Title: Nebula Lullaby

Summary: What happens when Han never makes it back after Bespin.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I'm just doing this for funsies and I'm not making any money.

--

C1: Discoveries

"I miss the sound of your voice; And I miss the rush of your skin; And I miss the still of the silence as you breathe out and I breathe in..."

Matt Nathanson, "Come On Get Higher"

--

Coruscant, 5 ABY

Her home is full of music. She keeps it playing softly, in the background, gliding across the walls and shiny wooden floors and the rich carpeting. Mellifluous Alderaanian waltzes. Sensual Tatooine sambas. Dulcet Nabooan symphonies. She loves the thunderous drumbeats of traditional Kashyyykian congas and the primal woodwinds heard by an Ewok fireside and the harmonies of Twi'lek operas and the slow simmer of blue Corellian jazz guitar. Each song, each opus, each melody is warm and inviting, more joyful than the one before. A sound system was the first thing she ordered installed in her opulent apartment. She wanted every room to float, to dance.

She wanted to block out the silence.

Because it is in the silence that she does her thinking, her remembering, her grieving. It is the silence that invites in all those lost souls, the souls of innocents she tried to save and not-so-innocents she tried to bring to justice. In the silence, she sees Alderaan, she sees a flash of green light, and then she sees nothing but shimmering dust, a sight too beautiful, too majestic, to have been the violent destruction of billions of lives. She sees her adopted mother withering away on her deathbed and she sees the mother that she never knew, that died before she began to form her memories. She sees the pain on her brother's face, sees him hanging from an antenna beneath a city in the clouds. She sees her torture, she sees the needles and the knives, she remembers the rape of her mind by her own father. She sees soldiers, lost, shot down, devoured in sparks and flames.

And she sees him. And that is the most painful of all.

It is the worst when she sees him, because she doesn't just see the pain. She sees the pleasure. She remembers the first time she met him, the first time he saved her life, and the countless times he did it again in the three years that followed. She replays all their fights, their spats, their thinly-veiled arguments that did little to mask the mutual desire that burned inside both of them. She remembers their first kiss, the feel of his lips against hers, his velvet tongue exploring her mouth, the sparks between them that made her weak in the knees. She can almost feel the waves of pleasure wash over her body as she remembers the love they made during those too-short months they were given together in space. The urgent joining, the tender coupling, the tangling of arms and legs and sheets and souls as they became one. She hears the rhythm of his heartbeat when she laid her head against his naked chest, soaking in the rapture of all they had become. She hears it even now, clearly, though she hasn't heard it in so long.

But she hates to remember the passion because she is then so violently reminded how it came to and end. She remembers her unease in the red-orange clouds and feels the acrid taste of bile creep up her throat. She remembers the terror that flooded her body at the sight of the man that had nearly broken her once before, the man that she later learned had sired her himself. She remembers, the tears now stinging her eyes, that he had tried to protect her, that scruffy and kind-hearted scoundrel, but it hadn't been she that needed the protection. Just as she can hear his heartbeat, she can hear his soul-shattering screams. They split through her heat and tear at her mind and threaten all the sanity she has left. And then she remembers the red and the blue, the steam, the sterile stench of that cold chamber. She remembers the yelling, the fighting. She remembers that last, desperate, urgent kiss, the pressure of their lips, the words that they wanted to say spoken wordlessly. She remembers telling him anyway, and she remembers that he knew, and she knew that he felt the same. The tears finally fall as she remembers the look in his eyes as he was lowered into that cursed chamber and the smile that died on his lips as he willed her to be brave for him. The sounds of the chamber, when they creep into her mind, make her nauseous, but the sound that she hates most of all is the memory of the slab that contained the man she loved so much crashing to that wretched floor.

She remembers feeling her heart break.

And she doesn't want to remember it anymore.

So she floods her home with music so she never has to fight with the silence. Childhood, her home on Alderaan, had been so musical, so full of life. Her father, the man she will forever consider her father, raised her with a dear love of art and music, passions of the heart. The man she fell in love with reawakened her with his own music, though now her heartstrings ache when she hears the music he loved. She tries to ignore the hollow ache the notes leave in her soul; instead she plays his favorite songs, the songs to which they danced slowly together, half-naked in his cabin, a prelude to the intimacy of his bed, because despite the sadness, those songs wrap her in light and joy and she can almost feel his arms around her once again.

