Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

10 ABY

“Kleya, you’ll wreck the floors,” Vel Sartha warns, as if the prospect of wrecking anything has ever stopped this woman.

For a moment, Kleya stops, her hands still on the fractal radio unit, old and broken, that she was pushing in the direction of the storage closet.

“Why don’t we just leave it where it was?” Vel asks.

The second she says it, Kleya’s lips turn into a thin line.

“Because it won’t be where it was. Might as well stay in the storage closet.”

Kleya’s irritation, as Vel has noticed not once in the ten years they have been together, is always almost physically palpable.

Vel sighs. She looks around the place that was once called “Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest,” which then spent a decade nameless, ransacked by the ISB and sealed — the place that is supposed to be the new home of the Senate Committee for the Veterans of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Some things have remained the same: the marble ceiling beams, the beige carved panels on the walls, even the hexagonal display stands Luthen would put his items on. The place itself is not what used to be, though.

The stands are now empty, covered in dust. One of the windows is cracked in several places, as if it survived a hail of blasterfire; Vel wouldn’t be too surprised if that really was the case. A lot has happened on Coruscant since she last had the time to take a proper look at anything but Mon’s old mansion and the Senate building.

Her gaze falls on the containers by the entrance, large and white, all covered in stickers with just one word: “CONFISCATED.” A gift from the Judicial Department's Committee for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Galactic Empire.

“There’s more to come,” Kleya warns, like she is talking about some sort of a cataclysm — Yavinian doodars wandering into the camp by accident or a stonebat infestation.

Vel forces a laugh.

“Well, they have to clear that ISB vault somehow, don’t they?”

She touches Kleya’s hand, gently; Kleya gives a reluctant nod. Stars, it appears some things will never change. This woman will swallow a thermal detonator before she actually admits she could use some help.

“All right,” Vel says. “Let’s get this thing to the storage closet, shall we?”

They have other things to take care of anyway. Sooner or later, they’ll get to it and figure it out — find a museum they could donate the radio to, provided they can prove its “significance”, that is. Museums these days are notoriously picky when it comes to rebel items.

Sooner or later.

After all, it’s not the first time Vel Sartha’s life feels like this one big transitional stage. It’s been this way for a few years now. Like they’ve just left one place — and never actually arrived anywhere else.

Fact number one: birthday parties are never about fun. In Miri Jung’s experience, your birthday isn’t really about you. It’s an event that exists with the sole purpose of gathering together all your family — and everyone your family considers family, because family, in the case of the Jungs, is a rather convoluted notion.

Fact number two: Captain Lagret has completed the Amnesty program, so he is not supposed to be a fascist anymore.

Fact number three: right now, Captain Lagret is proposing a toast to the “fallen heroes” — “you know who I mean.” When he says this, Miri can already tell the fallen heroes in question aren’t going to be the Red Squadron pilots. Or the people of Ghorman. Or even Saw Gerrera’s partisans.

And no one at the Pinnacle seems to pay any attention. Well, Miri catches a couple of curious glances from a group of Pantoran aristocrats seated at the nearby table, but that’s about it. Miri assumes they might be more curious about Madam Partagaz’s choice of jewelry than Lagret’s toast. The combination of five strings of yellow Naboo pearls — and a tower-like bun that probably required so much hairspray you could poison a small Outer Rim world — looks more like something that belongs to a High Republic holomovie.

“To our fallen heroes,” says Madam Partagaz, who now officially goes by her maiden name Sul Vertha — because it’s much more convenient to be Chandrilan “in this new, grim reality.” “Sagrona Teema.”

“Um.” Miri folds the napkin into a neat quarter as she tries to pick her words carefully. “I think you might be…misusing that expression?”

Madam Partagaz produces a smile that is equal parts motherly and condescending.

“Darling, in Hanna City, we’d always say this.”

Mom shoots Miri a look that counts as her version of a death glare. A muted, polite death glare. Accompanied with a smile that doesn’t extend to Mom’s eyes. LO-LA70, also known as just Lola, chirps quietly, as if trying to comfort Miri, and climbs up her shoulder.

“Um.” Miri taps her fingers on the table.

“Darling,” says Madam Partagaz. “Stop fidgeting, if you please. Manners, remember? And would you mind putting that thing in your bag? A restaurant is no place for such droids.”

Lola gives a quiet chirp of protest.

Then Miri says, “All I’m saying is, you cannot wish health and prosperity to people who are already dead.”

The table falls silent. Captain Lagret gestures for the waiter droid to pour him more wine. Supervisor Grandi pretends to be very busy with her nuna fillet. Jarro, Dad’s former attendant, just sits motionless with a smile plastered over his face.

Grandpa clears his throat.

“Actually, I believe it’s time for the cake. Right, Miri?”

She sighs.

“Um. No. No. I…”

Miri pauses, trying to think of the polite way to put this, like a well-mannered young lady that she is supposed to be — at least according to her mother, her grandfather, Madam Partagaz, the principal, and all of the teachers of the Galactic District High.

Lola buzzes, as though sensing what she is about to do. This particular buzz is meant to say, “Don’t. Just don’t.”

“I’m a little bit uncomfortable with this,” Miri says, slowly. “Could we please not toast to the ISB on my birthday? It’s a little bit…strange. Thank you.”

Great. Now the Pantorans from the nearby table are looking at her and not at Madam Partagaz’s ridiculous pearls.

Captain Lagret lowers his voice.

“Your father would have begged to differ.”

“I don’t want to talk about my father, Captain,” she says. “Not today.”

“You should have sent her to Chandrila,” whispers Madam Partagaz to Mom. “I’m afraid to think what she’s learning at this Coruscanti school. All those alien teacherrs— There is a marvelous place in Hanna—”

“But it’s his birthday too,” says Lagret. His expression doesn’t change for a second. “Need I remind you that your father died protecting this galaxy—”

Oh, please. Miri’s heard this crap too many times already.

“Just like Supervisor Heert, right?” she asks.

It’s weird how bits of stories that were never really hers, or Mom’s, or Dad’s, or Grandpa’s, stories that none of them ever witnessed, have a way of weaving themselves into the family history as if they’ve always been there. The Jung family is not unlike a bad hoarding case: if something isn’t in the “might come in handy” category, then it surely has some obscure “sentimental value.”

The remaining two of Supervisor Heert’s five tookas, as well as their grandchildren, still live at Mom’s and Miri’s apartment.

The story of Supervisor Heert’s death used to be Miri’s childhood nightmare, because some adults didn’t care what details you can and can’t share with a five-year-old. The school psychologist seemed very perplexed by the case.

Mom’s eyes narrow.

“Don’t you dare to talk about Jasper like that, young lady!”

Lola nudges Miri with a tiny paw.

“Like what?” Miri clarifies. “I didn’t say anything. I’m just not sure what was so heroic about becoming a droid shield.”

Grandpa’s face goes rigid. Jarro chokes on his wine. Lagret goes a shade paler, which is not something Miri had believed to be possible, given that his complexion is best described as “Maldo Kreis ice spider.”

And suddenly, Miri catches herself thinking that she rather enjoys this sight.

“I’m also not sure how exactly Dad helped save the galaxy,” she adds.

Let it all burn.

It’s less of a thought and more of a feeling, a sharp and clear and just a little bit frightening one. It’s a bit similar to those moments when Miri has fights with Mom — they all tend to get carried away — but at the same time, it’s nothing like that.

As it turns out, there are some things that you just can’t voice politely.

“He has all the names.”

Kleya frowns as she skims over the document Vel has just forwarded to her. It takes her a second to determine that the list is incomplete.

“Not all of them. He doesn’t have Meero. And…what does he want, exactly?”

It’s fascinating how a good half of all the veteran cases they are handling do not, in fact, require any help the Senate supposed she and Vel could provide. Just tracking down a dozen people and putting blaster bolts in their heads would have more than sufficed. Yet, sadly, it is neither Kleya’s nor Vel’s…zone of responsibility.

Not anymore, at least.

She has to quash the cold, familiar anger rising in her chest.

Different times, different methods.

(Why didn’t anyone warn her she would hate this so much?)

“He wants us to get him an appointment at the Judicial Department,” Vel says. “I imagine.”

Kleya sighs.

“I see,” she says. “So. Is it going to be me or you?”

The second she says this, she regrets asking.

She is not good at…those kinds of conversations. Never has been. Conversations that require too much empathy — or admitting that there is nothing, nothing that she can do, that it is not up to her anymore, that she is, by and large, useless, because the New Republic Tribunal has too much work already, and they will only accept cases with a clear, neat paper trail.

Making people take responsibility for their actions, it would appear, is a rather time-, energy- and money-consuming endeavor — and there are too many fascists, former fascists, and fascist sympathizers in this galaxy.

(You can’t make everyone pay, can you?)

(Sometimes you dream of everything you will do to Dedra Meero when you meet her. Everything you are not legally allowed to do to people anymore.)

“I’ll talk to Rylanz,” Vel says. “I think it’ll help if one of us accompanies him.”

“Fine,” Kleya says. “I will go with him. We have to try.”

She knows, though, that it will not help. These are the days when determination can only get you so far. A suspicion that a task force captain by the name of Linus Kaido was sent by the Empire to Ghorman a day before the massacre is not enough. You have to collect and verify several testimonies, track the man down, then request funding for an arrest mission—

(How can a place that used to be your safe house, a place where you and Luthen spent years building the Rebellion, be turned into an office for a kriffing Senate committee that helps people with kriffing housing benefits?)

(How can this place feel so much like a prison?)

“Kleya?”

Vel’s voice snaps her back to the reality.

“What?”

Vel’s voice holds gentle concern.

“You’re staring at the wall, that’s what.”

“Oh,” Kleya says, somewhat absent-mindly. “That.”

After a moment of hesitation, she adds, “The panel on the right. It’s cracked. We’ll have to replace it.”

Must have happened during the raid, she thinks. Some half-qualified ISB investigator who was looking for a secret wall stash, like they would have been so stupid as to make a wall stash right near the shop’s window.

“They don’t make these anymore,” Vel points out. “This looks Alderaanian.”

She reaches to place a kiss on Kleya’s forehead; inadvertently, Kleya feels her shoulders and neck relax.

“I love you.”

Kleya nods.

“I love you too.”

It’s a phrase she has had to teach herself to say. The words still feel strange on her tongue, like she voices something she is not supposed to, something that is not meant for her, something she doesn’t deserve. This woman. This feeling.

“And by the way,” Vel says, “I would have much preferred just to gun them all down without all the paperwork, too, Kleya.”

Mom doesn’t say a word to Miri on the way back home.

As the speeder approaches their building, Miri catches herself thinking that this is how the entire birthday incident will likely end up: them not talking to each other for several weeks. Which is, in her opinion, not the worst-case scenario. It’s more of a regular-case scenario, and for a good reason. Maybe it’s just easier for them…not to talk.

At least, the less time they spend in the same room, as Miri has noticed, the better their respective moods are.

Mom opens the door, silently. Kicks off her thousand-credit high-heeled shoes — then pauses for a second, picks them up carefully, removes a speck of Coruscant dust from the black patent leather with the soft brush she always keeps by the door, and hands them over to the household droid.

In the Jung family, they do things the “proper” way.

Miri lets LO-LA70 out of the bag and throws her coat on the small white sofa Mom placed in the hallway last month, in yet another feat of “bringing order” to this place. Mishuu, the eldest of the remaining tookas, jumps on it immediately with a predatory hiss.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Mom asks, then.

Miri licks her lips.

There are some things that are never easy to admit.

Like the fact that her supply of courage for today is over already. It’s one thing to piss everyone off in a situation that doesn’t leave many opportunities for Serious Conversations. It’s another thing to return home and have to deal with the Consequences.

Then she braces herself and steadies her voice.

“What do you mean?”

Mom fixes her with a strange look. For a moment, Miri wonders if she is about to be grounded the classic way — no datapad, no pocket money, no hanging out with Seti Septrulla at Sakko’s Caf House after school, or shipped off to an all-girls boarding school on Chandrila. The kind that looks more like a prison facility where you still have to do your hair every morning.

“These people raised you,” Mom says. “Captain Lagret. Madam Partagaz. How dare you?”

“I never asked for that.” After a moment of hesitation, Miri adds, “I don’t want them in my life.”

Mom sighs.

It is only now that Miri notices the dark circles around her eyes, visible even from under a layer of that super sticky “second-skin” cream.

“Just because they what, have different views? Why can’t you all just be nice to each other, like normal people?”

“You know why,” Miri says.

“I don’t,” Mom answers, strangely insistent.

This makes Miri laugh. She just can’t with this. It’s too stupid. Every damn time, she has to explain the same things to Mom, over and over, things that have long been proven.

“You seriously don’t understand that they’ve done terrible things?”

“Listen,” Mom says. “Governments change. I’ve lived through that twice. And every time, each new government says that the previous one was the worst, and everyone believes it.”

“Mom, Dad killed people.”

“How can you be so sure? You don’t know what he did.”

“Mom. What do you think he did? He was ISB, for Stars’s sake!”

Connecting the dots here is not the hardest task in this galaxy. In Miri’s case, it happened more or less…on its own? Her history teacher, a tall, sad man in his sixties, is from Ghorman. Her best friend Seti is from Ryloth. She has known what an ISB arrest looks like since she was six.

Mishuu the tooka meows at the word “ISB,” a word he has heard too many times and apparently now mistakes for something like “good kitty” or “it’s lunchtime.” Lola pats Miri with her tiny metallic paw.

Mom stares at Miri with an expression that Miri can’t decipher.

“He loved you more than you possibly imagine.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Miri says.

“Go to your room,” Mom answers. “And stop making things up.”

“I’m not making anything up.”

“Then I’m looking forward to the case you will present to the New Republic Tribunal, Supervisor Jung.”

Mom’s voice sounds exhausted — but it’s different from a difficult day at Jung & Vereesa Shipments or one of those days when Madam Partagaz calls her to solve some extremely urgent and pressing problem. Such as dealing with an “alien” plumber who doesn’t speak Galactic Basic, because someone couldn’t be bothered to load more languages into her butler droid’s memory.

It’s weird that they still call people supervisors, Miri thinks as she scoops Lola up. That word shouldn’t exist anymore.

“What do you mean, ‘no spots until next year’?” Vel asks. “Erskin. That man was the head of the Ghorman front. He lost his daughter in the massacre. He lost everything.”

“And that’s exactly why I’m being honest with you,” says Erskin Semaj’s hologram. “I don’t want to waste his time or give him false hopes. The Judicial department is drowning. The last thing any investigator wants to take on is another Ghorman case that will remain unsolved for an eternity.”

On the other end of the room, Kleya scoffs quietly.

“Do you want me to call Mon?” Vel asks.

“You can always call Mon. But Mon will call me, and then she will ask me to put the case on the priority list, and the priority list already has two hundred names.”

“I’ll tell her you’re not being helpful.”

“Which will hardly be the worst fight I’ve ever had with Mon. Vel, I’m serious. We can’t take on any new Tribunal cases unless we are absolutely certain. It’s better to do ten things well than to fail a hundred.”

“A thousand, in your case,” Kleya comments.

On the hologram, Erskin squints.

“Is she there?”

“Yes,” Vel says. “And I’ll send her to your department if you won’t help us with Rylanz. There will be blood, you know.”

Erskin sighs like a man who has accepted his destiny — but still doesn’t like it.

“So now I have all the interns to vet, all the crazy people to deal with, and a Ghorman front leader to disappoint. Great. My late mother would have been so proud. I’m truly serving the Ghor people.”

Vel notices how Kleya’s expression grows unexpectedly focused.

“What kind of crazy people?” she asks.

“Ex-Imperials who want to sue the Empire for moral compensation for wrongly accusing them of being rebels. It’s become a trend lately.”

“Send them to us,” says Kleya. “If we can prove that someone was a rebel, then we can prove that someone wasn’t. Then you can help Rylanz and be a good Ghor like your mother would have wanted.”

“I don’t think she would,” Erskin answers. “It’s a bit of a personal identity crisis.”

Vel recognizes the expression on Kleya’s face all too well.

“I don’t care,” says Kleya Marki, like she always does when she sets out to do something. “Give me the Imperials. And find an appointment for Rylanz for the next month.”

“A week, then,” says Seti Septrulla on the comm.

“A week.” Miri plops down on her bed; Lola follows her. “And I’m feeding the ISB tookas.”

“So it’s a bit of a labor camp situation.”

“Time is on my side. One day, we’ll run out of them.”

“Of?.."

“Of the tookas, Seti.”

Last time, Mishuu tried to bite off Mom’s hand. They used to delegate the task of feeding the Imperial Tooka Bureau to the household droid, but the droid never seems to get the amount of food right, which either results in Mishuu gaining weight or in Mishuu acting out. That’s how the Jung family ended up making a tooka feeding rota.

And now, all the feeding is Miri’s responsibility. She is quite sure that there are sarlaccs friendlier than the late Jasper Heert’s pets — but hey, it’s not the worst punishment she can think of.

“And I’ll have to call Lagret and apologize,” she says.

Then there is a pause.

“Will you do it?” Seti asks, quietly.

Miri considers her answer.

She could have said no. It’s abundantly clear. If she doesn’t apologize to Lagret, one week without pocket money and Sakko’s Caf House and hanging out with friends turns into two, but it’s not a big problem. For Miri, it means two additional weeks to focus on Galactic District High’s Anti-Speciesism Society. And she’ll get more time to do not only her but also Seti’s homework because Seti’s grades have worsened lately.

She can do whatever she wants within the confines of her home. It’s not like Mom has a lot of free time to check it. She tends to get carried away by all the problems she has to solve. Hers and Grandpa’s, Lagret’s, Madam Partagaz’s.

Yet Miri has a feeling that if she does it once again, it’ll all be like it always was.

Which reminds her of one of those motivation posters with quotes from historic personalities Mister Arlanz put up in his class.

“The road to change is paved with hard decisions.” Bail Organa.

“I have a plan,” Miri says.

“What plan?” Seti asks.

When Miri tells her, Seti spends a good minute not saying anything at all. Briefly, Miri wonders if something has happened to the comm connection — but then Seti speaks up, at last.

“That’s crazy. Do you really think they’ll accept you?”

“Your cousin lied about his age when he joined the Alliance,” Miri reminds. “Worked for him.”

“But he was, like, killed a month later. Because they made him fly an X-wing, and he had no idea what he was doing.”

“I know what I’m doing, Seti,” Miri says.

She doesn’t, if she is honest — but there’s a quote from one of those old holobooks on business and success from Mom’s shelf, “Always walk into a room as if you belong there.” Not that it helped the man who wrote it — when Miri looked him up, it turned out that he was a famous Chandrilan banker who ended his days on Narkina-Seven, charged with embezzlement and tax evasion.

Still, she finds the advice applicable in her situation.

Lola chirps angrily and slides her paw as if pretending to cut her head off.

Miri gulps.

A familiar cold spreads inside her chest.

You will fail, a quiet voice in her head tells her. And then you will just create more problems for your mother, like you’ve already done, and it’s not like you’ll ever prove anything to anyone. It’d be best if those people never saw your internship application. You should hope they won’t.

Whatever. Miri tells the voice to shut up.

“The road to change is paved with hard decisions,” she repeats.

At least she can try. For once.

The girl before Erskin squares her shoulders.

Pale, anxious face. A dark blue shift dress that is supposed to make her look slightly older. Red hair, a short, wavy bob now known as The Mothma — a style that must be quite challenging to maintain if you don’t have Mon’s personal hairdresser.

Erskin knows the type. In two years at the New Republic’s Judicial Deparment, he has come to the conclusion that all the potential interns can de divided into several types, and a straight-A student keen to achieve change, however annoying they can be, is hardly the worst option to hire.

“Please, take a seat,” he says, gesturing at the visitor’s chair. “Your name?”

“Miri Jung, sir,” the girl says.

That rings a bell, Erskin thinks. Then he realizes. One of the few personal statements that actually made it clear why the applicant wants the internship.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Jung,” he says, with a smile. “I’m Erskin Semaj. I oversee the new recruits program at the Judicial department. Before that, I used to be Supreme Chancellor Mothma’s attache, but… different times call for different work to be done, right? Now tell me about yourself — what brings you here?”

This is an easy question. If Miri Jung is here, being interviewed for the position, she has already stated her purpose clearly enough.

“I…” She fidgets in her chair, as though taken aback by the question. Then come the polite head girl voice and the rehearsed speech. “I’ve always wanted to serve the New Republic, Mister Semaj. I grew up here on Coruscant, so I saw with my own eyes what can happen when we look away from the injustice and forget about, um, basic sentient being rights, sir. I see this internship as an opportunity to learn more about the important work that the Judicial Department does and use my analytical, organizational and language skills to contribute—”

“Good. Organizational skills, you say. Could you name a couple of examples?”

“In high school, I founded the Anti-Speciesism Society. It’s still working. We ran a successful campaign to add Wookiee food to the school canteen menu, sir. And we hosted a speciesism awareness day. Nonhuman literature book club, informing about the Empire’s crimes against different worlds—”

“Good. What languages do you speak?”

“Fluent Sy Bisti, intermediate Huttese, um, conversational Rodian and Rhyl, and I’ve taken up Ghor recently—”

“Good.”

So an educated Coruscanti with some knowledge of Outer Rim and Mid Rim languages, including popular trade ones.

Speaking of which.

Erskin lowers his eyes to the file on his datapad and squints.

“I believe it’s a technical error, Miss Jung,” he says, “but I can’t see full info about your education on this CV. Could you, perhaps…”

He trails off and watches Miri Jung’s face flush red.

For a moment, there is silence, complete and utter.

Then the girl says, “Mister Semaj, there might be, um, a bit of a—”

She inhales sharply, as though admitting her defeat.

“I’m still in high school, sir.”

Fact number one: lying on your resume only seems easy. If you absolutely must do it, make sure you come up with an elaborate back story.

Fact number two: in his book “What They Don’t Teach You at the Chandrilan Academy of Finance and Trade,” Davo Sculdun wrote that persistence is key to success.

Fact number three: Mon Mothma became a senator at sixteen.

“Mon Mothma was a senator at my age, sir,” Miri says when Mister Semaj starts explaining her once again that the New Republic Judicial Committee isn’t allowed to hire anyone under the age of eighteen.

“I doubt it’s an experience she looks back on fondly,” Mister Semaj counters. Then he adds, in a softer voice, “Miss Jung, we will be delighted to accept you for this program in two years, once you graduate.”

“I can work after school, sir,” Miri says. “It’s not problematic at all. I will do anything you say, even if it’s, um, the kind of work no one wants to do, and—”

Semaj gives her a tired look.

“It’s not about what you can and what you can’t. It would have been strange for a department that oversees justice in the New Republic to break its own rules, don’t you think?”

“If it were the Rebel Alliance, you wouldn’t have cared about my age,” Miri blurts.

She regrets her words right away.

“Thank the Stars we don’t live in these times anymore,” only says Mister Semaj. “I’ll see you in two years, Miss Jung. Good day.”

“Good day, sir.” Miri gets up from her chair.

The thing she says next, she says not because she wants to persuade Semaj — he’s made himself quite clear, and that part of her that hated the idea was right. It’s just that sometimes Miri says things out of some strange desire to feel like in the end, she is the one who is right.

“And by the way,” she adds, “my father was an ISB supervisor. So what I said that I saw it all, I meant it.”

It’s not what she says.

The Judicial Department, according to Erskin’s observations, has perhaps the highest number of Imperial kids with a guilt complex, and everyone thinks they are unique in their suffering. Navy brats. Children of various Imperial bureaucrats. Those with an alcoholic ex-stormtrooper father they have been estranged from for years. Honestly, an ISB supervisor parent isn’t remotely the worst situation Erskin has seen.

Grand Admiral Savit’s niece has recently been promoted to the senior investigator position. There is an Outer Rim moff’s son in the vetting department. There’s a death trooper commander’s daughter who was very determined to handle her father’s case; Erskin had to remind her what conflict of interest meant, no matter how earnest her motivation to send the man to the Karthon Chop Fields for a couple of decades of correctional labor seemed.

(Mon once said that it was a “rather convenient way to despise one’s parents.” To that seemingly off-handed remark, Senator Organa — the new Senator Organa, the daughter — answered that the New Republic was lucky enough people had the good sense to despise their parents. It was as if she had more to say on the subject but chose to restrain herself.)

So no, it’s not Miri Jung’s words that make Erskin say what he says. It’s a glimpse of sheer intensity that he spots underneath all the awkwardness and all the attempts to appear grown-up and serious. The kind of intensity that doesn’t befit a sixteen-year-old.

He’s seen it before.

He lowers his voice.

“Come to think of it, there’s an organization that might not care about your age. Just bring them a letter of permission with your parents' signature.”

He doesn’t even think Kleya would look at that, but these days, it’s best to follow at least some procedures.

Vel is no expert on forging documents — that was Luthen and Kleya’s domain, her specialty was everything that involved a bit more action — but she can tell a forged holosignature when she sees one.

“You’re the new intern, I take it.”

The girl, Miri is her name — “the new intern” is not the most precise formulation here, she is the first intern they have ever had — licks her lips nervously and looks around the office. Her gaze stops on the cracked wall panel, then on the cracks in the windows that nobody has had the time to fix.

Vel rereads Erskin’s message.

“Mister Simaj wrote you a letter of recommendation.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Vel contemplates asking the girl about the forged signature — but before she has time to do it, Kleya takes the datapad from her hands and skims over the message. The she seems to open one of the attachments Erskin has forwarded: either a personal statement or a resume. Vel can see her brows furrow in concentration.

It takes Kleya a second or two to say, “You’re in.”

Then she hands the girl named Miri a datapad with a file Vel recognizes all too well.

“Here’s your first assignment.”

Fact number one: Freedom Towers, a lower levels residential complex for the veterans of the Rebel Alliance, used to house stormtroopers before the fall of the Empire.

Fact number two: a building proudly named Freedom Towers has a severe mold problem. Whether it started in the age of the Empire or later remains unclear.

Fact number three: Executive Director Sartha didn’t seem very happy with Operations Director Marki’s decision to trust Miri with the task.

Director Marki places a long, battered-looking metallic thing on the desk; it takes Miri a moment to realize that this is an actual blaster. She hasn’t seen those since— Well, she’s only seen them from a distance, when she was in the fifth grade.

(At first, there were all those transmissions about Palpatine’s death that no one believed. When people started shooting, on all levels, not only on the lower ones, Miri stayed in, so it’s not like she had time to study stuff like that in great detail. All she remembers can be boiled down to three things: the school was closed, Mom hid her blaster in the desk drawer, and Jarro came to “protect” them, which looked more like he was hiding with them. He dragged in a decommissioned KX-unit, but no one had any idea how to repair it, so eventually, when things calmed down, Mom threw it away.)

Miri doesn’t remember if Dad had a blaster. He probably did. They were supposed to carry it around all the time, as far as she knows. Maybe the one in Mom’s desk was Dad’s originally, but whatever.

She waits for Director Marki to say anything.

Director Marki, in turn, looks at her like she’s an idiot.

“Take it.”

“Um,” Miri says. “I, um— I can’t shoot, ma’am.”

If anything, this is not how she had expected her internship to go. She was rather hoping she’d get access to the archives — any archives that might have anything related to the ISB. The Judicial Department’s archives seemed perfect, but hey, she didn’t mind settling for a Senate-funded committee archives, and—

Here she is. No archives. And a blaster on the table.

“It’s broken,” Director Marki says. “Put it in your pocket. It’s best to pretend that you have a gun on you. And change into something more practical.”

Something more practical with pockets big enough to fit a blaster, Miri adds in her mind.

The look Director Sartha throws at Marki doesn’t escape Miri’s attention. It’s the kind of look that could burn holes in durasteel. Yet, for some reason, Director Sartha doesn’t debate Director Marki’s idea.

“Put my comm code on speed dial,” she only says. “If you see anyone following you, comm me immediately, stay calm, find the nearest crowded place, and send me the coordinates.”

“She’ll be fine.”

Miri wouldn’t have minded half the trust in her abilities that Director Marki has.

“Can I, um, go home to change?” she asks.

“We have clothes,” says Marki, like they have a secret spy disguise wardrobe or something at this place.

A minute later, Miri learns that they, in fact, do.

“Are you crazy?” Vel hisses at Kleya. “She’s a child!”

On some level, she can understand why Kleya keeps doing it — but kriffing hell, not everyone had to become a revolutionary at twelve.

If Vel herself were tasked to do anything like that at sixteen, as a Chandrilan girl who had just moved to Coruscant and changed one all-girls boarding school to another, she would have ran away before even reaching Level 4300. No matter how brave she thought she was.

It’s a different time now, it’s a different situation, and sending interns to the lower levels clearly doesn’t help anyone build a safe, just, and democratic republic.

“Trust me,” Kleya says.

Then she gestures at the narrow, half-lit hallway leading to what used to be the shop’s backroom and says, “Move.”

“...yes, Seti, and now I have to go down there and knock on doors and talk to people. Also take pictures of mold, but that’s okay. Probably.”

At least Miri’s seen mold before.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says as she heads to one of those turbolifts that look like nobody’s used them since the Old Republic. Or even the High Republic.

“Dude.” Miri can almost hear how Seti rolls her eyes. It’s the Eye Roll Voice. “Couldn’t you have told me that, like, earlier? It’s not like I can just tell Dad I’m not helping him at the shop today because I’ve gotta help you again!”

“Again”? It’s not like corroborating the version from the fake note that Miri wrote herself, signed with Mom’s holostamp, and sent to the head teacher was as hard as bringing the Death Star plans. All Seti had to do was to nod and say that Miri was indeed very, very sick.

“I’m not asking you to come here with me.” Actually, Miri was about to ask exactly that, even though she felt terrible about asking for it — but now the wounded pride part somehow feels more important. “I just need some advice. Please.”

“I’ve never been below 4600!”

“Seti.”

Eye Roll Voice, again.

“Just be normal about it? No idea. And, um, call me? If there’s connection there?”

All right, Miri thinks.

It would appear she is completely on her own.

“How is the new intern?” Mon asks when she calls from Chandrila. “Erskin is keeping me updated on all the big developments.”

When you are approaching your fifties, the thought that you can still be the little cousin who has just hired her first intern for her little committee doesn’t feel so objectionable anymore.

Vel smiles.

Mon always calls at odd times — it’s as if she tries to use up whatever morsels of free time that she claws out of her schedule, in between meetings, formal and informal, official visits, budget hearings, and debates. This time, it’s before lunchtime, right in the middle of the work day on Coruscant — which must be night on Chandrila.

“Let’s hope she survives,” Vel says as she stretches in her chair and opens her Kapaio shrimp sandwich from the nearest Chandrilan deli. “She has that hairstyle, by the way. The Mothma. I think half the people on Coruscant do these days.”

On the comm, she hears Mon’s quiet, soft laugh.

“Please ask her to reconsider. She has many years ahead of her to ruin her hair.”

“The advice our Supreme Chancellor wishes to give to the younger generation. Should’ve been on those motivational posters they sell at Galaxy Holobooks.”

“They sell motivational posters now?” Mon asks, in mock-horror. “How ghastly. And here I hoped they’d limit themselves to dartboards with my portrait on them.”

After that, she falls into silence. Vel weighs all the arguments against asking the question that has been on her mind since the start of the call asks it anyway.

“How’s Leida?”

“Like Leida,” Mon says. “Thriving, in her own way.”

This must mean that Leida is close to finalizing her divorce. Judging by Mon’s evasiveness, it’s best not to press on.

“How’s Kleya?” Mon asks.

“Also thriving.” Vel takes a big hearty bite of the sandwich without getting up from her desk. Where did her manners go, she wonders briefly, but the answer is obvious: Yavin. “Was supposed to go get caf. Disappeared.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I have some idea where she went,” Vel says, taking another bite.

There are several facts Miri learns from her lower-levels trip — this has been quite an…enlightening experience, if she can put it that way — but there are two things that matter the most.

Number one. When you knock on random people’s doors in the middle of the day, people likely will not be thrilled to see you. It does get easier after the first hundred, though, so it would seem Davo Sculdun was right about something when he wrote about persistence. The task of knocking on people’s doors also gets easier when there’s cake. Miri thought it could work, even though a bakery bag didn’t seem like the safest thing to carry around on the lower levels at first.

Number two. Cake or no cake, the main thing is, basically, to shut up and listen. Maybe that’s what Seti meant by “just being normal about it.”

“Here’s Mold Stain Number Seventy-Seven,” Miri says as she turns on the small office holoprojector that Director Marki gives her. “I’ve numbered them all, and I’ve color-coded them because there’s black mold, and green mold, and…”

On holograms, the mold stains look a bit more disgusting than they were in real life.

In real life, it all didn’t disgust her as much as it made her angry. The idea that someone can live like that, and no one cares. Miri is not sure if her anger is relevant in this situation, so she chooses to school her voice and focus on the color-coding part.

She sees a thin smile on Director Marki’s face.

“Good work, Miri. You can file a report and send it to me. You spent three hours on the hundredth floor, though. Care to provide more details?”

Lonni’s girl gulps, takes her eyes away, and then does her best to make her face unreadable. It's fascinating how she has managed to inherit all of his mannerisms and microexpressions, Kleya thinks, even though she doesn’t seem to remember him.

“Um.” She taps her fingers against the desk; this seems to be a self-soothing gesture. Her face flushes red. “It wasn’t strictly about the project, ma’am.”

“What was it about, then?” Kleya asks.

“There was a Rodian woman, ma’am. She said she was a pilot. She can’t go outside much.”

“Why can’t she, Miri?”

“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you that, ma’am. It’s personal.”

“Well, maybe this committee can help. That’s what it is for.”

Miri appears to consider this.

“She looks like she has some sort of a scale infection. She caught a virus on Yavin. She says it’s not dangerous to humans, but that’s why it’s not considered dangerous enough in general, not officially, at least, which makes at it harder for her to use the veteran medical insurance—”

This, too, is very Lonni: the habit of giving all the important facts and trying to explain everything at once, the strain in her voice. The quiet, suppressed anger too.

Lonni was that way. Luthen had to train him. Then he grew a much thicker skin, but Kleya doesn’t think that what was underneath ever changed.

“Noted,” she says. “Share her details with me.”

“Can I go visit her again, ma’am?” Miri asks. “I think she needs someone to talk to?”

“You’ll come with me. We need to assess the situation anyway.”

Miri just nods at that. For a moment, she looks as though she is grappling with an emotion that Kleya doesn’t understand but can imagine. Could be the side effect of seeing too much life that was too different from hers, at once.

“By the way.” Kleya takes a twenty-credit chip out of her purse. “The cake was a good choice, but you should’ve saved the receipt. We’ll give you allowance next time.”

Miri blinks, like she has forgotten what New Republic credits look like.

“Were you following me?”

“I had to make sure you were safe,” Kleya says.

“I never noticed you!”

“Years of experience.”

Miri tilts her head; when she does it, she reminds Kleya of one of those orange and white birds on Yavin with a perpetually curious look in their eyes. Whisper birds, that’s how they were called. It was back when Vel made her “look around.” Every day, Kleya was supposed to write down five things she had learned on that planet that had nothing to do with warfare. It was hard at first. It kept her sane, though, even though she’d never admit it at the time.

“Were you in the Rebel Alliance?” Miri asks.

What do you think, Kleya wants to ask her. We made it all happen. The Rebellion. There would have been no Yavin, there would have been nothing—

Instead, she just says, “I was. ‘Till Primeday, Miri Jung.”

Chapter Text

So what if I'd gone through it all?
It's been a while. I don't recall.
I can't recall dates any more,
nor the locations of attacks.

(I am one atom of that war,
a nameless private. I came back.
I am one shot's mistaken trace,
I'm bloody ice of January.
I am imprisoned in that ice,
like a fly in amber jewelry.)

So what if I had seen it all?
I've purged it all. I can't recall.
I don't remember dates, nor days,
nor names of villages and towns.

(I am the hoarse scream in the fray,
I'm foaming horses falling down.
I am a day that will take lives,
I am soldiers in a distant fight.
I'm somber torch by common graves,
and a dug-out's feeble candlelight.)

So what if I had seen it all,
that mad "To be or not to be."
It's faded almost past recall.
I want to crush that memory.

I don't still dwell on that past war,
the war still dwells inside of me,
and tongues of the Eternal Flame
are licking at me steadily.

No tools exist to have me hewn
out of that war, out of those years;
There are no medicines to cure me
of that winter, of those snows.
We cannot part, it can't be done:
I'm in that snow, I'm on that ground,
until the snows without a sound,
where all our tracks merge into one...

So what if I had seen it all...

Yuri Levitansky, translated by Tanya Wolfson

“You know,” says Vel, “I think we really should do something about all those boxes. Not sure that the maintenance closet can fit any more. And they keep coming.”

She is standing in the middle of the kitchen, no pants, in an oversized, washed-out t-shirt with the Rebel Alliance crest that can barely be seen at this point, a watering can in her hand.

The sight of her seems strangely out of place in the apartment that has belonged to the Sartha family for years, the apartment that is all soft beiges and whites and columns and old-fashioned Chandrilan drapes touched by the moths here and there and even more old-fashioned Chandrilan carved dividers. This kitchen was probably never meant for the owner of the apartment to step her foot into, let alone water plants or make caf.

Kleya stares at the bowl of plain oats before her, her usual Coruscant breakfast. Neither she nor Luthen ever had time for anything else. “I’ll unpack them today.”

“That’s a lot of work,” says Vel. “You can delegate it to Miri, I guess.”

“I’ll unpack them,” Kleya repeats.

Vel casts a glance at the plants, like she is surveying her troops. The one with wide, thick green leaves was Andor’s once.

Memory one: they have exactly fifteen minutes left to pack before they leave Yavin. Vel wraps the pot in a piece of cloth, and Kleya stuffs it into her travel bag, in some half-feverish state, like the memory of Cassian Andor depends on that one thing.

Memory two: Kleya assumed the nameless plant would die in the first week, but here it is — on Hoth, in the cramped, cold room she and Vel share on the Echo base. “Look,” Vel says, “it’s growing a runner!”

Memory three: Vel insists that they should call this tiny, bright green sapling of an unknown species Clem. “We already have a Clem,” Kleya counters, as if she will ever see that boy from Mina-Rau that Vel told her about. “It’ll be Varian Skye.” Vel looks at her, the look in her eyes a mix of tenderness and genuine surprise. “What?” Kleya asks. It takes her a moment to realize that it’s the first time — at least in many, many years — she has told anyone a joke. Not the kind of joke Kleya-the-assistant would make in a conversation with Luthen’s client. A real joke. Vel kisses her on her cheeks, chin, in the corner of her mouth, and in between all the kisses, they laugh hysterically, like they’ve gone crazy. Someone knocks on the wall for them to shut up. They keep laughing.

Kleya is still careful with jokes. She makes them on rare occasions, when she feels she absolutely must. As though jokes are too self-indulgent if she is not using them strategically. She can’t help it. Old habits die hard.

Vel pretends her focus is entirely on Andor’s plant’s five new children, aligned neatly on the windowsill, each in a tiny clay pot. “Why don’t you—”

“I’ll unpack them.”

“All right,” Vel says, ostensibly more to herself. “It’s your stuff, after all. If you don’t want anyone to touch it, I understand.”

“You can touch it,” Kleya answers. “I’m going to need your help, actually.”

It’s not true. She can manage on her own, just like she has—

Some things she has learned to say for the sake of this relationship. Little, harmless lies she tells just because she wants Vel to know she loves her.

Little, harmless lies — and also little things it’s wise to never even mention.

It’s not that Kleya doesn’t want anyone to touch the things in those boxes — it’s just that the thought of Miri Jung touching them makes her uneasy.

You have to be careful about the doors you open.

Miri is a smart girl who is…curious about things — and stories behind them. And that particular story — the story under those boxes, the story of Kleya’s old clothes and Luthen’s things and everything else — is impossible to tell without leaving out one name: Lonni Jung. Even if Miri doesn’t know enough to realize it, she will sense there is something missing. Eventually.

Or not.

Maybe Kleya is just being paranoid.

Maybe the gaps in this story would be obvious to her and her only.

Whatever the reason, it’s not the story she is ready to share with anyone.

“Morning, Mom! Want some nuna bacon?”

The kitchen is enveloped in a smell of something that Daena Jung hasn’t eaten for at least five years — she’s past the age when she can…get away with certain things, as Sul Partagaz once put it. Nuna bacon is on the list, in the company of full-fat blue milk, that fluffy orange portion-bread Lonni preferred, cake, sugary foods, cheese, and even glowblue noodles.

For a moment, Daena is sure that the real purpose of the question is not to show that Miri cares for her mother — rather, it seems like another preemptive strike in the cold war that has been going on in this particular apartment for a couple of years already.

Then she sees Miri’s face. Her daughter seems…in a cheerful mood.

Interesting.

“Thank you,” Daena manages. “But no, thank you.”

Miri shrugs as she tosses the crackling pieces of nuna on her plate of fried pikobi eggs. LO-LA70 is holding it for her while the household droid beeps angrily: it would seem the memory of Miri not being able to cook anything without leaving grease stains in the kitchen is too fresh in this house.

Mishuu meows at everyone, demanding a piece of nuna; so does his grandson, Babu.

“All right,” Miri says.

It takes Daena a second to realize that this is not addressed to the tookas, as they get no extra helping of food.

“You’ve made breakfast.”

“Yeah,” Miri says. “Why?”

“It looks great,” Daena says, evasively, as she measures a spoonful of ground caf for her morning fix. “Just…had no idea you knew how to fry bacon.”

The last sentence — it’s an attempt to return to a semblance of normalcy, or at least what’s become the norm in their household.

Daena’s daughter doesn’t eat anything of nutritional value, let alone cook herself anything of nutritional value. Sometimes it seems that Miri is running entirely on caf and the blue cereal she has liked since she was four. Or five. It was Lonni’s mistake to let her eat that all the time, and now it’s too late to do anything about it because Miri is not at that age when kids listen to you anymore. Actual, normal food is a distraction from her cause, which is saving the entire galaxy with her school anti-speciesism society, or fighting fascism by talking back to Lagret.

Daena’s daughter doesn’t offer to share breakfast with her. No, their mornings usually pass in relative silence. Miri is too focused on her comm and her cereal, and her caf. The sight of Miri actually being nice to her mother is strange and foreign. Even alien.

Miri shrugs. “I found a holovid.”

So no sarcasm?

Someone must have stolen Miri and replaced her with a reprogrammed clone. As Miri eats, they fall into a silence that feels almost…comfortable — if only for a brief moment.

Miri focuses on the eggs and bacon.

Director Sartha said that she should start eating and sleeping properly — if she wants to last for more than a month juggling school and her internship tasks, that is. Eating “properly” didn’t mean living dairy- or sugar-free, like Mom does. Director Sartha made a point that what it really meant was eating enough and not forgetting about meat and vegetables.

So Miri gets her eight hours of sleep and her nutritious breakfast and her lunch and dinner.

Director Marki also says that she is too young for her caf habit.

The fact Mom thinks Miri can’t do anything like normal people do is not Miri’s problem.

Whatever.

She was just trying to be nice.

She also wanted to ask about something, but only if an opportunity presents itself.

“Any plans for the weekend?” Mom asks.

“Any plans for the weekend?” Daena tries, pouring caf into her mug.

When she says it, she cringes at her own words mentally. Stars, she is talking to her daughter as if there is nothing that unites them except for the fact they happen to temporarily share their living space. Something must have broken somewhere down the line, and she never even noticed it.

(Maybe it broke on that day when Jasper Heert, a close friend of Lonni’s, called Daena, and she picked up, out of some strange premonition — even though Lonni had explicitly told her not to touch her comm. Even though she assured Lonni she had thrown it away.)

Memory is a strange thing. Daena Jung doesn’t remember much about that day, except for those moments. It’s not a cohesive story by any means. Never has been. Rather, chunks and morsels of a story.

(When Jasper came over, he didn’t let Daena get drunk or, well, do anything to herself. Miri wouldn’t go to bed; she kept giving Daena that look, like she refused to comprehend what had just happened. Jasper helped tuck her into bed.)

(Jasper was killed a day later.)

Daena’s fingers tighten around the cup handle. It’s an involuntary thing that still happens from time to time, although she really should—

“Nothing special, Mom.” Miri raises her eyes from the plate. “Maybe I’ll hang out with Seti. And…just hang out. And clean my room.”

She tilts her head.

“By the way. I think it would be a great idea to clean all that crap from the speeder garage.”

Ah.

So that’s what it was about — the niceness, the breakfast.

“Language,” Daena says. “And it’s not ‘crap’. It’s your father’s things.”

“All right. Sorry. Why don’t we just, um, have a look at it and decide?”

“Absolutely not.”

Miri sighs in frustration. “So you’re just going to let it all sit there and gather dust. The Museum of Dad. That no one’s even allowed in.”

Go on, Daena wants to say, let’s take away the only damn place where your father could ever be on his own. Where he felt at peace. Go on, show him how much you hate him again.

She never really understood why Lonni needed, of all places, a garage. He’d always park his speeder on the apartment complex landing spot — and he was never one of those men who loved tinkering with their droids, adding useless modifications or reprogramming them a hundred times for no reason. Still, that was the thing with Lonni — she loved him, not just the select parts of his personality. If he needed a special place to read or do whatever he wanted in complete solitude, and if his study wasn’t good enough for that, then who was she to mind?

Now the damn speeder garage — the garage that Daena’s father insists she should sell, the garage that her daughter wants to “clean up” as yet another part of her Freedom-and-Justice-for-the-Whole-Galaxy crusade — has become the only part of Lonni’s life unclear to Daena.

She knows every holobook in his study.

She still keeps every “civilian” shirt he had.

The garage, however, is sealed shut, and she’d much prefer it to remain that way. It’s Lonni’s special place. He is allowed some privacy. Even now.

(Maybe the moment she learns everything about him that was left to learn, he — what’s left of him in her memories, little traces of him everywhere — will disappear completely.)

And on a more practical note, she definitely doesn’t have the time to waste on trying to pick a code-lock installed and programmed by an ISB supervisor fifteen years ago. She doesn’t even have time to hire anyone who could do that.

So Daena Jung says, “Yes, Miri. We’ll let it all gather dust.”

“I made caf.” Miri’s hair ruffled, and there’s a brown stain on the sleeve of her crisp white shirt. She places a tray with three steaming mugs on Vel’s desk, the look on her face proud. “Sagrona Teema.”

“Didn’t know that machine was working,” Vel answers. “Sagrona Teema.”

“I found a vid about how to fix it.”

It’s the universal Miri answer. If there’s no instruction on how to do something on the holonet, it probably doesn’t exist.

“Sagrona Teema,” she adds.

“Sagrona Teema,” Vel says with a chuckle. “I owe you a sandwich.”

“A shrimp one from Chandi’s, Director, please,” Miri answers, business-like. “Otherwise it’s not Sagrona Teema enough.”

In the first month of the Committee’s work — which, coincidentally, happens to be the first week of Miri’s internship — they end up with what Vel believes to be their first inside joke. Not a Vel-and-Kleya inside joke, these are more often than not quite grim. A Committee joke.

It happens on its own.

In fact, it grows naturally out of that story Miri tells them about some ex-Imperials her mother keeps socializing with. One of them is what Vel and Mon have taken to calling privately “New Old Chandrilans”: people returning to their roots in the times when they believe it offers significant reputational benefits. Decades of pretending to be Coruscanti, it turns out, can easily be reversed by drinking squigs at noon, calling teen marriages a noble tradition, and slipping “Sagrona Teema” into a sentence at the least suitable moment.

Miri giggles. Praise some teens a couple of times, and they become significantly more…vivacious.

The second she hears Kleya’s footsteps coming from the narrow hallway, though, she makes that serious face once again, as if trying to look more adult than she is.

“Good work on the caf machine.”

Kleya raises an eyebrow, takes her cup of caf with a nod that in her case means “thank you,” and settles at her workstation. Still, Vel notices a tiny, barely-there smile on her face that sort of appears on its own. The smile doesn’t linger.

“Enough with the Sagrona-Teeming. We have mail to sort.”

“Can I please get those letters from Mister Semaj, Director Marki?”

The look in Miri’s eyes is hopeful. Kleya, judging by her expression, pretends to consider this, but only for a moment. Sometimes Miri’s enthusiasm has to be calibrated — otherwise, they risk entrusting all the work they have to an intern.

“I’m on them already. You’ll take charge of the catering situation for the Ghorman remembrance day.”

“And the poetry reading situation,” Vel adds when she sees how Miri’s face darkens. “And the free holobook situation. C’mon, let’s do it together. It’s a big deal for them.”

Miri frowns slightly, as though contemplating some question she is hesitant to ask. Vel gives her a gentle nod that’s meant to say, Go on.

“Are you sure that these things work?” Miri asks. “We did that at school for Alderaan, and no one came.”

“They do if there are actual people to whom it matters.”

It’s funny how sometimes you put things into words — and only then realize that those things are actually true, and you believe in them wholeheartedly.

Until this minute, Vel herself was of the opinion that no one needed remembrance days, that they had become a self-parody, an attempt to pretend that most people haven’t already moved on as though no Galactic Empire ever existed, that all that air of solemnity felt stupid and out of place in this new world.

A mere half an hour ago, Vel grumbled to Kleya that it was just yet another portion of pure bureaucracy the Committee had to deal with: remembrance days fall under the obscure category of “veteran celebrations,” and the New Republic sometimes gives a bit of money to spend on that precisely.

When she says what she says to Miri, though, she thinks of Carro Rylanz, a man still wearing clothes made by tailors from a world that does not exist anymore. His old coat, made of expensive Ghorman spider twill. The fact that there are no spiders left on Ghorman; the planet was bled dry, rendered inhabitable.

She thinks about a hundred holomails Rylanz wrote her — his detailed opinion on “suitable” Ghorman restaurants and dishes. About that anxious holocall at eleven in the night, for which Rylanz apologized profusely; it was just that he had seen some Ghorman pigeons in a Mid Rim zoo and was wondering if they could rent them for the remembrance day.

She thinks about Cinta.

