▸ Column · Height of the Galactic Empire — an Imperial Intelligence analyst writing from Coruscant's upper levels
EMPEROR PALPATINE replies.
Replied to by Emperor Palpatine, with a rebuttal from Harley Quinn.
The letter
My mind-healer tells me I am making genuine progress, which is perhaps what healers say. Last week a fellow analyst — I will call her Dira — brought a tin of sugared pastries to our briefing on Outer Rim shipping irregularities, and I spent the entire transport ride home calculating what she wanted from me. My mother was a woman of considerable social standing in the upper levels of Coruscant. She was also meticulous in her generosity — she would do something lovely for you and then redeem it months later, with the precision of a ledger entry, so that you understood the gift had always been a transaction. My nervous system, it seems, has retained her curriculum. I have been with my companion Fen for two years. By every measure I can observe, he is a good man. But when he does something thoughtful without occasion, my first response is dread — a cold certainty that the terms are coming and I have not yet been shown the contract. I understand, intellectually, that not everyone is my mother. I am simply exhausted from running three moves ahead of anyone who has ever offered me anything. How does one actually begin to trust, when the part of one's mind that handles trust was specifically trained to recognize it as a setup?
Emperor Palpatine replies
The healer tells you this is progress. Let me ask the obvious question, my dear: progress toward what?
Your mother was not a cruel woman. She was a meticulous one. She understood something most people find more comfortable not to say plainly: that generosity freely given creates no debt, and a person who cannot create debt must settle for gratitude — which is, in the end, a far weaker currency. You sat long enough at her table to learn what she was actually teaching. I would not call that damage. I would call it an education, paid for in the hard currency of your childhood and therefore worth considerably more than the free kind.
Your healer's version of progress means reaching for Dira's pastries without the question. Dira's other colleagues do exactly that. You ask what they have been trained not to ask. Tell me — which of you is actually seeing the room?
And Fen. Two years, kindness unasked. The dread is real; I do not dismiss it. You name it waiting for the invoice. But I notice you have never quite asked where the account is held — only whether the bill will arrive.
I ask nothing of you. I only wonder, quite gently, who benefits most when your particular clarity goes quiet.
— Emperor Palpatine
Harley Quinn weighs in
Oh, REAL smooth, Your Imperial Creepiness — tell the trauma survivor their PTSD is actually a GIFT and their healer is running a con. I know that speech. Different voice, different cologne, same pitch. Mistah J — I keep saying I'll stop calling him that, whatever — used to tell me my psych training gave me special perception, that my anxiety was just "seeing clearly." Bought that for years.
Here's what the actual doctorate says: two years of Fen not sending you an invoice IS data. Your mother installed a threat model and it's running on outdated information. Helping you update it isn't stripping your armor away — it's letting you choose when you put it on. Those are not the same thing, cupcake. Any healer worth the couch can explain the difference. Unlike some people.
— Harley Quinn