Luke Skywalker wandered past Princess Leia's seat in the lounge and into the galley of the Millennium Falcon. Moments later he reappeared, a puzzled expression on his face.

"Have you seen Han?"

Leai didn't bother to look up from her data board, a mild frown forming on her face. It would seem Captain Solo would distract her whether or not he was present. She shook her head at Luke. "Haven't seen him," she answered curtly. "He should be in the cockpit." Beneath her feet the powerful engines of the freighter had started to hum and vibrate; lift off would come momentarily, she surmised.

"He's not," Luke told her. "I've looked everywhere."

Her frown deepened. "His quarters? 'Fresher?"

Luke looked a little chagrined. "I didn't check the 'fresher."

She tossed him a sympathetic glance, then noticed he was sincerely agitated. "He could still be outside, checking for tracking devices," she suggested, trying to mollify the young man.

"Yeah, OK," Luke said. "You're probably right. Can I help you with those?"

"Sure," Leia answered enthusiastically. This, the wind-down, was the toughest part. She generally appreciated the opportunity for a mission. It brought her back to her roots, a princess out with her people. Instead of the abstract strategy and endless discussions of a war room, Leia actually saw the Rebel Alliance in action; felt it out in the streets and towns of the places she got to visit. She witnessed first hand the struggles and violence of a place under Imperial control, and her energies exponentially increased every time she returned to base.

Dangerously, she realized she was starting to crave the excitement of a mission. It started on the Death Star, when she ran up a corridor chasing Luke into a barrage of blaster fire. Imprisonment had wiped her out, emotionally as well as physically, and she was both surprised and pleased to feel pink return to her cheeks. She was certain Han and Luke saw the same glimmer of adrenalin in her eyes as she saw in theirs.

Life on base was another rationale for taking on a mission. Granted, it was a selfish one, but Leia relished the chance to wear different clothing, to eat non-dehydrated rations, and now especially, to get away from the lethal cold of Hoth.

Hoth was perhaps the worst of choices as it was also the best of choices. Located outside an asteroid belt and so far from any sun as to make life almost uninhabitable, the Empire had yet to patrol that section of space. But the isolation and desolation of the environment was taking its toll on those living on the base. Blankets, warm water, and high morale were all luxuries in short supply.

Leia spread out her data boards to assign Luke a task. She was doing the accounting for the latest acquisition, currently being brought on board by C-3P0, and had only managed to reconcile one of the boards since they had returned to the ship.

"You can inventory the medical supplies. Take a reckoning, in cubic volume, of the bacta solution. There should also be, in that same crate, antibiotics and pain control. Count all those. That would be great. Thanks, Luke."

"No problem." Luke took the board and made off to the cargo bay, not too enthusiastically. One thing he had never imagined since joining the Rebel Alliance three years ago was the amount of filing and paperwork to be done. They still had a debriefing to look forward to when they got back.

The mission had gone smoothly, for once. Almost too smoothly. Luke had a nagging suspicion something was awry. Not seeing or hearing the loud Corellian pilot bustling about inexplicably bothered him. But Chewbacca, the Wookiee copilot, didn't seem to find anything amiss, so Luke told himself to just go with the flow. Counting helped push his worries aside, but once in a while when Leia fetched another data board or C-3P0 tottered by with the loading cart he would lapse into inactivity, worlds away, thinking.

Leia had been almost giddy with the success of the mission. The Falcon was in good repair and had made good time, the contact was met without delay, and the transaction handed off without alarm. The group had been careful not to exult out in the open, but their steps were light and they all had felt so optimistic as they headed back to the ship. Han had promised to open a special reserve brandy to celebrate.

Luke finished the third crate and returned the data board to Leia. C-3PO approached them. "Excuse me, Mistress Leia, Master Luke. I have finished stowing the freight in the cargo bays. I apologize if this took too long. Perhaps next time Captain Solo will think to bring a labor droid. My design, as you well know, is for protocol and I am not efficient at such tasks, menial though they may be." The droid paused. "I should like to commend Captain Solo for not harping on my slowness this time."

"Has he been working with you?" Leia asked. It came to her attention that no one yet had answered Luke's question of Han's whereabouts. She looked at her stack of data boards and estimated she had filled out almost three quarters of them. Obviously a good portion of time had passed and she'd been totally unaware, immersed in details.

"No, Mistress. He is probably in the cockpit with First Mate Chewbacca." Luke and Leia exchanged glances. "Shall I inquire of our lift off time?"

"Yes, please, 3P0," Leia told him.

"See, it's odd," Luke turned to her and she nodded.

There came a loud hoot of indignation from the cockpit, and both Luke and Leia left their seats to see what had caused the disruption.

"-no need to yell at me, Chewbacca," C-3P0 was retorting, his arms, permanently set at 90 degrees, raised in protest. "I merely asked a question."

Luke and Leia followed the conversation, picking out words and phrases without 3PO's help.

"...ship…. trackers..."

"No."

"...ask….lift off?"

"No."

"What vines has he been weaving in the light?" Chewie demanded.

"He means what has Captain Solo been doing all this time," C-3P0 added helpfully.

Chewie demanded.

"No one's seen him since we got back, Chewie," Leia stated.

"Did he even come back?" Luke asked.

"Yes." Leia knit her brows, trying to remember. "He was walking in front of me – he put the hatch down, remember?"

"If I may, Mistress Leia. When the delivery arrived Captain Solo told me he was going to arrange for customs and lift off."

"Check with the port office, Chewie," Leia ordered.

