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A new moon hangs in Alderaan’s sky and Breha Organa is alone.
Bail leads the evacuation efforts. The Empire promises that their new weapon can annihilate at will, through any planetary shielding, but the new moon does not fire yet and with the planetary shields still holding, a few ships at a time can make the jump to hyperspace even in the face of a blockade of Star Destroyers. Too few ships, always too few, but every one is one more act of defiance. Breha’s own defiance is for the damned. The old, the stubborn, the alone. Those who gave up their places in the evacuation lines years ago when whispers of a planet killer first began seeping in and the evacuation plans were disguised as local disaster relief. Breha sings into the microphone: old lullabies, bawdy soldiers songs, mountain croonings, and whatever popular earworms she hasn't been able to shake. Her voice echoes on every broadcast on every frequency in Alderaan’s space, drowning out Tarkin’s demands that the Rebellion surrender lest Alderaan be destroyed.
She hears it before she sees it, of course. That heavy mechanical rasp. The door to her office creaks open and there he is, a tower that eats the light.
Breha locks eyes with his mask and holds up one finger as she finishes her song. She's put a lot of thought into her last public words, even more than most of her foremothers, she would wager. She never thought they would be the chorus to “Hang Me On The Stars With You” by second rate jizz artist Syllomik W’kkazz. But she sings the happy little tune and cuts the broadcast herself.
“Lord Vader,” she greets, tall and proud as the high peak that broke her long before he could. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He shuts the door behind him. Breha does not let herself relax. Vader prefers witnesses to his cruelty, yes, but he does what he's told. Vader reaches into his cloak and withdraws not a lightsaber but a signal jammer.
“I require a private conversation.”
Breha’s pulmonodes do not allow her to stop breathing any more than Vader's respirator allows him. She opens a cabinet and presses a button inside. Durasteel casing slams shut over her gently filigreed windows and old oak door, plunging them into darkness. It would take hours with a plasma cutter for anyone to break in
“Do you think this will contain me?” Vader demands.
“You requested privacy,” Breha replies. “You have it.”
Vader stands. Vader stares at her. She holds what must be his gaze, placid as the mountain lakes, sheltered from the wind by the unforgiving permanence of stone.
“Leia,” he says and there is nothing that can touch those cool mountain lakes, crystal clear and icy cold. “She is not your blood.”
“Her blood has watered the gardens of the stones, just as any daughter of Alderaan does.” Breha smiles softly and remembers her own blood, dancing in those frigid waters. “I am so very proud of her.”
“She is not your flesh,” Vader accuses.
“We are little enough flesh, you and I,” Breha agrees, placing a hand on her stomach. Beneath the blue wool of her dress, her artificial heart and lungs glow and pulse, red and red and red in the dim emergency lights. “It is no secret that Leia is adopted, but she is still my daughter.”
“She is Padmé Amidala’s daughter!” Vader declares, leveling a finger in Breha’s face.
Breha smiles; gentle, sweet, and unassuming. “What a curious conclusion to come to, Lord Vader. When would the dear Senator have had time to bear a child? There are no records of such a thing and surely she could not have hidden a pregnancy."
“Do not waste my time,” Vader hisses as though Breha would do anything else, as though every second he stays here is not another second that someone else can try to slip past the blockade. “I know she shares Padmé Amidala’s blood.”
Breha gives him a look of gentle patience. “My Lord, I don't know what you hope to gain from this madcap theory, but Senator Amidala was from Naboo. Even if she did have a child, you could not know that. The Naboo as a rule do not permit their DNA to be sequenced nor sampled. All known examples of her genetic material would have been destroyed after her death to protect her living family. That is simply the custom of her kindred.”
“All known samples,” Vader repeats, cold and colder.
Breha clings to her calm like the face of a mountain, fingertips bleeding, arms straining, head spinning for lack of air. It's useless to fight nature itself. The only thing to do is live anyway.
“Very well. You have a sample that you believe to belong to Padmé Amidala, though you cannot prove it–”
Vader surges forward. The foot of the mountain surges up to meet Breha. She has known the agony of death before and she has survived it. If she dies, the conversation is over. Vader learns nothing.
