The first thing Luke felt upon falling into the garbage was water, or whatever liquid was in it. Wanting desperately for it to be water, Luke resigned himself to that and stood up, looking around him in disgust. He checked his blaster and made sure the power packs weren't water-logged, then pushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes before looking around more clearly.
Leia was up on top of a trash pile wrinkling her nose in disgust and looking helplessly at her stained white tunic and light brown pants while Chewie was roaring at the door and hitting it with his bowcaster.
"Chewie, move." Luke demanded, aiming at the door with his blaster. He fired, and immediately ducked as the bolt came right back at him and kept low as it whizzed around the room and eventually dissipated in the water.
"Nice job, numbnuts!" Leia hollered angrily, standing up and brushing her clothes while fixing Luke with an icy glare.
Luke just sighed and sheathed his blaster. "Nice to have you back." He muttered under his breath, shifting to the other side of the room as he heard Han's yells grow louder and realized that he was close to falling down on top of him.
Han fell into a particularly large pile of trash, and made a noise of disgust. Chewie grumbled something as he tried to get the door open, and Luke guessed that he was probably saying that it wouldn't budge. Leia was still wrinkling her nose at the smell, and she glared at Han when he glared back.
"What a wonderful smell you've discovered!" He snapped, his voice oozing with sarcasm. "Chewie, step out of the doorway."
Han wriggled out of the pile of garbage he landed in, and pulled out his blaster much to Luke and Leia's dismay.
"No, wait-!" Luke cried, but it was too late. Han fired and immediately the four ducked as the bolt whizzed around the room, hands on their heads and only looking up tentatively when the noise had stopped.
"Would you forget it? I already tried it; it's magnetically sealed!" Luke snapped, brushing his long hair out of his face and looking around for another way out. Leia, however, was much more enraged than her brother.
"Put that thing away or you're gonna get us all killed!" Leia yelled angrily, pointing at Han's blaster accusingly.
Han took on a mockingly compliant look. "Absolutely, Your Worship." Leia scowled at his insult, and then his face immediately turned angry again. "Look, I had everything under control until you brought us down here! You know it's not gonna take them very long to figure out what happened to us."
At this point Chewie let out a fearful grumble, and Leia fixed an angry stare on Han. "It could be worse."
Unfortunately for Leia at that exact moment something proved her wrong, and the walls creaked ever so slightly while the four of them looked around fearfully.
"There's something alive in here." Luke said urgently, the breath hitching in his throat as he searched the water for any proof.
Both Han and Leia had stopped bickering and listened skeptically, with Han scanning the water while Leia looked at her brother a little less doubtfully.
"It's just your imagination." Han replied confidently, but Luke and Leia both knew that maybe it wasn't just Luke's imagination. Neither could explain it, but they felt like something was about to happen.
But Leia ignored the feeling, instead joining Han in looking around for anything wordlessly but nevertheless feeling vulnerable now that she realized she was the only one in the group without a weapon.
Luke suddenly took a step back, scaring the wits out of both Han and Leia. "Something just moved past my leg."
"Look." Luke demanded, pointing into the water. "Did you see that?"
"What?" Han asked, his confidence noticeably more shaken. Chewie looked more scared now as well, growling anxiously and starts to beat on the door. Leia's stomach clenched as she felt the fear radiating from the other three, and wondered if any of them felt it as strongly as she did.
Something jolted inside Leia's mind, and before she could figure out what it meant the thing Luke had mentioned slithered around his leg, and to her horror it dragged him under the surface.
"Luke!" Both Han and Leia yelled, with Han digging through the water frantically while Leia stood frozen in fear. Her brother had just gotten dragged underwater by some... thing, and as the seconds ticked by slowly her heart squeezed more and more until she couldn't breathe.
Suddenly, when both Leia and Han thought all hope was lost, Luke broke through the surface like an explosion, writhing around and coughing nonstop.
