Chapter 5: Meeting Mon
The afterglow of triumph was a fickle thing, Leia decided. It had warmed her through lunch, fueled a sense of reckless, earned confidence that carried her through the rest of the day and into a deep, satisfied sleep. But in the harsh, polished light of a Coruscant morning, it felt thinner, more like a cloak she’d forgotten to take off. The memory of the whalebone was a distant ache, a dull ember. The memory of the delegates’ hands was… abstract.
She was eight minutes late to Mon Mothma’s office.
She entered without knocking, a habit born from years of rebel briefings where protocol died at the door. The difference here was the silence. No crackle of comlinks, no smell of ozone and stale caf. Just the quiet hum of climate control, the whisper of a fountain in the corner, and the clean, chilled scent of marble.
Mon did not look up from her datapad. She sat behind a desk of flowing, pale stone, sunlight from the vast window catching the grey strands in her auburn hair. A tray between them held a teapot, steam coiling from its spout, and two cups of that distinct, sharp blue tea.
“Sit,” Mon said, her voice neutral.
Leia sat in the offered chair, the plush velvet a stark contrast to the hard corner seat from yesterday. She waited. Mon finished reading, tapped the screen, and set the pad down with a soft click. Then she lifted her gaze.
“Eight minutes,” Mon said. She poured tea into Leia’s cup, then her own. The liquid was the color of a twilight sky. “In a war, eight minutes is the difference between an extraction and a massacre. In the Senate, it’s the difference between securing a vote and losing a system.”
“I was reviewing the Corellian amendments,” Leia said, the lie smooth on her tongue. She’d been watching a speeder bike race from her balcony.
“No, you weren’t.” Mon took a sip. “But we’ll begin with today’s lesson regardless. The Art of Strategic Concession.” She leaned forward. “You performed one yesterday. An instinctual, brilliant one. Now you must learn to perform them coldly, calculatedly, when there is no ruler held to your backside to inspire creativity.”
The frankness, the lack of any maternal warmth Padmé might have used, was its own kind of shock. This was pure politics.
“You gave the delegates a piece of personal power over you,” Mon continued. “In return, they gave Alderaan commercial power over them. A superb trade. But you must never let them believe it was a fair one. The moment they think they got the better deal, you’ve lost. The art is in making them feel magnanimous while you empty their pockets.”
For two hours, Mon dissected it. She used holograms of trade graphs, old Senate speeches, declassified Imperial negotiation logs. She was relentless, connecting each point to Leia’s experience. “The squeeze of their hands—was it inquisitive or proprietary? The younger woman, Elara. Her eagerness. That is a lever. Remember it. Finn’s awkwardness—a potential point of shame to be exploited later.”
It was fascinating. It was also exhausting. The warm cloak of triumph was now a heavy, instructional robe. Leia’s mind, so agile in a cockpit or a firefight, began to fray at the edges under the relentless, precise drilling. She fidgeted. She gave one-word answers.
Mon’s calm never broke. She simply refilled their cups and pressed on, her voice a patient, unwinding scroll of strategy.
Finally, the lesson concluded. Mon sat back. “Any questions?”
Leia stretched her arms over her head, a pop in her shoulders. The formal rigor dissolved, replaced by the casual arrogance of the newly anointed. “Yeah. Is this really how you spent the Clone Wars? Talking about leverage over tea?”
A faint smile touched Mon’s lips. “Among other things.”
“I just figured,” Leia said, standing and walking to the window, looking down at the streams of speeder traffic, “with all the stories, you’d be… I don’t know. Sharper.”
“Sharper?”
“You know.” Leia turned, leaning against the sill. “Mom’s got this… edge. You saw it yesterday. Even when she’s calm, you know it’s there. The whole ‘bend over the table’ thing.” She shrugged, a playful, dismissive glint in her eye. “I guess I expected the legendary Mon Mothma to be a little more of a hardass. No offense.”
The silence that followed was different. Not the silence of instruction, but the silence of a room holding its breath. The fountain’s whisper seemed to grow louder.
Mon placed her teacup on its saucer. The ceramic touch was precise, definitive.
“No offense taken,” she said, her voice still quiet. She stood, smoothing her cream-colored tunic. She walked around the desk, not towards Leia, but to a low cabinet of the same pale stone. She opened a drawer.
“Your mother is a remarkable woman. A warrior queen in the truest sense. Her methods are direct, visceral, perfectly suited to the palace.” Mon withdrew a long, slender object wrapped in dark velvet. She laid it on the desk, untying the cord. “My arena is different. The corrosion here is slower, subtler. The tools must be, as well.”
She folded back the velvet.
It was a switch. Not a crude, chopped branch, but a crafted instrument. About two feet long, it was made of a sleek, dark, polished wood, tapering to a wicked, flexible point. It looked more like a conductor’s baton than an implement of punishment.
Leia’s casual pose stiffened. The playfulness drained from her face.
