Chapter Text
The safehouse was quiet—just the low hum of the air recycler and the distant echo of traffic far above. Mid-cycle light slanted through the wide, dusty windows and painted everything in gold. Luthen lay on his back, sweat drying along his collarbone, one hand folded behind his head. Mon was curled against him, skin warm, breath even. He could feel the shape of her thigh against his hip, bare and smooth beneath the thin sheet. They had an hour but she wasn’t sleeping. Of course not.
“Why is your mind still moving?” he murmured.
“I’m wondering what happened to the Teydor stockpile from the Outer Rim seizures,” she replied, her voice a soft lilt against his shoulder. “Those crates held over forty thousand detonite charges. The Empire designated them as lost during transfer between Daro and the Jabiim corridor, but we both know that’s nonsense. They're using them somewhere.”
Luthen exhaled. “You just had the best orgasm of your life and your follow-up is detonite logistics?”
She propped herself up on one elbow, her hair falling back away from her face. “I’m serious. You know better than anyone that supply chain failures can end entire campaigns.”
“Oh, I don’t disagree. I just find your choice of post-coital pillow talk concerning.” He rolled toward her, catching her waist with one hand beneath the sheet. “I think this is your kink, Senator.”
“Don't be absurd,” she said, but her lips twitched.
“I’m not judging.” He pitched his voice low, leaning into his natural timbre. “You want to talk about which side kept control of the hyperspace lane junctions at Saleucami? I’ll put my mouth wherever you want while you do it.”
She laughed, an unguarded, breathless thing. “You’re insufferable!” She leaned down slowly, pressing her mouth to his throat. “And you’re impossible to distract.”
“I’ll remind you that last time you were droning on about the Ord Mantell ration failure.”
She gasped against his skin. “That was strategic context.”
Luthen let out a low groan and dragged her closer. “You drive me to madness, you know that?”
“I think you were born mad,” she whispered. “I just helped you organize the madness into actionable phases.”
“Of course you did,” he said, flipping her onto her back with practiced ease.
She let him, because she always let him when it was like this—tension coiled beneath the laughter, her body burning under his, her tongue still chasing the taste of rebellion even while his hands mapped every curve of her.
The light fractured. The safehouse dissolved. Her voice, once tethered to breath and skin, scattered into thin air.
He reached for her.
And woke up.
2 BBY
Luthen was in his bunk aboard the Fondor, sweat gathered at his temples. The dark was thick around him, save for the blinking red diode from the comm relay panel. He didn’t speak or move, just let the silence settle over him like dust.
It was a dream, a memory from those earlier days before the cause had taken so much from her. When she could smile at him and exchange stupid jokes in the cocoon of that damned safehouse. It left him hollow now, knowing the spirit of that time would never be, could never be reclaimed.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, pressing his hands over his face. Ghorman’s planetary ring rotated slowly outside the viewport, streaking the stars with faint, silent movement. A whole world embroiled in horrific violence, that he had partly facilitated.
He couldn’t afford dreams like this. Not with her speech on the horizon. Not with the ISB circling. Not with death as the most likely outcome for all of them.
Still, he thought of her face. Of the last time in that safehouse.
Hours later on the way back to Coruscant, Luthen stood at the main console in the Fondor’s cockpit, eyes fixed on the encryption matrix blooming across the holoscreen. The message had come in just before dawn, a low-priority data packet flagged for routine review.
Only three people in the network used that coding structure. Only one of them worked from the Senate. Luthen keyed in the response protocol manually.
The text was decrypted.
SHE’S WRITING AGAIN. LONG HOURS, LOTS OF CAF. FIRST DRAFT NEARLY DONE.
WON’T LET ANYONE READ IT YET.
PER HER REQUEST, ORGANA IS ALREADY SCHEDULING FLIGHT LOGS FOR “VISITOR TRAFFIC” TO CHANDRILA 2 DAYS FROM NOW.
CAN’T CONFIRM EXFIL DETAILS, BUT BELIEVE SHE’S MOVING SOON.
SHE’S GOING TO DO IT.
— E
So it was real. She was going through with it. Mon Mothma was going to light the match on the Senate floor, she was their final bet on which all their aspirations rested.
Kleya would be furious. She’d warned him not to trust Erskin too deeply. But Erskin wasn’t a field agent. He was a bureaucrat with an honest face and a love of Chandrilan poetry, which made him perfect. No one suspected the clerk who always had Mon’s caf order memorized.
Luthen sat down in the pilot’s seat, spine stiff with tension.
