Disclaimer: Star Wars, and all thus related characters, places, objects, names, etc. are not mine, and never will be.
Rating: Mature / R / TV-MA
Trigger Warnings: Graphic Violence, Torture, Rape/Non-con (including underage rape/non-con), Language, Character Death
Notes: This is the first book in an expansive AU series, which began with me asking myself, "Would it be possible for Leia Organa to resist falling to the Dark Side if she was taken as a child?" The idea quickly expanded far beyond an answer to that question, and at this point I have through book 2 at least roughly outlined.
I have based the Alderaanian language off of Spanish as a way to honor Jimmy Smits, who identifies as Puerto Rican.
Again, please note the rating and the warnings. This is an incredibly dark story - though I will promise you all that there are also moments of light and hope as well.
Huge, enormous thanks to everyone who has helped me with this: (tumblr users) absynthe-minded who has encouraged me from the very beginning, and who has put up with reading all 17 drafts of each chapter; princess-sansa-of-ithilien who has given her support and her advice, and who has been excited for this story even though she isn't really into fanfiction; actual-general-organa who has been screaming profanities at me since about day 2; ewokshootsfirst, justenhunterwriter, and steelrigged-blog who have all given me awesome critiques.
And now, without further ado, let us begin.
WE WHO WANDER THIS WASTELAND BOOK I
FALLING STARS
"Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves."
–The First History of Man
(Mad Max: Fury Road)
PROLOGUE
Bail Organa had a headache.
He sat at his desk, lost in thought, and stared out of his window at the glistening, snow-clad rim of the caldera in which Aldera was situated. A forefinger tapped a staccato rhythm against the datapad nearest at hand, a soft dissonance to the painful throb lodged at the base of his skull and behind his eyes.
The headache had begun that morning as a small worm of an ache, as familiar as it was despised: residue of too short a night's poor sleep. He had hoped to be rid of it after a cup of caf—but, even after Breha had kissed him and left, leaving him alone at the table on the balcony to nurse his third cup, the headache had stubbornly remained.
And as the day had progressed, the throbbing behind his eyes had only grown louder and larger.
On almost any day of the year, Bail would claim that being at home on Alderaan was far more peaceful than sitting in the Senate—or even simply being on Coruscant. If anyone had asked him that question now, however, sitting with the weight of the events of the day on his shoulders, Bail thought he just might wish for a good, old-fashioned Senate debate.
There was an old Jedi saying that Padmé had liked to quote, on late nights spent in the Senate, or in one of their offices working huddled over datapads and dataterminals. "Without pain, there is no gain," she would say, eyes glinting above that half-smile of hers that always promised trouble.
"I just hope," Bail murmured, with a sigh to the quiet memory of his friend, staring off into the middle of nothing, "that this pain provides gain."
It was moments like this, sitting at his desk with the work that he prayed would promise hope to the galaxy spread around him, that Bail missed Padmé Amidala most. Her presence, her smile, her voice had always seemed to him like a shard of that very hope for which he had worked for so long—a promise in and of itself, spun into words and tone. Even tired and irritable, she had been able to inspire him on the darkest of nights.
Well, he amended silently after a moment's thought, the silence punctuating his headache like sharp needles, perhaps the times I miss her second-most.
There were days, when Leia was cranky and particularly ornery—when she was, in turn, most like her birth mother or father—that in a very secret, very dark place of his heart, Bail wished that he and Breha could hand Leia off to another parent—a parent better-equipped to handle her and her unique personality and all that came with it, both the blessings and curses.
Not that, given a chance, he would ever give up his daughter. Not even on the worst days.
Not even after today, he told himself, and buried his abused head in his hands. Especially not after today. After today, he thought, she'll need us more than ever. The old fear, sour and stale in his throat, crawled once more onto his shoulders. His head throbbed again.
"Much like her father, I fear she will be," Yoda had told him, in his final farewell. "Temper her anger, her fear, you must."
"We will," Bail had promised. "She will be loved with us," he added, repeating what he had said when he had offered to take Leia to be his and Breha's daughter.
Yoda had looked at him then, piercing eyes flat and full of sorrow and something darker, more insidious, which Bail would only much later realize was fear. He had met Bail's gaze, strong and steady and full of warning, and had said, "Enough, that may not be."
Not for the first time did Bail fear that Yoda was right; not for the first time did the words She is too much like her father drift through Bail's mind, accompanied by an acid stab of fear. Never before, however, had the reality of his choice those five years ago been so real.
He had been in a meeting when Seltha, Leia's nursemaid, had entered the council room unannounced. Her face had been pale and drawn, lips thin and white, her eyes over-bright. The guards at the door had scrambled in after her, dismay and apology writ across their faces as they called for her to halt. Bail had lifted a hand, halting them mid-stride, and, ignoring the varying irritated and offended glares shot his way from the rest of the councilors sitting around the table, had motioned for Seltha to draw near. She had knelt by his side, leaned close, and whispered words that Bail had long dreaded hearing.
