Love Stories, or Five Things That Never Happened

Summary: Basically, FTTNH is pretty self-explanatory: five short AUs that never actually happened to our favorite characters. Dedicated to Mathematica, who gave me this wonderful little challenge, and a multitude of thanks to LittleCatt, for her awesome beta and letting me be neurotic about my story, and The-Solo-Smirk at the JC Boards, for her suggestion of Jimmy Eat World's "23," without which V. would not have been possible. Han Solo/Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader, Bail Organa/Carlist Rieekan. Mild adult themes ahead, you have been warned.

P.S.-The science in here is totally bogus. I am a history major, and I'm in to public health and not chemistry or physics. Begging for forgiveness in advance.

Disclaimer: GFFA and song lyrics aren't mine, but then again, you already knew that.

I. The Princess and Her Planet

"And Alderaan's not far away..."
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Californication"

They took her wrist chronometer when she was first brought onboard, so she has no way of watching the last minutes of her short life tick by. Not that it matters much. Every nerve ending in her broken little body is on fire from the drugs licking through her veins, every breath she drags into her lungs burns as though she were swallowing acid. So really, she can only hope and pray for the hour of her execution, for the glorious moment when she is at last free from her shattered, mortal self, for welcome death and its promise of sweet release.

And it will be soon, it will be so soon.

She knows that she has less than an hour to wait when the sneering lieutenant enters the cell. "A proper farewell, Your Highness," he says with a simpering laugh as he peels off the torn remains of her senatorial gown, and she shuts her eyes tight against the pain and the humiliation. The seconds tick by and she thinks that she can endure this because she will be dead soon anyway. She thinks that she can endure this because she is making her last sacrifice, for the Alliance, for Alderaan, for her father. It is better her than them, her life for their freedom, and she can endure this because she saved them. She saved them, and that is all that matters.

She remembers her sweet, majestic Alderaan looming wide and blue in the viewport beyond the observation deck and she remembers Tarkin looming over her, demandingdemandingdemanding that she betray the Rebel base, and she remembers the terror and the cold, mechanical hand that closed over her shoulder.

She remembers:

"You prefer another target? A military target? Then name the system!"

And:

Not Alderaan, no, not Alderaan. Lie. Lielielie.

And:

"I grow tired of asking this, so it will be the last time. Where is the Rebel base?"

And:

"Dantooine. They're on Dantooine."

And:

"There. You see, Lord Vader? She can be reasonable. Set your course for Dantooine."

And:

A flash of sickening green. And Dantooine. And then nothing, nothing but rocks and dust and what was left of a long-abandoned Rebel base and the ashes of a few thousand people that she sentenced to die. And, not Alderaan, dear gods, thank you, not Alderaan.

The lieutenant leaves her to pick her warm-white dress up from the cold-black floor and gather whatever shred of dignity she might have left. She tucks strands of her hair back into the buns on the sides of her head, not for vanity's sake, but because she is a princess, dammit, and though she fought the braids tooth-and-nail as a child, she would suddenly give anything to have her aunts fuss over her appearance one last time.

They kill her at 0200 exactly. It is blessedly quick. The injection is gray-green, and her final thought is of her father. Vader watches from the corner of the cell, and he gently closes her wide-brown, unseeing, so familiar eyes with two gloved fingers when everyone else files out of the room.

(At 0203, on Alderaan, the royal guards clear a barely-fit-to-fly Corellian freighter for landing in the private bay. The Rebels destroy the Death Star two days later, a swaggering spacer and his Wookiee copilot leave 17,000 credits richer, and a towheaded young Jedi never learns that he once had a twin sister.)

