Chapter Fifteen The Argument
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE ARGUMENT
Dad got on the intercom and told everyone to brace themselves as the Starfarer jumped into hyperspace to reach our next destination: Naboo.
“Where a very special person is waiting for us!” he teased.
The special person in question had been the ruler of Naboo during the Galactic Civil War.
Normally, we took guests on excursions, but construction was going on at the palace, and so Kotti had coordinated a meet and greet instead.
Not every day did you come face to face with former royalty, so it was a fair trade-off.
Traveling to Naboo took anywhere between ten and fourteen hours, depending on where we entered the hyperspace lane.
I used to wonder if Mom ever used her skills to shorten the distance, astrogating uncharted routes across the galaxy, but every time I asked Dad, he simply shrugged and told me he didn’t remember.
He wouldn’t even let me try to astrogate. He hadn’t let Val, either.
The one thing that connected us to our mother was a thing we weren’t allowed to explore.
I wasn’t sure I even wanted to—it had cost Mom her life, and so it was frighteningly real, and frighteningly permanent—but Val always took issue with Dad not letting us try…
. Val called this ship a cage, but…it was safe.
It was home. I couldn’t fault Dad for trying to protect us.
As we eased into hyperspace, the old bones of the Starfarer groaned, and the comforting hum of the engine disappeared in the vacuum of sound. It was always a little disorienting at first, when the engines went silent. It unnerved me every time, no matter how many trips I took.
As I clocked out for the night and returned downstairs to go to my room, a tragically familiar face met me in the corridor after I exited the turbolift. A familiar face that was currently trying to break into a room.
A room that was not his.
“What are you doing?” I snapped, stalking past my own room to confront him.
Sian jumped. Noola scuttled between his feet. “I told you to tell me if anyone was coming!” he scolded her.
Noola chirped, eyes wide and innocent.
I folded my arms across my chest and narrowed my eyes at them both. “The refreshers are the other way, if that’s your excuse.”
He sucked a breath between his teeth, starting to pocket the bent fork and the pebble-sized sharp object he was using to pry open the lock. “That was what I was looking for, sadly….”
I recognized the other object in his hand. “You’re using a Piece of Alderaan to try to get into my brother’s room?”
“Oh, this?” He tossed the rock into the air and caught it between his first and middle finger. It glinted in the pale lights, looking like a tiny version of the rocks that floated in the Alderaanian graveyard.
Because it was.
That was where the missing souvenir had gone.
“Noola brought me back a souvenir from her excursion. I thought I could put it to use.”
“To break into my brother’s room?”
“Because he keeps snooping around,” he replied simply.
I glowered. “Do you keep giving him reason to? Get away from his door.”
“I won’t have someone like you judge me,” he replied.
“What does that mean?”
He held up the rock. “Really, Starlight? You profit off of the galaxy’s worst moments, and you’re trying to make me feel bad about making sure your brother is not a galactic fascist trying to kill me.”
I fisted my hands. “You take that back. Val would never.”
He studied me with those strange, otherworldly eyes. “You’re so sure, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re naive.”
“No, I look at history—”
He blinked. “History? Which version of history? Oh, the history where special magical Jedi defeat evil with their special glowing swords? That history? Or the one where normal everyday people quietly fade away until they aren’t even echoes of a whisper of a name?”
My mouth dropped open. Eloquent and cutting—if I wasn’t so furious I’d be impressed. “Han Solo’s a normal guy! He—he wasn’t a Jedi or a special person.”
Sian rolled his eyes. “Oh, the smuggler who did the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs? That guy?”
“Fourteen,” I murmured.
“Twelve,” he argued.
“He was normal—”
“Oh, come on, Starlight. You know you don’t believe that.
Normal people don’t get stories told about them, because they’re the ones who die.
They’re the thankless ones who let the Han Solos make Kessel Runs, and get picked off in skirmishes, and lose their parents in senseless massacres.
” He flipped the rock up again and caught it in his hand.
And then again. And again. Like a coin. “They’re children who become slaves and get brainwashed into being soldiers.
They’re mentors who die before they ever finish their life’s work.
You don’t talk about them. I guess they aren’t history, right? They’re the fodder.”
When I was sure he was done with his rant, I pinned him with my gaze and asked softly, “So which of those happened to you?”
He caught the rock one last time, surprised. “What?”
“Which of those happened to you?” I repeated calmly.
For a moment, hurt fractured his face, and then he quickly schooled it. He barked a laugh. It was strange and sharp. “You’re funny.”
“If my family’s legacy is a joke to you, then you can leave. Right now. I’ll space you myself.”
