#i corrected another assignment on MY OWN staying up until 2am without complaining about it because we're supposed to be friends

[dokjaism]

i still cant believe someone used the we're supposed to be friends card w me

[nettlestonenell]

@nettlestonenell:  And the truth is, if I'm being 100% real and honest is that: there is no fill-in fic. B/C Han and Leia never broke up. I mean, I don't see WHY the writers felt they had to break them up (other than they wanted a reunion scene). TFA's story can still function well without having blown all three of the trio apart in the intervening years. Certainly, Han's death can be just as resonant w/o his having to be estranged from Leia. Everything is crap in Leia's life in TFA; she's lost Luke, her son, Han, and she's still fighting the same war. It's more weight than her character should bear. So, in truth, there is no fill-in fic in my mind. B/C that break-up didn't happen.

BUT, if you've got a gun to my head, I reckon a fill-in fic that would upset me less would be: Han and Leia had it rough in the beginning following RotJedi. Han had trouble adjusting (not to being second to Leia in most people's eyes, but to State dinners and pomp and deportment, and, like trying not to flinch every time someone called him General Solo, and being expected to stay put in one place).

After decades of being on his own, at the beck and call of no one, joining the Rebel Alliance was a rough transition. He worried that more seasoned Rebels were snickering about him behind his back. He worried that he wasn't being sent on missions b/c someone was trying to protect him for Leia's sake. He flinched at being sent away from her (when he wanted to be close) and being assigned to tasks near her (when he wanted to get away)… His life of smuggling still dogged him on the rougher planets. Past scores and broken deals caused trouble he couldn't always get out of without a scuffle or a fire fight--that would have nothing to do with re-joining the galaxy under the Rebel Alliance, and banishing what was left of the Empire. He knew the upper echelon of the Alliance was having secret meetings about how to “deal” with him. He knew the meetings were secret, even from Leia.

He hated to feel like he was a burden on her, on her leadership, her effectiveness. He said none of this aloud.

Leia simply had no time. Like any new president in her first 100 (or first 1,000) days, she barely slept. She traveled extensively. She studied studied studied to learn things about all the new worlds they were trying to bring into the Alliance. She was one of the few left alive that had any background in, or affinity for, diplomacy. And on many worlds the cultural importance of a consort (and the fact her side was often vacant) was not to be underestimated. When he was there, Han made gaffes. Sometimes he was found to be wanted on the world they had traveled to treat with. It was rough and bumpy, but not impossible. And then came the baby. They were overjoyed. Excited, terrified. Chewbacca seemed like the only one who felt pretty chill about the whole thing. Then again, Wookies simply take turns wearing their young more or less for the first two years of life. But Leia was torn between her considerable duties and the baby, and Han was simply unsure what sort of parent he had the capacity to be (he recalled little enough of his own parents).

NN:  And then the baby showed signs of being, well, gifted. And Leia became convinced giving the child into Luke's care was the only way to avoid, to hedge against creating a second Vader.

NN:  Han didn't like it--not because of Luke, but--he liked being around the kid. It made him feel different, in a good way. A fresh way. But Leia was so sure it was the right thing to do, and he--well, he'd never been very good at figuring out the right things to do. So, he agreed.

NN:  When everything happened, they were still together. The Rebel Alliance had been disbanded, or nearly so. Leia's responsibilities had diminished. No one was complaining or strategizing about Han’s proclivities toward adventure and smuggling anymore. Han had started to feel something like comfortable.

NN: Ben's actions, his kidnapping/turning away from the Light, savaged them, though. They hung on each other. Sleepless nights were shared.

Luke disappeared.

Even more light and spark vanished from Leia's eyes.

NN: And Han...well, Han went back to what he knew. Except now, instead of chasing illegal cargo, he flew and bargained, and shook trees like the old days, no longer to locate valuable, illegal freight, but to try and find their son.

He always returned, but for months he'd be absent--radio silence--chasing leads with Chewie. Taking on dangerous cargo to finance his hunt.

NN: And then one day he came back and asked for Leia, and a new staffer of hers told him she was in a meeting, and could not be disturbed. And he spied something of the meeting, how elegant and perfect Leia looked in it. She laughed (his own perception too skewed to realize it was polite, not genuine, laughter), she parlayed.

I'm not needed here, he thought. I carry with me the shadow of my son, and all that has occurred, and all that has been lost. Because of me coming into her and Luke's life.

And he found Chewie, without explaining why, and determined he would not be back until he'd found both Luke and Ben, and she could laugh like that at him again.

Leia exited the meeting feel tense and drained. It was a masque, after all, this variety of diplomacy. A play without a script.

Did I see General Solo? she asked the new aide.

No, I don't think so, Ma'am, the aide replied, having been instructed by several of Leia's advisors that they would just as soon chase the smuggler off as have to keep putting up with his stubborn, backward ways.

@reblogginhood: ok, so you are obviously 100% correct that they never needed to break up Han and Leia, and it was dumb to do so, because he could have been out there and found Rey and Finn without having to be estranged (but...not even really estranged???) from Leia

and honestly, that was the most frustrating part--they didn't even give Han and Leia ANY kind of story

there didn't appear to be anything to reconcile; there was no story to their reunion; it was just there, it seemed for the Kylo backstory

RBHOOD: but ANYWAY

all that said

HOW DARE YOU GIVE ME THESE FEELINGS WITH THAT FILL-IN

and also THANK YOU FOR THESE FEELINGS

and of course, on the other side, Leia assumes Han just couldn't be happy tied down to the life she has to live

and assumes he's happier wherever he is out there without her

(mutual pining is my fave trope)

NN: Like, being royal and the dramatic irony of your staff keeping you in the dark about things/decisions/actions is certainly a jam of mine.