II. The Princess and Her Pirate

"All my love was down in a frozen ground..."
Bon Iver, "Re: Stacks"

He has been in this room a hundred thousand times in his tenure as Baron Administrator, but never before has it looked so menacing. The play of light, blue and red, fire and ice, once innocuous, is suddenly poignant, significant, powerful. He wonders for a moment if the blazing red is burning brighter now, emanating from the two achingly beautiful lovers at his side, his former friend and his former friend's young princess. Their desperate passion plays stark contrast to the cold blue of the carbon freezer looming stark before them, threatening to tear them apart forever, and he muses at what Han Solo could have possibly done in his life to deserve a woman like Leia Organa.

Han would've never betrayed his friend like this.

He can barely stand to watch as the troopers rip Han away from His Princess, but he forces himself to look anyway because he is hardly entitled to any measure of comfort here. And he hears the note of panic in Leia's voice as she cries out "I love you!" and years of knowing Han allows him to discern equal panic in the smuggler's "I know." and half-hearted smile.

Then a button is pressed and a lever is pulled and the rational part of his mind is running through the physics of the carbon-freezing process and perhaps protecting him from the sickening-metallic roars and what might possibly the sound of his friend dying. The carbonite oxoanions bond with the positively charged nitrogen ions and the neutral charge allows the body's molecules to slow to almost suspended movement. At the same time, the freezing gasses trigger the thyroid and send the body into metabolic hibernation. A normal weight human can survive up to five years in carbonite hibernation without suffering the effects of severe dehydration and risking renal failure...

But then, physics and statistics and jargon that he never really understood to begin with mean little in practice, because it is Han being lifted in a solid block from that cursed hole. It is Han that is slamming to the floor, it is Han frozen, his face twisted in that agonizing attempt to breathe. And really, statistics are all lies anyway, and Vader is as wary as he about this whole process, and the absolute best tragedies always star princesses and pirates and other such perfect alliteration.

He knew how this would end, but he had hoped anyway.

"Well, Calrissian, did he survive?"

He checks the panel. Oh gods, no. He checks it again. Nonono. And a third time. His heart is not beating and there is no feeling in his body and he might as well be in hibernation himself.

"No."

He chokes on his own answer so it is barely audible, but it would have been drowned out anyway by the mournful wail of a devastated Wookiee and the sound of a petite princess running across cold durasteel and collapsing over the carbonite tomb. He hits the thawing controls because he owes her that one last look at Her Smuggler, and one stolen glance at her brokenbeautiful face makes him hope that he dies soon as is condemned to spend the afterlife in the deepest circle of all the nine hells in the company of other traitors.

Everyone, even Vader and that infernal, in-pieces droid, is silent as Leia presses trembling fingers against Han's thawed neck and finds no pulse. And even Chewie is allowed to move, is allowed to stand guard over the Captain and His Princess, as Leia brushes trembling fingers over Han's anguished face when she finds no life. The tears falling from her eyes make no noise as they splash against Han's cold skin, and she shakes her head as though she is waking from a dream.

"No," she whispers, and he feels his heart break.

"No," she says again.

"No!" she screams, and she drops her forehead against his and tangles her fingers into his wet hair and her body shudders with uncontrollable sobs. "Nonononono!"

He considers putting a hand on her shoulder, but thinks better of it because he could never offer her any measure of comfort. And then Vader's voice is booming, interrupting his thoughts, demanding that they go find some other alternative method of incapacitating this Skywalker person. So he leaves the princess with the body of Her Pirate and the Wookiee watching them both. Later, he finds out that they were all taken to Vader's flagship, Han's lifeless corpse cradled in Chewie's arms like a small child, Leia still weeping softly. Vader knocks Skywalker out and injects him with a temporary paralytic, and soon they're all gone away from Bespin forever.

(Ten years later, the princess is a princess once again, the stone-faced heir to her dark father's galaxy. Her eyes are evil yellow, no longer rich brown, and hard. He sees her on the holos in his drunken haze, and he wonders if he is the only person in the universe that can pick out the pain behind her callous glare, because he was the one who put it there.)

