"Doctor."
Albrina turned at the sound of Jaf Klander's voice. Her door was always open when not in session and he always only knocked.
"Major," she answered in low surprise, and gestured for him to enter. "Come in."
He took one step. "Packing up?"
She nodded. "I'm a bit behind schedule, I'm afraid. What about you?"
"I just got out of conference with the Minister."
"Yes, how did that go?"
"She agreed with the Princess. She'd like to see them serve."
Jaf was hesitant on the matter. Typically, suicide rates among beings in a prolonged situation of stress, such as refugees, were higher than in other groups. Things were going well on Buteral- they hadn't had an actual attempt though both he and Albrina issued a cautionary yet. The Death Star's destruction of Alderaan was still too recent.
"She actually used our data against me."
Albrina found that ironic. She returned to sliding manuals off the shelf and looking at their title. Then she chose which pile to place them in. "At least someone read the study."
"Right." Jaf was unamused. "Her reasoning is the Princess gives this sense of national identity, and that her presence, symbolically as well as the goals she's established coming out of this, are important. They see her fight, then they want to, too."
"That was Princess Leia's message in Imperial City, wasn't it?" Albrina paused from her sorting. "She told the assembled Alderaani there wasn't much else to lose."
"Everyone else is dead, we may as well be too?"
"Jaf," Albrina scolded. "I'm certainly glad the Princess did not phrase it like that."
"Do you think that's how she meant some to take it?"
"Not intentionally. Rather, I think she wants the Emperor to see them. The civil death suit really is clever; she's using the government he created against him. I'll bet it's infuriating. But she has made the truth of the Death Star public, as well as his complete intolerance for dissension and his failure to extinguish it. She doesn't want Alderaani to wait as the Alliance seeks justice for them, or passively stand by in mute shock at their situation. I know you've spent a long time with her, schooling yourself in the culture of Alderaan."
"I have," Jaf nodded solemnly.
"The remaining Alderaani are like the particles the goddesses pulled out of the void. They are swirling around right now, forming bonds, cohering."
"Like how the planet was formed."
"They are the planet." This was poetry, Albrina knew, not really true. The Alderaani on Buteral, with their brown hair and songs and cake, kept their culture but they could never recreate the blue of their sky, the smell of their air or call of their birds. "Figuratively," she added. "It's a creation myth, of course."
"Not many planets have a destruction myth."
"No, but one thing I have learned- and I knew this, but the Alderaani helped reinforce the truth of it- is that even destruction creates something."
"Huh." Jaf chewed on his cheek and looked at the floor. "So they'll fight, and in so doing those that had lost hope will find something to fight for... When you put it like that- Anyway, Mon Mothma seemed to think it was good propaganda for the Alliance. So I'm to finalize assessments and the ones that are cleared will serve with Princess Leia. She's their Princess."
"Is that to be her role in the Alliance?" Again, the irony struck her and Albrina laughed a little. "You know, Princess Leia even said something like that. Early, when we first started meeting. She said that no rank had been assigned to her yet, and she would just keep princess. She was upset then. I think she might like it now."
"Everyone calls her that anyway, don't they? 'Your Highness', or 'Princess'." Jaf cocked his head. "General Rieekan almost defers to her. I bet he thinks she outranks him."
"It's not a question of rank with him. It exactly illustrates the Minister's point: she's his Princess." She regarded her colleague a moment. He had only taken a step into her office and seemed to have something on his mind. "You're worried," she said.
"Actually, it's more than that." He faltered a bit. "I came to tell you. I... won't be leaving. I'm staying."
Albrina turned her body fully toward Jaf and her arms dropped to her side. She was no longer surprised. "Jaf," she said.
He held up a palm, eyes directed at the floor. "Before you say anything, I've analyzed it; just like we do for anyone else." His eyes met her. "It's not because I'm attached."
She smiled at him, and took her seat behind her desk, and he moved to the chair in front.
He repeated it. "I'm not."
"I'll accept that," Albrina said. She arched her brow. "Though perhaps to the work?"
"Maybe."
Albrina had already formed the conclusion Jaf was not exactly a student of the mind. His interest was in group dynamics; he had entered this field of study out of a desire to help the velabrill, a sentient life form found on his homeworld.
Within a few generations of human occupation, a complex relationship between the velabrill and socially dominant humans had developed, resulting in the velabrill falling into a subservient role. From outward appearances, the velabrill, a winged species with compound eyes, appeared to take the changes passively. There was no resistance. They fell into their new roles, the settler humans were fond of saying, as if they were born into it. The only marker was a tendency to damage, one at a time and over a long period of time, the facets of an eye until they were rendered blind and unable to serve.
Jaf had great sympathy for the velabrill, even as a member of the master class, the son of a sweet cane plantation owner. During his studies he fell to putting blame more and more on humans, not just for injustices on his homeworld, but throughout the galaxy. The destruction of Alderaan, and the group dynamics of loss among her survivors, led him to the Alliance.
It was his strength here, Albrina thought. She was the superior officer but he was the better therapist. He served an Alderaani as a member of a group where she saw them as a human individual.
"You've resigned your commission?" she asked.
He nodded. "I'll transition here with the CTC. Once, and if there's a New Republic, I hope to stay on in this capacity."
