Work Text:
Endless rain, dreamless nights. She missed her radio. She forbade herself to think of Luthen. Feverish busyness all around her, and yet they did nothing but wait. Kleya had learned that from Luthen; she had forgotten how impossible it truly was: staring at walls and listening to the rain, which carried no message.
No word from Cassian, not for weeks now. Fallen silent forever. An asteroid field where Alderaan had once been. The princess of that wreckage was their last chance. If the murmurs in the cantina were true, she had held out where no one could, had the plans they needed.
There was such a thing as hope. Not for Luthen, not for Cassian. Not for Alderaan. But for the galaxy she was still a part of. A cog in the machinery of those endless expanses. Condemned to stillness. To waiting.
In between, evacuation flights lifted off; the Rebellion calculated coldly. The embers of it could not be allowed to die out completely. There might be such a thing as hope, there was also a reality: in it, a jungle planet took on a Death Star it would likely lose against.
Sometimes Kleya saw Mon Mothma from a distance. Mothma had risked everything; she had not reached out again to Luthen and her, left back on Coruscant.
“She burns the bridges she no longer walks,” Luthen had said.
He had looked at Kleya, measuring; she had not quite kept her composure. “What did you expect?”
She did not dream of Mon Mothma; she did not think of her as the rain fell. She slept beneath the rough yellow blanket Vel Sartha had laid over her shoulders; she accepted Vel’s undeserved kindness. It was a strange kind of reckoning for the cruelty she had shown on Coruscant – she was aware of it. They drank Revnog together. They waited. They fired at targets.
“Why do you keep looking at her like that,” Vel asked one evening at the range.
“Who?”
“My cousin.”
Mon Mothma had hurried past them, quick steps and a smile that seemed to ache with fatigue.
“Is there a reason I would?”
“You tell me.”
Kleya said nothing. That Luthen had, in the end, been able to read her like the blind read the Tinian Codex – that lay in the nature of their bond. There was nothing to be done about it. With Vel, she had a choice.
“She’s preparing her surrender speech to Palpatine,” Vel said. Her voice sounded small.
“Excuse me?”
Vel shrugged and raised the blaster.
“When this goes to hell, someone has to.”
The shot hit the center.
“There will still be those who have to live in this galaxy.”
Dreamless night. Kleya pushed the yellow blanket aside and left the cabin that had been assigned to her. She walked through the rain, toward the temple. Mon Mothma sat beside the chair that had belonged to Bail Organa. Her chin rested on her narrow hands, her eyes fixed on the datapad before her, her lips moving soundlessly. She looked up when she heard Kleya’s steps.
“We haven’t heard anything from you,” Kleya said. “Not a single signal.”
Mon Mothma was silent for a moment, then she rose and stepped toward her.
“It wouldn’t have been wise.”
That was the truth.
“Kleya?”
The same question as in the safehouse, on the evening of the escape, the same open look.
“Would you believe me if I said I thought about it many times?”
She made herself hold the senator’s gaze. Mon’s gaze – she had long since ceased to be a senator. The leader of the Rebellion. Kleya had once wondered whether she was worth all the effort. It had been another time.
“Luthen would have called you mad.”
“But you would have been on the other end.”
Mon Mothma’s smile remained thin with weariness, but it reached her eyes.
Kleya gestured toward the datapad.
“We will fight, we will win. You won’t give that speech.”
Mon raised her hand, and Kleya felt her body tense – and was surprised when it did not pull away, but leaned into Mon’s hand instead, which brushed her cheek, barely there.
“Is it worth preparing a speech for you, then?” Mon asked lightly.
“I’m good at waiting,” Kleya said.
It was a lie. It was the purest truth.