#* if i can still breathe - i’m fine : verse / smuggler.

[spirekept]

               @risingthroughthestars​ / continued !

          it was suspect enough when someone he didn’t know tried to talk their way into official ohnaka transport solutions facilities, let alone someone he’d never seen in the outpost, sporting a NEON ORANGE jacket with...was that a rebellion insignia ? resistance ? he couldn’t be bothered to tell the difference.   (   frankly he’s just glad she ran into him & not gar.   )

          ❝   if you want in there so bad, how about you take it up with hondo himself, hmm ?   ❞

[ganymedesclock]

I’m biting the bullet and posting my generals’ backstory headcanons before s6 because I can’t lose, either s6 has a bunch of juicy backstory details that contradict me or there’s not much backstory and my headcanons are fine.

Acxa

Sibling theory, she’s older than Keith so she got to have a good childhood growing up close to both her parents, thinks of herself as a human and a galra, doesn’t talk about the non-galra side of her heritage much so this strong-held perception can be a bit of a surprise. After all barely anyone in the empire even knows what a human is and lately they’ve mostly been brought up in terms of “those rebel people who are most of Voltron” so this hasn’t been encouraging her to open up to, say, Haggar. 

Most people pretty much don’t care about what else she is besides “not pure galra”. Even Lotor and the other Generals don’t know she’s human- not that she didn’t trust them, she just doesn’t talk about it. 

There’s a standing draft on galra, including mixed race galra as long as you’re “galra enough”, to go to military academy. It’s somewhat loosely enforced- more or less the discretion of individual commanders who will often use it specifically as a punishment for “tax evasion”, I.E. having kids you don’t tell the government about. Acxa was more or less kidnapped and declared a ward of the state and there wasn’t much Krolia could do about it.

That wound her up in military academy- she started off incredibly scrappy / picked fights with anybody who so much as looked at her crosswise because she didn’t want to be here and everybody was gonna hear about it, but given her mixed race status she was disproportionately punished.

She effectively came out the other side as a perfectionist- buckle down and keep everything under wraps, perfect grades, perfect grooming, perfect record of behavior. The idea of “I’m a disliked minority but if I’m literally perfect, no one can hold it against me.” Which... predictably didn’t work out quite as hoped but it did get her considered for a higher position than a mixed race galra would normally be allowed for with a commander planning on snapping her up as a lieutenant as soon as she graduated.

Incidentally Lotor was sniffing around the academy at that point- he’d gotten himself nicely established resource-wise and had an opening for skilled manpower. As much as Acxa had “cleaned up” in the empire’s eyes, she was still raised by a Blade and Krolia’s rebel sentiment and Acxa’s love for her father, plus the harsh reception she had at the hands of the empire were basically all kindling for a pretty intense revolutionary sentiment- she hated what the empire stood for.

Lotor hit it off with her very strongly in terms of ideals, and his selling point to her heavily was the opportunity to change the empire, this bright future he believed in. Acxa was pretty starstruck by what he proposed and came out of that kind of... considering herself closer to Lotor because she felt like she had a keener sense of what he believed in.

The commander that had wanted her as a lieutenant gave her a relatively intimidating talk about how disappointing it was that she’d “settle for less” but she wasn’t about to be deterred.

Zethrid

Galra soldier mom, kythran dad. They met under... not ideal circumstances, he was technically breaking the law as a smuggler but she had sympathy for his cause (he was trying to protect people back home by getting needed resources to them) and pulled what strings she could to cover him / became his contact within the empire. That partnership became love, they had Zethrid, and kept her hidden.

Zethrid wasn’t found- her mom wasn’t suspected, being a “good soldier”, but her father was caught and executed by the empire, and mom couldn’t save them. That was a pretty hard blow to her emotionally, leaving her feeling like she couldn’t take care of Zethrid and that Zethrid was better off as far away from the empire as possible. She left Zethrid on Kythra with her partner’s relatives and then went back to the empire, cutting off contact entirely.

Zethrid grew up on Kythra raised by her paternal grandmother. She was pretty immersed in Kythran culture- “Zethrid” is a galra anglicization of a kythran name. Huge kythran pride- her granny was a tribal leader and a sweet-faced, stoop-backed woman who uses a cane to get around. The cane is actually a pretty high-powered rifle, as a couple of would-be bandits have found out the hard way. Everybody loves Am-Hal. Nobody messes with Am-Hal. Zethrid metamorphoses into the most well-mannered young lady you have ever seen around Am-Hal because she loves her gran. On the flipside she has high standards for respecting anybody else because if you’re in her esteem, you have to share that category with her gran and not just anybody gets to be mentioned in the same breath as gran.

