notbecauseofvictories:

[con’t from here]

Rose fidgets with the sleeve of her robes en route to Naboo, so much that the hem frays under her fingers. Just a few stray green threads, unraveling from the neat stitching and tickling her wrist, especially when she crooks her hands. Rose hardly notices—it’s not the first time she’s worn second-hand anything; her usual jacket has so many patched holes Paige had joked it could double as a rutaanil strainer. (Rose shuts her eyes, and thinks of Paige sitting beside her on the transport; Paige  with her legs splayed, looping her arm carelessly over Rose’s shoulders; her sharp chin jutting out and her necklace catching the overhead lights. C’mon, em gái, she’d laugh. I’d like to see any of these assholes repair a calcinator, their fancy sleeves would catch fire.

This image comforts Rose, and with her eyes shut, she smiles.)

Still, when she bows before the Queen of Naboo, all Rose can think about is her fraying sleeve, the tangle of green threads at her wrist. She wonders if everyone can see it—if that’s what they’re whispering about, all the ambassadors and diplomats with their painted-pale faces. Or maybe they’re whispering about her, the hairstyle she’d hastily done and redone aboard the transport, the callouses and electrical burn marks at her fingers and palms. Rose thinks of General Organa and tries to channel that same effortless command, elegance, but her robes are fraying and her hair is falling out of the careful braid and maybe she should have insisted it be General Organa. Maybe she should have refused.

I’m a mechanic, she wants to blurt out, though the Prime Minister of Naboo is speaking now, and it would be worse to interrupt him. I’m just a mechanic, I don’t know…

“The Resistance begs your aid,” Rose says quickly, once there is a pointed silence. She’s not sure if she was meant to speak just then, because the Prime Minister’s mouth thins with disapproval and the Queen’s expression remains still and unreadable as stone. “I hope that, in time, we may come to an agreement,” she adds, desperately.

The Queen of Naboo nods as though she’s a marble sculpture, grudgingly; as though even bending her neck requires tremendous work and she isn’t sure Rose or the Resistance merit such effort. Rose bites her lip and burns with embarrassment.

A courier whisks her from the chambers soon after, and guides her to a luxurious suite full of beautiful things. “The Queen wishes you to be comfortable,” he says briskly, and then he’s gone.

Rose pictures Paige in the room, picking up the pretty baubles and scowling—or maybe just bemused, her mouth a crooked line between amusement and annoyance. What the hells is this trash? Does a queen really think people can be bought with pretty glass and soft sheets?

“They are soft sheets,” Rose murmurs. She’s lying back on them still in her robes, wondering whether she should contact General Organa and ask for an extraction—she’s the wrong person for this, for how important this is. She’s just a mechanic. She’s—

Rose, Paige says, and Rose can shut her eyes and picture her face. That fierce sincerity, the look that usually meant it was one-hundred hours and Paige was mostly-drunk. She always got like that, after she’d been drinking. Rose, don’t let them make you smaller, or meaner, or harder than you are. Don’t let them think you’re any less than them, just because—

“Because we came from nowhere and nothing,” Rose breathes. The familiar refrain. 

“After all, that’s where heroes come from,” Rose murmurs, in time with the vision of her sister. Paige grins, and shifts forward to kiss Rose on the forehead. Never forget it, she says, and Rose swallows. Opens her eyes.

She’s alone, in the room.

.

0.327-alpha galactic standard.

TICO, ROSE: No progress to report. 

.

After the first day of negotiations, Rose comes back and carefully does not break every object in her lovely room, which is full of glass and stone and sunlight glittering off the nearby water. She does sit on the edge of the bed with her hands carefully folded in her lap, and thinks very hard about breaking all the lovely, delicate things, and the satisfying crunch some would make under her work boots. (She packed them, her boots. Just in case.)

She does drop a plate that evening at dinner. Accidentally.

The Queen of Naboo does not even in look in her direction.

.

17.327-regal galactic standard.

TICO, ROSE: No progress to report.

.

