CORUSCANT, 40 YEARS ABE:

On the ground below, Leia Organa-Solo fanned smoke away from her face and pushed forward across the platform with apparent unconcern for the occasional spray of blaster bolts burning through the haze.

"Iwo!" she shouted. "Iwo, can you hear me?"

"I am afraid she cannot, princess."

Leia froze. She turned, stepped through a plume of smoke rising from the back of a blue-clad Gotal, and saw Grand Admiral Pellaeon. He was kneeling beside the thin, white-clad body of an elderly human female. His white uniform was streaked with smoke and his thinning hair was in disarray, but it was the sorrow on his face that looked out of place as he gently folded Mon Mothma's arms over her chest and smoothed her short hair. Her eyes were already closed.

"No," Leia whispered. "How—did she—?"

"I don't believe she felt much," Pellaeon said. "The first turbolaser salvo threw her from her chair, cracked her head on the permacrete. I suppose it was just too much for her after everything." He looked up, meeting Leia's eyes with his own tired brown ones. "It may have been too fast for her to realize what was happening, to understand that it had all gone wrong. Is it wrong of me to hope that it was? To hope that she died knowing peace?"

Leia hesitated. Something about this wasn't adding up. Her hands strayed toward her empty belt again and she forced them to hang still by her sides. "Admiral, what happened?" she asked.

Pellaeon sighed and levered himself to his feet. It was the movement of an old man. He looked down at Mon Mothma's still body for a moment, then up and over Leia's head. She wasn't sure if he was looking at the horizon, at the turbolaser fire still lancing down around them, sowing panic and devastation in the fleeing crowd, or at some more distant sight beyond the range of vision. Leia ignored it all to focus on the elderly Grand Admiral.

"I always tried to be an honorable soldier, princess," he said. "You know this."

Leia inclined her head in a slow, hesitant nod. While she of all people had little good to say about the Empire, it was widely agreed that Gilad Pellaeon was one of the shining examples of what was best about it; of what could be good about it, in the right hands. For a few short, glorious weeks Leia had entertained the idea that those hands were finally here, that what was left of the Empire's order and efficiency was finally going to be employed in the galaxy's benefit rather than in service to tyranny...but the Imperial ships overhead, and the stormtroopers steadily advancing around them, put the lie to those hopes. Distantly, Leia could hear the unmistakable wail of TIE fighters, reedy and thin above the crackle of flames and the blistering pulse of turbolaser fire.

"I have done many things I am not proud of, as have all soldiers." Pellaeon straightened the chair he had been sitting in a few short minutes earlier, when he had been hesitating to sign the peace documents that would have ended the war between the Empire and the New Republic for good. Leia wondered, now, if he had hesitated on purpose—not wanting to commit that last base crime on top of this greater betrayal. "Some because they were the best choice of bad options," Pellaeon continued, "others because I was ordered to and could not see a means of refuting or refusing; still others merely because I was frightened or obedient...but I have always tried to be honorable in the carrying out of my duties."

"I know," Leia said. "Even I can admit to that, admiral."

Pellaeon's eyes were still far away, not on her. The smile he mustered was brief and sad. "We do not always have the luxury of acting as we would wish," he said. "Sometimes we must commit acts that are anathema to us. Sometimes out of necessity, or expediency...and sometimes because those acts are forced upon us."

Another burst of turbolaser fire sounded nearby, but the square where the peace should have been signed was not struck again. The starship gunners were unlikely to risk firing at it again as long as their Grand Admiral stayed there. Leia unconsciously took a step closer to him, away from the potential blast radius of another shot.

"You are the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Remnant," she pointed out reasonably, trying to quell the sudden flutter of her heart. "Who could force you to undertake an act so abhorrent—unless...you aren't referring to this treaty, are you?" she asked, waving her hand to indicate the scattered datapads.

Pellaeon looked down and saw one of them—impossible, now, to tell if it was the one the Imperials had brought to the table or the New Republic's—near his booted feet. Its screen was cracked but it was still powered on, the words of the treaty still visible through the sheen of dust and ash that coated it. He lifted the datapad, looked at it for a long moment, then set it on the table.

"No," he told Leia. "I am not referring to our surrender. I was ready for that, princess. I pushed for that."

