CW: PTSD symptoms, gore alluded to (not seen directly - I don't know exactly how to warn for this to be honest, but it's incredibly brief)

Her brain was slippery again. Barriers between Leia, Then and Leia, Now crumbled to dust, passing memory and sensory input to one another until keeping track of which was which was an impossible feat. She was running in the jungle, running in front of someone, running from someone, but she couldn't remember who was in pursuit. Leia suppressed any instinct she had to make noise aside from the quietest labored breathing she could manage and hoped whoever was after her would fall behind or get bored or lose her in the trees entirely.

She made a sharp right, heard someone call her name, pressed her back against a large tree hoping they would miss her if they ran past. Her muscles trembled and she knew it was more than the effort of running, more than the adrenaline. When the hand gripped her bicep, she had to cut off her own shriek.

"Leia, hey, are you okay?" Luke was using his steady, coaxing voice. She hated it.

"I'm fine," she snapped. She needed him to stop touching her now but she was trapped, her arm pinned between his hand and the tree. There was no use in struggling; his hand would just tighten, and tighten and—

Leia felt her entire body tense the slightest bit and Luke dropped his hand to his side, concern etched in his expression.

The unexpected movement jarred her into the present. She dug her thumbnail into the side of her forefinger and grasped for the list she repeated to herself — the therapist had called the list a grounding exercise, some reminders of where she was in time. My name is Leia Organa. I'm nineteen years old. I'll be twenty next week. I'm on the Alliance outpost on Indoumodo after the base at Yavin was discovered. The Death Star was destroyed. It's gone. I'm not running from anyone here. I'm…I'm…I'm in the middle of morning drills. That's why I'm running.

"Do you want me to get Shara?" Luke asked quietly.

He sounded shaken, and Leia wondered why for only a moment before she realized she had her eyes screwed shut and her cheeks were wet with tears. The sudden urge to sink herself in a nearby swamp out of embarrassment washed over her. She shook her head. "I'll be fine. I'm fine. I don't need Shara." She sniffed and scrubbed at her eyes with her palms, shoving strands of hair that had escaped her crown braid behind her ear.

"Did someone scare you?" Luke was so close. She needed him to step back. Han and Shara always knew when to step back without her telling them. She didn't know how to tell Luke.

Leia shifted a few inches away while maintaining eye contact with the boy, her friend who she knew cared about her and she knew would feel awful if she told him she was on edge because of him. But it wasn't him; it was anybody. Maybe he'd understand that if she could ever explain it in words.

"You just…you looked back over your shoulder and took off sprinting."

She shrugged, forced a chuckle and a smile that she knew didn't reach her eyes. "You know me. Competitive."

Luke furrowed his brow. "You were already ahead of the group a few meters."

She shrugged again. "They're not waiting for us, are they?"

Luke shook his head. "They went on to the range."

The range. The generously named clearing with a handful of targets set up that they used to practice aiming blasters. Leia took a moment, two moments, three to slow her breathing before nodding. "You should go. I'm going to head back to camp."

"You should come shoot with us," he said, an encouraging smile on his face. Leia could tell he was excited by the thought.

She resisted grimacing — there was no way he could know how much the suggestion stung — and forced a light, casual air when she spoke. "No, that's okay. I have some things I need to do in the office. I'm trying to figure this whole assassin bug thing out, you know?"

Luke deflated slightly. "Oh, yeah. Of course." He shifted away from her and met her gaze, blue eyes searching hers for something. "Do you need a hug?"

Leia hated that he had to ask, hated that her reactions were so confusing to him, to herself. She'd always been physically affectionate; it was strange to have someone she considered a friend feel the need to ask. Leia, Then would have been the one initiating contact in the first place.

Leia swallowed and nodded jerkily, allowing Luke to pull her into an embrace. Closing her eyes and focusing on breathing, she slid her arms under his. She held onto him tightly, longer than she expected to, gleaning some degree of comfort from the boy she couldn't seem to verbalize her thoughts to. When they both let go, Luke shot her a small smile.

"Better?" he asked.

She nodded again, annoyed by how frequently she seemed struck speechless lately. Words were her area of expertise. She always had the right thing to say in the forefront of her mind, the right turn of phrase for nearly any occasion. This being reduced to nods and head shakes out of nowhere grated on her nerves.

Leia cleared her throat in defiance of her own silence. "Yes, I'm…better." She lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug and began walking back in the direction she'd veered off from. "Need to get back." They parted ways and she headed back toward base, pulling her mind away from her momentary meltdown and refocusing her thoughts on the assassin bug thing as she'd told Luke. It hadn't just been a convenient excuse to avoid the range; they really did need to figure it out as quickly as possible.

It had been a week since the first kouhun sighting, and they'd been spotted in increasing numbers ever since, usually in groups of four or five and almost always heading straight toward camp. Their growing presence was a concern for all, but Leia sometimes felt as if she were one of only a few who viewed the deadly insects as a permanent problem rather than a temporary inconvenience. She was certainly the only one researching and piecing together possible plans for dealing with them long-term rather than just reacting to the bugs that happened to be in her immediate vicinity.

