"Why aren't you taking someone with you who already knows all this stuff?" Luke says it before he can think better of it, hating the petulant tone in his voice.

Leia doesn't seem fazed by it and just grins at him. "Because in case you hadn't noticed, born aristocrats are a little thin on the ground around here. And most of them can't fight worth a damn. Plus, given a choice, if I'm going to be stuck with someone for a week, I want it at least to be someone I like."

Just like that, the notion of dancing lessons gets a lot more bearable. "All right, but don't blame me if I step on your feet."

"That's why we practice, to get the foot-stepping part out of the way now. Come on." Leia takes his hand—he will never get used to the easy way she touches him, as if it doesn't tear at his heart every time—and starts pulling him down the corridor.

"What, right now?"

"The ball on Naboo is in six days. We leave in three. So yeah, now!" Of all the places to try and infiltrate, an Imperial ball on the Emperor's home planet seems like the most foolhardy thing they could do.

Given a choice, he'd rather be somewhere with a bunch of stormtroopers shooting at him. But it's Leia, and there's nothing he wouldn't do for her. She finds one of the empty training rooms on the base and produces a digiplayer from her pocket. "I'm not going to try and teach you anything fancy," she promises. "Have you ever danced before? Tell me the truth."

Luke wrinkles his nose. Dancing brings back too many memories of standing around at parties on Tatooine trying not to look like a complete idiot in front of his latest crush. He'd been a terrible dancer then, and he's sure he hasn't improved with age. "Not really. Aunt Beru tried to teach me some of the old Outer Rim dances she knew, but most of them needed a room full of people."

"Right, well, it just so happens that rustic Outer Rim dances are all the rage right now in the Empire, so we might be in luck."

"Rustic. Thanks a lot." He stops himself short of sticking his tongue out at her.

"You know what I mean," Leia looks uncharacteristically flustered. "Come here. Take my hand." She lifts her right hand, and puts his left hand on her waist. "This is a three-step dance popular on Devaron. It's probably the simplest, so we'll start here."

She's not the only one who's flustered. They hug easily, regularly. She's kissed him more than once—although he's never dared to kiss her—but this is different. As they stand and wait for the music to begin, he's acutely conscious of the pressure of her hand in his, the feel of her waist. He's trying to look everywhere but in her eyes, until she laughs.

"You know, it's customary to look at one's dance partner."

"Shouldn't I watch my feet?" he says, but lifts his eyes, and just as he feared, he's caught by her warm brown gaze and the bottom drops out of his stomach.

"By the time I'm done with you, you'll forget all about your feet." Her eyes twinkle at him, and if he didn't know better he'd think she's flirting with him.

"What feet?" he murmurs, blinking.

"Better." The music starts, and she instructs him through the first steps.

To his surprise, dancing isn't much different from the footwork he's been practicing with his lightsaber. It's all patterns and forms and steps that follow a set rhythm. After a few hours, he can keep up with her on a small handful of dances, and he's only stepped on her feet once or twice.

The last dance proves to be the hardest, and it's not because of the footwork. It's a dance that supposedly originated on Ryloth, and unlike the others, it's not done with a group of couples, but just one, and Leia says it's already caused a scandal on Naboo more than once.

"That's exactly why it will show up at the ball," she insists. "They'll want people to talk."

The starting position alone makes the blood rush to Luke's cheeks. Leia drapes around him like a clinging vine, one heel hooked behind his knee and her head thrown back. All he can see is the long white line of her neck, exposed. Their bodies are pressed tight together from the belly on down and if the music doesn't start soon, this is going to get embarrassing for both of them. As it is, she must be able to feel his racing heart.

They walk through it, step by agonizing step and the music finally ends with him bent over her as she leans back again, her hands holding his head and his face buried against her neck. Both of them are breathing hard and he doesn't think it's because the dance was strenuous. Carefully, he brings her back upright. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes bright. A few loose strands of hair spill around her face and he aches to brush them back.

