Archive of Our Own

Syril finds the length of the corridor from the assistants’ stations to Dedra Meero’s office has a tendency to lengthen or shorten based solely on his mood. Some days, if he’s made a breakthrough or they discover a leak in the Rebellion’s frustratingly airtight plans, the journey takes only a swift stride. Others—when she is particularly acerbic, or he’s unknowingly done something to irritate her—it feels as though he might walk for the rest of his life and never reach his destination. Today, the journey takes eons.

He’d been distracted since the early morning as he underwent a vicious cycle of drafting out a speech in his head, editing and rearranging it, then throwing it in the recycler. Even now, as he takes one shambling, uneasy step after another, he moves words around—as if the order of them holds any significance. Mumbles to himself. Pretends to look at his datapad while only looking inward. His stomach is a tremulous, nervous knot. His heart is a fist pummeling his chest to a pulp. What choice does he have? He’s exhausted all other possibilities.

Well, he admits, that’s not strictly true. He could continue allowing his mother to cut at him with her incessant, acidic inquiries about his love life. No one, still? Most men have given their mothers grandchildren by your age. You’re simply not trying hard enough, Syril. An Imperial uniform does not make you desirable. You have to make yourself worthy of being wanted. 

The way he sees it, he has two options: he can leave her comments where they lie, or he can do something about them. This is him doing something—or at least, he’s trying. But he’s put it off for too long, bent to an unusually powerful bout of procrastination, and now he’ll either succeed or he’ll melt into a distasteful puddle marring the ISB’s immaculate flooring.

His courage faints as he waits just outside Dedra’s door. He stares up at the unbroken cloud cover of white tile and heaves a deep, tight sigh. After a little under a year serving as her assistant, he’s spent enough hours with her to envision every nuance of the expression his inquiry will produce. Can sketch out the bewildered tilt of her chin, the insulted spark in her eyes, the dangerous shadows forged between her brows and at the corners of her downturned lips. No matter how many times he erases his words and scribbles them over, he cannot find a combination that doesn’t result in her making that face.

The dull, raindrop-pattering sound of fingers on a screen informs him she’s inside. Rocking back and forth on his heels, he tries to scrape something together. Plans. Second-guesses. Third-guesses. Supervisor Meero. I was wondering if—no, not ‘wondering.’ Supervisor Meero, I had thought you might—no, not ‘might.’ Supervisor Meero, I thought it might be beneficial to our working relationship if we—

“Syril Karn.”

Ripped out of his head without warning, he starts. Blevin. From the supervisor’s mouth, his name—bare of its title, lowly as it is—lands as a cut. Syril straightens and stares the man directly in the eye. “Supervisor Blevin.”

“Exiled from the boss’s office, were we?” The man’s smirk has two purposes: to taunt and to remind. Syril may have saved Dedra’s life, but to Blevin, he will always be the buffoon from Preox-Morlana.

“No. I hadn’t met with her yet.”

Blevin shoots him a grin wound through with gilded menace. “Best of luck to you,” he says, his tone conveying a sincere wish for a grenade to explode in Syril’s face. “She’s in a spectacular mood.” He claps Syril on the shoulder hard enough to sting. Then he strides away, whistling a mockingly upbeat tune.

For a smattering of dreadful seconds, Syril considers turning around. Abandoning the whole charade. Who was he kidding? It wasn’t as though she’d agree, and if he can get out of here before—

“Attendant Karn.”

There will be no getting out before.

“Supervisor… Meero.”

One glimpse proves Blevin’s sarcasm accurate. The day’s events have melted Dedra Meero down and reforged her as a being of pure, animalistic fury. A being of raised hackles and bared fangs, the smooth confidence of her voice sunken to a growl. Standing rigidly in the doorway, she fixes him with a stare that threatens to melt the flesh from his bones. She’s already scowling, already obviously aghast at him materializing without a syllable in warning. Everything from her posture to her voice radiates a disdain that takes his misgivings and multiplies them by a million.

“This is the second time I’ve told you to come in.”

Thankfully, he still has the datapad in his hands. “I was checking the detention numbers.”

“You’re not checking them now.” 

He nods, his head slipping beneath the surface in a sea of queasy frenzy. Seconds later, he absorbs her meaning. Enter, or get out of my sight. Wedging air down his throat, he practically tiptoes around her and into her office.

Supervisor Meero. I’ve given it lots of thought, and I—no. After hours of careful consideration—no. He trudges toward her desk with a leaden tongue and a brain that has forgotten the vast majority of words it ever learned. A pity, he thinks, that he cannot aim for the heart of the matter. But if he does that, he’s three-quarters convinced she’ll pull out her blaster and shoot him.

Dedra has a way of siphoning vitality from a space when she is in an ill mood, and as she brushes past him to stand on the opposite side of her desk, Syril notes that her office is truly devoid of life today. The white walls have faded to gray; shadows, darker than the void between stars, all seem to reach for him with scraggly claws. Even the small bonsai along the far wall appears crippled, wilted by her temper. The entire room has grown overcast and stagnant. Its air anticipates a storm.

She doesn’t bother looking at him. “Why are you here?”

It'll all be over soon, one way or another. “I—ah. Wanted to ask you something.”

She still does not make eye contact, and for that, he’s oddly grateful. He has less trouble speaking to the top of her golden head. “I’ve found myself in a precarious position,” he starts, clenches his teeth. No space to turn back now. “I—it’s not related to my work. But outside of work, I’ve found myself in a… marginally uncomfortable predicament.”

“I’m not hearing a question.”

He hadn’t asked? He thought he’d jammed his point in there somewhere, but now she’s staring at him as though he’s sprouted a second head. Every word in his mouth shrinks, hardens to a grain of sand. He must risk it.

“Supervisor Meero, would you be willing to accompany me to a dinner gathering hosted by my mother?”

Judging by her expression, his second head has grown horns and a forked tongue. She sets down her datapad and leans with both hands braced on the desk, her every breath and blink robotically precise and vaguely malevolent. “Say that again.”

He has sunk too deep. The only way out is to dig down and chance emerging on the other side. “I had hoped you might be willing to accompany me to a dinner gathering… at my mother’s residence.”