The more questions she asked of the rank, the more she researched, and the more connections she made between seemingly unrelated events, the more certain she became that they were looking at an ecological nightmare. As it turned out, Wes and Hobbie had not been pulling her leg; there were dogs. Sort of. No one had confirmed if they were actually dogs — in fact, the entire situation had led to the discovery that dog meant something different on just about every Basic-speaking planet as far as Leia could tell — but Wes had taken to calling them dog-adjacent monstrosities, shortened by the Rogues at large to DAMs, a nickname that spread quickly all over base.

Semantics aside, there were dog-sized creatures in the jungle and they were the cause of the issues. Or, rather, their moving deeper into the jungle was the cause of the issues.

The jungle dogs — Leia refused to call any living thing a monstrosity on principle — were apparently driven away from the jungle-swamp border by base activity. This, along with the wildly varying definition of dog, somewhat explained Han's insistence that Chewie hadn't detected the presence of dogs nearby. It also explained the increasing frequency of the appearance of kouhuns on base. From what limited information Leia could find on some very concerning corners of the holonet, kouhuns were swamp-dwelling carnivores that incapacitated their prey with the neurotoxin Han had mentioned, and devoured small-to-medium-sized animals, leaving only bones behind. They hunted in packs — the fact that the first one they found had been alone was odd — by sensing body heat, and seemed to have a particular affinity for the jungle dogs. The deeper into the jungle and farther away from the swamp the dogs moved, the more appetizing Rebel soldiers became.

Or, as Leia told General Rieekan and General Dodonna following days of research and talking to various members of the rank, "We're causing the kouhun to show up on base."

The insects hadn't hurt anyone yet, but there'd been some close calls. They seemed to be inclined to climb over and into just about anything if they could sense body heat — including gnawing their way through tent walls and traveling through deep puddles. They were swamp dwellers, after all; they could handle water, a fact that had nearly immediately killed Hobbie Klivian's plan, which Leia was informed had been named Operation: Big-Ass Moat.

"We're ninety-seven percent sure it would've worked if they couldn't survive under water," Wes said later in the morning after explaining the abandoned trench that lined about half of their camp's perimeter.

"Of course," Leia said, not wanting to dissuade creative thinking but unsure about keeping the landscape modification if it wasn't immediately useful. "It's just we've had two sprained ankles in three days because of the…"

"Big-Ass Moat," Hobbie supplied.

Leia pursed her lips. "Right, the moat. So, if it's not going to work for the kouhun, it's sort of just a hazard with no real benefit." She paused, waiting for the implication of her words to sink in. When the two men stared back at her blankly for a few seconds too long, she finally said, "It needs to be filled back in. The moat."

"Big-Ass Moat," Hobbie corrected.

"Right."

"We'll get right on it, uh—" Wes lowered his voice slightly and leaned toward her. Leia had to fight her immediate inclination to lean away from him. "What do we call you exactly? No one's been told and everyone's been afraid to ask."

Leia, was Leia's initial thought, but she knew he was asking for a rank, a title, something official that fit into base hierarchy. She…didn't have one, exactly. She imagined it had to do with her stalling on the High Command decision. Or maybe they weren't sure how Disgraced Senator and Princess of Nowhere translated into military ranks. She wasn't sure. She just knew she hadn't been given an official rank. She was just…there.

"Shara and Luke call me Leia," she offered as a sort of stop gap. She knew she hadn't answered the question directly, but she wasn't sure what else to say.

It seemed to appease Wes and Hobbie well enough. They promised to fill in the Big-Ass Moat and Leia returned to the cramped space that acted as a shared office. General Dodonna wasn't around, but General Rieekan sat at one of the two desks. Leia took the seat at the other without saying a word and pinched the skin between her thumb and forefinger. Her head had been pounding off and on since her episode during drills hours prior and Han swore that some herbalist he'd met on Numidian Prime said pressure on that spot was supposed to get rid of headaches.

Han and Chewie were on a run to Numidian Prime that week, actually. They'd taken Wedge with them. Leia had volunteered to go just for something different — the monotony of base life without a regular job was wearing on her, and she could research assassin bugs on a datapad in flight just as well as she could at the outpost. General Dodonna had shot down her offer, claiming they needed her planetside, though he didn't give a particular reason. Probably better anyway since I still don't have a blaster, she'd thought, though the disappointment of feeling like a grounded child was strong.

She'd thrown herself entirely into solving the kouhun issue, looking for some way to feel useful aside from featuring in the occasional propaganda recording, and while she'd done good research and could summarize everything the holonet had to say about insects, she hadn't solved the problem yet. It ate at her.

"What's happening with the trench?" General Rieekan asked, interrupting Leia's thoughts.

She pinched the spot between her thumb and forefinger harder and looked at him, Hobbie's correction of Big-Ass Moat echoing in her head. She pursed her lips. "They're filling it in."

