Warning for some minor spoilers for Leia: Princess of Alderaan. Very minor, but spoilers for a book that just came out all the same.
There were no casualties.
She had led a successful ground mission.
She had flown into enemy territory, led a team that freed slaves, had fought a Sith, and she'd done it all without losing any of the troops under her command.
Why didn't she feel victorious?
There were people, families, huddled in the ship. Thanking her, thanking Sana, thanking the troops, thanking Han, thanking Chewie.
They were exiting the atmosphere, and soon would be leaving real space behind and truly would be all clear.
From where she had left him on the planet's surface, the Sith reached out to her in the Force.
Leia. She could hear a touch of sadness in the mechanical voice's tone. She wondered if he remembered discussing baby names with her mother. Picking hers out. You will explain what you showed me.
She reinforced her mental shields, and he tore through them like they were not there at all.
You will not escape so easily. Explain those visions.
She moved quickly towards the cockpit and shouted at Han, almost panicked, "Punch it! Let's get out of here!"
Han turned towards her, indigent. "Give us a moment Your… youness. We're on it."
She rolled her eyes, exasperated. Why did this have to be a fight? "Darth Vader is here. I'd really like to get as far away as possible."
His face smoothed out, understanding replacing the upset. "Well, why didn't you just say so? Signal the transports, and then jump up to lightspeed Chewie."
Chewie grumbled his agreement and fiddled with several buttons and switches on the dashboard before pushing the controls up to full speed.
As the stars stretched out around them Leia let go of the tension that was holding her, releasing it into the Force, slumping slightly against the cockpit's wall.
This time, when she built her shields up Vader did not crash through.
"Are you ok? Did you see Vader on the planet?" Chewbacca was watching her, concerned.
She gave him a weak smile, trying to mask her exhaustion, both mental and physical.
"Yes. We fought."
Han turned towards her, radiating worry. "You fought with Vader? Kriff, you're as crazy as the Princess."
Chewie laughed, agreeing with his friend's assessment. "I'm impressed they can fit their bravery in such a small frame."
Han snorted. For her part, Leia sunk into one of the empty seats in the cockpit.
"I'm a Jedi. It's my job to fight the Sith when they make their presence known."
"Oh joy, more Jedi nonsense. My favorite." The wavering blue glow of hyperspace danced across his face, calling attention to and deepening the lines of Han's scowl.
"I don't get it, why are you so resistant to believing in the Force? You'd think with all the time you spend with my counterpart, and with Luke… even just fighting against Darth Vader, it'd be pretty impossible to deny that the Force is real."
Han turned away from her, pretending to focus on various controls, fiddling with the nav computer. She knew there wasn't much he actually had to adjust now that they were on a plotted course. He was just avoiding looking at her.
"I just know I can trust what I can see, ok?"
She reached for a hydrospanner that was laying in a corner of the cockpit, floating it to her hand.
"Would you look at that. You can see me call upon the Force with your own two eyes. Still, don't believe?"
He glared at her. Frustration filled the room. "That's a nifty trick and all, but it doesn't mean there is anything larger out there." Seeing that she was going to continue to argue, he gestured towards the door. "Why don't you head to the back and check in on your troops? You may not know it, but that is a huge part of being a leader."
Stretching as she stood, Leia glanced at the surly spacer. "Look, you don't have to trust in it or feel it with you, I just don't get how you can… deny that it is there at all."
He rolled his eyes. "You're as fanatically devoted to that religion of yours as the Princess is to her revolution, you know that?"
"No actually, I don't, since I really don't know this Princess everyone keeps comparing me to." She was getting so tired of being compared to her too. The perfect soldier and leader who seemed to live for nothing but this fight. "If she has devoted herself to something other than the Force, I feel sorry for her. Since she is another version of me I am certain the Force is quite strong with her, and it would do her well to learn to trust in it. Hopefully, she's learning how to do precisely that in my timeline."
Han gaped at her. "You think she's going to come home all… religious? Kriff that, she's smarter than that." His face lit up with a fond smile, and he shook his head. "Her Worship doesn't trust anything aside from herself, and a good blaster at her side."
Leia frowned, thinking of how hard she had to work everyday to find it in her to trust everything around her. The struggle her meditations involved. The undeniable payoff of it all. "Then I truly pity her, and you as well."
She left the cockpit, making a point of moving as calmly and peacefully as she could. It was not that she was sulking off like an insulted child, no, she was disengaging like the bigger person. Maybe if she kept telling herself that she'd believe it too.
For a moment she sensed a familiar Force presence on the ship with her, and she turned back to see who it could be. All she saw was Han and Chewie, watching her leave. The presence had not come from either of them.
She was distracted, which was why it did not surprise her too much when she walked right into a familiar gold-plated Droid on her way out of the cockpit.
