Untenitine 3, 30

"Ma'am…"

"What?" Helene Talmash mutters, three quarters asleep. She checks the chrono. It's 06:30, half an hour before her usual wake up time.

Her personal assistant droid is hovering next to her bed. "There's a security man here, and… he wants to see you."

She pulls herself into a seated position. Nothing good ever started with those words, let alone at a time like now. "Is the Order about to invade?"

"Nothing that important. You can get a cup of tea and dress, if you like."

"Thank you, C9." She takes a breath, and lets it out slowly. Whatever is going on, at least they aren't all about to die.

Three minutes later, with her hair long and loose, and a quickly chosen nightgown covering her, Helene heads out to see her security man.

Boy. This one is too young to qualify as a man. He's eighteen, nineteen at most, certainly not a man. He's in the uniform of the New Alderaan Security Forces, but he's also here, so he's one of the ones she keeps on payroll to bring her interesting bits and bobs. New Alderaan's open government policy means that pretty much everywhere in the palace and government compound is at least wired for sound, a lot is wired for video, and a wise political player takes advantage of these things.

He's hunched over a datapad, still watching the feed.

"What has you seeking me out so early?"

He jerks up, seeing her, and snaps to attention. "Ma'am. I thought this would matter to you."

"Then show me," Helene sits next to him, and watches him reverse the feed to about forty-five minutes ago.

"It looks normal, just the garden at night, and then…"

She sees it. A man, a big one, just… plops into the screen. He has to have jumped from above, but that's an angle they don't have coverage of. She doesn't know who he is, but she does know that if he jumped into frame, he fell at least five meters, and doesn't appear to be even slightly rattled by the fall.

He, also, appears to be in his pajamas.

She feels the nervousness creep up her spine.

"Once we saw that, we trained a camera to stay on him."

"I daresay that's a wise idea." The feed is currently showing him from the back and side. He's big. Long, black, or at least dark, hair, pale skin, a lot of it on display. "Not to be rude, but…"

"I know. The gardens are open to the public, and he appears to be the public, odd entrance and attire or not, but… Keep watching."

They do. The man walks to the remembrance stone. He's eyeing it. Touches it. Normal enough, literally millions of people have done that. Some of the edges on the lower two meters are starting to wear smooth it's been done so often.

He queues up a name, and watches.

Helene winces. Tall, black hair, the camera angle is too far and wide to really tell, but if he's there, staring at Bail and Breha… "Ben Solo."

"Maybe, Ma'am."

"Maybe." That's what all of her inner circle has been hoping for. Maybe. Maybe Kylo Ren is a pretender. Maybe… Maybe's getting less and less likely by the minute. They continue to watch. He's just standing there, looking at his grandparents, maybe. She pauses the feed. "How did he get here?"

The boy looks troubled. "We… don't know."

She just stares at him.

"No craft has entered our space, and if he came with the rest of the delegation but stayed on their ship, he didn't get off of it. We've got a feed on it, and no one's been in or out."

"Fuck." She mouths it. There have been rumors of small, personal crafts that bend the vibrations of the scanners and can slip through undetected. They're tiny little things, one or two people, and maybe a half ton of cargo, max. There's a huge chasm between rumor and fact, but if Solo is here… Of course, a Solo would have one of them. And she knows the the first thing Threepio did, before they even set foot on this planet, was map out all of the security feeds. Fucking Threepio! What she says out loud is, "I think we're going to have to do a reupping of the security feed. Obviously, the Order is in possession of someone who can tell where all of our internal sensors are, and then provide a good enough map to get through them undetected." Fuck. Those blind spots are there for a reason, but if someone outside of their inner circles can find them… Or worse, bug them. That headache that started the second she saw Threepio is just getting worse and worse. "Does he just stand there and watch?"

The boy shakes his head, and hits play.

The groan that pours out of her mouth when she sees the holo appear next to Ben is long, low, and pained. Threepio had said it. They didn't have anything to prove or disprove that the man in their garden was Ben Solo. The Order did.

It's Leia. Older that Helene remembers her, but she'd have to be, it's been more than a decade since they saw each other last. And, it's got to be some sort of holo projection. She's blueish and translucent.

And… Okay, that's not unfakable. This is one hell of a balls out sort of move if it's faked, but… She listens to the conversation. "Shit." No way anyone in their right mind would leak that conversation. No… She watches the feed. The holo actually turns toward one of the cameras and smiles.

"Leia. Fuck." She mouths that, too, not letting her voice actually touch those syllables. "Delete it."

The boy looks horrified. "Ma'am?"

"You heard me, delete the feed."

"Ma'am… I…" he's blushing and nervous. "Can't."

"If you have the access to make this copy for me, you've got the access to delete the feed."

He stares at her, blankly.

"You know what I'm asking."

He stands up, quickly. "I… Ma'am… I can't. That feed is public property. Attempting to alter it is a felony. I need to…" And he runs out. She rolls her eyes and sighs. Then she gets her datapad and immediately writes him up for a commendation. He'll get a nice pay bonus, for 'obeying the law in defiance of a direct order from a superior.' When he tells his Uncle what happened, she'll wave it off as a test.

It's not the first time one of them has done that. It won't be the last one. In the next year or so, he'll get a transfer to somewhere his stubborn adherence to the law won't be a problem. Probably personal security to the Queen, assuming, that a year from now, there is a Queen.

"Fuck!" The sun has risen, and the son of Leia Organa has set foot on New Alderaan, and the future is… damnably uncertain.

4/13/2

Rey stares at her hair in the mirror. "This one seems a lot easier than yesterday's."

Threepio nods. "It's actually a non-standard look for a female member of the Alderaanian royalty. But, it seemed, fitting. This is a style last worn probably two thousand years ago."

"Okay."

"Alderaan is, of course, peaceful. That does not mean that all of it's neighbors were similarly positioned, or that they didn't have to deal with people trying to damage that peace."

"So, from after Alderaan became Alderaan, at least, internally, but before it became Alderaan."

