The Mirror within the Mask 7

We arrived at the Nona Shyr Art Gallery shortly after eight and were in plenty time to hear the Emperor’s opening words and the organiser’s thank you speech as the exhibition was opened.

Thrawn, dressed in his uniform, gracefully retrieved two glasses of some pale pink drink in oversized champagne glasses. He handed one to me and I sipped it quietly while listening to the speech being given by the artist’s daughter. I glanced around and was amazed at how full the large gallery room was. Many of the faces I recognized and some I did not. I was glad I had chosen to wear one of Cati’s more exotic dresses because everyone was dressed up in their finest, or like Thrawn, they wore a uniform. Even gallery openings doubled as a Coruscant fashion show. Every clapped politely as the speeches ended and the exhibition was opened up for all to view. Smartly dressed wait staff manoeuvred deftly through the crowds serving strangely coloured drinks and gorgeous canapés.

Ermall Bernau had been a brilliant sculptor and painter who had been born on Bakura, where he had lived until the age of forty seven. He had moved to Alderaan when he had met his wife and spent the rest of his life there. He, along with all of his family except his daughter, had been killed when the planet had been destroyed. His works were strange yet elegant abstract representations of humans and aliens. He elongated the figure and exaggerated the limbs as well as the more prominent features physical features. He had primarily used Galanium as his favourite medium, a beautiful mix of neutronium and gold favoured by many artists.

His paintings were more about colour and motion than any particular concrete form. In a book about his work that my mother had owned he had said that he couldn’t be bothered with the finicky art of using a brush so he used his fingers and his paint buckets and slopped paint on the canvas, using his hands to play with the colours. I had often discussed with Bel about whether or not this could be considered art, after all, I often said playing devil’s advocate, a small child could do the same thing. These discussions had often gone on all night.

Now in the very beautiful setting of the Nona Shyr Gallery I looked at his paintings in a new light. I left Thrawn’s side to explore on my own, looking at each work, each painting and sculpture carefully, taking in the details of each piece. I was astonished at the vibrancy of his colours in the paintings and the tiny details of his sculptures that one never saw in books. I came to one painting called The Fractured Force and I was stopped in my tracks by it. I wasn’t sure if it was the colours he had used or the way in which they had been blended and shaped but what ever it was, the painting took my breath away. I stared at it, mentally tracing the paths his fingers had taken through the paint that had been dripped and poured onto the canvas. I had never seen a painting before that literally cried out to me. A painting that physically made me ache with a sorrow that I never even knew possible. I had to swallow down the sudden desire I had to cry.

“This was my father’s favourite, of all his paintings.” Said a soft, heavily accented voice to my side. I turned to look into the face of Bernau’s daughter.

“Why?” I asked, curious.

She sighed for a moment and thought about her answer carefully. “He said that when he painted it, it was as if the whole galaxy was a storm which poured into his being. He painted it close to the end of the Clone wars, just as the Jedi were declared outlaws to the state. When the madness really began, he used to say. I think it was that which broke his heart. He said he knew at that moment, when the Jedi were being slaughtered, that the soul of the universe was fractured in two.” She stared at the painting for along time and then looked back at me. “I’m sorry. You must think me very rude. I am Anallya Bernau.” She said offering me her hand. I shook it and introduced myself.

“Ahhh yes,” she nodded slowly. “The Emperor has mentioned your name to me, he said you were very interested in art. It was he who suggested that I speak with you.” She smiled.

“The Emperor is most kind with his words.” I said glancing around to see him talking with Thrawn and Grand Admiral Zaarin. Lord Vader was not present. I had mentioned the show to him and his reply had been rude. I turned back to look at Anallya. “Why would your father think that way about the Jedi Purge?”

