They’d had a good couple of years together, though, and he figured that after a few years of marital joy, Chewie might be willing to come back and make occasional smuggling runs with him. Being a happy married guy was one thing, but being married didn’t mean you were dead, right?
He and Chewie barely had a moment to speak together before the bustle of the wedding plans took his friend off on other duties. Apparently Wookiees did not have “best men” companions the way humans did, but Chewie, in deference to Han, asked the Corellian to stand beside him.
Han had grinned.
“Okay, I get to be ‘best human,’ eh?”
Chewbacca roared with amusement, and told Han that was as good a term for it as any.
As he sat in a corner in Attichitcuk’s home, staying out from underfoot, Han thought about the only time he’d ever asked a woman to marry him. That had been Bria, when he was nineteen, and she was eighteen, and he’d been a lovestruck, moony-eyed kid, too young and dumb to know any better. Good thing for him that Bria had left him ….
Han opened the inner pocket of his vest and took out a much folded, aging piece of flimsy. Opening it, he read the first line:
Dearest Han, You don’t deserve for this to happen, and all I can say is, I’m sorry.
I love you, but I can’t stay ….
Han’s mouth twisted, then he folded the flimsy again and shoved it back into his pocket. Until last year, just before the Battle of Nar Shaddaa, he’d thought that Bria must have gone crawling back to the Ylesians, unable to live without the Exultation.
And then he’d encountered her, gorgeously gowned and coiffed, in Moff Sam Shild’s fancy penthouse on Coruscant. She’d called Shild “darling” and there had been every indication that she’d been the Moff’s concubine. Han had done his best to despise her ever since. The idea that Bria might have actually loved the Moff never entered his head .
. . he knew who she still loved. When she’d first seen him she’d gone pale, and it was still there, in her eyes, though she’d tried to disguise it ….
Moff Shild had committed suicide shortly after the Battle of Nar Shaddaa.
The news-vids had been full of it. Vids of his memorial service (and Han had watched them deliberately) had shown no glimpse of Bria, though.
And now … to find out that she’s some kind of Rebel agent for Corellia … Han thought. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered whether that was what Bria had been doing in Moff Shild’s household. Had she been a Rebel intelligence operative, assigned to spy on the Moff, and, through him, the Empire?
It made sense. Han didn’t like it, but he found that he had more respect for Bria if she’d been sleeping with the Moff to gain information, than if she’d just been what she appeared to be—a spoiled, gorgeous plaything.
He wondered what she was doing, now that the Moff was dead. Visiting planets and helping their underground Rebel movements get organized, obviously.
Also … Han had heard that a year or so ago, a group of human Rebels had hit Ylesia, attacking Colony Three and rescuing about a hundred slaves. Could Bria have been involved with that?
The way Katarra and the other Wookiees talked about her, she was some kind of warrior saint, risking her life to bring them arms and ammo from the Corellian rebels. And Kashyyyk was an Imperial slave world.
Han remembered how betrayed she’d been when she’d realized that the Ylesian religion was a hokey bunch of fake mumbo-jumbo. She’d been furious and bitter. She’d hated the fact that, in the space of a second, she’d been altered from Pilgrim to slave. In the years since that horrifying realization, had she taken that fury and translated it into action against the Ylesians and the Empire’s slavers?
Han Solo hadn’t lacked for female company since Bria, by any means.
Back on Nar Shaddaa, Han and Salla Zend had been an item for more than two years now. Salla was a spirited, exciting woman, an expert tech and mechanic as well as a skilled pilot and smuggler. She and Han had so many things in common—and one of the foremost things that characterized their affair was that neither of them was interested in anything but having a good time—while it lasted.
Han’s relationship with Salla was something that he could count on, without it getting in the way. They’d never made any promises to each other about anything, and that was the way they both liked it.
Han had often wondered whether he really loved Salla—or she him. He knew he cared for her, would do almost anything for her, but love? It was safe to say that he’d never felt about her or any woman the way he’d felt about Bria.
But I was a kid then, he reminded himself. Just a reckless kid, who didn’t know any better than to fall like a ton of neutronium. Now I’m a lot smarter….