For Bratanimus, who requested Han and Ben and the prompt fairytale. But actually, she helped me come up with the stories Han and Leia tell in this fic as part of a larger ficverse we're working on together, so about half the credit for this story goes to her. And JSYK, the sky house where this story is set is actually a part of the Star Wars EU and too amazingly crazy not to write about.
Same Stories, Different Stars
The beer can hissed open in duet with Han's sigh as he sat back in his chair. He'd scoffed when Lando presented it at their housewarming and called it "the most comfortable chair ever designed." Chair? It's a giant floating pillow, and Leia'd agreed as she goggled at it. Floating right in the middle of the living room. But he had to admit-not out loud, not to Lando-that really it was. Perfectly situated in front of the holovid screen, the chair or pillow or whatever the hell it technically was had enough room for Han to stretch out his legs to full length, and would even rock gently if that was your thing. (It wasn't Han's, but it was Ben's, quite often.)
At the moment, though, Ben was actually asleep in his own bed, Leia was attending a dinner given by King Ozz in Ugnorgrad, and the swoop races had just begun.
Han couldn't remember the last time he'd been at leisure to sit around doing something as unproductive as watch swoop racing. Before the war, probably. Definitely before fatherhood.
His gaze wandered from the speeders careening around the track to the hall off the living room where Ben's room was. He sipped his beer. Was the kid really asleep? If not, should he get him up to watch the races? If he was, should Han get him up anyway? It was the kind of thing he'd have wanted a dad to do when he was a kid. But Ben wasn't much like Han as a kid…
Anyway, Leia would have a nerf if she got home and found him up past his bedtime, doing something as low class and un-educational as that. We pulled him out of school for this trip to Bespin! Han could hear her reprimand, as she had when he joked (kind of) about him and Lando taking Ben for a guys' night at the Pair o'Dice casino.
So Han settled back in the chair, returned his attention to the screen, and tried not to think about whether he was missing out on a father-son bonding opportunity.
Of course the fact that he was thinking about any of that at all proved how far he'd come since his days as a more regular swoop racing fan. Back then he'd made bets and gotten into brawls in grungy backwater cantinas; now, he watched from the comfort of his own sky house in Cloud City-a wedding present from Lando, fully furnished including the most comfortable chair ever designed-drinking some kind of swanky artisan Fozbeer.
Or would be, if he hadn't polished off this can. He waited for an ad break from the races then, with some reluctance, hoisted himself up from the chair and shambled to the adjoining kitchen for another.
By the time he got back to the living room, the ad break had ended and cut back to the races. But while he could hear the screaming speeders, he was met with the sight of Ben standing in front of the screen.
His pajamas, Han hadn't noticed earlier, were too short at the wrists and ankles-again. Already above average height at seven, if Ben kept growing at this rate, Han was going to have to take up smuggling again just to afford keeping his son in clothes that actually fit.
"What are you doing out of bed?"
"I can't sleep."
Han huffed out a breath, noting the more important details than the length of Ben's PJs: how pale his face was beneath the disheveled shock of black hair, how his dark eyes peered out of it almost like empty sockets.
"Another bad dream?" Han asked, raking a hand through his own hair.
He watched his son suck in his cheeks, eyes cutting briefly away before locking on him as he replied: "How could I dream if I can't sleep?"
Han probably should've scolded the kid for being a smart-ass, but instead grinned at the brave act he was putting on. Maybe they weren't so different.
"Wanna watch the swoop races with me?"
Ben stared.
"Try not to look like I asked you if you want to help me smuggle a flock of Fynocks."
"Will Mom be mad?"
"Your mom ain't home," Han replied, secretly pleased his son's mental progression followed his own. "You know these state dinners always go late. They end up turning into important meanings."
"How would I know? I'm always in bed."
"But not always asleep." Not that Ben's sleep issues were a joking matter. Han shifted on the chair, patted the empty cushion beside him. "Come up here. It's the most comfortable chair ever designed."
