Chapter 26: Collateral damage
It would be beautiful if it didn't feel disorienting.
A thousand shuttered pieces of transparisteel sparkling in the light, swirling in a head-spinning waltz around her. Reds, whites, golds, blues, ambers. They merge and split, and merge again, like tiny fragments in a holo-kaleidoscope.
It would be beautiful if she weren't trapped in the middle.
Yet here she is, and every change of a pattern seems to leave its mark: a scratch, or a faint burning sensation – not enough to truly hurt, yet enough to sting. Easy to forget how sharp those little things are, even if mesmerising.
Hazel-green-brown.
A desperate, angry young man facing Han, his words marred and distorted by darkness.
"Take off that mask, you don't need it!"
"What do you think you'll see, if I do?"
"The face of my son!"
"Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him!"
Ared blaze slices through Han, disbelief and anguish forever frozen in his eyes – hazel-green, always sparkling with mischief, she has never seen it so still.
"Thank you, father."
Brown, the same one she sees in the mirror. So foreign now. The pattern splinters and digs into an empty space between her lungs, where the heart is supposed to beat. It seems that shards, not oxygen, fill the air, and each new breath is tearing her apart from inside-out.
Brown-brown-red.
She's facing a young man, his eyes, once familiar, are hardened and distant. He's angry, desperate, throwing accusations at her like daggers, no matter what she says, no matter what she does, she cannot erase the look of betrayal from his face.
"You knew but never told me, mother."
There is fire shimmering deep in his brown gaze. Dark, dangerous, the one she's spent too much time running away from, only to push her son into the flame instead.
The pattern shatters, leaving in its wake a burning, scratching sensation in her throat from all the words left unsaid. Too little, too late, her ghosts, not his.
Blue-green-blue.
Luke teaching a lanky teenage boy how to wield a lightsaber, green and blue blades rhythmically clashing the air. Leia finds this mix of soft humming and brilliant light strangely comforting, almost meditative. He's so serious, so grown-up, so talented, her dear boy.
It's gone all too soon as well, before she can properly study this version him, soak in the warmth of motherly pride and , the pattern bursts, filling the air with countless new shards and a singular sensation of loss.
Hazel-green-brown.
A smiling toddler learning to walk on his unsteady, chubby legs, Han sweeping him off his feet, laughing, swirling him around.
The splinters mirror their movement in the head-spinning waltz, tearing the pattern apart with ease and grace, both equally merciless.
Brown-brown-gold.
A toddler reaching for her in a middle of the night. He's hiding his face in the crook of her neck, while Leia turns on the bedside lamp to fill the room with faint gold light, then chases his nightmares awaywith a familiar tune.
Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember…
When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember.
It's peaceful, soothing – just the two of them in a warm embrace, veiled by soft semi-darkness and the flickering gold light that reminds Leia of her favorite candlewick flowers in the royal garden.
Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers,
Those you loved are with you still—
She still feels a light tickling sensation from the toddler's soft breath at the point where her neck meets her shoulder, when the pattern bursts into dust, suddenly, irrevocably, without warning, just like Alderaan. No. No-no-no. Not again, not now.
Yet, try as she might, no matter how stubbornly she grasps at the air, shards digging into her palms, she fails to put the pieces back together. The cuts don't bother her - it's the marrow-deep hollowness somewhere in her chest that truly hurts.
A dozen different patterns follow. Reds, golds, blues, ambers. Gone. Gone. Gone.
It would be beautiful if it didn't feel so devastating.
Leia lurches upright in bed, hands frantically clutching at the sheets. Soft silk instead of sharp tranparisteel – it was just a dream. It takes longer than usual to calm her pounding heart: she's out of practice, a bit too slow with the switch, figuratively and literally - the bedside lamp turns on only on the third try. A neat raw of numbers on her chrono-alarm helpfully informs that she has three more hours before she's supposed to wake up. Yet getting up seems infinitely more tempting than going back to sleep. Definitely, the balcony is much more welcoming than her bed.
Leaning on the night-chilled rail, she stares out upon the endless nightscape of Hana city, still blissfully dark. Chandrila is not Coruscant, that much is certain: it basks in the night, adorned by scattered faraway stars. Coruscant is an endless galaxy of light, even at this hour, shining from trillions of windows, traffic lanes and advertising screens, brazen and unapologetic in their defiance of all rhythms of nature. She yearns for this buzz and glittering artificial lights now. Anything distracting would do, really. But Hana city is relatively quiet, almost eerily still, leaving Leia no choice but to stay alone with her thoughts.
It would be easy to claim ignorance and delude herself into believing that the dream means nothing. But, ever since her first nightmares came on one ordinary night a couple of years after Endor, they have burned themselves into her memory. One by one, night after night. So tonight... Ignorance is bliss, but it would be plain stupid. Leia may have many flaws, but stupidity isn't one of them.