Of the generals, Zethrid actually had a pretty happy childhood. Learned to shoot on Kythra, thanks to her galra genes she grew tall quickly and got pretty darn strong which in a closed community where the chores are everybody’s problem that was more of an asset than a liability. Really not too cut up about the separation from her mother- doesn’t hold the woman any enmity, but she kinda precluded having a relationship and Zethrid doesn’t really care to go hunting for that. 

Kythra had a history of being a “problem child” for the colonizing empire- they actually did a darn good job fighting back and their lack of permanent settlements and ability to navigate the environment / guerrilla warfare meant the local commander had resorted to different tactics and basically was trying to starve them out with a heavy embargo on resources. This was what had motivated Zethrid’s dad to become a smuggler.

This was what gave Zethrid the idea of going to military academy and becoming a soldier- it’d be good pay and if she could get a position in the occupying fleet she could open up more ways for resources to get to Kythra. In her wildest dreams maybe she could even take out the commander, give ‘em what’s coming to ‘em.

She basically had to pay out of pocket to get to the military academy, and quickly established herself as not somebody to be crossed but if you left her alone she’d do the same. (Most galra cadets think twice about crossing a large intimidating girl who’s very proud of her Kythran heritage and will drop you in the next hand-to-hand drill without hesitation). Easily the most disappointing thing for her was that compared to the ancestral craft of kythran gunsmiths, the standard imperial rifle did not measure up. “Where’s the kick? It feels like I’m shooting a piece of driftwood, not a gun.”

She and Acxa were classmates but didn’t know each other that well. Lotor was interested in securing a potential alliance with Kythra- since it’s technically an imperial colony that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows but they’d proved pretty darn willing to mess the empire up. Between the offer to disrupt the embargo / play some politics around Kythra, and the potential resources he had to offer, he was bidding significantly higher than any other job offer Zethrid had, so she took him up on it.

Ezor

Grew up on a crowded metropolitan planet with a similar population to the Space Mall, so not only was her non-galra heritage one of multiple races present, but she was hardly the only mixed race galra. As a result, she doesn’t have a super strong tie to either her father or her mother’s people- she characterizes herself more as “I’m just some punk kid from Talor.”

Her galra father was technically AWOL who ran away from the fleet to be with his sweetheart, but since there was a price on his head as a deserter, he was limited in the work he could take and with mostly mom supporting the family, it was a struggle to make ends meet. Ezor was the oldest of five children, and pretty early on, got involved doing whatever she could to make money and support her family. Grade school Ezor was a pretty good pickpocket.

Once she got old enough, she held down a lot of different jobs- largely service and hospitality. She developed her particular saccharine attitude holding those jobs, in particular being overlooked and underappreciated- on the surface she acted very conciliatory and eager-to-please because she needed this job but she started assembling a lot of resentment under the surface.

Things got worse when her father was caught by bounty hunters and chose to go quietly rather than potentially draw their attention back to his family. Ezor’s mom wasn’t quite... the same, after that, and started going through the motions for her kid’s benefit but broke down big time. Ezor basically became head of the household, especially when her mother not taking good care of herself led to her getting pretty sick.

At some point, quietly behind Ezor’s back, her mom took out a life insurance policy, so that when she died, the family suddenly received more money than they were expecting. While it wouldn’t last, it would be enough to put Ezor through military school- even grunt soldier pay was a lot better than anything she could get on the civilian side, so she went with it.

Military academy was basically just another job she hated but she was versed in jobs she hated, especially when she could find some common ground and vent her frustrations with Zethrid.

Lotor recruiting her went pretty much like this:

(It wasn’t exclusively about money, like... if you take someone who did customer service for years and offer them assassin training and a position where they can threaten people for talking badly to them, the “and I can easily outbid anyone else offering you a job at this point” was just icing)

Narti

Narti’s the only one of the generals who didn’t go to military school and is, in fact, not recognized as a legal citizen of the empire. She’s also the only general who’s less than half galra. Effectively she was a lab-grown chimera synthesized from multiple donors in an attempt to create a biological superweapon that was funded by a commander who’d formerly been in Haggar’s circle but had gotten kicked to the fringes and was bitter about it and trying to show them all!

Which, not that he had bad ideas, per se, but he was effectively trying to keep this base hidden by putting it in orbit around an unstable star... and there’s a reason nobody would want to go near that real estate. The base started collapsing before the project was, in his opinion, viable, so he abandoned the research and its one living specimen to be destroyed by the sun.

That didn’t happen, because Lotor caught wind of the base being abandoned and some research that its commander didn’t want getting into the wrong hands, and rallied his three new generals for a salvage operation.

Finding a someone, rather than a something, was not what they were expected, but none of them in good conscience really wanted to leave her there- she was mistaken for a prisoner rather than a specimen and rescued. She wasn’t about to clarify otherwise, not really used to the idea of being spoken to and expected to carry a conversation, or acknowledged as a person even. Ezor was the one who gave her the name “Narti”.

