A/N: A vignette and the start of a series of them providing backstory to TIE Fighter: Command Decisions and TIE Fighter: Resurrection. This is years before the Battle of Yavin, far in the Unknown Regions on Csilla, and fair warning, I have my own, rather firm ideas about their society and politics. So we're going with that. Same rules as all the other TIE Fighter stories: the Thrawn Trilogy is canon up until it diverges, the non-special-editions of the films are canon, EVERYTHING else is entirely subject to my picking and choosing.
Scoobyice8, you wanted more about Lisetha and Thrawn? Here you go...
"You realize, daughter, you can't avoid the question forever." Als'ele'kadre, daughter of the Fourth Family and widow of Terl'an'harana of the Second Family, stared at her eldest offspring with the usual mixture of exasperation and resignation. Reli'set'harana, Lady of the Second Family, ascended to the Council on her father Lanhar's death, was seated calmly at what was now her table, her correspondence before her, expression serene. The veiled retainer standing silently behind her moved equally silently to refill Seleka's cup of chai without waiting to be told, but then, the servants would expect an order from Lisetha now anyway, or at least permission to obey an order from her mother. She was eldest, she was Council, she was mistress of herself and in many ways of her family now as well.
And she was, as the stack of discarded missives indicated, stubborn as ever.
Lanhar had indulged her, that was the problem, and Seleka had allowed it. Whether he'd favored his eldest because she was eldest or because she was clever (some in Seleka's birth family said sly, though they had not said it where Lanhar could hear) and quick and thrived on the same things he had-language, culture, flying those thrice-damned-dangerous clawcraft, and most of all the arcane world of politics–Seleka had never known, but her late husband had raised a true daughter in Lisetha. And that meant while she would be polite, charming, and proper as could be, once she set herself in a position she was more immobile than a glacier and shifting her from that stance even more futile than trying to direct snows where to fall.
"I am aware that, politically and genetically, it will be necessary for me at some point to marry and produce an heir," Lisetha said. "Especially that last, I know my siblings as well as you do. But I see no need to rush the point. We've barely put off mourning, and I have many duties now. Unless the First decides to offer someone, and they don't have any males of suitable age or reason to ally with us, I will be doing the choosing and I choose to put it off for now."
"Except the offers you're rejecting outright," Seleka said. "The Third–"
"Garn'ase'denoth? He's an idiot, and a boring one at that, and not attractive enough to make up for it. If I want to look at stupid and ugly, I'll watch my little sister entertain her suitors. Of which she has too many, by the way, at least before our brother or I are even safely attached. And not a useful one in the lot thus far."
"Kelah is not of as serious a bent as you, and will have her amusements," Seleka said. Privately, she did not disagree entirely; her youngest, Telk'ela'harana, was a typical third child, more an indulgence herself than necessary for either Family's posterity (secured by Lisetha and Rael'or'kadre, the only son) and as such she had a habit of swinging between pride and resentment in her station. Her studies as an Archivist had always been somewhat less than serious.
Listha's lips pressed in a thin line and there was just the slightest tightening at the corners of her eyes. "She will have them as I permit them. If she continues being a useless flirt, that will not be for long." Even her tone of voice was a feminine echo of her father, and Seleka felt a fresh pang of grief. Lisetha turned back to the correspondence. "These other offers are just as ridiculous. Too young or too old, the Fifth suggests a boy that's your second cousin and I think some of these marriages are a bit too consanguineous already."
"At least they don't insult us as the Eighth does." Seleka picked up that particular message, which had been on the bottom of the pile, holding it by two fingertips as if the paper itself was offensive. "Second is a bit of a reach to begin with, let alone the first of the Family. And to pile on the insult by offering a trial-son . . . no matter how oblique or neatly phrased the very notion's degraded."
Lisetha frowned. "A trial-son? I didn't see that one." She held out her hand for the message, obviously checking herself from an imperious flick of her fingers. "The Eighth and a trial-son . . .why does that sound familiar?'
"I've no idea, but you know that means a common-born. And no matter how exceptional a soldier he might be that's hardly suitable when you're tossing aside blood-sons of much higher rank."
Her daughter wasn't listening. "I remember now," she said, even as her eyes scanned down the letter. "Mitth'raw'nuruodo. Baseborn, yes, but the youngest commander in remembered history. He has an older brother, as I recall, but he hasn't been made trial. The elder's a gifted officer. The younger is supposed to be . . . unusual. Spectacularly talented. Not entirely popular, but then how many genuinely talented are?"
"They must hope if he makes a spectacular match so far above his birth station it would be a political advantage to him personally in addition to the Family." Seleka couldn't help the sniff.
