Work Text:
Before:
“I can’t see.” The black-red wave of colour has darkened and darkened until there’s nothing left at all, the disorienting absence of space without stars. The roar of his own blood in his ears is too loud. Panic builds faster than he can counter it, heedless of how important it is to prove he can do this, and - “I can’t - Mon -”
And there’s her hand soft on his forehead and her voice saying she’s here, he’s safe. He’s safe.
He didn’t have to do this at all. Mon had been very clear on that: he’s under no obligation, she doesn’t expect it, and she certainly doesn’t want him thinking of this as another one of the numerous Chandrilan customs and practices he’s familiar with that aren’t anywhere near so demanding: a few words recited at the end of dinner, an exchange of gifts bound in red and silver threads. This is a ritual centred around a hallucinogenic drug whose entire purpose is to show him what his own mind fears, and even if he’d grown up on Chandrila he wouldn’t be expected to do this more than once or twice in a lifetime. She’d wanted him to know - and she had told him this very, very clearly - that he didn’t have to.
It’s a little easier knowing she’s there with him, beside him. The panic withdraws to a watchful distance and waits. “I can’t see,” he says, more under control this time. “Is it - meant to do this?”
But: “You can,” she says. “You can.”
And then - he can.
The first life that didn't happen:
It’s disorienting at first and then the world settles. The dream floods him and reality turns wisp-thin and dissolves away. Of course he can see: the people, the lights, the flowers hanging down from the rafters. Why had he even thought he couldn’t?
It’s Senator Mothma’s daughter’s wedding and the evening of the first day. Erskin’s a little tired, the drag of the time difference between Hanna City and Salline beginning to take its toll, but he can pace it out for another few hours and sleep in until breakfast tomorrow; he’s already made sure his name’s listed for the second sitting instead of the first. He’s been to enough Chandrilan weddings by now that he could do all this in his sleep.
It’s an interesting combination of guests: a lot of off-worlders from the Imperial Senate, of course, but a good number of the Chandrilans are expatriates from Coruscant too and if you watch carefully enough you can tell: there’s a slight dissonance in the conversations when they’re talking to the others, a few too many mentions of back home as somewhere that’s so good to be. Past that, there’s a few of Erskin’s colleagues - both friend and foe - from the planetary government here in Hanna, a few people in Imperial Navy uniforms, and the standard assortment of what must be relatives and friends.
Erskin would like to imagine his own invitation had come only because of his position. This isn’t impossible - he’d got a few difficult legislative victories through last year and he had the kind of career that was getting him described as promising now - but it’s far more likely that he’s been invited as the son of his father, a former politician himself turned speaker-writer-visiting-academic who’s one of the leading figures of the growing traditionalist movement. Erskin’s father has influence in the same way that suns have gravity: even when you keep your distance, you’re still in orbit.
Though the reception’s well underway by now you’d never know it from the bar, where glasses of blue First Night punch, pale sparkling wine, iced water and a selection of other things chosen to meet the varied palates and digestive biologies of the guests, all stand in perfectly neat lines like regiments of soldiers, discreetly tidied and reinforced by the staff. Erskin grabs a couple of glasses of punch and heads back past the far wall, trying to see who Senator Mothma’s speaking to without being too obvious about it, narrowly avoiding a collision with a woman in a dark blue dress and white sleeves heading in the other direction. She rolls her eyes before flicking a smile fast into place as she echoes his apology.
No, this is no use. He'll try later.
His father’s over at the other side of the room holding court to a circle of fascinated young arrivals from Coruscant who are all trying to one-up each other with the insightfulness of their questions about wedding customs. Senator Mothma’s daughter Leida is among them, basking in the glow of his approval; the Sculdun boy stands beside her as carefully expressionless as he’s been all day.
“And it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the welcome paths laid with balmgrass,” his father’s saying as Erskin reaches them. “Seems like it’s always last of the winter wheat these days.”
