#anyway you can catch me over here having emotions about this man and his children every single day

[love-toxin]

just read your latest billy fic and am now obsessed with the idea of billy babytrapping you and/or having a massive, unhinged breeding kink. in his mind you won't ever leave him if he gets you pregnant.

(please bear with my ramblings below)

billy obsessively tracking your cycle and going at it like rabbits when you're ovulating. sex that goes on for HOURS because he wants to get multiple loads inside of you, just to be sure. plugging you up afterward so all his cum stays inside. constantly telling you what a good parent you would be, and how beautiful your children would be because he's pretty, and you're pretty, so it just makes sense, right?

I really think he'd get so delusional about it. burying his face in your arousal and insisting he can tell you're fertile just by the smell/taste. bending down to whisper in your ear only to tell you how full and achey his balls are getting. leaving you little gifts but they're all pregnancy tests or baby clothes. forget whatever stage of a relationship or situationship you guys are in, he's starting a family with you. he'd get such an ecstatic glint in his eye when you finally tell him you're pregnant. don't get me started on the pregnant belly worship.

tl;dr if billy fucks me and I'm not sitting in a puddle of his cum afterwards, I don't want it‼️🗣

PRRRRRR!!!! yes. im into it. now u have to bear with MY ramblings

(cws: babytrapping, fem pronouns)

Feels like babytrapper Billy is an untapped gold mine--it's less that he wants a baby at first and mostly just that he wants control over you, but that switches up real fast when you actually get knocked up. When you actually wanna be sweet about it. Fussing about cribs and a nursery and having enough baby clothes, making him take you to the ultrasound appointments and actually getting a 'tude with him because he did this to you and now he's gonna have to deal with just as much as you have to carrying his baby.

But Billy ends up loving the shit out of it. He loves your attitude. He loves your mood swings. He loves your hormonal cravings and your tears when you throw up morning after morning. He loves holding your hair back and stuffing your bed full of pillows so you're comfortable, and he loves laying his head on your belly and hearing those little gurgles and feeling those little kicks from his baby.

At the same time, however, it makes him emotional. If this is how he feels before his baby is even here, then why would...how could his father ever treat him the way he does, and did? How could anybody do that to a kid? It makes him angry at himself for the way he was treated and the way he took that out on Max, too. He's got lots of apologies to make. Those experiences don't take up all his attention, though--he has a pretty partner to care for now, and having that to fill his time over bouncing from party to party and girl to girl just to feel something makes him unbelievably satisfied.

It honestly makes him glad that he never knocked anyone up accidentally leading up to when he met you. It had to be you, he knows that now. It had to be you that he coerced, begged, and fucked into submission to make you his, it had to be your womb that he wanted so badly to break and your pussy he wanted to risk going raw into. Wouldn't you just be the cutest with a baby, anyways? You're such a catch and you're so pretty. You'd make such adorable babies. It's obvious he never wanted to be one of those guys with a handful of baby mamas and kids he rarely sees; he wants you and your kids and that's it. It's official--you've hooked Hawkins' resident playboy into a dedicated partner and father, whether you wanted to or not.

If there's one thing he loves most about your pregnancy though, it's that he loves your neediness. He loves that something seems to click in you that makes you pine for the man whose seed you've sown, like there's an invisible connection between you two that pulls you both closer. It's like you're instinctually drawn to him and he hopes, god he hopes that continues after you've had the baby. He's ready to make love to a woman after she's had a child (after you've healed sufficiently, of course, he can wait) it's like that next stage of maturity for him. He can't wait to see how far you've come and how much you've sacrificed just to have his baby, and he can't wait to look you in the eyes and tell you he wants another. No, he doesn't want you to work off the baby weight first or fuss with your hair or your clothes to try and get back to looking like you were before. He wants you now. As you are. Raw. He's sick of those prissy party-girl snobs and their perfect bodies and their permed hair that they can't let get messed up. He wants the woman who stays up all night feeding his daughter and rolls her eyes at his flirting attempts in the morning. He's totally whipped, and even with those bags under your eyes and that tension headache behind his from the crying of his precious baby girl, he still wants another. And he's got ways of making sure that you do, too...after all, he got you into it the first time, right?

[love-marimo]

Dancing in the Rain (Neuvillette x Reader)

Lolita's Note: ー in which you saw neuvillette standing by the porch in the midst of a downpour of rain ー you asked him to dance, and little did you know it soothed his aching heart.

This, again, is taken from the actual lore of the hydro dragon crying whenever it rains!

There is a common superstition passed down through the hushed whispers in Fontaine…

…that when it rains, it is said that the Hydro dragon weeps.

It is something that you have always wondered about. You always thought about the things that made the hydro dragon cry, because it happens quite often too.

With that said, you have come to a realization that the Hydro Dragon must have a tender heart.

One that is as gentle as a morning drizzle.

Yet one that is as powerful as a thunderstorm blaring through the darkest of nights.

When the latter happens, you seek the arms of the one you love, Neuvillette. And somehow, when your bodies find each other, you swear to the archons that the storm has calmed down.

Even just a little.

The thing about Neuvillette is he does not like to display his emotions.

But he is very polite and courteous. He does not like to make anyone feel excluded, despite working in an occupation where a cutthroat attitude is necessary.

One can say that his personality becomes two sides of the same coin.

There is a middle ground, though ー a blurred space that combines these said facets of his personality. One that he fails to hide every single time.

One that comes out when it rains.

"Darling? Neuvillette?" You shift on your shared bed in a half-asleep state, looking for him.

When you sense that he's not inside your bedroom, you lit up a lamp and searched for him in your shared home.

It's been raining pretty hard these days. Coincidentally in your point of view, Neuvillette has been acting odd. It's as if he's more uptight and aloof. You noticed that he also stays up pretty late ー sometimes you think he doesn't sleep at all.

Another strange thing he frequently does, is he stands by the front porch watching the downpour of rain.

So now you definitely knew where he is.

Slowly, you hesitated to reach for his hair, but you did anyway. Caressing it gently, he was taken by surprise for a moment before he turned to you and gave you a small smile.

"Oh, my dear. You should go back to bed. We still have two hours before it is morning." He curtly tells you before he holds you closer to him.

"It seems that you want me to stay, though." You chuckle, placing your hand on top of his.

He lets out a small laugh ー one that comes out as a content sigh.

The loud downpour of the rain calmed down into a somber drizzle.

"Do you still find storms scary?" He asked you, while he looked out to the distance. You nod in reply. He sighs once again, as if he's apologizing that it cannot be helped.

"As long as you're here, I'm going to be fine." You held his hand and took him with you outside, a sudden idea of dancing in the rain popped in your head.

"What are you doing?" He asked you, a bit alarmed.

"Let's dance in the rain!" You exclaim.

"You're going to catch a cold." Neuvillette tries to take you back inside.

"Then take care of me when that happens!" You retort.

Neuvillette laughs. It sounded more genuine now.

It continued raining, but unlike the violent storm before, it poured gently on your skin. The man brushes a wet strand of your hair that covered your face and smiles at you again.

"Very well. Lead the way, monsieur/mademoiselle." Neuvillette put his hand over his chest, while you held the hem of your dress shirt on both sides.

After you bowed, you took Neuvillette's hands and guided them ー one finds its way on your waist and the other holds your hand.

"We don't have music, so let's just pretend that we are dancing to the melody of the rain." You laugh, as you begin dancing to the rhythm of waltz.

You both shared tender laughs and danced in the rain like children, even if the only light that illuminated you were the lamps of your home.

"I am sorry. I should've stayed in bed. I don't want you to be the one seeking my presence every time you feel afraid, upset, or terrible in general." He sighs.

Just as you wonder if the hydro dragon has a human form, Neuvillette wonders if you already cracked the code.

"Hydro dragon, don't cry. Hydro dragon, don't cry." You started to chant softly, as if lulling a weeping child.

He softened at your expression. As he spun you around he asked,

"Where did you learn that?"

"Oh, nothing. I thought it would be nice if the Hydro dragon hears it. I mean, not that it would be of much help." You chuckle.

Neuvillette then finds himself repeating the same words.

"Yeah that's it, let's chant it together!"

Hydro Dragon, don't cry.

Hydro Dragon, don't cry.

Hydro Dragon, don't cry.

Neuvillette admires your gentle nature. One touch, one word, and one look ー all of his worries dissipate.

All of his woes disappear.

And of course, the heavy rainfall that he brings forth once he has a heavy heart stops.

Just like now.

"Oh? The rain stopped!" You squealed in excitement.

"Yes, it seems that the hydro dragon heard us." He replied.

The skies cleared to reveal the slight glimmer of light at the crack of dawn.

Looking up, you can still see the full moon.

"Come, let us go back inside and dry ourselves. We still have a few hours of sleep to catch." Neuvillette tells you, guiding you back to your shared home.

"I wonder if the Hydro dragon really heard us. I hope whatever troubles them is resolved soon." You say as he tucks you to bed.

To him, if it's you, then he can get used to your lullaby ー a hushed chanting of his name, one that seeks to comfort his sonder heart.

ー Lolita

[damianbugs]

please share your dick and bruce fic recs, both sad and fun stuff

–someone who thinks about them a normal amount

OHHH my friend my dearest friend i will totally share the best most crazy brainworm inducing bruce and dick fics i have ever read. i wish i was exaggerating when i say this dynamic changed me as a person, but it is the truth i fear. THE troubled father and son blueprint.

DICK AND BRUCE FIC RECS ON AO3

a pointless resistance by emavee

It starts with a news report running in the background of a greasy little diner, but it ends with Dick dead. Except, it doesn't stop there. It keeps on ending, over and over. Bruce's son keeps dying, and nothing he does seems to make any sort of difference.

MY NOTES: whenever i stumble upon an emotionally repressed individual i imagine a little cartoon person in my head shouting SEND HIM TO THE TIME LOOP because it truly does fix all problems. wonderful bruce and dick writing and the dialogue was so real to me i have tears in my eyes just thinking about it. it is also set during the robin jason era!

Making Time by CaptainOzone

Bruce does not remember anything leading up to this moment. He does not remember teaming up with Superman recently, nor does he remember being anywhere but Gotham proper. He does remember having Robin at his side. Robin, it turns out, is not there any longer. God does he hate magic.

MY NOTES: you'll notice a common theme with these recs and that is bruce needs to be having a horrible time and then is forced to confront his emotions and express them accordingly to dick. there is something very bittersweet about this yet it was handled so wonderfully. again, tears in my eyes.

Catch and Release by snackbaskets

There's a tradition among the family: when in danger, you grab the smallest Robin and hang on tight. But like all traditions, this one had to start somewhere, right? Alternately: three times Dick bodily attacks his father (with love)

MY NOTES: ohhh i think about the last part of this fic like all the time. something so sweet and precious about it to me. such a fun and comforting read.

Afraid of the Dark by WrongLeverKronk

The wind whispered outside his window and the dim moon failed to provide comfort. He was embarrassed. Richard Grayson sat on his bed, above the covers, with his arms wrapped firmly around his knees that were tucked against his chest. He thought everything would be fine when he parted from his friends for the evening, that his confidence would follow him in solitary. He regretted parting as soon as he turned out the lights in his bedroom and became enclosed by the eerie atmosphere. (Or: the aftermath of the episode in which Robin hallucinates Slade. He calls Batman)

MY NOTES: can u hear the sounds of me screaming crying sobbing. one of my first ever dick and bruce fics. fun fact i have never watched teen titans but watched this episode specifically just for fun and then read this and now it is seared permanently into my mind forever. anyways read this.

in the dark of the night by fanfictiongreenirises

“I already have a dad, y’know? So you don’t have to be my new dad. I don’t really want you to be my dad, anyway. We can be friends. Partners.” Bruce seems to sigh in relief, having stiffened up halfway through Dick’s speech. “Friends and partners, then.” And they were in agreement. Bruce and Dick and a series of steps and leaps and jumps.

MY NOTES: sometimes im okay and then i remember how many times dc COULD have made bruce adopt dick and DIDNT because they SUCK and so this fic is here to warm the hearts of all those who need it. so lovely.

After the Wake by nighhtwing (divineauthor)

Fathers should not bury their children. —•— When Jason dies, Dick comes home, and Bruce muses on being a parent.

MY NOTES: a shorter one, but man does it pack a real punch to the heart. i find bruce and dicks dynamic immediately after jasons death the most fascinating and this was a wonderful spin on it!

You Are My Reflection (As I Am Yours) by Fairy527

A rope snaps. A collective scream echoes in the tent. (A threatening low voice. A sinister metallic click.) The Flying Graysons fall, and Bruce is sent back to that fateful night in Crime Alley

MY NOTES: clutches my heart screaming OHH. OH THE PARALLELS. there is just something so personal about the night the graysons fell and the night the waynes died being referenced with one another AND THIS GOT IT SOOO WELL. tears. tears forever.

i can't promise (it's not written in the stars) by konan_konan

Batman is following him, surely, but he’s smaller and faster and he’s not going to let someone take him and lock him up again. Wayne Manor, he’s learned, is just another kind of prison. It may be big and fancy but it is also empty and cold and he’s not going back. Tony Zucco dies tonight, he tells himself. It is the only thing that matters. or: dick loses two soulmates, and gains three.

MY NOTES: oh this fic. i need a moment. soulmate aus can be a real hit or miss sometimes but the way it was portrayed in this literally surpasses all expectation it was just SO GOOD. the dick introspection is honestly one of my favourites like. ever.

In This or Any Other Universe by wildsofmarch

There was a new vigilante in his city: a man who smiled too much and talked too loud and knew his way around a fight a little too well. Bruce wasn't bothered by his antics. Except the man also seemed to know a little too much about him. Who was this Nightwing, anyway? ------ OR: Dick Grayson (DCU) accidentally lands himself in Battinson’s Gotham.

MY NOTES: here it is. my favourite bruce and dick fic of all time forever and ever. im so serious. the tears are not in my eyes because they are streaming down my face. the idea of battinson with a robin was lovely and now that this gives us battinson with NIGHTWING i am just inconsolable. MUST READ.

[reds-skull]

BLOOD||HUNGER

[PREV PART] [AO3]

So many projects, so little time... anyway, here's chapter 11, "The Battle-Sick"

Page 3 of the “Blooede Starvatfōre-dēde”, parable ?:

I was a wonderful thing, shaped for fighting, Loyal to my masters, I slayed living warriors, Friends and foes, I was a weapon of war. I shall never be avenged, shall I fall in battle, As I am cursed, in the eyes of kin and enemies, To be not a man, but a monster. I am starved, of blood and flesh, Alone I roam this land, a damned Beast.

Soap can feel Ghost’s gaze burning at his nape, questions left unanswered in the silent space between them.

In the span of a few hours, Soap saw someone else come out of Ghost’s actions. A man, buried years ago in dry earth, dead in all ways but physically. The man Captain Price mourned, the man he aspired to be.

The man that saved those children wasn’t the infamous Ghost. 

Soap brushes a shaky hand over his mouth, the metallic taste of blood still sticking to his teeth. He’s running out of adrenaline, he knows, and the wheezing of his breath seems to be only getting louder in the empty alleyways.

He trips over nothing, barely catching himself on the cold wall, when strong arms pull him up.

“Coffee shop, on our three. Hold on just a little longer.” Ghost murmurs, hand coming under his shoulders to support his weight.

Soap goes to answer, finding his voice weak and scratchy, “aye.”

Ghost’s breath on his neck is somewhat soothing, in a way Soap shouldn’t find from a man like him.

The coffee shop has seen better days, to say the least. The stairs to the first floor have collapsed, and the ground floor is completely trashed. Quite like everywhere else in the city, Soap bitterly thinks to himself.

Ghost lets him down on the only chair that seems stable in the shop, and turns to clear it of hostiles. Soap gets up to follow him, but his vision darkens the moment he tries to get on his feet, and he falls back with a huff.

It would’ve made him angry, to be left so useless, but…

Simon has been left paralyzed, defenceless, shoved a knife to his palm and bared his scarred throat, and still trusted him. Never looked at him with any less than…

Than what? What is that emotion, in Simon’s eyes, when he looks at Soap? He blinks away the dark tendrils encroaching on his vision, brows furrowed as he tries to keep a semblance of a train of thought.

Ghost returns before he can veer it back on track. “Please tell me you found somethin’ teh drink.” Soap groans.

“Affirmative, got us a tea.” Ghost spreads the supplies he gathered from around the shop on the table next to Soap, teabags among the bottles of water and scrap fabric.

Soap sneers, “awa’ an’ bile yer heid, we’re in a fuckin’ coffee shop and ye pull out tea, fuckin’ Brits-”

His list of expletives is cut by rough coughing, and Soap has to spit out the excess mucus on the floor. Ghost crouches down, and gently cups his cheek. Soap’s eyes snap to his. Whatever emotion is swirling in those dark brown eyes, he still can’t name, but it makes his heart twist.

Ghost tilts his head up, brushing fingers over the probably bruised skin of his neck, “have any trouble breathing?”

Soap’s breath catches, not from any physical wound, “no. Jus’... throat pain. Ah didn’t lose consciousness.” cold hands soothe over his bruises, making him involuntarily sigh.

Ghost nods, “tea will help with that.”

“Fuck off.”

He chuckles as he pulls back his hands, Soap almost chasing them. Fatigue is starting to take its toll on him, and his head feels like it weighs more than a LTV right about now. A tap to his cheek makes him open his eyes (when did he close them?), “can’t sleep yet, Sergeant. Gonna clean your face.”

That’s the only warning he gets before a wet towel brushes over his mouth, sweeping over flaking, dried blood. “Surprised the wee ones weren’t afraid o’ either of us. One skull-faced bastard, the other looks like a damn vampire.”

Silent laughter shakes Ghost’s shoulders, “those kids were tough ones, swear they were about to fight me when we first met.”

“Tougher than they need teh be, at their age.”

Ghost’s movements become somber.

Soap catches one of the many questions floating through his tired mind, “why’d you save ‘em?”

The towel is thrown to the side, replaced by a dry one, “...I wanted to.” Ghost simply answers.

It doesn’t satisfy him, “that why ye worked with the Hunter?”

Ghost’s hands freeze for a short moment, before continuing to softly clean Soap’s neck. His words weren’t said with anger, but the harshness of them remained all the same. It leaves a bitter note in Soap’s mouth.

At what point did seeing Ghost get hurt by his words stop bringing any sort of satisfaction?

“I worked with the Hunter because… I worked with anyone. No questions asked, no job too dirty for me. Not that it was ever about money.”

Ghost lowers his hands, resting them in his own lap. His eyes drift downwards, lost in the past, “I did what I did because I didn’t know anything else. Survival meant fighting, and it didn’t matter who.”

Ghost rises to his feet, taking a cup off the nearby shelf and setting about to make the tea, “as long as there was blood on my hands that wasn’t mine, I knew I was alive.”

Soap opens his mouth, cruel words at the tip of his tongue, but he falters when Ghost’s really hit him.

Because he knows that feeling.

That hunger for violence, that need to feel bones break under his hands, a yearning stronger than anything for fresh blood. It is not a want, it is not something they take pleasure in. It’s simply the only way to feel alive. For Soap, it may be only for the Hunter and their soldiers. 

But when you’re constantly trying to survive, won’t the whole world start to look like an enemy?

“Why didn’t you stay with the civilians?” Ghost shakes him from his reverie.

The answer is stupidly simple. “I told ye we’re doing this together.” Soap stares deeply into Ghost’s widening eyes, “and I meant it.”

“But…” Ghost sighs, “we don’t have a way to find the Hunter.”

He hands Soap a cup, the aromatic tea somewhat pleasant for once. It is cold, but it does help the scratchiness in his throat as it goes down.

“Aye… We’ll-” a yawn cuts off Soap’s sentence, “we’ll need teh catch another fecker, maybe…”

Ghost’s eyes narrow at him, “what you need to do is sleep, Sergeant. You can’t even stand on your feet, can you?”

Soap scoffs, “‘course Ah can, ye weapon.” he thumped the mug down on the table, and held on it for dear life as he tried to rise from the chair.

Ghost caught him no more than 2 seconds later, when Soap’s face was about to have a very personal meeting with the dirty floor.

“Of course you can, huh?” Ghost goads.

Soap drops heavily back down, “wheesht.”

“Speak English.” he can fucking hear the smirk on Ghost’s lips.

Soap drops his head, finally giving in to the need to just crumple, “means shut yer puss…”

A hand on his hair surprises him, but Soap doesn’t dare move as fingers card through the tangles. It feels really nice… almost putting him to sleep.

Ghost’s voice is soft when he orders him, “c’mon, I’m sure we can find you a better spot for a nap than on a stool.”

He doesn’t really answer, far too knackered to be coherent. Soap feels the hand recede, and footsteps echo farther and farther away from him. A few minutes later, Ghost returns to urge him up, “set up some blankets and pillows behind the counter.”

Soap appreciates the attempt to keep him in the know, but at this point he’d let Ghost lead him over a cliff, and he won’t complain one bit.

The makeshift bed reminds Soap of the shitty pillow forts he would build with his sister back when they were kids, and the blurry memories make him suppress a laugh. With the way Ghost is staring at him, Soap thinks the giggles make him all the more concerned.

And what a concept that is. Ghost, concerned over his well-being.

Ghost lets him down carefully, wrapping him with moth-eaten blankets. Compared to the last “bed” Soap slept in, this is as good as a five-star hotel.

He can barely keep his eyes open, but Soap, as aware as he is in his compromised status, can’t let his guard down when Ghost turns to walk away. He manages to catch the sleeve of the giant man, and dark eyes turn to stare at him.

“Yer… yer not gonna leave me, right?” he mumbles.

Ghost stops, “just gonna go keep watch by the window. Not leaving.”

Sleep claws on Soap’s eyelids, and it takes far too much willpower to keep them open, “stay ‘here Ah can see ye… Don’ run off now…..”

The last thing he hears before he goes unconscious is, “never, Johnny.”

Gentle fingers card through his hair.

“Johnny.”

John groans, unwilling to open his eyes and start the day.

“Wake up, love.”

“‘S too early for that shite, let me sleep.” he burrows deeper into his pillow, enveloped in warmth and safety.

His pillow starts, very rudely, shaking with laughter, “fine, you lazy bastard.”

That voice… sounds familiar. Familiar in the way a knife’s weight is in John’s hand, in the way blood spills over his wounds, like the buzz of adrenaline in a fire fight.

Yet John feels… safe.

Gentle fingers card through his tangled hair. Why would it be tangled? Isn’t he at home?

“Can’t sleep yet, Sergeant. Gonna clean your face.”

John frowns, “my face is clean.”

Hands tilt his face up. There’s some sort of tackiness to his skin, he notices. A metallic taste bursts on his tongue.

John opens his eyes.

Dirty blond hair, messy from a mask pulled off non too kindly, rich brown eyes wide in surprise, dark like a grave’s fresh dirt. Scars leave valleys and hills on pale skin.

The features are there, but John can’t make sense of them. A stranger’s face, yet it feels so familiar.

Perhaps it is only the emotion carved into it, fear and shock twisting the man’s eyes.

Soap wakes up with a start, grasping tightly at the thin blankets wrapped around him. It takes him a few seconds to shake off the dream’s warmth, to feel again how cold the coffee shop really is. He takes a cursory look around - Ghost must have left for overwatch while he was sleeping.

He eventually forces himself to get up, encouraged by the fact that his legs stay somewhat steady under his weight.

“Ghost?” 

Soap walks over to the wider area of the coffee shop, where once there were floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed patrons to bask in the sun while drinking, but now are shattered.

In a dark, hidden corner, that Soap almost dismissed immediately, a huddled shape rested against the wall. Ghost’s dark gear blends near perfectly into the shadows. Soap is sure, if he wasn’t looking for the damn man, he’d never find him.

He has to step closer to actually see his eyes through the mask and darkness. Ghost is completely out, so still, he might as well be dead.

Soap huffs. In the entire time they’ve been fighting together, he’s never seen him asleep. The nearest thing to it was the rest in the shed, but even then Soap knew Ghost was constantly ready to strike, if it were needed.

Here, curled into a small ball, hands wrapped around himself, Ghost looks so unnaturally small and harmless. 

Soap doesn’t realize he’s smiling until Ghost shifts, murmuring something under his breath and curling further into himself. 

He scoffs internally and turns to find something to eat. The fuck is he doing, thinking this giant international criminal is cute. He blames that weird fucking dream he had, as well as a million different other excuses.

Soap repeats the mantra in his head ‘He’s not fuckin’ cute, he’s not goddamn endearing’, as he finds a couple of sandwiches that seem to be edible enough. He collects enough for Ghost as well, for when the bastard wakes up.

Whining from the dark corner makes him freeze.

Soap turns to look at Ghost, his shoulders now taut and shuddering, “...Ghost?”

“N-no… I wouldn’t… I’m sorry…” Ghost whispers, eyes scrunched shut.

Nightmare. Soap wonders if that’s what Ghost saw back in the shed. “Ghost”, he calls again, louder, the previous calmness he felt washed away.

Ghost’s hands crease his black jacket, leather gloves cricking in his tight grip, “I’m sorry… P-Price…”

He knows he shouldn’t get closer, that night terrors can make the friendliest of soldiers hostile, when shrouded by conjured nightmares and warped memories. But the sight of Ghost in that state makes Soap feel the need to do something, anything to help him.

He chances a hand on Ghost’s shoulder, “...Simon? Wake up, yer safe-”

Muscles bulge as they shoot up at him, Ghost wraps his hand around Soap’s, and in a blink, they’re on the floor. He pins him down by the neck, heavy breathing and shaking.

It hurts tenfold, to be choked for the second time in a few hours. Soap claws at the massive arms, attempts to lessen their heavy weight on his windpipe. Even in his sleep, Ghost is a force to be reckoned with.

When Soap sees those dark eyes open, searching wildly for hostiles, he thinks that perhaps, in his sleep, Ghost is even more terrifying. Fighting against the worst his mind can think of.

“S-Simon-” Soap manages to whisper.

The hands retreat instantly, and Soap turns to his side, coughing and massaging his wounded neck.

Ghost has crawled backwards until he hit the wall, eyes still wide open, their whites standing out over black painted skin. Soap heaves himself to his knees, moving closer to the shivering man. But Ghost shakes his head.

“Don’t-” Ghost says between breaths, “stay back.”

Soap, as he often does, refuses to listen, “why?”

Brown eyes flicker down to his neck before returning to his, “I’ll hurt you.”

“Ye won’t.” Soap stops in front of him, sitting back on his haunches.

Soap can see the tension still wrecking though Ghost, muscles trembling with fatigue and soreness. He chances a hand again, laying it on Ghost’s shoulder. The body under his palm freezes.

He leans in closer, tries to see inside Ghost’s eyes to his thoughts. 

This close, he can see just how pale his eyelashes are, how there are flecks of black shoot through the rich brown umber of his eyes. Something about them draws Soap in, in a way an oil painting would. How dark Ghost’s eyes are, how his pupils blend with the sclera.

“Johnny-” Ghost whispers, “the mask…”

Soap’s brows crease, “ye want me to take it off?”

“Please.” 

At his begging tone, Soap doesn’t hesitate, and slowly slides a hand over the skull, pulling it up and off.

Simon stares up at him, his eye black running down his cheeks, from tears or rain, he's not so sure anymore. At that moment, Soap realizes what emotion lingers in Simon’s eyes wherever he looks at him.

Faith.

Simon… has faith in him. More wholly than Soap remembers ever seeing.

Not just in life and death, but with this as well. With his most vulnerable moments. It shines through so clearly now, the serenity over Simon’s features the longer he looks at Soap.

He looks…

“Beautiful…”

Simon frowns in confusion, “what?”

Soap presses a thumb to the dark tear tracks, swiping under Simon’s eyes. “Yer bonnie. Never… noticed before.”

Simon opens his mouth to answer, and it breaks Soap from the trance he was stuck in. He pulls his hand away, as if it was burned, and wrecks his mind for a way to veer the conversation away from his stupid, weird behaviour.

Stupid steamin’ dream, stupid Simon with his stupidly pretty eyes, stupid-

“Ye said Price’s name. When ye were…”

Simon looks away, lips curving downwards minutely, “don’t remember.”

Soap sighs. Should’ve expected the deflection-

“He was… my captain. Before.” Simon murmurs, eyes on the broken shards of glass scattered on the floor. “I haven’t seen ‘im in years, not since I became legally dead.”

Soap can imagine. He remembers, even in his brief interactions with the Captain, just how much it was obvious that Simon meant a lot to him. If he knew Simon was Ghost, surely Price would-

“That’s it.” Simon murmurs, eyes alight with a new fire. Soap raises an eyebrow, and Simon turns to face him fully.

Gone is the softness in his tone when he says, “I know how we can get to the Hunter.” 

Ghost stands up, offering a hand for Soap, “we need to get our hands on a radio.” Ghost leaves him behind as he starts collecting their equipment.

Soap follows him, shoving a still wrapped sandwich in his hands, “what are ye planning, Simon?”

Those dark eyes stare at him with newfound conviction, as Ghost pulls the mask back over his head.

“There’s only one other person who would be able to locate the Hunter in this city.”

Soap’s brows shoot up when he understands.

“Captain Price…”

[sednonamoris]

once bitten

Pairing: John Marston x gn!reader

Summary: John and Abigail’s relationship continues to deteriorate as Arthur begins a clumsy courtship. You and John run off hunting to get away from it all, but things don’t exactly go to plan.

Warnings: Angst, emotional constipation, canon-typical violence, animal violence, hunting, strong language, weird and complicated love square pt. 2, brief dream sequence, more wolves

Word count: 3,551

A/N: I’m sure in a few days I’ll like this but right now looking at it any longer will make me cry - bone apple teeth :) Covered a lot of ground with this one 😮‍💨

Series masterlist • AO3

—

There are fresh wildflowers hanging around the entrance to John and Abigail’s tent. Jack has new clothes, unfrayed and free of patches. There’s a healthy flush to Abigail’s cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes that’s been missing for you don’t know how long - ages. Arthur walks around camp with a jaunty step and whistling tune. Even Uncle says something about how happy he seems. 

John isn’t happy at all.

In fact, you’re sure he’s never been madder. 

Every time Arthur walks by he sneers or makes a rude, too-loud comment to whoever he’s talking to. When he spies Abigail or Jack he snipes a nasty word their way or disparages any kindness Arthur has done. The flowers are ugly. Half-dying. Why the hell did Abigail have to put them up, anyway? And those new clothes look stupid. Can’t Jack be grateful for what he has already? This ain’t a life of luxury here. And so on. 

“That boy is lost,” Dutch says to you one afternoon, shaking his head while cigar smoke curls around him. John is chopping wood across camp like each log has Arthur’s face on it, chest heaving and sweat dripping down his brow. “Running once again, though he remains here among us.”

You frown, arms crossed. “He’s an idiot, lettin’ things get this bad in the first place.”

“Maybe,” Dutch chuckles softly, “maybe. He’s blind, certainly, to miss what’s right in front of him.”

He looks meaningfully at you when he says it, and you shift under the scrutiny. You’ve always known that Dutch knew - Hosea knows, and there are no secrets between them - but he’s been kind enough not to say anything over the years.

Until now, you guess.

“What do you think he ought to do?”

You know what you want him to do, but it’s silly and selfish and Dutch has always been better at this sort of thing. 

“I think,” he says, like he’s been waiting for you to ask, “I need this family whole again. John has a choice: to step up and be father, or to let Arthur do it in his stead. Love catches us all, in the end - one way or another. But maybe you’re asking me what you should do.”

“Maybe,” you admit on a sigh. “I’m afraid I might be lost, too.”

You’re scared to look him in the eye but feel him stare right through to the heart of you anyhow. He grasps your shoulder with one hand and tilts your chin to face him with the other. His brows are pinched together over strong features that feel like home after running with him for so long. Your own father’s features have long since faded to dreamlike memory.

“You, Arthur, John,” Dutch says, “you’re the children I never had. Figure this out before you break your old man’s heart, will you?”

There’s something you can’t place in the depths of his gaze - a love or a warning or a promise. It doesn't really matter because whatever it is he’s right; this has to be fixed sooner than later.

—

Things come to a head when Abigail kicks John out of their tent in the middle of the night. In nothing but his longjohns and the pitch dark he shouts every obscenity he can think of at the tent flaps, but she doesn’t budge. Worse, she doesn’t even shout back, and half the camp is woken anyway.

After sulking by a campfire that isn’t much more than embers he tries again. Her rejection is even quieter, this time, but no less apparent. 

So he tries your tent instead.

John pokes his head past the flaps and you blink through sleep to see him flushed, equal parts anger and shame with just a shred of hope in his expression. “...You got room in here?” 

Sometimes you wish you were a worse friend.

“Jesus, yes, fine,” you grumble. “Hurry up and shut up.”

He steps in with his bedroll and sets it on the ground beside your cot while you roll over and pretend to fall back asleep. Still, you don’t miss his quietly mumbled thanks or way his breathing evens into soft snores in a matter of minutes. You eventually close your eyes to the sound and sleep away the few lavender hours before dawn. 

—

He is not forgiven by morning. If anything, more time to think about it has made Abigail even less compromising.

“The hell did you do to her?” you ask over breakfast, but he only glowers in response. 

She’s giving him the silent treatment, going about her day without so much as a glance in his direction. It’s driving him crazy. Especially because she makes a point of talking to Arthur instead every time he tries to start a conversation. 

“That woman,” he seethes. “And Arthur is no better! What did I ever do to deserve this?” 

You can think of an itemized list, but you don’t tell him that. You’re still busy feeling sick for telling Arthur to go for it in the first place. Christ alive, you’re more guilty now than you ever have been about robbing and killing folk your whole life. It might not be so bad if Arthur didn’t take every opportunity to rub his intentions in John’s face, but the two of them are worse now than when they were kids.

You want to confess, to make yourself the villain instead, but what if John will never speak to you again afterwards?

…What if that’s what you deserve? 

“That’s it,” he stands so abruptly the table rattles. You jump, startled from your spiraling thoughts. “I’m gettin’ out of here.”

“John Marston if you tuck tail and run again you can forget Abigail, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Not like that,” he says. “Hunting trip. Just a couple days; I need to kill something other than Arthur. Would you—” he cuts himself off, squirms in place. Can’t quite look you in the eye. “Do you wanna come with?”

“Sure, yeah,” you hear yourself agreeing automatically. “Someone’s got to make sure somethin’ doesn’t gnaw off the other half of your head.”

He scrunches his face. “Real funny.”

You allow yourself a faint grin. “I know.”

—

It’s quick work to get the horses tacked while he packs rifles and food enough for a day or two and triple checks the location with Hosea, who looks like he can’t decide how exactly he ended up raising such a bunch of fools. His brows raise when he catches your eye past John’s shoulder. You can feel the helpless expression on your face in response. 

Arthur makes a point to wish you luck. Not John, just you. Abigail keeps busy with Jack at the far end of camp without so much as a word. Dutch steps into place beside Hosea and sends you off with a meaningful stare you feel long after camp has passed out of sight.

—

“Apparently some feller told Hosea about some real big elk in that forest out past Valentine,” John says as the two of you trot along. Moonshine takes two steps to Old Boy’s one, but you’re making good time. Even the pack horses you’re ponying along keep pace just fine. 