"There's been an accident," she said. "There was a witness."
Bail felt his blood run cold, then hot, then cold again.
"Excuse me," he said, rising quickly.
A number of hard looks were leveled at him, ranging from consternation to irritation, and one of the women sitting in attendance of the meeting—a prim, greying matron of the Ministry of Agriculture—tapped her fingers against the tabletop. Bail bowed, his official robes of office fluttering, and said in as even a tone as he could manage, "I fear an emergency has arisen concerning my daughter."
There was a ripple of emotion around the table, inaudible and barely discernible—a flicker of meeting eyes, a snap of tension in fingers and shoulders and jaws—and then the greying matron herself smiled and rose, bowing in response to Bail. "We will pray that the young princess is safe and well," she said, and murmurs of agreement echoed around the table. All of them loved their little princess dearly.
"My thanks," Bail said, smiling at the table. With that he turned and strode for the door, Seltha hurrying in his wake.
She directed him to Leia's bedroom. It was locked from the inside—which went against family rules—and from the shapes of the shadows underneath the door, it looked like Leia had shoved at least one chair up against it.
He knocked, Seltha at his side.
"Leave me alone."
The quaver of barely-swallowed tears was thick in Leia's voice. She sounded far older than her five years.
"Leia, sweetheart," Bail said, pressing his forehead close to the door, "it's Papá."
"Go 'way," Leia said again, and that time Bail thought he could hear the hitch of a sob.
"Leia," he tried again, sterner this time. "You need to open the door."
Sniffling. Then came the sound of chair legs grinding slowly across wooden floorboards. Bail placed his hand on the door sensor, waited for the click of the lock disengaging—but it did not come.
"I don't want to see Seltha," Leia said, voice muffled through the door. "Just you, Papá."
Bail exchanged a glance with Seltha, and the older woman nodded. Her wrinkled face was creased with worry and her dark eyes were shadowed, but she smiled at him and turned to walk down the hall to the family's private sitting room.
Bail watched her go, feeling an odd hollow yawn in his gut. Seltha had not served the family for long—only five years, since Leia was two weeks old—but she had quickly settled in, becoming a cherished member of the Organa family's household.
Leia particularly loved the old woman. With her greying hair and her warm smile, the smell of cinnamon and apples that seemed to hang around her like a shawl, and her ability to read aloud with a whole cast of voices, Leia had fallen in love before she was even old enough to toddle around the nursery. Her first steps had been from Bail to Breha, but her second steps were to go find Seltha. Even now, at the age of five, Leia would cry when Seltha went on holiday to visit her own family—a daughter and her daughter's husband, and their two teenage children—and on the occasions that Seltha was sick, Leia insisted on being the one to care for her.
That Leia didn't even want to see Seltha now in her distress was strange, and to Bail, more than a little disconcerting. Standing out in the empty, shadowed corridor, he felt a prickle of trepidation worm its way up his spine and into the base of his skull. His headache yawned.
He pushed away the rising ache in his head, and once more leaned close. "It's just me, Lelila," he said through the door, once Seltha had disappeared from sight. "Now let me in."
There was another breath of silence, and then the lock clicked off. The door slid open silently beneath Bail's touch.
Leia was standing just inside the door, right hand still upraised from disabling the locking mechanism. Her face was red and blotched, cheeks streaked with tears, eyelashes wet and sticky, nose dripping. She sniffed at the sight of her father, took a small step forward as if to run to him—and then checked herself, stopping short before she had moved more than a few centims.
"It's okay, Lelila," Bail said and, kneeling, opened his arms to her.
She hesitated only for a second, then she flung herself into his arms. Her small body shuddered with fresh sobs as she planted her face against his chest, fingers tangling in his long robes. He didn't hesitate to hug her tightly, gathering her closer to him.
"Hush, my Lelila," he crooned, cupping the back of her head with one hand, smoothing her dark hair. "It's okay," he said again and, twisting his head down at an awkward angle, pressed a soft kiss against the crown of her head.
"'m sorry." The words were muffled against Bail's chest. He felt them vibrate through his ribs and into his heart, which clenched at the sound with a painful fist. "Please don't be mad."
Bail hugged his daughter closer still, before pushing her away just enough to tuck a hand under her chin and turn her face up to his. "Why do you think I should be mad at you?" Bail asked.
Leia sniffed and blinked tears from her eyes. "Cause." She sniffed again. "Cause…'cause I did something bad."
"What did you do that was bad?"
"I don't know." And suddenly Leia's tears redoubled, her small shoulders shaking with the fury of her sobs, her breath coming in hiccupping gasps. She lifted a hand and wiped her nose on her knuckles, then tried to stem her tears by smearing them across her cheeks with her palms. All she accomplished was making her face even more of a mess.