"That was…" Leia slowly blinks and he has a glimpse of the tip of her tongue swiping her bottom lip, "...not bad at all." Her eyes seem to get caught on his mouth for just a second too long before she meets his eyes. "You're a natural."

"I have a good teacher." He can barely breathe, acutely aware that they're still holding each other, their faces just inches apart. For the first time he can admit to himself how much he wants. He wants things he can only half-imagine, things he's sure would earn him a death sentence on some worlds, but he also just wants this moment, right here, to never end, for Leia to keep looking him with her eyes so wide and dark and her lips just slightly parted.

"Luke, I—" Her voice is throaty in a way he's only heard in his dreams. She blinks and her eyes clear a tiny bit. "How are your feet?"

"What feet?" he repeats and has just about convinced himself to lean in and kiss her when she steps back abruptly.

"If—If we're leaving in three days, I should finish the arrangements. We'll both need clothes for the ball and I need to make sure we've got the identification we'll need, and… yes." The normally graceful princess nearly trips over her own feet trying to get to the door. "I'll find you later."

And then she's gone, and Luke is cursing himself for ten kinds of idiot. He pushed too hard, and now the entire trip is going to be awkward.

#

Get a hold of yourself. Leia starts scolding herself the moment she leaves Luke behind. Trying to teach him how to dance was risky, she knew that, but she did it anyway. And what in the name of all the stars possessed her to try and teach him the Twi'lek vine dance, knowing full well they would probably never need it but—no, she knows why she did it.

The problem with being a princess is that everyone expects you to know what you're doing, to be in control at all times, to keep your people in the center of your thoughts. There's a war going on, and she needs to keep herself focused. She knows that.

She is a princess, the last princess of Alderaan, and she knows her duty, but she's also a young woman of twenty and Luke's the hero of the Rebellion right now. Even if he didn't have the sweetest smile she's ever seen and eyes that remind her of the lake outside her parents' palace, he'd still be hard to resist. Even if he didn't look at her like she outshone the binary stars of his home world, she'd be drawn to him. But he does, and even though Leia knows her life allows for no frivolity right now, she wants.

So she asks for him as her companion on this mission, and teaches him a dance he'll never need to know so that just for a few stolen minutes she can feel his arms around her and his body against hers, reveling in the current that arcs between them. It's a dangerous line, and she's taking a chance that one or both of them will get burned. But when she thinks of the way he looks at her mouth, she can't help but think it might just be worth it.

The next three days are swallowed by last minute preparations. It will take them a day and a half to get to Naboo, where she and Luke will be posing as two Corellians, a new-money shipbuilder and his more refined bride. The original plan called for two nobles, but there's a limit to how much refinement she can teach in such a short time.

According to their contact, someone in the palace on Naboo has information on the Empire's long-term strategy, and the ball is a perfect place to mingle unseen. She and Luke spend long hours memorizing the floor plan of the palace and coaching on etiquette. They dance again, but this time, Artoo and Threepio are in the room to watch. It doesn't help. The tension is still there, just less overt. Pushing it underground only increases the pressure.

Departure day arrives and Leia tries to swallow her last-minute nerves along with her breakfast. The borrowed star yacht Corellian Dawn waits for them in the hangar. Everything is loaded on board. Real new-money Corellians would have a staff on board—a captain, servants, the works—but there's a limit to the Alliance's resources, and undercover gets harder the more people are involved, so it's just the two of them. When she arrives, Luke is already there, circling the ship and examining it.

Leia's gotten so used to seeing him in what passes for an Alliance uniform or in his flight suit, she's forgotten what he looks like in civilian clothes. He's dressed like a Corellian all right, albeit upgraded a few levels above Han. Leia tries not to think about him much either, wherever he is now, off trying to get out of trouble with gangsters and governments alike. Still, the similarity is there: brown pants that are just a hair too snug to be from any other world, an open throated shirt of a soft white linen, and—because she couldn't convince him to give it up—the yellow jacket he'd had to borrow on Yavin (later a gift from the original owner).

She'd made Wedge work with Luke on his body language, so he moves around the Dawn with the appropriate swagger of a spacer made good. Still when he sees her, the smile is all him. "Isn't she great?" He looks up at the Dawn with admiring eyes. "She's supposed to be fast. I guess we'll find out."