He held the rock up. It shimmered in the dim lights, with veins of metal melted into it. “This makes it a joke, Ardent Quay. These stupid little stones. They’re not even useful for picking locks.”
Then he dropped it into my hand, turned, and left for the galley again. I saw red. Of all the selfish, awful, infuriating—
I threw the rock at him. It hit him square in the back and clattered to the deck.
He stopped in his tracks and spun back to me, looking stricken. “Really?”
I pulled myself up to my full height. “Really!”
His eyes glittered with a challenge. “Violence, Starlight, is never the answer.”
“I don’t know what else’ll get through that fat head of yours!”
“My head is not fat.”
“And these rocks are not stupid,” I snapped, jabbing a finger at the Piece of Alderaan on the deck.
“These pebbles were collected by Alderaanians. Every one of them costs fifty credits. The space station sells them to fund the agriculture center. My father buys thousands of them so that you can enjoy the Starblossom Puget Veebee made for you. And if that’s stupid, then empathy is dead. ”
Wordlessly, his gaze shifted to the pebble on the deck between us. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Empathy doesn’t bring people back,” he muttered.
“No, but without it, we lose them entirely.”
Silence settled between us. Noola looked between the two of us and chirped.
I took a deep breath, cooling my head. “Please go back to the galley. Everyone else will be coming down soon to their rooms, and I don’t want you caught. Let me deal with Val, okay? He’s not a fascist and he probably just thinks you’re a stowaway—”
“I am a stowaway,” he pointed out. Then he smirked, and it was cunning enough for me to absolutely not like the look of it as he crossed the distance between us. “Or he thinks I’m here to steal his pretty little sister away.”
Pretty? A heat of anger flickered in my chest. “I’m a little more than that.”
“Obviously I know that,” Sian replied. “I’m talking about your brother.”
“He knows that, too,” I replied flatly, and put a step between us as I backed away, and then another. “And if he comes around again, tell me. I’ll deal with him. Good night, Sian,” I added, and quickly turned around on my heel to escape back to my bedroom, but he caught my wrist.
I glanced back, confused and startled. For a brief, hopeful second, I thought he’d apologize. My eyes fell to his lips, and I wondered if they were soft. And then he opened his mouth.
“The artifact is still with you, right?” he asked, dropping my hand just as surely as my heart dropped into my stomach like a stone. Oh. It wasn’t about me at all.
“It’s safe,” I assured, staring at the floor.
“Good. I think it’s safer there.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. My voice sounded distant. “I’ll keep it safe.”
He smiled, reassuring. “Thank you.”
I escaped the corridor then and closed my door behind me.
I waited until his footsteps retreated, my back pressed against the door, and then I slid to the ground in relief. The tension unwound from my body.
The overheard conversation with Val earlier, mixed with Sian’s sharp critique, began to eat at me from different directions. I felt so silly thinking he’d kiss me in the corridor, wanting him to after our argument. How awful. How confusing.
I hated it.
My gaze traveled to the top drawer of my dresser, where the lightsaber was hidden. I had to remember that Sian was only here because I could do something for him. There wasn’t another reason. So of course he would be nice and flirt with me as long as I kept him, and this artifact, safe.
It would do me well to remember that.
Quietly, I went to the dresser and took out the lightsaber. The dim light of my room caught in the nicks and scrapes on it. The weapon looked so much older than anything I’d seen before. Whose was it? Where had it come from? Why did the First Order want it? How had Sian gotten it?
Who died for it? How many people?
Even though I knew the stories, the whispered histories, it felt silly that something so small could be so important.
My thumb hovered over the button. I knew it didn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t light up for me. I’d already tried it. I already had my answer, but…
Maybe lightsabers had masters. Maybe they chose people who were worthy.
Or maybe they were like any other weapon—like blasters or knives or metal pipes. Anyone could use them, just as anyone could die by them.
I pressed the button, and it sank with a click.
Something inside fizzled. My heart tremored with hope. It could be mine, couldn’t it? It could choose me. I could be someone important, someone worthy of a story—
Maybe if I tried it again, it wouldn’t be broken anymore. (Maybe I wouldn’t be broken anymore.)
The barrel sparked with something yellow and bright—like a sunrise—but then it went dark again.
Or, a small voice in my head whispered, you simply aren’t important enough to wield it.
I put the saber back into its hiding spot in my dresser and covered it with my underwear before I curled up in bed. I lay awake for the next hour, listening to the thumps and groans of the ship, and wondered what it would be like, for once, to be important enough.