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“…will bring an end to the Senate…to their cherished fleet…”
The holo washes the walls of their apartments the same corundum blue as it has for hours now, and the last echoes of the speech ring out over and over, the small figure, squared-shouldered in its long coat, at the center of the stage commanding, “Fire!” as fervently as it had the first time and the tenth and the thirtieth, until it seemed there was only that moment, that exhortation, the beginning and the end of everything. At least, before the speech resumes anew, reaffirming yet once more: “This is the last day of the Republic—the end of…”
And nothing to contradict it, the chaos in the city outside confirming that their tranquil time on Gatelenta has reached its end, even their normally serene hosts thrown into chaos by the destruction of the Hosnian system, the streets thronged with the helpless, the grieving. The footage of the cataclysm blares on every screen in the city, matching the loop, The last day, the last day, the last day. Fire. Swarms of starcraft lift into the plummy skies, off to, well, it’s difficult to say. Help presumably. How remains unclear—the five planets meeting their destruction appeared quite beyond any assistance. But it’s the done thing, Maratelle knows. The rushing off. The scurry to answer. Again, again. Nothing new in the Galaxy.
She worries the edge of her shawl between her fingers. It’s gossamer, light, dove gray but unadorned, as is the fashion here. They do well to blend in. They always have, no one the wiser as to who they were three decades ago, the Commandant’s wife and the kitchen maid long vanished to the Galaxy’s indifferent eye, since it was all smashed to smithereens, the Academy and everything with it. No one knowing or caring that she’d been left behind. Until the plain-faced girl who’d bore her husband’s son came along and offered her a work-rough hand out of the rubble. Brendol days gone by then, the boy with him.
The boy—a man now, more than thirty—in the holo intones with all the rabid certainty of his father, of all zealous men who meant to run the Galaxy: “All remaining systems will bow the First Order.” In answer, Sadhbh lets go a choked, sodden sound. She’s a little woolen lump on their sofa, shoulders hunched, knees drawn, a soggy handkerchief balled in her fist. Maratelle takes one measured breath. Ventures away from the window at last, trying to ignore the pang she feels for delaying this.
She’s on the other side of fifty, Sadhbh, years gone from round-cheeked girl she had been, with her cornsilk hair neatly plaited down her back, the muscles of her arms firm from beating bread dough into submission, and always that touch of the Arkanis coast in her voice, unshed, even today, no matter how many times they've traversed this starry spiral of worlds. And no part of her is untravelled territory to Maratelle, not the grays at her temples, or the lines of her cheeks, or the thin, soft skin of her thighs, belly, shiny with faint stretch marks, or the full roundness of her hips, breasts. Maratelle knows her entire, and the same knows all too well the gasping, hiccuping way she’s breathing now, shoulders heaving. The way she cries only late at night when she remembers him, how they snatched him out of her arms right before the bombs fell.
Maratelle curls around her as she has on such nights these many years, nuzzling the crown of her head, wrapping a bracing arm around her middle, putting all her contrition into a firm kiss to her temple. “There now, pet, it isn’t so bad, really.”
Sadhbh doesn’t laugh; it’s more of a congested snuffle. “Oh, isn’t it?”
“He could have blown up six planets,” she points out lightly, as she might have once lamented a hostess’s unfortunate choice of dress. “Or one we liked. I never cared for Hosnian Prime, did you?”
“Maratelle.” She gasps wetly. “People died. Billions. Doesn’t that upset you?”
“Not especially.”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Darling, what can I tell you, sometimes our sons—or, in my case, our most favorite lover’s and most despised husband’s son—destroy worlds. It doesn’t do to fall to pieces over it.” Certainly the elite wives of the Empire had never bothered their beaded and bedecked heads over such things, Alderaan or no Alderaan. She had aspired to be one of them once, ambitious as her husband. May have been, if Brendol hadn’t left her among the ruins of the life they built together. She never did get a chance to thank him for that. “After all, there are pieces enough already.”
Sadhbh yowls and shoves her arm off then, squirming around to glare at her, straight in the eye. “You’re terrible.”
Maratelle shrugs, giving no sign of her relief to see the barest flicker of that spirit she loves so well. She reaches over to switch off the holo. Dares to say, more gently as she brushes Sadhbh’s hair off her tear-sticky face. “At least you know he’s alive now. Tell me you’re not glad of that.” They have, after all, spent long years and no few credits looking.
