Written for Angstober Days 17: The Abyss Looks Back and 31: The Last Goodbye.
Alderaan had been dead for over a year when it started killing other planets. Leia stood in Eriadu's dried husk of a jungle and gaped at the carnage around her. She had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that away from the cities it would be greener. Eriadu was a very built-up world, after all—it had gained enormous wealth after Tarkin gained prestige in the Empire and pulled industry towards them—and the countryside near to the industrial quarters was even less than lacking.
But Han had flown over miles and miles of brown, charred earth before they finally landed in the middle of all this death. There was no green left to be seen. Animal corpses littered the ground, huddled in hollows, caves, where there was shelter to be found.
"What the hell happened here?" Luke asked, staring around. Leia stared with him, her heart in her throat.
Eriadu had been Tarkin's homeworld, she knew. A part of her could see him in this landscape—not the holos of the lush, diverse jungles that this land was meant to be; the scorched and drained landscape seemed to epitomise his tactics. If Eriadu had continued under his lead, they would have ended up like this anyway. But by the natural resources they had in their mines, it shouldn't have been for another few decades.
"We're waiting for forensics to run tests," she said. "The Empire are dealing with the refugees." No one in the galaxy had really noticed the slow death of the planet until hordes of people—first farmers, then others, then the whole planet—had fled the surface. Horrible living conditions. No food would grow. And, everyone insisted, they would have stayed, but…
It felt like death.
Leia could feel it now. Standing on the surface was like standing in a graveyard, without the names and flowers to memorialise people by. The world was dead to the core.
But nothing indicated why.
Luke worried his lip. "The Empire? They won't—"
"I know." Leia crossed her arms against the sudden rush of cold. It was chilly here, chillier than humid Eriadu should ever be. She thought about the various Alliance safe houses, scattered across the galaxy. She visited New Alderaan often—technically, she was the queen, and they called her as such. But she never let them crown her. She would be Princess Leia until she died, thanks to Palpatine. "But we don't have the resources to help."
They had resettled a lot of people fleeing the Empire, where they could. All the locations were deadly secrets. But it was easier to resettle the scattered diaspora of a vaporised planet than it was the population of a thriving one. Leia was glad they had survived the death of their homeworld, but there was little they could do.
Han's comm buzzed. He aborted what he was doing—kicking over a rock to observe with a terrible attempt at an impassive face the dead insects that did not scuttle out from underneath it—and picked it up.
After a moment, he said, "Chewie's still doing flybys. He says there's some crater or something ahead."
"A crater?"
Han quirked an eyebrow. "Dozens of 'em, actually."
They weren't big, as far as craters went. But they were deep. There was little they could do there other than take holos before the forensics team arrived, but when they received the report back at base, it wasn't any more illuminating.
"No trace substances?" Leia pushed, leaning forwards in her seat. "Are you sure?"
The scientist opposite her at the table shook her head. "Nothing out of the ordinary, Your Majesty."
Right. The scientist was Alderaanian. She should have guessed from the two braided buns at the back of her head.
"It's Your Highness," she corrected. "If that's possible, why did it die? The carnage we saw was on the level of mass poisoning—Han theorised that maybe they brought heavy metals too close to the surface through their mining. There was nothing there?"
"No poisons, certainly. We performed autopsies on what animal corpses we could find, and there appears to be nothing wrong with them."
"Other than the fact that they're dead?" Han drawled.
The scientist cast Han a glance. "Other than that," she said. "There doesn't seem to be a reason that the animals died. Or any of the people who stayed, rather than fleeing. Patterns suggest they were trying to migrate as well to escape the effects, largely away from the surface. Animals that live under the ground were found dead on the surface, sometimes even halfway up trees."
"'Death comes stalking with Her black hole heart,'" Leia murmured, "'and all must succumb or flee.'"
The scientist nodded stiffly. "I didn't want to say it, Your Majesty—"
"Highness."
"—but…"
"Death?" Luke asked, jittery.