There it is: the face. Her head tilts backward an inch or two. A few additional lines cluster between her already furrowed brows. Her eyes narrow in ruthless judgment. A tortured beat passes. Syril frets his audacity might earn him a dismissal. Instead, she advances on him with the malicious smoothness of a predator stalking easy prey.

“Would you like to know how I’m spending my day, Syril?” she snaps. He would’ve answered in the affirmative, but she leaves no space in the air for his response. “I was greeted this morning by the news that several high-value items of interest disappeared last night from an airbase in my sector. An ice storm hit the facility at the time of the theft, which caused the cameras to fail. The officers on duty miraculously managed to spot neither the Rebels nor their ships, so there are no eyewitness accounts. Major Dolaven refuses to answer my comms or to file a report with my office and is, apparently, insisting to Major Partagaz that the incident resulted from improperly allocated resources at the ISB.”

A spectacular mood, indeed. Syril hadn’t known about the theft. Was that what Heert had been attempting to discuss with him earlier? His restless thoughts had dominated so much of him that none of the man’s blathering had registered as anything other than a distraction.

Dedra comes to a stop before him, her face flushed, her breathing heavy. She demeans him through gritted teeth. “And with all of that considered, you thought it sensible to waste my time in asking whether I would attend your dinner party?”

“My mother’s,” he corrects in an uncharismatic mumble.

Her thin form practically vibrates with wrath. “I don’t care who’s hosting it!”

The host’s identity does, of course, matter. To Syril, that’s at the center of it all. Unfortunately for him, even if he explained, it wouldn’t change Dedra’s mind. At this point, he doubts any force beneath the stars could. 

“Now if you’ll excuse me, attendant,” she snarls, “I’m leaving to obtain a viable account of what happened. By any means necessary.”

As she shoves past him to gather her things, the clouds break. Intentionally or not, she’s given him an opportunity. “Let me go. Let me take care of it.”

“Why?”

“I’ll get the report from Dolaven if you go to the party.”

One of her gloved hands squeezes into a strangling fist. Especially today, she radiates danger and displeasure like a furnace. He rather enjoys basking in that heat, even if it might reduce him to a cinder.

His suggestion wasn’t without merit. He has met Major Dolaven. Syril and the hollow-cheeked, dark-haired officer had a handful of conversations when he’d visited Coruscant a few months earlier. Hoping to make as many Imperial connections as possible, Syril had jumped at the chance to show him and his staff around the ISB. He’d found Dolaven both amusing and insightful, although he’d taken note of the man’s disparaging sneer when the company made its way past Dedra. No love appeared lost between them, and he now wonders whether Dolaven is purposely making it nigh impossible to resolve this burglary issue as a means of expressing his distaste for her. As a means of shaking the ladder beneath her feet.

Short of breath, he waits. She takes a step. The space between threat and intimacy shrinks; there is only directionless energy, a slim gap of boiling air laced with a murky, indistinct charge. Her expression goes blank. She might dismiss him, slap him, shoot him, or…

“Fine.” She spits the word out like a bite of something poisoned. “I’ll inform Major Partagaz that you’ll handle the affair from start to finish. You’ll write up the formal report and file it, and you’ll be responsible for providing a reasonable account of how this happened both to me and to our superiors. As well as outlining revised prevention measures and updated security protocols.” She raises her eyebrows. “In short, you’ll ensure it never happens again.” 

After ‘fine,’ the rest of her instructions washed away beneath a wave of elation and a high-pitched, jubilant buzzing in his ears. Has he really done it? Oh, he can picture his mother’s bulging eyes and quivering mouth, her disbelieving, affronted gasp. Being forced to eat so many of her words at once might make Eedy Karn choke.

Before he celebrates, he must be certain. “You’ll go, then?”

Dedra shoots him a sour look. “Only if you resolve this in a satisfactory manner,” she says flatly, her upper lip twitching in obvious annoyance.

With all his dreams realized, his efforts to keep a straight face crumble. He permits a small smile to stretch his mouth. “I won’t let you down.”

“No.” Her snarl tightens his collar and weakens his knees. “You won’t.”

He watches as she pulls off her gloves and throws them onto the desk vengefully, as though meting out punishment. To him her office now shines like Coruscant’s highest levels, the ones never accessible to him in his adolescence, resplendent spaces unfurling with greenness and sunlight and hope. No matter how many times he repeats it to himself in his head, the truth has yet to sink in. She’ll go. She’s going to go.  

And if it turns out that any of this business with the theft involved Cassian Andor, well, even better.

***  

As she weaves her way through a crowd of shabbily-dressed pedestrians in Coruscant’s lower mid-level rail station, Dedra Meero feels a headache coming on.

She wants to believe it started in the aircar taxi, an unfortunate side effect of plunging several levels lower on the city-planet than she’s ever deigned to go. But the aching at the base of her skull commenced hours earlier, back in her apartment, as she pulled on a high-collared, floor-length dress that had long served as little more than a magnet for the dust particles at the back of her closet. It drilled deeper as she rifled through the few pieces of jewelry she keeps in a locked drawer. It dug its talons in as she pulled on a pair of heels that spawned constellations of dull, aggravating pressure across the soles of her feet.

She hadn’t spared any of those items a second thought since the last Imperial gala—a thoroughly insipid Ascension Week event that forced ISB personnel to mingle with Palpatine’s foppish assembly of oily, ineffective politicians. A headache had bloomed at the back of her skull that night, too, the kind that coated the sides of her tongue in a layer of acid. But now, as she spies Syril across the platform, she predicts this headache will put that one to shame.

The muscles in his throat visibly tighten as she approaches. He sucks in a short breath and then swallows; he appears frozen in place. His gaze locks on hers and then trails downward, observant, appreciative, and intense. The darkest, most juvenile corner of her mind whispers that no one has ever looked at her that way. She has no idea how to appropriately react to it. Rebelliously, the skin at her elbow tingles with the memory of a long-past touch.

Shoving her bewilderment aside, she squares her shoulders. “Well?” 

“Follow me,” he says, his chest puffed. She does not enjoy being issued an order from the likes of her attendant, and she takes care to remain an inch or two ahead of him as they walk down a corridor. She expects stares and is surprised when few passersby take note of her. Then she remembers she is wearing a different skin. Without her uniform, she’s scrubbed off a layer of herself.