“Aunt Satele’s switch,” Mon said conversationally, picking it up. She gave it a gentle test flex. It whispered through the air, a sound like a parting sigh. “She believed rulers should understand consequence from the ground up. Or, more accurately, from the backside down. This was her primary tutor.”
She looked at Leia. “You mistake deliberation for weakness, Leia. A fatal error in any arena. Come here.”
The command was not shouted. It was simply there, immovable as the desk. Leia found her feet moving, carrying her away from the window’s false escape.
“The lesson on Strategic Concession is over,” Mon stated. “The lesson on Respectful Conduct begins. Remove your trousers and underthings. Bend over the desk. You may keep your tunic on.”
“Mon, I was just—”
“Now, Leia.”
There was a new edge in the voice now. It wasn’t Padmé’s fiery resolve. It was colder, more tectonic. The edge of a glacier. Leia, heart hammering against her ribs, fumbled with the fastening of her trousers, pushing them and her panties down to her knees. The marble floor was cool under her feet. She leaned forward, placing her hands flat on the cool stone of Mon’s desk. The holographic reports continued their silent dance on the walls, indifferent witnesses.
Mon did not rush. She picked up her datapad in her free hand, scrolling with her thumb. “I am sending a memo to your mother,” she said, the switch resting lightly against Leia’s trembling thigh. “It reads: ‘Practical tutorial on political perception underway. Estimated duration: thirty minutes. Outcome: increased acuity.’ She’ll understand.”
She put the pad down. “You will be silent unless asked a question. You will not rise. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Senator.”
The first stroke was a revelation.
It was not a thwack. It was a hiss-crack. A line of pure, concentrated fire, laid diagonally across the crown of her cheeks. It didn’t feel like impact; it felt like the sudden, precise slice of a laser scalpel. Leia’s entire body arched, a choked gasp ripped from her throat. The pain was so sharp, so specific, it bypassed any buildup.
Mon waited. Five seconds. Ten. Letting the single, defining line of agony settle into Leia’s nervous system, a blueprint of what was to come.
The second stroke landed just below the first, parallel. Another searing line. Leia’s toes curled against the floor.
“This,” Mon said, her voice still a calm, educational drone, “is sharpness.”
The third stroke intersected the first two. A criscross. Leia saw white sparks behind her eyelids.
“It is not about volume. It is about accuracy. About choosing the exact nerve, the exact moment, for maximum effect.”
The switch fell in a slow, deliberate rhythm. Not a barrage, but a series of meticulously placed, searing strikes. Each one was its own universe of pain, distinct and terrible. They covered the landscape of her bottom and the tender backs of her thighs with a grid of fire. Leia bit her lip until she tasted copper, her knuckles white on the desk, tears of sheer, unadulterated shock dripping onto the polished stone.
Mon paused. The switch tip traced a burning line. “Do you still find my methods lacking a certain edge, Leia?”
“No, Senator!” The words were a sob.
“Good. We’re halfway.”
The second half was worse. Mon began targeting places that hadn’t been touched: the sensitive undercurve where cheek met thigh, the delicate crease itself. Each stroke here made Leia jerk and cry out, her discipline shattered by the biological imperative to escape.
“This is politics,” Mon said, her breath unruffled as she delivered a stinging lash to the backs of Leia’s knees, making her legs buckle. “It is finding the unprotected flank. The forgotten vulnerability. And applying precisely measured pressure.”
It was endless. It was a masterclass in sustained, intelligent pain. The whalebone had been a blunt declaration; this was a polemic, written in lines of fire.
When it finally stopped, Leia was slumped over the desk, weeping openly, her entire lower body a constellation of intersecting, burning aches.
Mon laid the switch aside. She rested a hand, cool and dry, on Leia’s heaving back. “Up. Corner time. Face the wall.”
Somehow, Leia managed to stand, pulling her clothes up over the ruin, each movement agony. She stumbled to the corner by the fountain, her forehead pressing against the cool marble. The water’s gentle trickle was a torture all its own, a serene mockery of her hiccuping breaths.
She heard Mon sit, the soft tap of fingers on a datapad. The normalcy of it was devastating.
After what felt like an age, Mon spoke. “You may turn around.”
Leia did, her face ravaged, eyes downcast.
Mon was holding a small pot of salve. “Come here.”
Slowly, Leia approached. Mon gestured for her to turn. Cool, numbing gel was smoothed gently over the latticework of raised welts. The relief was so intense it brought fresh tears.
“Your mother provides the motivation,” Mon said, working the salve in with a firm, clinical touch. “I provide the calibration. You will need both. The galaxy is not a simple place of offenses and punishments. It is a web of perceived weaknesses and calculated responses. You mistook my patience for softness. That misconception has been corrected.”
She finished, wiping her hands on a cloth. “You are dismissed. Be on time tomorrow. We’ll discuss the upcoming vote on the Galactic Resource Allocation Act. It’s a minefield. You’ll need your wits about you.”
Leia nodded, unable to speak. She walked stiffly to the door.
“And Leia?”
She turned.
