thisavrou_log | (no subject)

Of late he's been in and out of the freighter even more than usual, stowing away bits and pieces, boxes and bundles, anything he thinks the new Captains might take issue with. His room on Mero isn't exactly bare but it's orderly, everything in its place, far from the comfortable jumble of a few days past. The Falcon, too, isn't so bad-- some of the crates are absolute nightmares, sure, but they're stacked neatly.

When he gets her message, though, he smiles at it, thinking of the far less orderly aft hold, their makeshift quarters, still cozy even if it's not the only bit of privacy they've got now. He knows it's probably not quite as pleasant an invitation as he's hoping-- she doesn't say we need to talk but he's thinking it himself. If she hasn't met Jaina he's got news, and if she has, they probably need to touch base anyway.

He shows up a little later, covered plate in hand.

"We oughta meet like this more often."

"That can be arranged." She grins up at him, moving her feet off the table so there's room for them to set things down if they need to. The whiskey glasses are at her side (because while brandy should have snifters, the Falcon has whiskey glasses, and Leia really doesn't give a damn), so she can start pouring the drinks right then and there. "Bringing food back is easier than trying to cook in this thing."

A tease, but a pretty gentle one, as teases go. Han's ship might be his first and truest love, but it's still a bachelor pad in a lot of ways, and its near-nonexistent galley is one of them. It's not a bad setting for eating, though, especially now that there are decent places they can retire to after if they want.

Slowly but surely, she thinks, the ship's becoming something like a home--not just for him but for them. Closer than anything on the ersatz Star Destroyer it's docked inside.

"Have you met any of the new captives?" she asks, deceptively casual, as she holds out a glass to him. "They're an interesting bunch this time around."

"No cooking, but we might have the best wine cellar on the ship."

Granted, it's almost all carefully packed in hidden smuggling compartments, but still-- the Alderaanian vintages alone are astronomically, anachronistically rare. He flashes her a smile as she pours, taking his seat beside her, close enough to bump against her fondly though he sprawls out after. The Falcon isn't a big ship, but it uses its space well and he's always made an effort to make it comfortable.

"Interesting," he echoes, giving her an intent look as he takes the glass. Yeah, she's fishing, so they might as well get straight to it. He takes a long sip, nodding. Right.

"Jaina."

Because if she's asking, she must have met their daughter too, right?

"Might?" A little coy. There's no might about it after the month they spent hauling liquor--and plenty else--out of the Ingresses on Amissis-Re.

Leia pecks him on the mouth when he sits down, but when his expression shifts, hers does, too. It's obvious before he says more than interesting that he knows exactly what she's getting at. What he thinks about that fact isn't so clear, but that's why they're here.

Well, that and the fact that the Falcon really is a better setting for just about any conversation than a crowded mess hall.

"So you met her, too." She pushes a bit of food around on her plate, her attention too focused on Han to make much of her meal. "She seemed a lot happier to see me when I ran into her."

It's not the first serious conversation the Falcon has hosted and he doubts it'll be the last. At least this one is a nicer talk, about (arguably) a nicer kid. Honestly it's almost enough to have him feeling peculiarly guilty. Learning about Ben had been so hard on both of them-- confronting not only their future but an incomprehensible failure, an ugly fate. This is a hundred times stranger, but not nearly so tragic.

"Me, too. I bumped into her and she called me dad," he says, nodding. Worlds away from Kylo Ren's unprovoked anger. Their daughter-- the words still feel out of place-- is as much a stranger, but not by design. "But I don't get it," he adds. "The two of them--"

Talking about their son, as it turns out, is no easier than it has been. He still hasn't shown Leia the other holo, but this doesn't feel like the right moment to open that door. Still-- wouldn't he have mentioned a sister? Shouldn't she know her brother? Mismatched timelines are strange enough; he doesn't quite know how to begin dealing with the implications of this. The only explanation he can find is that one of them is lying, but it doesn't seem likely-- not when dragging the truth out of Ben was so difficult, when Jaina seems so earnest.

"That sounds about right." It's shockingly easy to imagine the scene; Jaina has such a bright, open smile, such an easy way to her. It's far removed from Ben's precise speech and gestures. Despite how poorly he seems to control himself, there's a white-knuckled restraint in the way he carries himself, as if he's trying desperately and failing at something the rest of the world finds easy.