He could see her, sitting at her Senate office desk in some soft shawl, night cycle bleeding through the windows, writing with that pinched brow she always wore when angry and afraid. His fingers closed into a fist. She was about to become the public face of dissent. No more shadows. No more deniability. This speech would be her formal break from the Empire. Once it was done, she’d be marked. Everything she told him about the Delegation of 2,000 came back to him now, all that she endured then and ever since. She was about to do it again, voluntarily, on a scale far beyond what she herself probably could have ever imagined. Just a woman using her voice on behalf of untold millions.
He keyed into the encrypted uplink and recorded a message for Kleya.
“It’s happening. She’s going to make the speech. I need you to confirm our emergency exit plan for the Senate rotunda. Our contact says there’s a team planning a cover, but I want redundancy. We go in quietly. No marks, no names.”
He sent it, then leaned back and stared at the ceiling of the cockpit, letting the silence press down on him.
He’d dreamed of her just before Erskin’s message came in. That wasn’t a coincidence. It never was with her. Even the Force, if such a thing existed, seemed to understand that Mon Mothma haunted him like no ghost ever could. She was going to do it. By the stars, he’d do whatever it took to make sure she could.
The meeting point was a derelict tram platform deep in Level 262, where the only sound was the slow drip of condensation and the metallic scurry of vermin. Luthen waited alone, shoulders hunched against the ambient chill, the fingers of his left hand ghosting near the hidden blaster beneath his coat. He didn’t expect trouble. But he always expected betrayal.
The door across the track hissed open. Lonni Jung stepped through, still in uniform, face drawn and damp with sweat. No time for cover tonight.
“You’re lucky I came,” Lonni muttered.
Luthen ignored him, there was no time for this dance. “Tell me about Organa’s people.”
Lonni blinked. “What?”
“Are they still viable for the Senator’s exfiltration?”
The man hesitated, which was answer enough.
Luthen stepped closer, voice lowering to a near-growl. “I need details. Now.”
Lonni scanned the shadows, then spoke quickly. “The ISB has a human intel asset embedded in the crew arranging false diplomatic flight manifests and security rotations for the Senator’s post-speech evac.”
“One of yours?”
Lonni nodded. “They’re embedded deep and were recently tasked to run interference by Organa’s team in preparation—clean comm logs, create false telemetry records.”
“Name?”
“I can’t give you that.”
“Then tell me what they’ve done.”
“They flagged their pilot roster to the ISB. Said someone on Organa’s team keeps rerouting starport requests to the same corridor node near Fonderen Lane. Too many redundancies. Too neat. ISB sniffed it out—now they’re planning to intercept.”
“When?”
“Day of the speech. They’re planning to hit the evac route after the broadcast, make it look like a transport accident. Quiet. Blame the techs or the crowd panic. Alternatively, they may not let her get that far, might arrest her on sight.”
Luthen’s pulse raced but his voice stayed calm. “They’re waiting for her to speak. They know she’s planning something.”
Lonni nodded grimly. “They want her on record. Treason in her own voice. Once that’s done, they’ll move.”
Luthen turned away, jaw tightening. Lonni’s voice softened. “Look—you can’t run a rescue through Organa. If she tries to walk out that door with his people, she won’t make it off-planet either way.”
“And your asset?” Luthen asked. “Can you burn them?”
Lonni shook his head. “If I pull them now, ISB will know I tipped. I’ll lose my clearance.” He didn't have to outline the worst case scenario, it breathed down both their necks every minute of every day.
“And if I kill them?”
“That’s your choice,” Lonni said quietly. “But you’ll only get one shot.”
Luthen stared down the rails. His reflection warped in the oxidized metal, not quite human. “I’ll take care of it.”
She was alone, practicing her speech in the darkened Senate plaza, exactly where he told Erskin to send her. The plaza was empty, its great arches shrouded in darkness, the air carrying only the hum of distant repulsors. Here in the shadowed edge where she stood, the night almost seemed to hold its breath. He walked toward her purposefully, never taking his eyes off her silhouette outlined in Coruscant’s endless industrial glow. A pale figure draped in white against the plaza’s backdrop, clutching at her datapad like a lifeline. She looked like a statue they’d forgotten to place in the rotunda.
Luthen stepped out of the shadows. “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
Mon didn’t startle. She knew his gait too well. “You shouldn’t be here at all,” She shot back. She turned slowly, the lines of her face hard in the half-light. “I like the quiet before the storm,” She lowered her datapad in one hand. “It’s all I have left for myself.”
“You won’t have much more of that after tomorrow.” He said. He didn’t meet her eyes at first, he surveyed the plaza, the high facades of the government buildings, the distant figures retreating to the Senate offices. “Bail Organa’s team is burned. You won’t make it out if you go with them.”