Leia nodded again. Now was not the time or the place to point out that she no longer went by the title of princess; had not for many years, now. She suspected to old men like Gilad Pellaeon she would always be that feisty young princess arguing passionately on the Senate floor. Ordinarily that thought annoyed her, but today it just made her tired. How would that girl she had once been react to the idea that the peace she fought so hard for would not be achieved for a long, long forty years? For longer, even, if today went the way she feared?

"I am referring…" Pellaeon waved a heavy hand around at the smoke and devastation all around them; at the fallen chair where Mon Mothma had been sitting, alive and hopeful, so short a time ago. "I am referring to all of this."

"What happened?" Leia asked.

Pellaeon shook her head. "Duty," he said. The word came out like a judge's verdict, heavy and final and merciless.

Leia raised her eyebrows. "Perhaps you could explain that," she said.

Pellaeon's shoulders lifted in a sigh. "Do you wish to join me?" he asked, indicating the other chair. "I can assure you that none of the stormtroopers here today will dare to fire anywhere near you so long as you are in my vicinity."

Leia shook her head. "I would rather stand," she said.

"Of course," said Pellaeon. He sighed again and lifted the cracked datapad. "It could have worked, couldn't it?" he asked. His voice was so soft that Leia had to strain her ears to hear him over the screams and shots and shouts around her. "It could have worked."

"It could have," she agreed. "Maybe it still can. If you tell your forces to stand down…"

"They aren't my forces," Pellaeon said. "Not anymore."

"You've been removed from command?"

"I've been usurped," Pellaeon said simply. "I am still Grand Admiral, still Supreme Commander of the Imperial Remnant...but even the Supreme Commander must obey those who outrank him, and I am not Emperor."

Leia's blood ran cold. "Who—?"

"Mom!"

She spun at the sound of a familiar voice.

"Mom, where are you?"

"Bail, get out of here!" Leia snapped. She started forward through the smoke and a blaster bolt flashed in front of her, almost scorching her nose. She flinched back.

Another light suddenly flared into life amidst the smoke, a bright green one. It batted back the blaster bolts that converged on it and several mechanically-augmented screams came from somewhere over Pellaeon's shoulder. The lightsaber vanished again, removing the convenient target of its glow, and a short humanoid form in a long brown robe ran forward to grab Leia by the arm.

"Mom, come on, let's get out of here!" Bail Solo said. He was a lean, tightly-muscled boy a handspan taller than Leia with floppy brown hair, pale skin, and bright brown eyes. He looked much like his twin sister, but unlike Breha, he wore the plain robes of a Jedi rather than the bright orange of a fighter pilot. He was also less adept at masking his emotions and right now, fear poured off of him in waves—fear for his mother, mainly, although once he realized the import of today's Imperial betrayal that feeling would expand to encompass the rest of the galaxy as well.

He tugged at his mother's arm, trying to get her out of the line of fire before it started up again.

Leia shook her head and looked back at Pellaeon, who sat where she had left him, looking as settled as a man in the garden of his own comfortable estate. He met Leia's eyes and gave her another tired, short smile. "It was an honor to know you, princess, and an honor to fight you," he said. "It would have been an honor to work with you, too."

"It still could be," Leia offered. "Come with us—"

"And lend you my expertise in warfare against my Empire? No," Pellaeon shook his head. "That I fear I cannot do."

"If they are dishonorable, isn't betraying them what honor demands?" Leia ventured.

Pellaeon shook his head again. "In this case it is duty, not honor, that I must obey. My regrets, princess. And may the Force be with you." He sighed. "I fear you're going to need it."

"Mom come on!" Bail cried again. This time he used the Force to augment his pull and Leia stumbled toward him.

"Your sister—"

"She's in the air already," Bail said, relief mingling with the worry in his voice as his mother at last allowed him to move her forward, away from the slow advance of stormtroopers. "She's worried but okay, and moving away from us. The comm-jamming is still up so that's all I know right now. She'll be less worried once she can feel we aren't in danger anymore, so come on. Let's get out of here and help Rey concentrate before she gets blown out of the sky, okay?"

"Okay," Leia said. She was starting to go numb around the pain of her bumps and bruises and the blood on her face was drying. She wondered that her eyes could still be dry, too, and only belatedly realized that they weren't: she was crying, had been since the explosions started.

As they gained distance from Pellaeon, sparse blasterfire began to pierce the smoke around them again but Bail was half-sunk in a Force trance, navigating the paths of danger and safety on Jedi instinct. Twice he had to ignite his lightsaber to batter shots away from him and Leia, but they took no more damage as they traversed the savaged platform.