III. The General and His Viceroy

"Teardrop on the fire of a confession, fearless on my breath..."
Jose Gonzalez, "Teardrop"

It has become their ritual in over thirty years of friendship to say their farewells on the landing platform. They have, after all, been at war for longer than the Viceroy's daughter has been the jewel of Alderaan's eye, and they can never be sure which goodbye will be their last. So they walk out together, slowly, and clasp hands in a firm shake, and brown eyes meet blue and hold each other just a fleeting moment longer than what is acceptably conventional. Then one wishes the other "Clear skies," and other wishes the one the same and embarks up the ramp as it begins to close, and it is all they need until the next time.

Today's farewell is unremarkable, and, in fact, has become somewhat predictably routine. He is off again to his troops at Yavin IV, leaving his oldest friend to what he does best, keeping watch over their precious Alderaan. It is his third such departure in as many months, and neither assumes that it will be his last.

"Leia's close to Tatooine by now," Bail Organa tells him, making normal conversation as they walk out to the platform. "I just hope that Kenobi waits to tell her the truth until I can be there to help explain."

"It won't be easy on her," he agrees, "but Leia's resilient. She can handle it."

"I hope you're right, Carlist," Bail sighs, stopping with him at the base of the ship's loading ramp. Dark eyes catch light and Bail smiles warmly. "I'll see you a week, then. Leia and I will be joining you on Yavin when she arrives with Kenobi."

"You will," he agrees, extending a hand.

He doesn't say:

Bail, you're all that I think about, which probably suggests terrible things about my ability to command my troops, but it's true.

Or:

I've loved you since before Breha died, Bail, since before you became a father, and I've wanted to tell you every day for the past thirty-three years.

Or:

Please, Bail, please be careful. The Empire is getting suspicious, and if I lost you...I wouldn't know how to go on.

He doesn't say any of it because this goodbye is like every other, and there will be another time and a better place to tell him the truth. Bail takes his hand and shakes it firmly like he always does, and then is turning back to the palace, leaving him to board the ship alone.

"Clear skies, Carlist."

"And to you, Bail," he agrees with a nod, then ascends the ramp without as much as a glance backwards.

(It is the last time he will ever see the viceroy. Bail Organa, his oldest friend, his oldest love, goes to the grave three days later in the blink of an eye and a flash of green light alongside 2,234,432,198 other Alderaani without ever knowing exactly how he feels.)

IV. The Father and His Son

"And it is an evil destination..."
Jedi Mind Tricks, "On the Eve of War"

He can hear the princess screaming that it's a trap either all the way down in the bottom levels of Cloud City or in his mind, he can't really be sure, but still his son ignores the warning and steps silently into the freezing chamber. He wonders briefly if the junior Skywalker is truly brave or just an idiot, then hears the boy's determined thoughts so loud that he might as well be screaming them and realizes that the child is a little of both. Luke is a gallant fool; his plan to lure the fledgling Jedi to this place with the pain of the irreverent Smuggler and the Princess who drives his fury because she looks so much like Padmé was brilliant. Brilliant because Luke is loyal to the end, dammit, and still far too good to bear the thought of another's suffering.

And then he lays masked eyes on the Jedi -- his son -- for the very first time, and is thankful that his respirator prevents his breath from catching in his throat. For his own hair had once been that exact shade of blonde and his eyes might still be that color blue and his chin would probably still have that same dimple if it weren't for his cursed former master and the fires of Mustafar. Luke even shares his same skin, browned to the same finish by the twin suns of Tatooine, and would in fact be his own mirror image, except that Luke inherited Padmé's nose and Padmé's height.

(The boy also inherited Padmé's love, her sense of devotion. And if he weren't a Sith lord, if he weren't supposed to find such qualities useless, he would have been proud, and so thankful, that their son is so much like her.)

Luke activates the lightsaber in his steady hands, and the hum of the blade and pale blue light that it casts are both entirely too familiar. So, Obi-Wan did keep the old weapon, did find it appropriate to give to the boy. He isn't sure whether to be angry or honored, but suddenly it doesn't matter because he is wishingwishingwishing that Luke would just cast away the saber so there would have to be no battle at all. Never, not once in the twenty-one years that he's been in this walking coffin, has he been bothered by killing, but now, suddenly, the thought that might harm Padmé's child after what he did to her is nearly unbearable.