"Oh my, Princess Leia! I am terribly sorry for banging into you, I just wished to inform Captain Solo that -" Leia honestly did not care what C-3PO was entering the cockpit to do.
"Tell him whatever you want Threepio. I doubt he'll believe you. It seems the Captain is bad at admitting things that are right in front of him."
She glanced back towards him, frustrated that she even cared. What was it about this man that got to her so completely?
It wasn't until she had entered the ship's main cabin and started helping Sana distribute blankets and other supplies, that it occurred to her that he had successfully gotten her mind off of Darth Vader.
They dropped back into real space.
They had only just left hyperspace, nothing more than that, and already she was emotionally undone.
She was looking at Alderaan.
The last time she had seen it, really seen it, had been aboard the Death Star. Watching it explode. Yet now here she was, gazing at that wonderful blue and green planet once more.
White clouds swirled about in the atmosphere, and below them she knew thranta and so many other precious creatures flew through the breeze. The seas and glacier lakes would be calm and peaceful. On the land the farmers would be hard at work, producing a bounty with flavors so vibrant vendors across the galaxy would clamor for the chance to sell them, and at countless vineyards stretched across the mountains grapes were being harvested to create some of the most prized wines in the galaxy.
Oh and the arts! Artist colonies devoted to nothing but but creating new songs and dances while also perfecting those left by those who came before them. A constantly changing tapestry of new and old blending seamlessly to create something wholly unique and Alderaanian anew each day.
Leia knew each aspect of her planet's culture and history, had had each industry and trade drilled into her from a young age. She had thought, truly believed, that having them taken from her, from the galaxy at large, had made her appreciate and understand her home's value as much as she ever possibly could. Yet now, now as she gazed at that jewel of a planet hanging in space, knowing that its entire culture was thriving and living... every molecule of her body sang with her joy and love for everything her home was and had ever represented.
If simply seeing Alderaan evoked this sort of response, what would actually setting down upon the surface do to her?
Getting to swim in its lakes, or hike through the snow covered mountains once more?
She could not wait to find out.
They began their descent, the ship cutting through wispy white clouds. The clouds parted enough for Leia to see the patchwork of farmland stretched through the valley beneath them, and she let out a gasp of pure joy.
For one dizzying horrible moment Leia remembered that every being on this planet was dead, everyone, down to every last wolf-cat was dead. They were nothing but ghosts, memories of a place that no longer existed.
Leia banished that thought as quickly as it came.
What she saw outside the ship was real. Stunningly real. This was not yet another dream she would wake from, forced to confront the reality of the planet's destruction anew.
It was real and alive and soon she would be standing on Alderaan's surface.
Oh! Alderaan, wonderful beautiful impossible Alderaan, she was coming home!
Then... Through the mountains was the most familiar sight, filling her with a peculiar homesickness and pure wonder all at once. Aldera City, and rising above the city her home, the Royal Palace of Alderaan. She could already make out the tower that held her bedroom, the balcony that came off of her father's office, the drain she used to climb down to escape her lessons.
She was home.
She had just started to make peace with the fact she'd never see this place again (who was she kidding she would never be at peace with that fact no matter how long she lived) and yet here she was!
The ship set down, and her heart lurched. She couldn't remember it ever beating faster, it felt like it was going to vibrate right on out of her chest.
They had landed not in the spaceport that serviced Aldera City, the one her family always utilized when they came to and from their home, but rather on one of the landing pads attached to the palace. A landing pad used only by visitors from off-world.
She rushed to where the landing ramp would descend, ignoring Ahsoka's laughter as she did, eager to get off the ship and stand on Alderaan herself.
When the ramp descended she was not greeted by anyone she knew. There was no WA-2V come to check on her charge (Leia could just hear TooVee complaining now. "Coveralls again your highness! And your braids! You cannot simply pin them up like that, you need to let them fall more elegantly!"). No familiar officers welcoming her home, asking her about where she had been and what she had done. Asking in that slightly knowing way, inviting her to reinforce whatever cover story she had been traveling under this time. Absolutely no one recognized her at all. There was just a smattering of guards clustered on an otherwise empty landing pad.
One of them looked over, he seemed bored and disinterested. "Welcome to Alderaan, Master Jedi. The Queen welcomes you to her palace. She is in a meeting now, but you are to have an audience once she finishes up her current business."
Reality flooded her, disorienting and dysphoric and just downright nasty. There was a thin strand of ice slowly expanding in her chest, almost tickling her insides as it spread out, like ink expanding in water.
She was not this planet's most beloved daughter returning home. She was a visitor. She did not belong here, did not live here, was not known here.
This place, which should be the most welcoming location in the entire galaxy, her home, did not recognizeher.
A pilot, an officer in her parents' service, approached them as they neared the entrance to the palace.