Each step seemed to drag at Leia's feet as though she were moving through heavy gravity, or thick liquid, but it was the weight of broken hopes pulling at her, not the ground.

A warbling, animal-like bellow jolted her out of her fuge. "Chewie?" Leia gasped.

Bail's face lit up in a grin. "Chewie," he confirmed. "Chewie! Down here!" He ignited his lightsaber again, waving it overhead like a landing beacon. The smoke around them started to waft away in shreds as the sound of repulsorlifts approached them through the tumult and the screams. At the sound of Bail's voice the rumble intensified, the source of the noise banking toward them more sharply, and then the familiar saucer-shaped side of the Millenium Falcon broke through the last of the smoke.

Leia felt her steps, for a moment, grow lighter.

Chewbacca bellowed again, this time with both delight and impatience as he spotted Leia and Bail. He was standing on the open boarding ramp of the ship, one furry hand wrapped around the hydraulic column that raised and lowered the ramp, the other stretching toward the two humans as though even he had a long enough reach to simply lean out and pull them aboard across the half-dozen meters between them.

The ship lowered carefully toward the permacrete and Leia and Bail hurried, nearly running, to meet it.

"You first," Leia ordered.

"Mom, I'm a Jedi—"

"And I'm your mother," Leia interrupted curtly. "I'm not arguing, Bail."

Bail sighed, rolled his eyes like he was an adolescent again instead of a young man of twenty, and gathered his strength for the leap. He closed his eyes, visualized his target, and boosted himself with the Force into a long, soaring arc that deposited him neatly on the edge of the boarding ramp—a little too neatly, and he wobbled on the rim for a moment before Chewbacca snagged him by the tunic and pulled him aboard. The Wookiee rumbled a greeting that was half-complaint, half-relief, and gave him a helpful shove up the ramp.

Bail hurried aboard, out of the way, and down below his mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath in preparation for her own jump, centering herself in the Force through the wave of shattered hopes and painful deaths. Then her eyes flew open again and she turned at a shrill cry: "Mistress Leia! Oh, Mistress Leia!"

C-3PO tottered forward as fast as his stiff metal legs could carry him. "Oh, please don't leave without me!" the protocol droid wailed. He waved his arms over his head in a desperate bid to be more visible, one hand clutching a slim datapad. "Mistress Leia!"

"Threepio?" Leia said, plainly bewildered. She shook her head and snapped, "Well hurry it up then! Han won't wait forever!"

"Oh dear!" Threepio wailed. "I assure you, mistress, I am moving as fast as I—oh!"

A blaster bolt flashed by close enough to scorch a long black streak across Threepio's siny shoulder. "I'm doomed!" he cried. "Never mind, Mistress Leia, save yourself! I'm done for!"

Leia shook her head. "It's all right, Threepio," she said, and closed her eyes again. This time instead of preparing to jump she stretched out her hand, fingers splayed, toward the pessimistic droid. "I've got you."

With a sharp little "Oh!" of surprise, Threepio raised off the ground and soared smoothly toward the hovering YT-1300 stock light freighter. "Oh deeeeaaaaar!" he wailed as Leia deposited him, a bit hastily, on the ramp. Chewbacca grabbed him by the arm, growled unhappily, and shoved him up the ramp in Bail's wake. He bellowed anxiously at Leia and leaned forward farther over the edge of the ramp, as though preparing to snatch her out of midair.

Leia ignored both the Wookiee and the staccato retort of blasterfire tracking toward her, bent her knees, and pushed herself into a long Force-assisted leap.

A dozen bright red blaster bolts pierced the space where she had just been standing, but Leia was already gone.

Her dirty white robes flapped around her as she landed heavily on the ramp of the ship. Chewie reached out and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her in for a quick half-hug and a rumble of reassurance before shoving her up the ramp in the wake of her son and the droid. He followed, bellowing a command, and the ramp began to rise while he was still climbing, forcing the tall Wookiee to duck his head to avoid banging it on the hatchway.

The Millenium Falcon banked away from the carnage and headed for the skies.


NOTE: I want to post a "cast list" for all the major characters at the end (still pretending as though this were being filmed as Episode VII lol) and I haven't been able to figure out a good actor for Bail. (Right now I've got Colin Ford or Jeremy Irvine but neither really feel perfect to me.) If anyone has suggestions for someone who could play a good twin brother to Daisy Ridley, please share them in the reviews!