...okay.

She usually wears a watch, does she have that on her? She'll try checking her wrist just in case. Not with very high hopes; this appears to be a dream.

She will neaten the stack of old gossip magazines and wait for signs of life.

She has her watch. In fact, she's dressed identically to her last clear memory.

Soon enough, a door that's suddenly always been there opens, and a rather nondescript man steps through, carrying a clipboard.

"Ayra?" he calls.

She stands. "Yes?"

"We're ready for your consultation now."

"I don't remember signing up for any consultations." Or leaving her apartment to come here, or walking in any doors that may or may not have existed to enter the room. "What is this place?"

"People usually don't sign up intentionally, no."

"This is where we decide your afterlife, Miss Ayra."

Oh.

Well this is a pretty pleasant nightmare so far, as they go.

"I don't remember dying."

"Not too unusual. Do you want to know what happened?"

"Yes."

"You were hit by a truck on the street outside your apartment."

Well that sounds fake. "Does my brother know?"

"I can ask around the office for details on the world after your death - but the consultation generally happens very soon after, and the living world is hard to reach."

"I'm finding it difficult to accept the premise that this is real, but I can't think of anything that would be useful evidence one way or the other."

She'll probably just continue thinking that this is a dream, a weirdly detailed high-definition dream, until they get to the point where she no longer exists, and then it will no longer matter what she believed was happening.

That's upsetting, but the less real this is the less sad it can be. "You mentioned deciding an afterlife."

"Yes. If you'll come with me - ? My office is possibly a bit more comfortable for this."

"Alright." She'll follow.

His office is fairly generic - but, yes, much more comfortable. A nice plush chair sits on their side of a large wooden desk piled high with papers. The man crosses to the desk's other side, sitting.

She'll sit too. That sure is a lot of paper. 

He pulls over some papers. "Now... Most people get a choice of afterlives. The majority need to reincarnate a few times, to build up enough karma for one nice enough for their tastes - you seem to still be in the usual karmic range for the reincarnation cycle..."

"I don't have any pleasant afterlife options available, yet? -- how many times have I done this?"

"A few dozen times - not an unusually high number, yet."

That sure sounds like a high number. How far back in history does that get her? Between -- hm, a few dozen, say 48... or even if she chooses 24 for a lower bound, even if she shortens the lifespan average to 50, that's still a minimum of twelve hundred years ago. But probably thousands.

That's a very long time. It feels momentous to find out about, even though she still doesn't think any of this should be real.

"Do you know where I was the very first time? Do you have records of all of my reincarnations?"

"We do keep those records, yes. You can look through them if you want."

"Yes, please. If the delay won't be a problem."

"It won't."

He retrieves a thick folder from the pile, handing it to her.

She reads through the folder.

It's interesting. (It's also increasingly alarming, how long the plot of the dream remains consistent, how little the text swims or changes or blurs into other scenes before her eyes. It's not, actually, very much like a dream at all.)

Eventually she closes the folder and hands it back to him. "Thank you. What are my options now?"

"Now we make decisions about your next life - usually people reincarnate at this point, and you'll have the option of either keeping your karma in reserve for the future or spending it on a better position in your next life. You can also gain karma credits by taking on life elements most souls are reluctant to."

“...okay. What sort of things can I spend karma on, do you have a list?”

"Yes, right here - "

He reaches for another stack - and then a phone rings.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I have to take this - "

“Of course.”

He stands, half turning away, a phone appearing in his hand. "Yes ma'am? - Of course, ma'am - I understand, ma'am - are you sure - of course - right away, ma'am."

The other side of the conversation is completely inaudible.

He hangs up, and turns back to Ayra - "There's an offer going out, right now, to all reincarnating souls, if you'd care to hear?"

“That seems like relevant information.”

"One of our other offices - for a different universe than your own - is suffering a critical shortage of souls for a specific time period. We're offering a rather large karma credit to anyone willing to reincarnate to help relieve that shortage."