“Cumberland?”

“Yeah, that’s it. I figure between the two of us we can take at least one down - maybe two - and bring ‘em back to camp. Pearson might even happy with us, for once.”

“He’s plenty happy with me,” you scoff. “Charles, too. We bring in game all the time.”

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

You smile to yourself.

It’s a fine day for it, if a bit cloudy. Looks like it might rain later. Cumberland isn’t quite as green as you like, but the spruce trees stand tall and proud and the grass is coming in full, sprinkled with deceivingly pale and delicate flowers for what you know it takes to survive out here. Still, it’s not too sunny, not too warm, and the faintest whisper of a breeze fans your face with the scent of late spring and coming rain. Hard to complain about that.

Even skirting around Valentine you make it to a decent campsite before the evening goes grey and the drizzle begins. Muscle memory makes quick work of striking up the tents and unpacking the bedrolls. John gathers the driest kindling he can find while you hobble the horses. You warm a can of beans over the newborn fire while he scouts around for a rabbit or squirrel to complete the meal. 

“Feels like I can breathe again out here,” John says once dinner is ready and the two of you are settled around the campfire. 

Something about being out in the wilderness makes even bad meals taste better. If Pearson tried to serve this up you’d riot, but here? Rabbit and beans is about the best thing you can think of. 

“No such thing as bad country,” you agree. 

“I don’t know about that. You remember Ohio?”

You groan. “Don’t remind me. That was a terrible winter. I ain’t built for cold like that.”

“You ‘n Javier both,” he snickers. “I’m surprised you didn’t complain so much in Colter.”

“Colter was different. So many people gone, and the rest half froze and scared,” you look away and sigh deep. “Wasn’t my place to complain.”

“I guess,” he blows out a loaded breath. The tin plate resting between his knees is all but forgotten. “Still hard to believe we lost people like that. Do you think Mac is alive out there?”

“Hard to kill a Callander. Still, I don’t fancy his chances. Those Pinkertons are mean sons-’a-bitches, and the law was on us out there like stink on shit.”

John snorts out half a laugh. “Sure were. Feels like the whole thing was a setup. And Dutch—”

“Dutch what? Javier said he didn’t have much of a choice.”

“You weren’t on that boat,” he shakes his head. “He says it was her or us, but I can’t help feeling like that girl didn’t have to die. He spent our whole lives tellin’ us not to kill in cold blood. Weren’t nothin’ hot-blooded about that.”

A shiver runs down your spine remembering the glacial calm on Dutch’s face as he dragged John to shore, spattered in blood and a bad situation. Not regret.

“Sometimes there ain’t no way out but the hard way.” 

Never regret. 

“Yeah,” John says. “Maybe.”

When you make your way into your tent for the evening the staccato beat of rainfall lulls you to sleep. You dream of storms. Rain comes down red and thick as blood. When you look down it’s covered your hands. Stained them. When lightning strikes you hear a woman scream. Instead of thunder, Dutch’s laugh echoes. 

—

The next morning you lie on your stomach on a ridge overlooking the Dakota. Pale dawn light filters through the mist and makes the morning shimmer. You breathe deep and steady and quiet and try to focus on the elk at the other end of your scope and not the way John is pressed so close to your side, his own sighted rifle at the ready. A whole herd lies below. They take turns keeping watch and grazing and drinking their fill from the pebbled shoreline. Hosea’s man wasn’t wrong; the smallest cow among them is easily six hundred pounds. 

The both of you rose with the sun to start tracking them through the wood. Last night’s rainfall made their muddied hoofprints easy to follow. Through the brush and down to the river you scouted and crouched and checked for scat and broken branches. Now they’re settled on the riverbank for the morning, 

“I was hoping for a bull,”  John mutters. 

“Meat is meat,” you roll your eyes, “and these are damn big cows, besides. Which one you dropping?”

“I’ll take the one by the tree. You?”

“Other side of the river, head down drinking.”

You feel him nod beside you. “On three?”

“One…”

Inhale.

“Two…”

Exhale.

“Three.”

C-Crack!

Your shots fire off almost simultaneously, scattering the herd all at once, save the two that are dead before they hit the ground. 

John whistles for the horses and you make your way down rocky paths to the riverbank. You settle on dressing them at camp and hoist the bodies onto your pack horses whole, heaving with effort. It’s a good thing the little Morgans are sturdy.

“We should head back,” John scans the ridge, shifting in place, “before anything smells the blood.”

“Sure.” You swing into your saddle and take the lead of one pack horse.

John ponies the other off of Old Boy, and you pick your way back up narrow pebbled deerpaths to the main road. It’s early yet, and you’ve only been gone a night, but meat is best fresh and it’s not too far a ride back. Still, you’re slower now than you were coming out here. You tell yourself it’s because the horses have a much heavier load this time around, but it rings false even to your ears. What it is is selfishness. Out here in the wild things are simple and John is all yours. Back at camp life is far, far more complicated. 

“Wish we could’a stayed another night,” John breaks the silence, voicing your own thoughts. He glances at you sideways from his saddle. You pretend not to notice.

“Too bad we’re not worse hunters.” 

He sighs and rubs his jaw. “Yeah. Just not sure if I want to see Abigail so soon. Or Arthur. The pair of them—”

“Can’t we talk about somethin’ else?” Your shoulders hunch, defensive, and your lip curls somewhere between a plea and a snarl.

 “Really?” John turns his head to you fully and pulls his horse up. The closer you get to camp the harder it is to forget the tensions that wait for you there.There’s a mean shine in his eyes, clouds before the storm. “Seems like you been happy to talk to Arthur about it all. Karen said—”

“That’s different.” 

“How the hell is it different? Last I checked it was you ‘n me, not you and him.”

“It’s different,” you insist, arms folded and glare full of thunder. You open your mouth to say something more - something mean - something you’re sure to regret, when a rustle in the brush snaps your gaze past John and any argument to the forest behind. 

The horses dance beneath you, spooked and snorting. Their eyes roll white. The commotion gets closer. In moments a blur of brown and tan and desperation comes barrelling out of the brush; the biggest bull elk you’ve ever seen. You swear it looks right at you before puffing out a frantic breath and galloping away. 

“What the—” John curses, but you aren’t left to wonder what was chasing it for long. 

A bone-chilling howl cuts him off. One, then two, then three wolves emerge from the forest in hot pursuit. If they hadn’t called you might not have noticed them until it was too late; their grey-brown coats blend into the brush perfectly, and each padded footfall is all but silent. Powerful muscles ripple through their shoulders as they run. It’s as beautiful to watch as it is terrifying. You don’t think you even breathe. John is just as petrified beside you, face blanched and hand straying up to clutch at his still-healing scars. 

They’ve almost passed entirely when your pack horse rears up, whinnying desperately at the scent of a predator. You shush her but it’s too late; The wolves stop their pursuit and stare at you instead with their hungry golden eyes. Saliva drips from their maw. Midmorning sun glints off their canines. 

You fire your pistol at the ground near their feet, hoping the sound will scare them off. Two shy away and take up the elk’s trail again instead, but the biggest of the lot jumps back for only a moment before circling the horses once more with a savage snarl. Fuck. You don’t have a spare hand to reach for your rifle, and neither does John if you have any hope of keeping hold of the pack horses and your respective kills. Another bullet does nothing to deter it this time. It circles even closer and snaps at Moonshine’s heels. He squeals and kicks out, narrowly missing the wolf, which pins its ears and growls at the close call. 

Everything in you screams to run, to get far far away from this predator that stalks closer and closer still, but you know that even if Old Boy and Moonshine take your direction, in their panic the pack ponies will flee every which way, tearing the leads from your hands and making themselves easy targets. 

“Go on, get!” John shouts hoarsely. 

The wolf’s lip only curls in response. 

This time when you fire your gun, your aim is true. Big as it is, a single bullet from a pistol is only enough to make it mad, but you’re desperate. It lunges forward, and you empty the chamber into its skull. The horses scream. Your pack pony tears away into the wood. Moonshine nearly skitters out from beneath you. Old Boy rears up on John. 

But with a final whimper the wolf lies dead.

“Shit,” you curse. “Are you alright?” 

Now that you can finally turn to look at him, John seems about as rattled as you feel. All the blood has drained from his face, making his scars stand out even more, stark pink against white. His grip is white-knuckled and shaking ever so slightly around his reins and the lead of his pawing pack horse. 

“I fucking hate wolves,” he says. 

It’s easy to agree.

“C’mon,” you say, “that pony can’t have got far.”

“What should we do with the wolf?”

You shrug. “Skin it if you want, but I doubt the hide is any good after I shot it full of holes.”

“You think that elk got away?”

“I dunno.”

You tilt your head at him, eyes squinted, but other than scared he seems fine. Still, he stares at the wolf’s prone corpse just a moment too long before following you into the brush to retrieve your missing horse. 

—

The rest of the ride back is silent save for the creaking of saddle leather and occasional snort from one of the horses. John keeps looking over at you like he wants to say something. Every time you look away and spur your mount forward before he can. 

—

“Hey, you’re back already!” Javier calls from midway up the path to camp. He whistles lowly when he sees the haul you’ve brought with you. “What’s with the faces? This will feed us for weeks.”

“Long story,” you say.

John just shakes his head. 

“Siempre algo con ustedes,” you hear Javier mutter as you pass. You wish he wasn’t right. 

You hitch the horses as close as Ms. Grimshaw will allow and begin the huffing and puffing process of getting both carcases strung up near Pearson’s station for proper dressing. John takes one end while you take the other and heave it off the horse.

“Take a look at that - what a beauty!” Pearson says when he sees the size of the cow.

“Quit lookin’ and help us get this damn thing up,” you grunt. “Jesus, it’s heavy.”

The work is cumbersome and awkward, but between the three of you it gets done. Jack appears somewhere between stringing the first and second one up, staring with wide, innocent eyes. He doesn’t say a word, content just to watch. You flash him a small smile. John ignores him entirely.

At least until Abigail joins him.

“Surprised you’re here,” he jabs. “Got tired of Arthur while we was gone?”

“No,” she huffs. “He’s gone to Strawberry to fetch Micah. I— The boy, I mean, was worried ‘bout you is all. Didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”

“Didn’t plan to be.” 

She puts her hands on her hips and he glares, forced into some sort of stalemate. 

You busy yourself with Pearson and try to look everywhere but at them. Both keep glancing over to you for something. Support? Vindication, maybe? Abigail’s eyes are heartbreak blue, and you feel yours widen when they meet hers, backed into a corner you still don’t fully understand. When you finally manage to break away the grey of John’s waits for you; ash and ruin. 

Like the coward you are, you tuck tail and retreat with the excuse that the horses still need to be untacked and cooled out, nevermind that Charles has already started the job. You hear Abigail say that she and John ought to talk, if he can get his head out of his ass long enough for a serious conversation. You’re out of earshot before his retort comes stinging. 

“Are you okay?” Charles asks when he sees the look on your face. 

You sigh and manage a grimace. “Sure.” 

He glaces back to where John and Abigail stand before meeting your eyes once more, all sympathy. Left without something to say - because what is there to say, really? - he puts a strong, warm hand on your shoulder. The solidness of his touch should be reassuring, but it only reminds you of how fragile and broken everything else feels.

[ayakamizu]

FFXIV Write 2024 Day 10 - Stable

Stable: Adjective. Not subject to emotional instability or illness; sane; mentally sound. Characters: Sidurgu Orl, Ayaka Mizushima (WoL), Rielle de Caulignont, Myste, ??? Expansion: Stormblood Rating: G Notes: Meant to take place at the start of the StB Dark Knight questline. General DRK questline spoilers apply here.

“So I have to ask,” Sidurgu starts, pausing for a moment to weigh his words. “Are you… alright?”

Well then. “I’m fine,” Ayaka answers plainly, ignoring the ache in her chest.

Sidurgu frowns at that, arms crossed over his chest. He looks like he wants to say something, but decides against it at the last moment.

From around the corner, Rielle and Myste are chatting about… something. She isn’t sure, but something about the interaction makes her senses tingle unpleasantly. Like she wants to pick Sidurgu’s young charge by the scruff of her jacket and take her far, far away from this child (ghost) before her.

She is fine though! (No you aren’t.) Sidurgu’s concern is sweet, but Ayaka is perfectly fine. (No you aren’t!)

(Quit ignoring me, Ayaka! You make an awful liar—!)

“About the job stone…” Sidurgu starts again, changing the subject from one uncomfortable thing to another. The awkward way he holds himself betrays him in this moment as well. “Do you really think Myste’s plan will work?”

“No clue,” she sighs, looking back at the pair. “This has never happened before.”

Sidurgu groans, shoulders slumping in defeat—whether at the situation or Ayaka’s disinterested replies, she isn’t sure. “Then we’ll have to follow the boy’s plan for now.”

“And you’ll take care of the children?”

(Child. Singular. You know what that “boy” is Ayaka. A misg—)

“Since when did I become a babysitter?” He grumbles, looking up towards the heavens with all the tiredness of a man resigned to his fate. “Yes, I’ll watch the children while you’re off doing… whatever it is you’re doing.”

“Trying to free a country from Garlean occupation.”

Judging by the look on his face, he wonders which one. “No rest for the wicked, huh?” Sidurgu mutters instead, frown deepening.

“It’s fine.” (No it’s not.) “It’s to help a friend.” (The most truthful thing you’ve said tonight.)

“You keep the oddest company.”

“I keep your company, don’t I?” Ayaka teases, knocking one of her shoulders against… his forearm. Why were Auri men so tall anyway? It was unfair.

The flush on his face made it worth it though. Sidurgu could be quite cute when he wanted to be! “We’ll stay here until Myste manages to figure something out,” he says, ignoring the jab. “Contact us if something else comes up. Maybe one of your scholar friends can give us some clues.”

Ayaka nods, rolling her shoulders as she steps away from the wall. Sidurgu elects to stay leaning against it, the perfect picture of a brooding knight in darkened armor. She catches the look on his face to see the concern written all over it before it’s wiped away with a mask of stoicism.

“No promises,” she says instead, continuing to ignore the elephant in the room. In all likelihood, Sidurgu knows she isn’t being truthful, but he won’t probe any further. “Take care of the children!”

“Not so loudly!” He hisses, glancing over at the aforementioned children. They’re now looking at the two of them—Rielle with confusion (and embarrassment, whoops) and Myste with an unreadable look. “You make it sound like we’re raising them!”

‘Is that not what you’re doing with Rielle?’ Ayaka thinks, glancing at the blonde Elezen. She shakes her head instead, deciding against teasing the man further. “As you were, Sid! Keep him out of trouble, Rielle and Myste!”

From behind her she heard a canopy of voices ring out in the cold night all at once (“What did I just say?!” “I’ll do my best.” “What is going on…?”) as she made her way back towards Ishgard and on the next airship to Gridania.

(So troublesome, Ayaka.)

‘It’s going to be a long trip back to Rhalgr’s Reach at this rate,’ she thinks, wanting to get as far away from Western Highlands as possible.

[casspurrjoybell-27]

Claimed by the Beast - Chapter 3b

*Warning Adult Content*

Alpha Energy - Part 2

- Knox -

After the women leave, she dabs at Everett's damp cheeks with her fingers.

"I know Knox can be a bit much to deal with, but trust me, you aren't in any trouble with him. No one around here is going to kill you."

"You don't know that."

"Oh, I do. I'm married to Gavin, after all. My name is Josie, by the way."

"Wish I could say it's nice to meet you, but I'd just be lying."

Everett dries his remaining tears on Knox's shirt before turning to face Josie.

"Is Gavin a member of the club?"

Josie snorts.

"More like the president."

Everett immediately sits up in his seat, his expression hardening.

"Well, I definitely can't trust you now. Everything I say, you'll just report it back to him. I should go."

"Don't. Please?"

Josie grabs Everett by the hand as he stands, her eyes pleading for him to stay.

"I know what happened to you tonight. You had your entire world flipped upside down, and it doesn't help any when you're suddenly taken by a group of strange men."

Everett slowly sits back down.

"No, it doesn't."

"I like to think I'm pretty good at reading people," Josie says.

"Once they realize you mean them no harm, they'll let you go. This will all be over soon, okay?"

Everett scoffs, shaking his head.

"Despite what you've seen tonight, The Fallen Angels are good men. They don't hurt women, children or innocents like you, so you really have nothing to worry about. And if this situation ends up putting you in trouble, I know they'll protect you. Knox most of all since he apparently gave you such a hard time."

"Right now, you're safer being here than out there where The Jackals can get you," Josie says. "How close were you to the man that died tonight?"

"His name was Shaun and I... we've only known each other for a few weeks. Do you think it's dumb for me to be this emotional over someone I barely knew?"

Josie shakes her head.

"It's natural. You saw the man get shot and die right in front of you. I'd be more concerned if you were sitting here with a dry face."

"How do you know all this? Did Knox tell you?"

"No, if I give my man enough kisses, sometimes he'll turn generous and will loop me in on club business," Josie says with a cheeky grin.

"You're not like the others. You're... different. How the hell did you get mixed up with these monsters?"

Everett glances down at her big, round belly.

"I pray for your baby's future."

"No need for that." Josie laughs, waving him off. "I told you already, The Fallen Angels aren't like that. They're not monsters. They're actually the ones who saved me. I'd be dead if it weren't for them."

Everett gasps.

"Dead?"

A dark look settles in Josie's eyes, slightly dimming their shine.

Everett remains quiet, allowing her to continue if she wants to.

Seconds turn to minutes before she talks again.

"It happened six years ago," Josie whispers. "My father worked in the pharmaceutical industry, granting him access to things every drug lord craves. One night, a man who'd been trying to blackmail my father for money and drugs kidnapped and beat me. He wanted to use me as a bargaining chip. I was with him for three excruciating days. Long story short, the cops were always one step behind at catching the guy, so my father grew desperate and reached out to The Fallen Angels. If the money is right, they'll take on jobs that the police should be better at doing. Anyway, they found me, saved me... and I've been glued to Gavin's hip ever since."

Everett places a hand on her bouncing knee, squeezing gently.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

"I still have nightmares sometimes but I'm mostly over it." Josie sighs, then she plasters on a sympathetic grin. "What happened to you tonight, you'll eventually heal from it. The pain you're feeling won't stay with you forever."

"I hope you're right."

Everett exhales deeply, quietly contemplating what his next move should be.

No one here will lend him a helping hand and after chatting with Josie, his thoughts towards The Fallen Angels have become even more complicated.

"Seriously, you're going to be fine," Josie says. "Try not to stress so much."

Everett rolls his eyes, not at Josie, but at the unfortunate situation he's trapped in.

"I'm stuck with Knox for God knows how long, so that's easier said than done."

The sound of heavy footsteps approaching has both of them turning their heads.

Knox casually strolls into the kitchen looking like a fitness model ready for their photoshoot.

He's barefoot, shirtless, has his hair down and is rocking the hell out of a pair of grey sweatpants.

Little is left to Everett's wild imagination.

He stares hard at the man, shooting invisible daggers from his eyes.

He barely notices Josie giggling next to him.

"I'm surprised I didn't find you outside trying to climb the gate to escape," Knox says to Everett.

He walks to the refrigerator and takes out two bottles of water.

"Have you eaten anything?"

"Why do you care?" Everett grumbles.

"Has he eaten anything?" Knox turns around to ask Josie.

She shakes her head in response, still grinning at both men.

"Don't give me that look, Red. Whatever you're thinking, I suggest you dead it."

"Not a chance," Josie laughs, then stands to leave. "And stop giving this kid such a hard time. He's gone through hell tonight, remember? Tone down that big Alpha energy, for God's sake. It's enough to suffocate an entire room of people," Josie says her goodbyes to Everett before waddling out of the kitchen, leaving him alone with the man whose guts he despises.

They glare at each other for a long while, making the temperature inside the room soar.

Can Everett really put his trust in Knox, or did Josie feed him nothing but lies just now?

Everett still isn't sure which path he should walk.

The one that'll lead him closer to Knox or the one that'll send him running in the opposite direction.

"Your cell is dead," Knox speaks, his deep voice breaking the silence. "I couldn't find a charger that's compatible with it, so I'll have to buy you a new one tomorrow. Then you can reach out to your folks."

Everett nods.

"Okay."

Knox takes a step forward, sighing softly.

"The room next to mine has been cleaned out. You can stay there for the night or you can stay with me. Whatever makes you comfortable."

"Oh..." Everett drops his gaze to the table, nervously fiddling with his fingers on his lap. "I don't want to be alone tonight. I'm afraid of what might happen when I close my eyes to sleep, I'm scared of what I might see..."

Everett doesn't flinch when a hand rests on the back of his neck.

He remains motionless when Knox's thumb slowly moves back and forth across his warm skin, caressing him and calming him.

"If The Jackals later decide they want me dead, will The Fallen Angels protect me like Josie said?"

"Look at me, Everett."

Everett lifts his head and falls fast into Knox's smoky eyes.

"I will keep you safe until every single Jackal has been dealt with," Knox says. "My brothers will, too. Now let's get to bed. It's late and you need to rest."

Everett is beyond exhausted, so he doesn't put up a fight.

He grabs a few snacks out of one of the cupboards and then follows Knox back upstairs, deciding to put his trust in the man.

"I'm not actually sleeping on that hard ass floor, so I'm taking the left side of the bed. That cool with you?"

Knox smiles, nodding.

"Whatever you want."

[panharmonium]

behind this mask...is another mask!  

sometimes i think about how true this “joke” of a statement is, and how welcome a change it must be for kakashi to start spending all his time with three kids who are too young to realize it.

for all that kakashi is obviously a person who’s been trying to scrape together some degree of anonymity (in whatever way he can - the mask, the headband, anbu), he has long since been stripped of most of his privacy.  he can put on as many masks as he wants, but he’s living an incredibly overexposed life - all of his most traumatic experiences were high-profile, high-publicity events, and some of them made him famous enough that every antagonist he encounters in every country he visits already knows far more about him than he would EVER choose to disclose to someone he’d just met, or even to a friend - if he ever even had that choice, which he never does, because everybody he meets already knows all of the things he might be reticent to reveal.  

for someone who is so clearly trying (in vain) to put some distance between himself and the total strangers who know far too much about him, this is profoundly uncomfortable.  it’s like walking around naked all the time.  nothing is private for him, no matter how hard he tries to cover up.  he has a mask to hide his face, but everybody already knows who he looks like.  he has a headband to hide his eye, but everybody already knows what’s under there.  his teacher’s death is probably the most well-known and widely-discussed event in recent hidden leaf history, and his student’s departure (and subsequent infamy) is now an international issue.  every single intensely personal and painfully intimate tragedy in kakashi’s life is very much out there in the public eye for people to scrutinize, and i think this situation probably just gets more uncomfortable after the uchiha massacre, because now not only is kakashi the first (and only, as far as people know) non-uchiha to ever possess the sharingan, he’s also suddenly the LAST person to possess it, at least until sasuke’s potential abilities awaken.  

kakashi can cover his face all he wants, but it doesn’t matter.  he might as well be wearing a flashing neon sign on his headband, for all the privacy it grants him.  

but with the kids, though -

the kids are too young to know.  they weren’t alive for the third great ninja war or for the battle that finally brought it to a close.  they’re too young to remember the nine-tails attack.  they don’t know anything about what happened to kakashi’s father or how kakashi got his eye or how he’s connected to the leaf village’s most famous martyr or any of the other horrible things that have happened to him.  they do eventually start to realize that he’s famous, in a sort of vague, undefined way, but it doesn’t mean anything concrete to them.  to them, kakashi is just their sensei.  he can shoot lightning out of his hand.  he can kick zabuza’s butt, twice!  he can use four different chakra types.  he has a pack of talking dogs.  he weaves hand signs faster than the eye can follow.  he’s the coolest mofo on the planet, but he's also very stupid, because he’s obsessed with the dumbest books the kids have ever seen and he’s ALWAYS late for EVERYTHING.  

and i’ll tell you right now - kakashi loves being perceived like this.  with the kids, he gets to just be, and he loves every second of it.  he loves that they think he’s a chronic oversleeper with no sense of punctuality; he loves that it drives them bonkers - they don’t need to know that he’s always late for them because he visits his friends’ memorial stone first thing every morning and gets stuck there thinking about “what an idiot [he] used to be” - they have no reason to suspect something like that about him; they just yell at him for being lackadaisical and he's perfectly happy to let them do it; he’s perfectly happy to entertain them by coming up with more and more outlandish excuses that they can scold him about.  he loves when they make fun of his reading material and take advantage of his fannish devotion to it so they can best him in a fight.  he loves when they fall out of a tree on top of him because they’re mistakenly convinced that he’s dating somebody and they’re desperate to discover all the dirty details.  he loves when they obsess over what’s under his mask and start spying on him; he plays along with all their schemes and lets them stalk him and sets up decoys and eventually agrees to “reveal” what’s underneath as part of a bigger joke, which he knows will drive them crazy (but which he also knows will be the most entertaining outcome) - he couldn’t be happier to be playing along with these games!  he doesn’t mind their occasionally curious and clumsy attempts to stick their noses into his business; he knows it just means they’re interested in him, like all kids are interested in the Very Secret and Mysterious Lives of their teachers.  they’re having fun, and kakashi loves seeing kids get to be kids, so he chooses to have fun right along with them.  nothing about it bothers him - no matter how much they try to stalk him, kakashi still gets to decide how much of his personal life they’re privy to (and that’s a relief, because it’s not a luxury he has with anyone else).  

but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t ever share things with them.  it just means that when he does, it’s because he chooses to do so, which makes it a far more authentic connection than whatever he experiences with random strangers who already know all his personal business without ever having put in the time to earn that kind of intimacy.  kakashi tells the kids things about himself not because he’s forced to, but because he wants to, and the fact that he sometimes makes these kinds of choices even when his natural inclination is to preserve what little privacy he has left is exactly what makes him such a good teacher.  that scene he has up in the tree with sasuke is important precisely because kakashi doesn’t have to tell sasuke what he does (“everyone you’re talking about has already been killed”) - he could have just given sasuke a lecture and been satisfied with that; he could have demanded that sasuke listen to him solely because one of them is the authority figure and one of them is the student - but instead, he chooses to disclose his own history, his own feelings, his own struggle, because he knows that sasuke deserves more than platitudes from people who can’t possibly understand how he feels; he needs to hear from somebody who legitimately knows what he’s going through (see: it’s easy for you to talk; you have no idea!  maybe if i were to kill the most important people in your life - everyone who’s ever meant anything - maybe then i’d listen to you, because maybe then you’d have some idea how i feel!)  kakashi knows he won’t have any credibility with sasuke until he opens that connection, vulnerable as it makes him, and so he doesn’t hesitate.

nor does he mind.  he’s comfortable making that choice.  he’s perfectly willing to open himself to somebody else when he feels it’s appropriate, but the trouble is that the only time he ever has a choice to do so is with the kids.  everybody else in the Leaf and beyond already knows too much about him - he’s been mistaken for his father in multiple countries, at multiple ages, and every single villain he encounters has some kind of comment to make about his eye even before the headband comes off.  despite the barriers kakashi has tried to put up between himself and other people, everyone he meets is privy to details of his history that are WAY too personal and painful for total strangers to know, and it’s only with the kids that he manages to escape that constant overexposure.  his students are too young to know anything about him, and too unsuspecting to realize that asking around might net them any information.  they don’t know that kakashi’s father was more legendary than the sannin, or that he killed himself when kakashi was many years younger than they are now.  they don’t know that kakashi lost his own eye protecting a friend, or that he got his new eye when that same friend was crushed to death saving kakashi’s life.  they don’t know that the rest of kakashi’s history has just been one long parade of loss.  

to them, kakashi sprang into existence the day he became their teacher, and ever since then, he’s just been ‘Our Cool Sensei, Who’s Also Stupid.’  that is such a gentler, happier, more hopeful image of himself than the one everybody else sees when they look at him.  and when he’s with the kids, i think it’s all kakashi wants to be.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 322: IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME

Previously on BnHA: Endeavor was all, “Kirishima please take Hagakure and Aoyama and put them away somewhere out of sight until we’re finally ready for the U.A. Traitor Plot.” Shouto was all “HEY DEKU DID IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU THAT MAYBE YOU WANDERING THE STREETS LOOKING LIKE A GOTH PRAYING MANTIS IS EXACTLY WHAT AFO WANTS.” Deku was all “I’M SORRY I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY CRUSHING MARTYR COMPLEX AND ACCUMULATED TRAUMA.” Mineta was all “HEY DEKU YOU SWEET THANG, IF I COULD REARRANGE THE ALPHABET I’D PUT ‘U’ AND ‘I’ TOGETHER, ANYWAYS HMU 💖”, or at least that’s what fandom apparently thought he said. Everyone was all “WELL SINCE WE’RE BACK HERE IN KAMINO WE SHOULD DO THE THING” and did the whole “launching someone into the air to save someone by dramatically grabbing their hand” thing that everybody fucking loves to do in Kamino so damn much. Iida was all “[bombards me and Deku with feels].” Deku was all, “ू(ʚ̴̶̷́ .̠ ʚ̴̶̷̥̀ ू).” I was all, “(;*△*;).” Horikoshi was all, “my work here is done.”

Today on BnHA: 

oh my god.

so I finally went back to look at what I wrote up for 321 last week, and it’s a hot fucking mess lol, and I really don’t want to deal with that right now, so we’re just gonna skip it and go back sometime in the next few days or something because I really want to read the new chapter and I have no self control. I’M SORRY IIDA

oh my god he���s breaking out the narration word bubbles oh my god. shit is about to get epic isn’t it

has there ever been a chapter that opened with these that WASN’T epic? serious question. anyways all aboard the Feels Express I guess

YEP

I saved a bunch of other crying kaomojis when I was looking for ones to use in the “previously on” summary, and right now it’s looking like that was a good fucking decision you guys. if I’m going to be an emotional wreck I might as well do it in style ʕ ಡ ﹏ ಡ ʔ

AND BY THE WAY!!

SHOULD I JUST THANK HORIKOSHI NOW AND SAVE MYSELF SOME TIME LATER. THE MAN ALWAYS FUCKING DELIVERS WHAT ELSE CAN I FUCKING SAY GODDAMN. IS IT TOO EARLY TO DECLARE THIS MY NEW FAVORITE CHAPTER? I SHOULD PROBABLY READ FURTHER THAN ONE PAGE BUT I’VE JUST GOT A FEELING

(ETA: it’s like. maybe my second favorite lol. A HUG WOULD HAVE PUT IT IN FIRST, I’M JUST SAYING.)

anyway so Ochako is releasing Iida, which is actually hilarious, because idk if you all know this but Iida can’t fucking fly you guys

like, I assume Ochako released him because she already knew that Kirishima was in place to catch him, but I really love this split-second of panic on Iida’s part where he’s all “HMM, IS OCHAKO TRYING TO KILL ME, ACTUALLY”

LOL THERE’S A THOOM AND EVERYTHING

that’s some plus fucking ultra on Ochako’s part right there. “IF THEY DIE THEY DIE” goddamn girl did you leave your chill in the same locker as Momo or what

now poor Kiri is all “DAMMIT DEKU ARE YOU PASSED OUT OR WHAT, I DIDN’T GET TO TELL YOU MY THING GODDAMMIT”

oh my gosh he is curled up so small you guys oh my fucking lord

RESIDUAL “LOST CHILD” FEELS FROM LAST WEEK COMING IN FOR A LANDING!! PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR SEATBACKS AND TRAY TABLES ARE IN THEIR UPRIGHT POSITIONS OMG ( ˚͈͈͈͈̥̆ ₍₎ ˚͈͈͈͈̥̆ )

LMAO IIDA IS TRYING TO CONFIRM THAT OCHAKO PLANNED FOR KIRISHIMA TO CATCH HIM, AND KIRISHIMA IS ALL “NOPE I’M JUST HERE BY CHANCE BRO”

Ochako is the U.A. Traitor confirmed. Hagakure I am so sorry I doubted you. Ochako get over here. so are you Toga now or what

anyway so now everyone is running over before Iida can react to this casual announcement of his attempted murder. and now Mina is taking her turn, and Horikoshi is all “HEY BTW IS MINA CRYING ON THE LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE YOU CRY?” and of fucking course it is, you bastard. I’m not made of stone

( ɵ̥̥ ˑ̫ ɵ̥̥)

SLDKFJLSDKJ:LKWEJ

IS THIS THE PART WHERE I JUST START SCREAMING INCOHERENTLY FOR THE REST OF THE CHAPTER LOL. SURE FEELS LIKE WE ARE GETTING TO THAT TIME

OH MY GOD KACCHAN AHHHHH

I CAN’T OMG LOL I ALREADY GLANCED AT THE NEXT COUPLE OF PANELS, AND HE’S STARTING A WHOLEASS MONOLOGUE ABOUT ALL OF HIS DEKU FEELS AND OH MY GOD

“HERE YOU GO MAKESTE, A WHOLE CHAPTER OF ALL YOUR FAVORITE META TOPICS JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE THEM” THANK YOU HORIKOSHI YOU’RE A BRO (っ˘̩╭╮˘̩)っ

SLKASODIFALWKFLKJ

THEY’RE JUST DEKU AND KACCHAN. holy shit you guys. because oh my god, but it’s like when Deku was talking to the Vestiges about saving Tomura, and he turned into his little child self because his heart and intentions were so pure?? and it’s like that again, except that we’re seeing them as their child selves because that’s who they are to each other?? like, not that they actually see each other as children, but just, they can see past all of the stuff on the outside and see each other to their cores, to who they are inside, and when they look at each other they each simply see the other boy that they’ve known their whole entire life. idk?? does that make sense??? DOES ANY OF THIS EVEN MAKE SENSE I DON’T KNOW WHAT WORDS ARE ANYMORE I’M JUST SWIMMING IN FEELS OKAY. I’M TRYING HERE

they’re just boys, is what I’m trying to say, I guess. just Deku and Kacchan. all the walls are down, all the gaps are bridged, and all it is is the one boy reaching out and connecting with the other, and just,,, (꒦ິ⌓꒦ີ)

OH MY GOD [GRABBING YOUR SHOULDERS AND POINTING WORDLESSLY] !!!1LK1

DO YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THIS IS YOU GUYS

HOW PERFECTLY FUCKING RAD. WELL LET ME JUST ENJOY THESE LAST FEW SECONDS BEFORE MY LIFE IS FOREVER CHANGED, I GUESS

OH

MY

GOD

CAN HE EVEN SAY THAT??? IS THAT EVEN LEGAL??? IS HE EVEN FUCKING ALLOWED TO SAY THAT. WHAT IS HAPPENING

OH MY GOD!!! OH MY GOD!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!

─=≡Σ((( つ ◕o◕ )つ

GET IN HERE, EVERYONE!!

Y’ALL HE REALLY DID IT. “BAKUGOU IS SUCH AN ASSHOLE HE HASN’T EVEN APOLOGIZED” WELL GUESS FUCKING WHAT. GUESS FUCKING WHAT, YOU GUYS!! LET’S FUCKING GOOOOO ((((／￣∇￣)／＼(￣∇￣＼)))) AHHHHHHHHHH

OHHHHHHHH

HEH. I’M ALREADY DEAD, HORIKOSHI, YOU BASTARD. DO YOUR WORST. GO ON

YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON “US”, HE SAYS. ALONG WITH A BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF OMG. KACCHAN, YOU STUDIED!! YOU UNDERSTAND!! PREACH!!