(But then he pushes that thought from his mind, because he is a Sith lord, and he does not care about anything but gaining a new apprentice that just happens to be his son.)

His hand shakes as he activates his own bloodred blade. The battle is short, far from epic. Red saber meets blue five times. Strike and parry. Luke is good, but not good enough, and he knows the boy's next steps before they are ever made. He manages to push Luke in the freezing chamber and activate the controls in one fell swoop, and thirty seconds later, the huge metal claws are reaching into the carbon steam and pulling out the frozen block that is his son. The boy's face is contorted in pain, in that last angry breath, much like that Smuggler's had been not long ago. But, like the Smuggler, Luke is alive, is in perfect hibernation, and he is activating the hover controls and leading his son -- his new apprentice -- to his shuttle, to his ship, and to his Emperor.

There is smokefirepandemonium in the corridors that lead to the landing bay, and he is so pleased to have his son with him at last that he pays no attention to the battle in the halls and the fact that the Princess, the Wookiee, and the Baron have managed to retrieve the Smuggler and they are all, with those two infernal droids that are entirely too familiar, running for that infuriating, dilapidated freighter. No matter, anyway, because he's already ordered his men to disable the ship's hyperdrive. They will not escape, they will not escape, because he needs Leia Organa and her penetrating brown eyes, because Luke is so devoted to her that he will do anything to save her. He needs Leia because -- and he does not know whether to thank or curse Obi-Wan -- Luke believes so purely in what is right, not what is easy, and he will have no hope of saving the boy from Palpatine without the motivator of the Princess' pain.

Except that they do escape, the Princess and the Smuggler and the rest of their ragamuffin entourage. The Falcon's hyperdrive kicks in when it is within a meter of the tractor beam and he has nothing, nothing to sway his hold over Luke. Crushing Piett's throat is not enough to quell his anger, and he directs the Executor to Coruscant with only the dim and fading hope that Luke will embrace the Dark Side before Palpatine loses patience.

(Luke does not.)

V. The Pirate and His Princess

"No one else will have me like you do; No one else will have me, only you..."
Jimmy Eat World, "23"

The fight this time takes place in the threshold of the secondary hangar bay, in front of whatever soldiers and commanders and powers that be just happen to be in the area. It starts over something, or maybe it is nothing, like power couplings and the food in the mess, but it comes around to the same angry insults and threats that only they can interpret, a language that only they share, that cannot be found anywhere within the depths of Threepio's databanks and his six million forms of communication.

(She calls him an "arrogant bantha head," but she really means "my darling." He calls her a "frigid ice queen," but he really means "my sweetheart." And when he threatens to leave, he's begging her to ask him to stay, and when she says she doesn't care if he does, she's telling him that her heart would shatter in a million tiny pieces if he ever truly did go.)

"Why are you even here, then, Han?" she demands angrily, throwing up her arms in frustration at the handsome once-smuggler before her. "Leave! Go back to whatever it is that you want so much!"

"That isn't what I want!" he returns, clenching his gloved fists at his sides and looking towards the ceiling of ice above them as though he might find some answers there. His words are ambiguous, infuriating. She feels like a child and is suddenly overcome with the urge to make a snowball out of the hard-packed frozen precipitation of the wall at her right and smash it in his face for being so stubbornly obstinate.

"Then what do you want?" Her question is acidic, dripping with sarcasm.

And then, suddenly, there in the threshold of the secondary hangar bay, in front of the pilots and commanders and powers that be, he ceases his yelling and his pointing and fixes two serious, captivating hazel eyes on her. He takes three steps towards her and she's so caught off-guard by the shift in his assault that she can only hold his gaze and stand there as though the soles of her boots are frozen to the icy ground.