"Alderaanian folk tale, kid."
"Poem," Leia corrected. "Millennia ago, a queen was deposed by her cousins and killed. Her cousins died soon after. It was the plague that was going around at the time, but poets started talking about how betrayal turned Queen Eloise into a revenant. She's called Queen of the Dead, sometimes. Or was, at least."
"It's not relevant though, is it?" Han said. "There's no Queen of Alderaan that killed Eriadu."
"There's no Queen of Alderaan at all, Han," Leia informed him. If there was, she would be the true Queen of the Dead.
He had the good grace to grimace.
She turned away from him in disgust. "We're just observing that it looks familiar."
"Everything looks familiar when you're searching for home," the scientist said quietly.
Leia swallowed. "What about the craters?" she asked. "Anything about them?"
"They're about the size of meteors, but if a meteor had hit Eriadu we would have known. None of the refugees mention anything like an impact."
"So, we have no idea what this is?" Han interjected. Leia tried to get up the energy to glare at him again, but she didn't bother. Just watched the scientist shake her head.
"None," she confirmed. "The pattern doesn't seem to add up, but they may be blast craters. Perhaps the Imperials were trying to mine more effectively and released something deadly into the atmosphere. It wouldn't be the first world to die of Imperial mismanagement." And it wouldn't be the last.
"I know. But I've been to those worlds before." Leia tapped the table. "They all died in some specific way. Nothing kills everything—some aspects of the planet's life were spared, if wounded. Or if it all died, it died in a certain way. That didn't happen here."
"I don't want to suggest it, Your— Highness," the scientist said, "but perhaps Eriadu was a test."
"For what?"
"If they have a new poison weapon—something they can unleash on planets…"
"They can't do that," Luke said. "That would be like—"
"Like a second Death Star, kid, yeah." Han pursed his lips. "We all know they've done worse."
"I don't think it is," Leia said.
"Neither do I, Your Highness. But it's worth keeping in mind. It does seem to be another case of Imperial mismanagement—I know you have extensive experience on humanitarian missions, but there have been a string of other planets which had similar symptoms, recently. Not as high profile as Eriadu, but…"
Leia's ears pricked up. "There have?"
The report on Gorse and Cynda was illuminating, if sparse. There wasn't much left to know. It had been the Imperial centre for mining thorilide, a substance used for shock absorption in military vessels. Gorse was tidally locked, with one half facing the sun at temperatures too high for a humanoid to withstand and the other side plunged in cold, perpetual night. Cynda was its moon, a protected nature reserve for the deep caverns it held, but even she had been mined for some time before the Empire used droids to mine the thorilide on Gorse's sun-bound side.
Between them, the planet and the moon had provided enough thorilide to power the entire Imperial fleet for decades. And the Death Star, but Leia didn't like to think about that. Now, they were both dead.
"Let's go down to the mines," Leia said.
"Princess, we can't go to the light side of Gorse, we'll die—"
"Then go to Cynda!" she snapped.
Luke grimaced. "We can't. Look."
Han tipped them to the side, so they flew out from Gorse's shadow, and Leia caught a glimpse of its moon. She'd seen holos of it—it was almost the size of Gorse itself, and looked untouched from far away enough—but they were useless, now.
It was gone. Completely.
Han swore. A miniature asteroid field swarmed in its place, chunks of rocks—chunks of Cynda—battering against each other. Before they got pulled into its trap, he banked left, hard, and turned around.
"That's an entirely different type of apocalypse," he remarked.
Luke asked, "Leia? Are you alright?"
She blinked. She hadn't realised she was staring at the destroyed moon, her mouth hanging open in horror, until he jerked her out of it. Turning away, she pressed the tears out of her eyes with the heels of her hands.
"I'm fine," she ordered. Luke shut up, but she couldn't obey her own command. "The Empire is definitely doing something here, then. I assume Gorse is similar?"