Memory is a strange thing. It molds your past into peculiar shapes, rearranges its episodes and weaves them together in the most unexpected ways, and yet never truly disposes of it. It’s always here.

Maybe sometimes you need remembrance days not because you forget — but because there are so many memories you might go insane.

So Vel says, “Some of those people who will come lost their loved ones. Some were nearly killed at Palmo Plaza. They are all gathering together for the first time.”

She gives Miri a wry smile.

“Let’s make it matter.”

“Let’s make it matter,” Miri repeats.

She has no idea how. The task is too big and intimidating, and now it feels too important, in a way the Alderaan remembrance day at school never did, even though when they were organizing it, Miri almost had a panic attack. The day itself was…underwhelming. They handed out some leaflets and played some music, and the principal uttered something about how important it was to remember things if you want to build a free and just society, then the mic broke down, and that was that. And that’s how half the people at school started calling Miri a nerd. It went on until Seti kicked Jappo Zaponoida’s ass.

Caring about stuff, as Miri learned, is often punishable.

Yet this Ghorman day feels different.

There were no actual Alderaanians at that Galactic District High classroom — and there will be actual Ghormans at that remembrance day.

“How are we going to do it, though?” Miri asks cautiously.

“Let’s start with the most basic things,” Director Sartha says. “Which brings us to… Kleya, any updates on the venue?”

No answer.

“Kleya?”

Director Sartha casts a careful glance at Director Marki. So does Miri.

Director Marki is staring at her datapad screen, unblinking, silent. Her face goes rigid for a split second, and in that moment, Miri hardly recognizes her. She clasps the datapad like she is about to crush it.

Then she returns to her normal expression.

“The venue’s confirmed. Senate assembly hall 51.”

They don’t talk about the holomail until the end of the day.

“So she’s still alive,” Vel says, standing in the maintenance closet’s doorway. “Somehow.”

“Somehow.” Kleya cuts the biggest box open. “For now.”

Vel regards her with both suspicion and worry.

“Please tell me you’re not going to do anything stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Kleya says. “It’s something I should’ve done eleven years ago.”

“Only, you couldn’t have done it eleven years ago,” Vel counters. “You had no time for that at Lina Soh. And — don’t you think it all came back to her anyway?”

“If she is still there, it wasn’t enough.”

Six years on Narkina-Five is not nearly close to the punishment a woman by the name of Dedra Meero deserves. Dedra Meero should have long been dead. Her body should have been tossed into that very pit they used to dispose of all the bodies on Narkina.

Yet somehow, she is even doing quite well — if she has holonet access and enough free time to keep sending those perfectly worded letters to the Judicial Department. If she has the audacity to demand moral compensation.

“Listen.” Vel’s gaze grows serious. “Whatever justice you are hoping to restore here, it’s too late to do it now. It will help no one. And in any case, it’s not something Luthen would have wanted you to do.”

“How do you know what Luthen would have wanted me to do?”

This comes out faster than Kleya even can think it over.

“Luthen never did anything without a reason, Kleya, and you know it.” Vel’s voice now holds a degree of exasperation, like she is trying to explain something that should be abundantly clear to Kleya. “You are not going all the way to Narkina to kill that woman. Not simply because it will get you in a world of trouble. Because she is irrelevant. She means nothing now.” Vel’s tone grows firmer. “And you have a job to do, and you know that it matters. And you are not going to ruin everything just because of one half-insane Imperial. I read her letter. If you think she will understand what you are punishing her for, you’re mistaken. That moment is long overdue.”

“Maybe,” is all Kleya says.

Vel fixes her with a long, serious look that reminds Kleya of some obscure time when everything was different. Aldhani. Ferrix.

“You have to promise me you’re not doing this,” Vel says.

Kleya nods. “I promise.”

There’s a glimpse of fabric in the box she just opened: purple velvet, moth silk lining.

Luthen. She would have never worn purple, of all colors.

“I think this is all clothes,” Kleya says. “We’ll need to do something about them.”

“And the ship,” Vel adds.

“What do you mean, the ship?”

Kleya asks this just to be sure she is not crazy. It can’t be the ship she is thinking about. It has to be some other ship. She and Vel have been talking about getting one for years now, and Kleya keeps telling Vel they need it. Maybe Vel has finally taken heed to her words and decided to buy a ship quietly. As a surprise.

No, this is hardly plausible. Vel knows Kleya hates surprises.

“They found the Fondor,” Vel says. “There was a dock in Bash Four where the Imps put ‘seized assets.’”

For a minute or so, Kleya says nothing, just lets that sink in.

The past knocks on her doorstep when she doesn’t ask for it — and now that she’s opened this door once, it doesn’t appear that the visits will ever stop.

“Are you sure we need these drapes?” Vel asks.

“It’s a Ghorman remembrance day,” Kleya points out, downing her third caf this morning. On her desk, Vel sees another cup, a full one, as if prepared in advance.

So that’s how they end up searching for enough quality fabric in traditional Ghorman hues to cover up the Senate hall’s ceiling. Vel is not sure who they’re fooling if they think they can make anyone forget it’s a standard oversized Old Republic-era congregation hall.

In the middle of the day, Kleya disappears for a few hours without explanation. She returns with a stack of holobooks on the history of textile.

It takes her less than an hour to decide that they are also now searching the whole galaxy for antique Ghorman brocades and antique Ghorman velvets.

“Really?” Vel asks. “When we only have a few weeks to plan the whole thing?”

“You have to trust me,” Kleya says, like someone who didn’t spend years working at Luthen Rael’s gallery for nothing.

“They said it’s impossible, Director.”

Miri turns off the comm.

The office is in a state of disarray; there are fabric samples everywhere, and in the corner, Director Sartha is having a very tense conversation with the Sern Prime zoo administration.

It doesn’t seem like anyone here asks for Miri’s opinion, but she finds herself inclined to agree with the candy factory’s owner. A thousand traditional Ghorman spider-shaped candy boxes is not something you can make in three weeks.

“It is more than possible,” says Director Marki. Not a single muscle on her face twitches. “In that time, they can make at least two thousand. We are only asking for one. They are trying to make it more expensive. Standard practice.”

Miri considers this.

The whole negotiations thing seems overwhelming; Miri has no idea how Mom manages to do this all the time at work. “What do we—” She breaks off, feeling like an idiot.

“Just be more persuasive,” says Director Marki. “Mention the Senate again. Bring up Chancellor Mothma. Talk to them like you’re doing them a favor by ordering those spiders.”

“But Director, I’m—”

They must sense that she’s a sixteen-year-old who has no idea what she’s doing. Anyone can see it.

It seems Marki reads Miri’s mind. “They don’t know about your age. Make it seem like it’s do or die. Because it is.”

Miri has no idea how a candy order can be a do-or-die kind of situation, but she nods.

“So?” Kleya asks.

“They want it to be more solemn — which is kraytspit, of course, I’ve already told them that we’re not stuffing a thousand people into one hall for several hours just for them to weep in silence and get some medals.”

The more holomails Vel receives from the Senate’s Public Relations Department, the angrier she gets. The latest trend has been removing all things Ghorman from the remembrance day — except for the mentions of the Palmo Plaza massacre. The Senate’s chief media officer asked specifically to turn the entire event into an “educational exhibit” with “holograms conveying the scale of the tragedy” — and without any “tone-deaf” elements. Such as anything that represents the Ghorman culture and traditions.

“They backed off when I told them they might as well stock up on PTSD meds if they want to show holos of corpses to a bunch of Palmo Plaza survivors,” Vel says. “So now they’ve changed their strategy.”

Kleya raises an eyebrow. “So we’re not solemn anymore.” She squints as Vel shows turns the datapad screen to her. “What’s this?”

“A list of ‘approved artists’ to play at the event. There’s kriffing ‘NIAMOS!’.” Vel’s gaze flickers to the other side of the office. “Miri, cover your ears!”

Miri raises her eyes from her comm. “What’s ‘Niamos’’?”

Now this is the question Vel Sartha least expected to be answering today. And it makes her feel very, very old. “‘NIAMOS!’?” she tries. “An intergalactic disco hit?..”

Miri regards her for a couple of seconds, unblinking, which reminds Vel of Kleya just slightly (the Kleya experience, it seems, has a way of wearing on anyone). Then Miri bursts out laughing. “Stars, of course I know what ‘NIAMOS!” is. I was just kidding.”

Vel snorts. “Get back to your holomails now, young lady. Sagrona Teema.”

“Sagrona Teema,” Miri says.

She is still giggling.

“Of course I know what ‘NIAMOS!’ is.”

When Miri says it, she doesn’t really mean or imply anything — except for the fact that she knows this stupid song. Everyone knows it. ‘NIAMOS!’ is like Dantooine brain worms — once it gets in your head, there’s no way to get it out.

Five minutes later, though, just as she is about to send yet another spider-related holomail to the candy factory, have a cookie, and go make another caf, a realization comes over her.

It’s not a nice realization by any means.

She’d much rather purge some memories from her mind completely — but maybe they are like Dantooine brain worms too.

This memory is blurry, although some details still remain. The music. The party droid that Mom later threw away.

Miri is five. She’s sitting by the big dining room table. She and Mom are wearing matching sparkly blue dresses. Everyone at the dinner party is dressed nicely, except for Dad and his friend Heert, who are wearing work clothes, but judging by the looks all the guests keep throwing at them, it somehow makes them more interesting or important.

“NIAMOS!” Heert declares, raising his glass. “‘NIAMOS!, everyone!”

Miri has no idea what this strange word means, but Mom laughs, and then people start getting up from their chairs, and the party droid’s lights blink, and there’s music.

“Oh, please!” Dad scoffs. “Let’s not torture the neighbors, shall we?”

“Lonni!” Heert pulls him by the hand. “Come on, come on! NIAMOS!”

“What’s Nyamos?” Miri asks. “Dad! What’s Nyamos?”

“Lonni,” Heert scoffs, mock-displeased, “why do I have to teach your daughter everything?”

Dad waves him off — and gives Miri a small, close-lipped smile, like he always does, because Dad never smiles like other people do or laughs out loud. “It’s a special song, and there’s a special dance. I’ll teach you.”

“No ‘Niamos’ for them.” Director Marki’s voice snaps Miri back to reality. “I’ve already booked the valley horn orchestra. They can try to cancel it, but I’ll make sure everyone in the Ghorman community knows it.”

“I think we should start paying her,” Vel says when Miri leaves, her hair ruffled, her tiny blue backpack slung over her shoulder. “There’s too much work.”

It can’t be official, though; this much is obvious.

The girl forged her mother’s signature on the letter, for an obvious reason. Erskin told Vel that Miri’s father was an ISB supervisor. It’s not the kind of family you want to tell about your work for the Rebellion’s veterans.

Miri’s to-do list can now compare in length to the Petition of 2,000.

Call the Ghorman place.

Make sure they let Director Sartha at least pick up all the boxes of of food in the first half of the Remebrance day, if they are so busy they can’t deliver orders on their own.

Call that lady from the Sern Prime zoo.

Make sure they have everything to deliver the special Ghorman pigeons that Carro Rylanz,  the head to of the Ghorman diaspora, wanted to Coruscant.
Find someone willing to take a bunch of pigeons to Coruscant (preferably, not a smuggler — Director Marki made a point of clarifying that little detail for some reason).

Make sure to do it by the end of the week, or Director Marki will fly to Sern Prime and get them on her own. When she said it, it didn’t sound like the pigeons would enjoy it.

Accompany Director Marki to the mold removal works at Freedom Towers. Miri is not sure that anyone needs her there, but still, she’d like to go: it feels oddly important to have a look at what is, essentially, the result of her work. It’s Marki who made it happen — Miri remembers she was on the comm that day, talking to people in a steely, emotionless voice that sounded unsettling even if you knew her. But anyway. Miri did something too.

She also wants to see Ashaa the Rodian pilot and ask if the new antibiotics Ashaa has been prescribed are working.

Add to that a dozen Anti-Speciesism Society tasks Miri has been putting away — new leaflets, new posters, new Protest Project, as Seti puts it, because, in Seti’s words, they have to protest against something if they want people to talk—

It’s always like she is not doing enough, no matter what Marki and Sartha tell her. And it’s also too much.

“Coruscant to Miri Jung,” Seti whispers. “Hello!”

Rawacca nudges Miri with a paw. Then she types on her datapad, “Wakey wakey.”

Miri sighs and raises her head; her vision is still blurry, and she is a little bit ashamed for falling asleep — it’s not something she usually does during classes, and she especially hates the fact she’s been sleeping through history — but a quick survey of the classroom tells her nothing important is going on.

Some people are copying other people’s homework. Most are on their datapads. Mister Arlanz never reprimands you for that; actually, he doesn’t reprimand anyone for anything. He has this thing about personal freedom — if you’re old enough to drink caf, then you’re old enough to decide if you want to listen to your teacher. There will be a test anyway. And even if you do get a bad mark, you can always work it off.

Miri focuses her gaze on the Bail Organa poster by the shelf. Need to replace this one, she thinks as if on autopilot; it’s been the fifth time someone drew Bail Organa tiny fangs and Hutt eyes already.

Mister Arlanz switches the slide on the holoprojector.

“And so, Grand Admiral Thrawn…”

“Wasn’t Grand Admiral Thrawn Pantoran?” asks Jappo Zaponoida — because, well, this is Jappo Zaponoida; he must think he is being so funny.

A few giggles here and there.

Seti doesn’t even roll her eyes anymore. Rawacca snorts; a Wookiee snort sounds more like a snarl, but no one freaks out at this point.

Mister Arlanz raises his eyebrow.

“What makes you think Grand Admiral Thrawn was Pantoran, Jappo?”

“Some people say he’s, like, our national hero, Mister Arlanz. He fought Imperial Imperialism and all.”

Mister Arlanz’s expression doesn’t change. The look in his eyes, however, tells Miri that he refuses to comprehend a reality in which a man like Grand Admiral Thrawn could be anyone’s national hero.

“Fought how, Jappo?”

“By being Pantoran in the Empire, Mister Arlanz. I mean, you said it yourself. We should, like, celebrate diversity in this beautiful galaxy.”

For a moment, Miri ponders whether it’s worth it to try to explain to Jappo that the concept of celebrating diversity in the galaxy doesn’t exactly include justifying war crimes. “Stuuped,” Rawacca types on the datapad screen.

“I see,” Mister Arlanz says after a pause. “I see, Jappo. I’m going to be honest, I find it a little bit concerning that we are talking about this — while we really should be talking about Grand Admiral Thrawn’s attacks on Lothal, his attempts to capture Chancellor Mothma, and his bombings of Atollon. But I think…I understand why you might say things like this.”

He gestures at the holobook on his table.

“To most of us, this is all…just history. Just a chapter in our textbook that we have to read to prepare for the class, because our boring teacher told us to. With any luck, we’ll remember a few facts — or even understand what the battle of Atollon meant for the Rebel Alliance in the grand scheme of things. But the trouble with historic events is that…it’s hard to understand what they truly meant for everyone when they didn’t affect our life in any way.”

A thin, sad smile tugs on the corners of his lips.

“And it’s fine. I’m not asking you to know, feel, and understand everything. But you are getting new homework today.”

Now Miri hears some angry whispers in the classroom.

“You don’t have to do it for the next class,” Mister Arlanz says. “Let’s give it a month.”

Some sighs of relief.

“I need you to find those alumni of Galactic District High who contributed to the fight against the Empire. It doesn’t matter how: they may have been members of the Rebel Alliance, they may have worked in the Senate, they may have sabotaged the Empire’s operations. If they are alive, I’d like you to talk to them. If not, you can talk to their relatives or friends. What matters is that you should find out why they did it — and what their choices cost them. Did they go to prison? Did they lose their jobs? Were they executed? Did they have to abandon everything they had?”

Another sad smile.

“By the end of this month, each of you has to turn in an essay about one person. We’ll put the best ones on our school’s memorial wall.”

“We have a memorial wall?” Jappo Zaponoida asks.

He gets a couple of death glares for that — “don’t make it worse, you idiot.”

“We will,” Mister Arlanz says, mildly. “By the end of this month.”

“Not sure how we’re gonna do it,” Miri mutters.

“There has to be someone,” Seti says. “We can, er, look through all the alumni records?”

And Miri wants to say many things to that — that such investigations are not as easy as Seti makes it sound, that there sure as hell were no rebel heroes who graduated from Galactic District High, formerly Federal District High, that this school only started accepting nonhumans some five years ago.

(Dad graduated from Galactic Disctrict High with honors.)

(Which should be saying something about this place.)

“And there’s something else,” says Mister Arlanz, his tone unexpectedly firm. “We are all attending the Ghorman remembrance day. Count it as a field trip.”

Memory number one: she watches Luthen from afar, pretending to be curious about the items the dealer put on display at the tent: some silverware, a bracelet. “What’s the offering?” Luthen asks. The dealer asks what he is looking for, like they always do — this much Kleya has already learned. Luthen asks for twenty credits, even though the piece is worth forty; the dealer says that she can only give seven, and it’s not that Kleya knows a lot about money, but she knows enough to tell they need it. Money is food, warm clothes, ship fuel, good guns to for Luthen, and a place to sleep. “Let’s walk away,” Kleya says.

Memory number two: in the end, she bargains, and they sell the piece for eighteen. The dealer asks if she is Luthen’s daughter. “Yes,” Luthen says, like it’s an obvious thing.

When Kleya places a stack of credits on Miri’s desk, Miri looks at her in mild surprise.

“You want me to, um, pay for something? The candy situation’s all sorted—”

“It’s your allowance,” says Kleya. “Spend it however you will.” She has to remind herself that she is talking to a teenager, and that the times are different now. “But if I ever learn that you’re buying alcohol or anything you shouldn’t be having at your age, you won’t receive it anymore. In three months, it will grow by twenty percent.”

Miri’s eyes widen. For a second, it seems as if she’s seen a ghost. “Thank you, ma’am,” she says. Then she adds, “What do I, um, do with it?”

“It’s your money,” Kleya says.

After all, this is what Luthen told her many years ago, when he handed her three credit chips, half of what they had earned that day.

She was a bit younger than Miri.

In the end, Director Marki tells Miri to set some money aside — “you never know when you’ll need it” — and Director Sartha tells her to celebrate her first payday.

“Something for your emergency fund,” she explains. “Kleya is right, it’s good to have money of your own. Something for your anti-speciesism stuff. And little bit to treat yourself too.”

So that’s how Miri ends up at the recently reopened “Candy Galaxy” store on the 5120th, together with Seti and Rawacca. At first, Seti seemed puzzled when Miri said she wanted to take them there. Now, she is checking every stall with the curiosity of that archaeologist from that holoshow where he travels to all sorts of worlds with his pet monkey-lizard.

“Whoa,” she says, gesturing at a basket full of sparkling purple and pink crystals. “Let’s try this Shili pop stuff!”

The place is different now. It used to be all white, surgically clean, like a lab; now there’s soft gold lighting everywhere, and the hovering, brightly painted baskets of sweets move around the store on their own.

The last time Miri was there was with Mom, exactly six years ago. The whole thing closed down after those broadcasts about Palpatine’s death, when people started shooting on the upper levels.

Rawacca studies the candy spider in the basket that floats right before her. It’s just like the samples that have just arrived at the Comittee’s office, though not as well-made. Miri has become quite the expert on spider merchandise.

She doesn’t notice the shining, pink and golden sales assistant droid approach her — and the worst part is, it’s too late to warn—

“Hello and welcome to Candy Galaxy, Miss,” the droid chirps. “I see you are looking for something unusual? We also speak Shyriwook!”

When Rawacca is scared, she seems to shrink — even though you would have never imagined that a two-meter Wookiee is capable of that. Seti exchanges glances with Miri. This particular one means, “oh shit.”

Calm down, Miri tells herself. It’ll be awkward, as usual, but you’ve all been through it a thousand times already, and it’s not like a droid can be weird about those kinds of things.

Those kinds of things being Rawacca not speaking, like, at all. It’s something Miri and Seti and all the teachers have gotten used to. Rawacca doesn’t speak. She doesn’t want to explain why. No, she’s not mute. She just doesn’t speak, and whatever it is, she must have a good reason, because she hates it when you bring this up, and her foster mom hates it too. It’s the kind of fact you just accept and roll with it.

(Rawacca’s forty, which is sixteen in Wookiee years but still a lot of time. A few times, Miri caught a glimpse of two identical scars on her wrists, under the fur.)

The thing is, people ask questions. And some don’t understand. And all the explaining you have to do always makes Rawacca anxious, and it ruins everyone’s day—

What would Director Marki do?

It’s a question Miri doesn’t expect to pop up in her mind. Yet the answer is obvious.

“My friend prefers Basic,” Miri says, her voice calm but firm. Picking Basic is a spur-of-the-moment decision: Shyriwook keyboards on datapads are a hell to use. “Please give her a minute.”

When Rawacca pulls out the datapad, she flashes Miri a look of gratitude.

They eat their candy on a giant, fluffy couch. Rawacca marvels at the spider box like it’s precious and hides it in her backpack.

“You know,” Seti says, “I wasn’t a fan of this place back then. It was all white and boring, and it only had, like, candy that humans could eat, I think. And Dad always made me dress up when we’d go here because it was expensive.”

Another unwanted memory: Dad holds Miri’s hand while she fills her candy bag with glowing lollies from Hosnian Prime. “These look good.” Dad gestures at the giant bright purple marshmallows that smell of some berry Miri has never tasted before. “Want to try them?”

Miri banishes the memory right away.

“Yeah,” she says. “This place is much cooler now.”

Memory number one: it is their first trip to Coruscant, even before they started earning enough to live here, and Luthen takes Kleya to “Candy Galaxy”. At first, Kleya wants to make fun of him because it’s just some stupid thing families do, and they are not a real family. But there’s something in Luthen’s expression when he offers it, casually. There’s something that makes Kleya nod. “Pick what you want,” he says as they enter the shop. “Just don’t poison yourself on accident.”

Memory number two: she has no idea when Luthen’s birthday is — he never told her that — so she picks a random date that looks nice. It’s not hard to make a cake, not for someone who already knows how to make a bomb and is building a radio unit.

Memory number three: Luthen stares at the cake, small and blue and slightly wobbly, and the card lying next to it on the table. “You don’t know when my birthday is,” he says. “Don’t care,” Kleya says. “Enjoy your cake and your card.” Before Luthen has time to answer anything, she walks out of the kitchen.

Kleya stares at two little gold candy bags — one on her desk and one on Vel’s. Next to them, she sees two little thank-you cards.

The place that used to be called “Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest” is now all covered in feathers.

“We have a pigeon situation,” Vel says the second Erskin Semaj enters, before she says something like “hello” or “how are you”. “Looks like they didn’t like their trip to Coruscant.”

“They’ll be all right if we put them on a diet! I’ve just talked to the zoo lady—”

Ah. This voice coming from the hallway must be young Miri. The voice is accompanied by angry cooing. That’s probably not Miri.

Vel sighs. “Oh, please. Tell her we don’t have a lot of time, and the last thing we’re doing with it is putting Ghorman pigeons on a diet—”

The look she gives Erskin is almost apologetic.

“I can take care of it, Sagrona Teema,” Miri emerges from the hallway, her hair ruffled, white and dark blue feathers stuck to her face and clothes. “Um. Good day, Mister Semaj.”

Just what is going on at this place, Erskin thinks.

“Good day, Miss Jung,” he says, instead. “Keep up the good work. I’d like to steal your supervisor for just five minutes, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m still impressed this thing has survived,” Erskin says, glancing at the fractal radio. “Are we seriously having this conversation at the maintenance closet, though?”

“The backroom’s taken by the pigeons.” Vel blows a feather off her shoulder. “And the movers are putting all the fabric decorations in the main room. Because you can’t leave them at the Senate for longer than two days.” She shrugs. “And, well, Kleya locks the other rooms.”

The other rooms — meaning, those that once belonged to Kleya and Luthen. Kleya made it abundantly clear nobody was going there, the second they first stepped into this place.

“I see,” Erskin says. There are layers of meaning to these two words that Vel doesn’t really want to get into. “Actually, I wanted to talk about Rylanz.”

Again, thinks Vel.

Carro Rylanz has already deemed five different samples of spider candy boxes sent by the factory “unacceptable,” demanded that they change the restaurant, offered his opinion on the bread selection for the Ghorman bakery section, and had a small-scale fight with Kleya.

He remains perfectly polite and always brings cake when he comes, but Vel has noticed Miri pretends she ugently needs a caf whenever he shows up.

“How did your meeting go?” Vel asks.

“It went…well. Except for the fact he now wants Mon to make some sort of a statement at the Remembrance day.”

“What kind of a statement?” Vel clarifies.

“Updates on the Ghorman massacre investigation. Which we don’t have. We can’t even say that we are ‘actively investigating’ it — because we aren’t. The ISB archives will take years to sort out — and I have a feeling that Partagaz and Yularen purposefully deleted any Ghorman files of any value. I need you to talk to Rylanz.”

“You know it matters to him,” Vel says. “To them all. Just tell them something.”

“I don’t want Mon to publicly promise the results we can’t deliver. Every time there’s a delay, it’s Mon’s reputation that takes the hit.” Erskin gives her a wry, tired smile. “The Supreme Chancellor is, sadly, a much more interesting figure to blame than a bunch of nobodies from the Judicial Department.”

The moment he says it, a thought crosses Vel’s mind. At first, she dismisses it as idiotic. Then she considers it. Then she considers it again. “What if…”

Erskin tilts his head. “Do you know something I should?”

“Stay here,” Vel says. “In the closet. I’ll call Kleya.”

“You know what’s the weirdest thing about these pigeons? They are not trying to fly away. All they do is build nests. Everywhere. Out of everything. And that cage got a bit bent on the ship, so I, like, have to—”

Miri sweeps a fresh batch of feathers from into a trash bag — and looks around.

“So you’re not coming to Sakko’s,” Seti says, as if it’s something she wasn’t counting on but would like to verify anyway.

“Can’t. And if Mom calls, please tell her I’m at a sleepover with you.”

Seti is quiet; for a moment, Miri hears nothing but the cooing of the pigeons.

“Can we at least hang out?” she asks. “I mean…you’ve got this Committee thing, cool, and we don’t even have time for the ASS meetings, and I totally get it, you’ve been busy, but—”

Miri can’t help a smile. “Don’t call it that.”

“Anti-Speciesism Society. ASS.”

“Seti. Seriously. I’ve gotta help at this Ghorman thing, and then we can have ASS meetings all we want.”

“Okay,” Seti says.

This is not the Eye Roll Voice. Or the Scoff Voice. It’s something new.

“What are you up to?” Miri asks as she heads to the exit to dump the feathers into the level’s trash compactor. It’s not like it’ll help things — she feels like she’s just won the competition for the galaxy’s worst friend — but she has to try.

“Uh,” Seti says. “Not much. Wanted to go to Sakko’s with you and Rawacca, but…”

She trails off — on purpose.

“Wait,” Miri says. As she is about to press the button on the rotating door, she freezes, surveying the room. “Something’s wrong. With the pigeons.”

“Look, I’m sure they’re all right,” Seti says. “They are pigeons. The worst that can happen to them is that they go bald, or someone eats them, but you don’t have tookas there—”

A quick peek into the backroom, however, proves that Miri is right: the cage is empty. She glances at the maintenance closet door, behind which Director Sartha, Director Marki, and Mister Semaj are having some debate in hushed voices. At the bird-free corner near the door. Down the completely bird-free hallway.

“Seti,” she whispers, then, “the pigeons are gone.”

“You can’t be serious,” says Erskin in a half-whisper.

“Be specific,” Kleya says. “What exactly I can’t be serious about?”

He lets out a nervous laugh.

“The list is too long. You’re not an investigator. You can’t arrest her on the spot. If everything you told me is true, she’ll flee Narkina the second she sees your face, and we’ll lose track of her forever. She’s not an idiot. This woman survived six years on Narkina-Five.”

“I’m not suggesting that I’m going to arrest her,” Kleya says; Erskin knows this intonation; he’s heard it not once, usually in those Mon-related situations that he’d much rather forget. “I’m not even suggesting that I go there. Dedra Meero has never met Vel.”

Vel casts a cautious look at Kleya but nods.

“I can go there. I’ll pretend I’m just gathering information to help her with her case. We’ll get everything we need — and then you can arrest her.”

“And then you can arrest her,” Kleya repeats.

No, Erskin really doesn’t like this intonation.

“Kriff, kriff, kriff—”

Miri looks around the backroom for the hundredth time, checks the corners for the two-hundredth time, inhales and counts to ten.

“Kriff.”

“All right, now calm down,” Seti says on the comm. “They are somewhere here.”

“They’re not cooing!”

“But did you see them flying away? Nope.”

“What if they’re dead?”

“I’m not sure a pigeon can die this fast. And this quietly. Look, Rawacca here says to check for the holes—”

“Holes!” Some treacherous part of Miri’s brain that tells her thinking is pointless now; the best thing to do is probably sit down on the floor and laugh hysterically. “I’ve checked everything! I’m going back to the main room now, and I’ll check it again, just to show you that there’s nothing there— It’s an office, not a forest on Endor or—”

“I think that’s offensive to Ewoks,” Seti says, her voice level. “Check again.”

“Ugh. Sorry. It’s just— I can’t—”

Miri pauses for a second, trying to come up with a way to finish the sentence that best summarizes the extent of her perils. “I can’t even” or “I just can’t with all that” don’t seem to cut it.

Maybe she should just stand and stare at a wall.

Maybe if you stare at a wall for long enough, your problems magically solve themselves.

Maybe—

Her gaze travels down one of the ornate wall panels — right to the crack running through it.

The crack’s always been there. Miri never really paid a lot of attention to it. Only, now it seems a little bit…wider.

“Glad we’ve got that settled,” Vel says.

At least it’s something. She’d like to have more things in her and Kleya’s life she’d say the same thing about, if she’s honest. The prospect of meeting the woman responsible for Luthen’s death isn’t all that relieving, but the clarity is—

All feelings of relief, however, evaporate the second Vel steps into the main room.

“What’s going on in here?” she asks.

The cracked Alderaanian tile is now placed in the corner. The Ghorman pigeons glare at everyone menacingly from a hole in the wall.

“I don’t know,” Miri says. “There was some hole in the wall, like a stash or— I don’t understand how they could sneak in there—”

“They are Ghorman,” Erskin says. “Ghorman pigeons sneak into places.”

It would seem embracing one’s Ghor heritage means not only learning about spiders but also acquiring some obscure pigeon expertise. Vel doesn’t want to know, though.

“All right,” Miri says. “I…see. And…why do we have a hidden hole in the wall?”

In her mind, Vel sifts through all possible answers.

Because no one’s had the time to fix it?

Because this place remained sealed for eleven years?

Because some Imperial investigators tried to make up for their lack of skill by thoroughness — and one of them was thorough enough to hew out a hole in the wall?

Dozens of version of that answer flicker in Vel Sartha’s mind in just one second — and Stars, aren’t they all terrible.

“This place has rich history,” Erskin says, before she even opens her mouth,  in the same tone he used to explain to Miri the habits of Ghorman pigeons. He doesn’t notice the death glare Kleya shoots him. “I think this must have remained from the ISB raid.”

A moment later, he finally sees the look in Kleya’s eyes. A realization creeps into his features. He keeps his tone studiously casual, though, a seasoned Senate dweller that he is.

“You didn’t tell her?”

Memory number one: when Kleya comes back to the small house they rent on Naboo, Luthen is there already, even though she’d thought he was meeting a client. The client was aging aristocrat with a love for mysticism, interested in those kyber crystal medallions; Kleya had told Luthen to ask more for them. She wonders if the deal ever happened. Then her eyes dart to the bags in the middle of the room. Luthen’s. Hers. All the items for sale. She stills, startled. They meant to give that plan a year or so, to save more, sell more — and here they are. “We are going to Coruscant,” Luthen says, like it’s the most mundane thing imaginable. “We have the money now.”

Memory number two: she spends years building the backroom fractal radio system. It seems like it’s never going to end. When she is done, Luthen says, “Well, it’s time to celebrate.” He pours Kleya her first drink. Alderaanian wine. They can afford these kinds of things now, which is still hard to get used to.

(Luthen taught her how to blow up a bridge before he’d let her try alcohol.)

Memory number three: Kleya watches the ISB investigators from the crowd. In the window, she catches a glimpse of a man removing one of those Alderaanian wall tiles — Luthen had ordered them on a recommendation from a senator client.

There are fives ways she can think of to murder Erskin Simaj right now, and all of them seem equally enticing.

Yet sometimes you have to address things you don’t want to. Things you’d rather prefer left in those boxes, covered in dust, buried under old velvet jackets.

She schools her voice.

“This place used to be an antiques shop my father owned. We had some senator clients, so we did some work gathering intel for the Rebellion.”

After all, she thinks, it’s not that far from the truth, is it?

The momentary shock in Miri’s eyes is with some semblance of understanding.

“Oh,” she says. “So…that’s why we’ve got this broken radio, right? Cool.”

Everything is secrets, closed doors, and closed boxes.

Miri stops this thought at its nascense.

Dad’s speeder garage is one thing. Director Marki’s rebel past is another. It’s not like Miri is entitled to this story (the garage, however, remains the property of the Jung family). From what she’s learned so far, real rebels — not the holomovie rebels, or people on the holonet who pretend to be rebels — don’t really enjoy talking much about Yavin or Hoth or the undercover work or anything like that.

All Asha the Rodian wants to talk about is cooking and the holosoaps she’s watching. Director Sartha has those cool vintage Rebel Alliance t-shirts she wears occasionally and appears to know too much about weapons, but most of the time it seems she’d much rather spend her time working or Sagrona-Teeming with Miri.

No one owes Miri Jung war stories — no matter how much she’d like to hear some of them.

And there’s not much time to think about it, anyway. She has enough things to do.

Go to school.

Help Seti with her homework.

Help Rawacca with her homework.

Come up with another excuse for Mom.

Call all the people who haven’t yet responded to the remembrance day invitation. There’s a man named Dasi Oran, the former Ghorman senator, who keeps hanging up, but Kleya told Miri to “persist.”

Feed the pigeons.

Miri focuses on her to-do list. Now it doesn’t even resemble the Petition of 2,000. It’s longer than the list of all the planets that belonged to the Confederacy of Independent Systems in the middle of the Clone Wars.

The Ghorman day is tomorrow, and she is not doing enough, and—

“Miri?”

It’ll never cease to surprise Miri how Director Marki sometimes just shows up behind her back without making a sound.

“I’m on it,” Miri blurts, without specifying what task exactly she is talking about: there are too many of them.

“I know you are,” says Director Marki. “But you have to rest.”

“Can’t,” Miri protests. “I’ve got—”

The pigeons coo from their new, more solid cage.

“It’s not a suggestion.” Director Marki gives her a focused, serious look. “It’s a task. There’s a hovertaxi waiting for you. If you want to attend the remembrance day, I need you to go home, get sleep, get some rest tomorrow, dress up, and come there knowing that you are one of those people who’ve made it happen.”

Miri prefers to think before she speaks — but there are those moments when she just…says things and only realizes what they actually mean after the words leave her mouth.

She giggles.

“Yes, Mom!”

“Yes, Mom,” Miri Jung says, and there’s a sharp pain in Kleya chest.

Luthen told her to never do things without a reason. She’s used to calculating her steps, pulling herself together, containing — emotions, mostly. What she is still not used to is how emotions sometimes take hold of her, against all common sense.

When Kleya looks at Miri, the feeling is here, back again — and it’s as messy as a feeling could be: an odd, uncalled for, inappropriate tenderness, tinged with something maternal she never thought herself capable of.

(The first time Luthen called her his daughter, he did it as if in passing, like it was a completely unexciting fact of their life. “That’s useful,” he explained later.)

Kleya schools her voice.

“Actually,” she says, as if it’s a mere offhand remark, “I have something for you. It’s vintage. The lining is Ghorman silk. If it doesn’t fit you, do feel free to give it to your friends, but I thought it’s your color.”

A smile is blooming on Miri’s face.

“Really? Ghorman silk? Director Marki, I—”

“It’s Kleya,” she answers. “And there’s a brooch, too.”

“I haven’t seen this one before,” says Daena.

The dress is deep blue, long, and it has a small capelet lined in white silk. LO-LA70 adjusts the hem as Miri steps into her shoes.

“It’s vintage.” Miri checks her reflection in the living room mirror once again. “We went to a thrift shop with Seti and Rawacca.”

Daena can’t possibly think of anyone in their right mind who would donate such a thing to a thrift shop, but she refrains from any comments on this matter. She also sets aside the sudden anxious thought that her daughter might have become a kleptomaniac. Robbing upper-levels vintage boutiques after school instead of overdosing with sugary drinks at Sakko’s Caf House.

“It looks beautiful,” Daena says, instead.  “This blue really suits you.”

She allows herself to marvel at her daughter, just for a second.

It’s not just the blue. It all…suits her. Even the hairstyle — that bob in the style of Supreme Chancellor Mothma that makes Miri looks older, Daena has never been a fan of — it doesn’t look out of place.

“Are you sure you want to wear it to a school trip, though?” Daena goes on.

“Mom, it’s a remembrance day at the Senate!”

“I see,” Daena says. “Then, of course, you should dress nicely.”

She allows herself to steal just one more look at Miri — it seems, more and more often, as as if she has no right to her daughter, as if her daughter is not her’s anymore. Which is, as Daena supposes, a very common feeling among parents of almost-grown-up children.

For a split second, she lets herself wonder what Lonni would have said had he seen Miri now.

And here Vel never thought anything would be done about the evidence boxes.

Luthen Rael’s clothes are lying on the sofa, neatly stacked, cleaned, and steamed. So are Kleya’s old dresses.

“Not sure I’ll fit into this,” Kleya says. “I gave one away to Miri.”

“You’re still the same size,” Vel points out.

Kleya ignores her comment.

“I’ll donate this all.”

That will be a very generous donation, Vel almost says, considering how much care Luthen put into maintaining the image of a wealthy antiques dealer. But that’s not the main point. The main point is that it feels wrong to just— Sorting out is not throwing away.

Which gives her an idea.

“Actually…” she points at the purple velvet jacket. “You could try it on.”

Kleya snorts at that. “It was Luthen’s, Vel.”

“Miri showed me that holovid,” says Vel. It eludes her how she even remembers this. It could be the sheer intensity of the exposure — if a teenager forwards you two hundred holovids over the course of a week, something sticks no matter how hard your brain resists. “Oversized things are in fashion. You can cinch it with a belt.”

As Kleya watches herself in the mirror, it seems to her like it’s not the same jacket anymore.

“See,” Vel says, tracing Kleya’s clavicles with the tip of her finger. “A Coruscant shirt, a long skirt or trousers, and it’ll be perfect.”

“A white Coruscant shirt,” Kleya clarifies. “Loose collar. And there was a chain that he attached to one of the lapels—”

She studies her reflection once again. “Do you think he’d have…”

Vel kisses her on the cheek.

“I think he’d shoot you if you tried to donate his clothes,” she laughs. “Especially given that you look so good in them.”

“If I’m completely honest,” Mon says, “I didn’t expect it to look this…”

She keeps her voice down.

They are standing in one of the hall’s more remote corners, behind one of the makeshift pavilions that were installed yesterday. These days, Mon prefers to keep out of the public eye before the event starts.

“I thought it would be a disaster too,” admits Vel, in a half-whisper. “But hey. Here we are.”

“I didn’t expect it to be this good too,” says Erskin. “But knowing you and Kleya, well…”

His expression seems oddly pensive. Mon rests a hand on his shoulder.

Vel throws another look at the surroundings, checking everything for one last time.

The first decorator insisted on building a model of Palmo Plaza, as Senate hall 51 was “big enough for ambitious projects.” Vel and Kleya figured they’d find better use of the money. Now there are several small, round pavilions in the Ghorman style under the hall’s domed ceiling, which is covered in soft drapes in shades of green and brown.

The book pavilion is separated from the rest by ornate dividers — it allows for the poetry readings to take place in relative quiet. In the animal pavilion number one, they placed the giant spider terrarium. The pigeons are cooing from animal pavilion number two. There’s the Mini-Twillery; Miri suggested the idea, and Kleya took it seriously, which resulted in the entire Ghorman diaspora of Coruscant looking for an authentic twill weaving machine. An antique one, of course.

The Ghorman bakery.

The wall, an imitation of medieval Ghorman city walls, on which twillery owners would often hang the freshly died fabric to dry. In their case, it serves as to showcase the antique Ghorman brocades, velvets and twills that Kleya has sourced.

A passage between the pavilions, dedicated solely to the holos of those who were killed at the Plaza massacre — everything that Kleya and Vel have managed to find.

Erskin stares at the passage.

Mon’s hand lingers on his shoulder for a little longer — a small, comforting gesture.

There is a thousand candy spiders, and Miri is to keep an eye on them, and she is also supposed to hand them out to the guests, and—

She has studied several holodocumentaries to get her Ghor just right. Vel — Director Sartha, Vel now — suggested that they make get little vending trays for the waiters and volunteers, like the trays that Palmo Plaza street traders had, to carry the candy spiders around. She and Kleya ran the idea by Mister Rylanz, the head of the Ghorman diaspora on Coruscant — that nice but slightly intimidating old man who has been showing up at their office every day with a box of cake and a fresh batch of politely worded criticisms. Mister Rylanz, surprisingly, liked the idea.

The thing is, they have one volunteer, Miri — and there are no waiters in sight.

She has two dozen vending trays and all the spiders and just one pair of hands. Also, she has one tongue, and she can only talk to this many people simultaneously.

And the people keep coming.

“Where are the waiters?” she whispers to Kleya.

Kleya’s jaw tightens.

“Stuck in a turbolift on the 5125th,” she mouths. Then her expression changes to a friendly smile as she starts greeting the fresh batch of guests, like she wasn’t seething with her signature blend of quiet fury a mere second ago. “Good evening and welcome to the Ghorman Remembrance day! Please allow me to show you around—”

In the crowd, Miri sees a familiar face. Then another one. And another.

“Kleya,” she whispers. “Kleya! I have an idea!”

“You have to be resourceful,” Kleya told her once, when they were still arguing with that candy factory owner.

Miri is trying her best.

“Could you look after Oran?” Mon asks.

“Wait,” Erskin says. “He decided to come?”

Since Oran returned to Coruscant from Narkina-Seven, where he spent seven years or so, he has never talked to anyone but Mon, let alone attended a public event. Vel and Kleya sent him an invitation; they said he didn’t reply.

“I made him,” Mon says.

This makes sense. Oran was Ghorman’s last senator, after all — last real senator, not taking into account the succession of those Imperial appointees who didn’t speak a word of Ghor and only cared about bleeding the planet dry for the sake of kriffing kalkite.

Erskin remembers the day the stormtroopers dragged the man down the Senate’s corridor.

“He’s at the entrance,” Mon says, like a former senator could have forgotten how to find his way through Hall 51. “Please pick him up.”

Mister Arlanz’s eyebrows shoot up.

In the second it takes for him to answer, Miri feels terrible for asking the thing she asks of him. Here he is, dressed nicely in an old-fashioned twill jacket, with an entire class to look after, and she’s an idiot for even coming up with this idea—

Then he says, “Well, I didn’t expect to see you among the volunteers, but I’m not surprised.” He gives her a tiny smile. “I sold these things when I was…what, fourteen? The first money I ever made.”

He turns to the class — and raises his voice just slightly.

“The first three people to hand out a hundred spiders will get an A+ this year. Those who can correctly tell what these spiders are for get to choose the holo we’re watching at the class next week. I’ll bring cake. ”

Rawacca shoots him a nervous glance.

“Hey,” Miri whispers, “you don’t have to talk to people. You can just show them how to open those spiders if they’ve no idea what it is.”

“You have one like that already,” Seti adds.

“And we’ll be with you,” says Miri.

Rawacca roars softly and pats her on the shoulder.

Then they get to work.

“Who are these children?” asks Carro Rylanz as he watches Miri and two other girls — a Wookiee and a Twi’lek — demonstrate how to open a Ghorman candy spider to a small crowd that’s gathered around them.

“Our volunteers,” Kleya says. “Our intern is in charge.”

Vel notices that she sounds strangely proud.

“I thought it would look…different,” says Dasi Oran.

His hair is grey. Erskin has noticed that he lost a finger on his right hand.

“Excuse me, sir?” a small, pink-skinned Twi’lek girl calls him. She is holding a tray of well-made, expensive-looking candy-box spiders. A young Wookiee is towering behind her, completely silent. “May we offer you a special gift?”

A candy-box spider is an image from Erskin’s childhood, vague and blurry. Mother would bring them from her trips “home” occasionally.

Oran freezes.

“Spiders, sir,” the girl says. Her voice falters slightly when she notices Oran’s expression. “It’s a box. It just looks like a spider. If you open it, you can find a surprise inside—”

“I—” Oran’s voice cracks when he speaks. “I know. Thank you.” He studies the girl, like he has seen something he has a hard time believing in, like an ancient Force being. “What is your name?”

“I’m Seti, sir,” the girl says, more confident now. “This is Rawacca. Our teacher’s Ghorman, he brought us here. We’re helping.”

The Wookiee taps on one of the spiders with a claw and looks at Oran questioningly.

For a moment, Erskin is sure that Oran is going to refuse and leave this place. Then, slowly, he takes the spider.

“Thank you,” he says, again.

“And this one is for you, sir,” says the girl named Seti, as she offers another spider to Erskin.

He takes it — even though until now he had been sure he didn’t have any right to.

Some people hug. Some talk in Ghor — and from the words Miri makes out, it seems that stout, bearded man in his seventies standing with a glass of Sacha-Lo hasn’t seen the taller, younger black-haired man with a glass of wine for years. Mister Arlanz’s class is joined by two ten-year-olds and their mother.

“That’s not how you offer a spider,” the mother keeps telling them.

Miri finds Mister Rylanz near the wall of fabrics: emerald and cream and light brown and deep brown and that peculiar shade of brown that in some lighting seems orange and gold. The older and rarer pieces that require special treatment are framed and placed under protective screens. The newer ones are draped over the walls in the classic Ghorman fashion.

“Director Marki picked these, am I correct?” he asks.

For a moment, Miri is sure that this is yet another Ghorman thing that they all got wrong. Like those first spider candy box samples. Or the choice of catering. Or all the other things this man was certain everyone got wrong.

“Yes, sir.” Miri switches to Ghor. “These are all antiques.”

Her Ghor is accented, and she’s quite sure she has made two grammar mistakes, but Rylanz gives her a small smile. He gestures at a piece of reddish-brown and green brocade threaded with gold that’s shining under the soft lights that Kleya installed everywhere.

“Where do you think this one is from?”

“The piece is by House Rylanz,” Miri says, without thinking. “It is six centuries old, and the design was created by Esma Rylanz, who was also a famous artist, right? The Hosnian Prime Museum of decorative arts borrowed it to us for the event.”

“Do you know what it symbolizes?” asks Carro Rylanz. He points at the print: swirls of lines, thick and thin, colliding.

Now this is a harder question.

“Um,” Miri says.

“Look at it,” says Rylanz. “I’d like to know your opinion.”

As she studies the brocade once again, she squints. “Um. I guess…they’re all connected?”

Rylanz nods. “There’s a Ghorman saying. ‘The soul travels.’ Which means that we are all a part of something larger. Do you see these little intersections?”

“There’s more gold thread there?” Miri switches back to Basic.

“Yes,” Rylanz says, after a pause. “It is what happens when we unite. Only fools think they’re better off on their own.”

Never in her life has Vel Sartha seen anyone as thrilled by the sight of a pigeon as some guests at the animal pavilion number two. Sometimes, she thinks not without amusement, doing something that matters means taking risks and making sacrifices — and sometimes it means having feathers scattered all over one’s office, finding nests in the least likely places, measuring bird food, and bickering with a zoo director.

She takes Kleya’s hand. “See? It was worth it.”

“It was,” Kleya says. “But we need to gather everyone. The speeches.”

“May I offer you a special gift?”

Only when Miri says this well-rehearsed phrase does it dawn on her that she is asking Supreme Chancellor Mon Mothma.

She blinks. No, she is definitely not hallucinating, and this is definitely not some woman she has mistaken for Chancellor Mothma, because no one else can wear a floor-length sparkling white cape without staining it once or letting anyone step on it.

Miri feels her face flush red.

Stars, she must look like an idiot—

“I would love a special gift,” says Chancellor Mothma. “Perhaps you could show me how to open it and what’s inside?”

“Mon and Miri! Come on, it’s speech time!”

Vel’s voice sounds focused, as if they are about to start a military operation. It’s a fact Miri’s mind registers before she realizes that Vel’s just put her name in the same sentence with Chancellor Mothma’s — or, stranger yet, called Chancellor Mothma by her first name.

Memory number one: Luthen comes back to the shop at three in the morning. “Organa’s rescue team for Mon is corrupt,” he says, his voice flat.  “Lonni says there’s an ISB agent there. It’s his agent.”

Memory number two: the broadcast of Mon Mothma’s Senate speech is, of course, interrupted — but it’s interrupted later than Kleya expected.

Memory number three: Mon is standing at the safe house, staring at the window, exhausted — and for the first time in many months, Kleya Marki feels something akin to relief.

Rylanz introduces himself and makes an announcement.

Kleya watches Mon get up on the stage.

“Thank you,” says Chancellor Mothma. When she is standing onstage, she looks even taller in her white cape. “It’s Remembrance Day, but I would also like to talk about truth, as these things are interconnected. The speech I gave in the Senate twelve years ago, after the Ghorman Plaza, is still fresh in my memory. Those were the days when truth was pried out of our hands. Now are the days when we have the luxury of being able to dig it out, keep it, and protect it, and that’s why this day is so important.”

She keeps her gaze on the crowd.

“Not once have I heard Ghor spoken in this hall today. Some of the people who have taken the time to gather here survived the Ghorman Plaza massacre. Some lost their loved ones. Most lost their homes. For these people, the tragedy is not a memory to dust off once a year. It’s the truth that is always with them. They live with it.”

The room is silent, as if everyone is waiting for her to continue.

