A/N: Me again! This is a shorter chapter, but I promise the coming chapters are a better length. I just couldn't find any other way to fit this in. As always, your comments mean a lot to me! I own nothing except the plot :)
5 – The Unknown
"Your Highness. It's good to see you. I trust you have much to report?"
The blue holo-images of Mon Mothma and her advisors crackled into life in the deserted conference room. Leia bowed her head.
"Yes, Senator. I've sent a report of the base's progress to your office. It is proceeding quicker than expecting, and the base should be fully completed in less than a month."
"That's excellent news," nodded the Senator, "And what about your personal mission? You've recruited people for the Corulag assignment?"
"I have. The Jedi, Rahm Kota and Ahsoka Tano, will be at the head of the group, along with the agent Starkiller and Captain Juno Eclipse, amongst others." She listed the rest of the group, and Mon Mothma nodded again.
"A strong team," she said, "I hope they have the ability to see it through to the end."
"Oh, they do," replied Leia, "I will make sure of that." She trusted everyone she had picked explicitly – she only hoped they would live up to her expectations, just as she was expected to live up to her father's legacy.
Mon Mothma was looking at the datapad on her desk, presumably scrolling through the dossiers that Leia had sent over.
"Captain Juno Eclipse – of the Salvation II, correct?" When Leia nodded her affirmative, she continued, "I'm concerned that taking her out of her command may affect the performance of that particular attack team."
"Captain Eclipse and I were aware of the risks – however, she assures me that her former second-in-command is more than capable of the role. I trust her implicitly."
"It says here..." Mon Mothma glanced again at her datapad, "...that Captain Eclipse was not due to join us until the completion of Echo Base, but this was then changed last-minute. Can you explain why, Your Highness?"
"Senator Mothma," began Leia, feeling a twinge of uncertainty crawl up her spine, "I do not believe that I need to explain myself when making decisions on behalf of the Rebellion."
Mon Mothma frowned, and Leia almost felt like a teenager at the Imperial Palace again, under the scrutiny of her many aunts.
"You must see that this is not some 'between friends' secret you are allowed to keep. We cannot have any secrets within our ranks – everything we discuss is above board, do you understand?"
Except the mission details that I'm sending my team on, thought Leia, but she said nothing.
"Of course, Senator. But I am truthful when I say that I have shared all the information relevant to the mission with you. Captain Eclipse was transferred early simply because the rest of the group were already assigned to the Hoth base and I saw no reason to wait."
It was not a lie, exactly. Leia was just...omitting certain truths from the conversation. She knew it was wrong, that she had a duty to the Rebel Alliance and should be upfront about everything, but...well, Juno was her friend. A friend who had helped both her and her father out on numerous occasions. A friend whom the Rebel Alliance could not afford to lose, at any rate.
Mon Mothma's holo form frowned slightly at Leia's words, but otherwise nodded.
"Very well. I take it that you are moving the mission forward then, due to Captain Eclipse's arrival?"
"Yes. We aim to be ready shortly after the completion of Echo Base. I will stay here as a point of contact within the Alliance, but I will guide them on their exploits on Corulag."
"You seem to have the situation under control then, Your Highness. I shall leave you to your duties."
"Farewell, Senator Mothma." Leia bowed her head, and the blue holo-images faded away with a crackle.
Leia sighed, and sat down heavily on the nearest chair, massaging her temples. It had been a long day, and leadership was much harder than she thought it would be. It would have been so much easier if her father were still alive – she could always ask him for assistance. She was sure he would have sympathised with Juno, too. The Captain had helped to save his life on two occasions, and they had worked together on many others.
There was a knock at the door, and it slid open. Leia jumped, roused from her daydream.
"Mistress Leia! I have been looking for you. I have received an urgent report from-"
"Threepio." Leia held a hand up, silencing the droid. "Can it wait until tomorrow? I was just about to retire to my quarters."
"Oh." If droids could look offended, See-Threepio certainly did. "Yes, of course. In the meantime, you might be interested to hear that Master Luke has broken the base's record for flying to the transmitter station and back in under twenty standard minutes."
"The base record – what? I had no idea we even had a base record for that kind of – I am having words with that boy tomorrow..."
She spent the rest of the walk back to her quarters muttering to herself, C-3PO helpfully supplying her with gossip from the base that he'd picked up.
"...And, of course, I did notice that Captain Eclipse, formerly of the Salvation II, had not been assigned living quarters. However, R2 informed me that he noted two life-forms fitting their description walking together in the direction of Agent Starkiller's quarters-"
Leia closed her eyes. "Threepio - too much information. The living arrangements of Rebel soldiers are not yours to pry into."