Albrina regarded him, and softened when she thought about his presence here. He was as much a character as the Alderaani. The way the wind played with his thinning hair, his enjoyment of the snack counter, how he could be found in his free time fishing.
"This has been my station," she told him, "but I would say you've made a life here."
"Yeah," he said. "My father will be disappointed I'm not coming home to run the plantation."
"What about the velabrill?"
"We didn't get good results there, you know." He tapped her desk, and she saw he was referring to their study data. "Humans, servicing the velabrill, when we're the reason why!" He flung up a hand. "They can't bear to see, you know, what happened to them, what happened to their planet. It is a grief, I see that now."
"Yes. It sounds like a very complicated situation."
"It is. In just four human generations! Incredible, isn't it? Makes me think what Palpatine has managed in two decades to be a drop in the ocean."
"You'll get home again," Albrina half-asked.
"I will. And when I do, it's the humans I'm going to talk to." Jaf rubbed his upper lip. "I've got a sister there. She can run the plantation. I'd probably ruin it anyway."
"From the human perspective."
"Who knows. One thing I've learned is things are very delicately tangled."
"That's true," Albrina murmured. And finally the change sank in, how she would be leaving Buteral in very short time and all the sensations and lessons it had taught her. She felt badly for the Alderaani, for whom the presence of Jaf and Albrina was a constant they came to depend on, just like the roaring rush of the sea.
"General Rieekan is telling them tonight," she told Jaf. "They know something is up. Let's keep our doors open. We'll want to be available to anyone who needs to discuss it."
"Sure," Jaf said.
"When I first came here," General Rieekan stood at the table where he had dined with little Maline, her mother and brother Bail, and Bail's two school friends. There was cake tonight, ordered by the general for everyone.
He was the guest, tonight, Albrina thought.
It had taken him a little while to get everyone's attention, and Jaf and Albrina stood sentry by the doors, making sure no one left too early.
He cleared his throat and started again. "When I first came here, I was already wearing this." He tugged at the shoulder seam of his Alliance uniform. "I was a working man. But I think I was a lot like you. Because we are all from Alderaan. I kept seeing things that weren't anymore."
Some people in the dining hall nodded their heads.
"And it was hard, wasn't it. It was surreal."
There were more nods.
"It's still hard." Rieekan sent his gaze around the room. "It's not right. I think that's what makes it so hard, that it just wasn't right. So it might stay hard, difficult; not all the time but at certain times, and I think... I have decided that that's how it should be. But, too-" he broke off, and watched his hand sweep at imaginary crumbs, "I've learned a new place, and I have to say despite everything Buteral has been a good host, a good submoon to us.
"We're at war. I know you know that. I know some of you want it; others think it won't make a difference. We know more than anyone how uncertain a time like this is. We've learned to look for things that may not be there anymore."
He grinned at them, sad and kind. "I'm still a working man. I've still got this." And he patted his shoulder and there was light laughter. "But I'm afraid I've become one of those uncertain things. I'm being sent to a new location."
People stirred at the announcement, but General Rieekan didn't let them dwell. "I'm a little saddened by it; I'll be truthful; there's been something soft and gentle about being here with you. But." He nodded at them. "Two, three months ago, I don't think I would have said this: It's not hard to go. We're at war, I'm a working man, and I can contribute. The same goes for our Princess. She's really grabbed the nerf by the horns, hasn't she?" he chuckled at them all. "If you've followed the news then you know what's going on. I don't want you to think Minister Mothma has sent the Princess away; that's not true. But she needs to be safe, and she needs you to be safe, and in order for both things to happen she can't stay on Buteral."
The general let the news sink in. "I have asked to be stationed with Princess Leia. I will serve her fight. As I understand it," his eyes flicked to Jaf's quickly, "some of you will follow soon." Jaf moved his head twice up and down.
"So. I won't be here. But I won't be gone. I know, of anyone, you all understand that. If you look for me, you can find me. You have your fight. Each of you, individually. Keep fighting. When this is over, and I have to know that it is going to end, because- well, it can't be made right, can it, but it can be answered. I think that's what I want. And when it is over, then we'll find each other again, and we'll be together, and we'll have Alderaan again. Different, and hard, but I can see it. I hope you can, too.
"Thank you," he concluded. "There's a lot of cake." He smiled suddenly. "I ordered too much. If you don't want yours, I happen to know that Major Klander over there likes cake for breakfast."
Jaf indicated willingness to accept cake by raising his arms and folding his fingers rapidly near his face. Some people laughed and some stood up. A teen was already making his way across the room, bearing cake on a plate.
Both he and Albrina stayed to mingle, answering questions and looking out for the quiet ones.
Not many had left, and the CTC kept bringing more. It wasn't a large population, which was tragic in its own way. Humans didn't designate their own who witnessed genocide as an endangered species because technically they weren't, but they should. They were endangered, period, Albrina thought, due to prejudice and acts of violence, and then they were an endangered culture, too.
Still, the swelled numbers brought a sense of habitation to Buteral that was pleasing. To see people outside, walking the shoal or sitting on the bridge, talking together was nice. She remembered how the first Arrivals needed a schedule, and that they stayed in the residential building and were very quiet. Now she might hear a shriek of a game, a snatch of song, and everywhere there was movement.
There was life here. Delicately tangled, human upon human.