Disclaimer: Just for fun, don't own nothing SW, no money here.

Rating: I'm not sure. Let's go with a R for situations and places.

Summary: When History moves faster than life and you're at the center of it, it's easy to get lost. Some characters try to found their core and regain their lives.

Only Humans on the Inside

I- Han

He liked brothels. He liked strip houses. He liked the dark alleyways and the rough talk.

He was a smuggler. Of course he was all, respectable now, but once solo, always solo. He smiled. In a way it was like the dark path of the Force. Once you got there, there would be no escape.

But, the smile died on his face as soon as he remembered why he was looking at a mirror. Why the face and clothes there were not the ones he used and felt comfortable with. It was the price he had to pay to return to his old life. He snorted at his reflection. Uncomfortable clothes to the one place he felt comfortable.

Not that he didn't love his wife and his children. It had nothing to do with that. It was a matter of love, yes, but other love. In fact, he was homesick. And so, he managed to go out, to a return to his old life. Disguised. Alone. Solo.

Leia was out on some New Republic mission; she had taken the children with her. He liked when that happened, because that meant that he did not have to think of any excuses to pursue is own mission.

He was good looking and he knew it. Age suited him well; he looked mature, experienced, and manly. His self-confidence mask was a cape that he had always worn with pride and that was now somewhat tainted by the fear of being discovered. It seemed that he could only be honest with himself being a smuggler.

Putting on a hat, he snorted at himself. "I'm being dishonest with myself, playing the respectable and honest guy!" He exited the luxury of that life he was leading, in an old vehicle. He had convinced Leia that it was always good to have something to go out in that wouldn't make people look. Little did she know that he would use it as part of his hidden life.

He arrived at his destination. A dark-strip club, on a dark alley, where no one would recognize him. At first he was afraid of bumping into someone he knew. A pilot, a smuggler, maybe a part of his old life waiting for him, but as time passed he grew more confident. His only problem was that strange resemblance with a famous former rebel. But that was all right. It only made him more popular with the ladies.

"Hi there, Soilan! Long time no see." - The sweaty man that approached Han smelled of ale and cigars.

Han grinned. The manager of that joint was a good man, well, a good scoundrel. "Leia would like him!" He thought, but quickly buried the thought to a place that had no business at the place he was. They motioned to a table.

"Zeto! So, what's new?

"I have a new girl you will like to see. She dances so well, you will certainly like her."

"Ah! You have a good hand to choose them!"

Zeto, the manager, knew he liked to see the girls dancing and stripping. It confused him that he never tried to have any kind of sexual encounter with any, but in his activity he had learned not to ask question, so he indulged this Soilan desires. Besides, he always paid.

Han turned to make a signal for a drink. Zeto signaled the new girl to approach. Se was hardly a girl, she moved as a woman who knew what she was doing and with the sensuality and assurance of someone who knew very well her body. Her walk was a feline dance.

As she approached the table Han turned. The woman in front of him made a face that should mirror his. The disbelief and panic of having being discovered, Zeto looked from one to another.

"Oh! It's seems that you know each other!"

2 - MARA

So beautiful! So that's what happiness looked like! No wonder people walked lightly when happy. It was just as the laughter rising in the air as a soft summer breeze. Maybe it was why! The laughter made then going up, and so, they felt lighter.

She did this kind of thing sometimes. She chose different places, but the outcome, the objective was always the same. To see families together, interacting.

Arraios was a green world. Soft mounts with scattered trees that were an invitation to picnics and games outside.

The entire planet made its living from fine handmade rugs, full of intricate motifs, and tourism from middle class families from the systems around. Normal families with normal problems, as if there was such thing as normality.

She came and always brought her holocamera, she would pretend to be an aunt looking for her sister and her children. She sat and talked on the intercom with imaginary family members, asking how granddad was doing or if young Loi had started crawling already. She laughed aloud of imaginary funnies and offered her shoulder to invented pains.

It was a romantic figure; one that she would kill had not been the torture it was to create such woman. Everything her so well constructed logic despised. She would spit on the floral light pink dress she was wearing, on her hat with a pink ribbon, on the picnic basket, on everything, if not the strange desire of being a part of it.

Today she was even giving balloons to some children that hugged her and ran away free as the wind, chanting little screams of happiness.

Then she sat on the grass and ate, sharing jokes and family stories with a couple near her. They were expecting their second baby and they were happy. She studied them, the others around, using her training to drink in their gestures and rituals.

As the day come to an end she felt Mara coming back and Shany going away. She was thinking about finding an infant she could take with her. Only to make her look more authentic, only so she could pretend a little more, only so she wouldn't feel so dumb inventing stories to why she was alone.

Organizing her things to go, she said goodbye to the children and the friends she had made. She would never see them again. Walking to catch her transport out of Arraios, a small girl came to hug her and say goodbye and she overheard the family murmuring what a nice young lady she was.

Her mask lasted until the transport landed on Marteca, a planet in a nearby system that was the center of transportation. She never took her ship. It was safer that way.

She was tired, very tired. Mara entered the Jade Fire. As she was saving the holos to a safe place she stopped, looking at several of them thinking that she had helped to destroy the happiness of families like this one, not so many years ago.

Her com took her out of her reverie. Without thinking that she hadn't yet changed out of her outfit for the day she answered, full vid mode.

The face on the other side of the holocom showed surprise, but tried to look composed.

For once Mara felt cornered. She had to come up with a good story quick, for the person calling her could never find out what was going on and stay alive.