Princess of my Heart

Princess of my Heart

Chapter 1

"Princess of My Heart"

By EsmeAmelia

AN: I don't own Star Wars, okay? Here's another challenge fic for your enjoyment. This time I got challenged to write a fic where Han and Leia were separated from each other for a long time and then meet up again. I usually consider fics of that sort to be extremely formulaic, so this one was difficult. Let's see how it turned out...

Four years.

Four years today.

That was all Han Solo could think about as he sat in a small bar that nestled in the underbelly of Coruscant, which he had patronized nearly every day for the last four years, sometimes passing out from alcohol consumption, sometimes drinking nothing at all and only staring into space. Each time, he had only one desire, one purpose for these visits, which in all the sickness, blackouts, hangovers, and spent hours, he never achieved.

He wanted to forget her.

Forget her, pretend that she had never existed, that was what his soul constantly screamed, since he could never get her back. It was better to never remember her than to face the incomprehensible stretches of eternity without her. Even after his own death, even if there was such a thing as an afterlife, even then he couldn't look forward to being reunited with her. The fact that she was special and he wasn't made it highly possible that they would still be separated even in death.

Death...

Han rotated his mug between his palms in order to prevent his hands from shaking, his eyes concentrating on his distorted reflection in the orange-tan liquid in an attempt to keep tears from forming - an attempt that once more proved itself to be in vain. As his vision blurred, Han wondered how he could still be like this after four years had passed. He now remembered why he once had a policy of never getting attached to anyone. Anyone could die. Anyone could abandon him to suffer this.

Even his wife.

Tears fell into his drink, creating ripples in the liquid barely noticed by the former smuggler, whose mind was possessed instead by the lost communication with Leia's ship...the news of the explosion...the funeral without so much as a body. Her funeral had been far more elaborate than she probably would have wanted, but with an entire galaxy mourning her, it really couldn't be helped. Han had given a speech at her funeral that people called very moving, but he couldn't remember a word of it. It had seemed that he was in a trance that day, a dream where he was struggling to wake up, but could not.

For a long time he tried to convince himself that it had all been a mistake, that she would still come back, but as the years passed reality gradually consumed him. She wasn't returning. Ever. All the things that came with marriage - children, old age spent together - could never come to be.

There had been times when Han felt that he absolutely could not stand to live the rest of his life without her and had to do something about it. Three times Chewie caught Han pointing a blaster at his head and stopped him before he could harm himself. Several other times the Wookiee caught him taking too many of the sedatives and anti-depressants the doctors had recommended to help him through his grief. Han thought the best way those pills could help him through his grief was by ending his life, but Chewie wasn't going to allow it. The copilot ended up hiding the pills and monitoring how many of them his cub was allowed to take, like a parent supervising his child's medicine.

Although Chewie had ceased to hide the pills, he still insisted on being there when Han took them, even though the suicidal urges had ended. Sometimes Han wondered if the fact that he was no longer trying to kill himself meant he was moving on from Leia's death, but he always concluded that that wasn't the case. He wasn't moving on - he was just terrified of death.

Lando thought that Han should start dating and looking for another woman. The idiot. How could Lando, who had never had a relationship for more than a few months, possibly understand Han's pain?? If he even had the most minute bit of understanding, he would know that Han could never find another woman to replace Leia if he searched every damn planet in the whole damn galaxy.

The mumbling from the small holovid on the wall slowly brought Han's eyes up from his drink, like it was calling out to him, telling him that it showed something he needed to see. Perhaps it would be a distraction that could briefly remove his thoughts from Leia.

The holovid was showing the news - something Han would have immediately turned away from under usual circumstances, but something compelled him to look. Look not at the newscaster who was speaking in some language Han didn't understand, but to look at the headlines traveling across the screen underneath her.

He looked.

He read.

And five words seemed to leap into the bar and strangle him.

SENATOR LEIA ORGANA SOLO ALIVE.