“…if you cannot be a princess, then perhaps you’ll make a lovely oracle. I’ve been meaning to add one to my collection…”
Posting this mood board for accountability purposes (read: Amaranth needs to actually finish this fic)
Constellations follows Atoms, in which our vicious Grand Moff speculates about his plans for Leia. But he’s bitten off about one rebel princess more than he can chew…
Look, I love Force-sensitive Leia, and I love how easily retconned the idea is because of very weird choices made by Lucas & Co. during the filming of the OT. But it is absolutely cuckoo-bananas-bonkers to me that the original plan for her was to be Just Some Princess. Like, if you watch ANH and ESB, the whole time they were filming those movies, Luke's sister was somewhere else in the galaxy. Leia wasn't the "another" Yoda talks about at the end of ESB; they consolidated the two characters in ROTJ to wrap everything up without adding some new person in the mix. Which means Leia, Just Some Princess, didn't break under the interrogation on the Death Star or allow Vader to infiltrate her mind or whatever it was implied he was doing to get answers from her I guess through sheer determination and willpower, and Leia, Just Some Princess, hears Luke call for her on Bespin.
Absolutely chaotic choices made for Leia, Just Some Princess, the entire time. I love that we can pretend that it was purposeful foreshadowing. It's like they somehow accidentally nonesensed themselves into a workable plot twist. Utterly wild.
“IC-2224.” Vader hissed. “Stop her. Before she tears apart the station.”
Cody looked at his superior officer a little dumbstruck. During his time with Vader, he was used to receiving unreasonable orders but this? This really took the cake.
-
They’d built this place, with the intention of destroying planets. The weapon to end all weapons. One to finally scare the greater galaxy in to submission.
Now they’d done it, destroyed a planet. Thoroughly.
This planet, Alderaan, was wiped off the map, certainly. All that was left was dust.
And they’d done so, in the presence of its princess, who was apparently, Force sensitive. Very Force sensitive.
Whoops.
-
Cody had worked for the Empire for almost 20 years. He’d thought he’d been made for the Republic, at first. But the Republic had been gone now for more years than he’d ever known it, and the longer he served the Empire, the more Cody thought that maybe, he’d been made for this all along.
He didn’t like it, but who liked their job?
From what Cody could tell, not many people, and most of them didn’t even have an iron vice gripping their mind, ensuring compliance.
You could hate a job without being forced in to it, undeniably.
The chip was beyond matter really.
-
The empire didn’t need command of Cody’s brain chemistry for him to follow at their beck and call. Not when Cody had no other option. He was a soldier, he worked for the government. He always had. What would he possibly do if he left? What would he be?
Cody had no desire to stand against the empire.
And yet…
-
Here he was, being given orders, that left him, frankly gobsmacked.
He’d seen Vader send men to their deaths before, without a chance of survival and for little reason. He’d seen that from him even before he was Vader.
But Cody couldn’t think of a single reason that he might- what did Vader even want him to do? Just walk over and serve himself up to her?
He really didn’t know. Maybe that was what was stopping him. How do you follow an order if you don’t know what the order is?
“Sir?” He asked.
-
Vader turned to him, and without a word Cody was hit with the full force of that Helmet. Shining black plastic eyes boring in to his own and that stare, brought with it a reminder, the knowledge of what a long silence from that face could mean, and Cody…he felt nothing.
They were all dying here weren’t they? Hadn’t they always been?
Maybe they hadn’t known it at the time but it seemed clear to Cody now that from that first day, on the bridge of the Negotiator, Cody and Anakin Skywalker had met eachothers eyes for the first time and from that point, they’d been headed here.
Fighting for the Republic, Falling in love, Killing his General, or not killing him for that matter; living without him when he might not have.
None of it mattered, because all of that, came after. The end was already set, the day Cody met this man. He saw that now.
He met this man in another life, and since then, they’d both just been making their way here.
-
Vader uses that stare because he intends to make people break. He does not have to speak, he just stares at them and eventually they crumple under the weight of it and reveal all.
