Joint Story: The Sequel - Chapter Two

Secret Marriage

She wasn’t much company to Luke as they sat and ate breakfast together.  It wasn’t as if she had never tried to piece together the events of that night before.  It had just never been quite as important as it had become now.  That little bombshell this morning had highly encouraged her to refocus filling in all the gaps of that evening.  She only hoped that the exercise wouldn’t reveal anything else she would’ve been happier to forget.

**

Six Months Earlier

She and Han had been on a mission together.  It was to be a ‘simple mission’.  Somehow those words, combined with her and Han Solo, always ended up in something else entirely.  The mission entailed funneling some credits through a few dummy accounts.  Lots of credits.  Through lots of dummy accounts.  Han had bragged that he knew his way around all the shady characters that they would have to deal with.  That his mouth and his wits in those type situations could be just as quick as his blaster draw.  Ha!

 Sometime during the night, which had entailed numerous cantinas and casinos, the pair had gotten drugged and whatever credits they had managed to pilfer had been stolen from them.  But that was not the worst part.  Of course, they didn’t remember being drugged.  They couldn’t even remember where they had been last.  But after they woke up the way that they did…credits and Alliance missions were the least of their worries.

That morning, at the very first tingle of consciousness, Leia immediately knew something was wrong.  She bolted up to a sitting position, her head swiveling around on her shoulders like Artoo’s dome.  A sharp pain behind her eyes was pounding, pulsating with the heavy thumping of her heart.  The drapes over the window were gaped opened, allowing a piercing sliver of daylight to plunge into the otherwise darkened room.  Her hand went up to her forehead, squeezing the pain away.  Something was still not right.

She grabbed a fistful of the sheet and pulled it to her chest.  Her bare chest.  It wasn’t a habit of hers to sleep in the nude, especially while on a mission in a strange city.  And this didn’t look like her room.  The bed was too soft, too big.  Something tugged at the sheets and she clutched them closer to her.  No, no, no, no.  But no matter how many times she said it, it wouldn’t make him disappear.

“Douse the freakin’ lights, huh?” He mumbled, opening one eye to glance at her.  “My head’s killin’ me.”

 She stared at him, horrified, glaring at the one eye that had just briefly focused on her.  Allowing him a moment to absorb what he had just seen.  One, two, three.  The eye popped back open, wide and disbelieving.  And then there they were; one bloodshot hazel eye, clearly not trusting itself, staring at two wide brown eyes. 

And reality finally set in.

Leia had seen Han in action before.  She had seen him draw his blaster so fast that anyone would swear that he had it up his sleeve.  But she had never seen him move as quickly as he did just then.  Yanking the covers as he rolled out of the bed like a frontline soldier diving for cover, Leia reacted just as quickly.  Before a single word could be spoken, they were standing across the bed from one another.  She, half-naked, still clutching the sheets to her breasts.  He, she wasn’t sure how naked, clinging to the coverlet as if it were a titanium shield.

“Wha-?” Han asked, looking around as if someone was going to shoot him at any moment.  “Wha-?”  He tried again, looking at the bed as if upon the scene of some heinous crime.

Leia, for her part, just stood there, shaking her head, as if the more she denied it, the less it would be true.

“What the fuck happened?” Han finally spit the words out.  Leia only hoped that whatever happened didn’t involve the word ‘fuck’ in it.

After a few more false starts at trying to speak, they began to take stock of their situation.  Han had to finally drop the coverlet to convince Leia that he still had his underwear on.  Two pairs of underwear, they both conceded, equaled the princess’ innocence was still intact.  Well, maybe not my innocence, she thought, but then thought better about arguing over semantics with a half-naked Han Solo.

A round in the ‘freshers and a few more items of clothing later, and the pair had figured out that they had been drugged.  They spent the day retracing their steps.  Talked to bartenders and casino dealers, watched security footage.  Pinpointed the time the mission officially went off course and even identified a few likely suspects.  But it still left hours upon hours of unaccounted for time.  Time, during which, they were both definitely under the influence of a mind-altering drug and apparently de-clothed.

Back then she had been so worried that something physical had happened between them, that once they had determined it hadn’t, she had been so relieved that she was willing to let a few missing details remain a mystery.  Even during their mission debrief, they didn’t mention the unaccounted for time period for fear that the Alliance may want to hypnotize them or otherwise glean the information out of them.  If Leia ever happened to remember how she ended up the way she did, she definitely didn’t want an audience.

Initially Han had been very magnanimous about the entire thing.  Leia was sure it was because he was racked with guilt at the thought of perhaps defiling her.  It had taken numerous assurances on her part to finally set his mind at ease.  Too late, she realized that that had been a huge mistake.   In the Falcon, on the way back to the Rebel Base, Han was finally able to find the humor in the entire ordeal.

“You look different.  More mature.  I think we at least kissed,” he said, staring at her from across the holochess table.

She stared at him.  Of course she had come to accept that they had indeed probably kissed.  It wasn’t like she hadn’t fantasized about it and obviously, while stripped of her inhibitions, had acted on some part of those desires.  She was just really relieved that, even while so blindly inebriated, she hadn’t let it go any farther.  But all of that didn’t mean she had to admit any such things to Han Solo.  She would never hear the end of it!  She took another sip of her kaffe, set it down on the table and said, “Kissing you would hardly be considered a testament of my maturity.”

“Well, something happened,” he said determinedly.  Every time his eyes dropped down to her chest she imagined he was trying to remember what they looked like.

“What makes you so sure?” She asked.

“Because we woke up in the same bed,” he said impatiently.  “Women just don’t do that with me unless something…something nice enticed ‘em there in the first place.”

“Please stop,” she said, holding her hand up and shutting her eyes.  “I still have a headache and you lumping me in with your loose term for women is enough to make me wanna vomit.”

“I do not use the term loosely!”  Han bellowed.  “I happen to like nice women.”   Clearly she had bruised his ego somewhere along the way.

“Fine,” she agreed.  “You like nice women.  But let’s not forget that I don’t like you.  And nothing happened.  We fell asleep in the same room…under the same covers…lying next to each other.”

“Naked,” Han added.

“Semi-naked,” she conceded.  “And that’s it.”  And she had sliced the air with her hands, putting an end to the entire conversation. 

But Han had been right, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time.  Even if he was only trying to rile her up and joke with her.  Something had happened to get her into that bed.  Something, perhaps worse than anything physical she might’ve done.  Something more permanent.  Or at least official.

She stuck her hand in her pocket and felt for the flimsi, not sure how she would endure the conversation that would ensue once she showed it to Han.  Of course, maybe she would have some control over that now, over him now.  Maybe, through some divine influence she had heard rumor of, he would have to listen to her now.  After all, according to that little piece of flimisplast, she was his wife.