Leida’s nodding, so intent it’s close to captivating. “But people only think that’s traditional because of those poems. It would always have been balmgrass around Hanna before that.”
“Indeed! Indeed it would. How refreshing it is to have young people who actually pay attention to our history. You’re a credit to the Elders on Coruscant.” A glance over at Erskin, and the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Even my own children found it hard to summon up much of an interest at your age.”
“Lies and slander,” Erskin says, handing him one of the glasses. “And before he tells you the story of someone training a toy droid to copy homework, that was my brother, not me.”
His father’s audience laughs politely, and one of Leida’s peermaids says “Which brother?”
“I’d never tell. I took a vow of secrecy.”
“He still swears it was Erskin’s idea,” his father says.
“In that case, it was Jado.”
They laugh again; they’re not surprised. Jado, the closest in age to Erskin, spends most of his life climbing mountains and fording rivers on distant uncharted moons, bringing back strange plants and stranger animals and then making holos about his adventures which are wildly popular (though, Erskin suspects, also wildly exaggerated). Such things are entirely expected of Jado and run no risk of damaging the reputation he’s happily, and profitably, made for himself.
Not that Jado’s alone in that, of course. For all their father’s mock performance of sorrow he wouldn’t really be harmed by anything his children managed to do; he’s far too well-known, far too influential,. The only time anything even came close to changing the trajectory of his success was some unpleasantness before Erskin was born about a rumoured affair with a woman from Ghorman and of course that came to nothing, in the end.
No; if any of them need to worry about their reputation these days it’s Erskin, the youngest of five and the only one whose career is still vulnerable to the shifting winds of politics. His father’s reputation provides a certain level of protection but there’s plenty of people who’d gladly bring him down for that alone and who will surely be watching him in a place like this. Which is one of the reason why, though he’d very much like to speak to Senator Mothma on certain subjects a little more involved than welcomes and pleasantries, he really can’t risk it. Not here.
They’re far enough out of the city itself that the stars are clear here. He puts a hand palm-down to the stone beside him, the way he’s been taught all his life: our eyes on the stars, our hands on Chandrila’s earth. Don’t turn away from the galaxy around you, but never forget that what matters and what lasts is here.
He’d believed it, once.
He’s so lost in his thoughts that it’s a while before he realises he’s no longer alone. The woman leaning against the railings is silhouetted against the low lights spilling onto the terrace below but he recognises Senator Mothma anyway, here alone and presumably looking for solitude just as much if not more than he had.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“No, I’m sorry for disturbing you.” She comes to sit beside him, her hands flat against the stone as she looks up at the stars. “Perrin’s persuaded the musicians to stay for another few hours and I needed a little reprieve before the next round of canapes. It’s been a long day.”
“I’m sure.”
“Two more ahead.” She’s smiling, but there’s only a wisp-thin trace of it there in her voice.
“Is your daughter all right?” No immediate answer, but suddenly there’s a very sharp, very intense stare fixed on him. “Uh, I passed her on the terrace earlier. She looked a bit upset.”
Her shoulders drop a little, and something behind her eyes turns away. “An argument with her intended. They seem to have made up now with some intermediary diplomatic assistance.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Yes. Well, yes, indeed.” A very careful collection of breath. “She is so very young. She doesn’t think so of course but then we never do, do we? Or I certainly didn’t at my own wedding. I was fifteen as well.”
“Yeah, me too.” Though he’d still felt like a child at his own wedding, the youngest of five whose every step was in someone else’s footprints: remember when Jado, remember when Lin. “I mean you could probably guess that with my family.”
“Your father’s reputation does rather precede him,” she says, smiling just enough to reassure him it’s not - or at least, not entirely - a criticism. “I imagine he had very clear ideas about all of your weddings.”
“My sister wanted to have the sash for her second-day outfit tied with the island-style bow instead of the Salline one. He was appalled.”
