Like I said, it's darker than the others. It's PG.

Leia on the Death Star. Set after Understood

~~Hating~~

She allowed you to exist. It is because of her that you can stand there, here in front of me. Cold, black monster. Evil, twisted heart. Souless, empty machine.

I would hate you. I would hate you with all the angry heat that burns up inside of me when I think of everything you have done, everything you have caused, everything that has been caused through you. You are a demon of the worst kind. You were once human, and injuries or not you chose to be otherwise. So, I would hate you if I could.

But I am not allowed to hate you. I am forbidden to hate you. My father made sure of that. My father, who you have killed. I want to hate you for his sake. I want to hate you because you have taken him – and everything else dear to me – and had it turned to space dust before my eyes. Hating, however, would destroy one of the lessons Bail Organa took great pains to hammer into me.

 No one has more power over you than the one you hate.

So, I can't hate you. Not only because it is forbidden to me to hate, but because in hating you I would have given you something that you could not take from me freely. My freedom of thought. I won't let you take it. You can rip my mind from it's very foundation and crush it until I'm little more than a dribbling mess, but still you have not taken that one last right. You have merely moved it to another place and in that place not even you can touch me.

So I will not hate you. Nor will I hate her.

Her: Padmé Amidala. Queen of Naboo. Senator.

Do you know her? I like to think you do. It make sense somehow that you would. Maybe she is just a figure, a characterless being who served a purpose and is gone now. Perhaps you killed her. In a sick way that would be justice; for her and for the galaxy.

No longer would the woman who put Palpatine on the throne exist – at least in this reality. By doing so she gave him power to create you. You. Who I will not hate. Who has taken everything good and worthwhile from me. Who does not deserve any more than my pity and contempt. So, justice for her crimes.

Yet justice, or rather peace, for the crimes against her. My father told me she was a victim. She was there at the right time, a vessel to manipulate the galaxy through. Then when the despot had what he wanted he moved on and left her unaware. It was only later she realised what she had been tricked into doing.

I can only imagination would she must have felt like. I think it must have been a weight on her shoulders so heavy it threatened to push her into the ground. A choking sensation tightening around her chest until she thought she would never be able to breathe again. It would have seemed as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest and sliced into a million little pieces. The thought of looking in a mirror would have devastated her, because how could she stand to see the person who looked back at her?

Actually I don't imagine that's what she experienced. I don't imagine at all. I know. Watching Alderaan explode before my very eyes, I knew. I didn't think it was possible to feel this much pain and still be alive. Surely death must be near?

What did she look like when you killed her? Relieved, I bet. I bet she was so damn thrilled that the end had arrived she threw herself at you and begged for death.

Did you grant her that wish? Or did you make her suffer more? Did you let her live? Is she on some remote planet forced to watch the galaxy go by, forced to watch every evil that is perpetrated in the name of an Emperor who she unknowing gave the chance to seize the throne?

I think I'm making this up. I think maybe I'm adding in something here that was never there in the first place. As a child I was accused of telling tales, changing the story for something else. I learned a long time ago I must not do this. Politicians have to bend and twist the truth to work in their way. To manipulate the facts until sometimes we're not even sure of the truth. But we're not supposed to make things up. It is true that others have done this, have told outright lies in order to get what they want. However, I was taught better.

So maybe I've made this up. This connection between you and her. It probably never existed, it only does in my mind because it's easy to believe that an abstract hate of a collection of objects or thoughts or actions is less damaging than the hatred of a single entity, a person. You. Or even her.

You didn't know her and she didn't know you. She was just a child-Queen, and a young Senator (like me) who was manoeuvred into doing something she couldn't possibly conceive the consequences of. You were just a man who followed Palpatine and became a monster who serves him – that's what my father told me you were and are.

It's so much simpler to look at it the other way, though. I could even take it further, and say you three sat around and planned it like this. Hating you would be so much easier then. I'm not allowed to hate you. I don't hate you.

But if I hated you, maybe I wouldn't hate myself so much.