Era: between RotS and ANH
Disclaimer: Star Wars and all characters used belong to their respective creators (namely, not me).
The Hag, Celessare, and the Syve are my own creations.
Notes: I wrote this a while back, but never put it up here, I have been editing it recently and thought, why not? I'll put it up and see how it does.

I originally put this up on the force . net not to long ago, I have edited it a little since.

Summary: Something goes wrong on the way to Alderaan. A young Leia finds herself falling through the hands of fate and into a destiny far different than that of a princess and yet very much the same.

Falling Through Fate: A Story of Leia

Prologue: The Fall

The attack came out of nowhere. Imperial ships decimated our small transport, a ship chosen to be inconspicuous and not for its weapons or defense capabilities. Their fighters swarming us as soon as we dropped out of hyperspace over a small planet called Celessare. We were outnumbered and outgunned, the ship was going down and there was nothing I could do to stop it as the girl-child in my arms screamed and screamed and screamed. No help would come for us, traitors that we were. Our only hope was the escape pods.

There was little I could do to calm the child, the baby, in my arms. A little girl I had only just begun the call daughter. She did not calm even as we were flung from the ship, even as our escape pod hurtled through space and the battle shrank behind us.

We were falling.

We were falling to Fast.

I made sure she was securely strapped into the infant pod before checking my own webbing. Her wailing only grew louder and louder the closer we came to the ground and dread clenched at my heart.

I am going to fail, I thought.

I hoped I was wrong, even as our escape pod drove into the ground and I heard the tearing of webbing and snapping of bones. Even as I smelled the pungent scent of burning and tried to shield the girl with my body that would not move fast enough. I hoped.

Hope, she is my hope, our hope.

My last thoughts went to my wife, I'm sorry, I told her though I knew she could not hear.

And then my body failed and there was nothing more to remember.

~*~*~*~

Darth Vader stood on the bridge of the newest technological wonder, the Imperial Star Destroyer, the Imperial Pride and stared out the viewport at the scattered remains of the nameless transport.

Foolish of him the think he could escape the Emperor's justice by taking such a backwater way home as this, Vader thought.

Celessare was a long ways away from Alderaan.

Foolish of him to leave his wife unprotected.

Vader turned away from the viewport, watching with mild interest as the crew scurried about, he wondered if they knew who they had just killed. He wondered if he should tell them.

He wondered if they even cared.

He supposed the smarter ones would figure it out when the news of Bail Organa's disappearance spread throughout the galaxy.

Foolish.

~*~*~*~

The borderlands of The Syve echoed with the crashes of thunder and lightning lit the blue-black sky with its electric glow. What was one more crash? What was one more flash of unnatural light to disturb the sleep of the lone human inhabitant of the Borderlands? It was nothing, it should have been nothing, but it woke one old woman as surely as a crash in the dead of silence would have. She lay in bed, pale green eyes wide open as the laughter of the Fates drowned out even the sounds of the wild night, and the heavy weight of a stranger's death settled like a lead blanket over the old woman's heart.

~*~*~*~

In the heart of the Alderaanian Palace, Breha Organa woke in a cold sweat, her dreams, nightmares so sharp in sleep, were maddeningly hazy now that she was awake. She remembered only the growing horror of falling and failure, the acrid smell of smoke and smoldering flesh and then the sound of her beloved's voice, haunting and pained.

I'm sorry.