Lisetha still sounded oddly distracted. "As it would be." She set down the Eighth's letter and stared into the middle distance in that strange way she had, looking at everything and nothing, fingers steepled together in front of her and tapping against each other. Before she even said anything, that silent servant placed a stylus and her letterbox, reserved for the most ritualized and traditional of communications, on the table before her mistress. Lisetha took out a fresh sheet of the expensive fine paper, and studied it as if imagining the script before she set it out.
"You're not going to open with them!" Seleka knew she sounded much too emotional for her daughter's taste. Lisetha detested overt snobbery, also a relic of her father and being of the second-highest Family. Only the First exceeded them in security in their station. "You cast away offers from Families nearly as highly placed as your own, but you'll meet with a common-born officer trial-son from a Family almost as low-placed–"
"Yes, I will. Assuming he is amenable, of course. Someone so remarkable might be an advantage as a husband to me, and even if he isn't, he's certainly someone worth meeting." Lisetha was writing now, her script not quite as fluid as it really ought to be, but she always rushed it a bit. "The rest of these, I have met on several occasions and they bore me already. I was still in mourning for Father when the promotion and announcement of his trial status were made, so I have not met this Mitth'raw'nuruodo." She paused, considering. "Thrawn. Such a brusque name, no extraneous vowels like some of ours. I wonder if it fits the man."
"Daughter!" Technically Seleka no longer had the right to rebuke her own child, but sometimes she was so deliberately shocking it was impossible not to. "You've never met him even formally! Even in private, you have no business using his core name. I certainly hope you can maintain some sense of decorum and propriety if he does have the unmitigated nerve to call on you. Otherwise even a common-born will be shocked."
Lisetha only smiled serenely and kept writing. "Well, if he is so easily shocked and appalled, then I'll know he does not, in fact, suit me after all."
When Seleka had gone, Lisetha gave it a count of two minutes to make sure neither she, nor Kelah or Lorkad would be storming in with further objections, before saying to the 'servant,' "I believe it's safe, Master."
Aleishia Zei-Venah, human, castaway, and once a Jedi Knight, removed the camsilk that hid her offworld, inferior origins from prying eyes. "Perhaps I don't have enough experience with parents and children, but should you really be quite so high-handed with your mother? It seems disrespectful."
"Over a year and you haven't noted our ways?" Lisetha nibbled the end of the stylus thoughtfully. "It's her place now to respect me. I excuse her in this; the Fourth Family are a little more fixated on blood; Second has the luxury of being more open-minded. Father would have–" She heard the un-aristocratic, childish catch to her voice and paused to compose herself. "Father would have approved of considering new blood, especially one already accomplished despite being–" and she glanced at the letter again–"only a few months' my junior."
"You're quite young for your high position." Aleishia was, Lisetha had eventually discerned, not old herself. Very young, in fact, by her species' standards. But even injured, delirious, crashed on an isolated moon barely inside Ascendancy space, she'd always had a serenity and confidence Lisetha found herself envying.
And, of course, the Force.
Lisetha shivered and closed her eyes. She had always assumed her sixth sense, that warned her of dangers and when an event was great import, that gave her hints into the minds and souls of those around her, perhaps even gave her the reflexes which made flying a much easier task, were simply . . . unusual good fortune. And then they had lead her to the isolated moon, diverting her journey when she'd grieved privately for her Father and taken a first hard, adult look at the real lay of the sector, and she had found the strange alien injured and alone, sole survivor of a viscous attack. The way of her people had said to leave this odd creature to her fate. Lisetha had never been one for rigid obedience to tradition, at least not in the place of sound judgement. It had been days before they had worked out an effective means of communication, weeks before it became more fluent, and longer still before Lisetha had genuinely accepted the truth of what her strange guest told her.
As the Force was with Aleishia, so was it with Lisetha.
And when she had read the missive from the Eighth Family, she'd felt a tremor in it. Her mother was correct, it was, no matter how eloquently-phrased, an enormous gamble on their part, and if she had been so inclined she could take the suggestion of marriage to a trial-son as a severe insult. But instead she'd felt that uncertain wavering, that sense of right, suggesting that she go this way rather than that, and while it was never more than a mental sort of nudge, this time she was certain it was pushing her in the direction of Mitth'raw'nuruodo. Perhaps not to marry–that would still be an enormous leap and while she had no desire to be a slave to traditions she was still newly made Council and that would be a dramatic statement. But she should, at least, meet him. That impulse from the mysterious power around her was undeniable.
"Strong feelings, apprentice?" Aleishia kept her voice low, and she spoke the odd, awkward language that was her native tongue. Lisetha enjoyed learning it, it was a challenge, and it did have its uses as a code no one was likely to break.
But now it was the content of the question, not the language it was in, that occupied her thoughts. "Not yet, Master." She touched stylus to parchment again and continued to write. "Not yet."