Title : Through a Mirror Darkly
Author : Gaswn
Ratings : M to be safe for violence, language, and some suggestive content.
Genre : Drama
Pairings : Sabe/Obi-Wan, Original characters
Summary : Sequel to The Grey Divide. In times of war and tyranny, love can be the ultimate act of resistance.
Disclaimer : Don't own 'em, not worth suing.
Author's notes : This is the third and final installment in a trilogy with Smoke and Mirrors and The Grey Divide. You will be pretty lost if you don't read those first. It has been a long time since I have looked at this series at all, and I think it's finally time to draw it to a close. (Yay) The plot itself is finished, it just requires some refining and proofreading. I will attempt to post a new chapter every week. Looks like it will come in just under 30 chapters.
Chapter 1
Dashira, Alderaan
1 BBY
The traveler stepped from the hatchway ramp of the starliner, blinking owlishly in the natural light. After two days of the relative dimness and cramped quarters of space travel, his freedom was almost dizzying, and he stood for a moment getting his bearings.
A Bothan ran into him from behind, its fur going red in irritation as it barked at him. "Out of the way, off-lander"
He stepped aside quickly, choking back a sharp retort. Sate Pestage would not thank him to get in a fight when he was scarcely off the transport ship. Looking around the airy space port, he took a deep breath. The light was different here, he noticed. He'd become accustomed again to the oily orange haze of Coruscant at dusk. Here the sunset was sharper, cleaner. You didn't feel a residue on your skin. Or maybe he was only imagining it.
Otherwise the spaceport was like many others he had been in. Transparisteel formed an arch over the concourse with faintly golden light striping the walkway. It was a slow traffic day, which he had counted on, and individuals or groups of two or three walked towards the entrance way. The species present were diverse, as one would expect in an academic town or capital. This spaceport was halfway between both.
He picked up his bag and shouldered it, making his way to the main entrance. Outside he was a little disappointed to notice that the towering starliners and other structures of the spaceport blocked a view of the planet's terrain. I'm not here for sightseeing, he reminded himself firmly. After a moment he found his next objective ; an egg-shaped hovercraft with a silver and blue diamond pattern on the outside. Next to it was the twitchy-looking young man with sandy hair that he remembered last seeing deep in his cups in the Uscru entertainment district.
The young man spotted him and even recognized him. "Hey, over here!"
The traveler was surprised. Clearly the taste of glitterstim he'd had in Uscru hadn't had any lasting cognitive effects. He walked over, dropping his bag to the permacrete. "Hello again."
"I'm sorry, you'll have to remind me..." the young man said, looking sheepish.
"Eli," the traveler replied.
"Eli...?" The young man prompted.
"That'll do, for now," Eli said.
"Ah. Errol," the young man said, following his example. Eli got the sense that if his last name was a noteworthy one, he would have found a way to supply it. Errol turned away and punched a code into the keypad on the hovercraft. Its hatchway slid open, a small ramp extending. "Do you have luggage?"
"I've sent it ahead," Eli said, following him into the interior.
It was roomy and quiet inside, the walls and benches upholstered in red tufted velvet. Through the tinted windows Eli caught a glimpse of towering snow-capped mountains. He mouth fell open, but as suddenly the view dimmed and fogged out entirely and he was enclosed in a womb-like darkness. He looked at Errol, who shrugged and pressed a button on a console jutting out of the circular seating. "I thought you might like some real entertainment."
Suddenly Eli was surrounded by holographs of violently gyrating Twi'lek girls.
"Of course," he said with forced lightness as he suddenly remembered he was supposed to be the kind of person who enjoyed this. He arranged himself into a lazy sprawl and assumed a leer. Shortly he felt the hovercraft jolt and start to hum as it began moving. "Why no high altitude transport?"
"Environmentalists," Errol said with an eye roll. "They are supposed to disrupt the biome or some such nonsense."
"Well, we have no policies of that kind on Coruscant," Eli said loftily.
"It would be nice if the Emperor would finally do away with all of that nonsense, give a man a chance at an honest living."
Eli glanced at Errol's soft, manicured hands and suspected he'd never had an honest day's work in his life.