"A different universe. Huh. Why is there a shortage? Is there a reason people from that universe wouldn't want to be reincarnated back into it?"

"Population growth, and it's in the middle of a time of turmoil. This particular period is quite close to some cataclysms, though they can be averted."

Hhhuh.

"Well. That seems like a reasonable deal. Could you tell me more about the world?"

He picks up a paper, squinting at it. "The specific region in question is a galaxy - it's fairly crowded with inhabited planets, especially compared to your home world's galaxy. Many of the planets have space flight, though some haven't been contacted. The time you'd be born... A transition between a reigning Republic - in the middle of a civil war - and a Galactic Empire that is expected to shortly unite the known galaxy under one rule."

"The universe has a native magic system, usable by a small percent of the population."

...well that sounds weirdly familiar. But maybe Galactic Empires are a thing that lots of sci fi and also apparently alternate universes have; she's not sure she can pinpoint the one thing this is reminding her of.

"Is there any way to know whether I'd be in that percent of the population?"

"That'd be one of the things you could spend your karma on, if you wanted to be sure."

"Oh. What else can I spend my karma on, here?"

"There's a list..."

He digs a bit, and pulls out a piece of paper - her current karma total is too low for the magic, naturally, but if she took the credit it'd be raised...

The things she can purchase with her karma include 'past life memories,' 'perfect past life memories,' 'magic sensitivity,' specific magical talents, lifelong luck, royalty or other high class raising, eidetic memory going forward, quick learner, some talents at mundane things... There are also disadvantages, which will give her credit. 'Born with enemies' and 'imperial enemy' are worth extra credit, as are unpopular backgrounds, statuses, and such.

These are so many things.

She would like to keep her past life memories. Perfect past life memories seems unnecessary given that she does not have perfect memory of her current life (or is it past, already??) to begin with.

Lifelong luck would be extremely useful, it's incredible that that's even an option. Maybe it's expensive? (She assumes she did not purchase any lifelong luck the last time she made these decisions, given that she was randomly hit by a car at age 22).

Quick learner would also be useful. High class ranking is unnecessary, but might be helpful to her in working to avert various cataclysms. So, that depends on the cost.

She'll take a disadvantage. Born with enemies is fine, imperial enemy seems also fine - can she ask for more details about this Galactic Empire? Also, what sort of unpopular backgrounds are on the table here, is she able to know or select details about her range of options there?

Yes...

Lifelong luck and perfect past life memories are both expensive enough she wouldn't be able to afford them and the magic; she could get magic and luck without past life memories, or perfect memories without magic or luck.

She can have a list of all options and their costs! Unpopular backgrounds contain things like some disabilities, extreme poverty, born into a war zone, abusive parents, born into slavery...

The Galactic Empire is not expected to have total uncontested control of its territory, but is likely to be fairly brutal to those of its opponents it catches.

It is being founded by the Supreme Chancellor of the old Republic, by a vote in the Republic's Senate. Senators who opposed the formation of the Empire are expected to continue to oppose it, and to be natural imperial enemies - most likely she'd be born into one of those families with that detriment.

Hm.

Okay. She would like magic and non-perfect past life memories and eidetic memory going forward. She will take the born with enemies + imperial enemies option. She is not going to choose any of those unpopular backgrounds. (Though. Given her life and the lives that she read about in her file, she has to wonder if this is not a choice she usually makes.)

Is that... everything she needs to decide?

She has a few miscellaneous points she can spend on small things, like specific areas she could be talented in - or she can ask for those points to be assigned randomly, or keep them back for future lives.

What are some specific areas of talent that she can afford?

Of mundane - marksmanship, piloting, politics, fighting, languages... Really most talents that existed in her world.

Of magical - visions, visions specifically of events surrounding objects, seeing 'shatterpoints' (sort of how best to break something), healing, the ability to sync multiple minds together for large tasks like in battle... The last is quite comparatively expensive, but affordable if she's willing to not take many other things.

