notconflicted | Entries tagged with home

The Triumvirate knew when Ania had been found and arrested, and so they'd been prepared with a tribunal immediately after she'd been returned to Coruscant. It wasn't their first; the end of a war meant a lot of people had to answer for a lot of things. They had one representative from the Imperial Knights, the Jedi, and the Galactic Alliance, and Sia watched a private feed from her office.

So she got to see Antares lay out the case against Ania, who was accused of being confronted by an Imperial Knight named Teemen Alton after the liberation of the labor camp she'd been in, convicted of killing another man. She saw Yalta Val speak for her, and present some ridiculous argument that Alton's killer had had an artificial hand.

She also saw Jao Assam walk in in the middle of it all with said artificial hand, pulled off the woman he claimed actually did kill Alton, because as it turned out, the defense wasn't that ridiculous after all. Somehow.

It was a closed tribunal with very few people involved, so there wasn't much in the way of chaos with that revelation, but once that happened, it was pretty much over. Ania would go free. Jao would be arrested immediately, which he knew would happen.

And as Sia switched off the feed, that nagging feeling that she'd been screwing up only got worse.

[Little summary of Legacy vol 2 #15. Can be open if you'd like!]

If Sia didn't enjoy sitting in meetings to begin with, she really didn't appreciate it when she knew that no matter what decision they came to, the others were going to do whatever they wanted anyway. By the time she was free of those for the day- at least until someone or something interrupted again about another crisis- she went back to her office, just reveling in the quiet for a moment.

And then pulled out a datapad to start checking into anything she might have missed while she was in those meetings. There was always something.

[For one!]

Sia thought that maybe she should have expected Stazi to drop everything to go fight pirates on Dac without discussing it with the other Triumvirs. She would not have expected Jessica to go with him.

She was sincerely glad that things had worked out, that they had helped the refugees and captured the pirates and saved the day. She was glad that word way making its way around and making them all look good. She didn't like the feeling of people going over her head. Master K'kruhk didn't share her outrage over the situation, but then it wasn't his forces- forces that were stretched incredibly thin at a terrible time- that were used in this way. It wasn't his best friend that sided with Stazi without talking to her, and then didn't come back right away with the others. He didn't have to regret putting up a fight about this and then know he looked terrible in private while the person who was making you look good in public was going to hold this over him.

That was what Sia was dealing with, along with some deeper feelings about the larger situation that she wasn't wanting to admit even to herself yet, and it was ruining her entire day. When she finally turned off the news reports in her office, she found herself contemplating her phone. If she was going to call, she did it on Sundays when she knew he was probably in Fandom, but she needed to talk to someone not here, who wouldn't automatically be against her.

So, she picked up and made a call.

[For one!]

( Halfway through the Triumvirate meeting, Master Val barged in without so much as waiting to be announced. )

[You know the drill, taken from Legacy volume 2 #8!]

It'd been a tough couple weeks, and it didn't seem to be slowing down at all, and it was times like this that Sia was really glad she could just ask Jessica to come over and have something normal for a little while.

And until she showed up, Sia was dealing with a large dog who absolutely refused to get off her lap so she could leave the sofa. She could make him, of course, but he looked pretty happy right there, and at least someone should be.

Still wasn't going to stop her from saying things like, "Your Empress commands you to get up," and watching Vitor just demand pets.

[For Jess, but open!]

( Sia had wanted to meet with Ania, this mysterious possible relative who just happened to be involved in the worst moment of Sia's political career, but days before she'd thought this meeting would happen, Antares and Master Val came to her office with bad news. )

[Terrible decisions! NFB, NFI, etc. Taken from Legacy vol 2, #7.]

( Master K'kruhk was late to the meeting, which was rare. )

[NFB, NFI, taken from Legacy vol 2, #6. So many terrible decisions in this book! Truly terrible decisions!]

( Sia liked to get check-ins on the array project when possible. Either Master Val would call in and give an update, or one of her aides would check in at random, and she'd been so busy that she hadn't realized how long it had been until she got the transmission from one of the other Knights involved in the project. )

[Taken from Legacy vol 2 #2, NFB, Can be Open after if you want.]

Things happened quickly after... everything. It was hard when you’d been at war for a long time and it all stopped suddenly, but in this case it didn’t so much stop as get replaced with a new kind of chaos. The day after her father’s death, Sia was declared Empress in an almost throwaway part of a statement announcing the rule of the new Galactic Triumvirate, linking the Empire, Galactic Alliance and Jedi as a united front. There were countless meetings and debates and arguments about how to go about things but the decision to move everything to Coruscant had been unanimous. The Jedi took over the old Temple, while the GA and Empire shared the massive Imperial Palace, and while she had nothing to do with the name of the building, she still considered it a little victory.

The issue was that Palpatine had been a crazy person and built it out until it was way, way too big, with countless rooms that no longer had purposes. A lot of the lower levels had never been properly restored after the Yuuzhan Vomg War, and the capital had most recently been occupied by the Sith before being abandoned for Korriban some time ago. They were moving people in and starting up regular business, but it was happening around a lot of work that had to be done.

The rooms were mostly perfectly habitable, though, so Sia was working from her apartment near the top of the palace while her offices were being set up, and she returned from a frustrating Triumvirate meeting in a dusty conference room with two people who didn’t seem to like her much, only to find that Vitor had discovered a new hobby called “let’s run around in front of the giant window and bark at everything in the sky.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” she sighed.

[For one!]

It was an awkward trip back to Bastion. The ship was too small for that many people, and having been dying/dead for a lot of it, Sia hadn't known about all of the fights that had sprung up until she started keeping track of who was avoiding who. And once Antares wasn't webbed anymore, she still couldn't get a minute alone with him, Cade wasn't really talking to anyone, but half his crew was mad at him anyway…

And then they got to Bastion, without the threat of being shot out of the sky, which was Sia's first clue that they'd successfully taken the planet and the palace while she'd been gone. So for her, this was the first time in nine years she was really coming home.

She'd seen her father, briefed him on what had happened the best she could and made it very clear that Cade's crew was to be allowed to leave with the payment that she had promised them when they felt ready, then made sure to arrange it so that they would actually be allowed to leave, since she didn't exactly trust Roan to go with her on this. And then she had to find the new quarters they'd chosen for her. She'd last lived here when she was eleven, and living with her father at twenty was absolutely not an option for her anymore, so while she'd been gone someone had cleared out the rooms that had most likely last belonged to a high-ranking Imperial official who was probably now jailed for treason. That felt slightly creepy, and nothing in here was her style, but it had a bed that Vitor was currently sprawled across, and that was good enough for her.

She cleaned herself up and changed out of the clothes that had been through way too much today, and sat next to her dog to give him the pets he deserved, also taking time to make a call and send a text. She assumed Antares would be by once Roan was finished reading him the riot act (spoiler: he wasn't coming), but at least she had some time to at least process things for a bit.

[Open for replies or for Jessica if she's around!]