She stood there, a shivering, weeping girl that at once looked three and ten, backlit by the failing morning sunlight creeping in through her windows, small and vulnerable and afraid of something she did not understand, only felt.
"Shhh," Bail crooned, once more gathering Leia into his arms. She resisted him for half a second, her body stiff in his arms—and then she melted into his embrace again, a choked, drowned, "Papá," shuddering into his chest.
He stood, lifting her with him, and Leia wrapped her arms tight around his neck before once more burying her face in his shoulder. Bail pressed another kiss to the side of her head and ignored the tears and snot staining his robes. "It's okay," he said for a third time. "We'll wait to talk until you have a chance to calm down."
It took nearly a quarter of an hour for Leia to tire herself. Bail held her the entire time, walking with her around her bedroom with her on his hip, humming softly, and standing in silence by turns. Leia clung to him, and long before she had quieted, Bail's shirt had been soaked through.
At last, though, her sobs trickled into sniffles, and then her sniffles into silence. She kept her face buried in the crook of Bail's neck, however, and gave no indication that she wanted down, like she usually did after having been held for more than five or ten minutes. On any other day, Bail would have been thrilled that she wanted to stay in his arms; today, all he wanted was to feel the squirm that would tell him that his daughter was all right.
Bail carried her to her bed, then sat down at the edge of the mattress. The waning light of the late autumn afternoon slanted in through the windows lining the wall above her bed, painting the white rug on the floor with an eerie glow, and throwing the rich, red wood of her furniture into a low, near-burning glow.
"Now," Bail said, perching Leia on his lap, "can you tell me what happened?"
Leia was quiet for a few seconds, unnaturally still as she sat and stared at his chest. "I dunno," she said at last, still looking straight ahead. She sniffed, and her fingers, tangled in the front of his robe, tightened.
Bail waited, patient.
"I was kicking my ball down the hall," Leia said after another moment, her voice very small. "I know I'm not supposed to kick it inside and I'm sorry," she added, her words jumbled together in her rush to get them all out.
Again Bail was silent—the time for chastisement would come, but right now he wanted her to finish telling him what had happened. He doubted that she would be keen on completing the story if he reprimanded her now. He waited, watching Leia looking resolutely at his chest.
When Leia realized that her father wasn't going to punish her for her confession—at least not yet—she continued. "I kicked the ball and it hit the wall and then it looked like it was going to hit a window." She blushed and fidgeted uncomfortably. "I stopped it. But Caral saw it and screamed. I tried to say sorry, but she ran away."
The hurt was obvious in Leia's voice, and she sniffed again as she finished. There was confusion there, too, Bail thought—a quiet note of betrayal that Leia had never experienced before. She was not used to people being afraid of her. Quite the opposite, in fact; the palace loved her, staff and courtiers alike, with very few exceptions.
Leia looked up at him. In a very small, teary voice, she asked, "Why'd she run away from me, Papá? Why'd she scream?"
A hopeful rush of relief threaded through Bail's chest, tasting warm and coppery in his mouth. From the way Leia was talking, it did not seem that she had realized just how she had stopped the ball from smashing through the window.
Bail reached up to take Leia's hands, gently pulling them free of his shirt. "I think you surprised her," he said, smoothing her fingers out of their tight fists.
Leia looked puzzled, thoughtful, and as if without noticing what he was doing, allowed Bail to place her sticky palms on his. It was a comfortable tradition that he had started with her when she was barely old enough to talk—when they would talk about something important, they would sit and face each other, and Bail would rest Leia's hands on top of his. It was a calming technique, and served as an anchor, with the hope that it would help teach Leia how to calm and ground herself when discussing difficult topics.
Ahsoka had been the one to recommend the technique.
"But why?" Leia asked at last. She looked up at Bail with wide, dark eyes, and sniffed.
"She wasn't expecting to see her princess playing with a ball in the hall, for one thing," Bail said, and gave Leia a stern look. Now that she had finished telling her story, he was comfortable with reminding her of her transgression, and of informing her that there would be a consequence. "Speaking of which, your mother and I will have to speak about that, and what will be an appropriate consequence. You know the rule."
Leia ducked her head, but nodded. "'m sorry," she mumbled.
"And we forgive you." Bail squeezed his fingers around her palms gently in a silent reassurance. "But the rule still stands."
Leia nodded again. She was silent for a few seconds, then said, "But I don't think she should've been so surprised. The ball didn't hit the window."
"Maybe not," Bail said. "But you aren't her."
"I should apologize to her too, shouldn't I?"
Bail felt a swell of pride blossom in his chest. "I think that would be a wonderful thing for you to do," he said. "And I think Caral would appreciate that."