"Good. I don't know what they were thinking."

Leia shrugged. "They thought they could drown the kouhun," she said, though that was obvious. She knew what General Rieekan meant; her initial response within seconds of hearing about the moat had been But, they live in the swamp. They survive all day under water. Why this hadn't occurred to Hobbie or Wes before installing a tripping hazard around the camp was beyond her.

"General Rieekan?" Leia said quietly. The older man looked up from whatever he was working on and met her gaze. "I'm really concerned about the kouhun. Nearly everything I've read is right in line with what Captain Solo told us; one sting is lethal to the majority of humans and other beings. They've made their way through barriers including closed tents. No one's getting good sleep because tentmates are switching off every few hours to keep watch over night. If we can't find a way to keep them out of our space, I'm not sure what our options are."

General Rieekan rubbed his temple and nodded, deep lines appearing in places on his face. "We're beginning to look at other options for the outpost."

Leia squinted at him. That seemed like a major move all because of some insects. Then again, they were quite literally threatening the lives of everyone on base. She nodded slowly. "Are we looking to leave Indoumodo?"

General Rieekan shook his head. "We're readying scouts to check other parts of the planet. We want to stay put if at all possible. As far as we know, the swamps extend planetwide, so I don't know how realistic it is to stay. But, we did request that one of the naturalists transfer thanks to your suggestion. Solo's making a stop to pick him up on their way back today."

My suggestion, Leia thought ruefully. General Rieekan was being generous; it had been less a suggestion and more a frustrated outburst when she first reported the presence of the assassin insects to the generals at the outpost. Leia had, to her own horror, allowed the words I find it utterly baffling that we did no ecological research on this planet before deciding to settle here. It was shortsighted to the point of negligence, to exit her mouth, at which point General Dodonna had informed her that he had been the one to make the final call on which planet to flee to, that the decision hadn't been ideal, but they'd also hoped to stay on Yavin at least another few months. Leia had felt slightly sheepish for criticizing the man's decision so harshly — his options had been extremely limited, after all. But she knew she wasn't entirely wrong, and she was glad that someone had taken her feedback seriously.

"Glad to hear it," she said. "But surely I didn't suggest anything groundbreaking."

General Rieekan shook his head. "Not groundbreaking, no. We did scout this location, Your Highness, but we didn't stay long enough to affect the boundaries of the dogs' territory apparently. I do hope more careful consideration of our impact will help the longevity of future outposts."

Leia nodded, still pinching the spot on her hand. She wasn't certain, but she thought her headache had let up a bit.

"Has Mon contacted you?" General Rieekan asked.

She nodded again. "Every three days or so," she said, letting out a soft sigh. She'd truthfully been glad for the consistent contact with the chancellor. Mon was familiar, trustworthy, and comforting to Leia. But Mon also wanted an answer about the Command post and Leia didn't have one for her. She'd taken what Wedge had said to heart — Mon and General Rieekan wouldn't suggest something that was bad for the Alliance — but Leia wasn't sure she was a good fit.

She kept waiting to feel like herself again, hoping that if she could just recapture whatever part of Leia, Then was driven away during her Death Star stay, she'd feel better equipped. But, as it stood, she was averaging at least one episode a day where she had to remind herself of where and when she was by repeating the most basic facts she could think of about herself and her surroundings as if she were a confused child. She couldn't imagine being considered fit for High Command if Mon Mothma was made aware of the frequency with just how often her memory slipped.

"I haven't decided yet, if that's what you're wondering," Leia said.

"We could use a tie-breaker," General Rieekan said ruefully. "Right now, if Jan and I disagree about how things need to go on the outpost, it's a battle of the wills until one of us acquiesces."

Leia let out a bewildered laugh. "I hope you're not just wanting an ally," she teased. "I might disagree with you. I've been told by at least a dozen senators that I'm opinionated and stubborn."

General Rieekan chuckled. "I can't imagine where you got that from," he said dryly. He smiled at her. "They knew Bail well. What werethey expecting exactly?"

Leia bit her lip. "A more publicly subdued version of my mother, I suspect. And they instead got Bail, but…oh, what was the word a couple of them threw around? Shrill." She laughed softly. There were many things about her pre-Scarif life that she missed; interacting with certain members of the Senate wasn't one of them.

"Shrill," General Rieekan muttered in disbelief. "They may have been projecting."

Leia laughed again. She flipped through the reports that had been sent to her datapad absently, her eyes drawn to one particular transmission between the overnight communications officer and an incoming ship. "You said the naturalist is arriving today?" she asked, attempting to sound casual. She didn't need it confirmed; the ETA for the Falcon was right in front of her. Still, hearing it said out loud—

"Captain Solo is supposed to arrive this afternoon, yes," General Rieekan said matter-of-factly. "It sounds as if they had a successful run."

