Leia sits upon a cold metal bench in the Falcon, curled up with her hands around her knees. A thin blanket pulled from one of the cabins lies draped around her shoulders. The boy, Luke, is slumped before a table across the room, a look of unbearable sadness on his face. They can't be far apart in age, but to Leia he seems hardly more than a child.
She has half a mind to shake him by his scrawny shoulders.
Old men die every day, she wishes to scream. You have hardly lost a thing.
Alderaan had hung defenceless in the sky as Tarkin questioned her; as beautiful and delicate as a jewel her mother might have worn on a bracelet. Leia had not looked away from her home, not even as it was consumed. But she had screamed afterwards, for as Alderaan was torn apart it seemed that she could feel the explosions in her belly, in her heart, in her veins. The pain had been real, but had lasted for only a moment. Still, she had sagged against Vader's iron grip and sobbed out her broken heart.
She longs for her father, tall and solid and strong. His dark eyes— so cool and hard when he debated with his colleagues, so warm and kind when he looked at her— burn brightly in her mind. She wants her mother so badly that it's all she can do to keep from crying out. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Her family is dead, her planet is gone, who is she now?
Princess of Nothing, she thinks bitterly. Princess of Dust. The words feel like poison in her mind.
Go to him, Leia.
Leia looks up. Someone had spoken, and yet no one had. The words were soft as a sigh, and were spoken in her father's voice. She closes her eyes. Sorrow and exhaustion course through her bones.
Go to him, Leia.
Why should I? She thinks, too tired to question the voice.
He is suffering.
So am I. She feels ancient. She presses her knuckles into her temples.
Then don't suffer alone.
She opens her eyes. She sees mountains reaching to the sky, and the lake that stretches before them. She smells the sweet sharpness of the trees, and hears the pretty singing of the birds.
Home.
She blinks, and the vision is gone. The sights of Alderaan are replaced by Luke, and she sees him, really sees him, for the first time. The pain in her heart is reflected on his face. A different kind of hurting, but just as agonizing.
Don't suffer alone.
"I am Princess of Alderaan," she whispers to herself. "Daughter of Breha and Bail. I am their legacy. I will not falter."
Leia waits for a moment, hoping to hear her father's voice again, but it does not come. She shrugs the blanket from her shoulders and rises to her feet. She walks slowly toward the sad boy— lost and alone in the galaxy. Homeless, friendless, and afraid. Like her. She is drawn to him, she wants nothing more than to feel his comforting warmth at her side. But why?
I do not want be alone.
She places the blanket across his shoulders, places a gentle hand on his back, and sits beside him. He stiffens for a moment, and then leans in a little.
We aren't alone.