"Luke!" Leia exclaimed relievedly, but her relief didn't last long when she realized that a tentacle was now wrapped around her brother's neck.
Leia thought fast, grabbing a long pole near her. "Luke, grab hold of this!"
"Blast it will you; my gun's jammed!" Luke gargled through the water in his mouth and the tentacle squeezing his throat.
"Where?!" Han asked in a panic, attempting to hold onto Luke while still holding onto his blaster as well.
"Anywhere!"
Han let out a few desperate shots but it was too late. Leia watched in horror as Luke tried to stand up and was immediately rushed back under, with Han crying out his name and digging frantically.
The seconds passed by again, and Leia heard Chewie give a low, mourning grumble. She felt tears start to rise at the corner of her eyes, and she angrily pushed them back. Luke was alive still; she didn't know how she felt it but she did, and she knew with all her heart that he'd come back up any second. Or at least, she wanted to believe he would.
But a loud noise from inside the trash room jarred her thoughts, and she shared a worried look with Han. This noise was much louder than the last, and it made them both extremely uneasy. Chewie was growling fearfully at this point, his attempts on opening the door becoming more frantic. The entire room was charged with anxious energy as the trio waited for Luke to reappear while simultaneously wondering what the noise was.
A few agonizing seconds later Luke came blubbering back up, coughing and flailing around again as his senses started to recover now that air was in his lungs.
"Help him'" Leia demanded to Han, then turning to Luke. "What happened?!"
"I don't know!" Luke exclaimed breathlessly, coughing as Han helped him up. "It let go of me and disappeared!"
Leia was extremely relieved that her brother was alive and safe, however she couldn't help feeling a bit worried that the creature had let go of him so soon. She somehow knew it was no longer in the garbage with them, but why did it leave? Did something scare it off?
"I've got a bad feeling about this." Han voiced Leia's own worries while Luke continued to cough and recoup from almost drowning, but the group didn't get much time to rest as a low rumble within the walls answered Leia's questions for her, and she exchanged worried looks with Han and Luke before looking back at the door to see it still hadn't budged at all.
Leia looked around, still worried about what scared the monster away but too tired to dwell on it too much. However, her eyes snapped wide open when the trash started moving around her.
"The walls are moving!" Luke exclaimed, while Leia took action immediately.
"Don't just stand there! Try and brace it with something!" She commanded, attempting to lift up a long metal pole near her and getting some help from Han while Luke looked around frantically before pulling out his comm.
The walls were growing closer together, and the four of them were caught in the middle.
"Get on top!" Han demanded at Leia, gesturing to the trash pile. She figured that maybe he thought that they could climb out, and she had to admit that it wasn't a bad idea. But she couldn't get a foothold, and was sent sprawling down every time.
"I can't!"
She looked over to see Luke with his comm out while yelling frantically into it, his eyes blown wide with fear and his body stuck inside a consistently restricting pile of trash. Leia and Han weren't that much better off, with Han trying to brace the walls against the long pole Leia had earlier and seeing it bend as if it were a twig.
"One thing's for sure: we're all gonna be a lot thinner." Han snapped dryly, and at the moment neither twin appreciated his attempt at humor but both decided to let it go, caught up in other, more life threatening things at the moment.
Leia felt herself slide down into the water, with only Han grabbing her arm to prevent her from being trapped underneath the trash. "Get on top of it!" He repeated, and again Leia tried and failed.
"I'm trying!" She snapped, scrambling up the unsteady pile of trash if only to get away from the threat of the water underneath her. Han was in a similar predicament next to her, and Luke was still shouting for Threepio into his comm.
Han and Leia shared a worried glance, and both realized dreadfully that they could touch the opposite wall with their feet at this point.
But that was it. The walls didn't come any closer. All four were hesitant to celebrate just in case the walls had stalled, but after a few more seconds Han let out a victorious whoop while Luke had a broad smile across his face and was screaming in hysteria, and Leia couldn't help but laugh hysterically in relief. They'd survived. She didn't know how, but they'd survived.
