Carry On

A/N: “Look at the size of that thing.” That’s what she said.

Seriously, though, I don’t usually do these, but this is to remember a dear friend that I miss terribly today. If you watch the news, you may have seen her picture a few months ago.

Summary: What happens when your leader dies? AU.

For EMC.

“Won’t you carry on without me...”

James Taylor, “Carolina In My Mind”

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She was prodigious, to say the least. I knew her only for a short time, when we were both younger, schoolmates in Alderaani art history. That was a year before she was elected to the Senate and then pushed along a path that would take her further and further from Alderaan until eventually she was forced to witness its destruction from a little window in a sickening weapon of evil. But she was prodigious even then. She left a mark burned into my soul with her vibrance and her zeal for life and effervescent smile and innocent belief that democracy would have to prevail because it was good and it was right. She had her beauty and her privilege and her intelligence and she became the person that I wanted so desperately to hate but couldn’t because she was so happy, so genuinely happy, every time she saw me. She made me feel as though I was the only person in the galaxy. She was excited, thrilled, for me when I told her I had decided to attend Academy on Naboo and would be leaving Alderaan shortly after she was inaugurated. She told me that I was lucky to have such an opportunity before me and to always remember my privilege because it was something not everyone was fortunate enough to experience. She told me to use my gifts to serve others because not to do so would be a waste of incredible talent. And I did so, not because she told me to, but because I saw her do the same, and I saw the good that she brought into the galaxy and I wanted to be like her, just like her. I wanted her optimism and her benevolence and her passion.

She wasn’t supposed to die this way.

She was a soldier, yes, engaged in what must have been daily combat. I’m sure she saw danger, I’m sure she saw death. She was a hero, an icon. She was on her way to saving the galaxy and perhaps she deserved a hero’s demise. Tortured to death by the Lord Vader. Blasted down while stealing the plans for the Death Star. Beaten while trying to stop the destruction of Alderaan. But she survived all those things. She brought down two separate battle stations. She had helped restore democracy to the galaxy, she was Chief of State. She had survived war and was on her way to solving other problems, leading missions of peace to struggling planets, bringing food and medicine to save dying peoples from their own tragic end. She had even contracted some foreign virus while visiting the planet Morvan, some virus that had no cure and was supposed to kill her. She even survived that, all the while demanding that medical aid be delivered to the Morvans and not given to her on her sickbed. Death by that virus would have been a hero’s death, a death that perhaps would have been fitting if she could not be immortal like she so deserved.

But she did not die a hero’s death. She was killed by a blaster shot to the head on Coruscant, not far from her own apartment, in the early hours of the morning. Out for a run before beginning her day, as she had most days since the ending of the Rebellion and the establishment of the New Republic and she had finally been able to settle in one place. The planet, the city, and particularly the area in which she lived have always been considered incredibly safe, even for someone of her status. But not this morning. The story goes that two homeless and desperate Rodian vagrants crossed her path, cut her off, demanding credits. She had none on her, of course, and so they killed her. Shot her. With blasters. The guards that found her were unable to identify her at first because the wounds to her famous face had rendered her unrecognizable.

They didn’t know who she was. The most ironic thing about it all was that they killed the one person that was truly concerned about the plight of the homeless of Coruscant. They killed the one person that cared about them.

Her husband didn’t know what had happened at first, not until he was asked to identify her body. She had just delivered two sweet little babies not long before and it was her routine to leave in the morning before he woke and sometimes have to stay out until well past lunch. Her husband, that handsome General, had taken the day off to be with the children, according to the holonews. And he was expecting her back for the midday meal and grew concerned when she didn’t show up.

The story also goes that her twin brother, that lone and mysterious Jedi master, knew the moment it happened. That he felt her death, felt her pain and her fear as she felt it. But he was lightyears away and could do nothing to stop it. She had been dead for two days by the time he made it back to Coruscant.

I knew her family, her Alderaani family, most of whom met that tragic end at the hands of the Empire. But she had been able to persevere through what would only be a permanently debilitating loss to a lesser person and form a new family in the members of the Alliance that surrounded her daily. She was respected and loved by the other high-ranking members of the New Republic, Rieekan and Mothma and Ackbar and the others. And the soldiers, the soldiers adored her. I wonder if even the Imperials admired her, secretly, for her spark. Everyone that met her loved her instantly, but there were those that loved her most of all. Her brother, of course, the twin from whom she had been separated at birth and then preceded to rescue her from certain death upon the first Death Star. And the General, I think his name is Calrissian, and those two Commander pilots. And that wookie. She seemed to be surrounded by them always, her inner circle, her dearest friends and confidants, her protectors. Perhaps she had felt so alone after the loss of her own family that she sought their comfort with the Rebellion’s victory. Perhaps she needed that security. Perhaps they sensed her losses and hoped to keep harm from ever befalling her again.