She laughs, a polite little chuckle. “He must be proud of your career.”
“So far.”
“Oh, you’re quite the rising star. I appreciated the message of support you sent after we lost the vote on the resentencing directive. I don’t always expect the traditionalist group here to take such an interest, but you - you always do.”
It’s subtle, this shift in the conversation, but it’s not hidden. He nods. “It was Imperial overreach, plain and simple. You were right to oppose it.”
He wishes the light was better out here - he can’t quite tell how she’s looking at him now, what it is she’s considering. “Many of your colleagues were satisfied with the carve-outs for Chandrilan judicial independence,” she says.
“I find that short-sighted even for Chandrila’s interests but even if it wasn’t for the precedent it's set there’s a galaxy beyond Chandrila. We can’t just sit back and watch. It’s hideous what they’re doing out there, I’d…” There’s really a great deal he’d like to say here and so much he’d like to ask her, but there are limits, there’s a balance, there’s too much that’s fragile, too much at risk. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
She doesn’t say anything, and he can’t tell whether that’s bad or good. She nods.
“If there’s more I can do in the future, now - whenever - If it would be helpful to you to have an ally -”
“You’d be that.”
“Yes.”
“In planetary government? In the House here?”
“That too of course but I’ll be doing that anyway - well, what I can. I meant… if there’s anything else I could do to help. Any other way. It feels like you’re one of the few people standing against what the Empire is becoming.”
He doesn’t mention the rumours he’s heard or the inferences he’s made. He doesn’t mention Bail Organa. He doesn’t say that he knows the Empire is chasing her, is watching her with eyes everywhere on everything she does. He doesn’t tell her: my family’s wealthy, our money is well protected, or: I’m linked to enough of the old clans that we can run supply lines out off-world and have the Empire chasing its tail forever trying to figure out where it’s going. He hopes she can hear it all anyway.
“It does feel that way,” she says, very quietly. And then there is a long, long silence. And then she says, “I can’t ask this of you.”
“I’m offering.”
“I can’t accept. Oh I don’t doubt your intentions, you have nothing to convince me of there, but what you are - who you are - your family, your political colleagues, all the Salline clans - I can’t tie myself to any of them. I can’t take that risk. And you can’t untie yourself, and so here we are.”
She smiles at him as she gets to her feet, and there’s such sorrow in it, and he feels like he knows her, somehow, that he’s seen some truth in her that she’d never usually share.
“I wish you luck,” she says. “I think you’re right, I’m afraid. I don’t believe the Empire will make exceptions for Chandrila forever. I hope you have more success than I did in getting anyone to believe that.”
She looks so alone as she’s walking away.
The second life that didn't happen:
The problem, Perrin says, is that she might start crying again.
Erskin hasn’t seen Mon cry very much but the idea that she might isn’t a great surprise to him. Certainly if she’s ever going to cry it would be at this time of year, in the lead-up to all the parades and the fireworks to celebrate the birth of the Empire. (The end of the wars, really. Peace and stability. The theme for this year is future through oversight, a garbled empty slogan which he’s sure his successors back on Coruscant are rolling their eyes about.) What’s more of a worry is that Perrin seems set on blaming him for it.
“She’ll be all right,” Erskin says. “It’s just this week. With everything.” And then, because Perrin doesn’t look remotely convinced: “I’ll speak to her.”
Perrin snorts. “You do that.”
It’s a summer of long, dull parties and morning lie-ins that never really end, a summer to drowse through in white chairs on lush-green lawns under the deep shade of the trees. Everything’s a haze. Sometimes it feels like he’s moving through syrup, something thick and soporific haunted by the deep droning hum of beehives far away.
That morning he gets up early and heads down to the harbour before Mon is awake. The flags are already in place for Empire Day and the parade route into the town all marked out though it’s still largely empty of people. One of the cold sea-fogs has rolled in overnight and it’s still lingering, refreshingly cool against the heat of the day to come. He sits on a bench and watches a few of the little hover-skiffs disappear into the blanket of white mist, and thinks about Coruscant.