This is nothing like that.
When Cody speaks, it is not fear that loosens his tongue, it is not because he can no longer bear the silence, and the anticipation that brings.
For the first time in a long while, Cody speaks because he wants to.
-
“We’re going to die.” He breathes.
He knows it like he has known little else.
Cody took off his helmet, wanting to see it happen with his own eyes. “We die here.” He told Vader. “Me and you, we were always going to.”
Doesn’t Vader see it? Can’t he feel it?
Vader made a noise that was beyond interpretation. “I will not die here today. Now go talk to her.”
Talk to her? Like that would do a thing.
Cody choked on a laugh. “Don’t you see?” He asked, “You already have.”
They were dead. Had been since that day on the bridge of the Negotigator. It had simply taken a little while for their bodies to catch up, but here it was. Soon.
-
Vader’s head whipped between the soldier and the girl.“Girl! Stop this. You will die, you don’t want that do you?” He barked, but the girl did not seem to have heard him, her eyes were glazed.
This whole situation was beyond comprehension. He’d tortured her, how had he not seen this power? She’d appeared force null but this… this was something beyond the ability of most force users, no matter how distressed.
What did this mean? How hadn’t she been found as a child? Was this the end? Not of Vader and that insolent idiot. Not of the Death Star, but of the Empire?
A force user of this power level being hidden could bode nothing good. Someone had planned this. They’d hidden her, waited for her to grow so she might one day destroy him and without Vader? There was no Empire.
His Master’s plan would crumble to ashes. He needed Vader, they all did.
That idiot Tarkin. He'd told him that blowing up that stupid planet was a bad idea. The man had an inferiority complex the length of Coruscant. Vader knew this whole thing would end badly.
Why did they need a weapon to destroy planets, to terrify people in to submission, when they had Vader? They didn’t, plain and simple. This was just a superfluous supplement and now, the Empire would fall, thanks to that idiots hubris.
Tarkin should never have been allowed such power, look what he’d done with it.
-
The viewport cracked.
Of all the things to kill him. After all this time. All it took was one self important bureaucrat antagonising a princess. It was laughable.
All the Deaths he’d escaped to get here.
The clone too! The last of his kind.
-
Not that Vader wanted to draw any commonality between the two of them. But all that they had survived these past decades and this was what finally did the two of them in?
Vader deserved more of a death than some clone. After all this time, he’d earnt something bigger than this.
He looked back to the girl. He couldn’t reach her in the Force, she’d wrapped it round herself in an impenetrable shield.
This was a impressive show of power. All that time, she’d just been living on some insignificant planet. Had he known…
-
He could see the power rolling off her in waves. This was someone who he might have overthrown his Master, beside.
Were he in any other situation, he might be curious, to watch things play out. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. Coming off her in waves, it was as if through her pain, she was causing reality to fold in on itself.
Did she know what she was doing? She was drawing on the Cosmic Force, any student of the force knew that this kind of manipulation, was a quick way to end up dead.
-
She was still screaming, a piercing harrowing thing. The scream itself seemed to be driving the disturbance. If he could reach her in the Force, he could cut it off at its source. If he could move towards her physically, he might be able to do the same, but he found himself held there, waiting for their end.
She was not only feeling the pain of the past hour, she was terrified, stuck in a feedback loop, her own terror feeding the storm she was creating.
He’d tortured her and she’d made no attempt to escape, she could have, using the force, undoubtedly. In the days of the Republic, brigs were made to contain force users, on a ship like this, they would have had force suppressants easily available. But there was no room in the empire for Force users, not when Vader and his Master were living. There may only be 2.
If she’d made no attempt to escape, if he’d seen not even a glimpse of this power when she was under torture, that could only lead him to the conclusion that, she hadn’t known. What a way to find out you had such a power.
No wonder she was terrified.
-
It was fascinating really.
Any force user could wreck havoc in an emotional situation but without training? They’d burn from the inside out, tearing down everything in their reach on the way out. His Master had created this end. They were not prepared for her, because of the ways of the empire.