Though I will have to have a few words with her before that, Bail thought.
It seemed that Leia had not realized what exactly had happened—a fact for which Bail was both thankful and relieved. According to Seltha, Caral had seen the ball had been hovering a few inches from the window when she came around the corner. Leia had snatched it out of the air a brief second later—but it had definitely been hovering. Of that, Caral had been adamant.
Thus far, only he and Breha had borne witness to Leia's outbursts of Force sensitivity. They had feared, though, that it was only a matter of time until someone else saw something that they shouldn't—a fear which, it turned out, was very valid. At least Caral had had the good sense to go to Seltha first with her strange tale.
But if Caral hadn't gone to Seltha right away. If Seltha hadn't come to me when she did. If Caral had told someone else…
The datapad beneath his fingers chirped, dragging Bail out of his dark thoughts.
Bail glanced down at the screen. It lit up, displaying a New Message icon. Bail felt his stomach lurch, then tighten. There were very few people who would send a message to him on his personal datapad at this time of night.
With a deft flick of his fingers, Bail unlocked the datapad, then brought up the new message.
It was simple, succinct. Three words glared at him from the screen, shimmering a barely discernible purple-blue against the black background. Meet me tonight, it read, and was signed only with AT.
Bail read it twice, and then the message wavered, blurred, and disintegrated into a cascade of pixels that disappeared off the bottom edge of the screen. Three seconds later it was gone, all trace of the message's presence wiped clean.
A sigh of breath escaped Bail's lips.
He had not expected to receive an answer so quickly.
Bail checked his chrono, then stood. It was late already—nearly midnight—and if he was to make it to their meeting place and back before sunrise, he was going to have to move quickly. He glanced once around his office, taking in the view out of his window, the datapads and flimsies scattered across his desk, the neat arrangement of the couch and chairs in front of the empty fireplace on the far side of the room. Then he strode out of the room.
He had much to do, and little time to do it.
Malothar Morieen, Captain of Alderaan's Honor Guard, lived with his wife, Aidréna, Lady of Morieer, in a comfortable suite high in the palace's west wing. The couple spent most of their time at the Royal Palace, as Aidréna was not only a close friend but also a counselor to the Queen, though every spring and autumn Aidréna would return to Morieer to oversee the season's festivals.
Malothar and Bail, while not old friends, were dear friends, and of everyone in the galaxy, there were few Bail trusted more. When Bail had been announced as Breha's fiancé and Alderaan's Prince-to-be, in the devastating wake of the civil war that had wracked Alderaan's peace for five brutal years, Malothar, then only just appointed to the Honor Guard—twenty of Alderaan's finest warriors, who trained from age twelve to twenty-two, and who were sworn to defend the royal family's life and honor with their last breath—had been one of the first to accept Bail as part of the court.
Bail walked to their apartment in silence, tense and anxious. The few members of the palace staff he encountered nodded or bowed in respect, but Bail hardly saw them. The moon shone high and bright through the many vaulted windows he passed, a constant reminder of the narrow window of time against which he raced.
It took two chimes of the bell outside Malothar and Aidréna's apartment to open the door. When at last it slid open, revealing a disheveled and bleary-eyed Malothar, it was all Bail could do not to snap at him for taking so long. Malothar looked tired, with his dark skin washed silver by the moonlight pooling around his head, bleaching his frosted gold hair with a pale halo; his amber eyes were dark and filled with the fog of sleep, swallowed by the bruise-colored shadows beneath them.
Instead Bail took a deep breath, and in the calm and even tone he was so well-known for in the Senate, said simply, "Get dressed. We have a meeting with an old friend."
The exhaustion drained from Malothar's face. "I was unaware we had a meeting," he said, any confusion and suspicion he may have felt well-hidden.
"Neither was I," Bail said simply. "Now hurry."
"As you say. I will meet you in the garage in a quarter hour."
Next Bail turned his steps toward his own apartment, just down the long hall. The shadows lay thick in the sitting room as the front door opened at Bail's touch. He moved with sure steps around the furniture, and with less sure steps through Leia's toys littered across the floor in front of the fireplace, then slid, as silent as he could so as not to wake his family, into his and Breha's room.
She was asleep.
Loath to wake her, Bail sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress, and for a long, precious moment, simply looked at her. She looked peaceful, the lines of stress he was so accustomed to seeing etched around her eyes and mouth smoothed out by sleep. Her hair was loose, and it tumbled around her shoulders in a tangled curtain, dark against the white blankets draped over her chest, against her skin, paler in the night than ever in day.
She was beautiful, Bail thought.
Bail lay a hand on her shoulder, and called her to wakefulness.