In truth, Rose had protested when General Organa had suggested she assume the role of diplomat. “I—I’m sorry?” she’d asked, tentatively, when the General had suggested it. “I’m not….I don’t think I understand.”

It’d taken four different people, only two of which were Finn, to explain to her the proposal, and get her to accept. “Every report of your conduct has suggested that you are charming, capable, and cool under pressure,” General Organa had said smoothly, though Rose had quietly and hysterically thought she was not cool under this specific pressure and also what in all hells. “These are invaluable qualities in a diplomat.”

“I’m a mechanic,” Rose answered weakly, but no one seemed to hear. She’d had a few weeks of preparation, and then they’d put her on the first transport to Naboo.

And that was that.

.

I miss you, Rose transmits over however long a terrible distance between her and Finn. Their exact locations been withheld from the other, citing security concerns. The Resistance is small and each sentient still swearing loyalty to it is precious, they cannot afford to bargain such thing on lax security standards.

Still.

I wish I were there, she writes. I wish you were here. I wish I had someone—

Sometimes, she gets message delivery error notices, and she stares at them so long her eyes blur.

Rose goes to bed early those nights.

.

The Queen of Naboo is busy with domestic administrative duties, so Rose goes down to the stables as a way of distracting her from the monotony of her rooms. (She’s found six puzzleboxes and three hidden passageways and she’s bored, she can’t be surrounded by pretty and useless things anymore or she’ll start smashing them. Even writing back to Finn—whose last transmit was almost entirely black-censored, due to classified information—can’t stave off the boredom.)

Naboo doesn’t have stables of fathiers, the way Canto Bight did; they’re a waterlogged planet, and so their pets and beasts are aquatic. Still, Rose can’t help grinning as she dips her hand in the broad pool and the creatures—she’s not sure what they’re called, but they’re smooth and funny to touch, ticklish—lap at her fingers. The skinny ones twine around her wrists and mouth at her skin, and she giggles.

She names the spotted, aggressive creature twice her size ‘Rey’ because it seems to fit, the serious, hard-headed Jedi. There’s a smaller, thin animal that darts close and then away, and she calls that one ‘Finn’ because its scales are so bright and its mouth seems to smile. The prettiest one is ‘Poe’ obviously, since even Paige had been in love with Poe, because everyone is in love with Dameron, Rose, even if we don’t prefer male humans overall.

Rose is trying to coax out the dark-scaled, uncertain creature hiding in the rocks when a strange voice startles her:

“They like you.”

Rose forces herself to stay still, since she has Organa—a dark-grey, huge creature—wound around her hand. The creature is humming, just below the threshold of human hearing, and Rose isn’t interesting in disturbing her. “I like them,” she says simply.

The woman comes to sit beside her on the edge of the tank, and Rose vaguely recognizes her from all the many conferences. A handmaiden, or some sort of representative; maybe a duchess. Even General Organa’s knowledge of Naboo internal politics was shaky. They knew that the Queen had handmaidens, and often these were nobility unto themselves, but that was all.

“You’re the ambassador of the Resistance,” the strange woman says, and Rose half-shrugs. 

“I suppose.”

“You don’t seem certain about that. Don’t you know who you represent?”

Rose smiles. She shakes off the Organa-creature, and straightens up, meeting the handmaiden-or-duchess in the eye. “A week ago, I was a mechanic. Diplomacy is…not exactly where I saw myself going.”

“Hm,” the woman says, noncommittally. Rose watches as she rolls up her sleeve, and dangles her hand in the water. The Poe-creature immediately swims up to the surface, and twines around the strange woman’s hand, trilling in a way that’s almost-audible, just enough to give Rose a low grade headache.

(Sometimes when she comes, the creatures are singing, just below the frequency of human hearing; Rose likes to lie down then, and grit her teeth and think of Paige, and Finn, and telling the both of them about the songs of these nameless creatures, which she could feel through her skin.)

