Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Asked by General Rieekan to write an account of their recent experiences with a goal of prosecuting war crimes after the conflict is over, Luke and Leia submit separate reports. Rieekan also pays Han Solo and Chewbacca a combined 500 credits for their own report, then pulls the files R2D2 downloaded from the Death Star. Rieekan believes supporting the three accounts with the Empire’s own records of Leia’s capture, interrogation, imprisonment and planned murder will lend credibility and bolster the Alliance’s position that destroying the Death Star was an act of self-defense. These reports become part of the official record, but Leia decides to continue to keep an account of daily life on Hoth. As part of the royal family and a senator, Leia kept a diary of her daily activities for the official record. Her entries had tended to be concise and factual, usually no more than a couple of hundred words. She finds her new diaries are far more reflective of her new life: more chaotic, more detailed, more authentic.
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This is the official account of my physical capture and mental torture by Imperial Forces, specifically Governor Tarken and Darth Vader, who committed war crimes against myself, former Senator and Princess Leia Organa; former Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, most recently of Tatooine; 152 beings from various planets (see end note for details) on the Tantative IV and approximately 2.7 million beings on the planet of Alderaan. Estimated cost of the destruction of Alderaan is 753 trillion credits, with an additional 157 thousand credits for the Tantative IV. (Note: An additional account of war crimes committed against Owen and Beru Lars as well as a commune of 15 sand people, all of Tatooine, will be detailed separately by Luke Skywalker. Estimated costs of crimes on Tatooine is 53 thousand credits.)
On the day of the Battle of Yavin and the destruction of Alderaan, I, Leia Organa, awoke on the ship Tantative IV at 0500. My ship was captured by the Imperial ship Devastator while the Tantative IV was over Tatooine. Storm troopers, led by Darth Vader, boarded the Tantative IV at approximately 0800. Imperial Forces stunned me and took me on board the Devastator to interrogate me …
The next six months were hard for everyone on Hoth, but Leia was grateful for the heavy workload. At first, it kept her mind off her physical discomfort. Once she got used to the cold, the workload helped ease the pain of the loss of Alderaan. She didn’t dwell on the past, but she caught herself several times absently planning what day would be best to call her parents before realizing there was no one to call. In her diary, she automatically starred three things she wanted to ask her father about before remembering he wasn’t available to ask.
She longed to talk to her older sister about the uncomfortable underwear. Because of their age difference, they hadn’t had a lot in common, but they had the same opinions about traditional Alderaani formal wear, which required a sort of girdle underneath to make the clothes fit smoothly. Leia thought they might have had a good laugh about bras clearly designed by men or robots — a being without a breast, that was for sure. Now that her sister was gone, Leia found herself missing her more than she had in life.
Leia didn’t cry, and she wasn’t sunk in grief the way some of the Alderanians were, but she was pierced with sadness sometimes, like a light saber to her heart — a breathless stab, quick, searingly painful, then gone so fast it made her dizzy. Some mornings when she woke up she had to think about where she was — Hoth was so cold, and her quarters were so different from her apartment, and her dreams were sometimes so vivid, she often felt a bit disoriented until she remembered where she was and what she was doing. Breathe in, breathe out, move on, she thought.
Han had moved on, or Leia supposed he had. He reached out to General Rieekan about a week after he and Chewie left. His trip to pay Jabba a portion of what he owed was successful, which was a relief to Rieekan, as well as Leia and Luke.
As the weeks turned to months, Leia began making friends on Hoth. Alderaan had been socially egalitarian with a high standard of living. It was a wealthy planet, but that wealth was redistributed through taxes. No one, including Leia, lived in luxury that was common on other planets, but everyone had access to education, health care and basic needs. When she joined the Senate, the economic status structure was the hardest thing for her to navigate. As a lieutenant colonel, she had been afraid things would be similarly socially regimented, and she would be insulated from the rank and file, but while Hoth was a large base, it was also an informal one. They were a congenial group and didn’t stand on ceremony, which was a relief to Leia. On Hoth, all the women joked about the weird underclothes and the men complained about the hats, and everyone hated the local wildlife, but the mood was generally upbeat most of the time. If one could ignore the bone-numbing cold, it wasn’t a bad place to be.
And she and Luke were together, which was a source of comfort. Their shared experience on the Death Star had forged a tight bond, but their time on Hoth developed the bond into a close friendship. They were opposites in so many ways, but she found that they thought alike and had the same sense of humor. They talked a lot, almost as if they were trying to catch up. She tried to eat at least one meal a day with Luke, and during their first month on Hoth, he asked if she would be his next-of-kin. “Only if you’ll be mine,” she said cheerfully, unsurprised by the request.
They’d eaten together enough times that Leia knew he liked to salt everything — a holdover from the dry, hot weather of Tatooine, she supposed, when it was important to ensure one consumed enough sodium. She handed him a salt shaker he hadn’t asked for yet. “I still don’t expect I’ll live too long.”
Luke grinned and salted his protein dish, then nodded toward the citrus perched on his water glass. “Lemon?”
“Yes, please.” He handed her his lemon wedge, and she squeezed it into her water.
Luke took a bite and said, “Let’s just say our lives are becoming faster and more intense. If the battle doesn’t get us, the cold probably will. Or the wildlife.”
“Ugh, I hope not. If I die here, you have to promise to write me a good obituary.” She could feel her bra strap sliding down her shoulder, and she impatiently adjusted it. “I want you to say I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”
Luke let out a hoot of laughter that turned heads. He pointed his fork at her. “I don’t think so.”
An sat down beside them. “What’s so funny?”
“Leia’s complaining again about underclothes,” Luke said.
“I don’t understand it,” An said, her brow furrowing. “I mean, they are printed to our specifications. Why are they so uncomfortable?”
“It’s the material, I think. The cut isn’t great, but the material doesn’t have enough stretch,” Leia said.
“The Alliance probably got a good deal on it,” An said gloomily. “We likely have a zillion yards of it and will have to use it till the end of the war.”
“They can’t be worse than the hats,” Luke began, and both An and Leia chorused, “Yes, they are.”
The whole Hoth experience was almost like a time stamp. Leia and Luke both had the sense that their old life had ended, and their new life had begun. Before and after. Before was Alderaan, the Senate, undercover work, moisture farming, repairing fences, cleaning droids, racing speeders. After was the rebellion.
And the rebellion was everything.