OH NO!!

OH WAIT!!!!

LOL I GOT SCARED THERE FOR A SECOND BUT ANYWAY! EVERYONE GET IN HERE!!! GROUP HUG!!! OR WAIT, NO, WHAT ABOUT -- [GRABS YOUR COLLAR URGENTLY] YOU DON’T THINK -- COULD THEY POSSIBLY -- !!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ARE YOU GONNA HUG!??!?!?!?! I AM NOT OKAY!!!!!!! !!!hgk

REACTION PANELS LOL EVERYONE ELSE IS ON THE EDGE OF THEIR SEATS TOO WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

LOL OCHAKO

I KNOW THAT IN REALITY THIS FACE IS JUST BECAUSE SHE’S CONCERNED ABOUT DEKU’S FRAGILE STATE RN, BUT I KEEP THINKING ABOUT THE WAY SHE JUST DROPPED IIDA COLD THOUGH, AND I CAN’T HELP BUT FEAR FOR KACCHAN’S SAFETY LMAO. THAT FEELING WHEN THE CLASS PERV AND THE CLASS BULLY BOTH BEAT YOU TO THE LOVE CONFESSION. KACCHAN WATCH YOUR SIX

OKAY BUT LOOK, IT’S NOT THAT I DON’T LOVE ALL OF THE OTHER KIDS, OKAY, BUT CAN WE PLEASE!??!?! HELLO?!?!? MOMO, JUST -- COULD YOU JUST FOR A MINUTE --

NOOOOOOOOOOO

“DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT, I HAVE TO SAVE SOMETHING FOR THE FINALE” HORIKOSHI YOU BETTER WATCH OUT, I’M COMING FOR YOU WITH A TWO BY FOUR!! NOT THAT I’M UNGRATEFUL!! BUT JESUS CHRIST, YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT, AND THEN ALMOST DO THAT, AND THEN NOT!! OMG I HATE YOU

sure let’s cut to Thirteen then, yay. I mean I’m glad they’re alive lol, don’t get me wrong

(ETA: I think that might have sounded a bit sarcastic so I just want to clarify that I really am happy Thirteen is alive and on the job again lol.)

it’s just that if your name doesn’t begin with Baku or Deku I honestly am not interested for just these next five minutes okay lol. like I’m just gonna be completely honest. I am too invested lol, please, they were having a moment, JUST LET ME HAVE THIS PLEASE

OH DAMN U.A. GOT SWOLE AF

THIS SCHOOL HAS BEEN JUICING WTF. I THOUGHT YOU WERE TARTARUS LOL

I’m literally not even reading the speech bubbles though omg I’m so sorry. I really hope there is not a quiz, I promise I will come back to it later scroll scroll scroll

okay so they brought him back to U.A. and he’s all tired and out of it yes

oh goody Hagakure knows all about the security system

(ETA: is it just me or is Horikoshi really laying it on thick with the hints about these two guys lately? I’m on to you sir.)

THAT’S WONDERFUL NEWS. GLAD THIS CRITICAL KNOWLEDGE IS SAFE IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE THAT WE TRUST

ffs Deku

WHAT WILL IT EVEN TAKE TO CONVINCE YOU THEN?? SWEET JESUS

-- holy shit, what??!

they know?? how did they find out??! holy shit???

I’m about to cancel the whole of Japan lmao. fucking try me dudes

-- THE PRINCIPAL!?

NEZU GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!! WHAT THE FUCK

“a ticking time bomb” tell you what, this man is just asking to be punched in the face. literally begging for it omg

(ETA: I have been advised that I misread this part; Rat Principal told everyone how safe U.A. was, but he’s not the one who ratted out Deku; that was “the rumors”, apparently. which, if I had to guess, were probably started by AFO.)

oh I see, so it’s to be Feels, Part II then

he looks so sad and tired and lonely and she goes right for the hand, god bless. though if Kacchan’s not gonna hug him, you’d think someone would at least. or is it because he still smells bad. hmm

AND THE CHAPTER’S ENDING ON HER LOL WELL OKAY THEN

I MEAN IT’S GREAT AND ALL, I LOVE OCHAKO REALLY I DO, BUT WE WERE PROMISED GREAT EXPLOSION MURDER GODS, WHAT GIVES SOB. I WAS ALL READY TO BREAK OUT INTO SONG AND EVERYTHING. SURE, HE DID THE APOLOGY, BUT WHERE IS THE FOLLOW-UP GODDAMMIT

(ETA: just to clarify the reason for my rambling here, I was really waiting for the hero name reveal and the presumed deeper meaning behind it lol. but I guess that is a conversation still to come! and we still need Deku’s response to the apology too for that matter. lots to look forward to still.)

WELL WHATEVER, SO THAT IS THE END OF THE CHAPTER! SHOUT OUT TO MY BOY RAT “LET ME JUST TELL EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD ABOUT DEKU’S SUPER SECRET IDENTITY, I GUESS THAT’S ALL RIGHT NOW, NOTHING BAD COULD POSSIBLY COME OF THIS” PRINCIPAL. listen here you little shit

anyway but if you’ll excuse me... IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME. IF I COULD FIND A WAY. I’D TAKE BACK THOSE WORDS THAT HAVE HURT YOU, AND YOU’D STAY. I DON’T KNOW WHY I DID THE THINGS I DID. I DON’T KNOW WHY I SAID THE THINGS I SAID. PRIDE’S LIKE A KNIFE, IT CAN CUT DEEP INSIDE. WORDS ARE LIKE WEAPONS, THEY WOUND SOMETIMES. BUM~ BUM~ BUM~, I DIDN’T REALLY MEAN TO HURT YOU. BUM~ BUM~ BUM~, I DIDN’T WANNA SEE YOU GO. I KNOW I MADE YOU CRY, BUT BABAY, IF I COULD TUUUUURN BACK TIIIIIIIIIIIME...

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Gotham Characthers Favorite Book Growing Up:

DISCLAIMERS:

I just did one of thoses about the Batkids. It was full of love and care. This one has love and care but also is kindda shitposty because have you seen Gotham??!! There's no way anyone can fully take those bozos seriusly.

Also: it's Gotham only. I'm not fitting other versions of the characthers. Or my answers would mostly differ (I do have a list of them for my fannon rogues). The only characther with the same book in all versions is that loser Jervis and he isn't even here cause I'm not one to state the obvius.

-> Oswald: A collection of Grim Fairy Tales. Gertrude used to read it to him every ninght until he was fourteen and complained enough. He loved the vegenfull ways the villans suffered and dreamed about having his own fairy tale prince. He kept the book with him and cares a lot for it. He used to read it for Martin tho he always skipped Cinderela for "some reason".

Alternativally the Holy Bibble, but only the tale of the children making fun of the bald man and being eaten by a bear. Gertrude used to think Oswald was a good boy because he liked reading the bible, Oswald just wanted to summon a bear to eat his bullies. When he realised it wound't work he just pushed one of them down the stairs, blamed the other and proceeded to be very disapointed with God for forcing him to do all the work.

-> Edward: The Gray Ghost comics, I don't care if they aren't mentioned the gray ghost is a cannon media in all batman related things in my head IDC. Ed was the comic book nerd who would complain of other kids for having fun imagining scenarios because it wasn't cannon and the power scale didn't fit. He read other things, but the comics were his favorite thing ever.

Adult Ed straigh up lies about it. He always says his favorite book as a kid was the full Les Miserables book for no reason but to show off. He once told he read it in the original french (not even a modernized one) at age nine. Somehow people belive him.

-> Zsasz: He liked the American Girl books. He still does. Sometimes he just takes an american girl doll book to work and enjoy the glory of people confusedly whatching him read. He tried to make Oswald read them, Oswald was not pleased (he secretly read them anyway, he aproves). He also likes Goosebumps

-> Ivvy: Remeber when I said that this headcannons are Gotham only? It was a lie. All versions of Poison Ivvy have The Secret Garden as they favorite kid book. Though this Ivvy only read it after she moved with Oswald.

-> Jonathan: Peter Pan, when his mother was alive she would read it to him as it was the only childrem's book they had. After she died, when he was six, his dad only letted him read scientific studies on fear and Animal Farm for some reason. He developed a hate for Animal Farm. Zsasz introduced him to Goosebumps. He was pleased. (He is the only version of Jonathan Crane to not have Sleepy Hollow as the answer.)

-> Jerome: he can't read. Jon tried to teach him once using Oswald's version of Peter Pan. Jerome ate the book. Literally. Crane cried. Oswald screamed than realized it was one of the books from his father collection and promptly passed out.

-> Jim: There's a book series that fits well here. I promised myself I would not use it in any of my headcannons as a self-love act. So I will say the Chronicles of Narnia. He never got any of the sybolism, but he really liked the sword figth scenes. His favorite characther was Susan and he cried over the injustice she suffered at the end and tbh me too, budy, me too.

-> Bullock: Anne of Green Gables. He loved that book and still does, he cried a lot reading it as a child. He considers it still to be the best thing he ever read. It might be true.

As an adult Harvey just loves emotional trashy romance, but he will not admit it. Once after being catched by Jim reading Twilight he somehow convinced Gordon he was iliterated and never read a book on his life. It took a looong time to Jim to realize Harvey was lying and could indeed read, a loong time.

-> Lee: A Series of Unfortunate Events. She found the book series very inspiring as a kid, it teached her that the word wasn't black and white and that sometimes people had to go to tortuous ways to do good.

-> Barbara: The Baby-Sisters Club, it was the only book series chosed by her and not by her parents and so automatically it was her favorite. She sometimes compare people to the girls. She also presented the series to Selina so they both could gossip about the characthers like they were real people. Besides being a fun activity it made both Oswald and Jim feel like they were missing some vital information somehow. They later turned it into a code.

-> Thabita: she never had a favorite book series. She read a bit of everything as a kid but while she likes them she never loved them. Her brother was obcessed with some book series about a magical boy but she found them lame. Maybe a volume of the Discworld saga, probably Men at Arms.

-> Butch: Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He is sure that as a kid Oswald was a lot like Greg Heffley and he hates the fact he thinks that.

[soft-boi-eli]

OMG CAN I REQUEST CC!PHILZA INTRODUCING HIS ADOPTED EMO CHILD TO THE REST OF THE SBI/DSMP

Gender neutral pls they/them

Of course! I've been having a bit of shortages on ideas. So this is so fucking welcomed.

Anyways

Father CC!Philza x Emo! Reader

Pronouns:they/them

Summary:your old parents gave you up as a teen, overflowing you with emotions, causing depression, mood swings, and quite a bit of anxiety. When you got adopted by a man and a lady,both seemingly very kind and understanding. You felt happy. They didnt expect the sleepy bois to come and visit so soon.

Tw:anxiety attacks, mention of depression, loving clothes (not a tw but damn I sometimes miss my old fashion sense.), mention of trauma, swearing!

A huge new family

They dont blame their biological family. They knew that they were being overwhelming. Slowly shifting into a state of mind where fluffy black and colored hair was their favorite. Their outfits became more extravagant and their makeup took a turn for the darker. But they didnt have to put them up for adoption.

About a year in and out of foster families, a few months in an orphanage, then one more foster family. It was official. They were the new child of philza.

Your life got better. Both of them accepted your choice of clothes and makeup, even supported it!

They helped with everything in the first few weeks. Giving you space, letting you know that they were there. But you nor phil knew that three boys were heading down to visit.

So when you answered the door to see three faces demanding philza minecraft and one just looking awkward. They were also changing about him coming and join them you felt panic flood through you. Slamming the door on their face you held near your chest.

Your uneven breathing was heard by your father and he was quick to scoop you away from the door and have kristin answer the door.

He was sitting next to you hand lightly rubbing your shoulder and he guided you through the panic attack. "That's it. In through the nose. Hold it for a few second. Breathe out." His voice was calm.

It took less time to calm you down then you've ever had. "There ya go mate. Just keep breathing." He kept coaching you through you panic attack.

Kristen let the four in with their promise of keeping calm. Your shaking form brought major concern to the two older ones and confusion to the two younger ones. "(Y/n) I want to introduce you to the four behind us. Technoblade, wilbur, tommy, and tubbo. They are really good friends of mine." Nodding lightly you sat there, not wanting to turn because if you did the panic would strike harder. Remembering what happened before you parents left you.

A huge group of people basically shunned your for your choices and didnt want to take you in because 'trash like you' wasnt accepted in the family. But these two were different. Supporting you with your choices. How different were their friends? "Hey I think you shirt is cool! Who's on it?" A slightly hyper voice broke through the silence. " black veil brides." It was quite but a start. "Cool! So their a band right? What kind of songs?" The brown haired teen was trying to communicate with you. "Uhm. Rock." It had started small but you opened up to the teens. They were about you age and they didnt bash what you decided to like. The two older ones hung out with phil and Kristen. You three hung out in your room which was kind of softer then your appearance. It was to reflect a bit deeper into you. Bookshelves, a desk, reading corner, and a bed. Not fully knowing what to put in there.

But you, tommy, and tubbo were almost the best of friends when they had to leave. Techno and Wilbur it took a bit. After the two teens left you had came out of your room, no makeup, hair had all products removed, and your clothes changed from Jean's and a black veiled brides shirt to a black tee shirt, grey sweat pants, with a book in hand.

Before sleeping you just chilled in the living room, reading while basking in the presence of your adoptive parents. You did not expect wilbur and techno to still be there.

Plopping down on the couch next to phil you opened your book and tried to zone out, to get engulfed into the book. Nope. Two sets of eyes just watching you.

"So you like poems?" The book you were reading was a massive collection of poems. Looking up to the two on the couch you nodded lightly.

Looking back down you felt nervous. "Small talk is awkward." Looking up to the brown haired guy with an American accent you nodded. "Same." Once more you looked down at your book. You already had issues focusing but you tried to work though it. "What kind of poems are you favorite?" You sat there for a second. Trying to think of something that catches your attention.

"Mainly ones about trauma. It reminds me I'm not the only one in the word that went through something I have. It just makes it more interesting when I can relate." It was true. Sometimes the poems you liked ring a little to close to home.

"Good choice. It does really intrigue the audience when they can relate." Nodding you closed your book. "Especially when you relate. It's a must for me. Other wise I get turned away from it and just cant focus. But if I like it then I am just dead set on that poem."

You and techno bonded over poems and wilbur brought up some songs. "So what is you song preference?" "Hollywood undead, black veil brides, other then that its random. If I like the song it's in my playlist." With no other preferences with music other then it had to sound good to you there was honestly no judgement for other people's taste in music. There were little treasures from almost all genres.

For a while you talked about poems and songs. It honestly helped you feel safer with them. They didnt care about what you found intriguing. Or why. You even went on a rant and there was no care. They just listened.

But sadly they had to leave. Bit they promised that they would visit more. They were like the brothers you never had.

"So I see that you were able to talk to all of them." Nodding to your father figure you smiled "they were nice. Honestly. I cant wait to see them again."

He found joy in you wanting to hang out with his friends/technically children too.

Now meet the rest of the dream smp. It was very fast. Meeting almost all of them at the same time.

Phil was streaming and no one except for the sleepy bois knew about you. So you walked into his stream, book in hand and sat on the couch behind his set up. You liked having another person on the room. You just hated being alone. It gave you really bad thoughts. "Who's that behind you phil?" A random donation read out. Phil looking behind himself saw you in the corner reading and you normally did. "Ah that's my child. They like to have company. So sometimes they come in here to read." "Wait you have a child?! Since when?" The voice made you jump. Your book fell out of your hands and you looked at your father's screen. A green man with a weird white blob for a skin on minecraft. "Yeah. I took a break to pick them up from the orphanage." All hell broke loose. You ran while phil answered questions. You were not dealing with that. No way. Nuh uh. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not today satan. It took phil bribing you with a trip to hot topic to get you to come back in. I mean hey you get to score a few shirts and hats. Might as well.

Meeting the server wasbt too bad. But the questions were weird. You didnt answer the ones you were uncomfortable about and they didnt care. Your boundries were up. And when tommy, tubbo, willbur, and techno revealed they knew of you they were yelled at. It was funny. Watching people say they should of said something. But it resulted in alot of compliments and Phil's chat loving you.

You were now the older sibling of the chat. Why? Cause chat said so.

When you come in from now on the chat is chanting for you. Just "(y/n)!" Over and over.

Your life? Crazy. But it became a bit better after you were living with your new parents. It was heaven.

I'm sorry if its awkward I'm not good at introductions. And I am tis but a sleep deprived human. I need sleep and so do you have a nice day and once more I'm sorry if this isnt up to what you wanted.

[phoenixyfriend]

Auntie ‘Soka and Little Leia (and Rex)

The counterpart to Uncle Ben and Little Luke (Original Post, Chrono)

Listen. You all knew this was coming.

This got... very long and detailed and I’m going to have to clean it up and post to AO3. As in, this was supposed to be 2-3k and is literally ten times that long. It crossed 25k. And the initial section actually glosses over a bunch, actual fic-style writing starts at “That, of course, is when things get interesting.”

Warnings: discussion of various canon traumas (most relating to being child soldiers), general PTSD, several scenes featuring dissociation or panic attacks upon being triggered, and canon-typical violence.

Rated T, gen.

I still want there to be de-aging nonsense involved so Ahsoka is physically a late teenager despite having a solid two decades of field experience behind her (we’re pulling her from Malachor).

Leia, much like Luke, is now six. She just came from being a rebellion general. She is not happy about being a child. She was already short, this is just mean.  She’s a human espresso.

UNLIKE BEN, Ahsoka is not happy about this turn of events. Being seventeen-ish is not helpful in the outer rim. She’s a female togruta, young and healthy, and in the Outer Rim, caring for a small human child. Sure, she has her lightsabers and plenty of combat experience, and she can keep them safe, but she’s just one person, and a major target for those looking to make some quick cash. It doesn’t matter how good she is; she needs sleep at some point.

It makes my heart happy to treat Ahsoka and Rex as two halves of the same black ops specialist so you know what, he’s there too! He’s physically like... 10-12 in natborn, maybe. They’re not sure, because clones age weird. He’s moderately more useful than Leia (who is very competent but also physically six, and short for that age), but he’s still... very small.

Reminder that none of them have been born yet.

Ahsoka has a harder time explaining WHY she has children with her, since she's barely more than a kid herself, and clearly unrelated by species. She sometimes just says “Oh, my adoptive brother’s kids” since it’s kind of the truth for Leia and she’s not touching the actual truth about Rex with a ten foot pole.

Ahsoka definitely knows about Leia being a Skywalker, or at least has suspicions that Bail never outright confirmed but was conspicuously quiet about. She does tell Leia about it, but it’s not like that means anything, right? Just, you know, your dad was my teacher! I don’t have to tell you he became Va--oh shit, you already knew that part. Well, fuck. What do you mean he had a son? OH SHIT, PADME HAD TWINS.

Alt take for explaining why she’s got kids: She’s my foundling, I know her name as my child (Leia shut up!!!)

(Ahsoka can fake Mandalore. Sometimes.)

That said, there is... significantly less gambling and significantly more theft to get to Coruscant.

As previously stated, Ahsoka is a black ops kinda gal, and more importantly, she looks like a fairly attractive young woman in the Outer Rim, with two children in good health. She’s a target, and also not the kind of person one generally gambles with. If she does gamble, people get upset when she doesn’t lose, in ways they don’t get upset about Ben doing the same, because she’s, again, a cute teenage girl. It’s exhausting.

As things go, she largely ends up stealing from people who deserve it and/or smuggling herself and her charges into someone else’s ship. They’re small, they can hide. Sometimes she can get them all passage by working as a mechanic, she’s good at that.

Once they’ve got a handle on when they are, they have to decide on Names. None of them have been born yet, so technically they could use their own names without anyone Knowing. Rex and Leia might not even be born, depending on how successful they are at, you know, stopping the war and everything. Ahsoka, though, she’s going be born in two years, and there’s no reason to prevent it, so... she doesn’t want to steal baby-her’s name. That would be mean.

Leia is already calling her “Auntie ‘Soka” when she can for reasons like “selling the bit” and “manipulating adults” and “making us both feel better after we had a mutual breakdown about Anakin being Vader.” Ergo, she decides that whatever new name she picks better include that in some way, and decides on “Sokari” because it sounds pretty.

Overall, they don’t... they don’t actually make it very far before there’s an Incident. Again, teenager with small children. They spend a lot of time hiding out in space ports looking for an opportunity.

That, of course, is when things get interesting.

Specifically, Ahsoka spots a Mandalorian.

She doesn’t recognize the armor. She does recognize the sigil, and thinks ‘well, they’re more likely to help than some,’ because from what she’s heard, the Haat Mando’ade are Decent People Overall. Her view is a little biased, mostly on account of the sheer level of grudge she has against Kyr’tsad. It’s fine! The True Mandalorians have the same grudge, right? And Mandalorians like kids and Ahsoka hasn’t slept in five days and it’s fine. It’s fine! IT’S FINE.

“Oh shit,” Rex whispers, before she can suggest anything. “Oh fuck.”

“Stop cursing,” Leia hisses, elbowing him. “People are going to notice.”

“That’s the Prime,” Rex panics, mostly quiet. Ahsoka’s heart drops, because fuck is right. “That’s Fett.”

Leia isn’t impressed. Ahsoka just angles herself between Fett and Rex and hopes that he doesn’t see them. That’s just asking for trouble.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is in fact running on none sleep with left trauma, and doesn’t notice Fett walking up and dropping into a seat across from them until he’s actually done so, removing his helmet to glare a little more efficiently.

“Wanna explain why your kid has my face?”

Ahsoka later tells herself that he’s killed Jedi and that’s why he can sneak up on her, and that she can be forgiven some slip-ups with the exhaustion being what it is, and that she’s obviously going to be dealing with some emotional instability in light of the sudden return of teenage hormones and new forms of anxiety that are markedly different from those she was dealing with a few weeks ago.

What Ahsoka wants to say is “that’s kind of a long story,” or “maybe he’s a cousin,” or “kriff off, I don’t know you,” or maybe even “he’s a clone.”

What Ahsoka actually does is burst into tears, which is embarrassing for her, for Fett, for the kids, and for the entire rest of the bar.

It really is the straw that broke the eopie’s back. Even when she was actually this age, she didn’t exactly cry much. Objectively, Fett quasi-aggressively asking a valid question shouldn’t send her into a panic. She’s been through torture and worse. She shouldn’t be crying.

But she is, sobbing her eyes out with no control, and he’s just sitting across from her and looking uncomfortable while Rex wraps his little arms--oh Force he’s so small--around her, and both ‘children’ glare at Fett.

“So, I’m going to take it she didn’t kidnap you from a loving family or do something illicit with a blood sample,” Fett says, after it becomes obvious that Ahsoka’s not going to be ready to talk any time soon.

“She didn’t,” Rex says stiffly, with just the right emphasis for Fett to catch what’s implied. Ahsoka just keeps her head down, eyes pressed against the heels of her palms, trying to get her body to stop rebelling against her.

Fett’s eyes dart to Leia, who folds her arms and draws herself up, every bit the unimpressed princess. “My father claimed her as a sister, so she’s my Auntie ‘Soka.”

The man dithers a bit, the conversation clearly not going where he’d expected. “Right,” he says. “You--you’re all kids. I thought she was a little older, at least, but I didn’t have a good look at her face before.”

She is older, but actually admitting that is only going to make this worse, both for her pride and for her chances of making it out alive.

“Where are you staying?”

“What?” Leia bites out.

“You’re kids, you’re alone, and you’re clearly not okay if you were trying to hide the one with my face as blatantly as you did, and then... whatever this is, when I confronted you,” Fett explains. Ahsoka lifts her head to glare at him, but it’s probably not doing much with the way her eyes are rimmed with red and still wet. “Don’t give me that look, ad’ika, your kids looked as confused and horrified by that as the bartender did. They obviously didn’t think it was normal either.”

Well, kriff you too, Ahsoka thinks.

“And what do you mean by ‘blatantly,’ here?” Leia challenges. It’s adorable, but Ahsoka watched this tiny girl shoot a man last week, and wonders when people are going to start taking that seriously.

“There’s a lot of people in this galaxy, and I don’t exactly have the clearest memory of what I looked like at that age,” Fett says, slow and careful like he thinks they’re dumb. Ahsoka decides to chalk it up as being because Leia’s visibly six. “I would have thought it was just a coincidence if you hadn’t put in effort to hide him.”

Leia huffs, and Rex glares harder. Fett just sighs, like they’re all going to give him grey hairs.

“You can explain whatever the hell’s going on,” Fett says. “I’ll let you stay on my ship, there’s a spare bunk and you’re small.”

“For free?” Rex demands.

“A night on a bunk in exchange for information,” Fett clarifies. “We can negotiate from there.”

Ahsoka takes a few moments, notes that both of the others are waiting on her for the decision, and cringes. She doesn’t feel steady enough to carry that. She has to anyway.

“Rex?” she asks, voice rasping after the breakdown of the past few minutes.

“Yeah?”

“How much?”

He looks up at her, eyes calculating, and grimaces. “We don’t want Order 66. A warning is better, even if we... share information.”

She nods, and turns to Leia. “Any premonitions, princess?”

Leia glowers, cute and furious. “No.”

“No, don’t tell, or no, you aren’t getting any vibes about sharing info one way or the other?”

“The latter,” Leia clarifies, huffy to the last.

“Right,” Ahsoka says, and then just... hesitates. “Fett...”

“You’ve got conditions,” he guesses.

She bares her teeth in what could have, through a squint and perhaps a few drinks, been called an apologetic smile. “Just one, really.”

“Yeah?”

“No hurting, killing, or turning us in for bounties,” she says. “Any of us.”

“You’re children, I wouldn’t.”

She blinks at him, slow and careful. She hesitates. She reaches down, out of sight, sees him stiffen.

She unclips her sabers from her belt and puts them on the table.

His eyes are fixed on the weapons the second they enter his line of sight, and don’t move as he clearly realizes why she made the condition she did.

“I left years ago, because I couldn’t stay without it ruining me,” she says. Still slow. Still careful. She’s so tired. “But if I want to keep Leia safe, I have to get back to Coruscant.”

His eyes finally lift from the sabers, expression blank. “Just her?”

“Rex doesn’t have the same monsters coming after him,” she says. “If it were just me and him, I’d worry less. Leia’s a different kind of target.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith on the table by telling me that,” Fett says, voice flat and toneless. “Considering my occupation.”

“She’s a child,” Ahsoka says, feeling heavy and boneless. “Even with what I was and will be, even with what money you would get from the right buyer, you wouldn’t.”

“There are other risks.”

“There are.”

They stare at each other for too long, probably, and then Fett jerks as Rex kicks him under the table. The boys glare for a moment, and then Rex says, “If she weren’t good, I’d still be a slave to those who grew me.”

Fett blinks, and then nearly growls the word, “What?”

“She freed me,” Rex reiterates. “While I was trying to shoot her.”

Ahsoka lifts a hand and puts it on his far shoulder, pulling him into her side. She doesn’t meet Fett’s eyes again, because part of her is back on Mandalore, dodging her own soldiers and crying out as her family dies across the galaxy.

Fett breathes in. Breathes out. He puts a hand to his head, visibly frustrated. “Fine. A good Jedi kid, and two smaller kids, one of which is apparently in some way mine.”

Rex makes a face, which is fair, but also not helping.

“To the ship,” Ahsoka says, putting her sabers back on her belt and sliding out of the seat. “I’m... I’m Sokari.”

“You already know my name.”

“I do.”

---------------------------

Fett watches her like she’s a predator, which has the benefit of being accurate and slightly flattering. She lets other two take care of most of talking, and then Fett tells her to sleep first, and talk in the morning.

“You’re dead on your feet, jetii,” he snorts. “And that crying jag didn’t do you any favors. Sleep.”

So she does, and Fett doesn’t even wake her. He just lets her sleep. He watches her in the way of a guard. She sees him when she gets up to use the ‘fresher in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t even comment when she collapses right back into the mediocre cot she’s borrowed for the cycle.

Rex and Leia are safe, her hindbrain tells her, even in the depths of sleep. Her mind curls around theirs in the Force, and she trusts that they are here. They are not happy, but they are alive and unharmed, and that has to be enough.

When she stumbles her way to true wakefulness, groggy and loose-limbed, Fett greets her with caf.

“The kids wouldn’t let me near you,” he tells her.

“They’re good,” she says, cupping her hands around the mug. She feels wobbly, in every sense. Her body, her mind, her emotions, her connection to the Force. Nothing is on-kilter right now. “Did they tell you anything?”

“They waited for you,” he says. “But the little miss needed a nap of her own. They’re down in the other bunk.”

“I didn’t notice,” she admits. She should have. She’s Fulcrum. She’s a veteran of the Clone Wars. She’s... she’s supposed to be better than this.

“How long?” he asks, and then when she squints up at him, he clarifies. “How long did you fight?”

“My last fight--”

“No, whatever war you came out of,” he says. Her chest twists cold. “I don’t know if the Jedi sent you into it or if you waded in yourself once you left, but you move like a soldier.”

“I was,” she confirms. “But... but I don’t want to talk about the details. Not until the other two are here.”

He frowns at her. “Is there anything you can talk about?”

She shrugs and looks away, trying to take solace in the warmth of the caff she holds above the table, as if it can hide her, guard her, from the disgraced Mand’alor across the table.

“Jedi?”

“I’m not officially a Jedi,” she says, voice quiet. “Not anymore.”

“Then what do I call you?” he asks. “We’re not exactly close enough for names.”

“Torrent,” she says. “It’s not--I can’t claim my family name anymore. But I can claim Torrent, so I will. And if you want a title, I was a commander.”

“Bit young for that.”

“I got the rank when I was fourteen,” she says, and watches his face do something complicated and unpleasant. “Don’t. I know your own culture puts children on the field that young.”

“Not in command.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, well... the soldiers were technically younger. Adults, but...”

Ahsoka can see the way he casts about to figure out what species grows at that rate. He guesses a few, and she shoots all of it down.

She won’t tell him. Not until Rex is awake.

This part of the story is his.

--------------------------

When Leia tries to sit alone, a foot away on the bench like a proper adult, Ahsoka refuses to let it happen. She pulls the younger girl to her side and quells protests with a glance. It’s a decent skill, but she’s not sure how long it’s going to work on her niece-in-spirit.

“Your body needs the chemical release of skinship,” she says, and Leia glares at her. “I spent way too much time with the boys to not know about this. Deal.”

Rex sits close enough to knock their knees together under the table, and his warmth is the old comfort she needs.

“Do you want the story you’ll believe, or the truth?” Ahsoka asks.

“What’s the difference?”

“One of them involves something so impossible that even most Jedi wouldn’t believe it,” she tells him.

Fett folds his arms and leans forward to rest them on the table, challenging but oddly open. “Try me.”

“Time travel.”

He blinks, just once, fully controlled. “That’s a tough one.”

“There were only three Jedi left alive when I died,” she says. “Or... whatever it is that happened to me. I think I died. All I know is that one moment, I was thirty-two and dying, and the next, I was... seventeen again, and had these two with me. All of us younger than we were. None of us have even been born yet.”

She refuses to look him in the eye. “They both outlived me by... six years, maybe. Got caught up while traveling instead of dying. Leia was twenty-two. Rex was thirty-five. I’m not technically the oldest anymore. I mean, physically I am, but that doesn’t mean anything, and it’s not exactly doing us any good, and--”

Rex bumps his shoulder to her arm. “I dunno, Commander. I’ve spent a long time looking older than I should. Nice to look younger for once.”

She shoots him a small, pained grin. “Could be worse, yeah.”

“Let’s say I believe you.”

Her attention snaps back to Fett, who’s looking damnably blank, and is showing even less in the Force.

He waits a second for her to relax back into her seat.

“Let’s say I believe you,” he repeats. “How’s ‘Rex’ connected to me? What’s so special about Leia there? And what war did you fight in that has you acting like a veteran?”

“Three years in the clone wars,” she whispers, glancing to Rex and forcing herself to not go for her sabers to defend against an attack that her paranoia says is coming and the Force says is not. “Then almost all the Jedi were wiped out at once, and I spent a year... drifting. Then black ops for the next fifteen.”

“Black ops,” he repeats, still damnably flat.

“There was a Sith Empire,” she says, and she can hear her own tone growing somehow emptier. “Glassing planets. Enslaving entire species. Committing genocides all over. Of course, there was a rebellion, and of course I joined it. I was one of the only people left with Jedi training. For all that I’d left the Order, I still had a duty to the universe.”

His eyes flit to Leia, who shrugs and tries to look prim. “I was adopted and raised by one of the founders of the rebellion, a movement built on the desire to instate freedom and democracy in a galaxy that had lost even the pretense.”

“That why you’re special?”

Leia smiles, thin and patronizing. It doesn’t fit on her little face. “I’m special because my biological father was one of the most powerful Force users in history, and his Fall to the dark side and choice to become a Sith is why the Emperor’s rise was nearly uncontested. I do not like power, but it’s in my veins and I can’t change that. Force users are... a lucrative trade, and I’m still the size of a child, so I can’t fight back. I’ll be safer in the Jedi Temple, even if I don’t want to be a Jedi.”

Fett looks to Ahsoka, makes to ask a question, and then shakes his head. Not the time, maybe.

“So, that’s all... very complicated and I don’t know how much of it I believe, but it doesn’t explain...” he trails off, and sighs. “My kid, or whatever you are. I heard you mention clones.”

Rex grins. It is not a kind expression.

“Let me tell you about Kamino.”

---------------------------

Ahsoka has no idea if Fett believes them. Either he thinks they’re telling the truth, or he thinks their delusional kids. Whatever the case, he offers to take them closer to the Core. Ahsoka quietly offers to take a look at his engine in return, and then pretends not to notice when Fett awkwardly drifts to and away from Rex.

“They put chips in our brains to make us kill the Jedi we respected, cared for, even loved. I tried to shoot ‘Soka, Fett. She was seventeen and risked her life to get that chip out of my head while I was trying to kill her. I have never hated myself more than when I woke up and realized what I’d almost done, and I was one of the few that were able to fight it. I heard the stories of dozens of brothers who woke with their chips having degraded and chose to eat their blaster rather than live with the guilt of the orders they’d followed without question because of a thrice-damned Sith slave chip in their head.”

“So no, I won’t call you father or acknowledge you as clan until you do something to prove you’re worth it, shared blood or not.”

What Ahsoka does get out of the arrangement, for all that Fett’s route mostly takes them on a meandering path that isn’t faster than their previous system, is sleep. She gets to rest. She gets to trust that Fett won’t kill Rex, out of guilt for something he hasn’t done, that he won’t kill Leia out of a worry that she’s just a delusional child, a real child, that he won’t kill ‘Sokari’ because it would ruin any chance of gaining Rex’s favor, ever.

She’s not safe, won’t believe she can be until she’s in the Temple and Sidious is dead dead dead, but she’s safer than she’s been in a long time.