They had reached Leia's quarters now, and she keyed in the passcode so that the door slid open.
"I apologise, Your Highness," said the droid. "I bid you goodnight, then. Do you want the urgent messages relayed to your datapad?"
"That will be fine, Threepio. Thank you."
With that, the droid wandered off and Leia collapsed onto her bunk. She was exhausted, and she knew the coming weeks wouldn't get any easier or less tiring. Still, she was part of the Rebellion. And she had a job to do.
He was walking through a deserted city. The streets were clean and the sun was in the sky, bathing the pavements in a golden light. Galen continued walking, past empty shops and parks and office buildings. It was...nice. He felt relaxed.
In the distance, he could see a forest. Just out of reach. His curious dream-state wondered what lay within the forest. It felt like he had been walking for hours, but the forest was still in the same place. He broke into a run, to see if the forest would appear any closer. The sun was setting; he was running out of time. He felt his muscles straining, perspiration on his forehead. The forest was still out of reach.
As the sun set, the air grew cold, and the once-pleasant light turned from gold to red. The buildings still loomed high above him. Galen stopped running, and looked behind him. He suddenly wished he hadn't. The buildings that had once looked so clean and serene were burning, flames spewing out of every window. He turned back and closed his eyes.
The city had been silent up until now, but Galen started to hear voices. Quiet, at first. He thought he heard Juno, and then Kota, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. Or understand. Then, he heard other noises. Some of them sounded like the Jedi he'd killed, some from a forgotten place in his memory. In the midst of it all, he thought he heard a child. Perhaps it was his voice as a child, but he couldn't remember any more. They were getting louder, and the forest wasn't any closer. He began to run again, but the once-clean streets were now cracked and twisted, blackened by the absence of the sun. He tripped and fell, not onto the pavement but down one of the widening cracks, down, down, down...
Galen jolted awake, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He hadn't had a dream as vivid as that in a long time. Holding up his hands in front of him in the darkness, he found that he was shaking. He had never been a heavy sleeper, so it was unsurprising that he found himself waking suddenly in the middle of the night. What bothered him, however, was the dreams that had tormented him this time – whilst nightmares were a fairly regular occurrence for him, he couldn't quite put his finger on this one; but it felt different, somehow. It had the same, hard feeling of truth that his Force visions had in the past – and they were hard to ignore.
He shook his head groggily, as if to visibly shake off the memories, and sat up, noticing that something seemed off with the room. Looking over, he noticed that the space next to him was empty – Juno. He needn't have worried, however, as she was sitting hunched on the small desk chair in the corner, reading something on her datapad. The blue light from the datapad illuminated her face in the dark room, and he noted the dark circles under her eyes. She's been working too hard, he thought, as usual.
"Galen! Are – are you alright?" When he'd sat up, she had closed down her datapad and sat down on the bed next to him, a concerned expression on her face.
"I, uh... I think so? Just – just another dream." He waved a hand vaguely, trying to ignore the creeping fear that lingered at the back of his mind.
"Tell me." Juno lay down next to him and leaned into his side. Coaxing him to lie down again, she rested a hand on his chest, stilling his rapid breathing. He swallowed, closing his eyes.
Juno said nothing whilst he recounted his nightmare to her, her presence being enough to help him through. When he finished speaking, she reached up to stroke his face, her expression sad.
"You've been having a lot of these dreams, haven't you?"
Galen saw no reason to lie, so nodded once. "Yes. This one was the worst, but I get dreams...a lot," he sighed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears. "It just felt...it felt like my visions in the Force, back before the first Death Star – do you remember?"
Juno smiled, briefly. "You started levitating my tools in the cockpit."
"Yeah, that time. What I saw then...came true. But I understood it, it made sense, I could act on it. I don't understand this dream. I can't...I feel helpless."
He looked away from Juno, still ashamed – even after so many years – to show so much emotion in front of her. She put a hand under his chin and turned his head to face her again.
"Hey," she said, gently, "Galen, you are the strongest person I know. And I don't mean physically, with the lightsabers and combat, I mean up here." She tapped his forehead gently, and he playfully tried to bat her fingers away. That brought a smile to both their faces, at least.
"If the Force is trying to tell you something, then maybe you need to wait it out and let it fully unravel itself. I'm sure the right answer will come to you in time."
"So just...wait and see?" he frowned, "For how long? What if – what if something happens and it's too late?" He had the niggling feeling that his dream was referring to Juno, but he couldn't say how. He didn't mention this to her.