She shrugged slightly. “I do not know, he would never say exactly. He once told me that the Jedi had overseen peace in the galaxy for thousands of years and their destruction was a terrible blow for everyone.” She told me softly. “When the Empire was created he stopped painting. After that he concentrated only on his sculptures. I was only five at the time. This painting was his gift to me when I left Alderaan to go to school here. He said it was to remind me of what could happen when chaos and greed clouded good judgement. I never understood what he meant and he died before I could think to ask.” She said, looking at me with an expression I didn’t understand. “You are the first person I have ever seen look at it exactly the same way he used to.”

I nodded. “It’s very powerful.” I said softly. “I had no idea your father’s paintings were so vivid. This is the first time I have ever seen any for real. Was it you who organized this showing?” I asked wanting to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Actually it was the Emperor who requested a collection of his works. I am here as a token, I think. I must be very honest with you Miss Gabriel; I do not like art all that much. I am far more interested in mathematics and physics.” She smiled. “But as the only surviving member of the family I felt it was my duty to come and see my father’s work so honoured. It is a shame the show is private and just for this one evening, but it is for a good cause.”

I nodded. Unlike me most of the patrons had purchased their ‘invitations’ at a huge price. All proceeds were to go to the preservation of Alderaanian flora and fauna. The exhibition was a veritable who’s who of the Coruscant rich and famous.

I nodded. When Thrawn appeared, I introduced him to Anallya and the rest of the evening passed in a haze of interesting art discussion, polite, banal banter and subtly underhanded political back stabbing. I suppressed the desire to run when the Emperor came over to join us. Once the polite formalities of bowing and curtsying were done he began to converse with us.

“I see you two young ladies have met.” He said casually to both Anallya and me. We nodded. She was in awe of him, me, I was just terrified.

“Well, Miss Gabriel how are you enjoying the show?” he enquired politely, with that slight smile that reminded me of dead things.

“It’s very impressive, your Excellency.” I said, trying to avoid eye contact.

“And you, Admiral, what do you think? Do you share young Miss Gabriel’s sweepingly general opinion?”

I frowned at his barb and his smile widened just a hair’s breadth.

Thrawn cocked that single eyebrow and looked around the room. “I find the juxtaposition of the three dimensional works with his earlier paintings quite jarring.” He said coolly.

“Why?” demanded Palpatine, leaning a little closer towards his only Chiss officer as he asked.

Thrawn drew a slow deep breath. “His earlier works stem from a time when he was more content and happy. His art is more free in its expressive nature; he explores the universe through his rather unconventional use of paint. One can see the sudden shift from this freedom of spirit and artistry when one looks carefully at the piece he called The Fractured Force, the last piece he ever painted, if I am not mistaken?” he looked at Anallya who nodded. “After he stopped painting he began to explore the world through three dimensional medium but this medium lacked the freedom his earlier works show. His sculptures are exaggerated images of beings that, when one understand how the Empire works, are the forgotten races, the alien races who now find themselves on the fringe of society. These sculptures are tight and constricted, bound by some law he did not feel when he painted. He found a way to enslave his talent and prison it in his sculptures, the same way the Empire enslaves alien races and binds them to work in the ship yards. This tells me he felt constrained to produce more conventional looking works, but instead he produced art which spoke of sadness and bitterness. To place the two styles together in one room is jarring. They are so diametrically opposed to each other. Freedom verses restriction. Light verses dark. He was not pleased with the fall of the Old Republic and it shows in his art. Were he alive today I cannot help but think he would be siding with the Rebel Alliance and not with the Empire.”

Palpatine stared at Thrawn for what seemed an eternity. The air was suddenly thick and oppressive with the power of the force which Palpatine wielded. It was almost as if Thrawn had laid down some invisible challenge and the Emperor was deciding what to do about it. I stared at the Emperor for a second, waiting for his response. Then without warning the world around me seemed to shimmer and fall away. I found myself staring at Thrawn seated in a command chair dressed completely in white clutching his hands to his chest. It was not this strange scene that caused my heart to skip a beat but the look of surprise on his face and the red of the blood that ran from underneath his fingers. As swiftly as it had come so the vision vanished, leaving me shaking in its wake. It had been so quick, so brief and yet so real that for the barest of moments I had no idea where I was. I knew a sort of fear then, not for myself but for the man whose bed I shared, whose affections I held onto and did not want to lose. It was a sudden sharp ache and the sheer power of it made me clutch my pendant and gasp.