The crowd thins considerably the farther they travel from the station. By the time Syril guides her into a tiny elevator, they have no audience, no observers. Evening has pulled itself down around them, but it’s an early, suffocating thing. No layers of orange sprawl across the sky. Here, she realizes, the sun does not set. Whatever beams of meager light make the mistake of crawling down this far simply curl up and die, resigned to their fates.

Something stirs forebodingly in her chest. A long-repressed childhood memory, perhaps. She pulls her arms behind her back, takes one wrist between her thumb and pointer finger, and squeezes. Exerts control until the pain forces everything else—everything she has worked so excruciatingly hard to tame—away.

He presses a button. The doors cough out a jarring rattle as they close. Beside her, Syril’s fingers are working twitchily at the tailored cuff on his suit jacket. “Is something wrong?” she asks.

“No,” he answers reflexively, and obviously dishonestly. She’s hardly surprised when, after a few loaded seconds, he continues in a watery stammer. “It’s just, I—there’s something I need you to do.”

They continue to sink. She bites back an irate sigh. True to her word, given his success in handling the Major Dolaven incident, she agreed to attend his party. What more can he possibly want? “Out with it,” she says.

“I, ah,” he splutters, “I told my mother that we’re… involved.”

“…involved?” A ferocious irritation catches in her gut and spreads through the rest of her body in a blink. Syril doesn’t say anything else; the silence boils with his implication. Involved. “Why?”

“Because it’s what she expects!”

Dedra has never pretended to be capable of solving the twisted labyrinth that is Syril Karn’s mind, but this has truly lost her. Was that his plan from the start, to lure her here with an innocuous dinner invitation and then hold her at blaster-point? Undoubtedly, yes. If he’d been forthcoming with this information, she would’ve refused him no matter what he offered. A smart move, she thinks. One he’ll regret.

A few inches away, he stews in fidgety silence. Dedra weighs her options. Considers refusing to go along with it. Considers abandoning this whole hairbrained ordeal, shoving him out of the elevator, and making her escape. If given the choice between reliving the Ferrix catastrophe in its entirety and posing as Syril Karn’s… as being involved with Syril Karn, she’d choose the former.

But if she refuses, he’ll be insufferable. Pouty. Irascible. Reticent. She could and probably should dismiss him, but, loath as she is to admit it, she requires his assistance in her search for Axis. He finds patterns, determines causes and effects, and discovers motives where the rest of her numb-skulled colleagues insist there’s nothing amiss. To her deepest chagrin, Syril Karn has her shoved against a wall.

The elevator shudders to a stop. Her assistant stares at her expectantly. If she’s going to wrench herself free of him, the time is now. Instead, she moves. Steps into his personal space, drives him backward until there’s nowhere left to go, until he’s braced against the elevator’s dirt-encrusted side. He might have trapped her, but now she has trapped him. Years of experience within the Empire have taught her not only how to climb ladders, but also how to turn tables. Two can play at Syril Karn’s game.

As though presiding over an interrogation, she speaks plainly, but with an intricate, intimate chill. “Fine,” she tells him. “I’ll pretend. But you’ll owe me, Syril.”

He relaxes, nods so vigorously she thinks he might give himself a concussion. Oh, that she might be so lucky. “Yes, Supervisor Meero.”

Supervisor Meero. Not tonight, apparently.

He has, of course, realized the same thing. As they so frequently do. “Given my mother’s assumptions, I’ll have no choice but to call you—”

“I know.”

The elevator doors start to shut, and he wedges his arm between them to trigger the automatic re-open. He steps onto the balcony and motions for her to follow.

“This way,” he says. “Dedra.” His slight smile prods uncomfortably at the spaces between her ribs.

He leads her down a weakly lit concrete hallway decorated by smears of greyish grime. They pass one scuffed, worn-down door after another, and she decides the whole place reeks of insignificance. Of an obsolescence and stagnancy that makes her skin crawl. Of having settled so low into the bowels of Coruscant that even the suns refuse to acknowledge anyone squatting here. Every breath she takes holds an illusion of drowning, sends a warning from her lungs through the rest of her that she yearns to heed. You should not be here. This place is beneath you. True, in senses literal and figurative.

Syril comes to a stop outside a beige door just as worn and tired-looking and repulsive as all the rest. His normal expression is one of intense concentration—his mouth always pulled into a determined line, his forehead wrought with thin, focused wrinkles—but now his face betrays true unease. As he reaches forward and presses a button with punishing force, she spies a glint in his eyes that, for one reason or another, settles in neatly alongside her memories of conducted interrogations long past.

A muted scuffling sounds from beyond the barrier. Abruptly, dewy fingers brush against hers and try to pry their way into the spaces between them. She pulls away. Shoots him a glare. “What are you doing?”

His whisper flutters with anxiety. “For the sake of appearances, shouldn’t we—”

“No.”

More shuffling. Closer.

“She’ll notice. She’ll mention it.”

“Then she mentions it.”

“She’ll smell conflict and stay on its scent until she catches the truth. Do you want to spend tonight being hunted down?”

Oh, I think I’d manage. But just because she could withstand it doesn’t mean she relishes the thought. The next several hours are likely to be agonizing enough based solely on her throbbing feet and proximity to Syril. She hardly needs a nosy mother scraping at her for details about mythical trouble in a nonexistent relationship. With a fatigued sigh, she reaches down and locks Syril’s hand in hers. Palms meet. Fingers interlock. Her stomach flips in what she tells herself is the initial symptom of an illness this farce has brought on.

The door slides open, and Syril squeezes her hand. “Mother.”

Dedra’s first thought upon seeing Syril’s mother is that she is thoroughly of this place. Acknowledging her existence means looking down. Her out-of-date clothing glows the colors of Coruscant’s neon billboards, an obvious attempt to mimic the fashions of hundreds of higher levels pressing down above her head. Makeup, caked thickly around her eyes and extending her lashes to an unnatural degree, takes a desperate shot at revitalized youth and lands between garish and pitiful.

She leaves Syril’s greeting unacknowledged, turns her beady gaze down to their joined hands, and then looks upward by degrees until she makes eye contact with Dedra. “One would think that if my son had found the woman with whom he intended to spend the rest of his life, he would have done me the courtesy of mentioning her earlier.”