Han's unspoken question is one that's been gnawing at her today, too. Leia swirls her drink idly, watching the dark liquid as she tries to find the way to put together her thoughts into something she can present outside of her own head. The two of them don't seem to fit together. It could be a matter of the difference in time between them--Ben's childhood had looked idyllic from that holo, hadn't it?--but that doesn't seem like the right answer.

It feels like there's something more here.

"Jaina looked at me like she'd never heard of him. Either he's her brother Anakin--" She still can't believe that one, that an Anakin Solo is going to exist in the future--"going by some other name, or we're in for a lot of kids."

Maybe you can blame it on some kind of strange genetic connection, but he likes her already. Probably, it's simpler than that: she cares for him in an open and obvious way, it feels natural enough to respond well. Particularly when the idea of fatherhood isn't new, but is still strange. Jaina offers up the kind of connection he's sought and doubted with Ben, outside the implications of that recorded message.

"He wouldn't have changed his name," he murmurs, a little bitter maybe. The thought that Leia would ever name a son of theirs Anakin is too bewildering to touch on. Still, it doesn't feel right. Jaina's old enough that if she were the eldest, Ben would have to have been born-- wouldn't he?

"A lot of kids who don't know each other?" It still doesn't make a lick of sense. "I don't think either of them is lying."

"I don't think so, either. But if Ben's the youngest..." She's just going to ignore that first comment, aside from the moment she tensed at the thought. Han's right, but it's nothing comfortable to consider, just how thoroughly their son seems to glorify his grandfather. "He never said he didn't have siblings. I never thought to ask."

Her first mistake...but it isn't as if Ben's been interested in catching up. He seems furious to have to acknowledge he came from anywhere in the first place.

"I don't know when Jaina was born, but if it's...soon..." She shifts a little; somehow, it's discomfiting to talk about children they're going to have someday, even if everything's settled between them. Suggesting they might have a daughter within the year, once they get home, is just a little much. "It's technically possible that we could have him later, too."

It just seems unlikely, now that she says it out loud.

"It's not like he does a lot of talking."

A lot of ranting and threatening, maybe, but chatting? Not so much. More, lately, than he expected, but even so Kylo Ren remains a stranger, Ben Solo an unknown quantity.

"I guess," he mutters, unconvinced. What a thought, though-- the two of them having such an enormous family. It's a daunting prospect, considering his apparent track record as a father. Though he doubts more and more each day that he's done as badly as he first thought.

"Somehow I don't think he's gonna want to talk about it."

Which is unfortunate, because... They'll have to. They need answers.

"I'll ask him. He might talk to me." Leia doubts she'll get far, but without knowing about Han's latest little adventure with their son, she's certain she can find out more from him. "And he's got to know more than Jaina."

If he's the youngest child, he'll know. If he doesn't have a sister named Jaina--somehow--then he'll know that, too. And if that's the case, she's not sure what's going on, but they can try to figure it out.

That if is going to bother her, if that's the case. Two children, two completely different children... She takes a sip of brandy, letting it burn a line down her throat. "I don't know how we can get to the bottom of this otherwise."

The idea of sending her to talk to Kylo Ren is unnerving... And the fact that it is leaves him feeling the slightest bit guilty. He is, after all, their son. He was, at any rate. And as poorly as things have gone with the two of them, Han doesn't doubt he cares for his mother.

"You're right, I guess."

Trying to keep the misgivings out of his tone-- and at least halfway managing, he nods and sips his own drink thoughtfully.

Ben seems content to try and upset her, maybe to frighten her. If that means she's the envoy between the two of them and their son, then so be it. It's better than letting Han go and get thrown around like a rag doll.

"I wouldn't go that far," she answers wryly, giving Han a sidelong smile. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

That she can admit as much is proof positive of just how much she's learned to trust him over the years. Of course, if she hadn't, they wouldn't have future children to talk over anyway.

He shrugs, turning the gesture into a stretch, looping an arm around behind her shoulders.

"Better idea than I've got."

And what they'll do if it turns out they've somehow got two sets of kids... He can't think that far ahead. As if Ben wasn't enough to worry about.

"Meanwhile..." They've got two kids, one of whom is apparently receptive to being their kid. Which certainly makes things easier, but leaves him no better prepared for fatherhood.

"We can keep an eye on her."

There's a little bit of a question, there. He knows it's a stupid question. Of course they will, but he could use the confirmation that he's thinking in the right direction.