NN: But, you know, the loss of Han is also (importantly) the loss of Chewbacca for Leia. And for every time Han put a foot wrong, on so many planets the presence of a Wookie in the Alliance's retinue put a foot just *right*, lent an air of nobility to the proceedings.

NN: And he gave the best hugs, Chewbacca. Leia misses him.

NN: When she can't sleep (which is often), and she can't stare at another diplomatic briefing (which happens sometime after 2am), she lies down on the smallest, narrowest thing she can find; a chair, a couch, a cramped window seat--and imagines she's in a bunk on the Falcon with Han, his arm laced around her back as they sleep—as they always slept--to make sure she doesn't fall off the rack.

NN: Han, who would rather no one knew how sentimental he is (he pretends they don't notice that he treats a way-too-old ship like his own maiden auntie), takes to stopping by the O2 masks on the Falcon, hanging ever-in-the-ready. Sometimes he pulls one down, takes a hard, unnecessary drag on it.

Tells himself maybe that was it--that was the one, the one Leia always used. That in doing so he can once again share breath with her, be close.

NN: Chewbacca? Chewbacca worries. He doesn't mention it, but about six months after Luke goes missing he starts to shed, even though it's unseasonal, not the right time.

NN: He follows Han, they smuggle to finance their search, but the jobs seem more dangerous now, and Han gets less joy out of the danger than before. Solo is become a man driven, weary and almost spent, even from the moment he wakes. Chewbacca begins to feel too old for this life.

Chewbacca misses Luke. Luke was good for a laugh. Luke made them all smile, or worry in concert. That was his job, his function in this family. But the worrying before was never so laced with fear, with loss.

Chewbacca thinks: it is the difference between worrying over whether a stew might be burned, and whether your planet's deathly drought will ever end.

It is oppressive.

NN: The two of them chase the slightest whispers of Ben's whereabouts, surely the last people in the galaxy interested in finding the boy after what he did. They run after hare-brained, wild goose chase information they know to be nothing more than that about Luke’s location. Still, they carry on.

Occasionally, they find themselves learning news of what the Alliance is becoming: the Resistance.

Occasionally, a news transmission includes an image of Leia.

After seeing it, Han does not sleep for three solar days.

NN: Leia comes down with a migraine so rough nothing the medical droids can offer her short of sedation can take the edge off it.

But she has a meeting with a group that can help finance new weaponry her Resistance desperately needs.

NN: She insists on attending, knowing her inclusion in the talks is found to be inspirational, an essential stamp of approval, by many.

Traveling back to base in the shuttle, she retches long and hard into the nearest receptacle. I'm sorry, she apologizes to the pilot and the flight crew for the mess.

As they disembark back at base camp she realizes; it's Han's birthday.

RBHOOD: OH GOD NOW I'M CRYING AGAIN

just imagining the musical montage of leia and han thinking about each other at the same time as they can't sleep, thousands of light years apart

RBHOOD: ..........and of course, you know, diplomacy sometimes requires a bit of flirtation

and Han catches a video clip by accident on a news feed on a distant station

and after a moment of paralysis he thinks, this is good, this is good, this is where she always ought to have been, and I want her to be happy

and he almost makes himself believe it

NN: And then, off in the distance, Luke occasionally feels Leia's emotions, and he can't bear it.

NN: This is a 1000% pining-ready situation.

And then the montage starts with them a younger age, and then ends with some time lapse where they've aged into their TFA years.

RBHOOD: yesssssssssssss

they have become accustomed to the pain of loss and loneliness, but it hasn't lessened

NN: but their moment of reconciliation definitely occurs prior to the events of TFA. It actually happens when he loses the Falcon.

Chewbacca brings him back, finds where Leia & Co. are hiding. Han's been roughed up, he needs some rest and some light medical intervention. The two of them are on the run, so why not hunker down with some other people also on the run?

NN: No one tells Leia that Chewie has signaled their arrival. In fact, there are so many new people in the Resistance that most of them don’t quite recall the fact that Leia and Han were together, or the shape their lives took. It’s as though the textbooks of the day elide over Han, and his missing son—whom many come to incorrectly believe (as General Organa’s son) perished in the massacre of the rest of Skywalker’s students. It is a persistent misinformation.

But something brings Leia to the hanger that day, and though Chewie is not flying the Falcon, she runs up the lowered ramp of the unfamiliar ship he pilots into their hidden base, and finds her way to Han's side. Han's so in and out of it he doesn't know what year it is or how long (or if) he's been gone.

He speaks to her and holds on to her like no time has passed at all.

She recognizes it as the gift it is. Because in a short time he will recall it all; the pain, the loss, the distance.

But for those hours that it takes for medical to get him stabilized, he's thinks he's somewhere between just having been awoken from Carbonite, and being tortured by Vader in the Bespin system.

She memorizes every word he says, answers his every question in kind.

The human medical staff try to keep their blushes to themselves, unfamiliar with encountering their General in this form.

They have forgotten how very small of stature General Princess Leia Organa really is, how she has for decades shouldered the burdens of the movement without having anyone to shoulder her burdens.

They have forgotten, or never understood, that she loved a smuggler; the father of her lost child. That her brother, the mythical figure, was just a farmboy on a backwater planet.

That underneath General, beyond diplomat, around Princess--she is Leia, a soul distant from all those she loves.

RBHOOD: nell, that LAST LINE

that's GORGEOUS

it's a crime this is all in DM, tbh

NN: Stop tempting me to collect it.

I know I'm gonna wanna read it all again one day

RBHOOD: No you SHOULD collect it and post it