"Exactly, Lady Ren. This is the traditional look of the Alderaanian Battle Commander, off to parley battle into accord. The primary braid is one of action and violence. You'll note it starts at the crown of the head and then tapers off. The second and third braids, on the side of your head, are for seeking accord and peace. You'll note they're complete, and come together behind the battle braid, closing it off."

"And you thought this would be… a good statement for today."

Threepio nods. "It is likely today we will speak of things at least nudging the bounds of our non-aggression treaty, and possibly brush some of the treaty itself. A warrior who wishes not to be a warrior, seeking peace and accord seemed to be an appropriate message."

"Ah." She lets the droid fiddle with her hair while she sips a cup of tea. "And the outfit."

"The outfit is a casual, breezy look for strolling through a garden without a care in the world. After all, we may be seeking accord, but we understand that this is not, in the grand scheme of things, anything to lose sleep over."

She hits him with a bit of side eye. "Except, of course, on a literal level."

It's possible that Threepio may have mentally chuckled at that, but his metal face stayed perfectly unreadable.

The most damnable part of the Ben Solo thing exploding into Helene Talmaash's life is that she just doesn't know all the angles on this.

Or, more specifically, she doesn't know what her niece, the Queen, thinks she's doing with it.

There's a plan there, an idea, and… She cannot break in enough to find out what it is. Which means one of two things, it's a bleedingly stupid harebrained idea that will backfire hard enough to hurt the whole Talmaash line for decades, or, worse, it's not.

Because if it's not, then the easily placated girl who was placed on the throne to make life significantly more easy for Helene may have, in fact located both a spine and plans for the future and that'll just muck up the works.

She took out Leia Organa, and it's true that Helene didn't kill her sister-in-law, but she certainly died at a convenient time, and Helen certainly took advantage of it, in order to get this position here, and she's not about to lose it because some idiot child starts to get ideas.

Unsupervised free time. Rey and Heloise are 'having a stroll' and 'getting to know each other.' They're on a patio, overlooking yet another garden, and Rey's coming to the conclusion that, any bit of land that can possibly be coaxed into supporting some sort of plant life on New Alderaan has been coaxed into supporting some sort of plant life. Today's garden is full of flowers, and blooming trees.

At the far end of the patio, 'mingling' and 'having a pre-breakfast nibble' Ellie, Threepio, their 'retinue' (two of which had to be spoken severely to, by Rey, in order to get them to not follow her and the Queen around the garden), and the Viceroy, Tayron Talmaash, the Queen Father, Samanth Organa, and a few others are 'getting to know each other.'

The only ones not there are Colonel Jeffries, who is apparently in a private meeting with Lord Bail Antillies, who is the lead diplomat for New Alderaan. They're, apparently, actually doing business.

Meanwhile, Rey and Heloise stroll.

It's making Heloise's entire contingent of advisers extremely nervous.

Heloise can see/feel/understand what Rey's picking up with the way the rest of her contingent is just watching them. "At this point in my career, I've come to the conclusion that if something makes all of my advisers nervous, but none of them are willing to be seen to say, on record, that I shouldn't do it, that I very much should."

Rey nods at that. "I… haven't been doing this long enough to have developed habits like that, yet. But it seems like a good plan."

"You've only been at this for…"

Rey thinks about that, and decides that, "Less than six months," is both true and accurate enough for this conversation.

"But you and Lord Ren have been together longer than that?"

"Yes, several years now."

Heloise nods. "You didn't go into this expecting to be Lady Ren?"

"It was a far, far removed thought on my part."

"But not on the part of Lord Ren?" There's some genuine curiosity in her voice, and Rey has the sense that Heloise would like to know more about Kylo.

Rey laughs a bit at that. She can see Kylo holding out his hand. See the First Order burning and the Resistance dying. Neither of them had even the start of an inkling of an idea of what could possibly come next. The idea of strolling about a garden talking alliances, that absolutely wasn't, though. "This sort of thing certainly wasn't."

Heloise chuckles at that. "Did he expect you to be a battle commander?"

Rey shrugs. "I think it's fair to say that this, and things like it, are so far afield from anything either of us ever imagined, that whatever glimpses of the future we may have had, they've long since faded." Though her image of them, in the sunshine, building something, with the children… It still feels real. Maybe Achc-To. Maybe that's where the sunshine is. They'll certainly need to be building once they get there.

More reason to move sooner than later…

They walk a few more steps, and Heloise is about to talk a bit about the flowers next to them, when Rey asks, "Do you like being Queen?"

That stops Heloise. She looks up at Rey intently. "I don't think anyone has ever asked me that. It's just sort of… assumed, you know? Everyone wants to be Queen. We sell stories for small girls in which they grow up and get to be a Princess or Queen. Will you ask me next if I want to be Queen?"

Rey smiles a little at that. "I'm almost tempted, just because I know that we're wired for sound, and if I did, everyone listening in would have a heart attack, and your side would begin to wonder if The Order is about to sweep on in and relieve you of duty."

"Are you?" That intent look is still on her face. But there's something more there… Rey's got the sense that if she were to spend more time with Heloise, she'd get a better read on her, but… She's spent so damn long keeping her thoughts and feelings and plans hidden… Rey blinks. This is a woman who never lets what she's thinking get to her face, and she's so good at it, keeps her motivations so far down, even Rey has to strain to read her.

People don't develop that skill in a vacuum. Something is going on here. "Really, Heloise no." She puts a little extra reassurance into her voice. She doesn't know what Heloise is keeping below the surface, but she can at least soothe some of the worries. "People come to us, not the other way around. Organa came to us. We were sitting around minding our own business."

"Then why tell the galaxy he was born Ben Solo? You may have been 'minding your own business,' but once you say something like that, everyone else has to respond."

Rey expects to feel why make a play for my throne or some variation on that theme, but if it's anywhere in Heloise's mind, it's buried deep. "Because the number of people who knew that was greater than two, which means eventually, it'd get out. And… You know what happened when a surprise parent got dragged out for his mother."

Heloise blinks.

Rey realizes that she's among the people who have the school book version of events. "People who would trust the motivations of Leia Organa, were suddenly uninterested in trusting the motivations of Leia Vader," Rey says, expanding on the idea.

"Oh. Of course. In the senate."