He was saved from any further conversation as Errol seemed more interested in gawking at the holograph dancers and sending messages on his comm than getting further acquainted. Perhaps half an hour later Eli began to see the shadows of buildings through the shaded windows.
"We're close," Errol said, turning off the Twi-lek girls. "We'll begin at the opera house if you like."
"Opera," Eli repeated, unable to even fake enthusiasm.
"Oh yes," Errol said. "Where everyone who is anyone turns up on a weekend night."
As if on cue, the hovercraft jolted to a stop. The door slid open to reveal a long slope of carpeted steps up to an imposing hall with heavy permacrete columns and a huge pediment. The steps were crowded. Eli squinted to see the carvings within the pediment but could not make them out. It was much older than the typical building in Coruscant. He hoped the inside would be as interesting as the outside.
He was disappointed as soon as they entered the tall doors. Right down to the paneling and hovering orb lamps, everything was arranged to be at the latest fashion. But it was really five to ten years behind Coruscant so that it all felt dated, worn, and sad. If all of Alderaan was like this, then it was just like every other core world, except with a few more trees. Father always said there was nothing really new in the universe.
"I've reserved us a box on the fifteenth level. Excellent view," Errol said. "Meet you there in ten?"
Eli almost laughed aloud at his pretentious manner, but schooled his face and nodded. Errol walked away, linking arms with a girl nearby who looked a bit less happy to see him than he did her. The two of them disappeared into the crowd. Meanwhile Eli engaged his most proficient skill; wandering unobserved and observing.
Was this really an nest of extremists? Everything had the appearance of the blandest and most pacifistic refinement. Most of the attendees were young, all of them talking and laughing in the thoughtless way of the privileged, without checking doors or guarding their backs. The rest seemed to be either faculty of the nearby Academy of Arts or wealthy patrons. Everyone seemed relaxed. He sensed nothing of conspiracy or ill-intent.
It was then that his wandering brought him into direct contact with a passerby, the collision resulting in an explosion of flimsy pages around the two of them.
"I beg your pardon," He spluttered, catching a few pages away from his face.
"You'd better," said the girl petulantly, sitting on the floor. "I have to be on stage in ten minutes!"
"Let me assist you," He said, feeling actually embarrassed. She was smaller than he was, and he'd knocked her over completely. He took her hands and helped her to stand, and then helped her gather the sheets of flimsy. Music, he noticed as he stacked them as best he could and handed them to her. She frantically stuffed them into a folder.
Then she turned her gray eyes on him, and he felt it at once – like being scanned with a high beam light or being an insect beneath a microscope. It had been a while, but how could anyone forget that sensation? His skin crawled. After a moment she said, "You are one of Errol's."
"I...came here with him, yes," He said carefully, turning the same magnifying lens attention on her. "I'm an offworlder just arrived. He's been kind enough to show me around. How did you know?"
She smirked. "He has a type. Nice clothes, terminally bored, looking at all our pseudo-Coruscanti finery and wondering what the fuss is about. Of course, nothing here has anything to do with the real Alderaan."
She closed her folder and waved off his hand that was hovering to assist her again in some way.
"And where would I find the 'real Alderaan' if I were so inclined?" He asked after he'd recovered.
She winked. "Why would I tell an off-worlder if we are to keep the best parts for ourselves?"
She turned and began to walk away, but then paused. "-But you might start by ditching your tour guide."
Shaken, Eli decided to stop lingering in the lobby and go up to his box. When he finally found it, Errol was already there. Eli groaned aloud when he peered down to the circular stage and saw the stage hands painstakingly moving huge silvery, water-filled membranes onto the stage.
"The Mon Calamari ballet? What am I doing here?" He asked Errol coldly.
"You were interested in making some connections among the elite of Alderaan, including the governing families, right?" Errol asked.
Eli nodded, the droning of the Mon Calamari chorus already beginning to give him a migraine.
Errol swept his hand dramatically to indicate the boxes below them. "Well here they all are. The crème de la crème, out of their offices and mansions and with their guard down."
Eli doubted that very much. Very few let their guards down anywhere in these times. He wondered if Pestage was aware of what a tremendous boor he'd linked him with back in Coruscant. "Please tell me this isn't the full ballet," He said.