She will dance with her brother, the only other human male she has any desire to live with, when he comes home. He taught her the samba and a raucous Tatooine tango, though he wasn't exactly sure he got all the steps right. She taught him the traditional waltz of Alderaanian High Court and the lazy two-step she learned on Naboo during the summer when they both had been twelve. She dances with the walking carpet, careful to avoid his oversized, furry trotters. She tries to dance with the former baron administrator, a man who has become hardened by what he did to them and the anguish that he feels in his soul. She tries to dance with him, to cheer him up, to show him that she forgives him, but he waves her away with his slick smile and a sip of his favorite whiskey.

She offers a dance to the visitors in her home. The former pilots that now serve the New Republic Navy that became such good friends during three years of war and grief. The generals that cared for her, that watched over her as if she were their own child in the years following Alderaan's destruction, smile and tap their toes in time with the rhythm. The fellow senators, the political consulates, the leaders of the New Republic, have all shared a smile with her, have commended her strength and her resolve, her ability to offer joy in the wake of so much sorrow. She plays her favorite songs from Alderaan when survivors visit her home; she has learned waltzes and polkas and even to just sway in time with the music. She lived through three years of war, three years of silence when the walls weren't being ripped apart by explosions, three years of pain and heartache and remembering music but never hearing it.

The silence had been broken when he asked her to dance. Because then she finally gave into her heart.

He brought joy back into her life in those months in space with music. He broke a week of claustrophobia and suffocating tension with a song in the galley and steps to a new dance. It was a Corellian shag, and the song was how he remembered his mother, and it was a dance he'd refused to do for twenty years. But he shared it with her and it became their dance, their song. It was a beautiful song that she loved so much. Her brother knows how special it is to her and he always offers a hand whenever the notes begin float through the lavish apartment. But she just smiles and shakes her head and asks for his hand some other time because this song, this dance, is reserved for someone special.

It is reserved for her son.

--

Sullust, 3 ABY

Luke Skywalker's firm embrace, comforting though it was, did little to ease the black abyss that had opened inside her soul since the Millennium Falcon touched down in that deceptively beautiful cloud city of Bespin. Leia Organa felt hollow, lightheaded, desolate. She felt as though she would never know joy again. She watched, choking on her own tears that she refused to let fall, as that same ship that had brought her to Bespin, that same ship that she had come to call home after three months of limping to its destination, disappeared into the solitude of hyperspace, Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian at the helm. Lando had promised her that they would find Han Solo and the Wookiee had echoed that confidence, but Leia still felt as though she would collapse under the weight of the terrible thought that she might never see the man she loved again.

Han and Leia spent three years engaged in verbal sparring matches that melted into three months of unrivaled ardor when they were faced with a long, boring trip and, more importantly, the feelings they both had been hiding for so long. Han inspired in Leia a passion she never knew existed in herself, and she discovered in him a tender, selfless soul like none other in the galaxy. They learned in those three months that they were equals, that they were predestined to fall in love, that they were soul mates. She had smiled bitterly, ruefully to herself when she first saw Darth Vader in stark contrast to that innocent banquet room on Bespin because she thought of all the time she'd wasted hating Han Solo when she could have been loving him instead. But now, searching out the transparisteel window of the Alliance's largest medical frigate, orbiting high above Sullust, she could only think that she would prefer the angriest of arguments with Han to the gaping hole that his cruel absence left in her heart.

"They'll find him, Leia," Luke said quietly, suddenly, as if sensing her pain. "I know they will."

She looked up at her dear friend, her brown eyes swimming with the tears she refused to let fall, and offered him the closest she could to a smile.

"Thank you, Luke."

The blond farmboy, a blue-eyed man that seemed to have aged twenty years since she'd last seen him on Hoth, kissed the top of her head gently and pulled her body closer to his, trying desperately to offer her strength through contact alone. Leia glanced at his artificial hand; covered in synthflesh, it looked as though it belonged on his body.

"How is your hand?"

Luke flexed his fingers and pondered the question for a moment.

"It's fine, actually. It feels just like the old one. The strangest thing is knowing that it isn't real."

She responded with a low "hmm" and turned her gaze to the viewport again, willing the Falcon to magically appear with Han on board. The dizziness seized her body again for a moment, and she leaned more heavily into Luke's secure grip.

"Princess?" The voice behind them was tentative and quiet. She turned slowly, biting back her annoyance when she saw the young human adjutant to Mon Mothma, clear in his hesitance to interrupt whatever scene was before him.

"Yes?" Her answer was icier than she had intended.

