It had always been a part of the itinerary to jump back to Coruscant at 0200 the morning after the reveal of the Death Star, so that Palpatine could just make the end of the celebrations and give the speech that formally closed the Empire Day festival for another year. Leia just happened to have forgotten that fact, what with everything else that had gone on.

She woke up the next morning to the familiar hum of hyperspace engines underneath her. It was the first thing she noticed, which was unusual in itself. Usually when she woke up in hyperspace, what stood out to her was the glaring emptiness all around her, in the Force. She welcomed it, usually: it reminded her of living on Mustafar and—she now knew—Tatooine, where her family were the only beings for miles.

It was peculiar, waking up to those familiar vibrations without the emptiness.

She cast her mind out, and felt for the minds of all the thousands of workers on the ship. They dotted the Force like sand grains in the Jundland Wastes. She frowned, pushed a little further, then a lot further. Her father sensed her probe from the general vicinity of the bridge, and sent one back, but she pushed further—

There. There was the edge of the ship, and hyperspace beyond it.

She frowned. It was an embarrassingly long time before it hit her.

She was on the Executor. They'd switched to her father's new flagship for the jump back because it was faster. She should have noticed: she and Luke had moved to completely different quarters on the Executor, with two fairly large bedrooms attaching to her father's main living area. They looked nothing like their quarters on the Devastator. But. . .

She was distracted.

And she knew exactly why.

Her conversation with Sabé was weighing on her mind.

She could barely remember what she'd said. She wasn't convinced it hadn't all been a dream—the Death Star, too. One horrible, horrible nightmare, where the galaxy as she knew it fractured before her eyes and she was left scrambling in the wake of it—

A knock at the door.

It was Luke, she confirmed after a moment. She didn't know how she hadn't sensed his approach, but it was Luke.

She gave him a mental nudge. He felt like a ball of nerves. Come in.

The door hissed open, and he stepped in, pausing to take a look around her new bedroom. It was the same standard Imperial grey, black and white, a wardrobe in the corner, a large but comfortable bed she was still sitting cross-legged on.

"Huh," he said aloud. "Looks identical to mine."

"Almost as if it was built for twins," she quipped.

The corner of his mouth twisted, like he was trying not to smile. Despite all her worrying and preoccupation, his genuine amusement warmed her heart.

"So this is the Executor," she commented.

"Yup." He kicked his black boots off at the door and crawled onto her bed, settling into a seat behind her. Knowing what he was about to do, it wasn't a surprise when she felt him gently start to take apart the plaits she'd slept in overnight, and summoned her hairbrush to hand from the dresser.

He continued, "I've been awake for a few hours now—"

"Couldn't sleep?" she teased. It was soothing, the rhythmic strokes of the brush through her hair; she found herself relaxing from a tension she hadn't even realised she was carrying.

The brush stilled.

"No," he said quietly.

She grimaced, but knew better than to say anything else. Everything had been so. . . sensitive. . . lately—the Death Star, their conversation about Amidala, her defection—that while before she'd always known exactly what to say, now. . .

She couldn't say anything at all.

Fortunately, Luke recovered quickly. "You've slept in all the way to noon, lucky you," he commented jovially. "Father told me not to wake you because we technically don't have anything to do until we get back and he didn't want you mortally offending some important governor because you got bored."

"I would not have done that."

"I don't know, you can be pretty—"

"Finish that sentence and I will ram that hairbrush into you so hard you get imprints on your colon."

He laughed. "Alright, alright, I get it. But still, you got to sleep in. Cause for celebration."

"And what have you been doing all this time?" She had her suspicions. "Wandering around getting under everyone's feet?"

"I," he informed her, putting the brush down and taking the hair in hand to start plaiting, "have been on the bridge—"

"Getting under everyone's feet?"

"Watching how a Star Destroyer is run."

Well, she knew what joke she would have made to that a few months ago. As distasteful as she found it now, she made it. She wanted to make him laugh again.

She nudged him with her elbow, glancing over her shoulder. "That'll be you in a few years."

Strangely enough, it just ruined the mood. Luke's hands froze for a moment, before they resumed plaiting. His cheerful tone was forced as he said, "Yeah."

Through the Force, it tasted like a lie. A lie tinged with guilt.

