Han & Leia | Galaxy of Us

Chapter 1

A/N: This story is basically going to follow the premise of their relationship in the movies, except with "fillers" of all the gaps in between. Like the three years in between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, for example. This is just a preliminary chapter to set the tone for the rest of the story.

"Wonderful girl! Either I'm gonna kill her or I'm beginning to like her!" – Han Solo, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan, and Rebel Leader, was up to her ankles in waste and discarded machinery in a trash compactor. Lovely.

Her rescuers...or to be precise, a Wookie, a spirited, yet inexperienced boy and a scruffy, trigger-happy, irksome man...were stuck there with her. "Some rescue mission," she muttered to herself, echoing her words from earlier, gingerly finding a perch on more solid ground. She had just had possibly the most trying week of her existence. From being captured and tortured by Vader to having her home planet...no, she refused to dwell upon that. Not now.

Grief made her strong and brusque, yelling at the man who had just stupidly shot off his blaster in the confined space, "Put that thing away! You're gonna get us all killed!"

"Absolutely, your Worship," he retorted in a sardonic tone that got under her skin, "Look, I had everything under control until you led us down here! Now it's not going to take them long to figure out what happened to us."

She knew he was right. About the latter at least. "Could be worse," she muttered sullenly.

The pile of scrap metal she stood upon shifted. There was a low growl. She had a bad feeling about this.

"It's worse," the man murmured.

The following events passed in a horrific blur before her eyes. The boy, Luke, was suddenly dragged down into the murky depths of the muck below by some unseen force. The man pushed his hands through, frantically attempting to reach for him but found nothing.

Luke's head emerged with a splash, a thick tentacle firmly wrapped around his neck, like a coiled snake. After attempts made by both the man and Leia to help him, the former shooting with his blaster, Leia reaching out with a metal pole, Luke disappeared once more. A grim silence and Leia's heart thudded against her chest.

Another loud splash and Luke resurfaced, gasping. The creature had released him. But why?

The loud screech of metal rubbing on metal greeted her ears. The four looked around warily. Much to Leia's horror, she realized the walls were closing in on them. "Don't just stand there, try and brace it with something!" she ordered, trying to raise a heavy metal bar. The man helped her, as Luke attempted to come into contact with his friend, Threepio.

When the wall space was half the breadth it had been originally, the man hoisted her up by the waist, attempting to raise her to higher ground. "Get on top!" he barked.

"I can't!" she hated the way her voice sounded in that moment, young and fearful. He continued to grip her arms and legs, pushing her higher, "Get on top of it!"

"I'm trying!" she struggled, though soon it was no longer a struggle, as the trash became compacter.

The walls continued to close in as Luke still vainly attempted to communicate with his friend, "Shut down all the garbage compacters on the detention level!"

She winced. The walls were still closing inward and then...they stopped.

The four of them looked around in disbelief. A widening smile spread over Leia's face in relief, as they began to shriek in delight. The man pulled her into his arms in a tight celebratory hug. He was so much larger than her, she felt all-encompassed, though it was not an entirely unpleasant sensation either.

Once they had made their way out of the compacter and onto the deck of the ship, the man and the boy began to pull off their clone suits. Leia smoothed down her attire and patted back her hair ineffectually, sneaking furtive glances at the two, despite herself. The boy was thin and lanky, possibly her age or younger, she allowed, with a youthful sort of handsomeness. The man, for he certainly was a man, tall, broad, strength etched into the very planes of his arms, was exceedingly attractive, radiating with a devil-may-care aura that Leia instantly recognized as trouble. He had a thick mop of scruffy brown hair with a set to his face that might have been hard if not for the dry humor lurking behind his dark eyes. He was messy, arrogant and the type more likely to shoot before he thought.

She made her opinions clear in her cool words to him, asserting her dominance, "I don't know who you are or where you came from. But from now on, you'll do as I tell you. Okay?" her tone left no room for argument, as she strode past him, however, that didn't stop him from following, outrage evident in his voice, "Look your Worship, let's get one thing straight, I take orders from just one person. Me."

"It's a wonder you're still alive," she said sweetly.

Han Solo, well-known experienced smuggler and silver-tongued flatterer, had just escaped the Death Star, rescuing an ungrateful, stuck-up princess with his Wookie best friend, an innocent boy and an old man.

Her Worshipfulness was a handful, that was for sure. He didn't know whether he wanted to strangle her or kiss her senseless, just to piss her off. Not that she wasn't a looker. She was beautiful, he could grudgingly admit, in an ice-princess, unattainable sort of way. Whether she actually possessed a heart inside remained to be seen. He certainly wasn't going to be the one to find out. Once he got his reward, he'd be outta there. And he told her so.

"If money's all that you love, then that's what you'll receive," she replied calmly, yet with a condemning look in her eyes that disturbed him. It wasn't often that his conscience troubled him, hell, he liked to think he didn't have one. The only person he really cared about other than himself was Chewbacca. He didn't care for heroics or gallantry. He brushed off her words roughly as she left, passing by Luke on her way out, "Your friend is quite a mercenary. I wonder if he really cares about anything. Or anyone."

"I care," the kid mumbled in a sort of awed daze, Han noted with amusement. He was dead-gone on her.

"So...what do you think of her, Han?" Luke sidled into the seat next to him with the eager inquiry.

"I'm trying not to, kid," Han muttered, in an effort at indifference. "Good," Luke responded with unconcealed satisfaction.

At that however, he couldn't resist teasing him a little, glancing around to make sure Leia had left, "Still...she's got a lot of spirit...I don't know, what do ya think? You think a princess and a guy like me-"

"No!" Luke interrupted defiantly before he could finish.

Han only grinned. The kid's words couldn't hurt him. Even he knew his limits and seducing a princess was far out of his reach. Especially that one. He didn't think he'd ever met anyone who got on his nerves quite as much as Her Highness.

It was that innate controlling nature of hers, he decided, that put him off. She was proud, but beyond that, she was domineering, something that went against every fibre of Han's being. He took orders from just one person. Himself.

Still, he couldn't quite forget the feel of her petite body in his arms as he'd helped her atop of the trash and held her. Odd. He generally preferred his women taller. The princess came barely up to his chest. And yet, she was a firebrand. She had no trouble with speaking to him as though she was looking down at him. He had a grudging admiration for that. She was no push-over, that was for sure.

He wasn't quite sure how she maintained that up-do of hers. Her thick wealth of sable-brown hair seemed too heavy to be coiled up in those side buns of hers, especially to be held up by such a dainty, slender neck. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. Enough of the princess. That one was trouble.

He'd be taking her to her rebel base and that'd be the end of it. Collect his reward, settle his debt to Jabba and he was a free man. Probably never see the kid or the cold princess ever again.

Somehow the thought didn't make him as cheerful as he expected.