Albrina reached for her cup of kaf before remembering she'd limited herself to half a cup this morning. She said to Princess Leia, "I'd like to talk about our letters first, the ones we sent each other, if that suits you."

The Princess nodded. "That's fine," she agreed, stretching her fingers around the edge of the table. It reminded Albrina of an athlete warming up.

They had arranged to meet very early, two hours before the Princess's shift, and Albrina knew the Princess hadn't had much sleep. They'd passed each other the night before in the mess. Albrina was leaving to retire for the night and the Princess was just entering with Lt. Taryn and Commander Skywalker. Despite the early hour, her hair was intricately arranged and her eyes were clear. Her breakfast consisted of a ration bar which she merely nibbled at, dunking it in a cup partially filled with broth to moisten it. Albrina's own half cup of kaf was already empty.

"We both wrote at a time of in-between," Albrina continued, "which, seeing as I barely have an office, I feel is still an appropriate way to view our relationship, however professional or personal."

The Princess nodded again. "Then, as now, I find it appropriate that you set the tone."

"Alright." It didn't exactly answer the question of how the Princess viewed their relationship. They were meeting before duty, eating together. Both had brought a databoard on which to make notes. Perhaps one way to describe it was personally professional.

Albrina's databoard was the one which she had carried on the transport from Buteral. The Princess's transmission was downloaded to it and she took a moment to glance at it. "The rubble," she began. "You described yourself as standing on it, the dust cleared, the way shown before you."

Princess Leia set her ration bar on the small piece of flimsi napkin and clasped her hands, resting them on her lap. After a moment's consideration, she said, "Yes. I still feel that."

"Did you mean Hoth?" Albrina couldn't keep a careful incredulity out of her voice.

A slight smile, knowing and restrained, crossed the Princess's face. "Not specifically, no. I'm not a seer. But, I do feel- I think I know how I can put myself to better purpose. The dust, the rubble, mean... I've emerged from something. There's a clarity."

The Princess spoke without reluctance. Her words were still carefully chosen, but delivered freely. She hadn't sought help initially, Albrina remembered, and probably wanted to reject the suggestion- or order- that she get some. It was a sign of progress that she was now willing to talk. Albrina cocked her head: or was it better to be professionally personal?

Carrying on, she said, "You've used that word before. Clarity. On Buteral you were assigned settlement affairs of the Alderaani refugees. You initiated a civil death suit, established a reparation fund. Arranged for candles," Albrina remembered with a bob of her cocked head. "And you told me, I think it was after the first Arrivals came, you had clarity. Then you engaged the Emperor. Tell me about these moments of clarity, Your Highness."

The young woman was listening intently, nodding along in silent, subconscious agreement. "Most of that time, Buteral, is me still under the rubble." She spoke slowly. "I was in survival mode. I suppose putting on a brave face. Or managing just a face. I don't remember a lot of it, actually. The things I did- it was- I don't know. Something. Anything. Like being able to shift the rubble that covers you. You don't know if it's the piece that will help release you, or the one that buries you further."

Albrina nodded, but she was seeing the sweepers take away the rubble created after the Corellian bombing, when there was no more hope of finding survivors.

"As for what I accomplished," Princess Leia continued, "looking back I feel I moved very slowly. Halting. We still are adding names to the civil death suit- it might be years before we file it. I remember when I told you I felt a clarity. This one, this clarity, is much... brighter. Surer. That one was," she smiled at the tender memory of herself, "like a fog starting to clear, only visibility is still very much impaired."

"Still, an improvement," Albrina granted. "I would agree you have a sense of purpose since I last saw you. Let's examine this purpose. The Princess Leia of the Death Star, the one who was strong and capable- do you feel more like her?"

Princess Leia's shoulders sagged a little. "That Leia had no clue what was to come. If I ever get like her again I'll be wiser. I feel... a shaping. An understanding of what to do."

"And what did you come to understand?"

The Princess continued as if she had not heard the doctor's question. "Also a rejoining. I felt... severed. Upside down. As if those of us who didn't blow up needed to be led to the afterworld, but there was none, or no one came for us..."

"Your purpose here, then, is for Alderaan," Albrina attempted to understand. She wished her files had arrived. She saw something in the Princess's demeanor, a calculated composure, ancient and distant; it didn't quite match the way she marched across the ice. "I had thought it was Hoth, the war-"

"I came to Yavin two ways. One as inarguable fact, on a freighter. The other as... an accident." Her voice changed from sharp to hushed. "Collected, by a farm boy and a smuggler. A... a sort of spirit. Lost."

