I love Star Wars so much. Unfortunately, it is not mine.
i. Stars
When Leia is young, she is entranced by the stars.
She pores over star charts and pulsar maps before she is old enough to make any sense of them, and devotes herself to learning the names of all the systems in her quadrant (and then some). She asks for her bed to be pushed up against a large, sweeping window, and she loses herself tracing constellations every night before she falls asleep, bathed in starlight.
She thinks wishing on stars is stupid, because everyone knows that stars are just big flaming balls of plasma (whatever that is), and they're not about to make her wishes come true, or anything. But sometimes, when she's curled up in bed, alone in the dark, she'll whisper her dreams to them and secretly hope that they're listening.
When she closes her eyes, she sees nebulae and twinkling lights. She dreams of strange planets and impossible landscapes, asteroid fields and long voyages to alien worlds. In her dreams, she is a fearless explorer, and the entire universe is hers for the taking. By day, she'll stand outside and look up to the sun and think that she can't wait until she's old enough to leave Alderaan behind and discover the galaxy.
Sometimes, her parents take her with them on diplomatic visitations and important senatorial missions and just regular plain old vacations, and sometimes, if she's lucky, she's allowed to stand on the bridge as the ship jumps to hyperspace. The stars shiver and stretch and hurtle towards her, like they're reaching for her, welcoming her.
She reaches back and dreams of a life in space.
ii. Bail Organa
Leia loves both her parents dearly, but everyone knows that she is Bail's daughter.
She shares her mother's sharp sense of humour and love for the sea; it is the Queen's embrace that she seeks when she is afraid, or unsure, and it is her mother who teaches her how to braid her hair and weave flower crowns and smile like she means it even when she really, really doesn't.
But it is Bail who she resembles more, with her dark eyes and serious demeanor. They are both eloquent, perceptive, and practical. He indulges her interest in astrophysics, and then history, and then politics, with an unwavering patience and affability, and he understands her better than anyone.
Bail Organa is a Viceroy and an Imperial Senator and, in her opinion, the greatest father she could have asked for. She is immensely proud of him. He teaches her that battles can be waged and won with words alone, and the importance of ones like freedom and justice and sacrifice, and she knows he is proud of her too.
iii. Rebellion
Bail has never coddled her, or treated her with anything other than trust and respect, so when she turns seventeen and asks him are the rumours true and are you seriously involved in all this, he tells her nothing but the truth.
When she demands to be involved (this is important to me, and to the people of Alderaan, to whom I have a responsibility, father, and I can help, I can do this, I know I can—), he doesn't tell her that she's too young, or that it's too dangerous, or that she doesn't understand the risks. Instead, he clasps her hands in his and looks at her with those dark, serious eyes (so like her own), and later that night he informs her mother that she'll be accompanying him on his next trip to Coruscant.
When the cruiser makes the jump to lightspeed, Leia is in her quarters, immersed in senatorial transcripts and Imperial Supreme Judiciary minutes and holoreels on Outer Rim planets and unexplained disappearances.
The stars stretch towards her. She is too busy to notice them.
iv. Vader
She is an Imperial Senator by the age of eighteen, and it is in the government halls of Coruscant that she first meets him.
His reputation, of course, precedes him. Some say he's a fallen Jedi; some say he's a Lord of the Sith (no one can agree if one necessarily means the other or if they're mutually exclusive or what a Sith Lord even is, exactly, but it certainly sounds menacing). Rumour has it that he is grotesquely disfigured, and that he uses his gleaming black armour to hide his terrible face; others say that he is in fact more machine than man, that the armour is as much a part of him as her skin is a part of her.
Somehow, it feels personal. He is often seen accompanying the Emperor, and when she stares down that ghastly mask from across the Senate floor, the surge of anger she feels surprises her, empowers her, stamps out her disgust (and even, almost, her fear).
Senator Organa, he will say, as he passes the Alderaanian Delegation. His voice cuts her straight to the bone; the sound of his breathing—astoundingly, disturbingly even—echoes oppressively off the walls.
Lord Vader, she will nod in return, staring into the dark lenses where his eyes should be and thinking I don't know what you are, but I know who you are. I know what you've done.
The rumblings of rebellion are louder than ever, and she finds herself living precariously. She is the youngest person ever to be elected to the Senate, and by day she strives to assert her position; she pushes for tolerance, pushes for peace, pushes for the security of Alderaan and the Rule of Law in the Empire. By night, she sifts through encrypted reports and black market supply deals and defense strategies, relays scrambled fleet coordinates and tentative plans of alliance (of a new Republic), and dreams of blueprints and access codes.
