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“I have a dangerous mission and I need three troopers right now.” The tiny woman says with the urgency of one who knows what urgency is but never panics.
“Dune’ll do it!” Someone calls out, and Cara whose been minding her own business pretending not to stare at the last princess of Alderaan makes the critical error of saying very loudly, “What?”
Three of the men around her snicker, right until the princess looks there way. They quell under her judging look and can’t meet her eyes. Cara would like to relish the moment, but those piercing eyes lock on her next and any emotion other than overwhelming inferiority is swept away from her.
“Dune?” She checks, and Cara realises she needs to bow, or curtsey? Something. She manages to lurch to her feet, and then freezes because she realises she doesn’t know how to do either of those things and now she’s standing awkwardly when she could have stayed sitting.
“I’m game.” One of the big men up the back says and Cara isn’t sure if it’s Marlo or Pikarell because it’s dark back there but more importantly she can’t turn away from the princess.
“That’s one,” the princess acknowledges gratefully, “anyone else?”
“Two,” Cara manages to say despite the misfiring in her brain.
“Two,” the princess acknowledges her but her eyes are for the room at large.
“What kind of mission?” One of the other women asks, she’s got a broken nose and striking beauty. She’s also sloppy with her work.
“Juba.” Cara snaps, and her friend whose small for a shock trooper looks surprised and then cautiously puts his hand in the air.
The princess addresses him alone when she asks, “Are you sure?”
His confidence comes back to him because he stands up, sweeps a perfect bow and says, “Absolutely Your Highness.”
“Alright grab your things, the shuttle is already waiting,” and Leia Organa, rebellion hero, general commander and Last Princess of Alderaan walks out of the room and takes the air with her.
It takes a few seconds for the air to come back and the first thing anyone does is thump her in the back.
“Nice going, Dune.” Gor behind her laughs, and his friends follow. The next hand that tries to thump her she catches and twists and she has Gor, the lug of a brute, on the floor with her knee in his back and his arm twisted up close to the point of breaking.
“What was that?” She asks him loudly and he tries to shift her so she pushes harder.
“Yield!” He cries just as she was worrying she’s actually going to break it or have to fold herself. She pops up and helps him to his feet. “You’re a tough rock, Dune. Don’t go dying.”
“Don’t go reminding me that coming back means having to see your face and I won’t.” She counters. He tugs her in by their gripped hands and thunks his forehead down onto hers then lets her go.
Feeling buoyed and acknowledged Cara gets on with her job.
Her companions are waiting at the door already, their drop bags slung over their shoulders, and she checks her friend with her shoulder and leads the way to the hanger.
Cara takes a breath and says, “When you said ‘we’,” the princess is looking around the corner from their position in the compound’s halls, Cara apologises to all that is sacred, gets a hand into the smallers woman’s collar, tugs her back into the safety of their alcove and takes her position. “I thought you meant- not this. Your Highness.”
The shorter woman gives her a fierce glare and steps directly into the corridor gun at the ready to shoot anything at the other end.
Despite her mini heart attack Cara does not have to watch the princess take a blaster to the chest for the dumbest move she’s seen a fighter make since basic training. It doesn’t calm her nerves.
“How are you not dead?!” Cara demands, and forces herself to go faster than she usually would while infiltrating an enemy base. Someone failed to give her princess a stop button and it shows.
“Diplomacy, and blasters.” The princess replies as she ducks around another corner into potential enemy lines and Cara wonders if she could be charged for throwing the princess over her shoulder and doing the rest of the operation like that. She could handle the weight just fine, but she feels like she might be murdered on the other side.
“And a Jedi brother.” Cara grumbles as she puts a splayed hand over her princess’s chest and pushes her back from the door they’re about to go through. She apologises to Queen Breha and Prince Bail for the disrespect. The princess herself doesn’t seem anything but ruffled about being moved out of the way, the manner seems to escape her notice.
“I survived for years on my own before her showed up.” The princess argues, as if Cara has called her very honour into question. Cara opens the door and storms in, she drops to one knee, shoots a soldier on the right, then pivots to take out a second on her left. A shot blasts over her head and takes down a trooper coming through an opposite door. She has time to raise her gun and take out the one following him.
“I fought the Battle of Endor without him.” the princess further explains exasperated.
