He knew that.
"How close do you want to get?" Leia asked at length, and only then did Han tune in to the image on the screen before them and realize that Sernpidal had grown quite large. They hadn't come here to try to retrieve Chewie's body - of course, that task was beyond them, beyond anyone.
Han had come here, and Leia had readily agreed to it, because he needed this moment.
"What are we going to tell Chewie's family?" Han asked.
"The truth," Leia said. "That he died a hero."
"I never thought -" Han began quietly, his voice breaking apart.
Leia looked at him gently, allowed him the moment to compose himself.
"I had built this bubble around us," Han tried to explain. "Around all of us - you, me, Chewie, the kids, Luke, Mara, even Lando. Heck, even the stupid droids. We were all in it, you know? In it and safe, a cozy family."
"Invulnerable?" the ever perceptive Leia asked.
Han nodded. "Nothing could hurt us - could really hurt us," he went on, and then his voice broke up and he just shook his head and blinked away the tears - and when that didn't work, he wiped them away - and stared out at wobbling Sernpidal. He knew that Leia understood, that he didn't have to say more. And even though it made no sense, she didn't disagree. This should have, logically, happened a long, long time ago, after all. And if not to Chewie, then certainly to one of the others, Han, perhaps, most of all. They had been living on the very edge of disaster for so very long, fighting battles, literally, for decades, running from bounty hunters and assassins. Even the first time Han and Leia had met, on the Death Star, of all places, and in the gallows of the place to boot! So many times, it seemed, one or more of them should have died.
And yet, in a strange way, that close flirting with death had only made Han think them all the more invulnerable. They could dodge any blaster, or piggyback on the side of an asteroid, or climb out a garbage chute, or ...
But not anymore. Not now. The bubble of security was gone, so suddenly, blown apart by a diving moon.
"Even Mara," Han said, and Leia turned back to regard him, though he continued to stare straight ahead. "Her disease couldn't kill her," he went on. "I knew it wouldn't. Even with the reports of those other people dying, she'd live, because the others weren't in my bubble and she was. Mara was, and so she'd win out."
"She will," Leia insisted.
But Han wasn't so sure of that anymore, not by a long shot. Suddenly he got the dread feeling that Mara was indeed terminal, and the realization that those others in his bubble, most notably his kids, weren't exactly safe, either. With their efforts against the aliens, Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin had proven themselves worthy of the title Jedi Knight now, beyond anyone's questioning. They had moved beyond Han's control, and with or without that control, Han knew that they weren't safe anymore.
The bubble was gone.
The alien threat had been all but eradicated, so it seemed.
But to Han Solo, the galaxy suddenly seemed a more dangerous place by far.
Star Wars The New Jedi Order - Vector Prime - Book 1 Page 38