Dedra blinks. Staves off a confused scowl. Is that an insult? And if so, directed at whom? Syril, for never bringing her up, or at Dedra herself, for not being of enough hypothetical importance to merit discussion? Have they both been slighted in a single sentence? She can’t tell, but the possibility gnaws at her ego.

“Mother,” Syril repeats himself, “this is ISB Supervisor Dedra Meero.”

At once, Syril’s mother’s demeanor shifts. Her back straightens, and her mouth splits into a reptilian grin. Before Dedra has time to bask in the effect her title produced, the woman plods forward. She clasps Dedra’s other hand—stars, Syril will not let go—in hers.

“Eedy Karn,” she says. Dedra recognizes her tone; it’s the same as was employed by politicians introducing themselves to her at the Imperial gala. A tone that makes no secret of searching for a rung to climb. “It’s lovely to meet you, Dedra. I’m glad that despite Syril’s best efforts, we have this chance to get to know each other.”

Trapped as she is in the clutches of the two Karns, Dedra forces a smile that extends no further than the edges of her lips. The muscles at the corners of her mouth burn. “Yes,” she agrees with her skin crawling, “I think tonight will be quite informative.”

***

Eedy Karn’s apartment is a beige canvas no artist bothered with painting. Everywhere Dedra’s gaze lands, she’s assaulted by more and more of it. Cream-colored walls and fixtures, appliances as old as they are drab, threadbare furniture that bears the shame of its owner’s unimportance as well as her lack of wealth. Obvious attempts to tidy the place are neutralized by its overpowering blandness.

Still grabbing her hand, Syril guides her to sit at a scuffed pebble of a dining room table. She eases down onto a cushion whose pitiful inch of padding makes no attempt to shield her from the hard surface beneath. Eedy buzzes around in the kitchen with the energy of an irritating bug, and Dedra’s nose curls as the scent of smoke invades her nostrils.

Her assistant squeezes in beside her. As he finally drops her hand, she realizes the seat is not wide enough to hold them both comfortably. Either their legs will touch, or she will have to partially lean off the condemnable thing to prevent that from happening. She chooses the latter. Syril looks oddly wounded, though from the way he’s interrogating the apartment’s every shadow, she doubts that has to do with her.

“Is Uncle Harlo here?” he asks.

From the kitchen, Eedy’s voice parts the smog. “He sends his regards.”

Given their closeness, Dedra feels rather than sees Syril stiffen. “You said he was coming.”

“You hear, but you don’t listen.” Eedy’s response is punctuated by several vaguely alarming clatters, each of which drives a nail through Dedra’s throbbing head. “I told you an invitation would be extended, and it was. Let this be a lesson in distributing pertinent information freely, Syril. Perhaps if you’d explained that your special friend was an ISB supervisor, Uncle Harlo would have seen merit in attending.”

Syril’s sigh stirs a few errant strands of her hair. She has the sense that he has long been acquainted with this particular disappointment. Who is ‘Uncle Harlo?’ She briefly considers asking, and then decides it’s not worth the breath the question would expend.

As if in hopes of healing his ailing self-esteem, she catches Syril’s hand sliding toward hers. In a flash, she pulls her hand off the table and wedges it beneath her thigh, then pierces him with a glare that communicates the depths of her displeasure. If she allows him to leech onto her again, she half-thinks he’ll never relinquish his grip. That she’ll drag Syril Karn along at her side until her last breath. 

Then his expression shifts into that same injured stare from before, and this time it is because of her, and she thinks—for the tiniest, dried-out crumb of a second—that dejection puts the startling blue of his eyes on display. She dismisses the troubling thought as though it has called her authority into question. When he stands and walks away, she’s relieved. Immediately, Eedy fills the silence.

“I assume he’s going to tidy his room,” she says as she shuffles over to the table with a pungent-smelling dish in her hands. She sets it down in front of Dedra, leaving her no escape route from the stench. “It’s the only reasonable explanation as to why he failed to offer you a tour. A pity, that you’re left to weather his lacking social graces. Do accept my apologies. I taught him better, but unfortunately for us both, I have no power over which of my teachings he chooses to remember.”

Given how meticulously Syril sees to each and every detail at work, she cannot imagine his room—does he live here?—in a state of disarray. She screws on another rusted grimace of a smile. “Whenever he’s ready.”

Eedy huffs. “It’ll have to wait.” As she makes her way back toward the kitchen, she looses a shrill yell that almost makes Dedra flinch. “Syril, if you’re not here when the meal is served, don’t expect to eat!”

As though his mother’s order conjured him, Syril materializes by Dedra’s side in seconds. He slides back onto the bench. Using her peripheral vision, she evaluates his expression in an attempt to gauge how slowly the next hour will pass. A faint stroke of sunset red starts at the bridge of his nose and swipes outward. When he starts to bounce his leg, it stirs the skirt of her dress. An anxious Syril will leave her to do most of the talking.

His mother returns with three cloudy, water-stained flute glasses and a bottle of wine. Dedra purses her lips. She hardly drinks; she hardly sees benefit in allowing any substance to taint her cleanliness of thought. Now, however, she’s all but certain that the only way she’ll endure the next phase of the evening is with her cleanliness of thought tainted. The wine might help her forget about her headache. And Syril, who is a sentient headache.

Ignoring him, she reaches for the bottle and draws it to her side of the table. When Syril speaks, he sounds surprised. “You drink?”

“Not generally.” She takes a sip. The liquid is a river of molten fire gushing down her throat, and she chokes back an undignified cough. Nothing to be said for the taste.

He gingerly takes the bottle from her and pours himself a glass. Unsurprisingly, he gives a delicate cough after swallowing. “Neither do I.”

That doesn’t stun her, although the confirmation earns him a hair-thin sliver of respect. By the time she’d left the Imperial gala, most of her colleages and half of her superiors were so impaired that they couldn’t have counted the badges on their tunics. With so many in various states of disarray, no disciplinary action had been taken. She’d been against that. But at this year’s event, perhaps she won’t be the only one possessing the ability to think straight. She takes another searing sip of wine, and finds something strangely soothing in the thought.

