Archive of Our Own ^beta

The mattress by his feet shifted a bit, and there was pressure on his shins that suddenly went away.

His daughter was crawling into bed with her parents. She hadn't done that in a while. He'd almost forgotten. Probably because he and Leia were finally both getting a good night's sleep.

Her funny whisper, exaggerated so actually kind of loud, was at his ear.

"Dada."

"Mm," he grunted. Maybe she'd had a bad dream, and just wanted the comfort of lying next to them.

"Spirit came."

Oh, right. That's why he was so sleepy. He and Leia had gotten to bed late, making sure Pandreia was really asleep before transforming their living room into the magical scene of Spirit's Night.

At that, at least she wasn't whispering that the living room was on fire, because Han had worried about the candles.

"Mm," he grunted again. She was sitting on his arm, so not in for a snuggle.

She leaned forward and pulled on his ear. "Come see," she whispered into his crookedly-angled face.

"Om," he complained, and sighed.

An old memory came to him as he sat on the edge of the bed. Pandreia was already standing on the floor, doing that telltale dance of feet.

"'Fresher," he commanded her, and she scampered gratefully away, relieved that someone had put a name to her feelings.

Why would his toddler daughter needing to pee remind him of Luke?

Spirit came.

Yeah. Twenty-one year old Luke wandering into the Falcon's lounge, hair not combed, shift not started, obviously his first destination- no; second, since he had checked to see if the Command Center looked festive after Spirit's Night.

During the war, no candles, no gifts, just a garland of greenery stringing the monitors together. Stupid, fresh-faced Luke, Han had thought, able to say that, think that, after the things he'd seen, the things he knew.

The memory of being a kid, the power of belief, that even years later Luke remembered and loved his little-kid self, and smiled, and told Han, when he knew for certain there was no Spirit, "Spirit came."

What time was it, anyway? Han twisted his head to see the bedside chrono on Leia's side. Kriff, they'd only been asleep about three hours. Leia was on her side, still asleep. He wondered if he should wake her. If she would be upset about missing her daughter's reaction.

She had predicted it. "She's so excited. You know she's going to get up early."

If Leia had predicted it, then she knew already how her daughter would react, because Leia was like Luke, someone who remembered what it was like to have Spirit in their lives. He decided to let her sleep.

"Wait for me," Han called to Pandreia in a hush, because she had exited the 'fresher and was already heading towards the living room. "Wanna see it from on high?"

"Bird eyes?"

"Shh. Yeah." He hoisted his daughter up on his hip. "Bird's eye view," he whispered.

There were candles on the mantle, on two tables, and on all the window ledges, the dark night outside acting like a mirror to the glass and reflecting the flames, adding to the soft glow. They'd bought slow-burning, and they seemed to be so. In the three hours since, the wicks still had plenty of wax on them.

"Pretty," Pandreia said.

"Yeah," Han answered.

It was. Spirit's magical decorating was... tender, almost. Soft and gentle. Really peaceful. There were metal beads in the greenery Leia hung that sparkled in the candlelight. In the middle of the night, when everyone should be asleep, to see it undisturbed was special. Han hadn't anticipated that.

"Can I open mine?" Pandreia asked about her present.

"No, wait for Mada. Let's sit and watch everything sparkle, huh?"

He sat in the big armchair that had no candles by it and settled Pandreia on his lap, hoping she'd settle her head on his shoulder and they could fall asleep.

"I like it, Dada."

Han half-smiled. "Your Uncle Luke does too." He thought of Luke again, the way he hadn't combed his hair and came to the Falcon first. Spirit came.

He absorbed the peace in the room. He and Leia had made it and he didn't know what it was like to believe and then not believe, and then believe again, even when you knew it was just a story.

Han had known, always, there was no such thing as Spirit. Spirit's Night was for the lucky children and he'd had to make his own luck, and he never bothered to pretend that Spirit came by lighting candles and buying presents and hanging greenery. The holiday was another way to separate the lucky from the unlucky, to cram some sort of bitterness down throats that wouldn't have sweets.

Pandreia was one of those kids now, a lucky one. And he squeezed her close in the moment, because somewhere out there was someone who wasn't and he felt, sitting in his tranquil living room... sad. He had half a mind to bundle her up and take her outside where there were no candles, just the darkness of night, and show her the alleys and the dirt and the cold and the hunger.

Leia had been like that. She was one of the luckiest probably, and when she grew up it all went away; not Spirit's Night but everything else, and it made her sad and it made her energetic, to go out and fix things, make every single being in the galaxy lucky to be loved. She couldn't do it, though, such an impossible task, and Han was there to lift her up and set her going again, because he wanted to show her that misfortune didn't stay forever. Longer than Spirit's Night, that's for sure, but it didn't have to be forever.

He loved Leia. Loved her that she saw her good fortune as unfair to others, loved her for wanting to take luck away and just make it the way things were, the way things should be. He thought of his little-kid self, all the feeling and struggle, and realized that's what Leia had done for him. Made it okay. Made it worth it.