Despite having been rocked to sleep in this chair many a time, Ben looked skeptical of the claim. Nevertheless, he climbed up onto the floating chair and settled into the crook of Han's arm. Made it a little hard to drink his beer, but this was good, too. Better, even. He could actually watch the races without wondering if Ben was sleeping peacefully down the hall.
He wondered if Ben had fallen asleep now, he was so still and so quiet against him. More still and quiet than he slept, most nights. But when Han brushed Ben's hair back from his forehead, the brows knitted together in a frown so deep it was almost a glower. Han withdrew at once, stretching his arm along the back of the chair.
"You know, I used to do this," he said, indicating the race with a flick of his fingers. "In my misspent youth."
Ben turned his head from the holovid screen to Han, expression as unimpressed as it had been with the claims of the chair's comforts. "Will you tell me a story?"
Or maybe he was a little more impressed than his face showed.
"About racing?" Han fumbled between the chair cushions for the remote control, and punched the mute button. "Sure. There was this one time, at the Narmle Memorial Rally, when my speeder-"
"Not a story about you."
"Thought I had a few years before you got jaded and disillusioned about me," Han muttered. Maybe this was how the Force manifested in Ben. Or maybe that was just his mother in him. "Those are the only stories I know, kid. And a few about your Uncle Luke, or Chewie…Or Kes Dameron…"
Ben shook his head. "Not a story about real people. Something made up."
"Like once upon a time? That kind of thing?"
"Yeah." Ben nodded.
Han leaned his head back, scrubbed his fingers over his chin as he thought. "I know one of those."
"Tell it to me."
"You ever hear of asking?" Han snapped, but Ben just went on looking at him, one corner of his mouth quirking upward.
He could be so quiet and withdrawn, it was good to hear him be up front about what he wanted. Still, he was reluctant to give in.
"It's not a great bedtime story…Parents used to tell it to their kids on Corellia to scare them into behaving."
"You didn't have parents," Ben said. "And you weren't very well behaved."
"Who said that? Your mother?"
"You did. Just now. In my misspent youth."
"You're seven. How the hell do you know what misspent youth means?"
Ben shrugged. "Context."
"Context." Han snorted, watching the speeders on the silent holovid screen.
Ben was right about the lack of good behavior and parents, but the story had freaked Han out anyway, cost him more than a few nights' sleep. The kid already had more than enough problems with that.
"Come on, Dad, please." Ben shifted closer, catching Han by the sleeve. "I won't be scared, I promise. I'm brave. Please tell it?"
The last thing Han wanted was for Ben to think his father didn't think he was brave, and anyway, it was just a made-up story. Ben was old enough to draw distinctions between fiction and reality. Stars only knew he read enough of those holocomics.
"Okay," he said with a glance toward the foyer. As if he thought Leia might've come in and be watching them. Hopefully moony-eyed at the image of father and son sharing an affectionate moment, and not arching an eyebrow at him letting Ben stay up past his bedtime. Who was he kidding? With Leia it was always disapproval.
"Once upon a time, there was this prince…Oh, the story's called 'The Cursed Prince,' by the way."
"Let me guess," Ben deadpanned. "The prince gets a curse put on him?"
"Are you telling this story or am I?"
Han ruffled Ben's hair and, in spite of the kid's scowl, snaked an arm around his shoulder and hugged him close. Ben elbowed him in the ribs, but didn't pull away, and Han realized the nudge was for him to continue.
"So like I said, there was a prince who hadn't been cursed-yet." He smirked down at Ben, who smirked right back. "One day he was at a cantina with his friends, real shady place, and that's where he met the witch. She overheard him bragging to his friends that he was unbeatable at Dejarik, thanks to this new tutor he had up at the palace, and challenged him to a game."
"Did she win?"
"You'd think that was how the story was gonna go, but it didn't. The prince played well, and he beat her."
"I bet the witch let him win."
"Maybe, but that ain't really the point. The point's what she said to him after. I can give you unlimited power to rule the galaxy as your own."