She frowned, almost—almost—turning right round there and then to ask him what was wrong. He was her brother; she wanted to help him. She wanted to end this horrible, horrible awkwardness between them.

But at the same time, she knew she wouldn't be able to keep any of it a secret if she did. It was all come tumbling out, and Luke. . .

I'm on your side.

She did not know how Luke would react.

Logically, she knew that with a little bit of talking round, a little bit of explanation, he'd understand—he'd promised to understand. But. . . she had spent ten years surrounded by the dark side. Fear was something she knew well.

She was afraid of her brother looking at her like a monster.

Like he hated her.

Like a traitor.

And if there was the slightest, tiniest chance that he would. . . she did not want to risk it.

It would break her.

So she kept quiet.

She didn't ask.

"The Death Star. . ." she said instead, because that was clearly still weighing on everyone's minds. She felt Luke flinch. "That was real, then?"

"Unfortunately. It wasn't a dream." She didn't need to look at him to see the smile tugging at his lips. "I'd be concerned about you if you had come up with it in a dream, though."

She laughed at that. There was nothing else to laugh at. "So would I, to be honest. But. . ." She chewed on her bottom lip. "It was real."

Luke's hands tightened on her hair.

"He actually built that."

"I know."

"It's—"

"Horrendous."

"Disgusting."

"Abominable."

"An affront to life itself."

A moment of surprise, then they laughed—genuinely this time, in unison. It warmed her heart a little.

"I can get the thesaurus if you want," Luke quipped.

"Oh, shut up."

Another silence. So much said, so much left to say—the silence was a tangle of thorns and flowers in the woods, and Leia was unnerved and reassured by it in equal measure.

Her brother hated the Rebellion. . . but did he hate the Death Star—and Palpatine—more?

He had hero worshipped their father. In the wake of having that, that which was such a major part of his character, ripped away. . . who had he become?

She realised, with a pang of regret, that she'd never thought to find out.

But his next words—quiet, measured, and comfortably ambiguous—gave her a clue: "What is this Empire coming to?"

A sad smile curled her lips. He finished tying off the braid and let it thump softly against her back, his hands dropping into his lap. She twisted around to face him.

Automatically, she reached to entwine her fingers with his. His hand squeezed hers gently.

"I don't know," she admitted in a murmur. "But. . ."

He picked up on her thoughts. "It's up to us to change things."

Change things—that was it. That was the perfect phrase, as comfortably ambiguous as his question had been. It meant her nod wasn't a lie, and that the fierce resolve that flooded through her could, for a moment, be interpreted as equal to his.

It meant that, just for a moment, she could believe that they were actually in this together.

Despite how gentle and tender as it had been—or perhaps because of how gentle and tender it had been—his conversation with Leia had shaken him.

He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to confide in her. When he was braiding her hair the way he had for as long as he could remember—come to think of it, even when they didn't have their memories, Leia had always worn her hair in styles Aunt Beru had taught her to do—he'd wanted it more than anything. It was such an intimate, comfortable, common thing for them to do; it felt intrinsically wrong to do it when he was keeping this sort of secret from her. Like he was pretending to be the brother she'd always loved, an imposter.

He'd wanted to tell her so much. . .

. . .but he didn't want to risk it.

He couldn't risk it.

He could deal with it, if his father hated him: their relationship was already fragile. Palpatine he didn't give a shuura fruit about. But if he lost Leia. . .

He couldn't.

So he kept his mouth shut, hating and hating and hating himself for the awkwardness, for the deception. . . but deceiving her all the same.

Leia had kicked him out of her room, saying she needed to get dressed and go mingle with the dignitaries they were escorting back to Coruscant—something about needing to keep up with the gossip of the court. Luke had never understood how she put up with them so well, but each to their own.

He made his way to the bridge, instead.

He was growing increasingly doubtful that Palpatine would ever let him serve on a Star Destroyer under his father. The Emperor must know that they had burgeoning plans for a coup against him—what he'd said to Leia had as good as confirmed it—and Luke doubted he'd want to let either of his demon twins out of his sight for too long.

So all that meant was he had to learn as much as he could in the little time he had.

He stood on the bridge for several more hours, talking amiably with the newly-appointed Captain Piett—he was one of his father's favoured officers, if he remembered correctly—and trying to take in as much information from the man as possible.

