Honor Among Thieves

From the command center, Commander Ackbar’s voice grated and snapped. Han didn’t recognize the voices that responded.

“Any regrets?” Luke asked. From anyone else, the question would have seemed like prying. From the kid, it was too openhearted and sincere to take offense at. Leia shrugged. “Some,” she said. “But I don’t know what I’d have done differently. Regret that I couldn’t find a better way through than the one I found. Does that count?”

“What about you?” Luke asked, and it took Han a few seconds to realize Luke was talking to him. He opened his mouth to say no, then paused, shrugged.

“You know,” he said. “There were a bunch of critters on Seymarti who were just trying to make it through another day in their crappy little swamp. They didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

Leia raised an eyebrow.

“That’s your regret?” she said.

“Why not? It’s a good one.”

“What about having the key to end the war in your hand and choosing to throw it away?” Leia said, her voice a little hard with sorrow. Just for a moment, he saw behind her façade. From this moment on, she would be carrying a little more of every death in the war. Every adolescent fighter pilot who got shot down by a TIE fighter, every spy who got exposed and executed in an Imperial prison, every foot soldier who fell under a stormtrooper’s blaster rifle would be in part because she’d had the chance to take the power of the K’kybak and Seymarti V, and she hadn’t.

It was easy to forget that she’d seen Alderaan die. She hid the guilt of surviving so well that it could blend right in with the normal pressures of commanding an army. Or leading a rebellion.

He thought back to all the things he’d said about Kiamurr. He wanted to say something comforting, but he wasn’t sure what that would be. Han made do with answering the question.

“It wasn’t the key to stopping the war,” he said. “It was the key to stopping anyone ever from doing something I didn’t like. Stopping the war would just have been the start. And who wouldn’t have done that? Who wouldn’t have used it to keep some innocent people alive and stop the thugs from getting more power? Something like that, though, you can’t stop once you’ve started.”

“Too much responsibility?” Leia asked. The barb felt almost like he’d offered her an apology. Almost like she’d accepted it.

“The responsibility’s not the problem,” he said. “A galaxy without smugglers and thieves? How’s that a better place? No, Your Worship, you’ve got to leave some room for people like me.”

“Do I really?” she said.

“You really do,” Han said. “Sometimes you are people like me.”

Leia’s gaze softened a degree. Luke looked from one to the other of them, a hint of confusion in his bright blue eyes. For a trembling moment, something dangerous seemed about to happen, but then Leia pulled back. Her smile turned sardonic and the façade fell back in place.

“Sometimes I am,” she agreed. “But then I bathe.”

Chewbacca snorted and Luke chuckled, looking relieved. Han held up his hands. “Fine, sweetheart. You can say anything you want. We both know how you really feel.”

“You aren’t still pretending I was jealous of Scarlet Hark, are you?”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Han said. “I’m a good-looking guy. And back on Cioran, I really didn’t have a choice. I had to take my clothes off.”

“Why did you have to take your clothes off?” Luke asked.

Han shrugged. “They were wrinkled. That’s not the point. The point is it’s perfectly normal for a woman—or in this case two women—like her to be attracted to a man like me.”

Chewbacca howled.

“She did turn away, yeah,” Han said. “But, you know. She probably peeked.”

“She did,” Leia said.

For a moment, the room went silent. Han felt a blush rising up his neck and fought it back.

“See?” he said, poking Chewbacca’s knee with a finger. “She peeked.”

The Wookiee didn’t answer. Around them, the business of the war went on, as it would for the months or years until one side or the other won. Han wondered, when that time came, if he’d still be a rebel, and whom he’d be rebelling against.

“You know,” Luke said after a while, “with Seymarti and Cerroban out of the running, there aren’t a lot of places left we can build the new base.”

“As long as it’s not Hoth,” Han said. “That’s a miserable planet.”

“We’ll find something,” Leia said. “It won’t be easy, and it won’t come without a cost, but we’ll find it. We always do.”