(When she attends the Senate, she dresses in white. It is the colour of her enemies, and also the colour of her resistance. She stares down the Emperor and his right-hand man, and she wears it with pride and insolence.)
v. Death Star
Of course the Alliance leaders have known about the Death Star for years; they have some of the most talented dataslicers in the galaxy on their side, and she's been tracking enormous discrepancies in the Imperial budget reports since before she was even appointed to the Senate. It is on her fourth attempt to initiate an inquiry into the missing funds that the project is presented to the Senate as an unfortunate but necessary investment into the safety of the Galactic Empire.
(Safety, her ass.)
The official announcement can only mean that the Empire is no longer in a position of having to hide the weapon, which bodes poorly for the fledgling Rebel Alliance. However, it also presents them with a singular opportunity.
Imperial encryption does not pose an insurmountable challenge, but the plans are housed on data banks strictly isolated from any and all information networks. The official acknowledgement of the project, however, forces the Empire to move the files. This sets off an improbable chain of events which leads the Rebels to the databanks housing the plans, the blueprints onto a standard-issue Corellian Navy datachip, and the datachip into the custody of an Imperial turncoat, who presses it into Leia's hand amid blaster fire on Ralltiir.
The man falls to her feet, dead, and everything changes.
vi. Obi-Wan Kenobi
She has known of the Jedi almost as long as she has known of the Empire. An ancient and noble order; peacekeepers devoted to a great and mysterious power; a people and a way of life, extinguished in a swift and silent genocide. Slaughtered.
The Empire has done its best to erase all traces of them, and so Leia devotes herself to learning all that she can of them. She spends hundreds of hours in Alderaan's oldest libraries, poring over ancient texts, stringing together rumours and legends and tales of impossible feats. She listens, enraptured, as her father tells her about glowing crystal swords and Jedi mind tricks, about grand temples and old friends, long dead, lost to the Clone Wars.
She has spent her life dreaming of them, and dreaming vividly; things she has never seen, things she shouldn't even be able to imagine—scenes she can picture so clearly that they may as well be happening right in front of her.
She dreams: of crystal caves and glowing sabers, cutting through the dark
She dreams: of distant voices, chanting, arguing
She dreams: of golden eyes that flash like lightning
She dreams: of endless armies, white, marching
She dreams: of rage and fire and screams that leave her sitting up in bed, gasping.
After Ralltiir, she stands aboard the Tantive IV with the stolen data chip clutched in her hand (soaked in blood and death and sacrifice) and listens to her father tell her, You must find Obi-Wan Kenobi. You must go to Tatooine. When the sirens are wailing and the ship is shuddering and she is facing the sudden, impending threat of defeat, she surprises herself with the readiness with which she surrenders her fate to a higher power.
The Jedi were wisdom and courage and hope, and here, on this Outer Rim wasteland, is the last of them.
(Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.)
vii. Justice
She has spent the better part of her young life despising the Empire. She hates its widespread policies of assimilation and Reign by Terror; its belittlement of native cultures; its persistently brutal treatment of non-humans; the constant imposition of the Emperor's will on systems and planets that are powerless to defy him. She hates it with a passion she can barely control. It burns in her veins and her stomach and her bones, ignites her words, brands her thoughts, makes it so that she cannot remember a time when her life was not entirely dedicated to tearing the whole system down, brick by Imperial brick.
(With my bare hands, she thinks, if I have to.)
As the Imperial Senator Organa, Royal Representative of the Alderaan System, Leia is notoriously relentless in her pursuit of justice. They call her Madam Senator and Little Miss Inalienable Rights as though they think petty words will dissuade her (where blatant misogyny and blaster fire did not), and it only makes her more determined. Some people want to save the world; Leia wants to save the galaxy. She looks not to the Old Republic (as so many of her father's friends do), tied down by its own weighty history, mired in bureaucracy and indecipherable policy, stagnating in its endless deliberations. Instead, she envisions a new Republic as a dynamic forum for the expression of ideas and the cooperation of peoples; an arbiter, not a ruler.
But these dreams are light years away from her reality, and so instead, she uses her time as a Senator to pursue current injustices with a doggedness that surprises, annoys, and ultimately intimidates her opponents.
