All the sadness in this one, sorry. So much so that I had to throw in a (kind of?) happy extra scene to end the chapter. I hope it makes you feel just a little bit better.

Chapter 43: Only Hope

The Millennium Falcon might have been fast, Luke granted, but it wasn't fast enough. He wasn't sure how much longer he could sit in streaking hyperspace, listening to Han and Leia argue. A headache was brewing, encasing his skull. He couldn't find any peace in the Force.

"It's a fair move!" Leia cried. "What are you yelling about it for?"

Chewbacca, at the other end of the dejarik board, simply threw his head back and roared louder. Han, lounging in the pilot's seat, gave a word of advice.

"I wouldn't provoke him, sweetheart."

"I'm not provoking him," Leia countered. "I'm playing the game."

Han shook his head with a smile.

"This ain't like playing with your school friends. A human don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that."

Leia narrowed her eyes at the Wookiee, probing in the Force.

"You wouldn't," she declared eventually.

She moved her next piece, Han watching on with keen interest.

"What'd you make such a crappy move for, then?" he asked.

Leia scowled.

"It's not a crappy move."

"It is."

Chewie seized Leia's piece gleefully, underlining Han's point.

"I scared ya," Han smirked. "Didn't I?"

"You wish, nerfherder."

Luke did not engage in the back and forth. He barely heard it. He couldn't kick the feeling that there was something wrong in the galaxy today.

The Devastator knew the trick. It materialised from hyperspace behind them in all its enormity and Ahsoka felt the coldness of the Sith apprentice deep in her own gut. A boarding craft detached and began its pursuit. There was another barrage of cannon fire. They could not outrun them in this wounded ship. She'd messed up. Badly. And she'd brought the Princess of Alderaan along with her.

One breath. One heaving, steadying breath. There was no time for anything else.

"You get into that escape pod, Ariarne," she decided. "We wait until they board. We let them know that I have the plans. We have all their focus and all their energy on me. And then I will release the pods and they won't go after you."

The princess looked at her in horror.

"That's a terrible plan, Ahsoka. You die with the plans that the other rebels died for. And that's not to say some gunner on the Devastator doesn't shoot my pod down anyway."

It was true. It was a terrible plan. Ahsoka was gripped by the horror of being, after all these years, after all these great escapes, out of ideas.

"Alright," she breathed, steadying herself. "I need to think, Ariarne. I need to meditate."

There was so little time. Ahsoka had meditated all her life, had always found some way in the Force. Had survived a hundred disasters that should have killed her. Surely, she told herself, even in these brief moments, the path forward would become clear. Surely, she could manage one more miracle.

"We could put the plans in an empty pod," Ariarne proposed. "They mightn't shoot it down. The lifeform scanners will read negative."

Ahsoka stared at the teenager as though seeing her for the first time. The stowaway princess did not reproach her poor etiquette.

"We release them early, before they board, so they think it's a decoy to discourage them from boarding."

"Yeah," Ahsoka murmured. "Yeah, okay. That's not a terrible idea."

Ariarne shrugged.

"I mean, I don't know how we're going to get the plans back once they land on…"

She squinted through the viewport.

"What planet is that?"

"Tatooine," Ahsoka answered. "I know someone there who can pick them up."

"And as for both of us not dying…" Ariarne ventured.

"I'll fight," Ahsoka resolved.

The teenager looked at her with scepticism.

"Do you know how many soldiers are aboard an ISD?"

"Most of them are useless in combat," Ahsoka consoled her, or perhaps tried to console herself.

"But one of them is the Emperor's apprentice," Ariarne pointed out.

Ahsoka sighed.

"I have to try."

"But why wouldn't they take us as prisoners?" Ariarne suggested. "We both have information. The location of the base. The location of Jedi survivors. And if we could convince them that we've transmitted the plans somewhere else and only we know where…"

Ahsoka shook her head, stricken.

"The Empire is not kind to its prisoners, Ariarne."

"But it gives us time!" she pressed. "To escape. To survive."

