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Kleya woke with a startled jerk and a choking grunt of displeasure just loud enough to wake the woman sleeping next to her. She looked around frantically, head aching like it sometimes did when she became too intensely focussed on a task.
She swallowed, noting her whereabouts. Her bedroom. Clothes still littered across the floor, furniture where they'd left it, door still closed. Rumpled white sheets with an impossibly high thread count draped over her body. Everything as it should be.
"Darling?" Mon mumbled, her voice muffled by Kleya's shoulder and heavy with confusion.
"I'm fine."
She felt Mon's chest expand against her as she breathed in, before she rolled onto her back. Kleya felt the loss of warmth immediately.
"Bad dream?" Mon asked, and Kleya blinked up into the darkness. Her heart beat loudly in her ears.
"In a manner of speaking," she said carefully. Her mind teemed with images and she desperately tried to shove them into the lockbox that lived the back of her brain. The one that existed exclusively for things Kleya never in her life wished to think of again.
Mon's frown was audible. "An ominous statement."
"Go back to sleep."
"I don't believe I can." Already Mon sounded alert. Years of living in a war zone that spanned a whole galaxy had a way of teaching ones body to jolt into action at even the smallest provocation. "Tell me what troubles you."
Kleya hesitated, and then reached out under the covers until her fingers brushed the soft skin Mon's side. She felt the other woman shiver beneath the light contact before Mon shuffled a little higher up the bed and then captured Kleya's hand in her own.
Mon's hand was dry and warm. Five fingers, Kleya noted with some relief.
"Kleya?"
"I had a strange dream. It's nothing to worry about," said Kleya, a little too loudly into the still night.
"Tell me," Mon repeated, softly, insistently, full of the kind of concern that would keep Mon awake until she knew what was wrong with the woman she loved.
Kleya licked her lips. "Have you ever met a Hutt, Mon?"
There was a lengthy pause. "Yes," said Mon eventually. "Twice, during some of the more eclectic galas I have attended. Much of my knowledge of their society is academic."
Kleya wanted the mattress to swallow her. "I dreamt you were a Hutt. That's it. Now go back to sleep."
There was a sudden movement and it took Kleya a moment to realise that it had come from Mon clamping her free hand over her mouth. Her eyes narrowed, heat rushing to her face.
"It's not funny."
"Of course not," said Mon quickly, voice almost smothered by the palm pressed against her lips. Kleya could feel Mon's body begin to shake with suppressed laughter. "I'm terribly sorry you had to endure that, darling."
"I said go back to sleep!"
For one blissful moment, Kleya thought Mon might do as instructed, then Mon rolled back over onto her side and looked at her. Kleya stared determinedly at the ceiling.
"The political ramifications of the Chancellor turning into a Hutt could be quite interesting," said Mon thoughtfully.
"I don't want to talk about this."
"It would certainly open the door to alliances that have been beyond our reach before now," Mon continued.
"You are not a Hutt. You will never be a Hutt."
"If I were though," said Mon insistently, "we could dismantle their criminal syndicate from within."
Kleya pinched the bridge of her nose. Sleep was becoming a distant memory. The horrifying images were seared into her minds eye now. Probably forever.
"You had a Hutt twin brother."
"Did I?" asked Mon, delighted.
"An old friend of Luthen's," said Kleya. "Lonni." She had never told Mon about Lonni, but perhaps one day she should.
"Lon Mothma," said Mon, sounding far too pleased with herself.
"Slugma," Kleya corrected. "You went by-" She paused, and not for the first time wished that she'd allowed herself to perish in the safe house on Coruscant. "You went by Lon and Mon Slugma. You thought you were identical. You weren't."
"Double the political power," Mon observed.
"You are not a Hutt."
An almost disappointed hum.
"What were you doing in the dream?"
As dreams were wont to do, some of the more mundane details had already begun to fade. "I don't remember precisely." Thank the Gods. "I was your aide. Taking notes on your rapidly shifting eye colour. At one point they became red." A disgusted pause. "Absurd. As though we don't know the colour of your eyes."
"Obviously," Mon agreed.
"That's everything," said Kleya firmly. "Now, will you please go back to sleep?" Before Kleya made the unwise decision to smother her wife with a pillow.
Mon let out a long-suffering sigh and squeezed Kleya's hand once more. "Very well, love." Kleya's body unclenched. Mon leaned over and kissed Kleya's temple. "Sleep well." Kleya chose to ignore the amusement in her voice.
"Good night, Mon."
A few minutes passed and the pull of sleep grew heavier. Kleya's breathing became slower as she tried to relax.
Then:
"Kleya?"
Kleya's eyes shot open.
"What now, Mon?"
"Would you still love me if I were a slug?"
