This chapter is devoted to everyone who, like Korkie and I, are brewing some very glamorous bags under their eyes. Work is feeling heavy but writing this has been a highlight of my week. Nothing can come close to the brilliance of A New Hope, of course, but I'm having a good time trying.

Chapter 44: Causing A Scene

Mon Mothma had been working towards this alliance for nineteen years, from the Petition of 2,000 to those miserable years in the Imperial Senate to the freedom and the terror of her senatorial resignation and the birth of the Alliance proper. She had fallen out of love with her husband for this cause. Had grown distant from her daughter for this cause. And now it was falling apart all around her. Not simply falling but tearing, with the shouting matches around the Alliance Council table, with the exodus of leaders who had threatened to leave if the Alliance went to war. Mon had known this would happen and that was why she had not endorsed Jyn Erso's mission at the Council table. But she had also known that war was an inevitability and she had sent to Scarif as many of the troops over whom she could claim jurisdiction. The trouble was that very few of them had come back. And those that had were in a bad way.

"Korkaran, we need to talk."

Mon Mothma caught by Mandalorian soldier by his upper arm as he charged down the hallway with a box of rations upon his shoulder and several belts of ammunition slung across the sharp bones of his hips. The skin beneath his eyes was sunken and vaguely purple and his under-armour was unchanged from Scarif; there was a spattering of blood upon his sleeve.

"Tell me you're not going somewhere?" Mon asked.

"Getting ready to go somewhere."

But Korkie seemed to sense Mon's silent plea and set the box down at his feet between them.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"About the state of the Alliance."

Korkie gave something that looked like it was perhaps intended as a smile. More a grimace.

"Ah. Look. I'm sorry, Mon. That's all my fault, I-"

"We don't have time for apologies," Mon told him. "And you don't owe me one. Listen, Korkie, we did the right thing. I still believe that. But we're at risk of losing it all."

Korkie rubbed at his aching forehead.

"It feels like we've lost it already," he confessed.

They had been so cruelly close to victory. The plans had been transmitted successfully, received by the Profundity. But the Alliance's greatest starship had succumbed to Imperial fire and lost its entire crew. Then the Tantive IV, too, had been captured. Yesterday, Imperial media had announced the destruction of the ship and the deaths of Ahsoka Tano and Ariarne Organa, the Princess of Alderaan. But they had not lost, Mon told herself. Not yet. Not while there were still rebels left to fight.

"If the plans are lost," she resolved, "we will find another way. There must be another copy, or a defector willing to talk, or-"

Korkie held her gaze, managed to return a resolute nod.

"You're right, Mon. Forgive my pessimism. Anyhow, don't fear for the plans. They're not lost. Not entirely. Ahsoka has a contact on Tatooine who, stars willing, will find them for us."

Mon felt a flutter of hope in her chest.

"That's wonderful news, Korkie."

He shrugged.

"I suppose it is. Forgive me, I've been so miserable, I must have forgotten to mention it."

Mon's heart ached for him. He and Ahsoka had been inseparable in all the years they had worked with the Alliance. And the Princess Ariarne had adored him all her life, had followed him at his heels like an akk pup, and he had loved her so tenderly in return.

"I'm so sorry, Korkie," Mon murmured, reaching out a hand in comfort. "I cannot imagine your grief. However…"

She steeled herself, gave a grimace of apology.

"The Council has fractured and the Alliance as a whole will follow," she sighed. "I fear I need your leadership alongside my own if we are to keep a united front."

Korkie shook his head.

"I don't know how much I can help, Mon."

"They listen to you," Mon insisted. "They followed you to Scarif. And I need you to help me hold them together now."

"What we need," Korkie countered wearily, "is those plans. We'll have them soon, with any luck. But we also need Ahsoka and the Princess Ariarne back. Which I'm going to sort for you."

Mon looked at him, agape.

"The Empire has announced their executions, Korkie."

Korkie shook his head.

"They're only saying that because they don't want us looking for them. They'll be trying to use them for information."

He dropped his head, twisted a finger around a strand of blonde hair, tugged at it irritably.

"If Ahsoka had died," he muttered, "I'd know about it. I'd have felt it."

