The more time passed that Leia lived without Alderaan, the more she found herself thinking about her mother, whom she had lived without longer. This was a safe place, she figured. Her first brush with death. A dry run.

Leia held her own gaze in the reflector, watching her fingers separate her hair into sections for the Griever's Plait, the traditional arrangement for widows. This was a very Alderaanian thing to do, a woman arranging her very long hair, and maybe that's why Leia started the day thinking of home and family. Leia was not married, but she had to address the loss somehow. Maybe she should cut her hair, she dared think now; it had felt very symbolic the first morning after but now, months later, it was…

Well, it was a lot of things. Sad, or mournful. Not painful, but a hurt just the same. Like a health condition one had to live with, that couldn't be cured. She felt old because of it. She felt… drained. It drained her.

"Ready, Princess?" A soft knock came at the door.

Leia heard but didn't; she was watching her face in the reflector to see the reaction at the suggestion of changing her hair. There was none. Outside the 'fresher door steps moved away, and she went back to getting ready to present herself to the world called Gavildar.

No one would see the Griever's Plait. She would wear the traditional Gavildan headwrap over her hair. It was her disguise but also it felt consoling. Gavildar's condolence. The world had been a staunch ally of Alderaan's for a long time, and that's why Leia was here. The Minister of Rule was in office for twenty-eight years now and knew both her parents; his wife had gone to university with her mother. They had contacted her. They expressed their sorrow and outrage publicly. Privately they offered their assistance to the Rebellion.

She used to come every year with her family. It felt odd to be here by herself. Just months ago she had danced with her father at the ball. Though she wasn't alone; Han was here. And she needed his kind of help- street smart, twitchy fingers- more than she needed the grace and dignity with which her parents had carried themselves.

The fact that it was just her though, of the Organas, here on Gavildar made the change seem suddenly drastic. One moment dancing with her father, the next getting the access codes to the armory. They had toasted her mother at the ball. They wouldn't have that opportunity today, and Leia felt badly about that, how the destruction ended traditions, changed friendships.

Ever since she was a young child, Leia knew her mother was fragile. There were episodes, extended periods of time where her mother was so fatigued she ruled from her bed, and parented from there, her daughter quietly coloring pictures or burrowing under the covers. Somehow Leia's young self understood her mother would one day die. It was inevitable, and it taught Leia death was merely part of life. A natural thing. Hopefully peaceful, and sad for the living of course- very sad- but natural.

Alderaan's was anything but peaceful or natural, and Leia was both pained and comforted that her mother had gone first. The planet had lost her queen, but she was there, regal and comforting, to greet her subjects at the end.

Leia saw it, dreamed it. Her mother on… on a kind of runway, a course. Her hand out, her voluminous robes still and dark, touching every single living thing that had graced the planet, streaming infinitely toward her, and she guided them.

If you had told me, Mother. If you had warned me.

Her portrait would have hung forever in the House of Organa, but Leia as a girl encountered it everywhere: in banks, in schools, even in friends' homes, and her eyes would lift to it, and she would greet her mother, silent and comforted. Hi, Mother.

She had loved her mother dearly, and she wondered now, if somehow, in death, her mother knew about Alderaan. And she wondered how much it would break her heart, and if Leia and her father had disappointed her mother.

For Breha was the queen, the daughter of the Twelve Goddesses. Leia had been one of the privileged few to view the ancient piece of fabric in the First Temple, limp and discolored, on which it was written how the goddesses created their earthly daughter.

And her father was the Viceroy, one of the great thinkers of his day, the one who wrote a treatise on the Just War, which Leia was trying to fight.

Leia held the gaze of her own brown eyes in the reflector. Gods and government, she thought. That's who my parents are.

If she could, she would ask her mother, Did you have faith? Did you really believe?

Every night, since her ascension to the throne, her mother had recited the Queen's Prayer. When Leia was four Breha taught it to her. They said it together rather than in her private chapel, Leia tucked under the covers of her bed, her mother's weight atop them making them heavy like a shield.

With mine own eyes closed, let thine reveal right.

With mine own lips quieted, speak thy truth into mine own ears.

Protect me, lead me, goddesses of Alderaan; as I rest I entrust myself to you until the forever sleep.

"Because you need protection too," her mother would say, and kiss her good night.

Leia wasn't descended from the Goddesses. She was adopted. And yet it was understood Leia would one day become queen.