Justice, to Leia, is more than a political concept. It is the lens through which she views the world. It is both the means and the end; her only constant in an unreliable universe. It is an indisputable truth of the here and now that cleaves the world into black and white (and it is obvious to everyone where she stands).
She has always believed justice to be an inevitability; the eventual, inescapable product of good will and hard work (and perhaps even some higher, guiding power, although the jury's still out on that one). But, as she discovers (writhing and gritting her teeth, cursing the Empire and straining against the interrogation droid in anguish), there is nothing quite like Imperial torture to convince you that there is no such thing as justice.
viii. Alderaan
—is towering blue mountains and sunlit valleys, clear skies and glittering rivers—
—dark palace halls and great stone towers, heavy fabrics and sweeping arches—
—giggles and secrets, schools and castles, friends and teachers—
—insufferable, nosy aunts, brushing her hair, teaching her manners—
—ancient libraries and scholars and knowledge—
—dinner with her mother and her father in the gardens—
—dirty hands and skinned knees—
—gentle smiles, mother's caresses—
—the green of the trees and young ladies' dresses—
—moonlit lakes—
—first kisses—
—a bastion of peace in an unstable galaxy—
—half-remembered dreams of space adventures and heroes—
—an unsuspecting planet caught unawares—
Alderaan: is nothing but rocks and stardust, screaming into the void.
ix. Sacrifice
Eventually, Obi-Wan Kenobi does come to rescue her (although he is too late—her heart is gone. She is aching, empty; her body a shell, running on hatred and horror and vengeance). She never meets him; he sacrifices himself to Vader's blade so that the rest of them may escape.
(On any other day, this would be a tragedy. Today, it is utterly eclipsed by an unspeakable, unfathomable catastrophe, and she really can't think about this right now—)
Leia knows a little bit about sacrifice. She sacrificed her freedom to live up to the expectations of royalty. She sacrificed her youth to the pursuit of justice. She sacrificed her safety for the Rebellion. She sacrificed her personal life for the lives of others. She sacrificed Aldera—
(No.)
And now Kenobi has sacrificed his life for hers.
After nineteen years, Leia has nothing left to give but herself.
(The difference is that now she has nothing to lose.)
x. Luke Skywalker
Leia is not entirely sure that she believes in Luke Skywalker.
Here is a farm boy from Tatooine (a backwater, nasty, desolate, Hutt-infested desert planet), who just happened to come across her R2 droid, happened to know 'Ben' Kenobi, and also just happens to be descended from a Jedi; who took one look at her holo recording and decided that he just had to rescue her. From right under the nose (helmet?) of the most feared man in the entire Empire. Where she was trapped in the largest, most dangerous battle station in galactic history. It seems less like real life, and more like the beginning of a very cliche Callonian opera (Smuggler, Wookiee, ancient protocol droid, and battered Corellian bucket-of-bolts notwithstanding.)
She suspects they are near the same age, but she feels light years of distance between them. She admires him as much as she is incredulous of him. Everything is new to him: the existence of the Rebellion, the notion that the Empire is something to be overthrown, the atrocities that have been occurring galaxy-wide all throughout their lives. They don't call it the Outer Rim for nothing, she muses.
Still, despite his naivety and boyish face, there's something about him that inspires trust. He knows when to ask questions and when to keep silent; he has an almost uncanny sense for when she is upset, without her ever having to say anything. When she's struck by terror or grief or helplessness, as she often is during the hours it takes them to get to Yavin IV, he's happy to talk about his life on Tatooine until the feeling passes. She likes to sit in the main hold of the Millenium Falcon, avoiding its insufferable Captain, and watch him spin through exercises with his lightsaber.
He's bright and kind and brave, and funny in an unexpectedly snarky sort of way. (He might even make her laugh, if the mere thought of laughing wasn't impossible). He is also, almost certainly, in love with her.
(But she really can't afford to think about that.)
xi. Chewbacca
Leia has spent some time on Kashyyk, and she is no stranger to Wookiees. She even understands a bit of Thykarann, but the Falcon's co-pilot speaks a hard, fast, Shyriiwook that utterly escapes her. She has no way of communicating with him except through Threepio (who can be irritating and obtuse at the best of times), or the Falcon's laser-brained Captain, who seems to prefer goading her over facilitating conversation.
("How're we doing, your Worship?" he says, his voice thick with sarcasm. She does not dignify him with a response. She has lost more than he can imagine and has a mission and a duty to the Alliance that he cannot comprehend, and she simply does not have time for this.)