Ahsoka looked at her and it broke her heart. There were things in this galaxy so much worse than death. The princess did not know what she was suggesting. And yet…

"I'm so sorry, Ariarne," she murmured.

Ariarne frowned.

"Sorry for what?"

The plan wasn't good. But it was the best chance they had.

"That I have nothing better to offer you," Ahsoka sighed, handing over the data chip of precious plans. "Alright. Get this into an escape pod."

The teenager hurried to comply while Ahsoka turned to the control panel. There were many warning lights flashing now but the comms, thank the stars, still worked. She smashed in a contact code she had not used in years but would never forget.

"Anakin. Hi. It's me."

The response was immediate, Anakin's voice taut with stress.

"Ahsoka! Do you know where my kriffing kids-"

"Anakin, I have no time," Ahsoka interrupted firmly. "I'm sending you a data chip in an empty escape pod. It's the most important data chip in the kriffing galaxy. I'll try to direct it to your corner of the sandball but it might take a bit of dune-combing."

There was nothing now but shocked, crackling silence.

"Please do this for me," Ahsoka urged. "I'm so sorry. But I need you. You're our only hope."

"Ahsoka, what-"

"I've got no time, Anakin," she repeated.

The boarding craft loomed ever-closer.

"You're my hero. You always have been. Please do this for me."

"Ahsoka-"

The clunking of the Imperial craft making contact.

"Goodbye, Anakin. Release the escape pods, Ariarne, now."

She plunged her lightsaber into the comms panel and stood tall, waiting. The creak and hiss of their door giving way. The marching of stormtroopers. And the elegant, near-silent glide of the Sith apprentice, coming to end them.

Trilla stalked onto the rebel ship a half-step ahead of the Grand Moff Tarkin, a hand upon her 'saber hilt. She beheld Ahsoka Tano, grown to adulthood, standing in front of the Princess of Alderaan. Her lips curved into a slow smile. Tano would be a formidable opponent in the Force but the princess would be easy. She would give them everything they needed to know. If Tano had been smart – if Tano had been a Sith, unencumbered by compassion – she would have killed the princess herself before their capture and eliminated the risk. But she'd not had the strength to do it. Perhaps Tarkin's plan was not so foolish after all.

"We will take them alive," Tarkin commanded.

The stormtroopers filed out from behind them, blasters in hand. Trilla eyed Ahsoka in warning.

"Fight back and I cannot promise that the young princess will not sustain collateral damage."

The stormtroopers were bad enough shots, certainly. Tano heeded the warning, chin high, and relinquished her grip upon her own lightsaber hilts at her belt.

"You are too late," she told them. "The plans have been transmitted far beyond your reach."

Trilla inspected the comms, damaged beyond interrogation. There was no way to prove the claim, nor to trace any transmissions.

"We will search and interview you both," Tarkin informed his prisoners. "I trust the location of the plans will be revealed in time."

Interview. An appalling understatement of what awaited them. But the princess would comply quickly, Trilla told herself. The process would be brief and then proceed to a simple execution.

"Come along, then, esteemed guests."

Trilla turned her back upon the marching soldiers at they returned to their boarding craft. Gazed at the planet Tatooine beyond the viewport. Why had Tano come here? She reached for her comms.

"Lieutenant Corr, those escape pods ejected from Tantive IV were destroyed?"

"Negative, my Lord. They contained no lifeforms. Futile decoys, I presume."

"You presume?" Trilla seethed. "Send a party to Tatooine. Those escape pods and any material inside them are to be destroyed."

"Yes, my Lord."

"You are to stay aboard the Devastator, Lieutenant Corr. We will discuss the recurrent failures of your decision-making."

She would, finally, rid herself of the useless gunner leader. Corr's voice quavered over the return comms. He knew.

"Yes, my Lord."

Trilla followed Tano and her princess onto the boarding craft. The business on Scarif had been messy. But matters were near tidied up now. A dispatch to Tatooine, a flight to Alderaan, a few brief interviews aboard the Death Star…

"I trust you can handle our trembling young princess?" Trilla asked, of Tarkin. "I will interview our lost Jedi."

