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Leia was not used to quiet .
Growing up on Alderaan, it was as peaceful as any place in a galaxy on edge could be, and the palace in Aldera was as calm as any place within the capital city of an entire planet could want. But it was never quiet -
There were birds outside, and servants in the halls, and leaving her personal rooms always brought with it the sound of people going about their day. Evenings brought with them music or private conversations, and the early mornings were filled with studies or discussions. Wandering further on less busy afternoons, the whole city was alive in the way only a spacefaring port could hope to achieve. There were ships taking off at all hours, and the streets winding through millennia of construction were filled with people.
Leia, too, was never alone. She was always accompanied; if not in the presence of a carefully selected tutor or her parents or their extended family, she was followed by a bodyguard or, later on, a senate aid. While they did not always talk with her, she tried her best to be on good terms with those around her, and she was never more than a few feet away from someone she could turn to in order to have a conversation. Her commlink, on her at nearly all times save for more sensitive meetings, placed another million others within her reach.
That had been the strangeness of space, when she found herself traveling between Imperial Center and Alderaan regularly. Long distance comms were still available to her, but the bustle of life was no longer present. Instead, the muted hum of the electricity running through the ship and the low noise of the other systems replaced the sounds of birdsong and insects. There were still people, of course, Leia having a present entourage, but it wasn’t lively . She was proud to represent Alderaan and passionate about what she knew she could achieve through both her work as a Senator (albeit limited and obstructed by the Imperial government) and as a secret member of the Rebellion, but traveling through space would never be her favorite part.
Imperial Center was like Aldera in some ways, though the sheer scope of an entirely urban planet was beyond her ability to truly contemplate and no one would ever call the planet that had once been Coruscant “peaceful” in any sense of the word. It was once the focus of the Clone Wars and now the focus of the entire intergalactic Empire. It was the center of humanity, Leia had heard claimed, and it certainly lived up to it.
It was not peaceful, no, and not beautiful like the mountains and city she grew up in, but it seemed to breathe like a being in itself. There were few distinctions between days and nights, and the stars were almost entirely blotted out through the haze of smog and the light pollution that spilled from every part of the upper levels, but the whole planet was filled with life of a million different sorts. There were people from every part of the galaxy and then some, and a thousand actions occurring at any given moment, and every one of them added to the sense of vitality that contradicted the planet itself.
(Leia would later contemplate whether that had been the force she had felt, weaving between persons as she had landed there for the first time, knowing the constructed planet was entirely alive in a new, different way to that she had known…)
Feeling that, how could anyone not surround themselves with life? Leia was unable to imagine a place that had none of the business and sound she had long grown familiar with.
A place that was quiet , she thought, would be a place without life; it would be somewhere dead and empty, the song and soul of a world removed.
Leia was not quiet , either.
She had been headstrong from the moment she was born, and additionally filled with the sort of emotion and passion that she had once imagined could break apart anything set in front of her. She knew how to hold it in, but she also knew how to strike with scathing words and decisive actions, and being raised and instructed as Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan only enhanced all of it. She had the privilege to speak her mind, and although she knew better than to publicly state certain ones of her truths, her parents encouraged her to do so in the private of their rooms.
Holding your tongue when you saw something wrong was an injustice, Leia was certain, and so when she could not loudly say the words that ran through her head, she spoke them in other ways. In the encoded messages of the Rebellion or the whispers that became rumors that became truth spread among the people, or the carefully phrased speeches she delivered before the Senate, she made sure her thoughts were heard. Loudly, and clearly , if at all possible.
And if not, she carefully reserved her opinion within herself, and it became only a matter of politeness and the manners carefully drilled into her. It was not about fear but about strategy; it was a particular decision to withhold her words and not a matter of anything other than that.
This was the way that Leia was familiar with beyond anything else. A person who stood quiet , Leia knew, was a person who did not care. A person who was quiet was a person resigned, a person indifferent, a person afraid , and Leia would never let herself be any of those things.
What could there possibly be, in the whole of the Empire - no, in the whole of the universe, in any galaxy here or far, far away - that could ever make Leia fall silent and afraid, make her used to a lack of life and noise and all that quiet ?
Leia was not used to quiet , but in those few moments, it was all that there was.
As if every one of the voices she ever heard had suddenly fallen silent, every person she had ever loved dead…
It was so, so quiet.