The revelation afterwards that she was very strong and had a host of powerful abilities was not one they were all prepared for, and Lotor in particular was deeply uneasy around her for a long time.

Their relationship kind of progressed from “the more I know about you the less easily I sleep at night” to “I, for one, am very glad she’s on our side because I’ve seen what happens to her enemies” to by the time we see them in s3 Lotor’s near-totally numb to it. Just. “Lotor, what the hell is your fourth general” “an associate of mine who does excellent work.”

She was pretty used to operating blind before Kova became her personal helper / eye buddy, but that made her able to read and learn to be a pilot. The more time she spent with the team the more she was developing... some inclination to voice her opinions one way or another, but for the most part she just enjoyed being acknowledged and feeling part of the conversation, even without speaking.

[storyknitter]

“Teach me how to play?”

Thanks for the prompt! And yay for cute fluff! throws confetti

This is set sometime in the latter half of KOTFE. Enjoy!

Vassanna had been searching the Alliance base for Theron for at least thirty minutes – he was nowhere to be seen, his comm was off, and he’d muted their growing bond enough that she couldn’t find him. She could only tell that he was still on Odessen.

Hylo eventually came to her rescue, informing the Commander that she’d last seen Theron heading to the Defender. Thanking the smuggler, Sanna pivoted and stalked off to the military hangar, muttering something under her breath about “spies” and “disappearing acts” that forced Hylo to stifle a laugh.

On the Defender’s landing pad, Sanna paused to focus – Theron was definitely shipboard and she was close enough now to sense his emotions. They were a jumble that only served to confuse her: nostalgia, pleasure, spikes of frustration and irritation followed by triumph, pride, then more frustration.

The door to her ship was partially open, enough for her to slip in quietly. A woody, ringing sound was coming from somewhere in the ship and she cocked her head to pinpoint it, reaching out into the Force as well. Sanna crept up the stairs; the rhythmic and metallic tone of a quetarra grew in volume as she approached her quarters, accompanied at the start of the verse by a soft voice. Wait, is he… singing? she thought, eyes widening in surprise.

Vassanna shifted on silent feet to stand near the entrance to her quarters, peeking around the corner into the room. Theron was sitting on the edge of the bed, turned slightly away from her and strumming the 8-stringed instrument with eyes closed. He was clearly savoring this time, regardless of the fleeting exasperation she sensed from him.

“… her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. And she tied you to her kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair…” Theron’s voice drifted off, brows furrowing slightly in concentration.

His fingers, made clumsy by a lack of playing in recent years, slipped to the wrong frets while changing chords. He glared at the offending strings as she felt another now-familiar spike of irritation from him.

Enthralled by the sight in front of her, Sanna didn’t retreat from the doorframe quickly enough. Theron froze when he saw her, a blush creeping up his neck and cheeks, and a wave of shy embarrassment rolled off of him.

“Umm. Hi. I’m so sorry I interrupted. And eavesdropped. I’ll go now.” Sanna gestured over her shoulder and she continued, the words tripping over themselves to get out. “I just couldn’t find you – your comm was off – and Hylo said you might be this way and I didn’t mean–” Theron’s huff of laughter halted her rambling words.

“It’s fine Sanna, you don’t have to leave. It’s your ship, after all.” He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head towards the place on the bed next to him and she crossed the room at his invitation. Theron carefully set the instrument upright on the floor, leaning it against the bed, and draped an arm around her shoulders as her arms snaked around his chest.

“So… wanna teach me how to play?” She couldn’t resist the question, grinning impishly when he snorted.

“Uh… if you really want. It’s been a while and I’m pretty rusty.”

“I was just teasing, but I’ll settle for listening to you play. Often.” He chuckled and she reached up to kiss his cheek before continuing, “So is that yours? I’ve never seen it before. How’d it get here?”

“Yeah, actually, it is. I’ve had it forever. Hylo helped me reacquire it – and as it turns out, now I owe Balkar one. Again.” Theron sighed and shook his head ruefully. “When I left Coruscant a few years ago, I couldn’t really bring much with me. With the blockade, getting off-planet was tricky enough without bringing a suitcase or quetarra along for the ride. I mean, I don’t miss what I ended up leaving behind, but it is nice to have this back,” he said with a small smirk as he gestured to the quetarra. A beat of silence fell before he spoke again, softly, “Though I’d rather have you than an apartment full of things.”

Vassanna’s heart stuttered at his quiet confession and she pulled him into a tight hug, tucking her head into his chest, and he wrapped both arms around her shoulders. The moment grew heavy with unspoken sentiment as they held each other close, fading to a comfortable silence as they sat together.

A thought crossed her mind unbidden, and she leaned back to look at him, concern furrowing her brows. His hand drifted up to cup her cheek.

