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Prologue

3 ABY

Visenya Vardalos knew she was going to die.

She had done a few foolish things in her life. Handfuls of foolish things, if one asked her friends; astronomic tons of foolish things, if one asked her parents, and yet despite all of that, she was not a fool.

She was coughing blood, she was short of breath, and there were ominous, tender pox marks in the little dips between each of her fingers; she knew this infamous fatal illness when she saw it. It was not a question of if she would die, it was a question of when.

She couldn't fritter her time raging and cursing and wondering where she had picked it up; disease was an equal opportunity sort of human experience, and she had long since lost some of the aristocratic snobbishness that had lingered from her upbringing –

A younger, more vivacious Visenya might have turned up a neatly pointed nose, scoffed at the notion of a common illness, snapped her fingers for a good physician to work impossible magic – but Visenya as she lived and breathed now had no such airs, and no such access to privileged health care.

What she did have was a decent apartment that on many days out of the year, was too cluttered and cold because she forgot to pay the bills. Chronic absentmindedness was a remnant of her airheaded socialite days. She had a job she was constantly late to – but did exceptionally well at, due to her pretty face, and wildly infectious, flirtatious personality – an estranged family, and, first and foremost, now that she was – unarguably, a dying woman – a very beautiful little girl for whom she had to consider making arrangements.

It was on the day that she realized she would not survive the winter that Visenya realized she had never been – never quite tried hard enough to be – a very good mother; at least, not in the sense that one probably should be a good mother.

She sent her daughter to school, of course, and fed her; she also bought her lovely, much-too-expensive clothes, sometimes at the expense of turning on the heat. She had never planned on having a baby, and yet when she'd gotten pregnant, she'd thought what Visenya Vardalos always thought about things that were wild and shocking – well, this will certainly be fun!

She had never hurt her daughter deliberately; she had never lost her, or left her anywhere, or punished her harshly – in fact, Visenya rarely disciplined at all; her major parenting flaw was inattention. She couldn't blame her lack of involvement on the curse of youth; she hadn't been too very young when her daughter was born – in fact, in her well-to-do parents' eyes, she was much too old for mistakes like that, though their opinion hardly mattered, as they'd disowned her long before she involved herself with that wrinkled smuggler.

Visenya had merely always harbored a certain love for herself that precluded loving anyone else more, and she was prone to brushing unsavory responsibilities aside. So when she took a look at the blood on her handkerchief one day, and noticed that climbing the steps to their apartment winded her beyond what was normal for her age, she opened her eyes wide and took stock of her life, and of her daughter's, and wondered how the hell the bright young thing had turned out so well.

She was kind and polite and well-behaved; she had a habit, Visenya noticed, of watching her mother with concerned wariness, as if she needed to save her; she never fought at school, she was never in trouble, and she never ran wild – all day Visenya had watched her, while clutching the handkerchief in her pocket, thinking she must have lucked out with her daughter's temperament, or she must have inadvertently cursed her with it, by being such a frivolous mother that there was no time for the little girl to run wild and careless as she should.

And so, in an instant – a sobering, but resolved instant, nonetheless, Visenya had chosen to be the most outstanding mother she possibly could be, perhaps out of a tiny, flicker of selfish desire to have her daughter remember her well, but mostly because death put life into perspective, and there were many parts of hers she had lived wrong.

She found herself gripped with significant fear over what would happen to this child of hers, who she had all too often treated more as a pet than a human being – loving her when it was posh and convenient, ignoring her harmlessly when she was absorbed in something else, or in love with some new man – Visenya had cut all ties with her former life, even the socialite aspects of it –

Her wealthy, high-ranking Corellian family had never set eyes on Visenya's daughter, and never would; they abhorred her origin as they abhorred every man Visenya had ever aligned herself with – and the wealthy aunt who had always secretly liked Visenya, and furnished her fistfuls of cash on the side, had died a year and a half ago. She had been elderly, anyway; she never would have been able to take a child and raise her.

Late into the night these days, Visenya worried; she picked at her nail, chewed on the edge, and did research – she had no friends that would be willing, or worthy, to take her daughter, she had no family – the only recourse she could find was the Corellian mandate that when the custodial parent died in instances of separated parents, the courts automatically awarded – no, not even awarded, forcibly attached – custody to the surviving parent, providing they were determined to be a moral, ethical, and honorable individual.

Moral, ethical, and honorable – so very Corellian, and so very not what Visenya's long-vanished paramour had been.

She hadn't given her daughter his name – not visibly, not really. She didn't talk about him – not out of spite, for there was nothing spiteful about him, or their affair – it had been merely that, an affair, and she hadn't even thought it necessary to place his name on the birth documents or attempt to send him a message letting him know.

Despite having his child, she hadn't even really spared a thought for him in years, until his name became famous in the intergalactic wanted ads – and his face was plastered all over the holo, just under those other two rebels –

Public Enemy Number Three, Han Solo, wanted by the Empire and the Hutt outlaws of the galaxy, and here, on Corellia, Visenya sat at a vanity studying her reflection, debating whether or not to fill out the papers that would name him as the father.