Next year, she reflected now, when I reach twenty-one. If I make it that long. The people accepted her, and that was enough for the Goddesses. It wouldn't be the first time during the long history that direct lineage was broken.

But there would be no title bestowed on her.

Was it because she was not Alderaanian? But she was, she would argue, to the Goddesses even; there was nothing else she knew, nothing else she desired to be.

Had her mother feared this might happen? Had the Goddesses warned her? It haunted Leia now, their whispered nightly ritual, "because you need protection too."

Leia closed her eyes. Reveal right, she implored the goddesses, for she felt a little lost ever since she left the Death Star, but she wasn't sure they would hear her. They might never have existed, she posed. She didn't think they did anymore.

What happened to a god when the planet they were credited with creating died? Alderaanians believed the twelve goddesses resided on Alderaan. The planet was their hearth. Or did they exist because someone believed in them? Could she still, now there was no Alderaan? Did she still?

Love, Leia began to list, watching her hands in the reflector deftly place hairpins. Goddess of War, of Home. Time. She wanted to make sure she included them all and paused, her hands atop her head. Twelve names. Goddess of Peace, and Creation. Health, yes. And the Arts. It took her a moment, but the rest came in a burst. She only had to put herself back on her bed, her mother's hand entwined in hers. Harvest, which included fertility. Goddess of the Earth, of the Sky. Destruction.

Because you need protection too.

She wanted to ask her mother, even though the question formed as a frightened whimper in her mind- because this is what caused her heart to break more than anything else- she was scared to ask: had she and her father, neither who had any direct connection to any goddess, had they invoked Destruction? Brought her together with War?

The goddesses worked together interchangeably, in groups, though it was best to keep some separate. The Goddess of Destruction wasn't- evil. When she paired with Creation, her mother had explained that it was like the sweeping of the hearth. An earthquake or fire needed Love and Time to deal with the immediate despair, but then Creation and Harvest made the world new again.

Another aspect of surviving past her mother was-

What an odd way to think of it, she suddenly realized. Surviving past. Like she wasn't meant to. But she felt so alone. She was the steward of the goddesses, and they were her mother's, and Leia couldn't give them a home.

"We're going to be late, Princess." Han's smooth voice, edged with an impatience.

Leia returned to her original thought. Stubbornly, for she wouldn't be distracted, she repeated the exact earlier words: another aspect of surviving past her mother was not having anyone watch her become whatever she was going to become. There was no one else who ... who appreciated her life, as only a parent could. Rooted for her, agonized with her.

And there was this- her mother wouldn't meet Han. Or Chewie, or Luke. As if the goddesses were giving her the choice of fate. On the one hand, there was Han and Luke and Destruction; on the other there was Peace and Home and Alderaan.

If I could have both...

Destruction isn't evil, Leia had to remind herself constantly. The Emperor is, and he took Alderaan.

Constantly. Creation and Harvest, I pray you will make my world whole again.

"Leia, if you don't come out soon I'm going to have to shave again."

She watched her lips form a smile in the reflector. He doesn't understand ritual, she told her own reflection.

She opened the door, and just the act of looking up to nod into his eyes gave her a pang. She wanted for her mother to see him, this; a remarkable bond she had forged on the Death Star she couldn't break if she tried. It was so important; she wanted so badly to tell her mother. She missed being a daughter, a girl.

"Patience, Captain." When she thought of her mother listening she spoke formally. "It takes me ten minutes to do my hair."

He handed her a palm pistol and a coat. "Takes me ten seconds."

"Don't exaggerate," she told him smartly and he grinned.

She and Han stepped outside, both bundling their coats. She had borrowed one of Han's and he was wearing one he told her he had picked up for Chewie the Wookiee had never worn. They were disguised in swaths of extra fabric, but it was not out of place here. The view was the same; the gray sky and mountains looming off into the distance was familiar, but Leia felt guilty for her lack of transparency.

Her first trip here was when she was four, she reminisced. She had begun assuming duties as Princess of Alderaan that year, and she joined her parents on the royal tour celebrating trade unions.

The first trip stood out in her mind, during which the long hours of hyperspace were filled with work- Princess work, she had called it- learning phrases and how to arrive.