Every night, Ahsoka wakes up and stumbles to the little galley, deaths and torture sparkling behind her eyes with the energy of a thousand lost Jedi, ten thousand mourned brothers and sisters.

She is not the only one of their little group to be a survivor of a near-total genocide, but Rex could not feel his brothers die in the Force, even if his nightmares featured what they heard of suicide missions by the emperor’s favored shock troopers, and Leia had... Alderaan had more off-world survivors than there had been Jedi at all.

It’s not worth comparing their pain. It’s stupid to even think it. Part of her can’t help but do it anyway.

“Caf?”

She feels a lek twitch in response to the voice of the only other person on board who can reach the top shelf. “I probably shouldn’t.”

“Whiskey?”

“That’s a definitely shouldn’t.”

“Hoth chocolate?”

“...please.”

She doesn’t lift her head from her arms until the mug clicks down in front of her, ceramic on plastisteel.

“Do I ask what it was this time?”

She shrugs. “It’s hard to explain to non-sensitives.”

“Try me anyway.”

Ahsoka twists the Hoth chocolate in her hands, takes a sip as she thinks. “The Force isn’t just one thing. It’s... energy and philosophy and spirit, a sense of being that ties the entire universe together. Sentient and inanimate and living and dead, empty space and lush forests and stifled cities. For those of us who are sensitive to it, it’s possible to feel the life of everyone around you, theoretically possible to feel entire systems. If you have a Force bond, like a master and padawan, that can stretch across planets, even systems if one or both are particularly powerful.

“So just... just imagine, for a moment, what it’s like to feel the screaming of all those Jedi in the Force as their trusted men shot them down.

“Some of them were close enough that I could feel them die,” she manages. “I... it’s horrible. It’s horrific. It’s not something I can ever forget, and I want to. I want to forget what that moment was like. Not that it happened, but...”

She can feel the tears. Fuck..

“You want to dull the edges.”

“Don’t we all?” she asks, scrubbing the back of her hand across her eyes. “Leia lost her entire planet, billions of people, and she was forced to watch. Rex... Force, I can barely imagine, and I was there for most of it.”

Fett watches her, measuring. “From what he said, they were as much your brothers as his, by the end.”

“No,” she immediately denies. “They could have been, maybe, but the ones I was closest to died earlier, and then I left, and by the time the Empire rose, all but a handful were... no. Rex, I will claim as a brother in all the ways that matter, but I don’t get to do that with the rest. I don’t have the right.”

“You’re hard on yourself.”

“Fate of the galaxy, my good bitch. Guess who’s got it on her shoulders.”

He snorts at her, and nods at the mug. “Drink your Hoth chocolate. We’re landing in eight hours, and you’ve got kids to look out for.”

---------------------------

There’s a twitch in the Force when they land, something pulling at her in a way she barely feels. She’s had her shields up so fully for so long that it’s natural to hide away what she is to the point where she can hardly tell what anyone else is, either. It takes more than a moment to remember how to let herself spread out across the world.

“Auntie ‘Soka? Why’d you stop?”

She doesn’t have an answer to Leia’s prodding question. “I don’t know.”

It’s almost familiar. Old and half-forgotten, not the same as what she remembers, but--

“This way,” she says, and wanders off into the crowd. Leia and Rex follow without question. Fett curses and rushes through the rest of his transaction with the docking attendant. The sound of him jogging after them is almost funny, with the armor, but she can’t focus on that.

Ahsoka slips between people with the ease of a career built on such a habit, children trailing like ducklings. She knows this feeling, she knows this person, what is she missi--

“Oh,” she breathes, going stock still. She knows that face. She knows those braids. She even knows the presence.

Younger than Ahsoka had ever seen her, but unmistakably Master Billaba.

“Torrent, what the hell?” Fett demands, finally catching up. “You can’t just run off like that!”

“It’s Depa,” she says, eyes still fixed on the woman parsing through a datapad with an irritated vendor. She has a padawan braid. It doesn’t feel like Master Windu is on-planet, so this might be a solo mission, a... oh. Senior Padawan, Knight Elect. This is the kind of mission taken to test if she’s ready to be promoted.

Ahsoka feels light-headed.

Fett waits for her to elaborate, but she can’t. This was Kanan’s master. This was a member of the High Council. This was a woman who died and--

“You need to sit down,” Fett says, not a touch gruff. He puts a hand on her shoulder and guides her off the main walkway. “I’m... going to talk to the woman in the Jedi robes. You three just stay there and don’t get kidnapped.”

Ahsoka nods, feeling like she’s not quite inhabiting her own body.

It’s Depa.

Her eyes track Fett without conscious control, and her montrals pick up the sound.

Depa looks up when the armor comes close enough, free hand tensed in a way that says she’s preventing herself from reaching for a saber in reaction to the heavily-armored individual standing several feet away.

“Mando,” the woman says. “May I help you?”

“Are you Depa?”

Depa doesn’t do anything so dramatic as gape or step back, but she does blink rapidly for a moment. She then folds her hands down in front of her, drawing her spine up ramrod straight. “I am Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, yes. May I ask why it is that you need to know?”

Ahsoka imagines Fett grimacing, or rolling his eyes, or maybe dithering. She can’t tell from this angle, and he has a helmet on besides. It turns his awkward silences into judgmental ones.

“I’ve had some Jedi kids on my ship, hitching a ride,” he says at length. “One of them recognized you and then just... froze.”

“You have our younglings in your care,” Depa says, carefully not accusatory, but close enough to be a warning.

“Not quite,” he says. “The one that actually came from the temple is seventeen. One of ‘em isn’t Force Sensitive, and the last one is but hasn’t been to Coruscant before. They’re trying to get the little one to the Temple for her own safety.”

Depa considers that, and then passes the datapad to the vendor. “Lead on.”

It’s surprisingly simple, really. Fett did all the talking.

And then Depa is standing right in front of her.

“Like I said,” Fett sighs. “She froze up.”

“Hello,” Depa says, hands laced together inside her sleeves. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “I know of you. I’ve seen you spar. You’ve never spoken to me.”

All true. A little misleading, but it’s fine, it’s all fine.

Depa waits a moment, and then says, “You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Sokari T-Torrent,” she manages. The words feel clunky in her mouth, the sound abrasive for all that it’s just her own voice, no different from usual. A little shaky, maybe. She can feel a cool breeze on her upper arms. Shouldn’t she have armor? She should have armor. “It... it’s been a long time since I’ve seen another Jedi. I’m having a hard time believing you’re real.”

“I see,” Depa says. “Perhaps we should take this somewhere more private? You seem a little unsteady.”

Ahsoka lets herself be led back to the ship, in the company of Mand’alor Jango Fett, Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, Princess-General Leia Organa, and good old Captain Rex.

It’s like the start of a sick joke.

---------------------------

Fett and Depa talk where she can hear, but they rarely address her directly. Both seem to realize that she’s not particularly useful right now. Leia and Rex are pressing up against her at the little table in the galley, and Ahsoka lets them.

This is real. She can feel Depa in the Force, recognizes her energy even if it’s not quite what it will-was-could-have-been. This is happening.

It’s a textbook Traumatic Stress Response case, one of them says.

Fett has his helmet off. Ahsoka’s sure that’s wrong for some reason. She thinks he might already be on wanted lists. Should she worry about Depa trying to arrest him?

Depa asks about Rex at one point. Fett tells her that someone cloned him without his knowing, but the kid is more comfortable with Ahsoka so they’re still working on what that means for him.

It’s more or less true. Rex squeezes her hand the one time someone suggests separating them. She’s not letting that happen unless Rex wants to leave for whatever reason. They’ve worked apart before. They can do it again.

“Auntie Soka? You’re shivering.”

Is she?

Leia cuddles in closer, and Ahsoka runs a hand over her hair. It’s an absentminded motion, and for all that she knows Leia’s hair is fine as silk, it feels like plastic in the moment.

“I don’t think I’m okay,” Ahsoka announces. The words hang in the air like lead balloons, and she can feel Depa staring at her. “I haven’t been for a very long time.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Fett says. “Do you need to lay down, Torrent?”

Does she?

“No,” she says. “I... I don’t know what I need.”

“The spicy drink,” Rex tells them. “It’s grounding.”

Right. That.

Fett goes to grab it, and Depa continues to watch.

“How long ago did you leave your master?” Depa asks. “Or... did he die?”

Ahsoka closes her eyes and shakes her head. She can feel the shivers now, tremors in her biceps and a shudder she can’t control in the height of her ribcage. Her teeth grind together, jaw like stone.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Depa assures her. “I’m... going to recommend you see a mind healer on Coruscant.”

That was a forgone conclusion.

A cup clinks onto the table. Fett’s back. “Drink.”

She does.

Depa and Fett continue discussing it as “the adults” at the table. She’s older than both of them. Rex is older than all of them. Ahsoka follows about half of what they say. She agrees with most of it. Rex bullies his way into speaking when she doesn’t, without her even asking, because he knows her mind as well as she does. Fett rolls with it. Depa lets him.

She’s going to reach out to the Temple and see about getting them a ride back to Imperial Center Coruscant.

Fett makes Soka go to bed, taking Leia with her.

---------------------------

She feels more like a person come morning.

Depa’s sitting at the table, datapad in her hands and caff on the table in front of her.

“Good morning,” Ahsoka says, rough and croaking, and Depa’s eyes flick up to meet hers. She nods a shallow hello.

“Feeling better?”

“Much,” Ahsoka says, and goes about gathering a breakfast. There’s definitely some dried meat in here. She can get something fresh when they stop by the market later.

“I was hoping to speak with you about your options,” Depa tells her, once she’s sat at the table. “Fett and your friend Rex took care of most of the negotiation, and I feel like I have an idea of what would work best for you.”

Ahsoka nods slowly. “Okay.”

“There is a Master-Padawan pair a few planets away,” Depa says. “The Council informed me when I spoke with them about you and your wards. They’d be headed back to the Temple in a few days anyway, and the Council has agreed to extend an offer to Fett to handle the transportation. The presence of a Jedi Master on board will allow for him to get in and out of the Core unmolested, and we’d like for you and yours to have a Jedi escort, given what happened yesterday afternoon.”

Her complete spiral into nonbeing?

“I understand,” she says instead. “I suppose Fett agreed because he’s still trying to get Rex to like him?”

Depa shrugs. “That part isn’t my business.”

Of course it isn’t.

“Rex can stay with me for a while, right?” Ahsoka finally asks. “I know it’s not exactly protocol, but I’m...”

“In need of a support system until you’ve seen a mind healer, and against all odds, the child is part of it,” Depa summarizes. “Yes, I recognized as much. I think the Council will be able to allow some leeway there. I don’t know if he’ll enjoy it, given that all the others his age are Initiates, but we can adjust as necessary. On that note... Do you know Leia’s midichlorian count?”

“No,” Ahsoka says, and hesitantly adds, “But her biological father was my Jedi Master, and I’m told his count broke records even as a child. Given what Leia’s shown so far... it’s why I’ve been in a hurry to get her to the Temple.”

Depa frowns at her, clearly working through the implications of a Jedi having a daughter and still teaching... and then visibly dismisses the situation, eyes closing to breathe in the steam of her caff.

Biological father certainly implies a child that was raised by her mother or adopted out so the Jedi father could remain in their chosen career without a conflict of interest or duty.

She’ll tell the council the truth, or... at least Master Koon. Master Kenobi is still a padawan, but she can tell Master Koon.

She already told Jango Fett, of all people.

“Padawan Torrent?”

Her head snaps up. She hasn’t been a padawan in over fifteen years. It’s weird to hear. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked if you wanted some time to think it over before I presented the offer to Fett,” Depa says.

Ahsoka gets the distinct feeling that Depa is planning a report to the Council that has ‘needs a mind healer’ underlined at least three times.

“No, I’m--I’m fine. That sounds like a good plan.”

“I’ll speak with him, then. Would you like to come with?”

"No, thank you.”

---------------------------

Fett agrees. Ahsoka’s pretty sure it’s all to do with Rex and maybe Leia. It’s probably nothing to do with ‘Sokari.’ She’s a Jedi, an adult in mind and in body, or at least close enough to count. She’s a damn sight more ‘enemy’ to Fett than the other two are. Not as much as Depa, maybe, but Fett’s been playing nice with her for Leia’s sake.

He plays nice with Ahsoka for Rex’s. That’s all.

They’re only a few planets over from the meeting point, and they have a few days to hang around before the escort meets them. Depa hadn’t given them a name--apparently it could have compromised the opsec for the Jedi team--but Ahsoka’s pretty sure she’ll be able to identify almost anyone. She gets the feeling that the Force is going to send her a familiar face, just as it did Master Padawan Billaba.

Ahsoka lets herself feel the world around her. It’s dark and dreary, in the sense that the beaten-down port is full of petty crimes and less petty horrors, but it’s still lighter than most of the Empire had been. She sneaks away from the ship at night, ignoring Fett at her back, and performs a bit of vigilante justice while she can. She’ll be banned from doing so as soon as she’s reinstated as a Jedi, probably, but for now... for now, she can look at the drug cartels and ‘they’re not slaves, really’ workers and do something to help.

She doesn’t use her sabers. She doesn’t need to. It’s been a long time since she has, for small fry like these.

“What are you doing?” Fett asks her, landing heavily behind her back.

“Chip removal,” she says, hand pressed to the slave’s leg. Her eyes are closed, but she can hear him shifting. “Let me concentrate, I don’t have a meddroid for this.”

He’s silent until she finishes, and waits until the people she’s helped are on their way to the planet’s freedom routes. He doesn’t ask what she did with the owners.

“You’ve done this before.”

“Regularly,” she confirms. “You?”

He doesn’t answer that, just ambles over to the the chains and stares down at them.

“Fett?”

“You go through this like it’s as easy as breathing,” he says. “It’s... impressive.”

“I guess?” she hesitates to continue. “I’m... I don’t think of it that way. This is the easy stuff. A time-waster that helps people. If I wanted to help for real, I’d been going after Jabba or Sidious or--”

“How old were you?” he asks, turning on his heel to face her dead-on. The vocoder of his helmet pulls the emotion from his voice. “When did this... these missions, the slavery battles, when did that start for you?”

“Fourteen,” she says. She’s not entirely sure, really, what counted as a mission for ending slavery and what counted as just a part of war, but she can round down. “Maybe fifteen. It’s a bit of a blur.”

“And you just kept doing it.”

“Of course,” she says. “If I have the time and the energy, if I need to do something and there’s nothing official on my hands, why not?”

He doesn’t answer her.

---------------------------

Rex greets them before she does.

Ahsoka, in her defense, is asleep at the time. It’s a restless sleep, but it’s enough that she doesn’t sense the nearing Force signatures until they’re almost at the ship.

She recognizes one of them.

“Auntie ‘Soka?” Leia questions, when she lurches to her feet and starts pulling on her boots with all the energy of a zombie. “Where are you going?”

“Jedi,” Ahsoka grunts. “Here.”

“I see.”

Leia dresses to follow her, in a little coat that’ll withstand the chill of the outside air, and Ahsoka makes it to the cargo hold just in time to hear Rex saying, “I’m not shaking your hand until you put your gloves on, Vos.”

She laughs to herself, breathless with the knowledge of what she’s about to find. She jumps the railing of the upper walkway, drops down just in front of the Master-Padawan team, and keeps her back to Fett and Rex. “Hello, there.”

One human, one Kiffar. She knows the latter.

“Would you be Sokari Torrent?” the Master asks.

“I am,” she says, with a slight bow. She can tell there’s a bit of judgement for how she’s dressed, but they’re covering it well. A Shadow and his trainee know the value of armor better than most Jedi bother with. “I’m afraid Padawan Billaba didn’t inform me of your names before we met.”

“And yet your friend knew my padawan,” the Master says.

“By reputation,” she says, as smoothly as she can. “I’ve encountered Quinlan Vos before, though I doubt he remembers--”

“I’d remember someone like you,” Quinlan interrupts, with a grin she’s sure is meant to be charming and rogueish.

He’s... very young for her, and not her type. Mostly, she wants to pat him on the head, but that probably wouldn’t go over very well. She still looks like she’s younger than him.

“Anyway,” she says, turning back to the master, “I’m afraid I still don’t know who you are, Master.”

“I am Tholme,” he says, with the bow that a Master gives a Padawan. She feels a little slighted, but it’s fine. She looks the right age, it’s fine.

It’s not like they know.

“It’s nice to meet you, Master Tholme,” she says. “My charges are Rex Torrent, the young man behind me, and currently coming down the ladder is Leia Antilles. I’m sure you’re aware of Jango Fett.”

“The Mand’alor,” Quinlan volunteers, and Ahsoka can almost hear Fett’s teeth grinding.

“Don’t call me that,” he says. She’s sure he’s got a hand drifting for his blaster.

“There isn’t a whole lot of room on the ship,” she says before the men can get into whatever weird contest she’s sure someone might start. Her bet’s on Fett. “But Leia and Rex are small enough to share with me, so I’m sure we can make it work.”

“There’s spare rolls for anyone comfortable with sleeping in the hold,” Fett grunts. “Or on the floor in the passenger room.”

“Well, I guess I could ask for a little help fi--”

“Vos,” Ahsoka snaps, letting her voice take on the kind of ‘obey me or get fresher duty’ irritation that she’d perfected back when the rebellion still had her managing people, before they’d realized she was more use in the field. “Do not.”

There’s a moment’s pause, and Tholme looks unimpressed with that raised eyebrow, but the kind of unimpressed that’s split between his own padawan and the stranger before him.

“Um,” Quinlan says. “I just--”

“No,” she cuts him off. “No flirting.”

It’s weird and uncomfortable and she’d have maybe been okay with it if she was actually the seventeen-or-eighteen-ish(?) that she looked, but she’s not. She’s in her thirties and Vos is... what, twenty? Twenty-one? No.

He stares at her, and she wonders momentarily if she’d gone too far in the direction of judging his intentions in the Force and preempted actual flirtations.

“I’m sorry?” He offers, looking confused, but ashamed. “I, uh, I’ll keep that in mind.”

She definitely preempted the actual flirtation.

Fuck.

Ahsoka closes her eyes and breathes in. Breathes out. Opens her eyes. “Right. That was... I’m not sure how much Padawan Billaba told you about me.”

“Enough,” Tholme says. He moves forward and puts a hand on Quinlan’s shoulder. Ahsoka has no idea if it’s to comfort him or hold him back. “I didn’t share most of it with my padawan, but I have a general understanding of what’s going on.”

Quinlan darts a look at his teacher, but Ahsoka doesn’t acknowledge it. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

“Thank you for your understanding,” she says, and bows, and stiffly turns away to walk to the galley.

---------------------------

Leia squirms into the bench seat, shoving her way under Ahsoka’s arm like a particularly wriggly tooka.

“What was that?” Leia demands, the authority of a rebellion general rather useless in the squeaky voice of a child.

“What was what?”

“The whole thing with Padawan Vos,” Leia says. “You blew up at him before he even did anything.”

That’s pretty true.

“I felt the flirtation coming before it happened and reacted inappropriately because I panicked. I’m significantly older than him, but I can’t tell him that, so it’s just awkward and uncomfortable and... I’m not okay, Princess. I haven’t been for a long time.”

“Yeah, we can tell.”

“Leia.”

“What? I need therapy too! Captain Rex needs therapy! I’m pretty sure Fett needs therapy! You, Fulcrum, you really need therapy. None of us are okay.” She huffs, wiggling impossibly closer. “I don’t like it, but it’s true.”

“I know,” Ahsoka groans. “I just... I just need to hold out until the Temple.”

“Will you be able to hold it together if you see someone you actually care about?” Leia demands. “What are you going to do when you see Kenobi?”

“Stop.”

“I’m serious, you--”

“Leia, that’s enough,” she snaps. “I was fighting that war before you were even born, and I’ve dealt with the consequences since. I know the risks and I’ll thank you to remember who taught you to control your own mind.”

Leia stiffens, sucking in a sharp breath. “That was uncalled for.”

“You’re not the child you appear to be,” Ahsoka reminds her, not a little sharply. “You want to dish it out, be ready to take it. What will you do when we see Bail Organa? When we see the toddler that is Anakin Skywalker?”

“I get it.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Ahsoka mutters. She isn’t surprised when Leia ducks out of the embrace and leaves the galley. She lets the girl go, guilt warring with the memory of how Master Kenobi had more than once spoken that way to Anakin at the height of the war. The fact that she’s an adult in the body of a child isn’t an excuse for poking at Ahsoka’s open wounds. It was cruel and unnecessary, and unbecoming of a... not a Jedi. A princess. A politician.

She rests her head on her arms and zones out. She should meditate, but that seems like... too much effort.

She can feel Vos and Tholme setting up in the room they’ve been assigned. Neither seems particularly angry. Most likely, Tholme’s given the absolute shortest explanation of ‘child soldier, dead master, highly traumatized and emotionally unstable’ to Vos to smooth over the incident in the cargo hold. Rex is with Leia; he’s agitated, but less so than Leia herself. Fett’s annoyed, in the cockpit, but he seems annoyed as often as not. There’s a shudder at lift-off, and a few minutes later, they’re in hyperspace, headed for the Core.

Fett finds her, falls into the other bench in full armor, and drops his elbows onto the table. The helmet clunks down a moment later.

She doesn’t lift her head. “What do you want?”

“Do I need to keep Vos away from you?”

“What?”

“Vos. He made you uncomfortable. Was that him being someone that hurt you in the future, or just the interaction being awkward?”

She lifts her head. She stares at him. “What?”

He leans back and crosses his arms. “Do you need me to tell Vos to stay the hell away from you?”

She’s gaping. “You realize I’m thirty-two, right? I can handle my own battles.”

“You’re also traumatized as hell and everyone can see it,” Fett argues back. “If Vos himself is a trigger, I can handle it.”

“He’s not,” she tells him. This is strange. Fett’s being strange. “He was actually a friend of my grandmaster’s. I’m just uncomfortable with the flirting because I’m a lot older than he realizes, and I can’t tell him that.”

He nods sharply, and then looks away. The silence sits.

“Thanks for asking?” Ahsoka says, well aware of how her confusion over the offer turns it into a question. “I mean, thank you for... caring.”

I guess, she finishes in the privacy of her own head. Or at least pretending to.

Fett makes a face, still not facing her. He eyes the galley instead. She can guess where his thoughts are going. The galley is... not very big, especially with six people on board instead of one, but she’s sure they’ve stocked up enough. On the off chance they do go through more than expected, because of how many growing bodies are in residence, they can stop off and buy more. They have those resources now.

Jango never does ask what she did with the slavers.

“Who’s going to cry if I spice things properly?” he asks.

“Probably Leia,” she says immediately. “Vos will try to power through it even though he’s going to be overwhelmed. No idea about Tholme, but I think he’ll keep a straight face whether he likes it or not. Rex and I are fine, ‘hot’ was pretty much the only flavor of seasoning the GAR had.”

“GAR?”

“Grand Army of the Republic.”

He finally looks at her.

“You already knew I was a child soldier, Fett; don’t act surprised.”

“That doesn’t mean I like hearing about it.”

“I was fourteen. That’s old enough by Mando standards, Fett. Just think back, when did you get on the battlefield?”

“I take your point,” he says, lip curling unpleasantly. “It just hits different now that I’m old enough to look back and think of how damned young fourteen really is.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Yeah, well--”

“You said the clones were ten.”

There’s the rub, isn’t it?

Of course it was about the clones.

“...closer to seven, by the end. Kamino was just making speedies at that point. Triple growth on the average instead of double, but averages in that case meant they’d been growing at double rates for six years and then got forced through four growth cycles in a single year to beef up the army when we kept losing men.” She looks down at the table, picking at a scratch in the plastipaint with her nail. “Rex and the rest of the ones from the beginning were basically twenty in mind and body, even if they’d only been decanted ten years earlier. The speedies... I always wondered. They’d gone from functionally twelve to functionally twenty in a year. That’s not... even in Kamino, that can’t have been normal. They didn’t act like adults, not the way the originals did.”

Fett rubs at his face, groaning. He swears under his breath in three different languages.

She pities him, if only because he hasn’t actually done any of this yet. He’s paying for the crimes of a man he likely won’t ever become.

She kicks him under the table. “Wanna make tiingilar and see how long it takes Vos to start crying while he insists it’s fine?”

---------------------------

Dinner is when the questions start. Some are relatively easy. Others, not so much.

“My Master was Leia’s biological father,” is an easy truth to share. “She inherited his power, so I need to get her to the temple for her own safety, because home no longer is.”

“Yes, her adoptive parents were unfortunately killed rather recently. We’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“Rex is with me. Where he goes, I go, and vice versa.”

That one gets her an odd look.

“I thought...” Quinlan trails off, gesturing between Rex and Fett.

Fett keeps his face impassive, but his discomfort and guilt leak into the Force. “I didn’t know Rex existed until I ran into these three in a spaceport cantina a few weeks ago.”

Quinlan blinks at him, looks at Rex again, and then turns back to Fett with a grin that might have been described as ‘saucy’ if he were less smug about it. “Wild oats, huh?”

“Are you shitting me right now,” Leia whispers, and Ahsoka elbows her.

“That was inappropriate, padawan.”

Quinlan’s grin fades as Fett just continues to eye him.

“Um, so--”

“How old is the kid?” Fett interrupts.

Darting eyes answer him, as Quinlan tries to gauge Rex. “Ten? Maybe twelve?”

“And how old am I?”

“...early thirties?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

Quinlan’s grin fades further as he does the math.

“I’d have been between fifteen and seventeen when he was born,” Fett says, tone flat. “Between fourteen and sixteen at conception. I know damn well I wasn’t doing anything that could have resulted in a kid at that age.”

Quinlan rallies. “So, brothers?”

Tholme sighs loudly, hand over his eyes.

“I’m a clone,” Rex says, and Ahsoka can feel the amusement he gets out of Quinlan’s confused shock. They’d both had plenty of respect for Master Vos, but Padawan Vos was nothing but trouble. “Harvested genetic material, grown in a tube, inconsistent aging meaning I don’t even know how old I am for sure.”

“I broke him out,” Ahsoka adds, which is half true.

“There was a chip in my head,” Rex adds, with a bright smile. Quinlan’s discomfort grows. “She got it out. Also, lots of brothers. None of them are... around anymore. The creators were trying to make an army.”

Vos and Tholme have no response. Fett looks like he’s been carved out of stone. Leia’s just ignoring them and picking at her food.

Ahsoka lifts a hand and, without looking, Rex high-fives her.

---------------------------

“Drop your elbow.”

Ahsoka tries to cover her smile at the dirty look that Leia shoots Fett. Fett remains unimpressed by the glare of royalty, just gestures for the girl to do as he said.

“I know how to fight,” Leia grumbles. “I took lessons. I was good at them.”

“And I’m better,” Fett says, leaving no room for argument. “You want the Torrents to take over?”

The Torrents. Rex and Soka. She likes being referred to that way. Like they’re a team that never got split up.

Force, she wished they’d never gotten split up.

“Again,” Fett orders, and Leia moves through the Mandalorian kata with ill grace in her emotions and all grace in her sweeping limbs.

Well, as much grace as an undersized six-year-old can, at any rate.

“Think he’ll ask me to spar her again?” Rex asks, dropping down into the seat next to Ahsoka and passing her a drink.

“Maybe,” she acknowledges. “I think he’s wondering if it’s worth asking Vos to spar with her, so she gets more experience with size differences.”

“Hm?”

“She flinched at his face again,” she tells him. “The whole... thing with Boba, I guess. She still won’t tell me why Fett triggers her sometimes, but he’s not pressing her to spar with him, and there’s only so much she can get out of fighting me. Asking Tholme would be presumptuous, but Vos is just a padawan. I think it’d work out.”

“And you?”

She looks at him, already feeling a cresting wave of bullshit she doesn’t want to deal with. “What about me?”

“Are you going to spar with the Jedi?”

She should. She hasn’t sparred with a saber since she got tossed back into a body only half-familiar to her. She’s let Leia borrow the shorter one to learn some basic blocking moves, Shii-Cho and then, with hesitance, the first Soresu form. Another time, she loaned it to Rex to practice some attacks; they both know that the next time he picks up her saber in battle, having lost his weapons or she her grip, it will be neither the first or last time he wields a sword of light. None of that, however, is... sparring.

None of that is against someone who knows what they’re doing.

How long has it been since she sparred with anyone other than Kanan and Ezra?

How long has it been since she sparred without the looming specter of Darth Vader in the back of her mind, without fear of the Inquisitors, without the knowledge that any saber held by someone other than her two friends would be red as blood and twice as drenched.

Would she be able to hold back as she fought?

“I should,” she acknowledges, eyes on where Fett is nudging Leia’s feet into position for some kind of leveraging flip. She’s so small. “It would probably be a good idea to spar against a master at some point.”

“Do you think you can?” Rex asks.

“I never knew him,” she says. “And he isn’t Dark. It should be fine.”

Rex nods, taking her word for it. They watch as Leia stumbles on a final move, and Fett gestures for her to sit down and get a drink.

“That man is a terror,” she informs them.

(She’d once described him as a slave-driver. She had not made that mistake twice.)

“Least it’s not Kamino!” Rex tells her cheerfully. When Leia refuses to look impressed, he laughs at her.

Ahsoka has a half-second’s warning before heavy boots thud to the ground next to her. “What’s Kamino?”

“Hello, Vos, it’s nice to see you too,” she drawls. “I’m good, thanks for asking, and yourself?”

The boy-not-quite-man rolls his eyes. “Hi, Torrents; hi, tiny one.”

Leia glares at him next.

“So, Kamino?”

“Planet by Rishi,” Rex says.

“Why were you there?”

“They specialize in cloning.”

Ahsoka covers her mouth as the conversation drops into the same awkward gap that always happens when Quinlan stumbles into a subject he didn’t know to avoid.

“Like... you were made there, or you were researching how it works for your own--”

Ahsoka slaps a hand over his mouth. “Now’s a great time to stop talking.”

He licks her palm.

She bares her teeth and arches her fingers just enough to press nails into his cheek.

He bites at her palm, and she yanks her hand away.

“You’re all children,” Leia accuses, conveniently forgetting that Ahsoka and Rex are both over a decade older than her.

“I can throw you the length of a swimming pool,” Ahsoka tells her. “One of the fancy competition-ready ones that would make a Tatooinian cry. You are absolutely the child here.”

“Using the Force is cheating, sir,” Rex informs her.

“Only if there’s a competition,” Ahsoka shoots back. “And proving that a certain princess is a small child is not a competition. It’s a declarative fact.”

“I’m going to rip open the seams on all your tops except the ugliest one,” Leia decides.

“Try me,” Ahsoka challenges. “Adi’ka.”

A low, rough cough interrupts them. “Are you done?”

Fett has his arms crossed, and an eyebrow raised. He knows they’re all adults here, and is entirely unamused. As the silence drags, the eyebrow climbs a little higher.

“Done with what?” Quinlan finally asks, thereby volunteering himself to spar in hand-to-hand with Jango Fett, as one does.

“Poor, poor Vos,” Rex laughs, watching as Fett barks out orders at Quinlan every five seconds to fix his footwork, to stop dropping his guard, to stop wasting energy on flips instead of just dodging the easy way.

“Throw him!” Ahsoka calls. To her delight, Fett obliges.

The thing is, Quinlan isn’t bad at brawling. He’s got training, endurance, skill. The man knows what he’s doing, objectively. He’s just not a match for Fett, and is used enough to relying on his saber that his hand-to-hand skills are rusty. They are perhaps less rusty than those Jedi who don’t take questionable jobs in the Mid-Outer Rim, and Ahsoka’s got a suspicion that Vos regularly gets into bar fights in his downtime, but none of that is enough for him to actually do more than survive against Fett without his saber.

Even the saber wouldn’t help, if Fett had his armor.

“Whose idea was this?”

Ahsoka cranes her head back and smiles. “Hello, Master Tholme. Vos... volunteered.”

“Did he know he was volunteering?”

“No comment.”

Tholme snorts, crossing his arms and eyeing the spar in front of him. “I thought Fett hated Jedi. Giving us a ride for the sake of you three is one thing, but why is he teaching my padawan?”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Constructive bullying?”

There’s a small twitch of a smile, quickly gone. “He said something wrong, I’m guessing?”

“There was no way he could have known,” she dismisses. “We’re just, like, ninety-percent tragic backstories.”

“You’d think the Force would warn him,” Rex notes.

“That’s not how the Force works,” Leia chides.

“No, no, he’s right,” Ahsoka corrects. “The Force does sometimes step in to stop a person from saying something stupid. However, Padawan Vos is at an age where people think they are very rational while being more irrational than they likely ever will be again.”

“Do I want to ask what you were doing at that age?” Tholme asks.

“Running bla...” she trails off, then whips around to gape at him.

He smiles, bland and unassuming. “Does Fett know?”

“Know... what?” Ahsoka asks.

“That you’re significantly older than you look,” he says, voice just low enough that the sparring duo can’t hear him. “All three of you.”

Ahsoka turns back to the spar, only catching Tholme out of the corner of her eye. “He knows.”

“Mm. Were you planning on telling the Council?”

“Yes.” That part was never in question. “How did you figure it out?”

“I am a good investigator,” he says. “And you rely a little too heavily on your physical forms to obfuscate. Were it just one of you, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the pattern repeated across three is a little easier to discern.”

“I hoped the whole ‘child soldiers’ thing would be a bigger distraction,” Ahsoka mutters. She glances at Leia and Rex. Both of them are used to being in charge to some degree, giving orders and making contingency plans, but in this... in this, Ahsoka is in charge. They’d decided that at the very start. It didn’t matter that Rex had lived longer and had more experience, or that Leia had held the highest Rebellion rank of the three of them. Ahsoka had been agreed as leader, and they were relying on her.

They’re waiting on her orders. Stiff and unhappy, in Leia’s case, but they trust her.

“Will you be telling Vos?” She asks.

“No,” Tholme says. “Your secrets remain your own unless they endanger us, and I’ve a feeling they won’t be.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Rex jokes, smile not reaching his eyes. “I’ve been working with this family for too long to trust that trouble won’t find them around the next corner.”

“This family?” Tholme repeats.

“Sokari was telling the truth about her master being Leia’s biological father,” Rex says. He shrugs. “I worked with him, with his wife, with both of his kids, with his master and his padawan. All of them, to a one, are trouble magnets.”

“Ah, but that’s not the secret that’s putting us in danger,” Tholme points out. “Simply existence as a Jedi.”

Rex shrugs. “Fair enough. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.”

Ahsoka lurches to her feet, turning with a smile and dancing backward into the the stretch of empty cargo hold they used for such things. “A spar, Master Tholme?”

He looks past her, to Quinlan, and raises a brow. “Would you not prefer to spar with someone a little closer to your level first?”

She barks out a laugh. “Master Tholme, I’m afraid I’ve spent more of my life fighting to survive than having normal friendly spars. My style is more lethal than the average, and you’ve already seen what war’s done to my mind. I ask to spar with you because, if I lose control, if I slip in time or react on an instinct that isn’t appropriate, I trust that you’ll be more able to stop me than a senior padawan.”

He smiles. “Yes, I gathered as much. Still, better to ask. Shall we wait for them to finish up?”

Ahsoka shrugs, turns, and yells. “Clear the deck!”