"It will be a pleasure," Tarkin agreed. "The princess and I will reach an agreement, hmm?"

The young woman's eyes were downcast. She was dwarfed by the stormtroopers on either side of her. How old was the Princess of Alderaan? She had completed her Day of Demand, Trilla recalled. But hardly grown to adulthood. No older than Trilla had been, when she had…

"Very well," Trilla snapped. "I will be most disappointed should I have to intervene."

"You will not, Darth Gelid."

Trilla gave a sharp nod. The boarding craft docked upon the Devastator and she stalked off to find Lieutenant Corr, leaving her former classmate and the too-familiar princess behind.

Ruma's stolen Imperial freighter limped all the way back to Yavin 4. It was his greatest escape. An outrageous, miraculous escape. But Korkie could not muster any relief. His body ached and his heart was grieving. The Battle of Scarif had been as costly as the dissenters amongst the Alliance Council had warned. Mando'ade had died on foreign soil in the battle he had insisted they fight before returning to their homeland. The Profundity had been lost with all of its crew. The plans had supposedly escaped with the Tantive IV, but Korkie had tried a hundred kriffing times and he could not reach Ahsoka. By scarce survivor reports, the Tantive IV had been in a bad way when it had made its jump to hyperspace. There was every chance that it had been apprehended too. He didn't know what he was supposed to tell Bail and Breha.

Korkie turned his comms over in his hands. It buzzed again. Not Ahsoka. Never Ahsoka. He panned through the call log. About a million missed calls from Anakin. He frowned. Anakin never called him.

He closed his eyes, summoned the strength, and called back. Anakin's voice came in a terse stream of anxiety.

"Korkie, what in the hells is going on?"

Korkie had no answer to that question and Anakin, thankfully, did not seem to be interested in waiting for one.

"My kids are missing," he listed, "and I got some call from Ahsoka that sounds like the galaxy is imploding-"

"Ahsoka?" Korkie repeated, sitting bolt upright. "When? What did she say?"

"A few hours ago. She's sending me a data chip."

Korkie groaned with relief.

"Oh, thank the stars. Thank the kriffing stars. You have to find it, Anakin. You'll find it?"

"Well, maybe, I guess. Except that my kids are kriffing missing. Where the kriff are my kids?"

Korkie rubbed a hand over his weary eyes. The kids were missing. Of course, the kriffing kids were missing. He stifled a groan.

"I don't know where your kids are, Anakin."

"They're not with you?" Anakin pressed. "You haven't seen them?"

"No," Korkie repeated. "I haven't seen them."

Anakin pushed on with his stubborn disbelief.

"They must be coming to you, there's no other place they'd run away to. Can you find them?"

"Do you have any kriffing idea of the state of the Alliance right now?" Korkie demanded, his anger breaking free of his restraints.

He sighed, answered his own question. Korkie's world might have been falling to pieces all around him but Anakin lived in a very different corner of the galaxy.

"You have no idea of the state of the Alliance right now," he corrected himself. "You have no idea what's happened."

"What's happened?"

"The Empire has built a planet-destroyer, Anakin, for which we have stolen the plans at great sentient cost. The plans went missing along with Ahsoka and the Princess of Alderaan and I think she's sent them to you."

"Ahsoka's missing?"

"It's a kriffing disaster, Anakin. A complete kriffing disaster. Please find those plans."

Korkie's voice broke over his plea.

"Please. We gave everything to get them."

"But my kids, Korkie-"

"They'll be fine," Korkie snapped. "Or they won't, I guess. But we don't know where they are and we're a bit too stretched to go out and find them right now."

Anakin's horrified disbelief was tangible, all those parsecs away.

"You've turned into your kriffing dad, Korkie. Mission first and family second," he reproached him. "We need to find them. Please. You love them."

Korkie heaved a sigh. He had perhaps never fully understood his father until this moment.

"I love your kids and I love Ahsoka and I love Ariarne and everyone's kriffing missing at the moment, Anakin, in case you didn't hear me correctly, and the best I can do is to start with rescuing the ones that I have good reason to suspect are in Imperial captivity."