Palpatine turned to look at me. “My dear young lady, you are as white as an Alderaan lily, are you feeling quite well?”

I glanced at Thrawn who showed no emotion at all and nodded. “Yes, I am fine. Just a little tired.” I said, trying not to show my trembling fingers.

Palpatine took my hand in his and patted it in the most avuncular manner. His skin was cool and dry. “Perhaps it is time the good Admiral here took you back home. You look as though you have seen some terrible spectre. I am quite sure Lord Vader would be most displeased should his favourite employee take ill.”

I had to fight the urge to pull my hand away from his and nodded slightly, lowering my eyes so he would not see the emotion that boiled there. “I’m fine, really it’s nothing. Too long a day and I didn’t eat enough.”

“Of course.” Palpatine said in that caress of a voice which slithered down my back making me shudder. This time Thrawn glanced at me in a ‘do you wish to leave?’ sort of look and I shook my head slightly all the while being observed by Anallya and the Emperor. With a deep steadying breath I found my center and put a lid on the fear that never seemed to go away when ever the Emperor was near.

“Well then, I must attend to my paying guests, I shall let you young ladies enjoy the evening.” He said to Anallya and me. He turned then to Thrawn, “Perhaps you should look to Miss Gabriel’s well being, Admiral. She does seem to blossom under your care.” His words had a strange touch of threat to them which I didn’t understand. “Perhaps at another time we shall discuss further your ideas about Bernau’s works.” He added and as we bowed and curtsied he moved off, his shadowy entourage moving with him. I stared at his back until Thrawn handed me another drink and Anallya began to ask Thrawn more about his own feelings on the show and art in general. Slowly I found myself able to think straight again and after a few sips of the incredibly cold drink I felt almost normal. The strange vision receded but the irrational fear it had instilled remained. As much as I enjoyed the event, I was grateful when it was time to leave. My face ached from having to smile so much.

***

A few days after the exhibition I was curled up on the couch with Thrawn watching a report from the Colonial News Nets about the recent activity by the Imperial forces. They had just taken the planet Lirra away from the Hutts in a dramatic show of force. The footage shown was quite astonishing. The reporter who had been embedded with the battalion detached to deal with this situation was currently shouting into his recorder about the bloody battle currently going on to free the Human slaves. He was elated about the freeing of the humans and I wondered as I watched this if the rest of the galaxy’s non human population felt the same way. The Empire used slaves without apology, especially from planets such as Kashyyyk. Thrawn just shook his head at the report and was about to change the feed when the doorbell sounded. It was late enough that someone coming to call raised eyebrows. He made a stay here hand gesture and went to answer it. When he came back he had a large, flat rectangular box in his arms.

“It’s for you.” He said.

With his help I opened it. Inside the box, under the protective wrapping was the Bernau painting; The Fractured Force.

“I wasn’t aware this piece was for sale.” Thrawn said as he cleared away the paper and the packaging, setting the painting against the table so that when we both sat on the couch we could look at it.

“It isn’t, wasn’t.” I told him. “It belongs to his daughter.” I stared at the painting, feeling that strange emptiness in my gut and the sudden prickle of tears. I didn’t stop them as they trickled down my cheek. I didn’t understand my reaction to this piece of art at all.

“This was tucked in the back of the canvas.” He said handing me an envelope. I took it from his hand and slipped the letter out but my hand shook as I went to read it. I was grateful when he took it from my hand and gave me a puzzled glance. I ignored it, wiping the tears off my face angrily.

He looked at me for a moment but didn’t comment on my visibly visceral reaction to the painting. Instead he read the letter to me, his voice soothing the bizarre storm of emotions that made me ache.

