Speedo Challenge - Submission #3

(Submitted by Push)

The Millennium Falcon (somewhere on Tatooine)

It was early morning and the Princess was up first, as usual.  She stood for a moment, looking around the Captain's quarters of the Millinneum Falcon where she had been sleeping these past several days.  She had followed Luke to Tatooine and joined him and Chewie on the Falcon.  Lando had already infiltrated Jabba's Palace and now they were made to wait.  During that time, she had already organized the galley, the storage bins in the lounge, the spare parts in the engine room and the medical supplies in the main hold.  Everything that had aggravated her during that trip to Bespin was being checked off her mental list as she mentally checked off each passing minute, hour and day.
 

If Chewie had minded all of her housekeeping, he had been either too polite or too considerate to complain and Luke, for his part, had merely done his best to stay out of her way.  Now, what had started as something to keep her worried mind occupied, had slowly started to become an all-consuming obsession.  Perhaps it was because she wanted everything to be perfect when Han arrived, although she realized her idea of perfect and his were probably worlds apart.  Thinking back to her polishing efforts in the cockpit the day before, she worried that he might actually want to kill her when he finally did return.

Leia bit her lip, turning around to survey Han's bedroom once more.  Of every nook and cranny in the Falcon that she had swiped, wiped, organized and dusted, the Captain's quarters had heretofore remained untouched.  Perhaps it was because she felt it too presumptuous to invade his personal space or maybe she found comfort in every discarded item that had been touched by him last, in some ways feeling like one of them herself as she slept restlessly all alone in his bunk.  Whatever the reasons had been, they had lost their argument with her on this day.

She started with the storage bins underneath his bed which were full of clothes she was positive half of which didn't fit him anymore.  Her agenda had not been to get rid of anything, so she merely folded and organized; sniffing, studying and sometimes wearing items of clothing along the way.  He was everywhere in this room; his scent on his clothes, his personality in every piece and part of machinery that he had obviously felt some need to keep, his unique style of filing and organization.  Her heart swelled with the sensory overload.  Maybe this was why she had avoided this space.  Regardless, she pressed on.

She reached his desk and began sorting through old space charts, flimsiplasts and assorted paraphernalia.  After efficiently organizing one drawer in particular, she noticed a scraping noise as she moved to shut it.  Opening and closing it a few times more, she realized something was stuck behind the drawer itself.  Reaching a slender arm down and back behind the drawer she grabbed for the thin object with the tips of her fingers, but it remained stubborn and elusive.  Several tries later, she had finally pulled the item free.  It was a photo still, or holo, and it had been printed, old-fashioned style, one-dimensionally on a thin piece of flimsiplast.  It was of Han.  It was of a nearly naked Han wearing less than Leia knew was his normal choice of underwear, his legs crossed, shoulders comfortably slouched, eyes looking directly into the holocam.  Behind him she could make out some greenery and he appeared to be near some water.   

   

Leia took a step back from the desk, disorganization and dust long forgotten as she stared at the image in her hands.  Compared to everything she had recently immersed herself in, thoughts of him, his room, his scent, his clothing, this struck her all the deeper.

She knew that throughout most of their relationship Han had been steadily giving her chase.  Looking at him now, the reasons and all that history and baggage put aside, she wondered at how she had resisted him that long.  He was quite the specimen.  This Han she now held in her hands, all bare-chested and exposed, appeared comfortable and accepting of whatever intimate situation he had been in at the time.  She realized that she did not have the right to know him in this way yet.  Her fingers traced over the lines of his broad shoulders and her eyes seemed to keep finding their way back to his stomach and below.  In perfect imitation of his sunwashed shoulders, Leia felt a full body blush spread a delightful warmth across her and she suddenly felt somewhat voyeuristic and intrusive.  She glanced furtively behind her, suddenly afraid of being caught.  Her body ached for him, the warm blush abandoning her just as quickly as it had surfaced, leaving only want and desire in its place.

She studied his face, the expression not one she was particularly accustomed to.  He looked more open, less the cynical, jaded space jockey she had had occasion to deal with.  And, although she had once called him scruffy, she had never seen him wearing quite that much facial hair, she made a mental note that when she got him back she would request he take a reprieve from the razor.  When I get him back.  She refused to entertain thoughts of failure.  They would get him back.  And what would they be like when he returned, she wondered.  Did she have the right to know him in this way now?  The possibilities both excited and scared her.

They had declared a truce of sorts on the way to Bespin, they had acted together like they had never acted before.  Like a couple.  But little had been talked about.  Little had been done of those kinds of things that couples do beyond idle chit chat and niceties.  She was inexperienced and reluctant to initiate, he had been reticent for his own reasons.  Nothing would be standing between them when he returned.  Would it?  She looked at his face for answers.  His eyes deep and shadowed, his brows furrowed from the sunlight.  At that moment he looked worried and remorseful, she hadn't noticed those emotions before.  "Are you alright?"  She asked him, the him that was out there somewhere frozen in carbonite and in time.  This him that he had been for someone else some time ago in this photo, this him that she wanted for herself now.

She closed her eyes on the silence.  The Republic medical staff had prepared them as best as possible for what to expect upon freeing him, stating that his first moments of consciousness would be the most telling.  It was possible that he would not remember her.  It was possible that he would no longer know.  Opening her eyes, she refused to give further life to those thoughts and she moved to shut the drawer, content now with leaving the mess for another day.  The holo still in her hand, she looked down at it and studied it one last time.  Such a rare find, it was.


She had never known Han to pose for a holocam and he wasn't very likely to share any sorts of memories of his past - especially near-naked ones.  But the longer she held it, the more it began to lose its charm and the larger the hollow ache inside of her grew.  Initially bewitched by the sight of him and his state of undress, the entire thing only became increasingly frustrating and sad.  It was a poor substitute for the man himself, she decided.  She would take her jaded, cynical spacer over whoever this was any day, fully clothed and grease-stained at that.

She pushed the drawer gently shut and walked away, discreetly stuffing the holo into her pocket.  Poor substitute or not, she would be a fool not to keep it.

Harrison Ford in his "Yoda" pose?