The grim logic seemed to ground Anakin.

"Yeah. Okay. Right."

"You need to find those kriffing plans, please. Find the plans, bring them to Yavin 4, and then we can find the kids together. I'm sure they're fine. They've been scheming to escape Tatooine for years. I'm sure they've got a good plan in place."

"You can't just say-"

"You've given everything for them, Anakin, for all these years, and nothing to anyone else. If you could give us this one thing-"

"Fine!" Anakin interrupted. "Fine. Okay. I'm packing some water and I'm going. But not because you asked nicely. For Ahsoka."

Korkie closed his eyes and let himself feel a wave of relief. One win. One small win. Not all was lost, then. It was not all entirely hopeless.

"I'll take any reason, Anakin," he sighed. "Thank you. Once you've got the plans and I've got Ahsoka and Ariarne back, we'll go wrangle the strays together. I promise."

"Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the stolen plans or the Rebel base…"

Reluctant. It had taken more than reluctance to survive that. To hold her tongue. It had taken everything. Ariarne swayed faintly where she stood. Tarkin's voice had a strange, echoing quality to it, as though he spoke to her from another star-system.

The Empire is not kind to its prisoners, Ariarne.

Ariarne had known that, of course, in her rational mind. She had read of torture. Crimes against prisoners. It had been a sobering study in legislation. But in her blessed life as the Princess of Alderaan, Ariarne had never truly known pain. Not like that. Had been unable to even conceptualise it. The droid had retreated now, at its master's silent bidding, but still her body quavered. It seemed some small miracle her legs had not again given way, as she stood beside her captor. They had re-dressed her – had to re-dress her, to hide what they had done, perhaps, from their own eyes – in a gown of draping white. She could not help but feel she'd been decorated as the sacrificial centrepiece in some sick ceremony.

"I have chosen to test this station's destructive power on your home planet of Alderaan."

It was a nightmare. All of this was some bizarre nightmare. Ever since she had stowed away on the Tantive IV, this ceaseless spiral of disasters could be nothing but a nightmare.

And yet, it truly was Alderaan before them. Ariarne would recognise her homeworld as long as she had eyes with which to see. There was a globe of the planet sitting in her bedroom at this very moment. The ridges of the mountains upon which she had run her fingers. She could see them now. The ring of snow-capped peaks that surrounded the city of Aldera. The lake so vast one could see it from space. Her home. She beheld that strange miracle of day and night and the slow turn of the planet before them. It would be dusk in Aldera. The sun flaring, then dying, over the jagged line of the mountains.

Her parents would be at home. Waiting for her.

Ariarne tried to speak but her voice strangled in her throat.

"Well?" Tarkin pressed.

Did he mean to destroy Aldera, as he had destroyed Jedha? What had Jyn meant, exactly, when she had called it a planet-killer? It surely was not capable of destroying whole planets. Nothing could be capable of that. But even Aldera alone housed millions. And her parents…

"We have no weapons," Ariarne pleaded, finding some voice that rang distant from her own, foreign in her chest. "This is senseless. Please."

"You would prefer another target?" Tarkin prompted. "A military target? Then name the system!"

Yavin. Yavin 4. But she could not say it. For her family lived on Alderaan but they lived on Yavin 4 too. She hoped, at least, that they still lived. She thought of Korkie and long-spent tears pressed at her eyes again.

"I grow tired of asking this so it will be the last time: where is the rebel base?"

The Force is with you, Ariarne.

She willed the image of Ahsoka into her mind. The feeling of her hands in hers, in the moments before the Tantive IV had been boarded. Ariarne had felt the sneering of the Imperial soldiers, when they realised they had captured an idiot teenager alongside the respected Jedi. This one will crack, their eyes had said. But Ahsoka had told her that they could not defeat her, that the Force was with her, that she was stronger than them all.

She looked Tarkin in his empty grey eyes and she knew. The tears were spilling again and she was not fearsome or powerful but the Force was with her.

"You would destroy Alderaan even if I told you," she choked out, in ragged accusation.

