Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars. I just think it's a travesty that Leia was never given a scene in the movies to remember Alderaan.
There's nothing. Just deep, deep darkness. An inky blackness, where Alderaan should be, but isn't anymore.
Her mind wants to disbelieve what she's seeing, but her eyes do not lie, and she's not one for living a life of denial. Leia's world is gone.
It's been months since the event actually happened, and in that long interim, she's wanted to believe that it was all just a lie or the darkest nightmare she's ever had, but Leia's back again, and Alderaan has not risen from the ashes.
She hadn't wanted to come back by that way again, but there was a necessity to it, and Leia could not deny that she had to.
For Alderaan, if nothing else.
Leia rests her head against the porthole, staring beyond her reflection. But before she can bear to cast her eyes on the graveyard of Alderaan, she does look at herself, just once.
For once, and only once, Leia sees herself as she really is. Sees her vulnerabilities, sees the deep purple shadows under her dark eyes and the way her skin is becoming more tightly drawn across her cheekbones. She's not the round-faced, idealistic teenager she was six months ago. Leia's lost her humanity, and she only wishes she lost it six months ago, when she desperately needed something else.
Because it was her humanity that cost Leia Alderaan, the desperation that made her willing to sacrifice a small world on the Outer Rim that still would have hosted hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives.
A small dose of inhumanity might have saved Alderaan, if Leia had pointed the Empire to an even more irresistible target in the Rim, something that could have both sated their bloodlust and demonstrated their might.
But it's useless to agonize about what could have been. Alderaan was doomed from the moment Leia set foot upon the Death Star, and she knows that nothing would have persuaded Tarkin not to destroy it, so great was his desire to break her (And he never understood what a fire he lit in Leia's soul, by committing one malicious, vindictive act).
Leia closes her weary, heavy eyes, letting out only one sound: a soft, leaden sigh.
It's so useless.
Two billion lives. Couldn't even let out a scream before being annihilated.
Alderaan is not a phoenix, and there is no way to resurrect the shattered stones to once again form a beautiful green world.
And when Leia closes her eyes, she can still remember, remember what Alderaan looked like at the point of impact, when a whole world let up a scream, and couldn't be heard.