She was created by the empire, in another life the Jedi surely would have trained her. Any training, might have prevented this, the Whills, the Nightsisters, no matter how destructive the sect, self preservation would have been taught to her by any.
She couldn't have any idea what she were doing.
The jedi temple had after all, offered training to all for a reason. Untrained force users could wreck havoc in emotional situations. He supposed having your planet blown up counted as such.
She had shown no signs of it during his torture though. And had made no attempt to escape. A power like this, lurking beneath the surface all that time.
-
Without Vader, Lord Palpatine would never be able to maintain his empire, but he might not have to. This girls grip on the cosmic force, the way everything around her seemed to be at risk of folding in. This might be the end of them all.
She may well bring about the end of all reality, if she survived any longer.
There was no point in trying to reason with her. She was no more able to control it than he was. trapped in her grief as she was. The maelstrom continued to wrap around her, tighter and tighter.
-
He glanced away from her. IC-2224 looked triumphant.
The viewport cracked further.
“Anakin.” IC-2224 called, drawing his attention away from the cracking glass once more. The cheek of the man, Vader was unsure what made him more angry, the use of that name, or the automatic impulse, to turn towards it.
Before Vader could say a word, IC-2224 was speaking once again. “This is the end.” He closed his eyes, tipping his head back. “Finally.”
There was the sound of wrenching metal, a sharp crack, loud enough to be heard even over the screaming.
-
Vader readied himself for the cold burn of space. IC-2224 would feel it first, he’d removed his helmet, skin bared to the elements, he’d go first.
With artificial lungs and no tissue for the cold to damage, it would take Vader himself slightly longer to die, he would last until the last of the death stars air, was deplete of oxygen. He’d feel the cold of the void before he lost consciousness, in the sockets of his prosthetics first, and then the rest.
The girl would undoubtedly be cushioned by the shield she’d inadvertently wrapped around herself, she wouldn’t die until she realised she was the one holding it, and dropped it.
-
Vader turned his eyes to the viewport, seeing the most recent, and largest crack, as it slowly spread its way across the transparisteel, meeting the rest.
Once the weakness had wrapped its way around a complete chunk of the glass like material, it would break free, sucked in to the vacuum and then, all the rest would follow.
Vader waited, watching the cracks spread for what seems like a lifetime, he watched as a crack meets another, forming a neat plug of glass, and he watches, it flex in place, the vacuum of space tugging at it.
-
He closes his eyes, waiting for the cold void of space to meet them, but before it can, time crumples like a paper ball.
this is the snippet i wanted to post before when i posted the other one from chapter 2 with cody and past jango. i have not been able to remember the bits that made the version i accidentally deleted better, but i am still pretty sure it was better so i’m pretty upset about that still lol
this is a wip. this part is from chapter 1 which is really something of a prologue as the fic is about ex-purge trooper cody, grieving and pretty messed up after years in the empire. being sent back in time, landing on the slave ship with jango. i’m working on chapter 3 atm. theres no set timescale, just, as and when inspiration hits. but the end is written
I've had a theory for a very long time that the reason that Leia remains undetected while on the death Star as a force sensitive person is because she, like many force sensitive people, has an additional special gift and hers is near impenetrable shields. She doesn't need to work to shield herself to hide her force presence it just happens it's incredibly useful for protecting herself and she doesn't even know that she's doing it.
Okay, hold the phone here. One thing I haven’t seen discussed much is Leia’s scene towards the beginning?? Like gosh, we knew she was pretty Force Sensitive™ but wow! Not only does she survive the initial explosion, she then goes zooming through space like nobody’s business, casually showing up at the ship. What’s more (I know they’re in the middle of a battle but still) nobody blinks an eye at it! Which makes you wonder: how often is Leia using the Force? Do people know she can use it? How skilled is she? Has she been trained? Did Luke train her? Who knows?? It was one of the coolest scenes in the movie, in my opinion. I’ve always liked that Leia’s main asset is her mind, first as a politician and then a general, but dang was it cool to see her wield the Force like that.