He looked at her with disgust and reproach and anger. She had failed him. She was the idiot teenager but she had seen through his games and she had not cracked.

"Very well," Tarkin seethed, and turned to an attending officer. "We will go ahead with the operation as planned. Prepare to fire upon Alderaan."

She had not cracked but she was broken. Ariarne collapsed to her knees before the viewport, face in her hands. Her mother and father would be having their cup of tea upon the balcony.

Would they see this terrible weapon above them? Would they know? Would they know that their end was near, that their daughter had failed them, that she had been unable to articulate her terrible premonition and had abandoned them?

Her body racked with sobs. She was a coward, she knew. Face buried in her hands.

When she finally found the courage to lift her chin, her planet was not there anymore.

It happened so fast and yet so slowly. The looming of the mechanical moon upon the dusky horizon. Like a figment of some bizarre imagination, blurred by the waning pinks and blues. The clamour from inside the palace – to evacuate or not to evacuate, an empty threat or an act of war.

Bail watched it and understood. Understood why his daughter had run away, the terrible feeling eating away at her that she had been unable to name. And he was so, so grateful that Ariarne had not come home with him as he had asked her.

"Bail, we must leave."

Breha's voice was ragged, her tea abandoned on the edge of the balcony where they had once stood with their infant daughter, welcoming her to the beautiful planet they called their home. They had named all the mountains for her, then the lakes, and then the constellations, as the snow fell in silence around them.

"We cannot, my love."

There would be snow on the mountain-tops tonight but the air in the valley was still soft upon their skin. Bail had planned to stay outside, upon the balcony, until the sun had fallen all the way beyond the horizon and the stars had emerged.

"Ariarne is safe," he told Breha.

Bail did not know where Ariarne was. But it must have been somewhere better than here. He prayed, to gods he did not believe in, that she was safe. He enveloped his wife in his arms and felt the first prick of tears at his eyes.

"I have been undeservedly blessed to have loved you," he told her.

Breha buried her face in his shoulder, grasped him tight. A breath hitched.

"Bail-"

"Don't be afraid, my love."

He trembled as he said it. Repeated the mantra, silently, to himself. What had Korkie told him, after the death of Mace Windu, when he had brought them their winter baby?

There is always life in the Force.

He placed a kiss upon Breha's head and stayed there, close, breathing in the scent of her. He thought of his daughter who had never truly known war. Who had never truly known grief.

There is always life in the Force.

Wherever there was life, he would love them.

Han jolted the Falcon out of the path of a hurtling asteroid.

"We've come out of hyperspace in a meteor shower, some kind of asteroid collision," he muttered. "It's not in the charts."

"Then what good are the charts?" lamented Chewie.

"We're in the correct position," Han insisted. "But… no Alderaan."

Leia entered the cockpit with a bark of laughter.

"Nice one, Solo. You've taken us to the wrong kriffing coordinates."

Han looked from the navi-guide to the asteroid field in which he had landed – with a conspicuous absence of the planet Alderaan – and back again. Checked a third time for good measure.

"I took you to the right place," he repeated. "I'm telling you. It's not there."

"What do you think, Chewie?" Leia demanded.

Chewbacca replied in Han's defence – there had been no error in the calculations. But he sounded just as unsettled as Han. A planet couldn't just disappear. The Empire would have liked Alderaan to disappear, sure. But it would have taken a thousand ships with more firepower than-

"Sounds like you won't be getting that second instalment of your pay after all," Leia sighed.

"Now, hang on a minute, that's not fair-"

"We asked to go to Alderaan!"

"Something's wrong," Han declared. "I don't like this. I don't know what's happened but-"

"What's happened, my fine pilot, is that you have gotten us lost in the middle of an ast-"

"Shut up, both of you."

Han had almost forgotten their second passenger was aboard, Leia and her big mouth having occupied most of his attention.

"Do you think the kriffing planet might come out of hiding if we're quiet?" Han asked.

But the young man's face was terribly pale. Luke ignored the jibe and looked at his sister with earnest eyes.

"Can't you feel it?" he asked. "Something terrible has happened."