"You got it. Scans suggest"—Han tapped a few buttons on the Falcon's console—"that she's been beaten to a pulp, just like Eriadu. I don't wanna go down there and deal with the sun, or even the dark side."
"I can feel it from here," Luke said. Han rolled his eyes, but Leia nodded. "It's just dead down there."
"Craters?"
Han pointed at the scan. "Plenty of 'em."
"So, Gorse died the same way Eriadu did," she said softly. She looked back out the window at Cynda.
Luke finished what she didn't want to say. "And Cynda died the way—"
"Don't," she warned.
Luke didn't.
"What's that?"
Han's comment roused her from another moment of deep melancholy, fizzing anger, that spread through her like liquid nitrogen. She shook her head, tried to shake it off; turning towards him was an effort. "What's what?"
Han stared at the scans, then edged the Falcon away from Gorse—back towards Cynda's corpse. "There are droids and ships flitting about in there."
"What?"
Luke squinted. "There are!" he exclaimed. "I think they're mining them."
Leia put her head in her hands. "The report said there was once talk of blowing up Cynda to facilitate easier mining," she said bitterly. "Perhaps that's it." Her resolve hardened. "Han, fly into the asteroid field. We need to stop them."
"Are you crazy?"
"Do it." Her fists were white-knuckled at her sides. "We cannot let them get the materials they need to build more weapons."
"We can't fly in there without help! We gotta leave anyway before they spot us. I'm punching in the coordinates now." He turned to do just that.
She marched over to him, catching his arm, but not before he'd finished. She stood there, gripping his wrist and feeling his pulse hammer through it, glaring at the calculating computer. "We can't just sit by and let them do this! They can't use what they destroyed!"
"They didn't destroy Cynda," Luke said.
Leia spun around. "What are you talking about?" But Luke's face drew her up short. It was pale and drawn. His hands were shaking.
"We need to go," he said. "Can't you feel that? We need to go!"
Her heart had collapsed in on itself. All she could feel was grief.
"Please," he said. "Please, we need to—"
In the distance, the fabric of space shimmered. A sharp tug in her chest drew Leia towards it; she drifted to the viewport. Green light unfolded into the sky.
"Han, punch it!" Luke barked.
The navicomputer beeped as it finished calculating. Han gave them both a strange look, then saw that light on the edge of the system, coming closer and brighter.
He swore—"Don't wanna know what that is"—and punched it.
Leia slammed her hand against the viewport. "Han!" she shouted. "Han, no—"
They shot into hyperspace. Leia's heart wrenched out from her chest and stayed behind, hovering—once again—in a pile of stones that used to be someone's whole world.
"I've only seen that shade of green once before," Leia said. "When—" She broke herself off.
Dodonna looked at her sympathetically. "I understand," he said. "We have had our suspicions as well. From what you tell us about the state of Cynda, we have come to another conclusion."
"What?" Leia looked up, clutching her mug of hot chocolate to her. They'd all been kind to her, giving her nice things. It made her so angry, but she didn't want to reject them, either.
"The Empire has another Death Star."
She blinked. For a moment, she didn't even process what that was supposed to mean. "No," she said. "That—that's impossible."
"With the state that you found the moon Cynda in—"
"It wasn't a Death Star! The craters on Gorse and Eriadu don't match… that." The comparison was going to make her sick.
Dodonna sat forwards, his white beard bristling. "We are uncertain about that, but our investigators theorise that it was a low power setting. We know that Jedha and Scarif were destroyed on a lower power than what was used against Alderaan"—he still gave her hesitant looks at that, as if she was the child he'd known, in need of comforting, when it had been his homeworld too—"so we suspect that it has the capacity for lower energy attacks as well. Multiple blasts of that sort may have created the craters seen at the sites."
"And none of the people evacuating Eriadu noticed a space station the size of a moon hop out of hyperspace?"
"They may have streamlined the technology so it would be smaller—"
"If anything, I think Palpatine would make his second weapon of mass destruction bigger than the first." She glared into her hot chocolate. She didn't even like hot chocolate that much—she should give it to Luke instead, he was still mourning his family as well, and it might actually do some good there… "There is no Death Star, Jan."