Rey offers her a slight smile. "Of course. In the senate."

Heloise looks toward the side of the patio where the rest of the party is 'mingling.' "Did you feel that pause? Where half of my side stopped in their tracks to watch us?" Heloise asks, voice amused.

Rey raises an eyebrow.

"That was half of my advisers feeling their hearts skip a beat."

Rey smiles. Or maybe she doesn't just know the school book version.

Heloise takes Rey's hand in hers. "To answer your question, yes, I do like being Queen, most of the time, in most ways. In some areas I have less freedom than I'd like, but in others… The ability to do so much good has to outweigh the restrictions."

Rey has the sense that Heloise is asking for confirmation. Rey squeezes her hand. "I hope so. But… It's not a secret, though it's not widely available yet, but The Order will have elections for its own senate in five year, and eventually, Master."

"You and your Lord are not staying forever."

"It's easier to bear constrained freedom if you know that there's an end date in sight."

"Ah… Interesting."

"Is it?"

"There is talk about whether the great Lord Ren will allow himself to be replaced."

Rey inclines her head a bit. Heloise has a clear image of the Emperor in mind, and the talk seems to be about if Kylo will attempt to follow in the Emperor's footsteps. "That is the plan. Not this round, but the next one. He wants to stay long enough to make sure the first spate of elections goes smoothly."

"May I offer advice?"

"Certainly."

"As soon as that's widely known, and given you just said it to me while we're wired for sound, the correct answer is, by the end of the month, people will begin to scheme about who comes next."

"Likely true. But they were doing that anyway, and at least right now, more of them will probably move people into place to get elected, instead of looking for ways to stab him in the back."

Heloise nods. "I'd forgotten that. Yes. The rest of the galaxy does not strive to limit the tools of political upheaval as heavily as we do, here."

Rey glances at her. "Does it… work… really?"

"No leader has been, or even been whispered to have been, assassinated by political rivals on Alderaan in the last three thousand years."

There's something in that, a message, but not necessarily for Rey. But Heloise is looking for something, again, not necessarily from Rey. "They just… don't do it?" That seems to be somewhere on the right path.

Heloise pauses. She thinks for a moment. Then she says, "Consider it a mutual destruction pact. We chose not to use those sorts of weapons in our politics. And, should anyone do so in a way that even a hint of it got out, every other faction would ally against them. A breech of our norms that drastic will result in an immediate truce between all the other players, just to boot the pretender out.

"You're familiar with the idea of the consent of the governed?"

Rey offers a little smile. "We do not conquer, our citizens come to us, and leave if they decide they don't like what we're doing."

"I'll take that as a yes, then. So, what happens when the governed don't consent? When they refuse to pay taxes, when they won't follow the laws, when they just… ignore… the Powers That Be?" Heloise nudges them further out, toward several of the smaller planters full of flowers.

"They get killed?"

Heloise smiles a little at that. It's a much more jaded look than Rey would have expected from her. "Only if enough of them agree with the Powers That Be to pull a trigger." Heloise nods to the delegation watching them, and Rey can feel who the Powers That Be are. Interestingly enough, Heloise doesn't consider herself one of them. "In the past that's been true. But you rapidly run into a situation where the soldiers under the Powers That Be are starting to have to shoot their parents and neighbors and friends, and that… Is the bridge too far. People will attack 'the enemy.' They get very skittish about attacking themselves. Very few people are such true believers as to be willing to do that."

"So… That's the deal? If there's the idea that someone got into power illegitimately… Everyone just… ignores them?"

"It's remarkably difficult to be Queen and do queenly things when you have no courtiers, when your police force won't take your orders, where your people do not acknowledge your laws… And that's what would happen if anyone could make a believable claim that you got your throne by poison."

Rey rubs her lips together. What is she supposed to do with this? She's Lady Ren, consort of to the man who controls a huge military, and is looking to ally with New Alderaan. "And by conquest?"

Heloise shifts a bit, bending, stroking one of the lilies they're walking past, and by doing so, is able to flash Rey a smile so swift and small that anyone not focusing intently on her would have missed it. "New Alderaan is peaceful, Lady Ren. We have no weapons."

"Of course." Rey says, with a nod. "Did you know, that my mother-in-law was the best shot of her family?"

Heloise smirks. "Was she now?"

Rey nods. "With a blaster. Her brother was a fine, fine shot, assuming he was aiming a ship's gun at something."

"As we all know." This story seems to please Heloise. "And as the Empire learned, much to their dismay."

"As we all know. I've been… reliably told that with an actual blaster he wasn't quite so hot."

Heloise laughs at that. "But, of course, he was not raised on Alderaan."

"Of course. And neither was her husband. He was apparently very, very fast on the draw, but maybe not the greatest aim past five meters."

That seems to amuse Heloise a lot. She doesn't laugh, but there is a smile lifting the corners of her lips. "But if you are that fast, you can let them get close, so you can take advantage of the speed."

"You have an impressive understanding of blaster technique."

"Amazing what one can learn by reading."

Rey smirks at that. "Of course. And her son… He tells me that were he to actually practice with one, he'd be excellent with a blaster-"

"But Lord Ren sees no need to practice because he has his saber and can use his Force to stop blaster bolts."

"Exactly. It'd be a waste of his time. That said, as of right now, if a blaster were to be had and used as a weapon, I believe he'd hand it to me."

Heloise laughs at that. "So, you are saying that of the extended Organa clan, it was only the one raised on a pacifist planet who could really use a blaster?"

"So, I'm told."

Heloise offers up a calm and content smile. "Ah, yes. The galaxy is filled with marvelous contradictions, isn't it?"

"And that's all you've got to say about that?" Rey asks with a smile.

"That's all I've got to say about that." Heloise replies with a grin.

"Is it forward to say that I think I might genuinely like you?"

"Not at all." That grin grows wider. "Do you know how rarely I run into someone willing to actually talk to me?"

"I'll take it as rare."

"Painfully." She glances at Rey, and then away, which Rey takes to mean she's pointing out the microphones listening to them. "May I ask a personal question?"

"You can always ask. I may not answer."

"I'm told Lord Ren visited last night."