“There are fates worse than death,” Vader promises, looming so close to her that she would have to crane her neck to meet his gaze. She fixes her eyes on his chestplate instead, on his primitive control panel. He's the Emperor’s finest enforcer and his life support is a model that was generations obsolete when Breha had hers installed twenty years ago. She can imagine he knows a thing or two about fates worse than death. Just as she knows a thing or two about healing from them anyway.
“Let us imagine a daughter of Padmé Amidala,” Breha offers. A peace offering. “A daughter of the Emperor's most beloved martyr. How could such a girl, if she did exist, ever grow out of that shadow? Would it not be cruel to raise her under such… public scrutiny?”
Vader doesn't answer. His harsh, rasping breath fills the inches between them. Breha’s pulmonodes work silently, glowing in her chest, warmer and fuller than the harsh pinpricks of his suit. There are pleasing aesthetics to be had in refusing to submit to flesh. Useful ones.
Vader takes a step back, folds his hands behind him. The menace of him still fills the room, but it's his own attempt at a peace offering. As much as violence begets violence, peace begets peace just the same. Whether that will be enough to survive this encounter remains to be seen. How fortunate for Breha that she has already made her peace with death.
“Why was I not informed?” Vader asks.
“Why would you be?” Breha returns, light and curious.
“The girl is Force Sensitive.”
“You think so? She's never tested like it.”
Vader makes a sound that might be a laugh or might just be a sign that his respirator needs repair.
“She's never shown any of the classical signs either,” Breha continues. “But even if she were, she's far too old to train now. Untapped Force Sensitivity wears off eventually, I was told.”
“The Jedi lied to you,” Vader scoffs. With him, a chance to speak ill of the Jedi is often a distraction. “They lied about many things. For so many generations that they had forgotten the truth completely. Everything the Jedi teach is a lie. Their very foundation is rotten to the core. Remember that. Why did you not tell me about the girl?”
“Whether the Jedi lied to us or were simply mistaken, we believed the results of the midichlorian tests that were given to us. As she had no need for a trainer, we had no reason to involve you.”
“You saw no reason to involve me in the matter of Padmé Amidala’s child?” Vader asks, cold as the mountain streams and cutting as stone.
Breha remembers the sensation of her spine breaking with perfect clarity. It is hard to find fear greater than that. She spreads her hands, palms empty, politely baffled and nonthreatening. “Padmé Amidala died almost twenty years ago. I first heard tell of Darth Vader sixteen years ago. If there is some connection between Darth Vader and Padmé Amidala, it is unknown to me.”
“There is none!” Vader insists, immediate, almost frantic.
“Then what reason would there be for Darth Vader to know anything about Padmé Amidala’s child?”
Vader turns away, pacing. Three long steps, then he turns. Six strides cover the width of the room.
“May I ask you a personal question?” Breha asks, keeping her mind fixed on the peaks of Alderaan.
Vader’s breath hitches, a weakness her own body is incapable of. “You may ask.”
Breha has no heart to race in terror, no lungs to gasp. She even had the sweat glands on her palms removed so that her body could never again betray her grip. “Are you satisfied with the quality of medical care His Excellency has offered you?”
Vader stops pacing. His whole body turns to her. She turns her own to his and tugs down the collar of her gown, showing the glow of her pulmonodes. The half-droid Queen of Alderaan is hardly a secret, but it is one thing to know it and another thing entirely to see it.
“How much did they replace?” Vader asks.
“My heart, both lungs, my sternum, eleven ribs, two vertebrae, an inch of spinal cord, my diaphragm was removed entirely, and I needed a plate installed to keep my liver from filling the rest of the space,” Breha recites. “After that, I had my tubes tied as well. A pregnancy risked the liver plate sliding around inside me.”
“You–” For once, Darth Vader doesn't speak.
Breha has heard what he intends to say a thousand times. That she doesn't look injured. The truth is that she does. The glow of her pulmonodes in her body make that clear. Even when they're covered, she does not breathe as a human is supposed to. The effect is subtle, but eerie enough that most humanoids outside of her closest companions find it rather disturbing. Except for Leia, of course, who has never known her mother any other way.