"I think we'll have to," Leia answers, the words coming out a little grim, as she leans her head against his shoulder. His manners might be rubbing off on her (in private, anyway), to judge by the way she picks a carrot off her plate with her fingers and takes a bite. "Who knows what Ben'll do when he hears about her?"

If he doesn't know already. He'd found Han, hadn't he? Surely he'll know his sister's presence on the ship, if they know each other. If he's lost himself in rage, though, Leia hasn't seen evidence of it yet--on the ship or in Jaina's attitude.

It'd be nice if they could say for sure that Ben wouldn't harm his sister... But knowing what they know, they can't be sure. It doesn't seem likely to Han-- whatever grudge he's carrying, it feels like it's about them, about him, and wouldn't a sister be a fellow victim of their unexplained wrongs?

"Yeah."

He hasn't got the appetite to bother about his food, least of all if she's going to curl up against him. There's enough of a makeshift galley to reheat it if they must, after all.

"She said she's training with Luke."

So, there's that. The Force, apparently, breeds pretty consistently.

Ben's anger is so volatile that Leia's not convinced strangers won't end up on the receiving end of it. What protection can a kid sister half his age have? Especially one as gregarious and potentially prone to annoy as Jaina?

Leia would feel better about all this if she only knew what their future--any of theirs, all of theirs--really looked like. But they're unlikely to puzzle it out on their own, so they might as well move away from the most concerning aspect of it.

"She mentioned that." Leia looks Han's way, reading the expression in his eyes. And then, a little gentler than usual, "It sounds like you might be surrounded on all sides."

"Seems like."

The prospect is unnerving. By now, much as he'd rather, he can't keep insisting on disbelief-- there's been too much evidence of things he can't explain. Han is still pretty doubtful about the Force-- its demands seem unreasonable, its power difficult to anticipate or rely on. Any day of the week, he thinks, he'd rather stick with his blaster.

Even now it's tempting to walk away from that part of it. Leia, after all, is better equipped than he is to to help their no-longer-solely-hypothetical children with that. But what Ben said sticks with him-- the hurt scabbed over into bitter resignation-- the accusation that he never wanted to understand.

And it's not untrue. He doesn't want to understand that-- a power that could twist someone so thoroughly. But with the peculiar prescient hindsight of meeting the man his son will become, he's not so sure he has the luxury of turning away from it, now.

Trying to lighten the mood, he rolls his eyes, looks for a joke to make and finds-- nothing.

Leia watches him, and she waits--but he says nothing more. Maybe it doesn't feel like there's anything left to say. They're faced with too many questions, not nearly enough answers, and Han's never been the biggest fan of the unknown.

If he was, he wouldn't be so skeptical about the Force.

She can't leave things here, though. Quietly, she asks, "Can you live with that?"

More than that: Can you love them for it? Can you love me for it? Not despite, but for--can you learn to see their abilities and believe, even if you can't understand? This isn't something that can be brushed off with a smart remark and a shrug of the shoulders, as convenient as that would be.

Answering that should be simple, instant, but it isn't. In part, at least, that's because he's trying honestly to adjust to the idea, instead of just setting it aside as not his business. Which he still can't help but feel it isn't; it's like being expected to paint with colors his eyes aren't capable of perceiving. Leaving it to Leia and Luke to sort out seems like it ought to be the best option.

Certainly, he can say, it wouldn't make him love them any less-- he hasn't pulled away from her, though he's been jealous and unfair here and there at the time she's spent. All in all, he'd like to think he's coming around to the idea, even if he's inclined to keep his distance from the discussion.

But that distance, it seems to be part of their problem.

"It seems like Jaina thinks so," he says. Dancing around the question, maybe, but what he doesn't say is maybe the more worrying answer: Ben thinks not.

"Jaina loves you." It's obvious in the way she spoke to Leia, and in Han's description of his run-in with her. Jaina's a bright, happy girl, one who looks at her mother like she's never let her down in her life. "She believes the best of her father."

Ben loves you, too, she wants to say. She wants to believe it. But he wants to believe the worst.

And Leia? She's seen how Han can take a green kid and help him learn to be a hero. He leads crews easily and pushes everybody to do more--without making it feel like a push. Sure, he can be as grouchy as a snow bear on Hoth at times, but he knows how to be gentle when he needs to, how to be patient. He has the makings of a good father in him.

But how good depends on how he handles having half a dozen Force users in his family.

It doesn't matter that she doesn't say it. She doesn't need to; Han is more sure of that than he's said. Ben loved him, once. What he feels now is more complicated; their son doesn't wish to be their son, the relationship he has with Kylo Ren is something wholly different.