"Except there is," he said gravely. "Our intelligence confirmed it. Once we started searching for that sort of pattern—massive requisitions of materials, increase in mining across the Empire, materials and qualified professionals apparently vanishing into nowhere—it started to appear. Moff Jerjerrod was given a new title and project only a few months after Commander Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star."
"The title?"
"Director of Imperial Energy Systems."
She snorted. "That's suspicious, yeah. But if you ask our spies to start looking for that sort of data, they'll see it everywhere. The materials could be going anywhere; they're probably wanting to reinforce the Imperial fleet—"
Dodonna pulled a holo out of his pocket and switched it on.
Leia nearly cried.
"While you and the others were running reconnaissance on the Gorse system, as well as the others," he said, and Leia winced to think of the worlds they'd already visited—Ilum one of them, a scared Jedi sight that had left Luke screaming from the misery in the Force—and their destruction, "we sent spies in."
The holo was of a Death Star. The frame was clearly there, the dish—like the pupil of a great eye—almost complete, while the skeleton that held it grew metal flesh around its bones. That was undeniable.
She closed her eyes. "We shouldn't be surprised," she said thickly. "The Empire were always going to build another one. It's their style." She hadn't dared to fathom it, but looking back… she should have.
Dodonna clicked it off. "Do not blame yourself, Leia."
"That thing doesn't look anywhere near operational, though," she said. "It's obviously still in construction. What if—"
"I cannot believe that the Empire would leave themselves vulnerable for so long. They do need to expand the fleet, like you said. It is entirely plausible they would ensure the Death Star was operational as a bare minimum and use it before it was complete."
"Why Eriadu? Why Gorse? Why Ilum?"
"They required the resources—"
"They were mining them anyway!" she snapped.
"And they are still mining them. Those droids you reported in the remains of Cynda…"
"Were horrible, yes. But Eriadu is a major Imperial world in the Outer Rim." She shook her head. "They wouldn't have willingly destroyed that. Their governor is loyal to them. The people are loyal to the Empire."
"I would put nothing past Palpatine."
"I'd put resurrecting Alderaan past him."
Dodonna's brows drew together. "I would," he agreed. "But that is hardly something to mourn."
"It is," she said. "This nascent Death Star didn't kill those planets. Alderaan did." She glanced down at the report Dodonna had handed her when she stepped in. "All of these worlds that were destroyed—they're the ones the new Death Star is using resources from, aren't they?"
"Yes, but—"
"They're desperate for them. That's why they're still mining Cynda. Alderaan is trying to slow them down."
"Leia," Dodonna said, planting his palms on the desk and staring at her. "What are you proposing?"
She swallowed. "I know it sounds insane."
"That it does."
"I saw her! I saw the green light in Gorse, before we left! Did you hear what happened to the mining droids of Cynda?"
"They were destroyed—"
"I haven't seen green light like that since I saw Alderaan destroyed, General," she insisted. "That was Alderaan who killed all those planets. I know it."
Dodonna stared at her. "You're suggesting our planet is undead. Undead and vengeful."
She swallowed. "Protective," she argued weakly. To try and hinder the construction of the Death Star with such brutality—
"Alderaan was destroyed. Even if this would be possible—and I saw the Jedi in action during the Clone Wars, Leia, I have seen Commander Skywalker's abilities, do not think I am not open to impossible ideas—she would not destroy other worlds."
"She was destroyed herself."
"Leia, this is a far weaker theory than that of the new Death Star." Dodonna shook his head. "I am sorry." He hesitated. "Have you… spoken to anyone? There are few psychotherapists in the rebellion, but we have some affiliated, who would like to prioritise those who have undergone immense trauma—"
"If you're not going to pursue this theory, Jan," Leia informed him, "I will."
