#not that he was ever Really a jedi but whatever. that's not his kyber crystal.

[vlasdygoth]

i've been thinking about a mgs star wars au so obviously this had to happen

[toska-writes]

“You lost this”

Summary: Trying to kick the habit of losing your lightsaber it somehow always ends up at the hip of the commander of the corrie guard. I mean that’s better then getting in trouble

Paring: Commander Fox x GN Padawan Reader (PLATONIC)

Warning: none!

Word count: 1386

Notes: once again this man deserves some good fluffy moments, also this one kinda mimics the other Fox fox I have I just realized but whatever. If you have any suggestions feel free to shoot them my way!

Kriff how could this happen again.

Your master was sure going to kill you this time. Ponds walked beside you now as you ran a hand through your hair.

"I've heard plenty of story's of Master Kenobi losing his lightsaber, how bad could it be, you'll find it." He tried to give some comfort.

"1," You held a finger up " I would love to hear that story, 2 you don't know how important it is. Master Windu has told me many times that I shouldn’t loose it because your lightsaber is your life."

Ponds stared at you for a moment before shrugging his shoulder. "Sorry mate, but if you lost it here one of the corries might have picked it up."

It was your turn to stare now. "Really think they'll have it?"

"It's better then turning up empty handed to the general."

Ponds gave you a small nod before turning to part down his own hall of the huge temple. "Ill let Master Windu know you'll be studying with Ahsoka then sir."

You opened your mouth to question him for a second but Ponds flashed you a cocky smile before turning away from you.

You scoffed to yourself for a moment being ever so grateful for the commander of the 91st.

Corries, corries right you could easily go ask the Coruscant Guard to see if they had seen it. But why was it so hard.

Would any of them tell your master, or worst. They already have.

A sweat stared to form a little at the top of your brow. Where could you have left it? The hanger, the temple. It could be anywhere on Coruscant by now.

Great great great. If you didn't find it first it would be just your luck your master would find it before you.

You stood now on the steps of the Jedi temple. You had to go quick if you were to be back before anyone noticed your gone. Ponds excuses could only save you for so long.

In the back of your mind you felt a slight humming sound, the force around you flourished as you  acted on this feeling.

You took a few steps with your eyes still closed, the force was now guiding you to the senate building? Mmm your best guess is Commander Fox might have it.

As you walked you recounted the very few encounters that you had with the clone commander. All were pleasant and nothing to make you sweat, but you still did either way.

The building laid out in front of you, the feeling was growing strong now. You could hear the hum of your kyber crystal as if it was in your own hand.

Taking a few steps you scanned the area quickly, trying to keep a low profile in a place you didn’t know all that well.

Fox was an allusive man when he wanted to be but the familiar feeling you craved coming from your saber was much stronger.

You spotted him from a distance away, he was chatting with another brother in red you weren’t sure you knew who though. From here there was no sign of your saber.

You cleared your throat as you made your way over. “Hey commander Fox?”

His eyes and body snapped to attend as did the other person with him. Fox’s shoulders seemed to relax ever so slightly when he saw it was just you but all the same he asked “Is there a problem commander?”

“Oh no I was just looking for something” You casually put your hands behind your back, the hum now grew to a quite background noise as it normally did and you instantly felt a lot better.

Fox head turned forward questioning slightly until his hand flew to his hip, and sure enough there it was clipped to his belt. “I’m assuming it’s this then? You came just in time sir I was just about to contact Master Windu.”

He could definitely see the worry on your face at the last comment as he handed back the weapon you cherished so deeply.

You gave fox a thankful nod then added “You know it wouldn’t be terrible to say if this happens again not to tell my master right away.”

The man standing next to him looked a little puzzled at this small exchange of words but you decided to ignore it.

“I’ll see what I can do about that sir.” He nodded

“Thank you Fox. I owe you.” You turned and quickly made your way back to the temple before Windu decided he really wanted to know where you are.

Fox stood for a moment accompanied by Hound who seemed just as confused as he.

“So that must be the Y/N you told me about.” Hound nodded at Fox. “They definitely live up to what you said.”

Fox gave a slight nod in return, Hound was definitely right about that.

The second time you lost your lightsaber you were already making your way after departing with ponds, to the senate building once again.

Fox stood more by the entrance now, as soon as he caught sight he swiftly made his way over.

In one simple moment he unclipped the saber from its resting place on his belt and held his hand out.

“You keep this up and you’ll tie with General Kenobi for the most amount of times lost.” He joked a little.

You shot an eye brow up as the cool metal made its way into your own hands. “Wow does everyone know that story?” You asked with a smile on your own. “You’ll have to fill me in next time I see you.”

“Hopefully not under this circumstance sir.”

With another small smile you made your way from the senate building. Fox would have to get use to that. But he did enjoy the visits.

The third time it was already like a reflex. Fox saw you come in and scan the building for a moment trying to recognize the armor of the Corrie Guard commander.

When you spotted him this time he already had the weapon in his hand- the weight felt uneven and deadly in his hands.

Fox held it out to you for a moment as you finished your approach grabbing the weapon and stop right in front of him. “Missing something Commander?”

You laughed for a moment, eyes sparkling.

You could just walk out, Fox found himself thinking about one time. You could make a snide comment or two and aggressively grab your lightsaber out of his hands. He wouldn’t be surprised many did. But as always you stoped have a kind smile and a small bow of gratitude then ask him how his rounds were or if he needed anything.

This time you asked if he was almost done with this shift. “No, I have a few more since I took over for Thire, he wasn’t really feeling himself.” Fox shut his mouth quickly after his last words, venomous words floated around his head saying he shouldn’t have shared and you didn’t really care.

But the compassionate look told him all he needed to know. “Well tell Thire I Hope he’s feeling better in no time.” You stated. “And since your going to be on a little while I was thinking about heading to a near by caf machine.”

Fox stuck his hand out waving you off. “No need for the trouble commander I’m fine really.”

The worry in his voice hurt you for a moment. “Nonsense besides I was planning on getting one for myself. Really it would be no hassle.”

Knowing your stubbornness he gave up the fight quickly, nodding his head in a response.

He watched you exit for a second, the bright glittering saber now hung where it rightfully belonged.

In a way Fox hoped that you would loose it again, not to get yourself in trouble but it’s refreshing to have someone to listen to what you had to say. Someone in the same boat as him but not in the same seat so to say.

But one things for sure, he would never get use to the weight that thing carried when it was on his waist. He’s seen them work before and those weren’t as pleasant as he’d like to remember.

—————————————————————

Taglist: @arctrooper69 @thereforepizza

[kanerallels]

90, 78, & 58 for the 501st Celebration 🎉

Congratulations!

SO sorry it took me a while to answer this one-- but it's here!! Finally!!

58: Jacen As Ezra’s Padawan And The Hijinks They Get Up To (TJSA prequel). The title says it all!

“Are we sure this is the right place to go?” Jacen asked, staring out the view port with a frown.

Ezra couldn’t blame him. The planet below them was torn to pieces, its brown surface charred black in places.  Whatever catastrophe had affected this planet had been bad.

“You’re the one who did the meditating,” he reminded Jacen. “If the Force is telling you to go to Jedha, you shouldn’t doubt it. Neither of us should.”

That, Ezra knew, was a key part of this mission for his apprentice. Learning to trust his own judgment, and his connection with the Force as a Jedi. He was only here to supervise. Everything else was up to Jacen.

Slowly, Jacen nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Okay, let’s do this.”

“Excellent,” Ezra said, nudging the New Dawn forward. “Operation Kyber Crystal is a go.”

Whatever awaited them on the surface, they could handle it. Ezra was sure of that much.

78. Kanan as a Lunar Guard au. Ohhhh this one. This one is good. It's an au set in the TLC universe, where Kanan is a Lunar! He saves Ezra, who's a shell, and they take off to Earth! And I went a little crazy for this one, so enjoy!!

90. Pacific Rim au.

I am sooooooooooooooo obsessed with this one

“So, this is her,” Kanan said, gazing at the massive Jaeger in front of him. “The Phantom Eclipse.”

He’d seen Hera Syndulla’s Jaeger on TV approximately twice, and a few times from a distance, but never up close. He’d never really had the opportunity. But now? Now, if the test was anything to judge by— and it was— they were drift compatible. So Kanan figured it was logical enough that he got a good look at his new ride.

It was a Mark-4, and therefore nicer than anything he’d ever piloted. The Jaeger he’d piloted alongside his mother, the Beacon Instinct, had been a Mark-2, and the Kasmiri Escape had been a Mark-3 before a kaiju had torn it to shreds. Feeling a twinge of nostalgic sorrow, Kanan redirected his attention to the Phantom.

The Jaeger towered above them, the silvery gray metal gleaming proudly. Scattered across the limbs and torso, however, were bright splotches— paintings, Kanan realized.

Stepping closer, he studied the nearest one— a phoenix, red-gold wings flaring across the metal of the Jaeger’s leg. It wasn’t the only one of its kind. In fact, he spotted several of the birds, including one soaring across the chest. Above it was a black circle, white-gold lines of lines curving around the rim and out from the edge. An eclipse, Kanan realized.

“That’s Sabine’s work,” Hera said from behind him. Kanan cast a quick glance over his shoulder. His new co-pilot stood with her arms folded, her expression calmly neutral as she watched him. “I don’t think you’ve met her yet— she works in J-tech. Mainly a weapons expert, but she’s an artist, too. She asked me if she could do a little work on Phantom, and, well, it turned into a lot of work.”

“I’m impressed,” Kanan said, studying the artwork for another minute. “She’s good at what she does.”

“She’ll be glad to hear you say that.” Hera’s voice held a hint of pleasure— clearly, she liked hearing Sabine praised. They must have been close. Kanan made a mental note to meet this Sabine as he turned to face Hera.

The pilot lifted an eyebrow at him. “Well?”

Kanan knew exactly what she was asking. “She’s stunning,” he told Hera.

A smile spread across Hera’s face, warm and open, and Kanan knew without a doubt that he was done. There was no way he could pick up the pieces after she smiled at him like that. “Good,” she said.

[engagemythrusters]

Okay. Here we go. Entombed!

Hasn’t even started yet and I know damn well we’re not gonna get crosshair

Wrecker n Omega bonding time 🥰

Ooh more toys? More glass for her kaleidoscope? Is that what that is?

BOLO AND KETCH <3 Phee don’t lead them on tho

Is echo sleeveless.

Nope not for her kaleidoscope

Ooo compass

I still can’t tell if he’s sleeveless or not. Cause bitch ain’t got no melanin for no stinkin reason.

No he’s got sleeves on I think

This is gonna be a case of the revealed “actually I’ve never been a good treasure hunter /I’ve never actually retrieved any treasure” schtick isn’t it. Star Wars you’ve already DONE that with that stupid droid spy arc that nobody likes (except for when Gregor 🥰). BUT GOD NOT ANOTHER PLEASE I fucjin hate that trope.

Hondo prefers pirate, Phee prefers liberater of artefacts… nobody likes smuggler

God I miss crosshair

Bolo and ketch episode when

That droid is literally a walking soda can

It called entombed bc they going to entombed ha ha ha.

I love you Omega

I LOVE YOU WRECKER

Hm… Jedi temple?

Oh no more like Space Atlantis.

Poor wrecker always has to do the work. His muscles are probably always screaming. Doesn’t matter that he’s Big and Strong—he can be overworked too!

Hahaha. called entombed bc they entombed rolling my eyes.

I miss fun Star Trek ep titles. They were fun. When am I gonna get a title like “Far Beyond the Stars” or “Take Me Out To The Holosuite” from this show.

Those highlights ones don’t follow a pattern… but okay.

Not a fan of this ep sorry guys :(

Echo and Hunter go hmmm idk about this . Good on them

Kyber crystal?

FINALLY HUNTER USING A SENSE geez they never let him use his enhancements

Cave boy tru eat wrecker! No thank you cave boy!

O NO. TRAPPED

Momentarily forgot Hunter existed (couldn’t count four clones for some reason and couldn’t figure out who was missing). Which is a lot like how the writers forget HUNTER HAS ENHANCEMENTS

AAAAAND THEY FORGOT AGAIN

He! Would! Be! Able! To! Sense! That!

Omega sweetie you’re so smart. I love you.

OOOO ITS LIKE THOSE ROLLY TUNNELS YOU CAN FIND AT A PARK I wanna go inside

Not a kyber crystal ig

Wait maybe? Idk I can’t tell

It’s a lot smaller than I expected tbh.

Oh the place is gonna collapse isn’t—yep.

spache chip? Mega mech? Mech.

Oh…

Oh this is something… I’ve seen something… it looks like something I know but I don’t know what. What is it. Pausing to think.

I don’t know but it… it reminds me of SOMETHING.

Soda can on da move

Soda can crushed

It really is quite the interesting design for a mechanical creature. Majestic and terrifying. Too bad it has to go. It was truly gorgeous. Something to behold. Whatever it was.

Tech: can we fucking stop treasure hunting now jfc

“At least no one can ever activate that thing again” … we’re gonna see another of these aren’t we.

