Chapter Text
Leia was covered in filth. Her senatorial robes were stained red and clung to her body where the blood had soaked through to her skin. It was still sticky. And it wasn’t just blood. There were bits of flesh which she tried to shake off without actually touching them. He was all over her.
The cell had a fresher set in the corner, and she pressed the toggle to get a wholly insufficient squirt of water into her palm. She wiped at her face. The last thing she wanted was bits of him in her eyes and mouth.
After three presses no more water came and Leia desisted and sat down on the metal bench along the wall.
She’d saved Alderaan, at least for today, but she didn’t understand how she’d done it. You couldn’t change reality just by wishing it, but she had. She’d wished, with furious desperation, that Wilhuff Tarkin die, explosively, horribly, and… he had. But there had to be another explanation. Perhaps she was not the only Alliance member on the Deathstar. Had someone managed to get Tarkin to swallow a small bomb? That was a much more rational explanation. Or perhaps the man had just been too full of his own poisonous rhetoric and had died from being to foul to exist. But then Vader and Palpatine would have been dead long ago, if such a thing were possible.
Wishful thinking aside, Leia felt in the pit of her stomach that she had done it. She had sensed a fiery power burst out of her, in reaction to her wish, and she had felt it as it tore Tarkin apart until no bit was left of him larger than a finger joint.
The command deck had looked like an abattoir. For a beat none of the officers had moved at all. Then Darth Vader, his gauntleted hand still heavy on her shoulder had spoken.
“Power down the weapon.”
Shaking Imperial hands had been swift to obey.
Vader himself had been the one to steer her off the command deck and into a turbolift. He hadn’t spoken a word, he’d just pulled her along and put her back into the same cell he’d used to torture her just hours earlier.
She wanted to pull off the bloody mess of her robes, but she had nothing to replace them with and no way to clean herself. Her skin itched where the blood had dried. She felt polluted, and as the adrenaline waned she began to feel terribly tired. She closed her eyes and tried to not think.
The sound of the cell door sliding open jolted her awake. A female Imperial officer looked at her without expression.
“You need to come with me.” The woman said.
“Where are we going?” Leia asked, trying to smooth out her ruined robes as she got to her feet.
“To get you cleaned up.” Was the only reply she got.
Leia followed the woman down the corridor past dozens of empty cell doors until they came to the end of the hall where the guard booth was likewise empty.
“This way.” The woman pointed to the left, clearly avoiding touching her at all, which Leia appreciated.
She was led to an open shower and her guard watched without interest as she peeled off her bloody robes and stood in the hot water. It smelled mildly of disinfectant, which was probably a good thing.
She unwound what remained of her hairdo and let the water seep into the heavy mass of her hair. She ran her fingers through it, encountering bits of bone and other detritus she couldn’t identify except that she knew it came from a human body.
The officer had a standard Imperial grey towel for her, which she used to dry herself off and to squeeze as much of the moisture from her hair as she could.
Outside the shower she was given a prisoner’s jumpsuit, also grey. It was pristinely clean for which she was absurdly grateful. Then her hands were cuffed in front of her.
She thought the officer would take her back to her cell, but they went in the opposite direction, down two levels, onto a bustling floor full of Stormtroopers and a few harassed looking officers.
“You’ll need to cut that.” An officer with a data pad said, glancing from Leia to her guard, then back to his data pad.
“Yes, Sir.” Her guard replied, steering her into a small room with a stool nailed to the floor. “You sit.”
Leia sat, unsurprised as her guard acquired a hand held laser cutter which made short work of the hair that she had been growing long her entire life.
She watched the mess of dark brown fall to the floor. In other times she might have cried for what it meant, loosing her hair, but she felt nothing but the odd sense that her head was lighter.
She was taken to what was clearly a holding cell, as it contained several other prisoners, mostly human, in Alliance military attire. She sat alone against the back wall, away from the strangers. If they knew who she was, they gave no sign of it. She wondered if they had been picked up at Scarif.
A middle-aged human man who wore a rust colored flight suit sat down an arm span away from her. “Did they torture you?” He asked in a Mid Rim accent.
Leia just nodded. Just because these people looked like Rebels, and were being treated as prisoners, did not mean she could trust them.
“We’ve been here for days.” The man continued as if she had replied. “There are a lot more troopers today, so we think they’re getting ready to move us.”
Leia had to ask, even if she couldn’t trust the answer. “Move us where?”
The man gave her a pained half-smile, “Off this battle station is my guess. After that, who knows?”
Leia looked away. She wondered if the Deathstar was still in orbit over Alderaan or if it had entered Hyperspace. It could do that. They hadn’t taken the rumors of the mobile planet destroying weapon nearly seriously enough, but it had all been true.
For a moment she’d held hope in her hands, in the data disk her father had trusted only her to deliver to Tatooine. She’d failed, though. She’d been meant to find General Kenobi in some place called the Dune Sea, but she’d only been able to jettison a pod with the droids. She hoped Artoo would be able to complete the mission. It was all up to him and Threepio now.
