She still didn't have anything. All this work, and everything kept getting taken away. Were the maidens ever any use?

And him, charity work. Leia sniffed with indignation. He got a reward for her, but for others he'd do it for free? When it was her work?

She needed the war. She needed an enemy. Those were easy.

And not just playing at it, with a hollow gun and a headstart.

No more learning. She needed to take charge. No names in between dashes, victim after victim.

She didn't want pity. She didn't need their respect. They received resentment, bottled up and simmering.

The submoon was theirs now, too. On the bridge, the shoal. Hiking where the mounds were accessible. She hadn't done that. On the water even, the water craft safe on its repulsor hovers, and they spread a net and let it sink.

She hadn't done that yet either.

A ship floated upward, leaving. Red. He would be down there, somewhere, like them. Exploring. Got his deal, set in stone.

She could find him probably, if she looked hard enough. A lean figure, black and white like a second skin.

If she wanted him, then why didn't she?


Dr. Renzatl was staring at her shelves, at the pieces of burnt brick at each end of the row of data manuals.

They were mementos from a very chaotic time. The Bombing, as Corellians now referred to it. All were affected, but not all physically, like Albrina. Except, she had started to shake.

The bombing hit her city. Albrina no longer lived there. Maybe the largest? Funny what you didn't know about your own home. But the city that set the standard. The city that moved credits.

As soon as she heard about it, Albrina, from Corsucant where she was at university, tried to reach her mother. Her comm was always held at the ready; she hit send every few minutes. While packing, walking the campus and telling each of her professors she needed to leave, arranging with her residency for an extension, watching the holonews.

Albrina left the same message again and again. "I need to hear from you. Why don't you call back?"

The city was in rubble. They were saying comms were down. Albrina bit back her worry, waited for satellite connection to be re-established. That must be why her mother didn't call.

According to the holonews, the map of of the strike areas included where Albrina had grown up. And the footage! The people working so hard to clear the area, find survivors. After a few days, and her mother hadn't called her back, nor her sister, and she was still shaking, Albrina stared at the number of reported dead, and knew, without knowing, without wanting to know, they were caught in the bombs.

There were unexpected stories of survival and reunions. Albrina wanted to be one of those. She still called, every few hours, dreading their recorded greetings as the call went to message. "Just tell me you're alive."

The crowds at the port, beings- humans, mostly- were huge; all trying to get transport, and Albrina paid careful attention to the charge of the comm, leaving it open and watching for it to light up while she waited in line, while she sat against the wall.

While in transport of course communication wasn't possible, but as soon as they hit the atmosphere of Corellia she had pulled out her comm.

The only message was from her fiancé, asking if she'd made it yet.

The sweepers had already cleared away much of the rubble. Two weeks had passed. The lovely neighborhood she remembered with the row of houses set equally apart along the street and the tall trees creating a barrier from the air speeder lanes above was mostly gone. A section of brick wall here, a shattered trunk of a tree. She walked on tiny pieces of glass.

It was unreal. It was unrecognizable and therefore not real. Not her neighborhood. Where was it? Where had she lived? Where was her mother, and sister, and her sister's three little boys? They must have been getting ready for school. Albrina had calculated the time, recreated their last moments based on information from the holonews.

There were workers in the neighborhood. She was told where she could view- where they had set up a temporary morgue, but she didn't want to. So she picked up five pieces of rubble: three little ones for each nephew, and two big ones for her mother and her sister, and put them in her bag. She would have liked them to be from her childhood home, but there was no way of knowing. And she realized she would keep looking at her comm for the rest of her life, wondering, if she didn't go see.

Her fiancé was from another part of the planet, unscathed. Albrina didn't want a party after they married, but her future mother-in-law did, so they left a table empty to remember her family. Starting out their lives and careers together, she and her husband moved a few times, and Albrina lost three of the pieces of brick. They just- crumbled, into dust. She took care of the surviving pieces- that's what she called them- wrapping them in cloth and setting them on top of files whenever she set up a new office.

Albrina no longer felt shaky. She couldn't remember when that had stopped, and she felt badly about that. It seemed it was something she should know. But the pieces of brick were an essential part of her office.


Notes of Dr. Renzatl
Patient 20326

Humans have changed. I realize this as I listen to specific ones, the Alderaani. Our trajectory as a species has rocketed upward and I fear we are in danger of leaving them behind.