“You know I am,” Sadhbh answers, bitterness stinging her voice. “I don’t know what that makes me, but the first thing I thought was, ‘there he is whole and hale at last’ and was relieved.”
She strokes her cheek. “It makes you his mother.”
The full bow of her mouth bends. “The mother of—what are they calling him on the Holonet? The Starkiller.”
“That has an impressive ring to it, doesn’t it? He’s done well for himself. A General or better at a glance. Must be important to have made that speech. And delivered capably, too. Perhaps we should be proud.”
“Mara, please, must you say such things.”
She sighs, taking her hands, worn now, the veins standing out in places, the joints knobby, but still the dearest hands between here and wild space. This has never been one of her talents. Sincerity. “What should you like to do about it, my love?” she asks bluntly instead, stroking Sadhbh’s knuckles with her thumbs. “We may stay here and rend our clothes and hair in the street, if you wish. Give some succor to Leia Organa’s new Rebellion, whatever they’re calling themselves now. Fly to Cantonica and forget all our woes in Sunberry wine and pretty faces and games of chance.” This last, she’ll acknowledge, is more of her own desire (but it does no harm to mention it, surely?). “Whatever will ease you, pet. I'm yours to command." As I always have been, she need not remind her.
They have wanted for little since the rise of this New Republic (not so different from the Old), Maratelle found blameless in Brendol's service to the Empire and her family’s estates left untouched by the reconstruction, all the wealth Brendol meant to use for his own means firmly in her grasp with her husband missing and presumed dead. (And if he returned, it was with a death sentence on his head, and better still.) What will befall them now—she doesn’t worry. They’ve survived one regime change and will endure another, whatever happens.
Sadhbh looks back at her, less aggravated. Soon, Maratelle will send the droid for a basin so she may wash her raw cheeks, rinse her irritated eyes. And fetch her a veil, if she likes, so others might think her in mourning and not ask so many questions. Yes, this she can see to—can assure her care and comfort as Sadhbh did hers so many times, when she might have left her cold and alone and abandoned, as just desserts for all Brendol did to her, all he took from her.
(Maratelle still dreams of wringing his stodgy neck, one of her fine shimmersilk scarves pulled tight under his chin. Or else a monomolecular blade, sunk neatly into his back. Pleasant visions, indeed.)
“I want to see him,” Sadhbh says finally. “Armitage. I want to look into his face and see for myself what he really is. If he is just—that.” She gestures to the darkened holo. “If he’s Brendol’s and Brendol’s alone.”
Maratelle nods as easily as if she’s asked for bonbons for a sweet tonight, or a new gown. But then, this First Order is out of hiding, their intentions declared for all the Galaxy. It will not be as difficult as it once was to find Armitage Hux, after their many thwarted efforts, those long decades wondering. Who could have known that someday he would step from the shadows and call out so clearly, here I am and take note, as though he had never been stolen at all? “Of course, darling, I will put a word in to the guild straight away and have them send their best on our behalf.” She leans in to kiss Sadhbh soundly, to affirm I’m here and I’m yours, before she moves to stand again.
But Sadhbh hasn’t let her go, interlacing their fingers and holding her fast. “It’s foolish, isn’t it, to think he might remember us at all. That it might make a difference if we find him. After this.”
“I cannot promise who he will be when you see him,” Maratelle says slowly. If I could, I would, gladly, she doesn’t add. I would give you the boy he was back in an instant, were it in my power. But Sadhbh knows that; Maratelle has sworn as much countless times. “However we find him, I will be with you. And if you want to truss him hand to foot and throw him in the ship’s hold until you decide what to do with him, that is what we will do, First Order and the Galaxy be damned.”
Sadhbh kisses her back now, soft and sweet and slow. “Thank you.”
It was a chilly morning on Arkanis, the dust settling around them, ash and smoke clogging the air, the Academy grounds in ruins, pockmarked by missile and blaster fire, the Rebellion’s ships blemishes on the green landscape, rain lashing their hulls. She had been hunched under a surviving balcony, dress torn, face dirty, unable to move or speak, barely able to breathe, think, and what would become of her now, when the kitchen girl appeared, as though by cosmic intervention, looking as untouched by the destruction as anyone could be. Maratelle recognized her at once, though they had never spoken. Of course she knew who she was. The boy's mother. Her eyes were the same, the color of the sea. Unhesitating, she had reached out for Maratelle and said, “Come on, love, let’s get you out of here.”
Maratelle looks back into those same green eyes, feeling as untroubled by the future as Sadhbh had been that day. “Always, my dear.”