Han remembered the shiver those words had sent down his spine as a kid-hell, they did again now-and he went silent and held his breath, waiting to feel Ben shudder against him.
Ben didn't move a muscle. There wasn't even a tremble in his voice when he said, "If he was a prince, he'd already get to rule someday. When the king died."
"That's what the prince told the witch. He was kind of a smart ass. Like another kid I know."
Ben's quirked lips parted in a wide, crooked grin.
"But this was a clever witch," Han continued. "She told the prince the king was still a young man, even if he seemed old from a kid's point of view. He was healthy and would probably live a long time. The prince might even be an old man himself before he got to be king. And the king was a fool. They couldn't have a fool for a king, could they?"
He paused again, removing his arm from the back of the chair to scratch his head. This story was starting to feel a little weird, weirder even than he remembered it making him feel. But true to his word, Ben didn't seem to be freaked out by it. He was hanging onto every word.
Maybe that was the weird part.
"What did the prince do?" he asked.
Han stared at the silent holovid screen for a moment, watching the speeders take a hairpin curve and wishing he'd just stuck to swoop racing. He knew about that.
"The witch had poisoned the prince with her words, and the prince poisoned the king."
"He killed his own father?" Ben looked up with rounded eyes, and somehow this made Han feel better.
"Pretty messed up, right?" He patted the thin shoulder beneath the ill-fitting pajama shirt. "Hey, kid. No reason to look so distressed. It's only a story."
"Did anyone find out?"
"The prince's mother. Women always find out." Han's grin was met with a blank stare. "When the queen learned the wicked thing her son had done, she was in such deep grief for her husband that she cursed the prince."
Ben hadn't shivered with fear before, but now his shoulder beneath Han's palm rose and fell with deep heaving breaths. "His own mother cursed him?"
As a kid, the unthinkable part of the story to Han was that a kid could be lucky enough to have a father and then kill him, but from his perspective as a parent, he saw the horror Ben fixated on now. How could a parent curse their own child? No matter what he'd done.
"What was the curse?" Ben asked.
Han swallowed, his throat raw like when he came out of the carbonite. "That the prince would forever be a slave to evil," he rasped, the words sounding like they came from someone else, somewhere far away. "That any good thing he tried to do to redeem himself would turn to evil. He would roam the galaxy forever as the devil with one red eye and a constellation of stars on his face."
"Like the stars?" Ben said, scrambling down from the chair. "Is this about the Prince constellation?"
Han blinked, the haze cast by the story clearing a little as he swiveled on the chair to watch Ben run to the curved bank of windows along the back wall and press his face to the darkened glass.
"I guess so?"
Feeling bone tired, and every day of forty-one, Han slid to the edge of the chair, sat for a moment with his elbows propped on his knees, then hauled his ass up and trudged to join his son at the window. He meant to look for the constellation, but instead his gaze was drawn downward, to Ben's pale reflection, his eyes like stars themselves reflecting the living room lights.
"Then what?" he asked.
Then what? Han's weary mind struggled to keep up. "Oh. In the story? The end."
The long lines of Ben's face drew into a scowl. "That's not a very good ending."
"That's not the ending."
They both turned to see Leia standing in the foyer.
"How long have you been spying on us?"
Han wished he didn't sound like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He supposed it was too late to turn off the holovid screen. He glanced at the window, which reflected the race. Yep.
"Not long." Leia pursed her lips against a smile as she reached up to unclasp her dark blue dinner cloak. "Is that really how 'The Brave Handmaiden' ends on Corellia?"
"'The Brave Handmaiden'?" Hooking his thumbs over his belt, Han said, "Sweetheart, you've got your stories mixed up. That was 'The Cursed Prince'."
"You'll discover there are different versions of the same stories all over the galaxy." Leia glanced across the room at Ben as she hung her cloak in the hall closet. She toed off her shoes and put them away, too. "My governess told me a similar one when I was a little girl."
"The girly version?" Han couldn't resist teasing.
Leia gratified him with a roll of her eyes as she swept past him into the living room. "The version with the satisfying ending."
