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32 BBY
It is perhaps a tad undignified for a senator’s husband to race through the halls of the embassy. Not many sixteen year olds normally held residency in Coruscant’s Chandrilan Embassy, however.
“Mon! Come take a look at this,” Perrin calls over his shoulder, chest heaving as he takes in several panting breaths. The entire skyline of Coruscant stretched out in front of him, great spires of buildings surging up into the sky like a bizarre metal garden struggling to reach the sun.
Careful steps come from behind him and Perrin turns around with a brilliant grin. “The whole city, just for our viewing,” he informs her as if it’s not blatantly obvious; Perrin likes to announce each discovery he’s made still as if they’re something significant. “They shouldn’t have.”
Mon’s careful smile transforms into something mildly awed, his wife’s hand flickering out to press against the glass as she takes in the sight.
Perrin has already grown restless. Instead, he evaluates the rest of the main apartment, taking upon himself the great burden to test each and every sofa. Mon finds him on one not long after, limbs sprawling out in all directions.
“Well?” she asks, fingers twisting each and every one of her rings.
“Well, what?”
Mon throws him a sharp glance, hands falling to her sides. “Will it do?” she presses, shifting about on her feet.
Perrin takes another surveying look, as if he’s not already more than satisfied. “Just about, I think,” he offers neutrally as he gets up, the appearance of nonchalance somewhat ruined by the grin he can’t seem to get rid of.
He sidles closer to his wife, hands easily finding their way to her hips. “Where do we think the bedroom is then, senator?”
Mon flushes red, eyes darting around the room. “Perrin!” she chastises, only to gasp as he presses a kiss against her cheek. “I need to be at the Senate in an hour.”
Perrin steals an actual kiss then and this time Mon pushes him off with a laugh. “Later,” she promises, already stepping back.
For once in his life, Perrin backs down gracefully. “As the senator wishes,” he submits, flopping back down onto the sofa. He watches his wife assemble her things, watches her straighten the collar of her dress for the hundredth time.
“I think we’re going to be very happy here, Mon,” he says, announcing another one of his significant discoveries.
Mon turns around with another shy smile. His wife looks rather pretty like this, bathed in the afternoon sunlight, almost glowing in her white robes. “I hope so too.”
31 BBY
Perrin takes another stiff bite of his game fowl, viciously chewing on the piece as he watches his wife. “Do you like this one?” he asks loudly.
Mon looks up from her report, food completely ignored. “Hm?”
Perrin tries to hide a scowl. “The song.”
Mon frowns, eyes flicking to the side. “It’s not on the list,” she states. The pair of them had drawn up a list of their favourite things not too long into their marriage, an advised move from Mon’s parents apparently. It was good to know something about one’s spouse, after all.
“New one. Heard it live last week at that bar I was telling you about.”
The smile Mon gives him is sweet but hardly satisfying when her gaze flicks back down to the report soon after. “How lovely,” she says, mouth already falling back into the drab, stiff expression.
It’s a frequent thing of late, for Perrin to be completely remiss of his wife’s attention. Before coming to Coruscant, all Mon had ever seemed to do was focus on keeping him happy, doing everything she could to fit into his life as seamlessly as possible.
Now, his wife seems to have fallen into a long, extended affair with her work and Perrin can’t help but hate her for it. “Interesting report?” he snipes.
Mon lets out a sigh, seemingly missing his frustration. “No, not particularly,” she tells him even as she flicks over to the next page, finger swiping across the tablet.
Perrin stabs his fowl with perhaps a little more force than the poor bird deserves. “Yet you’re reading it,” he complains, knife shrieking across the plate like a widow’s howl.
Mon looks up at that, brows knitting together. “It may not be interesting but it is important, Perrin,” she insists, hand going flat across the screen.
Perrin ignores her attempts at appeasement and instead takes a swig of his glass, filled specially with Crème D'Infame. “Can’t you just get one of your little advisors to read it for you and save both of us an evening?”
Mon’s eyes widen momentarily before she stutters, frantically pushing the tablet away from her. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me,” she apologises, hand darting out to try and grab one of his. “I didn’t think-“
His wife takes in a shuddering breath, calming herself before she goes on. “There’s a lot of work to be done,” she states as she squeezes his hand. “I just don’t quite know how to manage it all yet, but I will, I’ll try.” Mon looks up at him hopefully, thumb rubbing soothing patterns against his knuckles and Perrin relents.
“Of course,” he offers, squeezing her fingers before returning to his meal.
The song changes then, something softer, almost romantic coming on. Mon immediately beams, three fingers pressed against her lips. “This is my one,” she tells him with some elation.