Leia bit her bottom lip and allowed a smile to cross her face at the thought of the Falcon arriving so soon. She'd be glad to see the ramshackle ship on base once again. She was so used to having certain beings around that going without seeing Chewie and Wedge and, yes, even Han for days, had been difficult. She didn't spend their entire trip worried exactly, but she knew she would rest easier once the Falcon had touched down on Indoumodo again. "Good," she said, keeping her voice even, neutral. "I'm glad to hear it."

She couldn't sleep again, though this time it wasn't because of graphic dreams or her thoughts and memories becoming slippery or even becoming convinced that the sound of leaves rustling in the jungle was actually the sound of kouhun chomping through her and Shara's tent wall. This time, she couldn't sleep because she was worried. Eight hours had passed since its projected ETA and the Millennium Falcon still hadn't returned. Leia didn't want to hover around the communications officer on duty, distracting them and likely calling attention to her motives for staying up. She didn't want to betray her concern, to have it rub off on anyone else. She was, thankfully, such a frequent presence at the campfire on the north end of the camp, none of the night watch gave her a second glance. This was where she spent the hours between nightmares most of the time. They were used to her being there.

After watching the night watchmen make their lazy rounds with feigned interest, she'd settled on the ground, her back against a log, chin tilted up slightly to view the stars and light of distant planets. She wondered for the thousandth time which of the shining lights — if any of them — was Alderaan. They were far enough away from the Core to see decades'-old light from the planet she was sure, though it was possible they were too far away to see it at all.

Wedge Antilles walked past her with a man she'd never met following close behind — the naturalist, Leia assumed. Wedge smiled at her briefly, acknowledging her with an exhausted nod before continuing on. Relief washed over her. They're back. That meant she'd have company shortly. Han always said he was wired after supply runs, unable to sleep and chatty for at least a few hours after landing, and he tended to make that the problem of whoever happened to be awake. Leia glanced in the direction Wedge had come from and couldn't help but smile a little when the smuggler appeared just as expected.

"You're late," she said flatly, unwilling to let him entirely off the hook just for showing up. Their delay had, after all, been the primary cause of her insomnia this time.

Han raised his eyebrows a he approached. "Didn't know you'd miss me so much, Highness." He sat next to her. "Nearly got boarded. Had to make extra jumps to be sure we weren't bein' traced."

Leia scrunched her eyebrows together in concern. "I was just teasing. I didn't know."

He shrugged and leaned back against the log behind them. "Everyone's okay. Cargo's okay. No one traced us. Hazards of the trade."

"Chewie's okay?"

Han smiled and nodded. "He's fine. Just wanted to turn in. Antilles and that biologist, too."

"I saw them pass by. Wedge looked exhausted."

"We're all pretty beat, I think," Han said, though he didn't sound half as tired as Wedge had looked. "Surprised you're up."

Leia arched an eyebrow in amusement. "Are you actually?"

He chuckled. "No."

"Well, when I'm expecting a freighter to come in at 1500 and it's—" She checked her chrono. "2340, I find it's difficult to sleep until I know what happened."

Han grinned mischievously. "You missed us."

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Maybe a little."

They fell into easy silence, the sort of quiet that exists only when there's comfort enough to not feel the need to fill the void. Leia stared at the stars again, searching, searching for home.

Han cleared his throat quietly. "Found someth—"

Tycho Celchu's voice drowned out the end of his sentence. "Col!"

Leia sat forward in alarm, eyes wide. Han appeared confused, as if he hadn't heard the man's cry at all. Leia looked toward the tents, then to Han, suddenly confused herself. "I thought I heard Tycho—"

The second scream was undeniable. Han scrambled to his feet and took off running in the direction of Tycho's shouts. Leia followed, all the while aware that she only had her borrowed knife if she needed to help fight someone or something off.

Leia was fast, but Han's legs were considerably longer and most of the camp was physically closer to the tent Tycho and Col shared. By the time she arrived on the scene, a small crowd had gathered and Han stood in front of the tent, blocking the entrance almost entirely. Tycho was babbling incoherently about Col, something about Col, and Leia attempted to peer around Han into the tent.

"Antilles," Han said sharply, pushing Tycho in Wedge's direction. "Get him outta here."

"What's going on?" Leia nearly shouted, still trying to see what Han was blocking in the tent. Someone — Col, she assumed — was inside, laying on a cot, completely still.

"Leia!" Han barked and she flinched, looking up at him. He looked pale.

"What's going on?" she repeated, eyes locked on Han's.

He glanced over her head quickly. "Get the kid away from here," he said seriously.

Leia looked over her shoulder and saw Luke wandering close to crowd, sleepy and confused. She focused back on Han and shook her head slightly. "I don't—"

He stared directly in her eyes, still pale, still stricken. "You don't wanna look, sweetheart. He won't want to, either. Trust me."

She'd normally fight him on something like that, insist that he couldn't possibly know what she did and didn't want, make statements about being her own person and not being a child, but Han looked so shaken that Leia felt she could only do as he requested. She nodded and turned, grabbing Luke's wrist as she drew nearer to him. "C'mon," she said softly, pulling him in the direction that Wedge had taken Tycho.