Rex snorts behind her, and lowly mutters, “Sir, yes, sir.”

She smirks at him over her shoulder. “At ease, Captain.”

“That’s ‘Commander’ to you, I got promoted,” he sniffs, chin held high.

Heavy steps herald Fett’s arrival at their little group. “The hells are you doing?”

“I’m going to have a spar with a Jedi Master, and I want you and Vos to not get stabbed.”

“I’m not that easy to injure in an actual fight, let alone by accident,” Fett grouses. He looks up and over at Vos, who is already significantly taller, if a fair shot less built. “This one, on the other hand...”

“Hey!”

Ahsoka laughs and backs into the center of the cargo hold, drawing her sabers. “Don’t worry, Vos, I won’t play dirty. You’ll probably get your master back in one piece.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself there, aren’t you? He’s a Jedi Master and former Watchman. You’re... what, eighteen?”

Ahsoka raises a brow and activates her sabers, tapping the blades together and watching as more than one person winces. “Wanna bet on how long I last?”

“No,” he says immediately, stepping back to join Rex on the bench. “You’ve already blindsided me enough. I’m not dumb enough to fall for whatever you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“I don’t have sleeves.”

“Armwarmers-slash-greaves, then.”

“Greaves go on the legs, these are vambraces.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “I’m just going to stop talking now!”

“Good plan,” Leia snarks, and then literally hisses when Rex ruffles her hair.

Tholme lights his saber and sinks into an opening stance.

Ahsoka mirrors him.

---------------------------

She wins, but barely. She's had a few weeks to practice her forms, has sparred hands-only with Rex and Fett, but this is her first real try at using her sabers against a person, instead of a blaster or thin air, since she arrived in the past. She’s only mostly adjusted to her body.

But Tholme is a healer and a watchman, not a duelist. Ahsoka held her own against Ventress, against Grievous, against Maul when she was this age. Still adjusting to her body or not, her lineage is one of battle, and it bled true.

“You’re terrifying,” Quinlan tells her after they’re done, smiling like the sun as he hands her a towel. “Please never turn that on me.”

She laughs at him. “Would you believe that I’m out of practice?”

“Out of practice with what?” he asks, horrified and fascinated. “Fighting Sith Lords?”

“Among other things,” she says, and smirks when he chokes on his drink. “Multiple darkside users who claimed to be Sith, at least. One being a full Lord, one that was disowned by his master, and one that was apprenticed to a Banite apprentice, so she wasn’t technically allowed to be a Darth because of the rule of two.”

Tholme meets her eyes past Quinlan’s shoulder, head tilted and eyes half-shut in consideration. He’s taking her seriously. He knows what she’s not saying.

“How...” Quinlan trails off and shakes his head. “You know what, no. Asking you people questions never ends well.”

“Good plan,” Ahsoka says, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Also, you need to spar with Fett more. Your footwork is shit.”

“It is not,” Quinlan gripes. “You’re all just scary good at this stuff.”

“You mean surviving?” Leia pipes up, and smiles innocently when Quinlan turns to pout at her.

“You’re getting bullied by a six-year-old,” Rex informs him.

“Yeah,” Quinlan sighs. “I know.”

Ahsoka laughs, and it’s fine. It’s all fine. For a week, everything is honestly great. She trains, she laughs, she works through the nightmares.

Then fucking Denon happens.

---------------------------

Denon is a city-planet on the intersection of two major hyperlanes. It’s the kind of place where they stop for two things:

Fuel.

Paperwork.

Technically, there’s a whole mess of paperwork they have to fill out to continue along this specific hyperlane, since they aren’t official Republic ships, and don’t have the licenses to just pass along like ships that are pre-registered to the Trade Federation or the like. They could sneak past--literally all of them know smuggler’s routes--but it’s honestly less of a pain to do things legally. They have a Jedi Master. They have cash. Some of that cash wasn’t quite legally acquired, but nobody needs to know that.

It’s supposed to be a pit stop. That’s all.

It’s just a pit stop.

But no, the galaxy isn’t that kind and Ahsoka’s luck is currently being compounded with a Skywalker, two Fetts, and Vos, which means that of course they run into trouble. Of course they do. There was never any other option, was there?

“Motherfucker,” Ahsoka snaps, lifting her head up and slamming her drink on the table.

The glass is empty. That’s good. They’re in a restaurant right now, a little splurging after weeks with only each others’ company, and spilling the sugary child-friendly juice with that move would have drawn way too much attention from the servers.

“Language,” Tholme says, voice idly unconcerned.

“Sir?” Rex asks, kicking Ahsoka under the table. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wr--that jackass,” she hisses, getting to her feet. “Rex, grab a blaster, I’ve got shebs to kick.”

“Okay,” Rex says, grabbing one out of Fett’s holster and scooting out of the booth before anyone can tell him not to. “Whose?”

“I didn’t even know that he was... osik, I don’t have jurisdiction,” she realizes. “I don’t have any record of wrongdoing. I can’t arrest him since we don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing...”

“Are you two going to explain what’s going on?” Vos asks. “Or sit down, maybe?”

Ahsoka makes her decision. She eyes the window--the restaurant in question is a little dingy, but it’s also several dozen stories in the air. “Rex, remember the thing we did on Geonosis that you hated?”

He pauses, and then sighs heavily. “Yes, sir. I remember the... yeeting.”

Hah. That slang doesn’t even exist yet.

“Great. With me!”

It’s a good thing the windows are forcefields instead of transparisteel. A bit of a twist to the energy and they’re gone.

She only hears a little screaming before the wind tears all noises away while they plummet.

They land lightly--of course--and Ahsoka wraps them both in a don’t notice me aura. Nobody even notices that they’ve just come from above. It’s great that she can just Do These Things again, and get brushed off as Weird Jedi Shit, instead of worrying about the Empire. She’s missed being able to jump out of windows without fear.

Rex follows her as she starts running through the city. They don’t have comms, and he’s still so small, which means he can’t keep up with her even if she runs at normal speeds without Force enhancement.

“Should you carry me?” he asks, before she can figure out if it’s worth suggesting. She did it a few times before they joined up with Jango.

“It’s not... urgent, I think,” she says. She hesitates to speak, even as she keeps jogging with Rex at her heels. “Honestly, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can ding him for so we can attack him. It’s all well and good that I can beat him right now, but all the crimes I know about haven’t happened yet, so it wouldn’t be legal...”

“Commander?”

“Hm?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

She scrolls the conversation back mentally, considers, and says, “Oh.”

“Who’s getting steamrolled?”

“Uh, Maul’s here,” Ahsoka admits.

“Ah,” Rex says. He makes a face. “I understand the desire to jump out a window, now. I don’t agree with it, but I understand.”

Ahsoka laughs. “I mean, I just... every time I’ve seen him for almost twenty years, it’s been like... on sight, you know? We’ve never not attacked each other, except when I needed him to cause problems on Mandalore. But I always knew I was in the right, then.”

“So... what do we arrest him for?” Rex prompts.

“Um... carrying a lightsaber without a license?” she hazards. “We’ll need Tholme there. Hopefully I can just shout at him and he’ll attack me, but I think he only went full nutjob after Master Kenobi cut his legs off. He might be too controlled to try to kill me just for yelling at him.”

“...do we have to stalk him?” Rex asks, sounding like he’d most likely sigh if he weren’t mid-run.

She scoops him up and swings him around onto her back before she answers. “I think we have to stalk him, Rex’ika.”

“Don’t call me that.”

---------------------------

Maul is... exceptionally sneaky, actually. Either that, or he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. Ahsoka’s betting on the former, because she’s seen this particular skocha kung take over a planet before anyone realized he was the most dangerous person around.

Or maybe he’s just not committing crimes, and is in fact just here to buy groceries.

He’s examining a papaya.

She fantasizes about jumping across the market and greeting him with a heel to the cheekbone.

“Are you imagining a flying kick, Sir?”

“Yeah...”

“He’s examining a papaya, Sir.”

“I know...”

“Does he know we’re here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Do you think I should go hit him?”

“No.”

“Should I hit on him?”

“No, Sir. I would not advise that.”

“He’s looking at the neloms.”

“I can see that.”

“Why does he have to be so bo--did he just fucking bite a nelom?”

“It appears so, Sir.”

“Like... like rind and all. Just bit the little fucker.”

“Seems it.”

A scuff of metal. “What the fuck are you two doing?”

Ahsoka tips her head around to peer through the grate. “We’re spying, Fett, what does it look like we’re doing?”

Rex cranes his head. “We’re hanging upside-down from a fire escape to get a look at a suspected Sith Apprentice that is currently shopping for various fruits, Mand’alor.”

Ahsoka waves. “Hi, Master Tholme.”

“Sokari,” the master greets. “This seems a very conspicuous way to spy.”

She shrugs as well as she can from this angle. “Yes, but you see, this way’s more fun.”

“Is it now.”

Rex shifted. “He’s on the move!”

“To kill someone?!”

“No, to the deli meats.”

“Kriff.”

---------------------------

Apparently, Tholme and Fett had told Quinlan to take care of Leia, as Leia had wanted to finish her juice and refused to get involved in the Torrents’ nonsense. According to her, if they couldn’t be bothered to explain the nonsense, they didn’t need her.

This was true and accurate.

Quinlan shows up while they’re still stalking Maul, having moved to a low rooftop for a decent vantage point with less likelihood of being spotted. He’s giving Leia an eopie-back ride, and the pout on her face at needing it is adorable. She pouts harder when she sees them.

“Are you even trying to hide?” Leia scoffs.

“Not really,” Ahsoka admits. She’s got Fett’s binoculars out. “I’m not sure he’s caught wind of the fact that we’re here yet.”

“Or he has and he’s just biding his time to escape while we’re distracted,” Tholme points out.

“Meh,” Ahsoka says, avidly devouring the visual that is a teenage Maul glaring at leafy vegetables. “I just want him to do something so I have an excuse to beat his ass.”

“Do I get to know who?” Quinlan asks, setting Leia down on the roof. “Or are we going to keep being completely unwilling to share information?”

“Baby Sith Lord,” Ahsoka says. “He’s fifteen. A child.”

“A baby,” Rex agrees.

“You’re... that’s... ugh,” Quinlan groans as loudly and as dramatically as he dares, flopping down to the rooftop. “Master Tholme, please tell me this isn’t a real Sith.”

“He’s Dark,” Tholme confirms. “Sith is... up for debate until we have evidence.”

“He’s a bitch is what he is,” Ahsoka mutters. She observes the teenager in question stop to poke at some pink tomatoes. “E chu ta, break the law, already!”

“Does he have a lightsaber?” Quinlan asks. “If he has a lightsaber and no Jedi ID or specialty license, we can probably arrest him.”

“Auntie Soka doesn’t have a license or ID,” Leia points out.

“She’s got a Jedi escort,” Tholme says. “And if our supposed Sith is polite and plays nice, we can probably escort him to the Temple as well.”

Rex snorts derisively.

“Do you know why he’s on Denon?” Fett asks.

“No clue,” Ahsoka admits. “Evil reasons, probably.”

“You’re useless,” Leia tells her.

“Thanks, princess, how’s that attempt to open the jam jar by yourself coming?”

Leia says something very inappropriate for a princess, for a child, and for a lady. It’s fairly appropriate for a soldier, which is admittedly what she’s been for a few years now. Ahsoka sticks her tongue out at the girl like the mature operative she is.

“I wish we could still get him to lose his osik by just showing up and insulting him,” Rex mutters, low enough that Quinlan probably can’t hear.

“I wanna punch him in the face,” Ahsoka confesses. “I want him to try to punch me in the face, and fail.”

“Don’t bully the baby Sith,” Rex admonishes.

“He’s a Sith.”

“He’s fifteen, it’s tacky.”

“But it’s Maul.”

“I know, but you’re tw--significantly older than him.”

“But... but it’s the motherfucker himself.”

“...you can bully him a little, but only because he’s a Sith.”

Fett steals the binoculars. “You can borrow them again when you stop acting like children.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rex says, dry as Ryloth. “I’m ten.”

“Pretty tall for your age,” Ahsoka mutters, and then giggles.

“Don’t steal my jokes,” Rex says. He elbows her, hard.

“You know,” Quinlan says, slow and tired. “Master Tholme and I are trained investigators.”

Ahsoka and Rex look at each other, and then up at him.

“Okay?”

“...do you want me to find actual evidence of this guy doing something criminal?”

“Oh, yes please.”

---------------------------

Quinlan, as it turns out, is not overselling his skills. He does catch Maul doing something illegal later that day. It’s a little more ‘stealing corporate secrets in the dead of night’ and less ‘torturing people for kicks,’ but it’s still enough to legally arrest him. Quinlan attempts to do so.

Quinlan does not succeed, and is forced to jump out a window to avoid getting cut in half. Maul follows, steals a passing speeder by throwing out the driver, and takes off. Someone--looks like Tholme--drops back to save the driver, but the rest of them give chase. Ahsoka gleefully takes point on that, of course. She’s the best pilot.

(Rex looks bored, but someone is likely to puke by the end of the night. She hopes it’s not Leia, who insisted on coming for some fucking reason.)

“How the kriff is a teenager that good?!” Quinlan yells, clinging to the edge of the speeder to avoid getting tipped out as Ahsoka swerves around a corner with a wild laugh.

“He’s a Sith!” Leia shouts over the wind. “What do you think?”

Quinlan is not impressed by the claim of Sith.

Ahsoka screeches as she drifts across four lanes of traffic and into an alleyway to pursue Maul. He’s pretty good at dodging cross-building walkways, but she’s better. She bares her teeth, hissing, and tries to pick a plan.

“Vos, how’s your aim with Force throws?” She calls to the backseat.

“Uh, decent?”

“Great! Fett’s the projectile!”

Vos takes a second longer to process that than Jango does.

“I’m wh--”

He cuts off, screaming, and is flung forward by Quinlan to crash headfirst into a teenage Sith.

“Take the wheel!” Ahsoka commands, not waiting to see who follows the order, because Fett and Maul are both getting to their feet, the other speeder is about to crash, and she’s not sure who’s going to win that fight.

She jumps from the speeder they’ve been violently dragging around Denon, and lands feet-first on Maul’s... shoulder.

Hm.

That definitely dislocated something.

“You should wear armor!” she chirps at him, drawing both sabers and grinning as he whirls to face her, eyes wide with hate.

He’s utterly silent.

That’s disturbing. Expected, but disturbing.

“Did you just throw me?” Fett demands, higher pitched than she’d normally expect.

“No, Vos threw you.”

“Because you told him to!”

“Yeah, it’s a good strategy!”

“It is not!”

“Why not? Throwing people was standard practice in the GAR.”

She can’t see his face, but she’s pretty sure he’s about ready to strangle her.

Ahsoka cannot, at that point, continue snarking with the father of her best friend, because there’s a red lightsaber coming for her throat, and she should probably worry about that. Maul’s very good at killing people and she’d like to avoid becoming part of that statistic.

As she is quickly reminded, he is... fifteen. And shorter than she’s used to. And already injured.

It’s really, really easy to take him out, actually.

At some point, the other speeder was safely recovered before it caused property damage, and their own is landing a few meters away with Vos and the kids.

“You have Force-negating cuffs, right?” Ahsoka asks.

“No, Master Tholme has them.”

“Oh,” she says, and grimaces. “I guess I’ll just... keep sitting on him then.”

Maul snarls, and she raps him on the skull. “Stop that, it’s uncivilized.”

Rex snorts.

Jango makes a noise that is incredibly frustrated with the lot of them, and turns on Rex. “Was she telling the truth?”

“About?”

“Throwing people being standard practice for the GAR.”

Rex’s face goes pained. “It was in the five-oh-first. And a few others.”

“What’s the GAR?” Quinlan asks.

“None of your damn business,” Fett snaps.

Quinlan throws his hands up in the air again. “Come on! I just proved I know what I’m doing!”

“And their tragic backstory is none of your business, prudii!”

Quinlan blinks at him, and then glances at Ahsoka. “Um.”

“He called you a shadow since your training, um, seems to be pointing in that direction,” she says as carefully as she can. “We were theorizing.”

“Wh... you actually paid attention?” Quinlan asks, looking horribly confused. “I thought I was just annoying you.”

Ahsoka laughs at him. “Oh, Vos... I’ve been running black ops for... much longer than most would guess. Trust me, I know another spy when I see them.”

She smiles as kindly as she can, because she hadn’t actually meant to make him feel left out or unwanted or... well, she’d been pretty patronizing, especially for someone seemingly younger than him. The smile does not work. Quinlan just looks kind of horrified about how young she just implied she started spy work.

Granted, she’d been sixteen for Zygerria...

Deciding to ignore him for a bit, she shifts on Maul’s back and pats him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Baby Sith. We’re going to get you lots of nice therapy. Mind healers, no Sith tortures, all that fun stuff. Maybe some plushies.”

“You’re also getting therapy, right?” Quinlan asks. “Please say you are. I’m required for the specifics of my training and if anything you’ve said is true, I feel like you really need it and I’m scared of what’ll happen if you don’t.”

Ahsoka laughs, knowing exactly how empty it sounds. “Oh hell, if I didn’t get therapy, I imagine Kix would rise from the grave to force me into it.”

The name means nothing to anyone except Rex, and... ah, yeah, she told Fett about Kix a few weeks ago.

“No more throwing me without warning,” Fett grumbles, dropping to sit on the ground next to her. “Especially not at baby Sith Lords.”

“I am not a child!” Maul spits.

“He speaks!” Ahsoka cheers. “Aw, I knew you could do it.”

“’Soka, I told you not to bully him,” Rex complains. “It’s tacky. You’re being tacky.”

“I’m allowed to be tacky,” Ahsoka declares. “I’ve died twice, that’s, like, permission from the universe.”

“You’ve died twice?” Quinlan asks, back in ‘fascinated horror’ territory. “Wait, no, I shouldn’t ask--”

“Too late! The first time was on a planet that doesn’t exist and my Master lost his mind, killed a god, and used the good favor of another god to have me brought back to life at her expense. Not in that order.”

“I--what? No, that’s--what?”

Ahsoka smiles brightly. “You asked.”

Tholme finally shows up with the cuffs.

---------------------------

“You should eat something.”

He glares at her.

“Baby Sith Lords need to eat.”

He keeps glaring at her.

“Maul, you’ll never get big and strong and ready to kill if you don’t eat your vegetables.”

He bares his teeth.

“No, I don’t eat my veggies, but I’m a Togruta, so if I eat too many vegetables I throw up.”

Rex kicks her thigh, right on the faulds. “What did I say about bullying the Sith Lord?”

“Not to.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Making him eat his vegetables.”

“Soka.”

“Rex’ika.”

He kicks at her again. “Get up, we’re swapping out the watch.”

“But I wanted to hang out with my favorite little criminal mastermind.”

Rex drops to the floor and presses his forehead to her shoulder. “How the hell is being around this guy the first thing to make you cheer up in weeks?”

“I’m allowed to be mean to him.”

“He’s going to bite you.”

“I’ll bite back.”

Rex jabs a finger into her ribs, and she squeaks. “Go get something to eat, Commander.”

“Fine,” she huffs, rolling to her feet and moseying along to the galley. She walks in on Tholme and Fett having an argument about the ways in which Jedi and Mandalorians differ. Quinlan’s on the side, watching with wide eyes, and little Leia’s drinking a juice box at his side, tucked up under his arm and occasionally saying things to fan the flames. Ahsoka assumes she’s enjoying herself.

She opens the cooling unit, looks over the contents, and pulls out a raw leg of eopie mutton. She leans against the counter, bites into the chilled-but-not-frozen meat, and uses the back of one hand to wipe the blood off her chin. The ‘real adults’ don’t notice.

“I’m like ninety percent sure you’re doing this to mess with me but also...” Quinlan trails off, staring at her with horror. “Why?”

“A girl’s gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but all the obligate carnivores I know are like... generally holding to basic rules of courtesy when it comes to not grossing people out,” Quinlan says. “Like, I don’t chew with my mouth open. You don’t... eat in the most intimidating--did you just crack the bone with your teeth?!”

Ahsoka smirks at him, using her free hand to take away the shard of bone so she can suck out the marrow without eating the bones themselves. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t polite society. We’re in a galley on a bounty hunter’s ship, and I’ve been living on the run or in an army for most of my life. Table manners are optional.”

“No, they’re not,” Leia orders. “Fett, it’s your ship, tell her to--”

“--and another thing!” Fett snaps at Tholme, clearly paying less than no attention to the food argument.

Ahsoka keeps on eating, trying to catch wind of where the discussion’s at. Mostly, it seems to be at ‘talking past each other.’ Neither of them seems to have fully grasped more than the absolute most basic parts of the other culture, and that’s only enough to insult each other, not actually have a constructive conversation. She’d have expected more out of Tholme, at least. He’s not exactly young.

“Hey, quick question,” she says, in a moment where both of them have paused for breath and the opportunity to seethe. “Fett, when’s the last time you worked with a Jedi, or any member of a Force-based religion, before I popped into your life?”

His nose scrunches up as he makes a face.

“And Tholme, when’s the last time you worked with anyone from the Mandalorian system?”

Tholme’s reaction isn’t any more gracious than Fett’s.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. “Vos, were either of them actually interested in that conversation, or just looking for an excuse to yell?”

“Now listen here, jetiika--”

“Fett,” she snaps. “I am not a child.”

“And neither am I,” he growls right back. “This is my ship, and I damn well don’t need you treating me like a misbehaving youngling. You’ve got a problem, you bring it to my face, not get all smug about people’s tempers blowing over.”

Well, then.

She smiles thinly. “Of course.”

He stands with his arms crossed, in full armor save for the helmet. She puts aside the eopie meat and wipes her hands, smiling until she can put her hands on her hips and let it drop to a challenge.

“You know, I’m just--I’m just gonna go,” Quinlan mutters, pulling Leia out with him, the girl hanging from under one of his arms. “This, uh, this looks like a problem for... you folks. Um. Yeah.”

He sidles out.

Tholme doesn’t.

Fett rubs at the bridge of his nose, and then gestures at the table. “Sit.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

He drops his hand and glares at her. “We have another week on this ship together. We are going to have this conversation. Sit.”

She sits, right on the warm spot left behind by Quinlan and Leia. She crosses her arms, lifts a brow, and waits.

Fett takes the seat across from her. Tholme leans against the counter.

“We all know you’re older than you look,” Fett says. “I heard Tholme mention it, I know that much has been shared. You’re acting like an actual teenager, and I’ve... I’ve put up with a lot. I am trying to keep things civil, particularly with you. I’ve tried to be friendly. You’ve been fucked up since we met, fine, everyone’s got trauma. The thing where you’ve started talking shit to our faces for what seems like your own amusement? That has to stop. You’re older than me, Torrent. Fucking act like it.”

She blinks at him, slow and not exactly happy, and turns to Tholme.

The man shrugs. “I was planning to put up with it until we arrived to the temple and handed you over to some mind healers. Fett doesn’t have that kind of time.”

There’s a curdle in her stomach, defensive and angry and guilty.

“You’ve been... a bitch,” Fett finally says. “You know that. I’m not going to mince words. You’ve been holier-than-thou and rude and condescending, and aiming that at Antilles is one thing, when you’ve apparently known her since she was a toddler and taught her things. Aiming at the rest of us isn’t going to fly. We’re all adults trying to share a space. Stop acting like... just like you have been.”

There is no defense to be made that they aren’t both already aware of.

She closes her eyes and tries to strangle the burst of irrational rage.

Their accusations aren’t unfounded.

They deserve an apology.

She is in the wrong.

She’s felt freer than she had in years, and in that freedom allowed herself too much rein, let herself lace her words with barbed wires and poison instead of sparks and spices, comments that were cruel instead of just joking. Too familiar. Too comfortable.

“My behavior’s been inappropriate,” she finally says, the words clumsy and too big in her mouth. “You’re right about that. I’m sorry, and I’ll endeavor to keep a tighter rein on my less pleasant behaviors in the future.”

At least she only lashes out with words. It could be worse.

She opens her eyes, fixes her gaze on the wall behind Fett, wrestles her expression into stiff neutrality. “Am I dismissed?”

“...uh, no, not after that,” Fett says, sounding just a little horrified. “What the hell was that?”

Tholme hisses out a breath. “Let her go.”

“No, this needs to be discussed, that’s not a healthy rea--”

“Fett, let her go,” Tholme insists, low and heavy.

Fett looks between the two for a moment, seems to come to a realization he doesn’t like, and then gestures almost violently towards the door. “Fine. Go.”

She walks out, doesn’t sprint. She’s stiff. She’s controlled. She’s the one that fucked up, so it’s fine if she doesn’t feel great right now. Getting called out on one’s own failings as a person isn’t something to get upset about if the failings are real. The feelings are real and normal, but this was her fault, and so it’s up to her to fix it, and she can’t let them know it hurt her, because this was her mistake.

She goes to the cargo hold.

---------------------------

Ahsoka works out her frustrations on Fett’s punching bag. She does not augment herself with the Force, just uses raw strength and technique, ignoring the tears that press at her eyes.

She’s fine.

It’s not weird. It’s not odd. It’s not strange to not notice she’s been kind of a bitch since her mood came up with the whole Depa thing, and then Maul. She’s been mean, mostly to Vos and Fett, and nobody’s confronted her about it until now. They let her have room for her trauma, and she hadn’t reined it in. She’s just gotten worse.

‘Snippy’ she’d always been, but age apparently hadn’t fucking tempered it.

“Um.”

She catches the punching bag, breathing heavily and covered in sweat. She hasn’t worked out all the twitchy, nervous energy yet.

“Vos,” she greets, once she’s caught herself enough that her voice won’t waver. He’s on the other side of the bag, but she knows his voice. “Do you need something?”

“You’re kind of... projecting,” he tells her, drifting to where she can actually see him. “Not self-loathing, but, um, recrimination? You just don’t feel very good and I was hoping to help”

Why in all the Sith hells does he have to be nice.

“I got called out on my behavior and wasn’t ready to face the fact that I’d kriffed up,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine. And I’m... sorry. I haven’t been fair to you and was using you as an easy target for some of my ruder comments.”

“I mean, I kind of figured,” he admits, coming closer. “I’ve been tutored by Shadows before, and a lot of them act like you. I just assumed it was more of that.”

“I still shouldn’t have let myself run loose like that,” she says. “I’m... it wasn’t appropriate. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she says. “Not with... not with you. Or anyone other than Rex and a mind healer, really. Most of it is...”

She trails off, distantly noticing that her eyes are tearing up enough to blur her vision, and her nails are digging into the bag in a way Fett won’t appreciate.

There’s so much that beat her down, never quite breaking her, that she doesn’t even know what made her act the way she does.

“Want to spar?”

She looks over at him, wonders what he sees that makes him want to fight her when she’s visibly unstable.

He smiles, kind and easy, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s genuine in intent, if not in energy. He wants to help. “You all keep saying I could work on my hand-to-hand. Just take off the armor so I don’t break a finger, maybe.”

“You’re serious.”

“No, I’m Quinlan.”

She’s going to wipe the floor with this boy. “You sure you wanna fight me?”

“You won’t be able to meditate until you do,” he says. He’s right, damn him. “The other option is that I go get your... vod, I think? I go get Rex and you two can talk it out since you trust him with more. I don’t want to do that, though, he’s still a kid.”

She eyes him, lips pressed together and mind awhirl with emotions and thoughts she’d tried to beat out of her head and into the bag. “Ever fought someone without the Force?”

“...yes?”

“Was it cuffs?”

“Oh, you meant me not having the Force,” he realizes. “Er, no. Is... is that something you’ve done a lot?”

She smiles at him. “You’re planning on Shadow work. That means getting captured and stripped of everything you are at some point, Force included. Unfortunately, the cuffs are in use on a very annoying Dathomirian right now, so we’ll have to make do with you shielding like your mind’s a Kessel Spice Mine.”

“...do I want to know how often you’ve been captured?”

“No, you don’t.”

When he comes at her, it’s easy to dodge. It’s easy to tap him on target points, little pokes that show she could take him out, but isn’t going to until he’s learned something. He stays grinning throughout, letting her take the lead, and he treats her like... like a knight. Like a teacher. He’s stepped back and gone from trying to impress her as a fellow padawan, to proving himself to a full knight.

She’s not sure when that change happened, or why or how, but it makes things much smoother. She wants to think that it would have even if she hadn’t gotten a wakeup call from Fett.

So she treats him the way she treated Ezra, for the year she’d spent traveling with Kanan. She treats him as a student that’s willing to learn, good but not yet great, competent but not yet ready to survive. She draws him into the kind of chest-heaving exhaustion that tells a fighter just how much energy they waste.

(Ahsoka may have had her own style, but her grandmaster had been the pinnacle of a Soresu user. She’d spent years on the frontlines of a war. She knew the worth of conserving energy, and she’d teach it to any who stepped in to challenge her.)

“Who taught you to fight like this?” He asks, when they’ve taken a handful of moments to circle each other. His steps are heavy, sure, planted. Her own are light and ready.

“Soldiers,” she says. It’s true enough.

“Not your Master?” he asks, just as he tries to kick for her upper arm. It’s a safe question. For anyone else, it would be a safe question.

But for Ahsoka, it’s another chink in the armor, after a maelstrom of emotion, a storm of self-loathing, a dervish of instability.

She doesn’t break right away.

She spirals. She fights Quinlan, but doesn’t quite see him. Her strikes get sloppy, her feet stumble. She can’t make herself meet Quinlan’s eyes, not when the scrape of his heel against the metal sounds like the rasp of a breathing machine. Her shields get fuzzy, she knows, and she leaks what she feels into the air, making it sour and thick. She doesn’t notice, because all she can see, all she can--all she can hear and feel and--

She drops to her knees and grabs at her head, trying to stop it.

“Sokari?”

She breathes. In and out, harsh and jagged but natural in a way that the damned respirator wasn’t.

Her master her teacher her brother the traitor the hound the executioner

Her face is hot. Something prickles. It might be tears.

She tries to say something, tries to say a name or a request, tries to make anything come out of her mouth that isn’t the broken wail of a woman who hasn’t let herself think about how she died.

She feels herself pulled into someone’s arms, and she can’t quite tell who, but they’re bigger than she is, and feel warm and worried. They care. They don’t understand, they’re scared, but they care.

Her hands shake, clutched to her chest and she can’t breathe she can’t make herself take in enough air to do a Force-damned thing the empire is going to feel her her shields are down and broken and her emotions are spilling and the empire is going to find HER ANAKIN IS GOING TO FIND HER AND--

“COMMANDER!”

Rex.

Rex is here.

Her breath is coming so fast that she’s hiccupping more than she’s actually inhaling. She feels small hands in gloves on either side of her face, and then her forehead presses to something warm.

Rex. A Keldabe kiss. Her brother, her partner, her other half. He’s here. He’s calm. If he’s calm, then things are fine.

“What happened?” Light voice, high voice, small and distant. Leia. Little Leia little princess Leia she’s in danger she’s in trouble Anakin will--

“Commander.”

No. Here and now. She needs to focus on here and now. Her throat feels cold. She breathes too fast, still. She can’t stop it.

“I don’t know.” That’s Vos. He was... they were doing something. He was here. Talking to her. “We were sparring, and she just--”

Right, sparring.

“I don’t know if I said something?” He offers, voice pitching up, unsure and worried. Is he the one holding her? He’s the one holding her. That’s embarrassing.

“Commander?” Rex prompts. “Commander, can you open your eyes?”

She tries. She can’t. She shakes her head.

“Soka?” he asks, voice quiet. “Where are you?”

“F-F-Fett,” she manages. It’s enough.

“And where were you?”

His voice is so soft. So worried. She held him the same way after Mandalore, after Order 66, after all his brothers, all her friends...

“Soka.”

Her mind is spinning, and suddenly all she can hear is Anakin Skywalker is dead. I destroyed him.

Her breath hitches, and she wails.

“Commander,” Rex tries again, but her head is a vortex of Then you will die and Perhaps this child and not the Jedi way.

Our long awaited meeting.

I destroyed him.

Then you will die.

She can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can only see that yellow eye that’s too familiar but belongs to a stranger can only hear a voice that shouldn’t exist can only mourn and break and--

“Soka?”

“Malachor,” she manages. “I--h-he--I died.”

“What did you say?” someone asks. A vod. It’s the right voice, almost, rough and business-like, not accusing anyone yet, and... and... no. No. Not one of her boys. It’s Fett.

“Um, right at the end? I asked her who taught her to fight like this,” Quinlan says, nervous. “And she said it was soldiers. And I joked, I asked that it wasn’t her Master, and she didn’t answer that. A couple minutes later, she just started...”

“Oh, Soka,” Rex whispers, pulling her closer. “Commander, just breathe with me.”

“H-h-he, he just--R-Rex, he j-just--and I c-c-couldn’t--”

“I know,” her captain whispers. “I know, just breathe with me.”

“He k-k-k-killed me,” she sobs, falling out of the Keldabe and into too-small arms. “I l-loved--he was my broth-ther and--and he just--he killed me, he didn’t even stop.”

“I know,” Rex whispers. “Soka, I know.”

Of course he does.

---------------------------

“It was just bad timing,” Rex says, once they’re in the room she’s been sharing with her little family, curled up under a blanket and watching the floor like it has all the secrets to how she lost her world three times over.

“Is there anything we need to keep in mind?” Fett asks, gruff and uncomfortable. She wonders if he’s angry that she took his necessary confrontation and turned it into this mess.

“Don’t bring up her Jedi Master,” Rex says, and pulls her in when she shivers. Her eyes squeeze shut before she can stop them, tears beading up again. “Just... don’t. It’s too soon.”

“He’s--”

“He Fell,” Ahsoka interrupts. “I thought he died, but he became a Sith. And fifteen years later, we ran into each other, and I refused to join him in the Dark, so he tried to kill me.”

Fett swears, low and muffled. She thinks he has a hand over his mouth.

Quin and Leia aren’t there. She thinks they’re keeping an eye on their Baby Sith prisoner. That’s good.

“Soka,” Rex whispers, and she buries her face in his shoulder. She’s too old to be this kind of mess. She’s thirty-two. She’s Fulcrum. She’s...

She’s in need of a lot of therapy.

“We can avoid the subject unless you bring it up,” Tholme promises. “Definitely until the Temple. Is there anything else we shouldn’t talk about?”

Ahsoka can practically feel Rex’s deadpan look. “Sir, we’re a trio of child soldiers ripped from everything we know. Every other sentence is a risk. We’re just... working our way through.”

There’s a knock at the door. Oh. Quin and Leia.

“Just figured we’d drop this off before we went down to visit Mr. Grumpy-Face,” Quinlan whispers. He still thinks Leia’s a child. He’s trying to make things less terrible for her. That’s nice. “We decided he’ll be less angry if he tries Hoth chocolate, and made some for everyone.”

They definitely made it for Ahsoka herself, and Maul was an afterthought. Still. It’s sweet.

“Commander?” Rex prompts, jostling her a little to try and get her to sit up.

“Gimme a sec,” she manages. It takes longer than it should to push herself away from him, to accept the mug that Leia gives her, too-serious worry in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her soul.

She doesn’t look six. She doesn’t even look twenty-two. This girl was always too old for her skin, forced to grow up in the hostile fear of the Empire.

