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The stranger arrived in Palmo with a fake name and a fake smile on his lips.
Thela continued to consider him a stranger even though he introduced himself as Varian Skye.
It wasn’t that his subterfuge wasn’t solid. It was. Masterful, even. He walked with the confident swagger of the Coruscanti fashion designer he purported to be. He dressed the part. He spoke like a man used to luxury and privilege. He was beautiful and confident and well turned out, bursting with charisma and charm.
But as Thela looked him in the eye as the elevator brought them up to his floor, he saw the man behind the persona - if only for a moment. There was a deep well of sadness behind his dark eyes and beyond the easy smile. He radiated pain that Thela recognized as so close to his own.
The man he saw did not know privilege or luxury except as abstract concepts. He chafed against his disguise but wore it with purpose. He was damaged and broken, but limping along because some unseen force propelled him.
Or perhaps it was simply the residual electrical impulses of a dead heart dancing to the simulacra of life.
That person had yet to introduce himself, and so he remained a stranger.
Thela’s instincts were proven right when he asked about the massacre. Sometimes guests asked, out of morbid or callous curiosity. But this man was different. Something in the way the stranger listened while he recounted in the barest details the crushing and burning of innocent civilians beneath the metaphorical heel of the Empire told Thela that he knew the pain in his heart all too well.
That small moment of connection drew a line between them. Although Thela still didn’t know his name, they now knew each other.
The electrical impulse that drove the stranger’s broken heart drove Thela’s, too. His heart was also broken and near death, but beating just enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
“It’s good to know you,” the false Skye had said.
Other than his sympathies, Thela knew those were his first true words.
Thela tried to keep his head down after that, but he couldn’t help but notice each time the stranger came and went from the hotel. Each time he did, the mask slipped a little and the hard sadness slipped through the jovial disguise.
Thela knew he should ignore it. He’d seen enough of the stranger’s subterfuge to know he had to be tied up in something dangerous. It was safer to look away. But then he realized his colleagues - ones likely to alert the Empire, were paying attention, too.
So on a weak excuse of checking in on an elderly guest, Thela went to the stranger’s floor. He stared at the door for a long time, but then turned to walk away as fear and fire and Imperial boots came flashing back. Featureless Stormtroopers marched over the dead bodies of innocent people. In that moment of tragic remembrance, childhood fear replaced bravado.
The door opened. The stranger stood there with ruffled hair and dark circles under his eyes. “Do you have something to tell me?” he asked in a knowing tone.
Thela’s stomach bunched. He looked down the corridor just as another set of guests exited the lift. He pushed past the stranger into his room.
“They’re watching. Whatever you’re doing, you have to be more subtle about it. My colleagues chase bonuses the Empire offers for turning in suspicious persons. You need to be more careful. You need…”
The stranger stepped closer to him in the space between him and the door.
Thela stepped back out of instinct. He felt a spike of terror at the sudden realization that this man might not be who he thought he was or who he appeared to be. How could he have been so foolish? This man could just as easily be an Imperial agent sent to catch people like him.
The stranger advanced again.
Thela backpedaled a second time. He felt a rivulet of sweat slide down beneath his uniform and slide along his lower back.
“Thank your for telling me,” said the stranger in a warm, low voice. He reached out to set one hand on either one of Thela’s shoulders. “But you should not have taken the risk. This is dangerous.”
“Being Ghor is dangerous,” Thela replied. “Being subject to the Empire is dangerous. This is a risk I take of my own free will. This is my choice.”
When the stranger touched his cheek, Thela realized that he was not drawn to him out of simple curiosity. There was something more there, something beyond.
Both Thela and the stranger recognized it in the same instant. They leaned toward each other in unison and met in the space between. That tether of connection which had prompted Thela to open up to him grew stronger as the kiss deepened. He embraced him and leaned into the kiss.
Even though he knew he’d be missed and questioned - and perhaps even reprimanded for his absence, Thela let the stranger push him back toward the bed. As they passed the console, he slapped at it wildly until the curtains overlooking the square closed.
The stranger undressed him with great tenderness and without haste. He kept his eyes locked on Thela’s as he pressed their bodies together. He kissed him and touched him with the familiarity of an old lover.
They made love like doomed men with a cloud of nihilism gathering above their heads. The pleasure, though intense - was bittersweet as the tide of arousal broke on their respective shores.
When it was over, the stranger held him from behind and rubbed the burn scars on Thela’s left arm. The stranger knew without having to ask when and how he’d been burned.
“Cassian.”
“You don’t have to,” said Thela as he turned to face him. “That’s not what this is.”
“My name is Cassian,” he repeated.
“Thela,” he replied.
“It’s good to know you, Thela.”
—
When Cassian reappeared a year later, Thela knew why he was back. Their doom might not come together, but it was coming. Rebellions require blood to sustain it, and theirs was marked to be shed.
There was no reunion or continuation of their affair, just an exchange of knowing looks. Thela no longer cared if his employer or the Empire discovered that he’d neglected to log Cassian in. That was a small risk in the grand scheme of things. He knew there were others out there all across the galaxy taking far greater risks. Each act was small, but together they could rock an empire.
A shadow fell over Ghorman as if an Imperial cruiser the size of the planet itself was threatening to land and crush all Ghor beneath it.
Life changed that day, when he was only a boy, and not just because he’d lost his father. He’d seen the true horror of the Empire. Their callous disregard for life. Their absolute domination and control at the heart of the horror of the machine of empire.
Thela saw a kindred spark beneath the sadness in Cassian’s eyes. But he saw the fire that drove him to rage against the dying light.
They might fail, but they’d fail on their feet with their heads held high.
The shadow did fall. Violence erupted. The rebellion came to Ghorman in earnest. And Thela acted when he had to, throwing a grenade to the door of the hotel at a cluster of Stormtroopers.
As Thela lie bleeding from the shrapnel his own grenade kicked back at him, he felt a wash of peace. Tinnitus flooded his ears and every part of his body hurt. But there was fire and ash and blackened and bloodied pristine white helmets. There was a pile of them outside the doors he walked through every day for years.
The blood of the Empire joined the blood of his father in Palmo Plaza that day, and that of hundreds of other innocent Ghormans.
He trusted in Cassian and the Rebellion to make sure much more Imperial blood was shed on the path to freedom.
That day was pain and regret, agony and tragedy.
But there was also hope in the small acts of defiance from people all over the galaxy.
And rebellions are built on hope.