Eedy returns with the source of the earlier eruption of smoke—a slab of roasted meat that, judging from its several-shades-darker-than-caf color, long overstayed its welcome in the oven. Dedra’s mouth goes dry at the sight of it.

Once she’s finished displaying the two dishes as if they’re a multiple-course, fine dining experience, they all take portions. Eedy settles primly into the seat opposite them. Without proffering a toast, she takes a dignified and near-haughty sip of wine. She sets the glass down, her garishly long fingernails peony pink in the impoverished light.

“Well. Given that Syril never breathed a word to me about your relationship, I regret to say I’m lacking in details,” Eedy huffs, staring Dedra down as a scientist might a creature soon to undergo experimentation. “How long have you been seeing each other?”

Syril and Dedra answer in unlucky unison.

“A year and a half.”

“A few months.”

Eedy raises her drawn-on eyebrows. Their inaccuracy is a cloud over the dinner table. A year and a half? What senseless corner of his mind had he pulled that from? She takes another sip to buy herself time only to find Syril doing the same. The correction of his mistakes will inevitably fall to her.

“He misinterpreted,” she amends. “We met a year and a half ago.”

Eedy’s interrogatory brows drop. “I see. Intriguing, that you’d known each other for so long. Syril never mentioned having a woman in his life, friend or otherwise.”

“Can you blame me?” Syril chimes in harshly, his fork frozen halfway to his mouth.

“Syril,” his mother sighs, “one cannot expect to maintain meaningful personal connections while holding them at arm’s length from family.” A bitter twitch of his lips is an open challenge to that statement, but he takes a bite of meat and allows the quiet to eat his retort. Eedy presses on. “How did you meet?”

The temperature in the room soars. Dedra reaches for her wine glass as Syril reaches for his. How did you meet? A simple question, really. For any other two beings in the galaxy.

The truth—I brought him in to interrogate him about the false data requests he repeatedly filed in pursuit of Cassian Andor—is out of the question. The next-closest thing—he stopped me outside my workplace to inform me that I’d unwittingly revived his will to live—is equally impossible. Clearly, Eedy didn’t know how the Ferrix incident had bound her and Syril together. Dedra would rather stab herself with the knife in her hand than plainly admit he had rescued her… but, she realizes with a smack of horror, Syril might thoughtlessly blurt it out. Before he has a chance, she lifts her heel and drives it down onto the top of his foot. He makes a sound that lands in the space between a sigh and a moan.

“He was still employed with the Bureau of Standards when we met,” Dedra starts, then pauses for a moment of consideration. “We happened upon each other repeatedly, unconventionally.” Outside the ISB, for instance. “Almost as if it was by design.” Your son’s design. “But the moment we found ourselves in the same room, we both became aware of a connection.” She eases off the pressure, but she keeps her heel on Syril’s foot as a sort of wordless warning.

“You both work for the ISB now,” Eedy says with a trace of concern. “I was unaware the Empire permitted romances between officers at your level.”

“You would know,” Syril interjects with cutting sarcasm. He fixes his mother with a dour glare.

Eedy’s lips smile, but her eyes eviscerate. “Whether or not the Empire allows it, in my experience—” Syril rolls his eyes— “mixing one’s career with one’s romantic pursuits spells doom. Professionalism and affection are opposed by nature. As time passes, it grows hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.” She turns her attention to Dedra. “Most have to make a choice. The romance, or the job? It’s an unenviable position.”

Dedra drains her wine, then swiftly pours another glass. Allows herself a short sip that stretches into a long gulp. The burn and atrocious taste have faded, leaving behind a satisfying, simmering buzz.

Why does she have the sense that she’s being reprimanded? That her integrity and loyalty to the cause is being dissected? Who does this woman think she is, to doubt Dedra’s devotion to her work? Or—is it the other way around? Is Eedy questioning Dedra’s commitment to the Empire, or to her son? One of those things, she would die for. The other, well… the other might’ve died for her, on Ferrix. She spares a glance at Syril. Much like her sip of drink, it is meant to be a quick thing. It lingers. Her gaze skims the sharpness of his cheekbones and contrasts his immaculately combed brown hair with his porcelain skin. His lips are thin, but plush. She stops herself. There’s no need to pretend inside your own head. You’re trying to fool his mother, not yourself.  

Syril throws his spoon down on his plate, where it lands with a clink. “We’re grateful for your support.”

“I’m only looking out for your best interests. Making sure you’ve considered the consequences of your choices.”

Syril’s empty hand curls into a fist. He makes a point of exaggeratedly glancing around the miniscule space, his expression contemptuous. “You certainly considered the consequences of yours.”

Mother and son share a spiteful look. They speak in tones of buried resentment, in a language Dedra cannot understand. “That’s hardly fair,” Eedy snaps. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. The sacrifices I made—” Syril makes a face, and Dedra surmises they’ve had this disagreement before. “Are you set on doing this in front of your friend, Syril? Do you truly believe that’s the most beneficial way to spend your evening?”

He scoffs. Presses an affronted hand to his chest. “I didn’t choose this conversation.” He takes a drawn-out sip of wine and sets the glass down with a grimace. “Let’s not.”

A truce established, Eedy settles back in her seat. They all eat in silence for a minute or two. Dedra washes down bite after bite of mealy roast and a tasteless, mushy side dish with generous sips of wine. Syril does the same, and between the two of them, they polish off three-quarters of the bottle.

Perhaps to lower the risk of another spat with her son, Eedy shifts to inquiries about Dedra herself. This proves both easier and more difficult than maintaining the fiction that she and Syril are together. Does she have family on Coruscant? No, I didn’t grow up here. Where did she grow up, then? One of the Outer Rim worlds. You wouldn’t have heard of it. Does she keep in touch with her family? Oh, I hear from them occasionally. You know how it is, when you’re focused on work. She never hears from them. Some things, her parents included, are best left light-years behind.

What does she do at the ISB? I monitor various sectors across the galaxy to ensure Imperial regulations are being upheld, and laws properly followed. Was she involved in investigating the incident on Aldhani? Not directly. That wasn’t my sector. The riots on Ferrix? My role there was tangential. What happened was unfortunate, but out of my control.

Syril excuses himself, abandoning her with Eedy. The woman peers at her almost suspiciously from across the table, and for a century of an instant, Dedra fully believes she is about to call their bluff.

