"Nice Men" and other Han/Leia one-post stories - Updated 8/8

This is something I dug up from my piles of little fan fics, and since I've been kind of slow and non-prolific in my writing lately, I thought I'd post it kind of experimentally. It's just a narration of a scene or two from ESB - nothing new or mind-boggling, and it starts and ends kind of suddenly, but I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it.
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Ignoring the droid's indignant protests, Han turned to the little cubby hole where he had sent Leia to do some simple repairs. She had finished with the welding and now struggled to set the newly-repaired machinery back into place. He could see her whole body stiffen, not just with the strain, but also frustration, annoyance, and impatience. If he approached her now, she would most likely push him away. It was the worst possible time to try to break down the
barriers she kept all around herself; it might only destroy all his chances forever.

He couldn't understand, then, why he continued to approach her. Why he seemed to sense, despite all her angry wrenching and frustrated sighs, a certain vulnerability, a breach in the supposedly impenetrable walls. He had to go for it. Acting on instinct rather than intelligent decisions, he came up behind her.

Leia felt his arms come around her. She was surprised that even Han would go so far, until she realized he was trying to help her replace the mechanism. No, that was no excuse. She shoved him off, attempting to ignore the peculiar warmth that spread through her entire being upon his touch.

"Hey, Your Worship!" His tone continued to carry that touch of mockery, though he said nothing that was outright insulting. "I'm only trying to help."

Leia couldn't quite put her finger on what exactly irritated her so much when he talked this way. Giving up the useless search, she instead scrounged up the first plausible complaint. He could, at least, address her by her proper name. "Would you please stop calling me that?" she demanded, less pleading than commanding, and meanwhile continued in her attempts to put the mechanism back in place, letting out something between a grunt and a sigh. The struggle only ended in more failure, and she managed to jam her finger in the process.

Han shrugged. "Sure, Leia." He managed to put something in his pronunciation of her name that made it even more irritating than all the epithets he had invented for her in the past.

Disgusted, Leia gave the mechanism one last furious wrench. "You make it so difficult sometimes," she muttered, and wondered how he would respond to the lame accusation as she nursed her injured finger.

He merely grinned. "I do, I really do." Why should it bother her so much that he willingly ackowledged his faults? Perhaps it was his arrogance, his self-assuredness, that seemed to go against all the beliefs she had ever held about honor and unselfishness.

And yet...as she glanced up into his face, he didn't seem so arrogant at all. "But you could be a little nicer," he was saying. "Come on, admit it - sometimes you think I'm...all right."

Leia almost laughed. All right! Coming from him, it was downright humble. "Occasionally," she conceded, keeping her face carefully averted. "Maybe. When you aren't acting like a scoundrel." She wasn't sure where she had come put with the word, but it seemed to suit him.

Oddly, he thought so too. "A scoundrel?" Han repeated. "A scoundrel." He nodded, a sly smile appearing on his face. "I like the sound of that."

Leia was perturbed to find herself staring into his face, and while she was thus preoccupied, his hands had wrapped themselves around hers. "Stop that," she said quietly.

"Stop what?"

You know, she said silently. Making my heart pound, my pulse race, my face flush.

Aloud, she said forcefully, "Stop that. My hands are dirty," she added pointedly.

Han grinned and refused to obey her command. "My hands are dirty too. What are you afraid of?"

What she was most afraid of, Leia realized, was that her own h

 

What a fantastic one-poster fic Cinde!

 

WOW!!! A h/L story!!

*faints*

that was awesome Cinde!!!

*SuperFilly*

 

Nice!! Thanks for sharing it.

 

Oh, boy, readers! Thanks for commenting! I'm glad you like it.


.....interested in any more little bits...?

 

Funny you should post that, it's uhhh, my secret favorite scene in all of Star Wars. Yeah...I wait till after C-3PO busts in and then declare I want to watch the scene about replacing the power couplets again...

I was just thinking about that today. I love that scene, and you wrote a fantastic story revolving around it! Just what I needed to read, so romantic, so real! Great job, and now I'm just rambling.

 

Wow, you write Leia so well! You should do a re-write of ESB from Leia's POV, and really develop the blossoming romance, and the evolution of their feelings for each other.

 

Very nice, Cinde. I love reading about the thoughts of the scene, not just the dialogue. I'd love to read more scenes too.

 

I'm working on a little bit based on the carbon-freeze scene. Anyone interested?

 

that was really great.

