▸ Column · Original-trilogy Star Wars, the Outer Rim smuggler underworld — spice addiction, credits, comm channels.
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Leia Organa.
The letter
My kid brother Theo's been cycling in and out of spice-withdrawal clinics for four years now. Last cycle he commed me from a fuel depot two systems out, begging for three hundred credits "just to book passage home" — almost the exact words he used the time before, the time he took the credits and dropped off the grid for six weeks. I transferred them anyway, because I kept seeing him bunked down in a cold landspeeder out in the dark. But our mother — who's given him a fortune more than I ever have — is livid that I "enabled" him, and now she's barely opening a channel to me. I've read enough to figure she's right. But every version of "tough love" I try on feels like I'm just washing my hands of him at his lowest. My counselor keeps pushing me toward a families-of-addicts circle, and I've been telling myself I'll go for two years and never do. I'm scared the circle will just confirm I've gotten all of it wrong. Is there a way to quit funding the spice without throwing away my brother?
Han Solo replies
Look, I owe credits to a Hutt — the worst sentient in the galaxy hung a bounty on my head over a debt, so don't lecture me about money coming to collect. I live there.
Here's your tell, and you already wrote it down: "just to book passage home," word for word, same as last time. That's the soundtrack. The movie's the six weeks he vanished after. Watch the hands, not the mouth. Those three hundred credits didn't buy Theo a ride home — they bought him gone again, and some part of you knew it when you hit send.
So yeah, your mother's half right about the credits. But here's where I climb off the tough-love speeder: cutting the money is not the same as cutting him loose, and anybody selling you that they're identical has a hand in your pocket. Credits wired from two systems out — that's not showing up. That's buying your way out of showing up and feeling noble about the receipt.
Stop funding the spice. Then go find him. In person. Where it costs you something. I'm not the guy who gives speeches — I'm the guy who shows up. The kid in the cold landspeeder needs his brother in the doorway, not a transfer code.
— Han Solo
Leia Organa weighs in
Han's right about the credits. Notice what he let you skate past, though.
You've been "meaning to go" to that circle for two years. That's not humility, and it isn't caution — it's the one decision you keep refusing to make, dressed up as modesty. You don't go to be sentenced. You go to learn the next thing to do. Walk in this week.
And your mother is not your opponent. She's the only other soul carrying this exact weight, and your silence is turning one wound into two. Mend it. You don't get to fight for your brother and abandon your post with her. Both — or you'll lose both.
— Leia Organa
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