Visenya sighed; she put her forehead in her hands and stared down at the electronic documents, the pages still staring up at her emptily – had it really been so many years since she'd seen him; had it really been so many years since she'd had her baby?

She pursed her lips, dragging her teeth along them to scrape off the remainder of dark lipstick. She tapped her chin with a manicured nail – she supposed there was some slight chance the Vardalos clan would step in and take her daughter after all, with Visenya out of the picture and no longer around to embarrass them –

Ah, but no; it wasn't just that the little girl was a bastard and a disowned daughter's child, she was of mixed skin, and the Vardaloses were too rigid and old-fashioned to love her despite it.

Visenya scowled – for all she'd been, for all the girlish adventures she'd had and scandalous roads she had taken, she had never been prejudiced, and perhaps that's what alienated her high born family the most.

The state; it was the state, it seemed, that would care for her child – though she mulled over finally naming a father just on the off-chance that he could handle it, that Corellia would track him down and ensure she was with family –

Because for all he'd been, for all his rough-and-tumble ways, and his gambling, and drinking, and devil-may-care smile, and the trouble he got into, Solo had never been a bad man, and if the rumors were true, if he was with the Rebellion – well, that took some guts, and some courage of heart, did it not? Certainly more than it took to become an Imperial officer, and he'd failed at that, he'd already been expelled when she met him, still in possession of his bloodstripes, though, and if Corellia let him keep those, then surely –

Yet he was hunted daily; the price on his head rivaled that pretty little thing atop the list, and because of the added bounty from the Hutts, it tripled the Skywalker kid's kill price.

There was hardly a chance the authorities would track him down just to hand him his long-lost, unknown daughter – and Visenya was starkly terrified, like she should be, as a newly resolved, very good mother, at the idea of her child in a war zone. But what was more terrifying; war zones, or orphanages?

Visenya bit her lip, staring at herself, for once not caring how she looked, or how she would look – what mattered is what would happen to her daughter, months from now, when Visenya herself was dead and she was alone in the world, with no idea of where she'd come from and no one to give her a real home, the kind Visenya should have been giving her all along, and not just for a few scared, sobering months at the end.

She picked up a stylus and tapped her holo screen, running a hand through her hair – she pulled distastefully at green streaks in it, internally chastising herself; twenty-seven, Senny, and you still dye your hair like this; grow up, grow up, grow up –

Senny, she thought, tapping her pen earnestly on the page to keep it live – that's what he'd always called her, out of laziness, or charm, she didn't know – she tried to imagine what he'd say if she could tell him, or warn him in person – something like, Kriff, Senny, quit fuckin' around – a kid, no way you had a kid –

She groaned quietly – why had she? She was so stupid when she was younger; she'd thought no more into it than – what the hell; kids are cute.

She loved her, though. Visenya loved her daughter more than anything, even when she mothered her lukewarmly, and she was such a sweetheart, he would love her, too – he would, even if he was shocked, and angry –

Visenya ran her hand over her mouth and then swept her stylus across the few blank spaces in the documents, writing, over and over, firmly, in any space with the word father under it –

Han Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo –

Filling in, under his name – Citizenship: Corellian.

There, there – he was listed, then, and if he ever survived his fight, there was the off chance – well, her daughter might have a home, and maybe he'd be good at it, maybe he'd be more mature than she was – though she couldn't help thinking she must be out of her mind, because he'd been just as reckless and risk-oriented as she had; running illegal spice was not the game of honorable men –

Yet fighting oppression was, and she had no idea what the hell he was doing with those rebels, but he was with them, in the spotlight, and he was remaining with them, and she wanted to believe that things might work out and he might be able to take her, so she let herself believe it –

"Mama!"

Visenya turned, laying her pen down, covering the datapad with a scarf.

Her daughter dashed into the bedroom, dark, curled hair flying behind her, the ribbon, from a sash on her dress, trailing through the air in a colorful streak.

Visenya held out her arms, and her daughter scrambled into them, climbing up on her lap.

"The holos," she said breathlessly, in her earnest voice. "The holos, Mama, they say the rebels might have all been killed."

Visenya shushed her softly, stroking her chin – oh, don't say that, darling; not all of them, she thought – and it was likely propaganda, anyway; the Empire so abhorred losing, even the image of it.

"They must be hidden well," Visenya murmured, shushing her again quietly.

She tilted her head back and looked down at her daughter, smiling bravely.

"Vada," she said quietly. "I love you very much," she promised.

Vada held her breath, and grinned, putting her arms around her mother's neck. Visenya hugged her, burying her face in the little girl's hair for a moment – she needed to get through winter; for heaven's sake, Vada couldn't be alone, and handed off to the State, in the harshest of months.

"I need to talk to you," Visenya murmured softly. She pulled back, and touched Vada's chin. "I want to tell you about your middle name."

Vada tilted her head, her lips going up in a very familiar crooked smile – how, Visenya asked herself, could I have thought so little about him, when she looks so much like him?

"Solo?" Vada asked, piping and curious.

Visenya swallowed nervously, nodding her head.

"Solo," she agreed, her mouth dry. "It was your father's – "

In the coldest reaches of the galaxy, far off the beaten path from Corellia, Han Solo was shouting at a Princess on a military base constructed of ice.

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