She was alert in seconds, sitting up and reaching for him with one hand, then turning to flip on the bedside lamp with the other. The lines around her eyes and mouth reappeared with the light as if they had never been gone. "What is it?" she asked, gripping Bail's nearest hand in hers. There was no trace of sleepiness in her voice, though she had been deep in dreams mere seconds before.
"She replied to my message," Bail said. There was no need to clarify who the "she" he spoke of was.
"So soon?" Breha asked.
"Yes. She must have already been close."
Breha nodded, slow and steady, but Bail could tell that she was uncertain or uneasy. Her fingers tightened around his. "You are going to meet her?"
"Yes," Bail said again. "I'm taking Malothar."
"Good."
Even though he was on his own planet, Bail dared not leave the palace without protection. Too many times, especially in the last five years, had someone tried to kill him—or at least to do him harm. Bail was under no pretenses as to why the number of assassination attempts had suddenly spiked after the Clone Wars had come to an end; Palpatine did not yet trust him, and no matter how well Bail played the part of a subservient agent of the Empire, he suspected Palpatine never would.
"Be careful, Bail," Breha said. Her voice was soft, a whisper almost lost to the silence of the night that huddled close to the pool of light cast by the lamp, and she looked at him, long and hard.
"Of course, my queen." Bail quirked a smile at her, an attempted reassurance, and then leaned in to kiss her cheek. "I'll be home by sunrise."
"You had better be," Breha said, not quite half under her breath, and arched one slender eyebrow at him.
In spite of himself, Bail was forced to swallow back a low laugh. Breha always did know how to make him feel better, lighter, even if only for a moment.
Bail rose and crossed to the large closet. It was deeper than it was wide, hung on one side with Breha's clothes, the other with his. Drawers, stacked and lined with watches, necklaces, rings, cufflinks, circlets, and a dozen and more kinds of jewelry that Bail hardly knew what they were for, rose in even intervals along the walls; shelves holding a hundred and more pairs of shoes sat along the floor beneath the hanging clothes. A second door, set into the right-hand wall near the back of the closet, led into his and Breha's shared bathroom. A third door led into a small corridor, which in turn led out to the sitting room; it was through this door that the palace staff usually entered.
Though it had been many years since Bail had married Breha, and had left behind him the life of the youngest son of a minor noble family, he was still sometimes struck by the sheer wealth and magnificence held by this one small room. This was one of those moments.
Gods, he thought, unsure if he was praying or cursing, the clothing alone is worth enough to feed, clothe, and hide two people for ten years.
He quickly silenced that thought, cutting its thread before it could spiral into a tapestry of panic. That won't be necessary, he told himself. Not yet.
Hopefully not ever.
Bail dressed quickly after that. He discarded his court finery for simple tunic and pants, both dark and unadorned, and pulled on thick socks and boots. Shrugging on a heavy winter coat, he stepped out of the closet and switched off the light, plunging the bedroom back into murky half-shadows lit only by Breha's bedside lamp.
"Be safe."
Bail turned at the door, one hand falling to rest on the frame, and looked at his wife. She smiled at him—a thin, wan expression that did not touch her eyes—and then blew him a kiss.
"I love you," Bail said.
"I love you too."
The walk to the garage passed in a half-dazed blur for Bail. His heart and thoughts lingered in the room with Breha, with his precious Leia asleep in her bed. He had stopped at her door on his way out of the apartment, opening it just enough that he could glimpse her, a blanket-shrouded mound of shadows at the center of her bed. Though he knew his time was running short, that Malothar was likely already waiting for him, he could not help but pause for long enough to murmur a quick, silent prayer to the Mother for his daughter's safety and protection.
As he had suspected, Malothar was already waiting by a nondescript speeder when Bail arrived. The garage was cold, despite the large, yellow lights beaming down from the permacrete ceiling, filling the cavernous room lined with vehicles with a warm glow, and Bail was glad to climb into the warm speeder Malothar already had running.
"Ready, my lord?" Malothar asked, looking over as Bail closed the door.
"Yes," Bail said, settling back into the seat and fastening his safety belt. "Let's go."
They sped through the near-empty streets of Aldera in silence. Bail watched the city lights flash past the window in tense silence, unaware that his hands were as tightly clenched as Malothar's around the steering controls. The tense pit in his stomach gnawed uneasily at his bones, and his thoughts were as tangled as they were torn between his family behind him, and the meeting ahead. Breha's look of uncertainty seemed to echo in his mind's eye, until it harmonized with his own sense of trepidation.
Malothar took them nearly around the city's entire perimeter before directing their vehicle onto the broad, multi-laned road that would take them through the Southern Gate, and out of the ancient volcano that sheltered Aldera from the harsh mountain weather. It was only as the wide tunnel, chiseled through the solid rock of the volcano's wall and lined with soft lights, yawned before them, Aldera's glittering skyline fading away behind and beneath them, that Malothar broke the silence.