“Oh?” Perrin says, digging into the thirty seven leaf salad that seems to be all the rage at present. “I don’t remember it on the list.”
His wife’s exhaustion must have finally hit her; Perrin sees the silhouette of Mon out of the corner of his eyes sag almost, shoulders falling. “I think it was far down, don’t worry,” she replies softly.
An awkward silence falls between them, the kind Perrin’s parents had told him most Chandrilan marriages were consumed by in the early years. Often it was Mon who tried to fill them and yet his wife makes no effort tonight, more focused on twiddling her fork seemingly.
“There’s a few new friends of mine I’d like you to meet,” Perrin announces after a few moments. “How about dinner in a few days?”
Mon offers him a weak smile then. “I’ll try.”
Something snaps inside Perrin then and he spears another leaf with far too much force, fork glancing off the side of the bowl. “Seems like all you do is try at the moment,” he snarls and Mon immediately sighs.
“Perrin,” she starts and then falls silent. “You agreed to this,” she finally whispers.
“To be married to you. Not being abandoned by you,” Perrin hisses and Mon’s face goes white, as if she’s been struck.
Perrin fiddles with his fork for several moments before shaking his head, placing it down. “You look exhausted,” he moves on, throwing his napkin onto the table. “You should go to bed.”
“You’re not?” Mon asks quickly, frowning as he heads towards the door.
Perrin turns on his heel, coat billowing out behind him as he stretches his arms out wide. “Heading out to meet the boys.”
Mon deflates a tad but she still musters another smile just for him. “Of course. Have fun, husband.” The title sounds so ungainly on her tongue, as if they’re just children playing a game of being married.
Sometimes, Perrin thinks maybe that’s all they are.
27 BBY
Months soon start to blend into years however and before Perrin has even had the chance to blink, they are suddenly adults in their early twenties, no longer rosy cheeked and wide eyed.
Instead, the golden glow of their surroundings and youth fade. In a way, Perrin likes to imagine them becoming parts of the city itself. He is another bright, glimmering thing of a night, filled with awe and glory.
The cold woman sitting next to him and sharply pulling her gloves off reminds him of Coruscant during the day: bleak, austere, as warm and welcoming as an inhospitable slab of marble can be. Not even that shock of auburn hair provides warmth anymore, the soft wave of hair now bluntly cropped at the nape of Mon’s neck.
“Take us home, please,” she demands of the driver bluntly, cutting off the connection before she’s even gotten a response. It is rare for his well mannered wife to be impolite. It’s even rarer for her pacifist outlook to be overridden by a look that threatens to flay the skin off his bones.
“Don’t scowl at me like that,” Perrin snaps, ripping his collar open. Obedience and servility were the traits his parents had most applauded about his future bride all those years ago and he will not allow himself to be subjected to any kind of scolding.
“You just spent half of our- my annual income,” Mon corrects herself, voice cracking as she violently throws her gloves down on the space between them. “In two hours.”
“I won it back,” Perrin hisses, only for Mon to throw him a look with such venom.
“That is not the point and you know it!” Mon scolds, shaking her head. Her fingers flit to the bridge of her nose. It’s such a common sight now, as if the entirety of Mon’s life was taken up with unnecessary nuisances.
Perrin flounders for several moments, hands restlessly pulling at the silk of his trousers. “I was going to tell you-“
“When was I meant to find out?” Mon yells at him, composure completely snapping as she turns again, hands falling to her sides like she’s been burnt. “When it was too late, hm? When I am told my husband languishes in a cell for failing to pay off yet another debt? Five years we’ve been here, and every chance I have of gaining respectability is constantly under threat from your childish antics! Do you delight in shaming me at every possible opportunity?”
Something must have replaced his wife one evening. This demonic, horribly cold and cruel thing of a human being bore no resemblance to the docile girl he’d taken vows with on Chandrila. His wife leans back, lips caught between her teeth as she seemingly tries to regain a hold of herself.
Perrin struggles to swallow, fingers digging into his knee. “We just can’t seem to get it right, can we?” he laments softly then.
Mon frowns, looking at him again. “What?”
“Marriage. I can never keep up with all the rules and boundaries it seems to demand-“
“You don’t even try,” Mon immediately interrupts, shifting so her back is to him. There will seemingly be no compromise tonight, his wife set on making him the villain of her story.
Another few agonising moments of silence past. His wife remains resolutely turned towards the window, shaking fist pressed against her mouth. “I don’t recognise you anymore,” she whispers so softly that Perrin almost misses it.
