A Certain Point of View

Chapter 16: Moonlight

He found her walking in the orchards at sunset, as beautiful under the canopy of a thousand trees from a hundred worlds as the day he met her. The low rumble of a capital ship as it passed overhead shook the boughs and dropped a scattering of gold and silver leaves over his mantle of office as he came down toward the pond.

She was there on the rock where she came to be alone with her worries. It had become a familiar place in recent years. It was serene enough, lying just below the rolling hills, in the shadow of the gleaming white and gold spires of Aldera. But Bail Organa had grown to despise the place of peace: worry enough in a place of peace, he thought, and it became tainted as a place of worry. And his wife was never wrong to worry—and that was worrying in itself.

"Is there room for another?" he said softly, mounting the rock.

"There is no room here for Viceroys," she said. "No room for Senators, and especially none for Generals."

He frowned.

"There is only room for husbands," she said. He sat beside her and she kissed him tenderly.

"And fathers?" asked Bail.

Queen Breha smiled sadly. "Yes," she said. "Fathers too. Especially them."

He sat with her in silence—never at a loss for words, as a statesman, but relieved in the end not to need them.

"Tatooine is a long way out," said Breha. "A very long way."

"I know," said Bail. "About as far from us as a man could get."

"She could be days returning."

"She could be," Bail admitted. "I don't imagine he'll be easy to find. You know, I told so many people he was dead, that by the time Mon Mothma spoke with me, I think I believed it myself."

She touched his hand. "And what do you believe now?"

"A thousand terrible things," he replied. "But I have hope."

"She's too young," said Breha. "I should have gone."

"Nonsense," said Bail. "I'd never have allowed it."
"I am your queen," she reminded him.

"All the more reason you couldn't go," he said. "The Republic needs this world—your world. It still stands, in spirit, somewhere beneath the Empire, as long as we hold true to our Code."

"The people love you," said Breha. "They would follow you as they follow me."

"Perhaps," said Bail. "But I have...I had certain reasons for sending Leia."

"I will not blame you," she told him. "Already I can see you blame yourself too much."

He hissed softly through his teeth. "I told her to turn straight home when the fighting broke out," he said. "I told her to abort as soon as things exploded over Scarif."

"And did she?" asked Breha.

He shook his head. "You know her better than that. And you know she'd have been back by now."

"Then she went ahead," said Breha. "She took the jump to Tatooine. What do you suppose that means?"

He shrugged. "Either she's got Galen's plans, and now we're in need of a Jedi...or she failed to get them, and now we're in real need of a Jedi. Most of the fleet's in ruins. I can't hold out much hope either way."

"She was not among the dead," said Breha. "The Jedi will help her."

Bail sighed. "Obi-Wan," he began, but then fell silent.