She lay her head back against the wall, closing her eyes and trying to breath. It was out of her hands. The plans would find General Kenobi or they would not. But she had prevented Tarkin from annihilating Alderaan, and that was a victory. No matter what came next, she had given her whole planet another day of life.
***
Darth Vader turned from the Holo feed where the young Princess of Alderaan sat amongst a few of the other prisoners. None of them had recognized her, which was good. Of course she was quite transformed now, with shorn hair, no makeup, and wearing prison garb. She was functionally anonymous unless she chose to make herself known, and if she did, well, none of those prisoners had a future in any case.
He input the girl’s record of termination at his own hand and dated it back a few hours. That would be all that was necessary for the official record. Officially, he had killed Leia Organa immediately after dragging her from the command pit of the Deathstar. Takin had actually been the one to sign the order before his… abrupt demise.
Vader smiled under his mask. It had been one of the messiest deaths he’d had the pleasure of observing in quite a long time. That was the thing about space combat, it was all too sanitary, bodies were incinerated on impact and it never rained blood.
He could have stopped the girl had he been so inclined. He’d felt her channel the Force with a wild, willful intent. He could have snapped her neck, or knocked her unconscious. He’d had milliseconds in which he could have saved Wilhuff Tarkin’s life. But he’d seen no reason to do so. Tarkin had been a roadblock on his path to power since before the rise of the Empire, and he’d snubbed and humiliated Vader incessantly over their careers in service to the emperor. No. Vader had had every reason to let the Princess of Alderaan slaughter Tarkin.
He’d had no inkling that she was Force-sensitive. They’d met once or twice on Imperial Center when she was a junior senator. She stuck close to her father, Bail Organa, and had a sharp mind and a sharper tongue. But she’d fallen mostly below his notice until today.
He took a moment to read through her Intel file. She was nineteen years old, born on Empire Day, and a war orphan adopted into the Alderaanian royal family. That was interesting. He’d always assumed the girl was Organa’s natural born child. Did Organa know he’d taken in a Force-sensitive child? Vader made a note to have the ISB look into that issue, if only for the pleasure of causing Bail Organa the additional inconvenience of such an investigation.
The man was luckier than he knew. Vader would have been well satisfied to let Tarkin destroy Alderaan. The planet’s rhetoric of pacifism had worn particularly thin when several Alderaanian ships were identified in the melee above Scarif. It would have been right and fitting if the Deathstar had made that planet its next target.
But the girl had interceded, and in the wake of Tarkin’s… exceedingly thorough dismemberment… Vader had had no reason to continue with the attack sequence. He’d had bits of Grand Moff raining down on him, and was already formulating how he would explain the event to the emperor.
Rebels or Rebel sympathizers, he had told his master via Holo link, had conspired to execute the Grand Moff in a gruesome and public fashion. He had forwarded the Holos for his master’s perusal. The emperor had shed no tears for his favorite Grand Moff, but merely ordered Vader to deal with the situation appropriately.
The Deathstar itself was to be parked, for the time being, somewhere secret while Palpatine took stock of the situation. Vader would transfer to his preferred warship, the Devastator, which would remain in orbit above Aldera City, where he was to supervise the investigation of the Royal House of Alderaan as having ties to the Scarif attack.
***
Leia and her fellow prisoners were formed up into a line, shackled together and marched from the detention level to a gargantuan docking bay. She was led past the tall brooding form of Darth Vader himself, and loaded into a sub-light transport shuttle.
Vader himself accompanied the prisoners, remaining standing in the shuttle even as it lifted itself out of the docking bay, and made an angled trajectory towards a Star Destroyer. Leia saw the briefest glimpse of a blue and white planet from the view port of the shuttle. Alderaan. They were still at Alderaan.
As soon as they set down in the Star Destroyer’s bay, Vader left the shuttle. Surely he knew who she was, and quite possibly he knew what she had done to Tarkin, but now he ignored her completely, which was immanently preferable. The last thing she wanted to was to be paraded in front of her own father as Darth Vader’s prisoner. On the other hand, if her father didn’t know she was alive, he certainly wouldn’t be sending anyone to rescue her.
It was bittersweet, knowing that Alderaan had survived annihilation but that she still might never step foot there again.
***
A plausible error in cell assignments had put the prisoner on an otherwise empty detention level. Accordingly, there were no intrusive eyes, or minds, to notice as Darth Vader approached the girl’s cell.
He palmed open the door, finding the girl sitting crosslegged on the pallet what was her bed and sole item of furniture.
The girl got to her feet warily but said nothing. Her mind was anxious but stubbornly set on defying him once again.
“You should know that the Princess of Alderaan has already been executed for her crimes.” He stated, observing her reaction carefully.
The girl scowled and opened her mouth, quick to reply.“I’m right here.”
“Your work on Tarkin was most impressive.” He commented, observing the way her eyes widened in a moment of panic then narrowed to slits.
“I didn’t do that.”