"I have a request from High Council. They seek an audience with you and," the aide's green eyes darted to Luke, "Commander Skywalker as well. They need a detailed recount of the events that led to your escape from Imperial capture."

Leia suppressed a groan. Meetings with High Council were not enjoyable, nevermind the fact that she was considered a member. They would, no doubt, be upset at her extended absence from duty.

"Very well. When am I scheduled?"

"I have a shuttle waiting to take you both to Home One right now."

She felt her jaw drop, but it was Luke that voiced his incredulousness first.

"Now?"

The ensign gulped.

"Yes, Commander Skywalker. Council feels that it would be better to have your account while the events are fresh in your mind."

"Exactly what I want to relive right now," the young Jedi said, sarcastically.

"Commander, I apologize but--"

Leia held up a hand, silencing the poor boy, who had obviously heard of the wrath that could come from her but was clearly not expecting resistance from the generally level-headed hero of Yavin.

"Nevermind, Ensign. We'll go now." She turned to Luke. "I just want to get this over with."

He offered her an understanding smile and they silently followed the terrified aide to the shuttle. The short trip to the largest Mon Calamari cruiser was wordless, as was the short trek to the chambers of Alliance High Command. The rotund room had the feel of being underwater, and in fact the walls were nothing more than an oversized aquarium. The effect was almost lazy. The light shimmered and danced off the soft ripples of the water, creating hypnotizing shadows that had lulled Leia into a daze on more than one occasion.

The members of High Command, most of them dear friends of Bail Organa's that had known Leia since she was an infant, were seated behind a large, round, pearlescent desk. Mon Mothma sat in the middle of the proceedings and offered two sponge-like chairs to Luke and Leia as they entered the chambers. Luke made a motion as though he was going to sit, but corrected himself immediately as Leia, rather defiantly, told them that she'd rather stand.

"Princess Leia," General Carlist Rieekan began, nodding to her with a sympathetic smile, "Commander Skywalker. As I'm sure you are both aware, you have been absent from the Alliance for the past three months."

"Yes, General," Leia said, tersely.

"This isn't a tribunal, Leia," Rieekan continued, quietly. "We are all very relieved that you're all right."

She raised her eyebrows and glanced at Luke, who seemed to be thinking the very same thing. 'All right' was a relative term.

"Commander Skywalker, our log shows that you left Hoth in an Alliance X-Wing fighter," Admiral Ackbar said, eager to move along. "Is that correct?"

"It is, Admiral."

"Where is that X-Wing now?"

"We had to leave it behind, sir. Our escape from Darth--" Luke faltered for a moment, "Vader was...rushed."

The Mon Calamari nodded, seemingly satisfied.

"Where did you go, Commander?" General Jan Dodonna asked, suddenly.

"I left Hoth and went to the Dagobah system."

"Why?"

Luke glanced at Leia, who nodded for him to continue.

"To continue with my training as a Jedi Knight, sir."

"Is there a Jedi Master on Dagobah, Commander?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who?"

"For his safety, sir, I would rather not say."

Dodonna frowned, but Rieekan nodded.

"Very well, Commander," said Rieekan. "Princess, our last communique concerning your whereabouts was from Captain Solo."

Leia felt her stomach lurch as Rieekan said Han's name. She gripped Luke's arm instinctively, steadying herself against the sudden assault.

"Yes," she managed. "During the Battle of Hoth, he was trying to get me to my transport since the final evacuation codes had been ordered. Part of the base collapsed, cutting off our only route to my transport's hangar bay, so he got me off world on his private ship."

"Why," General Crix Madine asked, "did it take you three months to rendezvous?"

"We ran into a problem with they hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon and were forced to hide from three Imperial star destroyers first in the crater of a large asteroid," she almost smiled at that memory, "and then attach to the hull of one of the destroyers until they dumped their garbage before making the jump to lightspeed. Without our own hyperdrive, the trip to Bespin, the closest safe port in the system, took three months."

Luke couldn't help but smile as Leia recounted Han's risky piloting, and even Leia felt the tug of a grin at the amazed faces staring back at her.

"You attached yourselves to the hull of a star destroyer?" Rieekan was floored.

"Yes."

"What happened at Bespin?" Mothma asked, breaking an incredulous silence that had settled over the room.

The dizziness returned to Leia once again and she contemplated sitting down, but instead she settled for tightening her grip on Luke's forearm.

"We think that," Luke began, hoping to save Leia from the agony of having to say it herself, "Vader may have hired bounty hunters to track the Falcon. You may know that Captain Solo has a price on his head from his days as a smuggler, which he gave up to serve the Alliance."