"You, Leia," he says, standing head and shoulders above her so she has to look up at him, and his voice is low and steady and it is almost as though he has forgotten they have an audience. She feels her heart stop as he says it, then speed to a dangerously fast beat that probably echoes thunderous off the frozen walls.

"What?"

"You," he says again. "I want you. I love you. You are why I'm still here."

"What?" Really, the question is quite stupid, but she can't seem to make her mouth form any other words.

"I want to marry you. I want to protect you and keep you safe for the rest of my life and yours, and maybe, Princess, if you had ever looked at me, just once, really looked at me, you would have known that you are every reason why I've stayed."

He turns on one heel and stalks away before her mind even registers that her jaw is hanging somewhere in the vicinity of her knees and that her hands are trembling violently. And she is so keenly aware that no one around her is moving, and that no fewer than seventy pairs of eyes are trained solely on her, and that if her peers in the hangar bay possessed Luke's ability to speak in another's mind, they would all be telepathically ordering Janson to change their bets on the Princess and the Pirate. Forget sleeping together, Wes. Leia's going to shoot him in the next five minutes.

(Han has already ascended the ramp of the Falcon before she regains the faculties to move, and their audience breathes a collective sigh of relief as she starts after him.)

She steps over his blue parka, thrown haphazardly in the entrance to the galley, and finds him standing in front of an open cabinet, filling a clear tumbler with a shot of amber whiskey, and at the sight of him she forgets that she's angry. He downs the burning liquid in one gulp without the slightest flinch and sets about refilling the glass, and she moves into the room and leans lightly against the dejarik table.

"Should you even bother with the glass?" she asks, because she isn't yet sure what else to say. He lifts an eyebrow and shrugs but does not look at her as he swallows another shot. He refills the cup a third time, then retrieves an identical glass and pours a shot for her. She accepts it wordlessly, cradling it in two hands.

"Why are you here, Leia?" His voice is not cold, just weary. Their games are tired, and she wants to call him a scoundrel and an idiot and a nerfherder, but the sentence spills from her red lips before she has a chance to strangle her honesty.

"I need to know if you meant it."

He lifts the tumbler to his mouth and pauses, then lowers the glass without ever taking a sip or looking at her.

"I don't have the energy to lie to you any more."

Leia nods once and swallows half the contents of her glass. It is Han's good whiskey, and the smoky-sweet liquid smolders pleasantly all the way to her stomach. Emboldened, she downs the other half of the drink and walks over to him, setting the tumbler on the counter in front of him for a refill.

"Then say it again," she says as he tips the whiskey bottle towards her glass.

Finally, he looks at her, years of sabacc allowing his handsome face to betray no emotion, but his greengold eyes are swimming in the heady combination of anger and longing and amusement and something else she can't quite name. He sets the whiskey down and turns to face her fully, and the tempest of the past three years of their non-love is all but forgotten.

"Marry me, Princess."

"All right."

Han cocks an eyebrow and gives her a rueful smirk.

"Fuck, Leia, this isn't a gods damned joke."

She places her right hand over his left, resting on the worn-gray countertop.

"I know." Her tiny fingers find their way around his, and she wonders if he can feel her trembling. "Han. Ask me. Please."

And, suddenly, he is shaking, too, and she realizes that she has never before seen Han Solo waver in his resolve. He takes a steadying breath.

"Will you, then, Leia? Be my wife?"

"Yes."

Her voice doesn't quiver as she answers because she's never been more sure of anything in her life. She starts to smile, but then he is crushing her to him and she is lost in the lips and tongue and sparks of their first-ever kiss. She tangles her fingers in his hair and the world spins around her as he lifts her to sit on the counter and neither of them notice as the bottle of whiskey tumbles to the floor and shatters in a million shards and sticky-sweet amber liquid.

(Rieekan bets two thousand credits that Leia will accept Han's proposal at odds of ninety to one. He collects his winnings the next evening, a mere hour after he has pronounced them husband and wife.)