“You are not her mother!” Vader roars and Breha slams into the far wall. It hurts, as she expected it to, but adrenaline dulls the pain and her internal systems do not report the damage as catastrophic.
“Padmé bore her and then died,” Breha says. The high mountain lakes of Alderaan are too cold for anything to live. That is the fact that provides their crystal clarity. “It was her dying wish that her daughter be raised safe and loved. I have done that.”
A great and awful weight presses down on her throat as Vader's fingers clench. She can feel her vertebrae creaking and she knows what it would feel like for them to break. It does not make for a terribly compelling argument that Breha was wrong to keep her beloved daughter away from this killer.
Her feet find the floor and her breath continues as though it had never been interrupted.
Vader reels away. His lightsaber ignites in his hand and he slashes at the durasteel walls, gouging through with ease. She imagines it must be viscerally unsatisfying to cut durasteel with a lightsaber. If it takes the same amount of force to destroy anything, the only interest would be whether or not it screams.
“Don't tempt me,” Vader snaps.
“Children scream,” Breha reminds him. “They cry and they whine and they shit and they vomit and they throw tantrums over every little thing.”
“They learn to keep quiet if you teach them,” Vader says and a chasm of maternal agony opens beneath Breha’s feet.
But Breha has survived falls before. “Is that how you would have taught her?”
Vader doesn't answer. “I deserved to know.”
“Why?”
Vader paces like a cornered animal, but he keeps his lightsaber at his hip. That is hardly a reassurance.
“She is not safe now!” Vader snaps. He waves his hands, but no objects follow the motions. This is what passes for self control with him. “Not running around with your foolish rebellion!”
“This is not a safe galaxy to be a diplomat running mercy missions,” Breha agrees. “Despite the Emperor’s best and sincerest efforts. Do you think she would have been safer as an Inquisitor?”
The floor buckles beneath her feet. Finally, she falls, her unsweating hands digging into the splinters of the centuries old floorboards. She sees her hands bleed, but feels no pain. She must have more adrenaline in her than she realized. She sits cross legged on the floor and looks ruefully up at Vader, who stands in the epicenter of the destruction, all the cracks radiating out from him.
“That's not an answer to my question,” Breha points out, picking a splinter out of her palm. Even if she can't feel it, she does have nerves it would behoove her not to damage.
“This is not the life I wanted for her,” Vader admits. The vocoder will not permit his voice to be soft. Nor will Breha.
“Who are you to have wanted any life for her at all?” she demands. “You are a mass murderer who appeared after her first smile, her first words, her first steps. You were the monster whose deeds we hid from her to allow her to have any childhood at all. Where were you when Padmé entrusted her to me? What were you then?”
“You will die here,” Vader reminds her. It carries no weight of threat. “You will spare her no grief.”
“I was always going to,” Breha agrees. “I cheated Death once already. I owe my blood to the mountains.”
“You owe every scrap of life you have to y– to Leia,” Vader insists. “You cannot die here. I will not permit it.”
Breha smiles wryly. “Has anyone ever told you the parable of the Cerean Jedi’s wife?”
An unseen pressure wraps around her ribcage and sets her on her feet. “I have little use for parables.”
“‘How do you love a husband who will love everything else before you?’ the maiden asks the wife,” Breha recites. “And the wife replies, ‘When I was a girl, I wanted a love for me fierce enough to burn a planet. Then I saw a planet burn.’”
“Alderaan will burn,” Vader urges. “You will burn with it and leave Leia alone!”
“I would not be who she loves if I did any less.”
The durasteel over the windows rips outwards with a grinding shriek, leaving a hole large enough for Vader to step out of into empty air, if he wanted to, out to the high walls out of the palace. Away from witnesses, away from interference. Darth Vader is not a being one can defy and live.
The glow beneath Breha’s chest dims and flickers out. Four minutes. The timer flickers in the corner of her vision. Four minutes until she dies.
Vader’s hand squeezes the air and Breha’s ribs creak. Her pulmonodes are neither heart nor lungs. They will not be revived in the traditional manner. Breha is cold. What does a killing machine do with a problem he cannot kill his way out of? Can he be something worthy of Padmé’s memory?