Mon’s still sleeping when he gets back, though when he burrows beneath her arm and pulls the sheet over them both she wakes for long enough to tell him she doesn’t want breakfast before falling back into whatever she’s dreaming about. She always says she’ll join him some morning when he gets up early for a walk. It’s been a long time since she has, but he hasn’t stopped hoping.
He’d promised Perrin he’d talk to her about going away from town for a while. He should do that. He should at least try to talk her into coming down for breakfast; she doesn’t eat enough now, she’s rarely hungry. She’s sleeping so soundly, though, and she looks so peaceful when that’s a rare thing these days, and it’s not as if either of them are in any hurry so he lies there with her and watches her sleep for a while, thinking how beautiful her hair looks when the morning light turns it to copper.
He’s lucky, really. They all are. Mon is alive and not imprisoned. Chandrila is safe. It could all have been so much worse.
They’d got the townhouse here after leaving Coruscant, when Mon didn’t want to be at the family estate near Hanna, when it still felt possible that her bone-deep sadness would dissipate a little more easily if she had everything else she might want in place of what she’d lost. Though thinking back to it now, Erskin is no long sure that he ever really had believed it; more likely Perrin had and Erskin had thought it worth going along with because by then he didn’t have any better ideas left.
So Mon has all the trinkets and pleasures and distractions she’s ever shown even the vaguest of interests in: this house with the vines growing down sun-warmed stone walls, a set of china cups with shimmer-gold rims, pardons and reduced sentences for a few of the politicians who’d supported her earlier efforts to constrain the Emperor, a painting of a far-distant island she’d once liked as a child. Perrin had filled their life with crowds and parties and old friends and for the best part of a year she’d thrown herself into it, too. Erskin remembers her laughing in a shining golden dress, teasing Perrin that he couldn’t match her drink for drink with squigs any more, and how the whole room had seemed to centre itself around her light like a star fading down to red.
“I should go back, it’s late,” he’d found himself saying that night, suddenly all too aware that she didn’t need him here and perhaps the person she was becoming to survive this wouldn’t need him at all. And Perrin had clasped a hand around his shoulder in a grip too tight to be a farewell and said: no.
And now she has Erskin too, though whether he’d been Perrin’s idea or hers is something he tries not to think too much about. Now he can share her bed and lie like this beside her and it’s fine, really, because what kind of scandal is there even going to be? Who’d even care? And maybe he should have tried to have some kind of discussion about any of it, but he loves her too much to upset her and he’s too selfish to risk it anyway.
Mon isn’t retired. She still has a political position awarded in recognition of her service to Chandrila, though the responsibilities that came with it are slight and no-one’s pretending it’s more than a sinecure. She does what she can and he helps make it count. She still cares. He knows she does. But she ran out of allies and she ran out of options, and they set her a trap and now she’s here: no longer in a prison cell but so, so far from free.
There’s still a Rebellion out there, splintered across a hundred warring factions. Maybe Mon’s cousin Vel is still alive and fighting with one of them. Maybe Bail Organa, too; maybe the rumours are right that his death was faked, that he got away in the end, that he’s still out there somewhere, working in silence while the Rebellion builds its strength. Erskin doesn’t know whether Mon believes it and doesn’t really want to ask. Either way, she can’t reach it any more.
They’re waiting. That’s what she used to tell him and she doesn’t any more but he still imagines he can hear it in her voice (maybe she only forgot to mention it, maybe she knows he doesn’t need her to say). They’re waiting until things change, until the shackles of a life they’ve got her in ease a little. Mon hasn’t given up.
He wakes her softly, asks if she’s changed her mind about breakfast and doesn’t push it any further when she shakes her head.
“We should go away for a while,” he says.
