Work Text:
5 BBY
“In open rebellion as we are now, our funds are greater than anything that we could claim previously, but to completely outfit thousands of clones would beggar our peoples. It just can’t be done, General Kenobi!”
Mon Mothma didn’t bother to hide her disgust at the Senator.
She knew that while funds had been tight for much of the last fifteen years, the money they would use blocked by the banking clans and unable to be accessed without drawing the attention of the Empire, thanks to few of them able to go the route of Mandalore or willing to go the route of Ryloth, but if they were frugal with full access to the treasuries of the four planets in open rebellion, it was possible.
It wasn’t like he was asking for the best of everything; just a craft capable of space battles and of housing a minimum of ten.
She imagined that it was so they could blitz attack Imperial depots for funds and supplies to get them more properly outfitted as the surviving clones began to answer his call.
She opened her mouth to authorize his request, when she noticed that the man looked neither upset nor surprised.
“I think you misunderstand me, Senators, good people of the Rebel Alliance. I was asking as if I was one of your subordinates, not an equal member. I came here to be an equal, an ally, asking not demanding, so that we could engage in good faith.”
Then he pulled a datapad from his robes and slid it across the galaxy map of operations they’d met around here at a secret base on Dantooine, “Good faith, because it was originally going to be a little longer before I got access to my funds. I only lacked proof of identity, but well, Darth Vader’s appearance and acknowledgement that I am indeed Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master of the Jedi Order, Sitting High Council Member, gave me that, so it was just going to be a waiting game for the confirmation of renewed access to funds to get to me. As I walked into this meeting though, Bail gave me that confirmation, but I still wished to see if this Alliance was better than the Senate I once served.”
Mon Mothma grabbed it before anyone else could, and began to read through the technical language of the banking clans, “I’m sure the majority of you are good people, but I tire of bureaucracy.”
It was indeed a confirmation of access to Jedi Order funds, with much reluctance considering the account was now older than the Republic had lived to be.
“I have spent eighteen years trying to gain access to funds that the Jedi had set aside for military action, locked away since the Senate stripped that from us, originally so that I could have funds for my troops that the Senate would not approve me, that I had to find in alternate means. The funds that I did have access to then, were explicitly meant for peace-keeping and relief efforts, and we were denied the ability to do such things by the order of the Senate to wage war.”
She stared at the amount listed.
“The banking clans were reluctant to give access considering these funds are the bulk of its internal investment, so they gave me bureaucracy to prove that I had the right to. With a certain sort of irony, the Senate did give me the right by naming me, a Jedi Master of the High Council, a General of the Republic. Then there was just twelve thousand, seven hundred and forty-three forms I had to fill out, and just as I finished, sent them all through my approved intermediary while on Alderaan, I needed to prove I was who I said I was.”
Just stared.
“Then I was granted complete access to the Jedi Order’s funds.”
She’d never seen so many digits.
“And what you may have all forgotten was that our Order has been letting our initial funds from over a thousand years ago accrue interest, with very little spending as we were completely self-sufficient on plots of land older than most of the governments of the planets that we had Temples on, that has been supplemented by the profits of several dozen patents.”
He turned towards her, “Would you second that I don’t need the monetary support of the Rebel Alliance, Senator?”
She looked at him, saw both the genial, silver-tongue advocate that often talked circles around politicians until they did as he asked, and the sharp-eyed veteran commander who had lived and fought through more conflicts than most even now. She could see where he was going with this, and what he meant with it.
The Jedi had been bound in chains by the Senate, a dog of war and slave and scapegoat, lead to its near-extinction blinded and gagged, its screams and struggles ignored. The greater public had been turned against them, believing them culpable of everything that was suggested, and had not hesitated to allow their eradication.
The Jedi had been loyal to the Republic, once, and could still be, but not if that loyalty was taken for granted.
He was informing them that the Jedi would be independent of the Republic, but whether they were still allies was up to them.
“No, you don’t, not in a hundred years of open galaxy-spanning war, maybe not in hundreds of years.”
The Senator who had refused to fund Obi-Wan opened his mouth, and she silenced him with a raised hand before he could offend the Jedi further, “You don’t need the monetary support, but perhaps there is something else the Rebel Alliance can offer you in exchange for your pledge to restore the Republic.”
He stroked his beard, “I will have to confer with the other leaders of my rebellion for any such thing, but I cannot pledge to restore the Republic that fell, even as I still believe in it. That Republic was corrupt on every level, actively hindering any beneficial action, beholden to banking clans and trading federations and special interests, helping only the rich and leaving the poor and downtrodden to be crushed beneath taxes and injustices.”
Taking a moment to let that settle, then pointedly looking around them at who was represented here in the Alliance Leadership.
“It was manipulated, but the majority of the sentiment behind the Separatists was valid, and they had the right to secede peacefully. Right now, you have a common enemy, but do you have a common cause? You’re selling the idea of a Republic, but I would take care to make sure exactly what sort before you go much further.”
She looked, trying to find what he saw, but all she saw were the same people that she’d fought and served alongside for the last twenty years.
As he left, it dawned on her what he meant by that, at how she’d been so focused on getting back to how it had been before the Empire, that she’d forgotten what the Republic had been like even ten years before the Clone Wars.
Every year, fewer and fewer of those that had seen Palpatine’s corruption before he’d become Emperor survived, but she’d forgotten about those that had seen the corruption and left rather than abide by it trying to work from within to correct it.
She didn’t see any of them here, and she wondered how she could have forgotten them when it had been them that had lead the Rebellion here.