“Tell me, Dedra. Which of my son’s many personality defects will prevent you from staying with him?”

If she had taken a bite of roast, she might’ve choked. “Pardon?”

“I’m no fool,” Eedy elaborates. “You’re rising up within the Empire. You’re young. Attractive. I suspect Syril is one of many men clamoring for your favor, and no matter how long you’ve been acquainted, he will eventually do something ill-advised and aberrant to lose you. As his mother, I’d like to know—are you already seeing signs of that behavior?”

It takes Dedra longer than she’d like to string her sentences together. This, she thinks, is why she doesn’t drink. “Syril is unusual,” she starts. “His feelings rule him to such an extent that he often acts on them alone.”

Eedy’s face twists in frustration. “I’ve always told him to keep his emotions in check. He never pays attention. Never takes my advice.”

She’ll pin her next words on her empty flute glass. “With that said, I’m told he regularly catches errors his peers overlook. He is driven, dedicated, and devoted. Passion is not an undesirable trait, Mrs. Karn. There is an electricity to it, and when conducted properly, it can be as useful to the Empire as any weapon.”

“How kind.” Dedra has been accused of being many things in her thirty-odd years, but never kind, a descriptor she equates with weak. When Eedy leans forward to rest her hand on Dedra’s wrist, the woman’s hands are cold as failure and twice as clammy. “You care for him.”

How is she meant to answer that? Her thoughts spin in lazy, uncoordinated spirals. None of it is true, so none of it matters. “I… yes.”

“That concerns me.”

“Why?”

Mrs. Karn’s expression turns grave as decades-old pain infects her brown gaze. “Love is a lie, Dedra,” she says slowly, wanly. “The songs laud it, call it beautiful. They put it on a pedestal as some flawless, pure thing, and they are wrong. It numbs you. Then it carves away, and every cut feels like a kiss until it leaves in the dead of night without a word in warning. When it goes, it takes the pieces of you that it stole. Only then do you realize its falsehood. By that point, it’s too late. It’s destroyed the person you once were, along with any hope you had for your future.” Eedy pulls her hand back. “I wanted my son to seek out an advantageous match. To meet someone who’d lift his status and raise him up in the world. I never wanted him to fall in love.”

Dedra goes completely rigid. Confusion battles with discomfort to determine which can seize a greater share of her body, which can claim all of her senses. Why had Eedy bothered to warn her about love, of all things? Unless… she hadn’t given it a second’s consideration before, but Syril had, from the start, only ever mentioned his mother. His mother’s party. His mother’s residence. And Eedy’s phrasing—leaves in the dead of night—yes, that had a pointed edge. A bitterness borne of crystallized resentment. You certainly considered the consequences of yours. An absence that splintered a family.

“Syril and I aren’t in—” Dedra’s lips seize up at the word. Her tongue recoils at the idea of it. “Our relationship isn’t of that nature.” It’s the truest thing she’s said since she walked through that dingy door.

Tension drains from Eedy’s shoulders. She stands and starts gathering the dishes, scuttling and tidying around the table like a dutiful droid. Dedra deludes herself into believing the conversation has ended. But when Eedy reaches her side of the table, she offers one last piece of advice.

“Feel free to have fun with him, then, if that’s what you’re after,” she says with smarmy nonchalance, coaxing Dedra’s plate into her hands. “Do what women your age do with wealth, status, and time. If it turns into anything more serious, well. You’re better than Syril could’ve hoped for. But if you value your career and your future, don’t fall in love with him. Don’t lower yourself for him. And if it can be helped at this point, which I doubt—” she glances up so that their eyes meet— “don’t let him fall in love with you.”

Words evaporate in her mouth, so Dedra merely gives an acquiescing nod. Eedy goes back to her business, and the new silence that stains the beige air between them is the most uncomfortable yet. Naturally, Syril chooses that moment to sweep around the corner. He straightens his suit jacket precisely, intently—too precisely, too intently. Dedra wonders how much of their conversation he overheard. All of it, probably. In fact, that was likely why he left. To hear the honesty dragged forth by absence.

“I can give you a tour,” he volunteers. Shoots a pointed look at his mother, who keeps her back to him.

What is there to see? More of… this? The whole apartment is a shriveled, aged creature blubbering to be put out of its misery. But, recognizing an opportunity to wriggle free of Eedy’s incessant questioning, she stands and falls into step beside Syril. She’s drunk enough to leave her balance slightly askew, but she hasn’t drunk enough to make her feet stop hurting. What use is alcohol when all it does is dull her?

Just as she’d assumed, there’s nothing worth viewing. Syril hovers outside his mother’s room as though prevented entry by some invisible barrier. The bathroom is small, unremarkable, and at least twenty years out of date. Syril’s room—

“You’re moving…” she leaves a gap at the end of the sentence for him to fill as she observes the small garden of boxes sprouting up from his cheap carpeting.

“Out,” Syril closes the gap in a satisfied sigh. He hadn’t been pleased with his living arrangement, clearly. Given what she’s witnessed of his dynamic with Eedy tonight, Dedra hardly blames him. More than that, she, on some level, understands. She deliberately installed half a galaxy between herself and her wastrel parents. At times, it still doesn’t feel like enough.

Sidestepping the precisely arranged packing materials, she crosses the room in a few strides and peers out a hole in the wall that barely passes for a window. The world beyond is void and colorless as the farthest reaches of space. It again occurs to her how infrequently the suns must shine down here. How rarely the adolescent version of her assistant must have seen them, and how twisted and stunted things grow to become when fostered in the absence of light.

The shadow behind her exhales softly. “Dedra,” he starts. She crosses her arms to render her hands inaccessible. “Did you—”

“Syril!” Blessedly, a shout from the dining area rips whatever he was about to say to shreds. “I could use your help out here. Unless you’re above that sort of thing now. You probably can’t fathom helping your mother with the dishes, although she spent her day slaving over an elaborate dinner for you.”

Turned away from him as she is, Dedra can’t see his reaction. She doesn’t have to. Months of working in tandem show her the contemptuous spark in his eyes, the purse of his lips and marble set of his jaw as he grinds his teeth.