And Leia, who had impressed Han as the sort of person not to tolerate any sort of bantha-shit, fell quiet and pensive.

"What are you talking about, kid?"

Neither of them answered.

"It's like millions of people… millions of voices…"

Luke pushed his hair from his eyes, dazed.

"They were scared. Terrified. And now…"

"…they're gone," Leia finished.

Han looked at his passengers with vague horror. He thought he'd picked up a pair of young idiots. Not crazies.

"What sort of mystical crap is this?" he demanded. "Did you pick up some sort of mushrooms with your winnings before we left Tatooine?"

"Something terrible has happened," Luke repeated, with more certainty this time. "Alderaan is gone."

"I can see that," Han grumbled. "But what I don't get is how-"

The debate was interrupted – as though Han didn't have enough on his hands, steering through the asteroid belt – by the fire of a small fighter. The TIE swooped over the top of them and carried onwards.

"What in the hells is that thing doing here?" Han asked. "There aren't any bases around here. Where'd it come from?"

The kids, blast it, were right. Something was very wrong about this whole thing. Han had the feeling that ten thousand had been a bargain and not the exorbitant fee he'd intended. Luke didn't look all too happy about the situation either.

"Sure is leaving in a hurry. If they identify us, we're in big trouble!"

"Not if I can help it," Han muttered. "Chewie, jam their transmissions."

He urged the Falcon forwards faster still.

"What are you chasing it for?" Leia demanded. "You're going to get us killed."

"You want me to let it fly away and tell someone about us?"

"Look at him!" Luke pointed. "He's heading for that small moon."

"I think I can get him before he gets there. He's almost in range."

"Who said anything about there being a moon here?" Leia asked. "Where have you taken us, huh? Alderaan doesn't have a moon, you moron."

"What else would it be?"

"It's a…"

Leia squinted.

"I think that's a space station."

Han shook his head.

"Too big to be a space station."

It was beginning to look, Han conceded, a little like a space station. Like an impossibly big space station.

"I have a very bad feeling about this," groaned Luke.

"Turn us around," Leia demanded.

"You know," Han breathed, "for once, Leia, I think you're right. We'll reverse. Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power."

The Falcon continued forwards. It was definitely a space station.

"Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power!"

"I did!"

"Why are we still moving towards it?" Luke asked.

"We're caught in a tractor beam," Han gritted out. "They're pulling us in."

"I want the two thousand back," Leia muttered, drawing a blaster from her belt.

As though they might have a chance at kriffing shooting the thing out of the sky. It'd take more than the whole Imperial navy, Han mused, to take that thing out. It loomed impossibly large and larger still before them.

"There must be something you can do," Luke pleaded.

"There's nothing I can do about it, kid," Han snapped. "I'm on full power."

Onwards they were dragged. Han didn't have to be a Jedi – or whatever his two young passengers were, exactly – to have a very, very bad feeling about this.

Riyan chose to barge into the apartment, somewhat predictably, when the baby had only just settled to sleep.

"Did you hear, Lana? The rebels-"

"Shh!"

Lana hurried her brother out of the doorway through which he had entered and down into the stairway.

"Quietly, please. What is it?"

Riyan's grin was undampened by Lana's disapproving reception.

"The rebels attacked an Imperial base on Scarif," he told her. "The General Grievous is dead and you'll never guess who got him!"

Lana eyes widened.

"Grievous is dead?"

"Grievous is dead!"

The hulking cyborg, surely invincible, had been a symbol of the Empire for as long as she could remember.

"And who got him, then?"

Riyan pulled out his data-pad, began to scroll. Lana tried to look disapproving.

"Are you streaming illegal shit again, Riyan?"

"Otherwise we wouldn't know anything about it, would we?"

Lana shrugged her acquiescence of the point and focused upon the reporter – her face obscured and voice distorted – on the data-pad.