I have been told of the origins of the planet Alderaan. How twelve goddesses- interesting to me their number, the multiple of the human psyche they represent- came together and fashioned a terrestrial form from elements of space, very much like a spider weaves a web.

The story is so familiar; even with a cast of goddesses it is, at its heart, human in its elements. It is also magical and fantastical. The birth of a planet! Alderaan, according to her children, did not come into existence in a way our science tells us.

And now our science has become like the gods. We can destroy. We have removed the humanity that was the gods- the fury, the love, the chaos- Alderaan was created with emotion, after all- and now humans have learned the power to shape the galaxy.

Not completely, however. We can destroy. We have yet to create.

The destruction of Alderaan has changed the way humans experience trauma, the way they grieve. Usually, when a client comes to us, the trauma has occurred. It has done its damage. What we see is behavior, the emotional and continual reaction to that damage. What I am finding, whether it is the Princess, the General, the mother or the student, is that the trauma is still active. They are brutalized; I think to some it feels with every waking moment.

What humans have accomplished is unnatural. It feels wrong.

Leia Organa, as the Princess, the earthly representation of a goddess, is caught between the emotional and the physical, the magical and the real. She knows, feels the responsibility to do as her mythological mothers once did. She must fashion a home from the void. There aren't twelve anymore. There is just her.

To me this is profoundly unfair, but then I am not Alderaani. She has been terribly hurt, and she is only human. I cannot help thinking, however, of the magic and the real; the men-as-gods on the bridge of that Death Star, showing off their new power to destroy. They boasted to the wrong one, and that is why there is war. For by forcing the Princess to watch her homeworld crumble, they woke in her the power to create.


For some reason, the Princess hadn't taken a seat yet.

Dr. Renzatl waited from her seat, legs crossed as usual, the transcriptor recording silence.

Princess Leia leaned against the wall, her body angled so she could gaze out the window.

She had changed her hair style, Dr. Renzatl noted. The intertwined braids were elegant and intricate. Her eyes seemed very large, but her cheeks weren't sunken. She was pale. Tiny when she didn't speak. From the cut of the uniform, Dr. Renaztl could see where the hips were wider than the waist, the fullness in the bosom. This was the body of a young woman, not a girl. She had, in a month's time, changed.

"Are you watching something interesting out there?" Dr. Renzatl finally said.

The Princess shifted which foot bore her weight. She shook her head softly. "Just the activity."

"It's a window now. Properly," Dr. Renzatl alluded to a former conversation. "Now that the lights are on."

"Yes, that's true," the Princess answered politely.

It was enough to draw her eyes to the doctor. "Why don't you sit, please," the doctor said. It was not a request.

Princess Leia approached and perched as if she needed to be ready to spring up, her rear forward on the seat, feet flat on the floor.

"You're having trouble getting started," Dr. Renzatl observed.

"I suppose I am," the Princess said, and then she gave a small smile. "Aren't I always?"

"Not always. Would you like me to pick a topic? I expected we would discuss how it went to be reunited with your people."

The Princess merely nodded.

Dr. Renzatl pushed a little more. The Princess, as she recalled, had dreaded the moment, almost equating it with the moment of impact on all their homeworld. It stemmed from the sadistic mind game to which her torturers subjected the Princess.

She said, "Sometimes, just describing- narrating- what happened opens doors."

The Princess nodded again, and her lips parted as if to speak. She pulled at a hangnail on her thumb, her eyes unfocused. "I have a sense," she finally said, "that I know how it went. What happened." Her eyes lifted to Dr. Renzatl, present and clear. "It's a memory."

The doctor was intrigued. The human mind never failed to fascinate her. It was not a text book, but more like an atlas. Some wanted the fast, direct route; others wound their way slowly, with stops. The Princess was not an eager participant in her own health, but she recognized that others thought it important. Much of it was her own training: a Princess should not be flawed.

"A memory?" Dr. Renzatl questioned. "One you can revisit?"

"Yes. And be objective about."

"I see."

"I remember... the before. What you want to talk about. That I was nervous."

"A bit more than nervous. You dreamed that Darth Vader held you in place while they landed on Buteral." The doctor pushed again, this time more pointedly, and the Princess reacted only by a shift in her posture.

"Yes. And of course that is unrealistic, as my nerves proved to be. The students- they touched me."

"How were you touched?"

