Nearly one year from the date of Leia Organa resigning her Chancellorship, Leia and Kira engage in an unusual training method. . .


"Why can I not beat you?" Kira asked, throwing her hands up in the air in resignation.

Leia had taken the fifth consecutive match, handing Kira a spectacularly bad defeat after backing Kira's Imperator into a corner, leaving nowhere else to move. She had thought every move through carefully, even using the Force to gain insight and to attempt to block Leia's moves. But as in the last four matches, and much like the dozens of matches that came before, Leia had backed her into corner after corner as effortlessly as if she was pouring herself a glass of bantha milk.

"You're overthinking it," Leia said, patiently, and she waved her hand over the board. The pieces moved back to their starting places of their own accord. She could tell that Kira was frustrated, and as in the last match, the frustration was starting to show.

"I get the feeling I'm not thinking it through enough," Kira said, leaning back and looking at the arrayed pieces, which sat in formation, waiting for the first move. She debated starting another game, as her frustrated state of mind did not want another spectacular loss at this moment.

Kira closed her eyes, allowing the frustration to dissipate. Initially, Kira had wondered why they'd be wasting their time with a game when lightsaber training or meditation would seem more productive, but Leia had countered that she could not imagine a better use for their time than playing Shah-tezh.

"Remember your training: when you hit a wall, and you find that doubling your effort reduces your effectiveness, what do you do?" Leia asked patiently.

"The opposite," Kira replied mechanically.

"And what's the opposite of overthinking?" Leia asked.

"Underthinking?" Kira shot back sardonically, and Leia cocked an eyebrow at Kira's cheek.

"You're gripping the lightsaber too tight," Leia explained. "There's no talent discrepancy between you and me, and I was Alderaanian Shah-tezh champion seven years straight, even without the Force."

"But how does gripping the lightsaber too tight apply here?" Kira asked, perplexed.

"You're forcing it. You can't follow the will of the Force if your thoughts are drowning it out," Leia said, smiling patiently at her mentee.

"But how am I supposed to direct my pieces if I don't think about the next moves?" Kira asked, frowning.

"Your thoughts can deceive you," Leia said, smiling. "Don't trust them."

Kira sighed, still feeling that what Leia was asking her was too abstract and too out-of-reach in a game as cerebral as Shah-tezh.

"Eyes closed this time," Leia said, and Kira rolled her eyes in annoyance before settling that emotion as well. She took a deep breath, dropped her shoulders, and, closing her eyes, she reached her hand out, and her third position Soldier moved ahead one square, nudged forward by the Force.

As both women sank deeper into the Force, the game commenced. Kira saw the pieces moving in her mind's eye, and occasionally, a thought would pop up. She allowed the thought to pass, instead attuning to the currents of suggestion that she usually associated with a lightsaber battle, realizing this is a lightsaber duel.

Kira parried and dodged, weaved and struck, as pieces flew off the board. Several times, she had Leia's Imperator backed into the corner, and several times, Leia had nearly cornered her. Without warning, Kira realized that there were no more moves to be made. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see Leia smiling.

"Congratulations, Kira," Leia said, her smile radiant. "It's a stalemate."

"Are you sure?" Kira asked, scrutinizing the board and her three remaining pieces. No moves were evident, but she felt certain something would occur if she thought hard enough.

"You're doing it again," Leia said, her smile still bright. "You don't need to think your way through to a possible solution. There are no more moves to be made."

"But isn't the goal to win?" Kira asked, frowning.

"Wining, as you're thinking of it at least, is not always a possible outcome," Leia said.

A warning light blinked on the communications console, precluding any further explanation from Leia. Leia's smile faltered, and she rose from her seat. She pressed a button, and the holoprojector activated, projecting an image of Kit Antilles.

Kit let out an audible sigh. Kira could see that she was tired, haggard, and had that special form of aggravation when she wanted something very badly and had been thwarted.

"What happened?" Leia asked, her brow furrowing.

"We had him, and he got away," Kit said. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had been shouting.

"Did he escape?" Leia asked.

"No," Kit said, and then her anger surged as she said, "Panga Meesh swooped in and swiped him out from under our nose."

"Are you still on Kowak?" Leia asked, the furrow in her brow deepening.

"No," Kit said impatiently. "Rogers got us out. Zhey'la's resting."

Leia's brow relaxed, and she sat thoughtfully before saying, "Thanks for telling me this, Kit. You did well. Now come back home so you can get some rest."

"But what are we going to do?" Kit said, growing aggravated that there was not an obvious course of action to follow.

