Leia had turned to Marcov Petron. It was he who stepped on a whim into her office on Buteral and sparked the idea within her, though she had dismissed him at the time.
He was still on Buteral supervising the living history project, but he told Leia, "Give me three days and I'll be there."
"I'm not able to stay in Imperial City," Leia informed him. She could feel his eagerness.
"Let's do it on Buteral, then."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Petron. I admit the idea of Emperor Palpatine looking out a window and seeing me in front of my old Senate building tickles me. This can't wait."
The journalist made a few more valiant efforts to get Leia to reach a compromise before conceding defeat. "As much as I'd love to scoop you," he had said over the comm to Buteral, and Leia had smiled at the expression on Han's face, "this is too important for one on one. I'll make some calls. I guarantee you'll have an audience the Emperor won't be able to miss."
Leia desired perspective. She would like a bird's eye view. To soar above that broad and high staircase and see her own body, the small woman clad in blood red, standing before a cluster of journalists. The staircase was an elegant introduction to a building which had lost its purpose, but it was still there. Now Leia would make use of it.
She had the sense she was only partially in control. She was given the pieces, but how she arranged them didn't matter; there would be an outcome. Eternity only wanted to be entertained.
It left her bitter, jaded. But also there was a certain composure; a distance, and she felt she couldn't be touched.
The Galaxy Satellite of course, Petron's publication, but also present were the Corellian Sentinel, Imperial News Network, and Times of Chandrila, all with offices in Imperial City. The journalists, holding various equipment to record her voice and person, represented core planets with large human populations.
Leia thanked them for coming and immediately was peppered with questions, some speaking at the same time. Why had she summoned them, what was her purpose in Imperial City, could she tell them her version of events concerning the destruction of Alderaan, did she have a statement about the loss of her homeworld.
"I want to talk about the Death Star," Leia said.
She looked at Han as she said it, who stood down the steps and a little to the side. He listened with his head lowered, like a nerf bull ready to charge.
It doesn't let you go, Luke had said, and he was right. In the blink of an eye Leia saw it was always about the Death Star. She couldn't fight Palpatine with words and twisted perspective, civil death suits or reparation funds. She had intended to tell the truth, but truth was one of those pieces Eternity granted that looked different in other hands.
There was an Emperor and a Princess, Leia knew, a smuggler and a farm boy; a lackey named Tarkin and a loyal partner called Chewie. But the monster was forgotten when it was an integral part of the story, and mattered still if the story were ever to end.
So she brought the monster to life again. Leia told of how the Death Star was as big as a small moon, and the pet of the Emperor. That when it eyed a planet that world crumbled to dust. Its skin was impenetrable, lined with cannons and armored. She described her cell and the bridge of the Death Star. As she told the story of her arrest and interrogation she noticed that Han no longer stood by himself; people stopped out of curiosity to learn the latest news story.
"The simple statement is the technology exists to destroy planets," Leia said. "That is chilling enough taken on its own. But the question we must ask ourselves is why Emperor Palpatine, who styles himself as the paternal caregiver of our homes, would bring such a thing into existence."
A journalist spoke up. She was a human from a sun-soaked world, tall and thin with beautiful amber eyes and ebony skin. "I'm with the Times. Is it a coincidence that Viceroy Organa, a known opponent to Emperor Palpatine, was from Alderaan, and that happened to be the first planet the Death Star destroyed?"
Leia lifted her chin. "Are you asking because you know that Iblis of Corellia, another vocal opponent, disappeared? Are you asking because Kindrast of Po'oppera died in the bombing? I don't mind that you mention my father. If you look at his career alongside Palpatine's, you see the kind of men they are. My father was proud to serve the Republic, and he has been outspoken about Palpatine's direction for the galaxy since they were both senators. He retired his seat so that I, his daughter, could enter politics and seek election. Palpatine kept his longer than he should, and when pressed, eliminated all his enemies and named himself Emperor.
"But I was on the Death Star," Leia added, glancing at Han. He thinks about it, too, Luke had said. And Vader must as well, Leia realized; he was Palpatine's first in command but his fingers had clutched at Leia's shoulders. He heard the million voices same as General Kenobi. There were only five beings in the whole galaxy who truly knew the Death Star.
Han kept himself to the rear of the gathering crowd. Leia returned her level gaze to the journalists. "I know what the orders were: destroy the headquarters of the Rebel Alliance. Emperor Palpatine did not green light the destruction of Alderaan. He had no idea it was going to happen."
"INN," another journalist broke in. He had a deeply creased face and no hair. Leia thought his voice was tart but maybe that was her bias about the Imperial News Network. "Emperor Palpatine has said that a band of terrorist rebels seized a battle station and in the resulting battle Alderaan was destroyed. What do you say about his version of events?"
