a/n: there's no real note, this is just how i format all my stories. enjoy!

Scars

Her breathing was so soft and steady that he thought she was asleep. He was debating getting up, if he could do so without disturbing her, and getting some work done on the Falcon, when she lifted her head from his shoulder and shifted to the pillow, her hand slipping from his stomach to his ribs.

"Han?" Leia asked quietly.

He turned his head to look at her expectantly.

"Can I ask you something?"

She shifted closer, her hand running over his side, fingertips tracing the edges of a roughened patch of skin she'd noticed earlier. He had similar imperfections all over – his chin, his left shoulder, and his upper thigh. He considered her for a moment, wondering what was coming, and nodded.

"Where did you get this?" She asked, her fingers pausing on his ribs, pressing lightly into the scar so he'd know what she was talking about.

She'd noticed it, on the rare occasions when she'd happened to see him without a shirt on, back before she started lying around naked in beds with him. It had always made her curious – and seeing so many more scars on him now, scars like that one on his leg she'd never have seen if not for their recent intimacy, sparked a deeper interest in who he was.

He looked down, tilting his head to see which one she was pointing at – there was a smaller scar lower on his hip, if he remembered correctly. He moved his hand to rub the mark for a moment, his fingers nudging hers away, and cleared his throat.

"It's from a vibroblade," he answered.

"It seems…gruesome," she remarked softly, her fingers tracing the outline of it.

He shrugged.

"It was," he answered dryly. "Hurt like hell; took forever to heal."

"What happened?"

He grimaced lightly, and then arched an eyebrow at her.

"You really want to know?" he asked.

He sounded a bit sheepish, and she shifted, slipping one arm under her head at an angle and using her elbow as a pillow. She nodded, far too curious to demure now.

"I, ah, was accused of cheating in a high stakes Sabacc tournament," he answered slowly. "Barabels don't like cheating."

"Barabels don't like anything," Leia remarked. "Were you cheating?"

Han paused.

"It depends on what system you're on," he said.

"What a sickeningly diplomatic answer."

"Hey, you're rubbing off on me, Your Highness," he teased. He turned onto his side and put his arm over her waist, tugging her closer. "Literally," he added, leaning into kiss her.

She moved her hand from the scar on his ribs down to the one on his leg, her light touch sending shivers down his spine; good shivers. When he pulled away, and shifted his lips to her neck, she pressed her fingers against the scar.

"This one?" she asked in his ear.

He drew his head back thinking for a moment.

"You don't remember?" she asked, compressing her lips, almost amused.

"I been in a lot of fights, Princess," he retorted. "Lot of bad situations."

"How many did you get yourself into?" she challenged.

He grinned charmingly.

"It's from a Gaffii stick," he told her. "Weapon popular on Tatooine."

"Luke's home," Leia murmured.

"My old stomping grounds."

"Hutt Territory," she remembered. She pursed her lips. "Were you cheating then, too?"

He laughed, and shook his head.

"Tuskens deal in the human slave trade," he said. "I wasn't about to get taken alive."

"Luke's told me humans rarely win against those things."

"Yeah, well most humans don't have a full grown Wookiee watchin' their back," Han retorted.

Leia licked her lips.

"I suppose I don't want to know what happened to the Tusken."

Han shook his head. She ran her fingers over the scar a little more, and to his dismay, pulled her hand up from his thigh and splaying it innocently on his chest.

"And the mark on your knee? The one – this one, on your hip?" she asked.

He looked at her curiously, and cleared his throat.

"Ahh, the knee, that's from the Academy," he said slowly. "I cut it in combat training."

"How?"

"Caught it on the metal edge of the ring," he said gruffly, lifting his hand and gesturing. "The – training ring." He thought about his hip for a minute, and absently reached down to rub the thin, reddish blemish. "Bar fight," he said. "She was aiming lower, but she was drunk."

Leia arched her brows, understanding exactly what he was implying the target had been.

"Had you broken her heart?" she asked, her eyes glinting.

"Ha," he snorted quietly. "No. I had – her, ah," he broke off.

"You don't have to tell me," Leia said quickly.

He was silent for a moment – it was just that he didn't want to bring up other women while he was in bed with her. He didn't think Leia naïve enough to believe she was the only one, but he generally made it a rule not to be that – dishonorable.