“Next year.” She stretches out one arm into the warmth of the space he’s vacated, yawns a little as she rolls over.
“This summer. This week, we could go this week. Get away for a while and see somewhere different.”
“No.” And she’s asleep again before he can answer.
He eats breakfast out on the lawn with Perrin, Mon’s chair empty beside them. They have bread that crumbles to soft flakes in his hand, and the local vine-leaf tea, and honeyed cold meat arranged in dishes shaped like wings which looked fine when they were all stacked empty but here they’re filled and arranged in a circle and it gives the disturbing impression that some predator has been tearing birds to pieces.
“You said you’d talk to her,” Perrin says.
“I tried.”
“Oh you tried! You tried. Well done, that’ll help.”
“Perrin -”
“I can try.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” He has less patience for this than he used to.
Perrin tips his head, the way he does when he’s pretending he cares enough to think about his answer. “Maybe I should have done,” he says. “Maybe I did and it didn’t - go - well.”
Oh. Though the house does feel like they’ve been fighting again, that sense of a place holding its breath. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Was it going to make a difference?”
“No. I don’t know, maybe.” Erskin mops up some of the muja-fruit conserve with the edge of a crust. “I don’t want to get in between you.”
Perrin laughs. “That so? I seem to recall you quite enjoying yourself at the hotel the last -“
“Don’t.” He can feel his face flush already. “Forgive me for thinking this was a serious conversation.”
Maybe it is, though. It’s always hard to tell exactly what Perrin thinks about this situation they’re all in. Sometimes he seems to despise it, snapping at Mon, swatting Erskin aside with some seemingly casual comment that’s sharp enough to draw blood; sometimes he’s kind, oddly gentle. Sometimes he sighs and complains that nothing in the galaxy could ever make Mon happy so he doesn’t know why he’s ever bothered trying and she can take Erskin down with her if she wants but he’s going out to spend some time with people who can do more with their lives than mope. Sometimes he just looks sad. Whichever it is this time, Erskin can’t tell and finds he doesn’t really want to know.
He stares down at the wing-plates instead, focusing on them and nothing else, ignoring whatever Perrin wants. And then they seem to shift in his sight and he realises they aren’t wings at all - they’re shells. He’d been looking at them wrong all along.
“Problem?” Perrin says.
“I thought they were wings.”
Perrin sighs as though the weight of planets has been burdened upon him, and says “As if anything’s allowed to fly around here.”
Mon still wears her Hanna pendant, and until they came to live on Chandrila he hadn’t realised how much importance he’d place on that. It had always mattered, of course, but before this it had mattered because of the honour it signified and the reminder of all she’d done for Chandrila; now it’s achieved some kind of superstitious status in the less rational parts of his heart and he checks every day to see if she still cares enough to thread it onto its narrow gleaming chain or pin it back on to her clothing. The day she doesn’t, he’ll know she’s given up.
It’s evening now, her room draped in long shadows. Mon removes her pendant carefully and lays it down on the white marble table and then comes to sit on the edge of the bed beside him. “You’re staying tonight, aren’t you?” she asks, tipping her head to the side as she takes off her earrings.
“If you want me to.”
“I don’t expect Perrin home until tomorrow. Klavin’s son’s Day of Days.”
That isn’t really an answer, but he supposes he doesn’t really need one. Of course she wants him to. Of course he’s staying.
“I really think we should go away for a while,” he says. “Just for this week.”
“What?” She seems baffled more than anything.
“So we’re… Because it’s Empire Day.”
“I know what this week is, Erskin, thank you.” She’s drifted away again, looking vaguely into the blankness of a corner where the rafters meet the wall.
He wouldn’t usually push her when she gets like this. It still bothers him to see her look so absent and the thought she might drift even further until she’s all the way out of his grasp is - one he’d rather not think about. But she’s drifting anyway, whatever he does. “I thought it might be easier if we’re not here. It’s quiet at work -” that’s an understatement - “we can take a few days out. Somewhere quiet.”