"Will you tell me now what is going on?" he asked, flicking a quick glance over at Bail seated beside him.
His voice was softer than it had been, his address more informal than in the garage or the hallway. Bail relaxed slightly, glad to hear the voice of his friend and not his Captain of the Honor Guard. Only then did he feel the tension cramping in his fingers. Purposefully forcing his hands to unclasp, Bail let out a deep, calming breath, centering his thoughts and his emotions.
"There was an…incident today," Bail said at last, choosing his words carefully. Though Bail trusted Malothar implicitly—more than he trusted almost anyone in the galaxy, in fact—Malothar did not know Leia's true identity; only Breha and Ahsoka—and Obi-Wan and Yoda, who had been present for her birth—were privy to that information. And, while Malothar was aware that Bail and Breha suspected that Leia was Force-sensitive, he had no proof, and had no inkling of the degree to which the Force was with her.
"An incident?" Malothar repeated, risking another quick glance over at Bail. "What type of incident?"
Bail shook his head, trusting that Malothar would glimpse the movement from his peripheral vision. The lights on either side of the tunnel lit the inside of the speeder with quick flashes of rich gold, throwing both of their movements into sharp relief against the shadows. "I think it would be best," Bail said, staring resolutely ahead toward the pinpoint of darkness that was the end of the Southern Gate, "that you not know the details."
Malothar was silent for a long second, and Bail knew that his words had stung his friend. "As you wish," Malothar said, and his voice slid a fraction of an inch back into the chilly officiousness of his rank. But then he sighed, and as the speeder slid out of the tunnel and into the snow-swept world beyond Aldera, where the moon and stars shone as bright as the lights they had left behind them, he said, "I am sorry, my old friend. I should not begrudge you the secrets you keep from me."
Bail smiled up at the stars. "Those are few and far between, my friend." His smile dimmed, and grew grim. "And I wish I could share this one with you as well."
After that they settled into a companionable silence, lulled by the steady thrum of the speeder and eased by the winter's mountain beauty around them. The miles slid past quickly, swallowed by snow and ice and bright moonlight.
The road Malothar took wound high into the mountains, passing cliff faces cracked by winter storms, and climbing through shivering cios-tree forests, whose blue-black needles shivered in the night wind. Twice, over the hum of the speeder's engine, Bail thought that he could hear the ululating cry of a mountain cat.
The Mariner's Star had just lifted his alabaster head above the horizon when Malothar abruptly slowed the speeder, then pulled off of the main road and onto a narrow dirt track cleft into a cliff. Darkness swallowed them, the only illumination the faintest shadows of silver starlight that filtered through the cios-trees' thick branches and the yellow glow of the speeder's headlights. The headlights danced over the ravine walls to either side, showing pits and cracks and thick, twisting cios-tree roots, as Malothar spun the speeder first left, then right around sharp and sharper turns, taking them deeper and deeper still into the heart of the mountain.
And then, as suddenly as they had entered the ravine, they were free of it. A small valley spread out before them, nestled between three towering peaks, filled with a thick cios-tree forest and the glint of moonlight off of water. The stars shone brilliantly above, and the purple-and-cream arms of the galaxy spun in full view overhead.
It took another five minutes for the speeder to reach the valley floor, and another ten to reach the river that crawled into the waterfall for which the valley was named. And there, sitting well-hidden amid the trees that overlooked the roaring fall, was Bail's destination.
The house was small but finely built, with two stories, a porch that wrapped around two sides, and a shingled roof. The upstairs windows were shuttered tight against the night, but from the window that peeked out over the small garden, there came the faint, ruddy glow of firelight.
Bail looked over at Malothar as he drew the speeder to a halt at the end of the drive. "Wait here," Bail said. His voice was surprisingly tight, and the words seemed to stick in his throat like mud. "I shouldn't be long."
Malothar threw the speeder into park, and nodded. "As you wish, my lord," he said. "I'll keep her running."
Bail nodded in return and, unclipping his safety belt, threw open his door and stepped out into the mountain night.
It was colder here than it had been in Aldera. The wind keened as it tore through the cios-trees, lifting the collar of Bail's coat and tugging at his hair as he started down the dirt drive. He shoved his hands into his pockets, and put his head down against the wind. The toes of his boots, he found, were decidedly more interesting than watching the house draw nearer with every step.
All too soon, however, he was at the porch steps. He took them quickly, hesitated, then lifted his hand to the front door and knocked.
There came the muffled sounds of footsteps. Then the lock on the door clicked, and beneath that the faint hiss of the security system powering down—and then the door opened, releasing a flood of warm, yellow light out onto the porch.
"You came."
Bail looked up, took in the back-lit figure standing in the doorway. She was as tall as ever.
"Of course I came," Bail said stiffly in reply. "What else did you expect me to do, Ahsoka?"