Mon was looking at her, not with pity, but with a sort of stern approval. “The switch is retired for today. But it remains in the drawer. It, or something like it, will appear whenever your perception needs… realignment. Understood?”
“Yes, Senator.”
“Good. Send Charlie in on your way out, please. He’s due for a chat about his latest budgetary analysis. I believe it contained several creative errors.”
Leia slipped into the outer office. Charlie was there, lounging in a chair, playing a game on his comlink. He took one look at her red-rimmed eyes, her stiff, careful posture, and his playful grin vanished.
“Whoa. You okay?”
She just nodded towards Mon’s door. “Your turn. Creative errors.”
The color drained from his face. He stood, shooting her a look of pure, sympathetic terror.
Leia managed a weak, watery smile of her own. It wasn’t comforting. It was the shared, grim smile of someone who has just learned a fundamental, painful truth about the universe.
She walked out into the corridor, bared her bottom and rubbed it before heading home.
She walked out into the corridor, bared her bottom and rubbed it before heading home.
Charlie watched her go, his own insides folding into a cold knot. He took a steadying breath and pushed Mon Mothma’s door open.
The office was serene. Mon was placing the velvet-wrapped switch back into the stone cabinet. The salve pot sat closed on the desk. She didn’t look at him immediately, finishing the neat, precise motion of closing the drawer.
“Close the door, Charlie,” she said, still facing the cabinet. Her voice was tranquil, almost weary.
He did, the latch clicking with finality. “Aunt Mon, I can redo the analysis. The errors were stupid, I was rushing—”
“Sit.”
He sat in the same chair Leia had occupied. The seat was still warm. The blue tea in his cup had gone cold, a film forming on its surface.
Mon finally turned, leaning against the cabinet. She studied him, her gaze lingering on his nervous hands, the too-casual slump of his shoulders he was trying to affect. “It’s not about the budgetary errors, Charlie. Those are a symptom. It’s about the attitude that produces them. A certain... cavalier carelessness. An assumption that charm and cleverness are substitutes for rigor.” She pushed off from the cabinet and walked towards him. “You watched Leia walk out of here. What did you see?”
Charlie swallowed. “She was... she’d been crying.”
“She had been corrected,” Mon clarified softly. “She held a misconception about power. It has been addressed. You, I think, hold a misconception about consequence. That it is something you can flirt with, something that happens in controlled, dramatic settings like a palace meeting room.” She stopped in front of him. “Real humility is not theatrical. It's quiet, and utterly exposing. Stand up.”
He rose, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“Remove your clothes. All of them. Fold them and place them on the chair.”
His breath hitched. “Here? But... the windows...”
“The transparisteel is polarized from the outside. No one can see in. Your audience is me, and your own pride. Which, today, needs to learn a new dimension. Now, please.”
His fingers felt thick and clumsy. The soft tunic, the trousers, his briefs. The cool office air raised goosebumps on his skin as he folded each item with trembling care, placing the pathetic, neat stack on the velvet seat. He stood naked before her, covering himself instinctively.
“Hands at your sides,” Mon instructed. She walked a slow circle around him. His skin prickled everywhere her gaze landed. “You will exit this building through the main lobby. You will walk the perimeter of the Reflection Park. You will then return here. You will not run. You will not hide. You will simply walk. This will take approximately thirty minutes.”
Charlie’s face burned. “Someone will see. The guards, the staff—”
“They will see a young man who has forgotten his place, being reminded of it in the most fundamental way possible. They are professionals. They will not comment. But they will see. And you will know they see. That is the lesson.” She pointed to the door. “Begin.”
The walk from her office to the main lobby was an eternity of chilled marble under his bare feet. The first security droid swivelled its dome. A red photoreceptor scanned him, processed, and turned away with a soft whirr. The human guard at the grand entrance, a man with greying temples named Evram, stiffened. His eyes flicked over Charlie once, then fixed straight ahead at some distant point on the horizon, his expression carved from granite.
Charlie pushed through the heavy doors into Coruscant’s afternoon.
The light was bright, unflinching. The sound of speeder traffic was a roar. The walkway to the park was busy with aides, diplomats, service workers. A gasp from a Twi’lek courier. Averted eyes from a group of interns. A low, appreciative chuckle from a Duros merchant. He felt every stare like a physical touch, a laser scoring his skin. The breeze was impersonal, touching him everywhere.
He reached the park’s grassy perimeter and turned, putting one foot in front of the other. A mother pulled her child close, whispering. An old man on a bench shook his head, a faint smile on his lips. The humiliation was a live wire in his chest, sizzling and undeniable. It wasn’t about pain. It was about being stripped of every layer of social armor, reduced to a simple, shameful fact walking in the sun.
He completed the loop, his face a mask of fiery red that had nothing to do with sunlight. He re-entered the lobby. Evram still stared into the distance, but the corner of his mouth twitched. The journey back to Mon’s office was a blur of cold floor and hotter shame.
He entered without knocking, closing the door behind him and leaning against it, breath shallow.
Mon was on her com