At Mos Bina

by TwinEnigma

Tags: Alternate Universe, Alderaan got blown up earlier, there are consequences, Slavery, Interrogation, Vader is a mess, Discussion of Genocide, That's Not How The Force Works, the Force does whatever it wants Helen, Mental Breakdown, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Overprotective Uncle Owen, Beru is so Tired, Leia will stone cold murder a Hutt, Threepio is Concerned(TM)

Nota Bene:

This is a redux of "They were at Mos Bina." If you had previously read that, you will notice that I have made some changes to the story in terms of theme, chapter content and even chapter order. There is also an additional chapter added. These changes address certain issues with the story. Additionally, they remove certain things which I no longer feel comfortable including or that it would be appropriate to continue to include, due to a situation I was made aware of with the previous version. It is also for this reason that the previous version will no longer be available publicly. Anyone wishing to reread the previous version will have to contact me privately, starting on January 1st, 2019.

That being said, I do hope you enjoy the redux.


Chapter 1:

all we have is our bones and our secrets

It comes without warning.

Savage and ruthless, in a single instant the people of Alderaan are rendered homeless. It is intended as a demonstration, a test fire for a superweapon not even near total completion, against a world thought to have rebel sympathies. Only those lucky enough to be off-world have been spared, a small fraction of a population that once numbered in the billions.

Huddled among the diaspora, Princess Leia finds herself twice orphaned. The Empire has taken both her family and her world. Looking back at the ashes of her world, she dries her tears and takes the pain and the anger, putting it to the side, saving it for another day. One day, she tells herself and the other survivors, the Empire will be made to pay for this travesty. For now, all they have is each other: they, together, are all that remains of Alderaan and this is something that cannot be taken from them, no matter what follows. Even stripped of everything, this is the one thing they cannot lose, the one thing that they must not let be taken from them. It is something they have each branded into their hearts.

"For Alderaan," they whisper quietly among themselves, "We must survive."

"For Alderaan," Princess Leia says.


They are a fleet of the lost and unwanted.

No one will take them, she learns this the hard way. No one wants to risk having the same fate befall their world. Senator after senator, world after world turns them away and, worse, some have begun to exile the few Alderaanians who had been there, many for generations, in their fear. Even the Corellians, known to loathe the Empire to the last, will not have them – they may have rocket fuel for blood, but they are not fools. Credits are running scarce and supplies are dwindling. Their options are growing scarcer with each day and their numbers only swell as more of their displaced and orphaned people find their way to her.

She thinks, perhaps, that they should seek out General Kenobi or the Rebellion, but she fears the Empire might be watching still or, worse, using them as bait. Her advisors and bodyguards agree: they know all too well of the Empire's capacity for cruelty.

They manage, scraping together what little they have left, and try for the Outer Rim.

And that is where the slavers find them.


"They must not know you are the princess," her bodyguards say as they help her change into one of their uniforms and quickly, purposefully restyle her hair to match their own. Outside, in the halls, the dull whoomps and shrieks of blaster fire grows closer.

There is fierceness in their voices, a defiant resolve, and Leia hears what they are truly saying: they have taken everything from us, but they shall not take you. She is now more than princess, more than senator: she has become a symbol of Alderaan.

Distantly, she thinks of her sister in all but blood, Winter, on one of the other ships and how she must be doing the same. Winter would tell her this, too, is something they must endure, if only to survive long enough to bring justice.

"They must not know," her bodyguards remind her once more before the doors come crashing down.

Leia takes the identity and title of Princess, burying it deep inside her heart and bones where the slavers cannot see it and layering over it with every scrap of deception learned at her father's knee. She tries not to think of the escape pod, of R2-D2 and C-3PO, hurtling away from them in search of General Kenobi, and instead focuses on the lie she must now tell.

They must not know.


Leia watches in silence as she and her people are slowly separated to be sold, their ships scrapped and scavenged for anything of value. She hides her fury, hides her pain, because she must if she is to survive.

The explosive chip they have placed beneath her skin is something she is intimately aware of.

"Endure," her bodyguard whispers, kissing her cheek in farewell, and marches with her head held high to the auction block.

"Endure," she tells her people when it is her turn – an order, maybe the last she'll ever give them – and she goes with her head held high.

"For Alderaan," they whisper as she passes, "We must survive."

It is a promise.


The Hutts like pretty things.

Leia is grateful that they do not like politics – or, at least, the Empire's politics – and do not recognize her among the other Alderaanians they have paid for. They see only a young human girl with a pretty face, one of several such girls and no more remarkable than the one next to her in line.

The part of her that is a senator, that believes in freedom and justice, violently swears that this affront must end. She promises herself, then and there, that when she is free, she will bring the Rebellion here and they will stop this madness. R2-D2 and C3-PO will make it and they will find Obi-Wan, she believes that – she has to.