He was standing there when he sensed the commotion.

They'd received a message saying that his father was on their way up only a few minutes before, when it started. Luke cast out his senses at the first hint of trouble, to find Vader a few corridors below him.

He frowned, and turned sharply on his heel to exit the bridge, exchanging a worried gaze with Piett.

He could sense the tension rise in the pits when he left—he wasn't sure quite when he'd acquired the reputation for being a sort of good luck charm against strangulation as far as the officers under his father were concerned, but he had—and did his best to ignore it. The tension was rising inside him, as well.

He could sense another presence next to his father, stoic and steadfast but afraid.

It was by a turbolift almost directly between his father's quarters and the bridge—he must have been waylaid midstride—that he found them. Jade's vibrant hair was just peeking out from under her helmet, her visor closed. She stood absolutely stock still.

Vader had his hand out towards her, fingers pinched together.

The doors to the turbolift opened on that scene, but neither of them so much as twitched as it chimed.

The scene—the familiar scene—sent a pang through Luke's gut. How many times had he seen this, his father hurting or even killing an Inquisitor or officer just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? All Jade ever did was snap back when she was snapped at; she never became a threat, or even a minor hindrance. She just. . . irked him, and he wouldn't flinch at killing her.

How had Luke not seen how corrupt this Empire was before? His own father was complicit in it—his own father wouldn't object to firing on an unarmed transport, or even planet; he just objected to firing with something as crude and artificial as the Death Star.

He couldn't see Jade's face, but he could imagine it was started to turn purple. She twitched unpleasantly; he could feel her consciousness fading in the Force.

Luke cleared his throat pointedly. "Father." No response. "Let her go."

Surprisingly, Vader did—or perhaps not so surprising. He had stopped before, when he realised it made Luke uncomfortable; he'd only tried to talk Luke out of being uncomfortable immediately after. Now was no exception.

Jade's mask hissed open as she gasped for air, oxygen flooding back into her lungs. Unconsciously, a hand reached up to rub her throat.

"The nearest medbay is one floor down, fifth door on the right," Luke told her. "I suggest you go and make sure you haven't suffered permanent damage."

She glared at him, but it was half-hearted. She knew who was to blame. "I know how to deal with this sort of injury."

Odd. Her eyes almost looked green when she said that.

"I don't doubt it," Luke said calmly—deceptively calmly, but it wasn't a threat to Jade. It was a threat to his father. "But it's always better to be safe than sorry." A moment, then— "I'll come and talk to you after, if you want."

For one long moment, she almost seemed like she'd nod, accept the offer. But then she scowled. "I don't need your help."

His father stiffened at the perceived insult, hand rising again—

Luke seized it with the Force and pushed it down. "I know you don't," he said, "and I wasn't trying to imply that you do."

She didn't seem to know how to respond to that.

After a moment, she just stalked away, the turbolift doors closing behind her.

Luke waited for the chime before he said to his father, cuttingly calm, "I thought you were supposed to be heading up to the bridge."

Vader straightened up, caution in his voice. "It was a brief delay."

"What did she do this time? Accidentally walk past you?"

"She suggested that the launch of the Executor meant I would have to spend less time of Coruscant, and that she hoped it meant she would see less of me."

"So naturally you had to nearly kill her."

"She will survive." The dismissal in his father's voice made Luke's ire rise. He tried to crush it down, veil it behind shields, but Vader picked up on it anyway. "You disagree with how I handle the Inquisitors."

Luke lifted his chin and looked his father in the eye. "Yes. I do." A moment, then he added— "And I think you already knew that."

There was no response from Vader save a tightening of his fists.

"Now," Luke continued, despite the fact he knew it was just going to escalate, he knew his relationship with his father was already strained; he did not care— "Don't you have a bridge crew to terrorise?"

"You disagree with how I handle them as well," Vader pushed. "You protect them, constantly."

"It's called having a conscience."

"A conscience?" His father sneered the word. "I did not raise you with such simplistic ideas of right and wrong."

"You're correct. For a good seven years, you didn't raise me at all."

Vader was stunned silent at that—at what it implied, that he brought it up at all. Luke had not forgiven him for lying. Not by a long shot.

But before he could reply, Luke had walked away.

He went to the medbay he'd given Jade directions to, wanting to check up on her despite what she'd said.