There’s an odd sheen to her gaze when Mon finally turns back around. It must be the city lights reflecting in her eyes. “I want my husband,” she blurts out then. “I want the man I married.”
Her face crumples. “Please, Perrin.”
“Mon-”
“I need my husband,” she cuts in, hands grasping at the lapels of his coat. “Please. Can’t you just pretend to be him again?” Mon begs, almost shaking him.
Perrin nods and yet his wife seems to be not the slightest bit satisfied. “Promise me,” Mon goes on, voice shaking. It’s a moving picture, her auburn hair in disarray, cheeks flushed and tear stained as she grabs at him. “No more gambling. Not in Coruscant.”
A beat. “Please.”
Perrin bows his head, placing one hand over hers. “I promise.”
23 BBY
It is a common enough experience in their late twenties for the only time they see one another to be amongst other people.
“How much longer?” Perrin hisses into Mon’s ear, fingers clenching around his glass.
Mon throws him a look as she angles her head away. “Try to smile. Another hour,” she tells him. When Perrin scowls again, Mon’s fingers dig threateningly into his arm. “Smile.”
His wife takes his arm in a more refined manner once he’s acquiesced to her demands, turning them back towards the room, a faux smile already in place. The Alderaanian Embassy is a world away from theirs, crammed with personalised decor and patterned tapestries that made the room feel like both Organas had stamped their literal handprints across the space.
Perrin’s already got a headache from just looking at it again. “I’m ready to off myself,” he informs Mon, whose smile only grows increasingly cold.
Before she can suitably chastise him as is her wont, another voice interrupts. “Senator Mothma!”
Mon turns only to offer a real smile this time. “Padme! It’s good to see you,” she greets her fellow senator, the small brunette gliding over to them in one of those bulbous creations she liked to call a gown. Mon looks comparatively willowy by her side. “You remember my husband, yes?”
Padme beams at him, nodding her head in greeting. “How do you do?”
“Terribly,” Perrin remarks dryly. His wife’s arm tenses against his.
Luckily for Mon, Padme seems to be only amused by his response.”These do tend to go on a bit,” she agrees with a delicate laugh. Her eyes flick back over to Mon soon enough though. “I’ve been meaning to ask, would you mind helping me with that drafting of the bill? I just can’t seem to get the wording of that last article right.”
His wife inclines her head in a graceful, mechanical motion, as she does all things. “But of course. Can you come to my office after the session tomorrow?”
Padme shakes her head, offering an awkward smile. “Can’t do it, I’m afraid. How does dinner sound?”
“She’s unavailable,” Perrin interrupts.
Mon blinks several times, looking back at him. ”I am?”
Perrin stares at her for several moments, waiting for her to remember. “You’ve forgotten?” he eventually complains, forehead immediately crinkling.
Mon frowns herself before her eyes widen momentarily. “That’s tomorrow?” she groans, head falling to the side.
“Booked two months in advance, please do not forget again by the morning,” Perrin instructs her with a warning look before taking a sip of his drink, hoping to somewhat soothe his irritation. Mon would not forgive him if he made a scene in public and no doubt that would only make his life even more unbearable.
“What’s tomorrow?” Padme chimes in with an inquisitive look.
“Dinner at Zothique,” Mon offers, another one of her pleasant, completely shallow smiles being forced onto her lips.”A late anniversary celebration,” she says, running a hand along Perrin’s arm.
Padme gasps, hands clapping together. “Oh, how wonderful! How many years?”
“The big ten,” Perrin tells her and Padme’s smile freezes on her face.
“Ten! I’m sorry, I just-” Something flashes in her eyes that the senator banishes, lips momentarily bitten down on. “Well, I wish you both a very happy day,” she stammers out quickly, offering Mon one more nod before starting to move away.
Perrin watches her go with some curiosity. “Sometimes I forget how shocked some are by Chandrilan custom,” he idly remarks to his wife, raising one brow.
“Hm.” Mon merely taps her fingers across his arm again, drawing his full attention. ”Behave,” she instructs him coldly before stepping away and abandoning him as well.
It’s not as if there’s anyone else to speak to while at one of these events, after all. They are flush with his wife’s simpering colleagues, all spouting humanitarian nonsense and wringing their hands to such an extent that they can pat themselves on the back.
Mon has become one of their most irritating members, forever screaming herself hoarse over silly, trivial things. Passion seems to only emerge from her marble exterior in matters of the Senate. Perrin is instead left to live with a statue of a being, pretty to admire but hardly capable at amusement.