“Thank you, Princess.”

She sips.

She can barely taste it beyond the ashes she imagines coating her tongue.

I destroyed him, her memory echoes. His slightest hesitation before he made the final move, it haunts her. She almost reached him. If only she’d tried harder, yelled louder, been better...

She shivers.

“Do you need help falling asleep?” Tholme asks. “I’m a regular healer, not a mind healer, but...”

She probably should.

She takes another sip of her drink, willing herself to taste it. It’s good. She likes it. She knows she does.

“Can you make it dreamless?” she whispers.

“It doesn’t always work, but I can try,” he tells her.

She nods. “When I finish the chocolate.”

“Of course.”

---------------------------

Everyone’s careful around her for days. The whole decision to be nicer doesn’t mean anything when she’s walking about in a daze of too few emotions, drained of everything she could feel in favor of a grey cloud of fluff in everything she does.

She does forms. Single saber and Jar’kai. Ataru and Djem so and Soresu. Reverse grip, regular grip, partial reverse on either side.

Again. Again. Again.

She loses herself in the motions, not meditating so much as just empty.

Rex worries. Fett worries. Vos worries.

Leia and Tholme keep their shields locked up tight, and she doesn’t know how they feel. She thinks Leia might be judging her. She think Tholme might be pitying.

Maul simply hates. It’s an old and familiar sensation to walk into, and she takes unthinking comfort in his rage. She’s silent instead of snippy, when she plays the role of guard, and they stare at each other in silence. His eyes burn, and she wonders how much he’s heard of her nightmares.

“You need to talk,” Rex tells her, when he finds her with a cold cup of caff, eyes fixed somewhere beyond it all. She lifts her head. “Soka.”

She just stares at him.

He sighs and pulls her into a hug. “Commander, please.”

She can’t.

Ahsoka stares at the wall behind him, resting her chin on his head. Her neck itches under the lek at the back of her head, a little tingle of a feeling that she can’t bring herself to do anything about. The pale light of the galley is sharp against the chipped paint of the metal that surrounds them. It hurts her eyes to look, but it’s not the deep and dark lit only by red--

Then you will die, her memory growls.

She flinches.

“Breathe,” Rex tells her, too-small hands clinging at her back. “Just breathe, ‘Soka.”

She curls in tighter and tries to just breathe.

---------------------------

“Tell me something good.”

Ahsoka blinks. She looks at Leia. She doesn’t have the energy to parse that.

Leia chances a look at Rex, who isn’t leaving Ahsoka’s side any more than he has to, and Fett on the other side. Tholme’s asleep and Quin’s on Baby Sith duty. It’s just people who know, right now.

The little girl across the table, the child senator, the spy, purses her lips and huffs in irritation. “You knew my biological father before he became one of the worst people in the galaxy. Both of you did. Tell me something good about him.”

Good things.

About Anakin.

“You fought a war as a Jedi,” Leia prompts. “Surely you must have done some good things with him, or at least thought you were.”

Did they?

Every mission ended in tragedy or was just a ploy of Palpatine’s. Every saved life was just...

Wait.

“He built Threepio,” she finally says. “Your father wi--I mean, Bail wiped Threepio’s memory after the Empire rose, for your safety, but Anakin was the one who built him.”

Leia sits up, eyes brighter. “I didn’t know that. I... was Artoo involved? Did he build R2D2, or...”

“No,” Rex says, “But Artoo was his favorite astromech, and they always pushed each other into stupid stunts. We risked a hell of a lot to save that droid, more than once, and I didn’t find out until you started working with the Rebellion full-time, but Artoo and Threepio were the witnesses for your bio-parents’ wedding.”

Leia gapes at him. So does Ahsoka. (Fett doesn’t know enough to care.)

Rex grins, and if it looks a little forced, that’s fine. “He had a holo recording. I was one of the few people left that knew about the marriage that might have wanted to see, so Artoo offered. It was... sweet.”

He waits, probably for Ahsoka to add something herself, but she has nothing.

“I think that’s when they swapped droids, since Threepio was more useful to a politician and Artoo did his best work when we set him loose on the enemy.”

“He never changed,” Leia muses. “Did he always swear that much?”

“Yes,” Ahsoka answers, as Rex laughs. “Always. All the binary I learned started with the best swears.”

She tries to think of another good memory, something else that Leia might appreciate. Her mind ticks back to saving Stinky, which is just a terrible option, because that mission started with Hutts and ended with the Battle of Teth. That massive loss of life, all for the son of the creature that had put Leia in chains.

She wonders if she has anything in her memory that doesn’t end in blood and graves.

“Soka.” Rex.

“Hm?”

“Remember that time Fives and Echo got lost in the undercity their first time on leave, and we had to get the General to help us find them?”

She does.

He’s right, that’s a good story.

“Okay, so what you have to understand,” Ahsoka says, already digging the faint details out and dusting them off, “is that these boys were ARC troopers, top-notch, terrifyingly competent once they got through specialty training, and loyal as hell. Echo had memorized the reg manuals front to back, and Fives was... well, Fives ended up being the only person to figure out the chips before they went into action. Point is, the Domino twins were good... eventually. Just like everyone else, though, they started out shiny.”

---------------------------

“Tholme’s hiding something.”

Ahsoka wonders if Leia will just leave if she ignores her enough. Probably not. This was the girl that got kicked out of boarding school for leading a sit-in at age seven. She’s got patience.

“His job requires him to hide a lot of things,” Ahsoka says instead. “Not as many as Vos will have to, eventually, but a lot.”

“He’s hiding something from us,” Leia insists, visibly frustrated that Ahsoka isn’t as upset about this as she is. “Something important.”

The way she says ‘important’ is clumsy and impacted by the missing baby tooth. She can’t say the r. It comes out as ‘im-poh-ten,’ which is adorable, and if Ahsoka comments on it, she’s probably going to get punched by a six-year-old.

“The Force doesn’t care,” Ahsoka says. “I trust his intentions, if not him as a person.”

“If you don’t trust him, then why trust his intentions?”

“Leia, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I trust one and a half people in the galaxy,” Ahsoka points out. “Me not trusting a person isn’t a sign of anything except my paranoia. The only person I trust fully and without reservation is Rex. Even you, I only mostly trust, because my brain starts screaming if I think too hard. That’s why you’re the half.”

“Okay, whatever, paranoia aside,” Leia barrels on, “He should tell us. Whatever it is that he’s hiding, we deserve to know. We’re not children that he can just hide things from for our own good.”

Ahsoka presses her lips together. “Leia. Princess. I know you’re used to holding all the cards--”

“This isn’t about me being a control freak!”

“It is, though,” Ahsoka soothes, and smiles. “Your mother--the bio one--was the same way. You spent years as one of the leaders of the Rebellion, so obviously you’re used to having all the information, and people reporting to you... but Tholme is a Jedi Master. He reports to the Council and the Republic. Do you know how many people I kept secrets from while I was a padawan? We’re an unknown, Leia. They have no proof that we’re on their side, especially since we’re traveling with Fett.”

Leia crosses her arms and glares as hard as she can.

“I’m not going to bother him,” Ahsoka says. “I’ve already had, like, five unrelated mental breakdowns. I’m putting this on hold until we get to the Temple and I can trust that there’s a healer on hand to sedate me or something.”

“You... want to be sedated?”

“Leia, this... really should be obvious, but a Force-Sensitive losing their osik the way I have been isn’t actually safe. I know I broke a weapons rack last week.” Ahsoka gestures vaguely. “If the Jedi Master isn’t telling me something for reasons that might relate to my clear and obvious mental instability, I’m going to assume he’s got a point.”

“So he should tell me or Rex.”

“We’ll be on Coruscant in four days,” Ahsoka soothes. “Just... let it be. They won’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t have to. The Force leads me in all things, including this.”

Leia isn’t impressed by that, but Leia isn’t impressed by much in the first place.

She strides off in a fit that is, perhaps, more influenced by her six-year-old emotional control than she’d like to admit. Ahsoka lets her. It’s not worth the argument.

It’s only a few minutes later that Fett strides in, takes the seat Leia was just in, and asks, “What would it take for you to teach me how to use a jetii’kad?”

She blinks at him. “You want to learn how to use a lightsaber?”

“Yes.”

“...why?”

“Viszla.”

“I see.”

She does.

Ahsoka taps her fingers against the table, eyeing him with the kind of interest she copied from Master Kenobi, years ago. Fett doesn’t fidget, but she thinks he might want to. He just looks back, waiting for her judgement.

“You’ll need to justify it,” she finally says. “It’s a significant difference from what you actually did, so I need to know your reasoning for doing it, and your plans for once it’s done.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s step one,” she corrects. She tilts her head, considering. “My standards for you aren’t built in a vacuum, and you know that. Explain to me what you plan to do and how you plan to do it, and if I approve...”

“You’ll help me achieve it.”

“Maybe,” she allows. “A lot of that depends on Rex.”

“I expected as much,” Fett says. “He is... an admittedly large part of the reason.”

“He would be,” she says. She gives the silence a few more seconds to sit awkwardly between them, and then stands up. “I’d guess you’ve been brainstorming already. Do you have it written down or is it mostly just in your head so far?”

“I’m still... debating options, so to speak.”

She grins, and the shape of the predator’s smile, the baring of teeth... that almost makes him step back. She can see it in the twitch of his muscles. Smart man.

“Follow me,” she says, and doesn’t wait for him to stand. She strides out with tooka-light steps, hears the heavy beskar tread behind her, and goes to the cargo hold. Fett’s confusion grows tangibly behind her, especially when she tosses him a wooden quarterstaff. She picks up the other and spins it in one hand.

“You’re going to fight me,” she tells him, stretching and letting the staff help with the process. “And while we fight, you’re going to tell me what your plans for Mandalore are.”

He mimics her, but there’s a frown on his face. “And why staffs?”

“You and I, we’ve only sparred bare-handed,” she says. “I need a feel for how you fight with a weapon anyway. These are a good start.”

“Not the beskad?”

She grins, and the twitch is back. “No. That can wait. We start with the staffs.”

He takes a stance, and she mirrors him. She lets him strike first with a weapon, but she’s the one that asks all the questions.

(He is the only one on the ship that can fight her one-on-one right now, and he can win. Still, she makes him work for every inch, and what she doesn’t win in bruises, she wins in words.)

(Fett might yet be a proper Mand’alor, but Ahsoka learned war from her brothers, negotiation at the knee of a general and in the shadow of a prince, and government at the side of duchesses and queens.)

(If he wants her help uniting his people, he needs to prove that he can hold them together once she’s gone.)

---------------------------

Ahsoka’s interrogation of Jango’s plans is thorough, and she’s not the only one involved. She brings Leia in, and has her join in on the grilling. She maybe laughs as the twenty-seven-year-old survivor of Galidraan, the Mand’alor, a man who has killed Master Jedi with his bare hands, gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly.

Still, Leia knows this better than any of the rest of them do. The girl might have grown up heir to a monarchy, but she got a classical education and was drilled on democracy and all associated forms of government. Where Ahsoka knows military protocol and law enforcement, intersystem relations and defensive measures, Leia knows agricultural subsidies and welfare programs, infrastructure and education.

Ahsoka may know how to find out if someone’s breaking a zoning law, but Leia knows why it exists in the first place.

“And I grew up in a cult,” Rex says, when an argument on that topic breaks out. Everyone that hasn’t heard the joke-that-isn’t-a-joke stares at him. “The Jedi grew up in a religious meritocracy; Leia grew up in a monarchy; and I grew up in a cult.”

Ahsoka elbows him. He’s not wrong, but still.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is about forty-seven percent sure that Leia will put her foot in her mouth when it comes to Mandalorian culture, blunt as the girl is. That prefrontal cortex isn’t anywhere near as developed as it should be, either, so impulse control for the princess isn’t great. Ahsoka refuses to let Leia and Fett talk about ways to mend the breaks between tradition and the pacifism of the New Mandalorians without either Rex or Ahsoka herself as a mediating presence. Tholme sits in a few times, but while he knows that Leia isn’t really six--though not about the time-travel, yet--Quinlan doesn’t.

They admittedly end up doing this while he’s on Maul-sitting duty.

“It’s like he doesn’t even care about making nice with the people that, at this point, make up the majority of his people!” Leia grumbles one night, as Ahsoka kicks over a step stool so the girl can brush her teeth. “He may not like the New Mandalorians, but from what I understand, it’s still early enough to prevent the majority of the cultural bleaching you brought up. If he stays this stubborn--”

“Leia,” Ahsoka says, and the girl’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m aware of your reasons for not trusting his intentions. But if I may say? Chill.”

“He’s not even trying!”

“He’s trying a hell of a lot harder than he did in the original timeline,” Ahsoka reminds her. “Brush your teeth.”

“I’m not a--”

“Teeth.”

It’s a little worrying, how the child’s brain affects Leia, but... well. That’ll pass in time, hopefully. Until then, Ahsoka gets to be the aunt she should have been. This includes tucking Leia in, which the girl grumbles about despite the fond waves of comfort that enter the Force around her. Ahsoka doesn’t call her out on it, just brushes back wisps of hair to plant a kiss on Leia’s forehead, and then does the same once Rex stumbles in, grumbling about the limitations of a cadet’s body, but far more ready to follow the protocol that is bedtime.

Rex doesn’t pretend to not like getting tucked in, for all that he’s sharing with a grumbly, already-asleep princess. He smiles up at Ahsoka, lets her hug him, and pretends they can be a normal family for five seconds.

Quinlan’s making a late night snack for himself in the galley. Tholme is guarding the Baby Sith. Fett...

Ahsoka goes to the cockpit, takes the copilot’s seat, and watches hyperspace pass them by.

It takes long minutes before either of them say anything.

“Do Jedi believe in souls?”

His shields are up, locked up tighter than the innermost chambers of the Imperial Palace. She has no idea where he’s taking this question. She has to cast about for an answer.

“That depends on how you define a soul,” she finally says. “Leia told me about Force Ghosts. A Jedi Master who underwent the right meditations and training could pass into the Force upon their death without losing their sense of self. They could remain themselves, to an extent, and interact with force-sensitive individuals. I don’t know if they could last that way indefinitely, but depending on your definition, I could argue those ghosts were evidence of a form of soul.”

“So you believe that the dead pass into the Force, but that what passes could be a soul. Something must exist for a sense of self to disappear at death in a way that impacts the Force as you understand it, and many would use the word ‘soul’ for that something.”

“Mm,” Ahsoka considers it. “I’d say that’s pretty accurate. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“What about those not yet born?”

Her fingers feel cold, and she finds herself no longer able to watch the passage of hyperspace as passively as she had, and her eyes catch on streaks and motes of what is not dust, her vision unable to keep any more still than her heart.

“Oh,” she hears herself say. “The clones.”

It’s a long time before he answers, but the walls come down. He carries a confused sort of grief with him, guilty and a mite resentful. His questions have been building for longer than she’d thought. His voice is rough. “I’ve taken plenty of lives, but I’ve never known the name of someone I erased from existence before they were even born.”

“The stories we told Leia about the brothers.”

There’s a grunt of agreement from Fett, so those dots at least connect.

“I take it my answer wasn’t helpful,” she manages to say.

“Will they still exist?” Fett asks. “Will they be born elsewhere? Or is... is a soul something that only comes into existence after the body does?”

“I have no idea,” Ahsoka admits. “I want... I want to think that I’d be able to find them eventually, to recognize them, if their souls are still born into this world elsewhere.”

“And if your Sith finds someone else to build his army out of?”

Ahsoka looks at him, sharp and pointed. “You wouldn’t.”

“They’ll be doing it anyway, if their plans are as ironclad as you say.”

“You’re already associating with Jedi,” Ahsoka says, fighting the urge to break his nose. “They wouldn’t approach you, not now. They can’t leverage your anger against you. They won’t know everything, but they’ll know that you have friends among the Jedi.”

“You think they can’t come up with better lies?”

He has a point. He has more than one point and she hate hate hates it.

A Jedi does not hate.

I am no Jedi.

“You’re going to have to convince me,” she says. “Especially if you want to somehow balance this with the darksaber thing. I won’t teach you how to fight with it if you’re not planning to retake Mandalore.”

“That’s how they’d sell it,” he says. “Retaking Mandalore. An army ostensibly for the Jedi, and ultimately...”

“You’d build an army of slaves.”

“No, I’d be the inside man for when they build that army anyway.”

She holds his gaze. She looks away first.

“Torrent?”

“I’m thinking.”

He lets her.

“I’ll need to talk to Rex. Probably Leia.”

“Understandable.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I’m only just considering it. It’s an idea, not a plan.”

“That’s the only reason I haven’t ripped your throat out with my teeth.”

“Hyperbole doesn’t suit you.”

She glares at him, and leaves, her mind chopping up and laying out every possible angle on Fett volunteering to do the exact same thing as last time, but somehow worse.

Great. Just what she needed.

---------------------------

Ahsoka isn’t there for the shouting match between Rex and Fett, but she doesn’t have to be. She can hear it form clear across the ship, and Rex comes to her afterwars. He’s been crying, which isn’t as surprising as it could be. These bodies are still prone to such things, and will be for years. She doesn’t comment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“We need to take out Sidious before he starts anything on Kamino.”

“Agreed,” she says. “It’ll be hard, though.”

“I don’t care.”

“What did Fett say?”

“That if it wasn’t going to be my brothers, it would be someone else’s. Either we stopped the cloning from happening at all, or we mitigated damage by being there.”

“I don’t think Sidious is going to tap him for it,” Ahsoka admits. “Not unless you’re willing to stage that kind of fight publicly enough for Fett to claim the Jedi poisoned you, family, against him. It could work, but it’s a gamble.”

He knows all of this.

“I miss them,” he says, and she cards her fingers though the curls he’s managed to grow in the past weeks. “I just... even at the end, I had Wolffe. I knew Boba was out there; I wouldn’t be surprised if the beskar let him survive a Sarlacc. I had brothers. Not as many as I used to, but there was always someone. I miss them all, so much it hurts.”

“It wouldn’t be them,” she reminds him. She pulls him closer, puts her cheek to his head. “It would be the same process, the same faces, the same training, even, but the boys themselves...”

He clings to her and shudders.

“Rex?”

“I can’t force them to grow up the way I did. I want them back. Sidious is going to make the army no matter what. Someone’s going to suffer, and I don’t want it to be my brothers, but they won’t exist otherwise, and...”

“And it’s an impossible choice,” she summarizes. “And it sucks.”

“It’s sucks Gungan balls, ‘Soka.”

She laughs, and feels him smile against her shoulder. Good. He needs to smile more.

“He’s still trying to get me to like him,” Rex says. "He’s still making an effort, and he never did that for anyone except Boba, and it’s weird. I don’t know what to do with any of that.”

“Gain a brother,” Ahsoka whispers, and she feels him jerk against her. “If that’s what you want.”

“He’s not vod.”

“Same blood as all the rest, and you’re older than him, so he’s not really in a position to be a parent to you like he was to Boba,” she says carefully. “You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to, but... I think he’s trying. I think this means a lot to him, and that he isn’t any more sure of what to do than you are. You don’t have to forgive him for what he did in the future, you don’t have to accept when he reaches out, you don’t have to ever talk to him again after we reach Coruscant if you don’t want, but I think... I think it’s worth at least considering what you have to gain. I think it’s worth looking at what he’s trying to give you.”

Rex huffs. “Why couldn’t he just be the shabuir I knew in training?”

“Something happened between now and then?” she offers. “I don’t know. I never met him in the original timeline. I just know the guy that keeps trying to get on my good side so you’ll like him.”

He outright scoffs. “Soka, that’s not the only reason he’s trying to get on your good side.”

“...I’m a former Jedi who talks trash to his face,” she says slowly. “And I cried on him. There is no reason for him to be nice to me, other than you.”

“He thinks you’re cool and a good person and wants you to be his friend.”

“Bantha poodoo.”

Rex grins in a way that goes straight to smirking. “Soka, I’m not joking. Jango Fett wants you to be his friend.”

“Kriffing why?” she asks, more than a little horrified. “I’m a mess, look like I’m ten years younger than him, have gleefully kicked his ass in front of an audience; I even told Vos to throw him at a baby Sith Lord. Putting up with me is one thing, but I’m... I’m only barely not a Jedi. I’m a historical enemy of Mandalore, and part of the community he hates more than anything, and--”

“And his reaction to you kicking his ass was pure Mando,” Rex says. “In that he now thinks you’re a badass, and thus worth being friends with.”

“I can’t believe that. I physically cannot.”

“Soka, just accept it. The Mand’alor wants to be friends with you.” He scratches at his scalp. “I mean, he met you while you were protecting what appeared to be children, and it’s apparently still early enough for him to care about that.”

She leans back in her seat, eyes on the wall ahead of her and back against the cool metal of the other side. Rex falls back with her. She wonders if Rex changed the subject so they didn’t have to talk about deciding how many of his brothers get to exist, and whether or not he can swallow the bitterness of his history to have a connection with at least one member of his blood. She doesn’t ask. If he wants to change the subject, that’s his right.

“I don’t... no.” She denies it as well as she can, and then the implications dig a little deeper. “Is this me accidentally signing up to be the Jedi Order’s official liaison to the Mand’alor?”

“I mean, this point in time... they’ve got Kenobi for the Duchess, yeah?” Rex shrugs. “Good relations with the system are probably a good thing, and you’ve got a stronger connection than Tholme and Vos.”

“Ugh,” she says. She rubs a hand against her head, and then lurches to her feet. “Fine! Fine. If it’ll get him to retake Mandalore before the Sith decide to bribe him with an army he doesn’t get to keep, I’ll teach him how to fight for the kriffin’ Darksaber.”

“That’s what makes the decision for you?”

“Well something had to!”

They only get one lesson in before Coruscant, but the lesson lasts a full day, and Ahsoka’s got his comm number. Fett’s a quick learner anyway, and Tholme was there to give pointers where Ahsoka couldn’t.

He won’t measure up to a Jedi in saber-to-saber combat, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to learn enough to turn all those skills with a beskad to something that works with a jetii’kad.

(The balance of a saber is wrong to those used to a physical weapon. The inertia doesn’t work the way anyone expects. There’s no need to worry about damaging the blade.)

(Fett is good. Ahsoka is better. And, bless his heart, he knows it.)

(She will mold him into the shape of someone who not only can, but should rule a system with a history like that, and he damn well knows that too.)

---------------------------

“Dropping out of hyperspace in T-minus twenty seconds.”

The Slave I is not, in fact, a Venator-class starship, or anything else near the size and smoothness of the ships that Ahsoka grew up on. This is a bounty hunter’s vessel, and the drop to real space jolts like nothing else. Ahsoka’s in the copilot seat for the return, but Tholme’s going to swap with her as soon as they’ve got confirmation that there were no problems with exiting hyperspace, and nobody’s shooting at them.

“We’re not going to get shot at,” Tholme had assured her.

“I always get shot at,” she’d told him.

“I have our clearance,” he reminded her, seeming more amused than frustrated. “There’s no need to worry about getting shot at.”

“I also always get shot at,” Jango had thrown in.

“Okay,” Tholme had allowed, after several minutes of his trust in the Temple warring against Ahsoka and Jango’s learned paranoia. The looks Quinlan had darted around the room when Leia and Rex also claimed ‘chronic getting-shot-at disease’ had been a treat. The paranoia of a Watchman and a future Shadow was great, but the paranoia of three revolutionaries and a galaxy-wide criminal was greater. “You can take us in close enough to get in radio contact, but the second we have to ask for clearance and a vector, I’m in the seat.”

She’d agreed, of course. She was paranoid, not inexperienced.

“We’re much less likely to get shot down by ground control if you tell them we’re with you,” she’d said, to his hilariously apparent metaphysical exhaustion. “Obviously.”

“Good enough,” he’d sighed.

What that means is mostly just that Ahsoka gets to watch the distant star at the center of Coruscant’s system grow rapidly brighter. She can pick out the constellations she’d grown up with, the stars the creche had projected on the ceiling every night, the ones that she may not have seen from the surface, but had greeted her and then sent her on her way every time she left on yet another campaign that lost her men their lives for a Sith Lord's wretched plans. These were the shapes and stories she’d never seen again as Fulcrum, a woman so hunted that to come within a dozen subsectors of the planet was to court her death.

For sixteen years, she hadn’t ventured closer than Alderaan, save for a single trip to Chandrila.

And now, maybe twenty minutes away at this speed, was the Temple. It was home.

A home that didn’t know her, that had sentenced her to death, that had hosted the rampage of her former master... but home nonetheless.

“Stable?” Fett grunts.

“Thrusters are good,” she confirms.

“I meant you.”

Ah. “I’m... fine. As good as I could be, anyway.”

She hesitates, but manages to speak before he does. “You?”

“I’m not the one walking into an entire building of triggers.”

“Only because you’re not entering it,” she says. “It’s the home of your ancestral enemies who, bad info or no, killed off a whole lot of your friends.”

“I get to leave,” he says. “You don’t.”

She plans to needle him a bit more, maybe on something a little less based in both their traumas. She needs to talk, if only to fill up the silence and keep herself from reaching out to all the lights in the Force. It’ll be too much, she knows.

Tholme enters the cockpit. “Change of plans.”

“Better be a good reason,” Jango says, voice flat.

“Leia’s crying.”

Ahsoka’s unbuckling herself before she can process the words fully. “What?”

Leia doesn’t cry for no reason. Her emotional control is as difficult as the body makes it, but she doesn’t just cry. There’s always a cause.

“I don’t know. Rex said to get you,” Tholme explains. “She was saying a name. He seemed to recognize it.”

Not good not good not good. If Leia was feeling the Emper--No. She cuts the thought off there. No catastrophizing. Information first.

“What name.”

“Luke. Mean anything to--and she’s gone.”

Ahsoka ignores him, just sprints to where she knows the ‘young ones’ are. They’re all in Maul’s room, because nobody wants to be alone with him now, but it’s the worst time to leave him without supervision. It’s not the worst option; he mostly refuses to talk, still.

This holds true, because he definitely isn’t talking when she bursts in. He’s sitting on the bench, in a corner, hugging his knees and watching Quinlan try to calm Leia down.

“Captain, sitrep.”

“Vos and Tholme attempted to show Leia how to reach out to feel the Temple from a distance. They felt that it would be a good use of the time, and an interesting exercise at this distance. She attempted to do so, struggled for several minutes, and then reacted with shock. She has repeated the name ‘Luke’ several times since then, and we’ve been unable to fully calm her down. I asked Tholme to get you, as you are the only Force-Sensitive on board that understands the situation in full.”

“Understood.” She nods to him, and then goes to nudge at Quinlan. “Vos, move.”

“Torre--”

“You can sit behind her, hold her in your lap like you did when we had lunch the other day, but I need to get in her face.” She waits for him to comply, and then drops to her knees and takes Leia’s hands in her own. She radiates calm and assurance, even though she knows Quinlan’s probably been doing the same since this started. She dips her head enough to get in the girl’s line of sight, waits for her to meet eyes.

“Princess,” she says, and meets Leia’s eyes. “What did you feel?”

“Luke.”

From this distance... they’ve got half the system to go, at least, and Leia’s training shouldn’t reach that far for anything more than the fact that the Temple is there. Ahsoka could feel unshielded individuals from here, if she focused, but she’s also been doing this much, much longer. The twins theory holds more water than ever.

“Can you show me?” Ahsoka asks, instead of asking for more clarification. She squeezes Leia’s hands and smiles. “In the Force?”

Leia nods, and closes her eyes. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time in a while that Leia’s needed Ahsoka to guide her through.

Luke’s light, for all that it’s unfamiliar to Ahsoka, is brilliant among the rest of the signatures in Coruscant. Like Anakin and Leia, he’s a star in his own right, but he’s brighter. He doesn’t have Anakin’s bitterness or Leia’s righteous anger, just... light. Ahsoka had asked Leia to show her instead of looking for herself because she’d expected to not recognize the boy, but she needn’t have. He’s unmistakable.

He’s so bright that she almost misses the other signature that she does recognize. She shies away, knowing that it would be there, but... but it’s almost twinned with another nearby. Not identical, but different in a way that comes with age, with trauma, with... death.

Leia hadn’t arrived alone, after all.

Why would Luke?

Her eyes snap open, her hand coming up not-quite-fast enough to clap over her mouth as she gasps. She feels a shudder, one that starts in her shoulders and reaches deep into her ribcage, finds a home in her chest and doesn’t stop.

“Oh fuck,” Quinlan whispers. “Torrent? Um, Sokari?”

Rex steps closer. “Commander?”

“That shabuir faked his death again,” she manages. “Three times, Rex!”

He blinks at her. “...I know way too many people who fit that description, Soka.”

“Master Ke--” she cuts herself off. He might have changed his name, just like she had. There’s already an Obi-Wan here. Rex seems to be figuring it out, but she needs to give him another hint.

“He pulled a Hardeen,” she stresses, and Rex’s eyes snap shut with a tired groan.

“Who?” Leia asks, her own tumult of emotion paused in the wake of Ahsoka’s shock. There’s a hope and relief to her, and Ahsoka belatedly realizes that her main worry had been that she’d misidentified what was going on, that she’d given herself a false hope. Ahsoka’s internal reaction, her approval and awe at Luke’s presence, had trickled over enough to give Leia the reassurance she’d needed.

Unintentional as it was, Ahsoka was glad that she’d succeeded in helping her charge.

“Er...” she trails off. “I don’t know what name he’s going by, right now. We’ve spent so long in hiding...”

“The man Luke knew as Crazy Old Ben,” Rex says, and Leia’s eyes light up.

“Oh,” she breathes. “General O--no, names. The High General, then.”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka says, not a little soft. “Yeah, I guess death didn’t stop him any more than it stopped me.”

“I could have told you that,” Leia says, smiling far too widely. She squirms where she still sits on Quinlan’s lap. “He was... he taught you, right?”

“As much my master as the official one,” Ahsoka says. She glances as Quinlan, feels Maul’s gaze on the back of her head. “Your f... my official master was very young when I was assigned to him. He wasn’t ready to teach, wasn’t even ready to be a knight, entirely, so my training was split between him and his master.”

Quinlan pops in at that moment, “Your grandmaster was military, too?”

We all were, she thinks. Even you, in your own way.

“I landed in their care mid-battle,” she says carefully. “It was a complicated situation.”

He nods, and she vaguely notes that he’s got his arms wrapped around Leia, and his chin tucked on top of her head. She isn’t sure if Leia’s noticed, but Quinlan’s picked up ‘baby’-sitting duty so often recently that she’s fairly certain he’s all but declared her ‘little-sister shaped.’ It doesn’t matter that Leia’s older--she’s still taking the juice boxes and gummy snacks that Quinlan shoves at her every single snacktime.

“Do you think...” Rex trails off, something uncomfortable twisting in the Force, even though his face keeps it mostly hidden. “My brothers. If the General survived and... and made it back...”

“I didn’t feel any,” Ahsoka says, because she knows she’d have noticed if it was anyone she’d met, and likely any clone at all. They all felt different in the Force, but they all held a spark that made her know it was one of them. “I’m sorry, Rex’ika.”

“A long shot,” he says, that dash of hope shriveling up. He must see something in her face, because there’s a curl of warmth in him, even if his smile is brittle. “It’s fine, really. I have you, ‘Soka.”

Rex and Ahsoka. Two halves of one whole.

She can’t wait to hear the lectures on attachment, the way people who haven’t seen her wars try to criticize her for clinging to any chance at still having a will to live. She can’t wait to see them justify telling her that it’s selfish to hold her sanity in her hands and refuse to let the grief take it away. She can’t wait to stare someone down for asking her to ‘learn to let go’ after she’s lost her family, her life, her universe three times over.

Most of the Jedi are more sensible than that, are reasonable enough to see those shades of grey and how to approach rules in the spirit they are meant instead of the rigid letter, but there will be some.

There will be more than enough telling her she is wrong to hold her oldest, closest, best friend as dear as she can.

Attachment, they’ll say.

What they’ll mean is ‘codepedence.’

They won’t be entirely wrong.

She reaches out for him, lets him fall into her side and stay there, closes her eyes and reaches out for the man she’d long called father, when they’d still been in each other’s lives.

This time, past the deafening flare of surprise-love-hope of the little star next to him, she can feel him reach back.

---------------------------

The second the ship has landed, even before Tholme and Fett are done with the checks, Ahsoka’s waiting at the exit. She strains her hearing so she’ll know the second the system will let her open the massive door of the cargo hold.

Leia clings to her side, and the boys stand to her back.

Quinlan’s stressed enough that she can feel it like a cloud. She is very much not trying to feel that stress. Quinlan’s stress levels, back where he’s got Maul so he can keep an eye on Ahsoka and the Baby Sith at the same time, are so low on her priorities list that it’s a a little sad.

It doesn’t take long for her to be able to punch the button and open the damn door.

It opens slowly. She bounces on her toes, because there’s a beacon of light and a steady, familiar glow on the other side, and she’s so, so close. She can’t see through the crack yet, because it’s day in this part of Coruscant, and the sunlight is blinding against the dark of the hold. So close. She’s so close.

“The hell’s wrong with you?”

Fett? Fett. He’s already here to get off? This door’s slow.

She doesn’t answer him, because the door is finally open enough to let her out, and she leaps through the gap.

She lands on a pourstone floor, feels pebbles and grit compress under her boots, frantically looks around as her eyes adjust to light and--

The High General, the Negotiator, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, looking just as he did when she first met him, if a little less armored and a little more fed. The hair, the beard, the crinkle in the corner of his eyes. His spirit is a little older, his smile a little more strained, his posture a little more tired, but it’s him.

He spreads his arms, low enough that she could have dismissed it if she’d cared less for hugs, except she’s almost as small as she was when they met.

And every other hug she’d given back then had been, functionally, her being a living missile aiming her montrals for someone’s organs.

She’s a little more aware of how to avoid stabbing her friends in the intestine now.

“Master!”

She sprints for him, collides and sobs, feels him stumble back and then sink to his knees on the too-hard floor, and can feel the tears pouring out of her already. Her breath hitches, and she wails like a child, and that last part of her that couldn’t even grasp at safety shreds itself. His arms are tight around her, warm and strong and Master Kenobi don’t you dare leave again.

It doesn’t matter that Sidious is out there, that the Republic’s been building towards war for a century, that even now someone’s kicking up the Trade Federation. Her dad is here.

“I’ve missed you too, my dear,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, the bristles of his beard scratching along the skin of her forehead. Off to the side, the binary suns that are Luke and Leia grow brighter in proximity, so bright she can barely bear it.

(“Fett, why the kriff are you reaching for your blaster?!”)

(“Torrent said her master tried to kill her.”)

(“Different guy, that was a different guy, put the blaster away.”)

(“You could have just warned me.”)

(“I didn’t expect you to go for a shot on sight!”)

(”Calm down, Jetiika, if I was going to shoot on sight, we’d already be in a firefight.”)

She ignores everything.

“If you fake your death one more time, I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

He tries to pull away to talk to her more directly. She does not let him. He apparently resigns himself to this, because he just adjusts how he’s sitting and pulls her in closer.

“In my defense, I was far from the only one presumed dead that took advantage of that status, by the end,” he says, letting her slump into his lap and cry herself dry. “I’m proud of you. You know that, I hope.”