“But often, truth tends to slip through the cracks. When we forget the truth, we forget the true cost of our freedom. We forget about the impossible price paid by thousands of people. We forget about crimes, and crimes go unpunished. It becomes easier to take our freedom away if we don’t remember that it was once stolen already.”

It seems to Miri that Chancellor Mothma…blinks?

“So we must remember the truth,” the Chancellor says. “It is a moral obligation for anyone who wishes for a free and just galaxy. Today, we have gathered here for this. We will remember all the victims of the crimes committed against Ghorman — and the people of Ghor who gave their lives fighting against the injustice of an impossible scale.”

She pauses for a second.

“But we must also remember everything the Ghor people stand for. Everything they treasure. All the beauty and meaning they have created. Everything the Empire tried to take away from them, but failed. Because their truth is not limited to the losses they have suffered.”

Her voice goes a little quieter.

“We can only rebuild what was ruined and protect it as long as we remember.”

The rest of the evening dissolves into the necessary things: an official statement from Mon on the Ghorman massacre investigation, handshakes, greetings.

“I’ve almost forgotten what it was like,” says Oran.

“A function?” Erskin asks.

At first, he is not sure if Oran has heard this question. The man has developed a habit of sinking into thought in the middle of the conversation.

“No,” Oran answers, then, staring at the spiders in shiny spherical tanks. “Ghorman.” He cranes his head. “I never thought so many things would survive. Life finds a way.”

His gaze returns to Erskin, then. “You were Mon’s aide, weren’t you? Where are you now?”

“The Judicial Department,” Erskin says. “Investigating the Empire’s crimes. Trying to.”

Oran eyes him closely, like he is looking for something in Erskin’s facial features. “You are Chandrilan, right? For some reason, you look Ghor to me.”

“My mother was Ghor,” Erskin answers. “Father was Chandrilan. I grew up on Naboo.” He lets out a quiet chuckle. “Life scattered all over the galaxy.”

And suddenly, inexplicably, he finds himself compelled to tell Dasi Oran more — about the Ghorman part of the family he planned to write to but could never bring himself to do that, about learning that his uncle was at the Palmo Plaza.

“I don’t think I have the right to call myself Ghorman.”

“Guilt.” Oran musters a wry smile. “Never goes away, does it?”

Erskin nods.

“It’s a very Ghorman thing to have,” says Dasi Oran slowly. “I imagine…we all think we haven’t done enough.”

In the passage lit up by hundreds of holograms, Kleya sees the same high-schoolers who helped hand out the spiders a few hours ago.

“Enza Rylanz,” reads the Twi’lek girl. “Thela—”

“Wait,”  a Pantoran with gold clan tattoos all over his face interrupts. “There’s Ezin Arlanz. Do you think?..”

They stare at the picture of a boy their age in silence.

When the valley horn orchestra starts playing, Carro Rylanz leans to Miri and whispers, “I trust you’ve learned the words?”

“My Ghor’s not good enough,” Miri manages.

It is, at best, conversational. There are still words in the Ghorman national anthem that she can’t even pronounce, like “l'ave-glège” or “brôles”, and she’s not sure she has the right to sing it, and—

“It is,” says Rylanz. “And it doesn’t matter.”

At the Senate gate, they don’t say the usual things expected to be said after such an event, things like “I can’t believe we did it,” or “It went well,” or “Great job,” or “Everyone seems happy.”

Instead, Miri hugs Vel.

Then she looks at Kleya, as if asking for permission.

Kleya doesn’t think she has hugged anyone except for Vel — and Luthen, but only once — in her life.

Yet she nods.

“You must talk to Miri, my dear,” says Sul Partagaz over the comm. “We’re losing her. I have tolerated many things, but this is beyond the pale. ”

Now, if you ask Daena Jung, a holo with Chancellor Mothma in which Miri looks presentable and even happy, surrounded by her classmates, doesn’t exactly count as “beyond the pale.” Miri is not doing spice or drinking, is she?

“Appalling,” says Sul. “Absolutely appalling—

These things shouldn’t be taken seriously — the less Sul Partagaz has to do, the more often she is appalled. In fact, this woman is quite determined to be appalled by things. Still, Daena suppresses her irritation as she casts a look at the reception through the glass wall of her new office: the cargo pilots waiting to meet her, the angry department store buyer, H’waa, the Sentient Being Resources manager, who has been on the verge of the mental breakdown for the past week.

“What, exactly?” Daena lowers her voice. “That she met the head of this republic? Or that she did some volunteer work for a Senate event together with her friends?”

Miri never said she would be a volunteer there, not just an attendee, but that’s become a Miri thing lately. Daena doesn’t even try to pry secrets out of her daughter anymore; she has other things to do.

“Her friends are aliens!”

“Nonhumans,” Daena corrects, automatically, although she usually tries to ignore such things — you can’t change Sul, you just have to accept her. “I will call you back later. I have an urgent meeting.”

She takes a deep, shaky breath.

“An urgent meeting”? That’s to put it mildly. Her entire morning consists of urgent meetings, like her morning yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and her morning on any other day. They haven’t been able to find a ship mechanic worth anything on Coruscant, of all places. H’waa is losing hope already.

Add to that the fact that they wouldn’t have needed an in-house mechanic if it weren’t for Father’s idiotic idea to venture into luxury imports, which required them to buy their own freighters to ensure additional safety. Aside from an in-house mechanic, they now need to find a private security company — preferably, with no Hutt clan ties — as the freighter carrying Naboo wine was recently attacked by smugglers.

And there’s a giant gralloc on the other freighter’s hull that no one can take off, so the kriffing thing just keeps staring at the people at the dock with its empty black eyes and, well, chewing on the wires.

“Think big,” Father said.

Now he is happily retired, only coming back from Niamos for family holidays, and she is here. The holo of Miri and Mon Mothma on the holonet is the least of Daena’s problems.

Her comm buzzes with a new message from Lagret.

“I take it Miri has now ventured into extremism.”

Another message.

“In the meantime, please do remind your accountant of my predicament.”

“It wouldn’t have been a predicament if you learned to do your taxes on your own,” Daena types in response. “New Republic forms aren’t that complicated.”

Not to mention that she is not bothering her chief accountant during a national Bith holiday.

Daena grits her teeth and deletes the message.

They can be a lot, she reminds herself. But they are the only family you have.

“That’s one hell of a family holo,” says Vel.

On the holo in question, the four of them pose together: Vel, Kleya, Miri, Rylanz. There’s a bit of Mon in the background, too; Vel can see a piece of the white cape.

She places it on her desk. Briefly, her gaze lingers on Kleya’s arm around Miri’s shoulders.

Real families — those that truly feel like one, which has nothing to do with whether you are biologically related or not — are not unlike that Echo Base mess hall stew. Ingredients that seem the least likely to go together are added to the pot in no particular order. Then it all simmers together for long enough, with a dash of whatever seasonings available. Surprisingly, the result is a thick, hearty soup that returns one to her senses even after a long, shitty day on planet Hoth.

Mon and Vel, cousins who could never be more different — and yet have always cared about the same things.

Vel and Kleya. Vel hated this woman for the first five years of their joint work for the Rebellion, and she is quite convinced Kleya hated her just as much.

Kleya and Luthen. Over the years, Vel has managed, with some effort, to piece the elements of this story together — all the bits of memories that Kleya shared with her reluctantly. It’s not how anyone would have expected a family to form.

Kleya and Vel and Miri. A lonely child of a long-dead ISB supervisor and a woman who has no time for her. Miri doesn’t tell much — Vel has a feeling she doesn’t like to talk about it — but what Vel knows is enough to understand: she knows this girl. She was this girl once, too. Miri showed up on the doorstep of this office to prove something both to her father and herself, in the same way Vel made her choices almost twenty years ago, to prove she was more than anything the Sartha family had in store for her.

Now here they are.

Three hours ago, Miri sent a message that she had gotten back home safely.

It’s almost midnight, and the office feels strangely empty without her; it’s a background feeling Vel notices without thinking much about it.

“About Narkina,” Kleya says.

“I was thinking I’d go there tomorrow.” Vel stretches in her chair. “We have the Fondor now. It’s easier. I’ve written to her already. She wanted to meet as soon as possible. Says the Judicial Department has been ‘wasting her time.’”

As she says this, she notices a flicker of dark amusement in Kleya’s eyes. “So you’ve been corresponding. Good luck to you.”

“I’ll do my best not to shoot her,” says Vel. “Although the temptation is there.”

Kleya walks past all the half-unpacked boxes cluttering the Sartha apartment.

The kitchen is empty. Vel’s cup of cold caf, forgotten on the table — Vel leaves a mess when she has no time, like someone who grew up with servants and then never bothered because most people on Yavin and Hoth didn’t.

Memory number one: Luthen was very particular about that. He liked to keep any space clean and organized — his army past, probably. The safe house was a mess, though, and they never had the time to clean it up properly, which he liked to grumble about.

Memory number two: “It’s a weapons stash, not a womp-rat hole, Kleya. You let all this dust gather here, these thermal detonators will be good for nothing in a month.”

She opens the pantry, moves the Organic Anoat Oats box to the side, and removes the wood panel she modified a little right after moving into this place. All the blasters are there. Vel didn’t take anything.

Kleya takes one.

She recognizes it. Probably took it with her to Lina Soh.

She stares at the blaster for a few seconds and then puts it back.

It is the first time Vel Sartha has been to Narkina-Five, but there is nothing about the place that she finds surprising.

All former prison planets are, in a way, the same. Remote Outer Rim worlds. Mountains, large bodies of water, dusty mesas, islands — the place has to be as hard to navigate as possible. The water is poisoned, the trees dry. The former Imperial prison, grey and decaying, is looming on the horizon: a ghost of a building.

Vel wonders if Meero chose to stay here, consciously. There are enough sunnier Outer Rim worlds with cheaper food, and over a year or two, she could have saved a bit of money doing menial jobs to pay for the passage. Narkina-Five is not a good place to settle on. Yet it seems to Vel that it’s a good place if one wants to lie low for a few years.

“These are all antique,” Kleya says as she stares at the traditional Naboo headcrest, the royal headdress that once belonged to Queen Amidala, and the fragments of an ancient mural. “They should’ve packed it better.”

It’s all the same evidence boxes. Confiscated from the ISB vault.

“Whoa,” Miri says. “That’s some museum-worthy stuff.”

“True.” Kleya doesn’t take her eyes away from the mural pieces, now wrapped in cheap bubble flimsifilm wrap. “I wonder why they didn’t sell it to fund an Empire.”

“So that was your dad’s.”

Kleya nods.

“What was his name?” Miri asks, unexpectedly.

“Does it matter?”

Miri gives her a look full of that slightly playful stubbornness that Kleya has been noticing on the girl’s face more and more often. “Is it a secret?”

Kleya decides to yield; it makes more sense to share a few morsels of information to satisfy Miri’s curiosity than to stay silent. Silence will only beget more questions. “Luthen Rael.”

“What was he like?”

“Dedicated,” Kleya says. “Headstrong. Gave his life for something he’d never see. Dressed quite well and had a good taste in antiques, too.”

Between the pieces of the mural, Kleya sees a small package wrapped in opaque film. She recognizes it for what it is right away: the Nautolan bleeder. She doesn’t show that the item is more important than anything else here, though.

“Was it the ISB?..”

Miri trails off; she doesn’t need to finish the question.

“You could say so,” Kleya answers.

“You know,” says Miri, “I wish my dad were like him. And less like, um, my dad.”

You have no idea, Kleya Marki wants to say.

“But you grew up into the person you are,” she says. “No one can take it away from you.”

“No one,” Miri repeats, somehow hesitant.

“No one,” Kleya says. “Trust me.”

“Either she is lying,” says Vel, “or she’s insane. Maybe both. Can’t think of anyone who can lie for five hours straight like she does.”

The day feels wasted. Vel comes back to the office at night, and she is actually very close to stabbing something. Or shooting someone.

Kleya taps on the datapad screen to pause the recording.

“They all lie. That’s the ISB way. She’ll twist and warp everything that happens until it suits the narrative that’ll make her eligible for rehabilitation. You will need to come back again. Eventually, she’ll get tangled up in her lies, and we can get what we need.”

“All right.” Vel’s gaze flickers to Miri’s empty desk. “That Lonni Jung she keeps bringing up. Do you think he’s…”

“I don’t know,” Kleya says, perhaps too quickly. “And I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell Miri until we have any evidence.”

“Maybe not,” Vel agrees, after a moment of contemplation. “Let’s go home.”

“Miri?”

“Yeah.” Daena’s daughter puts away a holobook she has been reading.

“I’ll have to go to Corellia for a week,” says Daena.

With any luck, she’ll be done in three days, but it’s best to factor in additional time when you are dealing with Corellian authorities. The good thing is, the Naboo wine cargo has finally been found. The bad thing? It was found on Corellia.

“All right.” Miri stretches out on the living room couch and returns to her holobook.

“You can stay with Madam Partagaz or you can stay with Lagret.”

“Ugh.”

“You can choose.”

“It’s not a choice, Mom.”

“You have to stay with someone,” Daena says.

“I can take care of myself. We have a household droid, and I can cook and do my laundry.”

“It’s not safe.”

“We have a security system in our building,” Miri points out.

“Miri,” Daena says. “I need you to stay with someone.”

“Fine,” Miri says, her voice now strangely innocent. Then there’s firmness Daena doesn’t think she’s noticed before. “I’d love to talk to Madam Partagaz about Chandrila. And I’m really looking forward to discussing politics with Captain Lagret. It’s so cool to exchange opinions! Maybe we can discuss this book I’m reading.”

“I see,” Daena answers. “I see. What book?”

Miri turns the datapad screen to her.

“Honor Lost on Lasan: Serving the Empire, Fighting for the Alliance,” the title reads.

“The guy who wrote it was ISB,” Miri says, in the same innocent voice. “He’s coming to Coruscant next week, there’ll be a meet and greet, and I’m preparing my questions. You think Lagret can help me? Or maybe he can go with me?”

Daena Jung suppresses a sigh.

There are only so many conversations with Captain Lagret on Miri’s “extremist leanings” that she can handle.

“Actually,” she says, “you can stay here. Make sure you water the plants and feed the tookas.”

“You shared this with Rylanz,” Kleya snaps.

“Listen, if we’re making all those promises and doing all this work, we might as well deliver at least some results,” says Erskin on the comm. “Plus, he knows everything about Ghorman. He might help spot inaccuracies in her statements—”

“Be honest. You were afraid to disappoint him.”

“We are keeping him updated on the investigation,” says Erskin. “He has the right to know.”

“You’ve created this problem,” Kleya hisses as she stands in the hallway, watching Carro Rylanz argue with Vel. “You’ll come here and solve this. Understood?”

“There is no problem,” says Erskin, calmly. “And I don’t work for you anymore. You and Vel were quite upset that the department didn’t listen to Rylanz enough. And when I ask you to listen to him for once, what do you do?”

Kleya bites back a curse and turns off the comm.

There is no point in listening to Carro Rylanz now — because she knows what he will say.

He will say the same thing she would.

“It was in the file I shared with him! There was a man named Syril Karn, an ISB plant. A member of the Front met with his mother three years ago, posing as a journalist, and the mother mentioned that Karn knew a woman in the ISB. It’s this woman!”

Miri has never seen Carro Rylanz raise his voice.

Neither has Vel, it would seem.

“Um,” Miri says, “hello?”

Nobody notices her, so she quietly slips to her desk and throws her backpack on the chair. It might make more sense to go get caf and wait for everyone to calm down, she decides.

“It’s this woman!” Rylanz repeats. “Dedra Meero! She killed hundreds on Ghorman. Not that dead supervisor Jung that she keeps bringing up — she. And you are just letting her lie to your face—”

That dead Supervisor Jung.

Supervisor Jung.

Supervisor Jung.

The floor Miri is standing on suddenly seems much less solid than it was a second ago; it’s as if everything is clouded in a grey fog.

“Lower your voice,” Kleya says, coldly. “Drink some water. Do you think we don’t know?”

She moves a glass toward Rylanz; he ignores it.

“Then you’re not doing the job you promised to do. You will waste time listening to her. She will keep fooling you until—” Rylanz’s hand gives a shake. “You are asking the wrong questions, over and over!”

“The right questions will scare her off,” Vel says. “You know that there’s no evidence, and the only way we could get her to admit anything would be to keep talking to her and wait.”

“You have to interrogate her. I don’t care how.”

“Which will get us sent to prison.” Vel raises her voice just slightly. “It’s a different time now.”

For an excruciatingly long second, Rylanz goes quiet.

“Sometimes I don’t think this much has changed,” he says, then. “There was no justice, and there is still no justice. We have spent years fighting to achieve it. We did most of the work on our own, investigating the massacre of our people. No one wants to do anything.”

He gets up from the visitor’s chair.

“Good day.”

They spend the rest of the evening in a tense silence, until Vel says she is going to get sandwiches at Chandi’s.

Miri watches the door until Vel’s figure disappears out of sight.

Then she asks, “Is it true?”

“What, exactly?” Kleya clarifies.

“You know what I mean,” Miri says. “Supervisor Jung. Did he really— Is he—”

“No. It wasn’t him. She only said it because he is dead, and the ISB destroyed all Ghorman documents years ago. We know it’s her.”

Miri squints. “How do you know?”

Kleya weighs her words carefully. “Because I know. My father had ISB sources. Supervisor Jung had nothing to do with the Ghorman massacre.”

“Okay,” Miri says, but she doesn’t sound too convinced.

She keeps thinking about this when she comes back home.

When she has her dinner: blue noodles and mushrooms.

When she puts tooka food in those small feeders Mom bought last week.

When she charges LO-LA70, who pats her on the shoulder with a paw, in an attempt to comfort her.

When she does her homework.

Falling asleep proves to be impossibly hard. Miri spends an hour on her datapad, trying to distract herself with all sorts of stupid holovids, but then finds herself in the living room, staring at the holos neatly arranged on the shelf.

The man is there. Delicate features that Miri inherited from him. Retreating smile. Blue eyes. Red hair. She wishes, more and more often, that she would look like Mom. Mom is Mom, but at least she never worked for the ISB.

Miri stares into the man's eyes.

In her memories, Dad's face is always blurry, slightly out of focus. His absence has always been more prominent in her life than his presence.

She wonders just how much she doesn’t know about him — and might never find out.

Maybe that Dedra Meero, whoever she was, wasn’t lying. Why was Kleya so sure? There could have been multiple people on the same case.

What if Kleya didn’t want you to find this out?

Miri considers the thought. Most of the time, Kleya makes a point of treating her like an adult — but there’s also something in Kleya’s tone or the way Kleya looks at Miri or the way Kleya checks occasionally whether Miri has arrived home safely or orders her hovertaxis or gives her allowance or doesn’t allow her to buy alcohol with that money—

She thinks she is protecting you. Even if Dad is responsible for Ghorman, she doesn’t want you to know it.

Miri cuts off that line of thought and places Dad’s holo back on the shelf.

It takes her another hour of staring at the ceiling at night, alone in an empty apartment, to come up with a decision.

Kleya walks into the kitchen, barefoot, in Vel’s old battered Rebel Alliance t-shirt. She treads as quietly as she is capable of.

She moves the box of her breakfast oats to the side and reaches for the plank.

Memory number one: from the crowd, she watches Luthen, unconscious, being dragged into a white ISB hovervan.

Memory number two: without the wig, on the hospital bed, Luthen looks so much older. Kleya watches his face. She doesn’t want to leave him there like that. In another universe, she would have saved him, she would have managed to drag him away— There’s no time. She leans to kiss him on the forehead — a farewell, an apology that she can’t do any better; she owes him this much. Then his breathing stops.

It’s not hard to make certain decisions.

In fact, they feel long overdue.

“Be resourceful,” Kleya Marki would often tell her.

Miri doesn’t know if reading Vel’s holomails to find out Dedra Meero’s address counts as that — if she is honest, she feels terrible when she does it.

That’s the only way to find out the truth, she reminds herself, it seems nobody is keen on telling her anything. She is surrounded by secrets and locked doors. Dad’s speeder garage. Two rooms at the Committee's office — those that ostensibly belonged to Kleya and her father. Boxes of evidence. Conversations.

Dedra Meero, it turns out, lives on Narkina-Five. The name rings a bell, for a reason Miri doesn’t understand at first. Then she realizes: it’s the Abrion sector, one of the sectors that Dad oversaw. A small moon where they built an Imperial prison.

Miri spends the entire evening looking up ways to get to Narkina on the holonet. There are flights from Eastport next week — but it means four changes on different planets, and it seems expensive. She’ll need some money left for food and transport on Narkina, even if she comes back the same day. There’s no way she can afford it all without using Mom’s account.

On the other hand…

“Be resourceful,” Miri reminds herself.

And just like that, she writes to that lady who brought the pigeons from Sern Prime and back, wondering if she knows anyone who could take one passenger to Narkina. If that’s not a good reason to spend whatever allowance Miri’s set aside, then what is?

Kleya plans for Benduday night.

She doesn’t have work the next day, and it’s easy to keep Vel off guard. She can suggest a date night at the Corellian restaurant a level below and pretend to be relaxed, for once.

Then she will go to Narkina and find Dedra Meero.

It shouldn’t be hard to interrogate her. You don’t need elaborate ISB techniques and trained psychiatrists for that. And if Meero refuses to talk, Kleya can make it all look like a suicide. No one will ever find out.

“Again?” asks Seti. “You can’t just lie to everyone every time you need to—”

Rawacca roars in agreement.

Miri gestures for them to keep their voices down, casting a glance at the school’s corridor.

“Look,” she says. “It’s really important. I have to go.”

“Where?” Seti asks.

Miri switches to a whisper. “Promise to not tell anyone?”

The Eye Roll Voice. “When have we ever told anyone?”

“To Narkina-Five,” Miri says.

Seti’s brows rise. “Wait, what? The prison planet?”

“The prison planet. I need to go there. It’s about Dad. Please pretend I’m super sick.”

Rawbacca takes her eyes away. Seti gives a nod, if a reluctant one.

“Csolcir,” Vel announces, excited as if she were Miri’s age. “The greasiest food in this galaxy. Remember when Wedge Antilles made it?”

The dish the waiter places on their table smells of cheese, butter, and more butter.

“On Hoth?” Kleya doesn’t suppress a smile. “It was quite terrible. Wasted supplies.”

Vel takes a knife and starts cutting the cheese crust. “It’s my favorite terrible food now. Might as well wash it down with a squig. Come on, let me take care of you—”

And Kleya wonders if she is the worst person in this galaxy, if she is betraying Vel’s trust, but silences that thought.

If there’s anything life taught her, it’s that sometimes such things are a necessity.

She reminds herself of Luthen — and of Ghorman, and Carro Rylanz’s words.

Several holovids say there’s an old, rusty shuttle going from Kina, the capital. It stops near the fishing village where Dedra Meero lives. From there, Miri chooses to walk. The stones crunch under her boots, and she almost falls as she climbs down the mesa, but she keeps on walking.

It feels strange, climbing into the Fondor after all those years. The fact this ship has remained the same — a few specks of rust here and there, but it can be fixed. The fact it’s parked on the same landing spot Luthen always parked it.

Kleya writes a message to Vel: “Gone off-planet, will be back tonight.” Then she turns off the comm for good. It’s best to use a burner one for the trip.

The flight itself is unremarkable.

Kleya studies the blaster in her hands.

Miri walks down the road and past rows of tiny, greyish-brown huts.

Dedra Meero’s hut is somewhat further away, situated as if at a distance. It looks decrepit — faded wooden roof, sunken walls, a crack running up one of them — but clean. No garbage heaps in the yard. Thoroughly swept doorstep.

Miri knocks on the door.

If the documents Miri found are right, the woman who opens should be Vel’s age. Yet she looks much older: white strands in her blonde hair, a wrinkled face, skin tinged grey. Her posture is ramrod straight, hands folded behind her back; it reminds Miri of Lagret and those old holos of Dad in the living room. The woman eyes Miri with guarded contempt.

“Are you Dedra Meero?” Miri asks.

Kleya lands the Fondor in a small, half-dried-up forest right behind the mesa that separates Meero’s village from what’s marked on the map as a shuttle station.

From there, she walks.

Lonni Jung’s daughter stares at Dedra, her eyes glassy, and Dedra would be lying if she said she doesn’t find some odd satisfaction in this sight. It’s a satisfaction of a grim sort: Jung has been dead for a decade, she had never managed to catch him when he was alive, and it is, by and large, his fault that her life has come to this. Were it not for him, she wouldn’t have spent six years rotting in prison.

Were it not for him, maybe, they would have still had the Empire.

There would have been order. Not…whatever this is.

So when she tells what she tells to Miri Jung, it feels like the punishment Jung deserved.

“I don’t know much about his dealings with Partagaz or Ghorman,” Dedra explains. “But what I know for sure is that he was a rebel spy. Served him right, in the end. He was shot like a dog by his own handler, Luthen Rael.”

She can’t resist a smile.

It’s not unlike a speeder crash.

Before the screams and the sirens and the buzz of rescue droids, time stands still.

At this moment, an understanding dawns on Miri Jung, cold and clear and horrifying, that her life has just been irrevocably changed. 

Chapter Text

Kleya freezes.

This can’t be happening, she thinks. This can’t be.

Yet, as is often the case with such things, it is happening.

A painfully familiar figure: thin, lanky, short red hair.

Kleya waits, watching her from behind a crooked tree near one of the huts. There is a part of her that wants to run to Miri, to take her away from here, that part of Kleya Marki already knows what happened. There is also another part — a more familiar one. Whatever happened in Meero’s house, it’s abundantly clear to Kleya that it’s not a good idea to make her presence known just yet, not when Meero can see her.

Jedha, Kyber, Erso, Kleya repeats in her mind. These words have lost their meaning over the years and turned into a mantra she repeats when she needs to think clearly.

Miri stills.

Then she starts sobbing.

“Miri.”

Her mind doesn’t quite register what happens next. It’s fragmented, like the world around her is no longer a calm world but fragments of a world, shards of reality. Kleya’s voice, calm, collected, commanding, Kleya pulling her by the wrist, Kleya leading her somewhere.

It’s as if Kleya appears out of nowhere, like in a nightmare.

It’s as if this is all a nightmare.

“I’ll take you home,” Kleya says. “Let’s go. Let’s go.”

For a split second, Miri wants to obey — like if she follows Kleya, it will somehow, magically, erase this conversation with Dedra Meero from her memory, purge that fresh knowledge from her mind, reverse everything—

No.

Miri tries to free her wrist from Kleya’s grip. “Don’t touch me,” she only says. “Just don’t.”

“Don’t touch me.”

Kleya barely recognizes this voice. It’s not the Miri she knows. This girl sounds like she has inexplicably grown a decade older, overnight — or perhaps even in a matter of an hour.

(It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Kleya’s childhood was over the second she saw a stormtrooper squad in her village — but it was her, it was back then. Forced to grow up, later forced to become a soldier, even though she believed at the time that she had a choice. But this was never something she wanted for Miri.)

The very fact Miri Jung is here, the very fact it’s all come to this means that Kleya Marki has failed in every way possible.

“Did you know?” Miri asks, coldly, quietly, which is an odd contrast to her tear-streaked face and shaking hands.

Kleya doesn’t need any clarification. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Why didn’t you—” Miri breaks off, realizing, it seems, just what she is about to ask.

“Let’s get to the ship,” says Kleya, levelly. “This is not the best place to talk about this. I’ll explain everything once we’re on the way home.”

Miri studies her face with a mix of fear, disappointment and disgust, and it makes something in Kleya’s chest ache. Then Miri squares her shoulders and raises her head. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I… I hate you. You’re just like them. If you try to touch me, I’ll scream.”

And it’s not that Kleya Marki doesn’t know any quiet and efficient ways to stuff a sixteen-year-old inside a spaceship, even though said sixteen-year-old has threatened to scream (which is not much of a threat in any case). It’s what she sees in Miri’s eyes. It’s the understanding that nothing she could say or do could make it better.

She wonders what Luthen would have done, and the answer is simple. In her mind, it is said in Luthen’s voice, raspy and irritated.

“For Maker’s sake, let her be an adult for once. She got here somehow. She might as well get home on her own.”

So Kleya asks, “Do you have a ticket back?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Do you or don’t you?” Kleya clarifies.

“I do,” says Miri. “Bye. Delete my comm code and everything else.”

Fact number one: shuttles on Coruscant go every fifteen minutes — or every half an hour, if it’s not a popular destination. At worst, they go every hour. The only time Miri had to take an hourly shuttle in her life was when she went to Bash Four together with Seti and Rawacca, to check out the abandoned TIE fighter hangar where everyone was taking holos.

Fact number two: the last shuttle to Kina City that stops by the station named Karavaso Fishing Village left exactly two minutes ago.

Fact number three: you should never make decisions on the verge of a panic attack.

(“No, Miri,” Dad says, his voice calm and firm. “You can’t cry and decide what we want to do at the same time.” She is four years old. That big black spider at the wildlife garden was so ugly and scary, and now she can’t decide if she wants to get away from it or that meltie she asked Dad for a few minutes ago or something else. She just keeps sobbing, and she can’t stop. Dad sighs. “It’s all right,” he tells her. Now there is softness in the way he talks to her. He scoops her up and kisses her on the forehead. “It’s all right,” he repeats. “You’re safe. Let’s get you someplace with no spiders, shall we?”)

It’s a new, unfamiliar memory. Miri doesn’t remember it ever resurfacing in her mind before.

Anyway. It’s not like someone is going to come and carry her home in any case. She wipes her face, takes a steadying breath — her hands are shaking, but that’s a minor detail — and tries to consider her options.

The man who agreed to bring her to Coruscant is leaving in two hours. He told her not to be late; he has cargo to deliver.

The next shuttle only stops by the Karawaso Fishing Village station at five in the morning, as the transport schedule app on her datapad tells her, which means that she will have to spend the night here.

The datapad battery is at exactly nine percent.

A quick search through Miri’s backpack shows that instead of a power bank, she shoved a camcorder in one of the pockets. That’s what happens when you think too much about fascists while packing for a trip.

Miri gives another look at the narrow, dusty road leading to Karawaso.

She has some credits left. Maybe she can find someone willing to drive her to Kina City.

When Vel wakes up, there is a cold, uneasy feeling spreading inside her chest. It’s there even before she opens her eyes and her mind registers that the other half of the bed, Kleya’s half, is empty.

It’s the little things. No muttering, for instance — Kleya still talks and thrashes and turns in her sleep all the time. Suspicious calm.

“Kleya?” Vel calls.

No answer.

She checks her comm, only to see one message: “Gone off-planet. Will be back by tonight.”

The second Vel reads it, she knows what it must mean. She gets up from bed and heads straight to the kitchen, knowing already that what she will see will only confirm her suspicion.

She is right. The pantry doors are open, the package of Anoat oats and the plank moved to the side.

Vel doesn’t need to count the blasters in the weapons stash to realize at least one of them must be missing. She also doesn’t need an investigation to know where exactly Kleya went.

“I need a ship.”

Vel doesn’t say “good morning” or “how are you” or “look, Mon, I’m sorry for disturbing you this early” — and this is how Mon Mothma understands it must be serious. “Kleya took the Fondor.” Vel’s voice is edged with tension. “Then she went to — kriffing — Narkina to kill Dedra Meero.”

“Dedra…who?” Mon will admit her memory is not at its best at seven in the morning.

“Dedra Meero, Mon. Ghorman. Luthen’s capture. That Dedra Meero. She’s on Narkina-Five.”

The realization slams into her like a Mon Calamari corvette going full speed.

“I need a ship,” Vel repeats. “Now.”

“No shuttle,” says an elderly Keridian fisherman; before Miri approached him, he seemed quite busy hauling a net of silvery, worm-like fish into his house. The net looks like it weighs more than Miri herself. “Naye today. Tomorrow. No speeder here in Karavaso. Old Prewo got a speeder, went to Kina. Will be back tomorrow too. Can take ye.”

“I see,” Miri mutters as she surveys the village street. “Thank you, sir. And… um, is there a place where I could buy something to eat? Or rent a room?”

The fisherman scratches his head with his palm. “Shop’s closed. Opens tomorrow. Bippo’s bar closed too.” He narrows his eyes, giving Miri a look in which she reads disapproval. “Ye too young for bars, haye?”

Miri shrugs. If anything, in a situation like this, it’s best to feign confidence.

(It doesn’t matter who taught her that.)

The man throws another glance at Miri, like he has an idea. “Freedi!”

“What?”

At first, Miri only hears the voice — but then another Keridian, black-haired and balding, comes out of the house.

“‘Dis girl here came to talk to Crazy Dedra,” says the fisherman. “All the way from Curasant she did. Missed her shuttle. Gotta go home. Nowhere to sleep.”

The man he called Freedi squints. “Crazy Dedra, haye? From Curasant, Dewi? Know better she should.”

“Not the point, Freedi,” says Dewi, the fisherman. “She stays with us, haye? In the shed? We give her ye blanket?”

Freedi’s response is a grunt; at first, Miri can’t tell if it’s an affirmative or a negative answer. Then he asks, “Ye eat squigglie soup, crazy Curasant girl?”

Miri considers the offer. She supposes she doesn’t have much of a choice anyway — and so she asks, in the same confident, business-like voice, “How much?”

Dewi the fisherman snorts. “Nothing. Ye need dis money to go home, Curasant girl. We’re having squigglie soup anyway. Ye have yer comm? We got dis new holonet thingy. Ye call yer Curasant parents.”

Some part of Miri thinks that in her situation, any soup would be good — even if she has no idea what squigglies are. It’s probably the fish this man is carrying in his net. It should be fine. If Miri is honest, she wouldn’t mind some fish soup right now—

How can you be sure you can trust them? A small voice in her head asks.

How can you be sure you can trust anyone?

“This is very generous, but no, thank you,” Miri says. “I really am in a rush.”

“A rain’s gonna fall,” says Dewi. “Better stay inside. Nasty rain.”

“I’ll manage, thank you.”

“A’right.” Freedi gives another grunt. “Jus’ don’t go anywhere near the berth, haye?”

“Don’t get near the water,” Dewi corrects. “Many thingies there. Not only the squigglies. And see the cliff? Don’t climb up that cliff, haye?”

“Don’t think she can climb,” says Freedi.

“Thank you,” Miri says, without really meaning it, because she doesn’t want to listen to all this any longer.

Dedra taps her fingers against the surface of the tiny, chipped table she had fashioned a few years ago out of whatever pieces of wood she found. The image of the woman who led Miri Jung away is still fresh in her mind. Dedra only saw a glimpse, but it was enough to recognize the face: Kleya Marki.

She is not surprised. Squigglies swim with squigglies, as people say here. Rebel scum, similarly, sticks to rebel scum. She would be lying if she said she hadn’t anticipated something like this — she had, since she looked up the Senate official who paid her a visit.

Vel Sartha, Mon Mothma’s cousin. Dedra found mostly old holos. A young red-haired woman with a perpetually bored expression, posing at Coruscanti and Chandrilan functions — kriff, Dedra has seen people serving life on Narkina that looked happier. The only recent hologram showed Sartha at the Ghorman remembrance day, much less put-together — disheveled hair, a harried expression — but the look of eternal suffering was gone. She seemed…happy. Dedra found that to be the most disgusting part.

Kleya Marki was beside Sartha, in a jacket that looked perhaps too familiar to anyone who had to shuffle through hundreds of holos of Luthen Rael once.

Dedra takes a steadying breath. It is perhaps worth examining her situation from a distance: the risks, the opportunities.

The risks, first. Another jail sentence doesn’t seem plausible. There are no grounds for pressing charges against her. Sartha, in all likelihood, knows this. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come to interview Dedra. No one in the New Republic would have cared about speaking to Imperials if it didn’t present them with an opportunity to trump up more political charges. The public craves justice these days. Sartha came here to pull more information out of Dedra, and then she failed.

Much worse is the fact that Kleya Marki knows all about this.

Even worse, Kleya Marki knows where Dedra lives. Dedra doesn’t imagine a woman like her would care about fair trials, the sole purpose of which is to soothe the feelings of the Ghor.

Thank the Stars that the Jung girl showed up. At least that will keep Marki busy for some time.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to leave tonight. A storm is brewing. Dedra has learned to tell it by the color of the sky.

The Fondor waits for Kleya by the forest, like nothing has happened.

The hatch rises; she climbs inside — and she can’t shake off the feeling that she is not really alone here, as if she might hear Luthen’s impatient voice at any second: “Get in already. No need to waste time on this planet unless you’re not planning to shoot Meero.”

Kleya shakes off this feeling.

As she lowers herself into the pilot’s chair, she stills.

“I don’t like it.”

Kleya is not sure whether she is just talking to herself — or this is meant for Luthen, or rather, the not-Luthen in her head.

“Oh, please,” says not-Luthen. “She’s not a child, is she? Sixteen is too old to be this foolish.”

“She is a child,” Kleya corrects him in her mind. “And I think she’s missed her transport. It’s too late for shuttles in this area.”

Not-Luthen scoffs. “Well, she has made herself perfectly clear. She doesn’t want your help or anything to do with you. There are choices, and there are consequences, Kleya. You knew it at her age.”

“Those were different times.”

“Maybe. But she can only afford to be foolish because you and I and her father — whom, need I remind you, she had despised until today — made this possible.”

“This,” Kleya clarifies. “What, exactly?”

“A world that doesn’t punish such foolishness like it used to. Come to think of it, when there’s no price to pay for anything—”

“Shut up,” Kleya says; only after the words leave her mouth does she realize she has said them out loud.

The voice in her head might sound like Luthen, but she doesn’t believe it — doesn’t want to.

“I’m only afraid of what I’m doing to you,” the real Luthen said, years ago, back on Naboo, minutes before he let her blow up a bridge. Kleya has thought about the words he said more than once.

It’s only now that she understands what he may have really meant.

Drops of water are slowly running down the outer side of the transparisteel viewport.

Kleya gets up from the pilot’s chair and puts on her cape.

Jedha, Kyber, Erso.

Miri tugs the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and curses under her breath. Those holonet forecasts weren’t too reliable, it turns out: no one mentioned a word about any rain in Kina City.

Karawaso is not Kina City. You just didn’t bother to check the weather forecast for this quadrant because you’re stupid.

She sits for a few minutes under the roof of a place named Bippo’s bar, now closed, until some Keridian women in the window of the opposite house start throwing weird looks at her.

Another option, Miri thinks as she gets up, would be to get back to the station: there was a rusty metal canopy, which is not ideal, but still suitable.

The problem is, you have no idea how to get there now that you don’t have a comm with a map and a geolocation app. You’re stupid, you’re useless, you can’t do anything, and you don’t know anything, and actually, it’s the only reason you’re here, you’re stupid, and—

Dad would be so ashamed of you.

Yeah, he would be. Really, really ashamed.

It’s a thought that engulfs all the other thoughts, slowly, little by little, until there is nothing left. The reality surrounding Miri seems more like background noise: the thunder, the rain lashing on the narrow, grey stone-paved Karawaso streets, the cold air.

She doesn’t think too much about where she is going when she leaves Bippo’s bar.

“I’m looking for my daughter. Sixteen years old, human. Red hair. Thin. Have you seen anyone like that recently?”

Kleya wipes the water off her face and tousles back strands of her rain-soaked hair. The elderly Keridian before her grunts, and for a moment, she is absolutely ready to hear him say he has no idea what she is talking about and slam the door of his hut before her. At least that’s what the previous five people she asked about Miri did.

Then the Keridian shouts, “Dewi! Come over here, haye?”

There’s nothing by the berth, unsurprisingly. Miri allows herself to linger for a few more minutes there, just to prove that she is right, and in those few minutes, nothing happens, either.

Which is something she should have prepared herself for. Most things, as far as she is concerned now, are the exact opposite of what you are told they are.

It’s those you consider friends who end up lying to you for months.

It’s those places you were told not to come anywhere near that turn out to be just boring, wet, slippery expanses of sand and rubble.

It’s—

Miri cuts off that line of thought. If she thinks about Dad one more time, it feels, something inside her, in her head, in her chest, might implode. The storm flashes right over her head; Miri raises her eyes — strangely, it feels important.

“You can’t scare me,” Miri mutters.

No point in staying by the berth any longer, she figures; there is nowhere to sit down or hide from the rain, and she spots some waves rising.

At least there’s a big old tree growing on that cliff the fishermen mentioned.

“She dinnae go to the water, did she, Freedi?”

The Keridian by the name Freedi Pamular scratches his head. “No idea. Kids, y’know. Don’t see anything like her—”

His brother Dewi is holding a weapon that looks like an oversized fishing harpoon.

“Can I have one too?” Kleya asks as she throws a quick look at the surroundings: the berth and the empty beach at a walking distance, the cliff.

Whatever it is that the Pamular brothers seem so concerned about, she wouldn’t want to face it unarmed.

Jedha-Kyber-Erso. Focus on the goal, set emotions aside.

She hears scepticism in Dewi Pamular’s voice. “Sure ye know how to handle dis?”

There are certain things one can and can’t assign to certain species. Many Pantorans, from Kleya’s observations, are still loyal to the Empire. She has heard of just as many Keridians working for the Rebellion, though.

“We had similar ones on Yavin,” she says. “In the Alliance.”

Dewi reacts to that with a grunt, in which Kleya hears a trace of approval. “A’right. Gimme a second here—”

Kleya squints.

At first, she thinks that a small dot approaching the cliff under the pouring rain must be something else — an animal?

Then the dot moves, and she realizes that it looks vaguely…human?

“We have no time,” Kleya says. “She’s there.”

It’s not as easy to get to the cliff as it seemed at first, but it doesn’t look unmanageable: it’s only separated by rocks and backwaters that appear shallow at first glance. Or maybe it’s some part of Miri that is determined to think they are shallow. Oddly, this all feels important and real, in a way nothing else around her does.

“C’mon,” Miri tells herself.

The first rock is not hard. She steps on it, careful not to lose her balance. There are only five rocks left, and the water running between them is just…water. It’s not lava. There’s nothing to be scared of. She is not on Mustafar or something, is she?

The second rock is just as easy.

The third rock is a larger one, and its surface looks chipped, like it had fallen once — or maybe not once — from a significant height. Still, Miri decides to try. At first, she thinks she manages to regain her balance quite well when she jumps.

A moment later, her right leg slips.

The water is so cold it stings, and she is sure the sharp edges of the stones will leave holes in her jacket, and suddenly, this is all that matters — no big deal, just ruined clothes, she should get up, right now, and find those fishermen before she gets too cold, she should—

Her ankle hurts.

There is something slippery brushing against her skin.

“A suck-lamprey,” says Dewi.

“A big bastard, haye?” agrees Freedi as he takes a step back and angles the harpoon. The water splashes into their faces. “These thingies are fast. Gotta get them in the head—”

There are moments when everything boils down to one task — and the rest ceases to matter.

Jedha. Kyber. Erso.

Miri.

When Kleya sees Miri Jung grabbing one of the grey stones and screaming as something tries to drag her down in the water by the leg, it’s one of such moments.

At one point, Miri is sure that this thing, whatever it is — a fish? A squigglie? — will tear off her leg because it’s pulling so hard. She wants to grab a stone to hit it in the head, but sees nothing she could lift; a moment later, it dawns on her that she will die just like this, here, and no one will even notice.

Then she hears a snap.

The fish’s entire massive body gives a jolt.

“Move!”

“I’ll get ‘em, haye?”

“The head! Or yer daughter won’t have naye leg!”

The voices are familiar, one of them painfully so. The fish sinks its teeth into Miri’s ankle once again and—

Miri wants to scream from pain, but she can’t, like something is blocking her throat. She feels her grip on the stone grow weak, and she is too scared to look at anything but the grey stones before her.

There is a cracking sound. And another one.

“‘S all right, Curasant girl,” says one of the fishermen. “The thingie’s dead, ye’ve got yer leg, Freedi will take the thingie off—”

“Miri.” Now it’s Kleya’s voice. “Miri, look at me. It’s all right. You are safe. I’m with you. I need you to look at me while Freedi is helping you. I need you to look at me, Miri.”

Reluctantly, Miri raises her eyes.

“That’s a deep bite, haye?” Freedi clucks his tongue. “Miri, don’t look. It’ll be like new in a month or so, I’m telling ye—”

Miri turns her head away, doing her best to stare at the wall of the Pamular brothers’ hut.

Dewi disinfects the round wound left by the suck-lamprey. The medkit Kleya had assembled for the Fondor several weeks ago lies on the floor, ravaged. The dead lamprey was dragged to the shed and is now in a bucket Miri’s size, waiting to be gutted and cooked. Freedi Pamular told Kleya that fish is considered a delicacy here on Narkina-Five.

“Miri, sit still,” Kleya repeats. “I have a hypo.”

Miri doesn’t say a word. She hasn’t talked to Kleya since the rescue from the river, but Kleya decides to write that off on the overall shock. She gives Miri’s ankle another scrutinizing look before she finally chooses the best place for the injection.

“Looks like you’ve sprained your ankle too,” Kleya says. “I’ll make a bandage.”

When the hypo presses against the skin, she hears Miri squeak in pain: not really a sixteen-year-old girl now, but a scared toddler. Then Miri steadies her voice and says, focusing her gaze on the Pamular brothers, “I’m sorry.”

“‘S all right,” says Dewi as he throws Miri a thick blanket made of wool belonging to an animal unknown to Kleya. “Ye'll eat some squigglie soup, ye'll get some sleep, ye'll go home, ye'll be all right.”

“Thank you,” answers Miri. “Really. But I’m not hungry.”

It seems she is purposefully ignoring Kleya. Kleya takes a bacta batch and an elastic band out of the medkit.

“Don’t care,” Dewi scoffs. “Gotta eat, Curasant girl. All things have to eat.”

“That lamprey tried to eat you,” Freedi adds with a raspy laugh. “Now we eat the kriffer—”

“Okay.” Miri’s voice sounds hesitant. “I’d be… grateful for some squigglie soup. Not, um, sure I can eat the, um, lamprey that, um, wanted to eat me—”

“Counts as revenge here on Narkina,” Freedi says. “Eat ‘em before they eat you.”

Miri appears to seriously consider this. “I could try a little bit,” she answers, then, with a certain degree of finality.

Dewi cackles. “That’s the spirit!”

Just how many things can you accumulate in a place that disgusts you so much, Dedra Meero wonders as she stares at all of her possessions, laid out on the floor of the abandoned hut she moved into a few years ago.

There is little to sell, and nothing of sentimental value. Chipped bowls. Clothes made of thick rat-sheep wool. The jacket is fine, actually — at least it’s warm.

Dedra counts all the credits she has managed to save by going to Karawaso and selling smoked fish to travelers and smugglers. Not much, but it should be enough to get to a neutral world and find lodgings for the first week.

As she puts the money in a grey, handmade, worn-out pouch she wouldn’t have touched in her previous life, she wonders how her life has come to this but shelves the thought.

The point is to live on. At least it will spite people like Kleya Marki.

If anything, spite is one of the most reliable things in her life. She’s been fueled by it for two decades already, with little breaks that only proved how wrong she was to believe there could be anything but spite.

They eat the soup — spicy, with a rich broth and a sweet-sour tang that must have come from the pieces of pickled fruit Kleya sees floating on the surface — from small clay bowls, sitting on the floor. The lamprey meat is then fried; Dewi chops up a bunch of herbs and sprinkles them over it. As Kleya raises her eyes from the food, Miri pretends to be busy searching for some treasure hidden between the pieces of fried lamprey on her plate.

After the dinner, Miri tries to revive her comm, predictably to no avail: the thing is thoroughly soaked through. It appears that the only thing from her backpack that has remained intact after the fall is a camcorder: a detail that makes no sense to Kleya, but well, that’s teenagers for you. It also appears Miri is determined not to use anything Kleya can offer to her anymore.

It’s not that Kleya’s gadgets would help much, though: judging by what she sees in the window, the rain is now pounding the streets with unprecedented ferocity, and the wind knocks down a cantina sign. Dewi Pamular gives the holoprojector a shake, curses quietly — “no signal” — and then turns on some holovid about fishing.

“That dumbass again,” Freedi grunts. “Can’t gut a kriffing crawfish. Couldn’t ye have saved anything better?”

“Can’t gut naye clawfish, can make holothingies,” counters Dewi. “Stop complaining, or make yer own holothingie. About squigglies. Bet no one’d give a shak.”

“Actually,” Miri chimes in from her blanket cocoon, “you can make your own holos. I think many people would watch that lamprey. I can teach you—”

As Kleya watches this girl — still pale and tired, but laughing — explain to the Pamular brothers how to film a squigglie bucket and make an overview of their fishing equipment using her camcorder, there is a sense of certain familiarity that’s hard to place.

Curiosity is a thing that never leaves you, if you truly have it.

(It was a holobook named “Fractal Radio Units and How to Build Them,” bought with her pocket money when she was Miri’s age, or maybe even younger. She would read it in between tending to Luthen’s injuries. It was a weird, almost physical need to occupy her mind with something, just something, that had nothing to do with whether Luthen lived or died.)

Obviously, Kleya has no right to make this comparison when it’s about Miri Jung.

Not anymore, at least.

The problem with hyperspace travel is that there always comes a point when all that’s left to you is staring at the blue glow behind the transparisteel viewports, with no holonet connection and nothing to do, and just…wait.

And sometimes, just sometimes, the wait feels unbearable.

Vel taps her fingers against the helm — and shuts down the stream of images her mind conjures up: Kleya with a blaster in her hand, Dedra Meero’s body on the floor, courtrooms, Mon and Erskin’s shattered expressions, Kleya in New Republic prison robes—

Calm down, Vel tells herself. It’s not like you can do anything at the moment. You will worry when you arrive.

Miri falls asleep in an hour or so. Kleya adjusts her blanket in a quick, discreet movement that is not meant to be noticed by anyone.

A second later, she realizes that the Pamular brothers are watching her.

“‘Bit of a pickle yer girl got herself into,” Dewi says. “And what for — Crazy Dedra, haye?”

In her mind, Kleya sifts through all the ways she could answer this question. “What do you know about Dedra Meero?” she asks, then.