"Severed." Albrina repeated the description because she liked it, as sad as it was. "First from your homeworld, the planet Alderaan. Physical object of fact," she added, as a nod to Princess Leia's manner of speech, "and also from your spiritual identity. Alderaan."

"Yes." Princess Leia's voice was thick, and she cleared her throat.

"Two Alderaans."

The young woman was lost in her own thoughts. "Luke thinks it's destiny."

"Ah, then Commander Skywalker doesn't consider you an accident at all. And therefore nor his presence here."

The Princess's face softened in a brief fondness. "I agree, he seeks an explanation. He can fit it all very tidily, because of his connection with the Force. But, I don't like his concept of it. It would have to be so arbitrary. And it's cruel."

"You haven't been able, yet, to rectify your part in this?"

"I'm either," the Princess shook her head, "a random assignee of history, or a reason. Both are hard, in their own way." She was silent a long time, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles. "I do think, at the end of my life, I'll look back, and it's not just one moment. I had to be arrested, I had to say goodbye to my father, I had to record the holomessage. Somehow all that led to Luke coming in my cell. But if it's destiny, they are separate, and they just happened to converge. Because he's the one who brought Captain Solo and Chewbacca; nothing I did made them part of my story until he made them part of his."

"Then they must have their own destiny, Captain Solo and Chewbacca."

"Yes. It's interesting to think about, isn't it? I had wondered about that myself, earlier. When it first happened. Why us, such an unlikely grouping of people. And a Wookiee. But I don't think like Luke. I don't feel it's given us, our lives, any extra significance or importance." The Princess fluttered a hand. "And Luke isn't going around like he's some chosen one; I don't mean to give that impression-"

"He seems modest."

"He is. That's part of his... not charm... maybe part of his- what he thinks is destiny- that he wouldn't know this until it happened, that he wouldn't keep knowing things. I think, for him, it's a decision that was made for him, because he has nothing to go back to, and that he feels he's a part of something bigger. It keeps him hopeful."

"Do you feel the decision was made for you?" Albrina found herself intrigued by the conversation. Both the Princess and Commander Skywalker sought meaning out of their experiences, something countless humans before them had. From her smaller viewpoint, it was also a positive point of therapy. She added, as gently as she could, "I could point out, Your Highness, but it would sound cruel, how you also have nothing to go back to."

The Princess didn't flinch; the pain was no longer sharp and stabbing, but a shadow of grief crossed her face. "It wasn't, as I said, one moment, or one decision. Whose story would it be, if that were the case? It can't be just mine. It would be Alderaan's. Then it would have to start so long ago, from the moment the goddesses wove the planet from the stars."

"Yes." Albrina rested her jaw on a fist, the stylus poking out from between her knuckles. Two people entered and grabbed cups for the urn. "Your friend Luke's perception is like a flow chart, or cause and effect. 'If this, then that.' Whereas, yours is more circular."

The Princess's back was to the urn but she caught Albrina's glance toward the door and lowered her voice. "And Luke has so many moments before he can reach his destiny. So much had to happen before he learned he could train as a Jedi. The jawas had to sell the droids to his uncle, one had to run away, General Kenobi had to save him from the Sand People. He had to be born! And then wait nineteen years." She shook her head again. "It doesn't make sense."

"And Captain Solo- does he have these moments as well?"

The Princess lifted a hand to swirl the contents of her cup. "Certainly, though I don't know what he was doing on Tatooine. Trying to pay off his debt, I presume. So, lack of success with Jabba the Hutt, deciding to get a drink in the cantina, meeting Luke and General Kenobi, who had decided to look for a pilot in that same cantina."

"Coincidence after coincidence," Albrina murmured. The people at the urn disposed their cups and left. "There's one more."

She watched the Princess think.

Princess Leia looked genuinely uncertain. "Flying through the debris field?" She shook her head as if she already knew the question was no good. "Alderaan?"

"The Death Star," Albrina pointed out. "One entering your cell, the other retreating down the corridor."

"So there was no escape. And I-" Princess Leia met Albrina's eyes. "I shot the wall."

Albrina smiled back at her. "Your moment of entry- in their stories- was also their way out."

"In the core of the Death Star. In garbage!" the Princess exclaimed lightly, a little amused.

"There's a certain irony to it," Albrina said.

"That's another way I can't accept this is the doing of the Force," Princess Leia said seriously. "It's... odd, maybe ironic, that you noticed it too. That it should toy with us, a child's game. Give us tragedy and enjoy it. Do you know what Captain Solo said to me?"