"She's beautiful," Leia agrees, disconcerted to find herself envious of a ship. "Are we ready to go?"

"One last check. You can get on board, if you want."

The interior is comfortable but not luxurious. There's more than enough room for two passengers, and Leia picks out a cabin on the starboard side for her own. She is resolutely not thinking about the next thirty-six hours of the two of them alone in hyperspace. They have to focus. This mission is critical, and they can't go in there distracted.

She hears him board a few minutes later, and makes her way to the cockpit, strapping herself into the navigator's seat. Luke is radiating nervous, excited energy. She's hoping some of it will have worn off by the time they get to Naboo, or he's not going to fool anybody.

They get flight clearance, then he fires the Dawn's thrusters, and they're off.

#

The Corellian Dawn isn't anything like a fighter ship, that's for sure, but it's not as bulky as some of the freighters Luke has flown for the Alliance either. Her flight is smooth and assured, even under his somewhat inexperienced hands, and she makes the jump to hyperspace with barely a jostle.

"Nothing to do now but wait," Luke says, pushing back from the controls.

"All right." Leia gives him a shrewd look. "Tell me again, when did we meet?"

"Huh? Oh!" Their cover story. He gives her what he hopes is an approximation of a roguish grin. "Well, your father Miru is one of my best customers. Eventually he brought me around his mouse and there you were, the prettiest girl on Corellia. Took me a year to get you to look back at me."

Leia sniffs and lifts her chin. "You had grease under your nails the first time we met."

"I just needed someone to civilize me, that's all." They've run through dozens of scenarios and have gotten comfortable being Gar Dengar and his wife Kalifa, but before it's always been with an audience. It feels uncomfortably real now, with just the two of them. There's a whole other life inside his head, one he has to pretend is his.

"Good." Leia drops character. "You've really gotten the hang of this."

It's on the tip of his tongue to tell her how easy it is to pretend to be in love with her, but he holds it back just in time. Instead he says, "Are you sure they're not going to think we're too young?"

Leia shakes her head. "Some noble houses marry even younger. And on Naboo, they won't even blink. The queen right now is only thirteen."

"I still can't get over that. When I was thirteen…" he breaks off and gives an exaggerated shudder.

"Let me guess, you were running wild through the desert shooting—what did you call them? Womp rats?"

"Well, I don't know about running wild, Uncle Owen kept me too busy for that. We had a tough couple of years right around then." He shrugs off remembered hardship. "But I was scrawnier than I am now and didn't have any common sense at all."

"You're not scrawny!" Leia laughs.

"No one's ever going to mistake me for a Wookiee."

"You're wiry." She's still laughing though, just not at him. "Besides, it's nice to have someone around I can talk to without craning my neck."

"So what about you?" Luke teases. "What were you like at thirteen? Running committees, I suppose."

"No, sitting through ceremonies and trying to dodge my aunts." Leia smiles, but her eyes are sad and too late, he remembers how much she's lost.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"No, it's all right." She reaches across the space between them and squeezes his hand. "We've both come through a lot since then."

He turns his hand over and twines their fingers together. "Yeah. I guess we have." They sit hand in hand for a comfortable few minutes. "Leia?"

"Hm?" She looks over.

"Why me? Seriously. There must be people trained in this sort of thing who could do it better than me. I'm not a spy. I'm a terrible liar."

Leia doesn't squirm exactly. "I trust you. Some people—some men—would try to take advantage of a situation like this. Or act like it gives them some sort of hold over me. I know you won't."

His mind gives a guilty little start, all too aware of the thoughts he's been having the past few days. No matter the thoughts, and no matter if he thinks she's flirting, she's just drawn a line and he wouldn't cross it for anything.

And yet, there's more that she's not saying. Luke can't say how he knows, it's a tingle in the back of his mind.

"I know that until the mission is over, we'll both be able to stay focused," Leia finishes, and squeezes his hand.

"Of course." And that's the end of it.