A hand fluttered. "By... them. As a group. You know, one person might react differently than another, but as a group, they were... the depth of their sorrow. It was," the Princess fluttered a hand again, "pure. Beautiful, in its own way."

Dr. Renzatl only nodded, so the Princess would go on with her thoughts unguided.

"And I felt like their Princess. Not just the nerves went away, but I knew what to do."

"That's empowering."

"Yes. They were- suffering. I could see that. I noticed- different reactions. I suppose that is their personalities? One was more angry, another distressed."

"Your Highness," Dr. Renzatl said gently, "I know you are asking as their Princess. We can talk about that, but I don't want you to forget the woman who was on the bridge, looking out that viewport."

The Princess looked down at her hands. "I haven't forgotten her."

"Perhaps you are asking for yourself as well, then." The doctor set her stylus down. "You want to know if their suffering will abate. If a trauma doesn't freeze emotions in a moment of time, where they are trapped forever? Children are remarkably resilient. If you give them a continued environment of compassion and love, make them feel safe...

"It's a big group," she added. "And it's only been a day really. And, it is interesting; it is, in fact, why my field of study exists, Your Highness, that we are- I call it wired-differently, each of us, which is what you noticed. We may all have the same experience, but we won't react to it the same. It's not completely understood why that happens, whether it's a genetic combination, or if environment, even experience within the womb, is a factor."

"From the womb," the Princess repeated thoughtfully.

"Naturally the study of a fetus and the question of psychological nourishment from the mother cannot be done. There are too many moral implications, but it is known that a body responds to environmental stressors with a release of whatever hormone is needed to restore balance. It causes a chemical reaction, which is a definite physical thing, and which is perceived as emotion. There are some who believe a fetus will also experience the stressors, as well as the mother's response."

"And feel the emotion," the Princess was leaning forward from her perch on the seat, her eyes lit up with natural intelligence. Dr. Renzatl forgave herself for launching down a side path, because the Princess was venturing right at her side.

"That's interesting," the Princess was saying. "My biological mother died in childbirth." Her head jerked up. "Had I told you that? That I'm adopted?"

Dr. Renzatl shook her head. "No, I don't believe you had." It was only a detail, probably not a necessary one, but she made a note of it because for some reason it was surprising.

Princess Leia waved it away. "Because it has no bearing. It was more an incident, something for my parents to remember. For my father, especially. I remember nothing; I was a newborn. I was also told very little. But it goes with what you say: I had love and security, and they were my parents. I was not very curious, I confess."

"You had excellent parents, it sounds like."

"Yes. But I feel for her, now. Now that my parents are history, and she always has been to me, but I don't want history to forget my parents, and yet it seems to have forgotten my birth mother."

"You are growing more curious."

"I don't know," the Princess replied. "Whether it is her, or just that I am realizing the history is incomplete."

"Is there something you would want to know you received from her?"

"You mean genetically, or shared from the womb?"

"Either. Even a name. That would fill in the history."

"Another example of wiring," the Princess stated. "Right? Luke- Commander Skywalker," the Princess corrected and looked at the doctor to see if she needed to. "He has found out more about his father recently- he was orphaned too, in case you didn't know that-"

"I did."

"- and he's just burning to know more. But me... if I'm curious who I favor... there was never any mention of my biological father. My father always said she died alone." The Princess looked up at the doctor. "A funny thing to say, because he was there. He must have been.

"I think of her an as Alderaani woman. That is all. I never wondered about her life, if she was married, what she thought about while pregnant with me. How awful, that her death is more important than her life."

"Because it brought you to your parents."

The Princess was barely listening. "Maybe her death is what I remember."

Dr. Renzatl let the Princess finish her thought. The theme of the session was finally emerging. "You are using that word often," she told the Princess softly. 'Remember.' And other words that imply it. 'History. Memory. Forget.'"

"It's all I have," the Princess said bitterly.

"The past, yes. I understand." Dr. Renzatl had her own training: a therapist remained detached. Yet there were moments when the Princess's predicament caused a rush of affection.

She went on, "Memories flow, in and out, for all beings. They lengthen the present and give form to our sense of the future. But your sense of the past has been abruptly separated."

"It feels much longer. Like I'm alive much longer in the past than I am now."

"That's an excellent description." Dr. Renzatl regarded Princess Leia with satisfaction. "Would you say your memories don't really fit the same way they did before?"

The Princess nodded. "They don't. They just pop up, like the hole in a hedge, or the maidens following me around. Maybe they fit in that they all conclude the same way, to remind me what is lost."

