“Don't tell me a Rathtar’s gotten loose.”

Without elaborating, Han rushed off the Falcon and away from Breha, Finn and Rey. They all exchanged a glance before hurrying after him with Chewie.

“Wait, what?” Finn asked. “Did you say Rathtars?”

As they headed down the ramp onto the larger cargo bay of the ship Han had pulled them into, Breha wondered where her father could have possibly gotten it. If he'd stolen it, which was likely, what was he going to do with it now that he had the Falcon back? Would he drop it on the nearest planet and forget about it? More importantly, could she use it to convince her father to let her keep the Falcon for the Resistance? If they had the Millenium Falcon on their side it would be a major boon. Of course, it'd be better if she could get Han to join them but she wasn't exactly holding her breath for that possibility. He'd have to face Leia for that.

“You're not hauling Rathtars on this freighter, are you?” Finn asked Han when they finally caught up to him at a control panel displaying different camera feeds from around the ship.

“I'm hauling Rathtars,” Han answered monotonously, not taking his eyes off the displays. “Oh, great. It's the Guavian Death Gang. Must have tracked us from Nantoon.”

“What does a death gang want with you?” Breha asked her father, but he was already walking away, ignoring her question entirely.

Rey looked confused as they followed after Han and Chewie. “What's a Rathtar?”

“They're big and they're dangerous,” Han answered plainly.

“You ever heard of the Trillia Massacre?” Finn asked her.

“No.”

“Good.”

Breha rolled her eyes as they kept walking. “Sure, don't actually explain to her what a Rathtar is. They're big, like my dad said, but really ugly and have all these tentacles or something. They'll kill just about anything in their path and especially when they're hungry.”

“I got three of them going to King Prana,” Han told them.

“Why does he want Rathtars?” Breha asked.

“Three?” Finn questioned. “How'd you get them on board?”

“I used to have a bigger crew.”

“Daddy…” Breha said.

“Oh, don't start,” Han said. He turned back towards them, stopping their seemingly aimless wandering through the ship as Chewie opened up a hatch in the floor for them. “Get below and stay there until I say so. And don't even think about taking the Falcon.”

He gave a pointed look at Breha at the last part as Rey gestured to BB-8. “What about BB-8?”

“He stays with me until I get rid of the gang, then you can have him back and be on your way," Han answered.

It didn't sound like the best plan in the world, Breha had to admit. She understood it was his way of making sure they didn't take off with the Falcon without him, but with what the little droid had being as important as it was, she didn't like the idea of leaving him to confront a death gang. If Han couldn't talk his way out through a peaceful resolution, BB-8 could get hit in the crossfire. One unlucky shot could mean they lose the map to Luke forever. She really didn't want to risk it.

But, she also knew her father. She could argue with him all she liked but they didn't have time with a death gang already making their way towards them. Unfortunately, she might just have to suck it up and part ways with BB-8 for a little while and hope the Force would guide them all to safety.

“What about the Rathtars?” Finn asked, shaking Breha from her thoughts. “Where are you keeping them?”

There was a thud to their left, causing the three of them to jump. There, on the small window set into the wall was some kind of gross, slimy mouth on the end of a equally gross and slimy tentacle, latched onto the glass as if it was trying to break through.

“There's one,” Han said.

Finn was the first to drop below. “What are you gonna do?” Rey asked.

“Same thing I always do,” Han answered with a small shrug. “Talk my way out of it.”

Rey dropped down as Chewie made a sound Breha understood to be of disagreement.

“Yes, I do!” Han argued. “Every time!”

“Please be careful, Daddy,” Breha requested.

Han brushed off her concern. “Yeah, yeah, just get down there with your friends.”

With a sigh, Breha followed his directions and dropped down, finally allowing Chewie to close the hatch above them, hiding them from sight and hopefully allowing the death gang who was slowly approaching to have no idea they were even there.

If it came down to it and the negotiations didn't go the way Han wanted, having the element of surprise would work in their favour. And, if things went really wrong, hopefully it'd mean they get out with their lives. Breha really hoped it wouldn't come to that.

They sat there in silence for a beat of three, just enough time for them all to get properly situated, before Rey, in a whisper, asked, “Is Han Solo your father?”

Breha looked over at her, surprised before realizing this was going to come up sooner or later. Of course, she would have bet later over, well, now.

“Do you really want to talk about this while there's a death gang possibly walking over our heads?” she asked in return, giving her an out.

“Yes.”

“Alright, then,” she said with a sigh. “Yes, he is. But I haven't seen him in a long time. He and my mum… well, it's kind of complicated. Something happened and they started fighting a lot and instead of facing the problem, they both kind of ran away. Mum to the path which led her to the Resistance and Daddy, well, went back to smuggling, clearly.”

Above them, several sets of footprints which had been slowly approaching came to a halt. A menacing voice said, “Han Solo, you're a dead man.”

“Bala-Tik, what's the problem?” Han answered.

“He called you Bree, didn't he?” Finn asked. “Is that your name?”

“Nickname,” she answered. “Almost everyone calls me that. No one calls me by my full name.”

“The problem is we loaned you fifty-thousand for this job,” Bala-Tik said from above them.

“Can you see them?” Rey asked, still whispering.

“No,” Finn and Breha replied at the same time.

As they started crawling down the little vent type space they'd been placed in towards the sound of the voices, Breha was thankful what was happening above them had caused the topic of conversation to change. As much as she was beginning to trust Rey and Finn, as much as the Force seemed to be pushing her towards trusting them, she still hadn't known them very long. Everything she'd learned in the Resistance told her it was still too soon to admit who she was.