As much as she doesn't trust the Force, she trusts Luke. She cannot pretend that her little brother didn't warn her.
Every choice we make, every single day, deprives us of a thousand others, so the future you saw may never come to pass.
Every choice she has made of late. Every single day. She doesn't regret it, yet… why didn't he warn that the phantom pain would hurt that kriffing much? How, in the name of Stars, can you miss something, someone you've never had? Leia doesn't know but feels hollow, somehow, so endlessly hollow, thinking of the boy with round checks and familiar brown eyes.
As the new day finally dawns in a haze of soft sunrise, painting the sky with pink, she returns inside, only to see her official Cabinet comlink already blinking with messages: reality, it seems, has no time for what-ifs and may-have-beens. Leia washes away the bittersweet taste of loss with a cap of strong caf and drowns the sound of her own thoughts in the noise of HoloNet News. Indeed, it's neither time, nor place to wax philosophical. She's got an entire unwitting New Republic to prepare for the invasion, whether it wants it or not.
Her days are blissfully predictable, packed with countless meetings, briefings, policy reviews - the office of the New Republic Councilor is more demanding that that of a Senator. She can control the political part of her life, though, and this simple fact makes daytime almost relaxing, all things considered.
Then, there is her net, the one Leia starts weaving, tentatively, carefully, in the best traditions of Alderaanian embroidery. Accidental meetings. Strategically planned appointments, preferably on a neutral ground or in a social setting. Lunches, tea-time, charity exhibitions that fill in her agenda from now on. Her delicate, impossibly detailed net of trade-offs and deals, leverage and quid-pro-quos, ambitions and egos to play on.
Winter – the only person who knows her schedule as well as Leia does, given her new title as the Chief of Staff to the Councilor – raises her eyebrows at Leia's newly developed tolerance for all people she previously swore off. Nothing gets past her, it seems. Small mercy that Winter was still away on a mission during the peace talks, Stars only know how difficult it would've been to sneak out to plot with Thrawn, had her childhood companion been in the palace.
"Wonders would never cease. Last time I asked you to speak to the heads of the banking clans, you said…"
"That as long as they support slavery, refugee labor rights violations and keep hiking interest rates in the Outer rim, I would prefer not talking to them."
"I think it sounded more like you'd rather kiss a Hutt than talk to those smug, lying, slimy, kriffing… ."
"Don't you ever get tired of remembering every single thing?"
Winter's infallible memory could be a nuisance at times, invaluable to the Alliance Intelligence, of course, but still a nuisance.
"I do, but as long as it allows me to tease you, I think it's a fair deal. But back to my question."
"And here I thought you'd be proud of me, finally taking your advice, after all those years."
For a simple truth is - out of the two of them, it is Winter who would've been better fit for a role of a princess and a politician: calm, meticulous, graceful and composed ever since their childhood.
"Hmmm…" Winter's expression is sceptical.
Mind working in overdrive, she comes up with a half-truth - usually those are most believable.
"I need a distraction, and work helps, doesn't leave me time to think of anything… anyone else."
Leia only hopes that Winter will connect the dots in the way she wants her too. Winter controls her agenda, so she knows that she hasn't seen Han in a while, it wouldn't take a genius to put two and two together.
"I'm sorry it didn't work out… Let me know if you want to talk about it."
Leia gratefully smiles and nods, even if a small voice of conscience is whispering that lying to her dearest friend is wrong. Yet the voice is soon replaced by a clock that is ticking somewhere deep inside her mind, counting down months and days until the inevitable.
New funding - six months at best to get it through the cabinet and the Senate.
Four months before first new ships will be ready, eight more to get to the levels they need.
And one small problem – she cannot overrule the Chancellor.
"Let me know if I can do anything to help, Leia."
"I will."
Still, in the evening, when all is said and done, uninvited echoes of her dreams creep up again. What an irony: just when she actually does need her overprotective little brother, he's nowhere to be found. Leia lets out a little puff of air and sinks on a sofa. She got used to having Luke at her side on Chimaera and Coruscant, but here she is, stuck on Chandrila, while her brother is roaming the galaxy somewhere. She isn't jealous, wouldn't trade her battlefront for his, just misses him. Pure and simple.
There is one more option, of course: a small, seemingly outdated Naboo comlink hidden in the folds of her dress. Not that she can explain her dreams to anyone but Luke, yet… She isn't looking for answers, not anymore. Just comfort would do. She wants to hear Thrawn's deep and measured voice, needs to chase away the echoes with something real. Before she can change her mind, Leia succumbs to an impulse and makes a call.
"I'm still amazed that this little thing works at long distance, just checking the connection."
She hopes it comes out as nonchalant as possible.