“You’ve given up so much for the Alliance. Your home, your career, your–”

“Worth it. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Sanna.” I gave it up for you, not the Alliance. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“But–” He stopped her protest with a kiss.

“Shh. It’s my life, let me decide what’s worth giving up and what’s not. I’ve got everything I want right here.” A myriad of emotions swirled over her face and Theron took her hand, placing it over his heart and covering it with his own. He looked into her violet eyes, and whispered, “Can you tell me I don’t mean it?”

With his memories and feelings tumbling around her, Sanna studied his face. Oh stars, he does. She bit her lip, and he tucked her head under his chin again, pulling her close and dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

[spirekept]

                       @arashikagesteeldoesnotbreak​     ❤’d.

❝   ohhhhhh, hondo’s not going to be happy…   ❞

[spirekept]

                      @petitehux​​    ❤’d.

❝   well, maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to run the new flight crews right past an engine repair site, huh ?!    ❞

[spirekept]

                @risingthroughthestars​ / continued !

          ❝   right,   ❞   he doesn’t break his gaze with the datapad in his hand. at least if he was stuck with him   this one   had experience, unlike some of the newer flight crews.   (   apparently hondo decided to stick with the   quantity over quality   approach.   )   he tosses the datapad on the shipment it came with, arms crossing defiantly,   ❝   so you   really   think you’re going to stick around, huh ?   ❞    yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts.   batuu was good for one thing to   TOURISTS   these days   ---   laying low & promptly leaving. even those with intentions to settle down never really ended up doing so.        here’s to hoping the resistance would do the same.

[spirekept]

                  @classiifieddroid​     ❤’d.

❝   okay, the good news: that’s not leakage ! the bad news: if there had been any leakage, those sparks would’ve blown up all of ohnaka transport solutions...   ❞

[spirekept]

                      @edgeineer​     ❤’d.

❝    are you sure you didn’t...seal it up in one of the crates you’re shipping out ?   ❞

[spirekept]

                                              *   @petitehux​   !

          another successful run for books deserved a little CELEBRATION, especially with this payout. they’d always run the line between high profits & high profits for batuu, but this . . . this was top shelf worthy. eyes flicker to his other half, who may or may not be as pleased with his current monetary decisions.  (  he knows it’s because she’s ready to run at a moment notice, if need be. he can’t  BLAME  her.  )    ❝   --  you know, you’re allowed to enjoy life every once in a while, ryann.   ❞  

[spirekept]

                  @solhjerte​     ❤’d.

❝   well, we’re not gonna get a lot of smuggling done  --  uhh, i mean, transporting done, without an engine, now are we ?  ❞

[spirekept]

                  @duchessmandalore​     ❤’d.

❝   we’re trying to do work here  --   ❞

[spirekept]

                    @edgeineer​ .

          ❝   SOMETHING’S WRONG,   ❞   he hums under his breath, fingers tapping against the crate he leans on. the time blinks back at him from his wrist comm.  twenty minutes.  twenty minutes, they’ve been waiting on their buyer to return. it’s been cycles since he’s been on one of these himself, but he never forgets the feeling before a deal went south, or the adrenaline starting to flow through his veins.   (   & he bore the scars from blaster bolts to prove it.   )  he wishes he’s back in the docking bay skimming through boring flight logs & manifests, about to head over to oga’s, drinking himself into a deep slumber... but hondo trusted them, more than anyone else at ohnaka’s,   (   or whatever the closest thing to   trust   was for the pirate,   )   & this was the most important cargo he’d seen ever come through the shipping business. knowing where it’s come from, he’s not exactly itching to hold on to it.

   a hand runs through his hair, as he calculates how many men are still in the room, the exits, how absolutely fucked they’d be with hondo if they bailed on the cargo,   ❝   ---  they’re taking too long.   ❞

[spirekept]

* crimsonshe said   :   ❝   impressive. every word in that sentence was wrong.   ❞ 

                          *   STAR WARS STARTERS   /   @crimsonshe​   !

          ❝   in my   HUMBLE   defense, that’s how hondo described it,   ❞   he throws up his hands to make his case. malta should’ve known there was very little merit in the story to begin with, you have to take hondo’s word with a grain of salt.   ❝   so in   your   opinion, what actually happened ??   ❞

[spirekept]

                  @1000voicesrising​     ❤’d.

❝   um, it’s  --  it’s not cooling down ! this is bad ! this is what happens before everything goes boom !   ❞ 

[spirekept]

                @riffrcffed​     ❤’d.

❝   are you seriously asking me about this right now ?  ❞

[spirekept]

                      @reyjustrey​     ❤’d.

❝   okay...wait. wait ! WAIT ! what did you just connect ? because the thrust vectors are moving  --  this is the first time those little suckers have moved since we brought the engine in here !!    ❞