Ahsoka stiffened at her name, as Bail had known she would. Bail suspected that, out of everyone she now knew, he was the only one to know who she had been before she had taken on the title of Fulcrum. He also suspected that she did not like to be reminded of what she had lost.
But now, feeling testy and on edge, with his daughter's fate hanging by a thread, Bail felt it only appropriate that Ahsoka be reminded, in as blunt or sharp a term as necessary, just what it was they stood to lose—just what this meeting meant: everything, both past and future.
"I suppose you should come in, then," Ahsoka said. She remained standing in the doorway for another second, though, before she stood back to allow Bail to slide past her and into the front hall. She turned and closed the door behind him.
"You seem upset," Ahsoka said, following him down the long hall and into the sitting room.
A fire blazed in the hearth, filling the cozy, low-ceilinged room with crackling warmth and golden light. The same golden light, Bail realized, that he had seen from the end of the drive. He unbuttoned his coat and, upon pulling it off, draped it over the back of the nearest armchair. Another armchair, in the same burgundy, sat opposite him beside the hearth, while a long, cream sofa sat cock-eyed facing the fire. The cabinet above the fireplace hung half-open, revealing a sliver of a viewscreen, on which Bail thought he glimpsed the Aldera News.
Bail sat on the nearest end of the sofa, folding his hands on top of his lap as he settled back. Ahsoka claimed the armchair by the fire, but as she settled she seemed anything but the relaxed she tried to feign. She perched on the edge of the cushion, like a thranta ready to leap into flight, her own hands clasped too-tightly together.
A sigh pulled free of Bail's lips. "We're too old of friends for this," he said. He forced his shoulders to relax, his posture to loosen.
Ahsoka cocked an arched eyebrow at him. "What do you mean?"
"This banter of barbed and subtly poisoned words," Bail said. He shook his head. "I count you as a friend, Ahsoka, in a world where true friends are rare." Ahsoka ducked her head. "I don't want to sour our friendship."
"I'm afraid," Ahsoka said, speaking to the carpet, "tonight may sour it regardless."
Bail frowned. "What does that mean?" he asked.
But Ahsoka shook her head, and with a tightening of her shoulders, she looked up. "No," she said. "First tell me why you contacted me this afternoon. Your message didn't say much."
"It's Leia," Bail said. He grimaced. "She accidentally used the Force this morning, and in front of a servant. I do not believe Leia realized it was anything out of the ordinary—but the servant did. And Ahsoka, she's getting stronger. I don't know how much longer we're going to be able to keep her hidden from the Empire."
Ahsoka's expression, which she had kept carefully neutral while Bail spoke, darkened at last. "I see," she said. "This is…troubling."
Bail nodded. "I thought that perhaps it was time that—"
"No," Ahsoka said with a shake of her head. "I know what you were about to say, Bail, and no. I don't think it would be wise to remove Leia from her home—from you and Breha. I can teach her a few things, to keep her powers channeled and contained in a way that shouldn't arouse suspicion. But no one can do for her what you and Breha are doing: giving her a family, and a childhood—and a good one, at that." Her voice grew suddenly soft, wistful. "It's something that I never had. Something that—" She seemed to choke, as if the words were lodging in her throat. "—that Anakin never had. And I can't help but wonder how things might have been different, if…if he at least had been somewhere stable, rather than being pulled from one side of the galaxy to the other. If he'd had a chance to be a child. To grow up right."
She took a deep breath, and shook her head. "But enough of 'what-ifs'," she declared. "We aren't here to reminisce and ponder the past, but to look to the future."
Bail nodded. "You said you can teach her some things?"
"Yes. They'll be small things—things that were taught to the younglings as soon as they were able to walk. Things to focus the mind, and to channel the energy and keep it from exploding unwarranted."
"And they won't be noticeable?" Bail asked.
Ahsoka hesitated. "I'm not sure," she confessed. "Normally they would be, if the person looking was trained in the Force."
"But?" Bail prompted, when Ahsoka hesitated again.
"But it took me three years to even realize that Leia was Force-sensitive. And given her strength, I should have been able to tell as soon as look at her. And even knowing that she's Force-sensitive, there are even times that she all but slips under my radar."
Bail frowned. "Why haven't you said anything about that before?"
"It didn't seem necessary at the time," Ahsoka said. She did, however, sound apologetic. "And I thought that her seeming natural ability to shield may keep her from being noticeable at all. I had hoped, at least…" She trailed off into silence, looking at Bail, waiting.
Bail, for his part, could only nod. "I see," he said. And he did, whether he liked Ahsoka's withholding information or not. "But please," he said, and fastened her with the hard and demanding look he had learned from Breha even before their wedding, "when it comes to my daughter, I would appreciate you telling me all that you know."
"I will," Ahsoka promised.
