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That look was making Han uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just Chewie being gone—”

“That’s not it.”

Han stared at Luke. “No … not really. You know … I don’t know where I’m going anymore, kid. I have a wife and children who love me, and who I love. But that’s the problem. I’m Daddy. I’m Leia’s consort. I tell amusing stories at state dinners—”

“You’re very good at it,” Luke said gently. “There’s a place for those sorts of—”

“—and somebody asked me at one of those blasted dinners a while back what it was like, smuggling I mean, back in the old days. I started to answer and suddenly I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d run an Imperial barricade, or what the cargo was, or how it felt.”

Luke grinned at him. “It was me and Ben and the droids.”

Han looked startled. “You’re right—it was, wasn’t it?” He smiled almost unwillingly. “Yeah. All right, let’s say I couldn’t remember the last time I made any money at it—”

Luke turned his head, looked off-pickup, and turned back. “Han, my guests are arriving. Are you sure you won’t join us?”

Despite himself Han felt tempted. “… nah. Not tonight.”

Luke nodded. “I’ll come by tomorrow. All right?”

“All right. I’ll talk to you later, kid.”

Luke’s lips quirked in a small smile. “Han—”

“Yeah?”

“Han, I’m older than you were when we met.” The smile did not fade, but it changed quality subtly, in a way Han Solo did not quite understand. “The world changes, Han. You can’t stop it and you can’t fight it, and you can’t ever, ever turn it back.” Han had the oddest impression Luke was studying him; and then Luke nodded and said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Hang in there.”

His image vanished.

Han Solo thought, The kid’s turning into Obi-Wan right in front of my eyes.

• • •

He got a recording when he tried to reach Calrissian.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t be reached right now. Business has taken me on an extended trip; I’ll respond to any messages if I return.

“If this is Han, buddy, you owe me four hundred credits if I get back.”

Well, blast it, Han thought. Lando had found some trouble.

Late that evening he found himself down at the launching bay where he kept the Falcon.

It was dark, except for the bay lights high above him, and quiet except for the distant sounds of cargo being unloaded, in the commercial bays a good ways down.

Nobody questioned Han when he arrived; nobody asked him what he was doing there; he walked through the darkened bay as though he owned the place.

He very nearly did.

Han Solo stood at the edge of the bay, and laid one hand against the control for the overheads; and four banks of floods came to life.

Beneath the wash of light, the Millennium Falcon glowed white. She had never been so clean, in all the years Han had owned her; she had never been so carefully painted and beautifully detailed. Her engines had been rebuilt—the new hyperdrive engines never so much as blinked. The weapons emplacements were almost all new equipment.

There were even spare parts for everything.

Han had ceased to wonder about how much it had all cost; the New Republic had paid for it all. He’d never even seen a bill.

Sitting in the pilot’s seat, in the cockpit, he initiated a launch sequence. He didn’t really intend to take the ship up; he just wanted to look at the sky.

The dome above the Falcon split in two, slid slowly apart as the platform the Falcon rested on raised itself up, and the sky came out.

Han Solo stared out at the world.

It was amazing how much better it made him feel, just to be sitting here, in the closest thing to a home that he’d ever had. The seat next to him was empty, and that wasn’t right—but it wasn’t entirely wrong, either. He hadn’t met Chewbacca until well into his adult years; and there’d been a time, before that—before Chewie, after the death of his parents—when there had been nobody.

No one except himself.

Han wondered sometimes—rarely, to be sure—what his family would have thought about him, if they could have seen what he had grown into. He’d never had to wonder about it, when he