During the long years of struggles to defeat the last of the Imperial warlords, the Falcon spent as much time grounded as she did in flight, and Han was spending as much to repair her as it might have cost him to purchase a newer ship. On those rare occasions when Han and Chewbacca turned to outside help, some old-hand mechanic would invariably remark that the Falcon's parts were in fine working order but that she was unhappy being a military ship and needed to get back to her roots.

Even if Han had no such desire.

He'd been a pauper, a pirate, a pilot, a smuggler, an Imp, and a thief, and had achieved a contentment he never would have thought possible. Leia completed him, and the twins, then Anakin brought him immense joy.

And just what were the Falcon's roots, in any case? Serving the needs of smugglers and traders by carrying cargo to remote areas of the galaxy?

Twice Han had started out on journeys to discover the ship's ancestry, and twice he had allowed himself to become sidetracked. The first time was shortly before he and Leia had embarked on a trip to Tatooine, which had ended up filling in many of the most important blanks in Leia's past. The second time was shortly before his trip to the Koornacht Cluster, from which he had returned with physical scars that had never entirely healed.

After that he asked himself how much he really wanted to know about the ship's past. Already she had been stolen on Dathomir, drafted into serving in a Kessel mercenary fleet, repaired by R2-D2, and rebuilt and upgraded by a New Republic tech team. She'd answered to the aliases Sunfighter Franchise, Sweet Surprise, and Shadow Bird, among others … Maybe he wanted to convince himself that the Falcon's real life had begun and would end with him. Suppose he should learn that the ship had been used for evil purposes—by the Empire or by a Jedi Knight who had strayed from the light side of the Force? Unconditional love had never been his strong suit, and sometimes history and love just weren't enough to warrant forgiveness.

He drew a hard line, Leia always said.

Over the years, he had armored himself in the same way he had added alloy to the Falcon. He was as suspicious of outsiders as the Falcon's sensors were, and sometimes as conflicted as were the ship's trio of droid brains. He was every bit as jumpy and restless as the YT, if not as prone to enigmatic breakdowns.

So maybe his uneasiness about learning the full truth of the Falcon's ancestry had owed to apprehension regarding what he might discover about himself.