“No disrespect, Your Highness.” Cara says realising she should be formal, graceful, dignified- it’s just it’s hard when trying to stay alive and keep the most important person to her people alive at the same time. Well, what people they have left. “You fought bravely and we are eternally grateful for what you did-”
“That’s enough of that,” the princess orders as she takes control of one of the consoles. Cara releases a tense breath and asks for patience. “We all did what we could. But I’m not a wilting flower and I didn’t ask you to come to treat me like a child.”
Why did you ask me to come?” She asks as she kicks weapons out of the hands of the dead and checks the adjoining room. It’s a guard room with no exists so she returns to her post protecting the princess. “And I’m not treating you like a child.”
The princess is suspiciously quiet in reply, and Cara ducks her head around the corner to check the corridor then stares back at the slight woman. She’s dressed in dark brown pants, a light green short sleeved shirt and a stiff over vest buttoned up with a thick banded belt over the top. She has a gun holster clipped into the belt and a second cylindrical holster, possibly for detonators. Cara didn’t think they were blowing up anything but it never hurts to be prepared.
“You didn’t want to, did you?” Cara asks surprised by the realisation. “You were going to do this alone.” It’s as much accusation as awe, because the audacity of it staggers even Cara and she once crept into Admiral’s Prikpri’s chambers to steal pure Rundun ale for her team after a particularly terrible mission had gone wrong.
The princess raises a finger for quiet and Cara stills to listen. Whatever the princess can see on her control station Cara can barely hear the echo of, but as it gets closer she identifies it as a troop moving quickly in their direction. She does a quick assessment, the princess is still working, doing whatever it is she has to do to complete the mission, and she needs more time.
“How long?” Cara asks and instead of hesitating like some people do the princess says, “five minutes.”
Cara accepts it with a head bob and says, “Try and be faster,” before she sprints down the corridor towards the oncoming troops. No-one calls her back, that’s not either of their jobs, and Cara ploughs into the fight head first. Gets three down with her bolt blaster before they’ve advanced on her position, and when one comes around the corner for her, she grapples with him and shots him through the chin.
The melee that follows isn’t unfamiliar to her, but she doesn’t like it. Too many close calls, but you don’t always get a say in how these things go down. By the time she’s broken the last man’s arm and shot him through the back of the head she’s panting, her hair is everywhere, and her arms seen better days. She shoots one or two of the men again to be sure they’re dead and hen the turns around to check on the princess she finds her standing there already, perfectly unmarred and unruffled. Hurriedly Cara runs her fingers through her hair to push it back a little neater and smears whatever it is she has on her gloves through the lose strands.
“That wasn’t five.” Cara grumbles, and the princess proudly smiles.
“It only took two.”
“Good.” Cara says, listening to the gunfire exploding across the compound, “because it’s time to go. You get everything you need?”
“More than.” The princess grins, and Cara feels her heart stutter because for the first time she sees exactly how dangerous her princess is, not to herself (though she is that) but to the remnants of the Empire. To anyone who would try to fight her and Cara wants to swear eternal loyalty to her, even though she already had once - before their planet was destroyed. Before this moment it was an idea, but looking at the fierce woman ready to throw herself into the path of any oncoming dangers makes Cara realise that it is very real, and she would die for her princess and her every ideal.
“Let’s go then.” She says instead of anything else, and she half leads, and half follows the princess out of the compound at a run.
“You’d have gone alone, wouldn’t you?” The princess asks once they’re retrieved her team and the ship is in hyperspace. Cara meets her princesses’ eyes dead on and a laugh punches out of her.
“I’ve done it before.” She agrees, then sobers, “But you,” she explains, “you’re a princess, you’re too important to lose.”
Juba is at the helm flying, and Marlo is unconscious in the back corner having taken a blast to the arm. He’s strapped into his seat so he can’t fall until they get him to the medics but he’s not in danger, just pain.
The princess has a sad smile when she disagrees with Cara, and Cara can see the yearning and loss she’s felt in her bones since the day she heard Alderaan was gone. “I’m not,” her princess says kindly, “my title is for a dead planet, a displaced people. I’m no more important than any one of them- then you.” The Last Princess of Alderaan presses Cara’s hands and kisses her dirty forehead. “Be safe, Cara Dune, and thank you.” And Princess Leia Organa leaves her there to check on Juba at the helm, but Cara can’t move, struck dumb and hopeless by the surge of absolutely love she feels for this woman, this princess, this queen. Her Queen.
The Last Queen of Alderaan.