Gilded (fanfiction)

[Rhea Kaylen]

This takes place some months after "Behind the Veil," Rhea's biggest adventure to date, written with Corias Bonaventure. Rhea has since spent time on her home planet of Imran and returned to Coruscant to join the Jedi Order. While it certainly isn't necessary to have read "Behind the Veil" first, it may help you to understand some of the things that happen.

Many thanks to Andrew, whose character and dialogue I reference extensively in here.

Property of ISJ, copyright 2004. Do not steal or use without my permission. Constructive criticism or comments much appreciated.

[Rhea Kaylen]

GILDED

"Excuse me, can you help me find something?"

Rhea Kaylen leaned lightly on the front desk in the first expansive room of the Temple's Archives, nervously biting her lower lip as the head librarian raised her sharp eyes over the narrow rims of her spectacles.

Her bland voice was edged with a businesslike tone, but she seemed in a good mood today. "Yes, miss? What can I do for you?"

Rhea attempted a halfhearted smile. "I'm looking for information about a particular language. A foreign language. Do you maybe have anything like that?"

The librarian's stern gaze grew even harder with indignation. "Miss, this is Coruscant's foremost historical and literary archive, consisting of a collection of works matched by few inside the Core Worlds. We have many, many fine texts written in or about languages other than Basic. I think you can probably find something here that will help you."

Right, then, nothing like getting on the boss's good side, Rhea thought, feeling foolish. She very much wished she could disappear now and leave the cranky archivist to her own blissful, bookish solitude. But Rhea was determined to do this now, because she had put it off so long, because her own curiosity was killing her about it, and because now was as good a time as any.

"Okay, then. I'm looking not so much for something written in this language as a guide to the language. A study book or something, perhaps."

The librarian looked overly pleased that she could just point Rhea on and go back to her work. "The very end shelf on this row," she gestured. Rhea followed the indication with her eyes. "The one with the red marker."

Rhea nodded thanks and began walking toward the correct shelf. Her step was resolute and brisk; she liked the Archives very much but felt at the moment as if she were still under the librarian's vigilant eye, and so wanted to get this done and get out quickly. As she passed the rows and rows of cool, stately shelves housing infinite numbers of small colored datapad cards and computer file disks, Rhea took notice of little, her mind occupied. She only stopped briefly to blink in surprise at a statuary bust she'd never seen before. Of course, it had probably always been here, she'd just never been in this part of the Archives to see it.

It was a bust of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the detail-bereft eyes fixed in a sagely manner on all he surveyed. Rhea wasn't sure why she was surprised to see the long-dead Jedi Master's face here, but it caught her attention enough to give her pause. Amused, she took stock of the sculpted features; the artist, whoever he'd been, had done a good job, based on what she could remember from the holovids she'd seen. Though the nose was a slight broader than it should have been. And the likeness captured none of the very fine, crinkled lines that gathered at the corners of Kenobi's eyes when he smiled. But otherwise the piece was well-done, if a bit on the plain side of well-done. Rhea allowed her fingertips to trail reverently over the bust's brassy name plaque as she swept by.

She finally arrived at the shelf she wanted, last in a massively long line of them and the only one denoted by a red sign affixed to the end. As she entered the shaded area between that shelf and the next, Rhea craned her head to take in the full height of the thing. Why were they built so high in the first place? She eyed the scaling ladder with distaste, but gripped the first rung above her head and swung onto the frame, clambering ungracefully upwards and running her eyes along the labeled tags as she climbed.

The items were arranged alphabetically, and Rhea could easily see that, even under the head archivist's meticulous care and cleaning, this particular shelf had been somewhat neglected. She noticed the fine particles of dust imbedded next to each datapad card that clearly showed these texts had not been used in quite some time. Rhea didn't care at all about a little dust—she only hoped the disks were in good enough condition to use.

Alphabetical listings blurred by her eyes: X-Y…W…T…R…R…R—there seemed an inordinate number of languages beginning with R—O-P…M…K…G…F. There.

