▸ Column · Star Wars galaxy — a smuggler reading holo-mail between runs, wedding reframed as a bonding ceremony
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Darth Maul.
The letter
I'm bonding with Darnell next season — eight months of planning, smooth sailing — until his mother sent word last cycle that if my oldest friend Kezia stands up with me at the ceremony, she and her husband won't show. Years back, at some family gathering, Kezia apparently said something that his mother has never let go of. Kezia swears she doesn't even remember saying it. Kezia's been my closest friend since the academy; she flew in from the far side of the system just to help me pick the hall. Bumping her to "honored guest" would feel like a betrayal I don't think I'd come back from. Darnell wants me to quietly move her to keep the peace — but he's admitted his mother ran this exact play at two of his cousins' bondings and won both times. I love his family. I want them there. But I'm scared that if I fold now, every fight from here on ends the same way.
Han Solo replies
Eight months of smooth sailing and his mother drops a bounty on your best friend over a line nobody can even remember her saying. Okay. Watch the hands, not the mouth. Her words don't matter — her track record does. She's run this play twice and won twice. That's not a threat, sweetheart, that's a forecast. Now Kezia? She got on a ship and crossed the system to help you pick a hall. That cost her something and she showed up anyway. I got a partner like that — big, loud, never once left when leaving was the smart move. You don't trade those in to make a room quieter. As for Darnell's "quietly move her" — yeah, I know that song. Safe. Sensible. It's fear with better PR. And paying somebody off to keep the peace? Trust me, I owe the worst Hutt in the galaxy — caving doesn't clear the debt, it just teaches them the price works. You already see where this road ends; you said so yourself. I'm not telling you to torch the family. I'm telling you keep your friend standing where she earned the right to stand. You wrote in. You already know.
— Han Solo
Darth Maul weighs in
Solo dances around the one truth in the room. The mother is the only honest creature here. She took a grievance three years old — a wound no one else remembers — and made it a weapon, and she has won with it twice. I know that engine. I am still being driven by mine. So I will not pretend she is wrong to remember. But watch the man you are binding yourself to. He does not fight her. He folds, and calls it peace, and asks you to fold with him. That is not a single decision. That is the verdict on every decision to come. The mother is what you fear. The fiancé is what you have not yet looked at.
— Darth Maul
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