Leia was back in Jabba's palace. Naked, she covered herself, ashamed that her belly was still exposed to the leering eyes of her captors.

"Not bad, is she?" said a Weequay, elbowing his Gamorrean friend. The green, pig-like creature's tiny eyes roamed over her naked body, drinking in the curve of her smooth belly. The Gamorrean slowly licked his lips.

"You keep your eyes to yourself!" Leia snapped. "Or you'll be looking at the wrong end of a blaster, you pig!"

Leia felt the sharp sting of regret. At the time, she had been angry, and felt victimized by those she had thought were her captors. Now, looking back on it, she knew that she was the aggressor. From her new perspective, she could clearly see that those poor nonhuman people were the real victims.

"Here, spitfire!" the Weequay said as he tossed something at her. She reflexively caught it, then covered herself once again. "Jabba wants to see you in this. And the boss man gets what he wants."

Her cheeks hot with rage, Leia looked down at what she was holding. She saw a copper brassiere and some kind of purple garment. Her mind reeled with horror.

As if falling into a deeper pit, the dream shifted and she found herself in Jabba's arms, recoiling in disgust as a fat, wet tongue came wiggling from his mouth, like a giant worm probing the air, searching for her. Jabba's hot breath hit her face, making her gag, and as she fought and kicked, the monster's strong arms drew her into his folds of fat.

"Oon chabba ne ban Jabba!" the monster growled, drawing her still nearer, and then the hot tongue pressed against her neck, her face. She felt sudden motion, as if her soul was fleeing from her body. While she never clearly remembered all of her time with Jabba, what she did remember was like a scar, mutilating her spirit.

"She thinks she's better than us," said a blue Twi'lek, a dancer stretching before her set.

The dream had changed suddenly, and Leia was sitting in the dark, humid dressing room with two of the Twi'lek dancers. Leia stood outside of herself, watching herself sitting like a puppet without a hand for guidance. At this point in her captivity, she no longer tried to form alliances with the other slaves, or even speak to anyone at all.

"Well, she's better than you!" said the other Twi'lek, a sallow, sour-faced girl concentrating on her makeup. "She's a princess!"

The blue Twi'lek snorted.

"It's true!" said the other one, smiling with cruel delight. "That's why she's Daddy Jabby's favorite."

"So is that her Prince Charming up on the wall? Tsk! That's pretty bad, when your man gotta go an' hang himself up on a wall in Jabba's house just to get away from you!"

Both of the Twi'leks cackled, the sound like scraping metal grating on Leia's senses, forcing her to withdraw even further. Looking back on it, she could see how devastating it was to her that the Twi'leks did not see her as one of them. Was she not a prisoner, just like they were?

"I'm not better than you," she said aloud, waking herself. That was eight years ago, and all of those poor creatures were long since dead. She stretched in her purple silk sheets, then closed her eyes again, as if she could return to that time and that place, back when she learned the truth. "I'm not better than you," she repeated quietly.

Leia was in her spacious, white marble bedroom, in the Republic Palace on Coruscant. She heard a deep snuffling beside her, then a wheeze. She turned and saw Lucitor Fenn lying beside her. Already a large woman, Fenn had been hybridized with the genetic makeup of a Hutt, and now her large, wrinkled body took up almost half of Leia's oversized bed. Lucitor Fenn mumbled, inhaled deeply, then drifted back to sleep.

Rolling over, Leia found Lucitor Opeia lying on her other side. Leia could not see her with a sheet thrown over her face, and quickly suppressed a feeling of relief. Leia climbed out of the bed and strolled naked toward the shower.

The shower was a large, open chamber with one wide horizontal slit providing a cascade of scalding water. Her mind drifted as she scrubbed and scrubbed her skin, her gaze fixed on the floor-to-ceiling windows providing a view of the ecumenopolis of Coruscant, the galactic capital. It was a bright and sunny day in the planet-wide city, and waves lapped against the sides of skyscrapers wreathed in endless traffic streams of ships and hover cars. Her gaze drifted to boats gathered around a makeshift pier built into the side of what was once a tower made for luxury suites for visiting dignitaries. Though the top few floors well above the flooding still served their original purpose, at the new "sea level" she saw rough-looking fishermen climbing in and out of windows with their fishing equipment. The floodwaters were nowhere close to sanitary, and in fact she had passed laws against flood water fishing, but enforcing those laws was no longer practical. Even the Cheka, the enforcers of the law, ate at floodwater cookouts which she could see from her balcony.

Coruscant once had seas and oceans, long ago, but they had been swallowed by the growing urban centers. Though few of Coruscant's modern inhabitants ever thought of it as such, the once mighty waves were essentially squeezed into pipes, and ran throughout the plumbing of the endless city. That is, until the fall of the Empire.

After the Rebels had destroyed the second Death Star at Endor, a violent uprising broke out on Coruscant, and as the Imperials fled, they bombarded the city-planet from orbit. Leia had always meant to rebuild the damaged infrastructure, but without the resources and a proper, sizable labor force, conditions had only worsened.