She would like visions and politics and fighting, please, assuming she can afford all of those at once.

She can.

Great. Is that all set, then?

Yes. If she's sure of her choices, he can file the paperwork, and she can get on to her new life.

She'd appreciate that, yes.

"Very well."

"I'll see you next time, Miss Ayra."

He takes her papers from her, tucks them into a folder -

The next feeling is rather like falling.

- oh that was fast, she wasn't expecting -

- she's about to be a baby, she probably won't be able to remember her life yet as a baby because she doesn't think babies' brains can support that - for some reason that scares her, she hates the idea of forgetting Destian even if it's temporary, another layer of leaving him behind -

- she's never minded falling, though, the feeling is pleasant - 

Being born is not exceptionally pleasant. It's messy, and wet, and changing pressure, and her ears and eyes don't work well and her brain's all fuzzy, and the only really reliable sense she does have is -

There's a galaxy unfolding around her. A world she can feel. A woman, sad sad sad, grieving terribly. Shaking hands cleaning her off. A boy, being born with her. The woman and boy's feelings are like supernovae.

There's one other person, here, muted next to the two brightest people. Hard to notice. Also shocked and grieving and angry.

The woman's humming something, breath ragged, even as she cradles her two children to her. The boy is mostly just hungry and upset.

The humming is nice, and makes her not upset.

But she is also hungry, and the boy crying beside her is too loud. She will Voice Complaints.

Bouncing, and humming, and feeding - the woman's saying something to the small person, sad, wrenching in her heart -

Feeding is much better. Bouncing and humming is also excellent.

But things aren't okay because the woman is much too sad. It hurts, a little, to feel it.

The small person does not know how to hum, and also does not really have a concept of it being possible to comfort people. She will press at the sadness a little, nudging the woman's light with her own. Maybe this will magically make it go away.

She gets a bit less overwhelmingly sad. Pets her daughter, lightly, on the head.

Says something that makes her sad to the other person, once her children aren't hungry anymore.

And then the two are being pulled away from their mother.

No she doesn't like that why would this happen

She tries reaching out for her mother and pulling, she wants her to come back.

Her mother's crying.

She's sorry - that's obvious -

But, no.

Gently, the girl's attempt fails.

She starts crying. Continues trying to fix this terrible thing that is happening, continues to fail, this is the worst thing that's ever happened since being born.

She's taken away from her mother, she and her brother both, into somewhere that smells strange and sounds loud and rumbles and moves - farther and farther away -

Something's happening in her mother's head. A twisting. A folding. Her mother's light dims, muffled - far away - nearly unreachable, now, moreso than distant -

She hates every single part of this. She does not have very much context on the spectrum of good-to-bad-things that might happen, but these are definitely all bad things and not good things like humming or bouncing or food.

She doesn't like the noise and she doesn't like what is happening to her mother, she doesn't understand it. She tries to push the noise away (which does nothing, turns out noise is not an object) and tries to reach her mother (and doesn't know if she succeeds because the light is too far away) and pushes her brother because he doesn't seem to be being very helpful.

Her brother is a baby! He's doing his best! He's very confused and highly alarmed and mostly knows Everything Is Terrible, Therefore We Must Scream.

Her mother's emotions swirl about her, a distant storm of grief and bereavement and anger - her mother isn't reachable, can't feel them -

Her mother starts moving away, too.

Yeah okay maybe screaming will work

Screaming: proven baby problem solving method since the invention of vocal chords! (The person with them is very distraught and alarmed and trying to calm two screeching newborns).

Unfortunately, it fails this time.

The ship they're on gets very very very quickly farther away from their mother, and she doesn't come back, for a very very very long time. The babies will be exhausted long before then, if she ever does come back.

Everything is terrible!!! Why isn't the distraught person fixing all the things that are terrible!!! Crying is supposed to get the people around you to fix things!!!