He wasn't surprised to find she wasn't there.

He wasn't even surprised when the medic told him she'd never turned up at all.

Leia was already lying to her brother, and she hadn't even been a Rebel spy—a Rebel spy, oh stars—for twenty four hours.

At least it had been a halfway-decent lie. She had gone to mingle with the Imperial dignitaries. . . for a time.

Then, she was back in her quarters, compiling a formal report of all the information she knew about the Death Star to send to Sabé.

There wasn't much. She was sure Palpatine would tell her more later—she hoped Palpatine would tell her more later—but for now, she had to work with what she had.

It was called the Death Star. She seen it with her own eyes. One year away from completion, it was a battle station about the size of a small moon, whose primary function was to fire on innocent planets who'd showed the slightest hint of rebellion and destroy them. This was achieved with the focusing dish observed on the upper hemisphere of the station. She didn't know how they'd managed to generate that much fire power—the entire Imperial Starfleet didn't have that—but Luke had mentioned a name in their conversation earlier: Galen Erso.

The person Luke had been interrogating for details before the reveal that had changed so much.

He, her brother theorised, was important enough in the design and development of this monstrosity that he had to have something to do with it. It was a shaky claim at best, but the Force spurred them both on.

So Leia typed that into her report to, though she didn't clarify what her suspicions were based on. In her experience, people were all too quick to dismiss things they didn't understand, and as much as Palpatine boasted otherwise, no one understood the Force. They just trusted it.

So she was ready when the incoming comm from Sabé lit her comlink, spot on the time she'd given her. Leia answered immediately, eyes automatically scanning her surroundings for surveillance, for all that she was in her own room, in her family's own quarters.

"Leia."

"Good. You haven't backed out?" It was a careful enquiry—and a necessary one, though she still took slight offence to it.

"Of course I haven't. I'm not—" She swallowed her words: a traitor. That was a lie. "I put a lot of thought into this. My loyalties don't change easily. Otherwise you'd have had me on Naboo."

An exhale of breath. "Good," Sabé said again. "You know that I had to be sure."

"Well, I hope you are now—"

"I am."

"Because I'm submitting you a report of everything I know about the Death Star," she said, already reaching to tap the necessary buttons. "I'll compile more information later on—codes, fleet movements, logistics, the like. This is all I could—"

"Leia," Sabé said, "it's perfect. I can see it coming through now." There was a pause, then, although Leia had told her the day before— "One year to completion?"

"Give or take," she confirmed grimly.

"That's. . . not very long. We'll need to find out where it's being built, see if there's any way we can sabotage it—"

"I'll do my best."

"Thank you," Sabé paused, then Leia could hear the smile in her face as she said, "Fulcrum."

Fulcrum.

"Fulcrum," she echoed. "The point on which everything turns."

"It's our codename—"

"I know what it is. Ahsoka Tano came up with it." She could sense Sabé's faint surprise. "You forget—it was my father on Malachor."

"Ahsoka does not have fond memories of the event, I'm told."

"No one involved does."

There was an awkward silence, and Leia sighed. "I need to go. I'll submit the other reports once I've written them." Sabé did not seem to be introducing her to any sort of Rebel spy protocol—at least, none as strict as the Imperial protocol she'd had hammered into her for years. Perhaps that was because a spy had to by nature have slightly more flexibility, perhaps because Sabé didn't want to scare her away too soon.

It didn't matter, either way.

"I'll send you the codes, so you know what encryption to use when contacting me. And—" A pause. "Thank you, Leia. We can do so much with this. May the Force be with you."

The comlink winked off.

Leia murmured, "May the Force be with us all."

Being on the Executor, as it turned out, did not exempt Leia from her politics lessons. While she had an active mission to work on, such as the Kuat Uprising or whatever Operation Eclipse was, she tended not to have any sort of lessons scheduled. She'd had a rigorous enough education until she was sixteen that it was a welcome relief once she started missions, though paradoxically it often made her want her lessons more.

She was painfully aware of her youth and inexperience when things went the slightest bit wrong. It made her want to drop herself right back in the classroom and be lectured on what not to do by one astrophysicist or military tactician or diplomatic languages tutor or another.

Even so, it was standard for her lessons to be cancelled when she wasn't on Coruscant, or occupied for some reason. She'd assumed the same applied to when she was on the Executor.

