Han/Leia, things you didn't say at all

he says, ‘so long, princess.’  but even though he is so inexpressibly rude, so sinewed with arrogance, so careless with everything…she’ll see him again. his face in her face, his back hunching through a low door. she’s never liked standing next to tall men, but she wants to stand next to him. he says, ‘i’ll see you in hell.’  because hoth waits for no man, not even the hapless ones who wander into the storm of an argument.  her face burns, it’s only cold chaos outside the base, only death. not the stagnant weight of fear, like recycled air, between two people with more pride than love can reasonably accommodate.he says, ‘i know.’  and it’s the purest thing they’ve shared, the truest intelligence, in what feels like a hundred years of laser tripwires in their path. so she doesn’t blink for a hundred years, twelve seconds really, while the chamber fills with acrid fumes. twelve seconds is how long it takes for his wings to finally break.he says nothing as he holds her, there’s a promise he intends to keep where too many others have died struggling for breath.  whatever they were, they’re too deeply lined now, twisted rivers finding their joined floodplains on a very old map. the topography has changed, but they meet where they always have, in the same swelling rapids. water flows, though, it’s bound by more than grief, and he only knows how to fly. away.his body says nothing because it never comes back to her.  she’s got a feeling, a lava-hot tracery of force memory from her son’s barbed heart, and it’s enough to keep her alive.  but han will never look at her again, in his way of not saying, look at her like she’d opened a door he hadn’t known was there. like all his life had been holding the course she set, waiting to soar through it and steal some peace.she says, ‘if i find the strength to put up a memorial, it’s going to say goodbye. for once.’