"No." The seeming change in subject- if indeed that's what it was- was abrupt and Albrina widened her eyes in question at the Princess.

"He was the last one down into the garbage. And he said, 'what a terrible smell you've discovered'."

Albrina smiled. "I think I probably would have said a thousand other things. Why do you think of it now?"

"I remember then I thought it- irreverent. Unnecessary, or a waste of time. I thought- he must be stupid." She smiled fondly. "But now I wouldn't be surprised if he's that god of irony and truth."

"Would you want that?"

"No! Because that god did all this. But- I hear it sometimes. At night, when I'm thinking about what happened, I'll hear him. 'What an incredible smell you've discovered'. Or other things he's said, all like that, just - kind of meaningless at the time, but in retrospect, they... they-"

"They what?"

"They... I'm not sure. Contradict Luke? Because they- they have a way of- they keep me... small. A part of all this. A player. Not the reason." She lowered her voice, speaking with a shyness, "I know at the time he was trying to provoke me. So many times... but later, after... they... make me - smile. Just a little."

Albrina's lips touched briefly in silent sympathy for the Princess. She would not point out how the Princess felt badly about smiling. "Let's go back to your sense of purpose. You were saying," Albrina double checked with her databoard, "about Alderaani separated from their homeworld. Needing to be collected, we could say."

"Yes," the Princess agreed, and she changed again, from objective philosophy and sweet curiosity to an internal weight of sadness. "I was well trained, I think, by my mother," she said softly, as if she didn't need the doctor to hear. "I did the only thing I knew. I didn't start emerging with a sense of vision until I went to Imperial City."

"The last piece of rubble that allowed you to free yourself was the Emperor?"

"The truth. My own declaration of war, really. I wanted one separate from the Alliance. Alderaan can't join the New Republic, obviously-"

"Just a moment." Albrina hastily entered something on the databoard. "I'm fascinated by this." She scooted forward on her seat. "I understand how your press conference was the truth. The truth about the Death Star and the Emperor's betrayal of his subjects. And you've discussed war. You've told me how your father planned for its eventuality, though he was loath to do it. You say your own declaration," she repeated, glancing at her databoard to be sure she'd written that down. "Separate from the New Republic's. So this one comes not from- or for, really- not for the planet that was destroyed, the physical object of fact, but for the other Alderaan. Or from?"

The Princess provided a stock answer which ignored the doctor's question. "The New Republic declared war to end tyranny and rebuild democracy."

"But as you point out, the one Alderaan won't be able to take part."

"Ensuring the obsoletion of technology like the Death Star is a job for the Alliance, as well as to provide justice and restore rights... But there's more to this war. For instance, if we win, where is Alderaan? It's difficult to describe, except that it feels absolutely correct."

Albrina put her elbows in the table. "You have told me a lot about Alderaan. Of your people's origins before you came to write a history, and then the recorded events after that. The Alderaan of your people was a pacifist world," she stated, just to make sure.

The Princess nodded. "We haven't always been pacifist. We call it the Recent Experiment." She wiped away imaginary dust from the databoard. "Alderaan should be ageless. Like Corellia or Coruscant. Time doesn't stop, yet its passing causes change. Even the queens- she is the earthly daughter of the goddesses. Yet the line of succession could be broken. A ruling House could fall from power. And the goddesses always recognized the succeeding queen as their daughter."

"The House of Organa fell," Albrina said softly.

"And yet I am here."

"You talked about that, too. If, without Alderaan, you were still her Princess. If you wanted to be, or could be. Have you decided how to be the Princess?"

"That is me atop the rubble. Yes. Going back to the topic of destiny- if the House was to fall, then why did the Princess survive? Because war has returned to Alderaan."

So that was how she marched across the ice, Albrina thought. "Is your understanding revenge? As the Princess of this world, this spiritual world, is that what you want?"

The Princess brought the restless hand from her lap and turned her ration bar over. "I want...revenge seems like an all-consuming anger." She brought her eyes up to the doctor's to see if she agreed. "And... this is still true: I will always hate Tarkin. I still want to shoot him or at least see the moment he knew he made a mistake. I hate him. I hate Darth Vader. But the hate is for what they did to me-"

"The Death Star destroyed Alderaan."

"Tarkin died on the Death Star. That is... it satisfies me. The irony of it. It's fair."

"More irony," Albrina commented without point. "Darth Vader still lives."

"Yes, but he..." The Princess stilled a moment, gathering her thoughts. "I also feel this great pity for him, a hateful pity; not compassionate at all, just scorn and disgust. I feel I could step on him like a bug."