Mon wasn't to know whether this was Jedi wisdom or desperate optimism. And even if Ahsoka and Ariarne weren't dead yet, what hope did the Alliance have of recovering them? Mon could not bring the question to her lips. Could not hurt the young man in front of her anymore than he already had been.

"How will you find them?" Mon asked. "Please tell me you're not going alone."

Korkie ignored the second part of the question.

"I can guess where the Death Star will be."

Mon felt a sinking in her own gut. No one on Yavin 4 had been able to contact Bail, nor anyone else on Alderaan, for half a cycle now.

"Korkie," Mon pleaded. "We need to work together. As an alliance. We need to hold together the resources we have and we need to use them judiciously and-"

"I'm afraid that despite all my mother's teachings, I'm really a rather terrible leader," Korkie confessed, picking up his crate of supplies again. "I'm going to trust you to do all of those things, Mon. I'm better as a soldier. Ahsoka and Ariarne need a soldier, right now."

A soldier like his father. Mon could not help but fear he would die like his father. In futile battle to save someone he loved. But he was striding towards his ship and Mon could not bring him back. The Alliance was slipping like water between her fingers. Spilling and soaking into the parched earth, irretrievable.

"I'm not asking you to come with me," Korkie told his Ba'vodu, as he packed his rations into the ship. "In fact, I'm asking you not to come with me."

Bo-Katan glowered.

"Korkie-"

"I'm not putting any more Mando'ade-"

He grimaced.

"Kriff, I'm not putting any more sentients from anywhere in the galaxy in the firing line. And I'm especially not asking ay more Mando'ade to fight a battle that isn't for their actual home, which, I'm well aware, is all they've ever asked of me."

Crate stowed, he stood upright and faced his Ba'vodu properly.

"I will fix this, and then-"

"We can't return to Mandalore if you're dead," Bo-Katan told him.

Korkie waved a dismissive hand.

"Of course you can."

"Are you hearing yourself?"

"Loud and clear."

Perhaps the only thing that Korkie had learned for certain in his lifetime was that anyone could die. And the galaxy simply continued to turn. It would turn without him. Those that remained would continue to fight.

"I'm not having you hand over the Darksaber to the Sith apprentice," Bo-Katan declared. "Or the Emperor himself, for that matter."

Korkie folded his arms.

"I don't blame you for having so little faith in me, but I did nearly kill her once. Should have done, probably."

"You definitely should have killed her when you had the chance," Bo-Katan agreed. "But no matter. We'll get her this time."

"Ba'vodu, really, it's best if you don't come. If I die the Mando'ade will need someone to lead them and you-"

"Going somewhere?"

Korkie turned his head to find a new arrival striding, with asymmetric footfalls, through the half-empty hangar of wounded ships. Cere Junda stood before Korkie's ship with her wrists bound and her lightsaber at her belt. Her leg, brutally wounded on Devaron, was repaired in gleaming silver.

"I'd be halfway to Alderaan already if everyone wasn't so keen on interrupting me today."

Cere looked unimpressed by his sulking.

"I'm not here to slow you down," she told him. "I'll come. Let's go."

Korkie raised his brows.

"Did I invite you?"

Cere snickered.

"I invited myself. Your Ba'vodu has enough on her hands leading her soldiers."

She sobered.

"You know that I've grown much stronger, Korkie, since we first rescued the princess all those years ago."

Korkie closed his eyes against the memory. Arkanis and the pouring rain. Trilla fighting with the ferocity of a wounded beast and Cere unable to absorb that pain. Mace Windu, clutching his abdomen. A baby wailing at Korkie's chest.

"I did what had to be done to learn of the Death Star," Cere reminded him. "And I'll do it again."

She was wounded, aged, but her conviction was as solid and tangible as her newly reconstructed limb. Korkie fumbled for words. Why did everyone want to protect him, still, after all these years? He didn't need protection. He just needed to-

"This argument is a waste of time," Cere declared, climbing aboard the ship. "I hate to say it, but how long do you think our princess can hold out in a place like that?"

Nausea churned in Korkie's stomach and he couldn't stay in this blasted hangar a moment longer.

"Fine. See you soon, Ba'vodu. Cere, let's go."

