Petite Gnome

But then I remember the 'two cakes' metaphor and how there can never be too many fics for a ship even on the same subject.

Jonathan Anderson did get inspired by Lynda Benglis but you can’t convince me he also didn’t watch Andor 😁

Fic Title: The Monster Eats Its Own Synopsis: Senator Mothma and Director Krennic begin a game of two truths and a lie. Fandom: Andor (Star Wars), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Pairing: Mon Mothma/Orson Krennic Notes/Tags: see original post

NEW Chapter 🩶 Chapter 35: The Queens of old will have our back, “The hubris of man is in his hunger. His cup will never be filled, his plate will be left wanting. He will fight for scraps from a table with too many guests. Envy and greed will make man feed on his brothers. Their scraps of flesh and bone will beg for mercy. Ignoring the inevitable; death is their only friend.”

Part One Chapters 1-16 Part Two Chapters 17-29

Part Three Chapter 30: A long, cold night, a city of decay, Chapter 31: Rules for some, and debts to pay, Chapter 32: You built this cage, where children play.

Chapter 1 of running purely of romcom vibes is here!

She sends it because loneliness has a way of tricking even the most jaded mind into believing that being understood is only a message away.

It’s a folly, really.

A small respite in a galaxy where the Rebellion presses on her shoulders, the Empire tightens its grip around her neck, and her family remains close enough to touch yet increasingly out of reach

This… This is only a few minutes stolen from every claim upon her.

At least until she has to give it away as well. Mon knows she will have to, eventually. Hardly a sacrifice worth mentioning, in the grand scheme of things. She has long since learned to cut off pieces of her soul without flinching.

One of these has the moral standing of a cartoon villain, the other might save the country.

Welcome to British politics.

Read on ao3 and please declare my debt to the universe paid so that I can crawl back into my comfort zone

Dominating the vast screen is what remains of the valley of the Holy City of Jedha: a churning, whirling, burning storm of sand and rock. The air, ionized by the laser’s energy, flashes with lightning. At the storm’s epicenter, the crater of the incinerated city smolders where the beam has sublimed the outermost layer of the moon’s crust.

The lens catches the storm rising from the crater, a vast column twisting upward through the atmosphere. Dust climbs in sheets. Whole sections of the valley lift from the ground, dragged higher and higher by heat and pressure, burning in the ochre-white inferno.

Mon hears someone make a small, broken sound - a sharp, desperate inhale, or a strangled sob. Then she realizes it was her. Her right hand flies to her lips, fingertips pressing hard, trying to force the sound back. Her other hand moves on instinct across the table, nails scraping the smooth surface, desperate to find something, anything to hold on to. Bail’s fingers close around hers at once, firm and steady, and he discreetly draws their joined hands beneath the table, hiding the unbidden evidence of her distress from the rest of the High Command. Mon closes her eyes for a second, then tears her fingertips away from her lips.

“Oh,” Orson whispers behind her. “It’s beautiful.”

If her sixth sense were not attuned to him, if his voice were not the first one she registered in any room, she might have missed it. Mon almost wishes she had.

Orson’s eyes remain fixed on the transmission, hypnotized, too bright for the horror unfolding before them. For one sickening moment, she fears she will see triumph or pride. Instead, she finds something that is equal parts better and worse.

Fascination.

Here stands a man admiring the precision of his creation, while every fiber of her being freezes in horror and revulsion. His pupils are blown wide under the ochre-white glare of the screen, expression focused but strangely distant, as if he is mentally following the beam back - past the city, past the bodies, past the whirling, churning void maiming the moon’s surface, and into the reactor itself.

Then his gaze meets hers. Awareness returns at once, but before she can read through the thin rim of blue, his eyes move to her joined hands with Bail, lingering for a second. His jaw tightens, almost imperceptibly, before he turns to Galen.

Galen, who has not looked away from the screen. Galen, who does not seem to have as much as breathed. Galen, who looks, for one moment, older than anyone in the room.

“The beam retained integrity through atmosphere.” Orson murmurs to his friend, tone almost reverent. “See the edge behavior? Minimal scatter. The kyber remained focused on partial discharge. No bloom until surface contact.”

On the screen, the feed continues.

Another cam-droid, closer to the upper atmosphere, catches the shock front as it devours the Holy City. Jedha’s ancient stone, its pilgrims, its tented markets, its archives, its children, its locals who sold charms at the gates - everything collapses into the same rising column of dust.

Another droid flies over the scorched deserts and the rubble into which the giant Jedi statues have been ground.

Somewhere in this graveyard of stone, fire, and dust, Saw meets his end. Mon’s throat tightness and she glances at Bail, seeing her own sorrow mirrored in his.

Madman, murderer, zealot, old thorn in their side. An ally. Too violent, too unpredictable for their conscience to trust fully and too useful for the cause to disregard.

Mon feels an overwhelming urge to cover her ears with her palms and close her eyes to shield the last vestiges of her sanity from the chaos swelling around her, louder and stronger, threatening to swallow her whole. Senator Mothma, however, has no time for self-indulgent sentiment.

Read on ao3