She nods against his chest, smearing tears and snot across the linen and wool. She doesn’t care that they’ll need a thorough washing. She can have her public breakdown and it’s fine because Master Kenobi is here.

He doesn’t even know what she’s spent the past fifteen years doing. Luke wouldn’t have known. He doesn’t know she’s thirty-two and broken, beyond a shadow and cut down by her own master. There’s so much he doesn’t know but the Force rings with the truth of it: he’s proud of her anyway.

“I’m going by Ben, now,” he mutters against her montral. “There’s already an Obi-Wan here, after all. Still, I remain a Kenobi.”

She can’t make the words come out of her mouth. She’s overwhelmed, so much so that speech is a mite bit beyond her.

Sokari Torrent, she presses along the frayed bond that’s knitting itself back to life with every breath they take. Leia was already calling me Auntie Soka, and Rex and I both took Torrent, for...

“For the men you lost,” he mutters. “Yes, that’s fitting.”

He smells like sapir tea and a spiced beard oil.

There’s a whirl of activity about her, greetings and ‘a Sith apprentice?’ and introductions. She distantly notes when Fett almost shoots Dooku before Rex shuts that down and advises the Master to leave the area before things spiral out of control. She feels Ben stand, and she stands with him, clings to his side like a child and trusts that whatever happens, whatever needs to happen, he’ll take care of it until she can stand on her own two feet without swaying.

Rex grabs her free hand, and she feels herself settle back into her skin, bit by bit.

She’s back at the Temple. The twins are safe. Her grandmaster is here. She has her other half.

They can save the galaxy this time.

She’s alive she’s home she’s okay.

She’s okay.

Everything’s going to be okay.

[padme-parker]

Mizpah // the darkling x f!reader // ch 6

summary: given some time alone to think, the pieces begin to fall into place. you go to confront the darkling be he avoids you at any given cost, until one night you go into the one room you were never granted permission to enter.

warnings: cursing, talks about violence/torture and death, alcoholism

A/N: the truth finally comes out. This is all over the place bc I was trying to rush getting it out. 5.9k+ words and 12 pages later, here we are. not proofread, will comeback later to edit.

ANA KUYA’S voice echoed in the back of your mind as you laid on your cot, calling out for Mal and Alina as they ran away from her. It was the day Grisha came to the orphanage to find out if one of their own had been whisked away into a place like this. You examined the walls, cracks running up and down them. The windows barely opened, and when they did, they let out horrible screeches. Water leaked from the bathrooms, the annoying drip a constant on your mind.

Maybe you should’ve gotten up from your bed and got tested by a Grisha. Maybe then you wouldn’t have had to stay in such a run down orphanage. The Duke was rarely here, so no one really cared about his orphanage no matter how infamous he was. But being Grisha meant leaving Mal and Alina behind, something you couldn’t do because they had become your only family. Besides, Grisha don’t get sick, therefore you weren’t a Grisha.

You could never be a Grisha.

-

AS you phased into consciousness, you could hear someone muttering something in the background. Your hands were so cold, you reached out for something- anything that could give you warmth. You tried to blink away the blurriness of your eyes, nothing seemed to work. The person rushed to your side, clutching both of your hands in one as the other stroked your cheek.

“Go back to sleep.” He said, brushing your hair back. Closing your eyes, he assumed you had fallen asleep already. He resumed his mumbling, the words slowly becoming coherent as fell back asleep.

“It’s...too...soon..”

-

THE painful pounding of your heart had subsided as the Grisha left. Mal walked into the room followed by Alina, who was sporting a new wound on her palm that Ana Kuya had scolded her for.

“Come on, get up!” Mal urged, knowing from the look on your face that the pain had already left you.

“Where are we going?” You said eagerly, scooting to the front edge of your bed to lace up your boots.

“To the meadow.” That was all you needed to hear before running out the bedroom door. Mal and Alina’s footsteps padding behind. The three of you started a mildly competitive game of tag, the other two making sure you didn’t exert yourself.

In that moment, you were who you were supposed to be. Three children lying on the field, making stupid promises to each other.

“We can’t hide forever, but we can run.”

-

THIS time when you find yourself in a field, there’s a man laying next to you. It was the same man from your dream, shoulder length hair and clean shaven face.

“Aleksander?” He lets out a hm, awaiting your question. “Where am I?”

“What do you mean, my darling?” Aleksander- General Kirigan- or whoever the hell he was turned to look at you, laying one of his arms upon your stomach. His hand keeping a firm grip on your waist. From your peripheral view you could see him studying you.

He started with your eyes, taking in their color and your long lashes. He moved from the curve of your nose until he got to your soft, plump lips. You stared at the sky, afraid of what you would see, who you would recognize if you turned to face him.

“We’re at our meadow.”

-

WHEN you finally regain consciousness, you find yourself alone in a nearly dark room. Only one lantern had been lit up. It was just before dawn, you could see the sun beginning to peek out. Someone had changed you into a nightgown, you didn’t know who it was. Perhaps it was Alina or maybe the Darkling, maybe neither. Either way, you were thankful they decided to change you out of the robe you had fainted in.

With great struggle, you propped yourself up, your elbows taking the brunt of your weight. You crawled to the foot of your bed to put on your night slippers. The rug under your bed only went so far before it hit the cold floor. You slowly made your way to the desk, sitting yourself in front of the mirror.

The magic Genya had performed on you days ago had worn out by now. How long were you out for? The dark circles under your eyes had returned, seemingly worse. Your skin, although already dull, became more dull and pale. Whatever shine you originally had was gone. Your eyes look sunken in. While your hair was frail and also lost the shine that Genya gave it.

“Saints..” You whispered to yourself as you raked a hand through your hair. You were basically a dead person walking. You considered fetching a servant to bring you Genya, but decided against it. Throwing on a robe, you silently made your way to the war room, hoping to find the Darkling there. When you entered it remained empty, along with the bed he usually slept in. You walked the halls looking for one of his oprichniki, yet they weren’t around either.

There was no use in barging into his bedroom when it seemed like he was gone. Plus you didn’t want to invade his privacy knowing that he could have you killed for going into his room without permission if someone had seen you. You spotted one of the palace guards, walking up to him as you placed your hands into the pockets of your robe.

“Excuse me, do you happen to know where the General is?” You asked, staring into the guards eyes.

“He left a week ago, accompanied by his personal guards.” Was all he said, not disclosing why he had left. A week? Had you really been unconscious for a week? This usually never happened to you, not like this.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“In a couple of days.” He said, not giving you an exact day. You quickly thanked him before making your way back to your room to change for the day. The dull ache of your heart was finally leaving, allowing for you to feel more like yourself. You were able to spot the sun in the sky as you finished changing. You thought about basking in its light when your stomach growled loudly.

I suppose I should eat, you thought. It’d been nearly a week since you were able to feed yourself, your last meal being breakfast. You could remember someone feeding you periodically throughout the week, now knowing the Darkling had left, it was most likely Alina. You rang for a servant, asking to be brought breakfast when she arrived. Surveying the room, you decided that the Darkling wouldn’t mind if you did a little retouching.

You moved the table towards the window, wanting to eat in the sunlight without having the harsh winter winds freeze you. Opening the curtain allowed for more sunlight to stream through, a grunt of triumph leaving your lips as you looked at your new setup.

The squeaky wheel of the servant’s cart alerted you of her presence, rushing to open the door before she could knock. You took the tray from her hands, closing the door with your foot as you skipped towards the table, eager to get some food in your system.

The food they had given you was practically the same, sweet pea porridge, a tall glass of water, and a bowl of grapes. It wasn’t your favorite, but you ate it anyway. Savouring the familiar crunch and sweetness of the grapes. Sitting in the sun had left you feeling giddy and warm, excited for summer when you would be able to go out whenever you could and feel the sun on your skin.

It was the same warmth you felt whenever the Darkling touched you, even when you saw him in your dreams, there had always been a lingering sense of familiarness-- and affection. You saw the look in his eyes just seconds before you passed out, the shock as you said his name, the concern visible in his eyebrows. Him whispering, stay with me, please. It was all foreign to you. In fact, his behaviour was strange to you.

You’ve always heard of the Darkling being cold, menacing, someone you had to fear. There were stories of him ruthlessly slaughtering the Drüskelle, using the Cut to separate multiple heads from bodies in a matter of seconds. Yet he welcomed you into his home without a second thought. He fed you, gave you clothing and a place to sleep, even gave you a tour of the Little Palace himself. You were sure he had never given someone the treatment that he had given you, so what made you so different? What made you so special to him?

You didn’t miss the look he gave you when you first entered the war room, recognition and longing bright in his eyes. He tried to hide the emotion, but you were able to catch it before he returned to his dark and empty gaze. It would explain the memories, but only fueled your confusion and curiosity more. Had you shared a past life with him? If so, why were you back? How were you back? Getting lost in your thoughts, you didn’t hear the person knocking until they opened the door and announced themselves.

The familiar red hue of his kefta brought you comfort. You were too trusting lately, you’d only met Fedyor a week ago. Just the sight of his kefta had calmed something down in you. This palace was changing you, bringing out something from within you that never existed. Being this trusting on the fields would get you killed.

“Good morning, Fedyor. What brings you here?” You greeted him. This time you already had your boots laced up, the tray in your hands ready to be disposed of on the table by the door. “Going to escort me to combat training?”

“Actually, the General forbade you from stepping foot on training grounds again.” You let out a loud gasp as you whipped towards him. Thinking there was something wrong, Fedyor stepped forward, reaching his arms out to steady you just in case anything happened. In your anger, you slapped his hands away.

“Oh just you wait until he gets back,” You seethed, “Who does he think he is? Taking away my combat training privileges?”

“He’s the General, he can do that.” Fedyor responded, a small smile on his face.

“So what am I supposed to do then?”

“Well, you could still go to the library.” No, you didn’t want to risk running into the Apparat again. “Watch the Grisha train.” He offered a meek smile. “Walk the grounds.” Perhaps you could go on a horse ride later, but right now there was one thing on your mind.

“Is Alina training right now?” The heartrender gave you a nod, “I guess we’ll be going to her room then. She has something I want to borrow.” With the flick of your hand, the two of you were on your way.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and if you don’t want to answer then that’s okay.” Fedyor squints his eyes at you, before motioning to continue. “Has the Darkling ever taken up any lovers?” The question makes Fedyor stop in his tracks, a baffled look on his features.

“Well..I..” He struggled with his words, not knowing if he wanted to tell you. What would the General do to him if he told you? It was common knowledge that General Kirigan had been alive for a couple centuries now, he thought everyone knew of his endeavours. “The General has been around for many years, so naturally he has...had sex before.” The mention of it made Fedyor blush. “But he’s never settled down with someone. The closest I ever saw was with Alina.” This didn’t surprise you, Alina herself had told you about what had almost happened between the two.

“In the tent, when he tested her to see if she was Grisha, I saw something in his eyes. It was admiration, but there was also a defeated look in his eyes. As if he had given up on something because he found Alina. Reasonably, it could’ve been relief, since we had finally found the sun summoner.” Fedyor pauses, thinking wisely about the next words he spoke. “Alina and the General were growing close. Everyone saw the look they gave each other the night of the fete. But any public traces of their affection for each other had disappeared that night. The two are only seen interacting when he visits her for a gradual check-in.”

“And he’s never spoken of any other lovers?”

“Not consciously, no. On the very rare chance where we ride in the same carriage, sometimes when he falls asleep he’ll whisper about a woman. Moya dorogaya, he’d call her. That’s all I know.”

Moya dorogaya, my darling. It was the same name the Darkling had called you in your dream.

“May I ask you a question?” He inquired, you nodded your head, allowing him to proceed. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

A smile so bright that could light up the room came to your face, “My friends down near the south Ravka border. A pair of siblings that taught me to fight before they defected from the First Army.” You confessed. “One of them also introduced me to my love of epic poetry.”

When Alina’s door came to view, you didn’t bother knocking as she had already left. After fetching what you needed, you quickly exited her room.

“I haven’t seen them since they left.” You rubbed the birthmark at your throat. Besides Mal and Alina, the siblings were also the closest thing you had to family. They considered you as their sister, even begging that you left with them. But you told them your place was here in Ravka, with Mal and Alina.

“I’m sure you’ll see them soon. Once Alina and the General get rid of the fold, we will have access to our docks again.” He said, trying to comfort you.

“I hope so.” The rest of the walk was filled with comfortable silence as you fiddled with the edges of the red book. As you neared your door, Fedyor stopped, telling you he would be just outside if you needed anything. Without wasting another second, you ran to the chair in front of the window.

The Istorii Sankt’ya glistened in the sunlight. Something about it had been calling out to you, urging you to read it and find out more. You flipped through all of the pages of the saints until you found the one that had been calling out to you.

Sankt Ilya in chains. Ilya Morozova. Morozova’s herd.

“One day. When the war is over and the shadow fold is gone, you will bear my name. You will become Mrs. Morozova. I swear it.”

The voice of the Darkling rang clear in your head. The memory made your heart come to a stop as you struggled to find a possible explanation for his words. The only conclusion you could inevitably come to was that you were the sole lover that Fedyor had been talking about.

As the sun began to set, you looked at the drawing once more. The stag, sea whip, and firebird all depicted. You called out for Fedyor, asking him to come into your room.

“Can you bring me dinner for two?” You politely asked.

“Sure, were you planning on eating it yourself or shall I fetch someone while I’m at it?”

“No. You and I are going to have a nice, long talk while we eat dinner.” His face paled as the words left your mouth.

“Oh...okay.” Was all he said before he scurried off to get the food. You tucked the Istorii Sankt’ya under a pile of paper in your desk to hide it. While you waited for Fedyor to return, you lit up some candles and lanterns now that the sun was going down. It was no fun eating in the dark.

Well, sometimes it was. You thought back to the orphanage. Night where you, Alina and Mal would sneak out of bed to have a piece of bread. The bread was never enough, but the excitement had always spurred the three of you on enough to make it a nightly routine until Ana Kuya eventually caught on.

When Fedyor returned, he rolled the cart over to where you had been seated. He placed a golden tray in front of you and another for himself right across from you. He also brought a big pitcher of Kvas for you to share.

Lifting the cover from your plate, you found yourself staring at some sort of meat pie with a side of root vegetable soup. Fedyor had the same meal but had pickled herrings instead of soup.

“Ugh, I don’t know how you eat that stuff.” You said with disgust. “I’m glad you guys don’t force me to eat that.” Although it was common peasant food, it never appealed to you. It was something you’d always hated.

“The kitchen staff have a strict list of foods you like and dislike.” That made your head snap up to meet his, who made the list? You had a scheming suspicion that it wasn’t Alina, leaving you with one suspect.

“Tell me, Fedyor, do you know what the General plans on using Morozova’s Stag for?” You inquired, feigning curiosity. You saw his hesitation, clearly uncertain if he could trust you. “I was, after all, one of the last trackers to spot it.” You reminded

“The stag is rumored to be an amplifier created by Morozova himself. Whoever wears it would hold the greatest power known to mankind. One that could rival the General’s.” He said, taking a bite of his meal before continuing, “He plans on giving it to Alina in order to get rid of the shadow fold. She’s strong, but not strong enough to get rid of it on her own.”

“What about you, do you believe they will be able to banish the fold together?” There had been a swirl of doubt pooling in you. The shadow fold was the one thing that had kept Grisha safe from the rest of the world. With the permafrost in the North and the mountains in the South, Ravka had practically been perfectly disconnected. Yet the Drüskelle and Shu still managed to slaughter Ravkans and Grisha alike.

“Yes, I do. It’s something very important to the General. That the sun summoner reversed what his ancestor, the Black Heretic, had created.” He explained.

“Right, we’ll then what happens after? It’s been so long since West Ravka has been able to connect to East Ravka. Who’s to say that they don’t want to create a monarchy of their own?” Fedyor paused at your words, he hadn’t thought much about what the West Ravkans wanted. He only knew how much his people longed to be free of the shadow fold.

“One step at a time.” He ensured, not sure if he believed the words he just said. He didn’t know what would happen if West Ravka decided to break off and become their own sovereign state. Whatever trade and weapons they had obtained came through the trading ports of the docks in West Ravka. Without it they’d have nothing. They would be nothing.

You finished the rest of your meal, occasionally talking about your time being stationed in the South while he talked about his Grisha adventures. When it came to an end, you helped him clean up and wished him a good night as he rolled the cart away. The pitcher of Kvas laid untouched, your fingers twitched at the thought of having a drink. You stared at it as Fedyor rolled it away, your throat begging for something to drink. Instead of giving into your urges, you chug whatever leftover water you had laying around.

As you got ready for bed, you couldn’t help the strong feeling of loneliness overcome you. You tried to push those feelings away when you jumped into bed, not wanting to have a miserable dream.

-

WHEN you wake, you find yourself in the deadly permafrost of the Fjerda-Ravka border in nothing more than your lace nightgown. The snow under your feet melted as you walked around, searching for another sign of human life. You didn’t feel the familiar nip of the cold at your fingertips or toes. It was that same warmth you felt with the Darkling.

You caught sight of your own breath as you whipped your head around, the snow catching in your hair. As you stumbled into a tree, you felt the recognizable carving, stating that you were now in Fjerdan territory. Your feet had walked on their own accord, not knowing where you were going until you stumbled into a clearing. The same clearing where Dubrov and Mikhael had died, slaughtered brutally by the Fjerdans. The clearing where you had killed two of their own without a second thought.

The clearing where you had finally found the stag.

The very same stag that had now stood in front of you.

You inched closer to it with careful and calculated steps. It didn’t back away as you approached. It showed no signs of aggression as you laid one of your hands upon its antlers, your other going to stoke its fur.

It was giving you that same look it gave you when you first encountered it with Mal.

Mercy. Respect. Most of all, understanding.

-

IT had been two days since you dreamt of the stag. You hadn’t dreamt of it since then, in fact, you hadn’t been dreaming of much since you saw the stag in your dreams. You thought about bringing it up to Alina during breakfast, but decided against it, the conversation somehow drifting towards the General.

“I was giving him a report of my progress last night-”

“Last night?” You interrupted, “As in a couple of hours ago?” She nods, confused by your behavior. “When did he get back?”

“The night you woke up.” She replied, as if you had been informed already. No one told you he had returned, you hadn’t even seen him once. Fedyor didn’t even tell you of his return during dinner. With a huff, you got out your chair, moving towards the door before asking Alina one last question.

“When did you mention me to the General?” She gives you another confused look, not knowing what you were talking about. That was the only answer you needed as you made your way to the war room.

He knew you. Even before he discovered Alina and took her to the Little Palace, he knew you first. Your thoughts ran around rampant and unprovoked, trying to come up with a viable explanation as you stomped towards his hall. Before you could even reach the doors of the war room, you were stopped by his oprichniki.

“The General wishes to be alone right now.” She said, hold up a hand to stop you.

“Tell him that I want to speak with him.” You replied, she looked you up and down. You wore no kefta or guards uniform. You were merely just a First Army soldier in her eyes.

“I doubt he would want to talk to someone like you.” Great, you were dealing with a Grisha Oprichniki with a horrible superiority complex. With a scoff, you turned away and walked to your room. Holding back every urge in your body to punch her.

-

WHEN night came, you found yourself struggling to get some sleep. After your encounter with that rude oprichniki, you tried your best to at least get a glimpse of the Darkling. You tried walking in the gardens in hopes to see him, no luck. You walked past the singular window of the war room, only to find the view obscured by the curtains. You paced the halls as subtly as you could, waiting for him to exit the war room. But he didn’t leave. Not once, so you just gave up and decided to try again the next day.

The black silk of your slip on did little to soothe the irritation you felt. In fact, it seemed to irritate you more as it slipped around even at your smallest movements. With a sigh, you got up from the bed and walked towards the dresser with the intention of changing into something that would provide better comfort.

You ran your hands through all the different laces and fabrics of the nightgowns until it landed on the gold kefta. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try. You took it off it’s hanger, before walking towards the mirror. You examined it closely. The fabric itself had shimmers of gold, the black thread similar to any other kefta. As you surveyed the back of it, you noticed the handiwork of a fabrikator. Someone had tried to mend the rips of the kefta, but they were still visible up close.

The kefta had fit like a glove when you put it on. It gave you a sense of belonging. That maybe as an orphan you had finally found a home. You ogled at yourself in the mirror, the golden fabric had practically made you glow. You placed your hands into the pockets, surprised to feel something in one of them.

Grasping the object, you pulled it out. It was a letter. Covered in blood, dirtied and ripped at the corners, but still a letter nonetheless. You contemplated reading it, making the motion to put it back into the pocket before a thought crossed your mind. It wasn’t like anyone was going to find out.

You opened the letter and began to read it:

Dear Aleksander,

My darling, I don’t know why the universe has continued to bring us together. But I am thankful that they’ve given us a chance to be together once more. I have loved you for all of my lifetimes, and nothing could change that.

At least, that’s what I thought. But you’re no longer the Aleksander I once knew. Something dark has taken over you, your lust for power consuming you. I don’t know who you are anymore.

That’s why I’m doing what’s necessary, you’ve been in power for too long. It’s time for you to stop. It’s time for Ravka to be whole once more.

I’m sorry. I hope with whatever love you have left in your heart for me, that you could forgive me.

Eternally yours,

Y/N

You froze as you saw your name signed at the bottom of the letter. Lifetimes? As in more than one? This could wait no longer. Shoving the letter into your pocket, you threw open your door. The halls were empty, his oprichniki were either on a break or a shift change. Either way, you didn’t care.

You barged into the war room, expecting him to be hunched over a pile of maps, but he wasn’t. The next place you looked was his sleeping quarters that had connected to the war room. This bed was empty too, the sheets still cold. You knew of one last place he could be, and didn’t care about the risks.

You walked towards his door, each step filled with the burning curiosity you felt. Placing your hand on the doorknob, you didn’t expect it to turn. You would’ve assumed he kept the door to this bedroom always locked. But then again you were the only person who would dare enter his room without permission. After entering his room, you shut the door. Not wanting to raise suspicion to anyone who might’ve walked the halls perchance.

You paid no mind to the layout and decorations of his room as you fervently searched for him, only to come up empty handed again. Where could he possibly be? Perhaps he went for a midnight stroll. Or possibly he left the Little Palace again. But before deciding on going back to your room, you were adamant on searching the entire ground for him.

As you made your way back towards the door, your eyes briefly flashed to the portrait above it. You were frozen in your tracks as you did a double take. There in the painting was you, depicted in the gold kefta you had put on mere minutes ago. Behind you was the General, who had one hand clasped around your waist, the other resting on your shoulder. The two of you smiling brightly, it had practically been one of the only other times you’d seen him smile.

The letter in your pocket felt like it weighed a ton, your mouth going dry. In your panicked state of mind, you didn’t notice the shadows jumping up and down the walls.

“My darling.” You never heard him creeping up on you until he started talking into your ear, his whisper making you involuntarily shiver. You could practically feel the heat radiating off of him.

Turning around, you didn’t expect to find his hair dripping wet, with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips. A blush formed on your cheeks as you tried to look at anything but him.

“Don’t call me that.” You spat out, he reached one of his hands out to touch the kefta you had put on. His touch lingered from the black stitching to the collar of the Grisha jacket, his fingers ghosting over your neck. “I’m going to ask you one more time, have we met before?”

The General saw no use in keeping the secret from you any longer; you had worn the kefta he’d made for you centuries ago, most likely read the letter in its pocket, and now you had just seen the portrait he’d hung up of the two of you. It was evidently clear that you knew something was going on.

“What do you remember?” He deflected, not answering your question.

Flashes came to your mind, ones you had dreamt, others were new.

“I remember...my death. The night those soldiers shoved a knife in me.” You confessed. You also saw other things. Horseback riding in the woods. Long nights in bed spent talking about the future. Him training you, teaching you how to wield a sword. The birthmark at your ribcage, the one on your neck, and the long ones on your back. They had all been scars. Marking all the deaths from your previous lives.

Three scars, three separate lifetimes with him. You reached up to touch the scar on your neck, “They..I-”

“This one, the Fjerdans gave you this one. We were hunting for the stag when we had gotten ambushed. They killed you for the sole purpose to see me in pain. I begged them to take me too, but they found too much joy in my grief. The Drüskelle held me on the ground, my hands spread apart, as I watched you bleed out.” You can see the tears form in his eyes as he recalls the events of that night. He walks around you, tracing the rips of the kefta. The rips had consequently been placed exactly where the scars on your back were. You could tell by the familiar pattern he traced, a once soothing action that now caused you great anguish. “The Fjerdans also gave you these ones. They tortured you for days on end. When I finally found you, it was too late. There was no healer that had the power to help you. All I could do was hold you as a heartrender calmed you, minimizing your pain.”

“I can’t remember that, why can’t I remember that?” You panicked, to which the Darkling turned you to face him, his hands cupping your cheeks as his thumbs rubbed your face in a reassuring manner.

“It’s not often that you fully remember what happens to you. It’s your brain's way of protecting you so you don’t get overwhelmed.” Well you certainly felt overwhelmed now. It was all too much to take in at once.

“The shadow fold..” You hesitated, removing yourself from his grasp. “Was that because of me?”

“Yes,” he confessed, “I created it after you first died. A way to protect all Grisha. I didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand. But it was one less threat we had to worry about.”

“I don’t understand. Why me? Why is it always me? Why do I always come back to you?”

“There’s a reason why the universe has continued to bring us back together, my darling. My other half. My life.” He walks up to you, grasping your face in his hands. His touch was different this time, it was cold yet welcoming. It felt familiar. The shadows engulfed the room as you felt a power rush over you. His eyes darted towards your lips, hesitating before leaning in. You close your eyes as you feel that familiar warmth consume you. His kiss is soft, gentle, yet you could tell he was holding back from ravaging you.

He pulls away, resting his forehead on yours. You kept your eyes closed, lost in the memories.

“Open your eyes.” He whispered. When you had closed them, the whole room had been taken by his shadows, leaving the two of you in darkness. But as he stood in front of you, his hands on your cheeks, the whole room had been illuminated. “My sun summoner, I have loved you all of my life. For all of your lifetimes.”

“Maybe one too many.” What else was there to say? You always knew, somewhere deep down inside of you, that there was something special different about you. You didn’t know it until now, until you were reunited with your other half. “But I thought Grisha couldn’t get sick.”

The smile falls from his face, “I believe..that this could possibly be our last lifetime together.” He disclosed. “Neither heartrender nor healer could explain what was happening to you. I think it might be the consequence of avoiding eternal death for so long.” He joked, his eyes meeting yours.

“I thought your last life had been our final one together. I waited hundreds of years for your return. When I had caught wind of a sun summoner being found, I thought it was you. When it wasn’t I felt as if my heart had shattered all over again. That you would never return to me again.” The Darkling squinted as the light around you grew brighter. His touch was making you unstable.

“But Alina-”

“Can’t know. No one can. I can’t risk your life again. Not anymore.” He replied, “Especially when this could be our last time together.”

You struggled to find a name to call him, the General felt too formal, and to you it seemed too early to call him by his given name.

“Aleksander, my darling. Call me by my name.” He said, withdrawing his hand from you and letting the shadows shrink back to the ground.

All your life, you had subconsciously fought the Grisha within you. You had always been Grisha. Using the powers you had been born with had given you back your strength, albeit not all of it. You enjoyed- reveled the rush it gave you.

“Aleksander,” His name left your lips in a hushed whisper, “..what if I want the stag for myself?”

-

Mizpah tags: @all-art-is-quite-useless @devilxangel @musicconversedance @parabatai-winchester @runawayolives​ @tartiflvtte @rbg1933 @thatguppienamedbae @batgal96​ @thebarisinhell99 @5hundreddaysofsummer​ @kaqua​ @queenseneschal @benbarnes-supremacy @princessofpersia96 @takethee @dontjinx-it @freakytillthemoon @amortentiaaaa @marvel-ousnesss @coolninjavoid @areomalfoy @pansysgirlfriend @universalirwin @leavejuliaalone @xx-winwin-wednesday-xx​ @honeyofthegods @lunamyangel @d-list-goddess​ @comphersjost @telepathdestiel @the-celestial-kitsune @thestoryofmylife9 @s-corpionem @pancakeisreading @sanna2020​ @secretsandtinyshadows @savannah-elliott @maliasblue @tea-effect @disneyandharrypotter @futuristicpinklemur @tanyaherondale @the-puff-is-strong-with-this-one @hxgreeves @yourboiialucard@thereeallink @ladyblablabla @wolfieellsworld @p3nny4urth0ught5​ @louweasleymalfoy @the-natureofme @itsloveroflife @oddlittleminx @within-thehollowcrown @itsfangirlmendes @heyyimlaynna @jgtfvhsg @gloriousmoneyrascalbiscuit @auggie2000 @itsnotquimey @jtownraindancer @sonnensplitter @sarcastic-and-cool @poulterfilms @spookybooisa @stickyknightflowerbailiff @hollandsweetie @yungkvte @evyiione @2023-padfoot @kawaiimarshmallow @nikki-sixx-is-daddy @sanktawylan @blackbirddaredevil23​ @athenamikaelson​ @mellifluous-cosmos​ @mylittlecrazyworldofinterest​ @iiclarixa​ @lcandothisallday​ @agent-jbarnes​

Mizpah taglist is CLOSED for now!

S.a.B. forever tags: @deceivedeer​

[ayamturd]

brother│sbi family

summary: y/n will always stand by their brothers no matter the hardship or challenges they should overcome in the end.

song: Brother by Kodaline

warnings: angst to fluff(?), cursing, blood/gore descriptions, death, slight spoliers for dsmp

pairing: in-game platonic!sbi family

a/n: i heard this song the other day and knew i had to give it a try (give it a listen!). also, each section/scene change is supposed to show a period of growth for the reader, both in age and confidence wise. as always, pls feel free to comment or give feedback!

wc: (4.1k) - m.list

When we were young we were the ones

The kings and queens oh yeah, we ruled the world

“Techno, wait!” 

“Keep up then, slow poke!” 

Technoblade and y/n were running through the village, laughing like madmen while jumping over the hay bales serving as their mini obstacle course. They were passing the time while Dadza finished his tradings with Wilbur, him volunteering to assist in hopes of exploring the market place. As they continued their chase, Technoblade began to gain a lead; his long limbs giving him a far unfair advantage against his smaller sibling. He was nearing the local well in the town square, and y/n knew they would have to take drastic measure before he could claim victory. 

Quickly assessing their surroundings, y/n grabbed the first product they could snatch off the closest stand. They beamed it at Techno, the potato hitting him on the back of his head, causing him to falter and trip over his hooves. Y/n leaped over him, grin wide when hearing the vendor and their brother yell after them.

“Y/n! What gives?!” Technoblade scrambled up in a hurry, rushing to meet their stride. Y/n only cackled, shouting back, “hey, it’s like you once said, ‘What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.’”

The sun beamed down in the late afternoon, yet y/n was too driven to notice. They reached the center square and rang the bell, signifying their win. “I regret teaching you the ways of Sun Tzu.” Technoblade was panting with his hands on his knees; he had tried to catch up given his fall slowing him down, but ended up running in vain to his defeat.

“Ahh you don’t mean that now, do you?” Y/n climbed up the well and jumped on Technoblade’s shoulders, forcing him to adjust to the sudden weight while they gripped his pink hair. He grunted, “I do if it means you beating me.” Y/n giggled. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll always remember your miserable loss as the origin of my success.” 

“Gee, thanks.” Despite their bickering, the two children held large smiles, snickering while spinning carefree and contently. They tuned out the world, purely existing in the moment while conquering each trivial challenge at a time.

We've taken different paths

“Come on, y/n, you’ve got to let go some time or another.” Y/n clung onto Wilbur’s side, curled into his chest while the lanky man hovered his arms above them.

“Not until you hug me back, you jerk!” Wilbur sighed, pulling them in again. “I already hugged you in the house. We’re not gonna be here for another 10 minutes, right? You know how impatient Tommy can be.”

“Alright, fine you dickhead. I’ll let you go. See if I care the next time you want a hug,” y/n huffed. They pulled away in haste and crossed their arms, turning away from him completely. 

“You’re such a cry baby, s’not like we’ll be gone forever. Can visit and shit,” Tommy spoke up, walking towards the pair with his saddle in hand.

“Shut up, bitch. I won’t miss you anyway, I was talking to Wilbur.”

“Like hell you won’t!”

Wilbur stepped between the two, hand on Y/n’s shoulder and a push to Tommy’s face. “Maybe it’s best that we’re leaving, y/n. Tommy’s obviously influenced you too much.”

“Why the hell you say that like it’s a bad thing?!”

“Ugh, God please no.”

Despite all odds, y/n was the shortest in the family compared to all the boys. They were forced to look up at Tommy while he glared down at their smug face. 

Phil came forward from the house and chose to stand besides y/n. “I’ve only just gotten them to leave, don’t tell me you’re holding them down any longer.” Y/n muttered a small no. Wilbur and Tommy looked offended at the comment, and Phil only chuckled at the sight. “You’ll see them soon, y/n. You know they’ve been waiting for the opportunity to explore, and one day you’ll take your chance too.”

“Yeah, I know,” y/n sighed and leaned into Phil’s side. They were openly pained to have their brothers leave their home, disliking the idea of their family separated, yet they knew they didn’t have the right to stop them from their ambitions.

Phil checked over their supplies once more before patting their shoulders with encouraging words. Giving them room, the brothers mounted their horses and pulled the reins to the East, taking one final glance at their home. They both waved and rode off. 

The sun laid above the horizon, strips of color spread across the sky as night began to fall. Though they were too far to hear, y/n waited a moment before speaking. “Till next time.” 

And travelled different roads

“You can’t be serious.”

“You rather I leave them to die?” Technoblade was packing, grabbing his best weaponry and stuffing rations into his satchel. Although contemplating to bring his armor, he opted out of it in favor of traveling light. Y/n was trailing behind the large piglin, eyes irritated and upset. 

“How can you say that? I’m only concerned on why you think a revolution is what they need right now!” Technoblade spun around at their words, standing above them menacingly. Any rational person would be afraid if it weren’t for the fact that they grew up together. 

“Y/n. You and I both know there’s a reason they called me and me alone. I’m going there to help and do what is ask of me. What else do you expect from all of this?” Technoblade spoke steadily, his chin still raised while his eyes looked down at them. It only angered y/n more. 

“What I expect, Technoblade, is for you to be their brother and help them! Be their brother for once and not just ‘the Blood God’!” Y/n emphasized each point with a jab to his chest. It was rare for the two to fight at all, them being considerably close and maintaining the same idealization for the most part. 

Techno only narrowed his eyes before grabbing y/n’s wrist. “We’ve talked about this, y/n. Don’t act like you don’t understand the difference between ‘the Blood God’ and myself. Don’t act like there is a difference at all.” There was a slight pause as y/n’s eyes widen at their close proximity, Technoblade having had moved closer towards their face.

“… you’re hurting me, Techno.” Glancing down at their hands, Technoblade immediately let go and grabbed his crossbow behind y/n, leaving the room as if the conversation never happened. Y/n was quick to follow him before he left the house. 