Now Rhea slid her index finger down the shelf in search of the exact entry she was looking for. A momentary spasm of anxiety crossed her for the first time—maybe there wouldn't be anything here that could help her. Really, this wasn't a big thing, no matter of life or death or even reputation, but she was so desperately curious. In fact…this went beyond mere curiosity. She needed to know.

She began to panic slightly as she started running out of F's, to such an extent that she actually missed the entry she sought—completely passed over it. In dismay, she went back over the labels again, and this time saw her mistake. With a grin, Rhea plucked the wafer-thin datacard from its spot, turning it over in her fingers and glad of its solid existence in her grasp, an answer waiting to be had, like a ripe fruit picked and waiting to be tasted.

But not now. Rhea half-slid, half-climbed down the ladder, rushed back to the front desk, and retreated from the Archives the second the librarian had scanned her out.

********

For the next three hours, Rhea was busy training and working, and unable to investigate her find. Had they been three unoccupied hours in which her mind could fester over what she might find on the datacard, she would have gone crazy thinking about it. But as it was, Rhea didn't have a solitary quiet moment the whole afternoon, and was saved the misery of being able to brood.

Finally, she was free to do as she pleased, and immediately went back to her room in the Temple living quarters.

Rhea loved her room, a sentimental, feminine sort of attachment that she was prone to forming for places she lived. She'd once been told never to love something that couldn't love her back, but she'd never taken the advice to heart. Especially since the small space which she inhabited here was a place she'd very much personalized, Rhea had long since come to regard her simple room as a comfortable and welcoming home.

The walls were the same plain, off-white as all the dorms in the Temple, but she had hung up a few handmade, colorful Imrani wall-cloths, and even put out a throw rug, to make it seem more homey. The bookshelves suspended in one corner held many of Rhea's most precious trinkets, though several were more than just dust-collecting knick-knacks. Her mother's lightsaber sat in pride of place, and under it hung the same woman's old, tattered, knife-slashed Jedi robe. Alongside the weapon were a bag of Astrel's teardrops, tumbled smooth for playing Stones; two rolled-up stellar charts and a moon chart; Rhea's repulsorboard (mostly a showpiece—she hadn't ridden it for ages); a stack of datacards; and three holovid projectors housing infinitely precious old vids of family and friends.

On the floor below the shelves was a small wooden trunk made of fragrant wood and carved all over with Imrani runes. Inside were important papers Rhea kept on behalf of her family, as well as her own journals filled up with memories, essays, transcriptions, rants, and the occasional doodle. Besides this trunk, all the other furniture in the room was standard Temple-issue and native to the room itself—small worktable and chair, sideboard with cabinets and a hotplate, uncomfortable bed (made much more tolerable by the addition of extra blankets as padding), and a chest of drawers.

Upon entering and locking her door, Rhea seized her datapad off the top of the chest of drawers and collapsed onto her bed, inserting the datacard she pulled from an inner pocket of her tunic. Stuffing the earphones into her ears, she thumbed the power switch, squinting past the initially bright glare of the screen, and poked at the face of the display with the stylus.

Bonjour, mes amis, a rich, male voice emanated from the high-quality headphones. Welcome to The Comprehensive Guide to La Langue Française.

********

For the next four hours Rhea was immersed in a swirl of words and sounds. Nothing else existed but the letters arranged on the small datapad screen, and no one else existed but the handsome-sounding man spinning foreign meanings into her ears. Once she'd started poking about the preliminary lessons, she'd become absorbed in the sound of the infinitely graceful language and began reading. And reading. And she was fascinated. She listened carefully to the alien words, wondering how the combinations of letters she saw could possibly be pronounced the way they were. She steered mostly clear of the grammatical sections, as she wasn’t really trying to learn the language, but she needed a basic idea of how to correctly pronounce the language in order to do what she needed to do.

At the end of all the pronunciation guides and primer lessons, Rhea suddenly gave a start, like waking from a dream, and quickly glanced at her wrist chronometer. Uh-oh, she only had about fifteen minutes until her sparring lesson with Sejah. Better make this quick.