“She was my wife!” Vader begs. “She loved me!”
And where were you?
“She was going to die. The Emperor said he could save her!”
And where is she?
“I–I killed her.”
Breha can see it in her mind’s eye. Burning and boiling and Padmé’s eyes bulging as her hands scrabble at her neck, finally collapsing onto her pregnant belly.
Breha responds with an image of her own. A little baby girl, smiling up at her. Bail’s voice in her ear. “Her mother named her Leia.” Where were you?
There is no explosion of destruction this time. Just a cold silence. The respirator stills. Blood drips into the shimmering mountain lake that hides nothing.
“The Emperor lied to me,” Vader pronounces with a depth of hatred deeper than the heart of a black hole.
In the sunlight streaming in through the windows, Breha’s pulmonodes glow their customary yellow. The timer vanishes. She warms.
“We have found a flaw in that battle station,” Breha offers. The type of peace offering Darth Vader merits is far from her usual fare. “If you remain on Alderaan, they will likely hold their fire.” She presses the button on the desk to retract the durasteel casings. They sputter weakly and do not move.
“Hardly,” Vader scoffs. “Tarkin would relish the excuse to be rid of me. The exhaust port, yes?”
“I was not informed of the specifics,” Breha demurs.
“Regardless,” Vader states. “I will require a vessel equipped with a proton torpedo.” He holds out a hand to Breha and she takes it. They step into the open air outside the window and drift gently to the ground.
The battle station looms in the sky above them. Breha is calm because she cannot afford to be anything else. The manicured gardens are empty and still. All the gardeners are gone. Some to the evacuation crafts, but the simple arithmetic of the thing means that most have gone home to their families for what time they can.
“Just the one?” Breha asks. She has little doubt Darth Vader could destroy the battle station with just one proton torpedo, but the time it will take him to transit from planetside… She had no hope to crush to begin with. She knew when the moon appeared in the sky that she would die. She cannot ask Vader even to carry a message to Leia; Leia would never believe it, coming from him.
“I do not intend to miss,” Vader declares, but before he can leave, he pauses. His head tilts like he is listening for a quiet, distant sound.
The sky shatters.
Sound and fury rend the firmament. When shadows return, the place where the battle station had been is an ever expanding cloud. The shockwave that follows nearly throws Breha off her feet, would have but for Vader’s absent minded hand at her back.
“How many people were on that battle station?” she whispers.
Vader looks at her. His answer is cautious. “Several orders of magnitude fewer than are on Alderaan.”
Inside one of the guest suites, the holoprojector blares to life and there stands Leia, upright and proud like the bones of the mountains. Vader rips another hole in the palace to get closer and Breha drifts behind him. She is in no mood to censure him.
“Good people of the Empire!” Leia declares. “I am Leia Organa, Crown Princess of Alderaan. You have seen your Emperor’s threats against my people and my home! If this is the reward His Excellency gives a loyal Core world, what do you think your loyalty will earn you? You have seen his threats and you have seen how we answer them! People of good conscience, make your choice! The Alliance to Restore the Republic will welcome you!” The broadcast flickers out.
“A loyal Core world,” Vader repeats. “Her audacity beggars belief.”
“A trait she did not inherit from me,” Breha observes.
“Training nurtures the skills nature provides,” Vader points out. Then, he pulls himself into parade rest, hands folded behind his back. “The Emperor lied to me,” he declares, “And his greatest work has failed.”
“Perhaps he is not as powerful as he seems,” Breha offers.
“He is more powerful than you can comprehend,” Vader retorts with the immediacy of habit.
The idea that the Emperor could be a Force user like Vader is horrifying to contemplate, but Breha has faced power before. The cold uncaring of nature, the vile malice of a planet killer, her own body trying desperately to let her die. And yet she endures. For her daughter and her people, she endures.
Barely above a whisper, Darth Vader insists, “She is my daughter too.”
“Are you the man that Padmé Amidala married?” Breha asks.
Darth Vader does not answer.
“Then become him.”