They'd stopped about halfway to the closest campfire. Tycho had tears running down his face and gripped his hair with both hands. Leia smelled something sour and saw vomit on the ground a meter away. Wedge stood near the younger pilot, staring as Tycho continued rambling.

"Col—he—they—he—his eye—he—his eye—"

"What's he saying?" Luke murmured.

"I—I don't know," Wedge answered.

It took hearing their exchange for Leia to realize Tycho had slipped into Alderaanian. She looked at Luke. "He's saying something about his eye. Col's." She turned her attention back to Tycho and stepped closer to him. "Tycho," she said softly. He looked in her direction with unfocused eyes and Leia continued gently in the rarely-used language of their home. "Can you take a few breaths and tell us what happened?" She reached for him and he caught her hand in his, gripping her fingers tightly.

"He's…he's gone," he said. A sob burst from his chest.

"Col's gone," Leia repeated, sounding far calmer than she felt. "Dead, you mean?" He most certainly hadn't run off.

He nodded. "His eye—"

The violence with which Tycho sobbed made Leia queasy. She took a deep breath, tried to focus only on the hysterical man in front of her and not the handful of others gathering nearby. "What about his eye, Tycho? How—Do you know what killed him?"

General Rieekan's voice rose above the chatter around her, calling for Leia's attention. She squeezed Tycho's hand before letting him go, heading in the direction of the general, more confused and unnerved than ever. General Rieekan looked about as stricken as Han had when she reached him.

"We need to do bed checks," he said, an edge to his tone that made Leia's stomach twist. "Make sure everyone wakes up but no one leaves their tent. Can you take the women's side of the camp?"

She nodded. "Of course. I—" She broke off. "General Rieekan, what happened?"

"Ensign Tugrina was swarmed by those damn insects." He swallowed. "He's dead, Your Highness."

Pieces of information from the past few minutes fell into place and understanding hit Leia with a force she wasn't sure she could bear. The kouhun—they were carnivores—

His eye.

You don't wanna look, sweetheart.

Bile filled her mouth at the thought and she tried to think of anything, anything, anything else to keep from getting sick.

Bed checks. She'd agreed to do bed checks.

Shara met her outside their shared tent and offered to take half of the women's tents. Leia nodded, grateful to split the duty. It didn't take long to account for all the women on base who were still in their tents. There didn't appear to be any other swarms or casualties.

Leia looked for General Rieekan and was pointed in the direction of the generals' office by a confused-looking commander. She approached the structure, slowing as she neared the door. It was cracked, but she could hear General Rieekan and General Dodonna arguing inside.

"—should never have settled on this cursed rock," General Rieekan said, sounding more frantic than Leia had ever heard.

"We had three options and the other two had sentients on the planets. They would've recognized her in an instant," General Dodonna countered. "We went with what we thought was a known risk."

Her? Leia didn't have to wonder who they were discussing. She was the only woman she knew on base with a massive bounty on her head; she was the only one who was even a little recognizable outside of the rank. Shivers ran down her spine at the implication. I'm the reason we're here. I'm the reason Col's—

"I know that, Jan, but if we'd considered the variables for—"

"We can't do anything about what's happened, Carlist," General Dodonna said bitterly. "We need to decide what to do now."

Leia thought it was as good a time as any to knock on the door and interrupt them with her report. She didn't tell them what she'd heard, kept her voice even and her expression neutral, and as soon as she was dismissed, she walked calmly out of the office and closed the door behind her before she took off running.

She had no plan for where she was going; she just needed to get away. The words pounded in her head over and over again as she ran past the rows of tents: get away, get away, get away. She looked down at her feet as she approached Tycho and Col's tent, intending to give the entire area a wide berth and avoid looking inside. She didn't notice Han was in front of her until she ran straight into him.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his tone just as serious as when he'd last spoken to her but with none of the bite. His hand was on her shoulder and Leia wanted to cringe when she realized he could probably feel her shaking.

She nodded but didn't say anything.

Han leaned down slightly and spoke next to her ear, "Luke and Antilles took Celchu to the Falcon to give him a minute, if you wanna—Bey!"

He'd pulled away suddenly and waved Shara over. She trotted toward them and Han said something to her in a low voice. The next thing Leia knew, Shara had thrown her arm around her shoulders and was walking with Leia toward the Falcon.

"Are you all right?" Leia asked numbly as they walked. Shara had been nearly silent, her usually tan skin almost as pale as Leia's in the moonlight.

Shara nodded. "Been trying to raise Kes. Haven't heard from him."

Leia gave her friend a sympathetic squeeze. "I'm sure he'll get a message to you soon."

"Yeah. I'm sure. Just wish we were on the same outpost. Wish I was on just about any other planet."

"Tell me about it," Leia said flatly.

"This isn't normal, what we're doing here. I—I'm trying to keep my head down and do as I'm told, but this whole operation has been strange. Settling in Wild Space on a planet we know nothing about. I don't get it."