Errol shook his head.
To Eli's relief, the dance was of reasonable length and soon ended. The membranes were pulled away. When it was cleared, a familiar figure made her way to the stage with a case in one hand and a small stool in the other. It was the girl from the lobby. She planted the stool in the center of the stage, a tiny figure in the vastness of the stage. Thunderous applause greeted her arrival, and she bowed properly.
When the applause had settled, she opened the case and removed a base on top of which she stood a shiny metallic object shaped like a crescent moon. It balanced on its end as if by magic. She made a show of stretching her fingers and then began some kind of complicated fluttering and dancing of her fingers between the horns of the crescent shape.
It sounded like something between an exceptionally well played harp and the clearest, sweetest, highest human voice imaginable. Eli was aware that he would be dissatisfied with that description if someone asked him about it later. He would be dissatisfied with any description. And it was loud. Without any apparent amplification it filled the opera house.
"What's making the sound? Magnetic field?" He asked Errol. He saw no strings or any other implements. She seemed to be manipulating the air.
Errol shrugged. "As far as anyone can guess. That's why they call it a magnolin."
"Well, if they don't know, how do they learn to play it?"
"She's the first human to do it," Errol replied, smirking. "Only the Gotals on Antar can, otherwise."
"Huh." Eli looked at the girl more closely, and there it was again; his skin crawling. Otherwise she was unremarkable. Pretty enough by virtue of her fresh-faced youth and unruly copper-colored hair, but certainly not in a way that would turn your head in a crowd.
"You know," Errol said, putting a finger to his pursed lips. "If you wanted to make a connection to the royal family, you could do far worse than starting with her."
"An opera house musician," Eli repeated skeptically.
They watched as she finished her piece and began to put away her instrument. She picked up her stool and walked to the edge of the stage where there was a little ramp to walk down to the main floor. Eli did a double take at the brunette in intricate braids and flowing white who was waiting for her at the bottom of the ramp. Anyone with holonet access would recognize her instantly. The two women clasped hands affectionately.
Errol looked at him in triumph. "A lot worse indeed.
"Dour looking fellow, isn't he? I suppose if he's with Errol he's loaded with wealth if not personality," Princess Leia muttered as she and Mara glanced up at the box where Errol was pointing them out to his companion. She looked over at Mara expecting her to add her own ridicule. Instead, Mara was fighting a smile, her dimples betraying her.
"Really?" Leia said, surprised.
"Honestly, Leia. All the men you like look identical. Cleft chin, chiseled jaw, wavy hair. In fact, all the men people call good-looking look the same. I won't play the slave to your societal norms," Mara sniffed.
"So I like someone who looks like he's been outside doing something rather than sitting inside with his nose in a datapad for the last," Leia squinted at the man with Errol appraisingly. "...five summers or so?"
"Ascetic. He looks ascetic, Leia. And don't talk as if any of them could survive your scathing tongue anyway," Mara teased.
They began walking toward the lobby arm-in-arm.
"Mine? Did you not reduce Errol's last guest to tears only last week?"
"Well deserved," Mara laughed. Her smile faded as she remembered something else entirely. "I hear you are leaving us tomorrow."
Leia's face clouded. "Tonight, I'm afraid. Matters at the capital cannot be delayed."
"It's getting worse, isn't it?" Mara asked in a lower voice.
Leia compressed her lips, her eyes far away. It was the closest thing to actual nerves Mara had ever seen on her face, and her heart fluttered in response.
"Can't you just stay for breakfast at least?"
"No. I've waited too long as it is. I didn't want to disrupt my social engagements. It might look as if..." Leia's eyes darted around the room. She forced a smile. "I'd give anything to remain here and speculate about your social life instead. Capital politics are more petty and with more dire consequences."
"I'd love to see the capital," Mara said. "I know it's awful and tyrannical and full of corruption and still I'd love to see those cityscapes."
"Mara, you need a graduate degree on human nature before I let you anywhere near Coruscant," Leia said, her jaw tight.
"Hmm, perhaps he will give me a lesson or two," Mara said slyly, looking back at Errol's friend once more.
"Perhaps I should start teaching you right away," Leia sighed, dragging her away by the elbow.