“And where do you imagine that it won’t be Empire Day?”
“We could go back out to the islands. Perrin’s uncle still has that hunting lodge. At least we’d be away from all the parades and celebrations out there.”
“It wouldn’t matter.”
“Please.”
She shakes her head, too slowly. “You go, if you like.”
She used to want him to stay. She used to want him with her. She used to tell him, all empires fall. Now she’s become a collection of absences and nothing he does makes a difference at all.
She takes hold of his hand and her thumb rubs slow circles over his palm. “Don’t look like that,” she says.
There’s more he wants to say. That he’d do anything to keep her safe and he always would and he always will, that what he wants to give her more than anything else is hope and she deserves it so much but she’s always been the hope, she’s always been the one able to see a brighter future where everything’s better, and he doesn’t know how to fix this deep sadness that’s dragging her down and down and down away from him - and -
And she kisses him and he lets her. Lets it all go, everything he was going to say. Lets his own hands find her and hold her close and lets his own body turn aside all the things he’s thinking in place of how wonderful it is to kiss her and how familiar she feels to him now.
She’s alive, and that’s what matters.
She’s alive.
The third life that didn't happen:
They’re calling it a trial, but he really can’t tell the difference between this and any of the interrogations they’ve dragged him through previously except that the room is a little larger and there’s more blank faces watching him. Then again, he wasn’t ever really expecting a trial at all. This is something he’s accepted since the beginning: if he’s found out, it’s over.
They haven’t bothered cleaning him up much. There’s still dried blood dappled like rust on his collar and down the inside of one sleeve. He’s seen a few others in the hallways of whatever place this is being marched or hauled past him by the guards and they were all wearing the same plain-looking uniform but he’s still in his own clothes, the ones he’d picked out for work that morning (was it? no, surely it’s been longer than that) without even giving it much thought. They haven’t explained why this is and he hasn’t asked. He wonders now if it’s for the cameras, so everyone watching will see him in Chandrilan clothes.
An impassive-looking imperial officer of some kind draws up a chair to the stand where he’s held, its metal post scraping on the floor. “Name?”
“You know my name.”
A tired-sounding sigh. “You might not care for procedure, but here we like to be sure we’re speaking to the correct individual. Name?”
He shakes his head.
It’s pointless, but any answer’s pointless. Anything gets twisted and turned against you. Obedience doesn’t make them any more merciful; defiance doesn’t make them angrier. You could lose your mind trying to find the right way through.
The officer sighs, again, and beckons for a datapad that one of his assistants brings with a little too much eagerness. “Fine. We’ll go through this the tedious way. Your name is Erskin Semaj. You were born on Naboo, the illegitimate child of a Chandrilan merchant and a Ghorman tailor. Correct?”
“She was a textile designer.” Out of all the people he cares about, his mother’s the only one he knows for sure they can’t hurt.
“Thank you, we’ll make the amendment. You attended university on Coruscant where your tuition was paid by former Senator Mon Mothma. You’ve largely worked for her since then. I presume that was the understanding?”
“No.”
It isn’t much to say, but he shouldn’t have said even that. Too late. “Mmm,” the officer says. “Still, hard to imagine you were ungrateful.”
This. he doesn’t answer.
“Since then you have assisted her in various activities classified as per the declaration you were given at the beginning of this session, most notably dissemination of prohibited material likely to cause public unrest, active financial, logistical or other support of terrorist groups, colluding with enemies of the Empire. Yes?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Mmm. And I do wish to note here that you are not at present charged with inciting any of these. This was all done in support of a woman to whom you already owed a great deal, who had supported you since the death of your mother at quite a young age. You must have felt very obliged to her.”
