#beanenchilada

But she is here, and that's what's important really—she gave up on hypotheticals when she asked Han to marry her, stars in her eyes and her heart so full of love for him that she thought she might cry, and he ran to the other side of the galaxy to suck Lando's dick. She's here, and fourteen minutes ago she was going so crazy cooped up in her room that she decided to go exploring, and now Boba Fett is staring at her from where he's bent over a desk with a soldering iron. And the door is sliding shut behind her with a snick.

"What are you doing?"

Boba leans back, rubbing at his neck. There's a streak of grease up the left side of his face, and a thin sheen of sweat across his head. "Prepping."

"For?" Leia asks, stepping closer. But she can already see the answer.

It's a mobile—or the pieces for one, anyways: rough bits of duratin cut into the shape of mythosaurs, discarded parts from an old T-E series slugthrower, and pieces of some woody root with runes carved into them. He's already got the frame lying to the side, sharp edges of the scrap metal shaved smooth, and chains that sure as hell look like gold coiled neatly, ready to be hung.

"For the baby," Boba says, and that's what finally breaks her heart.

She'd held it together through the long ride, through Fennec's thousand cutting comments and duller teeth, through the pitiful excuse for a negotiation she'd forced them into—and before, through Han's return, his apology, his proposal, his pretending to want everything she wanted because he didn't want to be a screw up for the rest of his life.

Leia wants this baby—wants it so bad it hurts—and that's the bitch of it, because she's a great politician but she'd be a shit mother. She's too busy to care for a child and too much of a perfectionist to let it make mistakes—the only thing she could do is love it, really, and that's not enough. Maybe she could have managed more in another life, maybe if her parents hadn't been blasted into nothingness by her horrible gene donor of a father and she had someone who knew what to do—someone who remembered how to do anything but tear things apart and pray they could be rebuilt better. But she doesn't.

Leia knows herself—knows if she thought she had a single chance not cocking the whole thing up she'd take the kid and try to do it right, and damn the rest of it to hell. But she'll fuck it up—there's no doubt about that—and the only thing worse than having the baby and not getting to keep it, not getting a family, would be not having it at all, so she's here. In a Mandalorian's stronghold. Where he's going to raise her child. And it'll never even know her name.

Leia doesn't collapse on the floor; she has better control than that. But she feels something break inside her chest—some horrible, vital organ keeping her intact. She's not going to die, because she's survived a hell of a lot worse and she still has work to do, but she feels—not that far from it, anyways.

Boba stands up sharply, worry flooding his face.

"Han'll be wondering where I am," she murmurs listlessly, staring at the wall without seeing.

There's a hand on her arm quickly—almost immediately—and she lets herself be led over to a stool to be hovered over.

"What's wrong?" Boba asks. She can feel anxiety flooding out from him, washing over her and dripping into all the grooves in the floor.

Leia lets out a breath, and smiles a tight smile. His eyes are very black and very wide when she looks up at them, but she doesn't let that phase her.

"Nothing," she says lightly. "Pregnancy hormones, you know. I'm sure the fetus is fine."

Men far more stupid than Boba would have seen that for the lie it is; she can't blame him from looking unimpressed.

"I should be getting back to Coruscant," she adds. "I've been gone to long already."

Boba absorbs the information in an impressively short time. He pauses for a second, then nods. "They won't wonder about—" He nods at her stomach.

"I have plenty of friends looking for surrogates," Leia replies. This, at least, she knows how to do. "I'll use one of them as a cover—tell the press I'm doing them a solid."

"And the birth?"

Leia's mouth tightens inadvertently. "I'll do it off-world, find someone I can trust to bring you the baby—tell everybody else it was a stillbirth."

Boba is silent for a very long moment. He's deliberating, Leia thinks, but about what she can't tell.