"Good afternoon and welcome to The Rising Dawn's daily bulletin. The Empire has finally confirmed the rumours of the death of the General Grievous, claiming age-related disease. But while the Empire has released propaganda to honour its hero, the Alliance to Restore the Republic has claimed the death of the General Grievous in battle with its forces in what has been called 'a mission of partial success'. Representatives of the Alliance report a fatal duel between Grievous and the exiled Prince of Mandalore-"

On Riyan's screen, a half-armoured man descended from an Imperial freighter. He was exhausted, pushed his golden curls from his eyes. His belt was cramped with blasters and 'saber hilts. A long scar glistened on his forearm, from elbow to wrist. Lana knew this man. Had known that broken arm. Riyan knew him too.

"It's Mahdi's boyfriend!" he beamed.

Lana gaped, blinked, looked from the screen to her brother, and found slow, rising laughter.

"Riyan, that's Korkie Kryze. But, oh my stars, you're right, it's also…"

"It's Ben!" Riyan declared, shaking the data-pad for emphasis.

And it was.

"Mahdi saved his life from the Empire," Riyan pointed out. "Which means that Mahdi basically killed the General Grievous!"

He was radiating pride and it was enough to prick hot tears around Lana's eyes. The secret he had kept from them for so long. What it might have meant to Mahdi, after those years of fear and shame, to see Riyan proud like this.

She swiped at her eyes, found a smile.

"I didn't think you knew."

Riyan snorted.

"Of course I knew. Why wouldn't I have known?"

"He kept it a secret. I think he was worried about what we'd think. I didn't know until…"

Until she had seen that blonde head bowed over her brother's broken body. The way that he held him, even with a broken arm.

"Well, until the end."

Riyan looked inordinately smug.

"Ha! I knew from the start."

"How?" Lana demanded. "You were what, nine-standard?"

There had been signs, Lana could admit, in retrospect. But they'd certainly never been obvious about it.

"Yeah," Riyan agreed. "But I could read."

"What does reading have to do with it?"

"Ben – Korkie – left some love note the first time he came over. Something about sharing a shower."

Lana laughed. Like she hadn't in years and years and years, when thought of her missing brother had brought only pain.

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I know I was a bit of a dickhead as a kid," Riyan grumbled defensively, "but I wasn't that bad."

Lana wiped another tear – happiness? Grief? – and smiled at her baby brother who perhaps had never been so bad, after all.

"Good for you, Riyan."

Riyan shrugged, stowed away his data-pad.

"They really liked each other," he reflected.

Long breakfasts when Mahdi really should have been asleep. The way Mahdi had tried to stifle a smile when surreptitiously checking his comms. Mahdi, who was afraid of everything, running into battle for him.

"Yeah," Lana agreed. "They did."

"And now," Riyan declared, with satisfaction, "They're both heroes of the revolution."

On the data-pad, the reporter continued.

"And in our second breaking news story of the day, The Rising Dawn reports a dense Imperial blockade around Alderaan's space borders, with multiple sources also confirming a complete loss of communications and data-sharing with the Alderaan system. This comes shortly after royal consort Bail Organa stepped down from the Imperial Senate and made public his affiliation with the Alliance to Restore the Republic. It is feared that the Empire has taken military action against the peaceful planet at this time of heightened conflict between Empire and Alliance. The Rising Dawn is making all possible efforts to investigate the highly guarded and secretive Imperial action in the Alderaan system…"

There was never good news in this galaxy, Lana reasoned, without the bad. She could only hope whatever was happening on Alderaan wasn't as ominous as the broadcast made it sound. Could only hope that Korkie Kryze would not be the next hero of the Alliance to face the Empire's retribution.

"Sounds bad, huh?" Riyan ventured, stowing away the data-pad. "The Alderaan business?"

Lana set her jaw, gave a grim nod.

"Sounds pretty karking bad."

Pretty karking bad indeed. Vale Bail and Breha (and millions of others). I feel pretty bad for putting Ariarne through all that. But very proud of her bravery.

On the matter of the destruction of Alderaan, I was interested reading up on how word got out, or whether the Empire publicised it with their propaganda. Apparently they spent a good week coming up with excuses and rehearsing their lines before an announcement was made.

Next chapter, things get messy in the Alliance. Anakin looks for the plans. And chaos, of course, aboard the Death Star.

xx - S.