Eventually she falls asleep, because she is a baby.

She's woken up by her mother screaming!

It's rather impressive, given that her mother isn't present.

There's fear, and helplessness, and rage, and grief, and regret, and confusion, and pain - her mother seems to be able to fit a lot of emotions into her.

(Brother starts screaming, too.)

Badbadbadbad and she still can't reach her and it's bad and

She will also scream. A lot.

Her mother's emotions - smother. Like someone's choking them. Bleed, and whip out, and drain, and she's coiling them all so tightly they can't do anything, just simmer under her cold cold cold pain -

The ship the babies are in keeps going, unaware of her mother's desperate pain.

Badbadbadbad

Pushes the ship, ship does not care. Pushes the nonbaby person onboard the ship; why haven't they made it stop yet it needs to stop it hurts.

Nonbaby: winces! Tries to soothe the two flailing babies. Seems to have a presence in the same light she's using, a similar power, but he's more muffled than her brother. Less immediately right there.

She is going to continue crying and poking him with her light until he makes her mother stop hurting.

He - doesn't.

Instead he takes her to a planet, full of people who are not her mother.

He talks to some people, there. Two, sad and worried and resolute.

He leaves her brother in the ship. He takes her. Hands her to the two people.

She will poke him as emphatically as she can until he realizes that he forgot her brother. Brother should also be here.

Wince.

He - leaves. With her brother. Without her.

She screams.

That gets the two people to try shushing and soothing her! Does not stop her extremely upset brother from being taken away.

She will cry for a very long time.

She can still feel her brother - he doesn't get muffled like her mother did. Doesn't seem to be actually hurt, even though he's confused and distressed and clumsily reaching out for her across the galaxy.

It's good that he doesn't erupt into agonydespairsuffering as soon as they're far apart; that was set as a precedent.

She reaches back for him. 

She gets hungry pretty quickly, because she is a baby. Starts crying louder and poking the nearby people with her hungerfeelings. Keeps reaching for her brother as she does this.

She's fed, and taken care of physically - and the new people can't reach back to her, can't really understand her pokes, but they cuddle her and sing to her. They try their best, and, elsewhere, someone is trying their best with her brother.

She appreciates the cuddling and singing a lot. She quiets down, but continues to be pretty distressed. She wants her brother to come back, she doesn't understand why he's not coming back. There will be more crying about this.

But cuddling and singing can soothe her to sleep.

Nobody returns her brother, not even as her ears and eyes work better, not even as she grows, not even as she learns that the two people who've adopted her call her Leia. Her brother stops spontaneously reaching out for her, eventually, the instinct fading. Her mother remains muffled and cold behind a wall of glass.

She grows up pretty happily, despite being constantly aware of her family members being very far away. She cried constantly as an infant, but she's a quiet toddler. Her adopted parents are very nice! They sing pretty songs and give good hugs and take care of her; she loves them just like she loves her family-who-is-far-away.

When she's three years old, one night before bed she asks her here-parents where her brother is.

"You don't have a brother, sweetie," is her mother's reply.

But she obviously does? Her parents should be able to feel her brother too, she thinks; he's very bright.

"Mmmyeah I do. Can feel him far away." She reaches for him a little, just to be sure that the sense is still there.

He's there!

Her mother frowns and glances at her father.

"Then you're a very special girl, and you should keep him a very special secret," her father says.

She'll accept this.

Can she have a bedtime story?

Yes!

This one is about a very brave Jedi who fights against slavery, even when people around her tells her that nothing bad is happening.

This is a very good story!!!

(Leia vaguely remembers Star Wars from back before-she-was-Leia, though not by name because she is three and it is difficult for her to remember the specific names of things a lifetime ago.

But she remembers that there were Jedi stories. She... doesn't remember Jedi stories being the only bedtime stories? But maybe her here-parents just happen to like them a lot more than other fairy tales, which is fine because Leia likes them a lot too.)

She continues to really like these stories as she gets older.