“What are they called?” Rose asks, watching. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for days, but searching the holonet…”

“They’re called ildeni,” the girl says, and her absent smile is nice. Rose thinks in another sort of galaxy, they might be friends, and the thought is reassuring. “Or Naboo rays, as they’re known on other worlds. Usually, they’re very picky about who they like, I’m impressed they’re so attached to you.”

Rose blushes. “You’re the only one, then,” she mutters, staring down into the deep pool to avoid looking at the woman, her round face. She had dark, fine eyes and Rose liked them; just as Rose liked her hand as it stroked through the water, with it’s long dark fingers.

“You don’t think you made an impression on the queen?” the handmaiden asks.

“I have no way of knowing,” Rose says , as gently as she can. (She’s gotten good at this, at saying ugly things in a beautiful way. Not to alienate—) “But right now, we’re just…circling one another. I’ve seen enough negotiations between the First Order and the mining federation to know the difference.”

The woman glances at Rose. “You worked for the mining federation?”

“I served drinks to the mining federation,” Rose says sharply. She can’t quite keep the scorn out of her voice. “There’s a difference.”

Rose can feel her—the stranger, with her lovely skin, and her dark fingers, and her smile—looking. Still, Rose turns, and meets her gaze when the stranger says, “My name is Aldoré. I am a handmaiden to the Queen.”

“Rose Tico, ambassador to the Resistance,” Rose says. They shake hands, and both of their palms and fingers are wet with saltwater. “Pleasure to meet you.”

They go walking in the palace gardens, after. Rose finds herself explaining about Finn, and Poe, and Rey, and Paige, and the Resistance, and light—even Light, which was better and higher and different, somehow. About growing up hungry and angry and how nothing would feed them except revolt, and nothing would clothe them except resistance, and even then, Rose missed her sister. Sometimes sacrifice was just—it was just horror, and grief. Even if you believed in what you were fighting for. 

Aldoré

listens, and she takes Rose’s arm, and they clutch one another in the gathering dusk. Aldoré says, “I grieve for your loss,” and Rose says, “Thank you,” and they are there, with the smell of the sea all around them and on their hands, and Rose thinks of Paige standing beside her, thinks of Paige saying, don’t be afraid, here I am, here I will always be.

Aldoré is beautiful, in the dusk; dark as the wrong side of the moon and lovely. Rose asks her if she’ll be at the queen’s dinner that night, and Aldoré shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry,” she says. “I have business to attend to.”

Dinner that night is stilted, quiet. Rose does not know what to say, and settles for saying nothing.  

.

The next day, Rose receives a missive from the Queen of Naboo. Come, it says. We have much to discuss.

Rose barely sleeps that night.

.

43.39-aris galactic standard.

TICO, ROSE: Tentative progress. Request authority to negotiate terms of support.

ORGANA, LEIA: Granted. 

.

Rose wears the same green robes, and when she bows before the throne, she knows that the Queen of Naboo sees the fraying threads at her sleeve. Mostly because the Queen of Naboo comes down from her throne and takes Rose’s hands, holds them up to her breast.

“I think,” Aldoré—or the Queen of Naboo, Rose still isn’t sure which except that she’s smiling the way the Queen of Naboo never did, her scarlet-painted mouth curling up at the corners—says, “that we have been remiss. We have been cruelly negligent.”

“Oh?” Rose asks faintly. Beneath the pale death’s mask of makeup, she can trace the outline of brown and laughing Aldoré, and she’s not sure how to think about that except hope fiercely that it somehow works out.

“Yes,” the Queen says. “After all, it was a Queen of Naboo who lit the ember of Rebellion. It seems only just that Naboo keep it burning. Kneel, Ambassador Tico.”

Rose wobbles to her knees in a borrowed, fraying green robe. Beside her, she can feel Paige, bright and hot and whispering, look at that, little sister, look at this; nothing and nowhere and no one and here you are. what did we say about heroes?

Rose Tico goes to her knees a mechanic, pressed into service as an ambassador because there was no one else and she was kind, maybe kinder than the rest.

Rose Tico rises up again to her feet wearing shimmering green, the color of hope, and leading an army.