Freedi shrugs. “Served time in that prison over there. Can’t fish for shit.”

“Tried to cheat Old Prewo when they went to Kina once,” says Dewi. “Says she was kind of a big mucky-muck somewhere in the Core.”

“She was ISB. She is the reason my father was killed. Miri’s father, too.”

From a certain point of view, this version is true. When Kleya puts it that way, though, there is a pang of guilt that she does her best to dismiss: she will think about it later, this is neither the time nor the place.

The Pamular brothers sink into an uneasy sort of silence.

“Makes sense, then,” Freedi says after a moment, and Kleya decides that it might be best to change the subject.

“I don’t know how to thank you for all your help.”

“Don’t,” answers Dewi. “Dinnae do it for you to thank us. Did it ‘cause…that’s what you do.”

Kleya notices that his brother doesn’t suppress a smile at that. The smile looks tired, wry.

“Remember those guys?” he asks.

“Remember,” chuckles Dewi, like Freedi is asking a particularly stupid question. “All the kriffin’ time I think ‘bout them!”

“What guys?” Kleya finds herself needing to clarify this for a reason she doesn’t quite understand; this doesn’t seem, after all, like some vital information.

“There was a prison break,” Dewi says.

“Some fifteen years ago,” adds Freedi. “We found two guys. We were fishing for squigglies—”

“Steal our ship they tried. We wanted to turn them in to the Imps at first. Not the squigglies, the guys, I mean.”

“Gave them a lift instead. Made sure they ran away.” Freedi Pamular’s expression takes on a certain kind of wistfulness Kleya hasn’t noticed before. “Wonder if they ever made it alive. Out of dis whole thing, that is.”

A prison break on Narkina-Five around fifteen years ago. Two men who escaped. The local fishermen who helped them. The seemingly random bits of information arrange themselves into a clear picture in her head.

(Andor never said much about how he escaped prison. It was as if he thought that not talking about Narkina-Five could help him forget that experience forever. Kleya doesn’t think he ever succeeded at that, though. Some experiences are impossible to forget.)

(The last time she saw Cassian Andor, she was still recovering from a concussion in Vel’s Yavin shed. Kleya listened, bleary-eyed, when Vel tried to persuade Andor and Melshi to let her join them. She could only make out random words and phrases: “Scarif,” “the Death Star,” “not happening,” “can’t leave Kleya alone.”)

“I knew them,” Kleya manages.

Dewi squints. “Knew? Are they—”

“Have you ever heard of the Death Star?”

It’s always safe to start such conversations with a question. Kleya had to learn it the hard way, when she was picking a gift for Mon at a wine shop last year. Some beings in this galaxy are convinced Alderaan still exists — and find the “sudden” surge in prices on Toniray "appalling".

“The big turbolaser thingy?” Freedi asks. “Dustin’ planets? Heard somethin’ about it—”

Kleya nods. “The men you rescued gave their lives to help destroy it.”

Freedi opens his mouth — and closes it.

“You’re joking,” Dewi says.

“I’m not,” Kleya answers. There’s an emotion she can’t fully comprehend. Honestly, she is not great at this, voicing such things — but she tries anyway. “Maybe we all wouldn’t have been sitting here if you didn’t help those men back then.”

Dewi watches her, quiet; it’s as if he has run out of what to say.

“Their names were Cassian Andor and Ruescott Melshi,” Kleya says. Her tone is even, like she is just stating the facts, but there is also a burning sensation in her eyes she does her best to ignore.

Isn’t it astonishing how sometimes one sees strings connecting things that she least expected to be connected? Like everything is illuminated at once, and it answers questions you never thought of asking.

She pauses to pick the appropriate words to put this story in.

“They were my friends?” Only, they weren’t, were they?

“We fought together?” Not always, right?

“They saved my life once,” Kleya says at last. “They didn’t have to do it, but they did anyway. Just like you.”

The Pamular brothers exchange glances.

“What do ye think, Freedi?” Dewi asks quietly. “Maybe there’s somethin’ good in dis shak-pit, after all?”

Freedi’s grunt likely means agreement.

“Shak-pit?” Kleya clarifies.

She knows this Outer Rim curse, but she is not certain what they mean.

“Dis galaxy,” Freedi says. “A shak-pit of a galaxy it is. But with some good people.”

“There’s this password we had in the Rebellion.” After some contemplation, Kleya chooses to share this little detail. “‘I have friends everywhere.’”

“‘I have friends everywhere,’” Dewi Pamular repeats.

“‘I have friends everywhere,’” says Freedi.

Kleya’s gaze drifts to Miri, slipping in her cocoon of grey wool blankets; Miri mumbles something inaudible.

(It’s Coruscant, and Kleya is twenty years younger. Luthen says he usually meets with this agent on the lower levels. He gives Kleya the coordinates of a cantina that she is sure doubles as a spice den. The agent in question is a young man: slender, red-haired, thin lips, a look of concentration in his eyes that the holos didn’t convey. “Have we met?” he asks, as though he is merely interested in buying Kleya a drink. She gives him a fake smile in response to that. “I have friends everywhere.”)

“U heard anythen from Miri???” a message on Seti Septrulla’s comm screen reads. “She didnt text me today like she promisd”

“Nope,” Seti says as she rearranges the blurrg soup cans, the ugliest thing the canned foods shelf of Jeefo Septrulla’s Delicacies and Necessities can offer. These labels, adorned with dancing and smiling blurrgs, have the capacity to ruin any display, no matter how appetizing the rest of the stuff looks. “She didn’t text me either. You sure she’s not, like, er, on the way back home? I don’t think you can have a comm connection in hyperspace?”

Seti almost sends the voice message — but stops herself because she feels like an idiot the second her finger touches the button.

Another text from Rawacca reads, “I dont like it. She promisd.”

“She’ll be pissed off if we tell anyone,” Seti says into the comm. “She asked us not to.”

“Still dont like it,” Rawacca texts back. “Gotta call madam jung. Im scared for miri.”

The voice message Seti does send is short.

“I’m calling Mister Arlanz,” she says.

It’s the first idea that comes into her head — and it might not be what you are supposed to do when your friend might have disappeared on Narkina-Five, but somehow, Seti doesn’t think telling Madam Jung everything just yet is a good idea.

Seti could use some adult’s advice, granted, but she’d much prefer it to be an adult that won’t kill her the second she says that she and Rawacca let Miri go to Narkina-Five without saying a word to anyone.

Weekend mornings at the Arlanz household are, as a rule, quiet. Aldo Arlanz makes caf. Esma Arlanz toasts the sweet golden-pink Palmo bread from the Ghor bakery on the 4929th. They water all of their plants together. Then they dedicate a few hours to reading: usually, something unrelated to their respective school and university curricula.

Aldo is currently on chapter five of an ISB spy-turned-rebel-operative’s memoir titled “Serving the Empire, Fighting for the Alliance.” He has so far found it a rather engrossing read; Esma says he should recommend it to his senior year students.

He is about to turn the holobook’s page when his comm buzzes.

Esma watches his face intently when he listens to Seti Septrulla.

“Wait,” Aldo Arlanz says. “Miri…what?”

Retrieving a cargo ship from a smugglers’ den on Corellia can be considered a perverse form of torture.

The New Republic Security Bureau officers wanted to list the freighter as “evidence” that would help them capture a pirate gang. The insurance company wasn’t too forthcoming when faced with the bills for all the lost Naboo wine — two thousand credits a bottle. It was even less forthcoming when Daena forwarded them all the hospital bills for the pilot who (thankfully) survived the raid.

One by one, though, she solves these things.

“Have you managed to search the ship through, Major?” she asks with a well-practiced smile, standing in the New Republic Navy hangar where Miri has been moved. “Do you have everything you need? Are you quite sure you do not require our help in any form?”

She has made a point of asking the question as many times as she possibly can. The more forthcoming you act, the more uncomfortable it makes most security service officers, from Daena Jung’s experience. Helpfulness can be a weapon.

“Madam, we have everything we need at this point,” says the very investigator who wanted to keep her ship on Corellia for two more months. “Should we have any more questions, we will contact you.”

Daena’s comm buzzes in her bag. “Very well. Our company would be honored to be of service to the New Republic, Major.”

Another buzz of the comm.

“I’m sure it would,” says the investigator; the smile he musters looks like a side effect of a sharp and acute toothache. “You may want to take that.”

When Daena Jung does finally fish her comm out of her handbag, she sees two missed calls from the Galactic District High’s vice principal, that nice Ghorman man who also teaches history and always speaks so highly of Miri.

He has never called Daena before, not like this. From her experience, he prefers politely worded holomails addressed to all parents at once. And he most definitely doesn’t send comm messages on a weekend.

Anxiety coils in Daena’s chest, grasps her throat; the feeling is all too familiar, a sort of spider sense telling her that something terrible must have happened.

(That’s how she felt eleven years ago, on that day when Heert called her.)

Aldo Arlanz’s message on the comm screen reads, “Madam Jung, please answer my call. It is about your daughter.”

Daena Jung’s crisp manner — a busy Coruscanti parent who never has time to listen — remains the same for just one more question after Aldo tells her what he learned from Seti.

“Excuse me, but this is ridiculous. How was Miri even able to get to Narkina-Five?”

“All I know is that she must be there right now, Madam Jung, as confirmed by her friends, and she did her best to keep it a secret from everyone.”

This is when Madam Jung’s voice breaks. The response is a string of questions, her desperation more palpable with each new one. “Do you know anything else? Please tell me, is she there alone? I’m going to Narkina-Five now — do you have the exact coordinates of where she went?”

“I don’t, but I do have some ideas on how to find out everything,” says Aldo. “Madam Jung, are you on Coruscant?”

If the sounds in the background are anything to go by, she must be in some spaceport.

“No,” she says. “I’m departing for Coruscant from Corellia.”

She seems to be trying her best to keep her tone matter-of-fact, but her voice does shake on the last sentence.

“Just what is going on here?” Vel asks.

This doesn’t make any sense. The Fondor is in the forest, locked up. Dedra Meero is more than alive, judging by what Vel saw in the window of her hut. Exactly thirty minutes ago, Meero was making herself a breakfast of fried fish and the local analog of caf.

Vel had to ask five people at Karawaso’s market to learn that Kleya is alive and staying with “them Pamular brothers.” It took another person, a vegetable seller, to find out the exact address of the brothers in question. Not to mention that Vel also had to buy what looks like a yearly supply of sweet Keridian turnips for this information.

What no one told her was the fact that Kleya is here, in the Pamular brothers’ hut, with Miri Jung.

There is a thick bacta bandage on Miri’s leg, and it doesn’t seem like she can walk properly.

“We had an emergency,” Kleya says, like Vel didn’t just wake her up.

Miri bites her lip. “Tell her the truth.”

The way Miri says it — the sheer amount of anger that she seems to be suppressing as best as she can — feels unsettling on too many levels.

“Tell her,” Miri repeats.

The Pamular brothers exchange glances.

“Gotta check the shed, haye?” one of them mutters; the other follows with a nod.

Kleya shakes her head. “There’s no easy way to put it, Vel.”

“I’m sure there isn’t,” Vel says. She has to hold her back; Miri doesn’t need to know Kleya lied to her. Vel can’t tell if she even knows why exactly Kleya is here. “Let’s start with why Miri is here on Narkina.”

The cargo pilot license that Lonni had urged Daena to obtain a good decade ago comes in handy once again.

(She taught him to read all sorts of official technical documentation like it was really intended to be read by those who understood — “Isn’t it more convenient than getting your analysts involved all the time?” He would go on and on about her learning to pilot ships, even though Father insisted it was “no woman’s work” and “easily delegated”. “Pilots come and go,” Lonni would say. “If you are dependent on them all the time, you lose time and money.”)

Daena kicks off her shoes. Had she known what today had in store for her, she wouldn’t have worn high heels.

A moment later, she notices that her hands are shaking.

They keep shaking when she pulls out her comm and starts typing a message to the first contact the comm shows her — Captain Lagret. Not an ideal choice, again. Their last conversation was about his taxes and Miri’s “extremist leanings”; he’ll likely try to lecture Daena on that again, but—

You don’t have any other friends, do you?

Her comm chimes with a new message.

“Madam Jung,” writes Mister Arlanz, “are you arriving at Eastport or Westport? My wife and I will pick you up.”

She never asked for this, but it doesn’t even seem like an offer, more like Mister Arlanz is stating the fact. And inexplicably, this comes across as some relief.

Daena deletes the message she was typing for Lagret. Calling Sul, she figures, would be of no use either. Whatever advice Sul could give her, it’s already too late.

Miri is on Narkina. And Daena had no idea.

Whatever she had to tell Lonni, she was late, too. Maybe it was because she’d trained herself to close her eyes too well.

The answers her friends offered to her have always been simple. Lonni died a hero serving the Empire, and there is nothing to think about — just mourn him and raise a glass to him once a year on his birthday. Miri is but a typical case of an impressionable youth corrupted by the chaotic and alien-loving New Republic. The only path to salvation is an all-girls school on Chandrila, and one where a year of tuition costs more than a heavy freighter.

So Daena replies to Aldo Arlanz, “Westport. I can’t thank you enough.”

Fact number one: adults lie to each other.

Fact number two: adults can lie to each other even though they have been dating for a decade and work together all the time.

Fact number three: lies, as Galactic District High’s school counselor put it during that “mental health hour” that Mister Arlanz made everyone attend, incur our debt to the truth, which means, the more you tell them and the more you try to keep ignoring them, the bigger the fallout you will have to face.

Fact number four: it’s always quiet in the eye of the storm, according to some writers essential to the high school Basic curriculum.

Miri doesn’t take her eyes off Vel’s face: the lips, compressed into a thin line, the wounded look in Vel’s eyes.

Then Vel only says, “I wish I knew this all earlier.” After that, she adds, in a quieter voice, “Miri, I am so, so sorry.”

Kleya — for the first time in Miri’s memory — takes her eyes away.

Miri raises her eyes at Vel — and even though last night she was quite convinced that all adults were liars, especially all rebel-affiliated adults or all adults with any Imperial past, she finds herself inclined to believe Vel and utterly unable to be angry at her.

“Thanks. Could you, um— could you take me back to Coruscant?”

Miri doesn’t ask Kleya this question: she can’t imagine half a day with her on a ship. She sees Kleya nod.

“You have a ship, right?”

It’s always easier to steer such conversations into a productive direction: the common problems Kleya and Vel need to solve, all the things both sides need to do. Besides, Kleya adds in her mind, it wouldn’t do well to fight right in front of Miri. Kleya’s spider sense tells her that the unpleasant conversation she and Vel are supposed to have hasn’t even started — and likely will not start until they land on Coruscant and get home.

She might as well concentrate on what they can do now.

“Yes,” Vel says. “The Navy gave me one.”

“A starfighter?” Kleya clarifies. She doesn’t imagine anyone would give Vel a corvette or a light cruiser for a quick run to Narkina, but she feels the need to slip in this question anyway. “Is there enough room for Miri?”

“A patrol craft,” says Vel, her tone flat and emotionless. “There’s enough room.”

“Good. Where did you land it?”

“Next to the Fondor.”

“Good,” Kleya repeats. “It’s best that you take Miri.”

As Miri listens to Kleya, all calm and business-like, she wants to scream — but she bites her lip and nods and says, “Yeah, that’d probably be best.”

“Do you think your Keridian friends could help us get you to the ship?” Vel asks.

“They might be busy. We should ask.”

The mundane tone in which they carry out this conversation, like they are a family preparing for a vacation trip, makes it seem like it’s not really happening.

It has to be a fever dream. Or — it’s as if Miri died, and the lamprey sucked all of her blood, and that’s what you get in the afterlife. Only, it’s the reality, and all that is left to Miri is nod, smile, and negotiate.

Neither Vel nor Dewi nor Freedi deserves to have their day ruined even more by witnessing Miri yelling at Kleya like Miri would want to.

“Crazy Dedra,” calls Farko Awalar, the vegetable seller. “Heard about that suck-lamprey Dewi and Freedi caught, haye? So big it almost ate some girl from Curasant, I’m tellin’ ye.”

Dedra lowers her voice so that no one else at the market overhears them. “You said you wanted to buy my boat, didn’t you?”

Curiosity creeps into Farko’s features, even though she feigns disinterest as she is counting sweet turnips. “Changed your mind, haye?”

“A friend found me a job,” Dedra says. “Off-planet. It’s a factory, so they pay well. If I leave, I won’t be able to take care of the boat anyway.”

Farko narrows her eyes at the word “friend”, but asks, “How much?”

In the end, the Pamular brothers refuse to take the credit chits Vel tries to leave surreptitiously on the table. However, they do agree to give Kleya and Miri their comm code, “to stay in touch.”

“I owe you a favor,” says Kleya.

“Ye don’t,” grumbles Dewi Pamular, the older brother. “I told ye—”

Miri gives them a camcorder that looks like it has seen a lot, and they accept it, as if this camcorder has become a vital part of a budding friendship. There must be some context that Vel is missing here.

“Promise me to post that squigglie holovid,” Miri says.

“No one’s gonna watch it,” protests Freedi Pamular, and in response, his brother nudges him with an elbow.

“Gotta start with somethin’, haye?”

On the way to the ship, Miri remains cheerful, but Vel has seen too many people in similar emotional states to know that it’s just a cover, and one is hard to maintain for long. She turns out to be right. The second the patrol craft jumps to hyperspace, Vel hears a sob coming from the second pilot’s chair.

“Hey,” she says, softly. “Hey. Can I hug you?”

Miri hesitates but nods; Vel switches the ship to autopilot and gets up from her chair.

“Sorry for crying,” Miri mumbles against her cheek as Vel embraces her.

“Never apologize for that,” Vel says. “You’re a living being. People get hurt. People cry.”

In response, Miri sobs again.

“What happened to you is terrible,” Vel continues, and she doesn’t know if she is telling that to Miri or to herself. “I can’t even imagine how that all must feel. I’m sorry about your father. I’m so sorry you learned everything like that.”

“I hate that Luthen Rael,” Miri says, with a certain determination. “I wish I could shoot him.”

“So do I sometimes,” says Vel.

“Did you know him?”

“I did. I stopped talking to him many years ago. I had…my reasons.”

Taramyn Barcona. Gorn. Karis Nemik.

Cinta. Cinta. Cinta.

There is the Luthen Rael forever seared in Kleya’s memory, the one Vel chose to respect just because he mattered to the woman she loved. There is also the Luthen Rael she remembers. Never before has the gap between these two men been so much like an abyss.

“And I hate Kleya,” Miri says. “I don’t want to see her anymore.”

Vel doesn’t know what to answer to that; there is a part of her that wants to agree, say something like “me too,” but it’s about a woman she has been with for a decade, and it’s not the fair thing to do.

She can hate Kleya right now, but Miri doesn’t need to know about this.

“Anyone would. You have every right to feel this way.”

“I don’t know how to—” Miri raises her eyes at Vel. Her face is puffy, her cheeks tear-streaked. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t she— why didn’t anyone— why Dad—”

“You don’t have to just yet,” Vel says softly. “Grief is a weird thing. It takes time. Never makes any sense at first.”

(In the first year after Cinta’s death, everyone would constantly tell Vel she had to “live on,” whatever the kriff that meant. “Live on,” for shak’s sake. She had no idea how to live. Every day she got through was a small victory.)

“Thanks,” Miri mutters.

And there are many more things Vel Sartha wants to tell this girl — that even though the pain never truly goes away, it gets bearable with time, that she will manage — but there’s no point in any of that.

When you are grieving, it’s the last thing you want to hear. Vel herself wants to punch those people who’d tell her that. “Managing” felt like a distant mountain.

So she says the only thing that feels right. “You’re not alone. I’m with you.”

The shuttle from Karawaso to Kina City is so ancient it seems to creak at every turn, and for the thousandth time in her life, Dedra wonders just how she’s come to this. Then she catches her reflection in the shuttle’s window.

She stares at the glass, taking in the image it returns to her: ashen, sagging skin, dry lips, grey hair she never bothered to dye since she was freed from prison.

Supervisor Meero, the woman she believed she was.

Dedra — how the man who loved her called her. Then he was dead.

Crazy Dedra, who will talk like the queen of Naboo and kriff you over if you sell smoked squigglies together. That’s how these people here see her. Same name, now tarnished.

She wonders who she will be next.

Perhaps it’s high time she changes that name, at last. To herself, she will always be Dedra — but no one else has to know it wherever she goes.

In the Fondor’s cockpit, as hyperspace swirls and glows before her, Kleya Marki spends a few minutes more battling the emotion that she has worked hard to ignore in the past two days. 

Jedha, Kyber, Erso, she repeats in her mind, on autopilot. The words that would always return a sense of clarity now ring hollow.

It takes her a second to realize that there is no need for clarity anymore. The situation is as abundantly clear as it could have been.

She is alone here, and no one is watching her.

She buries her face in her palms.

Her whole body starts shaking.

Chapter Text

“What do you mean?” Daena’s voice is more out of shape than she would have preferred it to be, but she can’t bring herself to worry about such things right now. “What do you mean, Miri did volunteer work for this Senate committee all this time, and no one ever told me?”

She is still dizzy from several hyperspace jumps in a row, on her fourth cup of caf, and yet new developments emerge every second. The house where the office of the Senate Committee for the Veterans of the Alliance to Restore the Republic is located looks familiar. Didn’t it use to be an antiques shop? It was a famous one.

“Well, I assumed you were aware of that,” says Mister Arlanz dryly. “Such things usually require a parent’s written consent.”

“Perhaps this is something to discuss later,” chimes in Madam Arlanz, a stout blonde in her sixties with an unnervingly perfect blow dry and an even more unnervingly well-tailored coat. “For now, we should focus.”

“Rawacca, I told you to hold tight!”

Last time Daena saw Seti Septrulla’s bright pink speeder bike, she had to deliver an entire lecture to Miri and Seti on why two people should never ride it together. Turns out, however, that this thing can hold a Wookiee.

“Hi everyone!” Seti jumps off her speeder; Rawacca elbows her in an instant. “Er, I mean, good day, Madam Jung, Mister Arlanz, Madam Arlanz—”

“We don’t have much time, Seti,” Daena says, quickly. “If you and Rawacca are here, you might as well help.”

“How about we post something on the holonet, ma’am?”

“We will, if we report her missing,” says Daena.

When we report her missing. There is no way you can sort this out without law enforcement.

Seti frowns. “What are we doing here, though? Looks like this place’s closed.”

Rawacca lets out a roar of agreement. Daena will admit she has the same question: it is not obvious to her what the connection is, exactly, between Miri’s volunteer work and Miri’s sudden disappearance.

There is a connection. Of course there is a connection.

No, she will not let herself spiral. She won’t.

“My friend knows them,” says Mister Arlanz. “They are never truly closed.”

There’s a part of Daena that wants to snap at everyone for no reason — and also a part that wants to hide in the corner and howl. She bats these thoughts away and schools her voice once again.

“Actually, Mister Arlanz, could we call that friend of yours?”

Carro curses under his breath on the comm, which is not something Aldo Arlanz has heard him do before.

“Miri,” he clarifies. “Miri Jung?”

In twenty minutes, he arrives at the Committee’s office.

The friend in question turns out to be the head of the Ghorman diaspora. Daena has heard a thing or two about him. Used to own a large twillery on Ghorman. Lost everything, rebuilt at least some part of it in the New Republic. Sells luxury goods across various Core Worlds now.

She did consider approaching him, at one point — only, they say Rylanz never works with anyone associated with the Empire, and she might as well belong to that category.

“Mister Rylanz, thank you so much for coming,” says Daena. “I just have one question. How… how sure are you that this…committee could give us any information?”

“Quite sure, Madam Jung,” says Rylanz. “Not long ago, we discussed a situation on Narkina-Five that the Committee needed to address. Your daughter was present in the room.”

“What situation?”

Carro Rylanz presses his lips together. “A former ISB supervisor responsible for our tragedy. Dedra Meero. It must have been her that your daughter wanted to meet.” He reaches for the comm on his wrist. “Young Miri is too brave for her own good, Madam Jung, but we’ll do everything to find her.”

“Thank you,” Daena says, against the sudden tightness in her throat.

(Lagret keeps saying that the Ghorman massacre is a “ridiculous exaggeration,” but the Holonet broadcasts that Daena had come across were fairly convincing. Whenever Ghorman is mentioned in his presence, she changes the subject.)

(She is here together with three Ghormans who owe her nothing. The only reason the Arlanzes and Carro Rylanz dropped whatever it was that they were doing this weekend to join Daena in her search is the fact they all know Miri and seem to care about her.)

Rylanz presses the button on his comm once more and frowns. “Director Marki is out of the coverage zone. So is Director Sartha.”

“Strange,” Mister Arlanz mutters.

“It happens in hyperspace.” Fear creeps in again, but Daena dismisses it. “They must be on their way somewhere.”

Seti gasps. “Did they, like, kidnap Miri? You sure you don’t want us to post anything?”

Rawacca gives Daena a questioning look.

“Not now, girls,” Daena manages. “Mister Rylanz, do you know anyone who might know Director Marki and Director Sartha?”

Rylanz nods.

“As a matter of fact,” he says, “I do.”

It is the last call Erskin Semaj expected to receive on his only day off. It’s not that he has come up with any decent ideas on how to spend his day, anyway — years in the Rebellion make the word “leisure” lose its meaning. He was planning on going to the office and getting some more work done.

Still.

It’s the last call he expected to receive.

He blinks as he listens to Carro Rylanz.

Then he says, in his accented, clunky Ghor, “I apologize, but I’m not sure I understand you.”

Rylanz repeats with the patience of a man talking to a fifth-grader. Erskin is quite sure this man has chosen to tell him the news in Ghor for the sake of both psychological warfare and appealing to his sense of duty.

“I see,” Erskin says as he lets the information sink in. He gets up from the antique Chandrilan armchair he never liked; he only keeps it in the apartment it because it was once the centerpiece of his father’s study. “I’m on my way.”

“No, they will not return my calls,” says the man Carro Rylanz has just summoned. “Which is to be expected if they are in hyperspace.”

His name is Erskin Semaj; he has a Chandrilan accent, but for some reason, Rylanz keeps speaking Ghor to him.

The motley search party has now relocated to the Chandrilan cafe right opposite the Committee’s office, at Daena’s suggestion. If all these people are ready to wait in an ambush with her, she might as well buy everyone lunch, she figures. Mister Septrulla and the Saar’unbs family, Rawacca’s Sullustan foster parents, wouldn’t have appreciated it if Daena let their children starve.

Besides, it wouldn’t hurt for her to force herself to eat something, too. Maybe she will want to kill Kleya Marki and Vel Sartha a little less.

“I will sue them for child endangerment,” Daena says. “I don’t care. Everyone will know who they are. Everyone—”

Child endangerment? What if Miri is already dead? What if—

Esma Arlanz asks her to breathe and count to four. Seti takes her hand. Rawacca smooths a paw over her shoulder. Carro Rylanz tells something to Semaj in Ghor.

“I’m calling Chancellor Mothma,” Semaj says then with grim certainty.

Miri swallows another painkiller pill, washes it down with the water Vel offered her, and steals a covert glance at Vel.

“No, I did not ‘kidnap’ her,” Vel says, lowering her voice. “Tell them she is with me, alive, and we’ll be planetside in thirty minutes. I’m just waiting for permission to land.”

Since they jumped out of hyperspace, that’s what Vel has been doing: responding to texts and ostensibly missed calls.

Vel sighs. “Yes, Mon, Kleya and I will have a conversation. Later.”

Miri gulps. It can’t be any other Mon; it’s not like Vel knows many people named Mon. Yet the thought that Chancellor Mothma is calling Vel to check if she and Kleya have kidnapped Miri just seems too surreal to believe in.

Well, she thinks. So was almost getting eaten by a giant lamprey on Narkina-Five.

Daena spends all the hours she has to wait oscillating between sluggish, background dread and surges of anxiety that made her forget to breathe, if only for a second.

When there is so little that you can control, all sorts of thoughts creep into your head.

In her particular case, it’s thoughts about Miri — what she will do or say if they find Miri alive. Some of them are plans for the future, all the measures she has to take for anything like this to never happen again. Some are things she never dares to tell Miri these days.

You are grounded, young lady.

You are going to a boarding school on Chandrila. A maximum-security boarding school.

I love you. Please, please come back. Just come back alive.

And this last thought is the only one that feels like it matters when she finally sees Miri, limping toward her across the New Republic Navy hangar Daena barely managed to get in. There is a bacta patch on Miri’s leg. Her usually immaculate bob, “The Mothma”, a style she spends hours and tons of hairspray to maintain, is tousled now. Strands of red hair are sticking to her forehead. Her face is pale, and the air about her is different — like she somehow managed to age overnight, like she is not sixteen anymore.

All that matters is that she is here.

When Daena hugs her daughter, it’s as if a dam breaks.

She pulls Miri closer — and when she does, she notices that her eyes are wet.

Kleya only saw Lonni’s wife once, from a distance. A young blonde, unhealthily thin, determined and nervous at the same time. There was something about her that made her similar to Lonni, like they were two sides of the same credit chit.

(Both Kleya and Luthen did their best to dissuade Lonni. Relationships were a risk he could not afford to take. “She will snap as soon as she sees a glimpse of who you really are,” Luthen once said. “Then she will report you to your C.O. while you are sleeping in her bed.” Kleya still remembers how Lonni’s tone grew uncharacteristically firm for a second. “She’s not like that. I’ve known her for fifteen years.”)

Daena Jung has barely changed, even though she dyes her hair black now, and there are dark circles around her eyes.

She raises her face, puffy from crying, from Miri’s shoulder — and holds her gaze on Kleya.

“You.”

Fact number one: it is, as the school counselor told everyone during the mental health hour, a bad idea to bury your emotions.

Fact number two: if burying one’s emotions were a sport, Miri’s mother would have been an intergalactic champion.

Fact number three: no matter how hard you try to bury them, as the counselor said, one day they will find a way. The real question is how.

It takes Mister Arlanz, Mister Semaj, and Carro Rylanz to pull Mom off Kleya and Vel, and Mom keeps screaming.

“You! You brainwashed my daughter, you put her in danger, you could have had her killed, you useless, lying, cowardly, traitorous—”

“Mom,” says Miri; her intonation reminds Kleya, inexplicably, of Lonni in those moments when he had decided on something and knew just what he was going to do. The rare moments when he made it clear he knew better than she or Luthen did. “Mom!”

It’s the way she raises her voice that makes Madam Jung shut her mouth, at last. Just when she was about to claw out Kleya’s eyes.

(What a frustrating experience it is, a random fight in public when the worst thing you could do is fight back.)

“No one put me in danger,” Miri continues with the same coldness. “I forged your signature and applied for an internship. Then I stole their data and went to Narkina on my own. Director Marki and Director Sartha went there searching for me.”

The taut silence that falls over this part of the hangar is only interrupted by the beeping of astromech droids.

Miri’s teacher fixes her friends with a long, serious stare. He lets go of Madam Jung’s wrist. “We were never here,” he says, as if stating a fact. “We did not hear this conversation and don’t know anything.”

Daena doesn’t even want to think about how many administrative violations her daughter managed to pack in just three sentences. She also would prefer not to know how many reasons the New Republic’s child services now have to pay the Jung family a visit. Miri is only lucky that Mister Arlanz refused to report her to the principal.

Yet Daena can’t bring herself to be angry at her daughter. She’s more angry at herself, if she is honest. Losing her face in front of those people, like that. She would have found it mortifying were she not so tired.

So when the entrance door hatch of their apartment slides shut behind their backs, she asks, “But why Narkina?”

She suspects she already knows the answer: Lonni.

Dedra Meero, the woman Carro Rylanz mentioned. Daena has heard that name before. Lagret said she was a mole who was shipped off to Narkina “for good.” Jarro would add that she was “to be held responsible for Supervisor Jung’s death.”

“Is it about your father?” Daena presses on.

Please tell me it’s not. There’s only so much I can handle.

“Mom,” Miri says, after a pause. “Dad was a rebel spy.”

“Her father was Rael’s mole, and you didn’t say anything.”

“What good would it do?”

Vel squeezes the handle of her cup so hard she is worried for a split second it might crack. She really should control herself better. It would have taken ages to get the wet stains left by Jorgo’s Calming Dantooine Herbs Tea Blend out of her maternal grandmother’s white carpet.

Kleya sits down in the opposite armchair.

“What good would it do, Vel?”

It would have still broken Miri’s heart, Kleya is right about that part, Vel thinks. The only difference is when it would have happened.

Or maybe it’s not the only difference.

“You would have been honest with her instead of treating her like a puppet,” says Vel, after a moment of contemplation.

“A puppet,” Kleya repeats. “Is this what you think I treated her like?”

“You should have left her a choice,” Vel answers. “Not let her work for us and get attached, without even knowing who you really are, or who her father was—”

She stops herself, suppressing a surge of anger.

“Is this really about Miri and her father?” Kleya clarifies, her voice glacially cold. “Or is it about me going to Narkina to do what I had to?”

This sudden coldness makes Vel wonder who exactly she is talking to: the woman she has loved for a decade or someone else? A memory of an old conversation from the times of Aldhani resurfaces in her mind. She doesn’t remember it word for word, but she remembers the metaphor Kleya used: a constant blur of plates spinning and knives on the floor and needy, panicked faces in the window.

She wonders how easy it must have been for the Kleya Marki she once knew to reduce people to that. If people are but needy, panicked faces, then they can be ignored or dismissed or manipulated if that’s what’s good for the cause.

“It’s about you lying to all of us and treating it like that’s a completely normal thing to do,” Vel says. “And — you didn’t really have to kill Dedra Meero. You wanted to do it, out of some misguided desire for revenge. It was never about justice for the Ghor people.”

Vel’s breath hitches just slightly before she says this. Kleya chooses not to respond to her words. It would have made no sense to respond to an accusation this untrue. There are times when one simply has to let people be wrong about her.

And sometimes it’s the people you thought understood you like no one else. Ironic, isn’t it?

The not-Luthen in her head lets out a familiar short, raspy laugh at that thought.

“You have made your point,” says Kleya.

If she is to end this conversation in a constructive way, perhaps she should pretend to agree with Vel. They may unpack this later, when Vel is in a better mood. This is rule number one for dealing with natures as fiery and passionate.

Such is life, Kleya supposes. Certain thoughts and feelings she can only keep to herself.

Vel stares her in the eye, like she is trying desperately and failing to see something.

For a minute or so, they say nothing to each other.

Then Vel answers, “I’m afraid I haven’t.”

She hates herself for what she is about to say.

When you are young, it’s easy to throw people and connections away. Most matter little. There is always something better to be found.

As you grow older, you learn to treasure whatever’s remained. You mend what’s broken, over and over. The patience Vel has developed over all these years with Kleya — Maker, would things have been different if she were this patient with Cinta? Perhaps they wouldn’t have to take that Ghorman assignment just to reunite.

There are, however, limits to any kind of patience.

Vel thinks about Miri Jung shaking in her arms — and about Kleya’s nonchalant tone, “What good would it do?”

“This can’t go on, Kleya,” says Vel. “This has to end.”

Kleya sits eerily still in her armchair. Not a single muscle on her face moves.

“This,” she clarifies.

“Us,” says Vel, because words like “our relationship” would have sounded too clinical. “Some things that you do I can never agree with or accept.”

“What things, exactly?” Kleya asks, like Vel hasn’t just made herself abundantly clear. “I suppose you were not that against secrecy back then. Besides — there is no way I could have explained to Miri the…whole situation.”

This sounds so surreal almost makes Vel Sartha laugh. “The whole situation? So there’s more to it?”

Just what can you possibly say to make this worse than it already is? she wonders. That you personally killed this girl’s father to protect another informant? Or was he maybe dealt with because the Rebellion was beginning to weigh on his life, and it was getting inconvenient for you and Luthen? Like it was with Tay?

“Lonni was the person who found out about the Death Star.” Kleya speaks slowly, and to Vel, this is beginning to sound more like a court testimony. “He’d been going through Meero’s files. Thought he’d been burned. Rang the red bell. Wanted Luthen to help him hide his family. There was no time. Maybe Luthen saw this as the only opportunity for his family to get out of this alive. He didn’t have the time to tell me that either. What matters is, apparently, most people in the ISB thought Lonni was in the clear because he was killed.”

Vel’s face shatters.

“You never mentioned his name,” she just says to that.

“We never mention too many names,” Kleya answers to that. “Do you remember that woman, Jyn Erso? Or Andor? No one ever says a word about Andor.”

The problem with this giant beast named the Rebellion — or rather, the Cause — is that it has a remarkably short memory.

No one remembers Lonni Jung, just like no one remembers Luthen Rael. If you look at the revised high school history textbooks the New Republic’s Ministry of Education has released — Miri once showed hers to Kleya — it’s as if so many things and people never existed in the first place.

Two pages to Gial Ackbar, one paragraph to Admiral Raddus, one sentence to Draven.

Twenty pages to Mon and Bail and Bail’s daughter and Luke kriffing Skywalker and Dodonna, no mention of Aldhani.

One paragraph to Hera Syndulla and her entire squadron.

Two sentences to Antoc Merrick.

Zero to Andor and Melshi and Luthen and Lonni and Cinta and Kleya and Vel and hundreds of other people.

“None of us did it to be remembered,” says Kleya. “We just did what we had to do.”

Vel fixes her with a long, hard look that doesn’t require words.

“Right. Right, right, right— I— I think I need a moment, Miri.”

Mom flexes her fingers until her knuckles crack. It’s a strange self-soothing gesture Miri has only seen her do a few times. The first time was right after Heert came to tell Mom and Miri about Dad. She would crack her knuckles all the time. Also, she’d rearrange things in an order that made no sense to Miri. Everything had to be aligned into rows, even the meiloruun fruit juice packets and bottles of blue milk in the fridge.

When Mom gets up from the kitchen chair, Miri isn’t sure she really sees where she is going or what surrounds her.

“Would you like some water?” Mom asks, her voice slightly too high-pitched.

Miri can see that she moves one of the glasses on the kitchen counter closer to another and then adds a third one to them. The housekeeper droid tries to put them back on the shelf; Mom waves it off.

LO-LA70 climbs onto Miri’s shoulder.

“I’m good, Mom, thanks,” Miri mutters. “Maybe it’d be, um, better for you to sit down now?”

“No.” The tone is now unexpectedly firm. “Sorry. Let me just— Miri, I— ” Mom draws in a shaky breath. In a moment, the firmness returns to her voice, but it sounds different now. There is a hint of realization. “It all makes sense now, don’t you see? It all makes sense now. Your father had been doing it for years.”

Lola chirps, but whatever it is that she is trying to say, Miri doesn’t understand it.

“How do you know?”

Mom shakes her head; the explanation must be too lengthy for the two of them to handle right now.

“I just know. Doesn’t matter. And no one even mentioned his name once. They killed him. Like he was…disposable, like he never mattered.”

It has only been a few hours without the constant presence of Kleya Marki in this apartment, but Vel already catches herself losing her mind.

Just because a decision is right doesn’t mean it feels good. Or that it’s easy. Some decisions one makes in a blurry state that doesn’t quite feel like being present in the reality.

A good cry is inevitable in such situations. The problem is, you can only sit in the armchair weeping for so long. Tears have a way of running out. Vel spends the rest of the evening wandering around the two floors of the Sartha apartment like a ghost.

This is the windowsill to which Kleya wanted to move all the newer plants.

This chair she disliked so much.

The bedsheets you chose together, didn’t you?

And what about these bags and boxes that she promised to collect later? At least one of them must be filled with Luthen Rael’s belongings.

“No,” Vel says, out loud.

If she keeps doing this, she might do something she will regret later. It would be best to keep herself occupied with…something. Talk to someone, too.

Vel calls Mon; they speak for the entire five minutes Mon has between the Senate meetings, then Mon promises to call her back. After that, Vel ventures to the kitchen, which feels less calming than she had expected. Maybe a kitchen is not that comforting a place if you spent half your life eating whatever your parents’ chef cooked for you, and the other whatever’s available at the mess hall of your base.

So Vel chooses to call Erskin.

“What are you doing right now?” Erskin asks.

Vel lowers her gaze at the chopping board. It takes her mind a moment to register just what kind of vegetables she has been trying to cut for the past ten minutes. She wasn’t too discriminating with her choice, it turns out — but one normally isn’t when all she needs is to busy her hands.

“Chopping up some turnips that I got at a Narkina-Five market in exchange for information on Kleya’s whereabouts.”

“Turnips.”

The Pamular brothers didn't want them: "The whole shed's full of those thingies, they keep growin'. Take 'em to yer Curasant, they're good." Vel had to drag the bag to the ship.

“Wouldn’t want to let good vegetables go to waste,” Vel says. “The Yavin mess hall cooks would have killed for them. I’m not even talking about the Echo base food situation.”

“Are you alone?”

She puts her knife on the cutting board. “Yes. Just me and the turnips.”

“Are you sure you want to stay alone?” Erskin asks after that.

Vel lets herself think this question over.

“No,” she says after half a minute of contemplation or so.

“I’m coming over for a sumptuous turnip dinner, then,” says Erskin Semaj in a tone that tolerates no objections.

“These are…interesting,” says Mon as she kicks off her shoes and lowers herself into one of the dining room chairs.

She finally makes it to Vel’s by eleven, after two meetings she could not bail out of, a briefing with the Defense Council, a particularly bad case of a Coruscant air traffic jam, and five very polite comm messages Erskin sent her.

“They are not bad with wine, I promise.” Vel places a plate of roast turnips on the table and adds a bowl of spicy sauce.

Erskin nods; the meal is not nearly as depressing as he imagined it to be, although he is quite sure these things are not meant to be oven-roasted Chandrilan style. Who knows, though; maybe Vel has just invented a new recipe.

“That’s good to know,” says Mon. “I brought more wine.”

“It says here they pickle these on Narkina.” Erskin puts away his datapad.

Vel chuckles. “Maybe I should take up canning. Maker knows I’ll need a time-consuming hobby now.”

“Why not?” asks Mon, softly, and Erskin can see that at this moment she takes Vel’s hand.

It is a small, comforting gesture that reminds him of something he can’t quite place at first.

Then he realizes that Vel held Mon’s hand just like that at Leida’s wedding.

As Kleya makes her way between the desks crowding the place formerly known as “Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest,” she can’t shake off the thought that none of this turned out how it was supposed to be.

Calm down.

Jedha. Kyber. Erso. One-two-three.

If anything, she figures, people like her have a tremendous capacity for rebuilding — and things like this shop deserve to be rebuilt.

There are times when the right thing to do also turns out to be the easiest, most familiar one. Vel doesn’t wish Kleya to be a part of the committee anymore; this much is obvious. Even if she did, Kleya supposes it wouldn’t have been a viable arrangement. Not after today, at least.

She takes a key card out of her pocket and slowly presses it against a panel that she hadn’t tried to unlock in a decade.

When she steps inside Luthen’s room, she is hit by a sense of recognition. The place is the same as it must have been on the day everything was over.

“You have an appointment at Lina Soh today, at two.”

Mom’s voice sounds just the way it always does, if only slightly raspier. No amount of that hundred-credit-a-jar second skin cream would have been enough to conceal the shadows under her eyes.

Lola chirps and tugs on Mom’s skirt; Mom ignores her. Mishuu sneaks in through the closing door hatch.

Miri props herself up on the elbows. “You took a day off today, right?”

Her ankle hurts mercilessly. Lola jumps on the bedside table and nudges a pain medication hypo toward Miri. Mishuu lurches after the droid with a predatory meow, but Mom catches him and takes him in her arms, in a well-practiced move.

“I’m working from home,” Mom says. “I’ll go with you to the hospital, don’t worry.”

“Did you sleep?”

The question appears to take Mom aback. “As much as I could. Better tell me what you want for breakfast.”

“Are you okay?” Miri asks.

Mom gives a vague shrug instead of an answer. “Fried eggs, cereal, or Anoat oats?”

“How about you just rest?” Miri asks. “I can make my own breakfast—”

“Not with a leg like that. Seriously, young lady. Please stay in bed until Lina Soh.”

“Cereal,” Miri says, not because she wants cereal right now but because it seems the easiest to make. “Thanks, Mom.”

When she is alone again, she falls back on the pillows with a sigh and checks her comm. A deluge of messages in the chat group she made for Seti and Rawacca; Miri decides to read all that later. A holomail from Mister Arlanz, who is inquiring about her health. She will respond when she gathers her thoughts in one piece. Another holomail from Carro Rylanz, same question phrased differently.

Then Miri sees a text from Vel.

“How are you feeling today? If you ever need any help, please call me.”

Miri considers answering with a standard “all good, thank you,” like her mother taught her. Like well-mannered girls from good families are supposed to do. She winces at the thought.

The text she does send to Vel must go against all possible guidelines for polite young ladies.

“like shit,” Miri types.

This is followed by three more messages within one minute.

“thanks for asking”

“if you’re serious about this whole help thing”

“do you think you can come over? mom’s not well and i have a lina soh appointment for the leg today”

A teenage habit that Vel at first found just slightly annoying now comes across as a tremendous relief. It means Miri hasn’t stopped talking to her after everything that happened.

“but no kleya pls”

“Sure,” Vel types and pauses. She lets her gaze linger on the empty side of the oversized bed of the master bedroom. The second time, it’s different: instead of anxiety humming in her head like yesterday, there is blunt pain. “I can take you to Lina Soh. Kleya won’t join us.”

Lina Soh is probably not the best place to tell Miri what Vel has just learned, but they can have a conversation afterward. It’s best not to delay it.

Why does all of this feel like trying — in vain — to fix a house Kleya set on fire? Vel thinks grimly as she gets up and fetches the bottle of water she left by her bed last night.

“Can my friend come over?” Miri asks.

“Of course.” Daena places a bowl of cereal on the bedside table. “When? Can you and Seti decide what you want for lunch?”

From her experience, sticking to routines is the best thing one can do in…such a situation. Routines return a semblance of control. Reality stops being fog-like, constantly slipping out of one’s fingers.

In a sense, it’s grounding because it reminds you that no matter how much pain you are in, real life never truly goes away. When Lonni was killed, there were still bills to pay and shipments to deliver, and an apartment to take care of. Miri needed to switch preschools if Daena wanted her to have any prospects. Father was about to retire. Maybe it’s the duties and responsibilities piling up wherever Daena looked that kept her alive.

Some duties and responsibilities she took on voluntarily — even though it never truly felt like they were voluntary. Rather, they seemed inevitable. Daena hadn’t been close with Sul Partagaz before all the deaths, but she was quite sure that woman wasn’t equipped for that — being dealt a bad set of sabacc cards for the first time in her life.

Daena probably wasn’t, either. She never had any time to properly think about that, though.

So she gets back to duties and responsibilities, again, because this must be better than sobbing into Lonni’s old shirt like a madwoman.

(That shirt is now stained with the remains of her mascara. The housekeeper droid will take it to the dry cleaners.)

(Did Lonni ever put on that shirt for meetings with his rebel handlers? It looks discreet, made of simple grey fabric that doesn’t catch attention—)

“I can order blue noodles,” Daena says. “Seti likes them, doesn’t she?”

“It’s not Seti, Mom,” says Miri. “I asked Director Sartha to take me to Lina Soh.”

“Oh,” Daena only answers.

“What?” Miri fixes her with a penetrating gaze, just like Lonni always did when he knew something wasn’t right.

“Can’t we deal with all that as a family?” Daena asks. “Would it be too much of me to ask you not to get any of those people involved? Haven’t they already ruined enough?”

Miri shakes her head.

“Vel killed no one, Mom. She had no idea about how that Luthen Rael guy treated Dad. She hates him too. All I’m asking is— I’d really like Vel to come. She’s not an enemy. It’d mean a lot to me. Please?”

Daena forces herself to nod. She is only doing in it for her daughter.

It’ll only be a few hours, she tells herself. You’ve spent more time with worse people.

The building Miri lives in, Sestra Towers, used to be a luxury apartment complex in the times of Vel’s youth, mostly populated by well-connected Coruscantis. Sculdun once considered buying an entire level for Stekan and Leida, “for the purpose of socialization,” but found the footage of the rooms “too modest” and the renovation rules “too restrictive.”

Sestra Towers are only recognizable to a limited extent now. The mirror transparisteel panels on some levels are still riddled with blaster bolt holes. A few floors seem to have been empty since the fall of the Empire. The “FOR SALE” banners covering them look faded already.

The tower where the Jungs live, however, looks just like it must have in the Empire years: stark white, shining, well-kept garden platforms, freshly replaced turbolifts.

Miri’s mother opens the door. Behind her back, Vel spots five curious tookas of various ages and sizes.

“Director Sartha,” Madam Jung says, her tone flat.

It’s not really a greeting — it seems more like she is simply acknowledging Vel’s presence. Vel decides to ignore this.

“Thank you for letting me visit, Madam Jung,” she says, passing Miri’s mother a basket of Chandrilan fruit and flowers. “I’m very sorry for what happened. This is for you.”

“Thank you. How charming.”

Never in her life would Vel Sartha have thought one could pack so much disgust into these four words — and she has heard Mon talk to Davo Sculdun.

“Miri’s room is down the hallway,” says Madam Jung.

The tookas crane their heads in unison.

Miri forces a smile. “You brought Sakko’s.”

She senses some unease in Vel’s voice as Vel hands her the takeaway cup and looks around the room.

“I didn’t remember what they call that thing you always get, so…”

“No, no, Spiced Blue Milk Frenzy’s pretty great too,” says Miri quickly. “I love it.”

Lola jumps and squeaks angrily. Miri doesn’t think she’s seen this droid act like that before — but hey, she’s had Lola since three. Lola’s system is getting glitchier with every year, but Mom insists on keeping everything as is.

“Don’t mind her,” Miri says. “Lola’s just acting out as u—”

She doesn’t have the opportunity to finish the phrase because this time, Lola jumps right on her with a series of furious beeps.

Miri was being honest with Vel when she said Spiced Blue Milk Frenzy is a pretty great drink. The thing is, Spiced Blue Milk Frenzy also has so much jogan fruit syrup Miri doesn’t think it’ll ever be possible to get the stains out of her favorite blanket.