Albrina raised her brows. The comment was interesting. "You hate him. Does this put you above him? Can you defeat him?"

"No, I can't defeat him. In my mind he's powerful and nothing. He can still kill me. But it won't be the... he won't have victory like Tarkin thought he did after using the Death Star. He wouldn't gain any significance through my death, but I would."

"I see. The more he kills the stronger your cause becomes. Is that why you pity him? "

"For his fingers digging into my shoulders. That even after he arrested me he still failed. For fixating on Luke. He's evil and twisted but also something is really wrong, missing in him."

The databoard was on the table. Albrina slid it to her lap and made notations without looking. She hoped she'd be able to read it later. "Do you have an empathy for him?"

"Absolutely not."

"Alright," Albrina nodded. A question she wanted to ask had slipped from her, and she frowned at the Princess, who looked back at her calmly. "I feel I got sidetracked. Let's go back a moment." She tapped her stylus on her lap, thinking. "To the Death Star. To the irony of Tarkin's death. Why do you say that?"

"Because of how proud he was, of his own stupid action. It was him that destroyed Alderaan, you know. The Death Star was a tool. And I'm glad it turned on him, and killed him."

Dangerous emotion simmered in her voice. Albrina reminded her, a little concerned, "The Death Star does not get the credit for Tarkin's death. It was us. Your friend, Luke Skywalker."

"He killed the Death Star." Princess Leia waved it away. "Still, there's some poetic justice to his death."

"How do you feel about the Death Star?"

Princess Leia's eyes lowered to the table. "The Death Star... is a tool. My education. It should never have been, just as Alderaan should always have been."

"Your education?"

"How naive I was before. Young and foolish. How I'll never be again. The Death Star gave me that."

Albrina shifted in her seat, wondering about her own rubble. Had she been wrong to share? Years ago, twenty-one year old Albrina Renzatl had picked up several pieces of burnt brick. She remembered feeling so differently about the world, and the rubble was a memento, a reminder not only of the family she lost but of the person she could never be again. There was no surprise the Princess should have similar feelings; Albrina had just not expected the Death Star to be the one to keep them.

"You said how it severed you," she told the Princess.

"I think, by the way Vader's fingers dug into my shoulders, it wasn't supposed to. And I am reunited," Princess Leia lifted her chin, "as best I can be."

"You sound sympathetic to it."

"Not really." Trancelike, the Princess shook her head. Perhaps she was remembering dashing down its clean corridors, looking for the smuggler and his freighter. "It was a tool." She blinked and looked up. "Do you know what it makes me think of? The goddesses, dancing in space and creating from the void. Only it was humans, and we made something we had to destroy."

Albrina was overcome a moment. "It's heartbreaking," she said. "The wonderful stories you told me, and the names of the goddesses. One other thing you were unsure of earlier: do the goddesses still exist?"

"Did faith ever prove to make something real?" the Princess answered with eyes large and sad. "The goddesses created something that could end," she sighed. "But I suppose they do, as my mother lives on in me."

"With Time and Memory."

"With Forgiveness, too, if this war lets us."

"Your afterworld." Albrina got a chill. "What then?"

"We can't weave, as they did. We are as you said, the spiritual Alderaani." The Princess shrugged. "We aren't quite ended yet, though I fear it is close."

"Is that also part of your understanding? Whether tradition could welcome change in the face of tragedy. What it will mean to be Alderaani from hereafter?"

"That is me atop of the rubble," the Princess repeated. "I am proud to lead them into war. There will have to be other changes, to ensure our survival."

"Listening to you," Albrina said seriously, "I suddenly wonder: which rubble buried you?"

Princess Leia's eyes were large. "Alderaan's or the Death Star's," she breathed out in wonder. "I hadn't thought of that."

The mess was hushed. The heating unit of the urn groaned occassionally but other than that they were the only two in the room. They sat in silence a while. Albrina read over her entries and waited.

"I think Luke would say," the Princess said at last in a quiet voice, "his moment of destiny came when he returned to General Kenobi with a decision, that he would learn the ways of the Force. If I have to have a moment, even though I disagree with him, it's the decision to... I don't know how to put it. Bury the dead. Put Alderaan to rest." She looked up. "That's it. Put Alderaan to rest." Her eyes brimmed with unexpected tears. "I don't really want to. I have to let some things go. I have, even, to be a little unhappy with it."

"Yes."