Anakin combed the desert sands, map quadrant after quadrant beneath the radiant sun and into the falling night. Ahsoka couldn't have given him a duller mission; it certainly wasn't the stuff of a glorious return for the Hero With No Fear. But she needed him – our only hope – and it had been so many long years but he could not have refused her. He would do anything for her, still, even if it meant acquainting himself ever more intimately with the homeworld he hated. Crest after crest of burning sand. There could be no ache in his metallic limbs but his organic back and neck cramped and spasmed. He sipped his precious water and knew he was in a bad deficit.

He had rigged a basic radar in the shed and found a signal that might have been compatible with a smattering of escape pods out in the Jundland Wastes but received no confirmation that he might have been on the right track until he came across a small band of stormtroopers. They could only have been looking for the same prize that he was.

The Imperial presence on Tatooine had been sparse all these years. Anakin had avoided the occasional patrolling soldier with ease, allowed them to be no more than a flash of white in the periphery of his vision. He hadn't beheld them like this, through his macro'nocs, and drawing ever closer. They'd reworked the helmet. Downgraded them to even cheaper plastoid armour. But the silhouette was the same as the brothers he had fought alongside.

His fingertips brushed the 'saber hilt at his belt. He'd not wanted to draw it ever again. The weapon with which he had killed the Tusken Raiders, with which he had killed Count Dooku. The weapon with which he had tried, and failed, to kill the Emperor. But the anger that his mother and then Obi Wan had worked to dampen for years was gone from him now. Was it all these years away from war? Anakin thought it might have been his children. They had saved his life. Until they'd tried to give him a heart attack, at least, by running away.

He'd get these damned plans – for Korkie, for Ahsoka – and then he'd walk away from this war and find his children. They were still more important than anyone else, no matter how grown everyone told him they were.

Anakin guided the speeder in the direction of the stormtroopers. The hilt of his 'saber was hot through his clothes. He sensed he was very close now.

"The fight is over, Tano. Your kind is eradicated and the war is lost."

Ahsoka was not in her tortured body. She was not in this battle station. She drifted, somewhere above them all, on the gentle tides of the Force.

"The princess will be killed," the Sith apprentice snarled. "You hear me? I will kill her if you do not talk!"

Ariarne lived, for now. Ahsoka could feel her. Tried to bring her with her, to this place of peace. She knew that speaking would not save her. The words the Sith apprentice demanded would bring only death.

I'm sorry, Ariarne.

She had consoled herself, as they were dragged aboard the Devastator and then the Death Star, that she would find some way to rescue the princess, to get them both out of this prison. But she had spent all her strength resisting the mind probes of the classmate she had once called Trilla Suduri and could spare nothing else. She dared not think of Anakin in the dunes of Tatooine. All thoughts of Anakin, or his children, or the base on Yavin 4, were locked so deeply away that they were beyond even her own retrieval.

She thought instead of Korkie. Her best friend. She had drifted in the Force like this, the night that she had kissed him like an idiot above Raada. Stars. She loved him.

Ahsoka hoped that he had survived Scarif. But if he had not, perhaps she would see him again soon.

They were in serious, proper trouble. Lieutenant Corr had already had the life strangled out of him for not shooting down the escape pods and now they had arrived too late on Tatooine. Trooper Harman surveyed the field of crashed escape pods, all of them cracked open and empty. Someone had been here already. Someone who had known they contained something valuable. Someone who probably had something to do with the other half of the search party not answering their comms anymore. They were kriffed, karked, done for.

"We'll find them," resolved the trooper beside him. "Which way's the nearest settlement?"

Harman glanced at his map. What good was it? Whoever had found the plans would be long gone by now. He wondered vaguely whether it was a better fate to be asphyxiated to death by Darth Gelid aboard the Devastator or live out the rest of his days in hiding on Tatooine.

"This way."

They trooped across that miserable desert until they reached the sand-swept exterior of a squat farmhouse.

"There's no point, Roxwell…"

"Look! Fuel canisters for a speeder. But no speeder here. We'll ask some questions."

Their intrusion was met by a cursing farmer, his face tanned to leather by the planet's twin suns.

"How many people live in this house?" Roxwell demanded.

The man frowned, hesitated just a brief moment.

"Two. My wife and I."

"No kids?"

The farmer's expression darkened.

"We were never able to have any."