"We were tracked by a bounty hunter named Boba Fett," Leia continued quickly, wanting to get it over with. "He alerted Vader to our destination and Vader forced Cloud City's administrator, a friend of...Han's to turn us over to him. Vader has been actively searching for Luke since Yavin." She glanced at Luke and saw him blanch. "Vader tortured us as a means of attracting Luke. He knew that Luke could feel our pain through his abilities in the Force and would come to help us."

There was a collective intake of breath at Leia's admission that she had, once again, been tortured by Lord Vader. Her brown eyes met his blue eyes again in wordless connection. Neither of them wanted to talk about what had happened next.

"Obviously," Ackbar urged, "Commander Skywalker came to your aid?"

"Yes," said Leia, flatly.

"Then what happened?"

"Lord Vader...froze Han in carbonite and turned him over to the bounty hunter. Then he engaged Luke and cut his hand off. Luke's only way of escaping was to jump into a tunnel that dropped out beneath Cloud City."

There. She said it. She felt physically ill. Leia pressed a hand to her mouth against the nausea and leaned forward against the lightheadedness. She clutched tighter still to Luke's arm, and this time he turned to her, sliding a protective arm around her shoulders. He leaned in closely, whispering so only she could hear.

"You don't have to do this."

Leia shook her head.

"No, Luke. I do."

He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly as they straightened.

"Leia?" The look of concern on Rieekan's face rivaled Luke's. It was Rieekan, after all, that she considered a surrogate father. "Are you all right?"

The princess forced a tight smile.

"I'm fine. Just tired. We've had an exhausting few days, I'm sure you are all aware."

"Yes," Rieekan agreed. "Council, I believe we've kept them long enough."

"Wait a minute," Madine interjected. "What about Captain Solo and Chewbacca?"

"Princess Leia has already informed High Command of Captain Solo's fate," Luke said, quickly, laconically. "Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian, the baron administrator of Bespin, departed to search for him not long ago."

"Do you have any indication as to where he is being held captive?"

"Tatooine."

There was an extended pause and Luke glanced at Leia again. As the interrogation wore on, she had grown increasingly pale. He needed to get her out of there.

"Are we finished?"

"Just one more question, Commander," Mothma began. "Do you have any idea why Vader is targeting you?"

Luke opened his mouth to give an answer that he did not truly have, but in that moment, Leia collapsed into his arms, unconscious.

--

When she first opened her eyes and looked groggily around the stark white room, Leia was overcome with the fear that she was still on Bespin. She sat up quickly, terrified, searching for a way out. Her gaze traveled to her arm, where she found an IV line taped to the crook of her elbow. Leia began clawing at the needle immediately, desperate to get it out of her body, but as she did a hand closed over hers, squeezing her fingers gently. She looked up to see Luke sitting in the chair next to her bed, and then she realized finally that she was in the medical frigate.

"Glad you're back," Luke said with an apprehensive smile.

"Luke? What happened?" Her mouth was dry and the words scratched at her throat.

"You fainted. Don't you remember?"

She frowned, then shut her eyes tightly. She did remember.

"They shouldn't have done that, Leia. I'm amazed that I made it through."

"No. No, something's wrong, Luke. What happened to me?"

"Princess Leia," smiled Tuck Ello, a young Corellian medic and friendly acquaintance of hers, as he walked into the room. "Good to see you up again."

"Tuck," she said, unable to return the smile. "I don't know what happened. The last few days have been...eventful. I must have just worn myself out."

Tuck nodded and patted the hand Luke wasn't holding.

"Well, you were not well when you came in. You were extremely dehydrated, which is why we've run the IV line in order to get fluids back into your body. Luke said you've had a very stressful few days and haven't slept and that just made you feel that much worse. You have to keep your health up for the next few months and I want you to make sure you're getting enough fluids and laying off the work a little."

Leia glanced at Luke, who was regarding Tuck with a look of genuine surprise, even shock.

"Right, Tuck. I'll do what I can."

Tuck shook his head.

"I hope you do better than that, Princess. It's for your own good, and your baby's good, too."

A wave of nausea hit Leia as Tuck's words echoed in her mind and she wondered briefly if she was about to faint again.

"Baby?" She wasn't sure she even said it out loud. Luke's expression grew even more shocked as the looked from the medic to the beautiful, wide-eyed princess in the medical cot.

Tuck gave her a confused look.

"You don't know?"