"I don't mind telling you," he said, surprising himself – it was true; he didn't. He wanted her to trust him, and that meant being honest with her.

She looked at him intently for a moment, and then cleared her throat softly.

"She was an old lover," she guessed.

"No, the shooter wasn't," Han said again, dryly. "I – slept with her wife."

Leia shifted her head, her brows going up further.

"Her wife?" she murmured. Her brows knit together. "You—if they were women married to each other, why would the wife be interested in you?"

"The wife didn't have a preference, gender or species, " Han said dryly. "And I didn't know the wife had a wife."

Lea looked at him incredulously for a moment, and then giggled, her cheeks colouring. It seemed his knack for getting himself into the wildest situations had persisted for years. Han smirked at her, shrugging carelessly - that story was Chewie's favorite.

"How did you break your nose?" Leia asked.

"Which time?" he retorted dryly.

She smiled, inching closer.

"Both times."

He rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

"Lando punched me when I won the Falcon off him," he said callously. "Sore loser," he muttered.

"Lando; the man we're putting our trust in?" she asked, thinking of Bespin, ever looming closer as the days went by.

Han grunted in a noncommittal way.

"Men punch each other and get over things," he said flippantly. "Women hold grudges for centuries."

"Is that what you think?" she asked mildly.

"It brings me to my next nose breaking," he sighed dramatically. "Her name was Xaverri. I thought we parted on good terms."

"Did you break her heart?"

Han gave her a look.

"You think I've been runnin' around this galaxy breakin' hearts in my free time?"

"I'm drawing a logical conclusion based on all the times I've wanted to do you bodily harm," she responded smartly. "The potential for violence got higher every time you hit closer to the nerve."

"I haven't broken your heart."

"Not yet," she advised softly.

He ran his hand up her back and massaged her neck lightly for a moment, eventually resting his palm against her cheek. He frowned, but fumbled for something to say; how could he make promises, when he didn't really know what could break her heart?

"Leia," he started.

"Why did she break your nose?" Leia interrupted, her expression pointed – she didn't want to hear what he was going to say; it was scary enough for her to be this open with him, to abandon control for a risk like this – she didn't want to know what he was planning once the Falcon was fixed, and he got her back to the Rebellion.

He sighed.

"I stole from her," he said simply.

"So, you deserved it; even years later," Leia noted primly.

"I stole the goods fair and square by smuggler code," he retorted.

"Smugglers have codes, do they?" Leia murmured.

"Sure, sweetheart," he drawled. "Much less dignified than your Senate codes."

She considered him a moment, and shook her head.

"I don't think they are, actually," she remarked. "The Senate was very cutthroat," she added grimly – politics was as brutal as a life of crime, in some respects, and the nasty part was that the illicit aspects took place under the guise of civility. "At least in your world, the duplicity is transparent."

He nodded, suddenly very curious about what her life in that Imperial arena had been like. She'd been so young – she was still so young – and they'd watched her and hunted her from day one.

"Got all your scars from the Senate, eh?" he asked.

She looked at him for a moment, and then lowered her lashes, her gaze shifting down.

"No, not from the Senate," she said quietly. "The Empire."

She said nothing else as she looked down at the sheets beneath them, and she moved her hand to pick at some of the threads. He pushed her hair behind her ear and looked down, his eyes roaming over her – he didn't push any further; he wasn't stupid. He'd seen – not just seen, he'd touched – the scars all over her, so hidden from view that they'd obviously been carefully placed by her captors; they'd avoided her face, avoided any part that might give immediate evidence to the mistreatment. There were fading marks on her ribs and the column of her spine; she'd shivered when he kissed an old burn scar low on her sternum.

He leaned in to kiss her again, and she pulled back, catching his gaze intently, her expression almost hard.

"Don't you want to ask about them?" she asked tensely.

She lifted her hand off of his chest, and touched the burn on hers. Brushing away the sheets, she gave him a better view of the bruise on her hip that had never quite healed, the result of an experimental serum used to induce pain, and of the angry red marks that remained permanently branded in her skin.

He'd never seen them before, not until a few nights ago, the first time they'd been together like this – and then, the lights had been dim. He'd expected them – even if he hadn't known that Vader had treated her miserably, he'd have expected scars. He just didn't know anyone, women included, who hadn't been through the ringer at some point in life, and maybe that's why he didn't ask.

