That's no moon... Wait, no, it's a moon.

[scruffier]

In which Our Heroes (?) stop for blaster practice, assuming the kids can stop bothering each other for two minutes, so help me, I will turn this light freighter around and we will not get ice cream.

Comments

[passingthrough]

"If I only told the nice stories you wouldn't know anything about me." That's not really fair or true. There were good parts. Even if they all end with 'and now I'll never see them again.' It doesn't make the memories any less precious for having happened.

[scruffier]

For a long moment he's quiet, looking away and ruminating. It almost seems like he's forgotten the question, but really he's just trying to recall what she knows.

"I told you I took on Luke and the old man so I could cover a debt."

Right?

[passingthrough]

"Right." She looks over, a little surprised that he seems to be starting something.

[scruffier]

"I owed money to a Hutt on Tatooine, so a job that'd get me off that ball of sand and pay enough to get out from under his tail seemed like a gift."

It hadn't gone exactly as planned, but she knows about that. Most of it. Enough of it.

"After Alderaan--" She knows that. "I didn't get paid until much later. After the Death Star, after everything. So what did I do?"

[passingthrough]

It is a little hard putting the tidbits she's heard back together to form a more fully developed, complete story that makes sense from beginning to end, but she does what she can. "Tried to avoid him and hope he forgot about it?"

[scruffier]

It doesn't help that he tends to hold back a lot, to downplay some of the action. It's been a long time since he felt like he could call himself a hero.

"Hutts don't forget. Not about that kind of money." But not far off base. "I stuck around with the Rebellion a couple of years."

[passingthrough]

"But Pizza the Hutt caught up with you?" Sorry. It's hard to resist sometimes. "And wanted payment with interest by way of bounty hunter?"

[scruffier]

"The Empire and the bounty hunters caught up with us at the same time." He doesn't get the joke, doesn't have the stomach to stop and ask her to explain at the moment. "They convinced an old friend of mine to take us in and turn us over. Mostly we were just bait."

[passingthrough]

"Who's the old friend?" She should probably know the name of someone who betrayed him like that. Seems like an important one.

[scruffier]

"You already got that part. It's why Ben kept kicking you when we were playing cards.."

Yeah, he noticed.

[passingthrough]

They weren't exactly subtle, were they? "That makes sense. Sweet of him to worry about you."

[scruffier]

That's one way to look at it. It's probably not the wrong way, exactly. But it's more complicated, because it always is. Han shrugs.

"He's not ready to talk about his grandfather, I think. Vader didn't give Lando much of a choice."

[passingthrough]

You know what would help? If you could just condense all of this into a trilogy of movies she could watch to catch up. Get on that, Han.

"His grandfather..." So much she still doesn't know about all of them. Even when she gets the highlights she's missing the depths and the connections. But she doesn't know if that's the same story or just an adjacent one. "So what happened after Lando betrayed you?"

[scruffier]

One great downside of the Empire was that, in the course of wresting and keeping control, a great deal of history was buried and lost. People are easier to subjugate if they don't know there's anything else. They've been trying to rebuild, to keep more than the barest sense of oral history, but with the galaxy so scattered it's difficult.

Han would hate to have a holofilm about his life.

"Vader wanted Luke, planned to have him frozen. Once the trap was set they didn't need me, so." He strives not to look uncomfortable, and the best he can manage is to look detached. "They tested the carbon freeze and the bounty hunter took me back to Jabba."

[passingthrough]

"The tested it on you? I guess it worked" Is he missing any toes? "And Vader is Luke's father?" She doubts he's Han's, but she'd like to close the information up a little tighter just to make sure she isn't missing things.

[scruffier]

He has the toes he has, Kitty.

"He was a Jedi, long ago, before he turned to the dark side. I'm not sure when he found out that Luke survived, and no one knew about Leia until much later. They were raised apart."

[passingthrough]

Such a suspicious way of saying that about the toes...

"Things have always been really complicated for your family, haven't they?" There's a sympathetic look.

So many things she could ask for follow up on here. But Han is the one she knew first. The one who took her in when she was feeling lost and gave her some direction such as it is. "How did you get unfrozen?"

[scruffier]

"I knew what I was getting into by the time I married her."

Han's side of the family is simple, which is to say, all gone.

"Lando helped Leia and Chewie get away from Bespin. They took the ship, rescued Luke after he faced Vader, and eventually they came and found me."

[passingthrough]

"What had been happening to you?" She's kind of assuming torture. Was it torture?

[scruffier]

Don't be silly, Kitty. He's already politely skipped over the torture part.

"I was still frozen, Jabba had me on a wall. They caught us on our way, but eventually we escaped. Went back to the Rebel Alliance."

[passingthrough]

She's been cheated again!

"I have a feeling 'eventually we escaped' is glossing over quite a bit. Jabba never went after you again?" She doesn't even think to ask how long he was frozen. She assumes it's a matter of days.

[scruffier]

"You'd be better off asking Leia," he says wryly. For once he has an excuse for the lack of detail. "Hibernation sickness meant I was blind for most of it. Jabba didn't survive the scuffle."

Frankly, having heard a few descriptions of the whole affair, Han is more upset to have missed the sight of Leia strangling that overgrown maggot than anything.

[passingthrough]

"How long were you blind? Wait, how long were you hibernating?" No, answer them both. And be thankful you said to ask Leia, if it had been Luke she'd have to take a shot.

[scruffier]

"I guess it was a day or two til my sight came back. I was under... About a year, I guess."

Luke was there for much of it, but Leia was the one to take him out of stasis. In spite of how awful the story is, and how much he doesn't like talking about it, the memory of his wife risking her own life for him... someone who loves you... It's nearly enough to make him smile.

[passingthrough]

Okay, her eyes widen at that. "A year? What were they waiting for?" Yes, she's annoyed at people she either doesn't know or barely knows for something that happened a long time ago that he seems perfectly recovered from now.