Words had failed her, so she just shook her head. The medic's confusion morphed into surprise and then an expression of touching joy.

"I'm so sorry, Princess. I thought you knew. I guess congratulations are in order, then. You're pregnant."

--

Her quarters aboard Home One were a luxury in stark contrast to the severe bases on which she had been stationed before and they were a luxury that made her almost uncomfortable after spending three months on a tiny, run-down ship. She had two rooms to herself, one a bedroom and one a kitchen and living area, and a large refresher that included not only a water shower but a bathtub, something that she had not seen since Alderaan and had almost forgotten existed. The rooms, though clean and crisp and white, still had an organic feel about them, a feat only the Mon Calamari had been able to master. The transparisteel viewports were wide and round and gave her offered her a breathtaking view of the expanses of space that she once loved so much but now made her feel so small. The covers on her bed were thick and warm and soft and scratched her skin in a way that the threadbare sheets on the Falcon's bunks never did. It had been nearly three years since she remembered having so much space to herself, and she only felt suffocated.

Leia wandered slowly, absentmindedly into her sleeping chamber and lay down on the oversized bed, almost swallowed by the mass of throw pillows that covered the crisp sheets. Staring out the window into the swirling light of stars and the system they were orbiting, she lay a hand over her still-flat stomach and tried to will herself to feel the life growing inside of her. She still felt nothing but a sense of shock and disbelief. There was no discernible heartbeat beneath the pads of her fingers even though she knew that one was thumping steadily within the nurturing folds of her womb. A heartbeat, a child, two souls born into one.

Her baby.

Han's baby.

The tears threatened to spill from her eyes in that moment, but it was the same moment that Luke, who had accompanied her to her suite after she was discharged from the medical frigate, followed her into the bedroom. So instead she shut her eyes tightly and swallowed the lump that had formed painfully in her throat as her dear friend settled in the oversized chair near the bed and offered her a reassuring smile.

"Thank you, Luke," she murmured, opening her eyes again to look at him.

"Of course. It's been a rough few days."

"Yes. It has."

They were silent for a moment and Leia noticed that Luke had dropped his gaze and had become incredibly focused on his new hand, flexing and closing it nervously. Leia sensed, as she suddenly became able to do ever since she heard him calling her from beneath the Cloud City, that he had a question that he wasn't quite ready to ask. She would have to give him a nudge.

"What is it, Luke?"

He looked up at her again with clear blue eyes.

"What are you going to do, Leia?"

"About what?"

"The baby," he said, hesitantly. "Are you going to keep it?"

Leia inhaled sharply and closed her eyes against the thought.

"Of course I am, Luke. It's Han's child."

A shadow crossed Luke's face. It might have been jealously, but she and Luke had come to an understanding about their relationship in the past few years, so she decided he was thinking about the repercussions of her pregnancy among members of the Alliance.

"Aren't you worried about how it might look?"

She shook her head and reached beneath the high collar of her dress, pulling out for the first time a thin chain necklace that held the most delicate washer Luke had ever seen. Silently, she slid the washer around the narrow third finger on her left hand, an intergalactic symbol of commitment in marriage, and then held it up for him to see.

"Ships' captains," Leia began quietly, looking not at Luke but towards the makeshift ring, "can perform legal ceremonies. Chewie officiated. We were going to have it documented when we got here and I was going to go with him to Tatooine. We wanted to have a celebration once he took care of things with Jabba."

"I didn't think Han was the type," Luke said, incredulous. It was news he had not expected.

Leia smiled.

"Me either."

"I didn't think you even liked him that much."

This time, she laughed, but it was tainted with her bitter regret towards the time she'd wasted pretending to hate Han.

"We'd been in love for almost three years and didn't know what to do about it. So we fought, and then we got stuck in the middle of nowhere for three months. It was either come clean or kill each other, but for those first few days I thought we were going to kill each other."

Luke, startled, envious though he was, also couldn't help but smile as he moved from the chair to sit beside her on the bed and take her hand with a gentle squeeze.

"Then I guess, Leia, that several congratulations are in order." He kissed her hand gently.

"Thank you, Luke."

She turned her head to stare through the viewport into the expanse of space once again, the shimmering light of the stars outside dancing across her porcelain face. The smile faded from her eyes, replaced with a crushing sadness that tore through the room. Luke rubbed the back of her hand as the tears returned again to her eyes and she refused to look at him. When she finally spoke, it was a hoarse whisper, as though she was choking on her words.

"Promise me you'll find him."

"I promise."