But politics lessons were different.

Because politics lessons, she received right from the top.

The Executor had a throne room, as did almost all of the Imperial Navy's flagships, and it was designed much the same as all of Palpatine's others, scattered wherever they may be across the galaxy.

However, while the fact that this room had already taken up this much space on a ship in which space was a precious resource was indicative of its importance—her father's spacious quarters weren't even a quarter of this size—it was smaller than most of the throne rooms. It gave Leia a least a little more confidence, a little more courage, as she traversed it to kneel at the base of the steps to the throne.

"Rise, child." Palpatine waved his hand almost noncommittally, immediately rising himself to gesture her into the Emperor's quarters through the door behind the throne. "You are here to learn, not serve."

She gritted her teeth—serving is all I do—but made sure her face was blank and her shields impeccable. If Palpatine, of all people, was the first to discover her recent defection. . . that would be nothing short of disastrous.

He led her into a small but ostentatious room, furnished with a table and several chairs around it. Datapads and flimsi and styluses littered the top in a way that spoke of studied chaos. "Sit. After yesterday's demonstration, I thought we could start with something along those lines."

He took a seat himself. He looked comical for a moment, black robes pooling at his elbows on the table, fingers steepled, but then she reminded herself that this was a very dangerous man and her mouth did not twitch into a smile.

Besides, any threat of a smile fled at what he said next. "What do you know of the Tarkin Doctrine?"

A sneer formed on her lips without consent. "Tarkin's proposal to rule through fear—he argues that fear, more than anything, will crush any rebellion and ensure the Empire continues its grip."

"Good," Palpatine praised. "And what do you think of this? The doctrine, that is," he added, "not the man. I am well aware you find him unlikeable, but you have to respect his ingenuity."

Leia begged to differ. She did not have to respect him at all.

"I think it's short-sighted," she said bluntly. Her attacks on Tarkin and the Empire's more overtly brutal policies weren't unusual in these sessions; speaking her mind here wouldn't raise suspicion. She hoped. "The more we tighten our grip, the more star systems will slip through our fingers. Eventually people will feel they have nothing left to lose, and then what will we do? It would be like a galaxy of Gerrera's Partisans—and they are troublesome enough already."

She could feel the question building in Palpatine, so she barrelled on before he interjected, prefacing her answer before he could ask. "If we are to implement such drastic tactics, we have to accompany it with something that will foster loyalty as well, or only the most. . . loyal"—she stopped herself from saying fanatical—"Imperials will be genuinely devoted to us."

She lifted her chin, face set in a mulish expression. "Tarkin himself used to be an advocate for both the lash and the lure. I fail to see what advantages this new doctrine of his holds over his previous philosophy."

"I see." Palpatine's eyes were narrowed, but in a pleased manner. He raked his gaze over her; his nod of approval made her relax, the slightest bit. For all that it felt dirty, immoral, to say something he approved of, at least she was doing her job.

"And. . ." His eyes narrowed further. "What do you think of the Death Star Tarkin has built to support his doctrine?"

Tarkin has built—a neat method of shifting the blame away from Palpatine, lest she disagree and the negotiations get hostile. If she agreed, she knew, he'd go right back to taking the credit for it. Palpatine was not someone who didn't plan for all contingencies.

"As I said," Leia shrugged, "the lash and the lure is needed. My problem with the Tarkin Doctrine isn't use of the lash—it's overuse of the lash, when the lure could be more effective." It wasn't even much of a falsehood. What was a law, and the punishment for breaking it, if not at least a mild lash?

"The Death Star is a disgusting thing," she said baldly. "It's an insult to the Force, and life itself. Such a technological terror is a waste of credits and time, when one powerful Force user could, with suitable study, theoretically, do its job with a fraction of the effort."

"Theoretically," he pushed.

She didn't flinch. "Has the Death Star fired yet? Have you any proof that it can do its job, beyond theoretically?"

His silence answered her question—as did the approving smile on his face.

"I stand by what I said. Both the lash and the lure are effective. The Death Star is, ultimately, a very severe lash. For very severe cases. . ."

She pinched her lips together briefly. She took a deep breath. She looked Palpatine in the eye.

And for the first time in her life, she flat out lied to his face.

". . .I believe the Death Star to be necessary."