"Right now, nothing," Leia said, her tone firmer as she recognized that Kit was on the verge of working herself up. "Come home. Rest up. We'll put our heads together to figure out what our next move is."

Kit let out another sigh, and she was visibly frustrated. However, she knew there was no use arguing with Leia, and so she nodded in agreement. "Alright, Leia. We'll see you soon," and the projector went dark as Kit signed off.

Kira looked at Leia, who had allowed a darker expression to come forth now that she did not have to corral Kit out of taking a rash action. She felt her own frown blossoming. This had been their best chance to apprehend Krax, the master codebreaker who appeared to have the skill to break the decryptions on a series of candid recordings from Chancellor Bolsko's office, something that had thwarted Kit and their smartest minds for the entire year since they had received the transmissions. Kit had spent much of the year trying to hunt him and a dozen other codebreakers down, and Kira knew that her frustration at coming so close - and failing - was likely off-the-charts. She needs some Shah-tezh lessons, too, Kira thought.

Kira shifted her musings away from Kit's state of mind, reflecting on her own worries at the effect of once again failing to provide concrete proof of Bolsko's duplicity. The galaxy seemed tired of the whole thing, and people seemed willing to accept any form of governance, regardless of how corrupt, if it meant an end to the bickering and the cold conflict. So much was riding on decrypting the transmission, that failure now at this point could undo the entire operation.

"What are we going to do?" Kira asked, voicing the worries aloud.

Leia rubbed her tired eyes, and Kira had a sudden sense that she seemed 20 years older than she was. She blinked, then sighed, saying, "Right now, nothing."

"Nothing?" Kira asked, mildly incredulous.

"When your Knight is caught between the Beast and the Vizier, do you overthink and force your move, or do you listen to the Force?" Leia asked.

"Listen to the Force," Kira said flatly, but dutifully. She opened her mouth to protest, but Leia leaned forward, placing her finger to Kira's lips. She smiled, her eyes tired, and her expression haggard.

"Right now, what I need more than anything, is a good rest," Leia said. "We will talk in the morning."

Leia rose to her feet and glided to the door. She turned back to Kira and, still smiling, said, "Thanks for the match, Kira."


The rains had come early to Alderaan that year, and the flooding that followed had caused a great deal of angst and concern among the population. Her father had navigated the temporary shortages skillfully, procuring grain from other planets while rerouting harvests from other parts of Alderaan. The rains continued unabated, and the lightning and thunder, always so loud as it rattled off the ramparts of Aldera Valley, shook her out of her sleep once again.

She drifted down the hallway, passing through darkened corridors. The cleaning droids did not notice her, nor did she worry that she would be seen. She was not sneaking into her father's room this time; an appointment had been set – a match long-anticipated with a Grand Master of the game, and such a match could only occur on the darkest and stormiest of nights.

She reached her father's study. No fire burned in the grate, and no light blazed from her father's office. There was no Mon Mothma or Ahsoka Tano deep in conversation about matters of rebellion. The only presence she sensed was a shadow, waiting patiently, amused even, for her at the demesne by the window. Leia glided in that direction and sat at her customary chair before the light side of the demesne. On the opposite side, she saw nobody, but she felt the presence. It had a cold, awful familiarity – one she knew from her earliest nightmares. In Leia's adulthood, the presence was not the stuff of nightmares, but in some ways, the fear was worse. Here was her true adversary, her lifelong enemy – one who had lingered even after the enemies before her eyes – Tarkin, Vader, Palpatine, Thrawn, Bolsko – had come and gone.

There, seated in the darkness at the opposite end of the demesne, the Shadow Man sat, waiting patiently.

Your move, Organa.

"Who are you?" Leia asked, seizing the opportunity for answers.

The Shadow Man only laughed, and silence followed – the cue that Leia was to make the first move.

"I'm not here to play by your rules," Leia said, sitting back in the chair in defiance.

My rules ARE the rules. Your move.

"We'll see about that," Leia countered. She closed her eyes and raised her hand, and her Third Soldier moved forward of its own accord.

Traditional, the voice countered. You play like an Alderaanian.

"I wonder whom you play like," Leia asked, and she watched as the Shadow Man's Fourth Soldier moved forward.

Shah-tezh is the only game we play, Leia Organa. You will not discover more with your clever questions.

"I don't care so much about who you are as I care about what you're doing," Leia admitted as he Vizier slid across the board.

The Vizier. Already, he has pulled the Knight off the board. Poor Skywalker.

As the Shadow Man said it, Leia watched her Knight vanish. "That's not how the game works."