"And on that note," she said, and straightened further in her chair. She seemed hardly to even sit, now, so close to the edge was she. "I have something for you."
"Something for me?" Bail echoed. Then he nodded. "I assumed you had some other business here. Unless you were already on Alderaan, or close to Alderaan, you wouldn't have been able to see me so quickly."
"You're not going to like it, Bail," Ahsoka warned. Her voice was suddenly quiet, and deadly serious.
Bail frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked. The uncertainty, the worry that had been lulled during his conversation with Ahsoka, suddenly flared to life once more. Every dark thought of what might have brought her here to Alderaan, to the heart of the Empire without even notifying him prior to her journey, came flooding back, now buoyed by her warning. "What have you brought me, Ahsoka?"
She stood. The movement was quick, fluid, jarring in its smoothnes. It was one of the moments that struck Bail, with the weight of iron, that this woman sitting across from him was imbued with the Force, and was a little more than he, or Breha, or any sentient but the few gifted—or cursed—by the Force, could ever be.
Deftly, Ahsoka reached into the pouch that hung, hidden by her draping robe, on her belt. When she withdrew her hand, she was holding a small, dark vial. For a fraction of a moment she held it tightly by her side, her hand and arm and entire body bone still around the vial—and then she extended her hand, and held the vial out to Bail.
He stood. "What is this?" he asked, reaching out and taking it from the palm of Ahsoka's hand. His fingers closed easily around it, and he found that the vial was as cold as night, and just as slick.
"Poison," Ahsoka said.
Bail's fingers tightened reflexively around the vial, opposing his urge to drop and kick the thing away from him. And then the true meaning of Ahsoka's words slammed into him, and Bail's head shot up.
"Who is it for?" he asked, voice almost a growl.
"Leia."
Ahsoka's voice was blunt, a club to the peaceful crackle and snap of the fire in the hearth, the low hum of the muted viewscreen in its cabinet. The name hung heavy in the air, sinking slowly where it hung between them.
"Leia?" Bail echoed. His fingers turned white around the vial. "What do you mean," he asked, voice as deadly calm and deadly warning as Ahsoka's was blunt, "by giving this to me?"
Ahsoka took a deep breath. "Please understand, Bail," she said, "I do not give this to you with the intent that you kill your own daughter. Quite the opposite."
"Explain."
"I found reference to it in one of the books in the Jedi Archive."
Bail's eyebrows soared. "The Jedi Archive?" he all but hissed. "Ahsoka, do you mean—"
"Yes," Ahsoka snapped. "I went to the Temple. It was worth it."
"Worth it? Ahsoka, you could have been killed. Or captured!"
"I know the risks, Bail," Ahsoka said. Her eyes flashed. "But what I found was worth it."
Bail looked down at the vial in his hands. From the periphery of his vision, he saw Ahsoka nod.
"Yes," she said. "I found that. Or, rather, enough to set me on the right path."
"And what," Bail asked, "is this, exactly?"
"It's an old Sith poison," Ahsoka said. "It attacks the midichlorians in a person's body. For most sentients, it's completely harmless. To someone strong in the Force, however, it is in small doses incredibly painful, and in large enough dose lethal."
Bail looked up at Ahsoka, eyes hard. "So why do you give it to me for my daughter?"
"Because, with the right dose, this poison kills just enough midichlorians to make the person who ingested it seem like a normal, Force-blind sentient, but not too many that the midichlorians can't regenerate."
"So what you're saying," Bail said slowly, "is that, with this, I can make Leia seem like a normal little girl."
Ahsoka nodded. "Yes," she said, "but at a cost. It will make her incredibly sick, and will only have the full effect for less than an hour. After her body metabolizes it out—which it metabolizes very quickly—her midichlorian count will begin to rise once more."
"So it's a short-term masquerade."
"It's a last resort."
Bail looked again down at the vial in his hand. It was still cold against his skin, the plastiglass of the container slick against his fingers. His heart shuddered against his ribs, climbed into his throat. Horror at what it was he held in his hand crept under his skin, sidled along the fine bones of his wrist and up his arm and into his chest.
How could he even think of poisoning his child? His sweet Leia, who laughed and danced and had only that evening at dinner told him and Breha that she wanted to make the whole world a happy place. How could he even think of poisoning her?
Then he thought of Palpatine. Of Vader. Of the crimson flags that hung in the Senate hall, that flew above the Alderaanian flag on the palace spire. Of the shadowy figures of the Inquisitors that stalked the Imperial Palace corridors; of the rumors whispered in the underbelly of the galaxy, and the reports coming in from his own spies, that spoke of thousands murdered by red blades and necks broken without a touch.
He thought of yellow eyes—of her eyes, so dark and bright and beautiful, bleeding to a sickly, rotten yellow.
He looked up and met Ahsoka's gaze.
"What will I need to do?"