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Ursa pushes her datapad aside and folds her hands together on her desk, leaning forward to stare at the nervous boy standing opposite her.
“That is a very specific hypothetical question, young man.”
“Could you just… answer it, please?” he asks. He ducks his head, but he doesn’t avoid her gaze. He's not afraid of her.
Good.
He may be a Jedi, but at least he’s not a coward.
“Well,” Ursa begins with a faint smile, sitting up again. “Yes. The vows were taken voluntarily, so the marriage is legal.”
“Karabast,” he winces, finally looking away from her.
She continues. “But—because the vows were also taken under the influence of alcohol—”
“Interrogation drugs, actually,” he interrupts.
Interesting. He hadn’t been specific about the hypothetical mind-altering substance in this hypothetical scenario, so she’d assumed her daughter had made a drunken mistake. Perhaps not, though.
“Under the influence of a substance,” she revises, “the marriage is also legally annullable, if the two of—” She stops herself from saying you; it does no harm to play along with his hypothetical charade. “—them, have never had that kind of a relationship. I assume that’s the case?”
He shakes his head quickly. “Yeah. That—no. Nope.”
“Of course, to get an annulment, the young man would have to tell his friend that she accepted his proposal—”
“What?! No, I didn’t—”
He breaks off and flushes red, looking away for the second time.
A moment passes in silence.
“If it’s any consolation, I knew you were lying since you opened your mouth,” Ursa offers, and he runs a hand over his face.
“I figured, but it was worth a shot.” He peeks at her through his fingers. “But, yeah—it was her idea, not mine.”
“Sabine’s idea?” My goodness, she’s farther gone than I thought.
“Yeah, it was weird. Whatever they gave me basically turned me into a zombie, but she was bouncing off the walls. I just remember sitting in the corner of the cell watching as she paced back and forth and gave me a ten-minute explanation on why I needed to marry her.”
Ursa laughs. She doesn’t try to hide it. “And Sabine doesn’t remember any of this?”
“None of it.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Probably not, but that’s what it felt like.”
She shakes her head and leans back in her chair.
“It’s good that you’ve told me this,” she says. “With Sabine’s return, it’s possible some clans will seek to ally themselves by marriage. That would not be possible if she already had a spouse.”
“Oh.” The boy wears his heart on his sleeve; he cannot hide the pang of hurt that strikes him at her words. “Makes sense. So… how does the annulling thing work?”
“In this case, the first step is for you to tell her exactly what happened, and ask if she wants an annulment."
He begins to reply, but pauses.
“If?” he asks.
Ursa clasps her hands, pressing the pads of her thumbs together.
“Well, yes. There’s a few reasons she might not. An annulment is public. If only the three of us know, she might want to just hush it up in case of a scandal—act like it never happened. You understand?”
He nods, and she goes on.
“Another possibility is that Sabine might not want to marry a stranger in a political alliance. In fact, I’m fairly sure she’d rather have you.” Ursa doesn’t laugh at the way he blushes again, but it’s a struggle. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I don’t think you’d have a problem with that?”
“Uh, no, ma’am. That would be—pretty—okay. With me.”
Again, he breaks eye contact. It amuses her, slightly, to see the boy who was so brave in the face of a clan of angry Mandalorians breaking down under some gentle questioning.
Ursa leans back a little farther in her chair, reclining it slightly and kicking her feet up on the desk as she makes her final comment—she’s going to have fun with this one. “And she might simply be in love with you, of course.”
He stammers, and sputters, and shakes his head, and finally just demands, “Are you crazy?”
Oh, you poor, blind boy.
“It’s possible,” Ursa goes on, nonchalantly. “You two are clearly quite close. You lived with each other on the same ship for years. You worship the ground she walks on, and if you did something about your hair, you’d be quite the teenage heartthrob. All I’m saying is—don’t rule it out. Hypothetically, of course,” she adds with a smile.
He gawks at her. “And—you’d—be—okay with that?”
Ursa sighs. “With Sabine, I have learned to pick my battles, and believe it or not, I like you. You have courage.”
“I mean—I’m a Jedi, too.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” she retorts. “Now, is that all? Because I was in the middle of reviewing some battle plans. And staging an insurgence on Mandalore does take priority over discussing romantic difficulties, I’m afraid.”
“Oh! Sorry—yeah.” He starts backing away towards the door. “That’s—that’s all. Thanks for… explaining.”
“Of course. Anything for my dear son-in-law. Now, go find Sabine,” she orders, before he can make a flustered protest. “Talk this out, and then get some rest. It’s getting late. Oh, and send Sabine to me when you’re done speaking—or kissing, or sparring, or whatever it takes to resolve this. She was supposed to be in my office half an hour ago, working on our plans.”
The red-faced boy stammers something and trips on his own feet as he skitters out of the room.
Ursa waits until the door is shut behind him and his footsteps have receded down the hall before she looks down, craning her neck.
“Out of curiosity, do you really have no memory of asking him to marry you, or were you lying so you wouldn’t have to talk about it?”
Sabine—looking furious as a wet tooka—glares up at her. Really, there’d been no need to dive under the desk to hide from him. She could have just pretended she was discussing strategy with Ursa, like she was supposed to be doing, instead of inflicting a thirty-minute-long tangent about the young Jedi in question on her poor mother.
How typical, of young love.
“I’m disowning you,” Sabine hisses.
Ursa smiles, faintly. She considers jibing back—wait until after the wedding, dear, I want a piece of cake—but decides against it.
After all, she’d been telling the truth. Saving Mandalore took priority over this personal drama. First they had to stage a rebellion. All of this could come later.
Besides, she’d hate for Alrich to miss the wedding.