Dear Miss Gabriel,

I know this is quite forward of me and I hope that you will forgive any breech of etiquette. I told you that my father had given me this painting when I had left home to go and study here at the Coruscant Institute for technology to remind me of what could happen when chaos and greed clouded good judgement. What I did not tell you is that I really disliked this painting and he knew that as well. It frightened me although I never knew or understood why. I suspect that on some level he was aware of this and was hoping I would learn some lesson from it. My father and I never communicated all that well.

I had not wanted to keep the painting, I often discussed it with him because I was well aware of its market value and felt it was wasted hanging on the wall of a room I rarely used because I couldn’t stand to look at it. He made me promise to keep it safe until I found a person who felt about it the same way he did. I asked him how I would ever know that and he said ‘you will see it in their eyes, their body language and their face’. I never believed him until I saw your reaction to it at the showing and then I understood.

The conversation I had with my father about this painting, the one were me extracted this promise from me was the last one I had with him. Two days later he, along with everyone else who was on the planet at the time, was killed with the destruction of Alderaan. Every time I look at the painting I remember this conversation and it makes me sad.

As it was his wish and because I can no longer bear to have this painting in my possession I would very much like you to have it. I hope that you will enjoy and treasure it. I think you will, I saw your expression and I believe that this piece speaks to you in a way I am unable to comprehend.

I hope you do not mind that I was able to obtain the address of where you currently reside from the Emperor himself. The Human Resources office was a bit vague about how to reach you and I did not want to leave the painting just anywhere.

If you have any questions or would perhaps like to meet for non art conversation I would be delighted.

Sincerely yours,
Anallya Bernau

I sat back on the couch hard, watching as he folded the letter up and slipped it back in its envelope. His touch was incredibly gentle as he stroked my face.

“You seem to have made quite an impression; this painting is worth a small fortune.” He said softly.

I shook my head. “It’s priceless and she hated it.” I told him. “And since when did this place become my mailing address? As far as HR and everyone else are concerned, my place of residence is still the flat at the palace.” Anger leeched into my voice taking the place of the inexplicable sorrow I had just felt.

Thrawn shrugged. “I have not advertised the fact that you often spend more nights here than there, but the Emperor does seem to keep a close eye on your whereabouts. I would not worry about it too much. He was probably concerned that such a valuable piece of art made it to where it was supposed to without incident. The loss of such a work of art would not look too good on the palace couriers.”

I nodded but was unconvinced. In little, insignificant ways the Emperor made it known that he was a part of my life, a gentle guiding hand, a subtle suggestion whispered. I loathed his interference almost as much as I feared it. That he knew I tended to spend more time here than at the flat in the palace bothered me. It made me wonder, if he knew then who else also knew and if that was the case just how safe was I really? I sighed and stared at the painting. It made me sad, touching something deep in my being that made me ache without knowing why.

“Can I hang this is the spare room?” I asked after a long silence. The spare room had become my room by default. It was where I kept my things that I didn’t want at the flat in the palace, my study and place to go when I wanted to be by myself but to actually call it mine seemed to cross a line I wasn’t quite ready for yet.

Thrawn nodded. “Of course. I have told you, that room is yours to do with as you wish.” He said as if he could read my thoughts. He had stopped being subtle about his feelings towards me sharing his home. I was a part of his world and he did not regret his choices in this matter, but I was still uncertain. I made a face and got up, taking the painting and the letter into the room. I didn’t want to look at it any more and I certainly didn’t want to think about all the implications that came along with it.

When I came back Thrawn had poured two brandies and was watching me intently.

“You have that look on your face again.” He said as I sat back down beside him.

“What look is that?”

“The haunted one.” He said.

I shook my head. “Well that would be because there are too many damn ghosts in my life, Za’ar.” I said.

He stared at me steadily for a moment and then said. “There are no such things as ghosts, my dear.”

