It wasn't easy being an alien in the Empire. Morgan Elsbeth knew that better than most, and she was only a half alien.
Most people wouldn't know Morgan's heritage by looking at her. Her father, Kristoph Elsbeth, had been human. Owner of a major Corellian conglomerate, his public reputation was immaculate as a businessman. Peers listed poise and astuteness among his trademarks. He had the money and understanding of Core World prejudices to mask the appearance of anything nonhuman in his only child.
"Father? Why is it bad for me to look like Mother?"
"Because the people in charge of Corellia don't realize how beautiful nonhumans can be. They don't want us to share our power and money with anyone else. I want you to live the best life you can, Morgan. My empire will be yours one day. If it requires a few surgeries to make sure no one ever takes that from you, then those are surgeries I'm willing to pay for."
Morgan was allowed to learn about her Dathomirian mother in the privacy of their own home. Nowhere else. She never even met the woman who gave birth to her.
Any desire she had to live among her mother's people vaporized in the wake of their execution during the Clone Wars. She survived the decimation of the Nightsisters because no one knew she was one.
Morgan was twenty-eight when the Clone Wars ended. As the Republic gave way to the Empire, the prejudice against nonhumans among the Core Worlds intensified. Soon, Morgan was too busy keeping the family business alive to explore her Nightsister side. She only had time to be human.
Kristoph Elsbeth died of a stroke at sixty-four. At thirty-two years old, Morgan Elsbeth took control of a major shipyard during the boom of Imperial fleet expansion. She did business with the most xenophobic officers the Empire had to offer, all without anyone suspecting a thing. Competition for Imperial credits was brutal, but Morgan always stayed a step ahead. Under Morgan Elsbeth, business reached heights previously unimaginable.
One day, Morgan received an unusual request from an Imperial officer. A freshly minted Commodore named Thrawn wanted his newly assigned flagship Chimaera to receive a custom paint job during its next maintenance docking.
Morgan was taken aback by the request. No one in the fledgling history of the Empire had ever requested their ship be repainted from the standard white. Who was this Commodore Thrawn?
To prepare for their meeting, Morgan read everything there was to read about Commodore Thrawn on the holonet, including reports of his two court martials. Thrawn was a controversial officer, ostensibly due to his unusual tactics and disregard for politics. One look at Thrawn's holoimage, and Morgan knew the real reason for the uproar.
Intrigued, Morgan set up a personal meeting on Corellia with Thrawn. To prepare, she studied the design he had provided in his painting request. Despite all her connections to the Imperial art world, Morgan could not pin down the origin of the image. The design must be alien too.
Bile rose in Morgan's throat as she waited for Commodore Thrawn to arrive. The gall it took for any officer to paint an Imperial ship, let alone in such a tacky manner… the Imperial court would faint at the sight. If word got out that Morgan's company had applied the design, they would gain a reputation for disrespecting the fleet. Thrawn had not yet arrived, and Morgan was already inclined to refuse his request.
A knock came at Morgan's door. Her sentry droid granted the visitor access, letting Morgan know it was Thrawn who had arrived. Morgan moved in front from her executive's desk, her expression cool and contemptuous as the alien officer stepped inside.
Commodore Thrawn's holo did not adequately prepare an observer for meeting him. In a holoimage, one could pretend Thrawn was a discolored human. In person, an observer would immediately notice the unnatural ridges lining his face, the penetrating red glow of his eyes. As Morgan craned her head up to make eye contact, she could not immediately discern Thrawn's irises from his scelera.
The effect was… witchy. Demonic, some on Corellia would say. She pursed her lips.
Thrawn said nothing at first. Instead, his gaze raked over every corner of Morgan's Elsbeth, lingering uncomfortably long on the Dathomirian landscape hanging beneath her framed copy of the Corellian Times profile on her takeover of the business.
Morgan cleared her throat. "Commodore Thrawn. A pleasure to make your acquaintance."
She extended her hand towards the alien officer. He took it, shaking once with a firm grip. For the first time, Thrawn's eyes studied Morgan. His brow creased, then immediately smoothed over.
"Lady Elsbeth. I must thank you for the upgrades you have prepared for my ship. Your accommodation of my request for assassin droids was most appreciated."
Even Thrawn's voice spoke to his alienness. No human had such an accent, especially not in the upper ranks of the Empire. Had it never occurred to him to change it?
Morgan stepped back behind her desk. "As fate would have it, your customization requests are what I would like us to discuss today. Please sit, Commodore Thrawn."
Thrawn sank into the chair across from Morgan. Morgan laid her hands out in front of her, fingers forming a steeple pattern. Thrawn's hands remained at his sides. "Is there an order you are unable to fill, Lady Elsbeth?"
"My company is capable of everything you have requested for the Chimaera, Commodore. My concern is the wisdom of fulfilling a certain one." Morgan pulled up the design Thrawn had provided to her maintenance crew. "Certainly you have noticed no other Imperial officer paints their ships, Commodore."
He inclined his head. "That did not escape my notice. However, there is no regulation prohibiting the practice. Your company has no reason to fear legal consequences, Lady Elsbeth. Nor should a custom design on the hull be of any detriment to the Chimaera's fitness for duty."
"Perhaps not in the physical sense, yet it may confuse other Imperial ships to see one of their own with a non-standard hull painting." Morgan talked around the real reason for her hesitation. "The only uniquely painted Imperial ships my company has seen in their repair shops were once the property of marauders."
Thrawn raised an eyebrow. "Are you concerned that another Star Destroyer will mistake the Chimaera for the property of criminals?"
She gave him a tight smile. "Honored as I am to be an official provider of ship repairs for the Imperial fleet, I happened to oversee the Chimaera's initial construction personally. I have no wish to see her in a scrapyard."