“Lola!” she hisses. “Go to your charging station! Kriff, gotta call the housekeeper droid—”

Even if Vel has never heard her swear before, Miri is sure she’ll understand. “Kriff” is the most accurate word when you’re all covered in spiced blue milk, spiced blue whipped cream, and pieces of candied jogan fruit.

Only when the words leave Miri’s mouth does she realize that Lola gives no reaction; blue liquid drips off the edge of her control panel. Her optical sensors blink once, then twice.

“Kriff,” Miri repeats. “Kriff, kriff, kriff—”

She is no expert mechanic, but you don’t have to be one to understand that a blue milk and fruit syrup bath isn’t all that good for a tiny toy droid.

“Madam Jung!” Vel calls. “We’ve had an accident! We need a towel, wipes, and a repair kit!”

Daena is not surprised it's come to this. Frankly, she should have taken LO-LA70 for maintenance earlier.

She hands the blue-milk-soaked bedsheets to the housekeeper droid, suppressing a curse. Vel Sartha cleans the disassembled parts of LO-LA70 once again and speads another layer of desiccant paste over the control panel and the microschemes.

Daena herself would like to think she is decent at droid repair, at least when she doesn’t have to worry about her manicure. One learns certain skills when all the repair shops in the Federal District close down because Coruscant has turned into a chaos pit. There are few things a helping of Nepenthé can’t fix. But reassembling a droid from scratch is too much even for her. She wouldn’t imagine a Chandrilan heiress, of all people — Mon Mothma's cousin, according to Mister Semaj — doing that with such ease. 

“How long has Lola been acting like that?” Sartha asks.

“All the time.” Miri seems to suppress a hiss of pain as she leans on the wall. “Got crazier when I came back from Narkina, though. We haven’t reprogrammed her since Dad was alive, have we, Mom?”

“No,” Daena says flatly.

It was an idiotic decision, letting this droid roam in such a state just because she wanted to preserve every trace of Lonni left.

Sartha gives LO-LA70 another look — and sprays the parts with liquid-and-grime remover.

“Looks like she was trying to tell you something. Maybe I’m wrong, but we can only find that out once we turn her on.”

Daena feels her heart sink when she hears this. “When can we do that?”

“I’d give it a couple of hours,” says Sartha, casting a glance at LO-LA70’s parts. “We can take Miri to her appointment in the meantime.”

It might as well be a glitch, Vel thinks as they fill out blanks at Lina Soh’s reception desk, wait for the doctor, then for the scans, learn that the bacta patch Kleya put on Miri’s leg has done its job well, buy the prescription antibiotics Miri needs to switch to now, and pop by at Sakko’s for more caf.

Small droids tend to become cantankerous without program patches. Maybe it’s that simple. That silvery plate-like thing with two paws and little decorative wings clearly was designed for entertaining a child, not going on unattended for years like a KX-unit can.

Vel is still not sure when she spends an hour assembling LO-LA70 back together again on the floor of Miri’s bedroom.

She presses the switch button, and LO-LA70’s sensors blink. The droid raises one of its paws and beeps, with much more clarity than when Vel last heard her.

“Lola?” Miri calls. “What did you want to tell us?”

LO-LA70’s holoprojector lights up.

In Miri’s memories, Dad never has a face. There is a voice, she remembers it — the undercurrent of tension underneath the calmness. But the face is something she fails to picture in her mind, no matter how much she can look at the old holos. It feels impossible to connect the mustached man in a highly-tailored ISB uniform, posing together with Heert at some Ascension week function, with the voice Miri grew up hearing.

The man she sees now is different. Somehow, it is abundantly clear to her that this is the man the voice must belong to.

The best word to describe him would be exhausted. He looks like he hasn’t slept for a couple of days. The intensity with which he stares at the invisible camcorder is almost unsettling. He is not wearing a uniform; instead, Miri sees he is clad in a sweater and a nondescript-looking civilian jacket.

The man licks his lips.

“Miri,” he says. “I— I genuinely hope you will never need to watch this. If you do, though— I hope you are at least, well, old enough to understand?” He stops, wincing. “To shak with that. Sorry for swearing, don’t tell your mother. The point is, I did something that I had to do, because it was right, and I’m not sure…how this will end.”

In her life, Daena has known many Lonnis.

The Lonni she first met was, frankly, annoying. They were both twelve. Lonni’s father was a client of Daena’s parents. Mother gave her some credits and sent the two of them to buy ice cream while the adults were having a “very important and very urgent conversation.” Lonni insisted on spying on some Jedi master he saw in the streets instead. The Jedi, of course, noticed them, which was quite embarrassing. To make this even worse, Lonni kept going on and on about all the Jedi trading cards he had — and how he managed to trade one “extra Ki-Adi-Mundi he never liked anyway” for “two different Obi-Wan Kenobis”, which was a “pretty good deal.”

Lonni the Royal Imperial cadet was going on and on about “serving the society” and “bringing order to the galaxy,” which Daena found unbearable to listen to.

The Lonni Daena fell in love with was different. He’d just started working for the ISB, but the words “traitors” and “bringing order to the galaxy” had by then disappeared from his lexicon. He had become quiet and observant instead, with a penchant for rueful humor — and a habit of anticipating things Daena was about to say or ask for. On their dates, he would talk about anything but work. The favorite subject was books; it was the time Daena had learned he was a voracious reader, after years of knowing him.

Then there was Lonni the husband, Lonni the father: carving morsels of time out of his ISB supervisor schedule to spend with Daena and Miri. Always preoccupied. Always looking as if he had to return himself to reality by the sheer effort of willpower. Planning their family time with such meticulousness as if it were an Ascension week party with the Emperor and Grand Moff Tarkin on the guest list.

The Lonni she sees right now is the one it hurts the most to think about. She recognizes the nervousness in his voice.

(He would wake up in the middle of the night, catching his breath. Whenever they were together in any public space, Daena noticed he’d scan the place for threats like they were in the middle of a minefield or something. Once, she found prescription anxiety medication in one of his desk drawers. She did her best to explain it with what she knew: no one was truly ever safe in the ISB. Some colleagues of Lonni’s ended up in prison after one failure. Backstabbing was a common advancement strategy. She begged him to quit every week. Much to her frustration, he never listened — as if he’d confined himself to a lifetime of service that was chipping away pieces of him, bit by bit.)

(The last time she saw him alive, they almost had a fight.)

In the hologram, Lonni clears his throat.

“If we…never get to talk about this, I want you to know that I did it for you and for your mother. I love you. You two are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Whatever happens, I’ll do everything for you to stay safe.”

Daena clasps Miri’s hand — and then Vel Sartha’s hand, too, inadvertently.

When the recording stops, Madam Jung keeps holding Vel’s hand.

“Lonni.” Her eyes are glued to the hologram, and she punctuates each word as she speaks. “What the fuck did you do?”

And Vel has thought of many ways to start this conversation, but when it actually starts, it is nothing like she imagined it to be.

“I happen to know an answer to this question,” she says, quickly. “I learned it yesterday.”

“So,” Miri says. “Dad found the Death Star. Dad — found — the Death Star.”

She clarifies this thing once again, just to be sure she is not making things up. But at the same time, there is a strange sort of understanding. Like things are falling into place.

“Is that what he’s talking about here?” Miri asks.

“If he recorded this holo before he was killed, then yes,” says Vel after a brief pause.

“I…believe he did,” Mom says. “That’s what he was like before, well— That’s how he— he was under a lot of pressure—”

Miri plays the hologram again. And again. And then again, until Mom snaps at her and tells her to stop, and Vel lays a steadying hand on her shoulder.

Sometimes things fall into place, but the very truths that make it possible feel bigger than you. Some truths are like tiny pebbles you throw in the water — and watch them sink in. And then there are truths that are more like those city-ships on Mon Cala.

“Beep,” says Lola, not moving and not turning off the holoprojector. She is clearly trying to sound soothing. “Beep-beep.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Miri asks.

“Beep-beep-beep.”

“What do you mean, ‘the time was not good’?! Seriously?! He recorded a message for us, and you never—”

“Beep!”

“You stupid, useless clanker.” It is not often that you hear genuine anger in Mom’s voice, and Miri is not certain she’s heard this word before either. It sounds like something old. Clone Wars old. Republic old. “It’s not an excuse! There’s no ‘right time’ for that!”

“Could have been a programming mistake,” says Vel. “‘Tell them when the time is good’ is too vague a command.”

“Lonni would never make a droid programming mistake like this.”

Miri has no idea what makes Mom so sure. People make all sorts of mistakes when they are distraught, as she herself found out recently. But Lola beeps again, this time in agreement.

Miri squints. “Wait. Are you trying to say he wanted us to find out? Before you could show us the message?”

“It makes sense,” says Vel. “A rebel mole in the ISB should be careful. He couldn’t afford to have anyone else access this message. So he gave that specific instruction to a droid no one would think of checking.”

“A droid Miri carried around all the time,” Mom adds. “I’m sorry for calling you a clanker, Lola.”

Her eyes dart to the holoprojector.

“Beep?” Lola asks.

“Yes,” says Mom, “you can turn it off.”

As she takes one last look at the hologram before it disappears, she mutters, “Lonni, you brilliant bastard.”

The first thing Kleya does is inform Vel, of course, that she will be stepping down from her duties at the Committee.

Vel’s response is curt. “Could you give me one week to move out? I will need to find the new office space. Thank you.”

Kleya presses her lips together. She suppresses the urge to throw the comm against the wall because it is much cheaper to replace one cracked Alderaanian clay tile than two.

“Understandable,” she types. “That would work.”

After that, there is an audit of all the things to be done: furniture to buy, renovations to make, and meetings to have. Some of the old customers are still alive and still have money, which is a relief already.

The biggest relief, though, is the fact that she has the items. A few may have doubled in price, by Kleya’s roughest estimations. She should set aside some time for proper maintenance. Then find an art historian to do the appraisals. Maybe some restoration will be in order, too, but first she’ll need to sell at least one piece.

The fractal radio unit, half-disassembled, is in the storage room.

Most of Luthen’s things are still at Vel’s apartment. Kleya only took a handful of data cylinders she found on the bottom of one of the boxes, with old ISB labels reading “IRRELEVANT” plastered all over them. One looked like the kind she and Luthen would use to store information about the items, so she figured it could be useful.

Kleya tries connecting it to her datapad, but the screen keeps showing that there are no new devices detected.

“Very well,” she says to herself as she tries another one — still, to no avail.

She should have them repaired, but perhaps not now: data cylinders are trickier than droids, and she can’t be bothered to go to the lower levels for a repair shop that will work on a weekend evening. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt to check everything she has at first.

The next data cylinder doesn’t work, and so is the one she tries after that. Finally, on the sixth one, she sees an alert on the datapad screen: “NEW DEVICE DETECTED.”

Kleya presses the “authorize” button — and squints.

The folder doesn’t look like the usual item info archives that they kept. Instead, she sees audio files with names in Huttese.

“Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-Wailers. (That Joyous Night) I Ate My Mate.gamp”

“Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes. Mad About Me.gamp”

Kleya frowns. She’d only seen Luthen listen to music once — although it was a jizz song, so this tracks, she supposes.

(They are at a spaceport cantina on Nar Shaddaa. It’s her first meeting with an informant. Luthen didn’t want her to join, but she insisted, and so she is standing here, completely surrounded by drunk people. A band is playing in the corner: a bunch of Bitth with kloo horns and a Twi’lek woman with a low, deep voice. It’s nothing like the music Kleya grew up with. Luthen orders himself two fingers of Corellian whiskey and comes closer to the stage. Kleya is sure she sees a glimpse of genuine satisfaction on his face, if only for a few seconds — like he is at peace.)

A datapad music player never offers one good sound, but she has nothing better.

It turns out that jizz music works quite well as the soundtrack for all the tasks on her list. She even gets to brushing the dust off the Naboo royal headdress with one of those tiny brushes she bought this morning at Sagan Dana Restoration and Conservation. Her and Luthen’s go-to shop. They would order supplies from there and sometimes bring pieces to the owner, an elderly Togorian.

The Togorian is still there. He even remembers Kleya. The shop looks as if nothing of any significance happened over the course of the past ten years.

“You’d find it funny, wouldn’t you?” Kleya mutters, picking up the thinnest mothsilk brush. “They are just as they were. Same quality.”

And just as if Luthen were really here, a song in Huttese ends — and another song in a language that Kleya doesn’t know as well starts. The words sound familiar, still. It takes her a moment to realize that this must be Fondorese, the language Luthen grew up speaking but never taught her.

The first word in the song title probably means “stand”. The other two ones? She supposes it must be something like “alone” — in Fondorese, such things can’t be packed into one compact word like they are in Basic.

“Stand alone.” That sounds very much like Luthen, she decides.

The singer is a middle-aged man who is accompanied by a small horn orchestra. Kleya notes that the horns sound softer and smoother than the rest of the records in the collection; quiet wistfulness instead of intensity.

She brings the brush to the panels adorned with red lace.

“Stand alone,” the nameless singer goes on. “Stand alone, stand alone, alone.”

Vel is right in the middle of watching a very educational holovid on pickling Keridian sweet turnips when Miri calls her.

“Are you busy?” Miri starts. There is an undercurrent of anxiety to the way she speaks that sounds different from what Vel heard today. “If you aren’t, Mom and I had this idea, and it’d mean a lot to me if you came, but, well, I understand it’s the second time today, so you don’t have to—”

“What idea?” Vel just asks.

When Miri tells her, she can’t help laughing privately at her life. She hasn’t had this many new Rebel Alliance developments in what, five years? Yes. At least five.

“Just so you know, I don’t have a saw.”

“That’s all right,” says Miri. “Mom’s already hired…someone.”

Fact number one: it’s often easier to do scary things together with friends.

Fact number two: as Davo Sculdun wrote in his book, life never ceases to surprise you with the most unexpected turns of events — and deliver a “daily basket of fresh anxieties” that one has no choice but to face. If one wants to succeed in the endeavor, that is.

Fact number three: fresh anxieties-wise, the situation Miri Jung is in could qualify for something bigger than a basket. That she has to lean on a crutch they gave her at Lina Soh and take pain meds every few hours is fine. That Seti brought her older brothers along, Miri doesn’t mind either. But that Vel is here with a squad of people in heavy protective suits and helmets behind her back? Well, that's a bit of an overkill, in Miri's humble opinion.

“Ma’am,” says the Gamorrean Mom hired. He is holding a plasma-saw twice Miri’s size. “Where do I start? And what about these people?”

“Show me the lock! Show me the lock, lady!” An Ugnaught man, all covered in tattoos, jumps up in an attempt to capture Mom’s attention.

“Everyone, step aside,” says Vel.

“Director Sartha,” Daena says, “what is the meaning of this?”

Frankly, she regrets trusting this woman, if briefly. One should always expect something like that from the New Republic.

“Daena.” They are not on a first-name basis yet, but something about the hard look Sartha gives her makes Daena bite her tongue. “Your husband was a rebel spy in the ISB. Do you seriously think one could open this garage and expect nothing to happen? The demining team will check it first. Then you can look for what you want.”

Whispers spread through the crowd surrounding the garage entrance.

“Whoa,” says one of Seti Septrulla’s brothers. “Miri, is your dad, like, Saw Gerrera?”

“Now look at this beauty.” The captain in charge of the demining team, a Trandoshan, shows everyone another thermal detonator. “Still functional after ten years! Whoever this guy was, he knew his explosives!”

“And just how much did he spend on the guns?” murmurs another deminer, a small human woman with a Corellian accent, as she tosses another blaster rifle into a pile of weapons. “That’s five grand here. At least. Those old rebels were crazy.”

There is also a fractal radio unit; Vel says all of Luthen Rael’s cell members used those to get in touch with each other.

Just what else don’t I know about you, Dad? Miri thinks.

In the end, they are allowed inside. The place smells of damp, mold, and dust, which isn’t at all an uncommon occurrence on Coruscant — in fact, that’s what must happen to a space like this after a decade of neglect. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling; Daena winces and covers her face as she steps inside.

On the whole, it looks like a regular speeder garage, if an abandoned one. A small, empty metal cabinet in the corner. A box of rusty spare parts.

Behind her back, she hears the children whisper: “Whoa,” “This place is sick,” “How come you guys never opened it before?” She notices, too, that Miri remains suspiciously quiet, and so does Sartha.

Then Miri touches Daena on the shoulder.

“There’s nothing else here, Mom. They took out all the weapons.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Your father stuffed this garage with thermal detonators,” Daena points out. “Whatever it is that he was hiding here, he didn’t want anyone to find it.”

(“Hope for the best, prepare for a raid,” Lonni chuckles, even though it’s anything but funny. “The old ISB adage.” They have this conversation the night after Lonni was sent by Major Partagaz to arrest another supervisor, Blevin was his name. That night, Daena begs Lonni to quit once again. He dismisses the idea, as usual. “We need to be careful,” he says. “It’s just standard precautions. Like a blaster for a cargo pilot.” She forces herself to nod.)

“Your mother’s right, Miri,” says Sartha. “There must be something else here.”

“Hey, Miri!” Seti Septrulla’s older brother calls. “Check out those parts!”

“Look.” Jeefo Junior waves a tube-like object in front of Miri. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Dude, you’re the mechanic, I have no idea what it is—”

“A speeder engine tube,” says Jok, his twin brother. “Looks heavy. Totally not supposed to be. There’s something in there.”

“We’re not opening it like this! Seti, tell them, they’ll blow everything up here!”

Miri will accept that she has a lot to learn about Dad — she just wouldn’t want to learn about more secret traps he placed in a speeder garage this way. Seti puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, chill, if those demining guys have checked the place—”

“Put that down, now!” Vel chimes in.

“Yes, Jeefo Junior, put it down!” This is Mom’s voice.

When Jeefo unscrews a lid on one of the tube’s ends, Miri squeezes her eyes shut. A second later, she hears a clanking sound. And…nothing else.

Finally, she opens her eyes.

“These are broken,” says Jok, staring at the data cylinders in Jeefo’s palm.

Seti tilts her head, staring at the other spare parts in the box. “What is it on the bottom?”

She grabs Jok’s flashlight, sticks her hand under all the tubes and pieces of durasteel — and fishes out a shiny hexagon made of hard anti-soak flimsi. In the center, Miri sees a tiny picture of a man with a lightsaber.

“Looks like a trading card to me,” she mutters.

Chapter Text

Just being alive is heavy tonight,

but we have enough dead friends.

Come over.

Lena Oleanderson

“It’s kind of a memorial wall,” says Miri. “Not really a memorial wall, it’s just a bunch of holos, but hey—”

She lays flowers by Lonni Jung’s hologram — a few luminescent candlewicks. There are five other holograms on display at the school’s entrance hall: Galactic District High alumni who were members of the Rebellion. One combat medic who was stationed on Dantooine, a human man. A human woman who was in the supplies; Vel remembers her from Yavin. She passed away last year, not really of heroic causes. A pilot. A Navy officer who defected and joined the Alliance, also already dead. Corwi Selgrothe, a journalist who joined the Alliance after Ghorman. Vel remembers the holo she took of Jyn Erso, as well as her failed attempts to interview Solo.

Selgrothe is here, posing with the principal and taking pictures of the small memorial.

“I think it’s great,” Vel says. “And you didn’t have a lot of time to make this.”

For a history project made by a bunch of high-schoolers, some of whom had until recently believed Grand Admiral Thrawn was a Pantoran national hero — when Miri first told Vel that, Vel laughed so hard — it really isn’t bad.

“Yeah.” Miri’s eyes rest on Lonni Jung’s holo. “The first time I turned in a history paper five minutes before the deadline.”

“You had reasons,” Vel says.

Miri still walks around with a crutch and a bacta patch on her leg. Everything they have found out recently would be a lot for anyone. How much more so for an injured teenager?

“I just think,” Miri says, quietly, “Dad deserves better than that.”

“Miss? Miss?”

It takes Vel Sartha a second to realize that the person pulling on her sleeve is a girl no older than twelve. The girl has red hair, a few shades darker than Miri’s. She's wearing a fuzzy orange sweater and a matching hat. The style seems vaguely recognizable to Vel, but she cannot place it. She’s seen a few teenagers wearing something similar recently.

“Were you really a rebel?” asks the girl. “Can you sign this for me? I brought flimsi! And here’s the pen—”

The pen is, also, orange.

“It’s my favorite color,” says the girl. “You know, I want an orange blaster when I grow up—”

“Not sure blasters come in orange,” says Vel.

“That’s okay,” answers the girl. “I’ll paint mine.”

As Vel draws her signature in what appears to be orange glitter ink, she notices that Miri’s eyes dart to the school entrance. Awkwardly, Daena Jung steps inside.

She lingers in the doorway, looking at her husband’s holo.

The Kaddak spaceport fresher, thankfully, doesn’t have those sonic cleansers; Dedra watches black water trickle from her hair down the chipped sink. It is five in the morning, and there is no one else around. Yet she has a suspicion it won’t win her much time.

The problem with Kaddak, the first “independent” world she could afford, is that it’s a shak-pit. Has always been.

(She was quite relieved when Partagaz assigned the Tammuz sector to Heert. After Ghorman, after everything that happened there, all she wanted was to focus on Axis. Supervising a sector infested with smugglers and spice dealers and bounty hunters and whatnot, however, was an ungrateful and pointless job. One that could never give you any feeling that you had restored some semblance of order.)

Any idea that Dedra could get used to Kaddak had evaporated the second she stepped inside a local cantina to buy dinner.

Some information, however, justifies the means through which it was acquired. Even if it means having to choke on a bowl of sticky shrimp-bug soup. The soup’s sour smell — and pieces of overcooked shrimp-bug floating on its surface — made Dedra want to vomit. She chose to pretend to enjoy her dinner, though, instead of giving anyone the impression she was eavesdropping.

“Lanupa. There’s that hotel, brother. Mud baths or something. The Hutt clan, the banking clan, they all go there. There’s money there, you hear me? They’re hiring anyone who can shut up and hold a gun—”

Lanupa. A hotel. Money.

Dedra stares at her reflection.

No, that long and lifeless hair will not do. If there is money in that place, she has to give the impression of someone… if not professional, then at least capable of doing the job.

“Are you capable, though?” a little voice asks her. “After all these years on Narkina?”

“Crazy Dedra, haye?”

“Oh, please,” says another voice in her head, a more familiar one. “Were it about one’s belief in one’s abilities, Grand Admiral Savit would have composed something more tasteful than ‘Glory to the Empire.’”

Grand Admiral Savit. “Glory to the Empire,” the Imperial march, as everyone called it. Long-forgotten names, melodies that are no longer relevant.

(Once, Doctor Gorst asked to add it to his music collection. He was of the opinion that the march would help maximize the psychological effect of the Dizonite choral pleading records. Partagaz found it amusing, even though they had to refuse.)

(Dedra heard they kept playing that music even after Savit was executed for treason. Treason was a rather popular charge back then.)

“In your situation, Dedra,” continues not-Partagaz, “you do not need to believe. We are past believing at this point. What you need is to know one simple fact. You have an opportunity to acquire the means for a relatively decent existence.”

“Is this what you wished for me?” Dedra whispers, brushing through her wet hair, now black. “What you thought I deserved?”

“There is this thing Grand Admiral Thrawn used to say, Dedra. An insufferable man — truly, I will never understand the extent of Yularen’s patience for him. But sometimes he was right. He would say, ‘Who deserves what is irrelevant.’”

In her mind, not-Partagaz gives her the same look he did when they first discussed Ghorman.

“It is especially true in your case, Dedra. Believing and deserving are ephemeral concepts that you currently cannot afford.”

In a sense, the voice is right.

The money she had set aside for lodgings — it would be enough for a passage to Lanupa, a fake ID, and a bacta pump of the cheaper sort. A bacta pump would be in order, Dedra figures. No one shows up for a security job interview with hands like these. At least she has to look like she can hold a blaster.

She also needs clothes to look the part. The grey, shapeless rags from Narkina will not do.

Also, it is the shoes, as Syril liked to say, that give you away.

Not to mention that she has to do something about the hair, the hair—

A vibroblade from her Narkina-Five times, the first thing she had acquired as a free woman, turns out to be enough to cut the hair.

The end result is not bad, probably. It reminds Dedra of one governor she had known, a Lothalite named Arihnda Pryce who was on friendly terms with Tarkin himself. Partagaz once remarked Dedra and Pryce looked “a little bit similar” — although then he had given the Lothal sector to damn Heert, who spent weeks going on and on about Pryce’s “efficiency.”

Pryce has been dead for a decade.

On Narkina-Five, fishermen like to take skins of dead suck-lampreys and fangs of water-dragons for luck.

Dedra will take a long-dead governor’s face, she decides, when she cuts her new bangs with her old vibroblade. A new name, too. Rihnda. That sounds acceptable. Not enough, though: an ID requires a last name as well.

There is a common belief on Narkina-Five that the worse a beast is, the better its fangs or claws are suited for a good-luck charm.

“Rihnda Orson,” Dedra mutters.

Yes, this has a nice ring to it.

“They agreed to send these data cylinders to my friend in the NRSB. There is no guarantee we will retrieve anything, though.”

Kleya places one of Luthen’s boxes on the hovercarrier platform stationed in the middle of what Vel’s mother called a drawing room in her usual old-fashioned manner.

“It would appear you have friends everywhere.”

“Not funny,” says Vel.

Kleya opens another box and inspects its contents. “I wasn’t joking.”

“Any ideas on what could be there?” Vel asks.

She could have found ways to avoid this woman — pretend she is having dinner with someone else tonight, ask her to come collect her things during the day. Yet Vel is here, and the question she asks Kleya is probably the main reason for that.

“I wouldn’t know,” Kleya says, without turning back. “He’d worked for us for fourteen years. It could have been anything. Dossiers. Routes. Aldhani.”

“Aldhani?”

Kleya’s tone grows amused. “Who do you think gave us the information about the garrison?”

Vel takes a moment before she says what she does. She has been thinking about it since yesterday. The image is now seared into her memory forever, just like many other images of a more gruesome persuasion. Miri, staring at a tiny hexagonal piece of hard flimsi with an image of a Jedi. The way Miri’s hand was shaking when she took it.

“We found a set of Jedi trading cards in the garage,” Vel says. “Hidden in a box of spare engine parts. He must have had these cards since he was a child.”

Vel herself was never an avid collector, but when she was twelve, Mon brought her one signed by a real Jedi. It was the only Jedi Vel liked: Master Aayla Secura. “To Vel,” the message on the card read. “Be brave. May the Force be with you!” Vel kept the card until any mentions of Jedi became illegal, and then her mother threw it away.

“Everyone has their own idea of rebellion.” Kleya opens and checks another box. “One would think the Jedi mattered to a Coruscanti like him more than they would to me.”

The world she comes from, once a Separatist planet, is not habitable anymore. Kleya has always refused to talk about it. Vel had to trace the story by the things left unsaid. Kleya’s indifference toward both the Jedi and the Separatists. Her ability to sell anything to anyone, as well as her refusal to eat jogan fruit in any form.

Vel cuts that line of thought. It’s not about her compassion for Kleya — a thing still impossible to deny. The feeling raises its head at every opportunity, but they are not talking about Kleya.

This is about Lonni Jung.

“He didn’t have to die,” Vel says.

“He didn’t,” Kleya says with a quiet matter-of-factness. “But he is dead.”

“Don’t you regret it?” When Vel asks this question, she realizes that, while it is Lonni Jung’s death that she means, she also means a thousand other deaths.

“I didn’t kill him. And Luthen never asked for my opinion. So my opinion is irrelevant.”

“I’m asking for it now, Kleya. Do you regret it?”

Kleya closes the box and sprays it with “Pack-It-All,” the aerosol that turns into thick film, one of the few things Vel missed in the Rebellion years. That thing would have come in handy when they had to stuff all their belongings into carrybags and leave Yavin.

“Yes,” Kleya says tightly. “Could you help me move this box now?”

Do you regret it?

Back then, regret was an emotion neither she nor Luthen could afford: it was too distracting.

Memory number one: Mon, dancing at Leida’s wedding. All Kleya and Luthen can do is watch.

Memory number two: Vel’s message after Ghorman. It’s brief. “This is not the rebellion I want to fight for.” A month later, Kleya will learn that Vel has joined the Massassi cell. Luthen will say nothing to that.

Memory number three: the quiet horror in Lonni’s eyes as Kleya tells him to move. Krennic is just a few meters away from them. She has a bug to remove. If Lonni is the agent who had the misfortune of being in the same room with Kleya, then so be it. She will use whatever opportunities she gets.

No, regret would be too small a word for this. Kleya doesn’t think there is any way to convey this feeling as it deserves to be conveyed. Every decision she’d made in those times is a heavy cobblestone. They fill her ribcage, making it harder to breathe than it would have been for a normal, innocent person, and there is no possible way of removing them. They are stuck too deeply.

Lonni could have been the head of that kriffing New Republic Security Bureau, a thought flashes in her mind. Should have been. He was good enough for that.

“I don’t think he would have kept any Aldhani files in a garage like this,” says Vel. “They were of no use after Aldhani was over. It must have been something that he planned on using later. If I can get Mon to request an inquiry, we’ll find out much faster.”

“I might be wrong,” says Kleya.

It’s not that my statements are very reliable these days, she almost adds.

“You’re losing nothing. If you are wrong, the NRSB will waste time and resources, but I’m the one who’ll be held responsible.”

Kleya wants to laugh in Vel’s face. There is a degree of absurdity to this whole conversation: how can they talk this calmly, like they never separated, and Vel never told Kleya she couldn’t go on like this?

People act differently when they insist that you have betrayed their trust, don’t they?

It would have been so much easier if Vel simply screamed at her or threw at her that heavy white and blue vase in the corner that was commissioned by Vel’s great-great-great-grandfather a century ago.

Yet there is a realization, a stark and uncomfortable one, that this has nothing to do with whether Kleya and Vel are together or not — and everything to do with the one thing that once dominated Kleya Marki’s entire life.

The voice in her head doesn’t sound like Luthen this time. It’s more tense, and the cadence of speech is faster. A clipped Coruscanti accent. An ever-present note of desperation.

“How about the cause, Kleya?” not-Lonni asks. “Or are we done with it? If we are, I wish I’d known this earlier.”

When Kleya shares her thoughts with Vel, Vel shakes her head, as though not believing what she has just heard.

“I hope you are right. I really do.”

“Rihnda Orson,” Dedra whispers as she gets inside a rusty freighter headed to Lanupa.

What seemed like a good, plausible-sounding name does not begin to feel any more natural with repetition.

She catches a glimpse of a reflection in the viewport: a woman of an indeterminate age, clad in a pilot’s leather jacket twice her size, her face obscured by black bangs. It takes her a second to realize whose reflection it is.

The jacket she stole at the spaceport cantina from a man who looked like a smuggler. She had to steal a pair of boots, too — heavy and thick-soled, made of blurrg leather — from one of those tiny shops on the lower levels of the Sliver.

In her years in the ISB, Dedra has seen many such women: scum of the galaxy, even if not necessarily rebel scum. Smugglers, arms and spice dealers, small-time bounty hunters jostling for the scraps their guilds threw them.

Rihnda Orson from the Outer Rim is one such woman. Dedra has to believe it if she wants her legend to be sound.

Her mind conjures up an image from many years ago: Luthen Rael, in his ridiculous wig, standing in the middle of his shop, telling her about his artifacts. Then there is another image: Lonni Jung, in his white uniform, moving around the COMPNOR arcology like he could not imagine himself outside of that place. Also, Lonni Jung, cursing under his breath when he heard that his agent was down.

Rihnda Orson, in her stolen boots and stolen jacket, with her cheap holdout blaster bought with the last money she had, is not half as despicable as those people were.

The new Committee office is a small space in the Senate building. It is a nightmare to get in for most visitors — a guest pass has to be ordered in advance — but Vel is working on that. If she is to accept visitors here, she might as well fight for a fast track for them.

She sends in the droids to unpack, brings a few plants from home, hangs a few old posters by Sabine Wren: splashes of orange and purple, captions that read, “Join the Rebel Alliance.” It does little to make this space feel like home — in a way that Kleya and Luthen’s former gallery began to feel in the first week Vel and Kleya had moved in, no matter the chaos. Still, Vel is used to building a home out of whatever’s available. One acquires this skill going from one base to another.

After work, Vel takes a hovertaxi to Sestra Towers.

“Looks a bit like a hospital ward,” Miri says when Vel shows her a holo of the new office. “That giant window is cool, though. Can I get the desk by the window?”

Since Vel told Miri that Kleya would step down, Miri has used every opportunity to remind Vel that she is still a part of the Committee. “Now I have Mom’s actual signature,” she joked once.

At times, it feels like an act of defiance, an attempt to prove something, although Vel can’t tell what exactly. There are also times when it seems like a decision Miri made along the way, but of the same persuasion as the decision Vel had made when she joined the Alliance.

“The desk is yours,” says Vel. “Brought something for you, by the way.”

Miri watches her from the armchair as she takes a small container out of the bag.

“It’s a plant!”

“It’s a grandson of a plant that used to belong to a good friend,” says Vel as she places the tiny pot in Miri’s hands. “Cassian Andor was his name.”

“The Death Star plans guy?” Miri clarifies.

She’s still trying to memorize all the names. Yesterday, Vel caught her drawing a simple chart on her datapad: all the people who had anything to do with the destruction of the Death Star, based on what Vel told her.

“The Death Star plans guy, yes,” Vel says. “He had a plant back on Yavin. We took it when we had to leave the base. It keeps sprouting. This guy’s name is Clem.”

Miri traces the thick, bright green leaves with the tip of her finger.

“Who’s Clem?”

“Just one of the names Andor called himself. People would make them up all the time.”

Miri snorts. “Hi, Clem,” she tells the plant. “Welcome to your new home.”

For a few minutes, they sink into comfortable silence: Miri in her armchair, Vel on the sofa. The eldest tooka — Mishuu — jumps onto Vel’s lap.

“Any plans for today?” Vel asks, then.

“Seti and Rawacca are coming over,” Miri says. “Dejarik night. And — um, can you stay for Dejarik?”

Vel has never been a big fan of this game, but she notices that Miri’s voice holds a strange kind of hopefulness.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” Miri says. “Sort of. But I think Mom needs someone…adult to talk to. She’s been reading that holobook you gave me, remember?”

“Honor Lost on Lasan: Serving the Empire, Fighting for the Alliance” by Alexsandr Kallus. A memoir of a former ISB agent who joined the Rebel Alliance. When it came out, everyone had an opinion on it, and every opinion was the only correct one. They say Kallus still receives letters with threats from both ends of the New Republic’s political spectrum.

Vel gave Miri her copy, the first edition. Or rather, Miri herself asked if she could borrow it when she picked it up off Vel’s desk and read the summary on the cover page.

Vel nods. “I’ll stay.”

“This is stupid!” Seti Septrulla pulls a spicy puff-cracker out of the snack bowl on the dining room table. “Miri got all the defense pieces!”

Rawacca gives a small shrug that is accompanied by a quiet, noncommittal roar — and then starts typing on her datapad.

“Time for a proper meal, girls,” Daena says as the housekeeper droid places plates of fried nuna legs and vegetables. “Stop your game for ten minutes.”

Fried nuna legs are hardly the healthiest option she can think of, but it’s something three teenagers will definitely eat during a Dejarik night. At least there’s some protein, and Daena has managed to sneak in a bit of vegetables underneath the cheese sauce.

“The judge is right,” Miri glances at the message on Rawacca’s datapad screen. “The computer distributes the pieces randomly, so it’s not my fault!”

“You’ve blocked my Molator!”

“What else would you do with the Ng’ok?! I mean, seriously, if you were me?!”

“Girls! Dinner time! It’ll get cold!”

“They can reheat it on their own, then.” Vel enters the dining room with two paper bags.

On one of them, Daena sees the logo of a neighborhood wine shop. The other, judging by the soft beige shade of paper and the gold lettering, must be from a bakery.

Vel. No Director Sartha, not Mon Mothma’s cousin who brainwashed Miri, Vel. Daena has never been one to let people in easily. It took a year for her to even admit that she was in love with Lonni. Six months to consider the prospect of a friendship with Jasper Heert, who had by then become a regular guest at their house.

Sul and Lagret were an exception, but so were the circumstances their friendship grew out of. Daena finds herself more and more inclined to view it as a friendship of circumstances now. And anyway, she’d very much like not to think about Sul or Sul’s messages or Lagret or the tax forms he can’t be bothered to file without her accountant or the real conversation she needs to have with these people.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is, all it took for her to start seeing Vel Sartha as a friend was a few days. Perhaps that’s what happens when someone retrieves your daughter from Narkina-Five — and then saves your life, just as you are about to take down the door of a speeder garage stuffed with thermal detonators.

Vel gestures at the girls at the table. “You are adults now, aren’t you?”

Daena clears her throat. “That’s a bit of an overstatement—”

“I ate the fish that tried to eat me on Narkina-Five, Mom!” Miri declares as she moves the Kintan Strider figure to lock Seti’s K’lor’slug.

“Correction, they are grown-up enough to reheat their food,” Vel chuckles. “I come bearing wine and buttersweet puffs. Shall we share these spoils of my expedition?”

There is a sort of casual grace about this woman that Daena has already caught herself admiring a few times. She wonders if it comes from Vel’s upbringing — or something else. In any case, Daena has never seen a woman so comfortable in her skin. She hadn’t even thought such women existed, until recently.

“Buttersweet puffs!” Seti now seems to have forgotten about all of the grievances she was airing with such passion a minute ago.

“No, you eat your nuna first!” Vel raises her hand in a gesture meant to stop the girls.

“We’ll save some for you, we promise,” adds Daena.

As soon as they are in the kitchen, Daena checks her comm. She tries to do it surreptitiously, but Vel notices anyway; she also notices a quiet sigh of relief when Daena apparently sees no new messages.

“My parents never let me play Dejarik,” says Vel, opening the bottle. “They were of the opinion it was ‘unfeminine’. Ghorla riding was just fine, though, for some reason.”

“My father taught me Dejarik.” Daena places the buttersweet puffs on one of her elegant cream-colored plates with raised rims. “He always said it was good for logical thinking. I was the only child, and everyone expected I’d inherit the family business. So.”

Her expression darkens at that. Then she forces a smile.

(“You know I haven’t played for years!” she warns. When Lonni told her to dress simply, she knew that whatever it was that he’d planned for tonight was in the lower levels — but a Dejarik parlor was the last thing she’d anticipate. Lonni navigates the lower levels with a casual ease she hasn’t seen in him before; it’s as if he becomes a different person when he is surrounded by all this: cig-stick smoke, smell of spotchka, neon lights, cacophony of Basic and Rodian and Huttese and whatnot smashed together. “You’ve always been good at this, I remember,” he says, moving the Dejarik board toward her. “Fine,” she sighs theatrically. “What are we playing for?” “Wishes?” Lonni suggests. And she accepts before she even can think.)

(She wins. It is an unusually long game — it takes two rounds of tsiraki, and neither Daena nor Lonni is a fast drinker. “Your wish?” Lonni asks, with a sort of demonstrative politeness that makes her laugh. “Let’s save it for later,” she says. “Later” turns out to be the moment they exit the parlor. “So,” she says. “My wish. Can I kiss you?” She freezes, mortified, the second the words leave her mouth. What if she is rushing things? What if—)

She remembers the gleam in Lonni’s eyes when she asked that question. “In fact, if I won, that would have been my wish too.” And so she kissed him. He kissed her back, and again, and again, until she noticed there was a group of Zabraks staring at them.

That’s how it started.

“Daena?” Vel calls. “Are you all right?”

The words snap her back to reality.

“Good question,” she says. “I don’t know. Guess you can say I’m…moving through life. Yes. I’m grateful. To be moving through life.”

Vel pours her a glass of wine, not taking her eyes off Daena — and raises her eyebrow, as if to say, “There’s a ‘but’.”

“But maybe I’m going crazy”?

“But I think about him all the kriffing time, and I don’t understand — because it turns out I know nothing at all about him?”

“I talk to him in my head. Obviously, I’m going crazy. That’s the ‘but’.”

“Fine. It was a bit of an…exaggeration," Daena says slowly. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

She was never this honest with Sul. No, Sul would say she’s being “unnecessarily negative.”

(She hasn’t answered Sul’s calls for two days.)

“Have you heard about this book, ‘Honor Lost on Lasan’?” Vel just asks in response.

“I’m reading it. Borrowed it from Miri.”

“How do you find it?”

The question, for all its casualness, makes Daena pause. “I…sometimes I want to talk to Lonni about it. I keep imagining him there. Wondering how he saw all that. Or if he and Alexsandr Kallus ever met.” She catches Vel’s look. “A lot of wondering, as you can see.”

“I know Kallus from Yavin,” says Vel. “We were never close friends, but we didn’t hate each other either. He’s coming to Coruscant tomorrow for a meet-and-greet, by the way.”

Daena’s expression grows thoughtful.

“Maybe you should come,” says Vel. “You could ask him at least some questions.”

“I—” Daena licks her lips. “Yes. I think I could. Would you come with me?”

“You didn’t have to ask,” Vel answers. “I’m your friend. You’re with friends now.”

In the Rebellion, bonds emerged easily, as if on their own. In part, it was a survival strategy: some things were just easier to withstand together. The Rebel Alliance was called that way for a reason. Daena is the mother of Miri and the wife of the man who gave Vel Aldhani. It would have been more than enough to qualify for a lifelong friendship on Yavin.

Carefully, Daena breaks off a piece of the golden, flaky crust of the buttersweet puffs on the plate with her fingers. Her nails are short, painted with pastel beige polish. The manicure looks fresh. These days, Vel has no time to waste on such things. A salon appointment — or even having a manicurist come over, together with the hair stylist, like Mother preferred to do and Mon still does — feels unnecessary. There are always better things to do.

For some people, though, such minor things are what holds them together. On Yavin, Mon treasured the few white capes she had — and even learned to wash them on her own so that she didn’t have to entrust them to the rusty, glitchy cleaning droid.

Daena brings the piece of crust to her mouth.

“Thank you,” she says.

“We’re not looking for security officers anymore,” says the hotel manager, a woman just a few years younger than Dedra. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Her lips are painted too bright a shade of red. They are stretched into a smile that seems glued to her face. She is lying, of course.

One gold-plated chandelier in this corridor likely costs more than a Narkina village, and Dedra finds herself irritated by the fact. Or perhaps it is the way this woman looks at her that she dislikes so intensely.

The experience proves to be more humiliating than Dedra had expected. She was turned down at the reception, twice, then one more time at the personnel office. It took some effort to get past the security, through the freight elevator entrance, and the fact she might be thrown out of this place any minute doesn’t make it easier.

“Would you like me to call the guards?” asks the hotel manager with the same smile.

“The man who has just come out of your office is a bounty hunter.” Dedra has time for neither arguments nor pleasantries, and she has never been good at the latter in the first place. “I believe you know that. What you don’t know is that he works for the Hutts. Your paycheck is the last thing he is interested in.”

She cranes her head. “I don’t suppose you have a conference coming up any time soon? The Banking Clan, perhaps? You need to do a better job at vetting if you are so intent on protecting your esteemed guests.”

The smile fades.

“Or you need someone to do that for you,” Dedra finishes.

For a long second, the hotel manager eyes her over, as if trying to place her. “Who are you?”

“Rihnda Orson,” Dedra says.

The smile returns. “Sounds like the name of someone eager for a fresh start.”

“Perhaps,” Dedra says. “Or perhaps I’m just here for the credits and the healing mud.”

It is partially true, even. Such things should be good for her joints.

“The spa is for the guests only,” the manager says. “Are you only skilled in telling bounty hunters from one another, or can you do something else?”

“I have experience in all sorts of security work and tactical team management.”

This part is completely true. The woman gives a curious hum, no matter how incongruent Dedra’s words must seem with her appearance.

“Would you manage a small tactical team to help us deal with a trash crab situation?” she asks then, her voice soft as moth-silk. “Count it as your test assignment.”

To that, Dedra Meero answers, “You’ll find I am very good at dealing with pests.”

The meet-and-greet takes place on the first level of Galaxy Holobooks’ flagship store.

“Feels like it’s Old Republic again,” Vel snorts. Her gaze travels from the wooden furniture to the tall painted glass windows and domed ceilings. She gestures at one of the walls. “Who’d think even these murals would remain intact.”

It’s strange how with each year after Palpatine’s demise, more and more places start resembling the Coruscant where Daena grew up.

Galaxy Holobooks was the place where she’d always stop after school. On some days, she wandered around the stationery level, picking stickers and multicolored datapad cases. On other days, she’d spend her pocket money on books. The murals with portraits of the galaxy’s famous writers were always there, always staring at you as if they had their own opinion on your summer reading list. Until they weren’t.

It always seemed to Daena as if the Empire had set out to colonize every aspect of an average Core-Worlder’s life, however innocuous. Lonni once told her, not bothering to hide the derision in his voice, that the Department of Communications, Information and Propaganda had ordered Galaxy Holobooks to remove the portraits of “controversial” writers. “Controversial” was a broad category. It included all writers known to Daena who touched upon the subject of civil liberties in the galaxy or mentioned the Jedi Order in any way.

The flagship store’s building, though, was deemed an architectural monument — so the personnel just covered up all the centuries-old murals with thick grey drapes, as it was cheaper and faster.

Now all the banned writers, all the writers once deemed “immoral” or accused of “promoting terrorist views”, are here, back again, staring at Daena.

“There’s a new one,” she says.

When Vel looks in the direction Daena does, she presses her lips together, as if battling some emotion she doesn’t want to give in to.

The mural depicts a young man: curly hair, stubble, lucid eyes. It is made in the same style as the original ones. Next to the wall, Daena sees a floating shelf of holobooks. “TRAIL OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS,” the glowing letters on the small advertising screen read. “KARIS NEMIK. MORE COPIES IN THE ‘MODERN CLASSIC’ SECTION ON LEVEL 3-A!”

The title sounds vaguely familiar. Miri must have it on her bookshelf.

“Did you know him?” Daena asks.

“Yes,” Vel says, her voice quiet. “I did.”

Maybe she’ll tell it all to Daena, when the time is right. Aldhani. How Nemik died before her eyes a few hours later. His final wish: to give his manifesto to Andor. How Vel and Kleya had to fight the publishing house that wanted to print it, tooth and nail. The time it took for them to prove that it was, in fact, Karis Nemik who wrote the manifesto.

How in the end, when Vel saw the first edition — a thin holobook with the only holo of Nemik that she had on the cover — she poured herself three fingers of Corellian whiskey. It was a moment of emotion that she allowed herself before another battle: she and Kleya had yet to pressure the publishing house into donating ten percent of sales revenues to a small research foundation created in Nemik’s name.

(Nemik once told Vel, in passing, that he spent five years at the Naboo Academy of Sciences, but had been kicked out for “anti-Imperial sentiments”. “I’d like to return,” he added. “When it’s all over.”)

One day, Vel decides, she and Daena will talk about it.

They find two vacant chairs by the shelves full of memoirs from a few centuries ago.

The people crowding this corner of Galaxy Holobooks’s first level are mostly young. Some are in their twenties, some appear just a couple of years older than Miri. There are Rebel Alliance pins and patches everywhere: backpacks, jackets, shirts. One girl — a Theelin, judging by the horns on her head — has a tote with the portrait of Karis Nemik on it. The sight makes Daena feel out of place, old and unwelcome here. Like there are some ideas she doesn’t deserve to have access to.

Not after years of being friends with ISB supervisors and their wives, at least.

Never mind. She has read the book. She would at least like to listen.

Daena catches herself zoning out as some journalist, a middle-aged, grey-haired human man whose face she vaguely recognizes from holonet broadcasts, gives an introductory speech. Select words come to her as if through a wall of water. “An impossible choice.” “An Imperial service notorious for its ruthlessness and cruelty.” “The only known insider’s account.” “Soon to be studied in schools.”

“If they don’t include anything written by a Lasat as well, I will make sure it never happens,” Kallus says curtly.

The Alexsandr Kallus on the holos that accompanied the book had a face that seemed both determined and displeased. A frown that didn’t look like it ever went anywhere. Eyes in a perpetual squint, mouth a stubborn thin line.

The Alexsandr Kallus that has come to the meeting is different. A good decade older. Making jokes all the time with the same deadpan expression. Longer hair, now with streaks of grey running through it. In fact, the only thing that has remained the same is the sideburns.

Daena figures that the Lasat with greying fur by Kallus’s side must be Garazeb Orrelios, the man who made Kallus reconsider his allegiances. A member of the Phoenix Cell. A former honor guard captain, from Lira San, another world devastated by the Empire. The chapter where the author and Orrelios were stranded together on one of the moons of Geonosis, intense as it was, felt like a welcome relief after everything Kallus had written about his Imperial service.

Daena has caught herself thinking, not once, what that moment could be for Lonni — the moment when he’d picked his side.

It was probably less…epic. She doesn’t imagine there were any shuttle crashes involved, and it’s not like any ISB supervisor would stand a chance against wild animals on an ice planet, especially with a broken leg. Agents have always been a different breed.

No, whatever it was that made Lonni choose who he was, it must have been different.

Quiet.

Unremarkable.

Kallus is right in the middle of a story about fighting Grand Admiral Thrawn on top of a Lothal comms tower — a story that will, as Daena already knows, ultimately result in his extraction during a battle. Blown cover. The worst thing that can happen to a spy. Kallus, though, makes it all sound easy. He wraps the facts in a wry, rueful kind of humor. Stupid Navy colleagues who couldn’t figure him out until one of the Empire’s best minds stepped in. Said best mind’s flair for dramatic speeches.

(Lonni only saw Thrawn once, at an Ascension week dinner hosted by Yularen. He returned home more anxious than Daena had ever seen him before. Now she understands why.)

“I have a question!”

Kallus doesn’t appear bothered by the fact the Theelin girl with a Nemik tote has chosen to interrupt his story mid-sentence. He raises an eyebrow.

“Go on, Trail of Political Consciousness.”