Vader leveled a finger at the girl’s heart, “I won’t my waste time with your denials.”
He removed himself from the cell, keying it to his personal code. The girl had already proved that she was resistant to interrogation. Her conversation with Tarkin had shown her to be an adept liar. But Vader knew exactly how to deal with this sort of prisoner.
Now, however, he had to make an appearance on the surface of Alderaan to motivate all parties to comply with his investigation of the Royal House of Organa for the crime of treason and sedition against the Empire.
A Lambda shuttle stood ready for him, the appropriate diplomatic officers already seated. As soon as he had boarded, the pilot lifted off and took them on an arced trajectory down to the landing pad at Aldera Palace.
His gaze fell on the entourage which included the Queen of Alderaan, Breha Organa, and her consort, the Viceroy Bail Organa himself. It was correct decorum, but still brazen, seeing as that Vader knew very well that Organa was guilty, and Organa clearly meant to claim innocence.
Organa knew him well enough to bow rather than proffer a hand. “Welcome to Alderaan, Lord Vader. We are honored by your presence.”
Vader had never much minded Organa’s courtly manners back when he’d been Anakin Skywalker, but now they grated on him terribly. “By order of the emperor, you and your staff must submit to investigation.” He ground out.
Organa feigned polite surprise, “On what charge?”
Vader smiled behind his mask, “You should be grateful I don’t take you into custody immediately. As it is, you will be under guard while my officers review your files.”
Organa didn’t smile. “If I’m not under arrest perhaps you might educate me on the strange specter that appeared above this planet yesterday.”
Vader stared at him, amused by his forthrightness and his capacity for straight-faced deception. He had no doubt at all Organa knew exactly what the Deathstar was. “As you wish.” He replied, allowing Organa to lead him into the pavilion arranged nearby. The queen and her staff left in the opposite direction, several of his officers trailing after them.
They sat amongst four frequency jammers, the only way to guarantee a private conversation in an open air setting.
“Lord Vader, while your presence on Alderaan is lawful, it is not necessary. I will gladly submit my files and records for whatever review you require.” Organa said smoothly.
“That only tells me that you have already removed any trace of your involvement of the terrorist attack on Scarif.” Vader bit out relentlessly.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.” The viceroy relied calmly.
“No? I have footage of several Alderaanian vessels fleeing the scene of the attack. One I have in custody. The Tantive IV?”
Organa paled. “And the occupants?”
“Then you do not deny knowledge of this ship.” Vader concluded.
Organa took a moment then replied, “It is a diplomatic vessel in Royal employ, of course I am familiar with it. In fact, I find it unlikely such a ship would be involved in a military attack, seeing as it is not equipped with heavy weaponry. “
Vader would have laughed aloud, if he could. “As you say, it is much more suited as a courier. Why do you ask after the crew, were they dear to you?”
A vein pulse in Organa’s neck and he gave Vader a defeated look. “My daughter Leia was on that ship. Is she dead?”
Vader studied the man’s face, and his sense in the Force, he was hurting and furious, but still determined, still sure he would triumph.
“I do not personally review prisoner intake, Organa.” Vader replied, knowing how the uncertainty would weigh on his opponent.
Organa’s dark eyes gave him a disappointed but unsurprised look. “The battle station you brought into orbit, where is it now?”
“That information is classified.” Vader replied easily. “You admit you recognized the design?”
Organa gave him a weary look, “I’d heard rumors of a spherical planet killer. Were those rumors baseless?”
“No.” Vader conceded. “In fact, a copy of its schematics was taken from Scarif. I am here to retrieve it.”
Organa’s face became mask like, “I wasn’t at Scarif.”
The Force told Vader that this was patently untrue, but he let it pass. “Perhaps, but your ships were. I believe the plans were aboard the Tantive IV, yet my men found no trace of them aboard that ship.”
Organa’s face remained still, but in the Force Vader sensed his burst of hope. “I don’t see how I can be of assistance, Lord Vader.” He replied firmly.
“You will comply with Imperial law. If you harbor Rebels on this planet, you must denounce them, lest you be implicated in their crimes.”
Fear shot through Organa at that. He was hiding other Rebels on the planet, then, in addition to being their leader.
“How many Rebels are on this planet now?” Vader asked swiftly.
Organa shook his head, “None, Lord Vader. We are pacifists.”
“Pacifism is in direct opposition to the Imperial ethos, should I take it that all six billion of your citizens are disloyal?”
“No, they are innocent.” Organa replied angrily.
“You must provide me with the Rebel leader, Organa. I will settle for nothing less. If you did not lead your ships at Scarif, I will have the head of the man who did.”
Organa’s jaw twitched. “I don’t have anything for you, Lord Vader.”
Vader watched the man, sure that, if he were so inclined, he could invade the man’s mind here and now. But there was little need. Bail Organa was absolutely guilty of everything Vader had accused him of, they both knew that.
“You have one day to produce leader of your rebellion, no more.” Vader said, standing abruptly. Bail knew him well enough to understand the threats that were implicit in his statement.