“Wait here,” he says. Why? She doesn’t have time to ask, or to remind him that she has never and will never take orders from him, before he storms away. Leaves her in his hollowed-out maintenance closet of a bedroom. There’s nowhere to sit, so she eases herself down onto the wooden plank of a mattress.

Glancing down, she finds she has company: a slender wooden box. Its black coating peels away in strips along the bottom edge, which bears marks of repeated stowing and retrieval. Its lid features a hand-painted Imperial symbol and rests slightly—invitingly—ajar. Dedra spares a glance at the empty doorway. He’d obviously listened in on her conversation with his mother, so she’s well within her rights to do some spying of her own.

She examines the box’s contents. A tarnished badge from Pre-Mor Security Corporation. Sewing needles. Several spools of thread in varying shades. Nestled at the bottom, a personal-use datapad. Her curiosity piqued, she reaches in and grabs it. The cool metal whispers enticingly to her warm hands. What is Syril using you for?

When she slides back the cover, the device prompts her to enter a passcode. She frowns at the Aurrebesh alphabet. Five letters. What five-letter word would Syril use as a barrier between his innermost thoughts and the rest of the world?

She makes an initial guess. S-Y-R-I-L. The screen flashes red. Too obvious. Biting her lip, she makes another attempt and hopes for the same error message. D-E-D-R-A. Then, as a precaution, M-E-E-R-O. Red flashes, both times. Her sigh of relief leaves thorny frustration in its wake. It’s only five letters, and it’s Syril. Even regrettably impaired, she should be able to— Oh. She has it.

A-N-D-O-R.

Green light. Waves of text flood the screen. Syril’s voice erupts, tinny and muffled, from an invisible speaker. Recognizing the controls from her own much-newer datapad, she flicks a switch on the side to gag him. Pauses. When no footsteps plod down the hallway, she returns her attention to the matter at hand and begins reading.

Another dull, useless day which brought me no closer to finding Cassian Andor. I filed another inquiry only to suffer through its rejection. The work I’m doing at the Bureau of Standards is as boring as it is unimportant. The only thing that matters is locating Andor. He is a rock in the perfect mechanism of the Empire. If no one fixes the problem by removing him, he and his accomplices could cripple the whole system.

Why does no one understand? Why don’t they listen? Supervisor Blevin wouldn’t so much as let me read the Ferrix report, and I shudder to imagine what it might say. It’s as though all of them have gone blind, and even in my failure, I’m the only one with the ability to see. But what use is sight when no one comprehends my vision? I can’t imagine giving up, but surrounded as I am by those determined to maintain the status quo, I can’t move forward. Am I condemned to watch as Andor unravels justice and security?

If my mother makes one more snide comment about my suits, I am going to open the window and throw myself out.

Unmoved, Dedra scrolls forward. Finds more of the same; complaints about Andor, whining about Blevin (having dealt with him for longer than Syril, she understands), laments concerning his mother’s nitpicking and selection of breakfast foods. Disappointed, she nearly puts the device back—and then she lands on an entry different from the rest.

Well. There’s hope.

The Morlana sector was reassigned—apparently removed from Blevin, who I’m confident didn’t deserve it—and given to another supervisor named Dedra Meero. She called me into the ISB to talk about Andor today. To the ISB! To discuss Andor! I can’t believe that after all this time, after I’d almost given up, there is someone within the Imperial structure who comprehends the danger he poses. Who listened to me when I talked, and who recognizes my value. She let me read Blevin’s ghastly report, too.

This is everything I’d dreamt. Dedra is everything I’d dreamt. She’s brilliant. She knows that Cassian Andor is a threat, and she’s trying to find him, too. As far as I’m concerned, she should be in charge. If it were up to me, she’d be promoted to the top. They’d all answer to her. I’d answer to her. She’s beautiful, in every sense of the word.

The bitterness in her mouth wages war against her racing heart. How strange, to have the opportunity to peer into Syril’s mind at the point he’d decided to stalk her. It came as no great shock that he hadn’t written about how she’d ordered him to stop searching for Andor, or that she’d turned down his first obvious attempt to weasel his way into the ISB. His mind had taken their first interaction and molded it into a shape that fit his designs. What was it, that he’d told her? He’d thought he was finished? Done? Until she’d shown him there was… justice. Beauty.

In every sense of the word.

In her time serving the Empire, men have called her many things. Stubborn, disagreeable, unlikable, off-putting. The vast majority would’ve rather swallowed the badges on their chests than assert she should rank above them. But Syril—who, admittedly, has faults outnumbering the stars—openly admires her intelligence. Sees her as brilliant, and has no qualms about putting it in writing. Just as he claims she saw him, he saw her.

With wine guiding her fingers, she presses onward. Reads the entry from the day he confronted her. He’d been right about one thing: she had recommended awarding him a clean bill of health. Even now, she can’t articulate why she bothered. The easy answer would be that he provided assistance in her search for Axis, and that service merited some form of reward. A scrap, tossed to a pitiful, starving creature. Yet, in the back of her mind, she knows there’s a difficult answer, too. There’s a missing piece she has no desire to locate, and the alcohol has pushed her frighteningly close to finding it.

She forges ahead. Lands on an all-too-familiar-date; an infamous episode that makes her taste bile.

Given a thousand guesses, I never could have predicted what happened today. I went to Ferrix in hopes of apprehending Andor at his mother’s funeral, but instead—it’s far too premature to assume, but it’s possible—I might have secured some form of employment within the ISB. Wait until Uncle Harlo and mother hear about this. If I’m fortunate, her heart might give out.

If nothing happens, though, that’s understandable. I didn’t save Dedra with the assumption that there’d be a job waiting for me. I simply couldn’t fathom the concept of a galaxy without her. The moment I saw them hauling her onto the street, all my aspirations of Andor lost their meaning. Frustrating, of course, that he escaped. I will continue my search. But—I believe I’m happier with Dedra alive and Andor gone than if he had been caught, but I had lost her. I would not fail her as I had failed myself.  

What happened today wasn’t her fault, and if her superiors are just, they’ll understand that. I’d swear to it, if they request my perspective. It’s odd. I can’t explain it—can’t understand it, really. But if she asked, I’d follow wherever she led. I’d spend my last breath to keep her safe. If nothing else comes of today, I hope she knows that.