Her parents are happy to indulge her, though her mother does also tell her bedtime stories about Alderaan's history, and her father sometimes tells stories about brave non-Jedi who did the right thing even when it was hard.

Then, when she's five years old, it's time for formal history lessons! These are really heavily mixed in with language lessons and etiquette lessons and politics lessons. History starts with broader galactic history, including occasionally the role of the Jedi in the galaxy.

What.

Is the role of the Jedi in history not just 'to be stories that people make up and tell their kids.' 

Some people think the Jedi are a myth because even at their height they were very rare, but they did used to exist, and are very important to galactic history!

Oh.

Okay, so she's in Star Wars. (She remembers the name, now.) That makes - honestly a lot of sense, given what life is like here, but it also doesn't make sense because why does Star Wars exist. Does Hansel and Gretel have a world where it actually happened, or is that too simple of a story? What about all the other stories. How does this work.

She doesn't even know that much about Star Wars. 

She spends a few moments boggling over this and being very distracted from her history lesson, which she does her best to disguise, before she remembers that she is Princess Leia Organa.

That makes even less sense. She was somehow a character with a movie about her and an actress who played her; that's very confusing. But it makes more sense because being separated from her brother, being adopted, the magical way she's always felt things, that fits.

She knows her brother's name, now. That's nice.

Also her father is Darth Vader??? And her mother is - hm. She can't remember anything about Luke and Leia's mom except that she was played by Natalie Portman? And also Leia is pretty sure that the mom died, which doesn't make sense at all because her mother is definitely alive.

Possibly the Star Wars movies were just wrong about everything. (Leia really wants to be able to go tell Destian that, he would be so excited about all of this.) She will stop being distracted and try to pay good attention to her history lessons to figure out other places where Star Wars was wrong.

That's honestly a bit hard to figure out if she doesn't have the extended universe memorized, especially for a five year old being taught a curriculum that walks a careful line between technically relaying Imperial propaganda and actually endorsing it. The recent Republic was corrupt and the Jedi tried to take it over and they were stopped and the Emperor restructed the government for the """good""" of """everyone,""" also leading the Empire into victory in the Clone Wars.

Still, future lessons get into things more. Like the Clone Wars starting when the Separatists attacked Coruscant with an army of clones, which was repelled before they could break through to the Senate by Anakin Skywalker with her own army of clones. Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi, but was well beloved and probably not a traitor given she died a hero's death in the Clone Wars.

Oh. Anakin Skywalker being a girl does make a lot more sense, because Leia's mother is alive. Alive and probably Darth Vader, which is... upsetting.

But Darth Vader gets redeemed. She's pretty sure that is the whole point of Star Wars. Her mother isn't really evil.

Was the Emperor part of the corrupt recent Republic too? Because that doesn't seem like a good system of restructuring the government to not be corrupt.

The Emperor had been Supreme Chancellor, but was hindered in fixing the corruption while the Republic's political structure still existed.

If he had the power to restructure the entire government, shouldn't he have had the power to tell the people doing corruption to stop?

He needed the Senate to vote to convert the Republic into the Empire, first.

Uh huh.

She wants to keep poking holes in this, because she knows that the Emperor is evil, but she is five and does not know all the places to poke holes.

How did Anakin Skywalker die?

In a Separatist ambush.

Hm okay.

Can she go on field trips as part of her history lessons?

On planet, yes. Off planet - once she's older, certainly. If her parents are traveling somewhere for work, they can also take her along.

Can her parents go to Tatooine for work?

Tatootine is an Outer Rim planet, and not part of the Empire! Probably a Senator wouldn't go there.

That's pretty disappointing!

When will she be old enough to go off planet places?

Well, that's up to her parents.

She will sit through the rest of her history lessons and then ask her parents afterwards. 

Her parents think it depends on a lot of things! If she's very good at working alongside her guards and her parents can trust her, she can go places under supervision much earlier. 'Twelve years old' is traditional for getting some independence.

