Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(126)

While Leia is in the other room taking a shower, Han says in a low voice: “Hey. It’s you and me, kid. Whole damn galaxy against us but we’ll make it through okay. I’m not always gonna be the best dad—c’mon, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I can barely take care of myself. But I’ll always keep us pointed in the right direction…even if we zig and zag a little to get there. There’s your first lesson: Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t mean following a straight line. Sometimes you gotta—” He takes his hand and gestures with it like it’s a fish swimming this way and that, left and right and up and down. “Don’t tell your mother I said that.”

Ben starts to cry. It comes on fast, like a tropical downpour. He’s staring up, all innocent, and then it hits, boom. The little body tightens up and his mitts make little rubbery fists and punch the air. His white cheeks bloom with red. The sound coming out of him is like a storm siren.

Han winces. Ah, hell. He looks around him like there’s gotta be something or someone there to save him—nearby, he finds a small tooka doll that Lando sent over, and he takes it and thrusts it into the air above the boy and wiggles it. “Here. Look. The cat is, ahh. The cat is dancing? Dancing tooka. Come on, kid, you gotta give me something here.”

It does nothing to stem the tide of tears.

Han growls, looking around for something else. He’s about to yell for Leia—but there she is, coming in through the doorway. “He’s, ahh, you know. He’s making that sound again.”

“He’s crying.”

“Right. Yeah.” Han holds up a finger. “It’s not my fault!”

“Han,” Leia says, coming over to him, still in her towel. “It’s okay. He’s a baby. Babies cry. It’s how they tell you they want something.”

“Oh. Yeah, no, of course. Maybe you could do your—” He mimes his hand floating in the air in an almost religious gesture. Leia has a connection with the kid that he can never have. Like Luke, she has the Force. That’s a thing he never used to believe in, but since getting caught up with this group, he’s seen a whole lot of strangeness just to believe it’s just a bunch of hooey. Leia can’t do what Luke can do and maybe never will, but she can quiet the kid with but the faintest of gestures. He hates to admit it, but he’s jealous of that. Han will never have that with Ben. They’re connected in a way he can’t even begin to understand. “You know. Use the Force.”

“Why don’t we try something else?”

“A little brandy on his gums?”

“Pick him up,” she says.

“Just…pick him up?”

“Yes. He’s your son. Use your hands. Go on, Han. Pick him up. He wants to be snuggled.”

“I smuggle, not snuggle.”

“Han.”

He sighs. “Okay! Okay.” He stoops down and gingerly reaches for his son. He hoists him up and Ben twists and turns in his grip. He’s so small. Han thinks how easy it would be to break him. Or to drop him. The boy is vulnerable to everything. And so he does what feels most natural—he protects the kid by bringing him close to his chest. And just like that—

Ben stops crying. The boy nuzzles up against his collarbone. He burps once, his dark eyes pinch shut, and he’s out like a light.

“See?” she says. “You don’t need the Force at all.”

“But I’ll never have what you have with him.”

“You don’t have to,” she says, sweetly. “You will have your own thing, because you’re his father.”

—

Weeks later, Norra’s old crew gathers again. Not for an assignment. They gather because it may be the last time they see one another for a while. Maybe forever, given the way things sometimes go. The tavern they find themselves in is one of Sinjir’s favorites, up on the side of a cliff overlooking the Silver Sea. They gather to drink, and they drink to Jom, and to Auxi, and to Brentin Wexley, and of course they drink to Mister Bones and tell stories about that mad dancing murder-droid until they’re all laughing so hard they’re crying. They drink to the Empire and to the New Republic. They drink to Leia and Han and the new baby who surely is keeping them up at nights. (“Squalling grub-monkey,” Sinjir calls the boy.)

When they talk of the child, Sinjir adds, as if surprised: “Did you know: The child did not smell bad. Not at all.”

Conder laughs and explains, “Sin thought the baby would stink.”

“Of course I did. Babies are foul little gobbos, covered in their own infant slime. I expected them to smell sour. Or…diapery.”

“Oh, Sinjir, no,” Norra says, her cheeks blushing with a bit of inebriation from the junipera she’s been drinking. “No, no, no. Babies smell wonderful. They smell sweet and fresh and innocent.”

“Sounds like you want to eat them,” Sinjir says. “Wait, maybe we should eat them. Like wriggling little loaves of bread, they are.”

Conder drives an elbow under his ribs. He oofs.

Norra continues: “Stop it, there’s nothing like the smell of a new baby. That little star-child smelled like he was made of clean towels. This one here used to smell so good—” She leans into her son, who of course drinks a sensible jogan-juice. Temmin wrinkles his nose in embarrassment and fails to pull away from his mother as she pinches his cheeks and makes a sound like wooshy gooshy woo.