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Most people did not know Coruscant was alive. This was not because she hid it, rather due to the fact that nobody thought to ask. People looked at her and saw a city-planet. They forgot that sometimes planets, much like everything else in the galaxy given enough time, learned how to think.
Coruscant had existed for so long that even she no longer remembered when she had first woken. Perhaps it had been when her first city became ten. Perhaps when ten became one thousand. Perhaps when one thousand became so many they were impossible to count.
Perhaps consciousness was inevitable when trillions of lives layered themselves one atop another until the planet could no longer remain silent beneath the weight of being inhabited. Whatever the reason, the fact remained that Coruscant was awake.
And she watched.
She watched senators rise and fall. She watched dynasties. She watched species go extinct. She watched wars begin in government chambers and end on the streets. She watched children be born and buried.
She watched and remembered and loved.
She loved traders and senators and children and thieves. She loved the rain against her upper spires and the steam rising from her lower levels. She loved old music leaking from apartment windows. She loved gossip. She loved riotous life. But most of all, she loved the Coruscant Guard.
They were hers. They walked her streets. They bled into her alleys. They died in her name and did not complain about it. They caught the monsters that hid in the depths of her heart and dragged them into the light.
They had not always been her favorites. At first they had simply been another military presence.
But something, she noticed immediately, was different about these ones, though she could not quite tell what yet. Coruscant had watched invaders and conquerors and governments and revolutionaries. Coruscant did not particularly have any issues with that type, she had been there before them, and would be there long after, but she disliked the way they made her people feel.
The Guard settled into her rhythm. They did not carve out a place for themselves like so many others, merely took what they were given. She watched them even closer.
She saw them watching over streets they would never own, and protecting people who barely looked at them. They were small bright sparks in red armor, moving through her veins. She could feel them when they were hurt. She could feel them when they were angry. She could feel their love for each other.
So Coruscant watched, and she became fond.
Eventually, Commander Fox arrived, and with him came the realization of why these ones were different. This Senate seemed to have the notion that they owned these ones. That made her furious.
Coruscant had watched kings declare ownership before, passively observed corporations buy planets, seen the Senate rewrite itself over and over again throughout the ages. Ownership meant nothing to her. Residence, however, meant everything.
And the Guard lived here. Which meant, if anyone’s, they were hers.
She found herself strangely enamored with Commander Fox the most. She loved the way he stood at the men’s checkpoints and pretended he was not one bad order away from biting someone. She loved the way he snarled at corrupt officials with the exact expression of someone who would have already killed them had he decided their funeral would not be a waste of city resources.
Mostly though, she loved the way his soldiers looked at him. The way they trusted him, and the way they trusted each other because he had taught them how.
They were good to her. Her Guard fixed broken things in her lower sectors without being asked. They redirected traffic when she was too crowded. They moved her people to safey during riots. They pulled her civilians out of fire. They cleaned up after the Senate’s endless disasters and never once forgot that the politicians were the ones responsible.
They thought she did not notice. She didn’t blame them for it—they were not sure if she was alive yet. She noticed everything, and did not say anything. Planets didn’t speak, and, despite her sentience, she was no different. Instead she simply adjusted for them.
Traffic incidents happened less near Guard patrols. Transit arrived slightly early when they were late. Doors stuck open, elevators waited, cameras glitched at convenient times.
Lost equipment appeared again, and Guard reports mysteriously found approval despite no one ever remembering signing. Palpatine’s office temperature was consistently three degrees too warm. Small things that could have been chalked up to chance had it not been for the frequency in which they occurred.
Her Fox noticed first, because of course he did. Commander Fox knew her better than anyone. Eventually he realized things… helped.
One of the elevators in the Senate building always arrived for his corries, but stuck for certain Senators. The way their comm signal never dropped no matter how deep they delved into the planet’s core. How streetlights that barely worked most of the time flickered on ahead of patrols, brighter than they truly should have been. And he got the strange feeling that the planet itself watched.