I didn’t answer him; I just sipped the brandy and settled back against his warmth. I knew he was wrong but there were just some things one could not argue with Thrawn about no matter what.

We also never spoke of what I had seen and experienced in the Jedi Temple. Thrawn did not bring the subject up and neither did I but I thought about it a great deal. Many nights I woke up crying from a nightmare where I watched the slaughter of those younglings over and over again. Each time the dream ended the same way, with the Emperor laughing, his hand upon Anakin’s shoulder whispering the words, “Well done, my young apprentice, well done.” But Anakin had not felt that way. I remembered how he had felt, and he had not been proud, he had been scared and confused as well as angry.

On these nights where I would wake, unable to return to sleep, I would get up, wrap a blanket around my shoulders and sit out on the balcony, watching the city move around me, oblivious to the dark currents that ran underneath everything. I found it odd that I did not hate Lord Vader for what he had done, what he had become but rather a part of me pitied him. He had admired the Emperor; I knew this from my birth mother’s journal. Anakin Skywalker had been a lonely often sad young boy and it was then Chancellor Palpatine who had befriended him in many ways becoming the surrogate father Anakin had never had.

But Palpatine had used and manipulated Anakin so subtly that Anakin had not seen it coming until it was too late, until there was no turning back. Now, no longer Anakin Skywalker, Lord Vader hated the Emperor and it was something the Emperor counted on but I didn’t understand this. Everything about their relationship was wrapped up in lies and deceit and I knew that somewhere deep in what ever was left of his soul, Lord Vader was biding his time. I also knew that at the very heart of the matter was his love for the woman called Padmé and his mother but these were topics I could never talk with him about. He either got violently angry or silent and moody to the point of shutting himself away for days. I had learned very quickly which topics were off limits. That had been a matter of pure survival.

Not for the first time, during these episodes, did I wonder if Jyrki had not been right about everything all along and I was the one in the wrong. Working for men who murdered younglings, oppressed rights and freedoms of non humans, whose only real goal seemed to be the accumulation of power, but somehow I could not justify what Jyrki had done to me either. Two wrongs did not make a right, as my father used to tell me, and I felt as though I were trapped in the middle. It seemed to me, sitting alone in the cool of the dark that the galaxy was slowly going mad, spiralling inward on itself and the only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to get caught in the implosion.

Thrawn left me alone on nights such as these. He would watch me, the questions on his lips, in his eyes and mind never spoken aloud, as I left the warmth of the bed we shared. He had tried, at first, to draw out my thoughts and discuss the situation but I would close up and, much like Lord Vader, become moody and peevish. He had learned that there were some things in my life that required space and time not discussion and classification. What was there to discuss? These memories were never mine but now they were a part of me and only I could deal with them. The one person who could have helped and given me clarity was the one person I could never talk with about them and so it was either sink or swim. My experience with the aftermath of a trauma had taught me that pure denial was useless and often ended in me doing something dramatic and stupid. So I would sit on the balcony of Thrawn’s beautiful Coruscant apartment and allow the thoughts to work themselves through.

More often than not it was there Thrawn would find me, curled up under the thickly woven Dantassi blanket which had become my favourite, staring out at the slowly lightening, pre dawn sky. He wouldn’t say much but usually brought me a cup of sweet tea and together we would sit in silence as night gave way to day. Somewhere along the line he had come to understand that his silence was as much a gift as his ability to analyse and unravel a situation through strategy and tactical thought.

It was times such as these where I knew that my downfall, as far as he was concerned, was complete. He had become such an integral, important part of my life that were he to suddenly vanish I would be utterly devastated. This was something I never told him, never spoke of and kept well hidden. I knew in my heart that while, for the time being, he was content to stay on Coruscant and play the political games, dance that elegant dance of court intrigue, it would not last. I would catch him sometimes staring up at the sky and the sensation of longing I felt from him was so intense it made me catch my breath. So I treasured what time we had together, knowing it would change. Everything changed, it was inevitable. Even the stars in the sky did not last forever.