Chapter Text
34 ABY
The ride back to base was slow and filled with agony.
It didn't matter that the hyperspace jump was still ten hours; that hadn't changed. It didn't matter that the Resistance and Republic had decimated the First Order base and taken many of the remaining First Order troops captive, at least the ones that hadn't managed to escape or weren't part of their main fleet that weren't on planet. It didn't matter that they had gotten Rey back; she was already about to escape without their aid.
No, none of that mattered to Karena as she stared at Han's corpse.
The Desert Dragon's cold cargo hold was necessary for his body, but it also had the unexpected effect of keeping her focused, as unmoving and stationary as Han, unable to take her eyes off of him. Chewie was in a similar state next to her, coupled with muffled whimpers that echoed throughout the metal hold like a steel drum. But Karena didn't join him in crying for she was out of tears.
With Chewie and Karena distraught and in no state to fly, Rey was the one who flew the Dragon, shaky in the air but more manageable than the two-person requirement of the Falcon, especially with Gray's help, and Finn started up the comm channel to relay what had happened to Leia.
Leia wasn't able to finish the call, her voice cutting off over the frequency as she fully processed what she had felt through the Force, so Kelin took the communicator from her and gave them their 'orders.' Return to base. Land on Tarmac 4.
Upon dropping out of hyperspace, one of the technicians helped talk Rey through the landing cycle for the Dragon since reading about it wasn't the same as doing it, but once the ship was safely on the tarmac, techs moved in to secure and refuel it. And upon her arrival, they moved out of the way for General Organa.
When the loading ramp stopped moving, she slowly walked up it until she found what she was looking for: her dead husband. A hand covered her mouth as she paused with a gasp, trying to remain composed with a multitude of Resistance members just outside the ship as well as her niece and a long-standing family friend in front of her. Estranged they may have been, but they never stopped loving each other. She knew that deep in her heart beyond any shadow of doubt. It didn't matter that she had felt his death through the Force.
Seeing him lying there. . . she wanted to break.
At the sound of her quiet gasp, Karena turned, stoic façade dropping as Leia entered the cargo hold. "Auntie. . ." Karena mumbled as she stood from the crate she was sitting on. "I'm so sorry."
With only her niece and oldest remaining friend to see, Leia cried.
Chewie was the first to move, taking Leia into his arms to shield her from the world, holding in his own sniffles. Karena bit her lip to keep her emotions in check and kept anyone from entering the cargo hold and seeing. Leia may have been the face of the Resistance, the glue holding it all together, but even she was human. Even she needed the space to break down.
It almost felt wrong to hold a funeral.
With the base scurrying to complete the evacuation and the war having officially begun, taking the time to hold a funeral seemed. . . like a last priority.
But Han Solo was a symbol from a bygone era. And the people needed his strength.
Officers stood in an already evacuated hangar bay, with Leia on a raised platform beside a coffin. Closed it may have been, but Leia, along with her niece and nephew, could see within. The cold body of Han Solo was set there with his hands clasped over his abdomen, his face finally relaxed and at peace.
Leia faced the waiting Resistance crowd and the cam droid broadcasting the proceedings across the base. The ceremony wouldn't halt the evacuation, but the whole Resistance needed to hear Leia's words.
"Han would hate this ceremony," Leia began, voice ringing out clearly across the hangar. "He had no patience for speeches or memorials, which was to be expected from a man who was allergic to politics and suspicious of causes."
Kelin's hand gripped his sister's in the filed masses. They remembered the stories from their family as though they were told yesterday. Han's reaction to the Force met with suspicion and derision. Han's reaction to the Rebel Alliance met with an eye-roll and a desire to leave. Han's reaction to authority of any kind met with defiance or indifference, depending on his mood.
But then he always changed his mind. Always did a one-eighty to turn around and do the right thing.
"I once told Han that it was tiresome watching him do the right thing only after he'd exhausted every alternative," Leia continued. "But sooner or later, he'd get there. Because Han hated bullies and injustice and cruelty, and when he confronted them, he could never stand down. Not in his youth on Corellia, not above Yavin, not on Endor, and not at Starkiller Base.
