This time, exceptionally, we have Han and Leia!

"Han...?".

Busy, as always, with his beloved Falcon, the former smuggler hadn't noticed his wife approaching him from behind, just beside his seat. He turned around to look at her: she was pale, she looked about to pass out.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Let's go away" the woman murmured.

"Away? We must reach Naboo, you remember? It's our anniversary, kriffing Jabba!" Han replied, annoyed. "You don't want to go back now! We've been planning this for months!".

Leia breathed in loudly, like a person who is about to lose patience or to cry without any possibility to tell the difference between the two options.

"Look at where we are" she whispered weakly. Her hands squeezed each other, making her knuckles white. She was trembling.

Slightly irritated, Han glanced at the control panel to check the board computer. One of his hands just floated above the screen, the other went to hold his forehead.

They were in the exact place where Alderaan, ten years ago, had seen its last sunrise.

Now there was nothing: no asteroids, no dust. Only a desolate void, an immense space of nothing that seemed to broadcast the remote echoes of the dead's voices. Leia still heard them through the Force: the same mute scream which had frozen Obi-Wan Kenobi's blood. It was a cursed place, a place that, despire the silence and the utmost calmness, wasn't going to have peace. Ever.

The princess of the lost planet only murmured a sentence after that moment of contemplation: "I should have been with them".

"Don't say so" Han said softly, but firmly, after standing up to embrace his wife.

"I do. I abandoned my people... no, I condemned them to death!".

Han could now see that Leia was weeping: thanks to her career in Senate she was able to hide any emotion to anyone, there weren't any tears on her face, but her lips were trembling and her shoulders shaking. The man had learnt to read her like an open book.

He kissed her forehead and held her close, knowing she truly needed that.

"You did nothing wrong" he murmured "you told me what happened. That's not your fault, they were the criminals".

"Then I had to be there with them" Leia said, her eyes watery. "I've never said goodbye to my parents".

Even with his harsh character Han was moved, torn apart by the vulnerable crack in Leia's voice. He couldn't bear the sight of her in those conditions.

"Your life would have been wasted" he said. "You still had a lot to do, we wouldn't have won the war if you hadn't been there. There are so many people who agree with me because they love you...".

"Many of those people wouldn't have met me if I had died there, so they wouldn't love me now" the woman replied bitterly.

"Nonsense" Han grumbled. "Luke, Lando, Wedge, Chewie, Mara, Winter, Mon, Riekaan, everyone else. Our children, Leia, think about our children...".
He tilted up his spouse's chin with two fingers and added: "Imagine you hadn't met this fantastic man".

Leia slapped him in the chest, even if she didn't stop crying. He just held her, ready to help her through her darkest hours as he had vowed in their wedding day.

Kriff, I had so much trouble in translating this stuff... too many ThirdConditionals!😂