Indeed, even surrounded by like minded colleagues, his wife struggles to summon anything more than appeasing smiles and shallow conversation. He watches her flit about, weaving in and out of conversations skillfully and yet none seem to truly lift her from the morose mood she seems to always fall into as of late.
It is only the Organas and Padme’s circle that seems to offer her relief. He watches Breha murmur a few soft words to his wife that seem to ease some of the tension from her rigid frame. Then comes Bail, always teasing Mon and clapping a hand on her back as if it could provide comfort. Frustratingly, it always does, and Perrin finishes off his glass in one drink.
He strides over to the group, passing his empty glass to a waiter as he does. Breha’s eyes flick over to him and he sees her lips move, clearly informing the group of his imminent arrival. Mon immediately steps away, removing herself from Bail's touch.
“Perrin! It is good to see you,” Breha greets him coolly.
Perrin slides behind Mon, arms slinging around her waist easily. “I thank you for your hospitality,” he offers politely, before kissing his wife’s cheek in greeting. He moves so as to whisper into her ear. “I’m leaving.”
He squeezes her hips in warning. “Either come with or I’ll find my own amusement.”
Something catches in Mon’s throat and Perrin can see both Organas watching them intently out of the corner of their eyes, even as they maintain idle chatter.
Mon forces herself to swallow and another of her stupid, vapid smiles emerges. “Thank you for having us, dear,” she says to Breha, moving away to kiss each of her cheeks. “We should be going.”
All of a sudden, it’s as if Mon cannot get out of the room quick enough. She barely waits for him to collect his coat, instead going to call the speeder. Once inside, she opens the commlink with a sharp flick of her finger.
Mon raises one cold brow at him. “Well? Where is it he’ll be taking you?” she snaps.
Of course. It is always a fucking performance with her, Perrin thinks. Mon Mothma can’t have people see her husband leave without her, damn what actually happened behind closed doors. “Drop her off at the Embassy first, please,” he demands before cutting off the link.
Mon lets out a bitter laugh at that, no doubt aware of the fact that he is trying to conceal the exact whereabouts of his indiscretions. “Well then,” she states only to not go on any further.
The journey back to the Embassy is a decidedly chilly one, Mon refusing to even engage in the few jests he throws her way. It is only when she is halfway out of the speeder, wrapped in all her furs that she turns around.
“What did I do that makes you cut at me so insistently?” she hisses out. “Is there even any reason at all?”
Perrin has no answer for her and any excuse he tries to come up with arrives too late. Mon turns sharply around again, heading into their home.
His wife is already gone the next morning when he wakes up, groggy and still dressed in last night’s clothes. She elects to come straight from the Senate rather than meet them at their home before dinner as well, as if purposefully avoiding before it was absolutely mandatory.
It’s an absolute farce of a romantic dinner, sweet words and meaningless gifts making Perrin feel like something is rotting in his stomach. There’s a mess inside him, something gnarled and twisted that he can’t quite rip out and afterwards set himself right. This poison has taken root too well in him, in both of them.
Mon toasts a glass to him. “Happy anniversary,” she tells him with a smile that he can’t quite decipher. He has not a single clue what his wife is thinking. It should terrify him.
Instead, Perrin feels nothing. He hasn’t known the stranger across the table for some time, the drawn woman wearing the same white clothes that his young wife liked to dress herself in as well.
19 BBY
The sky above Coruscant has properly lost itself to the storm as Perrin races out of the speeder, arm raised above his head so as to avoid getting completely soaked.
Even with such an onslaught, he spots the black and white flag flying just by the entrance.The six-spoked symbol fluttering outside the embassy was new. All in Coruscant who’d wanted to save their necks had quickly adopted it and his wife had been no different, despite her protests leading up to the event.
“Afternoon,” Perrin drawls as he passes by one of the new guards provided by the Senate, far more relaxed now he is back in the dry. He gives the man a lazy, mock salute. “Carry on,” he jests as he steps into the main apartment. Very few are in the entertaining mood this week and thus Perrin is utterly alone for once.
Thankfully, his wife isn’t home either, still away in Naboo for the senator’s funeral no doubt. Perrin has no doubt she will prolong the visit just to avoid returning home to the mess that is the Senate. He laughs inwardly at the image of her and Bali weeping into each other’s shoulders over the demise of that silly little coop of hens, constantly clucking about their own importance.
There’s an odd buzz coming from one of the walls as he heads over to a sofa, glass in hand. Somewhere in the apartment a tap must be running and clearly Mon’s assistant has yet to have the issue resolved. Perrin leans back into the sofa with a sigh, swirling his glass slightly before he takes another sip.