He had her attention now. She looked at him with consternation, then resignation, because of course he moved at a pace that had him several steps ahead of her, a dance partner moving to a new beat she couldn’t hear.
“How burned?” She asked quietly.
“Past the point of trust. If you go with them, you’ll be in a cell before sunset tomorrow or worse. What I’m telling you cannot be shared. I’ve arranged for one of mine to take you after your speech—someone I trust. Someone I know I can trust.”
Mon considered his words, searching his face for something. He was struck by the strangeness of this liminal space, how it felt like they were finally hurtling toward that which they’d dedicated so much of themselves to for so long. He wondered if she felt it too, the sense of an era drawing to a close to give way to a brave new world. If she dreaded it as much as she welcomed it.
“There’s something I need to know, first.” She intoned gravely, casting her eyes down for a beat before fixing him with an urgent expression. “Tell me Tay Kolma is dead. Do you remember him? My childhood friend?”
He looked at her for a long moment. This wasn’t a subject he expected her to raise and he found himself on the back foot. She advanced toward him, voice accusatory. “Tell me he’s dead, Luthen. Tell me you did it. Because if you didn’t, I want to know why.”
He didn’t answer, he wanted to hear her illuminate her thoughts behind this line of questioning before formulating his response.
Mon drew a breath like it burned her. “A few months ago I received an automated notification from Chandrila’s regional accountancy board. Apparently, Tay’s name was quietly removed from three corporate registries. No audit. No fines. He sold everything, then he vanished. All this right after Leida’s wedding, but I’ve only just found out about it because of his involvement with my charities.”
Still, Luthen said nothing. He kept his face unreadable but she knew him too well. She knew the set of his shoulders when he was bracing for impact.
“You spared him,” she said, stunned. A beat passed.
“He was sloppy,” Luthen said. “Was going to bring everything down, draw too much scrutiny toward you—”
Her eyes gleamed—sharp, angry, questioning—as she cut him off, “Then why is he living quietly in some Mid Rim backwater under one of your fabricated identities?” When his eyes darted to hers in alarm, she chuckled darkly. “You’re not the only one with useful informants.”
Luthen inclined his head, acknowledging her point. He settled for, “Because I needed you to stay clean.”
“Don’t—” Her voice trembled. “Don’t you dare make this about protecting me.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I did it because if you thought I killed him, you’d hate me. You’d believe it was just another trade—another ruthless cut. I wanted you to believe that.”
Mon swallowed, astounded by the clarity of the admission. “You let me think you were a monster.”
“I am a monster,” he said softly. “Yavin needs your leadership. You must be above these petty human foibles, they must look to you as a beacon in the times to come. I could give that to you, Mon. I don’t know everything but I know what I owe you. The best thing I can do for you now, is give you an out, and give you distance.”
She closed the space between them but didn’t touch him. “I never wanted to be another burden to you. You never gave me the chance to trust you. To really, fully trust you.”
Luthen looked away, jaw tight. They breathed together for a moment, both knowing that every second past was a second more than they had before the risk of being in the plaza together grew too great.
“Bail’s team is compromised. Alright. Then what do I do?” She asked, returning to the most pressing matter. He was close enough to take her hand, but refrained and refocused on the contingencies Kleya helped him map out.
“My operative will meet you in the Rotunda, after your speech. You’ll ask if he’s alone. He’ll say: I have friends everywhere.”
A faint breeze caught at her long white vest, and this time he did reach out to grasp at the fabric as if to steady her. His fingers moved gently to her arm and lingered a fraction too long before dropping it back to his side, missing what it was like to touch her. It was so brief a second, but he thought he felt her lean ever so lightly into his hand.
“I’ll go with your operative.” She said finally.
He let his relief show. “It’s the only way you walk out alive.”
“Come with me.”
Not much surprised him anymore, but that did. He looked at her in disbelief. “You know I can’t.”
“Then meet me there. When you’re finished with this place.” She was the one to breach the last bit of distance between them, take his hand where it was hidden in the folds of his dark cloak. Her grip was certain, her thumb pressing into his callused palm. “Promise me.”
He gave a rough, short laugh, but he didn’t let go. “You’re bargaining for my life now?”
“You deserve to live in the light, Luthen. Nothing will ever be as hard as hiding as we have, all these years…”
For a brief moment, neither spoke. He had to break her gaze eventually, finding the hope on her face painful to look at for too long.
“Is this goodbye then?” Mon whispered, her breath hitching as her eyes grew too bright. Her hand tightened its hold on his.
His gaze locked back on hers, unblinking. “No. Just for now.” His words were fierce enough to believe, but they both knew better. She let go first. The separation landed like a blow to the chest. He watched her walk the lone path to her office, until she disappeared from his sight.