They screamed out, “This isn’t right, Techno! For their sakes, you and that tactical brain of yours should realize that at the very least!” Technoblade stopped near the exit and tilted his head to the left, a brief silence before speaking. “If you weren’t so afraid of the world, you could always go save them yourself.”

He slammed the front door close at that, leaving a still y/n in shock at his words. The night was dead quiet as y/n stood there for some time, a ringing silence impeding the air. Phil came down the hallway from his room, tired yet aware of the situation; he was admittedly awake during the argument. “Are you alright, dear?” His voice was soft as he was unsure of y/n’s current emotions, their back to him while facing the front door. Y/n turned towards him with teary eyes.

“No.”

And when you're in the trenches

And you're under fire I will cover you

“Ya’ know what, Wilbur?” Tommy was sitting on a furnace, Wilbur leaning against the cavern walls across him. They were both eating dinner together in the dark, dimly lit and empty space, the only sound coming further down the cave where Technoblade farmed until Tommy spoke up. Raising a hand to chew, Wilbur swallowed before asking a what?

“I’m getting real sick of potatoes.” They both laughed at that, temporarily finding joy in the small joke before fading back into a helpless silence. They were still reeling from their situation; no home, no friends, no government to stand with. While they were in the presence of their brother, Technoblade was focused on their main goal: revolution. Even through perseverance, the brothers couldn’t help but feel exhausted from the efforts, the previous war having taken a toll in spite of the approaching age of a new one.

“I miss home,” Tommy expressed, eyes trained to the ground. Wilbur stared at the boy before looking down at the baked potato in hand. “Me too.” 

A sudden noise came from above, as if someone broke down their stone entrance. Although Pogtopia had gained an underground support from the citizens of Manberg, their location was still undisclosed to the others, secret letters and Tubbo being the only communication. Grabbing his sword, Tommy nodded to Wilbur and headed up the steep stairway. Wilbur briefly looked up and ran to warn Technoblade of a possible intruder. 

Weapon in hand, Tommy creeped up the path determined. Footsteps echoed underground and Tommy paused to push himself against the wall. The light of a lantern glowed ever so brighter with each approaching step behind the corner above. Right as he rose to strike, a familiar voice spoke out. 

“You’re not seriously going stab me now, right?” Tommy’s gaze shot up to see his sibling smirk at his surprise. “Cause that would suck after traveling this whole way to see you idiots.”

Tommy laughed breathlessly in disbelief before shouting their name for all to hear. He ran up to quickly embrace them and pulled them down to meet the rest. Technoblade and Wilbur visibly relaxed at the sigh of the two, weapons dropping to their side.

“You’re here,” Technoblade stated, his eyebrows raised unexpectedly. Expression neutral, y/n only spared him a glance before looking to the side. “I’m here.” 

Wilbur ignored the small tension and walked forward, a soft smile at the sight of them with his arms raised. “Am I still allowed to ask for that hug?” Y/n grinned and let him engulf them in a hug. They squeezed his torso tight while they swayed slightly side to side. Tommy, elated to see his sibling for the first time in practically years, vocalized his excitement loudly behind the embracing pair.

“Are you here to help us fight?!”

Y/n hesitated before turning back to smile wearily, “I’m here to help you in any way I can.”

If I was dying on my knees

You would be the one to rescue me

“You want to be a hero, Tommy?”

The battlefield was suspended in apprehension, everyone amassed on the small platform above the caved in trench. Standing before them, separated by the broken landscape, Technoblade held large, black skulls in each hand. In front of him, two structures of sand guarding his sides. He was perched over them, eyes red in blood-like fury with tusks that pointed in pride and determination. Y/n gaped in horror at the sight, whispering a small no that fell on deaf ears. 

“Then die like one!”

A sudden light blinded the field, Technoblade having had completed the ancient ritual due for destruction. Before anyone could collet their thoughts, a small force pushed everyone back. Strong winds blew as dust covered the the terrain, and from the ashes of white fire rose two mythological beasts with holo eyes and a grotesque body of dark bones. There was a beat of stillness before chaos erupted.

Yelling and panic ensued as some began fighting the monstrosities while others worked to kill those preventing the end. Y/n felt lost as others pushed and pulled them every way. They tried looking for their brothers, crying out their names in the frantic space, but could no longer define anyone in the tumultuous crowd overwhelming them. 

By the time they were able to separate themself from the group, a building hum penetrated from above. Explosions descended around them as they became trapped by the blasts. Arms covered and crouched close to the ground, Y/n was helpless to the wither, and they stared in dread as the creature began to glow to attack once more. 

Before they met their final end, however, colors invaded the sky and erupted against the wither’s side. It roared in rage at the measly ambush and turned to find the source. Y/n was still frozen in the futile position, but was hoisted from behind and dragged up the small crater entrapping them. 

Technoblade let go of their weight once on solid ground again and stepped away immediately. Y/n, wheezing from the realization they could have died, turned to look up at their brother while still laying on the ground. Arms beneath them, they struggled to raise their head to him. 

“Why, Tech,” y/n exasperated, eyes begging for a justification for more destruction beyond that of their recent brother’s death. Tears fell in anguish of the devastation around them. “Just why?”

“Not everyone can be saved. Not everything is worth being saved.”

And if you were drowned at sea

I'd give you my lungs so you could breathe

“Come on Toms, stay with me now.” Pulling with all their might, y/n grappled the thin boy through the water as they fought to swim against the current in the rising dawn. As they crawled onto the sandy shores, the heavy weight of being completely soaked left them restless on the beach. Taking a moment to breathe, y/n gathered their strength before rushing to Tommy’s side.

“Come on, Tommy. You can’t do this to me now.” Y/n laid him completely flat and started to push his chest in rhythmic beats, shoving down as hard as they could to save him. 

He was already incredibly pale from the cold depths of the water, and y/n could only assume he had been in the water for some time before they arrived. 

Every so often they would glance to discern any movement or change but would go back to focusing on reviving their brother entirely. As more time passed and Tommy refused to move, Y/n grew frustrated and speed up their pace harshly, tears clouding their vision despite their resolution. “Please, Tommy. Please. I can’t lose another one of you. Not again.”

With a sudden twitch, Tommy jerked before coughing up water and trembling with the rush of air to his lungs. Y/n looked up to the green horizon and closed their eyes in relief, tears streaming down their cheeks before they reached down to hold the boy close. Gently bring him into their arms and caressing his long wet hair, Tommy continued to draw breaths with his arm hung limply around them. He clutched the fabric on their shoulder, whimpering in a small voice,

“Y/n? Are you really here this time?” Y/n squeezed him tighter.

“It’s really me, Toms. I’m here. And I’m never leaving you again.”

And if we hit on troubled water

I'll be the one to keep you warm and safe

“This is not a trial, Technoblade.” Quackity motioned to the anvil strung above the stage, beaming at the seething piglin through the bars of the cage. “This is an execution. We are going to kill you.” 

Hidden beneath the breath of night while under the effects of the invisible potion, y/n observed from the roof of a nearby house. Although they kept their distance from everyone in their family besides Tommy, y/n couldn’t ignore the apparent ‘Butcher Army’ when they passed through the forest where they were collecting wood, their brother strung behind them as if on a leash. 

Y/n glared at the immaturity of the young boys, despising the belief that more death will create peace in a land built on bloodshed. While their relationship with Technoblade was rough considering their last encounter, they couldn’t deny the fact that he had a right to hold his certain principles and acted out in aggression to the others’ mistreatment; though arguably to an extreme.

Their gaze shifted when the mercenary, Punz, announced his arrival with thrown snowballs and began spreading TNT as an apparent distraction. Deciding to aid in the diversion, y/n pulled arrows out of their quiver and aimed to target the boys when they tried to assault him. 

“Where the hell did that come from?!” Fundy screeched out in revelation after barely managing to dodge an incoming arrow to the leg. Despite all efforts, Quackity realized their intentions and ran to pull the level. As he let out a joyous shout, y/n dropped their bow in fear, eyes trained on the falling anvil before it was meant to strike and scrambled to their feet. To their astonishment and utter relief, a faint, green glow emitted once Technoblade was supposedly killed. The Blood God had escape death. What a surprise.

Y/n watched as Technoblade climbed swiftly out of the cage and followed a green figure mounted on his horse through a tunnel hidden beneath a stone hill. They knew from pass whispers and Tommy’s harsh words that it was the warrior, Dream, having had only seen the daunting smiling face in a blur during the war. They were aware of the torment the man had caused to their family, both in the war and in Tommy’s exile.

Sliding down the tile roof, y/n jumped off the building and maneuvered their way down, ignoring the stare of their imprisoned father on top of the nearby balcony as the potion’s effects started to fade. They noticed Quackity trace the foot steps of Technoblade’s hooves, and stalked behind him as he entered the small hole. Pausing before leaping in themself, y/n looked up to see Dream already staring down at them, arms crossed and in wait. 

He stared at them expectantly, which made y/n’s patience wear thin once hearing Quackity lowly state how he planned to kill Technoblade then and there. Narrowing their eyes in annoyance, y/n gave Dream a final glare and blocked off the entrance once entering. 

They pulled out their axe and treaded quietly down the tunnel before pausing behind the broken wall to an old vault full of chests. 

“—nd I don’t care how long it fucking takes me, or what I have to do to get you, Techno. I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“I just have on question, Quackity.” Technoblade paused as Quackity asked him to continue.

“Do you think you’re enough, to kill me? Even unarmed, with iron armor?” They both ever so slightly gripped their weapons tighter, stance shifted as they prepared to fight.

“You know what? Let’s fucking find out, you son of a bitch!” Their weapons clashed as they dodged the blow from one another. Quackity delivered each blow with blind determination while Technoblade played defense with each graceful side step. Eventually, Technoblade knocked his pickaxe into his face, Quackity yelping in pain and holding a hand to cover the wound. 

When turning his back to move further down the tunnel, Technoblade risked leaving himself vulnerable to the crazed butcher. Quackity stood despite his injury and tried to attack him from behind.

Y/n took the opportunity to run towards him, axe prepared to strike. Before Quackity could turn to defend himself, y/n swung the axe into his neck. Blood instantly pooled at the cut as he struggled to breathe, and y/n ripped their blade from his flesh. He fell to his knees while grasping helplessly at his wound, choking on his blood before falling to the side. 

While they had a distaste for violence, unlike their brother, y/n couldn’t excuse the attempted murder of their family by any means. 

Technoblade stared in reverence, eyes darting between Quackity’s slump figure and his sibling covered in an excessive amount of blood from the attack. Y/n stepped forward and grabbed a lead from their belt, having previously found it abandoned in the snow. No words were exchanged as they silently pulled Carl through the sewer system, blood casually staining the water as they walked through. Technoblade only spoke once they reach the surface.

“Pog.”

And we'll be carrying each other

Until we say goodbye on our dying day

“Are you alright, y/n?”

Broken sobs become shuddered breathes as y/n hears the voice of their late brother. They lifted their eyes from beneath their arms that held their legs together while pushed against the very corner of the room, their current position reminding Ghostbur how small anyone could look when upset. Ghostbur slightly frowned at their lack of response, floating closer to them to observe their tears, lighting the space slightly with a soft glow. 

“What’s wrong?” Despite the innocence behind his echoed voice, y/n couldn’t help the pain from hearing his concern. “Nothing that matters, Ghostbur. Nothing that anyone could fix anyway.”

Ghostbur didn’t like that response, refusing to believe that sadness could exist without a solution to bring an end to despair. He reached into his pocket, hands carefully holding some dye out towards y/n.

Y/n tilted their head in confusion, tears having stopped running but still present. “What is it?”

“It’s blue! Here, here, take some.” Ghostbur placed the colored substance into their cupped palms, explaining its significance with a gentle smile. “See, when someone is very angry or sad, the blue sucks away all your sadness and turns blue! And what you can do, is you can throw the blue away, and that’s all your sadness gone.”

Although strange and futile, y/n couldn’t help the smile form on their face from Ghostbur’s clarification. Ghostbur gasped excessively, causing y/n to chuckle lightly. “It worked! Do you feel better now, y/n? I have more blue if you need as well!” Pulling an incredible amount that began to pile on the floor in front of them, y/n giggled at the sight.

Y/n wiped their eyes with the back of their hand, breathing in and out to recollect themself. “Thank you, Ghostbur. Never change your wonderful self.” The ghost grinned brightly at that.

“Of course, Y/n! Never change your caring self either!”

Oh brother, we'll go deeper than the ink

Beneath the skin of our tattoos

“I have to ask, Y/n. Why choose them?” Y/n stood before Dream in their kitchen, the man having had shown up unannounced at their front door and began asking vague questions. 

“What do you mean?” Y/n was unnerved by his demeanor, never having held a conversation, let alone utter a word, with him before despite small, yet silent encounters. They refused to show discomfort, though they didn’t have a mask to cover every waver in their voice or their jaw visibly tighten.

“Oh, you know.”  He turned to walk around the small living space, hand skimming over a chest surface before continuing to speak ominously. “Time and time again, I’ve seen you run and fall to your knees for your so-called family. Yet as time continues on, I’ve seen them give you nothing in return.” He paused and faced them again. “What’s the point of saving something that does nothing but hold you down?”

Though we don't share the same blood

Y/n crossed their arms in defiance, finally understanding his intentions and glowered at his objective.

“You wouldn’t understand, Dream. Even if you tried.” He looked confused at their response, tilting his head slighting while his masked continued the same haunting smile. Y/n smirked.

“Your seen weakness gives me strength. I fight for everything because of them. Your lack of attachment leaves you nothing to gain.” Dream bent forward in mocking interest, though y/n knew better than to give in. “Is that so?”

“You tell me. Who will come running to your aid when your lies eventually catch up, and everyone realizes the things you’ve planned behind their backs?”

“I have my ways. Ways that insure I’ll have people on my side when I need.”

Y/n scowled before stepping forwards, leaning into his face. “Say whatever you need to say to comfort the idea of your downfall. I don’t care about you or your motives, leave my family alone or I will personally see to it you meet your expected end before its fated to happen.” Dream let out an amused breath in response. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise."

You're my brother and I love you that's the truth

[miioouu]

Sakusa's Babysitter

Ok so here's part 2 of the Sakusa fic! You guys really enjoyed it and it made me so so happy!!

Warning:smut, age gap, sir kink...

      The next day, when you walked out of your room, everything was normal. The kids were still asleep, silence reigning in the luxurious house, nothing new. It's when you made your way downstairs, expecting the kitchen to be vacant as always, your typical nanny day was about to be disturbed. There's your boss, shirtless, sitting at the table, coffee in hand and sports journal in the other. You fixed your hair, tug down on your short sleeping shorts a little, if you knew he was here, you would've prepared yourself beforehand, and cleared your throat. As soon as eyes met your figure, a polite smiled reached your lips followed by a "Good morning sir. I didn't know you had the day off today, I would've gotten up earlier and made you your breakfast. Did you sleep well?"

      His response was mortifying. Accusing tone with a hint of teasing. Putting his mug down, staring right into your eyes, penetrating to your soul "Would've slept better if my sheets didn't smell like cherry blossom.... You know I prefer more musky, deep smells right? Did you change our typical products perhaps? Or is it something else?" An eyebrow raised, a malice curve to his lips, did he know? From the way he's speaking to you, so condescending, you were sure that he caught you. And you weren't really wrong. Feigning innocence and ignorance, you apologized, promising to change the sheets right away, and to prove that you bolted out of the kitchen as soon as you finished your sentence, you wanted to escape this thick tension.

      Finally in his dark room, you softly closed the door behind you, finally letting out a deep breath. But don't relax way too fast Y/n, you haven't even looked at his bed yet. It looked messier than usual, a weird smell in the room that you couldn't pinpoint, but you were sure it wasn't cherry blossom. Lifting the cover off, your mouth hung open... Did you leave that? In the middle of the wrinkled sheets, a pool of white substance could be found, you're not dumb, you knew exactly what it was, you just didn't know whose it is. And it's a dirty idea you're having tight now, really, you could've just chucked them in the washing machine and forget about it right? But your mind had a better plan, a naughtier one for sure. Your hand sliding along the mattress feeling the soft cotton, reaching destination, dipping a fingertip in the drying out liquid. Your heart was beating fast, loud, too loud ringing in your head. Your mind going haywire trying to convince yourself to get a grip and do what you were supposed to do, but your unconsciousness craving for more, what if you just...? And you should've thought twice before guiding your hand to your mouth, tongue swirling around your fingers, tastes so good it made your eyes roll back... It's his, you can tell.

      Too preoccupied tasting your boss, you didn't even notice that he was in the room all along, until a chuckle resonated in the large room. Your eyes went wide, your body froze, and your cheeks turned red in embarrassment and humiliation. That's it, that's the end of your dream life! "Can't believe such a dirty girl was taking care of my children.... Tell me though, does it taste good? Do you want more?" What were you supposed to answer, to say to that. You took to long, in his opinion, your mind too busy trying to decipher what's going on to give him a proper response, but you didn't need to now anyway. In an instant he was right before you, bent down and face to face, a malicious smile on his lips and you wonder since when does he smile like that. "I think you do, I can tell!" And with that you were pushed back, landing on the puddle wetting your thin shirt, feeling it stick to your skin. It should've repulsed you, but it only made the heat in your core stronger. The tip of his fingers, rough from years and years of volleyball, brushing alongside your thighs, going up, up, till they reached the hem of your shorts and sliding under, his thumb resting right between your thigh and your heat "You're gonna stay quiet for sir little one? Don't want my sons to wake up mmm?" You couldn't talk, only nod as he slid your drenching panties to the side, chuckling at your arousal. The other hand fast to push his sweats down his legs, surprised that a man like him wasn't wearing any type of underwear underneath, but that thought didn't last too long, because you were more worried about something else. Standing tall and proud, pink tip already drooling pre, and a prominent vein that you knew will make you see stars. The only things that brought you from you daydream is the sound of spitting echoing in the room, a liquid hitting your sensitive spot that made you whimper slightly.

      His eyes never once left yours as he sunk into you, observing your every emotion, from the wrinkle of your eyebrows, your lips parting to let out a soft whimper, a sigh of relief as he barely bottomed out, too much for you to handle all at once. He started with a slow pace, though already making you feel dizzy with all the passion he's pouring into it. Now that you think about it, you never once saw him with a woman, he always said he's too busy for silly rendezvous, that explains the zeal he's putting out. Gradually becoming faster, deeper, hitting that spot inside of you that made you saw stars. Your nails digging into his forearm for support, like your life depends on it. You broke your promise, a moan escaped you as you couldn't contain it in anymore, it's all too much it's all too good. Years of experience showing as he pounded into you, relentlessly to add, the man was showing off you can tell by the chuckle that left him when you struggled to breathe out his name as quietly as you can. The hand that was once on your hip moving up, lacing around your throat and giving it a good squeeze. Your eyes rolled back, your back arched, and the air hitting your hot wet back had you shiver with goosebumps, had you biting down your lips, but in vain, your screams had to be let out.

       The man is smart, he knows how to use his brain, but also his mouth "Didn't you promise to keep quite? I don't like it when you disrespect your sir.... Apologize to me right now" He waited for two seconds, his hand teasingly getting tighter, too tight to speak properly, and when you took your time to actually answer him, he stopped all movements, pulling out and ready to walk away, but you couldn't let him slip like that. As soon as his fingers left the already bruising skin of your neck you spoke, you begged, you cried for him to stay, to not leave you, promising him that you were so so sorry, and it genuinely surprised you when you saw a smile on his face, a rare one as he came back. Relief washed over you, but you didn't have time to savor it, he slipped inside you in one swift movement, his thrust sloppier but more intense than before, how is that even possible? And to make sure you won't break your promise again, he leaned in, slowly, almost hesitantly. His eyes bore into yours for a second before fluttering shut, for the first time, he locked his lips with yours, making the whole experience much more intimate than it was before. And you couldn't complain. Not when your entire body was shaking, your soul trembling from within with excitement and pleasure. Not when the knot kept getting tighter and tighter, threatening to break at any moment now. It's when his teeth nipped at your bottom lip, his tongue massaged yours sensually, his hands caressing you so softly like you're as fragile as porcelain, contrasting with the movements of his hips, furious and goal-oriented, the goal of breaking you apart, that you finally reached your high. Your back creating a perfect curve again, arching into him, you chests collided, he could feel the fast beating of your heart. Your nails dagger on his back, sinking into his skin is what triggered his climax, he painted your walls a warm white, the same you saw earlier this morning on his sheets.

       You wanted to stay a little longer, catch your breath again and melt into his touch, but your boss had different ideas, ones that broke your heart into thousands of pieces. When the words left his mouth you couldn't help but feel... empty? Disappointed? But what did you expect from Sakusa Kiyoomi other than "Go get a shower and dress properly, the kids are going to wake up soon"...

Tags: @iheartkuroorin @psychedelicwh0r3

[superhero--imagines]

Part 1 Here! / Part 3 Here!/ Playlist Here!

A/N: Maybe one last part after this?

Ko-Fi l Etsy l Commission Info Here

* You’re sitting on a bench outside, listening to Shoko and Nanami talk about something

* The breeze caresses your face

* It’s so quiet

* You haven’t experienced silence like this in years

* And there’s only one reason why you’re suddenly experiencing it now

* Your eyes stray from the dancing branches that hover above you to the dancing white-haired boy across the courtyard

* He’s talking to Geto about something, laughing as he does

* His sky blue eyes meet yours for a second, before abruptly looking away

* Not the usual flirtatious wink and wave he would normally give you

* You don’t know why, but it’s like Gojo’s lost every ounce of interest he had in you

* It looks like that prank you pulled on him is what did it-

* Apparently Geto had to help get the glass down

* He hasn’t tried speaking to you once since then, and every time your eyes meet he looks away just like he did a second ago

* What a baby, so he can dish it out but he can’t take it when someone uses his own tactics against him huh?

* It’s for the best really, you don’t want anything to do with him

* Besides if that moron just wanted someone who wasn’t going to react or get mad, then he should just date a sex doll

* It’s for the best, really

* So why are you so upset right now

* The prickle of irritation burns in your chest even when you turn away from the two boys, joining in on Shoko and Nanami’s conversation

* On the other side, Geto lets out a low whistle

* “Never thought I would see the day a lady killer like you would get embarrassed because you made eye contact with your crush” Geto grins when Gojo flushes a light pink.

* Geto almost wants to laugh, what happened to the womanizing-god-complex freak who was here just a second ago?

* “Don’t say lady-killer, you know I like men too, I’m an equal opportunity lover” Gojo gloats while running his fingers through his hair

* Ah, it looks like he’s on his bullshit again

* “You better watch out Geto, if you’re too much of tsundere I might fall for you next” the words are emphasized with a wink, and Geto can’t help but laugh

* “Whatever dude, don’t come crying to me when they start to hate you because you’re being flakey”

* Gojo laughs it off

* But late that night, while he’s lying in bed watching the shadows flicker on his ceiling he can’t help but wonder-

* What if you really do end up hating him?

* It’s not that he doesn’t want to be around you anymore or anything-

* He just doesn’t know how to approach you anymore now that he knows he’s in love with you

* “I’ve probably been in love for a while” he mumbles

* He’s not really sure when it started.

* At first it was just for shits and giggles

* Something to keep him entertained, and you just happened to be the most entertaining thing around

* So when did it stop being ‘anyone’s fine’ and start being ‘it’s only fine if it’s you’?

* He sighs turning to face the wall, he doesn’t understand his own feelings

* Yeah he’s got all this money and power and influence-

* But right now he’s just a boy in love for the first time

* And he doesn’t know how to handle that

* “I just don’t want them to hate me” he mumbles, feeling his eyes close shut

* He’ll try to talk to you tomorrow

* Even if it’s just a simple ‘good morning’

* At least it’ll be something

* But to his annoyance, he’s told he has to go save his classmates from a curse

* And then everything with the star vessel happens

* And he doesn’t see you for a while and he thinks-

* “Well maybe this is fine, maybe it’s better this way. They’re probably happy now that I’m not around always annoying them”

* And just as he’s thinking maybe this is for the best, that if someone leaves your life it probably means they weren’t supposed to be apart of it anyway -

* When you come barreling into his life again

* “Oi, Baka prince, where did sensei say this kid's house was again?” You ask, eyebrows threading together as you fidget with your phone

* Yaga-sensei sent you to accompany Gojo on his ‘mission’ to retrieve Megumi Fushiguro

* It looks like the only people who can reign Gojo in are you and Geto

* Not that you mind the impromptu mission, and besides- you don’t think Gojo is someone who should be alone around kids

* Gojo actually flinches when you speak to him, you’d traveled in silence so far, standing side by side without exchanging a word on the train.

* You sigh, you know he isn’t interested in you but the least he can do is be somewhat pleasant

* Even that usual annoying demeanor of his would be fine

* You’re not sure why but that prickle of irritation burns in you again, seeping through in the nickname you gave him

* Gojo doesn’t meet your eyes, those clear blue pupils are averted slightly as a pink blush singes his face

* “I’m not sure, I’ve just been following the cursed energy” he admits with an uncharacteristically shy gaze

* Okay WTF

* Gojo would never let the opportunity to tell you how weak you are for being unable to “even feel this amount of cursed energy”

* Who is this freak and what has he done to the real Gojo Satoru

* “Are you sick or something?” You ask

* Your hand’s already moving to cover his forehead, and you feel like somethings off

* Your eyebrows thread together as your peer closer, noticing a small gap where your hand and his forehead

* Ah right, the infinity he has around him

* You never realized it before but you wonder, can he ever feel anything?

* It must be lonely

* Gojo’s looking down at you, swallowing a lump in his throat.

* The expression on your face looks so tender, and you’re so close he can smell your scent

* And he feels a sudden urge to cry, to bury his face in your shoulder and weep like a child

* He’s watching you open your mouth, you’re about to say something-

* When you both feel a large burst of cursed energy

* Your heads snap to the direction you sense it from only to see a small boy

* You recognize him as Megumi Fushiguro, your target for this so-called ‘mission’

* He’s younger than you expected, he can’t be older than 10

* You turn to Gojo, you’re going to need a plan, someone that young is awfully impressionable. You have to do this with some tact

* But when you turn to look he’s gone

* “Huh?”

* You can practically see the outline of his form where he was standing just a second ago, your neck creaking as you turn to where Megumi-Kun is standing

* “Your father sold you to the Zenin Clan”

* You might appear calm and collected on the outside, but I promise you your soul has ascended to the fourth dimension where you are just screaming into the void

* “Well does it make you mad? Does it-“ Gojo’s waggling his fingers like a god damn perv when you basically apparate to his side and bring your fist down on his head

* “Oi, Baka prince what the hell do you think you’re doing?!?”

* Gojo’s stumbles back, nursing the emotional wound you just gave him and you crouch down

* “Don’t listen to anything that moronic man just told you, he’s got no tact” you tell the boy

* He’s a cutie, like the male version of Snow White.

* Though his expression tells you he’s about had it with this reality

* “Yeah I can see that”

* “Well he might act like a moron, but he’s got a pretty decent heart”

* You spell out the situation to Megumi as tactfully as you can, opting to treat him like an adult.

* “These are your options as I see them, you can go to the Zenin clan, or, that Baka prince already stopped the sale in return for you promising to join our academy”

* You and Megumi get along pretty well, you’re kindred souls

* Besides you both seem to be able to see right through Gojo’s princely appearance

* “Why did you guys leave me behind?” Gojo shrieks, Megumi’s hand is in your own, both of your free hands holding ice cream cones

* Megumi immediately makes a face, it had been so quiet while he was gone too

* You can’t help but sympathize with the kid, you used to feel that way before you got to know Gojo too

* You were just showing Megumi around the campus, helping him get familiar, and you thought you should reward him a little with a treat for being such a good kid

* Besides you like him

* Of course Gojo wanted to tag along, teasing Megumi half of the time like a damn idiot and spending the other half of the time giving flirtatious winks to women who seemed interested in him.

* Gojo’s making a scene and Megumi looks like he’s a second from throwing a tantrum too

* You sigh, you don’t get paid enough for having to deal with these two children

* “Here” when Gojo looks up, bright blue eyes peering over his black glasses he sees a scoop full of his favorite ice cream balancing on top of a chocolate-dipped waffle cone

* “But what about you?” He asks and the questions catches you off guard, since when has Gojo cared about anyone but himself?

* “I don’t want any, I just thought it would be good to get in line while we waited.”

* You didn’t think you would actually get to the front of the line before he caught up though.

* “No! You waited in line that whole time, here we can take share, take the first bite”

* You’ve kept your cool in front of Gojo for years but something about the expectant expression he’s giving you - the tops of his cheeks bright pink- and those bright blue eyes looking at you while holding out the ice cream cone that makes you flustered

* You can feel your face grow warm, geez what’s gotten into him

* To make matters worse you’re having a hard time saying no to him right now

* Something about those crystal blue eyes has you almost mesmerized

* And then Megumi stands up on the bench and takes a giant bite from the cone

* Cue Gojo screaming and crying because, goddammit he was this close to an indirect kiss with you-

* “Why did you do that?” He shrieks, he’s crouched on the ground, face bright red in anger and anguish

* “I don’t know, the green tea ice cream looked good” Megumi shrugs, only for Gojo to start shrieking again

* Gojo and Megumi are about a second from a fistfight when they hear laughter

* The gentle twinkling gets louder and they both instinctively turn towards it

* You’re laughing so hard you’re clutching your stomach, tears forming at the corners of your eyes

* “Geez you guys are like something out of a cartoon.” You manage to say in between laughs

* Megumi’s eyes widen

* He’s seen you smile before, but he’s never seen you laugh like that

* Megumi wonders what he’s thinking right bow

* His eyes trail to Gojo

* Gojo looks at you like you just hung the moon

* Like he’s a child seeing fireworks for the first time

* Megumi will never forget the look on Gojo’s face for as long as he lives

* ‘So that’s what it looks like when you love someone’ Megumi thinks

* Gojo pats Megumi on the head

* “Thanks kid, because of you I got to see something nice”

* You guys grow a lot closer because of Megumi, becoming sort of surrogate older siblings to him and Tsumiki

* “Why did you bring a Kotatsu?” You and Megumi are standing in the doorway holding takeout and oranges

* “Winter time just doesn’t feel right without a Kotatsu, isn’t that right Tsumiki-Chan?”

* The young girl grins as she nods, snuggling deeper into the blanket

* You and Megumi give each other an incredulous look

* Leave it to a little rich boy like Gojo Satoru to buy a Kotatsu for a casual hang out just because it’s winter

* Still-

* You watch as Megumi and Tsumiki cuddle under the Kotatsu, peeling oranges

* The kids seem to be enjoying it

* Gojo pats the spot next to him

* “I saved you a spot (Y/N/N), I promise I won’t bite” but Gojo’s giving you that same teasing grin he always used to give you

* Looks like things are back to normal

* You sigh taking a seat beside him, stealing your resolve as you put up with his incessant teasing

* Everything is back to the way it was...so why do you still feel that prickle in your stomach every time he looks at you?

* And the following weeks that familiar sensation makes appearances several times, leaving you more confused each time

* It’s not until you’re walking in Shibuya, one of your hands holding Megumi’s and the other one holding a Taiyaki full of ice cream that you realize

* “Gojoooooo” the woman in front of you whines “you’re so mean, I can’t believe you didn’t call me, because I know you had a good time”

* The woman’s pouty expression turns wolffish in a second

* Ah, so that’s where he learned to smile like that

* You and Megumi are mostly just enjoying the show, eating your ice cream and watching as Satoru tries to placate this woman

* “I’ve just been taking some time to better myself-“

* You snort, yeah you’re sure he’s been bettering himself with his dozen other lovers

* Honestly serves him right for fooling around with so many people. You’re surprised he’s not habitually in the infirmary for a new STD

* “You see, I’m a father now”

* You sputter choking on your ice cream. Megumi pats your back

* That idiot prince has really gone and done it now-

* Having an illegitimate child,

* Yaga-Sensei is going to kill him

* Not to mention what his clan might do

* Gojo looks back at you with warm eyes

* And you feel that pricking feeling again

* “Megumi is my pride and joy”

* Huh?

* Oh

* OHHHHH

* So that’s his game.

* What a sleaze bag using someone else’s kid as an excuse to get out of an uncomfortable romantic encounter

* Megumi squeezes your hand and you look down

* The look on his face could kill a man

* “I’d never call a pervert like you my Father”

* So Megumi woke up and chose violence today-

* You figure Gojo will laugh and cover it up with some jokes like ‘kids these days no respect for their elders’ or something

* But when you look at Gojo he looks genuinely hurt, those vibrant blue eyes look watery, and that pretty mouth that’s always curled in a grin is curved into a soft frown.

* And before you know what you’re doing you say-

* “Megumi-Chan you shouldn’t be so mean to your Father, he let you have ice cream before dinner didn’t he?”

* .

* ...

* .....

* WHY DID YOU JUST SAY THAT

* Megumi and Gojo are both looking at you with vacant stares

* Megumi is still in shock that you took Gojo’s side in this

* But Gojo’s looking right at you, cheeks holding a rosy tinge

* And then something amazing happens

* Gojo smiles at you-

* Not that wolfish smile he’s been showing you for years as he teases you, or that princely smile he uses to get something he wants

* It’s a genuine smile

* And you can’t help but think he doesn’t look at all like the most powerful sorcerer, he just looks like a boy

* Ah, there’s that painful prickle again

* “I love my family so won’t see you anymore, go ahead and delete my contact information,” Gojo says with a grin

* He walks over to you in long strides, hoisting Megumi up and carrying him all while the woman shouts obscenities

* “Come on (Y/N/N), let’s go home,” he says, his hand moving to hold your own

* And all you can do is let him tug you forward

* Your gaze lingers on your intertwined hands, the heat that radiates from his palm even though there’s an infinity between you both

* Your eyes trail up to look at his broad back, the way he holds Megumi so easily even though he’s pulling on Gojo’s hair

* The prickle intensifies as you watch them

* ‘He would make a good Dad his spouse will be lucky’ you think

* And then it hits you

* Oh

* Oh no

* Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no

* You’re in love with Gojo Satoru

* The f*ckboy extraordinaire

* F*ck

* How did this even happen? You had been so careful, you were even apart of that down with Gojo Satoru club with Nanami and Geto

* Are they going to revoke your membership now?

* F*********ck

* “Hurry up and put me down you pervert!” Megumi shouts, a fistful of Gojo’s white hair in his hand

* “Ora Ora, you shouldn’t be mean to papa like that Megumi-Chan” Gojo teases, not even the slightest bit fazed

* Megumi’s only grabbing onto the infinity around his hair after all, so it probably doesn’t hurt

* “Here Megumi,” you abandon your ice cream without a thought, carefully lifting him out of Gojo’s hold and onto the ground

* Megumi doesn’t say anything, he only holds your hand in his

* “Hold Papa’s hand too Megumi-Chan otherwise I’ll feel lonely” Gojo teases, but you can tell he really does want Megumi to hold his hand

* “If it’ll get you to shut up” Megumi grumbles, but he reached up, taking Gojo’s hand in his

* The three of you probably look like a family, and this time the prickling feels warm, like a tickle across your stomach

* Like butterflies

* F********************ck

* “For F*cks sake, how am I going to get out of this one” you mumble to yourself