As humans were squeezed out of the labor force, alien populations who were used to living in squalor in Coruscant's lower depths were slow to take up the burden of fixing the city's infrastructure, or even maintaining the droids who tried to pick up the slack. New Republic make-work programs and a lack of technical know-how had resulted in a seemingly endless series of compromised waste reclamation plants, and now a rising tide of brown water had solved the problem of the crime-ridden undercity by sending its inhabitants into the upper city, where the wealthy had once lived free from the everyday violence experienced in the dark undercity.

Violent crime was, technically speaking, completely out of control, and alien gang violence in formerly upper class areas was now the norm. Civilians were often caught in the crossfire. However, Leia did not blame the alien gangs. She was educated, and so she understood that the alien gangs were forced to commit violence because society had failed them. In fact, the alleged "innocent victims" of crime were, in some sense, the perpetrators of violence due to their history of oppression, and the alien gangsters who killed them were actually the victims. Leia understood perfectly well that this was an intrinsic part of living in a changing world.

As Leia scrubbed her skin until it was raw and red, her thoughts dwelled on those who resented this change. How the wealthy imagined they could seclude themselves from the underprivileged inhabitants of the lower levels was beyond her. If violent crime was now happening at such a rate that the Cheka no longer even bothered to document it, then so be it. They would either learn to accept living in a better world, or they would find themselves standing on the wrong side of history.

As Leia's thoughts shifted and turned in an angry maelstrom, she was struck by sudden moments of lucidity in which it felt like another person was being tormented by these angry thoughts - not her. She liked to think that she had grown quite a bit as a person, and in fact, she had grown multiple persons in her own mind, and could call up whoever was needed from one moment to the next.

"Your Highness."

Turning, she saw Lucitor Thorn kneeling in the center of the large bathroom. The small man in a pale blue robe had been hybridized with the genes of a Kowakian, and his lips had formed into something like a hard, dark beak. He had long ears and the top of his head formed into a point. Though Leia felt a moment of revulsion and annoyance at being stared at in the shower, she quickly hid the emotion from herself. She was in a new world and a new age without boundaries; who was she to demand privacy from another? That was a part of the old world, when war and hatred ruled the galaxy.

"Do you bring news, Lucitor Thorn?" said Leia.

"Lucitor Reo has been calling," said Thorn. He lifted a trans-system communicator and activated it. It projected digital snow, then the image cleared, revealing a blue hologram of Lucitor Reo kneeling. His pink robes were torn and covered in filth, and his eyes looked haunted.

"My Empress," said Lucitor Reo, his voice sounding hollow through the communicator. "I regret to inform you that your... that Luke has escaped."

The subject of her brother was painful to her. While she had once been eager to learn the ways of the Force from him, his problematic ideas about who should and should not be allowed to become a Jedi were incredibly outdated. He had absurd beliefs about emotional control, as if one could turn off one's emotions and become a robot. And she would never forget how he was completely fine with excluding entire species from his "academy", like Gamorreans, Tusken sand people, even poor Weequay - but he would never admit to his prejudice. She had hated how greedily he clung to his power, and would only share it with a select few. He was a coward, unwilling to work with those whose appearance challenged his preconceived notions of beauty.

Leia turned off the cascade of water and stepped down from the shower. Heated air blew her body dry, throwing her brown hair overhead. She lifted her hand and drew her robes toward her, using the Force to lift and open them. Her red body was enfolded by gleaming white robes and a white mantle edged in gold. Raising both hands, she tied a golden belt around her waist.

She took a step toward her disciples, one kneeling and holding an image of the other kneeling as well. "Well?" she said, unable to keep the edge from her voice. "Do you plan on going after him?"

Lucitor Reo lifted his eyes for a moment, then said, "Empress Organa, Luke has stolen my ship, and slipped through our blockade. He also destroyed my weapon."

"And your team?"

"They are all dead, my Empress."

Leia could feel her rage pressing against the walls of the room as the living Force responded to her emotion. She took a deep breath. Though it was hard to admit, the Cheka were having difficulties functioning as a military. In the Rebellion, she had been able to work with many teams of competent fighters, and the Empire always had an impressive ability to delegate and conduct large-scale maneuvers. She had never been impressed by her Cheka; the different alien groups had trouble getting along, and were even known to blackmail one another. Now a team of elite Cheka had been wiped out, and despite the size of the New Republic, she doubted they could be replaced very easily.

"Who helped him?" she said.

"Imperial stormtroopers, Your Majesty."

Leia exhaled in a long, hissing breath. "The Empire is everywhere," she said quietly. "Even now, there are humans all around us, plotting to take over. Even with their evil Emperor dead... hatred guides them."

"I... I tried to stop them, Empress, but they were too-"

"Their hatred controls them!" Leia shouted.

Lucitor Reo bowed his head still further. "Empress, if you would send another ship, and more Cheka, perhaps I can-"

"Do you know where Luke went?"

"Well... that is... forgive me, Your Highness, but I do not."

Leia nodded. "I'll think of something. But right now, I have an important meeting with Senator Binks of Naboo."