"The Queen is currently conducting business within her throne room," said a familiar voice from under the guard's long white helmet, and Leia suppressed a bitter laugh. Who better to welcome her home than a friend? "You can either meet her there or wait for her to join you in her office. Regardless I will accompany you so you do not get lost."
Leia didn't care that she wasn't supposed to know who this was, or that as a supposed off-worlder she would not know every room and corridor of this palace better than the back of her own hand. "That's alright, Evaan. I know how to get to the throne room. You should still walk with us though, I'd love your company."
Evaan Verlaine, not a soldier, not a rebel, not a politician, not one of Leia's closest friends, but an officer sworn to serve House Organa, startled when Leia said her name. "I uh... I was not aware that you could pick up on people's names in the Force, Master Jedi! The powers of the Jedi are impressive indeed."
Leia snorted. Right. Impressive powers. Not months of fighting side by side, of helping each other through the trauma of losing Alderaan. Traveling the Galaxy to find other survivors, arguing over just what exactly it meant to be Alderaanian in the wake of the destruction the Empire had wrought, stitching loose pockets of refugees together to form the Alderaan Flotilla. Being all the other had in the days immediately after Yavin, holding each other through the nightmares.
It was strange, so strange, walking through her home yet being treated as stranger. No one greeted her. No one acknowledged her. No one even glanced her way. She was truly nobody to them.
It was surreal in a way she had not anticipated, wrong to the very core.
Evaan was not the only person here she knew, far from it. Leia had always made a point of knowing each member of the palace staff by name, of memorizing a bit about each person's family. As she saw them in these halls, she was reminded each time that all of these people and every family member of theirs she would so often ask after, were all dead and gone.
Each passing familiar face was just a reminder of all she had lost.
Of the people she had failed.
There were so many people here that she had known, so many people who had known her.
Yet now not a single being here knew her at all.
No, wait. One person knew who she was.
She reached out, testing their fledgling bond. She did not know what she was doing, not really, but she tried all the same. In response she felt a comforting pulse, reassurance that the Togruta woman was aware of how hard this was, and would stay by Leia's side as long as she needed her.
The three of them strode closer and closer to where Leia's mother waited. On one of Leia's sides walked the stranger who knew her better than anyone in her home, and on the other walked a dear and treasured friend who had transformed into a total stranger.
She paused, staring now at the large and heavy ancient doors to the throne room. Leia had been so eager to see her mother as soon as possible, she hadn't even considered what it would mean choosing to meet her here. In this place neither of them had ever really like to go, as opposed to her mother's far more comfortable and familiar office. The throne room was hardly used save for the most formal of ceremonies. Leia wondered who her mom was meeting there.
There were two places in the palace Leia would have most liked to go to chat with her mother. The royal library and the gardens. Leia knew her desires could not be fulfilled. Those comfortable, private and ancient living spaces were for family, not off-worlders come for a visit.
Yet even as her stomach twisted in new and interesting ways, she would not trade this opportunity for anything.
She would be seeing her mother.
How would she be greeted?
She had been able to give her father the embrace she had needed as soon as she saw him, because they were in private, he could be himself within the apartment of his close friend.
She would be meeting her mother not as her friend's child or as one person meeting another, but as a supplicant brought before the Queen.
Was it too late to change her mind and go to her mother's office instead?
Funny, all of Leia's etiquette lessons on the formal way to properly greet the Queen of Alderaan, outside of ceremonies such as her Day of Demand, of course, had been taught with her playing the role of the one hosting the greeting.
Everything she had ever learned cast her in a role she no longer played.
She turned to Evaan, wanting somehow to connect with her. Say something that would let the other woman know that they even had a connection. Then she stopped. How would thrusting a friendship onto Evaan be any different than what she had experienced on Coruscant? No. She would not do that to her.
She hoped that it wasn't awful for her to still desire some sort of connection, let alone a meaningful relationship, with her mother.
She was suddenly terrified of what would happen when they were called into her mother's throne room. There were too many unknowns and uncertainties in a place where Leia had never had them before.
She was questioning if her mother wanted to see her if her mother would reject her outright. These were not thoughts or impulses Leia enjoyed having, were not ones she'd had in a very long time. Not since before she had even learned of the Rebellion when she had believed her parents had stopped caring about her as they grew ever more absorbed in secretly working to take down the Empire.
She hated that she had these doubts, even if the Queen Breha Organa in question was not the same as the one who had rocked her to sleep as a child. Had sat with her after she'd run away that time when she was nine and demanded to know just which Aunt had made Leia think her parents would ever marry her off to some random prince without her consent, so she could have Words with her. The mother who had climbed Appenza Peak with her when Leia fulfilled her Challenge of Body and had run through these very Palace halls with her laughing when she was young.
She bit her lip, suddenly having second thoughts about this whole trip. Maybe she should never have come here.