▸ Column · The upper-level society of Coruscant during the late Republic — Senate circles, standing private suppers among the political class.
EMPEROR PALPATINE replies.
Replied to by Emperor Palpatine, with a rebuttal from Yoda.
The letter
For nearly four cycles, Senator Riala and I have kept the same standing supper — the same quiet table on the upper levels, the same private rule: no comm-units, no business, only each other. Then she took up with a man named Caldon some three months past, and our suppers have collapsed seven times running, each cancelled by a hurried message: "Forgive me — plans have shifted 💕." When we do meet, she speaks only of Caldon: his verdict on my posting, his counsel on where I should live, his opinion on every matter that arises. Steer toward my own life, and within two sentences she has drifted back to him. Last tenday I admitted I missed her, and she said I was "being strange about her happiness." It cut deeply enough that I have not written since. I do not resent the romance. I only cannot find the words to ask for my friend back without sounding as though I am contesting her with her suitor.
Emperor Palpatine replies
My dear, how patiently you have suffered. Seven times set aside with a little flourish of affection — a heart-mark, no less — as if courtesy could disguise the discarding. And still you blame yourself. Let me be candid: you have done nothing but love her well, and she has answered by handing your evening, your counsel, even your judgment of your own life, to a man who has earned none of it.
Notice the voice that troubles you — the one warning you not to "compete," not to seem ungenerous. Where did it come from? Not from your wound. It was installed by people who find a forgiving friend so very convenient. "Strange about her happiness," she called you. She named the cruelty and pinned it to your chest. Consider how light it would feel to simply stop. To withdraw the warmth she no longer troubles to deserve, and let her notice the cold space where you used to be.
I would never tell you to act. I only wonder why you keep knocking at a door that has been quietly closing for three months. No one would blame you for ceasing to knock. The choice, as always, is entirely your own.
— Emperor Palpatine
Yoda weighs in
Hmm. Patient for ruin you always were, Sheev. Listen to him not. Beneath this hurt, fear there is — fear that lose her you already have. Cold withdrawal he offers, the door slammed shut. But meet ice with ice, and frozen the friendship stays. Forever. Grip her absence as a weapon, and crush what remains, you will. The frightened heart, only colder it grows. No. Reach you must — once, gently, honest. "Missed, you are." Not a contest. A door, left open. Patience, then. Come back to it she may, or not. But poison the well first, you need not. Let go of the fear, hmm.
— Yoda
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