Then, he pauses. Perrin tilts his head slightly to the left. That was Mon’s side of the apartment the sound was coming from. The driver had made no mention of picking his wife up from the spaceport.
“Mon? Is that you?” he calls, surging back up. There’s no reply. Perrin ambles over to her room and carefully pushes open the door.
The first true sign that his wife has returned from Naboo is the white robes lying discarded on her bedroom floor. Hem dirty, lying in a twisted, dripping mess, Perrin realised his wife must have walked home for some absurd reason.
The water keeps running, steam billowing out of the bathroom through the ajar door. Perrin goes to knock only for his hand to fall away when he looks inside.
Huddled on the tiles of the shower is his wife, arms wrapped around herself. Her back is to him and Perrin can see the way sobs run through her slight frame, shoulders shaking each time another one escapes her.
They’ve never known how to comfort one another. Mon’s attempts had only ever aggravated him further and he has no doubt she would say the same about his.
Instead, Perrin quietly steps back, padding softly through the bedroom and shuts the door behind him. By the time he has returned from his self improvised diversion, his wife has clearly recovered, standing in front of the bar.
“Out with friends?” she asks over her shoulder. Perrin pauses on the stairs. There’s something strange in the way she’s holding herself, languid in a way completely foreign to his windup doll of a wife.
“Uscru District,” he tells her slowly as he eventually makes his way over to the bar. “Not much to do though, the planet is still rather, well, despondent.”
Perrin comes to a stop just in front of her, waiting for his wife to say something. “You’re back,” he eventually states when the silence is too unbearable.
“Yes.” Mon says nothing else, merely finishing off a drink.
Perrin gestures to the evening gown she’s clad in. “Going back to work already?”
“I decided against it,” Mon tells him. Perrin finally clocks what the strange thing is. His wife is slurring.
The offending culprits are lined up on the bar next to her. Perrin notes an impressive half empty jar. “You hate squigs,” he points out, moving closer.
Mon shakes her head viciously, glass slammed down clumsily. “I’m not drinking for pleasure,” she informs him, words properly running into one another now. Her hand latches onto his collar.
“Stay tonight,” she demands, nails digging into his skin through the fabric. Dark lipstick once neatly applied is now partially smeared. Mon’s mouth looks more like a wound than anything else, something Perrin finds terribly fitting. A bleeding mouth to match her bleeding, broken heart.
“Mon-“ Perrin’s words are cut off by Mon kissing him, more bruising him than anything else
“Stay,” she asks again, moving forward until she’s pressed against him, almost sagging into him. There’s a desperation in her he hasn’t seen in all fourteen years of the marriage.
Indeed, Perrin can count on one hand the number of times Mon has initiated such a thing in the last few years. “Now?” he questions even as he supports her weight.
Mon’s eyes, glazed as they are, still manage to cut something inside of him, making an even uglier mess of him. It’s all they seem to be able to do to one another. “You’re all I have,” she whispers, fingers tightening even more around his collar.
It’s a horrifying statement. If Perrin was a better man, perhaps he’d have stepped away, held her through the night instead and told her she wasn’t that alone.
As it is, his hands go to the zipper of her dress.
18 BBY
Another champagne bottle is opened and Perrin winces, the pounding in his head only worsening because of the resounding cheer across the apartment.
“You cannot possibly understand just how elated we all are, Peri,” his mother tells him enthusiastically, just adding to the headache as she keeps talking, fingers incessantly fiddling with her hanna pendant. “With how long it’s been, we all thought-"
She breaks off herself, hand flattening against her chest. “Nevermind. It’s all in the past,” she decides upon, patting his cheek one last time. “I must go give your wife my congratulations.”
His mother hurries off, a bustle of blue and gold hurtling straight towards his poor, marooned wife. Perrin makes no move to assist her, instead turning to face his strangely silent father. “Well?”
The man merely raises one silver brow. “I’ve never seen a woman so uncomfortable,” he states, inclining his head over to Perrin’s wife. Perrin can’t disagree. For a woman used to adapting to difficult situations, Mon has taken to pregnancy as badly as a fish does to land.
“Well, it will all be over soon,” he says vaguely, finishing off his glass.
In truth, his wife’s unease only worsens after their daughter is born. It’s as if even breathing the same air as the rest of her family injures her and Perrin starts to expect Mon’s continuous absence from the embassy, even more so from his life.
Indeed, the lounge is noticeably lacking one cold, bleak statue of a wife when he steps inside. “Where is Mon?” he asks the blonde woman currently cooing at his daughter.