"There's a speeder missing from this garage."

"My wife's taken it out. What's the trouble?"

The troopers did not give an answer. Roxwell waved them forward.

"Search the house."

Harman knew how this story ended. They wouldn't get what they wanted and they'd kill the farmer just for the hell of it. The plans and that speeder were slipping further and further away. Darth Gelid would not spare them.

There was the impact of a projectile from an old-fashioned blaster rifle and Harman collapsed to his knees, reverie broken. The farmer's wife was home, after all. He knelt upon the burning sand and watched his brothers return fire. Watched the farmers crumple to the ground in the shadow of their home. Watched the spare drums of fuel go up in flames.

Glory to the bleeding Empire.

He didn't want to see this. Didn't want to be a part of this. Harman wished the farmer's wife had shot him properly.

"What's the plan for when they send a search party on board?" Luke hissed.

They were jammed far too close together in one of Han's contraband compartments. Leia had Chewbacca's hair in her face, Luke's elbow in her ribs and the gun on Han's belt digging into her thigh.

"We make sure they don't come back out," Han muttered.

"And then?"

"We have to disable the tractor beam if we're going to fly out of here," Leia pointed out.

"I wish we had a droid on board," Luke grumbled.

Leia glared at her brother. Hadn't he learned anything useful in all those years of tinkering?

"Are you telling me you can't even disable a tractor beam?"

"Sure I can!" Luke retorted. "But I don't know how I'm supposed to get out there if-"

There was the sound of armoured footsteps above their heads. Han's eyes sparked as though this was all some absurd game. Leia detested him.

"Ready, Chewie?"

Leia allowed their co-pilots to lead the scuffle; Han was already the sort of person who shot bounty hunters across a cantina table and there was no need for her to become that sort of person herself. Her mum had been a dead-eye shot, she knew. But she'd been a good person, an upstanding sort of person. Not the sort of person who shot unsuspecting stormtroopers then pulled the armour from their bodies without the faintest trace of remorse while they lay – were they dead, or just unconscious? – on the floor. Leia felt vaguely queasy as Han pressed the armour into her hands. Her father had warned her that war was ugly. That she wouldn't like war and was lucky to live on Tatooine where she could avoid it.

But Ba'vodu Korkie had told her that war was a fact of life – at least in this lifetime – and that unless they wanted to sing 'Glory to the Empire' every year until the stars burned out, they'd have to fight it and win it.

War was a fact of life.

Leia swallowed down her revulsion and accepted the armour. Her mother had been a dead-eye shot and she was too.

"Come on out, Leia!" Luke hissed. "I need to talk to you."

Leia stepped out of the 'fresher, still in her clothes from Tatooine. The gleaming plastoid and black under-armour were abandoned on the floor.

"Stupid armour's not made for women," she grumbled, and shot Han a sharp warning glance. "Don't you go making some stupid joke."

"Who said I was planning on making any jokes?" Han asked, with a grin that said he had been.

The teasing, however, faded quickly to sobriety.

"Are you sure you can't squeeze into it?" he asked. "We're gonna need all the hands we can get to disable this tractor beam."

"Plastoid doesn't give," Leia pointed out sourly.

"Forget the tractor beam," Luke urged. "Leia, can you sense-"

"Not this again," Han groaned.

"There's someone…"

He'd felt it ever since their arrival aboard this enormous space station. Other Force-sensitives. Force-sensitives in pain, in despair. Their father had warned them since the advent of language that the Empire hunted people like them. Taught them to shield and keep their heads down and never, ever show their gifts to anyone, least of all anyone in uniform.

They killed everyone in our Temple. They hunted down survivors. They're still hunting and they'll never stop.

But it had been no more than a cautionary tale of a distant evil. Luke had lived his life on that farm and if the Empire had hunted any Jedi on Tatooine he hadn't known about it.

He knew about this. He felt it. A screaming pain. A slow, ragged breath. There were two of them, he thought. One young, one older. And somehow familiar…

"Do you think we know them, Leia?"

Leia, who had been standing with her eyes closed, trying to feel what he had felt, lifted her chin and grimaced.

"I don't think we know them," she decided, eventually, opening her eyes. "It's not Korkie."

Luke conceded the point. They didn't really know any other Force-sensitives. Their father had shielded them well.