He swallowed. He looked so old, for a moment. His grief crashed into her, merging with hers, until she felt everything was ugly and raw. "I know," he said.
No one stopped Leia from taking a ship, but she knew that the generals were watching her—watching and grieving. Luke came out of the woodwork as the least annoying option to ask if she wanted him to come with her, as backup in case something went wrong. It was evident he didn't know what she thought, he'd just been informed by Dodonna that his friend was stressed and about to do something reckless, and she almost felt bad turning him away. But she would not let anyone else be there.
The last goodbye she had had with Alderaan had been brutal, surrounded by her enemies, unable to process her grief. She would not let that happen again. This was a conversation long overdue.
The asteroid field that used to be her home was stark and cruel to look at when she dropped out of hyperspace. Leia shivered.
There had been Imperials on duty here for several months, she knew. But as the Alliance had stepped up their assault on all areas of the galaxy, there were only so many men the Empire could spare, and this was one of the more boring jobs for an Imperial stormtrooper. Turning away very confused tourists, distraught relatives who hadn't heard the news, and sending any actual Alderaanians who fell into the trap to Imperial prisons to be monitored for revenge fantasies was hardly the most stimulating role. They'd packed up and left.
Now, only holocams remained to monitor the debris, but she was confident they wouldn't see her. She drifted between the chunks of rock that used to construct mountains and hardly remembered to avoid them when they threatened collision.
She closed her eyes when tears threatened. What had she expected to find here, except grief? What was she looking for, except for more reminders about how badly she had failed? She didn't know the precise position they'd been in the system when it happened, but she imagined she was staring at her home now just as she had on that bridge, Vader's durasteel hands digging into her shoulders, Tarkin's sharp, smug voice barking at her.
You may fire when ready.
She wanted to be sick.
When she saw the flash of green light again, she thought it was her imagination. That moment, that horrible, heart-wrenching moment when she'd watched an apocalypse come and go, had replaced the heart that beat inside her ribs. All she had was a planet in the throes of a fiery death, burning her lungs and thumping arrhythmically when she remembered to let it beat at all.
It had become the centre of her calendar: before and after. New Alderaan, the colony they'd set up with what surviving diaspora they'd found, still used the old solar calendar, even if they no longer orbited their sun at the same pace, even if the planet that orbited was dead; no one wanted to acknowledge this split. Least of all her.
She had not helped her people to rebuild. She had gathered them, she had found a place for them to go, but she had never set foot there herself. Throwing herself into work was so much easier. If she had to build, it required acknowledging what had been destroyed. If she came to New Alderaan, she remembered why she could not return to Alderaan proper.
If she let people call her Queen Leia Organa, she had to admit that her mother was dead. And dead because of her.
But that green light did not fade. It was not a figment of her imagination. It grew brighter and brighter beyond her viewport, engulfing the asteroid field, until any watching holocams would spark and fry from the overload. She did not dare to shield her eyes: she hadn't looked away before, and she wouldn't look away now.
Out of that light came stones.
They looked like the chunks of earth that made up the asteroid fields, but they weren't. They were ghostly, almost not there, and they reeked in her perception, even as she knew she could neither smell nor hear anything across space. Those stones, millions of them, spun in the middle of that green halo, faster and faster, until she saw the shadow of a planet in their circle. Other stones writhed in the centre, their pattern—vast enough to be almost invisible—shifting and changing.
"Hello," she said, the words sticking in her throat.
It rumbled back at her. Something on the back of her neck prickled.
"I know," she said. "You're— I wanted you to be at peace. I know that's impossible."
It edged closer to her. She felt from it still that all-encompassing fury; she embraced it. She deserved it. But when it realised that, it changed, and it was that which truly broke her.
She fell to her knees. "Don't you dare give me compassion!" she screamed. "I was your daughter, I was your princess, I was meant to protect you! I got you killed! Kier—" She choked. She hadn't thought about Kier, her first boyfriend, in years. But he was right, what he'd said about their involvement in the Alliance. He was right. "We shouldn't have done it. We should have protected you." She shook her head at the response she got. "No—no. You don't. You shouldn't."