Rey smiles. "That's true but not a question."

"Why?"

Rey looks mildly surprised. Heloise is, as best she can tell, about her own age, maybe a little younger, but… She should… know things like this, Rey assumes. But the listeners are listening, and… There's a message the Queen wants to send, and not necessarily to Rey. "Because we like… sleeping together." After all, sleeping is pretty much all they did. "Is that not… common for married people here?"

"Romance," Heloise says, like she's testing out an idea. "And… I understand it's common for many people, but not all. My parents were a political match, and they… got along, but not that well."

"Oh. Uh… We get on well."

"But he's not here, now."

"No. Our advisers thought it would be better if I were here on my own for this. That… It'd look less like him swooping down to scoop up New Alderaan. Which we have no intention or desire to do."

Heloise waves that away. "And you are married? We, of course, accord you the title of Lady Ren, Princess of Alderaan, but there's been some uncertainty as to that. Rumors that a wedding will be happening, but has not yet happened."

"We are extremely married, and at some future point, probably toward the end of our year, there will be a wedding to celebrate that."

She looks a little mopey at that. And for a moment Rey's concerned, and then… "Oh."

"Oh?" Heloise is uncertain.

"Match the two houses? That's what your parents did, right?"

Heloise nods.

"That's not going to be an option."

Heloise looks mopey again. Rey can feel she's just… trampled something carefully planned, but… This woman is not… anything… with Kylo. She feels no sense of desire, or interest, or infatuation, or… anything.

"I'm sure you can find your own prince."

That gets a little eye roll. "I'm sure I can, but suitable ones from the right bloodline who are so in love with someone else they'll travel the galaxy just to grab a few hours slumber with them are likely fewer and further between."

Rey's fairly sure she's getting the piece of the puzzle she wasn't before. "You want a prince who's attached to someone else." That doesn't make any sense, and then one last piece falls into place. She wants a prince who's attached, not a mate. "So… Oh… Right. Uh… No. That's just… not going to happen."

Heloise smiles at her, and shrugs, and says, "Well, it was worth a shot. It wouldn't be the first time a Queen and Mistress came to an understanding. Polygamy isn't unheard of here. Our dominant religion, the Church of the Force, doesn't hold with it, but we allow all faiths here, so it's rare, but not outlawed. Whatever, whoever it was he wanted to do in his own territory would be up to him."

Rey doesn't know what to say to that, so she just follows along as Heloise leads the way.

"And, of course, if he was interested in becoming King Kylo… Just because you say you aren't interested, doesn't mean you aren't, and that would be the way that most readily guards my position, and the interests of my family. Alderaan hasn't had co-monarchs in centuries, but it is legal, thus not impossible."

Rey's also got nothing to say to that. They take a few more steps. It's still very obvious that Heloise wants her to like her. That's still there. And…

"I'm sorry, I'm distressing you. I promise you; I have no interest in your husband as a mate, and am no threat along those lines." She turns a bit. "Here, light topics, we're supposed to be just chatting." She strokes one of the lilies. "These are my favorites. J'ccar lilies. They're also one of the great stories of Alderaanian science."

Heloise kneels before the small flowers. They're about shin high, light pinky-purple flowers all but gleaming in the bright morning sun.

Rey gets the idea that she's supposed to kneel, too. So, she does.

"On Alderaan, these were weeds. They grew in ditches on the sides of roads, and stagnant ponds across the grasslands. They purify water, which is nice, and feed the," she points to the tiny fish flittering around in the water the lilies are growing in, "bettas. It took us close to nine—" There's a slight movement of the Queen's hand followed by a shift in her voice. "The microphones can be blocked with a sound field, which is what I've just done for us. Down here among the flowers, there'll generally be patchy coverage of conversations and occasionally the mics lose us. We've probably got about a minute to talk before I've got to shut this off. I have no interest in anything beyond an alliance with your husband. I just don't. I have a great deal of interest in being able to have un-monitored conversations with you and your husband about the future of Alderaan, and courting couples are given quite a bit of leeway and privacy. This bloody planet is a mausoleum, too concerned with what was than with moving onto what is. These stupid flowers. Beautiful, yes, but we spent nine million credits rebuilding them from scratch. That money could have done… So much. And we keep doing that. Keep trying to resurrect the dead. I am a figurehead here, and I want to be a Queen, so I'm going to keep talking about fucking flowers for a little while, and then gently turn the conversation back to a possible husband sharing deal. Don't just shut me out this time. Tell me you'll consider it, and then invite me, and say, Samanth, back to the Supremacy in the not wildly distant future so we can have a real conversation without ears on us the whole time," she flicks the field off, "our genetic research and development laboratories are second to none, and that's allowed us to bring Alderaan back from the dead. It's slow," she stands up and Rey follows, "but in the next hundred years we should have close to twenty-five percent of our previous biodiversity up and growing again."

Rey nods. "That's impressive."

"It really is. Most of what we ate last night involved grains that were built from scratch here. There are, of course, hundreds of local varieties of cereal crops that naturally grow on this planet, and we used the genomes from many of them to recreate our own grains."

"Do the new grains… like it here?" Rey asks, looking for more context.

"We've had to carefully construct biomes for some of them, and a few can only be grown in intensive, indoor, factories. Some of them do fine here, but most of the local crops evolved here and have certain advantages over transplants."

"Ah… I asked last night about allowing new people here, is that… part of the same idea. Keeping things… making them… Alderaan?"

"Somewhat. There are so few of us, and… Preserving the culture is important. Part of why our system works is because we keep the culture intact. Without that, there is no Alderaan. We can't," she gestures to the world around them, "keep this up if we allow the culture to degrade." Which Rey can feel Heloise wants. Not for it to completely fall apart, she understands that, to a degree, what she is saying is true, but she also wants to see the hold of the past loosen. To allow some new air into their thoughts and habits. "That's why, right now, to come here, you have to either have a genetic link to Alderaan, or be able to prove at least one of your grandparents was of Alderaan. That's… Look, I understand this makes you uncomfortable, but there are so few of us. Any child of Alderaan is a huge boon to us, if for no other reason than for the genetic diversity."