It was easier to believe, once, that he'd done nothing right as a father, lay the blame solely at his own feet. It's not so simple. Maybe they ought to be grateful, in a strange way-- most people don't get to see their mistakes so clearly before they've started making them.

"I can't understand it."

That's the thing. It's not about wanting or not wanting to.

"Sometimes I feel like I can't, either." The Force isn't a legacy she's asked for, and she's not sure she knows how she can learn to use it without abusing it, as Vader did. "The more I learn, the less I feel like I know."

A mother who has the Force and doesn't understand it and a father who doesn't have it and doesn't want it. The thought of trying to raise children in it is starting to look like an impossible job.

But this isn't about the future yet. At this moment, she suspects it's about Han specifically, and about reassuring him. So she sets a hand gently on his leg and adds, "Even without understanding it, you can support them. You're not bad at bringing out the best in people, you know."

Maybe not wanting it is the problem. He can't shake the sense that things would be-- well, just easier for all of them if that hadn't come into the situation. It seems unfair, more burden than blessing, and so the idea of wanting to understand, to delve deeper, makes no sense to him. It works for Luke, maybe. The rest of them...

He shakes his head, then shifts to lean against her. It's reassurance he's not sure he deserves.

"I'd like to think so. I just don't know." There's a disconnect there, made all the broader by Jaina, who doesn't seem to feel so abandoned. Talking about this is miserable-- being aware of his own shortcomings is one thing, pointing them out to the woman he's always trying to impress is another-- but much as he wants to, it doesn't feel like he can keep this to himself anymore.

"Ben says I've never tried to understand."

He lets the declaration hang like that. It's a reluctant admission to begin with, he's not eager to share details. Surprise, Leia, he talks to their son sometimes. It was kind of a surprise to him, too.

Leia's brow furrows slightly as she glances up at him. "When was that?"

Ben says, he says--but the only thing Ben's done to Han, last she heard, is shout threats and use the Force. The thought that they've talked is both heartening and a little concerning. The two of them are at sea together when it comes to their son; they can't afford to keep interactions like that to themselves.

(Has she remembered to tell him all the occasions when she and Ben have crossed paths? Maybe not--it feels like it, but maybe she can't be so disappointed in Han if she's uncertain.)

(Maybe she is, a little, anyway.)

This, he realizes belatedly, is a conversation they should already have had.

"I should've told you," he says, a bit apologetic. "I meant to. It was before everything last month--" and, well, then there were bigger worries, and bigger things to deal with not dealing with, and it had entirely slipped his mind. Mostly. The truth is-- and he doesn't like to admit this to himself, he's not sure he's got it in him to say it aloud-- there's a selfish side of it, too. He's still coming to terms with the other holo, he wasn't ready to share it yet. Because sharing it means talking about it, figuring it out. Means having to let go of some of the blame he's heaped, and though that ought to be a good thing, it just leaves them with more questions.

"Hang on."

Setting his drink on the table and willing himself not to look back at her, he hurries off and returns in a moment with the small datacube, retrieved from one of the Falcon's myriad hiding places. Safekeeping-- not hiding it from her, but from the off chance that Kylo Ren might find out and try to destroy it.

(Futile, when he thinks about it. He's willing to bet his son knows the ship as well as he does.)

Hand flat, he offers it to her, settling slowly onto the seat beside her.

Leia nods, forgiveness in a gesture. In everything that happened last month, who can blame him for setting aside something and forgetting to bring it back up?

Taking the datacube from him, she turns it on and leans into his side to watch it with him. The face that appears belongs somewhere between the child in Leia's message and the man they've met in person. The softness of boyhood still clings to him in places, but his features are angular, and she knows they'll only grow more so.

It's a message for Han through and through, one a future Leia might not have seen. This is something for a man in the middle of a long journey with his Wookiee best friend, made by a son who's starting to occupy the same world they do.

Perhaps Han didn't forget to mention it. Perhaps he didn't know how to reconcile something so personal, so apparently heartfelt, with the enmity of Kylo Ren. Leia's not sure she can, having seen it. She feels like she walked into a private conversation.

"He loved you," she finally says, looking up at Han's face. She doesn't know everything going on behind those pale eyes, but the way he grows quiet around the subject of Ben, she thinks this might be a place to start. "I knew he must."