“You are complicit in the genocide of the Lasat,” says the girl. “Don’t you think it’s wrong for you to be sitting here and talking to us? Aren’t there other rebels who deserve to be heard?”

Orrelios rises from his chair; Kallus stops him gently by putting a hand on his paw. When Daena looked them up on the holonet, she found a marriage announcement — from five years ago, several months after the battle of Jakku.

The people in the audience keep arguing with each other.

“She’s right!” adds a human boy from the back row.

“He literally wrote half the book about that—” protests a Twi’lek girl.

Daena sees Vel’s jaw tense.

It's already been five years, and the discussion hasn’t changed a bit. Time and again, people go over the same arguments and questions, and for some reason, people aren’t sick of it yet. Only this time, there’s a new twist to it. Now, Alexsandr Kallus is taking a platform away from other rebels, those with nice, clean biographies untarnished by any past wrongdoing. Rebels who might, hypothetically, want to write a book about their experiences.

The wry humor is now gone from Kallus’s voice. “I am complicit in the Empire’s crimes against the Lasat people, and it’s something I will have to live with,” he answers. “No matter what I do or say now.”

The matter-of-factness with which he says it astounds Vel.

From her observations, it is a thing everyone who was in the Alliance thinks about — and yet she has not seen many people talk about it as freely.

(“This is on you now,” she tells the Ghorman boy as he is sobbing. “This is like skin. You’re taking her with you wherever you go for the rest of your useless life.” She wants to shoot him, here and now, and at the same time, on some level, she still finds herself unable to process the fact that Cinta is dead. All it took was one blaster bolt from one poorly trained idiot who thought he was smart enough to act on his own.)

(The boy, Samm. She saw him at the Ghorman Remembrance day, a good decade older, drinking Sacha-Lo with a friend. They exchanged glances — brief, knowing — but never approached each other.)

(Aldhani, too. Vel has no right to believe that her hands are cleaner than anyone else’s.)

There is a trail of dead bodies behind everyone. It doesn’t look as inspiring as the Trail of Political Consciousness.

“The only reason I wrote this book,” Kallus continues, “was that…the Lasat I knew demanded this story be told.”

“I made him,” says Orrelios.

“Don’t you think it’s not the kind of stories the Rebellion should be telling?” the girl insists.

“Excuse me,” Vel clears her throat. “What kind of stories should we be telling, then?”

Vel’s voice is different now; she never raises it, but Daena can physically feel the anger ringing in it.

“Stories of people who didn’t stain their hands serving the Empire, of course,” scoffs the girl. “I bet there are enough of those. Like Karis Nemik.”

“Yeah,” says a boy in the crowd. “Like Nemik!”

Vel takes a pause, as if doing everything in her power to suppress all the emotion. “Did you know Karis Nemik personally?”

“What kind of a question is that?” asks the Theelin girl. “I was three when people like Kallus shot him on Aldhani!”

“A rhetorical one,” says Vel. “You were three. And I was with him. On Frezno, not on Aldhani — he was not shot, but crushed by the payload of credits that we stole from the garrison. We managed to take him to the doctor, but he died on the operating table.”

She fixes her eyes on the girl, whose face takes on a rather telling shade of pink, no matter how defiant her expression remains.

“We had a former stormtrooper in our squad on Aldhani,” Vel continues. “Taramyn Barcona was his name. There was also a spy who helped us, a lieutenant from that garrison. His name was Gorn.”

The girl opens her mouth, but Vel stops her, raising her hand just slightly.

“Karis Nemik fought shoulder to shoulder with those people. It was a luxury to be able to keep your hands clean.”

“Half our pilots left Imperial academies,” Garazeb Orrelios adds. “We helped Wedge Antilles flee Skystrike! Sabine Wren was an Imperial cadet on Mandalore!”

The girl stares at him with defiance. “And is it something we should be proud of?!”

“No rebel is ever proud of having done any work for the Empire,” Kallus stops her. “This book is titled ‘Honor Lost on Lasan.’ There’s a reason for that.”

A couple of the store’s employees exchange whispers in the corner; it appears they are contemplating whether to stop this discussion altogether.

“May I?” Daena raises her hand. “I do apologize. I think— I have something to say.”

“I’m afraid we are running out of time,” the moderator, that grey-haired journalist, chimes in, but Kallus dismisses him with a gesture of his hand.

“Please, go on,” he says, looking at Daena.

When Daena rises from her chair, she seems to resist the urge to sit back down again, like she is newly and sharply aware of just how out of place she must look to these students. Vel herself must look out of place to them, too.

“Old rebels,” that’s what some of these children call people like Vel — and Kleya and Kallus and Zeb Orrelios and Mon and Erskin and Syndulla and whatnot. As if there is such a thing as “new rebels”. As if there is anything left to rebel against.

“Thank you.” Daena keeps her tone studiously neutral, but her shoulders are tense, and her voice seems just half a pitch higher than usual. “I just wanted to— I don’t believe we should be viewing our past through these lenses. Things we should be proud of — that we discuss and remember — and things we should be ashamed of, that we choose to stay quiet about.”

She clears her throat. All the eyes in the audience are glued to her; Kallus and Zeb Orrelios watch her, too.

“Some people in this room are old enough to remember when and how the Republic became the Empire,” Daena continues. “I, for one, remember it very well. You know what the strangest part was? Some things just…ceased to exist. Any mention of them was erased, like they were never really there. When I was a girl, I’d take a speeder train to school every morning. It would pass the Jedi Temple. All of a sudden, the Jedi Temple had become the Imperial Palace — and no one said a word. And we weren’t supposed to talk about it. All we were told was that the Jedi were traitors.”

She licks her lips. Orrelios gives her a small smile.

“I don’t imagine this is a way of thinking we can afford.” Daena’s voice now takes on a kind of intensity Vel hasn’t heard before. “If we want to remain a republic, we— We can’t pretend our past never existed. There are all sorts of people who fought for…this, the life we live now, to be possible. They are the only reason we can gather here and have all these discussions. These people are not perfect. But they took the risks for us — and paid the price. Not everyone chose the right side from the start, like Saw Gerrera — please forgive me, I’m not sure if it’s an appropriate example?”

A few people in the audience snort. A Rodian boy with a backpack covered in Rebel Alliance patches shushes them.

Daena ignores this.

“I believe the stories of those who switched their sides are important, too,” she says.“They show us that you can still make the right choice, even if you were a stormtrooper, an officer, or an ISB agent, or, or—”

A gulp. Blush spreading over her face. The brisk, busy Coruscanti tone is here again.

“Anyway, I’ve taken up too much time. My apologies.”

She tries to sit down as soon as she finishes, but Kallus stops her.

“I’d just like to applaud,” he says.

“Went better than expected,” Zeb says.

Kallus gives a surreptitious nod as he signs the last holobook and shakes one more hand. Compared to how some of their book signings have gone lately, this one is indeed fairly tame. It even resulted in a discussion instead of a fight. And at least there were no…creative minds, like those Corellians who brought a Kowakian monkey-lizard to parody everything Kallus and Zeb said.

“The Aldhani lady,” Zeb adds quietly. “Looks familiar. Not sure if I remember the name. Vel…Mothma? Fertha?”

“Sartha,” Kallus says, on autopilot.

After a year on Yavin, anyone will memorize the name and face of this woman. Kallus had heard she was one of the earlier readers. It’s quite unusual, he notes mentally, that she decided to come again.

Sartha looks different now, but not so much. They’ve all grown older. The clothes she wears vaguely remind Kallus of the Massassi cell days. A dark green jacket with large pockets, too functional for a Chandrilan aristocrat. Heavy boots.

“And her friend?” Zeb whispers.

“Never met her before.”

Sartha’s friend seems Coruscanti. A well-dressed middle-aged woman from the upper levels with a distinctive Core accent, her face oddly faded. Black hair in a tall lacquered bun. A New Republic official? Unlikely. They sound more self-assured when speaking on political issues. Those people have a supply of canned speeches on justice and freedom for any occasion. What this woman had to say, though, seemed genuine. Like she was talking about something deeply personal.

Sartha and her friend linger by the arc between the bookshelves that serves as an exit; Kallus notices that Sartha whispers something to the Coruscanti. The Coruscanti, however, shakes her head in response.

Zeb nudges him with an elbow. This particular nudge usually means, “Oh, come on, don’t be an idiot.” So Kallus gives both women a small smile.

“Well, if it isn’t Vel Sartha!”

“Well, if it isn’t Alexsandr Kallus,” Vel laughs. “You’ve grown a remarkable patience now, I see! I wouldn’t have lasted an hour against your readers.”

“You did manage to give them quite the history lesson,” Kallus answers. The smile that hasn’t left his face is a slow, coy one. His eyes dart to Daena, curious. “You haven’t introduced us to your friend, have you?”

“This is Daena Jung,” Vel says. “She owns an imports business here on Coruscant. We became friends after her daughter applied for an internship at our committee.”

“Captain Garazeb Orrelios.” The Lasat offers his paw.

“Pleased to meet you, Captain Orrelios and Mister Kallus,” Daena says as she shakes it. “I’ve found this book very enlightening.”

She hates herself for this platitude immediately. “Enlightening,” for kriff’s sake.

A deep breath.

Be honest, Daena, be honest.

She doesn’t have to be, though. There is always an opportunity to end this conversation right here and return home. Yet she wonders if there are some more answers to be found — to at least a couple of her questions.

“Actually,” she says, “it reminds me of my late husband. You see, he was a rebel spy too.”

There is a flicker of interest — and something like compassion — in Kallus’s eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss, Madam Jung.”

“I’m sorry too,” says Orrelios. “We lost many of the good ones.”

“It was a long time ago,” says Daena, out of sheer inertia.

She wouldn’t want to inconvenience these men with her grief, would she? She is only here to find answers.

“My husband was a colleague of Mister Kallus,” she says.

Kallus frowns when she says that; it is the expression of a man studiously connecting the dots in his mind.

For the first time since the start of the meeting, she sees genuine surprise on this man’s face. “Wait. Lonni Jung, the supervisor? Seriously?”

“If you ask me,” Orrelios says, “this is a conversation to be had over some nice drinks.”

“This used to be my favorite bar when I was younger,” says Vel. “It closed down.”

The new place that she and Kleya found here upon their return to Coruscant couldn’t be further from what she remembers: panoramic windows instead of half-dim lights, dark brown leather and mosaic floors instead of a spotchka dispenser by the bar for frequent customers.

“But the drinks are good, at last,” she adds.

The droid waiter carefully places four glasses before them. Two Corellian whiskeys, neat, for Vel and Kallus. One Kali Cooler, Hutt-sized, as they say here, for Orrelios. One Cloud of Bespin for Daena. Coruscant-style — that means, dry and no sugar.

“Still can’t believe I never noticed,” Kallus says, looking at Daena. “How long?”

The question doesn’t need to be more specific. It is obvious to everyone at the table what exactly he is asking.

“More than ten years, at least,” Daena answers. “I only found out a few days ago.”

Zeb shakes his head. “And he never told you.”

“Of course he didn’t,” says Kallus. “I wouldn’t either. What I find surprising here is that he managed to fool Partagaz and Yularen for so long.”

He raises his glass.

“To Lonni Jung, apparently the smartest man in the ISB.”

“To Lonni.”

Inadvertently, Daena’s mind conjures up an image of him here, at this table. He would have a Cloud of Bespin, Coruscant-style: just aged spotchka, Corellian vermouth, koja nut extract, and citrusy foam, no syrup or anything that could distract from the taste. After all, it was Lonni she stole that habit from.

She imagines him in a civilian suit — or perhaps a New Republic uniform. NRSB, she figures. A major’s plaque — the Republic has been quite generous with promotions for those deemed rebel heroes.

He must be older now. Greying temples. Prominent wrinkles on his forehead and in the corners of his eyes, a lifetime of worry.

His hand rests on her waist.

The vision fades; the space by her side feels suddenly, unbearably empty. The Coruscant version of Cloud of Bespin acquires a strange taste on her tongue: too sour and bitter. Daena swallows the drink anyway.

“To Lonni,” she murmurs, more to herself.

Kallus watches her.

She musters a smile. “I can see you have more questions.”

The look he gives her in return is casually ironic — in a way this man must have practiced to near-perfection years ago — but also warm. “Who wouldn’t? I was convinced I was the only spy in the ISB, and here we go.”

“C’mon, go easy on her,” Orrelios says. “She only learned it what, two days ago?”

“That’s all right,” Daena answers. “Questions for questions, how does that sound?”

Kallus chuckles. “Fire away.”

Daena traces her finger over the rim of the glass, not bothering about the foam.

“Actually, the first one…it’s a bit of a general one. To you and Captain Orrelios and Vel.

“Zeb and Sascha, now that we’re here drinking together,” says Garazeb Orrelios.

Kallus doesn’t comment on it in any way, like it’s the most natural thing imaginable.

(Lonni acted the same way whenever she would begin to talk about him at dinner parties. Heert would always say the two of them came in a package, Lonni-and-Daena.)

“Sure,” Daena says. “So. My question.”

She allows herself a moment to formulate it. It might not be the most original question, and it might very well be the question people have already asked any rebel hero a hundred times — but what does it matter?

Daena finds herself wanting to know the answer, desperately so, as if it could also be an answer to one of those questions about Lonni that have been spinning in her head for the past several days.

“I wonder what kept you going all that time.”

And funny as it is, it is a question no one has ever bothered to ask Kallus. It must have been dismissed by most as an obvious one. “What kept you going?” “My commitment to the ideals of freedom and democracy, of-kriffing-course.”

The table sinks into silence.

“I just knew,” Zeb says, then, “that even if I died, it wouldn’t be for nothing. It was better to do something than not do anything at all.”

He takes a sip of his Kali Cooler, served in a glass that looks more like a small bucket.

“I hated myself, you know,” he adds. “After what happened on my homeworld. Thought I didn’t do a good enough job of protecting everyone. The royal family, the people. My family. Thought I was as good as dead. Then there was the Rebellion.”

As Vel considers her answer, she notices a peculiar feeling.

She doesn’t remember who she was before the Rebellion. Memories of that Vel are faded, somewhat distant, fragmented.

Here she is, a girl riding her ghorla, a black and white spotted steed deemed too unruly by all the stablemen at the Sartha manor.

Here she is, a girl scolded for not being feminine enough. Too stubborn. Always gets into fights with the older children — and worse yet, boys.

Here she is, hiding a trading card with Aayla Secura’s image on it in her pocket. It is the most beautiful woman a thirteen-year-old Vel must have seen. The way she dresses up would have prompted all the Chandrilan matrons to call her a “fallen woman”, but she is a warrior. A Jedi knight. The inscription on the card reads, “To Vel. Be brave! May the Force be with you.”

All girls her age — at least, all girls her age she knows — dream of a husband. Vel dreams of a wife, one who will be as strong and beautiful and brave a warrior as Aayla Secura. She does not dare to tell it to anyone except Mon.

Now there is Mon, talking to her. Vel learns things. She is now freshly aware that people are starving on some worlds because the Empire has blocked the hyperspace routes. Starving right as Vel herself enjoys her sour-tarts and caf together with her cousin. There are worlds where people are massacred, too, just because they are deemed too unruly. Vel has never been to these worlds — they are outside of the Core — but she memorizes all the names.

Dizon Fray, Lasan, the entire Anoat sector, Mon Cala—

Here she is, simmering in a quiet rage she has neither the appropriate words nor an outlet for. Flinching whenever she sees the Imperial crest. The damn thing is everywhere. On the flags, on the shop windows, on the holonet.

And worse yet, no one around her seems to care — except for Mon.

“I don’t think anything I’d ever done before the Rebellion mattered.”

It’s not a hard thing to admit, by any means, she notes mentally as she says the words.

“It was the only way I could give my answer. An answer to what was happening around us. That’s what kept me going.”

Daena takes another sip of her Cloud of Bespin.

Isn’t it strange how you never even thought you had an option to give that answer?

How does it feel, spending all those years hiding your head in the sand while Lonni was—

“And I just knew it would never feel right if I didn’t keep going,” Kallus says, with a grim, quiet kind of certainty. “It’s a choice between two worlds. What makes it harder is that you don’t always see there is a choice. I didn’t, for a while. I grew up in an Imperial kinderblock. An experience that comes with a certain kind of worldview. Everything was so simple, so black and white, so…orderly. You get trapped in that. The illusion of order that requires getting blood on your hands every kriffing day to be maintained. You wash your hands, you tell yourself it’s for the greater good.”

A tiny smile tugs on his lips.

“The Empire is the most potent kind of spice. Kriffs you up and leaves you wanting more. Thinking that if you toss your conscience out of the airlock once again, just one last time, you’ll have order, and the world will make sense at last. Zeb helped me get off that shit.”

Orrelios — Zeb — nudges him with a paw, playfully. “Our little Bahryn vacation did. Ain’t no team building like fighting bonzami together, right?”

Kallus snorts. “Don’t get me started on those creatures. This republic’s nature protection laws are too restrictive.”

His eyes dart back to Daena.

“The day I betrayed the Empire, I stopped betraying myself.”

The look in Daena Jung’s eyes grows pensive. It also doesn’t evade Kallus’s attention that she is drinking faster than she must be used to.

“Honestly,” she says, then, “please don’t get this wrong, but—”

Another silence. Daena appears to be searching for appropriate words — and Kallus knows, from experience, that such words don’t come easy. The rebel lexicon is infinitely different from the Imperial one — or the lexicon that was acceptable on those levels of Coruscant where people could afford not to bother about politics.

Neither a Star Destroyer nor a table at the Pinnacle was an acceptable place for honesty. The problem with honesty is that it requires a certain degree of vulnerability — and, maybe, a choice to trust whoever it is that you are talking about.

Kallus doesn’t think he’d ever talked to anyone before Zeb. The first real conversation he’d ever had in his life was a conversation with an enemy, an “insurgent”, a “terrorist”, a “danger to galactic security” — when they were stranded together on a kriffing ice moon. Must say something about the life he’d been living.

These days, he and Zeb like to laugh about that.

It takes some getting used to, Kallus wants to tell Lonni Jung’s wife.

“I envy you,” says Daena. “You and Lonni, all of you had made your choices back then. When it mattered. I didn’t. I think about it all the time, and I think about Lonni all the time, too, and, I do apologize if it’s too much— I hate myself. Like I failed him. By not doing anything.”

She lets out a quiet laugh that’s also tinged with a sudden anger — at herself? At the situation she was in?

“And I kept doing nothing. I kriffing kept in touch with the entire Board all these years. My accountant did Captain Lagret’s kriffing taxes. I had Chandrilan squigs every weekend with Major Partagaz’s widow, even though I hate Chandrilan squigs, and—”

“Everyone hates Chandrilan squigs,” says Vel Sartha.

“You mean, that fizzy stuff with little worms in it?” Zeb asks. “Nah, wouldn’t have that either.”

He moves his Kali Cooler bucket closer, as if to make a point.

“That’s not the—” Daena hisses, but in a moment, realization creeps into her features, and she starts laughing.

It is a nervous kind of laughter, but it also sounds relieved.

“Daena,” says Kallus. “No amount of drinks you had with Partagaz’s wife will ever top the shit I did when I was convinced I was protecting this galaxy. Not that it’s a competition, but still.”

She sighs. “Never thought I’d sit here, drinking with actual rebels and telling you all that.”

Here she thought all she had left was Lagret, Sul, and Jarro. Like she was wearing an invisible stamp that rendered her unsuitable company for most people in that new republic. An ISB supervisor’s wife. Good enough to do business with, provided she keeps quiet, not good enough to be a friend.

It was as if her past somehow confined her to a certain company.

“Never thought I would either,” says Kallus. “It is the first thing that comes into your mind, doesn’t it? That you’re alone. The Empire very much wanted us to believe that, Daena. Made it easier for us to hold on to whatever it was offering to us. Serve or shut up. The only two options available.”

“You’re not alone,” says Zeb Orrelios.

“You’re not alone,” Vel repeats. She takes a swig of her Corellian whiskey; her voice takes on a quietly mischievous tone. “And if you think you’ve missed the rebellion hovertrain, I’m afraid to inform you that you are mistaken. Battles end, people remain. There are many ways you can help.”

Daena musters a smile.

“Consider me recruited, then.” She has no idea what she can do, as of yet — but she feels it’s a subject of another conversation. “Thank you for talking to me about this. I mean it.”

“Another round?” Kallus asks as he surveys all the near-empty glasses on the table.

After the second round, Vel Sartha learns everything she didn’t want to know about the Imperial Security Bureau.

“Now look, I’ve never seen that Dedra Meero you’re talking about, but there’s no way they’d think she was a mole! That Lagret guy was an idiot.”

Zeb Orrelios’s laughter is thunderous, and a few patrons cast covert looks at them — but you do have to think twice before approaching a Lasat with a distinctly military bearing.

“What I wouldn’t give to see him swear his allegiance to the New Republic,” Kallus says. “They make you do that on the Amnesty Program, right?”

“Zeb,” Daena calls, “just how much gin is in that Kali Cooler?”

Kallus snorts. “I don’t even ask him anymore. Must be lethal for us humans, though!”

“Listen, they want me on the Adelphi base right after we get back to Lira San! It’s my only real day off, can’t I have fun?!”

“Of course you can have fun, Garazeb Orrelios, of course you can.”

“Count yourself lucky I didn’t tell the ladies how much you spent on wine!”

“My wine is an investment, not a—”

“Actually,” Daena says, “I import wine, so we have a lot to discuss here!”

Vel finishes her whiskey and stretches in her hoverchair.

As they are nearing the end of the third round, Daena’s comm buzzes. She reaches for the inside pocket of her handbag, an automatic act. There is always a work situation that needs her attention, no matter what time it is or how drunk she is.

“Just please don’t tell me it’s the pirates again,” she mutters.

“Pirates?” Zeb asks. “A pain in the ass. Not enough X-wings to catch them all.”

“They stole my ship last month,” Daena says, unlocking the screen. Then she freezes. “Not you again. Please.”

Vel’s fingers brush against her palm. “Everything all right?”

Daena takes a second to fully process the question. Were she sober, she would have probably said yes. Out of sheer inertia. Because it wouldn’t be the best idea to burden anyone at this table with details of her relationship with the ex-Imperials she’d considered the only friends group available to her until recently.

She is on her third Cloud of Bespin, dry.

“Lagret keeps texting me. And I— I haven’t told him about Lonni. Yet. Haven’t told anyone.”

“You don’t have to,” says Kallus. “You don’t owe them anything.”

“Maybe I do,” Daena counters. “Whether I like it or not.”

“Oh, please,” Kallus winces. “I know Lagret. He is not your friend. He’s likely been using you to smooth his path in the New Republic. The only reason he stayed on the Board for so long was that he had gotten too good at making young idiot supervisors do his work — and then making them the fall guys.”

Lonni used to say the same. He’d tell Heert, explicitly, to stay away from Lagret.

The problem is, neither Lonni nor Heert lived long enough to be around when Lagret was.

“I understand,” Daena says. “I know who these people are. But…they were the only ones who showed up after Lonni’s death. I took what I was offered. It’s not about Lagret. It’s about me.”

“A matter of honor, Sascha,” Zeb tells Kallus.

“If I treat them like they were never my friends at all,” Daena nods, “then I’ll be just like them.”

As she says this, she feels Vel’s contemplative gaze on herself.

“Then you better do this as soon as you get sober. The longer you keep postponing it, the worse it will be. I’ve seen that.”

Daena looks at the people gathered at this bar table: Vel Sartha, who entered her life a mere few days ago and has already become her friend, Alexsandr Kallus, in whose book she searched for answers, Garazeb Orrelios, a man who chose to be kind to her even though he barely knows her.

And then she decides that just this once, she will make a reckless decision.

There is nothing that could be worse than telling Lagret everything sober and alone.

“I’ll call him now,” she says.

Kark. Kriff. Shak.

“You’re absolutely not doing it now, Daena,” says Vel. “Now is not the best time—”

Just as she reaches to gently pry the comm out of Daena’s hands, Daena presses the button with a stubbornness that could put to shame Miri and Kleya together.

“Captain,” she says, as if she still slips in the long-nonexistent rank to indulge an old and cantankerous man. “My apologies for not calling you back earlier. I have something important to tell you.”

“Daena, you are drunk, aren’t you?” Lagret’s voice holds a mix of amusement and disdain. “This is becoming ridiculous. If it’s a joke, it’s not a particularly funny one.”

“Yes, I am drunk,” Daena answers. “And no, it’s not a joke. I’m telling you the truth. If you don’t believe me, I have a hologram from Lonni.”

She’d much rather not show this hologram to Lagret — but at the same time, the scoff he awards her words with and his derision are making her angry.

You are so sure of everything, aren’t you? So sure that all the little lies holding your little world together are the ultimate truth, undeniable facts set in stone? How comfortable that little world of yours must be. How nice it must be to hide from life somewhere where the Empire is still bringing order to the galaxy.

“That won’t be necessary, Daena,” Lagret says. There is now a coldness to the way he speaks to her, a certain degree of formality. “I would much rather prefer that you call me sober to inform me of such…developments, yes, this much would be the bare minimum.”

He takes a pause, a somewhat theatrical one, that Daena recognizes easily. It always serves as a way to keep his face when Lagret is at a loss for words — because a man like this, the man he thinks he is, can never be at a loss for words.

“When and how did you learn of your husband’s treachery?”

“Last week.” Daena collects herself. Sometimes you have to hold yourself back from snapping for the sake of your own dignity. “From Dedra Meero, who, by the way, was never a rebel spy like you told me. Then other former Axis agents confirmed it. Then I went through Lonni’s things and found that hologram, in which Lonni said it all himself.”

“I see,” Lagret says after another overly long pause. “I see. Then — perhaps — you and I will have to make choices, and these will be choices made for the sake of our entire…community. Madam Partagaz. Jarro. It would be most devastating for them to learn who…Supervisor Jung truly was. Therefore, he shall remain the Imperial hero. You will not speak of this…misnomer ever again. Neither will I. I am counting on your prudence, Daena.”

And suddenly, she wants to laugh at him — at the demonstratively old-fashioned manner he resorts to whenever he is furious, at all the pauses, at all the excuses he invents just to keep clutching onto the lies.

You’ve been clutching onto enough lies yourself, haven’t you?

Well, at least I’m not doing that anymore, Daena answers that little screechy inner voice.

Then she downs her Cloud of Bespin.

The rebels at her table are watching her without saying a word, but she sees a thin, stubborn smile tug on Kallus’s lips.

“I’m afraid you misunderstand,” she tells Lagret. “I’m proud of Lonni. He fooled you for years, and you never even noticed. He was there, under your nose. He discovered the Death Star while you were what, making doonium mine investments in your brother’s name? Having lunch at the Pinnacle?”

“He was begging Partagaz to vouch for him because the gentleman’s club on the 5121th wouldn’t accept him,” Kallus comments.

Daena waves him off, trying to focus on the comm conversation.

“What is it?” Lagret asks.

“Nothing,” she says, quickly.

“Very well.” Lagret appears to have returned to his usual, mildly condescending tone, Must have taken him a considerable effort of will. “Let us be honest, then. Your husband, as it turned out, was merely rebel scum. Not even a particularly fascinating specimen. I see nothing to be proud of. We accepted him as one of us out of sheer pity— ”

“Oh, and by the way, I guess it was Lonni Jung who helped save Chancellor Mothma from those people after Ghorman,” Vel adds.

Daena opens her mouth — and closes it.

Can’t you have thought me that earlier? Not when I’m in the middle of a fight with Lagret?

“Who is this?” Lagret hisses. “Explain yourself now!”

Daena has only heard Lagret scream on two occasions before: one was when he learned of Emperor Palpatine’s death, the other when the doonium mine investment situation — that he had had high hopes for since the Emperor started building another Death Star — didn’t go according to plan.

“Who are these people, Daena?! I hear their voices!”

She casts a questioning glance at everyone gathered at the table. Vel nods: a permission. So do Kallus and Zeb.

“Chancellor Mothma’s cousin,” Daena answers then, finally putting her mic on loud. “And a former co-worker of yours, Alexsandr Kallus.”

“And Captain Garazeb Orrelios.” Zeb sounds like he is about to tip an invisible hat. “New Republic Navy.”

Vel snorts. “Sagrona Teema.”

“You—” Lagret stops, as if reminding himself that he has, at least technically, completed the New Republic Amnesty Program. “This is not over, Daena! We’ll discuss how you chose to treat your friends!”

After that, he adds no more theatrical pauses — instead, he just hangs up.

Daena puts the comm back into her bag, slowly, and catches her breath. The room is blurry before her eyes. Then her eyes meet Kallus’s. Zeb covers her hand with his paw: a steadying, calming gesture. Vel takes her other hand and squeezes it.

“Daena Jung,” Kallus says. “You’re a fast learner.”

Zeb scoffs. “Just tell her we’re proud of her already!”

“Of course we’re proud of her,” Kallus answers, as if it were the most obvious thing imaginable. He raises his glass. “Sagrona, as you say, Teema?”

They should have probably stopped the evening at another drink after that comm conversation with Lagret.

They don’t — because when Vel sees Daena Jung’s happy face, happy even though her cheeks are tear-streaked, Vel doesn’t have the guts to call it a night.

She texts Miri, a brief warning, “Your mom might come home late” — and orders more water for everyone and a can of electrolyte Meiloorun fruit soda for herself.

This is going to be a long night. And as far as long nights out on Coruscant go, this entire group might need someone at least moderately sober.

“NIAMOS!, everyone!” calls Daena Jung.

The tall, formal-looking bun on her head has now turned into a mop, and she looks like she couldn't care less.

The club Vel takes everyone to is just around the corner, and it’s just like clubs must have been when Kallus was young — only, he didn’t really go to clubs, did he? Didn’t have time to. There were his Royal Imperial classes, and then there were those dojo sparring sessions that he could not skip if he wanted to be in a better shape than the other cadets. Then there was all the ISB work. Then—

“I love this song!” Zeb shouts in his ear. “NIAMOS!”

“What the shak is Niamos?!” Kallus shouts in response as Zeb drags him to the dance floor.

The tune is vaguely familiar. He is sure he must have heard it somewhere, but he never paid any attention to such things back in the day. The cantina visits were to gather intel and meet with informants.

Stars, why is everyone screaming “Niamos!” like they are insane?

“The song you get drunk and have mental breakdowns to!” shouts Vel.

“It’s fun!” Zeb counters. “I had a whole special dance with Ezra! NIAMOS dance! We even taught Chopper! C’mon, c’mon, I’ll show you—”

Vel brings a bottle of water with a straw to Kallus’s mouth. She made him switch to it two rounds ago. Zeb and Daena proved to be unstoppable.

“Sascha,” Zeb grabs Kallus by the waist. “Come on. You’ll love it!”

Daena’s hair is much longer than Vel had thought. It’s tousled now. Her eyes are glittering, and she flashes Vel the most brilliant smile as she dances. Every shred of that calm, restrained woman Vel has known is gone.

The three of them must be quite the sight: a human woman dancing as if there were no one else here watching her but her friends — and a Lasat teaching Niamos dance moves to a human man who looks like he might stab you.

Vel calls a hovertaxi and tells the droid driver there will be three stops.

As soon as they all end up in the speeder, though, it turns out that Daena and Zeb now refuse to part — and just like that, Vel has to change the route: the Sartha apartment. Miri has seen a lot, indeed, but there are some things Vel still hopes to keep her from learning.

Never in her life has she been so grateful for the ridiculous number of guest bedrooms in the Sartha apartment.

“Good morning!”

With a moan, Alexsandr Kallus raises his head from the pillow. His mouth feels drier than Tatooine after a sandstorm. The image before his eyes is blurry for a few seconds. Then his mind registers a Chandrilan-style interior, a glass of electrolyte Meiloruun soda on a white bedside table, a jar of something that vaguely resembles pickles right next to it, and Zeb’s silhouette in the doorway.

“Morning,” Kallus manages. “You’re all right already.”

It’s more of a fact. There is a reason Lasat call most alcohol that’s acceptable in the known galaxy lemonade.

“Yeah,” says Zeb. “You think we should wake up Vel? Her comm’s been going off.”

“Wait,” Vel mutters as Zeb brings the comm closer to her face. “What?”

It’s not her friend that’s on the comm, and she should have perhaps been more eloquent, but that’s about what she is capable of at the moment.

Her NRSB friend is a male human. This is most definitely a female Mon Calamari.

A second later, Vel realizes.

“Director Sartha.” The NRSB’s head of forensic research sounds hesitant. “I’m calling to inform you that we’ve retrieved the information from Lonni Jung’s data cylinders, and given our discovery…”

Vel stretches on her bed, trying to process the new developments gradually, no matter how helpless any sentence longer than three words makes her feel now.

“I am saying that we are obliged to pass this information to the Judicial Department.”

“What information?” Vel asks.

“The information extracted from Lonni Jung’s data cylinders.” Now there’s a hint of testiness in the research head’s voice. “I am not at liberty to discuss this. Perhaps you should inquire at the Judicial Department.”

Holonet articles on wildlife state that trash crabs can grow up to two meters in height. The Lanupa trash crab called Tet’niss by the locals — not without affection — is nine meters.

In the back of her mind, Dedra Meero wonders about the size of the insurance Skull Ridge Mountain Hotel & Spa will pay to that idiot guard who decided to shoot the crab with a blaster.

The manager appears both mildly impressed and disappointed as she studies the charred remains of the crab on the snow. It’s as if she had hoped the test assignment could also work as a way to get rid of unwelcome guests like Dedra.

“How did you manage it?”

Dedra shrugs. “Animals form bonds, too. We tricked her into rescuing her young.”

A smell of burning spreads in the air. The manager wrinkles her nose. “An unsuccessful rescue attempt, I assume?”

Dedra can’t help a tiny, satisfied smile. “I did tell you I’m good at dealing with pests.”

Later, when she puts on the guard uniform given to her by the HR, plain green gaberwool tunic, slacks, and a ridiculous flat helmet, she wants to laugh. Some things can be surprisingly easy — much easier than one could have thought.

Maybe years on Narkina — years of being called crazy, years spent in jail and dirty little huts — made her lose all belief in her abilities, but Partagaz was right: it doesn’t matter. Her abilities never left her.

Sometimes all it takes for one to rediscover them is an emergency.

Chapter Text

My Chemical Romance

“Everything,” says Erskin.

The names, the dates, the records of all the trips Dedra Meero took to Ghorman. The documents. The lists of all the stormtroopers and Imperial Army squads deployed to Ghorman before the massacre. Captain Linus Kaido’s full dossier.

Vel studies the rows of text on the holoscreen before her. It is ten in the evening, and the Judicial Department’s building is almost empty when she comes to Erskin’s office to have a confidential look at the files.

“He’d been gathering this information for months. He kept it even after the massacre.”

“Talk about hope,” says Erskin.

It’s obvious. It would have made no sense for a spy to keep such files if he didn’t wait for a day to come when he could make all the information public. Erskin wonders how something like data can be so strangely similar to more ephemeral things — like “Trail of political consciousness.”

“Remember this. Try.”

Well, Karis Nemik was right. It turns out that Lonni Jung was right too.

“Rebellions are built on hope,” Vel mutters.

Erskin has heard this phrase before, once or twice, but he doesn’t remember who first said it.

“So.” Vel’s gaze is fixed on the holoscreen. “What are you going to do?”

“We’ve already opened a case. We’ll look for Kaido on his homeworld — in any case, Jung has just made the search at least twice as fast as it normally would have been. We’ll look for Meero. Then there’ll be a trial.”

Vel nods.

“We’ll need testimonies,” says Erskin.

The answer comes a little bit too quickly. “I’ll testify.”

“No,” he says, keeping his voice soft, yet another reminder to an old rebel that this is not how things work now that the Rebel Alliance has been replaced by the New Republic. “You’re already involved in this investigation because you provided the cylinders to the NRSB. I’d like you to join the hunt instead.”

When it comes to breaches of regulations these days, one has to be discerning. You can’t afford too many of them. Erskin would much rather use whatever loopholes he has to get Vel to do what she is best at.

“We need Daena Jung,” he repeats, in the same soft voice. “Otherwise people might doubt the origin and validity of the files.”

“What people?” Vel asks, irritated.

“Whatever lawyers these Imperials will get. And we can’t deny them the right to defend themselves in court.”

“It’s a kriffing tribunal, for Maker’s sake. They know what they did. You know. I know. Everyone knows it.”

“We’re a republic now, Vel. The Empire threw people in jail without due process. We don’t. So we will need Daena Jung to testify.”

Vel grits her jaw. “You have me. There’s also Kleya who worked with Lonni. I’m sure this will be enough.”

When Erskin looks at her, he sees something he is intimately familiar with — an urge to protect someone who has become dear to you from the inevitable.

(He doesn’t remember when he wasn’t trying to protect Mon.)

(It’s strange how often he was doing it not for Mon’s sake but for his own, really. For the sake of his conscience, or for the sake of that sense of family that Mon gave him when he didn’t think he would ever have it again.)

“Vel,” Erskin says. “Don’t try to shield her. You must at least give her a choice. It would be the only fair thing to do.”

“It might not happen any time soon,” Vel says. “They’ve opened the case, and they are looking for all the Imperials. Meero already left Narkina-Five, and they’re convinced she has gone to a neutral planet.”

“Why don’t you ask Dewi and Freedi?” Miri pours a bit of water into Clem’s pot. “Narkina-Five's not a big moon. Maybe they know someone in Kina City who knows—”

“Yes, I said that the investigators should talk to them.” Vel sounds pensive, like there’s something she’s pointedly avoiding saying. “Again, the trial won’t happen tomorrow—”

Mom puts three plates of her healthy shrimp-and-vegetable blue noodles on the kitchen table. These dinners together have already become a tradition. Vel brings her quick Keridian sweet turnip pickles; Mom has now begun to incorporate them into her diet recipes.

“Vel.” The unexpected firmness in Mom’s voice is different from the usual “go to your room, young lady.” “I believe you’re trying to tell us something else.”

“You don’t have to say yes.” Vel studies her plate, as though contemplating her words. “And in any case, they have not summoned you officially.”

“Summoned where?” Miri puts her watering can aside.

“To the witness stand. They will need to prove that the files really belonged to Lonni, who was really a rebel.”

“Lonni.” Only now does Miri notice how Vel calls Dad by his name, as if they were good friends when Dad was alive.

“You don’t have to say yes,” Vel repeats. “It will be a public trial, and I’m sure it will attract a lot of unwanted attention. The prosecutors can make do with Kleya.”

Her words make Mom freeze in the middle of the kitchen.

Mom goes quiet; it seems to Miri she stops breathing for an impossible second.

“Tell them yes,” Mom says, then, in a voice she often uses when Miri overhears her on the comm, negotiating contracts. “I can’t believe that you thought I wouldn’t testify.”

“You don’t need to jump to any decisions just yet,” Vel answers. “Let’s have dinner. They haven’t even found anyone.”

Mom doesn’t bother to sit down, though. “Why are you trying to talk me out of this?”

“Because stuff like this changes your life?” Miri tries.

The very thought of this — Mom testifying at a Ghorman massacre tribunal — is horrifying. Miri has done enough scary things in her life already, but this one feels different. It’s not necessarily worse than being eaten by a giant lamprey on Narkina or blowing up on thermal detonators in Dad’s garage. It’s just that…you can only be eaten once. And when you get famous for stuff like New Republic tribunals, it’ll be with you forever.

“As if nothing changed our lives lately, Miri,” Mom says. “And Vel, there’s nothing you can say to talk me out of it. I’ve given you my answer.”

“So we meet again, Vel Sartha. No alcohol this time.”

“Thought you were retired,” Vel says as she follows Alexsandr Kallus down the corridor of the New Republic Security Bureau building.

“So did I,” he scoffs. “The NRSB urges me to reconsider once a year. I couldn’t say no when they told me it was about Meero.”

The royal Naboo headdress sells to a private collector twice as fast as Kleya had expected.

“Everything is a cycle,” she mutters, rearranging the new items on display, like Luthen is here.

People have money to spend again — and, most importantly, a desire to spend it. All it took was a handful of years.

When the money appears in her bank account, Kleya spends almost half of it on renovations, which feels, under the circumstances, as important as it has not been since she and Luthen first moved into this building. Fresh wall paint, another set of handmade Alderaanian clay tiles— deadstock, found in an obscure Mid Rim world shop. New furniture that looks just like the furniture she and Luthen once had, the things the ISB likely broke or threw away.

She spends days rearranging and unpacking Luthen’s things and her things, for once, until the place feels like home again.

The new sign at the entrance is dark brown, with golden letters — and so are the new business cards, small hexagons coated in moth silk.

“Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest. Coruscant. Kleya Marki, proprietor.”

She considers hiring an assistant, but can’t bring herself to.

When the renovations and preparations are done, Kleya walks around the gallery, and for the first time in years, she finds herself satisfied with how this place looks. Briefly, she wishes that Vel were here to witness it — but she has to remind herself that Vel is not here, not in the same sense that Luthen isn’t here, but still. The only instances when they talk are about the Ghorman files — and even when it is about the Ghorman files, it is Erskin that does most of the talking.

Kleya will have to learn to live this new life. It’s just the way it is.

And whether she catches herself clutching her pillow at night like it’s a person doesn’t matter.

Days go by, filled with the mundanest things. Quick breakfasts together with Mom. School. Committee work, punctuated by visits to Freedom Towers, where Miri now knows every tenant by their name.

Days go by, and it turns out, the mundanest things have the capacity of making you happy. Miri makes Mom her usual meal of fried eggs, nuna bacon, and salad. She throws on a bulky purple jacket that Rawacca found for her when they all went thrifting.

When she checks her reflection in the mirror, she notes, not without surprise, that she doesn’t feel Mom’s disapproving look on herself.

New rituals grow into her life. Checking her new, official Committee holomail address as she leaves Sestra Towers — “miri.l.jung.COORDINATOR.scfvoatrtr”. Leaving a tiny jar of program patch jelly by the doorman droid’s charging station every once in a few days. Another tiny jar for whatever droid that is in charge at the Senate’s Entrance 7-12-A reception desk today.

Helping the Rodian pilot lady clean her apartment on Bendudays is another ritual. This one inevitably results in the one-armed Corellian man from downstairs coming to ask Miri to help repair a battered mouse droid named Princess that has broken down again.

“I’ll tell you everything, doll, don’t worry about that, just need an extra pair of hands here,” the Corellian keeps saying, apologetic, like Miri hasn’t already memorized the schematics.

“Actually, how about I take Princess to a repair shop?” Miri offers one day. “We might have some budget if we write that she is a support droid.”

Some things are more rewarding than they seem. It turns out you can get more praise for bringing a glitchy, beeping, panicky mouse droid to some Anzellans Vel recommended than after helping solve an entire building’s mold problem.

Days go by, and with each one, the new Committee office in the Senate building — no matter how weird the place felt at first — becomes more like a home.

“Yes,” Miri says, “these pickles are for everyone. No restrictions per person, really. Director Sartha keeps making them.”

As Vel checks the veteran insurance claims forms, the crew of X-wing pilots studies the pickled turnip jars aligned on the empty half of Miri’s desk.

“I like putting these in sandwiches,” adds Miri, just to reduce the awkwardness a bit.

“Know what, kid,” says one of the pilots, a man with thick black brows and a Corellian accent, “I bet they work well with spotchka too.”

Vel throws him a look that could have burned down the entire planet Hoth.

She is off-planet half the month now. When Miri asks, Vel always answers that she is not allowed to tell anyone what it is about.

“Not yet, Miri,” she just says. “Not yet.”

Days go by, and there are too many variables and unknowns in this case to Vel’s liking.

A cousin of Dewi Pamular’s friend’s insists that a friend of his friend brought an unpleasant-looking woman who seemed to be in a rush to Kaddak. No one is sure that it is the unpleasant woman in a rush that is relevant to the investigation. The local NRSB department pulls up security footage from all the streets leading to the spaceport.

“Zoom in on this Jawa,” Kallus tells Vel. “A bit too tall for a real one. And alone.” He squints. “There you are, Dedra. Hiding under your cloak. Staying away from the cameras. Just like they taught at Royal Imperial, right?”

“So Kaddak,” Vel mutters. “And here I hoped we’d get some…other kind of clarity.”

The fact Meero has likely gone to Kaddak complicates their situation. It would have been easier to find her on a less populated, less chaotic planet, but they’ve got what they’ve got.

“I believe,” Kallus says, “a cantina crawl around a lawless neutral world is in order.”

“Not yet,” Vel repeats as she places another jar of pickles on the desk.

These seem new; it would appear she is discovering vegetables that are not Keridian turnips.

“I hate all this secrecy,” Miri mutters.

“Says the daughter of a secret agent.”

That’s why I hate it, Miri wants to answer.

The more she learns about the world Vel — and Dad, and Kleya — come from, the clearer it is to her that she has no idea what this world truly is. She’s never seen Vel with a blaster. No matter what she knows, she still has a hard time picturing Vel on Aldhani.

Vel, with her pickle jars and her Chandrilan shrimp sandwiches and her habit of cursing at the data terminal when it’s being slow.

Vel, going on a “trip” that in all likelihood has nothing to do with her Senate work.

Miri doesn’t think there’s a way to keep her anxiety at bay, under the circumstances.

So she says, “Just please come back, okay?”

“I hope they don’t play NIAMOS there,” Kallus mouths as they approach one of the cantinas on the lower levels of Kaddak’s main settlements.

The place smells of spotchka and vomit.

Some part of Vel Sartha wonders if she is too old for this.

“‘Suppose they might.” Vel checks the blaster on her hip, just in case. “It’s a popular song.”

“Zeb and I made a bet," says Kallus. "My money’s on no NIAMOS.”

“You two are married, aren’t you?”

“Don’t think that’s an issue when it comes to money bets.”

No shootouts, Vel tells herself. You’ll keep this quiet and clean. All you need is information.

In the end, they are almost dragged into one. Almost.

Luthen Rael’s rule number one: build your exit on the way in.

Kallus taps his fingers against the bar table — a signal — the second he catches the look a tall Zabrak throws at them. At a cantina like this, there’s always a high chance someone won’t like her face.

“Three of whatever that guy’s drinking,” Vel says to the bartender. “Keep them coming.”

To the Zabrak, they will be a bounty hunter couple from Ord Mantell pretending to be run-of-the-mill smugglers. On a new assignment, paid handsomely by their guild. Very much open to making friends in this part of the galaxy. In some cases, a combination of confidence, credits, and spotchka proves to be a great conflict mediator — and an even better truth serum.

The transport that approaches the Skull Ridge Mountain Hotel and Spa does not appear suspicious at first glance: it is a standard Chandrilan luxury yacht, a smaller model that could have belonged to a moderately successful banker or an aristocrat.

Yet Dedra Meero feels like she wants to crawl out of her skin as she watches it land.

“Keep an eye on them,” she tells the deputy captain of the guards. “I have an urgent meeting with the manager.”

Two developments happen that day.

The first one: Kleya is paid in Old Republic credits, for a piece of a mural that a shipping magnate from the Outer Rim is really interested in acquiring. When she sees a small case full of shiny ingots, she wants to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation: are they on At Attin, the fabled treasure planet?

Vel would have found this so amusing.

The second development takes place just as Kleya is about to close the shop.

“We found Dedra Meero,” says Erskin when he calls.

Kleya’s breath catches as she processes what she has just heard.

“Where?” she just asks. “How?”

“First, she went to Kaddak. We found a smuggler who claimed a middle-aged woman in grey rags stole his jacket. Tried to pick a fight with our agents, they got him drunk instead. Then a spaceport employee insisted that some middle-aged woman left a fresher all covered in black hair dye stains. And another smuggler vaguely remembered that he took one brunette in a leather jacket to Lanupa.”

“Lanupa. That pirate lair planet?”

While Kleya herself would very much like Dedra Meero to fall into one of those acid pools on the Skull Ridge mountain, she doesn’t imagine a woman like Meero going to such a place of her own volition.

“There’s a spa hotel there now. Meero was in charge of security. Making sure no one found out about the slaves some Hutt brought along, and hunting trash crabs occasionally.”

“A meaningful life,” Kleya says.

“A meaningful life,” agrees Erskin. The irony then disappears from his tone. “It’ll take some time for us to draft the indictment for the tribunal, but you should already prepare to testify. Whatever happens around this trial, it will be a dogfight.”

As soon as Kleya ends the call, she starts laughing.

She cannot stop; as she laughs, she imagines Luthen laughing together with her.

“Mom,” Miri says. “You’re literally picking between twenty black suits that all look the same. And you’ve got a week.”

“I’d like to prepare.” Daena studies the black mothsilk velvet ensemble. No, she would probably look overdressed. It’s a crimes against sentiency trial, not a dinner party. “And they don’t look the same.”

There is also a simpler, but still elegant suit made of a wool and mothsilk blend — the kind of black that looks more like a very dark grey. Always a great option for work meetings. It should probably look acceptable in court as well. She can pair it with a white Coruscant collar shirt.

“What’s that?” Miri points at the suit in the farthest corner of Daena’s wardrobe.

Mom’s walk-in wardrobe has always been a place that existed largely in greyscale. White shirts and sweaters, black suits. Miri has only seen Mom wear anything that’s not black and white in the old holos, from their previous life. Orange is the last color she’d imagine she could find in Mom’s wardrobe.

“Oh,” Mom says. “It’s not orange. The color is called copper.” Then, some strange emotion colors her voice. “It’s…it’s a gift from your father. Ghorman twill.”

The memory of that one day, fourteen years ago, is still fresh in Daena’s mind. They went shopping together on one of Lonni’s rare days off. Lonni needed new “civilian” shirts, and she needed a coat.

Lonni saw the suit in the window of a boutique that one Ghorman fashion house had just opened in the Federal District, as it was then called. A muted brownish green ensemble with a classic Ghorman draped detail in copper silk twill descending from the shoulder. A jacket, cinched at the waist, accompanied by a flared skirt that went just below the knees.

Lonni persuaded her to try it on. As Daena stared at her reflection, she noted, with some surprise, that for the first time in the two years after she had had Miri, she liked what she saw. The woman that the mirror showed her looked as if those two years never really happened. No constant pediatric appointments, no tantrums to manage, no sleep deprivation, or diets, or work that never went away.