"I don't know what in the hells the two of you are talking about," Han hissed, "but there are troopers out there who will be expecting us to step off this ship any moment and we can't stand here any longer pretending to be fortune-tellers!"

He gave Luke an encouraging clap on his back.

"Leia can stay with the ship and you can come with Chewie and I to disable that tractor beam, alright? Get your bucket on and we'll go."

Luke looked to his sister in appeal.

"Leia, I think we've got to help them."

Han's eyes widened.

"Now's not the time for jokes, kid."

"There are prisoners here being hurt," Luke pleaded. "Force-sensitive prisoners, the sort of people the Empire is trying to exterminate. We can't let that happen. They're important. I can feel it."

Han, fed up, turned to Chewbacca.

"What do you reckon, Chewie? We got a chance, the two of us, at disabling this tractor beam while Luke goes on his suicide mission?"

Chewie's reply sounded sceptical. Han turned back to Luke.

"I'm begging you, kid, let's get out of here with our lives and then you can-"

Leia, meanwhile, had been fiddling with the comm-set on her abandoned armour kit.

"One of the prisoners is the Princess of Alderaan," she pointed out, with faint interest.

"Did you hear that, Han?" Luke pressed. "Rich. Very, very rich. The compensation for her rescue would be-"

"Have you seen the state of her kriffing planet?" Han sniped.

But Luke could tell that he had sown the seed in the smuggler's mind. He pressed, just a tiny bit, in the Force, nudged him along.

"I'm pretty sure a royal family would have funds off-planet."

"Don't pretend you know anything about money or how the galaxy works," Han grumbled.

But he steadied his grip on his Imperial blaster and sighed.

"Alright. We give it one shot and if anything goes wrong we bail and go for the tractor beam, you hear me?"

Luke gave an enthusiastic nod.

"Chewie, Leia-"

Han waved a beckoning hand.

"Come along, prisoners. We're taking you to the detention blocks."

"That was a little too easy," Cere muttered.

Thanks to Cere's piloting skills, which far surpassed Korkie's own, they had shot out the comms of a TIE fighter and tailed them closely into the enormous battle station, using their proximity to the authorised ship to escape the Death Star's scanners, and dealt with the furious pilot the moment they'd landed.

"Looks like they've got something else keeping them busy," Korkie mused, nodding his head at a shabby and blatantly non-Imperial ship in the docking zone.

The hangar was near abandoned. There was the faint blare of an alarm from somewhere overhead.

"Someone's causing trouble," Cere murmured appreciatively.

"Our guardian angels."

They seized the comms and swipes of the felled TIE pilot and forayed deeper into the station.

"Up this way, maybe?"

Korkie could sense Ariarne and Ahsoka easily. This was useful, in the absence of station plans, but kriff, it hurt. Ariarne was wounded, grieving, exhausted. And Ahsoka was like he'd never felt her. Detached, glassy, distant. Like she was barely there.

"Sure. Mind the troopers on your left, Korkie."

He barely perceived them. Pressed a sleep suggestion upon them and a shove for good measure, let them stumble, confused, wonder what it was they'd glimpsed, as he and Cere charged onwards towards the prisoners.

"You're quite good at that," Cere remarked.

Korkie shrugged. Another moment with the twinging pain of a childhood memory. The mind tricks that had so impressed his father and brother had made his mother stern and sombre.

They're sentient beings, Korkie. Those tricks may not leave any wounds, but it is no small matter to take away one's free will.

He hoped she would forgive him. It was a better solution, he thought, than cutting them down. War was not a choice anymore.

Ariarne was in some strange place between sleep and waking. Everything they had done to her body, that enormous surge of adrenaline – it had all run out now. Out of tears, out of sweat. She felt like she might have been all out of blood except that she could still feel the throbbing pulse of pain racking her body. Her planet was destroyed. Her parents were dead. She was in the galaxy's largest battle station and Ahsoka had told her they'd be okay but Ariarne supposed even Jedi got it wrong sometimes. She wasn't angry. Ahsoka had done her best. Ahsoka had been so strong. Taken all of the attention of the Sith apprentice. Ariarne could feel her, faintly, nearby. They had both done their best but they were broken now.