"Hey, open the maintenance hatch... Where are we? 3263827!" Luke requested into his comm, and immediately the door opened and Chewie walked out, followed closely by Han, Leia, and Luke.
Han tossed Luke a towel while the two of them changed out of their wet trooper outfits and revealed their drier clothes underneath, and Leia just sat next to Chewie, trying to avoid his horrible smell and the dripping of her clothes.
"Lucky; you two get dry clothes while I'm stuck in this." Leia gestured to her tunic while scowling.
"Oh, that reminds me." Luke grabbed something out of the pouch on his trooper belt and threw it at Leia. "I saw it in the maintenance room. See if it fits."
Leia held it up in front of her and rose a brow. It was a simple white dress, and how Luke managed to find a white dress inside the Imperial Death Star, especially in a maintenance room, was beyond her. But what mattered was that it looked like it fit, so Leia went back into the trash compactor and closed the door, changing out of her tunic quickly and slipping the dress over her body.
It limited her leg movement but it would do. Leia kept her white leggings and boots, knowing that she'd need them no matter how wet she was. She kept the belt from her tunic and rearranged her tangled brown mat of hair into her favorite hairdo; two buns covering her ears.
Satisfied, Leia exited the trash compactor and walked past Han and Luke briskly.
"If we could just avoid anymore female advice, we ought to be able to get outta here." Han stated, giving Leia a passive-aggressive glare as he did so.
Leia was having none of it, but before she could respond Luke interrupted her. "Well, let's get moving."
But before they could move, they all turned to see Chewie growling and pointing at the door. Han just let out a sound of disapproval and pulled out his blaster, ready to fire as Chewie watched.
"No, wait! They'll hear!" Leia exclaimed, but Han fired anyways, and immediately the three winced as alarms started blaring from inside the compactor and Chewie ran away.
"Come here, you big coward!" Han demanded, but Chewie shook his head no repeatedly. "Chewie, come here!"
"Where'd you pick this duo up?" Leia muttered to Luke, eyeing Han and Chewie unimpressed.
"Actually, they picked me up." Luke admitted with a shrug. The twins shared one last glance before approaching the two, with Luke taking the rear and Leia walking up next to Han.
Her brown eyes glittered angrily, fed up with his reckless antics. They were on an Imperial Death Star, and he refused to be careful, pointing his blaster and firing in all directions. "Listen, I don't know who you are, or where you came from, but from now on, you do as I tell you. Okay?"
To Leia's pleasure Han looked stunned, if not outraged at being addressed like that.
"Since when were you in charge?" He asked pointedly, using his long stride to keep pace with Leia's shorter legs. Luke was still in the back toweling off his hair, but he listened attentively to their conversation.
"Since I realized you three are incapable of a proper escape plan." Leia replied evenly, not breaking her pace.
"Look, Your Worshipfulness," Han started, and Leia whipped around and blinked. Your Worshipfulness? If that's supposed to be an insult, then it's a weak one. "Let's get one thing straight: I take orders from just one person. Me." Han pointed at himself, and Leia just rolled her eyes and continued walking.
"It's a wonder you're still alive." She replied dryly, not giving Han a chance to respond and instead shrugging her way past Chewie. "Will somebody please get this walking carpet out of my way?"
Leia rushed past the group angrily, and Han looked at Luke slowly in a way that Luke knew immediately that he wasn't too fond of his sister.
"Is she always like this?" He hissed angrily.
Luke shrugged, throwing the towel aside and ruffling his hair. "Mostly."
"Well, in that case I dunno why we even rescued the sassy princess in the first place." Han grumbled and walked forward, and Luke jogged to keep up with the group as they made their way through the halls.
Eventually, after lots of running through endless halls, the small group breathlessly reached a window overlooking the hangar, and Leia looked incredulously at the Falcon.
