Part I: A New Hope
Act I
Something was wrong.
Every nerve in her body was alert, tingling with warning.
Not for the first time, Leia Organa wished that she was better trained in the Force, so that she could figure out what was going on, what the quiet whisper of dread in her stomach was trying to tell her.
As it was, all the Force was showing her right now was that something bad was going to happen.
With the stormtroopers leading her to the bridge of the Death Star two steps ahead of her, unconcerned with her now that her hands were bound with stuncuffs, Leia glanced back at the towering, ominous form of Darth Vader as the Sith Lord trailed along behind her.
Her father did not meet her gaze, and that more than anything caused her stomach to knot.
Through the Force, she could feel his resigned wariness, his anxiety and agitation, and she knew that he was not happy about whatever was about to happen.
More importantly, though, he knew that she was not going to be happy.
Father? she reached out to him worriedly.
He did not answer, and he purposefully kept his mask trained on the doors to the bridge ahead as they slid open, so that he would not have to look at her.
Now more than ever, Leia felt dread settle in her chest.
The stormtroopers led her forward into the bridge, and she shifted her attention to the tall, slender man in the center of the bridge, dressed in a sleek gray uniform that somehow managed to make his sunken face appear even more like a living skull than usual.
"Governor Tarkin," she sneered as she was brought before him. "I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought onboard."
Coming to a halt just behind her, Vader moved his hand to rest on his belt and it brushed against the small of Leia's back, even through the material of her white gown, strangely warm considering that she knew it to be an artificial hand. He had lost the real one a lifetime ago, before she was even born, at the start of the Clone Wars, back when he had been a young Jedi Padawan.
"Charming to the last," Tarkin observed, and his tone made it clear that he was anything but charmed as he lifted a hand to clasp her chin between his thumb and forefinger, his touch sending a shudder of revulsion through Leia's entire body and causing her father to bristle behind her. "You don't know how hard I found it signing the order to terminate your life."
"I'm surprised you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself!" Leia spat, jerking her chin away.
"Princess Leia, before your execution I would like you to be my guest at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational," Tarkin informed her coolly. "No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now."
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin," Leia retorted. "The more star systems will slip through your fingers."
"Not after we demonstrate the power of this station," Tarkin responded smugly, and lifted a finger, snide amusement dripping off of him in the Force. "In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that'll be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's destructive power... on your home planet of Alderaan."
The air was knocked out of her, as if she'd just been struck in the stomach.
"No!" Leia cried in horror. "Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons. You can't possibly-"
"You would prefer another target?" Tarkin cut her off coldly, and she suddenly found it hard to breathe. "A military target? Then name the system!"
Swallowing hard, Leia remained silent.
"I grow tired of asking this," Tarkin growled, and moved toward her threateningly, causing her to back up into the hard chestplate of Darth Vader, who had neither moved nor spoken since their arrival on the bridge. Leia felt the urge to press herself closer against her father, to bury herself in him, as Tarkin loomed over her menacingly. "So it'll be the last time. Where is the Rebel base?"
Distantly, Leia was aware of a hidden speaker announcing they had reached Alderaan, but she only half-heard it. Her mind was in chaos, a frantic frenzy of dread and fear clouding her thoughts, and she might very well have failed to answer him at all had it not been for her father's cool, calming touch on her mind through the Force.
"Dantooine," she whispered, almost before she knew she was going to, and then she lowered her head in seeming defeat. "They're on Dantooine."
"There," Tarkin said, and he smiled almost pleasantly, but with a sinister edge. "You see Lord Vader, she can be reasonable."
Thanks to her father's touch, Leia was now able to breathe regularly again, and her shoulders slumped, not in defeat but with relief, until she realized that her father had only grown even more tense at Tarkin's words.
Looking to a man in Admiral's clothing, Tarkin nodded. "Continue with the operation," he ordered. "You may fire when ready."
"What?" Leia yelped, her heart wrenching.
"You're far too trusting," Tarkin informed her with amusement. "Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration. But don't worry, we will deal with your Rebel friends soon enough."
"No!" Leia cried desperately, lunging for him, but her father's massive hand fell on her shoulder, restraining her and pulling her back to him
Leia, her father's 'voice' filled her head, even as she struggled against him, with him only holding her all the tighter against his chest. Leia...
Do something, Leia pleaded, not so much with words as with emotion, her fear and terror mixing with a spike of the grief she knew was to come. She craned her neck around to look up at the mask which she had come to know every detail of as a child, a mask which comforted her and her alone. Father, please! You have to do something!
Even as she begged, though, she knew that nothing could stop what was about to take place.
The Force was already in mourning.
I cannot, Vader told her gently, and it might have been wishful thinking, but she thought she detected a trace of weary remorse beneath his grim countenance.
"Keep your eyes open, Princess Leia," Tarkin chuckled. "I wouldn't want you to miss the view."
Oh, how she ached to wrap her hands around that man's neck, to choke the life from him slowly and painfully for what he was about to do to her beloved Alderaan. Suddenly she wished, with a fierceness that made her blood run hot, that her father had instructed her in the deadly ways of the Force that he himself practiced, instead of just the basic use of the Force.
Because if she'd been able to, she would have crushed Tarkin's throat herself.
All those people... all those innocent, wonderful, beautiful people...
And Bail.
Kind, compassionate, loving Bail who had taken her into his home and raised her, who had loved her and whom she had loved in return. Her foster family was down there in Aldera, blissfully unaware of what fate was about to befall them, and she could do nothing to help them, nothing to save them.
She tried to look away, she really did. Her mind told her to turn away, to bury her face in her father's armor, regardless of who might see or what it might reveal, but her body just would not listen.
A single moment of stillness fell over her, and over the galaxy it seemed, the calm before the storm.
Then a wave of emotion slammed into her- cold, hard and filled with terror. The pain was worse than anything she had ever felt, worse than the time she had broken her leg trying to scale the side of the palace in Aldera, worse than the nights she had awoken with nightmares of her mother's death. Mixed with the terror and pain was the shock of betrayal, a betrayal felt by millions of minds all at once, and a cold unlike anything she had ever known, a cold that seeped right into the very core of her being.
Leia wobbled on her feet, tears searing down her cheeks as she wailed along with the people of Alderaan.
Through the thick haze of screaming voices, she felt her father's hand tighten on her shoulder, felt him giving her some of his strength even as his own presence staggered internally under the onslaught of the Force.
And then, as suddenly as they had awakened in her chest, the voices died out.
Alderaan was gone.
Alderaan, with its graceful cities and rolling hills, with it's peaceful people who had only a moment to realize their end was upon them.
Gone, in the space of a moment.