"I say that four prisoners managed to escape his battle station and flee to the Rebels, and in the resulting battle the Death Star was destroyed. Again, I implore you to ask questions. You are journalists." Leia spread her hands to plead to the crowd. "We are all citizens. Listen. Yes, there has been a rebellion which has grown larger each year Palpatine sits on his throne. Yes, they have acted like terrorists, small bands whose aim is to damage Imperial property. Yes, Alderaan is gone. But ask: Why would they destroy a planet? How? The answer is the Empire was ready to do so."
"You can challenge me. I am unaffected. It doesn't matter that I was the one with the plans," she ventured down a couple of steps, closer to Han and the crowd. The journalists scurried to follow with their equipment. "What matters is there are plans. Can you imagine, if such technology were permitted to continue to be built? That when we look at the night sky from our homeworlds, a Death Star joins the scene like a moon? Watching us, an entire city of men, ready to erase every sign of our physical being if we displease the Emperor?
"Alderaan's legacy," Leia continued, "is to give us courage. Emperor Palpatine should never point his finger at that lost planet and use it as a warning for the rest of us. No. We should look to it; it is ours, and be willing to join it in death rather than live under fear's shadow. For when one lives in fear, one's spirit has died. We may as well be dead."
She couldn't think of anything else to add. "That is all," she said. She stepped down again to make her leave.
"What would you say to the Emperor, if you could deliver a message?" the INN reporter called out.
Leia turned back. "Nothing," she said. "I am Alderaani. The goddess Time shows us Life is constant. Empires are not."
"And what do you say to all the beings gathered here? Have you a message for them?" a tired-looking woman asked. She bore the same blue stripe in her hair Leia had noticed on Danneria. "My colleague, Marcov Petron, put in a few calls to other broadcast stations and the universities that you would be speaking. This isn't a haphazard gathering, Your Highness."
Leia looked beyond the cluster of journalists. "Please thank him," she said.
For such short notice, it wasn't quite a crowd, but a fairly large group of beings nevertheless. Word seemed to have spread rapidly among the Alderaani, particularly the young. She spotted Jargist near the rear, standing with three other young men. His cousins, Leia figured. His gaze was intent upon her, and she acknowledged his presence with a nod. Two cousins noticed and leaned down to speak into his ear.
Brown-haired and brown-eyed humans listened, but also gray and red, spike-haired and shaven. Twi-lek lekku waved in delicate sensitivity, and the blue skin of a few Duran glistened with sweat. There were no Wookiees, Leia noted.
"I do have a message," Leia was practiced at voice projection. She had no microphone, but moved down more steps to be closer to the group. It didn't look like anyone had trouble hearing her. "As I look into your faces," she moved through the crowd, and they parted to let her pass. The journalists were forced to stand around the perimeter of the gathering, and some more pedestrians came over to see what was going on.
"I see Time," Leia said. "The young and old. I am twenty-one, the same age as the Empire. It is the only galactic government I have known. Some of you are like me, but I see a good number of you who remember the Old Republic."
Leia took a moment to pace along one riser, meeting the eyes of anyone who stared at her. "I see change. Change does not select the young as you might think, but our circumstances. Change can be frightening. It won't tell you the future. But it is here. Left alone it is passive and useless, but unsettling. You can't get away from its presence."
Her last sentence was spoken in front of Jargist, and he whispered, "you can't."
She stepped down again. "What I would like for you to think about, is how Time moves. The young become the elderly. Change requires action."
She had reached the last of the crowd and all that was before her now was the single figure of Han Solo waiting. It was time to go; Leia knew she had said all she wanted. She was calm, soothed by a sense of... she didn't know what to call it at first. Then she decided it was conclusion.
She understood now, how she was a rock dropped into a pond. Since the loss of Alderaan, she viewed herself at the bottom, swallowed by the waters and unrecoverable. Now she saw the ripples; like shock waves from the Death Star's laser, moving ever outward, a perfect circle growing larger and larger.
One riser higher than Han was not enough to equalize their height difference but she could see better into his eyes. She felt... good, the kind of personal satisfaction accomplishment brings. She might even have achieved something.
Wouldn't that be nice, she thought.
Han gave her one nod, somber and serious, his whole demeanor matching his deep set eyes.
She took his hand. He had asked to hold hers in her apartment, as together they surveyed the scene of the heartless looting of her home. In it, he saw her, all her struggles. She was much more than a drowned rock. He wasn't weak-kneed now. Neither was she. And if they were leaving, she didn't see why they had to leave separately.
Behind them journalists called out more questions and didn't want the session to end, and a lone voice called out, "Win the war, Princess Leia!"
It might have been Jargist. Leia kept herself looking straight ahead at Imperial City's traffic, but Han turned his head back to wink.
Leia hadn't shed the Death Star. She never would. But she had shared it, and just like a shame, it looked different in another's hands.