 

nice! make it a two post fic more morrrrrrrrrrrre

 

That was fantastic Cinde. I love how you got into their head that way. You write for Han and Leia very well.

 

Well, I don't know if this one is as good as the other - it's much darker, at any rate. But now that I've started, I just can't stop writing this little posties!
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When they had discovered that they were betrayed, Leia had thought things could not possibly be worse. Death seemed the only likely ending of this nightmare. And in her mind, that would be the worst possible ending, their lives cut off after they had come so far, their plans destroyed, all their struggles for naught.

But she was horribly wrong. Death was apparently not Vader's plan for them, not yet. His mind was even crueler, even more devious than she had imagined. Before disposing of them, he intended to use them. To trap Luke. The thought of being the bait in his trap made her stomach writhe. There was no way to escape and warn him. Luke's caring for them would be his undoing.

And yet she still could not fight off the dread, as the stormtroopers marched them down into the dark bowels of the city, that something far worse was about to happen. She had encountered that dread ever since they had arrived at Bespin, and though she managed to ignore it at first, it had grown and stretched until finally seizing her. It did not dissipate when the betrayal was revealed; if anything, it worsened. Something.... something was about to happen, so terrible that she could not comprehend it.

Being used to lure Luke, picturing the danger he was coming into.... yes, that was dreadful. Yet ? she had the oddest sensation something else was waiting at the edge, waiting to snatch her.

Or someone else?

Leia glanced at Han, whose hands had been tied behind his back, unlike the rest of their group. He had been treated the most cruelly of all of them, and she could not understand why. Senselessly tortured, battered and beaten ? Leia could not believe it was all just to catch Luke. Han had told her that the masked figure accompanying Vader was a bounty hunter, one of the lowlifes Jabba the Hutt sent out to capture him. And now he was captured. Any minute now, Leia realized, he would be taken away. A cold hand clutched at her heart. It had not even occurred to her, until this moment, that this could be the cause of her dread. Han. A few weeks ago, she would have been ready to nod a curt farewell and watch him go without a bit of remorse. Now she wanted to shout in protest, however uselessly the words would fall upon the ears of their captors. It wasn't fair. Childishly, that was all she could think. It wasn't fair. It was too soon, too uncertain. She needed time to sort out the struggle in her feelings; she needed to decide how she really felt. But they were taking him away.

What had happened to her? This was not the way a self-disciplined, analytical leader was supposed to think. Frightened, confused and vulnerable, she felt like burying her face in Han's chest and crying her eyes out. Whatever was going to happen to them, that would certainly not help matters. She needed to pull herself together. Taking a deep swallow, she entered the dim chamber where the stormtroopers were taking them.
The air had a pungent odor. Steam, from whatever source, rose and hissed in the air. The clatter of stormtrooper's boots rang throughout the chamber, another sound contributing to the noisy silence. At the center of the room, a circular pit gaped near the feet of chattering Ugnaughts. Leia did not dare peer into the pit. She allowed the troopers to lead them to a nearby platform and huddled close to Han. Threepio worried and warbled from Chewie's back, and Leia did her best to ignore him.

It was more difficult to ignore the conversation from the other side of the chamber, between Vader and the bounty hunter. She could only catch pieces of it, but there was something about Han.... not surviving.... compensation for the loss.... Her dread sickened as the implications of their words tumbled around in her mind, her thoughts as flurried as the steam that surrounded them. Death had seemed likely for all of them, but now that she had to consider th

 

nice!

 

I like it! It's sad, but it should be sad. I hope you keep writing!

 

That was so sad and wonderful! We need MORE!!! You should change the title though, so we can see when it's checked....

*SuperFilly*

 

I love it...you write it much better than the ESB novelization scene. A new beautiful perspective, very nice!

 

WOW!

 

Beautiful Cinde. You write sad stories so well.

 

Very nice. I liked them both, though the second was sad.

Got any more?

 

Wow. Just . . . wow. That was so dark and beautiful. Write some more ESB scenes!

 

Wow, those were incredible!! Please tell me you're going to be writing some more. Fantastic, thanks for sharing.

 

Beautifully written! I love those two scenes, and I can't get enough of reading different interpretations of them

 

I will gladly write more; I'm working right now on the scene in which Han gets defrosted. And I'm always open to writing more ESB scenes in addition to that. One question, though I feel kind of foolish having to ask this - how does one change the title of a thread? I just don't know how.

 

You just click "Edit" on the first post, and change the title there. Don't feel bad-- I couldn't figure that out for the life of me.