Fox never said anything. Why would he? How could he explain that away? Sorry, I was talking to the planet? No, better to do it in subtler ways. Sometimes, very late at night, after a blissfully quiet patrol, he would stop and rest his hand against a wall briefly, and let his feelings of gratitude bubble to the surface.
Coruscant glowed a little brighter those nights.
The Guard noticed too. Commander Thorn swore the city rerouted traffic so their medics reached them faster. Stone claimed doors opened when nobody touched controls. Thire held firm to his claim that Coruscant hated politicians.
Then there was the issue of the Chancelllr.
Coruscant had disliked Palpatine from the start. Not because he was Sith—she had hosted Sith before. Planets survived governments and the whims of mankind. She did not care.
But Palpatine looked at people and saw tools, and Coruscant did not care for that.
Especially because of her Guard.
The man worked them endlessly. He cut their budgets, and increased patrols on extended shifts. He assigned her children impossible tasks and demanded impossible standards.
Her Fox slept even less the longer their war dragged on, and her Guard laughed less. Their barracks emptied and more soldiers stood staring out windows. More of their medics worked longer shifts. She stopped seeing their faces as their helmets stayed on longer and longer, until they did not take them off at all.
Coruscant watched, and she became angry.
One night Fox came back alone and disoriented.
He sat in an empty train station, and took his bucket off. She saw her child for the first time in months, as he lowered his head into his shaking hands. His hair was peppered with grey.
And Coruscant, who was only kind to her favorites, listened as her child whispered very quietly, “…I can’t do this anymore. I don’t remember what I’m doing half the time and the other it seems like the choices I make only hurt us.”
Coruscant’s anger began to boil, intermixed with her compassion for her child.
“…I’m trying,” he paused and wiped his eyes, “…I’m trying really hard, I promise.”
Coruscant watched as Fox leaned back and closed his eyes. And said—so quietly she almost missed it—“I wish someone would help.”
Coruscant had been patient for a long time. Perhaps too long. She had watched Palpatine poison her streets. She had watched him turn her children into soldiers and her soldiers into broken things. She had watched him plan to break the Guard. That, more than anything, was unforgivable.
Coruscant had been alive for millennia. She had never once interfered. But her Guard had asked. And Coruscant loved her Guard.
Three days later Palpatine’s private shuttle malfunctioned and crashed into the Senate’s east wing.
Palpatine tried to call on the Force to slow the crash, but Coruscant shoved the sound of her own roaring traffic, her engines, her storms, her billion beating hearts straight into the shuttle and broke his concentration. He was not allowed to survive this. She would not allow it. And he didn’t. Coruscant felt the Chancellor’s heart cease to beat and rejoiced.
Investigations into it found nothing. There was nothing to find. There was no sabotage or tampering. They had to deem it a tragic accident.
Fox received the report and read it. Then read it again. He slowly looked out his window at the endless city. The ceiling lights flickered, and his eyes narrowed.
He stood up and walked to the window, and put one hand against the glass. “…You didn’t?” He asked, already knowing the answer. Somewhere beneath six thousand levels of city Coruscant hummed and Fox felt it in his bones. He stared a moment longer, then looked away.
Five minutes later he called emergency command.
“Unfortunate accident,” he agreed with them, and listened to the voice on the other end. “…No, I don’t think further investigation is necessary.”
After hanging up, he glanced out the window again. “…Thanks.”
Coruscant, in her endless wisdom and existence, did not reply. Her child, in his gratitude, did not mind.
Years later, after clone rights had passed and the Guard had real leave and Fox finally slept more than four hours every four days, he visited an overlook alone.
He stood there quietly, wind moving through his hair, watching the planet that loved him and his men to the point of intervention.
“You know, we loved you too,” he said, and the streetlights below brightened just a little. Fox smiled, and Coruscant smiled back at her child. “Thank you for everything,” he said, and got the distinct urge that the planet was telling him ‘you’re welcome.’