Hunter: for the love of god please stop filling my child’s head with fucking bullshit

Hm. Not a fan of that ep. Kind of bummed. This seasons got a slow pace to it. Crosshair soon? Maybe Rex and Gregor again? Soon please?

[burnwater13]

Grogu liked being a Mandalorian foundling. He felt very safe when he was with his dad and the others of his kind. He didn’t know a lot about them, but they had helped his dad and him out and he really appreciated that. 

First, when they had to leave Nevarro after Din saved him from the Client, those Mandos had just literally jumped right in and protected them both from the bounty hunters and Imps. That meant a lot. Really. No other group of people had ever just come to his defense because of who he was with. It made an impact.

Then, he met the other Mandos. The ones who could actually take their helmets off and let everyone see their faces. Grogu had been impressed by them. Mostly because he liked seeing people’s faces. It had taken him a little while to realize that Din Djarin was a human and not just a human configured bounty hunting droid. Grogu had met a lot of bounty hunters and they worked hard at tricking people. 

Spending time with them, he realized that they had a lot in common and they also had a lot of differences.

Grogu had noticed that the Mandos all seemed to decorate their armor. In some way. Even Din Djarin had a sigil on his armor to indicate that he was a member of clan Mudhorn. The other Mandos had things like that too, but some of them had the mythosaur skull on their armor and others had a feather and some had a symbol that liked like a gash from that flying menace they met up with on Nevarro. 

He had wondered what kind of critter it was at the time, but then he stopped caring when he realized that he had to help Greef Karga. He was glad that Greef didn’t really wear armor. Not because he had wanted the flying critter to hurt him, but because it was a lot easier to heal him because he wasn’t freaked out over exposing his skin (regardless of his complaint about Grogu wanting to eat his arm, yech). It had been much harder to heal Din Djarin. 

But a lot of things were different and harder with that Mandalorian. When they first met, Din had old, kind of beat up armor. Then he got the new very shiny armor. Neither set was very comfortable, but the old armor seemed softer somehow. Probably from all the damage. 

Din also didn’t have a flight pack when Grogu first met him. That was a problem. He couldn’t just zip up into the air and drop onto the top of the Jawas sand crawler and explain nicely to them why he wanted the parts of his ship back. By the time they met the face Mandos again, Din had a flight pack and he could just fly them wherever they needed to go. That had been very cool. But Din was bad about leaving it around. It reminded Grogu of Master Obi-Wan and his almost magic way of losing cloaks and occasionally light sabers. 

Now, Din had the Darksaber, an old Jedi tool from a long gone Mandalorian who had once been Mand’alor. Some of the Mandos agreed that having the Darksaber made you the boss of them (Mand’alor), but the others said nope. It was a Jedi weapon made of beskar. That violated the Creed in a lot of ways, even if it was more elegant, or nice, or whatever. 

But he didn’t really know how to use it. But then why would he? He wasn’t a Jedi. Grogu had been studying the ways of the Jedi when he was a youngling and he knew that lightsabers, whatever you called them, had to feel connected to the person who used them. The Kyber crystals were fussy and didn’t like to activate for just anyone. It wasn’t like using a flashlight.  

Grogu wondered if the other Mandos understood that? Any of the other Mandos. Only someone who knew a Jedi well was going to have learned about that sort of thing. And if there was one thing Grogu had learned, Mandalorians and Jedi did not get along. He and Din Djarin were the exception that proved the rule.

He liked his dad a lot, no matter how different or similar he was to the other Mandos, he was special to Grogu. After all, Din Djarin had shown him his face and that had been another turning point for them. That’s how Grogu knew they were really a family of two as well as a clan of two.

[bo-katan]

Episode 1 - THE DUEL

I really really like the style! It feels like you can see every single frame but not in a bad way. You can tell that it is harking back to classic samurai films.

I need to know what time period this episode takes place. Is it happening post-empire around the same time as Mando s1? Bc they do state that these storm troopers are trying to control "the last remnants of the wars" so I'm assuming this is post-Return of the Jedi.

Mans really said "imma put my soup to cook while I deal with this, brb" and left to fight a Sith that had an umbrella of lightsabers 💀💀 he's raw as hell! Especially when he stopped her lightsaber using the force! And the way he faked her out in the end... he a real baddie 🤭

He gives me vibes of "force user that doesn't want to be involved in the Sith v jedi bs but still has a moral compass that makes him do whatever he deems necessary" and that's why his saber color is red but he's no sith?? Idk I like him.

And the fact that he collects kyber crystals... I wonder if he would ever accidentally purify the crystals, in the same way Ahsoka does, and discover white sabers for himself. It'd be sick. I'd love to see more of his story.

[obiwanwhat]

Nothing Can Ever Be Simple Snippet #6

Got inspired by reading Stone and Sand on AO3 by @sassysnowperson to add some "Luke is crushed by the weight of his destiny and just wants to go off and be his own person" vibes to this au:

Luke spends the next few years wandering around the galaxy, trying to figure out what rebuilding the Jedi Order means in this new world. 

He’s tried so many times to reach out in the Force to Obi-Wan, or Yoda or his father, but all without feeling a flicker of response. He thinks this time they’re really gone - that whatever was holding them here ended after the celebration at Endor.  He can’t tell whether he’s grateful or furious.  It’s better, he thinks, to have a fresh start.  Whether they were right or wrong, the old ways of the Jedi Order simply aren’t realistic anymore, not with how the galaxy has changed over the past two decades.  He doesn’t need ghosts hovering over his shoulder telling him he’s wrong for breaking thousands of years of tradition when he knows it’s the only way forward. But on the other hand..there’s so much he just doesn’t know, both about the ways of the Force and his own family history.  As far as he knows, the truth of why Anakin Skywalker Fell died with him.  How can he avoid the flaws of the old Jedi Order when he doesn’t even fully understand the events that led to its destruction?

It’s times like this when he wishes Ahsoka would have agreed to help him.  He hears stories about her not infrequently - she’s out in the field, fighting Imperial remnants, helping the downtrodden.  He resents her for it, sometimes. He tries not to, but he does.  On the days when his destiny weighs heavy on him, when he can feel himself bending under the weight of the galaxy’s expectations of him, he thinks longingly of going off on his own and fighting ex-stormtroopers, or freeing slaves.  He’s not his own person anymore, not fully - the weight of a thousand generations of Jedi and of every untrained and unguided Force-Sensitive in the galaxy rests squarely on his shoulders.  He wonders, sometimes, how Ahsoka doesn’t feel the weight on her own shoulders, Jedi-trained as she is.  His duty is so clearly laid out in front of him that sometimes he feels like he can actually see it - shouldn’t she feel the same way, as (as far as he can tell) the last true Jedi-trained knight?  He knows it’s not how she sees herself, but it’s still what she is. 

Maybe it’s just that some days he desperately wishes for someone to share the burden with.  Having any other person to talk to and make decisions with would have helped, but to have Ahsoka…there’s so much knowledge she has that he needs.  She was trained from infancy by the Jedi Order, raised by them - she understands what it means to be a Jedi better than anyone alive.  If she’d agreed to come with him, he wouldn’t be racing around the galaxy chasing after scraps of old Jedi texts and records of kyber crystal locations.  He wouldn’t be so paralyzed with indecision, agonizing over every miniscule step to make sure it’s the right path to go down.  If she would only-

Every time he begins to spiral down these thoughts too far, he does his best to catch himself and redirect his energy to more useful endeavors.  Ahsoka’s choice is her own, and he can understand why she made it, given everything the Jedi Order had done to her and the things she’d gone though since then.  He can’t truly hold it against her that she’s walking her own path.  

It’s just hard not to think about how much better things could be if she’d chosen his path.

[gffa]