While his sister marveled at the piece of junk, Luke pulled out his comm. "C-3P0, do you copy?"
"For the moment." Threepio's prissy voice carried across the comm channel. "We're in the main hangar across from the ship."
"We're right above you. Stand by." Luke put his comm up and walked towards Han and Leia, where Leia was currently commenting on the Falcon.
"You came here in that thing?" She asked Han. "You're braver than I thought."
"Nice." Han praised her petty jab, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Come on."
Together the group jogged down the hall, and rounded the corner into about twenty stormtroopers. Luke and Leia immediately backtracked, but to their dismay and shock Han instinctively fired and barged right into them. Chewie followed him, and as they ran Han hollered back to the twins, "Get to the ship!"
"Where are you going? Come back!" Luke exclaimed, before Han and Chewie disappeared around the corner for good.
Leia just sighed and raised a brow. "He certainly has courage."
Luke frowned, not taking his eyes off of the corner where the smuggler and Wookie disappeared. "What good will it do us if he gets himself killed?"
"Come on!" Luke demanded angrily, but he didn't have time to dwell on Han's crazy behavior because muted alarms reached his ears. Together the twins start to dash towards the hangar, but unfortunately for them Imperial troopers were everywhere.
Luke fired his blaster blindly for cover fire as he and Leia raced through a hall with multiple stormtroopers in pursuit, and Luke only stopped when his feet reached the end of a ledge and he lost his balance. He looked down to see a gaping shaft in front of him, and panic gripped him as he desperately tried to regain his balance before he fell.
Luckily Leia noticed and grabbed his arm, pulling him back. Luke let out a breath of relief, but immediately remembered the situation they were in and looked to Leia worriedly.
"I think we took a wrong turn." He admitted, before blaster fire started coming from behind them. Luke and Leia instinctively ducked near the ledge, and Luke fired back at the advancing troops while Leia brought the door down, leaving the twins standing precariously on a short ledge overlooking the shaft.
"There's no lock!" Leia exclaimed worriedly, and Luke shot the control panel and felt a small prick of satisfaction as it went up in smoke.
Now that the door crisis was averted, the twins focused on how to get across the gaping hole.
"Quick, we've got to get across. Find the control that extends the bridge." Leia stated.
Luke looked back at the control panel, his stomach sinking. "I think I just blasted it."
Both twins ducked behind the small extension of wall they had while stormtroopers fired from across the shaft, and Luke fired back at them while Leia tried to fix the control panel to no avail.
"You're the one good at fixing things; fix this mess you made." Leia demanded, gesturing to the panel.
Luke looked at the panel, then at his sister. "No way, we don't have time."
He looked around for any way to get across besides the bridge, knowing that activating the bridge from this end was not going to happen anytime soon and they were running out of time.
However, Luke's blue eyes widened as they settled onto a small outcropping of pipes in the ceiling, and he suddenly had an idea.
"They're coming through!" Leia exclamation made Luke turn back towards the door, and to his dismay it was starting to rise up from the ground slowly but surely.
"Uh oh." He muttered to himself before giving his blaster to Leia. "Here, hold this."
Leia took the blaster and the two switched spots, with Leia moving to the edge of the wall while Luke backtracked behind it and against the door to give himself more cover as he unwound the grappling hook and rope from his trooper belt.
Luke had it mostly unwound when Leia looked back behind him to see the door rising even further. "Here they come! Hurry up!"
"I'm hurrying!" Luke snapped back, unwinding the nylon cable with more urgency now.
Finally it was all unwound, and Leia gave Luke back his blaster to holster it and watched worriedly as he threw the cable towards the pipes above. Both let out an inaudible but simultaneous sigh of relief when the hook caught, and after Luke gave it a little tug to check its weight he gestured for Leia to grab on.
Leia swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around Luke's neck. "Don't you dare drop me."