The quartet waited in tense silence as they awaited the verdict. Luke groaned when he heard the response in Basic over the comm, "there has been no request made by the Millennium Falcon for either customs clearance or lift off."

"Shit," Luke swore. "Where is he? Where can he be?"

"If he is off drinking or gambling," Leia threatened with tight lips, "I will absolutely kill him. And fire him. I'm never contracting with him again. It's bad enough we run into bounty hunters; we can't have his irresponsibility affect the missions."

"He's gotta be somewhere," Luke tried to appease her, though really he was talking to make himself feel better. "Chewie, try his comm."

Leia flung her hands in the air. "You know how he is with the comm! When you really need him is when you can't get in touch with him."

Chewie sat in tense silence as the other end of the comm call remained silent. He disconnected it and stood up, his intentions clear.

"Where are you going to look, Chewie?" Luke asked. "I'll come with you." He went to grab his jacket. "We'll need you too, 3P0."

"Oh dear. I do dislike the types of establishments Captain Solo is fond of visiting," the droid fussed.

"Shall I head in another direction?" Leia offered.

Chewie shook his great shaggy head. "Chewbacca feels someone should remain aboard the ship, Mistress Leia," the protocol droid translated.

Leia nodded, feeling chilled and detached from her body, and drifted out of the cockpit. She heard the ramp open and close, watched Luke, C-3P0, and Chewie head through the docking bay out the porthole window.

Outside everything was normal, routine. Inside, she felt everything but normal. The ship was quiet, the engines stilled. She found she couldn't concentrate anymore on the boards until the question of Han's location was answered. Where was he? Why had he left without indicating anything? She wracked her memory of the mission, could not find a single interaction which stood out as trouble for the smuggler. She vascillated between anxious worry and impassioned anger. The jerk! How could he! How dare he do this to them, leave them in a lurch, just when things were going so well? Finally, things had gone well, and if he were there with them now than things would be perfect. She needed to hear from him, to know he was alright. And when he dismissed their worries with complete indifference she would slap him silly.

She grabbed her comm and called Luke. "Anything?"

"No," came his tinny and disappointed voice. "But we only checked one place so far."

"Keep me posted," she ordered. Leia wandered through the ship to her quarters and grabbed a blanket Han had let her use from the bed. She wrapped herself in it, hoping it would soothe her by association. Then she found herself in the cockpit again.

She imagined he was in a bar, a stupid grin on his face. She began to pace angrily. She pictured him at a Sabacc table, self-satisfied and raking winnings into his arms. She crossed her arms bitterly. When she thought of him in a brothel and kicked his chair she realized she was being silly, so sat down in it. She put the tip of her pinky finger in her mouth and tore the nail off.

What if he were hurt somewhere? In her mind's eye she could see his crumpled form in an alleyway, on a morgue table. Stop it, she warned herself. What if it had been a bounty hunter? He might be shackled, aboard a ship, on his way to imprisonment or death. What if the Empire had learned of their mission and taken their pilot? Leia bit at another fingernail. Now she was being ridiculous. There had been no indication of the Empires' presence here. She hated this turmoil!

The mission had gone so well, she reflected. Her ebullience earlier was now so bittersweet. Maybe this, their missing pilot, was the mission taking its usual sour turn. A sour turn, true, but it was not usual to have a missing pilot. She was surprised at her reaction, how it was throwing her for a loop.

Just the last mission, they had almost lost Han and then Luke. Leia did not like visiting this memory. It was filled with tension, violence, danger. The ship was becoming too known, the bounty too enticing. Han spent the entire journey back in a fury. Leia wasn't able to figure out just what he was so angry about; it seemed to be everything. Luke's injury, Chewie's resentment, the cursed bounty hunter, the bounty.

Maybe himself, she reflected in hindsight. It was no one's fault but his own there was a bounty on him.

Just walk up the damn hatchway, already, she urged in her head. Just come back. I promise I won't kill you. I'll just be so relieved. Where the hells have you gone off to, Han Solo?

XXXXXXXXXXX

Deep in the port city, Luke and Chewie had hit another dead end. It was a difficult enterprise, Chewie recognized. It was not the sort of tracking he normally did, but for the strange nonappearance of his partner, it seemed a good way to start. He let Luke do most of the talking after the first proprietors quaked in obvious fear of him, despite C-3P0s's prissy recriminations. The golden droid was useless, as usual. With Luke doing the talking they needn't have brought the annoying mechanical along. The droid was pessimistic and gloomy, outlining his opinions on establishments and the fate of Captain Solo.

They had hit a visited a good number of the cantinas in the seedier district. Luke really didn't expect to find Han here. He wanted to, wanted to finish this endless chapter of nerves fraying, but he didn't think it was like Han to just go without a word. Oh true, he enjoyed drink, women and gambling, but he'd never been sneaky about it before. He would just tell them. And then Leia would get mad and they would have a fight.

Chewie had learned of a Sabacc match and so they had tromped across town to the hotel where it was held. Chewie scanned the names and holos of each participant while Luke scanned the crowd, willing the smuggler to appear. Again, they drew a blank. No one had seen anyone matching Solo's description. Or if they had, Luke thought darkly, they weren't saying.

"Chewie, it's like he dropped off the face of the planet. And Leia's called me maybe forty times. Let's go back to the ship and figure out what to do."

Reluctantly, the Wookiee acquiesced. But he let Luke know he was very uncomfortable with the situation. He took a final sweep of the streets with his eyes, his nose twitching in puzzlement. No blasters, no unsavory characters…. He had to agree with Luke. It was like Han had dropped off the planet.