It wanted to protect her.
It, too, wanted to protect the galaxy.
"By killing more planets?" she murmured. "Eriadu… I know, I know Tarkin was from there. But what about everyone else? All of them? What about all of us? If you destroy them, it's no better than—" She cut herself off before the response finishing manifesting. She could feel its rage.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "It's my fault you've turned into this." A planet burned to pieces, unnaturally, collapsing in on itself and exploding outwards, until it was so dense and hungry with anger that it could do nothing but destroy. "I should have done more."
She had done all she could. The idea was so certain, so fierce as it slotted into her own black hole heart, that she knew it couldn't possibly come from her.
Her planet loved her. She was still its daughter. It would forgive her, time and time again, even if—especially if—she could not forgive herself.
"What can I do for you now?" she begged. "You can't kill entire planets, that— we're pacifists. We're merciful." She was not. Had not been for a long time. That part of her had died with her planet. But her planet was a revenant, so perhaps she could resurrect her mercy, and parade its twisted corpse as best she could.
She was too hard on herself. She was a daughter of Alderaan, and—
"And I'll make this right," she finished for it, promised it. "You can't destroy planets to destroy the Death Star."
What about the people? How far down should this vengeance go? Every Imperial officer who had served it—Moff Jerjerrod, in charge of building a new one—Vader, who had espoused his dislike but served it, nonetheless—those nameless, faceless officers who'd flicked so many switches and pulled the ultimate trigger? Who was she meant to destroy for this? Where could she possibly find justice for such a tragedy?
Nowhere. The word settled in her gut. She'd known all along that the only justice she could win for her murdered people was victory, as petty and meaningless as it would be.
But there was one person she could destroy.
"I'll make this right," she said, and tiny pebbles, pieces of her home small enough to carry around in her pocket, rapped against the viewport of her shuttle in support.
In the end, it was a short message she sent to Emperor Palpatine, but she risked so much, destroyed so much potential for the Alliance to follow up on, when she did. Then she turned her shuttle toward the Endor system, dropped out of hyperspace there, and waited.
He might come. He might not. But she had met the Emperor before, and she did not think he was one to pass up an opportunity to gloat. Her heart still haemorrhaged grief. He would lap it up like a kitten.
She was not waiting for long. As she sat in the Endor system beside a moon that her map told her was called Kef Bir, she eyed the commotion on the far side of the planet. There was a forest moon over there being overrun by troopers as the Death Star was built, she knew. She didn't dare to approach it. She already had a squad of TIE fighters on her tail, but they hadn't shot her down. Clearly, Emperor Palpatine had ordered something.
His own Star Destroyer, the Eclipse, arrived promptly. She imagined she could smell his foul stench the moment he entered the system, even as she knew it was impossible; she fought the urge to retch and claw her skin off when she imagined his presence near her. But she kept her nerve. She answered his hail.
"Your Highness," he greeted. "This is a pleasant surprise."
She glared at him and did not try to disguise the fact that she had been crying. He would enjoy it. "I'm sure it is. The discovery of your new project was not."
"Of that I have no doubt, my dear." He grinned at her. "These are your final terms, then? You shall turn yourself in here, now, for thorough interrogation, propaganda use, and public execution, and I shall decommission orbital station DS-II?"
She swallowed. She hadn't mentioned propaganda use in her message, but of course Palpatine would want it. What better use for the Princess of Alderaan would he have than having her on a chain, letting her inform people that actually, her planet was not destroyed, that was a lie spread by the Rebels, and she supported the Empire wholeheartedly in their quest the crush them. How long would it take for people to stop asking, once he added her voice to his misinformation machine?
How long would it take for her to forget the truth herself?
"They are," she said. She had to trust in herself. She had to trust in her home.
His smile widened even further. "Your self-sacrificing nature is admirable. I look forward to spending more time with you, Your Highness. We will be working very closely in the future."