Last time I went about five months between doing a set of STAR WARS fic recs, this time it’s only been three months! Hurrah! It helps that, as always, this fandom puts out an incredible amount of excellent fic, so I feel like I’m never hurting for fics I want to yell about and shove at people, which is something I continue to appreciate as it often feels like so much of the world is such a huge tire fire. It helps to be able to find fics to retreat into, to have fun with, to express joy and creativity with, and so many of the authors in this fandom are just so good at this! To the point that these sets sometimes take awhile because there are always more fics I want to add, until the post starts threatening to be overly long instead of a decent length–in my defense, no seriously, you guys are just too good! Also, I forced myself to stop at 69 fic recs, because yes I do think it’s funny. (Nice.) STAR WARS FIC RECS: PREQUELS RECS: ✦ a comedy in four acts by jesuisdeux, obi-wan & dooku & yoda & qui-gon & cast, time travel, 4k ��  This was what time-travel is: staring at the dark sockets of skulls everywhere your gaze lands on. Being haunted by ghosts long gone. The apprehension of the slow yet sure approach of the inevitable which is sending chills down your spine. ✦ No Rest for the Weary by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & jedi & ocs, 61k    Needing a break from life at the Jedi Temple, Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, visit a Jedi AgriCorps settlement on the Midrim planet of Helia. There they encounter new friends, new enemies and have new adventures, all while attempting to navigate their sometimes turbulent relationship as Master and Padawan. ✦ Stars of Tatooine by Be_Right_Back, ahsoka & kanan & mace & rex & obi-wan & cast, 10.5k    After the end of the world, Ahsoka more or less kidnaps a child, has to air some old grievances, and tries to find whatever peace the universe can still offer. All paths in the Force lead home, eventually. ✦ Festival of Light by dendral, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & rex & cast, 8.7k    During his first year at the Jedi Temple, Anakin learns that even the Jedi celebrate holidays. ✦ the master, the padawan, the Force by skatzaa, depa & caleb, 1.4k    Caleb expects things to be different after Master Depa takes him as her padawan, but really, it feels like nothing really changes. ✦ desecrate my lungs by loosingletters, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & padme & cast, 16k wip    Time-travel fix-it in which Mustafar haunts Anakin decades after it happened and years before it would. ✦ Grace by dismantlingsummer, obi-wan & anakin, 2.3k    Shortly after Mustafar, Anakin realizes what he has done. He finds Obi-Wan to beg for death. ✦ Fifth Migration by wrennette, yoda & mace & obi-wan & ki-adi & yarael & coleman & plo & palpatine & cast, 2k    How about an AU where the Sith’s Grand Plan accounted for everything -everything that is, except the fact that the Jedi temple is actually an very ancient spacecraft and the second word got to the Jedi about there being clones on Kamino, all Jedi are called back inside and they take off immediately? Just imagine the dear chancellor’s face… ✦ fill pages with scribbled ink by magneticwave, obi-wan/padme & sabe & mace & quinlan & cast, 9.8k    A year after the Invasion of Naboo, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi is invited by Queen Amidala to return to Naboo and participate in a rite known as the Night of Fireflies. Things kind of snowball from there. ✦ Mind Your Words by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin, spanking, 7k    Obi-Wan reminds Anakin that there are consequences for careless behavior for young Jedi on missions. ✦ (you taught me) the courage of stars by grumpyhedgehogs, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & cast, 5.1k wip    Ahsoka Tano flees after a warrant for her arrest is issued, but not before receiving aid from an unexpected ally. (Ahsoka proceeds to go on a road trip filled with a bunch of strangers who all say the same thing: Obi-Wan Kenobi is much more than he has ever appeared to be.) ✦ they faked it (guess everything’s complicated) by katierosefun, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, 4.5k    Ahsoka temporarily loses memories of the events of Obi-Wan’s fake death. To help with the healing process, Anakin and Obi-Wan have to pretend that they’re okay. ✦ programed to dream by ghostwriterofthemachine, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, body horror, 1.3k    The spaceship Comet-rider is the fastest, most efficient vessel in the galaxy, and is crewed by Separatist-funded pirates. Anakin Skywalker is missing. Unfortunately, these two things are connected. ✦ Unpleasant Truths by hellowkatey, obi-wan & anakin, 2.1k    Obi-Wan and Anakin are stuck in a room with one another while waiting for truth serum to wear off. ✦ moment’s silence by skatzaa, obi-wan & owen & beru & luke & leia (pre-obi-wan/beru-owen), 2k    Owen had long since resigned himself to trouble, whenever Beru got that particularly stubborn set to her jaw. ✦ hold gently and let go by shatou, obi-wan & anakin (pre-slash?), 1.7k    A troubled Anakin comes to Obi-Wan to discuss attachments. ✦ sun child by Ro29, obi-wan & anakin, 2.1k    (or; sometimes being so tied to the Force causes problems, Obi-Wan helps his Padawan as best he can) ✦ A Dinner Out by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & cast, 1.6k    Obi-Wan can’t get his young Padawan to eat much, so he tries something new. But trying something different has unintended consequences. ✦ Shades in the Desert by loosingletters, obi-wan & anakin & luke & owen/beru, 10.8k    Not even from a certain point of view did Darth Vader kill Anakin Skywalker. He wished he did, but the specter of the Jedi’s light escaped before he could finalize his fall to the dark. Meanwhile, Anakin is raising his son on Tatooine. ✦ somewhere along in the bitterness by CallToMuster, obi-wan & anakin, major character death, 3.8k    It was probably the twelfth day floating alone in space that Obi-Wan and Anakin realized no one was coming for them. ✦ Songs for Little Jedi by soft_but_gremlin, mace & younglings, ~1k    The initiates are having nightmares, so Mace sings a lullaby to comfort them. ✦ atmosphere level by softredscrunchie, obi-wan/satine & qui-gon, 1k    As a joke, Satine tells Obi-Wan she thinks Mandalore is flat. He doesn’t take it well. ✦ on sith holocrons and misunderstandings by billowypants, obi-wan & anakin & mace & yoda & cast, de-aged!obi-wan, 7.2k    or, de-aged!Obi-Wan has the same Force bonds as adult Obi-Wan, and he does not react well. ✦ Perseverance & Resilience by loosingletters, obi-wan & anakin, 1.1k    In the aftermath of Naboo, Obi-Wan realizes he needs strength to protect his new Padawan. Growing up, Anakin needs peace. ✦ A Delicate Balance by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & yoda & jedi, spanking, 9.6k    As Anakin’s skills grow, so too does his penchant for getting into trouble. After a training mishap, Obi-Wan struggles with his role as Anakin’s master. ✦ mirror, mirror by CallToMuster, obi-wan & anakin, 5.4k    Obi-Wan has been rescued by Anakin after being rather embarrassingly kidnapped on the remote planet of Ilnuria during his investigation of rumored kyber crystals deep beneath the planet’s surface. …But is all as it seems? ✦ Mace Windu Appreciation Week by Redminibike1, mace & obi-wan & anakin & ponds & cody & jedi & cast, 12.5k    Set of unconnected ficlets for Mace Windu Appreciation Week, because he deserves it :) ✦ begin again as a quiet thought by skatzaa, obi-wan/quinlan, d/s, ~1k    Cool, smooth leather touched his jaw—gloves. Because of course Obi-Wan had thought of that as well. ✦ Drunken Lullabies by Siri_Kenobi12, obi-wan & anakin & siri & quinlan & aayla & garen & bant & ferus, 6.5k    “Do I really have to go to this thing?” Fourteen year old Anakin Skywalker dramatically sighed. “It’s sooo boring!” ✦ heaven knows how I love you by the_13th_battalion, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, 1.2k    Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka are stranded on an unfamiliar planet overnight. They spend their time exploring the community- and maybe they get a little closer to each other along the way. ✦ A Reckless Padawan by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, spanking, 3.9k    When Ahsoka upsets Anakin with an act of reckless disobedience, it falls to her grandmaster to help her see the error of her ways. OBI-WAN/ANAKIN RECS: ✦ Too Hot by secretsolarsystem, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 4.8k    Too Hot: A game where two players kiss without stopping and without touching each other. If one player touches the other, that player loses. The winner gets to do whatever they want to the loser. ✦ Nostos by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin & padme, NSFW, 17k    Or, how Obi-Wan and Anakin discover that there are many ways to come home. ✦ to touch the light, darkest by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 1.9k    Obi-Wan begins to fuck Vader back to the light ✦ encode by loosingletters, obi-wan/anakin & padme & handmaidens & cast, 26.3k wip    Instead of being accepted into the Jedi Order at the age of 9, Anakin Skywalker became a ward of Naboo. ✦ Hunting the Homeward Light by GreenQueenofClubs, obi-wan/anakin & mace & ahsoka & shmi & padme & cast, 31.9k wip    When Anakin Skywalker was nine, he left his whole life and mother behind to follow Qui-Gon Jinn to Coruscant and the Jedi Temple. When Anakin Skywalker was twelve, he left his whole life and Master behind to follow Mace Windu to the Outer Rim and away from the Jedi Order. When Anakin Skywalker was twenty… ✦ use my body to break your fall by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & cast, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, 44.7k wip    Obi-Wan Kenobi is too good at being a Sith Lord general of the Separatist army. The Jedi Council approaches Anakin with an offer he can’t refuse. These things are, actually, related. ✦ Over and Over by obiwanobi, obi-wan/anakin, 1.4k    “I love you,” he blurts out, loud and impossible to miss. Obi-Wan blinks once, twice. And freezes. The first time Anakin tells him is a mortifying experience. ✦ Exceptions by rinverse, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & mace & quinlan & cast, NSFW, modern au, 23.4k    Young and brilliant, Anakin is the mind behind JEDI Tech’s latest innovation. Obi-Wan is the company’s perfectly composed Director of PR & Marketing. And last night, they were just two strangers at a bar, looking for something quick and easy. But life had other plans when it crossed their paths again the very next day. ✦ Here There Be Dragons by Ghost_Owl, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka, 10.1k    Anakin knows why he can’t shift into his animal form like every other Jedi. It’s because he doesn’t want to, it’s because he’s had a vision of what he would become, and he doesn’t want it. ✦ Waiting in a Sea of Stars by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan/anakin, ~1k    Stranded in deep space, Obi-Wan and Anakin wait for rescue. ✦ Tristitia by JSwander, obi-wan/anakin & cast, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, 5k    An alternate timeline where Palpatine focuses his attentions on Obi-Wan Kenobi instead of Anakin Skywalker after the attack on Naboo. ✦ Prompted - Chapter 11: Communication, What Communication? by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, mobster au, 7k    a 7k obikin PWP that is somehow a prompt mashup of a mobster au, an accidental sugar daddy au, with a soupçon of an anakin never left tatooine au, and a pinch of qui-gon was anakin’s dad au ✦ who a person truly is cannot be seen with the eye by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, d/s, spanking, 3.6k    Anakin purposely avoids doing what Obi-Wan tells him to do. ✦ Prompted - Chapter 12: Potidaea, 432BC, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, historical au, 4.3k    Here is a short smutty scene inspired by all those classics asks, Alcibiades praising Socrates in Plato’s Symposium, and this vase c.490-480 B.C. depicting standing, face-to-face intercrural intercourse between a bearded man and a youth, which as far as we can tell was the most common and accepted position for it in Ancient Greece. ✦ Prompted - Chapter 13: Minikin and Tiny-Wan by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 5.4k    Happy May the Fourth! In honor of this happy day, I have written the fluffiest, crackiest, vanilla-flavored smut imaginable. Based on long discussions on discord with tomicaleto about her adorable Tiny AU. ✦ to hold until brightness by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 1.4k    Obi-Wan feared that it drew out the darkest in him, to bring Vader to these flashes of light, but it was a trade he would make again and again without hesitation. ✦ May Be Found, If Sought by ghostwriterofthemachine, obi-wan/anakin & mace & quinlan, magical academy au, 2.3k    In which Quinlan, Mace, and Obi-Wan teach Non-Traditional Magical Philosophy in an institution rampant with academic snobbery and discrimination, something dark is stirring in the nearby forest, and no one is ever prepared for Anakin Skywalker. A small story about first meetings in magical academia. ✦ infinitely varied by loosingletters, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka, modern au, 2.2k    Also known as Obi-Wan and Anakin teach a tiny program called A.H.S.O.K.A. how to be something more than lines of code via the power of linguistics. ✦ recipe for disaster by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka, modern au, 9.8k    When Ahsoka tells Anakin she doesn’t want to learn piano anymore, Anakin is heartbroken. He doesn’t care about the instrument, obviously, but he’s practically in love with her teacher. Obi-Wan offers up a solution to their impending separation, and it’s not dating like any normal person would suggest. Instead, he’s gonna teach Anakin how to cook. Except Anakin’s a pretty well-known chef, and Obi-Wan is absolutely awful in the kitchen. ✦ Pretty Kitty by GayCheerios, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 2.2k    “Master, you always take such good care of me,” Anakin says, a little chirp coming after his sentence, as his thumb rests on Anakin’s plump bottom lip. ✦ As One, Into Eternity by Pseudonymoose, obi-wan/anakin, force ghosts, 3.1k    Death comes, but the man who was, and is, and will be Anakin Skywalker is not gone. And in the Force, he will never be alone again. ✦ does he make you laugh? by y0u_idjits, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & cast, fusion fic, 3.6k    “Tell me it’s not about screwing the guy who’s screwing your husband.” ✦ Rotten Work by secretsolarsystem, obi-wan/anakin, 2.8k    Obi-Wan: I’ll take care of you. Anakin, with bloodshot eyes and a broken back from hours of terrible posture: It’s rotten work. Obi-Wan, who needs to bathe this man for his own sanity and health: Not to me. Not if it’s you. ✦ afterimages by shatou, obi-wan/anakin, 1.3k    Mustafar is nothing but a bad dream. ✦ understanding is honoring the truth beneath the surface by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, d/s, 7.3k    Anakin asks Obi-Wan to take control. ✦ The strongest stars… by Tomicaleto, obi-wan/anakin & beru & cast, NSFW, 7.4k    The war’s end seems to be close, with everyone looking forward to it. And when Anakin is doubting himself the most, an unexpected visit arrives at the Temple. ✦ home has a heartbeat by izazov, obi-wan/anakin, 5.6k    Or: Anakin and Obi-Wan are together, but there are still some things left unsaid between them. ✦ turn back now (i’m haunted) by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & padme & quinlan & ahsoka & cast, modern au, ghosts au, 25k wip    Anakin Skywalker’s house is haunted. Luckily for him, Padmé knows a ghost hunter. Unluckily for him, it’s the hottest, most english-professor ghost hunter he’s ever seen. And extremely unluckily for him, he’s starting to get the feeling he understands maybe ten percent of what’s actually going on here, not to mention what’s at stake. ✦ game plan by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 11.2k    Or, Vader keeps capturing Obi-Wan during the Wars. Obi-Wan keeps escaping. It’s kind of a thing. ✦ Provocation by ToolMusicLover, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 4.9k    Or: Obi-Wan and Anakin attempt to navigate their complicated relationship with barbed words and wilful ignorance. It wasn’t going well. ✦ Languages by Crowgirl, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 6.5k    So Anakin pulls out a map and makes a list. REBELS RECS: ✦ The Scent of You by ambiguously, kanan/hera & cast, a smidge of nsfw, 2.9k    Everything changes after Malachor, and Kanan has trouble finding his balance. ✦ Heard It in a Love Song (Can’t Be Wrong) by ambiguously, zeb/kallus, 2.7k    Kallus can’t quite figure out what makes Zeb tick, but he keeps trying. ORIGINAL TRILOGY/MANDALORIAN RECS: ✦ A Discussion of Choices by Peppermint_Shamrock, luke & mace, 2k    Mace Windu has traveled the galaxy since the fall of the Republic, keeping out of the Empire’s sight and teaching where he can. Upon the request of a ghost of an old friend, Mace finds himself instructing Luke Skywalker, who is still reeling from the truth of Vader’s identity. ✦ staring down the barrel of the hot sun by magneticwave, luke/din & obi-wan & grogu & mace & cast, 25.7k    “Gone to a Child of the Watch, the Darksaber has,” Grand Master Yoda announces in his creaky little voice. “Peace, there is not, and yet peace, there must be.” ✦ Released by Peppermint_Shamrock, cody & rex & luke & cast, 6k    Nearly two and a half decades late, Cody’s chip is finally removed. Adjusting to having his mind returned to him after so long takes time, and Cody struggles with questions of his purpose of the past, present, and future. Fortunately, he does not have to struggle alone. ✦ A Tatooine Rainstorm by skatzaa, leia & luke & shmi, 1.7k    Leia meets a ghost. ✦ Dealing with the Darksaber by Peppermint_Shamrock, din & bo-katan & cara, 1.3k    After her recovery, Bo-Katan contacts Din to challenge him for the darksaber. Din is still very much not interested in the whole affair. FULL DETAILS + RECS HERE

[forever-rogue]

Step into the Daylight - Part 12

Summary: Crafting, whispered declarations, and a newcomer lead to some interesting revelations.

A/N: Thank you guys for being so, so patient and still being excited for me to update. Taglists are open, and as always feedback is welcome! xx

Pairing: Din Djarin x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4.5k

Warnings: general s2 spoilers, and canon divergence (hehehe)

SERIES MASTERLIST

MANDALORIAN MASTERLIST

MAIN MASTERLIST

»»————-　♡　————-««

“So I’m going to make that,” you glanced at Cal’s glowing green lightsaber with a furtive point of your hand,  “from this?”

The small Kyber crystal felt pathetic and pointless in your hand as you looked between it and the lightsaber. It seemed like surely the one couldn’t truly come from the other. How was the dinky little crystal going to power up such an advanced weapon?

“Of course,” Cere offered you a kind smile and a warm hand on your back as she ushered you over to the workbench at the back of the Mantis, her ragtag crew’s ship, “all the materials and items you need to craft your own saber are right there. The most important of it all, the key, is the small crystal in your hands. Have faith in it - and yourself -  and you’ll be able to do it.”

“O-on my own?” your eyebrows shot up as she nodded, “how will I know what to do? I’m not dumb...but I don’t see how one equates to the other.”

“You will know,” she insisted, taking a step back and motioning for Cal to join her. Your eyes were wide with worry and concern as you were positive that this was a task you would never be able to complete. Maybe this was all a mad joke, and they were somehow testing you? But then again...surely they couldn’t be. Few things you’d learned about the Jedi and the Force made sense and this was definitely one of them. You were beginning to wonder if anything ever would make sense.

But your instinct, your gut or whatever it was, had gotten you this far. It had kept you, Din, and Grogu safe. Maybe there was something to it after all. Maybe now wasn’t the time to question it. 