He cleared his throat quietly.

"Why would I make you talk about that?" he asked finally.

"I asked you to talk," she said huskily. "I wanted you to tell me."

He shook his head.

"That's different," he said gruffly. "I know where you got those." He moved his hand to her ribs, palm sliding over her skin comfortingly, protectively. His fingers moved over the marks, but he didn't look at them.

"I used to have perfect skin," she said, her voice trembling. "Not even acne."

Han nodded, shrugging.

"Most royalty's like that," he said perceptively. "Easier lives. Pampering," he muttered. "I don't mean your life has been easy," he added warily.

"I know what you mean," she said shakily. She closed her eyes. She'd expected him to say something the first moment he saw them; she'd expected his hands to stop and explore – she'd expected him to stare. The battered and broken parts of her were such a stark contrast to the social station she'd been raised in, and the scars were so – ugly.

He hadn't said a thing. They hadn't even given him pause. His hands hand slid right over the scars, over all of her, touching every part of her with equal attention and desire.

"You aren't curious?" she asked hoarsely. "They're pretty nasty."

He didn't like the way she said nasty, like there was something wrong with the way she looked, or something wrong with her for having them. Scars could tell stories, scars could be interesting, scars could create curiosity, but he had no morbid fascination with hers – he had the knowledge that she'd been the Empire's prisoner, and he had an imagination, and he didn't have a salacious interest in anything else.

"Leia," he said quietly, drawing her closer to him. He turned onto his back and pulled her against his side tightly, his face close to hers. "I don't care that you've got scars."

She rested her chin on his shoulder, and pressed her nose into his jaw affectionately, her shoulders relaxing as she let out a quiet breath of relief. She hadn't realized she was holding it, and she'd known, deep down, that Han would never be dissatisfied with a less than perfect body, but knowing that didn't mean her insecurities evaporated.

He'd known people from the rougher sides of the world all his life; he probably had no idea what it was like to touch skin that wasn't rough, wasn't marred, wasn't somehow imprinted with a brush or two with death.

"Han?" she ventured.

"Hmm?"

"If I – wanted to tell you about them, someday," she paused, and corrected herself: "No; I won't ever want to. If I – needed to," she decided. She lifted her head, her eyes on his. "Would you listen?"

The unspoken question, of course, was – could you handle hearing it? And she wasn't sure if she could articulate that someday it might all come pouring out, because not talking about it kept it all locked in her head, and sometimes that threatened to drown her. And – and she wasn't sure why she was even talking about someday; she wasn't even sure he'd be around longer than Bespin.

Though part of the reason he hadn't asked was because he didn't want to hear what they'd done to her, he found the answer surprisingly easy.

"Sure, Leia," he answered simply, the same way he'd answered when she'd asked him, angrily, seriously, to stop with the Your Worship.

She smiled at him, and kissed his jaw. She moved her leg against his, and the next thing he knew, she'd hitched it up over his hip, resting her knee on his abdomen at an angle. He lifted his head from the pillow and raised is eyebrows.

"I had no idea you were so flexible, Princess," he quipped. "How are we going to use this?"

She blushed, and tossed her hair, reaching down to point at a thin, pinkish scar on her knee. She bit her lip, and then took a deep breath.

"I fell down a flight of steps in the Palace of Antibes," she reveled softly. "It was the first time I wore heels with a long dress, and I was chasing someone. I cut it so badly on a chip in the crystal stairs that my governess fainted at all the blood," her voice wavered bravely. "I was ten and it was the only bad thing that had ever happened to me."

He knew how difficult it was for her to talk about Alderaan, but that seemed to be the only scar she was willing to discuss right now, and in an effort to reciprocate, she'd touched on another subject that cut her to the core.

He put his hand on her knee and squeezed lightly, leaning in to kiss her. He couldn't believe she'd been dressed like an adult at such an early age; but what had he expected, from someone who was a senator at eighteen? He pushed her knee down and captured her leg between his, pulling her even closer. Forget fixing the ship, forget the work they had to do – this slow flight to Bespin might be all the time he had, and he needed every moment of it; in fact, he was discovering fast that he had to find some way to outsmart the bounty on his head, Jabba the Hutt be damned, because he wasn't ever going to be able to just drop her off at the rendezvous point and leave her – he wanted her, scars and all, more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life.

-alexandra
story # 294