Nothing. Say nothing. Don’t voice the anger that makes him want to defend Mon from that implication that she’d used him, knowing he’d forever be in her debt. Chandrila’s a hard place to make your way without a family and all the connections it brings and doubly so when you have the stamp of illegitimacy marking you from birth, but Mon had been more than a helping hand and a support for his career. She’d been there after his mother died, when everything seemed hopeless, when the whole galaxy seemed a bleak and miserable place and he’d given up trying to fight it. As if all Mon had done for him could be measured in tuition and favours.
He remembers, now, a bright spring day on Coruscant by the reflecting pools at the Senate - though it can’t have been the Senate, not back then. It must have been somewhere else. Hard to think clearly at all now. He knows they’ve had him on various drugs to smudge his sense of reality and make him say whatever they want him to, and dragged him awake from any sleep he’s managed to get, and that one side of his head is still aching from the last interrogation when they’d hardly even bothered with the questions - and now though he can recall the memory he can’t even remember where it was or why Mon had even been there. Just the glint of sunlight on water, and how she’d insisted he stay and talk.
He’d trailed his hand in the pool, more of an excuse not to look at her than anything else. “Obviously I’m grateful and I do appreciate -”
“That isn’t what I asked you.”
“It was a difficult exam, I hadn’t revised enough.”
“Difficult enough even for people who turn up on time without a hangover, I believe,” she’d said.
He’d felt all the shame that he couldn’t summon a shred of earlier crowd in on him at once. “I can try again in summer. I’m going to, I mean.”
“But this isn’t what I asked you either.” There had been something in her voice back in those days that could take all the air out of his lungs, leave him silent and empty. “I asked if you were all right. You applied to a very challenging program on Chandrila and you are absolutely capable of succeeding in it, but I don’t think it’s what you want to do.”
“It is. I made a mistake. I wasn’t thinking and -”
“Is Chandrila where you really want to be?”
Of course it was. How hard had he worked for this? And why couldn’t he even convince himself of it any more? “Yes,” he’d said, and neither of them had believed it.
She’d sighed. “You still need something to do until the summer,” she’d said. “Come and work for me.”
“In the Senate?”
“Why not? You like politics, you’ve got a good mind for it. It’ll be quite a junior role of course but I’m sure you can manage for a few months.”
And so he had - at first because he really hadn’t had anything else to do, and then finally because there wasn’t anything else he wanted to do more.
His shoulder hurts. He almost considers asking for pain relief to see how that’ll be taken in this farce of a trial - maybe he could tell them he’d slipped and fallen in his cell. He shifts in his stool to change its position, as much as the cuffs on his wrists will allow.
“Do you know Luthen Rael?” his interrogator is asking him.
“No.”
“You are not being honest, are you?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Luthen Rael and Kleya Marki owned an antiquities dealership here on Coruscant. Senator Mothma was a regular client.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You visited the shop with her on several occasions.”
“I went to a lot of places with her. I don’t recall.” This has got to be pointless - Luthen and Kleya left Coruscant a long time ago, and he knows ISB would have combed through their gallery and found everything there was to find by now.
“Luthen Rael spoke to you at Senator Mothma’s daughter’s wedding.”
“I don’t recall.” Leida. He won’t think about Leida right now. She’s on Chandrila, she must be - she’ll be safe there. They won’t go after her there.
“Did you speak to Luthen Rael after the wedding?”
“No.”
“If we have witnesses saying otherwise?”
“They’re mistaken.”
“What did you discuss?”
“I didn’t.”
His interrogator sighs. “You seem determined to make this more difficult for all of us, Mr Semaj, yourself included. Please reconsider. There’s little point in displays of loyalty now.”
“She isn’t safe,” Luthen had said.
Erskin, sitting beside him on the empty train carriage as it rattled its way through the tunnels that burrowed five hundred levels below anywhere he’d usually be, could hardly disagree with that. Mon wasn’t safe and this was becoming more and more evident by the day. He’d do anything to help her - he would - or he’d thought he would, but…
“I need time to think about this,” he’d said.