“Alright,” you nodded in quiet agreement, “I’ll try my best.”

“We will see you when you’re ready,” with that she turned and left, with Cal close on her heels after he gave you a wave of goodbye. Nodding to yourself you decided that you might as well just try and see where it led you. 

“Okay,” you whispered to yourself as you put the crystal in the center of the bench, “let’s give this a go then.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

It was several frustrating hours before you emerged from the Mantis, dirt and oil on your face, but more importantly, a giant grin. You quickly found yourself surrounded by several pairs of curious, prying eyes. The most important of all were inky black and accompanied by a happy little coo.

"How did you fare, young one?" Cere asked you as you reached behind your back and slowly pulled out what looked like a black metallic tube, covered in intricate golden designs.

"You tell me," without a moment of hesitation or pause, you ignited the saber and displayed the brilliant, glowing golden beam of light. Before anyone could say anything you wielded it and displayed the other end, showing that you had crafted a dual ended saber, "ta da!"

"Golden," Cal mused as he came closer and studied the saber, impressed by your ability to create such an impressive thing on your first try, "I've only seen one other person with such a color…"

"Should I have chosen a-a different one?" your brows knitted in confusion as you disengage the saber and clipped it onto your belt loop, "is there a way to change it?"

"No," he shook his head in amusement, "the Kyber chooses us and the color. It's nothing on your part."

"Oh...well, I'll take it as a good thing then," you cast a look over at Din and Grogu who were both watching your every move intently. You felt your cheeks warm up under his gaze, but a smile still graced your features, "golden...what does it mean?"

"Balance," he answered simply, "the balance between light and dark."

"O-oh," you swallowed thickly as you realized just how much it meant it, "wow."

"Wow is right," Cere game over and gave your shoulder a gentle squeeze, "you've done well. The art of wielding it is another thing. But you will learn, over time. There is no right - or wrong - way to do it. You'll have to find out what feels right to you."

"Thank you," giving her a nod of reverence, an odd feeling washed over you. It was all done now - your journey of finding your crystal and your building of the saber. This is where you parted ways. It was a lonely idea, a scary one at that, but you knew you'd still have Din and Grogu. That was all you really needed - anything else world work out.

Like it always seemed to.

"I believe this is the parting of the ways," she sounded almost disappointed as you inhaled deeply. Although you hadn't known them long, you felt as though there was a deep bond between your small clan and their crew. Like yourself and Grogu, Cal and Cere, and in some ways Merrin, shared a special bond with you. They were probably some of the only people that knew exactly what you were going through; especially the push and pull between light and dark.

“Indeed,” you slowly made your way over to Din, who gave a small nod of acknowledgment as Grogu reached out for you. Gently taking him in your arms, you kissed the top of his fuzzy head before positioning him so he could see everything, just like he pleased, “where will you go?”

“Wherever we’re needed,” Cal seemed as cryptic as his mentor, but you knew that despite trusting you, it was best for their own interests to kept their whereabouts as secret as possible, “I have not doubt that there are plenty of others just like you and I that are out there, and they’re scared and need help. We’re just going to go around and keep finding them, and helping them. So that way they can hone their own powers, just like you.”

“I’m sure they will be more than thankful for your help,” you said as Grogu cooed in agreement, “just like we are. I hope our paths cross again one day, Cal Kestis.”

“As do I,” he held out his hand and you grabbed it, giving it a firm but gentle shake. The energy that flowed between the two of you was enough to prompt a small sound of surprise from your lips; the force really was a strange, but wonderful thing, “until next time.”

“Until next time,” you repeated as you stood back and rejoined Din. A hand went to your side as he led you close to him. And then you realized - “wait! Jele - what about you? Are you going to come with us?”

For the first time since your reappearance, you really noticed the older woman watching you curiously. She offered you a warm smile, much as the others had done before shaking her head lightly, “unfortunately, our time is over, and I’ve found a new calling. I’m going with them, hopefully to use the skills I have remaining for good use. Just like with you. There’s nothing left for me to teach you, young one. Everything else will come to you in time, you will be ready for when it does.”

“Thank you,” tears pricked at the back of your eyes as you nodded in understanding, “for everything.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” she insisted, “everything’s always been within you, everything plays out as it should. Sometimes it just needs a little push in the right direction.”

A playful little grin crossed her features as she glances at you and Din in turn. Your cheeks warmed up at the mere thought of kissing him the previous evening, of finally getting to see him, of the whispered declarations of love, and what it all meant. Clearing your throat, you gazed at your feet awkwardly to hide your warm face, “well, regardless. Thank you. For everything.”

“May the force be with you.”

“And with you.”

The three of you remained there for some time, watching as the others gathered their things and packed up the Mantis to leave. It was strange to watch them leave, it almost felt wrong; they were new friends, fast friends but it felt wrong to see them go so soon. Something told you this wasn’t the last you’d see of them. 

“We should go in,” Din finally said after some time, his voice cracking lightly from how long he had been silent. It wasn’t that he had been worried about you while you were crafting your blade like he had been when you were on your quest for the crystal, but he was...nervous. Din knew you were more than capable of handling yourself, but at the same time he couldn’t help but fret over your safety. He loved you, truly, fully, and completely - he knew that now. Since he’d had the privilege of knowing a life with you, he wasn’t sure he could handle one without you. 

Shivering in response, it was only mere moments before Din had whipped his cape off from his shoulders and placed it around your own. You turned to him with a thankful smile before shaking your head in amusement, “what about you, my love? Now you’re going to be cold.”

“Not terribly if we move inside and warm up the Crest,” he snorted in amusement before moving in the direction of the ship just behind the snowy horizon, “come on, let’s go before we freeze.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

It was warm inside, the forced air was blasting and making the whole ship more comfortable. It really was the only way to combat the freezing chill of Illum. You’d showered and changed into something more warm and comfortable, and once you’d returned to the small living space, you’d found that Din had tucked Gorgu back into his small hammock. You watched the small green little bean fondly for a moment before gently stroking his ears and the top of his head. 

“Hungry?” you stopped at the sound of the voice that reached your ears. It was familiar and known to you, yes, but there was a part of it that was still more or less unknown. Dropping your hand, you turned and found Din watching you, his brown eyes meeting yours, “I-I made some food.”

“Y-yes,” you nodded, swallowing the lump that had welled up in your throat before walking over to him. Din stood there for a moment as you studied him; but then silently, tentatively, you reached up and cradled his face in your hands. He practically keened into your touch as you traced over his features, before leaning closer to him, the tips of your noses lightly brushing, “is this okay?”

"Yes," his voice was gentle as his warm breath fanned across your face, somehow causing you to lean forward and gently brush your lips against his. Din's hands found purchase on your waist as you breathed him in and familiarized with this - the sheer, wonderful act of intimacy, "may I kiss you?"

"Please," you barely whispered the word before he closed the gap and gently pressed his lips against yours. His touch and taste were intoxicating, despite being so simple and pure. It wasn't much, a few mere seconds passed as you both tested the waters to see how it would go. Not that there was any lingering doubt in your mind that you loved him, but it was all still so new and threatened to send you into an overwhelmed headrush all at once.

There was something so saccharine and sacred about kissing him, about knowing he was yours and you were his, that was too much and not enough at once. Your eyes closed as you rested your forehead against his, lips pulling into a small smile.

"What are you thinking?" you asked softly when you found inquisitive brown eyes searching your face for...something.

"I like this," his cheeks flushed slightly as his fingers danced around your waist, "I've never done this before, let someone see me like this, but I just…"

"Feel like this is right?" you finished as he nodded softly, "I don't know what it is either, Din, but I feel it too. I like to think that...there's a reason you found me and saved me that day. I'm glad you did."

"Even though you tried to fight me off?"

"Even though I tried to fight you off!" you pulled back and laughed, that wonderful sound that made Din's insides flutter happily, "I thought for sure you were going to turn me in. I...couldn't trust you or anyone then."

"And now?"

"I trust you with my life," you promised, "you are my home. You and Grogu."

“I’ve never…” Din paused for a long moment before closing his eyes and gently stealing another kiss from you, lingering against your lips. You were so close, but not close enough; part of you wanted to swallow him whole and keep him as yours forever, “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I’ve never loved anyone. Not before…”

“Him?” your voice was soft as you pulled back and cast a fond glance at the sleeping child. Din followed your gaze before training it right back onto you, “I can understand that. I love him too. Have you never...loved another?”

“No,” he admitted, almost shy as he gnawed on his bottom lip, “I’ve had lovers, here and there, but nothing like this. Nothing to where…”

“No one has seen your face,” you concluded as he nodded. Running a hand through his curls, you scratched lightly at his scalp as he choked back a moan at the tender touch, “thank you.”

“For what?”

“Letting me love you,” pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose, you couldn’t help but pull him close, “for letting me see you as you are.”

“You have always seen me,” he acknowledged, “just as I am.”

“As you have me,” you grinned at him, “I haven’t either...I’ve never loved anyone before.”

“Never?” he seemed surprised as you nodded at his surprised expression, “I thought...you’re...everything.”

“Not to most people,” you reminded him, “I never had the opportunity or the luxury to allow myself to relax or be...human. No one, not since I was just a small child, has ever loved me or cared so much about me before. Now I have a family, a real family. I must have done something right in some life to find you, Din.”

Unable to find the right words, Din’s hand found your face this time as he pulled you into him and just held you, watching you like you were the reason for every single glittering star in the sky, “Jeele told me that souls that are bound together will always find each other, no matter the time or distance or how hard it is. I’m glad ours found each other.”

“Din…”

“I love you,” he blurted out as you left a warm rush wash all over you. There was something about how he said - so sweet and gentle that left you breathless and in a dreamlike state. Part of you was convinced that none of this was real, surely you couldn’t be deserving of this much love or delicate intimacy. But the touch and feel of his skin on yours, the ecstasy of his kiss was enough to remind you that this was all real. He really did love you.

“I love you,” it was a promise, a tender declaration that set his soul at ease, knowing that you felt the same way about him. How, no matter how crazy or convoluted it seemed, your souls were bonded and had managed to find each other in this lifetime. Brushing your fingers over his patchy scruff, you grinned, but were quickly cut off from saying anything else by rapturous growl of your stomach, “oh.”

“I knew you were hungry,” he chuckled warmly, and Maker, you could easily get used to a lifetime of this, “come on, my little Jedi, the food’s almost ready.”

“Din-” you held onto his hand to stop him from walking away, “I have something to tell you.”

“What is it, Mesh’la?”

“Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum,” you tried your best not to butcher his language too much. Judging by the incredulous look on his face, he didn’t mind a bit, “I-I told you I had time to study a lot...my Mando’a is far from good, and you said it to me last night. I hope it’s not too horrible.”

“Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum,” he repeated back to you slowly, “you’ve got it down perfectly.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

“You’re thinking much too loudly,” you mouthed at him between bites of bread. Din’s eyebrow raised in amusement as he looked and waited for you to repeat yourself. Stuffing the bite down, you offered up a sheepish smile, “what’s on your mind, Din?”

“I was just thinking about...Tython,” he admitted, “I know we should go, we have to go, but I’m...I don’t know if I can part with him. Not yet.”

“You don’t…” you set your fork down and let out a heavy sigh. You knew, you both knew exactly what it meant. A part of you still held onto hope that it wouldn’t come to that. You didn't know a life without your small green bean anymore, and honestly, you weren’t sure if you could face a life without him, “nothing is set in stone, Din. Things could always...change. And if not...you will have fulfilled the duty you were tasked with.”

“It must be selfish of me to want to keep him,” he trained his gaze away from you, but you could see that his eyes were glistening with some tears, “he’s not just some thing. He’s….”

“Family,” you finished, “aliit.”

“Yes,” he agreed, gently resting his hand on top of yours, giving it a gentle squeeze, “just like you.”

“Whatever happens, Din,” you whispered, “this won’t be the last time you see him. I promise you that. You are his father - nothing is going to change that. He knows that, and so do you.”

“What do you think will happen when we go?” he opened and closed his mouth a few times as he blinked back tears.

“I don’t know,” you whispered, “I don’t know if there is a way to know. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. I do promise you one thing though.”

“What’s that?” 

“I love you - and I will always love you,” you took his hand and brought it to your lips before pressing a kiss to his palm. “And so will he. I promise you that.”

“I love you both too,” he said after a few moments of peaceful silence, “we should get some rest...we’ll be on Tython soon enough anI want to make sure we’re rested and prepared for...anything.”

“Yes,” you concurred, “you’re right, of course. Come one then, my love, we’ll rest for now.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

“So...this is it?” Din sounded skeptical as he looked around the rocky ruins, with Grogu clutched tightly in his arms. You couldn’t help but snort at him in amusement; Grogu seemed to be enjoying himself anyway, “is it...does this look Jedi to you?”

He gently set Grogu down and he toddled over to the small stone pillar in the middle of the ruins. The little one cooed excitedly as he looked between the two of you; Din, studious and bewildered as he looked around, and you, doubled over as you laughed and tried to catch your breath. 

“How does something look Jedi?” you finally choked out as you tried to stop your giggles, “it doesn’t have to look Jedi. It’s about the energy.”