"Pleased to see such commendable scientific vigour." Yes, it does work, his voice is as clear as if they were in the room together. "Good evening to you too, Leia."
It's the last part, seemingly trivial but somehow unexpectedly intimate all the same, that soothes the tension in her shoulders and eases the knot of anxiety somewhere deep inside.
"I've always said that the true method of knowledge is experiment."
"Somehow, I believe you have, indeed," his voice is a just the slightest bit teasing, a small change to his usual calm or wry cadence. "Would you prefer to book all my evenings in advance, in the spirit of science?"
"Presume I already have. Why ruin a good tradition?"
"As a strong believer in the value of traditions, I concur."
Five minutes in, he sees, or rather, hears through her tone, through her perfunctory retelling of latest moves in the Senate, too immaterial and too impersonal to be worth painting in painstaking detail. He hears through it, even before she can find a way to put into words a pressing phantom pain deep in her chest.
"Something's bothering you?"
"You want the list in alphabetical order, or chronological?"
"Perhaps, it would be wise to start with the most challenging one, in your case. We can, of course, debate the definition of challenging if that's what you'd prefer."
He predicts her next manoeuvre as well, because yes, that's exactly what she was going to do. Well, no hiding now. Thrawn has an uncanny ability to see right through her.
Leia leans her head on the back of the sofa and closes her eyes to summon the image of the small boy with round cheeks and soft brown eyes, then the desperate young man, torn, conflicted and distant, so endlessly distant.
"What do you think of collateral damage?"
"As all facts of war, it is a possibility, an unfortunate one, I admit. I do not spend my people, or civilians recklessly. Nor do I take their deaths lightly. However, there are times and circumstances when it is inevitable, and in this case, the best course of action is to keep it to a necessary limit..." he pauses his impromptu lecture, whether he intends it or not, it does sound like one. Leia blames it on her choice of words – the term too close to military strategy to evoke anything personal. Possibly, a fortunate mistake on her part, she can still hide the real reason for her distress.
"There is, of course, a matter of differentiating between collateral damage and one's regrets about it. The two tend to be intertwined more often than not. Beneath every regret lurks the thought and fear that there was something else that could have been done. Some action, or inaction, that would have changed things for the better." This does sound personal, tastes of personal experience too, a bit bitter on the edges. "To move on, sometimes one needs to set regrets aside the best one can. Knowing full well that they will never be far away."
They had a similar conversation, back when Kashyyyk was at stake, he seemed to read her then. Only now she feels entitled to venture deeper, to match her unnamed pain with his.
"Do you have regrets?"
"Every victory has a price." He pauses, then adds, tone weary, quiet and earnest. "More than I would care to acknowledge."
They fall into a comfortable silence, until his voice, uncharacteristically soft and soothing, breaks the spell.
"A year and a half, it's a required limit, Leia."
As if he's trying to ease her conscience as well as her mind. Even if his guess is wrong, actually, no, because his guess is wrong, Leia feels a sting of conscience for the second time today - the worlds will be lost to the inferno, and here she is, chasing phantoms.
"I'm being maudlin for no reason, forget it. The sky is always darkest just before..."
"…it goes completely black," he chuckles, and here it is again – a new texture to his voice that she hasn't heard before, "as one if my instructors at the academy used to say."
"Never thought instructors at the Imperial Academy had a sense of humour."
"They didn't."
"One insufferable man once told me that information doesn't equal knowledge."
She wonders if he'll take a hint.
"They didn't but the ones on Naporar did." He does, even if sounds hesitant, as if not used to sharing this part of his life. "TheTaharim Academy, Naporar, one of the planets in the Chiss Ascendancy."
And that's how, while one pattern has shuttered completely, a new one keeps growing from the ashes. Leia finds herself fascinated by a picture that is shaping up in front of her eyes: bit by bit, she gets the new pieces of a puzzle to put together. She loses the track of time as they keep talking - small things, trifles, memories, snippets. Important for no other reason than being personal.
Over the next two months, her plan is set in motion: she gets personal support from key Senators, strikes deals, trades favors, her network is much wider now, not as wide as she would like or need, but she has a quite few strings to pull when the time comes. Amazing what stifling your own pride and principles - for the sake of greater good - can do. In another life, Leia would've scoffed at the notion.
Yet, her profile is rising, sitting on the right hand of the chancellor in the Senate and helping her chair key committees would do that to any politician, let alone the one who is already quite a household name in the New Republic, ever since the Rebellion, the destruction of Alderaan and the Peace talks.
And then… she forgets that a chance and the right time to seize it are two completely different things. It comes to a halt a month later, during the Cabinet Budget meeting, when Akbar broaches the subject of investing in expanding the Mon Calamari Shipyards.