"Han fancied himself a scoundrel, but he wasn't," she said with a small smile. "He loved freedom—for himself, certainly, but for everybody else in the galaxy, too. And time after time, he was willing to fight for that freedom. He didn't want to know the odds in that fight because he'd already made up his mind that he'd prevail. And time after time, somehow, he did."
Leia took a deep breath, keeping her voice steady. "Han didn't want to know the odds when he, his sister, and best friend flew back to the Death Star in time to save my brother Luke and the last hope for our Alliance. He didn't ask about them when he accepted a general's rank for the ground assault at Endor. He didn't want them calculated when he fought for freedom at Kashyyyk. And he refused to think about them when deciding to infiltrate Starkiller Base and take down the shields."
And when he agreed to reach out to our son, she thought to herself. To reach out and try to draw him back out of the darkness.
The others didn't hear her thoughts, but Kelin did, her voice ringing through his mind. Karena didn't hear, but she could see the pain on her aunt's face and feel the guilt and longing running through her veins. She knew what Leia was thinking clear as day.
"Han has always faced the odds head-on," Leia said, lifting her chin high. "And we should learn from his example. I ask you to focus once again on the cause we all serve as we face long odds."
Various officers nodded in the crowd, a few murmuring in agreement.
"We have been preparing a threat that is now here. The First Order is on the march. The New Republic is mobilizing but is slowed by bureaucracy. With war on our doorstep, we are in a unique position to face the threat head-on."
Leia paused, eyes sweeping out over the officers, seeing the determination in their expressions. "I can't tell you what those odds are, and I don't want to know. Because nothing could change my mind about what we have to do.
"We must return to the fight. We do so because, like Han, we believe in justice and freedom and because we will not accept a galaxy ruled by cruelty. We'll fight for those ideals. We'll fight for each other. We'll fight for the sacred bonds we've forged serving side by side. . . And we'll fight for all the people in the galaxy who want to fight but can't—who need a champion. They're calling to us in terror and grief, and it is our duty to answer that call."
Leia let her words echo throughout the hangar as she looked directly at the cam droid, meeting the gaze of everyone who was watching.
"We all have our sorrows," she said, "and we will never forget them or those we have lost. In time, we will honor them fully and properly, but for now, we must save our sorrow for after the fight. Because right now, we have work to do."
The first one to get to work was Chewie busting his ass on the Falcon. They had just gotten the Falcon back and Han died. He hardly had time to celebrate it, to relish in it, to be grateful to return home. It left Chewie growling to himself as he tried not to break down while piecing components back together.
He had to get it off the planet. He had to get it ready to fly for Han's family. He. . . had to do something.
Chewbacca howled in the empty ship—his cry echoing through the circular corridors lining the ship. The volume in such a small area caused the toolbox that was leaning precariously from the edge of the walkway to fall into the hole, clattering around Chewie who growled in frustration.
But they were Han's tools, leftover from the last time they had been in the Falcon. Thankfully, the nerfherders who stole it never switched them out. So, Chewie took a moment to calm himself down before picking up the fallen tools, and placing them back into the toolbox. He worked slower than he should have, given the circumstances, but he couldn't help it as he gingerly picked up each and every one, letting his eyes and fingers roam over each one, remembering exactly where some of them came from.
The hydrospanner was from Kaleena when she accidentally broke his previous one.
Han had knocked out a bounty hunter with his socket spanner, so it became a joke afterward.
The plasma wrench was something Han had stolen in the heat of the moment from an Imperial shipment that they had intercepted.
The last tool Chewie grabbed from the floor was a small electromagnetic tool that he didn't remember being in the toolbox the last time he had dug through it before the ship was stolen. For a moment, Chewie didn't think much of it, thinking it had been added by one of the people who had stolen the ship until something caught his eye on it when he was about to add it to the box.