Still, she has generally found Wookiees to be compassionate and gentle, and Chewbacca appears to be no exception. Where she has immense trouble understanding him, he seems to have no trouble understanding her. He'll nod at her sympathetically when he catches her eye, or stop in the Falcon's main corridor to pat her gently on the head, and while she would find it belittling coming from anyone else, somehow, coming from him, it's alright.
(There is something laughable about objecting to being treated as a child by a being that must be at least a hundred years older than her.)
xii. Fear
Leia knows a little bit about sacrifice, and, she thinks, quite a bit about fear. She knows what it is to face off against an army of opponents with nothing but her wits and her words; she knows what it is to wield a blaster. She has been a spy and a traitor and a soldier. She has seen the fear in the eyes of young pilots, of informants lost so deep in this political mess that they can no longer see the way out.
Fighting the Empire is more than an uphill battle; it is a series of impossible feats, one miraculous escape after another. Standing in the War Room, analyzing the Death Star for weaknesses that she is slowly becoming convinced do not exist, the fear in the air is palpable.
Evacuation is defeat—most of them will escape with their lives, but the Alliance will have lost what little footing it has, most likely for good. Facing the threat head-on, however, will, if they are victorious, give them an unprecedented advantage against the Imperial army.
If they wait for the Death Star and fail to destroy it, they will be obliterated.
(They all signed up for this fight prepared to die, but that doesn't make it any easier.)
She goes to the break room while General Dodonna's slicers take another look at the weapons systems. There's a group of pilots and technicians huddled around a table, but they clear out immediately as soon as they notice her, murmuring things like excuse us and my condolences, your highness and we're so, so sorry. They are afraid of her grief, and afraid of the reminder that she carries: the Death Star is real.
(And it is coming for them.)
She hears the scuff of boots behind her as she pours herself some coffee, and turns around. Of all the—
"Princess," he says, voice gruff and surprised.
"Captain Solo," she replies curtly. "I'm surprised you're still here."
"Yeah, well," he grumbles, taking a few more steps into the room. "Your guys are still trying to scrape together the credits you owe me."
"Yes, your reward," she says coolly. He squints at her. "And then I suppose you'll be hightailing it out of here."
"You got it," he says, hooking his thumbs through his belt. "When's the evacuation?"
"Evacuation, Captain? We're not evacuating." She smiles at him and watches his eyebrows fly up.
"Not evacuating?" He looks like can't believe the words coming out of his own mouth. "Not evacuating? The Imps are coming, you know that. It might take them a while but they'll get here, and when they do they're gonna grind your pretty little base into dust."
"I'm well aware of the capabilities of the Death Star, thank you," she says sharply. He frowns. "And it's interesting that you mention the Imperials, seeing as it was the tracking device on your ship that led them straight to us."
"Now hold on just a minute," he says hotly, waving a finger at her. "That tracker never woulda been on my ship if we hadn't been rescuin' you in the first place. You'll excuse me for not running an external scan, your Worship, what with all the Stormtroopers firing on us and Darth kriffin' Vader himself right behind 'em!"
"The least you could do is stay and help us fight!"
"The least I could do? Honey, this whole adventure has already been way more trouble than it's worth. And besides, what are you gonna do when they get here, huh? Send a couple of X-wings out to shoot 'em up? Hit 'em with a couple of proton torpedoes?"
"That's the general idea, yes."
"Unbelievable," he says, throwing his hands up and rolling his eyes.
"You know, I'm not really sure what a low-grade smuggler could possibly know about offensive aerial strategy or Imperial engineering, but I'm quite sure nobody asked for your approval, Captain."
"Oh, I'm no expert, sweetheart, but I don't need to be an expert to tell you you haven't got a chance in hell of stopping that thing."
"Well then, I suppose it's good you won't be around to see us try."
"I guess so," he mutters. He takes a few angry steps towards the door and stops, turning around to look at her. "And what about the kid? Luke?"
"He enlisted. Almost the minute we landed."
"Of course he did," he sighs, shaking his head. "And I'm guessin' there's no changing his mind, huh?"
"You've known him longer than I have," she replies evenly.
"Right," he says, looking at the floor. Suddenly, he strides back towards her, stepping close enough that she has to tip her head back to look at him. He's frowning, his eyes darting across her face. "Look," he begins, wetting his lips. "Listen. I'm leavin' as soon as they get that money together. They said they'd have it figured out in about an hour. And then I'm gone. You understand?" He stands there, eyebrows furrowed, looming over her, his eyes wide and tense. "This is crazy. You know it's crazy."