Vel looks up with a raised brow. “She had to attend a coalition meeting,” she reminds him. There is no love lost between the pair of them, and normally Perrin would take the opportunity to jab at her in some way as well.
As it is, his wife’s cousin is the only reason he’s managing to sleep at night so he just waves a hand in thanks, settling down next to his daughter when Vel throws him a look.
He holds no restraint when Mon returns, however. “Dropping her at the first possible opportunity,” Perrin tuts as his wife steps into the lounge, files in hand. “One would doubt that you love your daughter.”
He doesn’t bother waiting to see Mon’s reaction, his wife has developed enough of an armour to ignore his slights. “Right, can I be off now? Done my fatherly bonding and all that-“
“Is it wrong that I don’t?” Mon’s shaken voice cuts in. Both Perrin and Vel turn to look at the woman who looks as if she’s been caught red handed, face drained of all colour.
“What?” Vel probes, face softening as she looks at her cousin.
Mon’s next breaths come quickly, each one escaping her mouth almost in frantic gasps. His wife turns on her heel, one hand pressing to her forehead. “It was nothing,” she says several moments later, starting to step away. “I should head up. Early start tomorrow.”
“Won’t you give us a kiss goodnight?” Vel tries, bouncing Leida on her knee.
Mon throws a sharp look over her shoulder. “I’m tired, Vel,” she retorts before she storms away.
Perrin watches the way Vel frowns at her cousin’s back, movements stilling as she merely cradles Leida now.
“She’s been that way for the last month,” Perrin supplies helpfully. “I’m used to her prickliness but she’s becoming a bit like a sea urchin you find back in Hanna-“
“Oh, shut up, Perrin,” Vel snaps, standing up and immediately handing Leida over to him. Without another word she goes to follow her cousin upstairs.
12 BBY
“Why is your mother smiling as if she actually managed to get a bill voted down by the Senate for once?” Perrin asks as he flops down onto the sofa next to his daughter. “Is a visit to a bank really that exciting?”
Leida merely scowls. At six years old, it’s rather impressive just how threatening such a look is and Perrin almost feels sorry for his wife.
Almost. He rather likes having an accomplice in the match against Mon. “I don’t know. She didn’t pay any attention to me,” Leida complains, arms crossed defensively.
Perrin leans to the side so he can twiddle with one of her plaits, drawing out a smile that Leida immediately tries to hide. “Oh? Why was that?” he probes. As far as he knows, there was no one of interest to Mon at the bank.
“Too interested in catching up with some stranger.”
Perrin frowns at that. “You’ve met Adrine and Marsa before,” he points out.
Leida just scowls again, in a way that suggested she was done with the conversation. “Not them, some man,” she tells him, making an irritated gesture before returning to her reading.
Perrin feels much the same many hours later when Mon is forcing him into the stifling prison that is Chandrilan evening wear. ”I still don’t get why I have to come,” he complains yet again. It was possible to wear his wife down, if only through persistence.
His wife, however, has no interest tonight in even compromising. “Appearance’s sake, Perrin. We so rarely return, people will start to ask questions if we remain in complete solitude,” she tells him simply, the way one would speak to a child they thought foolish.
Before Perrin can retort anything back, he finally takes a proper look at his wife as she moves to the dresser. Mon is dressed in a slim thing of silver, wrapped tightly around her entire body only to drape softly around the shoulders, inviting one to admire the smooth, unblemished arch of her neck.
His daughter’s words from early come back to him and Perrin straightens up. “You look nice.”
Mon throws him an awkward smile through the mirror; Perrin wonders if she finds such niceties as shallow as he does. “Appreciated, dear,” she offers in response as she hooks two long cascades of diamonds in each ear.
“Who else is coming? Anyone actually interesting?” Perrin goes on, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible while he watches his wife flutter around the room.
“Depends on what you define as interesting, Perrin,” she states vaguely, snatching a bottle of perfume. It’s an older one, not the one she uses daily and asks for constantly as an easy gift, but the kind saved for a special occasion and Perrin tries not to frown. “Some old classmates of ours will be there.”
“Not the drab ones, hopefully.”
Mon smiles softly; more to herself than to him, seemingly, as she looks intently at her hands while she selects rings. “Well, I don’t think Tay could ever have been considered drab, but he certainly isn’t now,” she tells him glibly.
There it is. “Tay Kolma?”
Mon shrugs, picking up her shawl. “I saw him at the bank today, he told me he was going as well tonight,” she passes on.
“At least that’s something,” Perrin opts for. “He was always a great sport. Now, I’ll get the driver to come round.”