Greetings, farewells, pardons and thanks. Little Princess Leia had caught on fast. The first learning session with her mother she had delighted in swinging her legs on a seat of the royal yacht, folding the loose skin on her knees into something hilarious and laughing. She'd jump off and on and away, running to fetch a doll, running back to put it back and get another. Back and forth, playfully getting caught by her mother, who rubbed her nose and said, in Coruscanti, then Chandrillan, than Gavildan: "Bye-bye, miss. Thank you, sir."

Little four year old Princess Leia, far away from home, on a windswept landing pad, a group of school children- so much older, so much taller- her mother bending down beside her, "The flowers are for you, Leilei," her mother said, looking composed and gentle, and safe.

"Take what's offered," her mother touched her lightly on her back, and Leia stepped forward, and reached out and looked the school child in the eye.

The girl curtsied. She looked, Leia remembered now, petulant. She probably had no real idea why she was there. Picked by her school to meet a royal family from far away. A queen and her daughter the princess, trailed by the Viceroy. She had no concept of trade relations, and Leia hadn't either.

The girl had a smudge on her stocking and that pleased little Princess Leia, who thought all children should be getting dirty rather than standing stiffly formal, somewhere windy and industrial, giving flowers away.

"Offer your thanks," the queen, her mother, murmured in Alderaani.

"Maltana," Leia said, charmingly mispronouncing the last syllable- maldanE, Leia said to herself now, walking next to Han, correcting her four year old self.

And the school child had smiled. Leia put her nose in the bouquet and said it again, like a reward, "Maltana!" in a shout.

The crowd had laughed. One simple gesture, thank you in a foreign tongue by a little girl, demonstrated how wise, how kind the leaders of Alderaan were, how blessed the two worlds were to have each other, to value each other in this time of peace and prosperity.

It was all gone now. The school girl would be in her late twenties by now, Leia figured. She walked beside Han, who wasn't talking, lost in his own thoughts, and she wondered how the girl's life turned out. Did she survive to adulthood? Was that an odd thing to wonder? How many other beings would wonder that same thing? Only those that almost died, Leia thought.

Did the girl have children? Did she tell them the story of the day she handed flowers to a little princess and a queen told the princess to thank her? Did she think of the little girl princess when she learned Alderaan had been destroyed by the Empire?

That's why Leia would hold the access code and not Han, when they got it. It was hers. It was language, not in words, but in gesture. What Leia told the galaxy. Farewell, and pardon. It needed no translation.

They were a team, however they were. It was something she would tell her mother, if she could. Not about his eyes, which she found interesting, or his propensity to nickname her in various ways, which meant something she wasn't ready to analyze yet. She wouldn't want her mother to get the wrong impression if she told her he was leaving or that his clothes fit snugly but that he was lean, so she would describe how instead he let her stay up most of the night before a mission he agreed to join because she asked him to, agonizing over details endlessly, imagining every scenario where it could go wrong, and how he would offer a solution, napping in between, awake as soon as he heard her voice. A team- maybe tourists, maybe husband and wife, definitely a sharp shooter, always Han and Leia.

How Breha must miss being a mother, too. All those years. Sometimes, in a moment of weakness, she would see her mother on that runway, and she would think how nice it would be if she could join that streaming line of beings and be reunited with her mother. It was the memory of her father that held her back. If Breha died to prepare the planet then her father had died for the galaxy. And Leia would honor that.

Could she explain to her mother why she chose Han? For Alderaan, Mother. For all that he was- jaded and handsome and provoking, he loved the galaxy, same as she did. Her love was borne from service and his as a pilot. He loved to fly; to arrive and depart. He told stories of storms and carnivorous beings, of breathing air that made you sleepy, or atmospheres with so little gravity you never got where you were going. He loved planets. And Luke had told her Han couldn't understand how he was flying through the rubble of what was Alderaan; his reaction was dazed and disbelieving, and too slow. "But it's how we got on the Death Star," Luke concluded, as if it was a happy coincidence.

It was why she didn't choose Luke. He was with Rogue Squadron anyway, so she couldn't, but his belief in destiny, the way he and Han came together with her on the Death Star- well, it meant that Alderaan had to happen, and she wouldn't accept that.

She wouldn't tell her mother this, though probably her mother would intuit it. The generals all thought she was crazy when she proposed his name. Deep down, she had a feeling she and Han had made some sort of bargain. You ask and I'm there. It was her way of asking him to stay and his way of confessing he couldn't deny her. It was at the heart of their teamwork. He was her favorite person to work with, and there were a number of very qualified personnel. He just knew why.

