My thoughts are mine alone

[Daelin Draggo]

Expert penmanship flows gently across an old fashioned journal, made out of a specialized old paper that doesn't fade. She likes old fashioned things and it shows. The diary is locked with a fingerprint key, however, it can be pried open if someone was that intent on reading it.

June, 6 ABY

It has not been that long since I have joined the Alliance. I manged a few months after Alderaan just to finish some obligations, but my true defection from the Empire began the moment that planet died. So I have seen the battle of Hoth as well as the loss at Endor. Despite being with the Alliance all this time, I am still branded as a 'new recruit', perhaps by some of the more haughty members of this band. I suppose it is mainly because of my demeanor--I act still like an Imperial officer. I can not do this otherwise, I trained nearly my entire life for a profession I no longer have. I could have gotten into the academy at an even younger age than I did but being a girl, it was not advisable until I was older. I was plenty mature by then and could have probably held my own, but it was my parent's wishes.

I wonder what they would say now, them being the lovers of the Empire that they so claimed to be, seeing me with this rag tag group of scruffy Rebels. I have lost contact with them after Alderaan, to save them from the embarrassment they would have in their social circles of having a daughter in the Rebellion. It would make them instant outcasts, and despite our ideological differences, it would be cruel and I don't want to do that to them. I suspect that they might have only been so into it because they were trying to save us, and indeed being in this group, as it were, saved us a lot of trouble on Coruscant. Many other people were rooted out and arrested on mere suspicion of Alliance ties. As I said, it would be cruel to subject my parents to anything that would make them be noticed in a bad way.

Still, I did not know this difference when I was younger and only assumed they loved the Empire just to love it, and it was what I grew up with. I knew nothing different, the dark city was my playground and my parents made it up to be like some shining beacon of beauty. I mean, I suppose it was, once, you can see what the architecture should have been like before those storms and corrosion. I don't remember what it was like before, it was always this gothic place to me.

I don't think they assume I'm dead. My parents, I mean. They know I'm alive. I am sure they still think I am in the Navy. Let them think that I am on some long mission somewhere in the outer rim.

Besides, aren't I anyway?

[Daelin Draggo]

June, 6 ABY

I find myself with more and more time lately to write. Due to our running from the Empire, it seems like. We are doing less fighting and more running. I'm all for survival as the next fellow, but sometimes I wish we could take a stand. Not that it would be smart or logical, in the very least, and I would be the first to vocalize my opinion against the matter. It just feels strange to keep running like this. Like if we made this a habit, it's all we are going to do, for the rest of our lives. Just a rag-tag splinter cell of discontents, a thorn in the Empire's side throughout the rest of history. A group that can't get anything major done but is just always there, a fly to be swatted.

The Empire can never truly destroy the Rebellion, as how can a man kill an idea, a thought? For that is what it is at its deepest level. So I do take some consolation that the Alliance will never die, even if every last person here gives their life up for it. It will resurface, time and time again, no matter how much the Empire represses its people.

It is funny to me, how my point of view has changed so. Not a few years ago I would be saying the complete opposite. The Empire does it for everyone's own good, it's their own fault for not falling into line like proper citizens should. I simply could not understand a Rebel's point of view, they all seemed rather mad to me, going up against a juggernaut like the Empire.

Hmm. Perhaps we still are.

Still, I looked at the Alliance with disdain. They were our enemy, and our last obstacle to total submission of the worlds. They were idiots and deserters, madmen and criminals of the worst sort. People rousing a rabble just for the sake of it, perhaps to gain attention or simply looking for a fight.

I had a conversation with one Wes Janson the other night as I was tending to my astromech droid, and told him about what I had thought previously.

"Some of us still are idiots, deserters, and madmen," he replied in that way of his that has the inability to take anything seriously. "Though the only criminals I've seen are the Imps."

"I see them now as great heroes and people of the best sort," I told him. "Though I do agree with you on the madmen part."

Growing up on Coruscant, or as it is better known these days as Imperial Center, one can't help but be inundated by Imperial propaganda as well as be surrounded by sycophants and people interested in saving their own skins. Though I can't blame my parents for doing so, or I might not be here at this moment.

Still, I wish they had the courtesy of telling me otherwise, telling me what the Empire really was and explaining to me why everyone acted so odd around here, fawning over everything Imperial. Or perhaps they did not trust me to keep a secret.

What worries me is, perhaps they thought me a true Imperial, and that I would turn them in. After all, I was brought up to know nothing else, and maybe when they realized their mistake, it was too late. It gives me a sick feeling to my stomach, that the parents should be afraid of the child. And I was not even that child. I would never turn them in, no matter how much the Empire had a hold on me. Did they not know that I loved them more than the Empire?

It saddens me that they still might possibly think that to this day.