It took two weeks to have the suit tailored to her measurements; the sales assistants refused to give it to her as is. She never wore it. It felt out of place on Coruscant: shoulders too soft and draping too flowy, a look not meant for office days.

“Mom,” Miri says. “Try it on.”

“It won’t fit,” Daena protests.

Miri folds her arms on her chest. “Mom, how can you know if you don’t try?”

“It wouldn’t look good on a brunette anyway—”

“Mom! It’s a Ghorman suit, and you’re going to a Ghorman trial!”

There are times when it’s easier not to argue with this girl, Daena decides. She tries on the suit just to prove herself right.

After five minutes of studying her reflection, she decides that she might need to spend a day at her hairdresser’s. Going back to one’s natural color after a decade of jet black dye cannot possibly be an easy endeavor.

“The galaxy is watching! We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching! We are the Ghor!”

The crowd at the entrance of the Coruscant Central Court where the New Republic Tribunal takes up residence now grows bigger with each second. Police speeders are hovering nearby but not approaching, Kleya notices as she observes the situation from a distance.

She sees Daena Jung, now blonde, hurrying up the stairs in a suit that looks Ghorman.

Miri, following her mother. Kleya doesn’t recognize this dark purple jacket; it must be new. She has not seen Miri wear this color before. The shade is called jogan fruit. Kleya shuts down a stream of absolutely irrelevant memories that it evokes.

Carro Rylanz is here, too. As well as Erskin Semaj, accompanied by two more Judicial Department officials.

Mon’s limospeeder lowers itself on the landing pad. The chanting grows louder. Camcorder flashes remind Kleya of the lightning from her homeworld that one could witness during a particularly severe thunderstorm. The police officers keep screaming at everyone to make way for the chancellor.

“The galaxy is watching!” Kleya hears. “We are the Ghor!”

Only when the doors close after Mon does she finally see Vel Sartha. Vel elbows her way through the crowd, clad in an old khaki jacket, her hair in a messy ponytail, and it seems to Kleya that in all these years, she has never seen this woman look so beautiful.

Kleya’s heart gives a twist as she watches Vel’s back.

As Vel reaches the top of the stairs, she turns back — but whether she sees Kleya or not, Kleya can’t tell.

Kleya lingers at the balcony overlooking the court for just a few minutes longer. It doesn’t seem like Dedra Meero will be led through the main entrance. Her pictures have been on the Holonet for a week already; the crowd, in all likelihood, will tear her to shreds as soon as she is dragged out of the NRSB speeder.

Then an unfamiliar thought crosses Kleya’s mind.

She could have stopped everything here. It’s not a crime, merely an offense. Failing to appear after being subpoenaed will only result in a fine she could easily pay. She has done her bit. No one will thank her for what she is about to do. To the contrary, she will lose a few clients, and the gallery will most definitely attract unwanted visitors.

And then she laughs at this thought.

Whatever happens to Dedra Meero, Kleya has to see this through to the end.

In the days since the X-wings came to Lanupa, Dedra Meero has contemplated her situation not once — and ultimately came to the conclusion that while said situation is bad, she has been through worse. What makes it easier is that the New Republic does believe in the nonsense concept of civil rights.

Civil rights, two vapid words to which meanings can be assigned depending on the situation and political agenda. She winces at the thought.

At the same time, it is this belief in these words that makes it possible for an old Imperial sympathizer from Corellia, a shipyards owner, to hire her a lawyer without admitting his sympathies openly. “Everyone deserves a fair trial.”

“Your Honor,” says Dedra’s lawyer, a middle-aged Devaronian man, “my client doubts the origin of the files the prosecution is citing.”

Dedra keeps her expression purposefully neutral as her gaze travels around the courtroom.

She has seen the case files. The prosecution will latch onto those statements from Sartha, Kleya Marki, and Jung’s wife — and squeeze every drop of evidence to prove that Dedra was on Ghorman. Dedra also makes no mistake that Kaido — now a grey-haired, overweight man who has spent the past few years running an Outer Rim private security firm — will rat her out.

He’ll try to pretend he was receiving all the others from her, Dedra muses as she watches Kaido standing in the dock. Yet he is the obvious fall guy. She isn’t.

The prosecution will have to work oh so hard to prove to the entire galaxy that she didn’t just stand there on Ghorman with little power to change anything.

“Miss Marki,” asks the prosecutor, an Ithorian woman, “how long had you been in contact with Lonni Jung for, and how did your collaboration start?”

“We had known each other for eleven years,” says Kleya slowly.

The holo Luthen had shown her: a young man in a grey ISB attendant uniform. A former Royal Imperial cadet. A former student of Wulff Yularen’s.

“He first came in contact with one of our informants, who had reason to think he was growing dissatisfied with how the Empire functioned.”

A Besalisk card shark from the lower levels — Kleya still remembers the man. He made significant additional income by supplying those who asked with information. There had always been ISB investigators among his clients, so Luthen was careful.

Memory number one: when Luthen comes back to the shop at night, he seems as though something has been weighing on his mind for the past couple of hours. “There’s someone I’ll need to watch closely,” he says, as though unsure whether it will result in anything. He refuses to give Kleya any further explanation: “It’s too risky for you to get involved just yet.”

Memory number two: Luthen shows her the holo. “This is the new agent,” he says.

Memory number three: the last time she sees Lonni in person, he looks as if he would very much like to shoot her, but she has to remove the bug from a piece in Sculdun’s art collection, and he just happened to be nearby.

“My colleague and friend Luthen Rael recruited him into the cell. While Rael acted as his handler most of the time for operational security reasons, I was aware of their dealings and contacted Jung occasionally.”

This story sounds so much simpler when put in words.

“Miss Marki,” continues the prosecutor, “had Jung at any point mentioned Dedra Meero’s involvement in the ISB’s actions on Ghorman?”

“Yes. A year before the Ghorman massacre, he informed us that Dedra Meero had been running Ghorman for about a year. He also said that the operation Meero was involved in was highly classified even by ISB standards.”

“Did Jung provide any details about Dedra Meero’s actions on Ghorman at the time?”

“At first, he learned that the ISB was orchestrating a smear campaign against the Ghor. All of us were convinced, however, that this was a part of a larger scheme. We had repeatedly dispatched our operatives to Ghorman to investigate further and assist the Ghorman front.”

Daena cannot bear to look at this woman; the second she tries, her head starts to spin, and tendrils of anxiety clutch her throat.

“Miss Marki,” says Dedra Meero’s lawyer, “could you tell us what happened to Lonni Jung?”

The prosecutor rises up. “Objection!”

Daena wants desperately for the senior presiding judge — a bespectacled middle-aged Gran — to stop this, but instead, after a moment of contemplation, he says, “Overruled.”

In the crowd, Miri hides her face between her palms. Daena digs her nails into her palms so hard she feels blood — but it doesn’t matter, she decides, it doesn’t matter now that she is here in this courtroom, now that—

Lonni would have wanted her to stay calm.

Lonni needs her to provide as thorough and convincing a testimony as she can.

And there is no easy way to say this, and nothing Kleya can possibly say will not make her sound less of a monster — but weren’t they all monsters? Hasn’t she known since the start that they would all be damned for what they did?

“Lonni Jung was killed by my colleague Luthen Rael,” she says slowly. “Jung believed the ISB knew that he had stolen Dedra Meero’s passwords and gained access to her files. We were all aware of the ISB’s…interrogation techniques. Had the ISB caught Jung, they would have tortured him and his family to extract information about the Rebellion from him.”

“Would it be correct to assume that such things were a common practice in the Rebellion?” asks Meero’s lawyer.

Kleya wants to spit in his face.

She will have to admit, however, that this is not the worst tactic: if your client is clearly guilty, try to discredit the Rebellion as an idea and stir the public opinion against it.

“Objection!” the prosecutor snaps.

“Sustained,” says the judge. “This question is irrelevant to the case.”

Kleya’s gaze falls on Vel, then on Miri.

Vel’s expression says nothing. Miri bites her lip.

Daena is sure she will need bacta for her hands, but she keeps her expression as neutral as she is capable of.

“Madam Jung,” says the prosecutor. “Could you explain how the files on the data cylinders that belonged to Lonni Jung came into your possession?”

She clears her throat — and starts speaking.

As soon as Kleya exits the court building, she is swarmed by journalists.

“Miss Marki, do you condemn Luthen Rael’s actions?”

“Miss Marki, why is Luthen Rael not in this court today?”

“Was it normal for the Rebellion to kill its own people?”

Her natural instinct is to pull the hood of her coat over her face, stay silent, and disappear as soon as possible. There is also a part of her that feels as if shooting a couple of people who shove microphones in her face with the most insistence could be justified.

Memory number one: as Miri looks at the evidence boxes, she asks what Luthen was like, and there is no way Kleya can tell her the whole truth.

Memory number two: “Did you know?” asks Miri. Her face is puffy from crying, and her hands are shaking, but she sounds eerily collected.

Memory number three: “Her father was Rael’s mole, and you didn’t say anything.” The wounded look in Vel’s eyes. The way she almost breaks the tea mug she is holding.

“No comment,” Kleya says: handing out quotes like this is not the best tactic if she finally wants this story to be told the way it deserves to be.

As soon as Kleya returns to the gallery, she finds the comm code of an editor working at Queen of The Core’s primetime news show.

For a split second, she wonders if she is making it worse, for everyone: Vel, Erskin, Mon.

“The only way to make this worse would be to keep quiet,” says not-Luthen in her head. “The more questions you leave unanswered, the worse the answers people come up with.”

Jedha, Kyber, Erso. Focus.

She presses the dial button.

Mon comms as soon as Vel gets home.

“Are you watching Queen of the Core?”

“No,” Vel says. “What about it?”

This can’t be good. No, it just can’t.

“Kleya,” Mon only says.

As Kleya sits in the Core News Night studio, she doesn’t move once. Her voice is quiet, but her posture is straight, and she looks straight into the camcorder.

“Miss Marki, I will ask you a question that you did not have the chance to answer at the court,” says the anchor. “Was it standard practice for the Rebellion to kill its own agents?”

Miri’s mouth goes dry as she and Mom watch the broadcast from their living room.

“No,” says Kleya after a long pause. To someone who doesn’t know her, her voice would sound like it didn’t change, but Miri catches a trace of tension. “No, it was never a ‘standard practice,’ and I wonder what kind of a person would believe that it could be. It was the last resort. An emergency measure when an operative had no other options left. A measure you knew you would regret for the rest of your life.”

She raises her eyes at the presenter.

“In some cases, the choice is not between dying and staying alive — it’s between different ways to die. The other option would often be to be tortured in the COMPNOR arcology chambers until you told the ISB everything — and I mean everything. Then they would execute you anyway. You would be lucky if you were the only person in your family to be interrogated that way.”

A long pause. Kleya’s gaze stays unblinking. “And it is the knowledge that we lived with. We understood that if we risked being caught by the ISB and there were no ways to escape, we would have to take measures. It was a possibility for everyone.”

“Which brings us to the question of what happened to your colleague Luthen Rael,” says the presenter then.

Kleya’s face seems to go rigid. “Luthen Rael was apprehended by the ISB on the same day. He attempted suicide, but it was not successful. After the ISB placed him on life support, I—”

Her voice cracks. “I had to do the same thing to him that he did to Lonni Jung. I wish I didn’t need to do it. I wish there were other ways. But it was the option that I had. I was alone, with no resources to evacuate him from a hospital that was sealed off by a squad of stormtroopers, and in a rush to pass on the information that Jung had obtained.”

Miri wants to turn the holoprojector off, but at the same time, she feels like she cannot move, and all that is left to her is to watch.

“Did that information have anything to do with the Ghorman massacre?”

“No,” Kleya says. “The Ghorman files, I assume, Jung had kept for years. He must have expected that he would get the opportunity to make them public one day. The situation I am talking about was urgent and concerned the whole galaxy.”

A flurry of images in Vel’s mind. The distress beacon Wilmon received, the tiny, frail body Andor and Melshi brought out of the ship — Vel barely recognized Kleya. Kleya’s lost look when Vel caught her wandering under the pouring rain.

“Could you elaborate?” asks the presenter.

“Lonni Jung discovered the existence of the Death Star. I was in a rush to pass that information to the Rebel Alliance.”

When she says this, it is as if she is not really here — but there, in the world from a decade ago that most people are starting to forget or trying to forget so desperately.

“It is thanks to Lonni Jung that we are alive and having this conversation in this studio.” Kleya’s voice is still colorless, matter-of-fact. “There are no words to describe how much I regret that man’s death — and Luthen Rael’s death, too. I also understand that my actions cannot be undone or atoned for. So I will have to live with this guilt for my whole life. But if anyone from Lonni Jung’s family is watching this, I want to say that I am truly, deeply sorry.”

“I am truly, deeply sorry.”

Miri turns off the holoprojector and hugs Mom.

Mom hides her face in Miri’s shoulder. Miri cards her fingers through Mom’s hair — she remembers doing it when she was little, Mom would let her, it would always calm her down.

They stay like that for several minutes, and at this moment, Miri wouldn’t have been able to say anything to save her life.

Kleya is almost finished polishing all the armor on display when she sees a small, familiar silhouette behind the shop’s revolving door.

Miri hesitates before entering. She is wearing the same dark purple hooded jacket Kleya saw her wear to court, as if she is worried someone could recognize her here in her usual clothes.

“Welcome to Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest.” Kleya fixes her with the usual impersonal client-friendly smile. The smile emerges on her face before she can think of any other reaction — a shield, a deflection tactic. “How may I help you?”

Miri opens her mouth, but it’s as though words don’t come to her. She licks her lips. Her breath catches as she stares in Kleya’s eyes.

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” Kleya says. “All of it.”

“Why did you—” Miri breaks off.

“That story had to be told,” Kleya answers slowly. “I only regret telling it so late. I was under the impression—”

No, no, no, this is not how you start this conversation. No.

Kleya rests her eyes on the purple fabric.

It is the same Kleya Miri has known for months — and yet it is a different Kleya, too, a side of Kleya that Miri suspects she is unfamiliar with.

“Your jacket,” Kleya says, slowly. “The color of jogan fruit.”

“Um. Yeah?” Miri doesn’t understand where she is going with this.

“My family were jogan fruit farmers. I would sell fruit with my mother. Fresh. Dried. We made jogan spotchka, too.”

“You never said that, did you?”

This much is obvious. She didn’t.

“I had five brothers,” says Kleya then. “When the Separatists came, they killed all of them. They killed my father, too. I was nine. When the Imperials came, they didn’t care if you were a man or a woman. They’d kill everyone, just to be sure, because our planet was considered a ‘Separatist world.’ I was twelve.”

“I’m sorry,” Miri says, even though she hadn’t imagined she would ever feel an emotion like that toward someone like Kleya.

Even though she doesn’t think Kleya wants her sympathy, either.

“Luthen commanded the mud trooper squad they sent to my village. His name wasn’t Luthen back then. I hid on his ship. They were shooting everywhere, and I figured it was the safest place to hide. He found me.”

“You fled together,” Miri realizes.

Kleya is pensive for a while. “May I ask you a question?”

Miri nods.

“Rebellions,” Kleya says. “What do you think they are built on?”

There are too many things for Miri Jung to pick from — but she chooses the first word that comes to her mind because it seems like the right answer, if there is ever such a thing as a right answer for a question like that. “Hope?”

“I think rebellions are built on stories that are impossible to tell to anyone who wasn’t there,” says Kleya Marki. “On guilt that you carry with you throughout your life, and you will never wash it away, and you know that you never will, but you still do what you do, because somewhere along the way you accepted that your decency was the price to pay for someone else’s future.”

There is a spark of intensity in her voice; she stops herself abruptly. “But you are quite right. They are built on hope, too.”

Miri watches her face for an impossible, torturous second, not saying anything.

“I just wish you had told me earlier.”

“So do I,” says Kleya.

I didn’t have the words for it, Miri.

I wouldn’t have been able to even tell it all to myself.

But do you really need my excuses?

“I am so, so sorry,” Kleya manages, and when she says it, she doesn’t recognize her voice.

Miri responds with a nod, an absent-minded one. Without adding anything to that, she heads to the door, but stops abruptly.

“You said Luthen Rael wasn’t really Luthen. Kleya Marki isn’t your real name, is it?”

“No,” Kleya says, “it isn’t.”

“What is it?” Miri asks. “Your real name?”

And Kleya tells her.

Daena keeps coming to the court even when her testimonies are no longer needed. One can only wear one suit so many times, so she buys herself a few vintage Ghorman silk twill scarves to throw over her shoulders: it only feels appropriate.

(Most Ghorman items you can find in the galaxy these days are vintage.)

She stays for as long as she can, whenever she can, and listens.

She takes notes, ridiculous as it may seem to an onlooker: she is no journalist, after all, is she? In a sense, it is a survival strategy, a way to comprehend a seemingly never-ending onslaught of things beyond comprehension.

On Daena’s datapad screen, the incomprehensible is broken down into chapters.

Blocked hyperlanes. Starvation. Smear campaigns. The day the Imperial army squads arrived on Ghorman. The shooting. The KX-series enforcer droids unleashed on the people.

In her private notes, there is a detailed plan of Palmo Plaza, too, accompanied by dozens of holos from various angles. On some days, as she lies in bed at night, she studies the files, trying to conjure up the place in her mind, but fails.

(Another image, though, is still just as vivid as it once was. Lonni, coming back home after Mon Mothma’s escape from the Senate. He had to spend two nights at work. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he says. “Please.”)

A producer from a Coruscanti news channel calls her and asks for a “brief, emotional interview about Lonni Jung and the role he played in restoring the republic.” Daena declines. For the life of her, she can’t see a way to pack this story, Lonni’s story, into a “brief interview” — let alone make it “emotional,” knowing that it will come right between a Senate dispatch and a perfunctory lower-levels crime story.

She gets hate holomail, too. As a matter of fact, the sheer number of people from various worlds who now hate her with such ferocity is astonishing.

Vel comes for dinner, and they read all the letters and messages out loud, in different voices. When they comm Kallus, he says, “Welcome to the club, Daena Jung.”

Not a day without a barrage of death threats from all sorts of people: Imperial sympathizers, firm believers in the ideals of the New Republic.

Kleya lets the holomail pile up — until one Benduday night, she pours herself two fingers of Corellian whiskey, and sits down at the backroom table. She lights up a cig-stick: a rare indulgence she only allows herself on special occasions. After a few seconds spent deciding on the music, she picks the songs from Luthen’s collection.

Then, smiling to herself, she starts reading.

Dedra shaves her head.

She was beginning to hate her reflection: the bangs grew out after weeks of detainment, and the grey roots too. Besides, the lawyer told her it could be a very efficient way to remind the court and the general audience of her “political prisoner past.” The state of her health, too, even though he never said that part out loud.

The New Republic does provide her with basic medical care, but it is nothing compared to luxury bacta pumps and hot springs on Lanupa.

She asks for a plasma razor; the guards watch her as she stands in front of the small mirror at her pre-detention cell, her hair falling on the floor.

When she is finished, she looks at herself. She expected to be relieved. Instead, she finds herself wanting to smash the mirror with a fist.

The Committee’s tiny office becomes Miri’s refuge.

Vel tries to talk her out of staying late a few times, but Miri makes herself clear, and at one point, Vel yields. So Miri comes to the Senate building after school and stays until Vel forces her to go home and hails her a hovertaxi.

On one such night, a man comes in whose face is obscured by the hood of a long black cloak. It doesn’t surprise Miri: all sorts of people helped the Rebellion, some of them involved in things considered illegal by the New Republic. Vel’s policy is simple: if it’s not spice or slave trade, criminal syndicate work, or piracy, they will do their best to help. Miri learned it after one holomessage sent by a very self-assured Weequay man that Vel seemed to dislike.

This man, however, seems different. Smugglers usually don’t show up on the doorstep — they contact Vel from other worlds instead.

The man talks to Vel like they have known each other for ages. “I’m here for a few days. Just wanted to come by and say hello. Good work on Ghorman, by the way.”

“You and visiting Coruscant,” Vel chuckles. “Snow must have fallen on Tatooine.”

Miri only gets a proper look at his face when he comes closer to her desk.

She freezes, speechless.

All she can think of right now, for an inexplicable reason, is that her desk is a terrible mess: half-empty takeaway cups from Sakko’s, stacks of work datapads, Dad’s trading cards — she keeps them at hand because sifting through them proves calming.

“May I have a look at these cards?” Luke Skywalker asks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like them.”

“My assistant’s got better Jedi artifacts than you,” Vel comments.

“They are my dad’s.” Miri feels her face flush. “He was a rebel too. A spy.”

“He must have been a brave man, then,” Luke Skywalker says, sifting through the cards.

Vel comes and rests her hand on Miri’s shoulder. “And she’s taking after him.”

This makes Miri blush even more.

“Actually,” she tries, “do you want to check out all the cards, maybe? I have more.”

Vel makes tea, a spicy and herby blend she keeps in her desk drawer. They spend the rest of the evening just like that: drinking tea and sorting through old Jedi cards from Dad’s garage.

“I knew this man,” says Skywalker as he takes out Obi-Wan Kenobi card number two. “And I knew Yoda, too.” His gaze falls on another card, then: a younger Jedi knight, not a master. “And… this one.”

Miri asks him a ton of clarifying questions because you should always ask questions when something doesn’t make sense — and nothing about Skywalker knowing a grand master who was probably killed with all the other Jedi makes sense. After that, she learns many things that she wouldn’t have even tried to retell anyone because they make even less sense. She has a suspicion, though, that it’s a normal thing when it comes to Jedi stories.

Then she says, “You can take these cards.”

“They were your father’s,” Luke Skywalker protests gently. “You should keep them.”

“I have two Obi-Wans,” Miri counters. Somehow, this seems important. “And many other Jedi. Take Obi-Wan and Yoda and…this knight guy?”

She can’t explain why, but she knows that Dad would have wanted this man to have them.

“Take the Obi-Wan already.” Vel gives Skywalker an amused look as she sips her tea. “And take some pickles too. You’ll thank me when you go back to that planet of yours.”

And Miri has no idea what kind of a planet one can’t get pickles on — but hey, she figures, that must be the Jedi life for you.

“The Tribunal finds that Linus Kaido is guilty on all counts of the Indictment.”

Daena Jung’s breath catches.

In the months of the trial, she has almost grown used to seeing this man on a regular basis — there is some perverse irony about how familiar the faces at a crimes against sentiency trial can become.

Miri sits beside her, lips pursed, back straight. Vel is somewhere in the courtroom, but there are so many people now that Daena cannot see anyone she knows. With her eyes, she searches for Carro Rylanz in the crowd, to no avail. And so all she has left is to return her gaze to Kaido’s face, greyish, pale, horrified.

One hundred years of correctional labor at Karton Chop Fields.

Miri would have expected a New Republic tribunal to end in at least one death sentence, but there are none. She can’t tell if it’s a good thing for the Imperials or a bad thing. A life spent at a scrap yard under the supervision of those scary sentry droids she’s seen in holodocs might not exactly be Narkina-Five — in the sense that on Narkina, you likely wouldn’t have been able to survive for long enough for it to count as spending your entire life there. And yet it’s not a thing Miri would have wished upon anyone.

Reading out the verdicts is a long affair, punctuated by some men crying and some yelling obscenities at the judges.

Miri’s entire body is sore from having to sit and wait for so long.

She sees how former Captain Kaido’s face shatters, and how he breaks down into screams and curses and sobs. The camcorder droids with various holonet channel logos close in on him, until the shock troopers interfere, and—

There’s only one person that remains: Dedra Meero.

“The Court will now adjourn for ten minutes,” Miri hears, as if through a wall of water.

“The Tribunal finds that Dedra Meero is not guilty on Count One of the Indictment, but is guilty on Counts Two and Three.”

Relief settles in Dedra’s chest: at least they have managed to convince the court she did not commit the war crimes. Honestly, that notion is ridiculous — the fact that the New Republic decided to call a series of insurgencies a civil war, just to add to its already extensive list of trumped-up charges. Crimes against peace, crimes against sentiency — these accusations seemed unavoidable.

This is a tribunal, for Maker’s sake, she thinks as she fixes her gaze on the judges. Of course you would find me guilty. You need to give the people something, don’t you?

“Taking into account the time served by Meero in the Imperial Prison Complex 17 on Narkina-Five and the state of Meero’s health, the court sentences her to one hundred years of correctional labor supervised by the Coruscant department of the Amnesty Program.”

The lawyer gives Dedra a tiny, covert smile, the kind that borders on a smirk, as if to say, “At least it’s not Karton Chop Fields, is it?”

She should be grateful, she supposes.

At the same time, she finds it impossible not to see the sentence for what it is.

Dedra Meero’s gaze drops to her hands, the joints of her fingers swollen, her skin pale. The thing about Narkina-Five Prison Complex 17 is that it leaves traces that no bacta pump treatment can solve once and for all.

She’d much rather the chop fields.

When it’s over, she is escorted out of the court by two reprogrammed KX-units with New Republic crests painted haphazardly on their plating. Camcorder droids buzz over her head.

“The galaxy is watching!” the crowd chants. “We are the Ghor!”

She straightens her shoulders. It’s best to pretend that all of this is not happening. This entire tribunal is but a spectacle: the public longs to be enraged and appalled. Dedra would bet a hundred credits on the fact many people blocking the stairs aren’t even Ghorman. No, they must be merely bored — and nowadays, the best free entertainment is pretending you stand for democratic values.

‘The galaxy is watching! We are the Ghor!”

“Respected citizens of the New Republic,” one of the droids announces, “for your own safety, please do not block the area.”

“The galaxy is watching! We are the Ghor!”

“Respected citizens of the New Republic, for your own safety, please do not block the area.”

“The galaxy is watching!”

“Respected citizens of the New Republic—”

“We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching! We are the Ghor!”

Dedra inhales, trying to steady herself.

“The galaxy is watching! We are the Ghor!”

All the faces before her — young, old, human or not, Ghormans and Coruscantis and those who must have come here from the Outer Rim for this trial only — blur into one.

She covers her ears; there are even more camcorder flashes; someone throws a rotten meiloruun fruit at her.

“The galaxy is watching! We are the Ghor!”

Sour-smelling meiloruun pulp sticks to her face and clothes.

“Prisoner Meero.” The KX-unit’s carboplast fingers close around her wrist. “Please follow us.”

Fact number one: no matter what happens, life goes on.

Fact number two: this applies to crimes against sentiency trials, too.

Fact number three: Miri still has to go to school and do her math homework, and Basic homework, and Huttese homework. She also has to return home to grab her dojo clothes because the fact she has a physical education class today slips out of her mind. And as soon as she gets to school, she also realizes that she owes Mister Arlanz a paper on the comparative characteristics of the Old Republic’s, the High Republic’s, the Clone Wars-era Republic’s shortly before its dissolution, and the New Republic’s governments.

Throughout the lesson, she has to force herself to focus repeatedly.

Mister Arlanz pretends not to notice that, to her relief.

“So,” he says fifteen minutes later, as people pour out of the classroom. “Did you and Madam Jung celebrate?”

“Celebrate?” Miri clarifies.

Seti throws her a questioning glance, standing in the doorway. Rawacca gestures at the chrono on her paw — “Come on, it’s lunchtime.” Miri waves at them — a gesture that, in the language understandable only to the three of them, means, “I’ll join you later.”

“Celebrate,” answers Mister Arlanz with a small smile. “Finally, a historic event that I was happy to witness. It wouldn’t have been possible without your father, Miri. Without you and your mother as well, to a certain extent.”

Miri sighs. “I just wish they, um, sent some people to actual prison. Not put them on the Amnesty Program. It’s just not fair. We know she was there, she made it all happen—”

Mister Arlanz gives her a look she doesn’t understand at first. “Do you, though?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really wish that?” he asks.

“I just don’t get why some people are sentenced to execution and Dedra Meero gets away,” says Miri.

The holos the prosecutors showed in court, the witness testimonies, everything that was mentioned in Dad’s files — if all of that wasn’t enough, then what is?

“It’s not that I want her to die,” Miri clarifies. “I just don’t get why she’s suddenly less guilty than all the other people that went to the chop fields—”

She breaks off, noticing an unexpected wistfulness in Mister Arlanz’s eyes.

“There is a difference between making a person face the consequences — and causing pointless suffering.”

Miri wants to answer something to that, but can’t find the words.

“Sending a Narkina-Five survivor to tow scrap on Karton would mean a death sentence,” says Mister Arlanz. “Hardly different from what happened to many Ghormans when the Empire put us to prison camps and called it a counter-terrorist initiative.”

He looks her in the eye. “If they sent Dedra Meero to chop fields, I would be the first one to protest at the Central Court’s entrance, Miri. We asked for justice. Not for punishing crimes with more crimes.”

“I’m sorry,” Miri mutters. “I get it that what I said was too harsh—”

“Don’t be sorry.” Mister Arlanz arranges his datapads in a neat stack and puts them in his desk drawer. “It’s perfectly normal for any living being to have feelings. But sometimes what we feel is right and what is right are two different things.”

When he says this, for all the seriousness in his voice, he can’t help a smirk. “And besides, I’m sure a lot of surprises await that woman in the Amnesty Program. Come on, now. Don’t miss your lunch.”

Among the death threats and holomails from people convinced she is a “disgusting traitor” — some of her closest former friends among the senders — Daena Jung finds...something else.

The sender is a woman Daena’s age from Coruscant whose sister, a Blue Squadron pilot, was killed a week after Lonni, on Scarif. “People like us should stay together,” she writes. There are also messages from other worlds: Corellia, Chandrila, Corulag, Hosnian Prime, Naboo, Rodia, Mon Cala, Ryloth, Lothal—

Daena Jung sits down at what used to be Lonni’s desk, in the middle of what used to be Lonni’s study, which he never used. Mishuu settles on her lap, Lola on her shoulder.

She dedicates the evening — and half the night, too — to reading all of the messages she has received and responding to them.

At half past four in the morning, the inbox is finally cleared. Daena gets up from her chair; she has no idea how she is supposed to function with three hours of sleep, and she doesn’t want to stay awake any longer.

Then her comm pings with a new message. This one is not a text or a letter; it is a holomessage sent to Daena’s personal comm code.

“Hi,” says a black-haired woman clad in what seems to Daena like farmer’s overalls. “My name is Bix. asked Vel to give me your comm. Vel and I know each other from Yavin. Not sure if she ever told you. She’s been busy lately. I heard your testimony at the trials, and I think you’re a brave woman, and also I think we have a lot to discuss— Vel said you work in imports, so I suppose you travel a lot? Let me know if you’re ever near Mina-Rau, griM-3? We can get drinks together, and I’ll show you around. It might not be as exciting as Coruscant, but maybe you could use a break. Anyway— No need to answer to this if you don’t feel like it. You must have a lot going on. Take care and, um, good luck with everything.”

The message makes Daena smile.

“Hello, Bix,” she types. “Pleased to meet you. As it happens, we do grain imports, so I can be on Mina-Rau soon. Any friend of Vel’s is a friend of mine, and I’d love to catch up.”

She can join the pilot for “quality control.” It’ll do no harm.

The answer comes in seconds.

“glad u answered! sorry for the typos im on the go”

On the profile holo, she sees Bix posing with a boy no older than twelve. They are standing in the middle of a yellow field that appears endless.

It still feels unnerving, letting new people in.

Daena Jung does it anyway.

The most popular evening pastime at Amnesty Housing is exchanging future plans. Dedra Meero finds other people’s future — dreams of it, she corrects in her mind immediately — lurking behind every kriffing corner of this giant, hive-like building.

Such are the two main constants of this life: “Long live the Republic,” meaningless words said at any possible occasion, and dreams of the future.

“I’ll go work at my old man’s cantina,” says a wiry blond man, clearly a stormtrooper, when everyone gathers at the dinner table once again. “It’s by that new Navy base, so he’s making good money. Lots of pilots there.”

“Maker knows there are enough jobs these days,” chimes in Lepori, an ISB technician Dedra vaguely remembers from her past life. “I’ll try my luck, though. There must be some Amnesty quota in the Navy. It’s not like good techs grow on trees like jogan fruit, eh?”

Various noises of approval from different ends of the table. Some former death trooper raises a glass — “to luck”. “Long live the Republic!” someone shouts.

“And you, Blevin?” asks Lepori.

It still requires a certain degree of conscious effort not to take eyes away whenever the man is in Dedra’s proximity. His hair is grey now; he is missing two fingers on his right hand — a typical situation for former prisoners. Not all milling machines and lathes on all of the Narkinas worked equally well.

“The NRSB.” Blevin keeps his tone plain, ignoring the whispers at the table. “My oldest is graduating from the New Republic Military Academy, top of his class. His instructor, Captain Wedge Antilles, agreed to vouch for me.”

“Nice,” says Lepori, reluctantly impressed.

“You must be proud of your kid,” adds the stormtrooper.

“As a matter of fact, I am proud of him,” Blevin says. “He is certainly making better choices than I did at his age.”

“Long live the Republic!” someone shouts.

Dedra doesn’t raise her glass; she never does. As she sits on her bench, she feels Blevin’s gaze on herself. His expression is blank, emotionless. It seems as if he is studying her, but whatever conclusion he has come to, he has chosen to keep it to himself.

Half an hour later, when Blevin gets up from his place and excuses himself, he gives Dedra the same unreadable look again.

Then he mutters just one phrase, as if to himself.

“And here I thought the Narkinas were a good enough lesson for everyone.”

Chapter Text

What I love about the heart is that it’s capable of breaking in infinite ways; may we never live long enough to experience all of them, but may we live long enough to experience the ways the heart can repair itself for subsequent breakings. The cycle of rupture and repair is a requirement of living, a cost of surviving, something that goes hand in hand with another reality of survival: that, throughout your life, you may not only lose people but also gain them.

Hanif Abdurraqib

And where autocracy lies, broken,
Our names shall yet be graven deep.

Alexander Pushkin, translated by Babette Deutsch

“D-d-do you k-k-know C-c-cas-sian?” asks an ancient salvage droid, shell covered in chipped red paint, metal patches here and there.

“Stop it, Bee!” Clem, Bix Caleen’s son, a dark-haired boy who acts too mature for his age, waves him off. “Madam Jung didn’t know Dad, all right?”

In an instant, the droid loses all interest in Daena's presence; he turns back and slowly rolls in the direction of the barn shed. There is nothing here, apart from the shed, and a few farmhouses scattered together by the field, and a long communal dining table.

“Sorry about him,” says Clem. “He’s a bit annoying sometimes. Always asks about Dad. Mom just commed, she’s on her way.”

“That’s all right,” Daena says.

Dust covers her chocolate brown blurrg skin boots. It was not the smartest choice of footwear, she makes a mental note.

Clem opens the trunk of the giant old speeder he came to pick up Daena in, all the way to the freighter landing spot on his own. Daena wouldn’t let him drive back to the settlement like that — and so he ended up in the passenger seat, giving her very convoluted directions.

“I’ll get the boxes,” Daena protests; this is too much child labor for one day.

“Nope,” says Clem, matter-of-factly. “Just wanted to check out all that Core-Rusant stuff before Mom comes.”

He takes a step back, as if marveling at the trunk’s contents, and whistles. “Whoa! That’s a whole repair shop in there!”

“Just thought you and your mother might like it.”

This is the weirdest gift Daena Jung has ever given to anyone. And she once had to source a special variety of albino blurrg skin for the luggage set that Sul demanded for her birthday; Sul’s favorite accessories house would only sell it in standard nerf suede due to shortage of materials after the fall of the Empire but was open to custom orders. Never mind that travel was not safe. Perhaps, in Sul Partagaz’s world, the bespoke travel bags served as hope for a brighter future that was yet to come or a reminder of the good old days.

With Bix Caleen, it was much simpler. It started out with a gesture of basic politeness. Daena chose to ask Vel what would be considered an acceptable gift on Mina-Rau. She’d never visited the villages. In fact, her Mina-Rau experience was limited to negotiations with owners of larger farms, and said negotiations always took place in the capital quadrant.

“If that’s for Bix and Clem only, better don’t bring anything,” Vel said. “Or bring something very small. They only have one shop where they live. Other people in the village might get upset, and you’ll make it awkward for everyone.”

Daena considered that, but disliked the idea for a reason she couldn’t explain. Instead, she asked Vel what would count as a good gift by “most people” on Mina-Rau.

The list was rather extensive; it took her a week to order it all. But the second she sees the look on Clem’s face, she knows it was worth it.

“Hey, what’s all that?” A thin grey-haired man comes out of the barn. A moment later, he notices Daena and adds, somewhat shyly, “Good day, ma’am.”

“That’s Madam Jung, Mom’s friend from Core-Rusant, Uncle Kellen,” says Clem. “She brought gifts for everyone.”

“Hey!” Daena hears a second later. “Maker, I’m so sorry I’m late.” Bix Caleen jumps off a speeder-bike, her hair disheveled, strands of it sticking to her forehead. In person, there is something of a youthful air about her. “There’s a guy who needed repairs, speeder broke down in the middle of the field— Did you get here all right? You want something to drink? To eat?” The second she notices the boxes, her eyebrows shoot up. “What’s all this?”

“Gifts,” Clem declares. “For everyone.”

“I just, er, didn’t want to come empty-handed,” Daena manages.

Bix stares at her, startled. Daena notices a blush creeping onto her cheeks. Just accept it, Daena pleads in her mind, just kriffing accept it, I’m not bringing all that back to my ship.

“You didn’t have to,” Bix says. “Really. But thank you.”

Clem takes one more look at the boxes and packages.

“Wilmon!” he screams, then. “Wilmon, you’ve got a new crutch!”

A curly man in his thirties peaks out of one of the houses. He is leaning on a walking stick, ostensibly handmade. A blonde woman in overalls similar to the kind Bix is wearing joins him. When she looks at Daena, there is a sort of instant recognition in her eyes.

“Don’t tell me that’s your Coruscant guest!”

The accent is unmistakably Ghorman. Bix offers Daena an apologetic smile. “Guess you have fans here on Mina-Rau.”

She looks Daena over.

“Let’s get you something less nice to wear here. Pains me to even look at these boots! I already feel sorry for them. Lunch’s in an hour, I made my special pie—”

Sometimes things that matter start in the most peculiar ways. A dejarik game. Your daughter’s secret trip to Narkina-Five, caf spilled on an old droid, an old speeder garage’s door falling to the ground.

A holomessage from the other end of the galaxy, Daena Jung figures, fits on the list.

One breezy Taungsday morning, as Kleya Marki is on her way to Sagan Dana Restoration and Conservation, she notices some grafitti on the wall of a long-abandoned department store building on 4999th.

The graffiti is no bigger than an A4 piece of flimsi. It’s placed right near an older portrait of Karis Nemik, already almost destroyed by the acid rains.

The artist may have taken a few creative liberties, but Lonni looks more than recognizable.

She pulls out the comm, to take a holo for Miri before she even thinks.

Her hand stops mid-movement.

Don’t assume she will want to talk to you just because you apologized.

“So you are currently employed, aren’t you?” Vel asks a stout, burly man in a battered cap.

“I am, ma’am, as a smelter at a durasteel plant in Bartanish Four. A foreman, as of recently. Can’t complain, ma’am, can’t complain.”

Vel squints, studying the files on her data terminal screen. Miri pretends she is busy sipping her caf and answering holomails, but something about the man catches her eye. On his jacket, right above the chest pocket, Miri sees a medal. It is made of cheap reddish alloy, and its edges are slightly bent. Must be an earlier one, Miri figures. It looks like the ones they gave to the Dantooine base troops early on.

(Some former rebels, she has noticed, avoid even mentioning these medals. This man wears it like it’s the first thing he wants people to notice about him.)

“I also see…quite a number of letters of recommendation on your file,” Vel says. “Your employers note your diligence and sense of duty.”

“That’s very flattering, ma’am. I do my best.”

“So what can the Committee help you with, Mister Mosk?” Vel asks. “You said it was about your employment situation, wasn’t it?”

The man — Mister Mosk — folds his hands behind his back.

“As a matter of fact, ma’am, I have come to advocate on behalf of my colleagues. Democracy gives one opportunities, and it would be foolish not to use them, ma’am. So I am not only a foreman but also the head of the Union of Veterans of the Alliance to Restore the Republic at Chorgo Durasteelworks. And we demand to be taken seriously by the management.”

The list of demands to the durasteel plant’s management that Mosk wants the Committee to support ranges from the fairly innocuous ones — bonuses and better insurance policies for combat veterans with health conditions — to a yearly “educational memorial event” fully paid by the company. It takes him a good five minutes to simply read out the list on his datapad.

“I suggest you compromise on a few things for the time being, Mister Mosk,” says Vel. “It’s always best to introduce such initiatives gradually, don’t you think? Insurance policies are crucial and so are the cash bonuses. The educational memorial event can wait—”

Miri wouldn’t think a human face is capable of getting this red in a matter of seconds.

“With all due respect, ma’am, this is absolutely ridiculous! ‘Compromise’? Did we spend years fighting to have to compromise on such things? Young people these days — they are beginning to forget, ma’am! They take this life for granted! I mentioned Lonni Jung’s name to a younger colleague of mine yesterday, ma’am. The man, the hero. And my colleague had not the slightest idea who he was! He thought the Death Star was a planet in the Outer Rim! Let me tell you, we are not going to have a republic for long if—”

“I understand, Mister Mosk,” Vel says, quickly. “I will call your management.”

When Linus Mosk finally leaves, Vel sighs and falls back into her chair.

“Know what?” Miri downs what remains of her caf in one gulp. “I think he’s right. About the memorial thing, I mean.”

When Miri tells Vel about her idea, Vel just asks, “Do you realize it’s not only your father that we will have to include if we want to be truthful?”

In response, Miri gives Vel an unblinking look. “If telling people about Dad also means that we have to tell them about Luthen— Fine. I mean, kriff him. But fine.”

The certainty in her voice is almost unsettling, too grown-up, and when Vel hears it, her heart gives a twist.

“If you want to include Luthen, we might need Kleya’s help, then,” Vel warns.

“And then we can try to pitch it?” Vel hasn’t seen such hopefulness in Miri’s eyes before.

“Yes,” she answers. “We can try.”

“So,” Kleya says when the three of them meet for lunch at a Mon Calamari cafe a level above the gallery. “You want a memorial. One that would include all the people who participated in the destruction of both Death Stars. From spies to X-wing pilots. Am I correct?”

“You are,” says Vel.

Miri pretends to concentrate on her sardine fritters and crab noodle soup, as if to say, whatever is it that’s happening between the two of you, just don’t kill each other here.

Kleya gives a tiny shrug. “Then you might be shooting yourself in the foot.”

“I understand,” Vel says. “But the scale doesn’t scare me.”

“Excuse me?” Kleya puts on her well-mannered-antiquarian-from-the-Core expression as she turns to the group of Mon Calamari men gathered at the nearby table. “I do apologize for bothering you, sirs. We were just having a discussion. Have you heard of Admiral Raddus?”

“Raddus,” the youngest-looking man in the group frowns. “That rings a bell.”

“Of course that rings a bell!” scoffs another man, his purple skin faded with age. “He was a hero of Mon Cala! Died in the war!”

“Oh, come on, Grandpa, not everyone has to know everything—”

“If you were to invite the admiral’s relatives to an official event commemorating his prodigies of valor,” Kleya continues, “how many relatives would it be socially acceptable to invite?”

The Mon Calamari exchange glances.

“I don’t know, twenty?” the youngest man suggests. “A few brothers, a few sisters, some children and some grandkids?”

Some people at his table nod, some shake their heads.

“Twenty?” the grandfather gives him a holomovie-worthy side eye. “Just what did I teach you about manners?” His gaze returns to Kleya. “Forty is the lowest appropriate number, Miss, lest there be too much infighting.”

“Thank you very much for your time, sirs,” says Kleya; then she turns back to Vel and Miri and lowers her voice just a little bit. “Did you hear that? Now count just how many Mon Calamari participated in the battle of Scarif. Then add the Bothans, if you want to include the second Death Star. Good luck finding out how many died to bring the plans, exactly.”

Vel finds it strange how insistent Kleya is on proving that they will not be able to do that.

“Hey,” Miri says, “It’s not like we can make that memorial for only one Death Star, and then tell people that another Death Star’s on its way because it’s less important, because it’s only the second Death Star. And it’s stupid. People mix up the Death Stars all the time.”

“I’m going to get the financing for the project of an appropriate scale,” Vel adds, looking Kleya in the eye. “And then we’ll need your help. I don’t care that you don’t work for the Senate anymore. We are not doing it without you.”

At last, Kleya nods. “Fine. I’ll help.”

Vel and Miri ask Kleya to join on Zhellday; on Benduday, a rather generous anonymous donation arrives to the Committee’s bank account, after Vel spends several hours thinking about crafting a compelling proposal for the Senate.

(The irony of it all: if you want to make senators spend money, you have to spend money to impress them first.)

“An anonymous benefactor,” Vel says when she calls Kleya in the evening from her kitchen. “I wonder who it was and what antiques she had to sell.”

“Not the most valuable ones,” Kleya says, her tone deadpan. “However, I heard she was paid generously in Old Republic credits.”

“Old Republic credits.” Vel can’t hold back a laugh. “Does she come from the treasure planet of At Attin, by any chance?”

“No, she is merely lucky,” says Kleya, and it is as if she expected that joke.

“Still financing the Rebellion, aren’t you?” Vel asks.

“Perhaps I am.” Kleya’s voice sounds amused. “Old habits die hard.”

“I can’t believe you guys don’t have one — normal — picture of Ruescott Melshi!”

Vel and Kleya exchange glances.

“We didn’t exactly have a lot of time for holos,” Vel says. “There’s a group one, though, with all the Pathfinders, and we’ll include it. A group holo of the Blue Squadron, too.”

“Not sure that’ll help,” Miri murmurs as she glances at the plan of the memorial on her data terminal screen — and then on the remaining holos at her disposal.

The only image of Jyn Erso that’s not an old blurry holovid still is a mugshot from a Wobani labor camp. Jyn Erso has been dead for eleven years — so there’s no possible way to find out what she would have thought about that — but Miri suspects she wouldn’t exactly be thrilled. The situation with Galen Erso’s holos is just slightly better: on the good ones, he is either very young or posing with Krennic or young and posing with Krennic.

“This one’s not bad,” Vel insists. “Everyone is there.”

“Even you,” Kleya says. “Looking like you fell off a speeder.”

“As it happens, I did fall off a speeder that day, we were trying to repair it!”

“We found one holo of Bodhi Rook,” Seti calls from the desk she shares with Rawacca. “From his old Imp file in the archives.”

That’s of little comfort, thinks Miri. They don’t have enough visual material to cover the portrait wall designed by one of Admiral Raddus’s grandchildren, a renowned Mon Calamari architect. Those former Guardians of the Whill? Not a trace of their holos anywhere. You can’t even look up their names.

“And I guess we can put pretty much any picture of a KX-droid—”

Rawacca growls before Seti can finish the sentence.

“No,” says Kleya, firmly. “He wasn’t just any KX-droid.”

Miri should have been worried about normal people things: final exams, her grades, the career she still hasn’t chosen, the university and academy applications she never bothered to draft.

Instead, she is here, at the Committee’s office, freaking out about the pictures.

“We’ll order portraits,” Kleya says. “They will all be in one style.”

“This is above our budget,” Vel counters.

“Then ask for more,” says Kleya, simply.

“Just how big of a disaster is it going to be?” asks Erskin when he climbs in the passenger seat of Mon’s limospeeder. These days, it seems like the only opportunity to have a work meeting with her that no one will try to overhear, as Mon has switched to droid chauffeurs. “Vel is demanding a budget increase, and she has moved the deadline once again—”

“It would have been a bigger disaster if we didn’t try at all, Erskin,” says Mon.

“Not in that sense.”

She knows full well what he means, he is certain.

There is a glint in Mon’s eyes he recognizes in an instant. “Then it will hardly be the first time we burn political capital.”

“Well,” he says, even though the idea sounds anything but. “If you say so.”

“Please don’t be cross.” Mon rests a hand on Erskin’s shoulder. “I’m more worried about the fact Kleya is involved in all this, if I’m honest.”

Erskin takes a moment to think about this.

“The good thing about Vel,” he says, “is that she has always been very clear on what she will and won’t accept.”

Mon pretends to watch rows of upper-levels Galactic District buildings that blur into one from the speeder window. “It took her some time to start applying that to relationships.”

“Look at us,” Erskin offers her a tiny smile. “Always trying to protect each other. Such a Chandrilan thing to do.”

“Sagrona Teema,” says Mon, in the same humorous fashion Vel has taken to using these words in the most random conversations.

There is a certain level of wordless understanding — not unlike telepathy — that grows between couples that have been together for long enough. And strangely, it doesn’t disappear when said couples break up.

“All good?” Vel asks Miri, just as Kleya casts a concerned glance at her.

“Found a guy who says he used to be a Guardian of the Whills,” Miri says, not looking away from her data terminal. “Kleya, thanks for the leads. He says a few people left Jedha when there was no kyber in the Temple of Kyber. Nothing left to protect. I think he’s genuine. He’s given a pretty accurate description of the temple, and he remembers Chirrut and Baze, and it’s not like he’s winning anything from that except for a ticket to Coruscant. He says he can try to find other survivors and get them to come to the ceremony—”

The usual situation: the bags under Miri’s eyes are fairly impressive, but she speaks with the speed of someone who’s just had four cups of caf at once.

“If it is true, that’s a good idea,” says Kleya. “But it shouldn’t be done at the expense of your sleep and homework.”

“You literally have a shop to run, and you’re still here,” Miri counters.

“Running a gallery is not hard. I don’t have to make decisions that will define my life for the next few years.”

Miri snorts. “Are you seriously worried about my exams?”

“We’re not worried yet,” says Vel. The “we” in this sentence comes out perhaps too easily, but she couldn’t care less. “But we’d like you to succeed in life.”