“Okay...well, does it feel Jedi?” he was at your side, gently nudging your ribs as you laughed at him again, “you’re being cruel!”

“I’m sorry,” you were but it was still amusing nonetheless, “it’s just...the energies. Can you feel them? Can you feel the force?”

“I don’t feel anything,” he shrugged lightly, “should I be?”

“I think so...Cal was right. The energies here are very strong,” you closed your eyes for a moment as Din huffed, “it’s alright...Jeele says everyone’s in tune with the force to a certain extent, and that it can be strengthened through practice. I-I’ll teach you, my love. That way you can tell if something looks Jedi.”

“Very funny,” he sighed, his signature trademark sigh as you took his hand and pointed towards Grogu. He was surrounded by a small swarm of bright blue butterflies, giggling as he tried to chase after them, “I didn’t know it was possible to have so much love in your heart for someone else. But now I know...because of the two of you.”

“Come on,” you took his hand in yours, “let’s look around to see if we can find anything. Grogu - you stay here, we’ll be right back.”

You hesitated for a moment before deciding it was okay, and trailed alongside Din. It wasn’t a huge planet, but it was beautiful in its own way, with animals running around. No humans or other creatures seemed to inhabit the place. It was quiet here...peaceful even. 

“I like this,” you said to Din as you walked through a small field of wildflowers, “it’s quiet and calm and you can just...be. I wouldn’t mind living someplace like this one day.”

“Without any intelligent life nearby and completely cut off from everything else?” he teased as you groaned at him. 

"No, shiny dummy," you plopped down into the tall, soft grass. You let out a long sigh and put your hands behind your behind, closing your eyes, "somewhere nice and quiet and with just us. Peaceful. What do you think, Din? Ever thought about the future…?"

With me?

After a few beats of silence, you heard the grass next to you crunch softly before you felt his body lie next to yours. His hand reached out and sought yours; you wasted no time in shifting your arm and letting him take your hand. He laced your fingers together before resting them on his chest.

"Yes," he whispered quietly, "I've thought about it a lot."

"Oh."

"I never thought I would ever want to settle down and not...do what I do," he confessed as his thumb stroked the back of your hand, "I never thought there would be more than what I had. But then I found Grogu and...you. I came to realize that I did want more, I want more than what I had."

"A future…"

"With him and you," you were positive that you could hear him smile at his confession. This was easy and hard at the same time - neither of you had ever imagined there would be this, "I don't want this life, the constant fighting and fleeing anymore. I want...a home, a real home."

"Me too," it was a smitten, gentle declaration, "I still want to help people somehow too."

"We will," he promised, "we'll have it all, Mesh'la."

Unable to stop yourself, you rolled onto your side and on top of him. A small grunt of surprise escaped his lips as his arms went to your waist and your hands went to his helmet.

"May I?" it was a gentle request, but his hands joined yours and the helmet was pushed up to expose his lips, and you wasted no time in kissing him.

You were loath to break away from him, but you were soon left breathless and flushed, about to say something when a loud, booming sound met your ears. The two of you broke away and looked to the ruins where you'd left Grogu. At the giant beam of bright blue light emitting from the center of it, you gasped loudly.

Scrambling to your feet, you held your hand out to help him up, before the two of you ran over to see what the commotion was.

"Kid!"

"Grogu!"

When you reached the ruins, you found nothing around except for Grogu sitting and meditating in the center.

"What's happening?" Din asked in confusion as you realized what was happening.

"Its okay," you put a hand on his arm, "he's reaching out. To see if any other Jedi are listening. There's nothing we can do...we just...wait."

"Okay," he sighed lightly as he let you take his hand and the two of you sat down. It was better than pacing around and worrying; at least this way you could keep an eye on him.

»»————-　♡　————-««

After a while, there was suddenly silence. And after the loud noise of the beam, it was almost deafening. Grogu waddled over to the two of you, smiling as he reached for Din. Ever the doting father, he easily scooped him up and clutched him to his chest.

"Did you do it, buddy?" he asked quietly as Grogu cooed happily. Reaching over and you stroked his ears, smiling at the small green bean.

"He called out for someone," you confirmed, "we just have to wait now."

"How long?"

"As long as it takes," you leaned back against him and the three of you heaved a collective sigh, "I guess we can relax."

Din nodded in agreement as you suddenly realized just how tired you were. Despite your best efforts, your eyes started to close and before you could fight it, you were dozing off. Din, however, was wide awake and kept his keen eyes open and sweeping the horizon as you and Grogu snoozed.

Even though he thought he was doing a thorough job, the Mandalorian missed one big thing. He almost jumped when a long, thin shadow loomed over him. In his panic, his hand went to the blaster at his side and he prepared to draw it.

"There's no need for that," it was a man's voice that reached his ears as Din looked up, "if I wanted to hurt you, you’d already be dead.”

"Who are you? Are you...the Jedi?"

"I’m Ezra. Ezra Bridger."

»»————-　♡　————-««

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[amiedala]

SOMETHING MORE (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 22: I'll Come Back for You RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!) WARNINGS: violence, sex, the usual, as always tell me if you need anything else tagged!! SUMMARY: “No,” you cry again, but this time you go limp. You’re crying now, for real. The planet is crushing you. Or maybe the air. Or maybe it’s just your own broken heart, suffocating itself against your ribs.

“Nova,” Din whispers again, “Cyar'ika, you have to hide. You have to stay out of reach of Gideon, which means you have to stay out of reach of me. Hey. Hey. Listen to me.” You try to find your center of gravity, but you can’t. You tumble to the ground, tears hurtling down your cheeks. Din follows you, clinging to you all the way down. “You just need to stay away long enough for me to defeat Gideon, kill him, and get the Darksaber back to Bo-Katan. Once he’s dead, once this is over, I’ll come back for you. Do you understand me?” AUTHOR’S NOTE: i am just truly so sorry for this. i would say the usual "happy Something More Saturday!!!!!!!!!" but i broke my own heart with this one. angst lovers, this one is for you, fluff lovers (me included) i promise it's just getting worse before it gets SO much better, and that i have a very sold (and fast) plan to fix it. more notes at the end. i love you :(

*

In and out, the lightsabers pulse. It doesn’t just flicker and hum with the glow of a kyber crystal, Ahsoka’s blades themselves run in radiating beams of light. It might just be the atmosphere on Corvus, the way that the fog messes with the brightness, but they look infinitely more real than you remembered the one back on Coruscant looking. When you held that one in your hand, it felt like a weapon. Hers feel like a lifeforce, equally as strong and as radiant as the other.

Ahsoka’s demeanor is just as ebullient, even though it’s clear she’s just as determined as she is kind. She’s tall in stature, purposeful with the way she walks. She seems to know the planet inside and out, although you’re not quite sure if that comes from lived experience or Force intuition. Every step she takes is intentional. You’ve tried to muster up the courage to ask her questions, to understand how the Force works through her, but every time you do, something else makes it sink back down into obscurity.

All three of you are in awe of her. Din’s quiet is usually just as purposeful, but here, you can tell it’s because he’s trusting, and that he knows she’s the one to default to. His visor tracks her footprints against the dirt of Corvus. The baby is currently in your arms, ears perked up every time Ahsoka speaks or moves in a certain way. You’re just openly staring. You know you’re probably being rude, or at the very least making her uncomfortable, but you can’t help yourself. This is the closest you’ve ever been to a Jedi before, and you can feel the energy radiating off of her. It’s like the baby’s, only fine-tuned and amplified. That sort of mind-meld connection you have with him, all of that radio frequency is sharing one, unified thought—I love her.

The three of you follow her, deep into the foggy forest, and you can feel Din’s eyes lock onto you when you’re stepping over the roots, watching Ahsoka’s footfalls. He holds up a gloved hand to help you over the large and mossy ones, but other than that, you just track her movements, a strange, bound triumvirate. When you finally reach the hill that feels like her temporary home, you sit yourself down on a low rock, cracking all the ache out of your neck, heart hammering, trying to figure out what comes next.

It doesn’t. Not for a long while, at least. Din starts to fill the silence once, then twice, then three times, but Ahsoka just looks serene and quiet, gaze intense enough to stop anything, and his voice falters off somewhere inside the modulator. Her eyes are locked on the baby’s, all that blue counteracting his giant ones. You see the way his facial expressions move, how his nose twitches, and it’s like you’re remembering a fragment of a memory. They seem to be communicating in another language, or some frequency you can’t quite seem to tap into. The way that you and the baby have been talking, somehow, you know it’s different. This is a practiced act, something wizened and older than you are.

You exchange looks with Din every once in a while, just trying to stay quiet and not interrupt whatever Ahsoka and the baby are doing, but everything in you is a complete live wire. You can feel his gaze on you, just as sparking, just as bright. Everything feels huge and colossal in a way it didn’t before, like you can feel all these moments in time through the blips of your visions starting to lace themselves together into something tangible. Even in the fog, even with the residual sounds of the town you know is nearby, you can feel how loudly the energy is pulsing. Something in you tells you Din feels it, too, even without his own tether to the Force.

Ahsoka is serene. She’s tall and athletic, lean muscles that bulge whenever she flexes. Her lips are always pursed together, and her skin is somehow even more orange and beautiful in the foggy, low light. She’s clearly been from one end of the galaxy to the next, seen wars you’ve only heard about. Her sabers are slightly different shapes. You notice them whenever they catch reflection through the trees.

For hours, it feels like, you’ve been sat here. You slowly slide off the mossy rock you’re perched on, trying to stretch your legs out, shake the stiffness off them. Your new pants are getting dirty, which is a shame considering the hassle you and Din went through to get them, but you happily spread out on the ground, relieving the aching pressure as quietly as you can. He sits, finally, after realizing this whole interaction might take some time. He tries again to talk to her, and when Ahsoka just tilts her head to gaze deeper into the baby’s eyes, he gives up.

You can feel the sigh through the modulator from here. It’s become less about sound, now, and just the recognition that he’s sighing. Even though it’s long and heavy, you know how much of a relief it must be for the three of you to finally be here, to meet a Jedi who can train the baby. It’s the thing he’s been tasked to do for as long as you’ve known him, and after so many close calls with Gideon and the residual death that follows him around, you can feel the pressure radiating in waves off Din’s back. Before, the three of you were outnumbered and outgunned. But now, with Ahsoka? Now, you’ve got a fighting chance. One that might give you the opportunity to strike fast instead of running, dodging, and hiding.

Din pokes at your leg. You look up at him, squinting, smile filling up your whole face. Slowly, he slides down to the forest floor beside you, and you rest your head in the crook of his shoulder, just long enough to be intentional, and he leans into your touch. You don’t want to be loud, don’t want to do anything to startle Din or the baby or Ahsoka, but then Din’s pinky cinches yours at the knuckle, and you sigh happily. Even with the noises echoing from the town in unrest, even with your heart still racing from all the scrapes with Gideon and his henchmen on the last few planets, there’s something warm and bright here in this little nook in the woods. The light is low in the sky before you hear anything from Ahsoka and the baby, and you curl your knees into your chest, trying to quiet the grumble of your stomach.

“How long has it been?” you murmur, quiet enough that you thought Din would be lucky to catch it, even sitting up right against you, but then Ahsoka is the one to answer.

“Long enough,” she says, and you feel the rush of blood to your cheeks. “We had a lot to talk about.”

“Talk?” Din asks, silently making his way to his feet. “What did you—speak about?”

“Everything,” Ahsoka answers, voice still smooth and even. “He’s been looking for me for a long time.”

You glance back and forth between her and the baby. “D—did he know you before?”

She tilts her orange head at you, and you feel your breath catch in your chest. “No,” Ahsoka confirms, “but he’s been looking for a Jedi for some time now. Grogu seems to have found a family instead.”

Your eyebrows furrow.

“Grogu?” Din repeats, head tilted, stepping forward. “Is that—?”

“His name,” Ahsoka answers, nodding. The baby—Grogu—coos from where he’s sitting, his big green ears perked up and attentive. He doesn’t really grin, just coos happily at you, but you see his small mouth break into a smile. You can feel his energy, how calm he is, how at peace he must be now that all three of you have your true names, your family unit together and truly whole. You quietly kneel down in front of where he’s sitting, and he grabs a hand at your necklace, swinging out against your squat and catching the low light. You let him thumb over the Rebel insignia, spending a few extra seconds pressing the pad of his finger into the star you carved on the back.

“Is that—” Ahsoka steps forward, and you turn your head to try and face her. She’s tall, determined, and when she squats right down beside you, she’s considerably larger, too. You stammer, realizing how close she is, how she’s a Jedi in front of you, someone who can feel the world in the same way that you can. It’s deafening, the rush of it. “It is. Are you a Rebel?”

Your breath gets caught in your throat. “I was,” you tell her, truthfully, “most of my life.”

She looks at you with pain in her eyes. It cuts through, sharper and brighter than the rest of her. It’s an odd look against her easy warmth, something deeper and striking than you’ve seen on her so far, but you can feel it. She is, too, even if she isn’t fully part of the Alliance. You have shared grief, and hers goes deeper than yours can even name.