"It will, unfortunately, have the optics of being self-serving," Mon heaves a sigh and hurries to add, "I know that there is no truth to that, Admiral Ackbar, but I doubt it will pass in the Senate."
"I could sponsor the proposal, just to manage the optics." Leia volunteers. Too early in her own estimation, but she sees a chance and jumps to take it.
"You would know, Leia, that submitting this motion so soon after proclaiming your complete trust in Supreme Commander Thrawn's commitment to peace will come across as a contradiction in terms. Unless, of course, you want to raise an alarm?"
Leia knows a trap once she sees it, worse yet – this one is of her own making. She doesn't have a leg to stand on, not after all of her press-conferences. Mon is the only one who can credibly submit the proposal.
"No, I believe we can trust that the peace deal will be respected."
"Then, you have no argument to make."
"Constant vigilance?" Ackbar offers.
"Checks and balances?" Leia's gasping at the straws, but she'd be damned if she gives up so easily. "Ensuring the New Republic can defend itself in case the need arises. Space pirates, crime syndicates, rogue moffs like Tolruck."
"All of the above can be dealt with by our current forces, which, may I remind you, remain frozen at post-war levels, given the Empire opted not follow our disarmament proposal."
"We lost quite a lot of ships during the war, though, given that we actually lost it."
Leia fights the urge to wince, cataloguing reactions of all those gathered at the Cabinet table: brilliant military commander though he is, Ackbar is not a politician – the last thing the Cabinet needs is being reminded of the defeat, so far, the New Republic has revelled in the opportunity to save face so graciously offered by Thrawn's suggestion of peace.
Mon, it seems, also senses the tension in the room, so she clears her throat and continues in a consolatory tone.
"War is not a state of being. It is meant to be a temporary chaos between periods of peace. Democracy is not in need of defence. People are. And it's why we kept our military at the post-war level. However, given your concerns about non-state threats, we'll suggest increasing the central shipbuilding budget by twenty percent. A peacekeeping force. The rest of our efforts will go toward training the militaries of other worlds."
Mon is giving them a bone, pity that they need much more than that.
Ackbar scoffs, all too aware that the effort of delegating any training to other worlds will be unreliable at best, futile at worst, due to corruption and lack of coordination.
"It may be argued, though, that in this time of upheaval, the galaxy will need law and order, and should we fail to offer it... It is that vulnerability that caused the rise of the Empire in the first place."
"It is the constant fear that caused the rise of the Empire, as well as the fractional interests of the military sector. I am surprised to see you, Leia, of all people, have forgotten it so easily."
It's a master strike and a low blow, actually, it's both, and that's why it hurts so much. Leia blinks, for once unable to formulate a response. Mon has just disarmed her, figuratively of course, by striking at the core of her identity – Alderaan. Leia bites the inside of her check in frustration. She lost this round, three months in, and she lost it. Only three left to sort out the funding.
"Thirty percent of the New Republic worlds have more than half of population living below the poverty line," Mon continues, "peaceful retooling will bring back the industry and jobs and should be the first priority for this government and this budget, if we are to take seriously our commitment to welfare of sentients in our care."
Leia cannot argue with that, not in good conscience. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
When she opens the HoloNet next morning, she curses at the headlines and her own short-sightedness.
Disagreements in the cabinet.
Military Lobby buying influence.
The Chancellor as the voice of reason.
Such a dilettante mistake, she has forgotten that Mon has a twenty-year head-start. When they meet for the next Cabinet meeting, Ackbar is apologetic, but Leia just shrugs it off.
"Freedom of information. We should always tell the press freely and frankly anything that they could easily find out some other way."
Yet, in the back of her mind, the clock is ticking. Three months left for the first phase of her plan, and she has no more room for mistakes. Time slipping through her fingers like water. She feels the weight of every single day on her shoulders every time she gets updates from Ar'alani, Eli Vanto or Thrawn through their secret channel.
The clock is ticking, and a scratching sensation of fear is growing deep inside: she hasn't heard from Luke longer than usual. Her evening calls with Thrawn grant a small respite - time seems to still for a bit, allowing her to sink into the sofa and simply breathe.
After a yet another sleepless night, too many caps of caf and too many meetings, even Winter suggests her to take a break. Leia laughs it off, at first, but then concurs. She needs a break and a refuge. Their refuge. Even if the clock is ticking.
Author's note
Guilty as charged, I love the politics of Star Wars just as much (tsss, possibly even more) as the Force and actual space battles. Just to reinforce – we love and stan Mon in this bar, she does what she thinks is best, based on her experience and info at hand. I'm trying to follow some of her key quotes from the New Canon regarding demilitarisation, so let's blame Disney for any inconsistencies ;) PS. Yes, we are saying goodbye to Ben Solo, wishing him all the best in some other universe, with all due respect, he has the New Canon all to himself, I'm just playing in my small sandbox.