Until she learned what about them the Force wanted her to know, she shouldn't tell them her real name, who she really was. Even if Rey just wanted to go back to Jakku, if she knew Breha was really the daughter of the leader of the Resistance and infamous smuggler Han Solo, if it got out that Resistance agent Aldera was the daughter of Leia Organa and Han Solo, it'd put an even bigger target on her back. Sure, Kylo Ren knew who she was, there was no hiding that, but the whole of the First Order didn't know. For some reason, the reason she still clung to hope she could get her brother back, he hadn't told anyone else who she was.

And Finn… he said he was a Resistance agent and she wanted to believe him but she'd be naive to ignore the obvious signs — to her, anyways — that he was hiding something. Maybe it was just why he'd joined the Resistance, maybe it was his real identity just like her, maybe it was something terrible which their line of work had caused to happen to him, but what if it wasn't? It could be something totally innocent but the Force urging her to trust him didn't mean she could discount it being something terrible. She knew her family's history, she knew it was all too possible for the Force to be manipulated to make it easier to trust someone.

Breha wasn't an idiot, as much as she knew people sometimes thought her to be. She knew people believed her to be too naive and trusting, thought she didn't see the true horrors of the galaxy. She had heard the whispers around the Resistance base about her, how people thought her belief she would save her brother — not that anyone knew who her brother truly was, they just knew he'd been brainwashed by the First Order — was a child's dream, unattainable. But she was smart. She was a Skywalker. She was the daughter of Leia Organa, the woman who had not only started the Resistance, but she'd been a leader of the Rebellion at only nineteen years old and Han Solo, who may not have always seemed the smartest (what was going on above them was a good example of that) but he'd managed to survive this long as a smuggler, which wasn't a career for someone who couldn't at the very least think on their feet. She was the granddaughter of Anakin Skywalker, one of the best generals the Jedi had during the Clone Wars and Padmé Amidala, who was elected Queen of Naboo at fourteen and then became a Senator and fought in her own way in the Clone Wars.

All this to say, she wasn't an idiot. She knew what the way Finn was already looking at her meant, she knew why he would have asked if she had a boyfriend. And she also knew the feeling in her own chest, what it was the beginnings of, what it could turn into, if she let it. But she was a Skywalker, after all. She knew what loving the wrong person could do, what even loving the right person could do if the Force wasn't in your favour.

“I heard you also borrowed fifty-thousand from Kanjiklub,” Bala-Tik said.

“You know you can't trust those little freaks. How long we known each other?” Han argued.

After crawling some ways down, they were finally able to peer up through the pipes and the grated floor above them to see Han, Chewie, BB-8 and the death gang in the distance. The voices were clearer now but their proximity also meant they probably couldn't get away with much conversation. At least this meant they wouldn't be able to ask Breha anymore questions about who she really was.

“They have blasters,” Rey observed.

“A lot of them,” Finn agreed.

“And there's more of them than us,” Breha pointed out.

“Not long,” Bala-Tik told Han. “We want our money back. Now.”

“You think hunting Rathtars is cheap? I spent that money,” Han said.

“Kanjiklub wants their investment back, too.”

“I never made a deal with Kanjiklub!”

“Tell that to Kanjiklub.”

They heard the doors at the other end of the corridor open and saw Han turn in that direction. The three of them started crawling towards the newcomers to get a better look at what they were dealing with.

“Tasu Leech,” Han said, “good to see you.”

As Tasu Leech answered in an alien dialect Breha was unfamiliar with but her father clearly wasn't, she couldn't help but let her head fall with a sigh. This was just like her father. If he wasn't careful, these negotiations he was trying to muddle his way through were going to get aggressive.

“Boys, you're both gonna get what I promised,” Han assured them. “Have I ever not delivered for you before?”

“Why would you ask them that?” Breha muttered to herself.

“Yeah,” Bala-Tik said.

Tasu Leech answered in his native dialect, clearly, for what was to follow, also in the affirmative.

“What was the second time?” Han asked and Breha suppressed a groan.

“Your game is old,” Bala-Tik told Han. “There's no one in the galaxy left for you to swindle.”

Tasu Leech said something else, probably adding onto Bala-Tik’s vague threat or simply agreeing with him.

“That BB unit,” Bala-Tik said. “The First Order is looking for one just like it. And two fugitives.”

Breha, Rey and Finn all exchanged a worried look, stopping in their tracks. They hadn't had the time to tell him the First Order was also after BB-8 and that's how they'd all come together. She should have known it would come back to bite them. It always did when they were low on time.

“We have to do something,” Breha whispered urgently.

“First I've heard of it,” Han said.

As the three of them hurried back towards the hatch, crawling as fast as they could, Rey stopped them at a small intersection in the vents. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said, approaching a set of fuses. “If we close the blast doors in that corridor, we can trap both gangs.”

“We can close the blast doors from here?” Finn asked.

“The fuses,” Breha realized.

“Resetting the fuses should do it,” Rey explained.

She leaned forward and pushed all the fuses, the lights above them turning from green to red as she did so. Where Breha expected to hear the sound of the doors closing and latching, she instead heard a distant roar which caused a shiver to run down her spine. Sensing their own fear at the sound, she looked over at Finn and Rey and saw them equally frozen in place.

“I've got a bad feeling about this…” Breha mumbled.

“Oh, no,” Rey said, a look of realization coming across her features.

“‘Oh, no’, what?” Finn asked.

Rey turned to look across the crossroads they'd found themselves at, her brown eyes landing on a different set of fuses. “Wrong fuses.”

“Kill them!” Bala-Tik shouted from above. “And take the droid!”

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an. bree is such a smart cookie, isn't she? I hope you enjoyed the chapter!