Rhea rifled through the various objects littering the top of her chest of drawers and located the small microphone for her datapad. Jacking it into the device, Rhea suddenly paused. Now that it came to it, she balked slightly at the idea of finally finding out the answer to the question that had been niggling at the back of her brain for nearly a year. That was ridiculous—Rhea had been dying to know this ever since her ill-fated journey home to Imran last year as a passenger on the scout ship Iolanthe, captained by Corias Bonaventure.

That trip…a disaster in many ways, a complete adventure in many others. Had she never gone, never asked him to take her back to Imran, she would now be without some of the worst nightmares of her life—but also without some of the very best memories. She would never have met Taya, never have gotten to know Corias better. And he would never have left her with one of the most annoying quandaries she'd ever had to deal with.

Two phrases. That was all. And it had taken Rhea all of eight months to get around to translating them, from the beautiful language of Français, Corias' apparent personal favorite of all tongues, into something Rhea could understand.

Why she'd taken so long, even she couldn't say. The obvious answer was that she'd been busy, too occupied with her activities back home and with her training here at the Temple to take the time. That every time she'd remembered, she'd gotten sidetracked.

Which would have been true…mostly. But there was also a small, nearly invisible shadow of fear involved, like a tiny but abrasive grain of sand in the mouth of an oyster. Rhea had built up layer after layer of forced "forgetfulness" and deliberate refusal, and now she was trying to force herself to crack open the pearl of her ignorance and face whatever she found.

It was the risk taken with all endeavors of discovery, with all quests to reveal truth. The answer could always be painful or harsh. But never had it been so personal.

Logically, Rhea told herself it meant nothing. He'd said these things flippantly, or all but. Why was she putting so much weight on them?

Simply because he said them? sneered the voice in her mind. Admittedly…yes, because she was afraid of what he may have hidden behind the words.

Nothing, she told herself firmly, shaking her head and stabbing the stylus with unnecessary force. Nothing at all. Grow up, and finish this, so you can get to class.

This was the hard part, though. Rhea's long-term memory was exceptionally acute and always had been. She could still remember things with clarity that happened to her as a three- and four-year-old. But her short-term memory was fantastically awful—she was lucky to remember what she'd eaten for breakfast, most days. Usually, once she'd forgotten something, her mind wouldn't retrieve it again for another year or more. This, among other things, was something she'd been working on extra hard in her daily Force-exercises: mental recall and memory. She wasn't any good at it yet, but she would need it now to remember what Corias had said to her.

Closing her eyes, Rhea shut off awareness to what was around her, almost utterly (once, during one of these sorts of sessions, Kale had sneaked up on her and not only picked her pocket, but pulled the elastic out of her ponytail without her noticing), and began searching for the mental "file" containing memories of that certain period of time. Like watching a vid reeling dizzyingly in reverse-play, Rhea saw images flash by at lightspeed. Man-sized, furred, muzzled Fyrokkians—Taya, Arajah, Lord Arushi on his throne—on massive Red Claw Station; the blood-red of the Veil nebula outside a viewscreen; Corias, looking harried, holding a sweating bottle of beer to his forehead. There was a blank spot, total black, here—stop!

Rhea knew that she had been unconscious at this time, after Iolanthe had dropped from lightspeed inside the nightmarish Veil. She was waking, Corias was talking to her and turning on the brash yellow emergency lights, reaching out his hand to push away her hair matted on a facial burn. His hands, she momentarily allowed herself to tangent, were some of the strongest hands she'd ever seen, unlike any she knew. Not like her uncle's hands, blunt and playful, or her father's, detached, studious. Not a craftsman's hands. Like a mechanic's hands but restless, like Corias himself. Sinewy and steel, but for that moment, half a heartbeat, kind and generous and very careful.

His words, too, were gentle. And he'd called her, quite clearly but quite puzzlingly, ma chérie, in his strange language.

Quickly Rhea tucked this away. She could easily remember this small phrase, while the other was longer and much more complicated.

She searched for it, found it. In her mind's eye, she looked up from Corias' book, unintelligible to her, to see him sitting in a comical posture, as if caricaturing an orator.

Rhea took great care, scrutinizing her memory of his mouth and forcing hers to imitate it. Sound, halting and not very accurate, but good enough, came from her mouth.