Kal's tattoo was carved into the handle.
Chewie brought it up, close to his eyes to study it. A demagnetizer. They had never needed one on the ship. It didn't do anything that any of their other tools couldn't also do with a bit of work or finagling. Chewie couldn't recall a time when Kal herself had ever used one either, so he didn't understand why her tattoo would be carved into it.
He did know that a few of them occasionally used her tattoo as a means of communication with only the others who would know it. The only people who could reliably draw the symbol were the ones intimately familiar with the shape, the people close to her. Wedge, Hobbie, or Sabine would have attempted to contact Han if they had come across the Falcon during the time it was stolen. And loathe as he was to admit it, so would Boba Fett. And it certainly wasn't from Karena, Kelin, or Leia.
Which left only Luke. . . the one person they were still looking for.
Luke was a brilliant mechanic with both ships and droids and here Chewie found a demagnetizer. The first possibility that ran through Chewie's mind would be something in the ship, but as he climbed out of the hole to start searching, he realized a much likelier explanation.
Artoo had been unresponsive since Luke went missing. The droid had been recharged and they attempted a manual reboot of his systems, but neither worked, so short of dismantling him, which they hadn't wanted to do, they were at a loss for how to proceed. But if he had something inside him that messed with his systems, preventing him from starting up. . . it could be from an electromagnetic field disruptor, which a demagnetizer could find and undo.
Chewie marched out of the Falcon and to the Command Center, gripping the demagnetizer tight in his hand as he passed scurrying troops, pilots, and engineers.
Kelin is the first person he spotted in the bustling room. With a mere two hours to go, perhaps it wasn't the perfect moment for Chewie to be drawn away from the Falcon, but he had to know. He had to know if the answer had been right there in front of them the entire time.
Kelin hardly looked up from his computer screen which he was furiously tapping on. "The Falcon has clearance to fly the moment she's ready, Chewie," he said, brows furrowing. "If you could give a hand with some of the heavy lifting before take-off though, that would be fantastic."
Not wanting to touch the implication of him being responsible for the Falcon beyond basics with a ten-foot-poll, Chewie gruffly huffed as he held out the demagnetizer directly in front of the screen to force Kelin to look at it. He could tell that Kelin's initial reaction was a desire to snap at him as though Chewie were Karena, but thankfully, he looked at what Chewie was holding, realizing there was a reason Chewie was interrupting his rushed work.
"What is this?" Kelin asked, taking the tool from him. He turned it over in his hands, expression blanching upon spotting the carved symbol the same as Chewie had. "Mom. . ."
Chewie briefly explained how he and Han had been trying to track Luke for years but that the answer was in front of them all along: Artoo.
It only took Kelin a few moments to piece together what Chewie meant and what he was leaving out. Kelin gritted his teeth in anger, his first reaction being wanting to toss aside the tool at the thought of his father. But as his grip tightened on the demagnetizer, he stalled and then let out an annoyed sigh as he rolled his eyes.
"Blast it all!" Kelin cursed.
It was his turn to march angrily through the crowd. But for some reason, more heads turned when he did it rather than the giant Wookiee stampeding through them. Perhaps it had something to do with a generally calm, stoic officer losing his cool.
Kelin marched directly to Leia's office and let himself in, knowing it was where she kept Artoo, wanting him close in the off chance he would turn himself back on. But of course, that would never happen.
Leia, Admiral Statura, and Major Brance looked up at Kelin and Chewie when they burst in. "Kelin," Leia started to scold, but he cut her off, bee-lining directly for Artoo.
"I'll apologize later for the informality," Kelin said, kneeling next to the white and blue droid. He may not have the finesse with droids and machines that his sister cultivated, but he was still taught by two brilliant mechanics and knew his way around well, especially Artoo specifically. He couldn't remember how many times he tuned or cleaned Artoo after missions or simply because the droid was becoming old.
