This is a one-shot look into the heart of Princess Leia as she faces a life ripped away from all that she has ever known and loved. Reviews are appreciated.
Space is cold. Depressingly so. It isn't that pleasant crisp refreshing sort of cold one most often associates with a Life Day celebration. Space is cold in the way a tomb is cold. Stale and fetid with disuse and death.
Ship air was artificial and flat. Only the smell of waste and degrading meals broke the monotony of chemically separated oxygen punctuated by the occasional flavor of coolant and quick seal.
There was one small exception to this lifeless taste on the ship. In a small cabin sitting in a gravitronic pot so it could not spill, sat a small green plant. It was carefully nurtured by it's owner who made sure it got enough UV light and sufficient water and nutrients.
It was not a common place for a plant to thrive but thrive it did under it's mistresses careful ministrations. Though not so well as it might have if given her choice to allow it to grow on some pleasant temperate planet not attacking or defending the Empire.
The mistress of this small plant faired about as well ship bound as the plant. An unnatural environment for either of them and yet she too managed to survive in spite of this.
Like so many other displaced beings, the Rebellion offered her a home, a family. Like so many others, a life she could no longer return to replaced by a life punctuated by the violence of victory and fear in turns. Like many of her fellow rebels, she had lost everything and would do so again before the end of her battles.
For all this, like her plant, still she thrived because she was tended to and cared for by others. She was not alone, not adrift on the sea of cold soulless space.
Her survival now depended upon her wits and fortitude not her family name and money. She found she preferred it that way. She had never known anything but comfort and abundance in the past. Her belly now knew what it was to hunger and eat nothing. Her head knew what it was to ask and receive no answer. Her soul knew what it was to give all and receive nothing but the satisfaction of having given.
It is said trying times brings out the best and worst in all. Those who are noble will rise to their nobility and those unworthy of their titles would show so. Though of royal birth, she would not consider herself noble. She simply did what needed to be done at the time. She felt this was earning her keep for the kindness of taking her in, feeding her and giving her a place to sleep.
There were others she would consider noble, who had willingly sacrificed everything for what they believed in. Because her life had been ripped away, she thought of herself only that she did what was necessary to survive.
She chose not to die.