It's to protect me, Leia thought bitterly, and she wondered in that moment if she'd ever be able to get Col's blood off her conscience.

Just add it to the pile. Col. Kier. Everyone aboard the Tantive IV. Everyone who'd perished at Yavin. Ben Kenobi. Luke's aunt and uncle. Her parents. Her aunts and uncles and cousins. Her entire world. Every tree and mountain and thranta and—

This is thought spiraling, she thought, recalling the phrase the therapist had used when she'd described the ever-escalating list of things she was surely responsible for, the list she could get lost in for ages without pause. Somehow recognizing it as such this time gave her a second to jump out of the spiral. She would no doubt return to it later, but she had a moment's reprieve at least.

Leia blinked and they were onboard the Falcon, somehow in the lounge though she didn't recall even walking up the ramp. Tycho sat at the holochess table, staring blankly at his hands. Wedge and Luke sat on either side of him while Chewie hovered near the sink, clearly keeping an eye on everyone. He was supposed to be asleep; she remembered Han mentioning that he'd turned in. Leia wondered dully if he'd woken himself or if Han had roused him.

She checked on Tycho, who seemed to be steeling himself against more tears, but Leia didn't have any particular words of wisdom or advice or much to offer aside from an awkward pat on the shoulder and suggestions of sleep that were ignored by all. She noticed they had empty mugs in front of them and, finding her mind once again teetering on the edge of a spiral, she gathered them and rinsed them in the sink. Leia dried the mugs carefully and put them away, lamenting internally that she'd finished the task so quickly.

We're here because of me. She had heard correctly, she was sure, and the mere idea ate at her endlessly. She hadn't asked for special protection, and she hadn't assumed it would be foisted upon her, either. She'd said over and over that she wanted to be treated like a standard soldier, and that had been ignored.

Leia watched as Shara stretched out on a bench and draped an arm over her eyes, curly hair splayed in a frizzy, dark halo around her head; as Luke repeatedly dozed off and shook himself awake, a guilty expression on his face that might have been amusing if the circumstances weren't so tragic; as Tycho tapped his fingers nervously against the tabletop in a rhythm Leia found grating but not grating enough for her to ask the distressed man to stop. Wedge met her gaze briefly, utter exhaustion evident in every part of his body. Everyone, everyone exuded sorrow and confusion and frustration. The air was thick with it.

I can fix this. The thought came out of nowhere, but she saw the necessary path with unexpected clarity. She couldn't bring Col back, she couldn't undo anything, but she could fix this; she could make sure this didn't happen again.

Leia slipped from the lounge and ran into Han on her way outside. He was less pale than the last time she'd seen him, but still looked disturbed. He touched her elbow gently to get her attention. "You all right? Where ya headed?"

She nodded. "I need my datapad. I'll be back." She paused before walking away. "Do you have—Is there a list anywhere of planets you've been to?"

Han smirked slightly though Leia sensed no amusement behind the expression. "Paper trails ain't really common in my line of work."

"No logs or manifests or journal entries?"

"Logs get destroyed after I get paid, manifests are gonna be mostly made up, and I've never kept a journal."

Leia found all of that hard to believe. Though it makes the wall next to his bunk make a lot more sense. "How do you keep track of things you might need to remember about a particular place, then?"

Han tapped his temple twice.

Leia looked at him skeptically. "You can't possibly remember everything."

"I remember what's important."

She doubted what he claimed was remotely possible, but her resources were limited. "Your star charts are up-to-date?"

Han hesitated. "Up-to-date 'cept for the Core. Don't think a new one's been released since…"

Her brain filled in Alderaan the way it always did now when people trailed off their sentences around her. Leia shook her head slightly. She couldn't think about that right then. "We can't land in the Core anyway. I need your help with something."

She had a plan. It wasn't perfect — no plan was perfect, Han had assured her multiple times, and she hadn't argued because she couldn't remember the last time one of her plans had gone completely right — but it was a workable plan. After a long night drinking caf, pouring over star charts, and asking Han, Chewie, Wedge, and Shara for everything they knew about a handful of Outer Rim territories, she knew what she would present to General Rieekan and General Dodonna. Yet another cup of caf as the sun rose and one conversation with Mon Mothma later, and she was ready to speak with the generals.

General Rieekan's joke about needing a tiebreaker at the outpost had stuck with her. Leia knew he hadn't been serious — he and General Dodonna usually seemed to get along well enough — but it started her thinking: they were trying to protect her without her knowledge or consent, but if she were part of High Command, she'd surely have to be notified of what was going on and why. She'd have a vote, a voice, some sort of influence. Command members had different ranks, but they all had the same amount of pull when it came to Command-led decisions.

Leia took her datapad filled with notes to the office and walked in without knocking. Both men were seated on either side of one of the desks, mugs of caf and ration bar wrappers between them. General Rieekan held his head in his hands while General Dodonna stared at a holoprojection of Indoumodo. Neither looked at her for more than a moment.