So, Kelin's fingers worked in a familiar pattern after activating the demagnetizer. He pried apart Artoo, dismantling the outer shell of the droid's body to find a small a small disruptor attached directly to the central processor. Using the demagnetizer, Kelin detached the disruptor without harming the processor. He held it up for everyone to see as he stood.
"Artoo knew his plans all along but was sabotaged," Kelin spat before throwing the disrupter to the ground and slamming his heel on it, destroying it. "Why am I not surprised?" He didn't expect an answer as he tossed the demagnetizer at Chewie, who caught it easily, and then he stormed out of the room, leaving the others in stunned silence.
Chewie howled in frustration, shaking his head to himself. He was torn between the grief and sadness he was drowning in, but at the same time, Chewie felt something he hadn't felt in a long time. For the first time in years, the two-hundred-something-odd-year Wookiee had hope. He had just lost his best friend, but perhaps he could still finish the quest Han had started.
Leia stared at Artoo, still powered off and missing his shell components. Slowly, carefully she reached out to him and switched him on.
For years, doing that would have amounted to a grand ol' nothing. His lights would stay dark. He would make no noise. He wouldn't move an inch. But a moment after she flipped the switch right then, Artoo powered up.
Karena was in the middle of last-minute repairs on one of Black Squadron's X-wings with the help of Rey when she heard her name called.
Her name. Not her code name. Not her rank. Not a nickname. Her given name.
Karena.
Even Poe and Snap look up in alarm from their own tune-up on the ship directly next to them, hearing the name not from their own lips.
The other members of Black Squadron who are aiding with the repairs and fuel up to get their squadron back up and ready for a fight notice the reactions of their two commanding officers, the strange spy they know little about, and the scavenger that said spy had picked up on Jakku.
Karena turns to see Leia down the tarmac calling for her again, and a pit forms in her stomach. If Leia of all people was calling her by her given name, then something was wrong. Something major. Something that caused Leia to throw out all propriety, rank, and secrecy which she usually kept to even in the most dire of times.
Even Snap realized as he said, "That can't be good."
Karena jumped off the X-wing, ignored the way her ankles screamed at her for not using the Force to cushion her fall, and took off running toward Leia, hoping and praying that whatever went wrong was something that could be fixed. Hoping and praying it didn't include another death.
But as she skidded to a stop in front of Leia, she found no words. Unable to formulate her racing thoughts, she simply looked at Leia with wide eyes, waiting expectantly for an answer.
"Artoo is awake."
Karena barely heard Leia's quiet words as her heart pounded in her ears, and she took off running again, that time to the Command Center. She needed to see it for herself. She needed to see her father's droid alive and kicking. She needed to hear the tell-tale beeps that hid curses only Binary speakers could understand. She needed to see the hope alive before her eyes.
She dodged around and under various Resistance personnel as she made her way to the Command Center where her eyes located the loveable astromech arguing vehemently with Threepio and Grey as though nothing had happened. As though he hadn't been out of commission the last few years.
Chewie was standing near the droids, spotted Karena, and waved her over. When she walked up with clammy palms and twitching fingers, Artoo noticed her and turned his body to face her, beeping sadly.
Karena couldn't keep up with Artoo's fast beeps and whistles, and she interrupted by briefly managing a weak, "Artooie. . ." as she knelt in front of him and wrapped her arms around his cool metal.
Artoo's beeps and whistles stopped aside from a whirring noise that Karena remembered to be one of happiness and contentment. And when she pulled away, she went to speak but didn't get the chance to before Artoo displayed something with his holoprojector.
A map that looked very similar to the piece BB-8 had safeguarded. And next to it displayed was a scrolling list of planet names.
It didn't take her reading many of the names to recognize what it must have been.
"Planets of known Jedi Temples?" Karena said, staring at the list. Artoo beeped in confirmation. "He can be on any one of them?" Artoo's confirmation was sadder that time, but firm, nonetheless. "And the map is of the specific system, so it isn't a well-charted one meaning we can rule out the well-known ones." She bit her lip. "Still, that's a lot of planets. But it's a start. We can find him."