I told you. I set the rules. And the Vizier will be of no help to you, anyhow.

Leia had a fleeting image of the half-remembered child, bald and radiating seriousness. The image vanished in her mind, and now, she saw that, only three moves into the match, she had already lost two of her most important pieces. She pushed her chair back, refusing to participate in the match. The chair flew back of its own accord, and Leia looked down; her hands, once aging and spotted, were now young and smooth. She was a child again, and she felt a child's powerlessness as the Shadow Man laughed.

This is a game you cannot win. Already, I have backed you into a corner.

Leia watched as other pieces fell from the board. The Counselor vanished, and Leia knew that the Bendu would be lost to her. The Dowager evaporated, and in its place, she saw a miniature Bolsko, red in the face from drink. The Beast split into two, and as they split, they began to fight each other. The Outcast lurked behind the soldiers, awash in fear and cowardice. Leia looked to her second knight and her Imperator, and she watched as the Shadow Man's pieces surrounded the Imperator. Curiously, the second knight remained untouched, and she reached for it, hoping to shield it from the Shadow Man's inexplicable maneuverings.

As she touched the piece, Kira's face flashed before her mind. She saw Kira taking her first steps mastering the Force; she saw her fleeing into the jungle, but returning, her hand in Ahsoka's; she saw her at play with Ben, pretending to be her Master; she saw her golden blades twirling and slashing, an Acronemsis collapsing to the ground.

The vision sped up, and she had an image of Kira's rage surging, of Ben watching her. She saw a grotesque, slug-like creature, and in her childlike horror, she forgot its name. She saw Kira grieving, lost, alone; she raced toward a woman, ringed in white, but nearly fell to her death; she saw Luke, old, feeble; and she saw Ben, writhing on the ground next to Kira, both defeated by the same shadow who sat before her.

As her horror deepened, she felt a connection emerging. She could see the swirling vortex of darkness, laced through with a pulsating, red wound. Across from it, as if in a mirror, she saw a similar vortex, shimmering white and emitting delicate tendrils of light. Between them, a golden fish chased a silver fish, always pursuing, but never reached it. She saw Kira, a child, innocent, healed from her trauma, reach out to touch the fish. As she touched the fish, light and dark entwined about her, and a golden light blinded her.

Your match is nearing its end. For the child, her match is only beginning.

Kira!?

Fear not. She is not just the light, nor is she just the dark. She is the board.

The voice trailed off like thunder echoing off Alderaanian mountains. Her vision shifted away from her father's study. The darkness remained, but in place of the old Alderaanian palace, she saw a thick, fetid mist drifting above a boggy flat. The sky was dark, and the air was ripe would decay. A shadowy figure walked toward her and lowered his hood.

Ben?

Ben stood before her, lost, conflicted. His lightsaber hummed. She felt his conflict growing, and she knew he was suffering. She reached forward to touch his face, and as her fingers grazed his cheek, she said, "I love you. This is not the life I wanted for you. For any of us."


Leia awoke with a jerk, pulling herself into a sitting position. Her pulse raced as she gasped for breath. She looked around, fearing attack. Slowly, her mind pieced together clues from her surroundings, and she recognized that she was in a cold room with damp stone walls. A Shah-tezh demesne sat idle on a table in the corner, two chairs left slightly askew as if two people had only recently ended a game. The air was cool in her throat, and recognition dawned that she was in her quarters on Cophrigin. It had been a dream.

Or had it? She had passed the Shadow Man off as a dream before until she later learned it may have been Palpatine trying to find her. But now with Palpatine gone and the Order of Ren rising, she knew that the Shadow remained, and she had been locked in a match that had begun years before she even knew they were playing. Many of her pieces were gone – the Republic, the Chancellorship, Luke, Ahsoka, the Jedi, even Ben. All that remained were a handful of Soldiers, a Knight, and the Imperator.

The last image of Ben burned in her mind. And as she tried to piece it together, she heard a knock on her door.

"Leia?" a woman's voice asked.

Leia took a deep breath, settling her emotions. She suspected that the dream had conveyed a powerful emotional charge, and Kira, as attuned as she was, would have sensed it.

"Come in, Kira," Leia said, hearing the weariness in her voice.

The door slid open, and Kira stood silhouetted in the opening, the light from the corridor behind her casting her in shadow. Her hand gripping the door frame, Kira asked, breathlessly, "What happened, Leia?"

Leia smiled and said, "A dream. A very, very old and strange dream."