She'd decided before she'd spoken with Mon that she'd approach the topic with controlled, righteous anger. It wasn't a leap from where her emotions currently sat. She was angry — about Col, about the attempts to protect her, about the lack of trust she felt from nearly everyone around her to operate like any other Alliance member. She didn't want to come across as livid or out-of-control, though. That was a balance she knew she could strike; she'd done it many times.

"Good morning," she said, hoping to at least start out cordially, though any hint of warmth was intentionally omitted from her tone.

They both responded in kind, sounding as exhausted as she felt.

Leia set her datapad on the empty desk but remained standing, giving her a height advantage over the sitting men. "I'd like to know at what point you were planning on informing me that my safety was the reason this planet was chosen for an outpost."

General Dodonna began to say something, but General Rieekan cut him off, clearly over any attempts at maintaining a facade. "We weren't planning on it at all," he said flatly. "How did you find out?"

Leia shrugged. "You two weren't exactly quiet about it last night. Mon confirmed when I spoke with her this morning." She looked General Rieekan directly in the eye. "I've agreed to accept the placement in High Command. This cannot happen again, making decisions on my behalf." Leia felt strange, speaking so coolly to men she'd spent the past several years looking up to, but the decision to head to a virtually unknown planet to keep her safe was unacceptable. Even her father would have thought so.

Well. Probably not when it came down to it, she thought. But I don't need to tell them that.

Whether it was surprise, exhaustion, or some other factor that kept the two older men quiet, Leia wasn't sure, but she wasn't going to squander the time she had with them.

"I don't have access to Alliance scouts' reports, but I spent the night looking through star charts with a couple of the pilots and Captain Solo and Chewbacca, and I think we have some solid candidates for the next outpost location," she said.

Dodonna bristled visibly at the sound of Han's name. "We're not taking orders from short-service contractors, Your Highness."

"No one's ordered anyone to do anything," she assured him. "I asked for Captain Solo's input. He's done more recent traveling than most of us here. He seemed like a good resource."

"Captain Solo has been consistent in his work and keeping his promises," General Rieekan added. "He has more recent experience with remote and hidden locations than most of us. I'd like to hear his thoughts."

Leia nodded briefly. "There are a couple of options, but we all agreed that the most promising is an Outer Rim planet in the Slice called Renatasia. It's remote — it's not on a hyperspace route or a trade route — temperature range is roughly the same as what we've experienced here." She paused. "There's one known environmental drawback, but I'd argue it doesn't remotely compare to being killed and devoured by carnivorous insects." She looked at General Dodonna pointedly.

The older man sighed. "What's the drawback?"

"It rains about eighty-five percent of the year," Leia said, attempting to maintain an even confidence. She knew it was a much larger drawback than she'd initially implied, but rain…they could figure out rain. The kouhun situation wasn't tenable.

The suggestion wasn't shot down immediately. It was agreed on by all that the scouting team prepping to travel on Indoumodo should instead begin preparations for Renatasia. Leia wondered how long scouting for locations usually took and the answer was disheartening: months was common, though Indoumodo had been decided on after only a week. She hoped they discovered what they needed to approve a move quickly, though everyone was obviously wary of repeating the mistake they'd just made.

Waiting to hear from the scouts was nerve-wracking, but Leia found she was able to find ways to keep busy and distracted on the outpost. In her discussions with the ranks about the kouhun and the dogs, other issues had been mentioned in passing that Leia felt she could take care of while they waited to find out more about their next move. They were seemingly small things — morning shifts being given to beings who were used to staying up all night when they could easily be swapped with beings who preferred waking early; the arrangement of tents was erratic at best and needed straightening out if they expected for the entire group to make a quick escape if they were invaded; the medical droids' bedside manner still needed to be recalibrated — but they were items that were important to the overall comfort of the rank and Leia was glad to focus on finally making a difference.

It took four days for her to realize that, in all the busyness she'd maintained since Col's death, her thoughts and memories hadn't been slippery once. Her mind had been consumed by getting their people somewhere safer, fixing things around the outpost, and making plans for the impending move once they were given the go-ahead; she simply hadn't been coaxed back into the past during her waking hours. Leia hoped her days of flashing back were over.

Accepting the spot in High Command, being presented to the rank as someone in a leadership role, it all felt like familiar territory for her. She'd been a leader on Alderaan, after all; she'd been a leader in the Senate. She knew the type of calm, cool, and in-control facade to adopt in order to keep those around her confident in her strength and willing to listen. It was akin to the mask she'd worn during the medal ceremony, but a little more aloof, a little less likely to laugh at winking ruffians.

It was fine — even helpful — for the mask to fall into place when she was speaking to the rank, handing out orders, or presenting to the others in High Command, but she didn't love when it settled over her being like a protective coating as she talked with her friends while sitting around the fire after dinner. It bothered her how easily she slipped into the persona, how quickly she could cut off any sort of depth in conversation. But the new mask seemed to keep a lot of the spiraling thoughts at bay — if the mask was in place and she remained busy, thoughts of torture and Vader and the endless guilt that had heaped itself on her shoulders after Alderaan's destruction rarely crossed her mind.

