Trigger Warning: Depression, anxiety
A glance at the night sky was nothing but lies and deceit.
Worlds could spin out of orbit and the casual observer would never know. A sun could wink out and across the galaxy children would continue to count its glow in their constellations.
Night was cold and dark and full of tiny twinkling promises of light. And yet, with a closer look, they fell apart.
There was nothing there.
A star wished upon was nothing but a remnant of history.
A planet that dictated a future was minutes off.
After all, a comet was only rock and ice. And it always came back around. Even if no one was there to see it.
And no one could.
If you traveled far enough fast enough, Alderaan was still visible to the strongest scopes.
The outer and farthest mid rim could look up and, if they cared enough, Alderaan could be picked out of those thousands of worlds. It was just that, until recently, no one had cared enough to do so.
Now tales of destroyed planets and weapons the size of moons littered the ports and hyperlanes. Listeners would look out into space and see a planet lightyears away; the ignorant would cry, "Look, there it is," while the informed would shake their heads and console the survivors who could see their home yet never return.
Marching across the galaxy, Darth Vader was one such spectator. After every jump, he'd set his scopes and watch.
Sometimes the distance was close enough he'd see himself destroying his daughter's home over and over. Again and again.
Sometimes the planet shown like a jewel, untouched and unaware.
Vader made his way across the galaxy, torturing himself with every step, tearing himself apart. How could he have missed everything? How could his daughter have been close enough to touch and he never knew? This is what he sought. Answers.
Answers scrambled from dark corners of fabrications and falsehoods.
After all space was cold and dark.
Polis Massa surrendered information without resistance, having been sacked by the Empire once already.
Vader swept through the halls to the medical center, hunting for information. The files where old and decrepit, and transferring them took time.
Enough time, though, for Vader to begin scoring the rest of the outpost. When he left, nothing remained in the ancient asteroid field but dust and hatred.
Alderaan flared like a beacon.
He hunted across the stars for ghosts. Cleaving through stations and cities across the outer rim. The slightest mention of Bail Organa was worth a glance, a hiss of the fallen planet earned a second look.
He ransacked old networks hunting for any message, any meaning in her name. His daughter, the Princess, the Princess Leia.
He could feel pride swelling, it didn't matter if she'd done the deed or not. All that mattered was that people would believe it.
He might have destroyed the Death Star, torn it apart with powers considered to be myth, but it was Leia, his Leia, whom people feared. One step in many for her to be recognized, to be remembered. Vader would give her the galaxy. That's what she wanted, after all. A galaxy of her own.
The Force raged a gale wind on the universe. It didn't settle and it didn't hesitate to shift focus from one to another as things long planned lost possibility.
Landing aboard the Executor, Vader re-entered the Empire.
Sweeping through the crew, a sense of compliance settled. The Sith returned from the dead would lead them to victory. The crew worked single-mindedly without reward or remark. They were headed home, deeper and deeper towards the core.
Admiral Ozzel was crushed under the weight of command and was removed, permanently, from the chain. Newly instated Admiral Piett saw the way the hammer was falling and was quick to settle into line. There were reasons he'd lasted so long under Vader's command prior to this.
Beings who wondered at the changes in trajectory didn't walk away from their stations and had to be removed later, with shovels and in bags. Some never left their bunks and others took the fast leap to the unknown.
Spiraling inward, Alderaan danced in circles, there, not there, a wink, a wailing mass.
The dreadnaught circled Naboo for three days while the Lord descended upon Theed. He stalked through the streets, uprooting history and ravishing myths.
Women nearing their fifties fell sneering. Holding whispers close to their chest, refusing to the last. They where born and bred for war, and a once ally now twisted and dark would not hear their lady's dying confidences. They would not break and they would not cower. Women of Naboo, raised in royalty, even from the cover of hoods, fought until there was no more fighting to be done.
Keepers of the dead, on the other hand, shrieked out secrets. Squealing like pigs, rank with disloyalty.
A Queen lived, if only to watch her people fall apart. She mourned draped in black.
The city began to moan and whine, pain two decades old reared its head and left no mercy. Children played quiet rhyming games with one another, giggling out:
"Queen Ami Da La,
Went to Corusca,
She fought and she spoke,
Until she was smoke,
The Queen Ami Da La."
The adults dreamed of painted faces and feral eyes refusing to bow. Of treaties and bombs. Of deep lakes and deeper dread.
The world fell to pieces, pulled apart at the seams and unable to resist. Their loyal guardian long dead, kept only in a memory that raced over the planet. Sadness crippled them as they remembered.
Trade slowed, and the planet slowly collapsed in on itself. Festering grief spread like a contagion. Closing boarders was impossible, but leaving became just as difficult. People slept for hours and hours only to wake and then return to sleep. Cities glorious for their pristine beauty grew moss and leveled grit in the archways.
Depression of the soul settled firmly, children wandered away from school, parents forgot to pack lunches, and the tourists and visitors lacked the motivation to return home. Anger where there shouldn't be thrashed, fear when there wasn't before cried out.
And the Executor continued on.
Alderaan smoldered as they passed.
AN: kid rhymes... still creepy.