For Maker’s sake, now she sounds like every elderly Sartha family member who ever lectured her on her life choices. The formulations were, of course, more vague — seven layers of subtext in one sentence about traditions and legacy — but the tone is there.

“You will need to choose your own path,” says Kleya.

Vel thought using the Gently Scolding Chandrilan Elder Intonation was too much — but she will admit that Luthen Rael Lecturing You on Your Role in the Rebellion takes all the portion-cake in this regard.

“Stars!” Miri rolls her eyes. “You sound just like Mom. I have no idea, all right? I don’t want to think about it. I mean…I know what you’re gonna say. That I’m supposed to become some warrior because that would have made Dad happy, and— Maybe I’ll apply to the military academy on Ganthel. I don’t know. It’s not like they’ll take someone like me, and I kind of hate the idea of going to Ganthel, but whatever—”

Oh, Vel thinks. So that’s what it is about.

“Miri,” she says gently. “It’s not about what your father would have wanted. It’s about what you want to do. Your own path. Kleya’s right.”

“You want to make a difference,” Kleya adds, as if stating a fact. “There are many ways to do it that do not require an X-wing pilot license, and you know that.”

“Simply put,” agrees Vel, “you don’t have to run around with a blaster to be a warrior.”

Miri nods. “Thanks,” she murmurs. “I’ll think about it.”

“But not now,” says Vel. “Now you are going home to get some kriffing sleep.”

After Miri leaves, they fall into a silence that feels both awkward and oddly comfortable.

The Senate building is never truly empty, but at this hour, the corridors look desolate. The lights are dimmed. There are no people rushing to their offices, no sounds of heels clacking and gossip traveling from one senatorial aide to another.

Kleya puts on her coat and ties the belt. Vel throws a bulky jacket over her shoulders.

When they exit the building, it dawns on Kleya that it is almost morning — somehow, she struggles to connect the numbers on her chrono with the reddish-orange sky she sees.

“I wanted to tell you something,” she says.

Kleya’s posture is ramrod straight, but she pointedly avoids looking Vel in the eye.

“This may be an overdue apology, but it’s an apology nonetheless.”

Vel cranes her head. “What for?”

A bulky guard droid passes them, sparing them a glance, but quickly loses interest.

“For lying to you,” says Kleya, after a pause. “I also believe I should have admitted my mistake earlier…” She trails off.

“Instead of trying to persuade me that you were right, yes,” says Vel. “Thank you.”

After that, once again, they appear to have run out of words — and so Vel considers offering Kleya a cig-stick, out of some inexplicable urge to extend the moment.

Then Kleya speaks up again. Her tone is cold and polite, but Vel has learned to see through this coldness over the years.

“I am going to say something else, too, and before I say it, I need you to know two things.” She measures each word, like she is not really talking to Vel but sending an encrypted message to a recipient who risks misinterpreting it. “Firstly, this is not a proposition. I respect your choice and cannot ask you to reconsider. And secondly, I mean every word of it.”

“Go on,” Vel only answers.

“It has been an honor and a privilege to work again with you and Miri,” says Kleya, simply. “I’ve missed her. And I’ve missed you.”

She walks away without giving Vel a chance to answer, as if the answer was not factored into how she imagines this conversation to go — but once again, Vel has seen too much of this woman over the years to take the gesture at face value.

“Kleya!” she calls.

Kleya turns sharply, her expression purposefully neutral — but the look in her eyes both questioning and expectant.

“I’ve missed you too,” Vel says. “Good night.”

Kleya doesn’t move. After a moment of contemplation, Vel takes a step toward her. Then another one. And Kleya takes a step toward her, too.

As they stand opposite each other, Vel slowly takes Kleya’s hand into hers.

Her fingers graze along Kleya’s skin. This small white scar Vel remembers. It must be from eleven years ago, as well as the tiny scar on Kleya’s forehead, closer to the hairline. Vel touches it, too.

Kleya freezes under her touch.

“I respect your choice.” The words echo in Vel’s mind. “I cannot ask you to reconsider.”

And so she kisses Kleya first.

When the lock on the gallery’s revolving door shows a red light, finally, Kleya leans on the wall and catches her breath.

Processing the events of this night — morning, actually, but details don’t matter in this case — feels like an impossible task.

“Get some sleep,” Vel told her, in the same tone she used on Miri a mere couple of hours ago. “Let’s not rush things.”

Kleya doesn’t think she will be able to fall asleep. Her heart keeps pounding; blood is thrumming in her veins, and the reality around her seems just a little bit hazy.

It is worth trying, though.

She reaches for her datapad — and a set of headphones. Lately, Luthen’s music has turned out to be quite helpful when it comes to relaxation. These days, Kleya doesn’t listen to it for the lyrics anymore. It’s merely a comforting presence she turns to once in a while.

Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-Wailers is followed by Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. The usual playlist Kleya has compiled, the usual order of songs: first come a few old jizz hits from bands that no longer exist, with kloo horns and lyrics in Huttese, then Kleya’s favorite, the Fondorese song.

It starts playing just as Kleya undresses and brushes her teeth.

“Osh wal’na,” the singer, a middle-aged man, repeats. “Osh wal’na.”

Kleya squeezes her eyes shut.

When the song stops, she grabs the datapad.

A Fondorese-Basic dictionary is not a hard thing to find on the holonet.

First, she checks the word “osh”. Then “wal’na” — not “neal’na,” like she first thought.

When the full meaning of the words sinks in, she starts laughing.

“You old bastard,” she says, like Luthen is still here, by her side. “Never took you for one who’d listen to something as sappy. Love and unity, for kark’s sake!”

Fact number one: acid rains are a common phenomenon on factory worlds, and Coruscant is considered one of the galaxy’s largest and dirtiest industrial planets. Just one of its districts — the Flatlands — produces more waste than the entire Batonn sector, famous for its mines.

Fact number two: an open-air memorial on Coruscant, in Gaan Raddus Junior’s words, will be rendered unrecognizable in a year. That’s why Raddus Junior, as Vel calls him, insists on building a transparisteel dome at the abandoned Imperial Navy shuttle landing platform they have been given by the Senate.

Fact number three: if you want something big done properly, you need time. While Miri has already learned that transparisteel is easy to assemble and even easier to maintain if you have a droid, it will likely take months. The space under the dome must be warm in winters and cool in summers. Everything has to work properly. The memorial’s idea seems…distant, even though Miri and Vel visit the construction site almost every day: a project that doesn’t appear anywhere near completion, a dream.

Too many things about it just seem too hard.

But when Miri looks at the portrait sketches, arranged on the office floor in the closest approximation of how Kleya wants to arrange them on the memorial wall, she gasps — because all of a sudden, it seems as real as it has never been before.

“Pao, Melshi,” Vel says, “looking good, aren’t you, boys?”

The artist says that Corporal Paodok'Draba'Takat Sap'De'Rekti Nik'Linke'Ti' Ki'Vef'Nik'NeSevef'Li'Kek, also known by his comrades-in-arms as Pao, was her favorite man to paint. “Look at those skin folds! Look at that smile! Such a charismatic man.”

Dad’s portrait is placed at the very beginning. The second one in the row. After Galen Erso and before Luthen Rael — Miri remembers the order by heart.

“You’re looking good too,” she tells him. “Not very fancy, though.”

“Better than the ISB uniform anyway,” Vel counters.

(“This must be the coat,” Mom says, after spending an hour rummaging through Dad’s stuff. “He’d always put it on and say he was going to his garage. This must be it.” The coat is made of thick grey bantha wool. Mom insists that Dad always — “always” — wore it with a scarf, a darker shade of grey. “Here, let me show you how he wrapped it—” Miri asks how she even remembers that. Mom shrugs: “Because it’s your father. That’s why.”)

The Luthen Rael Miri sees is very different from the holograms, too. Older. Tired. Short hair, dark cloak.

“Just because we’re including you doesn’t mean I don’t hate you,” Miri tells the portrait. “Say thank you that we didn’t give you that stupid wig.”

Luthen Rael — Lear, that was his real name — says nothing.

When Daena calls Bix — or Bix calls her — it is always early morning on Coruscant and late night on Mina-Rau.

They talk. It takes seven comm conversations for them to share their stories to each other in several installments.

Bix’s story: Ferrix, Mina-Rau, Coruscant, the Yavin rebel base, Mina-Rau again.

Daena would never imagine anyone could talk so calmly about torture — or about killing a rapist with a key wrench. Bix Caleen’s story is that of details that Daena has to make a conscious effort to picture in her head.

She battles the urge to start making notes, in a private file she would keep to herself, to memorize all the names and events. Her old, obsessive tendencies have a way of coming out to the surface whenever she is presented with bits of reality that she cannot fully comprehend. Like the Ghorman trials. It doesn’t feel right, however, in a private conversation when she is the only person trusted with the story — so all that’s left to her is to listen.

Daena’s story is simpler: Coruscant, Lonni’s sudden disappearances, Heert’s call, the body, the funeral, all the years of waiting and nothingness, the trip Miri took to Narkina, the holomessage and the speeder garage.

“I still can’t believe you didn’t open it for eleven years,” says Bix’s hologram as Daena walks into the kitchen to make caf, trailed by the tookas.

“Maybe I was just scared of what I’d find,” Daena answers.

“I think you knew all along.” Bix cranes her head, watching Daena intently. “When you live with someone… You notice things.” She squints. “Nice kitchen, by the way.”

Daena lets out a scoff as she measures kibble for the tooka feeder. “I’m endlessly fascinated by your ability to talk about the most traumatizing things I can think of and then say…that.”

“Hey, just because I have some, er, shit to shovel, doesn’t mean I can’t notice beautiful things! Like your wall tiles, ma’am. What’s this color called, cream?”

“Can you stop calling me ma’am?”

“It suits you,” says Bix. “You can be a bit of a ma’am. In a good way. Ma’am. Show me the tiles now.”

Daena moves the holocam slightly closer to the kitchen wall.

“You know, I always wanted a nice kitchen when we lived on Coruscant,” says Bix. “Tried to get Cass to buy proper plates once — you should’ve seen his face!”

“Maybe you needed my husband,” Daena says. “He had that theory about what kind of plate shapes worked best for what food. You’d need half an hour to listen to all of it.”

“Exciting,” Bix snorts.

“He’d also eat the same karking thing every day, and Maker forbid you had the wrong kind of blue milk in the fridge! And he’d take the plates out of the washer-box, call the housekeeper droid, sit down with the droid in question, and inspect them all, Bix. Because he had that theory that the droid didn’t program the washer-box properly.” Daena stifles a laugh. “Lonni was a man of theories, you see.”

“The many faces of the Rebellion,” says Bix. “One wouldn’t change the sheets until I had to yell at him, the other pestered a poor household droid.”

“He’d call them clankers like he was in a kriffing clone regiment!”

“Cass did that too! Well, once. We had a friendly conversation after that. Let me just say he was lucky Bee wasn’t around.”

“Tell you what,” Daena says, “Lonni would call them clankers, and at the same time he would buy new droids all the time.”

“Remember this: try.”

“Yes,” Daena says.

The caf machine pings. She takes her cup: black morning caf, as usual, extra strong.

(There was a time she’d make two of those — or Lonni would, depending on who remembered the fact they would need caf to get through the day first.)

“There hasn’t been a day when I don’t miss him,” Daena says.

The sentiment is hardly new; it doesn’t have to be. Some things, Daena suspects, will hardly ever change — and she doesn’t think she will ever get tired of talking about them. Talking about them to Bix, though, feels different.

“Same,” Bix answers. “Same.”

They don’t say anything for a minute or so after that, until Bix decides to change the subject. “Kellen wanted to thank you for the spare parts.”

“He already thanked me, though—”

“Well, I guess he wanted to thank you for the eleventh time. A man can have hobbies. His new hobby is going around telling everyone that I have a new amazing Core-Russant friend who got him a year’s worth of spare parts. Not a lot of gossip material here on Mina-Rau.”

“You should go to sleep,” Daena says. “You only have what, five hours left?”

“And you’ll be late for work if you don’t drink your caf and dress up now,” Bix answers.

Some friendships grow slowly, like a plant on a middle levels windowsill. Others are more like a speeder collision after which your life will never be the same.

Kleya moves back into Vel’s apartment just as the builder droids are finished installing the dome on the former Navy landing platform.

“We got another angry letter,” Vel says as Kleya drops her bag on the floor. “We’re ruining an architectural monument crucial for the galaxy’s history. The sender is, of course, anonymous.”

“An architectural monument. Documenting what, exactly — Admiral Piett’s shore leave?”

“This particular sender is more worried about Grand Admiral Thrawn and Director Krennic, who this man believes used this platform to attend High Command meetings. Here.” Vel offers Kleya the datapad. “It’s a rather exciting read.”

“I’m quite sure Krennic wasn’t authorized to land there because he wasn’t in the Navy. And I’m even more sure he tried to steal Thrawn’s landing spot. Those two hated each other.”

“‘Here Director Krennic Fought with Grand Admiral Thrawn over a Shuttle Landing Spot.’ We need a memorial plaque.”

“‘Here Is Everyone Who Took Part in the Destruction of the Death Stars, and Also, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Director Krennic Probably Fought over a Lambda-Class Shuttle Landing Spot in These Premises Around 7972-7976 C.R.C. But historians still argue about that.”

Vel watches Kleya’s face. “You’re smiling.”

“Yes.” The seriousness returns immediately. “Why?”

“I just like to see you smile,” says Kleya. “And you only have one bag.”

“Well, I unpacked all the old boxes after I took them to the gallery,” says Kleya. She falls on the sofa next to Vel. “And I’m working on something. A restoration project, of sorts.”

When Kleya asked Miri to bring the portable fractal radio unit Dad had in his basement, Miri didn’t think anything good would come out of it. The radio spent ten years gathering dust and rusting quietly. Two repair shops declined to take it, and one asked for a thousand credits, which Kleya said was a ridiculous price for fractal radio repairs.

The last bits of wrapping paper land on the floor of the Ghorman restaurant that Miri picked to celebrate her birthday — and Dad’s birthday, too.

“Try sending a message,” Kleya says. “I’ll give you the coordinates.”

Tentatively, Miri reaches for the control panel of Dad’s radio.

“That’s so cool,” says Seti.

Rawacca roars in approval.

“Unbelieavable,” says Madam Arlanz.

Mister Arlanz nods. “Very impressive!”

“Guess I should have kept mine,” Vel laughs. “Now that we have a free radio repair service!”

Mom musters a smile — but takes her eyes away.

In the time that has passed since Miri’s return from Narkina, she hasn’t said a word to Kleya.

She rarely calls Kleya by her name. Vel has come to accept that as a fact, even though Mom has known she got back with Kleya for weeks already. Kleya seems to have accepted this as a fact, too: not asking for forgiveness anymore but not resenting it either.

Vel brings up this question in the morning, right after Kleya makes her usual Anoat oats — and before the caf is brewed.

It’s a decision that has been brewing in her mind for a few weeks already. Erskin told her she was crazy, Mon said that the Sartha family celebration would likely be “catastrophic” — “and make no mistake, they will try to celebrate, you know your mother. It is of little importance to her that you haven’t spoken since you defected.”

“You can’t be serious,” says Kleya when Vel moves a tiny box across the table. “We’ve only been together for two months.”

“We’ve been in this relationship for two months,” Vel corrects. “And for eleven years in the previous one.”

It feels oddly, inexplicably important. Urgent, even. Like one little final act of mending everything that was broken, pulling it back together.

Vel is aware that she’s being irrational. The understanding doesn’t really help with the sense of urgency. She’d very much like to be done with this before the memorial. Before Miri chooses her path and walks off into whatever adult life she will decide to leave. Before—

Vel has no idea how these all things are connected. It’s stupid, really.

She is giving Kleya her maternal great-grandmother’s wedding ring on a whim. That particular great-grandmother was a Mothma, not a Sartha, but still—

“Do you realize the implications?” Kleya asks.

“There will be no big Chandrilan wedding, in case that’s what you’re asking.”

At last, Kleya takes the box.

“Good luck to us finding a marriage registry appointment on Coruscant,” she says, looking Vel in the eye. “It’s tourist season.”

The more Miri looks at all the portraits, the more she hates herself.

These people gave their lives for you to survive and do whatever you want. And here you are, sitting in this stupid shirt, not even knowing where you want to apply.

She glances at her reflection in the Senate window. Her hair’s a mess, predictably so: it always gets like this after a long day. More humiliatingly, she has a sauce stain from her Chandrilan shrimp sandwich on her Karis Nemik portrait shirt that she never noticed. If that’s not the epitome of a useless Core kid—

“You want to make a difference. There are many ways to do it that do not require an X-wing pilot license, and you know that.”

“You don’t have to run around with a blaster to be a warrior.”

“We asked for justice. Not for punishing crimes with more crimes.”

Miri thinks about Mister Semaj, and then about the Ghorman massacre trials and that woman, the Ithorian prosecutor.

Then she returns to one of the application forms opened on her datapad. The freshly-founded New Republic Academy of Justice, established to educate “a new generation of specialists for the Judicial Department of the New Republic as well as the New Republic Security Bureau.”

The list of requirements sounds intimidating: you have to score at least nine points out of ten on the New Republic Admissions Test, you need to provide a certificate of proficiency in at least one trade language used galaxy-wide that’s not Basic, a personal statement, two letters of recommendation, one of which should be from your teacher, your school grades, and then you will still need to pass additional entrance exams on history and social science.

“All right,” Miri tells herself. “Calm down.”

She already speaks good enough Huttese, and she can get a certificate if she asks her teacher for help. Mister Arlanz can write one letter of recommendation, Vel the other one. Her grades are already good — maybe they’ve slipped a bit, but if she studies…

“You think I can do it?” Miri asks Dad’s portrait, which now resides permanently on her desk.

Dad is, of course, silent.

“I’ll take it as a yes,” Miri says.

Vel could have asked Mon to help, of course, but it feels like dragging Mon into the Sartha family drama that Vel is sure will ensue the second anyone on Chandrila finds out that Vel got married in a private ceremony. Or that there was no ceremony at all.

She also has a suspicion that it could be good gossip column material: Chancellor Mothma Uses Her Powers to Secretly Secure a Marriage Registry Office Appointment For Her Cousin.

And just like that, she and Kleya spent their evenings checking Coruscant’s public services holonet portal as if they are checking for intel crucial or the survival of this galaxy.

“No luck?” Vel asks Kleya on Benduday.

“Two openings in the Flatlands office,” says Kleya. “The one between the durasteel plant and the scrapyard. In six months.”

Vel sighs. “What I said I wanted to keep it casual, that’s not what I meant.”

On Primeday, as they are in bed, they receive an alert about an opening in a Galactic District — the lower levels, just one level before the Underworld starts, actually, and next year.

“That’s our best shot if we are not getting Mon involved and if it’s a matter of principle for you to do it here,” says Kleya.

“It’s not a matter of principle,” Vel admits with a sigh. “I just wanted to do it quickly before the memorial opens, but I guess that’s not happening. It was stupid of me to think it would. We might as well just go to Niamos for a week. They have marriage registry offices too.”

“Or to Lanupa,” Kleya says dryly, with that intonation that makes it impossible for most people to tell if she is joking or not.

(For most people. Vel knows all the tiniest signs Kleya is being ironic by heart.)

“Guess I’m banned from Lanupa now,” Vel says.

“That’s unfortunate.” Kleya’s voice is the same deadpan, but she reaches to stroke Vel’s hair. “I have heard a great deal about their thermal springs.”

Vel snorts. “You want justice and democracy, you make sacrifices.”

Then she leans to kiss Kleya.

“Check your holomail.”

Miri receives the comm message from Vel five minutes before the Huttese class ends. She casts a surreptitious look at the comm, hoping that Miss Ansilajic Matiure is too busy pointing out all the mistakes in Jappo’s homework to pay attention.

“Miri Jung,” she hears a low voice the second she tries to scroll down all the messages on the comm screen. “Coona uba choskoo aag sakapi? Shadi uba naga shagadi foo mikiyuna? Soong vako sakumo Hutta booganda.”

“Miri. What are you so excited about? Perhaps you’d like to share it with the whole class? It must be more important than Huttese grammar.”

“Juba wuka, Ansilajic Matiure Wakaanga.”

“Forgive me, Teacher Ansilajic Matiure.”

One has to pick her battles — and Miri would much prefer to face a squad of death troopers, a krayt dragon, and Luthen Rael at once than a Hutt woman on a quest to bring enlightenment to the wretched younglings of Coruscant.

She apologizes again, just to assure Miss Ansilajic Matiure that there is nothing more important than advanced-level Huttese grammar.

Five minutes later, in the school corridor, she finally opens the message.

The first thing she sees is the hologram of the Great Galactic Seal.

“Ms. Miri L. Jung,” the text reads, “Her Excellency the Chancellor of the New Republic requests the pleasure of your company at the opening of the Death Star Destruction Memorial and the Medal of Honor Presentation, to be held at the Galactic District Dome on Centaxday, 7989.414.4 C.R.C. at 1800.”

Miri’s breath catches.

She freezes just like that, in the middle of the corridor, until she feels an enormous and just a little bit sticky body push her to the side. As a general rule, no one can stand in Miss Ansilajic Matiure’s way. This is especially true when the school canteen is serving slime pods.

“And here I was afraid they’d be stuck with it for a decade,” Daena says.

She dislikes Kleya Marki for many reasons none of which stand a chance to change — but she will have to admit this woman is efficient. Her efficiency, combined with Vel’s efficiency, the young Raddus’s efficiency, and Miri, Seti, and Rawacca’s help, seems to work wonders.

Bix’s hologram seems unusually tense when they have this conversation.

“I was hoping they’d be stuck with it,” she says, after a pause. “Actually. It’s great that they’re almost ready, though. It really is.”

“Wait,” Daena says. “What do you mean, you were hoping—”

“I can’t come to Coruscant. Of all the planets, they chose karking Coruscant, and— I can’t. I know I’ll regret not coming. And I’ll make Wilmon sad, too. If I make him go alone. And…I want to see those people finally thank Cass for what he did. But I just can’t, Daena.”

Why, Daena wants to ask, but stops herself: it doesn’t feel like the right question. The “why” must be here, buried somewhere between the stories Bix told her.

“Gorst?” she realizes.

It’s on the list of the names that, in one way or another, have defined Bix’s life. Life is strange, Daena thinks; such lists inevitably comprise the names of friends as well as the name of a man who tortured you in a hotel room.

Daena’s names: Lonni, Miri, Heert, Lagret, Sul Partagaz. Vel Sartha. Bix Caleen. And also Luthen Rael.

Bix’s names: Cassian Andor, Clem, Luthen Rael, too, Brasso, Maarva Andor, Wilmon Paak. And also Dedra Meero and Doctor Gorst.

“It’s not about him.” Bix pauses, as if struggling to find the words. “It’s about…what these kinds of things do to you. When I was on Coruscant— I couldn’t sleep. I’d stay in that safe house, high on meds, and—” Her speech cadence picks up. “All I could do was watch ‘Good Morning Coruscant’ and hallucinate, and I don’t want it to ever feel that way again, Daena.”

Daena nods.

She waits for Bix to say something else. Bix looks at her, probably waiting for her to say something instead.

“I’ve been there,” Daena says, slowly. “After I saw Lonni’s body. I would move and rearrange things all the time, and I would spiral if I didn’t stack my clothes neatly enough, or if all the glasses I had weren’t standing in a perfect row, because I thought something terrible would happen again. And I had those…thoughts. Fairly scary ones. They were there all the time, they were spinning, they wouldn’t stop for a second, and the only way to silence them was, guess what, binge-watching ‘Good Morning Coruscant’ reruns. On anxiety medicine. Drinking Lonni’s wine. For five hours straight. While Miri was with her nanny droid.”

“Five hours,” Bix offers her a faint smile. “No, even I couldn’t do that.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Bix says. “What was my favorite episode?”

“What made you go back to Mina-Rau? After everything that happened there?”

“I didn’t want to let them take away another place from me,” Bix says, frowning. “And I wasn’t coming to that place where that bastard tried to do what he did, and where they killed Brasso. I was coming to my friends. To live with them.”

“If you decide to come to Coruscant,” says Daena, “you’re not coming to that place where you popped meds and watched ‘Good Morning Coruscant.’ You’re coming to your friends too. And I’ll be by your side all the time.”

“Hey,” says Mom’s new friend, Bix, as her gaze falls on the plants that Miri arranged on the living room windowsill. “We had one just like that.”

“On Yavin,” adds the friend of Bix’s friend, Wilmon. “In yours and Cass’s yurt.”

Dreena, the Ghorman wife of Bix’s friend Wilmon, nods. “I remember that one.”

The hallway is now blocked by all the bags and boxes Bix brought from Mina-Rau. Most of them, as Miri has noticed, contain gifts from her and Mom from what appears to be an entire village. At least half of the gifts in question are food. One package is wrapped haphazardly in tawny paper and tied with a ribbon. No one said anything about it, but Miri saw a tiny birthday card tucked under the bow.

An old red droid — masculine programming, judging by the voice — tries in vain to arrange all the gifts neatly.

Bix’s son plops down on the couch next to Wilmon and Dreena.

“I like this place,” he declares. “I want to live on Core-Russant.”

LO-LA70, ever the most attention-starved droid in the galaxy, climbs up his leg. The red droid loses interest in the boxes immediately. He rolls into the living room, as if scared that LO-LA would somehow steal its owners.

Bix lingers by the windowsill; she traces the edges of the plant’s new leaves with her finger.

“Vel gave this one to me,” Miri says. “We named it Clem.”

Only after these words live her mouth does the realization dawn on her.

“You can’t name a plant like a human,” Bix’s son points out, with a giggle. “I’m Clem. My grandpa was Clem.”

“C-c-lem,” agrees the red droid.

“Miri, darling,” Mom calls, standing in the doorway, “would you mind showing Clem the Galactic District?” She catches the boy’s look and corrects herself with a sigh. “This Clem, not that Clem, obviously.”

“When? I’m going to the holomovies with Seti and Rawacca—”

“Wonderful,” says Mom, “Clem will be thrilled to join you.” She pulls a stack of credit chips out of her bag. “This is for the tickets and the refreshments.”

“W-w-what about me?” the red droid raises his optical sensor at her, concerned.

Mom exchanges glances with Bix — adds another credit chip to the stack.

“And a can of Nepenthé for B2EMO.”

Lola chirps, dissatisfied.

Mom adds another chip.

“You know what, please take them to the droid cafe instead.”

The droid cafe on the 5001st is the last thing that was on Miri’s list for today. Not to mention that she’s not sure Clem is old enough to watch “Knights of the High Republic: Wrath of the Drengir.” Then Miri notices the hopeful look in Mom’s eyes — and Bix’s awkward, apologetic smile. So she sets her irritation aside and nods.

In the end, it’s not Clem’s age that turns out to be the problem. They get kicked out of the holomovie theater for trying to smuggle a Hutt-sized bucket of fried nuna inside, despite Clem’s attempts to cover up Rawacca.

“Your spy dad would’ve been ashamed of us,” Seti tells Miri as they eat the nuna sitting on a bench by their next spot, the droid cafe.

“My spy dad would’ve been ashamed of us too,” says Clem knowingly. “But only a little bit. This bucket’s pretty big. Someone should’ve distracted the ticket droid.”

He fixes B2EMO—Bee—with a look.

“I m-made a m-mistake,” Bee admits.

Lola chirps, as if to comfort him. She climbs into his retractable storage tray, where she has been traveling for the whole evening.

Miri takes another bite of her nuna. “That will be our lesson for the next time, Agent Andor and Agent Bee.”

“Noted, Agent Jung,” Clem answers in a very serious voice.

“M-m-miri?” asks Bee. “W-w-when are we g-g-oing to the d-d-droid cafe?”

The alert arrives on 1515, Centaxday, 7989.414.4 C.R.C, in the middle of a day that — one would imagine — already could not be hectic enough. Most ceremony guests haven’t caused any problems just yet, but Vel had to tip the manager of one of the Galactic District’s hotels extra to make him check in a few of the former Partisans. The ones with particularly, as Kleya put it, unconventional manners. Then Skywalker commed from some Mid Rim world where he had “a bit of a refueling accident” on the way to Coruscant. Then Mon wanted to revise her speech for the fifth time.

Still, when Vel sees this particular notification on her datapad, she realizes that she hasn’t lost the capacity to be caught off-guard.

“This can’t be possible. The Senate public service office is booked until—”

The notification, however, is there: an opening is available at exactly 1545.

“Well, I assume someone cancelled,” Kleya answers over the comm. “You wanted to get married quickly, did you not?”

“I did.” Vel tries to keep her expression as impenetrable as possible, but it appears Miri notices her anxiety anyway.

“Yes or no?” Kleya asks.

“Yes,” says Vel.

“Good. I’m coming over.”

When Vel puts down the comm, she sees the curiosity on Miri’s face.

“Miri.” She can’t believe she is saying it like that — but well, one has to improvise. “I have a rather unusual favor to ask.”

There is a first time for everything — and being a bridesmaid is hardly the weirdest experience that has ever happened to Miri Jung: being almost eaten by a giant suck-lamprey on Narkina-Five after learning the truth about Dad still tops everything else.

Still, a certain degree of weirdness remains, she notes as her gaze travels along the lines in the Coruscant Central Public Services Office.

The sign on the wall near the marriage registry window reads, “Ritual mating dances, ritual mating fights, ritual copulation, and ritual mating cannibalism are prohibited in this building.”

“Congratulations, Kleya Marki and Vel Sartha,” says the elderly Quermian at the registry desk. “Your marriage certificate will be issued within one week. You may now express your devotion to each other in a manner culturally acceptable for your species. However, please remain within the laws of the New Republic.”

At least a few people, Miri notices as she surveys the crowd, are staring.

“We will refrain, thank you,” Kleya answers quickly.

She is clad in a long, dark purple velvet jacket that Miri recognizes all too well.

“Let me clarify.” Mon’s voice is soft, but this is the kind of softness that indicates she would very much like to throw you out of one of the Senate building’s windows. “You got married while I was at a hearing.”

“I tried to call you but figured you were busy,” says Vel. “We invited you.”

“We have five minutes,” Kleya says. “If you want some sort of a symbolic celebration, we need to hurry.”

“Kleya, I’ll get the wine, one second—” Vel opens her desk drawer.

“Do you seriously hide wine in your desk?” Erskin clarifies. “How old are you?”

Dank farrik, a voice in Vel Sartha’s head says loudly and clearly. She must have put the bottle back on autopilot, without even looking. Must have been that day people kept popping by to congratulate her after the Ghorman trials.

“...not anymore.” Vel stares at the empty bottle. “Didn’t realize we were out. Apologies.”

“We have, um, pickle juice,” Miri offers, gesturing at the jars on one of the desks. “And, um, Meiloruun electrolyte soda.”

“Meiloruun soda will do,” Mon manages. “Thank you very much, Miri.”

As Miri pours the bright orange liquid for everyone, Vel notes that she will likely get flack for her mismatched office cups later, both from Mon and Erskin, and Kleya will have something to comment on that, too. She smiles at the thought.

“Sagrona Teema,” says Miri, raising her cup.

“Sagrona,” answers Erskin.

“Sagrona,” agrees Mon.

It’s not the Chandrilan wedding that Vel’s parents must have imagined for her. No dances, no elaborate ritual dresses, no braids to cut off, no banquets.

The kiss Vel gives Kleya is nothing special, merely one of the many kisses she has given to this woman in all those years they have been together. Not the first one. Not the last one. Hardly the most passionate one: Miri is in the room, for Maker’s sake, and also, they only have time for a quick peck on the lips.

Yet it feels as special as a kiss could possibly.

The Galactic District Dome, as the media has taken to calling it, shines faintly in the daylight. The transparisteel it’s made of is tinted orange, so little coloring it is barely noticeable unless one looks at the dome from a distance.

The orange tint was a decision that Mon herself, half the Senate, and the Galactic District’s administration were firmly against at first. The discussions went on until Vel and Raddus’s grandson showed everyone a miniature model of the building that, in fact, looked much less of an affront to Coruscant’s architectural style than the description in the original pitch

“Your Excellency,” calls Mon a reporter with a Queen of the Core network logo sprawled all over his vest, as soon as she exits out of her speeder. “One question! Was a Death Star destruction memorial really necessary?”

This is precisely why Mon doesn’t normally talk to the media. She usually tells such people to stay for her speech, which will answer all of their questions.

Yet when she glances at Vel, in her white suit with her Alliance crest pin on the blazer, and at Miri helping her, and at Kleya in the crowd, she decides that she will break her rule earlier than she intended.

“Yes,” she says, simply.

The reporter brings a mic closer to her face, waiting for her to continue.

“This memorial is a reminder that such victories can never be achieved by one person,” answers Mon, ignoring the bodyguard droid that keeps trying to direct her to the gate. “A fight for freedom is a collective effort. A thankless one. Most people who fought to restore the Republic remained unknown to the broader galaxy. Their sacrifice is, sadly, not mentioned in history books. It is rarely talked about. We strive to rectify this injustice. The more we know, the better we understand the true cost of our civil liberties.”

Two young women in the crowd try to shove her pieces of flimsi with markers and sensor screen datapads.

“Chancellor Mothma,” reminds the bodyguard droid. “Ladies, no autographs—”

“So I hope that today citizens of our Republic will learn many new names,” finishes Mon.

It gets dark late during spring on Coruscant. Sunbeams fall on the white stone floor of the memorial.

Bix rests a hand on Daena’s shoulder.

“So.” Daena tries to turn this into a joke, because sometimes it seems like the only way to fully process what is happening in her life. “Who’s having a mental breakdown first, you or me?”

“It’s too early for a mental breakdown.” Bix’s voice is a half-whisper. “We get their medals, we have our mental breakdowns, okay?”

“Mom,” Miri calls. “Bix. Clem. Wilmon. Bee. Come here.”

“Mom?” Clem tugs on Bix’s sleeve. “Miri’s over there—”

“W-where is C-cassian?” Bee demands.

“You sure you don’t want a drink or anything?” Wilmon points at the open bar on that site where they’ve set up a stage for the Chancellor to speak.

“Nope,” Clem says, with certainty. “They don’t make milkshakes, I checked.” Then he repeats, “Miri’s over there!”

““You can go have a look with her, my love.” Bix offers him a smile that doesn’t really look like a smile. “We’ll join you later.”

“Galen Walton Erso”

“Born in 7921 on Grange. Killed in 7976 on Eadu.

“Scientist.”

“Abducted and pressed into service by the Galactic Empire to work on the first Death Star. Engineered a fatal vulnerability at the station’s center. Risked his life to share the information with the Alliance to Restore the Republic.”

“Hey,” Clem whispers, “was he, like, a slave?”

“I think it counts as slavery,” says Seti.

Rawacca rubs the scar on her wrist — and nods.

Miri’s gaze skims over a small group of men and women in their sixties, all scientists — Erso had no relatives or even friends left alive, but leaving him without anyone to accept his medal didn’t seem right. Vel had to track down his colleagues from the times of the Galactic Empire. Several who were friendly with him agreed to come.

One of the scientists bows his head. The others follow his example.

“Jyn Erso”

“Born in 7956 on Vallt. Killed in 7976 on Scarif.”

“Soldier.”

“Daughter of Galen Erso. Sacrificed her life to retrieve the plans of the first Death Star during the battle of Scarif.”

Vel met this woman on Yavin, if briefly. She remembers the face: pale, cold eyes, a focused, wary look of a girl brought up to be a warrior. Father abducted, mother shot before her eyes, as Vel learned later. Brought up by Saw Gerrera. Abandoned at sixteen. Sentenced to twenty years in a labor camp where five years was the maximum life expectancy. Rescued, only to die a few days later.

(Mon once said that Jyn Erso would have gone on to live an extraordinary life — “in a kinder universe”. To that, she added, as if in passing, that Erso had put the best and worst qualities of herself to the cause. Vel always wondered if the same couldn’t be said about all of them.)

(If you press a small button by Jyn Erso’s portrait, a holo will start playing: the words she said in a meeting with the High Command, captured by a journalist who had joined the Alliance after Ghorman. There were days when this holovid circulated around the galaxy. Brought the Alliance hundreds of new recruits, even. When Vel first asked Miri about it, though, it turned out that Miri had no idea what it is.)

“So the Partisans problem is solved,” Mon says.

It doesn’t sound like a question — and even if it were one, the answer is fairly obvious, Erskin thinks as he looks at a bunch of men and women of various species who look quite uncomfortable unarmed in a space this crowded. They also appear dressed up in the cleanest clothes they could find.

“Judicial reached an agreement with the NRSB,” Erskin answers.

The NRSB people now hate him and Vel, but at least they have a guarantee the Partisans will be safe, even those who went on to become bounty hunters.

Erskin watches Benthic, the man known by most people in this galaxy as Two Tubes, press the button — and play the recording of Erso’s speech for the third time.

Vel spent two weeks persuading them that a memorial for Jyn Erso was not, in fact, a trap. That Benthic has agreed to accept the medal for Erso, knowing full well that the ceremony will be broadcast, must say something.

“Bodhi Rook”

“Born in 7952 on Jedha. Killed in 7976 on Scarif.”

“Pilot.”

“Defected from the Empire to pass a message from Galen Erso to the rebellion. Sacrificed his life to retrieve the plans of the first Death Star during the battle of Scarif.”

Kleya watches a small, dark-haired woman in a traditional Jedha shawl, who has not left this spot of the memorial for the past few minutes.

It was worth it to pressure Vel and Miri to look harder for this man’s relatives, even if it appeared impossible to do: the planet had long been rendered unlivable. People who managed to leave it ended up scattered all over the galaxy.

It is, in Kleya Marki’s opinion, always worth it to look harder.

Melshi and Pao’s memorial spots prove to be the most popular ones among all the former Yavin rebels.

There are two mounds of flowers that look like they are competing in size. Someone leaves two glasses of Corellian whiskey on the floor — a common custom on many worlds, an offering to the dead. There are a few shots of spotchka from the open bar, too.

In the crowd, Vel spots Kallus and Zeb in his full dress Navy uniform.

“See?” Zeb says. “That’s what it looks like when people really like you.”

“A life well-lived,” Kallus says, “is when you’ve been dead for a decade, and people still want to have a drink with you.”

Vel finds that she couldn’t agree more.

Once again, the surviving pathfinders play that video from Vel’s personal archives in which Pao says the word “karabast” five times in one minute but repairs a blaster rifle in just about the same amount of time. You can only see Ruescott Melshi’s face for a few seconds, but you do hear his voice — and it’s obvious that he is very impressed.

The pathfinders raise their glasses.

“Hey,” Wilmon calls as he rushes to them, leaning on his crutch. “Wait for me!”

Some people travel from portrait to portrait. Others already begin to gather at the small podium Vel had installed for Mon’s speech.

Mon notices, in between talking to journalists and senators and officials of all persuasions, that some guests simply watch the ceremony from a distance, as if hesitant to come closer. Two women linger by the dome’s polished wall: a blonde and a brunette.

The blonde seems local — in all probability, a Galactic District dweller. Black tailored cape, black elbow-length gloves, a pillbox hat, face obscured by a voile. It takes Mon a second to recognize this woman: Daena Jung, Miri’s mother, Lonni Jung’s wife, the witness at the Ghorman massacre trials, Vel’s friend.

The brunette, however, does not appear familiar. Mon is not sure if they ever met. She is clad in a simple dark red dress with an equally simple white sash — similar to the funeral wear on worlds like Ferrix, Mon would suppose. Wherever she goes, she is trailed by a boxy red droid, dented and scratched.

“Come, now,” the blonde tells her. “We have to take a look, at least.”

Chirrut Îmwe.

Baze Malbus.

“In darkness, cold,” the inscription under their portraits reads. “In light, cold. The old sun brings no heat. But there is heat in breath and life. In life, there is the Force. In the Force, there is life. And the Force is eternal."

They had to vote on which Guardians of the Whills prayer to include. This one, cryptic as it is, turned out to be everyone’s favorite.

Seti tries hard not to stare at the men studying the wall, and so does Miri. One of the men is wearing an old dark grey robe with red lining, thoroughly cleaned and mended.

“So they came.”

“Yes,” Miri says. “They came.”

With her peripheral vision, she catches a glimpse of Mom.

“Cassian Jeron Andor”

“Born in 7944 on Kenari. Killed in 7976 on Scarif.”

“Agent of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.”

”Was a member of the Rebellion for four years. During that time, played a key role in the rescue of the future Chancellor Mon Mothma after she gave a speech in the Senate criticizing the Ghorman massacre. Sacrificed his life to retrieve the plans of the first Death Star during the battle of Scarif.”

Almost the same age as Lonni. Daena wonders whether they ever met. Probably not.

“C-c-cassian,” says B2EMO.

“Hey,” Vel calls. “There you are. Found you at last.”

“Yeah. Here I am.” Bix blinks; her grip on Daena’s shoulder grows tighter.

“I hate this memorial,” grumbles Clem. “It’s kind of stupid. You can’t hug a wall. And I can’t take a holo with him here because there’s too many people, and—”

“Sorry,” Vel tells him. “You’ll receive his medal for him.”

“C-c-can I receive the m-m-medal too?” asks B2EMO.

Clem sighs, but then pets the droid on the top panel that seems to cover his memory banks. “‘Course you can, Bee. We’ll go together.”

Between shaking hands with even more senators and posing for holos with Gial Ackbar and all of Raddus’s grandchildren, including the man who built this memorial, Mon can’t help stealing another glance at the woman in the Ferrixian clothes.

The woman is talking to a few former Massassi cell members who have brought flowers to Cassian Andor’s memorial. A man clad in the same kind of funeral attire approaches her; his face Mon recognizes right away. Wilmon Paak. He still has to use a crutch.

Finally, Mon realizes who the woman is.

“K-2SO”

“Droid.”

“Created in 7965 on Vulpter. Destroyed in 7976 on Scarif.”

“Created to serve the Empire, reprogrammed by the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Cassian Andor’s friend and companion; his assistance proved crucial on numerous Rebel Alliance missions. Sacrificed his life to retrieve the plans of the first Death Star during the battle of Scarif.”

Lola chirps as she climbs out of Bee’s storage compartment.

The thing she does next… Miri isn’t sure if she interprets it correctly. No, she does, given that all the other droids gathered at this part of the memorial are obviously doing the same.

The golden protocol droid standing the closest to her bows, just like Lola. A bunch of astromechs who came in with some of the guests attempt to do the same. So does the WED Treadwell assigned for dome maintenance. After a second of processing the new information, Bee follows suit.

“Goodness,” says the golden droid. “Artoo, this is a very emotional moment.”

An old blue astromech beeps in response.

“Lear”

“Born in 7910 on Fondor. Killed in 7976 on Coruscant.”

“Resistance cell organizer”

“One of the founders of the resistance movement during the Galactic Empire’s reign. Worked undercover under operative pseudonym Luthen Rael, collecting key intel for the Rebellion, recruiting operatives, financing, and planning missions for eighteen years. Lear was the first person to receive the information about the first Death Star from Lonni Jung, his agent.”

If you press a button under the portrait, it will play a hologram of the old Fondorese hit “Come Stand With Us” — the caption explains that it is a song from Lear’s personal collection. The package also includes a brief holotour of “Galactic Antiquities and Objects of Interest.”

It’s still hard for Kleya to call Luthen that name in her mind, Lear, but it was she who insisted that they used it.

“I burn my decency for someone else’s future,” the engraving on the wall reads. “I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.”

Kleya remembers the day he said this — as if to himself, as if repeating something he’d already voiced before. He had just come back from another meeting with Lonni, silent, tired. Poured himself Corellian whiskey. Downed one glass in a split second. Winced. Forced himself to get up from the chair. “Back to work now.”

Kleya wipes away a tear before it ruins her makeup.

“So,” Mon says behind her back. “Here he is.”

“Here he is,” says Erskin.

“Here he is,” Vel agrees.

“Hey,” whispers Miri. “C’mere. Kleya. Let me hug you, okay?”

“Lonni Jung”

“Born in 7940 on Coruscant. Killed in 7976 on Coruscant.”

“Agent of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.”

“Worked undercover in the ISB for fifteen years, providing crucial intelligence to the Rebellion. Passed information that saved the life of future Chancellor Mon Mothma during her rescue from Coruscant. Collected ISB files that later helped capture those responsible for the Ghorman massacre. Discovered the existence of the first Death Star.”

The holovid included is just some recording of Dad teaching Miri to play Dejarik that Mom made years ago. There are a few people watching it. As Miri approaches the memorial, she sees that one of them is Carro Rylanz.

“Oh, please,” Dad mutters in the hologram, “Daena, you’re a much better player—”

“You’re a better teacher!” the hologram Mom says. “Don’t get distracted.”

“Dad!” calls a girl that Miri cannot recognize anymore. “Don’t get distracted! Dejayik time!”

Someone in the crowd snorts. So does Bix.

“Fine,” Dad sighs. “Now, this is Grimtaash and this is the Ghhk—”

Rylanz pauses the holovid. When he notices Miri and Mom, a smile tugs on his lips.

“I believe it’s highly unnecessary to say that he would have been proud of the two of you. This much is obvious.”

“I only wish he knew this.” Mom’s face is obscured by the veil; only now does it dawn on Miri that it was a rather purposeful choice.

“I think he does,” Miri says. “If this…Force thing exists. He does.”

The Force is a strange thing. You don’t really talk about the Force per se, lest you risk sounding just a little bit crazy if your name is not Luke Skywalker — and after meeting Luke, Miri can tell with assurance that he’s a tiny bit crazy too.

Miri can’t see Force ghosts or lift stuff with her willpower, and neither does she have visions about the future. Yet she is sure it’s real.

“Of course it exists,” says Bix. “And of course he does.”

“There’s no death, there’s only the Force,” Clem declares behind Miri’s back; he must have overheard it somewhere. “I mean, it’s a little bit weird because it means that bad guys like Emperor Palpatine probably, er, joined the Force too, but—”

Mom rolls her eyes. “Please, Clem, this is really not the moment—”

Miri finds it funny how she has taken to scolding Clem like he is her son, too — but doesn’t pay the thought much attention. It’s quickly replaced by a memory. An image.

A stack of Jedi trading cards in Dad’s speeder garage.

“Your friend is here,” Mom says, then.

Miri turns back.

Kleya waits patiently for them at a distance, Vel by her side.

Bix casts a glance at them, then at Mom. A realization creeps into Mom’s features.

Awkwardly, she gestures for Kleya Marki to come closer.

Centaxdays in the Amnesty Housing are meant for friends and family visits — and it doesn’t stop until the night. Children, parents, siblings, spouses, best friends. Dedra prefers to watch the crowd from a distance, not bothering to hide her disgust.

Blevin’s son flies from Ganthel every week solely for the dubious pleasure of seeing him.

Lepori’s sister comes with containers of home-cooked food as if they don’t have food here.

The blond stormtrooper’s wife always brings spice-bread from some Outer Rim grocery — “just like at home,” like Core food is inferior — and everyone ends up eating it for a week. Except for Dedra. She would much prefer to avoid destroying her body with sugar, thank you.

Dedra Meero counts herself lucky. At least she doesn’t have anyone to bother her like that.

So she sits back and watches. It was far more entertaining than watching the Death Star awards ceremony together with half the former COMPNOR staff. At least Open Centaxdays, as they call it here, sometimes erupt into spectacular fights.

Dedra’s gaze skims along the line at the entrance. She squints; something catches her eye, but she can’t quite place it at first.

It is often the simplest things that have the capacity to cause one the most immense distress, as she was taught during her interrogation courses decades ago. For example, a glimpse of an old-fashioned orange coat — and an equally old-fashioned voluminous hairdo.

Dedra Meero gulps.

“Most appalling.” Sul Partagaz drops a squig eel in her glass of sparkling Hanna wine and watches it twirl as it dissolves. “How could you have let it happen, Captain?”

“What did you expect me to do?” Lagret scoffs. “Threaten them? Write more infuriated letters to the Senate? Go on ‘Good Morning Coruscant’?”

As Sul marches to the other end of the drawing room to press the power button, she steps twice on the hem of her hostess dress — and curses out loud, in the most unladylike manner.

The hologram of Daena and her insufferable daughter vanishes; Sul downs her squig.

This time, she cannot help making a face.

“C’mon,” Freedi hisses at the holoprojector. “Stupid, haye? Dumb, haye? Show me our Curasant girls, not dis blue screen no signal thingy!”

“Won’t show no sere-mony,” says Farko Awalar knowingly. “Remember when we watched Crazy Dedra? The damn thingy broke down right when they took her to jail!”

“At least our holothingy works better than all of your stupid holothingies,” Dewi counters. “Doesn’t go shak after every storm.”

Some people gathered in the Pamular hut today nod.

Freedi gives the holoprojector another shake and kicks it. Sometimes, such an intervention can work wonders. Like now: the projector starts working.

“Look,” he says, “dis our Curasant girls! Gettin’ medals!”

“Medals for what?” Farko Awalar’s son scratches his head.

“For those guys who saved dis galaxy from the Death Star, ye squigglie-head,” Dewi reminds with all the patience he is capable of.

In the hologram, Miri stands before some guy who puts a medal thingie on her. Freedi looked him up, said it was some Jedi skyguy flyguy, like a hero or something, and he had a sister with weird hair too. Both big mucky-mucks. Dewi couldn’t care less. If you ask him, girls like Miri and Kleya deserve the biggest mucky-muck in the galaxy, the Chancellor lady, not some average ones that no one will recognize if they come to Karawaso.

Miri, however, seems happy.

“Told you Kleya’s not her mama,” says Freedi.

“‘Course Kleya’s not her mama,” speaks up Farko again. “Are ye two stupid, haye? How did ye even believe that?”

“Believe we didn’t,” Dewi grumbles. “Help we did.”

In the holo, the Jedi skyguy flyguy and his weird hair sister shake Kleya’s hand. From what Dewi understands, Kleya gets a shiny medal thingy for her dad, and Miri gets one for her dad too, and both dads helped save the galaxy — everyone here did.

“So what about the shiny thingies for the guys ye saved?” Farko insists.

Freedi stares at the holoprojector.

“Guess we missed them, is what,” he says, at last.