There was the whooshing of the cell door and it occurred to Ariarne that they had come to execute her, as Tarkin had ordered. She did not feel frightened. She was almost relieved. Felt the faintest flicker of what might have been pride. She had survived their torture and given nothing away and now all the pain would end.

"Princess. Get up!"

Ariarne opened her eyes and wondered if she was hallucinating. Before her knelt a beautiful young woman, such kindness in her dark eyes. And such warmth in the Force. Ariarne heard the clink of metal and saw the cuffs at her wrists and felt such a wave of grief. This woman must have also been a prisoner. The galaxy was so terribly unfair. Ariarne did not want this woman to be hurt. The Empire had done enough evil already.

"Get up, Princess," the young woman urged. "We're getting out of here."

Ariarne grasped the woman's proffered hands and stumbled to her feet.

"I don't think I'm the Princess of Alderaan anymore," Ariarne mumbled, as the blood sank to her feet and her vision dimmed and swerved.

"Never mind that."

The woman's hands steadied her.

"I'm Leia. What's your name?"

"Ariarne."

"Well, Ariarne, you just try not to faint and we'll get you out of here. We've got to hurry. The boys have caused some trouble already, I see."

Outside the cell, there was the pinging of blaster fire. They entered the corridor and took cover between two unhelmeted stormtroopers and a Wookiee, all with blasters raised, firing at the troopers trying to enter the detention block.

"What happened to not causing a scene?" Leia demanded.

The taller of the two not-real-stormtroopers scowled as he continued to fire.

"Well I tried my best, sweetheart, but they're not very trusting types."

"No record of a prisoner transfer, apparently," the younger of the two added.

Leia groaned.

"Could you not have convinced them, Luke? I thought you were supposed to be the gifted one!"

Leia pressed Ariarne, who was still swaying slightly, more firmly back against the wall and out of the way of blaster fire. There was a strange ringing in her ears and a fogginess to her mind. But a sudden thought jolted her back to life.

"Have you got Ahsoka?" Ariarne asked. "We have to rescue Ahsoka."

"Ahsoka?" Leia repeated, eyes widening. "Jedi Ahsoka?"

Ariarne nodded. Leia turned to the shorter of the two stormtroopers.

"Luke, that's Ahsoka from the Family Book. Dad's Ahsoka. We have to-"

"No, no, no."

The taller of the stormtroopers took his eyes off his targets long enough to give Leia a fierce glare.

"We have already bitten off way more than we can chew with this rescue bantha-shit."

"Where is she?" Leia asked.

"I don't know," Ariarne stammered. "Tarkin took me here and Darth Gelid took Ahsoka-"

"Are you hearing this? Darth Gelid? We're not getting her."

Luke looked up at the older man in appeal.

"Han-"

"We don't even know how we're getting out with the one prisoner we've rescued!"

The blaster fire from the end of the hallway was intensifying. They could not hold out forever. Leia squared her jaw.

"Fine, Han. You're right. We need to get Ariarne out of here."

She took a concealed blaster from beneath her tunic and shot a hole in the wall near their feet.

"You and Chewie get the princess out of here. Luke and I will go get Ahsoka."

"And we're supposed to leave you here?" Han demanded.

Leia shrugged.

"You could wait for us."

"Wait?" Han howled. "Your mission's impossible, I'd be waiting until the stars burned out!"

"Fine," Leia snapped. "Lucky you don't like me very much. Luke and I will find our own way and you can fly on out with a clear conscience."

She waved her blaster menacingly, shepherded Han to her makeshift escape route.

"Now take Ariarne and go, Solo!"

The Wookiee, looking uneasy, crouched by the gaping hole and beckoned Ariarne while Luke covered them with blaster fire. Han and Leia were arguing still, faces flushed.

"Why are you getting so mad at me for asking you not to kill yourself?"

"Why are you wasting my kriffing time?"

"I never said I didn't like you!"

Leia did not seem to know what to say to this, and responded instead by pushing Han into the hole.

"Off you go, Chewie, Ariarne," she snapped. "Come on, Luke. We're getting Ahsoka."

Queen Leia. But the true hero of this chapter is Luke, for continuing to hold the stormtroopers at bay while Leia and Han work on their enemies to lovers arc.

xx - S.