Juno knitted her eyebrows. "Galen, you can't always save everything and everyone. You must know that by now. Stop trying to atone for your past, and think about the future for once." Her words were harsh, but he could hear the softness in them.
"You're right. I should – I need to stop thinking so much. Overanalysing won't help anyone." He sighed. "I'll talk to Kota tomorrow. He might know what to do."
"That's a good idea." Juno's voice was muffled by her face now leaning in to his side. "Kota really cares for you, you know." Her voice sounded drowsier than it had at the start of their conversation.
"Hm," muttered Galen, the corners of his lips twitching, "Well, he's alright. Not bad company sometimes. Much like someone else I know."
If he had been expecting a response to this, he didn't receive one, because Juno was now fast asleep in his arms. Galen smiled, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He shifted slightly, further on to his pillow, and closed his eyes – content that, for at least the rest of the night, he wouldn't have any bad dreams. Sometimes, he truly did not know what he would do without her.
Juno waited for Galen's breathing to slow and become regular before opening her eyes again. Shifting her position slightly, she looked over at his sleeping face. He looked remarkably peaceful, despite his nightmares. Juno wished she had the same certainty.
She certainly wasn't going to tell him the real reason she had been awake; her datapad, abandoned on the desk, had the article on nausea highlighted, and for good reason. The sickness hadn't been as bad as it had a few weeks previously – she suspected that this might be the tail end of it, which lessened her dread, slightly – but it was still unnerving.
Galen twitched in his sleep, and Juno froze, but he merely muttered something unintelligible and rolled over. She wanted to smile, but she could feel a familiar nauseous sensation building. Slipping out of their bunk, she rushed to the refresher and managed to close the door just in time to fall to her knees, retching.
When she had finally finished throwing up, she washed her face with cold water and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She looked gaunt, and paler than she had ever seen. She blinked a few times, and was surprised to see tears clouding her vision.
Her ideals of motherhood were all very well when she wasn't faced with nausea and an expanding stomach. Now that she was here, on Hoth, with Galen, all of her previous thoughts felt naïve and almost invalid. What the hell were they going to do when the baby arrived? Leia was sending them away on a mission, one that wasn't supposed to be dangerous, but what happens when the mission was over? Would they just walk away from the Rebellion? Could they just walk away from the Rebellion?
Tears ran freely down Juno's cheeks, and she scrubbed them away hurriedly. Galen wasn't a heavy sleeper; she was surprised he hadn't woken up again already. He must have played down how bad he had been sleeping lately; typical, Juno thought. Then again, wasn't she keeping bigger secrets? It was almost as if she loved him too much to tell him. Which was silly, she knew that. She had come close several times that day to spilling her secret, but had backed out every time.
Why couldn't she tell him? Juno herself didn't know. Part of her wanted to protect Galen from unfortunate truths; hadn't he suffered enough already? But part of her, she suspected, deep down, wanted to protect herself: if he reacted badly, it wouldn't be her fault. If he didn't know...
She didn't finish the thought, because it was too dark – even for Juno.
"Pull yourself together, Eclipse," she muttered, glaring at her reflection again. Sometimes, there was no-one to look out for her except her. And thinking those thoughts wasn't going to help anybody.
She tip-toed out of the refresher and slid mercifully back into the warm bunk – the temperature of Echo Base tended to run a little cold, to no-one's delight. Galen shifted a little in his sleep, but miraculously didn't wake. Or so she hoped. He'd had a hard enough time of it already – let him have a good night's sleep, she thought.
Galen's recurring dreams were another thing to add to her list – he'd always suffered from unnerving dreams, but she had thought that his growing distance from Vader over the past four years had allowed them to fade. She knew him well enough that he wouldn't have told her a thing unless they were really worrying him. And she also knew enough about Galen, and the Force, to tell that those dreams usually meant something significant. Juno hoped Kota would be able to help him understand – whilst her and Galen knew each other intimately, Juno wasn't strong in the Force, and that was what Galen needed.
Exhaling softly, she shuffled closer to him and slipped a tentative arm around his waist. Resting her head on the back of his shoulder, she let the sound of his heartbeat lull her to sleep, for good this time. She was just going to have to see what the coming weeks brought them both. Hopefully they could weather it together. If not...well, no-one particularly wanted to think about that.
End note: It might be a little while before the next update, so I apologise in advance! Writing has slowed down a bit since I started back at university, but I'll update as and when I can! I am as excited as you guys are to be on this ~journey~ with you, as cheesy as that sounds. Writing is hard, but I really wanted this story to happen, so here we are! x