And then she started her own family. She fell in love with the handsome General and he with her. Oh, it was all over the gossipholos. They studied the Princess and her General, their courtship, their wedding, her baby bump. And she tolerated the attention despite her reputation for being a private person because it was in her character to be generous with her time. But we never got to know the whole story, like how the General proposed to her or where they went on their honeymoon or why they decided to have children. We never even got to see pictures of the babies until recently, and now they’re already holding their heads up on their own. They have his eyes, but they have her hair.

And they will grow up without ever knowing their sweet, striking, majestic mother.

Hundreds of thousands attended her memorial, and millions more watched it over the live holocast or saw the clips they are still playing now, months after her death. It was a testament to her beauty and her character, and the grief still hangs over the galaxy, a thin veil that chokes at the space that she once found so magnificent. The great hall where the memorial was held was full and yet silent, so silent that the soft clicks of General Rieekan’s boots against the cold floor echoed across the walls and resonated into the far corners of the universe. They asked him to speak, her handsome husband, but he refused. He sat there in stunned silence, cradling his baby girl with everything that he had left within him because she looked so much like her mother and it was all that he had of her anymore. The wookie’s hand never left the General’s shoulder, and the other three men and two droids that were with her so often kept glancing at him worriedly. They asked her brother to say something instead and he agreed, walking up to the podium with the baby boy in his arms, his little nephew that he, like his brother-in-law, fiercely protected with all of his strength, desperately trying to keep the baby from the cruel world that stole his mother away.

Her brother spoke kindly about her, about her spirit and her strength, about her beliefs and values, about the family she lost and the family she found. He was quiet but eloquent and he reminded us all of the unwavering devotion that she poured into every aspect of her life. He told us not to mourn her loss, all the while knowing that we could see he would never be able to take his own advice. He, too, had lost his family before joining the Rebellion, and now he had lost his family all over again and the anguish over this fact tore at his soul and shone through his bright blue eyes, so unlike his sister’s though equally as expressive.

The infants were silent while he spoke, but as he took his seat back beside the handsome General, one of the infants began to cry. It started softly but then began to echo off the walls of the great room. And then the other infant joined, both wailing sadly, softly, for a mother’s comfort that would no longer come. The room, the galaxy, was silent except for the reverberating cries of the babies, but no one moved to silence them. The husband and the brother cradled the babies closer, but both men knew that the children only felt the despair that had settled within their own hearts. The brother found that hot, silent tears had begun to fall from his eyes; the husband, scarily stoic, refused to look at anyone but his daughter. Finally, his children’s cries continuing to pierce the stony stillness, he stood up and walked down the long aisle, leaving the service. The brother followed, then the wookie, the General, the two droids and the two Commanders. The infants’ heartbreaking wails echoed until the large doors of the great room finally slammed shut behind them.

In the months since her death not a day goes by where the holonews does not broadcast a story about her. Her pretty face is displayed daily, we hear her voice in some Senate meeting or giving a speech about civil rights. The media forces her upon us, reminds us that we will still be grieving her for a very long time. She was supposed to change the galaxy; she was already on her way to doing so.

The universe will never be the same without her.

My own sadness over her loss will never come close to the emptiness that her family no doubt will fell for the rest of their lives. I cannot imagine the pain, especially the pain of her husband that clearly loved her so much and now is forced to see her everyday in the faces of the two children that she left behind. I will never feel his pain, but I grieve as well. She was my friend in another time and another place, back before she was forced to rebuild her life. And I still feel the sickness that washes over me every time I see her image. It starts with a tightening in my chest and then my stomach begins to feel sick and then the cold comes over my body and I wonder if it will ever go away again. It is so unfair that we got to spend so much time with her and her children so little. It is so unfair that she had just found the happiness for which she had been searching only to have her life taken away from her so suddenly and so violently.

It is so unfair that we have to live here without her.

She was the light, the very essence, the brilliance of the galaxy. What can you possibly do when your leader, your hero, your friend is with you no longer?

You carry on.

And you never forget.