"No promises." Luke replied breathlessly, then he pushed off and all the twins felt was the pull of gravity and the wind ruffling their clothes as they swung across the cavern filled with blaster bolts. Leia bit her lip to keep from screaming, and couldn't help but let out a massive breath when her feet touched solid ground again.
The twins made it across none too soon, because as soon as they landed the door they'd previously locked slid fully open, and Luke and Leia wasted no time in sprinting down the small hall to avoid their fire.
The twins eventually slowed to a stop when the coast was clear, and Luke leaned back against the wall, gasping for air, while Leia rested her hands on her knees. "That was close." She gasped, "Too close."
Luke shot her a look. "Since when has anything ever been 'too close' for you?"
"Since you swung me across a bottomless pit with troopers shooting at us from above and about to come in from behind." Leia replied evenly, her lungs recovering from the nonstop action. "I think that's about my limit."
Luke grinned and shook his head, his shaggy blonde hair moving with him. "I never thought I'd live to see the day when you reached your limit."
Leia rolled her eyes, then looked down the hall to see the hangar at the end. She also recognized two figures, one towering and covered in fur and the other holding a blaster up. "Look, there's Han and Chewie. Let's go."
Luke and Leia jogged up to the other half of the group, and Han turned his head to greet them. "What kept you?"
"We ran into some old friends." Leia replied dryly, looking at the Falcon skeptically.
"Is the ship alright?" Luke asked, voicing her own concerns.
Han frowned. "Seems okay, if we can get to it. Let's just hope the old man got the tractor beam out of commission."
Luke could tell Leia had questions about just how he'd gotten here, and he shushed them all with one pointed look and a silent promise to explain it all once they were safe. However, something else caught both his and Leia's eye before either of them could worry about their own little nonverbal conversation.
"Look!" Luke exclaimed, pointing towards where Ben and who he presumed to be Darth Vader stood, their lightsabers gleaming as they clashed.
"Now's our chance! Go!" Han demanded as the stormtroopers rushed to encircle the old Jedi, but Luke was reluctant to leave Ben behind. He slowed down as the rest of the group made its way towards the Falcon, his heart hammering in his chest as he watched the duel.
Leia stopped next to him, but for another reason. Luke was focused on Ben, but she was focused on Vader. The Dark Lord's offer ran through her head.
With the right training you will become much more than you could ever hope to be.
But Leia's thoughts were broken as Ben looked at the twins, and she realized vaguely that he was the man who'd saved her in Mos Eisley a few years back. She wondered how he'd met Luke, but before she could ask Luke the old man did something peculiar.
He closed his eyes and raised his lightsaber, and Leia got the impression that he was surrendering. But Vader was merciless, and he struck down the old Jedi anyways.
"NO!" Luke roared, and Leia had to grab his arm to keep him from rushing in after Ben. She was also shocked; the merciless killing of a surrendering man rattled her to her core, and for a moment she didn't know why she'd ever even considered Vader's request.
"Luke, come on! There's nothing we can do!" Leia exclaimed, but Luke pulled out his blaster and started firing at the troopers who were now focused on him. Unfortunately, so was Vader.
But Vader wasn't focused on Luke. He was focused on Leia, and she knew it. She stared at his ocular lenses, and for a few short seconds blasterfire blurred into background noise as the two made eye contact.
However, the contact was broken off when Han ran down the ramp. Vader was shaken out of his stupor as much as Leia was, coming towards the ship. Leia could detect his menacing behavior, and gulped before shaking Luke's shoulder violently. "Luke, we have to go!"
"Blast the controls, kid!" Han shouted, and Luke redirected his aim towards the control panel on the wall and fired. The blast doors sealed most of the troopers and Vader himself inside, and Leia blinked as her eye contact with the Sith Lord was cut off completely.
Together, the twins rushed up the ramp behind Han. They sat as the Falcon took off and then moved into the gaming booth silently as the ship entered hyperspace, both feeling a bit emptier inside but having completely different reasons why.