Okay then she will do that!!!

If she can't go off planet yet could she have Jedi training instead. It doesn't have to be called Jedi training! They can be sneaky! It just seems pretty useful to know how to fight, in general, and also if she concentrates she can shuffle a box around across the room so there's probably something useful that can be done with that?

 - She should absolutely not reveal to people that she can shuffle a box around the room. That's very dangerous information. The Emperor takes children with special powers like that, and her parents don't want to lose her.

She can have combat training, of course, but neither of her parents know what Jedi training looks like.

That's okay, combat training works.

She will package the box shuffling away into her collection of secrets, along with her brother and her mother and her knowing-that-this-is-star-wars.

What is combat training like?

As a child - falling safely, how to break people's grips on her, how to get to safety, how to evaluate an area to hide in, how to call for emergency aid, basic first aid, some marksmanship training with a toy blaster that's pretty much just a fancy laser pointer... She can work up to martial arts forms traditional to Alderaan pretty quickly, though, and is placed in a martial arts class with several other children her age, from a wide variety of backgrounds.

She will work really, really hard on her martial arts forms. She practices in her room at night and when she wakes up in the morning. Leia knows that she isn't learning anything very impressive yet, but it's important to her to learn anything she can as fast as possible. She wants to be formidable by the time she's big and allowed to travel.

(It's important to be ready to protect her brother once she finds him, that feels like a pretty natural responsibility. She had to do that a lot when she was Ayra, and she knows that Luke isn't Destian but it still doesn't occur to her to question the assumption that Brothers Are Idiots Who Need Protection. This is just the way that having a brother works.)

She asks her martial arts instructor if they ever met any Jedi.

They haven't, actually! Jedi were always very rare.

This is pretty disappointing but makes sense. She won't ask any questions about using the Force in combination with these martial arts techniques, then.

When she turns ten, she remembers that her planet is going to explode. Darth Vader blows up Alderaan. That's her mother. And that's going to be her here-parents dying, along with all of the other people she's ever met.

It might not happen; the Star Wars movies have already been wrong about some things, but. That's not a risk she can take. That's not a failure she can allow.

She tells her parents that she had a vision of their planet exploding, that she keeps dreaming about it. Is there anything that could do that? That can destroy planets?

Her parents don't know of anything that can do that! It sounds like a really bad nightmare, though.

The nightmare felt really really real. Despite it's adorably primitive special effects.

Can they please keep an eye out for things that might do that to planets. 

They can, sweetheart.

Better than nothing, she hopes.

By the time Leia turns twelve, she has gotten very good at martial arts techniques. She still practices with most of her time. She often wonders how her brother has been spending his twelve years. Leia knows at the very least that he's still alive and that nothing catastrophic seems to have happened; she's sure she would feel it.

They're still just kids, really, and it should feel like she has a lot of time before everything blows up but it does not feel that way at all.

.....so, can she go to Tatooine now?

...Can she explain why Tatooine?

Because the politics of the Outer Rim are really interesting and complex and she thinks she would be better at knowing how to navigate them if she got to observe firsthand!

Also she's never seen a desert before.

Also the pictures she saw of it looked very pretty. (They did not).

Are these good explanations?

Tatooine isn't actually the center of any Outer Rim politics. Also there are deserts on Alderaan, and on many, many other planets.

Also her parents seem to recognize she's hiding something.

Okay so maybe it's because her brother is on Tatooine.

Her parents don't really look worried but they sure feel it.

They exchange a long look.

"Your brother?" her mother asks.

"My brother. He's a special secret, remember? I can feel that he's still there far away."

Long look.

"Is he in any danger?" her father asks.

"Not yet. But I want to make sure he's okay. He might get into trouble, I think that brothers usually do that."

"...Honey, because of the same reason you can't talk about him, it's not safe to draw any attention to him. Including by making an odd trip to an Outer Rim planet."