“And I’d like to give that to you but I don’t think we’ve got enough of it to spare. You know how close Tay Kolma got to ruining everything? She’d be in a prison cell by now if I hadn’t been there. I can’t be there every time. You can.”
He hardly needed reminding of Tay Kolma, and finding out how much more of a problem Tay had been than even his unsettled instincts had guessed was… well, it’s what had led to this conversation in the first place.
“She doesn’t think she needs this,” Luthen had said. “She thinks she’ll be all right. You believe that?”
He didn’t. No, he didn’t.
“All you’d be doing is passing information on when something worries you like Tay did. We’ll take it off your hands from there.”
But Mon wouldn’t have killed Tay, and Luthen had. And if Tay was a danger because of what he knew then what would Mon be once her money ran out?
He’d told Luthen he’d do it. And then he’d gone back home and he’d stayed up half the night plagued with it, wondering who he’d be risking, who he could risk - what it was worth it to risk - whether he really could look Mon in the eye and lie to her, day after day after day -
And then the next morning, he’d told her.
Luthen and Kleya were gone a few months after that. Then Vel disappeared, too; and then Bail Organa; and then one day that felt simultaneously like years ago and like this morning, he’d come to work and Mon hadn’t been there and a roomful of ISB officers and troopers had been there waiting instead.
He’ll never know for sure what it was that he’d missed, in the end - what threat, what undercover agent, what untrustworthy acquaintance. He'd been worried about so many of them, by the end, but Mon wouldn't hear it and he'd had no-one to go to. He’ll never really know whether it would have made any difference at all if he’d had Luthen and Kleya, though. Like everything else, it’s too late.
“You still intend to plead not guilty, I presume,” the interrogator says.
“I didn’t do anything.” He hadn’t done enough.
The interrogator drums his fingers on the stand beside him as if trying to recall something. “Yes, yes,” he says absently. “In that case, we have I believe finally concluded this preliminary session and we can proceed to the trial itself. Is there anything you would like to ask us?”
“No.”
“Nothing you’re interested in learning? The location of former Senator Mothma, for instance?”
Water floods his mouth and he swallows, knowing it’s useless to even try to hide how afraid he must look.
Mon might have got away. She might. She might be safe, now, out of their reach. Or she might be dead; or she might be in another cell like his; and some pathetic coward part of him wants to bargain with them, if you let me see her I’ll give you something, I’ll admit I knew about Luthen, it’s not like it matters, now, and he’s not getting out of this anyway - but she might have got away and he has to keep believing it.
“You wouldn’t tell me anyway,” he says.
The interrogator nods. “Does seem a little unlikely, doesn’t it. Why would we tell you what we know? Or what we don’t know, which I presume is what you’re hoping. Though - don’t you think it’s strange that we’ve never asked you?”
...and the life that did.
“Mon,” he says, and for a moment he can’t quite believe she’s there - she’s there. She’s holding his hand, telling him to breathe, be calm. Telling him he's in the Embassy and he's safe and she's there with him. Telling him: it’s over.
“I saw,” he says. “I was - I -”
“Listen to me. The fear you felt was real but what you saw was not. It’s like a dream. It’s the projections of your subconscious. It’s not real. You need to know that.”
He nods. She helps him to his feet - his vision’s back, mostly, if a little blurry around the edges, and his shoulder’s still a bit sore from where his other hand had clamped onto it hard enough that he can already tell it’s going to bruise, and he’s still lightheaded and he really thinks that if Mon wasn’t there to hold him he’d fall - but she’s there and he can stand.
“I’m okay,” he says. “Uh. How long does this take to wear off?”
“A few hours, I’m afraid. Did you have plans?”
“No,” he says. “No, nothing.” It’s easier to lie to her than he’d thought. It can wait until this evening when he’s away from here and out of Mon’s sight.
It’s only one message he needs to send to Luthen, anyway: I’ll do it.