She takes her fury, her indignation and turns them over and over, until these feelings are a polished thing, smooth and sharp as durasteel blades. Then, quietly, she puts them aside. They have a place, but they will not help her very much here where survival is in obedience and defiance is a subtle thing to be found in the spaces between "Yes" and "Master", where what is given is only what is expected and all that is important is concealed by the illusion of absolute servitude. It is a game she recalls well from her time in the Senate and her father's lessons, though the stakes are, perhaps, more intimately dangerous than ever before.

The Emperor is rarely so direct as he was with her homeworld.

She vows to herself that she will not give the Hutts the satisfaction of her anger and humiliation. She will give them only what they expect to see and nothing else. She has faith that R2-D2 and C3-PO will find Obi-Wan and bring him to help.

Then she will seek justice for her people.

For now, she will bide her time and endure.


Tatooine is harsh world, far from the lush memory of Alderaan. Here, water is more precious than all the money in the world and the sand sticks, cloying and coarse. Bright and rich colors exist only indoors and, at that, seem limited to the Hutt-controlled bars, casinos and pleasure palaces. Everything else is bleached by the double suns and scoured smooth by the sand.

In the slave quarters of Mos Bina, it is like another world entirely. She and her people are not trusted, not truly, by the slaves already there. Sure enough, they show them where things are and what is expected; they are even kind, if they are unlikely to be seen by an overseer. But they rarely speak freely in front of them and when they do, it is because they have not yet realized they are there and they do so in a strange dialect that seems to jump all over the Rim and slave worlds. Just as when the overseers come, these people fall silent in front of the Alderaanian survivors and give no indication that they even know anything save Basic and Huttese.

It is a harsh lesson: the survivors are outsiders to the Tatooine slaves, despite their common situation. Whatever they have built in secret remains their own. It is the only thing they truly do own.

If anything, Leia and the other Alderaanians can respect that. After all, the Hutts cannot take away something if they don't know it exists and they, too, refuse to share their greatest secret.

Leia is simply far too important to them to take such a risk.

The Princess of Alderaan eludes all, unbound and untouched.

And so there remains a gulf between them.


"On Alderaan, my name had a meaning," she confesses to the elder women one night. She dares not give the rest, dares not allude that she is more than a mere survivor of Alderaan who has fallen victim to slavers. Even her true name remains a secret to them. "But I'm afraid that one day no one will remember what it is."

The old Tatooinian woman combing her hair hums thoughtfully.

"We're all so scattered now," she says, twisting her fingers in the fabric of her skirts, "Too few."

The woman twists her hair into an intricate loop. "It is a sad thing, but what can you do?"

"I can survive," Leia tells her, sharply.

At that, all the old women laugh.

"That is true," the one doing her hair agrees, smiling. "You are not yet dead and so you may yet see them again, even if it is just in here."

She points then at Leia's heart, gently tapping the comb against her breastbone.

"They cannot take your heart," one of the others says in agreement, nodding her covered head, and says a phrase in their private tongue that Leia has come to recognize as a litany of some fashion.

It is the same phrase she has heard whispered since she was sold to this place, the same phrase they say so often in their secret tongue that she is starting to hear the cadence of it in how they say certain things in Basic. They hide it well, but Leia was raised a spy and a rebel and she knows how to listen better than most.

"They've taken everything else," she says with a heavy sigh, and it hits her all at once, all over again, everything that she has lost. The sheer magnitude of it is drowning her and she cannot stop the tears that come or the sobs that follow.

Her past is all that she owns now. Everything else is dust and ash.

"Let it out," the old woman says, embracing her gently. She does not say that another time may not come, but it hangs unsaid nonetheless.

Leia will take what she can get. She thinks of R2-D2 and C3-PO and begs all the gods of Alderaan that still live in her heart that they find General Kenobi soon.

Until they come, she has to do what she must to survive.

There is no other way forward.


One day, there is a commotion.

"Come, come quickly," an elder, the one all call grandmother, says, beckoning her.

All the slaves, young and old, Tatooinian, Alderaanian and those from worlds far beyond the Arkanis system, pour out of their quarters, murmuring and whispering with confusion and excitement.

"What's going on?" Leia asks as they press forward, flooding the gallery.

She is caught in the tide of sentients and flows with them.

The elder, eyes bright, pulls her along, turning her head. "A man has come to free us."

Leia feels the air leave her body in a rush and she sags against her grip, barely even registering the old woman's admonition of her being an outsider who does not know why this is somehow a special thing.

"Does he have a droid with him?" she asks, her throat suddenly dry with desperate hope, "A blue R2 unit?"

The old woman's eyebrows rise in awe and wonder, silently asking how it is possible that she could have known this.

Leia laughs, relief and joy flooding her.

R2-D2 and C3-PO made it.

And when the Hutt calls for her, she is ready.

She will be free and she will have justice.

Nothing may touch her.

She is, at last, without fear.


Notes:

TBH, neither group here really trusts the other with their secrets, but that's fair, given the situation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