Slowly, she stands back up from where she’s beside you, intense eyes locked back on Din. “You saved him,” she asks, but it doesn’t sound much like a question.

He nods. “Once upon a time,” Din confirms. “Truthfully, though, the kid—and Nova—save me more than I do them.”

Ahsoka turns, looking back at you. Quietly, you push off the ground. You’re clumsy, and there’s an ache in the middle of your thighs from where you and Din fucked on the floor last night, but when you’re finally standing, you nod against Ahsoka’s unasked question.

“I’m Force sensitive,” you whisper. You haven’t really ever said that out loud before, how heavy and residual the fact feels under your tongue. You nervously tuck a fistful of loos hair behind your ear, eyes oscillating between Din and Ahsoka. “I—is that a problem?”

Neither of them answer. You feel stupid. You know it’s a problem, that with the energy radiating through both you and the baby, you’re both vulnerable and very easy targets for a whole lot of evil. You know it lives, seeping and hungry, an insidious itch under your skin. You know how much danger the three of you have been in lately, how it plagues Din, how it keeps him restless.

“It’s going to make you accessible,” Ahsoka says slowly, her eyes flickering over to Din, just for a second, but long enough for you to gauge the meaningful look she gives him. “I could tell that Gideon—and the remnants of the Empire as a whole—want Grogu. They’re after him, and mainly him, so that they can experiment on him and take samples of his blood and cells. He understands that.”

You swallow noisily. In the distance, you can hear the fighting echoing from the neighboring city get louder, and, unconsciously, you take a step closer to Din.

“You,” Ahsoka continues, tilter her head in your direction, “are every bit as much of a target now that Gideon knows you can use the Force. You’re a bigger specimen, larger, complex. I don’t know what he wants with either of you,” she continues, crossing her muscled, slender arms over her chest, “but it can’t be good.”

“We—” you start, choking over your own words, “we know we’re in danger, I know I’m dangerous, because I’m…loud and untrained, and—”

“You aren’t dangerous,” Ahsoka interrupts, striding forward so that she’s closer to you. Maker, she towers over you, strong and lean. “You’re untrained, yes, and you’re very valuable to whatever Gideon’s plan is, but you aren’t a liability.”

The way she says liability, the way it fits in her mouth, immediately makes you look at Din. She’s angry, you understand, she’s angry because she thinks Din has told you you’re a reckless, loose cannon, and that you’re too close to every cliff edge that you’ve pulled the three of you back from, and you shake your head furiously, trying to assure her that isn’t the case.

“She’s strong,” Din says quietly. His voice, modulated and even, sounds distant. Unfamiliar. “Stronger than most.”

Ahsoka tilts her head at Din. “I can see that, just by looking at her. By being in her presence. But I think, somewhere along the way, somewhere between when you found both her and Grogu, and realized what danger they’d be in running from Gideon, you’ve forgotten her strength.”

You swallow again. Noisily. You can feel Din fuming, feel how hot and heavy he is, and you want to step in between the middle of the two of them, mitigate the conversation, try to diffuse any collateral damage. The baby coos next to you, and you lunge forward between the man you love and the Jedi you’ve just met, heart hammering. “This is helping no one—”

“You think I want to shelter her from every threat in this galaxy?” he snarls, and you blink at Din as he moves angrily towards you. “That I want to keep her in the middle of all of this? I don’t. I’d kill Gideon today if I thought it meant Nova and the kid—Grogu—wouldn’t be in danger. I would let her shoot every single bastard in his fleet to their deaths if it meant the two of them could live safely. I’d—I’d leave them on the safest planet of the galaxy and hide myself away for the rest of my life it meant that they could be free from this. I’m doing the best I can, and you have no right—”

“Stop,” you plead, facing towards Din completely, desperately throwing your hands up against the silver, armored chestplates, trying to stop him from advancing on Ahsoka. You can feel her hands against the hilts of her white lightsabers, and the absolute last thing in the world you want is to get a matching scar on the other side of your belly. “I mean it, stop. Fighting over this—over me—isn’t going to stop the problem at hand. You,” you whip around, pointing a raised, shaking finger at Ahsoka, “you’re a Jedi. You—you have the Force, you can teach the baby. Grogu. You can train him, and then he can show me.”

She starts to speak, but you twirl back to face Din. The careful braid you knotted up this morning has become frayed and undone, chunks of hair hanging in your face, brushing against your cheeks in the foggy, green haze. You try to find his eyes under the helmet. “You ever talk about leaving us somewhere ever again, I’ll shake the idea out of your beautiful, thick head myself. There’s no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me. I protect you, you protect me. That’s how this works, remember?”

Slowly, jerkily, he nods.

“Good,” you say, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than you feel, trying to stop your voice from wavering. “Teach him,” you repeat, looking at Ahsoka. All that darkness and flame that lit up her eyes a few minutes ago is gone. There’s a hardened edge there, but it’s not made out of steel. She doesn’t look angry. She looks exhausted, sad. You can see it in her posture as she drops your gaze, stepping closer to Grogu.

Din goes in to stop her, but you shake your head, and he lets his gloved hand drop listlessly down at the side. You’re not sure what she’s doing, and you’re even more confused that it seems like Grogu and Ahsoka have their own frequency, one that you can only catch distant warbles and static off of. Frustrated, you blow hair out of your face, stepping back to observe. Finally, she kneels down to the ground, picks up a pebble. Wordlessly, she shows it to Din, then to you, then to the baby. His big bug eyes are wide, unflinching. You know that he understands what she wants him to do before Ahsoka even says the words. He stares at it, tiny nose scrunching up against the task of trying to move the rock with his mind. For a few tries, it’s impossible, no luck. He’s distracted. Grogu keeps glancing back and forth over the three of you, to get permission that he doesn’t seem to have on his own.

“He doesn’t understand,” Din protests once.

“He does,” you and Ahsoka say in unison. Her tone is heavy. Yours is excited, like you can feel the way your heart is trying to keep in time with the words. And it’s true. The baby doesn’t follow commands well, especially when he’s decided he doesn’t want to, but this is different. You can feel the energy rushing through him, but he keeps breaking concentration to stare up at Din, and the pebble falls quietly against the mossy rock he’s sitting on, tumbling down to the earthen forest floor.

“Why isn’t he doing it?” Din asks, and you can hear how poorly masked the concern in his voice comes out.

“He wants your permission,” Ahsoka answers. Any of the fire that was in her voice earlier is completely gone now, like a flood just went through. She’s still intent, and she still has an edge to her, but it’s colored something more like determination than anger. “He needs it.”

“You can do it, baby,” you whisper, leaning down so that your necklace will swing out from under your covered collarbone again, something to fortify him, keep him balanced.

Your cheeks burn with the realization that Ahsoka was talking about Din’s permission, not yours, but your action seems to relax the baby’s little heart, his expression melting into something slightly softer.

“You can do it,” Din echoes, kneeling down in front of the three of you, a strange triangle made on Corvus’s forest floor. Grogu coos, trying to meet his dad’s eyes under the helmet. “Go on. You’ve got it. Take your time.”

You’re not sure how much time you have, really, because the noises of whatever’s going on in town keep increasing, and with how quickly those men appeared out of the thin, foggy air earlier, you’re on edge knowing that anything else could emerge with little to no warning. Nervously, you scan the treeline as Din continues to coax and encourage the baby, picking up the rock off the ground. You lean up against the tree immediately behind the three of them. Its bark is thick and coarse, and the branches hanging off every side are pointed and sharp, the leaves all budding and a dangerous shade of green. It’s exhausting, keeping an eye out on the potential enemies in the distance and trying not to miss what’s happening with Din and Ahsoka and the baby, if he could move the rock farther than a few inches.

Sleep is still encroaching the borders of your eyes, even though you were out for hours last night. The massiveness of the day is heavy and loud, and right now, it’s demanding all of your attention. You let your back brush up against the cold, course tree, cracking your neck free of all the ache again. When Grogu catches your eye again, you smile at him, nodding encouragingly. He still is having difficulty focusing on the pebble, so you step as far away s you can. You close your eyes, let everything drip down your spine and run out of you. You’re trying to just be, to not let anything heavy and dangerous slip in through the cracks, and it’s harder here. You wonder if it’s because there’s another, powerful Force-sensitive being around, or if it’s just sheer exhaustion doing you in, but one thing’s for certain, and it’s that it’s hard to pull yourself into a space where your mind is weightless. Eventually, though, you can feel it pull out of your head, and that wave of knowledge, serenity, and energy comes and crashes over you. In your head, you’re able to tell the baby to do it, gentle and coaxing, just like he was with you when you floated his ball for the first time. When he looks at you again, you feel something change. Before you even open your eyes, you can feel his gaze shift to Din’s, and your lashes flutter open to reveal Din giving the baby an encouraging nod.

The rock is airborne. It isn’t flickering, and it isn’t even really moving, but it’s enough for all three of you, who gasp and clap, breaking Grogu’s concentration. You slap a hand over your mouth, trying to wrangle everything back in, to restrain yourself so that he can keep moving forward, keep the pebble skyward.

He does. It’s shakily, and somewhat uncontrolled, but you watch as Grogu moves, letting the pebble levitate, then letting it come back and forth between him and Ahsoka. In a few tries, he’s got the rhythm of it, moving intentionally and slowly, letting the rock float through the air as unencumbered and free as his little metal ball does. You try to make yourself stay quiet, but you can’t help it. You clap excitedly as Din falls to his knees to get close to the baby, show him how proud of him his father is. You beam, watching the two of them, everything else rolling off your shoulders. This is the closest you’ve come to feeling free from the evil that lurks in the galaxy’s corners in months. Since you told Din you love him. Since he proposed. Since you’ve been aware just how much Moff Gideon wants to get his scary, manipulative hands on you or the baby to harness your power, leave you breathless, take everything for himself. It’s like there’s a bead of light in the place of where your heart is. It’s momentary, it’s fleeting, but it’s there, really there, at least for a second. Something to fixate on, to haul all three of you out of the darkness. Something to shine in the same way you do.

Ahsoka steps forward, and you catch her eye as she tilt sher head towards Din and the kid. You smile at her, completely, fully. She smiles back, just as easy. You still see that glint in her eye, that exhaustion, the way she stares at the three of you like she’s interrupting, like she’s something knife-shaped cutting through. You nod at her, just once, and you can tell she knows what you mean. There’s no hard feelings. She’s wise, and she’s seen probably three times as much of this fight as you have, and she’s still here, on the periphery, kind and unafraid to cut down things that are making the darkness bigger.

“Thank you,” you whisper. “For helping us.”

Ahsoka studies you. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

Heat rushes to your cheeks. You want to thank her again, but everything your mouth starts tumbling out is stammering and silly. “I—what do you mean?”

“You’re an ex-Rebel engaged to a Mandalorian,” she murmurs, and you blink, trying to figure out how she put that together before you remember that she and the baby had a conversation through the Force earlier, and the little gossip probably told her everything. You smile, tucking your loose hair behind your ear. “You don’t seem like the bounty hunting type.”

You kick a bit of mossy earth with the toe of your boot. “I’m not,” you admit quietly. “I don’t like killing.”

Ahsoka steps closer to you. You gulp, looking up at her. You thought Din was intimidating, that his stature was enough to make anyone not confident enough to look him in the visor run screaming. But as calm as Ahsoka is, how warm her heart beats, she’s just as fierce. A protector. A defender. A fighter. “Is that why you dropped out of the Alliance?”

You nod, slowly. “Sort of. My parents died on a mission, and I never really came back from that. I—I grew up on Yavin,” you continue, fingers absentmindedly finding your necklace. “On base. And it never felt like home after that. By the time they died, we were so close to winning, anyways, and once the Death Star blew, I left. I wanted to help people,” you say, your voice barely catching in the wind, “and I’m an excellent pilot, but I never liked shooting anyone down. Still don’t. I left, met some dangerous people, fell in their path, and barely made it out.” You swallow noisily, realizing how much you’re sharing. “I’m sorry, I’m babbling—”

“No,” Ahsoka encourages, tilting her head at you. Din and the baby are still practicing over with the rock, and he’s gleeful, showing off to his dad. “I’m curious. Please continue.”

“I was just a runner for a while,” you say, leaning back against the bark of the tree. “I moved food and drink and resources in the Outer Rim from one place to another. Before long, though, I started picking up people in bad situations, ones like I was in myself. I didn’t charge them anything, just shuttled them to nearby planets to help keep them safe from whatever they were running from.” You watch as Grogu lifts the rock in the air again, smiling faintly at him in the distance. You feel a lifetime away from the disbelief and betrayal on Din’s face when he saw you doing the same thing, your heart swelling with how he’s watching your kid in all his strange, magical, little, green glory. “I crashed my ship on Nevarro, which is where D—Mando picked me up. He told me he was just going to get me off the planet, that he’d drop me somewhere safer, but then I just ended up sticking around. Then we fell in love instead.” You mouth shapes a smile around the word love. “I know we’re in danger,” you say, urgent and quiet. “I know that we’re both liabilities. And I know we won’t be out of trouble for a long while, at least until we can get the Darksaber back from Gideon at the very least. But I’m not running,” you say, lifting your chin, resolved, into the air. “I’m not running. And I don’t know what kind of time you have, or what you can teach the baby and I,” you continue quietly, looking straight into Ahsoka’s eyes, “but I do know this is the closest I’ve felt to something that feels like winning in a long time.”

