IV

For a moment, seven-year old Han Solo had conflicting thoughts about passing the door. He could grab and hold on to it…but he needed to accept the change that was coming. His life would never be the same after this. He wouldn’t be one child in the crowded orphanage; he’d be someone’s, not one of Gabria’s; he’d be able to see a new planet, safer than Corellia.

So he followed Gabria through the door, shyly shuffling his feet and looking up through a fringe of spiky brown hair. The couple sitting on one of the couches within were blonde-haired and wore neatly tailored clothing, his a white tunic and cloak, hers a tan sheath dress with a red neckline of beads. Gabria steered Han to the room’s other couch with a hand on his shoulder.

Han had never seen this room before. It held one shuttered window with elegant lintels, the two couches which faced one another, a navy blue rug, and a silver protocol droid. As Han and Gabria came in, the droid offered a tray holding two glasses of water to the couple, and so Han’s first look at their eyes showed him surprise and greed as they took the offered liquid.

“This is Mark and Talia Redsun,” said Gabria to Han. “They’re here from Tatooine. They want to adopt you.” She put a placating hand on his back and smiled at the two offworlders, red lips curved in her sincere smile as usual.

“How many years is it going to be before he can work?” Mark Redsun grumbled. His was a lined face held a haggard but not antagonistic expression similar to that which the people Han was used to seeing on the streets of Corellia’s poorer distincts often wore.

Gabria replied, “We think he’s about seven.”

“I can work,” Han assured them. The fear of leaving his friends and first home dissipated in the face of real life people who wanted to be his parents, those half-mythical creatures orphans spoke of under their breaths. The realness—the lack of sugar-coating—on these people reassured him. He couldn’t recall if he knew where Tatooine was, but it didn’t matter. He had a home to tell the others about, and to find on a map of the galaxy. The prospect offered him an unimagined thrill.

“Is his face alright?” asked the woman, Talia. With one hand she brushed at her own chin.

“Be assured that all of our children are healthy and inoculated,” Gabria replied. “He just got that scar from falling, a few years back.

Would you three like to be alone for a while?”

“I’ll go with them,” said Han immediately.

Gabria’s kind face smiled in understanding as she looked down at him, hesitant for a moment. Then her demure manner returned. “You’ll be part of the Redsun family now. Tatooine is a peaceful planet. You’ll be a farmer of a sort we don’t have here, harvesting water from clouds.

“Cool,” Han replied.

He said goodbye to his friends from the orphanage in a cluster of hugs, congratulations, and some tears. Han’s belongings had been packed in a plastic case by Gabria and set beside him, ready to board an interplanetary liner. Tentatively he slid out of the group to take Talia’s proffered hand. She smiled, and the warmth of that smile was like two suns.

Han grew tired of the two suns quickly, just like every other human on Tatooine did. The cool underground room the Redsuns gave him became a refuge, his territory and his place to collapse after a productive day. Over the years he grew tanner and used to farm work. His hair bleached to coffee-colored. He spent his afternoons fixing droids, buying supplies, and driving the dented work speeder to retrieve water tanks and mushrooms from the vaporators, armed with a slug gun in case of attack by Sand People. Mark and Talia were tough and simple, but kind—perfect matches for Han. They did their own share of the same tasks that he did, and with few exceptions the makeshift family was happy.

He discovered underground swoop-bike racing around the age of seventeen.

Han pulled his hat down lower to shade his eyes from the suns as he walked toward his borrowed swoop bike. Baron, one of the friends he had made in Anchorhead, the nearest town to the homestead, called out laughingly as Han mounted, loud enough that the other three racers, Tatooine-born youths all, could hear.

“Don’t wreck my bike, Han! I’m counting on you.”

Han had time to hear Mehan, Baron’s girlfriend, clapping from the rocks which served as viewing stands in the desert before engine roars and hums drowned out any other sound. The referee, a cyborg human probably in the employ of a Hutt, held up a hand, fingers bladed, then dropped it. Han winked at Mehan, but in the next second he had slammed down the accelerator and was too far away for it to matter.

The swoop racers arced around the first turn, sand flying in their wake. The track was a simple circle in the desert flats, without obstacles except for the heat and the other riders—

Han cursed between his teeth for a split second as he tugged his forgotten goggles over his smarting eyes. The bike lurched, but he took control again and accelerated past the next-to-last rider, a Twi’lek with its head-tails wrapped in strips of cloth to protect them from the elements. He risked a glance back as his swoop sped up, and saw the alien’s angrily set face.

The Twi’lek was female, and pretty. He hadn’t noticed her before, assuming that he knew everyone who mattered in the surrounding townships.

He smiled and accelerated again.

He came in second out of four; the Twi’lek girl was first.

As soon as the bike stopped, a part fell off, something round and important-looking, so that when Fixer picked it up Han dodged behind his acquaintance Biggs and went to congratulate the Twi’lek. She was standing beside her bike talking to an older, human woman. One lekku had come loose of its wrappings, showing pink skin dappled with red.

When the conversation paused, Han caught the racer’s eyes and lightly touched her head-tail with his fingers. “You’re sunburnt.” He said, trying to smile winningly. “If you stop by Tosche Station, just over a few dunes, maybe you can get something for that.”

“Maybe I will.” She gave a small, dispassionate smile.

He practically skipped back to his friends. He had chores to do at home later this afternoon and a meager amount of prize money to divide between Baron and himself, but with few exceptions, his life was good.