Dedra sets the device down. The room has tilted several degrees, and the sparkling in her veins takes on a triumphant, twinkling air. She cannot read Syril’s mind, cannot rifle through his thoughts as he sits behind her at the morning briefings. This datapad has temporarily given her that gift of insight, and what she’s seen leaves her jubilant. He is not merely her assistant, attempting to climb over her to reach a higher rung. He is engrossed in her. Hypnotized by her. Willing to lag a few steps behind wherever she leads. In the competitive churn of the ISB, genuine loyalty is scarce as kyber and twice as valuable. If she discarded it, she’d do so at her own peril.

Footsteps sound in the hallway. Quickly, she slides the datapad back into its place and replaces the items that sat atop it. Repositions the lid just as Syril walks around the corner.

“I apologize.” He stops just inside the doorway, standing inflexibly as ever, a paradoxical mixture of crisp lines, tailored edges and composure that tears a little more with every breath leaving his lungs. Dedra acknowledges his apology with a nod. He continues. “She’s prepared dessert.”

She rises to her feet and approaches him. Silent as a shifting shadow, Syril slips his fingers through hers. This time, she does not protest. Marginal discomfort now will pay dividends in the future. Small sacrifices are worth it to cement his allegiance. Something flutters in her stomach, and she tells herself it is anticipation. A burgeoning eagerness to turn her knowledge into an advantage.

They eat some form of gritty, processed pudding in the haze of an exhausted evening that yearns for cessation. Eedy never so much as alludes to their earlier one-on-one discussion, instead opting to extol Dedra’s posture and continuously prompt her son to stop slouching. The conversation then dissolves further into an examination of Syril’s clothing. “If the modifications look as though they were made by hand, you shouldn’t be making them, Syril. One’s attire should suggest appreciation without shouting for it.” One side of Dedra’s mouth twitches. The woman is undoubtedly a shrew, but she has her merits. “Take Dedra’s dress, for example,” Eedy continues. “There’s command in its simplicity. It knows you’re already listening. It whispers so that you’ll lean in.”

Summarily, Syril sets down his spoon and declares he’s had enough; of the pudding or of his mother’s pestering, it’s unclear. He stands, gingerly wipes his face with a not-quite-white napkin, and extends a hand to Dedra. Realizing they’re meant to keep up the act going until the bitter end, she takes it. Predictably, he does not let go even after she’s gotten to her alcohol-unsteady feet.

The sight of the door feels, to her, like an unlocked set of stuncuffs. It must feel that way to Syril, too, because he rushes through a bitterly halfhearted farewell. He’ll be back, he claims, once he’s seen Dedra to her transport. With that, Dedra makes to walk away and again taste freedom. Eedy grabs her hand.

“It was lovely to meet you, Dedra,” she says. Then, lower: “Remember what I said.” There’s a hint of a plea in her tone. Don’t make my mistakes.

Dedra doesn’t see herself as at risk.

A few insubstantial pleasantries and a closed door later, Dedra walks back to the elevator that condemned her to this absurdity. The setting is no less foul lightly blurred, no less detestable if the haze from the alcohol leaves her unable to fully detest it. Syril plods along quietly at her side, peppering her with glances that he must believe are furtive. She stumbles once, her impractical heel sinking into a crack that should have been repaired, and he wastes no time in reaching out to catch her. She doesn’t thank him. She does, however, in light of what she read in his journal, permit his arm to remain around her waist.

They enter the elevator. Syril presses a button, and it climbs. The sudden movement turns her stomach to liquid and leaves her head spinning. Syril, equally drunk, reaches for her. They steady themselves. He’s the only stable thing in a dissolving room.

“What you told my mother, what you said—when you said I’m useful to the Empire,” he murmurs. His arm is gentle on her back. “Did you mean it?”

If they’re openly admitting to the evening’s transgressions now, she’ll take the conversational reins. She snaps his question back at him like a whip. “Did you mean what you wrote about Ferrix?”

He doesn’t bother with feigning insult. Doesn’t even put on a brief show of pretending she’s betrayed him—of pretending to view her invasion of privacy as the violation that, for most, it would be. An eager smirk rises at the corners of his pink lips, and Dedra thinks there’s something else in his expression now, something different, new, but the alcohol keeps washing the word away before she can grab it.

Red paints the edges of his glassy eyes, brushes inward to branch delicately through his whites. When his lips part, the scent of wine licks at her nostrils. They’re both unbalanced. Nothing guarantees his memory will return a word of this conversation to him tomorrow. Nothing guarantees she’ll recall it, either. Perhaps the hypothetical impermanence of it explains why she permits him to tighten his grip. Permits him to draw her nearer until the space between them is but a gasp; the air shrunken down to an insubstantial barrier that a single jerk of ancient cables could destroy.

Their gazes lock. The fabric of her dress is suddenly thin, weak-willed, and far too immaturely keen to reveal the exact location of his fingers on her body. The floor shudders. Moans. Shivers. His exhales become her inhales. Her skin guzzles down his flushed warmth. His eyes are wide, and round, and bloodshot, and blue, and, in their overt supplication, more intoxicating than any drink. When he closes them and cuts off her access to that wordless worship, it’s unforgivable. He’s ripped something sacred from her grasp.

“I—” he starts, fumbles, stammers feebly as only Syril Karn can. “Yes, I—you—you’re what’s right. What’s… judicious.” He suddenly seems to remember that generally, words combine to form sentences. “I’ve always seen my path as one of order, and justice, and veracity, and you… the moment we met, I knew you were all of those things. You are my path.”

Dedra closes her eyes, wills the empty blackness there to restore her to herself. There’s no more use in pretending. Eedy cannot see them. The charade has expired. And yet, if she’s to stitch Syril into her plans, to sew him to her with loyalty’s firm thread, she’ll have no choice but to maintain some form of pretense. Brilliant. I’d answer to her. If he’s to trail along unquestioningly at her heels, she’ll have to give him reason to move his deluded legs. Beautiful, in every sense of the word. 

And yet inexperience gives her plan the hiccups, because she’s never… done this before. None of her muscles know how to move to… initiate. He is so very close, and he is so very far away, and the dingy walls are closing in, rotating, and collapsing around her. She sucks in a shaking breath, starts to lean in, and—

The elevator stops.