Amazingly, she turned off the holovid screen without giving Han any judgmental looks-although he thought there was something kinda pointed in the way she pressed the power button.
"Do fables actually have satisfying endings?" he asked. "They're just morality tales: this is what will happen if you put blind trust in strangers instead of honoring and obeying your parents." With a glance at Ben, he added, hastily, "It ain't, not really. I mean, you shouldn't trust people you don't know-"
"Will you tell it?" Ben spoke for the first time since Leia got home.
"Tomorrow," she replied. "You're up way past your bedtime."
Although Ben looked disappointed, he didn't argue. The story's dire consequences might've had something to do with that. That unpleasant thought was pushed away by a much more pleasant one that might even qualify as moony as Han watched his wife hug their son goodnight. She feathered Ben's dark hair between her fingers and pressed a kiss to the top of his head-she barely had to bend to do it now, no wonder his PJs were too short-and gently sent him back to bed.
"You know," Han said when Ben's door had slid shut with a soft swish, "it's not past my bedtime."
"Are you trying to seduce me, or asking me to tell you 'The Brave Handmaiden'?"
Leia held his gaze as she sidestepped him, her head tilted just so that the curve of her neck where his hand fit so perfectly whenever they kissed was exposed to him. He turned with her as she moved, and felt dizzied by her beauty, and the effect it had on all his senses. The whisper of blue shimmersilk on the tile, as it trailed the floor without her shoes, the heady fragrance of her perfume, which he'd bought for her because it was supposed to smell like some now extinct flower she'd loved in the palace gardens back on Alderaan.
"Why's it have to be or? Can't it be and?"
Han followed her and the flash of her back bared by a cutout in her gown into the kitchen. It was a good thing he hadn't escorted her to that dinner, or he wouldn't have been able to keep his hands off her all night. Eight years of marriage, and she still had the same effect over him she had since the first moment he set eyes on her. Well, almost the first moment. Once he'd gotten over her mocking their daring rescue and insulting the Falcon.
And Leia knew it, too, throwing him another coy glance over her shoulder.
"We'll see."
As she selected a bottle of Corellian Merlot from the rack on the counter, Han reached over her to take glasses down from the high shelf beyond her reach.
She arched an eyebrow as she uncorked the wine. "I saw the Fozbeer cans in the living room."
Of course she did. Han gave her his most charming smile. "Had to leave something for Kate to do in the morning," he said, referring to the cleaning droid, KT-18.
"I mean," Leia said as she filled her glass, then let the bottle hover over the second, "are you sure you haven't already had enough to drink?"
"Probably," Han replied, not pointing out that she'd probably had wine with dinner; when Leia opened a late-night bottle, that generally boded well for him. "It'd be rude not to ease Lando's guilty conscience by letting the expensive apology booze go to waste, wouldn't it?"
Of course Lando had more than atoned for selling them out to Vader all those years ago, but he still insisted on keeping the house stocked with luxury items whenever they were on world. Leia filled Han's glass, then clinked hers against his.
"What are we drinking to?" he asked.
"'The Brave Handmaiden.'" Leia sipped, then stepped backward to lean against the counter. Han mirrored her the few feet across the galley-style kitchen. "The queen had a handmaiden. She was very observant-as handmaidens have to be-"
"I wouldn't know about that," Han interrupted, "not growing up in a palace with servants and governesses."
"You do have a cleaning droid now."
"Clearly moving up in the world."
"If you would please let me continue…"
Han gestured with his wine glass.
"The handmaiden saw the family's devastation, but she took pity on the prince, because she knew he'd been deceived by the witch. Used for the witch's own nefarious purposes."
The wine went down bitter, and Han's words came out the same way. "Putting it kind of mildly, don't you think?"
"What the prince did was terribly wicked, yes. And he'd blindly trusted someone he shouldn't. But he was very young, and the witch was very powerful. The handmaid believed there was still good in the prince. That the curse could be broken."
Sounded like Luke, Han wanted to say, but he didn't, hearing a faint faltering note in Leia's voice.