"So, you're agreed?" she challenged. "You will decommission it?"
"I will," he said, and she knew it was a lie. She had set it up so he could lie. Once she was here, with no feasible escape, having told him that they knew about his pet project and sought to destroy it, he would not hesitate to take everything and give nothing back. "My Star Destroyer will tractor you in. Do not resist."
She waited. Although she heard no sound from his end—he muted the call briefly—she saw him frown, turn away from the holo. She sat back in the pilot's seat of the shuttle and waited a little longer.
"What is this, Princess?" he asked. "Do you not trust my word?"
She deadpanned, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"I had heard of loyal Imperial worlds being destroyed, the life drained out of them, but I had not expected the princess of a dead world herself to be the one who held the weapon. What marvellous, perfect hatred. I shudder to imagine what your parents would think, were they alive, but I look forward to learning more about your new… tactics." His smile shifted; he bared his yellow teeth. "I have given you my word, Princess Leia. Call off your beast."
"Queen," she corrected.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I am Queen Leia Organa of Alderaan," she informed him.
"Your claim to that title is dead. Alderaan is dust. You are delusional in your grief."
"Then may my delusions crush you to death," she said. "As you attempted to destroy Alderaan, Alderaan will destroy you. We are still very much alive."
She saw it in his eyes when he finally caught sight of her planet. The storm of rock, light, and fury had consumed his precious Death Star already, swallowing the pieces and corpses into itself, leaving the forest moon itself untouched. And now it stormed for him.
"We will be here long after your Empire is dust," she promised, and watched the holo flicker out. When she glanced out of the viewport, the Eclipse disintegrated under a hail of hellfire. She smiled to herself, unsettled by the viciousness of it—but not too unsettled.
She sat back in her seat and watched the show. Once it had feasted its fill, Alderaan came back to her and embraced her in its storm, untouched. She closed her eyes.
"Thank you," she murmured, and felt its love vibrate back at her. It felt like her mother's; it felt like her father's; it felt like home. "Would you like to go home?"
The confirmation returned, warm and bright. Alderaan was not satiated—she was not satiated—but they had so much more work to do. She plugged in the coordinates and watched the galaxy elongate into hyperspace around her.
The colony of New Alderaan was a safeworld in the Deep Core of the galaxy, close enough to Alderaan's old system that the stars were still familiar. It was a long, arduous trek for the navicomputer to take her past that many stars unscathed, but when she was spat out into the velvet sky of the system she would have to make her new home, it still felt too soon. She wasn't ready. She did it anyway.
Queen Leia Organa of Alderaan was officially crowned a week later. Several Rebels begged time off to come to her coronation, and she was awkward about receiving their praise, but embraced it. Paradigm shifts were shuddering through the galaxy, like the universe was moving out of the darkness of an eclipse.
Vader was the new Emperor, and had increased the bounties on both her head and Luke's to dizzying heights. The war paused momentarily for his coronation as well as hers, but such a ceasefire could only last so long. Everything would slip back into chaos and violence yet again. Leia would return to the Alliance, where she did so much good work, but a regent would rule for her in her place, and she would visit often. She would rebuild her home. They would rebuild their future.
Having a queen as an active Rebel was an interesting dynamic to strike. Han certainly had fun inventing new names for her. Still, the existence and location of New Alderaan was a closely guarded secret among the atmosphere of intrigue, distrust, and violence that gripped the galaxy, but Leia invited people to visit her safeworld more often than advised. She had faith that they would be safe.
At the corner of the New Alderaan system lurked a minute black hole, yet another dangerous obstacle in a perilous hyperspace lane to travel. It had followed her there, and sent green light that no longer made her feel sick arching through the sunset on the day she was crowned, before retreated back to its peaceful rest. But she could feel it there, all the same. Watching them—watching her.
Alderaan had survived. Through her, through their people, through the justice she would eventually receive. And when they needed her, she would rise again.