He'd like to believe that, had things been different, he'd have thought to tell her. The truth is it might have come to this either way-- they might have needed to fall into the subject first. There's just no easy way to bring it up, and there's something about the message that leaves him feeling fiercely guarded. Protective of this private moment that hasn't happened yet. This is his son-- her son, of course, but there's something sacred about the way his voice cracks, the casual gossip, the things he think will interest his father. The genuine, embarrassed way he ducks his head. In another world there'd be no reason at all to share this casual, fond missive. Here-- well, of course he had to show her. Of course. And yet...

For just a moment he has to glance away at nothing in particular, the hard line of his jaw betraying the tension of the moment. Ben loved him-- but, awful as it is to even think it-- if he didn't, everything would be so much easier to understand. If they'd never gotten along. If there was some simple answer. But this leaves them with more questions than ever.

"I wanted to ask why," he says finally. "I still don't get it."

Maybe he never will.

It's not the place to start, if the way he can't even look at her when she voices the thought is anything to go by. Han must be tortured by that thought: a son who cared enough to send him messages, to tell him he was loved, grew up to kill him. But there isn't really a place to start in this. Every part of this message could wound him, in the right light.

Leia lets him have his moment, sliding an arm around his waist. The fact that he's taken their son's rejection so personally so quickly says to her that he has what it takes to be a good father. He cares, and he obviously cares deeply.

If only his love for his son wasn't rewarded with Kylo Ren.

"Was that all he said?" she asks in a low voice, setting the datacube back onto his lap. "That you didn't try to understand the Force?"

"Not much else."

None of it that makes any of it make sense.

"Nothing about-- what happened." Because something must have happened, mustn't it? There has to have been some catalyst, some catastrophe. A boy like that doesn't become a man like Kylo Ren without-- does he?

Maybe Jaina will grow into hating him, too. The thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, but it doesn't quite feel right.

It's like trying to rebuild an engine when you're missing half the pieces.

"He hasn't explained it to me, either." Han knows that, she's sure. If anything had changed, she would have come to him immediately; while he seems to swallow everything that happens with Ben, Leia can't help but want to talk about it. It feels like it's exploding out of her when she learns something new about their son's situation. It needs to be discussed. "If we can just figure it out--"

If they can coax out of him the moment that changed everything, they can stop it. The future is only written for him, not for them, and unlike her brother, Leia believes wholeheartedly in her ability to rewrite fate.

"It's too bad Jaina's still so young." Any possibility of finding the answer through her is dashed by the fact that she doesn't even recognize the name Ben as belonging to family.

Things would have to be so infinitely different for him to be comfortable talking about their son that it's not worth mentioning. Of course she hasn't heard any more. There's little speaking to him at the best of times, and recently-- well.

"It oughta be you," he affirms. There's something more civil between them now-- he wants to believe, anyway-- but Kylo doesn't want to open up, and his prying is apt to frustrate them both at best. At worst-- well, Han doesn't want a closer glimpse of what the future holds.

He doesn't expect there's anything to be done about it, not really. But it doesn't change the fact that they need to understand.

So soon after the outpost, Leia's had little desire to talk to most of the others from their galaxy. Speaking to Ben, especially, seems like a minefield stretching out in all directions. For all that Obi-Wan seemed to think Ben had gone to the outpost for her sake, she doesn't know what Ben knows about her last few weeks. The longer she waits to talk with him, the less likely it is they'll have to talk about that.

But they can't leave this mystery alone forever. The fact that Ben and Jaina both exist, apparently independent of each other, is baffling, and she wants an explanation.

She's just not sure she wants it yet.

But that doesn't matter here, not when Han only says it should be her--not that it should happen soon. She nods, pressing a little kiss to his cheek. "I'll ask him. I can't promise he'll tell me anything--" wryly, with a little shake to her head--"but I'll ask."

Nothing's ever certain with Kylo. Usually that's a cause to despair, though rarely it seems to work for them rather than against them. He hardly expected to have a civil conversation last time, but he'd felt the need to try.

"Be careful," he says anyway. It'd be nice to not feel like he has to say that-- but he still feels like he has to say it.

"I will."

Leia gives him a smile, though it doesn't quite touch the resignation in her eyes. It's not going to be a pleasant conversation, no matter what she does--but she can minimize the risks she takes. No more finding him and shouting whatever she feels.

He kisses her brow, mostly because he can. That's about the best he can hope for. Maybe they'll get some answers; at least, he hopes, they won't end up any worse off.

"C'mon, let's eat."