Alderaan dies in an instant.
For a brief moment in time, the sliver between one breath and the next-
A girl laughs, eyes sparking with joy.
A woman looks to the sky, thinking that's no moon, and realizes it's already too late. Her husband takes her hand and whispers reassuring things in her ear.
Cool water shimmers in the cracks and crevices of a very small, wondering hand. It shines.
Leia Organa's breath catches in her throat. Strong arms hold her back, and for once in her life she knows what it's like to be tragically useless. She bares her teeth and tenses, a whipcrack given form, a snarling mutt of a girl, a bitch standing over her starved dead young.
Her father tastes the flames of Mustafar, sizzling plasma and burned flesh and You were my brother Anakin and he revels in it. This is the taste of war. He knows no other. Everything is flames and fire and that is the way of things.
The small hand explores the feel of a droplet of that water, watching as it pools to the very tip of a finger and seems to hesitate. Wind brushes against a cheek.
My girl is on that ship, a queen thinks, kneeling beside her husband. The eyes of sixteen polished Imperial blasters stare blankly at her back. My daughter is there, and if Lord Vader is who I think he is-
Hope flutters in her chest.
Her husband thinks something very similar, and he shivers. He was there in the thick of the Clone Wars, and he saw the terrifying world-crushing power of the Jedi; he saw the destruction that Anakin Skywalker left behind. And he thinks: The floor is very hard. I am getting tired of kneeling. Skywalker was never the patient sort, and if I know him, this will all go very quickly.
He tries not to think of what might happen if Vader looks closely at his daughter. If his Force powers reveal to him his own flesh and blood, trapped and dressed in binders on that towering monolith in the sky. The Empire has all of the power of that battle station and ten thousand more besides in star destroyers sprawled across the galaxy, frothing at the mouth with troopers. And still none of it, none of it compares to what one Jedi could do with the Force.
He prays it will go quickly for her.
I love you, he tells his wife, without saying it, and she knows-
I love you, a mother says to her daughter, a father to a son, one stranger to another, and the next moment hangs suspended in midair.
A child watches in wonder as a droplet shivers, and falls.
You may fire when ready.
"No!"
-A cry, torn red and raw from Leia's throat-
Darth Vader remembers: Where is Padme? Is she safe? Is she alright? as if it's something from a dream.
Somewhere far away, Sidious' lips twitch up into something resembling a smile.
Alderaan disappears in a puff of smoke.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way-
Well, you know how it goes.
Somewhere far away, Ben Kenobi feels it in the Force, and he is shaken.
His bright-eyed young apprentice is thrumming with the spirit of adventure, practically bouncing with it as he stares into the vast expanse of stars scattered through the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon. His grief for his aunt and uncle is, for the moment, buried beneath a yawning pit of anticipation. He is a farm boy thrown headlong into adventure, savoring the taste of it on his lips and smiling.
When Ben was once Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was taught again and again: anticipation is distraction. A true Jedi didn't anticipate, they knew, because they allowed the Force to tell them so.
(Anakin had never mastered the art. While Ben would never know what exactly had driven him over the edge, he could bet that was part of it.)
When Luke turns to him, in some small part sensing his distress, and asks what's wrong, Ben tells him the truth. Because, Ben thinks, he has unwittingly thrown this boy into a war against the Empire, and he should know what he's up against. He should know the evil that he is about to face.
Ben says, "It was as if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."
Somewhere far away, tears fall down Leia's face. She hears that utter, horrible silence and can say nothing, know nothing but terror. She is alone, she realizes. Her people are gone. She may follow them soon into that great unanswered question called death.
Luke turns towards Obi-Wan, his anticipation waning. Before now, the whole thing - rescuing the Princess, going on an adventure - had felt like a great game, something that could distract him from the great pit of sadness that had opened up in him after the destruction of his family and his home. But now, as he hears a million voices cried out in terror all that he can think about is the way his aunt and uncle must have felt watching the blasters leveled at their chests, counting their final breaths. Were they afraid? he wonders. Did they cry out against the Empire, too?
In the next second, Luke realizes that he himself may be hurtling towards his own deathly silence, heading into the heart of the Empire. An Empire that could kill millions in the blink of an eye and create such terror as to bring the great Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi to his knees.
He turns to his new Master, and for the first time feels fear.
"I fear something terrible has happened," Obi-Wan says, and silence radiates throughout the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.