"Which brings you back to Kylo."

"Which brings me back to Kylo, and… Out of a population of ten million, there are fewer than thirty Organas left, any additional ones are of value to us."

"Even adopted ones?" Rey asks.

"Especially adopted ones. Culture soaks in through the blood, but mostly through raising. His mother practically was Alderaan, especially in the popular imagination, and… If we could bring him back…"

Rey licks her lips, and nods, just a hair. "And you said… polygamy isn't… unheard of here?"

"It's rare, but not illegal, a man with two wives… People might whisper a bit, but… Your Kylo wouldn't be the first powerful man to attract several women, nor would he be the first one to make a strategic marriage abroad, while maintaining a love match at home."

"Looking to improve the genetic pool of New Alderaan sounds like more than a political marriage," Rey says, voice dry.

Heloise gestures to the garden around her. "We do not need… romantic entanglements… to allow us to add Kylo's genome to the pool. If you'll allow me to be shockingly frank, we don't even need semen. A blood sample would allow us to… improve our diversity."

"So, would allowing more people to settle here."

"Yes, that's… important to the Order, isn't it? Marriages involve compromise and negotiation, and often goodwill gifts from one of the beloved to the other. I'm sure, if we were to talk further, things could be… discussed."

Rey nods at that. "Then we will host the next spate of conversations. Say, give you a month to look over the treaty, and then add your own… options to it. Then you and Samanth, and whichever Lord Antillies actually writes the contracts, will come to visit us."

Heloise smiles at her. "I'd like that very much."

Rey smiles back. "I'll look forward to it. I'm sure Kylo will, too." The listening devices must be on high right now, because she literally feels Ellie Kinear just about die at that line. As soon as they're on ship, Rey's going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Breakfast is tense.

Most of tense is aimed at Heloise by her side of the group, though it's clear that both Threepio and Ellie are wondering what it is Rey could possibly think she's doing.

And while it's true she can mentally soothe Ellie with a quick, It'll make sense when I explain later, if she can silently converse with Threepio, she hasn't yet figured out how to do it.

It feels odd to understand that she can pick up his thoughts, but she can't get hers to him.

He's stewing because he doesn't want Kylo Ren on the throne, or near the throne of New Alderaan, especially not now. And while he does appear to be looking that eventual Organa grandchild in the face, and her being named the heir apparent upon her birth by nature of being the child of the monarchs of Alderaan, that's not the game he was hoping to play.

He keeps looking at Rey, and in his ideal of how this works, that future grand baby is as much Rey's as Kylo's.

Well, he can wait. Nothing is going to happen in the next few hours that will cause irreparable harm.

On Heloise's side of things…

The Viceroy is not pleased. Satisfied that she now knows what's going on, but angry, because Samanth Organa is her choice for producing an eventual heir that is a mix of all three of the surviving royal bloodlines, and while that's an argument she can make, and be heard to make, saying that Samanth is preferable to Kylo because Kylo is a king in his own right, and Leia Organa's son, and thus significantly less likely to be easy to manipulate, isn't.

Samanth looks angry, but isn't. Courting couples are allowed a certain amount of privacy. Rey feels the pieces fall into place. At least once, Samanth and Heloise got enough time to talk, without anyone listening, to start getting this into play.

He's sulking about having to go back to Kylo's den, and makes at least one snide remark to Heloise about rubbing sand into the wound.

The Viceroy is satisfied about that, though. She's never been quite sure about Samanth. Sometimes, she wonders what game he's playing. Sometimes, she's sure he not smart enough to be in on the game. That's part of what she likes about him. Most of the time he just does what he's told to do. As best she can tell, he just shot himself in the ass by not returning from the Supremacy and clearly telling everyone involved that whatever Kylo Ren might be, Ben Solo wasn't it, which confirms to her that he's just a little too honest and a little too slow on the uptake.

Rey keeps watching Samanth and Heloise. She doesn't get the sense of any romantic engagement between the two of them, but they're taking the best advantage of the rules they're moving through.

Tayron Talmaash, Heloise's father, is… intrigued might be the right word. Rey gets the sense that he's not exactly too deeply wedded to the politics of New Alderaan. A prince by birth, but not by temperament. With the way Heloise controls things, she wonders if she was the Talmaash who wanted the throne, but needed to make a marriage link to an Antillies, who only had girls, so she threw her brother into the mix. He's actually an architect, and civic engineer, and much of what's around them is either his design, or designed to his specs.

He's doing a lot of the heavy lifting on keeping the conversations going, though Ellie's certainly keeping up at least her half, too.

Rey's a little embarrassed to admit it, but it takes her a while to get what he's saying to her, and how it appears to be building on what Heloise said. By keeping things the same they were wasting time, resources, and any chance of moving forward.

He's talking about the desert regions, "There were of course, serious challenges with recreating a lot of the architecture of Alderaan. Though we were able to find similar biomes to many of our previous districts, they weren't quite the same. Little things, like… adobe. Do you know what that is, Lady Ren?"

"Actually, I do. I was born on a desert planet, and several of the local settlements would use it."

"Excellent." Tayron smiles at her. "So, few people do. The deserts of Alderaan had a sand and clay mix that was ideally suited for adobe. You'd mix it with water and hay, and the bright sunshine of the summer season would bake it to rock hardness and waterfastness." It's clear Rey doesn't quite know what that means. "After it baked, it could survive the occasional rain without melting. Here… well, the sunshine isn't as bright, and the humidity level of the desert is a little too high for the adobe to set properly, and the local grasses were a bit too stubby and not fibrous enough to make good adobe. Well, I'm sure you can guess, that provides challenges to making stable buildings, but we got to it, and began to really work on the issue, to the point of having to completely reconfigure the construction of our adobe, but after five years we had a mix that was stable in the deserts here. And in five years, we were able to go back to the kind of buildings that had always made our deserts homes so beautiful."

"Impressive," Rey says. "What… do the locals do in the deserts, here?"

"There are no locals, Lady Ren. Or, at least, not by the time they got here," Ellie says. "When the Emperor obtained Glendevia, he removed the local populations."

"Oh."