They used public transportation to the Visitor Center. "Safer in a crowd," Han said, but Leia thought it was not dissimilar to the little girl who landed on strange soil and stuck her nose in a bouquet of strange flowers and shouted "thank you!" in a different tongue.

Greeting, is what he was doing. She made farewells and asked forgiveness, but he arrived. Her mother would appreciate that.

The exchange was to happen at the Visitor Center. One of the simplest missions Leia had ever executed, providing nothing went wrong. She and Han were to tour the changing exhibits, much as the Organas had always done when they first arrived.

Han picked up the brochure, and Leia almost fainted, though her vision didn't blur or her legs collapse. Spiritually, she fainted. She hadn't- she should have looked ahead, been more prepared-

The cover was an official portrait of the Alderaanian royal family. Leia was seven. Her mother had died when she was eight. Leia wore the exact same hairstyle as her mother, identifying her as the next queen, and her mother wore a crown. The seat her mother used was on a raised ledge, and Leia stood on the lower level, to the right. Her father, the Viceroy, also stood on the lower level, to the left. He looked... oh, how she missed him. Nice, and sympathetic, and handsome and proud.

"That's you, huh?" Han said, and he took the lead, entering the exhibit gallery labeled 'Alderaan in Retrospect: Celebration and Loss'.

"They didn't tell me," Leia said.

There was an enlarged version of the same portrait- it must be a reproduction, Leia thought. Easy enough to get it- She kept her eyes busy, moving over the other beings in the room rather than the artifacts.

Han took her hand, squeezed it, and let it go. "You already look bossy," he said, gazing at the portrait on the wall.

"Do I?" She kept her tone light, eyes moving. If she looked at it, she saw the ending. That's the Princess that lost her planet.

She'd only considered her parents, she realized, in all this. Never really herself. Should I, Mother? The dress her mother wore was dark burgundy, and Leia's was the color of childhood- the same as the parent, but white poured into the dye pigment, so it was paler- but the style was the same. Her younger face was gazing out, frank and open. The same brown eyes that had watched her style the Griever's Plait.

Han had moved down the wall, his head cocked at a framed holograph of one of the royal balls. In it, Leia was dancing with the Minister of Rule. Her dress was darker- she was a young teen, she estimated, and she was smiling, beaming really. Her father and the Minister of Rule's wife were dancing nearby.

"Where's your mother in this?" Han asked.

"She-" Leia felt close to a panic. "Um. My mother died, when I was younger."

"Oh, I didn't know that. I thought-"

"Yes. I suppose that's natural." The destruction had killed millions. Millions and millions of fathers and mothers and daughters.

"You look like you're having fun," Han said, still looking at the picture.

How he could swerve like that, treating the Leia of the past like she was the same as the one with him now. But it brought Leia's focus in, and she forced herself to breathe and act naturally. She stood next to him, the sleeves of their big coats touching. She did look like she was having fun.

"You know," she said, speaking quietly so as not to be overheard, "my mother died, and five months later we were scheduled to go on the tour. I didn't want to, and neither did my father, really, but it was our duty. But we were so... delicate. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to have fun again. But I think you're right. The Minister of Rule is a remarkable man."

"I bet you're a good dancer," Han appraised.

He was being silly, and her teen-aged face was making her feel flighty. They were supposed to be working. "We have to go in twelve minutes," Leia told Han. They were to meet the Minister of Rule's wife, who would pass them the access codes.

Han nodded sagely. "Yup. I know. Outside the gift shop. Will you dance with me someday?"

She blinked up at him, her panic vanishing. "What a ridiculous question," she said.

"I don't think so," he responded with a smart grin, then took her arm and led her through the gallery, like they were venturing towards a dance floor. "It's true there's never music," Han continued to talk, "where we are." They swept past the other artifacts, the items of trade. "We'll have to fix that, huh?" They moved into another gallery. 'Settlement on Stone: Galvidar's First Inhabitants'. "And I'll have to learn to dance."

He made her smile, though she tried not to.

Leia almost didn't recognize the Mister of Rule's wife. Her only disguise was to outfit herself years younger and come alone. She was dressed as a student, and her head covering was the same piece of fabric that covered her legs and torso. She and Leia were to pretend to be acquaintances who didn't expect the other to be where they were, meeting in a visitor center. It had been the Minister of Rule's wife's idea, and anyone could have done it, but Leia insisted she be the one, just as her mother's good friend had insisted that she be the one.