The response of the rank to her seemingly expedited promotion was mixed. Some seemed to think it an obvious choice, but plenty of others were suspicious when she still joined them for drills or chatted with the Rogues during dinner, as if her mere presence indicated they were going to be punished in some way. Leia didn't know how to convince them that the notion was ridiculous, that she was as close to being in the rank as she was in leadership. She was pretty sure if she tried to convince the skeptics of that, it would only make things worse.

The day the decision was made to move the entire outpost to Renatasia, Leia had to miss the morning drills, so she didn't see Luke or Wedge or Shara or any of the others she usually ran with . General Rieekan and General Dodonna called an emergency meeting to alert everyone to the move orders, so Leia went to track down the group she knew was likely still shooting targets in the clearing.

She heard Varner Coy, a member of the Blue Squadron who'd seemed more suspicious than most of Leia since the Command announcement, before she spotted any of them. "Miss High-and-Mighty too good for us now that she'd in Command?"

Luke, unsurprisingly, was the first to jump to her defense. "They've had a rough few days trying to figure out what to do since Col. I'm sure she's just busy."

"Shouldn't even be in Command. They only stuck her there 'cause of her parents."

"Leia served in the Senate same as her dad," Wedge argued. "Same as Mon Mothma, too."

"Just seems disingenuous, her spending all those drills with us and turning around and joining leadership. You think she was reporting back to them this whole time?"

"Reporting what, Coy? We're all on the same side." Leia heard the sound of blasters firing one at a time as five soldiers shot at targets.

Varner was quiet for a minute, but it seemed he couldn't help himself. When the blasterfire stopped, he started right back up. "You notice she never shoots with us? She runs with us for show and disappears any time we're doing something requiring actual skill. Probably never even held a blaster."

Leia cringed. She was, truthfully, overdue for her psych reevaluation, which remained the only reason she didn't carry a blaster. She knew she needed to do it, knew she needed to be able to carry a weapon and fly, especially if they were about to embark on a multi-day trip across the galaxy again, but she simply didn't want to revisit everything she knew she'd be expected to discuss. She didn't want to rehash Alderaan or the Death Star or be asked about how she was handling Col's tragically needless death, didn't want to risk her mind going slippery and spiraling again. And she'd been so busy; she hadn't been able to even think about scheduling the reeval.

"No one else in Command is even running basic drills with us," Luke said in her defense. "I'm sure they have other things they need to focus on. Leia at least tries."

"Yeah, but Rieekan and Dodonna are military men," Coy shot back. "Alls I'm sayin' is I'm not throwing myself in front of any blaster bolts for her if we get raided just because she's too scared to learn how to shoot."

"She can shoot. I've seen her," Luke countered, sounding so irritated, Leia wondered if this wasn't the first time they'd had the conversation.

"You're moony over her, Skywalker. Can't trust your opinion. If she can shoot so well, why doesn't she carry a weapon?"

Luke hesitated, and Leia held her breath. He didn't know why she didn't carry a blaster; she'd only ever told Han, and she was certain he hadn't spread the fact across the outpost. She'd considered telling him but with the reevaluation so close, she'd decided to just wait. She wondered what, if anything, Luke would come up with to explain her lack of a weapon when voluntarily running with a militia.

"She's Alderaanian," Luke reasoned. "They're pacifists."

Leia could practically hear Varner roll his eyes. "This is war, bantha brain. Celchu's Alderaanian and he carries. So does Rieekan. It's just the princess who needs a whole entourage to protect her."

"Watch yourself, Coy," Wedge warned.

"Anyone who can't protect themselves on base is deadweight. She's a liability. It isn't fair for any of us. Shouldn't be expected to cover her ass if she won't do it herself."

Leia grew tired of hearing Varner talk as if he knew the first thing about her. Expression stony, she strolled into plain sight, hand in her pocket. Varner Coy grimaced slightly before nodding at her in acknowledgement.

"This yours?" Leia asked, gesturing toward the blaster in his hand.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Anything wrong with it?"

He shook his head. "Perfectly fine. Hit four outta five bullseyes this morning."

"Excellent. May I?"

Coy hesitated for a moment before reluctantly handing the weapon over. Leia shifted the blaster from one hand to the other, testing the weight, before firing at each target as she walked down the line.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Bullseye. Bullseye. Bullseye. Bullseye.

"Four out of five?" Leia asked, looking at Coy. He nodded, eyes wide. She aimed at the final target in the line.

Five.

Bullseye.

Leia handed the blaster back to Coy and addressed the entire group. "General Rieekan and General Dodonna have called an emergency meeting. It starts in ten minutes. Everyone is expected to attend." She stalked off the scene before anyone had a chance to react.

A/N: I feel like this was sort of intense, but it accomplished what it needed to. Would love to hear y'all's thoughts.

I'm still trying to keep up my every-other-week cadence, so the next installment should be posted Friday, May 5, 2023. Thanks as always for reading!