Kira turned and looked down the corridor, and she looked back. Leia could not see the expression clearly on her face, but she could feel Kira's concern radiating through the Force. Feeling that this was not a conversation she wished to have with an open door nearby, she said, "Why don't you come in, Kira?"

Kira stepped forward, and the door slid shut behind her. Leia reached over, switching on the lamp at her bedside table. Kira pulled a chair away from the table holding the demesne, and she sat down next to Leia's bed. Leia pulled her legs into a cross-legged position, and she smiled at her friend, whose face was alight with fear and concern.

"What happened?" Kira said, settling herself into the chair.

"A dream," Leia said, leaving the phrase ambiguous.

Kira picked up on the ambiguity, and she said, "A dream so powerful it woke me from my own dreams."

"Yes, it was quite intense," Leia said. The fear receded, and she felt her own serenity, the byproducts of decades of meditation, growing. By the light of the lamp, the dream took on a different perspective, but its meaning remained elusive still. "I wish I could tell you what it meant, but I'm not entirely sure myself."

"Is everything ok?" Kira asked, worry etched into her face.

"I'm. . ." Leia began, but the explanation died on her lips. Staring into space, the image of Ben arose again. Kira began to speak, but Leia put her hand up, silencing her. Kira remained dutifully silent, even as her concern grew. Leia allowed her mental image to develop further, and she could see the clouds, acrid, green, and sickly, in the sky. She saw Ben's horror, and she sensed somebody else nearby. The looked to the ground and saw a blue light, and illuminated by the blue light, a swampy surface slick with oil and chemicals. She knew this place; she was hated there. It offered promise, but she had strictly forbid it. The last place in the galaxy she wanted to be, with the one person in the Republic whom she had told them to stay away from.

You must go.

It had not been words. It had been a feeling; an insistence so absolute that it was imperative. Again, she saw the image of Ben, followed by the image of Kira, lost and alone. Then, she saw the two fish chasing each other, and light and dark passing through Kira. She saw the Shadow dissipating in the light, and she saw Ben, silhouetted by a brilliant star, approaching a familiar figure.

Nal Hutta.

Leia looked up at Kira suddenly, alarm and fear in her face. Saying as if she had just received the bad news and was shocked at the truth of it, Leia said, "Nal Hutta."

"What?" Kira asked, her confusion and concern deepening.

"Wake Kit," Leia commanded, and she pulled herself off the bed, throwing the lights on.

"Wait, Leia, what are you talking about?" Kira asked, perplexed.

Leia did not answer her question, instead pulling her robe over her nightgown. She grabbed her lightsaber and hooked it to her belt. She was about to leave the room when she paused to look at the Shah-tezh demesne. There, she saw three soldiers, the Outcast, the Knight, and the Imperator. Instinctively, she swapped the Knight and the Imperator's position.

She turned back to Kira, mastering her sense of urgency for the moment in order to explain.

"We are going to Nal Hutta. It is imperative that we speak to the Hutts. Kindly wake Kit Antilles and ask her to begin planning. We need to find a pretext to visit the Hutts at Bilbousa, where we will offer our intelligence capacity in exchange for the use of their codebreaker," Leia ordered, her voice brisk and commanding.

"Leia, have you lost your mind?" Kira asked, shocked at Leia's directive.

Leia frowned, and in that moment, she wondered the same thing herself. Then, as the dream cycled back through her mind one last time, she remembered an ancient voice saying, How are you to hear the will of the Force with so many questions in your mind?

"I know this is going to be difficult to understand, Kira," Leia said, and she walked back to the edge of the bed. She set her hand on Kira's knee, and looking into her friend and mentee's eyes, she said, patiently and calmly, "The Force has spoken to me, and even though I don't fully understand what it is saying just yet, one thing is clear: we have to go to Nal Hutta, and we have to go as soon as possible."

"That makes no sense!" Kira exclaimed, outraged.

"No, it doesn't," Leia said simply. "The Force is many things, but an explainer is not one of them. It's our job to heed its warnings and have faith, even when we don't understand."

"But," Kira began, but Leia reached a finger out and placed it on her lips. With Leia's eyes gazing deep into her own, Kira felt a curious, childlike emotion. As she became still and compliant, Leia smiled.

She pulled her finger away and said, "Easy, Kira. There's a dark road ahead, but the Force is with us. All that's left for us to do is to listen to what it says."

Kira was calmer, and her response was quieter, even if she remained skeptical. "But Master, I don't understand why we have to go to Nal Hutta of all places?"

Leia smiled, remembering the Bendu's words, and she took Kira's hand in hers and said, "How are you to hear the will of the Force with so many questions in your mind?"