He’s not sure what he’s expecting to see. A secret finally exposed, perhaps, a compromising situation that can be another weapon in the arsenal Perrin uses against his wife when things aren’t going his way. She has far too much knowledge of his own indiscretions for his liking.
Instead, something far more surprising comes. There are no secret gazes, the brush of a hand against another when the pair thinks no one is looking.
There’s merely…an ease, a familiarity, one that can’t be truly questioned but rankles all the same. Perrin is used to seeing Mon smile and laugh with all manner of people, but nothing wounds as much as the small beams Tay seems to summon effortlessly.
“It’s been too long,” Tay is saying as Perrin strides over. “Chandrila has missed you, my senator.” Mine, Perrin glowers. Mine to take from, mine to do with as I wish. What right did Tay Kolma have to his wife that he did not?
“I’ve rather missed it myself,” Mon tells him. She angles herself slightly so Perrin can step into the circle, oh so generously permitting him to take part in the conversation. “We should come back more, shouldn’t we, Perrin?”
Perrin manages to summon a vicious grin. “But of course, especially with how happy you seem here. What’s missing from home, hm?” he jests and Mon’s smile dims for a moment before she reinforces it, turning back to the idle chatter of the group.
Perrin moves his hand onto her back. Part of him wishes he could almost brand her with it. Mon doesn’t move away, his wife would never publicly dismiss him, but he can tell she’s rattled by his words and Tay’s next joke summons no smile.
Instead, Mon’s eyes flicker about the room, taking in all the swarming masses of people, all possibly watching her just as he had been, and Mon leans back into his touch. “Perhaps we should head home,” she murmurs.
“At your pleasure,” Perrin offers, finishing off his drink.
Mon quickly makes her goodbyes with Perrin offering a nod as they go past others. Tay follows them to the door and Perrin catches the last of the pair’s conversation while returning with his coat. “I’ll see you tomorrow then?”
His wife pauses before shaking her head. “I’m afraid not,” she tells Tay with a shrug. “State issue has arisen, I’m sure you understand.”
Tay bows his head slightly. “Of course. Farewell, senator,” he says, shoulders sagging.
Perrin helps Mon into the speeder, trying to disguise a grin as he watches Tay despondently wave farewell at them both.
Mon’s eyes stay fixed outside the speeder even as it lifts into the air, clinging to the last glimpses of Tay’s figure before he steps back inside. She swallows hard and then something shifts in her face, a layer of ice freezing a pleasant, neutral expression into place.
Their extended visits to Chandrila cease. Perrin doesn’t hear the name Tay Kolma for many years, not in any circles his wife would frequent. It’s a match won this time.
The cold stare across the dining room suggests the next one won’t be.
5 BBY
The brief return of his wife to family life seems to cease yet again as the years go by, however. The only domestic interest she seems to gain is an odd fascination with lining the halls of their apartment with antiques from some dealer she visits frequently.
Perrin hasn’t even been permitted to see the last one, still wrapped and hidden away after the fight of the morning. His wife had remained resolutely stony as they prepared their home for guests, not even responding to his teases throughout the planning.
It’s halfway into the third course when one officer leans in conspiratorially. “She’s a cold thing, your wife,” he remarks with a sharp grin. “It’s a wonder you don’t catch frostbite touching her.”
Perrin snorts, drink nearly spilling out of his glass as he leans over as well. “As her husband, one is honoured with certain amount of thawing,” he teases, earning him a round of laughs from all the men crowded around his corner.
The woman in question sits at the opposite end of the table and her face remains perfectly blank even as she makes eye contact with him. Mon merely raises a glass in toast with a cold smile before she turns back to the dull politician she’d been speaking with all evening. She’d remained unwaveringly at her side of the table in protest.
It is only later that she deigns him again with her presence, once most of the guests have already left. “That’s enough,” she hisses, trying to snatch his glass off him. “You can barely stand as it is.”
Perrin attempts to shove her hand away. “Go be a fucking naysayer somewhere else, wife,” he spits. “I don’t need you ruining my night as well as everything else.”
Mon holds resolutely onto the glass, managing to finally wrench it from his grasp. “Remember what people will think-”
“It’s always about appearances with you. Nothing else,” Perrin moans. “I’m married to a shell of a human being.”
Something finally snaps in his wife. “And I’m married to filth,” Mon retorts, tipping out the glass into a nearby bucket of ice. She slams down the glass and strides towards the staircase leading to their upstairs.
