! How the hell are ya, you big rug?"
The Wookiee howled a welcome, arms above his head in pleasure.
Han leaned back slightly in mock consideration. "I swear you're gettin' bigger." He waited until the Wook paused in consideration, keening a query. "No, I meant around the stomach, pal."
Chewie whuffed good-naturedly, enveloping Solo in a bear-hug which took his breath away.
Finally, because he knew he'd have to sooner or later, he turned to Calrissian. "Lando," he said simply, face straight.
"Listen, Han..." Lando began, but Han cut him off, not ready to hear it.
"Don't even try yet, Lando. You dropped us all in big trouble, pal. Serious trouble. I can't just forget that--not yet. Not when Luke's still on Coruscant. He got us out, not you. He's payin' for your mistakes." By the time he'd said the last, Han had raised his hand, finger pointing to Calrissian's chest.
Leia stepped in. "Han, Lando got us off Cloud City. He broke us out."
"Yeah, and that worked out real good, didn't it?" Han said, eyes not leaving Calrissian.
It was Chewie, with years of experience of the pair of them, who broke up the moment with a long-winded series of barks.
Han held Lando's eyes for a second longer before turning to Chewie, anger diffusing. "Me? What are you asking me for? You're the last one who flew her--don't'cha remember where you left her?"
Chewie keened a long reply to the fact that he remembered exactly where he left her--and that was the problem.
"Ah, we'll get her back, somehow. Me, you and Luke'll go get her. It'll be a nice weekend out--kinda like a family outing."
Everyone fell silent at this, looking away, bringing an uneasy frown to Han's face.
"What?"
.
.
.
"You know I just...I don't even have an answer to that," Han said, bewilderment and anger coloring his voice. "Has everyone gone crazy? Is there something in the recyc water?"
"I'm sorry." It was all Leia could think to say in that moment--not least because it was true. She'd taken him to her quarters to break the news, knowing how this would go.
"He's..." Han shook his head. "C'mon, Leia--you know he's not an Imperial. You've just seen what they went through to get hold of him."
"Intel think it was a show--that they were trying to keep his cover intact, in case they needed to re-integrate him into the Alliance."
"That's copishit and you know it." Han's voice was hardening now.
Leia wasn't surprised. Everyone who knew Luke went through the same run of emotions: surprise, denial, anger, frustration...but acceptance, eventually. The facts were too many and too damning to ignore.
Not that many people did know. It had been decided that the official line would remain that Commander Skywalker died in the battle of Hoth. The Imperial agent who had recently been uncovered would remain unnamed. Official line on that was that the agent--a tech--had managed to pull out when they'd discovered his identity in the retreat from Hoth. To link the two accomplished nothing, save to show that Alliance security could be breached to a Command level, and they could do without that kind of morale-killer, both in personnel terms and in terms of their reputation.
"Han, I know it's hard to..."
"Hard! I know that kid--better than most, it seems. I've known him since... How do you explain Tatooine, huh? What the hell was going on there? What was he even doing there in the first place?"
Leia sighed. "They needed the location of the Rebel base at Yavin, Han. They couldn't get it out of me under standard interrogation on the Death Star, so they sent Luke in with a convincing back-story. He even managed to get hooked up with a trusted Clone Wars General and reel him in, too. The Imperials must have picked up Artoo straight off the Tantive, then wiped his memory of the fact when they'd seen what he was carrying. I'd left everything they needed to set up that whole scenario in Artoo--Kenobi's name, his last known location. What better way to get me to trust an Imperial agent than have him turn up with General Kenobi? I led them to General Kenobi, and then back to Yavin Four. Because of Luke. Think about it, Han...who's the one person who didn't make it off the Death Star? Don't you think it's convenient that this plan just happened to require General Kenobi to board the Death Star, and that the one person they'd not want to let free again, just happened to be the one who didn't get off?"
"Didn't seem very convenient at the time," Han growled. "No, I don't buy this."
"Han, it's Luke's voice, on Luke's comlink."
"Voices can be faked," Han said.
"And then loaded onto Luke's comlink? When? Luke's container was locked--three techs were there when they blew the combination. Two weeks later the Bothans ID'd Luke as an Imperial agent based on his voice, on those comms, without knowing what we'd given them or where we'd gotten the voice fragment from. They didn't ID it as Luke Skywalker because for the first time, we'd asked them to run the recording through their Imperial Agents database. We got duped, Han. We all just got..."
"Well then, why the hell is he being held prisoner now?"
Leia shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know what they're doing. We have a few theories. I do know when I saw him, he wasn't being held anywhere."
"You saw him on Coruscant?"
Leia nodded tiredly. "Yes, I saw him, the day after we arrived. He was still unconscious. I think he'd woken up briefly and asked to see me."
"Where was he?"
Leia frowned, remembering. "He was in private apartments in the South Tower. His presumably...they looked lived-in."
"The massive one with the long entrance hall--it opened out to a crossroads with a big domed glass atrium in the middle?"
Leia blinked in surprise. "Yes."
"That's where they were holding him. The whole time I was there, he was never allowed out of three rooms at the end of one of the corridors in that apartment. There were guards everywhere."
Leia shook her head, voice softening at Han's dogged determination. "There were no guards when I saw him, Han. Just Luke. All the doors were open. How often did you see him?"
Han frowned, clearly knowing she'd call him on this. "Once a week--almost. I missed a few. No set days or times."
"For how long?"
"An hour maybe. Sometimes less."
Leia looked down, shaking her head. "It's not enough, Han. It's not enough to challenge all this." She indicated the still-bagged comlink she'd borrowed from Intelligence, the data-chips of the deciphered messages, the reams of hard-copy documents from the Bothans. "This is too..."
"Well then why the hell did he get me out?"
Leia looked up at him, deeply uncomfortable. "I need to scan you." She turned to take a battered plasteel medical box from just inside her door, taking out a hand-held scanner to charge it up, her voice level with a kind of forced calm. "Do you have any cuts, Han? Any injuries you can't account for?"
"You think they tagged me?"
She didn't speak, didn't meet his eyes, only stared at the scanner as she set its search perimeters.
"C'mon--there's no tag small enough to hide in a human body that has enough range to track me here."
"No, but one could transmit a shorter distance. If they wanted to find out if there was an Alliance safe-house on Coruscant, for instance."