"One night when the queen was sleeping, the handmaid stole out of the palace in disguise. She followed the prince across the galaxy, doing what she could to put his wrongs to right."
"His shadow."
Leia nodded. "Only instead of being made of darkness, she was light."
A shadow of light. A lovely image, though Han didn't say so out loud. Almost as lovely as the way the light shone in Leia's dark eyes as she looked up at him. Although it wasn't exactly at him, but like she was somewhere else. Luke got that look on his face sometimes. And Ben…
"When the prince became aware of what the handmaid was doing, he was ashamed of his inability to do right, and of all she sacrificed to right his wrongs. His shame angered him, and he loomed over the handmaiden and said, 'Don't you know the devil will carry you away to the witch if he catches you?' She replied, 'No, he won't.' Because she knew that he'd fallen in love with her, as she had with him."
"Of course they had."
Han's glass clinked as he set it down on the counter, crossing the narrow kitchen in a single stride to his to slide his hands over the silk that clung to Leia's hips, settling them in the curve of her waist. He leaned in, brushing his lips to hers. He tasted the wine on them, and it was sweet.
When he drew back a moment later, Leia continued the story as if there had been no interruption, except that her voice was a little softer, her eyes looking directly into his now.
"Neither of them felt worthy of the other, she being a lowly handmaid, he the devil."
"Let me guess-the handmaiden turned out to be a princess in disguise. Hopefully not his secret sister."
Leia gave him a tolerant look and finished off her wine. "Believe it or not, she was just a handmaiden."
Setting her empty glass beside Han's, she stepped out from his embrace. Once again he followed the rustle of her gown on the floor, out of the kitchen to stand at the living room windows where Ben had earlier. As Leia looked up at the stars, she wrapped her arms wrapped around herself, and Han wrapped his arms around them, covering her small hands with his, pressing his cheek to hers so that the stubble rasped against her soft skin. She leaned back against his chest with a sigh.
"Underneath the Prince's anger and shame lay fear. He was so afraid that he would destroy her, too, as he was cursed to destroy every good thing. And so he tried to frighten her away."
"But the handmaiden wasn't afraid," Han said. "That's why it's called 'The Brave Handmaiden.' And she broke the curse and set him free? I can see why you like this story." He turned his head in to brush his lips to her cheek, and felt the movement of her facial muscles as she smiled.
"The handmaiden had no more power than the prince did to break the curse. The only way to do it was to kill the witch. Neither of them was strong enough to do it alone."
"But together…"
Leia turned in his arms, touching his face as she smiled up at him. "Together, they were more powerful than the witch. More powerful than all the witches in the galaxy."
Together. That was something Han knew about, more than swoop racing. What he and Leia had done together. Brought down an Empire. Brought a child into the world. There were times when he thought raising said child was even more impossible than bringing down said Empire, but then there were times like this, when he remembered that he had this woman at his side and believed there was nothing they couldn't do.
As they embraced, he looked over her head at the shimmering constellations, made out the jagged outline of the Prince's crown and the Handmaiden's swirling dress as they danced eternally through the heavens. Neither of them felt worthy of the other. He knew about that, too, the scoundrel who'd somehow won the heart of the princess.
"I like the Alderaanian version better than the Corellian one," he mumbled into the perfumed crown of her hair.
"Oh it isn't Alderaanian. My governess was from Naboo."
"Okay…" Han straightened up, slowly. Leave it to Leia to be having a moment and still have the presence of mind to talk about technicalities. "I like the Naboo version better. Ben will, too."
Should they really wait until tomorrow night to tell him this version? Seemed like he'd have a better chance at a peaceful night's sleep if he heard it now…
He'd looked down the hall toward their son's room, but Leia's hand on his cheek drew his attention back to her.
"The same stories told under different stars," she said, voice low. "You know what else is the same?"
"Tell me."
Leia took his hand and guided him to the chair (definitely the most comfortable one ever designed), and they told each other the age-old story that required no words.