"Otherwise, I'd die, wouldn't I? How can you want to leave such a place. I am both parts Alderaan. I am the physical, that breathes and has a pulse. It wants life. It is life. The other part of me is torn. But I clawed my way out of the Death Star. So that's the rubble I stand on. And it's been long enough, that the dust is clear. Showing me..." her brow furrowed tragically, "what's left. Not much, but some things."

Albrina turned her databoard off, to show that her answer was personal, even though there was not much to say. "That is true, Your Highness."

"That's what I wrote you, isn't it, in my letter. Only I didn't know it. Did you?"

"Oh, my role is quite modest, Your Highness. I guide. I brought up your letter because you described yourself as in the middle of something. I wanted to see if you had a firmer sense of where that was."

"I never know until you ask," Princess Leia made a weak smile. "Sometimes, it's too much to think about. Like, for me to be here, actively taking part in a war, with other Alderaani at my side- my mother would have to be dead. My father too. Luke's destiny. The tradition of pacifism would be the thing severed, and all those..." she pressed her lips together, "all those people, who believed in a certain way of life would-"

"I don't think they would," Albrina cut in. "Die? Couldn't you, as Princess, take action? Enact the change, like that," Albrina snapped her fingers, "or call for a vote?"

"I could," Princess Leia said slowly. "I wonder if I would have, if things were different. My father had his just war."

"Yes."

The Princess sighed heavily. "There's nothing I can do about it now. I've reached a point. And to sink into things that can't be altered... I should do as Captain Solo does, and just not think about things."

Albrina glanced at her chrono. "The shift change is about to start. May I point something out before we stop? For next time."

"I suppose-" the Princess said hesitantly.

"Your friends. When you mention Commander Skywalker, it's always Luke. I haven't heard you say-" Albrina searched her memory and failed to come up with Captain Solo's name, "- though you wrote it, once-"

"Captain Solo," Princess Leia provided. "Han."

"Something I noticed," Albrina said primly. "They need sorting." She watched a flash of irritation flit across the Princess's face, and then her usual polite expression- not a mask, Albrina had decided- was back in place. "They are two things you have," she pointed out. "Have you collected them? Were they lost? Are they accidents?"

"They are not my accidents. I know that because though my life is unrecognizable from the one I lived before, I can't imagine being without them. Even Captain Solo." She pushed her half-eaten ration bar away. "Another reason I hate irony," she declared. "Even the positives break my heart." She glanced at her chrono. "May I say something about your letter?"

Albrina was pleasantly surprised. "Certainly."

"I appreciate the concern you showed for me. For my physical health especially, because I don't view that as falling under your area of expertise. I feel better since I wrote. I think I needed to come to some conclusions, about this war and my role, and once I did I don't notice," she fluttered a hand, "well, the things I thought ailed me."

"That is good to hear. And you can take at as confirmation within yourself, that the decisions you made rest well with your body."

"Yes," the Princess said. "And about the rubble. The little seed seeking the sun. I found that... gentle, somehow. Uplifting. A different perspective. It's not the rubble's baby- no Alderaan or Death Star can be born again from its own rubble, but that some form of life can, tiny and innocent... It appealed to me. I like to think the little seed could be me."

"Oh, Your Highness." For a while it was all Albrina could say. She felt like Princess Leia's words were their own seed, taking root in her own body. "These times have been so difficult for you. All the questions that have arisen, all the pain and conflict and confusion that billowed up like the cloud of impact. That my comment, attempting to console- it means a lot."

"It meant something to me as well. Maybe it's why you thought I sounded sympathetic to the Death Star. Because of it. That life could grow out of something so terrible. Is the..." the Princess wrung her hands, "confusion... common with others in a similar situation?"

"The feeling of being upended, as you alluded to earlier, yes. Yours is a special story, one that has the effect of stirring the rubble. Specific answers you seek may not get answered with me, but I watch how hard you work to get them."

The Princess nodded and they both looked at their chrono. "Shift change," the Princess announced. She needed a mood shift, Albrina surmised.

"Luke said he'd meet me for breakfast. I'd like to be ready."

Albrina feigned surprise. "How do you need to prepare for breakfast with your friend Luke? You are as composed as ever. And he'd see you in any guise, Your Highness. I'm sure you know that."

The Princess's face was politely skeptical. "He likes to talk."

Albrina smiled. "Listen, argue, talk," she advised. "He is good company. I'm glad someone listened to me and finally stationed you two together."

She had succeeded in lightening the Princess's mood. "You'll have to thank the Empire for that. He's here because of Vader and and I'm here because of Palpatine."

Albrina smiled. "More irony," she said.