"Vos yeux," she spoke into the microphone, "ils sont comme les étoiles du matin et de la soir."

The datapad beeped three times and flashed a sentence on-screen: Your eyes, they are like the stars of morning and of the evening.

Rhea laughed suddenly, a loud shout of a laugh that startled even her. Her anxiety instantly eased, her fear dissipated. So that was the extent of her unnecessary foreboding—a wonderful compliment that was so typically Corias it was amusing. Only a joke. Flattering, to be sure, but it was just something for him to privately enjoy confusing her with. In and of itself politely meaningless; probably something he'd read in a book someplace. Now that she saw it in Basic, she couldn't help grinning and rolling her eyes. I should have known.

Still smiling, Rhea cleared the screen and said, taking care to shape her mouth in accordance with the phonetics she'd been studying, "Ma chérie."

After three beeps, the translation appeared, and Rhea's smile faltered. My dear, it read. Rhea blinked and frowned, but the datapad wasn't finished yet. Three beeps more, and another translation was beneath the first. My beloved.

Rhea felt her breath catch. No. He hadn't meant it, it was as insignificant as the other phrase. Maybe even a habit for him—Corias was a charmer by nature and acted suave the majority of the time. He'd probably just said it without thinking.

But…he had been genuinely concerned for her then, of that she was certain. Maybe he'd just been distracted or thinking of someone else. But his eyes had been focused, and Rhea knew that his calling her by this name was in direct response to her addressing him as ad'gan-da, an Imrani term meaning brother (something she had done out of force of habit, as she often reverted to Imrani when flustered). He had consciously chosen to do so.

Rhea lowered the datapad, feeling emptied. She didn't know what to think, something that didn't happen often. She always had some grasp of a question or problem, but this baffled her. Clearly, it could not be taken at face value, as it would be ridiculous to think that Corias had taken his term of endearment to heart. Maybe there was no other good word in Français for what he'd really meant.

So…what had he meant?

This was not a joke. In fact, this was downright dangerous. Rhea could feel herself slipping, allowing herself to wonder, to entertain the concept that he might not have been kidding. She couldn't, absolutely couldn't do this.

Mentally, Rhea was slapping herself in the face and pulling out her own hair, her mouth forming soundless words over and over again—Idiot. Fool girl. Yr'gano—like a woman possessed or mad. She had spent years consciously destroying her own dreams and hopes, and yet in a single moment they had all been resurrected, leering at her in all their futile potency. She had long since accepted that the life of her mother and grandmother was an opportunity she had missed, dead to her now and never to be possible. She would never be a wife or mother, she knew that. To think otherwise was to invite the deadly depression and lack of purpose that had, for years, danced at the outside fringes of her existence, inviting her with subtle whispers to give in and admit that her life was a failure.

She'd accepted the truth, moved on, fought the malaise of self-pity tooth and nail. She was content with her life, not happy (happiness she had sacrificed with her dreams), but content that there was no alternative. In fact, she'd convinced herself totally that there was no other way. Work hard, live the life you've chosen, be a good student and friend, and forget everything else you've ever wanted. That's not important anyway.

Rhea still firmly believed that, and in a few moments had regained her composure, putting the thought from her mind that Corias had ever seen her as other than an acquaintance or employer. She looked at the datacard in her machine and, disgusted, ripped it out. On this innocent-looking thing were meaningless promises, words gilded with the juvenile gleam of things that could never be. Nothing meaningful.

Much like your own emotional defenses, niggled the voice again. A shallow, pretty façade that disintegrates at the mere utterance of words.

Pulling on her outer robe, Rhea stuffed the disk in her pocket, trying still to even her breathing and heartbeat. No, she insisted. What I do now does have meaning.

My class with Sejah, she thought, clipping her lightsaber to her belt.

The work I do with my master. She pulled her hood up over her head, shadowing her stricken face.

A life as a Jedi. This is all that matters to me now. And she left her room, striding as quickly as she could down the hall and through the Temple to the training room where she was meeting Sejah Haversh for a self-defense lesson.

On the way, she dropped the datacard into an Archive-return slot, and promptly put its memory out of her mind.