The woman hugged Leia around her middle and they kissed each other's cheeks, gushing in feigned surprise. Leia resisted putting her hand in her coat pocket to feel for the access codes right away.

She introduced Han, who kept a hand on her shoulder, standing mild and patient, which was good acting, Leia thought. They chatted, and the woman pretended she had a meeting, and she issued an invitation for Han and Leia to come for dinner that night, but they would be long gone.

And then they were done. Leia reached into her pocket and felt the data chip.

"I have it," she murmured to Han when they were back outside to catch the transport.

"Easiest thing we've done," Han said.

Leia nodded. In principle it was, but she felt wrung dry. "I hope Gavildar doesn't attract the attention of the Empire with this move."

"They'll never know it, Sweetheart."

"I hope not," Leia breathed. Would this unease ever go away? The feeling that destruction followed her? "Because you need protection, too," her mother used to say. Everyone else does, Mother. Not me anymore.

The transport was very crowded, with an odd sensation of the warmth coming out of the heaters and the cold air from the open door, like they were at war. There were no seats left. They found a gap in the aisle next to some visiting Twi'leks. A horn blew, signaling departure.

She looked up with a faint smile at Han as the transport gave a lurch and she bumped against him. Both held on to an overhead strap to keep from falling. His arm was bent; he was relaxed and comfortable. Apparently standard strap heights were for taller beings, for Leia's shoulder felt a stretch and she was raised up on her feet.

"What?" he answered her smile.

"I was thinking about how you were while we talked. So mild-mannered. I predict a paunch and receding hairline for you," she said.

"Ha," he retorted.

Her smile broadened. There would never be a school girl waiting on a tarmac to greet smuggler and scoundrel Han Solo. A life in space, tanned by suns, but he was always happy to land, to see what was out there. His manner of greeting was to spread his arms wide, and say, hello world. I'm here. Whatcha got for me?

I miss you, Mother. And Alderaan. Tell the Goddesses I'm sorry I can't return. If someone took a holograph of her now, Leia wondered, what would the ending be, for the viewer years from now? "That's the Princess that-"

It was wide open. The Princess that won the war, died in the war. Was it only about war? Could there be a holo of the Princess, maybe dancing, and someone would say, "Look at the fun she was having on this day. I am glad she had fun on that day."

His coat she wore was thick and too large, and the motion of the transport jostled her against him, again and again, but she didn't resist. For one, they had the data chip, and for another, it was the movement of the transport that caused it, and the coats were bulky enough to still seem innocent.

Her mother would watch her with amusement, much to Leia's rankling. And then, sorrowfully, Leia realized her mother hadn't gotten the chance to give Leia these lessons, ones she probably meant to but ran out of time. She was simultaneously glad she wore the big coat, so she could be allowed to touch Han, and disappointed she would only allow herself to be next to him in the big bulky coat.

"They got the heaters on high," Han complained. "I'm gettin' hot."

"Leave your coat on," Leia murmured. "I'm sleepy." She was crashing, she knew, all the tension of the mission, of being confronted with Alderaan, sifted out of her and she was exhausted.

"Sleepy, huh?" Han grunted ironically. "S'what you get for staying up all night worrying." He indicated a seat that had opened and they moved to grab it before anyone else did. "Take a nap, Sweetheart."

"You're sure?" She replayed his speech in her mind, did he give anything away? But he sounded like a concerned- did they look like husband and wife?

Her mother's smirk- my arm is tired, Mother, and I'm on tiptoe. We got the data chip together, Mother, that is all.

"Sure. I'll wake you when it's our stop."

She leaned a bit, her body angled into Han's so her cheek was on the soft fabric of his shoulder. She reached a hand under his coat sleeve and held on while the rest of her swayed on the transport.

She closed her eyes and held her mother's face. It had been a long time, she thought, since she felt the kind of tired that wanted to give in to sleep,

She didn't sleep long, only a few minutes. Long enough for Han to- curtsy?- she realized, to her mother in a dream.

"I can be a gentleman," he told her, offering her mother a bouquet of flowers.

Her mother smiled at Leia. "You should, you know, Leilei."

Leia lifted her head and watched the landscape move out the transport window. Her mother had spoken. She wouldn't look at Han, or tell him, but she might take it back to Luke and see what he thought.