Perrin for some reason can’t help but follow her. “Why can’t you be satisfied with this?” he interrogates. “Why do you always have to go making a fuss?”
Mon freezes, back rigid as she hesitates on the steps. Finally she looks over her shoulder. “Of course. It’s me. It’s always me,” she says coldly. “If it wasn’t for me, our lives would be perfect wouldn’t they? You’d be in some Imperial cell for yet another debt unpaid, Leida would be in Chandrila getting ready for her betrothal no doubt if our parents had their way.”
Finally a real fire emerges in her eyes, a flicker of life. “I am the only one not tearing this family apart for amusement. If you are unsatisfied with your life, Perrin, you have no one to blame but yourself.”
Perrin refuses to accept defeat. He is sick to death of his wife and her moral campaigns, her insistence that all she did was right and good and thus everything he was in comparison was corrupt. “Do you know how exhausting it is to be married to you? Never there, more in love with her imaginary crusades than she is with the people in her own life. Not once have you showed any sympathy for the way I sacrificed my own life when coming here-”
Mon’s laugh is bitter, hollow even. “What life? Don’t try to claim hardship, Perrin, you are a rake whose ego has gotten so fat that even missing one course makes you feel under threat,” she retorts acerbically. “I cannot even begin to describe how much I loathe the spineless parasite you’ve become.”
She disappears up the stairs, leaving Perrin standing there by himself.
5 BBY
“You’re doing it wrong,” Perrin points out, watching his wife wrap the fabric around herself.
“I am not,” Mon snaps back, shifting it around in a way that evens it out at the front but still leaves a mess at the back.
Perrin lets out a long sigh. “Yes, you are,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Wrong again.”
Mon drops the fabric,hands landing on her hips. “Either take your useless commentary elsewhere or assist then,” she states coldly, watching him.
Perrin stares at her a moment before shrugging, standing up slowly. In the end, they always end up having to help each other with this task. Both of them have fallen out of practice with Chandrilan dress, Coruscant rarely demanding the same stiff customs that their homeworld did.
Perrin adjusts the back of her clothing, slips the overcoat on, and then wraps the belt around her waist. He frowns, tying it tighter than he normally has to. “Are you eating?”
Mon just glares at him in the mirror. “Does it matter?” she probes with narrow eyes, clearly questioning his intent for asking.
Perrin just rolls his eyes as he hands her the hanna pendant. “Wouldn’t want you to keel over. You’d get blood all over our nice floor and I’ve got guests over tonight.”
Mon offers a cold laugh at that, moving away now fully dressed. “I’ll do my best not to disappoint then.”
Perrin watches her adjust the pendant on her shoulder, licking his lips nervously before he decides to press forward. “I told you the truth last night.”
His wife immediately sags. “Perrin,” she sighs, his name being said in that warning way that means this is no conversation that she wants to start.
“It’s true!” Perrin insists. “It’s simply people trying to drag you down through me.”
“And why would they do that?” Mon cut in, hand flattening against the dresser. “Why would anyone think to use you to hurt me?”
It’s a cutting blow. Still, Perrin goes on. “I’m still telling the truth,” he defends himself, temper only growing as Mon refuses to meet his eyes. “Look at me!”
Mon’s head whips up. “Do not raise your voice at me.”
Perrin throws his hands up, starting to pace now behind. “You’re impossible,” he seethes, throwing her look.
Mon hooks two long earrings through her ears as she offers him a cutting look of her own. “I won’t have it,” she tells him and Perrin can’t help but snarl at her. He despises it, the way she speaks to him as if he’s some untrained dog who won’t do the desired trick.
“Sometimes I think the worst mistake I ever made was agreeing to this,” he rebuts, gesturing to her flippantly.
Mon scoffs, turning away from the mirror. “Do you think I feel any differently?” she snipes at him with, hands rigidly gripping the edge of the dresser.
“And yet our daughter waits downstairs for us both,” Perrin counters with. “You’re the one who invited the boy over. Face it, Mon. This is your doing, not mine.”
He doesn’t know what he was expecting. A victory perhaps, an win in their endless battle. He hadn’t expected such a submissive defeat from his wife though. Something cracks in that porcelain face of hers, mask shattering. “I know,” she says softly.
“Mother? Father?” Leida’s voice filters through the door and the pair break away from their conflict, smoothly falling into place as they join their daughter outside.
As they go down the stairs, the lights catch the sheen of their clothes, gold becoming molten as they stroll past. For a moment, Leida’s hair turns copper, a darker shade of her mother’s auburn.
Perrin wonders if his parents had felt their heart weighing down similarly when walking him towards his future bride.