She looks at him for a moment and then takes a step back. "Your contribution to the Alliance will not be forgotten. Best of luck with your future… endeavours."
"Thanks," he grinds out, and then he's out the door before she quite knows what's happened. She turns back to the counter and wraps her hands around her coffee, pressing her head against the cool cabinet door above the sink.
Leia Organa is not afraid.
(She's just very, very tired.)
xiii. Millenium Falcon
Han Solo's YT freighter is probably (definitely) the least spaceworthy-looking ship she's ever seen in her life. Fleeing from the Death Star, dodging Stormtroopers and TIE fighters, she's half (entirely) convinced they'll be torn in half at the first laser blast—but instead the Falcon just shudders and shakes and resolutely holds itself together. (She's not sure whether to attribute this resilience to Corellian engineering, or the Force, or the sheer force of will of the Captain, but somehow they don't disintegrate and she supposes, in a detached sort of way, that that's a good thing.)
Solo and Chewbacca have also, apparently, managed to outfit it with a couple of CEC laser cannons (she recognizes the model, alright; the Empire has them mounted on all the Lancer ships, but one thing they shouldn't be able to do is destroy TIE-fighters with a single shot, and yet Luke and the smuggler are are doing exactly that, which is leaving her with a number of questions about where the hell Solo got his hands on those kinds of modifications), and so they blast their way through a couple of Imperial fighters and leap into hyperspace with a stutter, and she's sure she's never felt more relieved than when she finally steps off of that improbable (impossible) mess of a ship.
(When the smuggler and the Wookiee finally load their credits and take off for good, she tries to tell herself good riddance.)
Her relief at stepping off the ship is only eclipsed by her relief when it reappears on their radars, Han's voice whooping in her ear as he makes his shot and changes history.
(She smiles breathless and wide and thinks I knew it.)
xiv. Courage
After the medals have been awarded, the speeches given, and the eulogies read, Alliance Command is back to work. They have a Rebel base to evacuate, scouting missions to organize, supply routes to manage, X-Wings to replace.
To top it off, reports have been coming in indicating that Darth Vader somehow survived the battle. Leia is no more perturbed by this than anyone else in Alliance Command—one of their greatest opponents has escaped them unscathed, and is surely organizing a blockade even now, and this is obviously cause for alarm. But this is also Alliance business-as-usual, and Leia simply refuses to understand why everyone is treating her like she's going to fall apart at any mention of his name.
"For the last time, I'm fine," she snaps, when Luke starts to ask her (for what must be the millionth time) how she's doing.
"Alright, sorry," he says, raising his hands and looking away. It is possibly the least believable imitation of sincerity she has ever seen.
"I'm serious. Stop asking me that. I'm not the first person to lose something in this war, and I certainly won't be the last."
"Leia," he says reproachfully. "It's not a competition."
"Exactly. Which is why everyone needs to stop acting like I've got the monopoly on tragedy around here. Look at you! You don't exactly have a home to go back to, either." Beside her, Luke stop walking, and she experiences the rare sensation of having put her foot right into her mouth. She sighs. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that."
"It's fine," he says quietly, not meeting her eyes.
"No, it's not." She puts her hand on his shoulder and tries to meet his eyes. "It was completely inappropriate. I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it," he says heavily, his startlingly blue eyes meeting her own. "Just - take care of yourself, alright?"
She's not sure at what point in the last few days, exactly, she and Luke Skywalker became first-name-basis, talk-about-our-feelings, worry-and-fuss-over-each-other, bonafide friends, but she supposes things like War and Death have a way of rearranging people's priorities, and formality and decorum have been knocked clean off her list. Still at the top, however, are words like justice and freedom and blockade evasion, and so instead of wasting her time grieving, Leia gets right down to work.
(What Leia doesn't tell anyone is this: at night, in her quarters, alone in the dark, she dreams that she is on fire. In her dreams, she tells them everything they want to know—all the codes, all the name, all the locations—and every night, they blow Alderaan to pieces anyway, and she watches the fragments of her beautiful planet hurtling outwards so many times that eventually, she cannot tell the dream from the memory.)
In truth, it is many months before she can sleep through the night.
Part II coming your way... hopefully sometime soon.