"There were surviving buildings in the deserts, and we did… look, hoping to find people who had hidden. We weren't about to take a planet that anyone still had a claim to, but," Helene says, and there's real regret in her voice, "The Empire was thorough in liquidating the population of this planet before we got here." Rey thinks it's a good thing that Helene Talmaash still has enough empathy to feel bad for another slaughtered population who had their home stolen from them.

"They were a pre-space flight society," Tayron says, "which, unfortunately, gave the Empire quite an advantage at removing them. None were able to pop up from the far reaches of the galaxy to reclaim their home."

"There's a memorial to them," Heloise says. "My parents' generation left their largest cities intact. We actually have archaeological expeditions there, and are doing what we can to document who they were and how they lived, but… We can't read their writing, and haven't figured out how to use most of their remaining technology."

"They used a very interesting method of mining to build homes in the desert. They'd dig into the cliff faces, and build their homes there, while also carving many fine crevices through the rock to collect dew in the mornings. Thus they made homes and kept themselves in enough water to survive. They were very clever and knew how to live off of the land here," Tayron looks wistful. "There is no version of a universe where I would have ever run into them had the Empire not intervened so terribly in our lives, but I wish there could have been."

"Like with our own traditions," Helene says, "we seek to preserve theirs. If you are involved in archaeological circles, there are huge discussions on the ethics of our current preservation process. The pros and cons of the information gathering we do, versus the damage we are doing. Unfortunately, some pieces of the past have to be destroyed as we attempt to get a better understanding of what we're looking at. Ideally, we could seal off their parts of the world, hold them outside the bounds of time, and keep them as they were. That seems like the least we could do for the people who died here. But… we learn nothing from them if we do that. And… honor would seem to demand that we at least attempt to learn what we can of the people who were here before us. It's a quandary."

Ellie's thinking brightly at Rey there. Listen, hear this!

Rey doesn't nod, but she thinks she understands, The Viceroy wants Alderaan put in a bubble, frozen in time, before the genocide. To honor those who didn't make it. She wants her home, back the way she remembers it. And Leia Organa… she was pulling away from that, changing things. A queen more focused on the world outside than inside. That wouldn't do.

Alderaan is peaceful. That line echos in her head. It means something here. Something about the Viceroy, and what she's trying to do, what she lost.

Alderaan was peaceful.

Peaceful, even in the world of the Old Republic, meant neutral. You can't be peaceful if you take sides.

Alderaan got to be Alderaan because it sat by the wayside and didn't poke its politics into dangerous places with dangerous people who would kill them rather than let them try to spread their world view.

Alderaan was peaceful; until it wasn't.

Bail Organa, Prince Consort to the Queen, Viceroy of Alderaan, First Senator of Alderaan for the Imperial Senate, and the Republic before that, was the highest ranked spy in the entire Rebellion. He was likely a General in the Rebellion, too. Not military strategy, of course not, but political strategy, finding where the weak spots were, how to use the image of the war to make the rebel cause popular… Of course, he did that.

Leia Organa, Crown Princess of Alderaan, Second Senator of Alderaan, because back when she was captured by the Empire, she was a member of the Imperial Senate, with her father. Also a spy, and a battle commander, for the Rebellion.

Which means there's no possible chance, at all, that Breha Organa, Queen of Alderaan, wasn't also, actively, supporting the Rebellion, likely funneling it money and resources if not fighting for it.

Which means that Alderaan wasn't peaceful.

It was a legitimate military target.

And it's likely that most of the higher ups of Alderaan never knew a thing about it. Public buildings are open to the public here. All conversations are monitored… Rey's suddenly sure that has to be a plot by Helene Talmaash, a way of making sure that alliances aren't built in the privacy of the Queen's home, and those alliances don't bite them, hard, again.

They're rebuilding Threepio's golden-colored, and fictional, Alderaan here. And doing everything in their power to freeze it solid.

But not everyone wants that. Heloise wants to begin to change things, too. Enough to risk getting off world to really talk to her and Kylo in private, and Rey can feel that Heloise knows her Aunt won't like that.

Another piece falls into place. Heloise has been Queen for three years. Helene is her Aunt. Her father's sister. Her mother, who is not here, not alive, was the previous Queen…

How much was she trying to change things? Rey watches Helene, wondering what, if anything, she had to do with her sister-in-law's death.

People die, that's just… normal. But… Ania Antillies, who became a Talmaash, couldn't have been much past her mid-fifties when she died, and possibly younger.

If even a hint got out… Why say that to her? Was there a hint? Did Heloise find something, maybe less than a hint, but a rumor of one? And if that hint came out, would it damage her own position? Would her queendom fall if that rumor got out, even if she weren't the one to wield the poison?

Wheels turning within wheels, Rey, Ellie thinks, loud and clear. We'll know for sure, soon enough.

When breakfast is over, Samanth offers to take Rey, Ellie, and Threepio into town. He suggested a walk at first, but Ellie smiled warmly at him, and said, "It's good to be young, lad, but my old bones aren't up for a twelve klick walk. Do you have some sort of small, personal conveyance?"

Rey knows that that's true on one level. Ellie doesn't do endurance walking any longer. And it also covers that Threepio's really not up to it, too.

Which is how Rey's ended up with Samanth, each of them on a 'scooter.' Ellie took one look at it and said, 'No,' and Threepio would have visibly blanched if he could, but he can't. He did say, "I didn't attempt to ride one of them on Endor, and I'm not about to, now."

Rey loves it. It's a slick little thing that reminds her of her speeder. But this is lighter and faster, designed to carry maybe two people, and more likely one. Lean forward and it zips along, lean back and it stops, lean left or right and it turns.

Samanth runs her through the controls, and then hops onto his. "Well, Lady Ren, shall we go to town, meet my father, perhaps?"

"I'd like that," and then they're zipping along, down the road to Resilience.

It is, without a doubt, the prettiest town Rey's ever seen. Granted, it's competing against fewer than half a dozen places, so there is that.

The buildings are made of some sort of light gray stone, most of them egg-shaped, dotted abundantly with oval windows, flanked with wide balconies surrounding the upper floors. The highest of them seem to be six or seven floors tall, though there is one near the center of town that's probably ten floors tall.