"Then allow me to reassure you personally of the Imperial fleet's competence. No commander would be foolish enough to risk friendly fire against a Star Destroyer without solid intelligence of the ship being compromised. I will attest to the ship's nonstandard design myself so that no one will mistake the Chimaera for a target."
"And if you acquire a target of a different kind?" Morgan asked. "Why are you determined for your ship to skirt regulations as closely as you do?"
Thrawn's eyes connected with hers once again. The glow intensified, but Morgan refused to blink. "Because the symbol you see in front of you has followed me for much of my career. It is a symbol of preservation against the threat of extinction. Against… forced assimilation."
"My enemies will know that I have triumphed once again. My command has reached new heights in its campaign against threats to the Empire. From the moment the Chimaera exits hyperspace, opponents and enemies alike shall know that the time has come to surrender. When the Chimaera's reputation can be seen, it need not be spoken."
Morgan realized she was leaning over the edge of her desk. She frowned, correcting her posture to a more neutral stance. Whatever exotic tinge Thrawn carried in his voice, he also brought the depth and conviction necessary to demand attention. His gravitas as a speaker was greater than most officers she had met in her career. "Inspiring as that may sound, it hardly seems like a necessary modification."
Thrawn's eyes flitted back to the Dathomirian landscape painting. "Hardly surprising you think that way, Lady Elsbeth. You hide your triumphs in the hopes no one will take them from you. You win from a position of weakness."
Her nose flared. "And what would you know about my business strategies, Commodore Thrawn? Your career is in the navy."
"I know you disguise yourself to appear human. Your… body heat. It does not circulate as a human's does. I also know your father never disclosed from where he acquired his heiress. Images of you as a child describe your appearance as merely sickly. I see an alternative explanation.
"You, Morgan Elsbeth, are the true chimaera in this room. You wish I hid my species the way you hide yours. It angers you that I will not."
Morgan's face burned. "Who told you such lies?"
"No one, Lady Elsbeth." Thrawn leaned forward, the tip of his nose distorting the holoimage of his proposed hull design. "And your company has provided me with many useful ships and droids over the years. My aide noted you to be a supplier of quality, hence why I requested your company for my customization needs. Why I augmented his research with a bit of my own."
"My company would surely lose business if such… rumors circulated. I do my due diligence on your requests, and you respond by insulting me." Morgan did her best to act incensed. On some level, she was. No one in her decades-long career had ever publicly acknowledged her mixed heritage. That was a secret for her father and doctor to know.
On another… no one had addressed that half of Morgan's life since her father died. It felt pleasantly strange to hear someone speak of it again.
"A non-human heritage is no insult, Lady Elsbeth. You are the only one in this room who sees it as such. I suspect you customized your appearance to match your business peers. I have neither the wealth nor the will to change my own. I would rather spend my earnings on the Chimaera."
"You intend to purchase this… service with your own personal salary?" Morgan asked. "You will not charge it to the Imperial Navy's account?"
"Indeed I do. And with that, I believe I have addressed all potential concerns you may have with providing every service I ordered." Thrawn's voice dropped into a near-growl at the end of his sentence. "If your company refuses the service, I will direct the hull painting myself."
"...Don't bother. If my company completes the design, I will know it was applied with the highest level of quality." Morgan conceded. "We shall bill everything but the hull painting to the Navy's account. My rates for hull customization are as follows." She listed her terms, to which Thrawn agreed immediately.
"Pleasure doing business with you, Lady Elsbeth." Thrawn stood to leave. Morgan turned the holo display off as she rose to see him to the door. "I look forward to seeing the result of our discussion today."
"I look forward to you keeping your defamatory speculation to yourself, Commodore," Elsbeth replied. Her tone lacked the force for a snap. Her words came with more of a teasing quality.
Thrawn took one last look at the landscape Morgan had hanging in her office. The only piece of art in the room not Correllian in origin. "Perhaps I should be more tactful. Imperial policy is not kind to certain practices outside the scope of the Inquisitorius. Personally, I care not for their categorizations of power.
"...If I find a copy of the Book of Law, should I send it to you? I can be discreet."
Morgan choked on her breath at the words. She had fantasized about learning her mother's ways since girlhood. Her father had never approved. He told her that attempting magic so close to Coruscant would catch the Jedi's attention. He couldn't afford to lose his sole heiress to a mystical order of zealots.
Now all the Jedi were gone. Their judgemental ways were a bygone era in this galaxy. Instead, a new regime of judgment ruled galactic society today. A regime Morgan was adept at thwarting in secret. Surely she could apply the same skills another way.
"Do that, Commodore, and I will refund you every credit you spend on your hull design." She grinned viciously."May every soul in the Empire know that an alien commands their space."
A/N's: I know the fandom likes to joke about Morgan being an obsessed stalker Thrawn doesn't know. I've made the jokes too. But for this fic, I decided to explore a scenario where her appreciation for Thrawn is based on a solid foundation.
My inspirations are twofold: the scene from Chaos Rising where young Thrawn gives Thalias the advice she needs not to fear her post-skywalker days and the Visions episode where an Imperial officer took a young alien to adopt as his son (forcing said son to hide his alien features for the rest of his days). This fic also offers a possible explanation for how Elsbeth is both human-looking AND a Nightsister.
She grows up in high Core World society with a lot of internalized xenophobia. Seeing Thrawn succeed, she cringes at first before deciding to cheer for his rise to prominence. She follows a different path to power in the Empire as a (half) alien, but respects Thrawn's more brazen approach enough to aid him on his path with a custom hull job. The rest of the Empire's upper class may see them as "foreign devils," but she feels like she can relate to him.
Hope you liked the fic! It's just me trying something new with my oneshots.