“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.
“Mom.”
“Oh, relax, Tem. I’m your mother. I’m allowed to embarrass you from time to time. It is my parental right, sacred and omniversal.”
“Ugh.”
Jas leans back with a scoundrel’s ease and clucks her tongue. “I think we’re supposed to call him Snap now, isn’t that right?”
Again he’s embarrassed. Blushing as he does. “That’s what the other pilots in Phantom Squadron call me. It’s because I can turn like this—” He snaps his fingers, pow. Everyone knows it’s because of his nervous habit—one shared by his father, once. But no one corrects him on it today.
“Phantom Squadron. More like Fancy Squadron,” Sinjir says. “Even fancier is this faint dusting of, what is that on your lip and cheek there? Dirt? Choko powder?” He leans forward with a finger to poke at it.
“Ow, hey,” Tem says. “I’m growing a beard is all.”
“Like Jom,” Jas says.
“Like Jom,” the rest of them echo. Again they raise their glasses. And again they clink and they drink.
Conder leans forward and says to Temmin: “A mouse droid tells me that the New Republic is setting up a new flight academy on Hosnian Prime. And I hear you’ll be a pupil there, is that right?”
“Yeah. It’s no big.”
“Perhaps you’ll actually learn how to fly a ship,” Sinjir says with a wink. “You know they’re not toys you smash in the ground.”