The roads are wide, and there are a lot of scooters like the ones Rey and Samanth are riding. There are some bigger conveyances for families, and bigger yet ones carrying cargo, but most of them appear to be designed for one person.

And, like everywhere else, gardens. There are berms of flowers between the lanes of the streets. Flowers drape off the balconies. Every intersection has a square in the center filled with plants and fountains. Trees line the streets.

Samanth secures his scooter in a park with what appears to be a place for the scooters. Rey follows his lead. "My father's shop is a few blocks that way," he gestures to the south.

Rey nods at him. "This really is a lovely town."

"It is, isn't it?"

Rey glances around. There isn't a huge crowd of people walking through the street, but they aren't the only ones by a long shot. "We're not monitored for sound here, are we?"

He smiles at her. "Would what you have to say to me change if we were?"

"Probably."

"Good. You're paying attention. Yes, we should be unmonitored here. Heloise and I were… intrigued by your comment about Kylo and the coffee last night."

"I got the sense that's a very… familiar experience."

"It is. We're… We don't remember Alderaan. No one under the age of forty can. Most under the age of fifty, don't. This is our home, and yes, there are traditions we're happy to upkeep, but… They're strangling us trying to…" He shakes his head. "You can't resurrect the dead. You just can't. And you shouldn't try."

He looks around at the city. "There are a bit more than a million people here. There should be tens of millions here. People like Helene… They're so hell bent on bringing the dead back to life, we're killing ourselves. It's not a problem, yet, but… Heloise isn't kidding, genetic diversity is going to be a problem in our society in two more generations if we don't loosen things up about who can immigrate here."

"I thought there were… ten million of you here?"

"There are, but most of us are already somewhere between first and third cousins of each other. When the genocide came there were six million of us. We've done our part and then some to make more Alderaanians, but people who were off planet when the hit came tended to be off planet in family groups. In two more generations all of us who don't go off world to find mates will be second cousins or closer. But Helene and her cohort are doing everything possible to keep us on world and making families with each other. That's not good. That's… slow extinction."

Rey winces. "You and her want to change the world."

"Yes. She hates being a figurehead. The ruling monarch of Alderaan is a diplomatic position, and the tie breaker if the legislature is ever deadlocked. It hasn't been deadlocked since Breha's mother was in power.

"My job is mostly to make Helene's grasp on power more secure. My brother and I are, well, except for you and your husband, the future of the Organa line. Daveed is off world. He's actually with the New Republic, still. Kylo's with you. I'm here because Helene needs an Organa to keep the veneer of all of us being one, united front in place."

"What does your ideal Alderaan look like?"

"Not this." He shakes his head. "Okay, this," he gestures to the city bustling around them, "is fine. But this is a town built in a place that has the climate and natural materials to build this town. No more spending half a decade and untold millions of credits to recreate what's dead. Beyond that, we don't really know, not yet. Just getting enough time to talk is a challenge. Finding out who else agrees with us is a challenge."

"We can help with that."

He smiles at her. "Good." He squeezes her hand. "I don't know how closely tied in you are to the Organa line, Ben obviously burned the name and broke with his past, but… We don't just sit back and let the universe roll us over." He offers a slight laugh, "I guess on that level, Ben's keeping up with the rest of us. Daveed, he's got one half of the attack under his wing. I've got the other, working with Heloise. My father… He's the exception to the rule." Samanth offers up a sad smile. "Years in an Imperial prison will do that to a man, though. The rest of us…

"We were born to change the galaxy, Rey, and if we've got to do it one planet at a time, we'll do it one planet at a time. But it's about time House Organa rose again, and got their hand back into play." He glances across the street. "Ah, here we are!"

He leads Rey across the street to Organa's Baked Goods.

"Dad!" Samanth calls out as he opens the door, and they're hit with the scent of yeasty, bready, spicy-sweet, pastries. There are a few customers moving through the shelves, picking out nicely packaged breads or cakes, and two others waiting in line at a counter. The lady behind it nods to Samanth.

Rey's jaw drops. She's been to a lot of places that have smelled good over the years, but this… "I never want to leave!"

Samanth laughs at that. "We get that response a lot." An older man who looks a lot like an older Samanth comes out from the back of the shop.

"And what's got you here today? Who's your friend?" Apparently, this is a small enough city that no one is even remotely confused about who Samanth or his father are. Though a few are giving Rey curious looks.

"I'm here because of my friend. Dad, meet Rey…"

Almath's eyes flicker slightly, like he's got the idea that he should know what this means, but doesn't off the top of his head.

"Leia's daughter-in-law. Ben's wife!" Samanth offers to his dad.

"Oh!" His eyes light up. "Leia's boy got married! Holy Force how the time flies. He barely had to shave the last time I saw a picture of him. Leia kept saying she'd bring him around, but…" He glares in the direction of the palace. "Well, I never had anything good to say about those nattering twits, and if she wanted to keep her boy away from them, more power to her! What did you say your name was, dear?"

"I'm Rey."

He grabs her in a warm hug. "It's good to meet you, Rey. You going to bring your man here? It's a good place if you stay out of the palace. He could make a home here."

"Dad," Samanth's voice is patient, like this is something they've spoken of before. "Ben's a little busy these days. He changed his name to Kylo Ren."

"Oh, right…" He shakes his head. "My brain's like a sieve. I never forget a recipe, but everything else tends to drift."

Rey inhales deeply. "It smells amazing in here. One of my students loves to bake, and I think if I could show her this shop, she'd decide this is heaven."

Almath smiles at that. "It's my little piece of heaven, too. Five years without enough to eat. It gets to you, you know? You dream about food. You crave it and fight for it and kill for it, and you never get enough. As soon as I got out… Everything I spent those years dreaming of…" He gestures around. "It's all here, just as good as my dreams."

Samanth looks a little embarrassed and a lot sad. "Could we put together a box for Rey to bring back to her students? Give them a taste of Alderaan?"