She’s quiet. It’s like she’s peering into your soul, spending time dissecting your every bone, every current your blood runs through. It takes everything in you not to waver, not to falter under her gaze, but you hold it. Finally, Ahsoka faces you head on, and she smiles. “You’ve still got something a lot of people in this galaxy don’t, Nova,” she says.

You blink. “What’s that?”

Ahsoka looks at Din and the baby, then back at you. Her gaze over you is still intense, but you can tell it’s because she likes you, because she sees a fierce spirit to you that nothing ever got close to stomping out. She lifts her chin to match yours. “Hope.”

You want to thank her, want to do anything to signify how that fortification alone feels huge enough to make everything in you swell and sing, but you don’t have a chance. An arrow shoots out of nowhere, and Ahsoka’s orange hand lunges forward, lightning quick, to knock you in the middle of your chest right below your collarbone, moving you away from the impact. You fall to the ground, scraping the heel of your hand against the rough bark of the tree root, skittering back out of immediate danger.

As if it were nothing, Din’s got both hands on his blaster and Ahsoka’s unsheathed both of her white blades, and you grab for the baby as they go running in the direction that a cacophony of blasts are heading from, and you duck and cover. It’s not your best move, but it’s the smartest one, at least until you can see where the fight is and be strategic about it. You don’t have the Crest, and you don’t have control, or lightsabers, or a whole artillery strapped to bulletproof armor, but you have your head. You pull your cloak up and around your face, covering the tops of your exposed shoulders and the gathering of hair, and you grab the baby and tuck him under the cloth. It’s not perfect, by any means, but with the atmosphere of Corvus being emerald and foggy, your faded green hood is enough camouflage to sneak closer and closer to the battle. You can’t see Din, and all you have to find Ahsoka is the hum of the blade and the screams of the attackers in the dark and you duck down as low as you can, pulling Grogu off your chest so you can look at him.

“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” you hiss, over the noise, “do you understand me? I’m just going back there to get my blaster.” You gesture back to where you were leaning against the tree, the weapon that’s supposed to be strapped against your thigh laying on top of the mossy earth. “I will be right back,” you whisper, holding his face between both of your palms, “I promise, Grogu, okay?”

He nods. You nod back. You’re not stealthy, and you’re not particularly fast, but there’s something about this planet, something about all this green and the baby’s energy and the way Ahsoka holds command that makes you feel invincible. You don’t sprint. You don’t try to run, either, because you don’t know how covered you are by the fog that’s drifting closer and closer to you. You don’t have an armada. You don’t have clear access to the ship. But you’re better this way, on the fly, focused by adrenaline instead of your anxiety of what’ll happen next get into your head. You lunge against the mossy ground for your blaster, and when you pick it up, you start running back to where you’ve hidden the baby, stronger with a weapon in your fist. Someone, tall and clad in dark clothes emerges from the fog, and even from a distance, you know that they don’t match either of the people who are defending you and Grogu right now, so you stop to steady your grip against a rock, and you take aim.

The person roars when your bullet ricochets off the boulder they’re kneeling in front of, glaring wildly, trying to find you. You see the baby’s big eyes widen and close back down when he spots you, and you nod the best you can lodged behind a safe hiding place. The person starts roving forward, and you roll your eyes when you see it’s a man stomping around, trying to find where you’ve hidden.

“You’re a shit shot!” he yells, and you can feel the hum of Ahsoka’s sabers. She’s close, you can sense it, and you close your eyes, clicking the safety off the blaster as you stand up enough to take aim again. He’s looking the opposite way, so you spring up, bending your knees slightly, locking your arms and your grip into place. When he turns around again, he’s against the barrel of your blaster, and he gasps as you push the could maw of it against his temple.

“Don’t think I would be now,” you say, in a voice so much more level than how you’re feeling. “Wanna test your theory?”

He shakes his head, you raise an eyebrow. Maker, it’s like he’s actually scared of you. You, Novalise. You, overemotional hopeless romantic that can’t make a shot to save her life. You, Her Highness Rebel Rouser Pilotess of the Outer Rim. At that and that alone, you steal a small smile when he closes his eyes.

“Why are you here?” You ask, tilting your head at him. “You’re trying to hurt us, take my son. Why?”

“The magistrate,” he says, lifting both hands sky-high. “She wants the Jedi. The orange woman. With the lightsabers.”

“I know whom she is,” you interrupt, shooting the baby a warning glance to stay where he is, camouflaged against the green, mossy rock. “Why does she want the Jedi?”

He shrugs, and you press the barrel of your gun a little closer into his scalp. He raises his hands even higher, so you let the pressure go, still staring down the gun to act like you’ll drop him at any second, even though you have literally no desire to shoot someone ever again. You step back, not much, but enough to plant your foot in a better spot, and you let him look down the blaster to coax him to answer. “Don’t know. We want her out of here. The magistrate. Their whole group is awful, holding the city of Calodan captive. Figure getting the Jedi out of here might placate her long enough for bargain for our city back.”

“You look pretty capable,” you counter, looking at the gun he’s dropped on the ground, gesturing to the arrows parked in the middle of the trees surrounding you. “Why wouldn’t you just attack them? Form a mutiny?”

He doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, and you sigh, dropping your grip just a little. It’s too much, though, stupid. The second you aren’t staring him down with the gaping mouth of your blaster anymore, he lunges for you, knocking you and your weapon to the ground. It doesn’t hurt, since the terrain is all grass, but it’s enough to knock the wind out of you, and he’s taken your blaster and kicked it off somewhere you can’t see, making a beeline for the baby.

“Help!” you scream, picking yourself off the ground, running, winded, back to where he’s heading for. You could kick yourself, but you’d probably trip over your own foot, so you keep going. He’s taller than you, and he clearly has more practice at running than you do, so you’re barely gaining speed when he picks up Grogu. He shrieks with being suddenly airborne, and you thunder your feet across the ground as fast as you can. You keep yelling loudly for Din and Ahsoka, because now you’re totally weaponless, and that piece of cowardly shit has your kid, and then you stop short, remembering you may not have a weapon, but you have something.

You clear your mind. Everything rushes backwards out of you. It’s still hard to make everything quiet in the midst of so much danger and noise, but you’re better at it now. Raising both hands, you focus, eyes snapping back open. You move, just slightly, and the man stops midair. He’s still trying to get the baby away, and he’s much stronger than you are, but then Grogu makes eye contact with you, determined and strong, and you nod, somehow knowing exactly what he’s about to do.

The baby bites down on the man’s arm. Hard. A real chomp, one he usually reserves for frogs and the food that’s supposed to be for you and Din. The man howls as he drops to the forest floor, and you lunge for Grogu as his abductor is stopped in his tracks. You give him a good stomp on his left foot, grabbing your blaster off the floor. He looks up at you with wide eyes, and you see how scared he is, so you decide to have a little mercy. “Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you,” you say, firmly, “and focus all your energy on taking back what’s yours instead.” He nods. You flick your finger back to stun and shoot him. It catches him in the belly, so he won’t be out for long, but it’s enough time to swaddle you and Grogu back up in your cloak, make your way through the edges of the fog that’s a lot quieter than it was s minute ago.

Your eyes aren’t the best on a good day, so you’re squinting and making shapes out of nothing. When you collide into Din, he has to clap a gloved hand over your mouth to stifle your shriek. The second he knows you aren’t going to be a red flag in the middle of the darkness, his hands moves off your lips and caresses against your cheek instead. You sag, letting him keep you upwards.

“That was some good fighting, cyar’ika,” he mumbles, and you feel your heart doing cartwheels in your chest.

“I learned form the best,” you manage, trying to wink but accidentally closing both of your eyes. “What’s the plan?”

Quietly, Din pulls the three of you behind another mossy stone. From this vantage point, you can see the mass of soldiers the two of them have taken down. Up on the parapet, there’s a shrouded figure with a thin, sharp metal spear. Your eyes narrow, knowing exactly who’s up there—the magistrate and her evil eye making sure that there’s bloodshed outside the city walls.

“Ahsoka’s clearing the last of them now,” Din whispers, and even modulated and quiet, his voice still sends shivers through you. “You’re going to sneak through the gate of the city with her and the kid.”

You blink at him, doing a double take. “Me?”

Din stares at you through the visor, tilting his head. “You proved yourself, Novalise. I trust you to be quick and quiet enough to sneak through undetected.”

You nod, butterflies soaring to life in the middle of your stomach.

“Besides,” Din adds, clicking the safety off his blaster, the noise muted against the rough fabric of his glove, “there will be three of you. And you all have powers.”

You smile at him. “The Force.”

“Looks like powers,” Din shrugs. Out of nowhere, Ahsoka appears behind you, equally as stealthy and silent as Din is. You smile at her. “Get ready.”

“Wait,” she says, cutting one orange hand through midair. “She’s going to shoot at you.”

Din nods. “The armor can take it.”

Ahsoka looks him up and down, disdainful. “She has a beskar spear.”

Din, who was about to emerge from a crouched position to stand straight up, a shiny force to be reckoned with through all the fog, sinks back down. “What?” The word is low and dangerous in his mouth.

“Listen,” Ahsoka says, urgently. “It’s yours. I have no use for it. You help me defeat her, you get the spear and I’ll…” her gaze lands on you and the baby as she trails off. “I’ll find someone to train both of them.”

“But I thought you—?” you start, but then arrows and blasts are being hurdled through the air again, and Ahsoka pulls you and the baby around to the side, where a cover of trees mixed with the nightfall and the ominous grey still hanging in the air will keep the three of you sheltered enough to make it through the gate undetected. You place your hand over your heart, looking at Din, who nods at you just for a second before he comes out of hiding, guns ablaze, in full Mandalorian mode. As promised, you, Ahsoka, and Grogu are able to make it through the gate without anyone catching sight. The city is small, desolate. It’s quiet, eerily so, and you think that if it weren’t caught between captivity and war, it would be beautiful. All the green from outside has evaporated in here, the streets looking shoddy and destroyed. You follow against the wood of the buildings, keeping only a few paces behind Ahsoka. Her grip on her lightsabers is light but intentional, ready to strike at any minute. The three of you sneak through the majority of the city undetected. When you’ve reached the border of what is clearly the magistrate’s headquarters, she signals for you and the baby to standby. You nod, ducking back against the buildings as she fights her way through the guards. Slowly, silently, she beckons for you to follow her, and you do as quietly as possible, trying not to take stock of the dead bodies on the ground.

It is beautiful in here, just as you predicted. You stay close behind Ahsoka, eyes darting up and around to watch for anyone who might try to hurt you. It’s dark but the greenery is lush and alive, and you run the tips of your fingers over the petals of flowers before you sit in the cloak under a big, sprawling tree, letting the baby out from under your cloak so he can see, too. Eventually, your gaze drifts over to Ahsoka. She’s regal, tall, shoulders set and back. Down the middle of this part of the city is a long slab of granite, dark and glassy. It cuts through a reflecting pool, and your heart lurches as you realize where you are.

In the visions, any that you’ve had that go farther than Ahsoka shrouded here with her sabers, this is where you’re trying desperately to get to Din, to see your panicked face in the beskar. Worriedly, you try to stand, knees wobbling, and when he steps through the doorway, your heart seizes in equal parts relief and terror. Ahsoka stares at him, and you want to start running towards him, shield him with your own body, but you’re frozen in place. Before you can start to shake the fear loose, another figure spears behind Din, pointing the tip of a beskar spear against the unsheathed part of his neck, right where his helmet meets his armor. It’s the only place that’s really left uncovered, just a sliver of skin at the nape of his neck, right before his head meets his spine, but if you know it’s there, it can be fatal. Your stomach is heaving, stormy and dangerous. You want to run to him. You want Ahsoka to use her lightsabers to cut the magistrate down. You want to know enough about the Force to use it, to get the magistrate away from the man you love, but as much as you denied it earlier, you are a loose cannon. You’re good at moving things. You don’t have much practice in saving them.

Ahsoka shoots one glance your way, but you know what it means, even in the dark. Stay put. You shrink back in the shadows the tree gives off, pulling the baby quietly up against your chest. No one knows you’re here except for her, so as long as you don’t give it away, you’ll have the high ground. You watch, heart in shreds, as the magistrate pushes Din forward.

“You have a choice,” she says, voice so smooth, so full of ice, “between the Mandalorian and the freeing of the city. You want Calodan back? I kill him. You want him alive? You leave this planet forever.”

Ahsoka’s eyes narrow. “An ultimatum? Weeks of you trying to kill me, to have your captives hunt me down in exchange for their lives, and all you have for me is an ultimatum?”

“It’s a choice, Jedi,” the magistrate spits. You move forward, enough that you can pull your blaster out of the holster. You aren’t stealthy, but the noise of it is quiet enough to be hidden by their conversation and the proximity to your vantage point. “A compromise.”

“No,” Ahsoka counters levelly, stepping forward with her lightsabers. The hilts are still unsheathed, and you watch carefully for the flick of her thumbs to bring them to life. “A compromise would mean me leaving you alive. I can dangle death, too. You just have to fight me for it first.”