"When they reach that conclusion, are you.. sad? angry?"

"Both, I suppose," the Princess shrugged, rolling her thumbs around each other.

Dr. Renzatl was finding some resistance. The Princess did not like delving into emotion. She tried a different tack. "I'm curious how you described the meeting with the students. You tucked it away as a memory, when it was only yesterday."

"Because I can remember it. I can see myself; how I moved, what I said."

"Your memories on the other side of that barrier, since the Death Star, a month old- they aren't clear?"

"No. There are things from... Since; you'd think I'd remember, like the battle or the medal ceremony, but I don't."

"Let's start from the Since then. Leaving the Death Star. When you think of flying to Yavin- you're on that ship, with two men and a Wookiee, and for you time is reset. What do you remember?"

The Princess was willing. She crossed one leg over the other, still perched on the edge of the seat, and thought. "When you ask that," she finally said, "it's like- in shadow. Sounds, things. If I keep asking myself, the same image rises to my mind. A hydrospanner."

Dr. Renzatl raised her brows. "A hyrdospanner?"

"I remember other things, conversations I had, with Luke. They come to me when I think of Luke later. After. Things he told me. He talked. But I don't see me sitting with him, talking. I see the frayed bunch of wires he is holding."

"Who was using the hydrospanner?"

"He was. And he dropped it. That's what I remember distinctly, how it rested on the floor. The angle it had, the little spots of rust."

"Did you pick the hydrospanner up and hand it to him?"

"No. I think that's why I remember it. He dropped it, to get something to eat. Chewie had brought food out. He just- left the repair project, put it aside."

"To eat."

"Yes."

"What about the Captain? What do you remember of him during this time?"

The Princess moved fingers through the hair by her temple. "It feels funny to describe these. They are flashes. But I see him- moving. Like I catch a glimpse of him, a sleeve, as he leaves a space and goes into another."

"He is in motion."

"Yes."

"One item suspended from action, another that won't stay still."

The Princess blinked at the doctor, who smiled in response. Princess Leia said, "It's symbolic?"

"The mind is wonderful, isn't it."

"I remember, once we got to Yavin," the Princess continued, her brow furrowed, "I remember knowing that we argued, and I can enter the Falcon and tell you 'this is where he insisted I take a medscan' or 'this is where he told me he wouldn't join the Rebellion', but I can't really see it happening. I can hear his voice."

"And of Yavin itself? We were there, two days was it?"

"Not very long," the Princess agreed with a nod. "It's- foggy to me. I remember the medal ceremony, when Luke and Han and Chewie came in. It's like a holo. They are standing there. I have a sense I was busy, but I can't tell you with what."

"I remember being outside," Dr. Renzatl said. "The suck sand."

"Oh, yes!" the Princess smiled. "And the temples." Her smile grew serious. "I remember the Graveyard very clearly. I see it before me now, just as I did from the cockpit."

"Perhaps your memories didn't seem so out of place there."

Princess Leia nodded. "Yes. Also-" She paused.

"Please, say it."

"I was in control. It was my request, my idea. And I did things; learned things that I hadn't before. In the Since."

"What did you learn?"

"Chewie started teaching me his language. I wanted to learn to shoot. Captain Solo gave me pointers. He has a training remote."

Dr. Renzatl thought practicing a speed draw as a means of whiling away the hours in hyper an odd way to kill time, but she didn't utter her thoughts aloud. "Why did you want to learn to shoot?"

The Princess had not asked herself the question before. She considered it, her mouth pursed charmingly. "I don't know. I was thinking about Luke, and his voyage on the ship. Before the Death Star. General Kenobi was instructing him in the ways of the Force."

Dr. Renzatl's brows went up again. "With shooting?"

Princess Leia smiled at the incredulity in the doctor's voice. "I think the urgency of the mission had him fast forward through many of the lessons. He was learning to use the lightsaber, and fight."

"And you wanted- what? To experience what Luke experienced?"

"No, I realized, fully, what the destruction meant. That we were at war. That we are all in danger. Alderaan was a weaponless society, you know. I don't want to be unprepared. I don't want to be defenseless."

Dr. Renzatl nodded thoughtfully. She knew the transcriptor was making a faithful recording. But to test a growing theory, she wrote, her stylus tapping swiftly while the Princess gazed out the window, "Alderaan (...) unprepared (...) defenseless."