"Of course! Of course, come here…" He heads behind the counter and pulls out a cardboard box, and begins to get it shaped properly. "Fill it up. Leia always says her boy likes sweets. She brings them home for him… What does he like…" He's puttering though his shop, and stops in front of some small tarts. They're a dark pastry crust with some sort of white cream and small purple berries on top. "There we go. His favorite from Uncle Almath."

As best Rey knows, Kylo's never talked about his Uncle Almath, but it's also possible, and likely, that those tarts pre-date his time with Luke.

"I'll make sure he gets them."

"Good girl. Your student who likes to bake, what's her favorite?"

"Right now, cookies. She loves to make cookies."

"Any particular kind?" Almath asks, eyeing his wares.

"The kind on a plate in front of her," Rey says with a smile.

"Good girl. Here..." He starts putting cookies into the box, and Samanth hovers behind, loading a few loaves of bread into a different box.

When the box is loaded, Samanth says to his father, "Thanks, Dad. We've got to get Rey back to her ship. She's due to go home soon."

"Right, son. Right. Who's your friend?"

Samanth smiles. He hugs his dad. "I'll be home soon, okay?"

"Okay."

When they're out, he says, "He's still sharp as a tack baking, and he can run the register no problems, but… The Imperials broke his mind, and sometimes he has good days, and sometimes he has bad ones, and… He's always been a little loose about where he is in time and who he's with."

"I'm sorry."

Samanth nods. "Thanks. I'm used to it. He's worse than he was when I was a kid, but he's always been a little, like he said, drifty." He pats the boxes. "He's still the best damn baker in all of Resilience, though."

Rey smiles at that. "And my kids'll love him for that."

He smiles back. "You know, if there is to be an alliance between the Order and New Alderaan, perhaps those kids of yours could come for a visit? Especially if you've got a young baker. I imagine I could find something to entertain them for a few days."

"I'd like that."

He secures the boxes to the back of the scooters. "Okay, let's get you back before Helene gets too nervous about what I'm plotting outside of her earshot."

"Just to double check, is she the one who instituted ears all over the palace?"

"No, but she championed it extensively."

"Okay."

They settle onto the scooters. You can't really talk while riding on one, so Rey asks one more question, "How did Heloise know that Kylo came to visit last night?"

"My guess is she knows the same way I did, and likely the same way Helene did, we all employ computer programs to keep track of the feeds, and then people to watch or listen to anything the programs think is interesting. A half-naked man dropping into the Remembrance Gardens from what appears to have been the balcony of your room, and then settle in for a chat with a holo of Leia Organa certainly fits that bill." He looks a little put out. "You could have just said she was alive, you know? All of the careful word play was… distressing in a way I hadn't expected to be distressed."

Since Rey hadn't known that anyone else had seen Leia, that throws her for a quick loop, and she hopes she covers fast enough that Samanth doesn't notice her confusion. "Samanth, Leia reveals herself to whom, and when, she chooses, and that's that. We… at any give time we do not know if we'll ever see her again."

"Oh… Even… Her son?"

Rey half smiles. "It's not a secret that things between them are still tense. Warming up, but… tense. How that shakes out is still anyone's guess."

"Ah." That seems to make sense to Samanth. He checks his chrono. "I know they won't leave without you, but I'm sure they're starting to fret now, especially since you didn't bring your guards."

She half smiles at him. "My entourage."

"Of course."

"What could you have possibly been thinking!" Helene is annoyed enough with Heloise that she's not even worried about the ears on them. Granted, at least a third of the kind of people who monitor these feeds are likely thinking exactly what she's saying.

"You wanted me to make a match with an Organa. He's a better match than Samanth. I put out feelers to see if it's possible."

"He's a… Child he is married."

"All the better. A single man would be sorely disappointed in me as a wife."

Helene's head is throbbing. "Oh, grow up and get over that. You don't like men, fine. That doesn't mean you need to debase yourself by looking for one who already has a queen."

"I think that's an ideal solution."

"Heloise, you won't be his queen."

"I don't need to be his queen. I already am one in my own right. All I need is a bit of DNA at the right time, and that's that. If he never sets foot on this planet, all the better."

"The right bit of DNA. Kylo Ren is, at best, a Solo. He sure as hell isn't an Organa."

"At best, he's a Skywalker, Auntie, and that's valuable." She doesn't have to mention the potential for a Force sensitive child, both of them see the angles on that. "At least, he's an Organa, which is what you tell me you want."

"Not by blood, and blood is what matters."

"Oh, get over that and grow up. Blood doesn't matter for figs. He's a king in his own right. Any child of his has a very good chance of being Force Sensitive. He has ties to our world. He has the kind of military might that allows us to be Alderaan. The Republic New or Old and the protection it offered is basically gone, and without something like that, we're suddenly left without the sort of powerful protector that allows us not to build up a military of our own. If we want to be Alderaan, there has to be a threat that someone will step in and utterly crush anything that tries something against us. The New Republic isn't up for it, so why not Kylo Ren?"

Helene glares at her, eyes hot and angry. "It's embarrassing. He is married, and you are throwing yourself at him like a scrap of meat before a dog."

Heloise rolls her eyes at her Aunt and snorts. "I didn't sign a marriage contract. I just got his wife to agree to let me talk to him about it. He'll probably make you deeply happy and say no, but, I am the Queen of Alderaan and it's well being is supposed to be my primary concern, and a little embarrassment is worth the kind of alliance that will give us the ability to rest easy, knowing we can keep on being peaceful."

"Please. You haven't read the non-aggression treaty they sent. They trust us no more than they have to, and they don't have to. Part of the treaty is bi-yearly inspections to make sure we're not fomenting a revolt against them."

"So, you're telling me he, or whomever writes his treaties, is smart as well as powerful. Is this supposed to make me think less of him?"

"Heloise…"

"I am an adult. I get to seek out my own mate. You get to suggest who you think would be most politically feasible. Beyond that, you have no say in the matter. The legislature, may, if they are so motivated, decide that they get final say on any contract our nuptials may involve. You do not, Viceroy. It's your job to convene the legislature and put things on the docket. One thing you cannot put on that docket is control of whom I marry. So, butt out. Your advice is noted."

Helene stares at her niece, eyes narrowed, but then leaves, wondering what the next move is.