You feel your eyes bulge open in the dark, impressed. She steps forward again, unflinching. She doesn’t even look scared to face the woman that’s holding your fiancé’s life in her hands, and normally, that would both you, but right now? Right now, you’re just marveling. Ahsoka’s a badass.

“Fight me for it, then,” the magistrate seethes, and Ahsoka raises an eyebrow, igniting both blades. You gasp at how they hum and pulse, the white blade both dangerous and serene. When she lunges, the other woman takes the spear off of Din’s pressure point. If you were faster, this is where you would have lunged, but he rolls, sweeping a leg underneath the magistrate’s feet. She avoids them midair, but when he kicks at her coming down, she stumbles. You thumb the safety off, still hiding in the shadows until they need you. For people who just met today, it’s clear that Din and Ahsoka know each other’s rhythms, how they move. It’s like watching a dangerously choreographed dance, all three partners wicked and fast. The other woman is clearly skilled, almost on the level of th both of them, because she’s able to both defend and attack in the same swing. Wordlessly, she swipes through the air. She catches Ahsoka’s skin with the beskar blade, and Ahsoka hisses and kicks just as dangerously, swiping the blade of her own saber over the blood to cauterize it and then swings with it as she yells. You’re in awe of her. Between her blades and Din’s armor, you’re completely mesmerized. There’s not a chance in hell that you would be a match for any of them, so you just watch with the baby safe behind your body. For minutes, it seems, the three of them fight, sharp and quiet. You watch Ahsoka swing the sabers through the air. When the magistrate tries to kick the one out of her left hand, she tosses it overhead to Din, who, amazingly, catches it and swings back in the same momentum she gave him. For a minute, it looks like they have the magistrate cornered, but when she falls to the ground, you’re right in her line of vision.

You panic. You don’t know what to do. Your heart is caught in your chest, and you know she sees you. Din and Ahsoka are so preoccupied with keeping her down that they don’t notice the magistrate’s hungry, dark gaze on you, and you’re frozen. When she gets to her feet again, it’s like she has a whole new wind. She strikes Din down viciously, and you can hear the beskar tearing into his flesh, over a just-healed cut on his leg. He roars as he drops, and you silently make the baby agree to stay hidden. You sprint towards him, throwing all caution and stealth to the wind, just trying desperately to make it there in time to get him off the ground. You scream at the magistrate, a slew of curses in every language you know, sliding across the smooth tile of the ground. Over her head, Ahsoka throws you one of her sabers, still ignited, and somehow, despite all odds, you catch it. It flickers in your hand and you stare down at Din, trying to steel yourself for what you have to do again.

“Now,” he pants through the helmet, “do it, Nova, do it—”

You do. You press the lightsaber down on his cut, just for a second, and he cries out with the cautery, going limp on the floor. You don’t have any time to make sure he’s more okay than that, though, because the magistrate is charging straight after you. Before you can turn, you feel her hurl the spear, the beskar whittling through clean air as it soars towards you, and you catch your terrified expression against Din’s armor before you lift your hand, bracing for the fatality of the impact, knowing that at the very least, you saved the man you love and the kid you share.

But the spear doesn’t come. It doesn’t pierce you straight through. After a minute, you open your eyes, looking around. You, Ahsoka, and the baby all have your hands up in unison, freezing the spear midair. Relieved, you exhale, breath shaky, letting the spear clatter against the pavement. The magistrate makes a desperate attempt to reach for it, but you’re quicker. For once, you’re quicker, and you lunge for the spear, and when you’re back on your feet, exhausted and bloody, you have Ahsoka’s lightsaber in one hand and the beskar spear in the other. She doesn’t move. She looks up at you with filth and anger, and you press the point of the spear to her open neck. She doesn’t recoil.

“Nova,” Ahsoka whispers, over the pulsating thumb of her saber. “It’s not worth it.”

“It is if she’s going to terrorize people again,” you hiss, raising the saber up with conviction. “I could make it quick. Fast. Better than she deserves.”

“You could,” Ahsoka levels. You don’t dare take your eyes off the magistrate, her evil gaze. “Or you could walk away and let me do it.”

“She deserves it,” you spit again, but already, your conviction is fading. You feel the spear being tugged out of your hands, and you whirl around with your arm raised, ready to strike someone down, but it’s just Din, and you sag. You can feel the magistrate ready to lunge, and you aren’t in the place to defend yourself, so you just look up at Din, terrified, making your peace with death for the second time in the matter of a minute. But before you can die, before anything, he’s stabbed the spear unto the shoulder of the magistrate’s right hand, and she drops, writhing against the ground, screaming bloody murder.

“She deserves to fall from grace,” Din grunts, “with no iron fist to cling to or come back with.”

Silently, Ahsoka reaches down to cauterize it. You look away, sheathing her lightsaber and tossing it back. Wordlessly, exhausted, you stumble over to Grogu and shoulder him against your chest. The four of you make your way over the magistrate, who’s knocked out on the ground, and go through the gates. A small gathering of citizens are there to greet you, terrified and just as tired as you feel.

“She won’t be in charge anymore,” Ahsoka says softly, voice firm. “I’ll stick around for long enough to make sure of that, and then you can restore Calodan to its former glory without any oppressive regime.”

“Thank you,” one woman manages, and you can see the tear sin your eyes. Ahsoka smiles, nods, beckons you to follow her. Slowly, you tread back to the Crest, everything in your bones weak and sleepy. You want to fall asleep in the shower. You want to fall asleep with your head on Din’s lap. You’d fall asleep on the ladder if it meant you could spend ten hours without being awake anymore. When the gangplank gets lowered, you don’t have the energy to even make it up the few steps to your bed on the floor. You just drop right there, holding onto the baby.

“Are you coming?” Din asks Ahsoka, and you look up to find her gaze, calm and kind, on you.

“No,” she says, decidedly, eyes still on you and Grogu. “I can’t train them. They both have emotional attachments to you, and to each other. I’m not going to be the one to stop that.”

Din starts at her, but you raise a tired hand. “Are there any Jedi left who will train us?”

Ahsoka’s gaze is so full of intention you don’t have the energy to decode. “Yes,” she answers, finally. Go to the planet Tython. It’s strong in the Force. Call out to other Jedi, and anyone who hears it will come for you.”

“Thank you,” you say. You’re so tired, you could fall asleep on the spot. You want to thank her for everything, but you can barely keep your eyes open, and hope your two words convey enough gratitude for Ahsoka to feel it radiating.

Ahsoka steps closer to Din. “Gideon is coming,” she whispers, lowly. “I know he gave you an ultimatum. I know he’s going to try and take them, btu I also know he’s ruthless enough to discard one of them to keep you distracted and to cut you down.”

If you were more awake, you’d be concerned, but you listen to Din’s intentional, determined voice, and something about his tone makes you think that he’s telling Ahsoka the same promise he’s always made you—he’ll protect you, Gideon won’t touch you, that nothing evil and Imperial can cut through him. She nods, kneeling to brush a light hand over your messy hand and boop the baby’s tiny nose, and then you’re being carried up the ladder. Eventually, you feel the ship take off, and Din comes back to sit against your wall with you, bacta patches in one hand and his helmet in the other.

You mewl at him, reaching to touch his beautiful face, to tangle your fingers hungrily through his messy hair. He lets you get as close as you want, and after you pull off his pants, with the intention of dragging the both of you to lay in the shower together, he pushes one of the bacta patches into your hand. Wincing, you see how deep and nasty the cut was, and how messily you cauterized it. “I’m sorry,” you whisper, voice uneven, and he waves a hand at you, just wanting you to fix the patch over the whole thing to try and let the bacta work its magic. You do, and you slump against Din’s chest, half-naked and exhausted. Eventually, you feel him move out from under you, arms strong and secure around your waist, and you let Din carry you up and into the fresher. You’re on the floor while he turns on the hot water, and the second that you can touch the warmth of it you stand up, letting the pressure rinse over your face, your aching muscles, stripping away as much pain and exhaustion as it possibly can.

When Din comes in behind you, you just turn around to look at him. His own eyes are tired, his beautiful hair getting wetter as you pull him into the stream, dragging the pads of your fingers over his shoulders. He sighs against your touch, pressing his own hands into the small of your back, trying to release the pressure. You’re not sure when he gets hard, when you feel him inside you, but it’s desperate and needy, and he’s leaving an artillery of kisses down your neck. His mouth sucks on and off you, marking your skin. Din’s hands, large and tan, grip either side of your hips to hoist you up, to rock every inch deep inside you. Before tonight, sex always felt like a gratitude, a reprieve. Even the hot and heavy times in the last few weeks have felt more like a thank you, like it’s something both of you want and give each other. Tonight, with the way Din’s burying himself in you, it feels like it’s the last time. The gravity of it, the sharpness, it all feels too heavy.

“My sweet thing,” he moans into your mouth, ricocheting off the walls and up into your ear. “I need you, n—need you to—my sweet thing. He hasn’t called you that in months, not since before Dagobah, and you feel tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. You’re not sure why you’re even crying, but with how desperate he is, with how he’s groveling, begging you to let him fuck you, it makes everything in you feel like it’s going over a cliff.

“You have me,” you murmur, punctuated by his thrusts, but it sounds like a reminder and not like an encouragement. When he’s ready, he looks at you through the water and steam, and you nod, afraid to speak in case your voice comes out hollow and fucked. Din thrusts down as he fucks into you one last time, gasping with the intensity of his orgasm, and when he lets you down he takes the showerhead and rinses between your legs, dragging the soap that smells like him over your skin.

You’re both so exhausted that you don’t even bother redressing when you get out of the shower. You just stumble, a two-headed animal, to the nest of blankets and pillows on the floor, and when Din brings you close against your chest, there’s something still so raw and hungry inside both of you. You can feel it, the despair, the dread, the sucking feeling of something being wrong in the air. But you’re too exhausted to talk about it.

“I’m here,” you repeat into the darkness, heart hammering in your ears.

“I know,” Din allows, but he sounds so faraway, so distant. If you weren’t this tired, you would cry, you would beg him to tell you what’s wrong, what he’s hiding from you, but all you can do is push your nose in the crook of his neck to fall asleep, hoping all that darkness will have been turned over by the time you both wake up.

It feels like minutes when you do, but you know it’s been over a day. You feel the Crest hurtle out of hyperspace, and you drag yourself to the fresher to rinse your sleep-filled mouth out with water. By the time you redress and make your way up the steps, you’ve already landed. It’s just about dawn, as far as you can tell, and your eyes are still full of exhaustion from the day before. You sit down next to the baby, and when he reaches for your necklace, in your stupor, you unhook it from your neck and give it to him to hold on to until you make your way out onto Tython’s surface. Din’s suiting up, grabbing everything and sticking it back into place, and you let your hair loose, swinging around your face as you crack your neck to relieve the pressure. You’re still half asleep as you follow Din down the ladder. His helmet isn’t on yet, and you reach up for a sleepy kiss. He returns it, mouth full of desperation and urgency and everything he was made out of last night.

In retrospect, that right there should have been the first sign. Maybe not the first indication that something was seriously wrong, but the way he touched you, the way he drank your face in, the way he fucked you in the shower. Like it was the last time. You follow Din down the gangplank, the same way you’d follow him down the aisle, or follow him into battle. Determined, protected, lovingly. But when your boots make contact with the ground, you realize that you aren’t on Tython. It should have been obvious. And if you hadn’t exerted every ounce of energy in your body the day before, protecting yourself and your family from someone trying to eviscerate you, you would have known exactly where you were.

Your eyes widen around the familiar greenery of Dantooine. You’re on the other side of the planet than you were the last time you were here, where Din killed Merle and ignored everything in him to kiss you anyways. Your heart is hammering as you look around, eyes darting back and forth from Din and the Crest, where the baby is hovering in his cradle. The tears come before the knowledge of what’s happening does.

“Wait,” you manage, your voice shattered. “W—what are we doing on Dantooine?”

You’re right on the forest’s edge. You can see the city through the foliage, just a few klicks away. You look wildly back at Din, trying to scry the look on his face past his helmet. Your heart is a staccato in your chest, everything in you screaming that this is wrong, that you’re misinterpreting the situation, that this is a dream/

“Nova,” Din starts, and you shake your head at him, violently. “Novalise, listen to me.” When he grabs for your face, you sob, loud and unashamed. “Gideon is going to keep coming.”

“I—know,” you say, thrashing against his grip. “I know that, Din, I know—did you see what I did back there on Corvus? I can help! I can s—stop him, I can protect us—”

“No,” he says gently, “no, Nova, you can’t. Because if you’re with me, you’re the one he’s going to kill. He’s not going to capture you. He’s not going to keep you alive for long enough to fight back. He’s going to use you to break me, to get the kid.”

“No,” you cry again, but this time you go limp. You’re crying now, for real. The planet is crushing you. Or maybe the air. Or maybe it’s just your own broken heart, suffocating itself against your ribs.

“Nova,” Din whispers again, “Nova, you have to hide. You have to stay out of reach of Gideon, which means you have to stay out of reach of me. Hey. Hey. Listen to me.” You try to find your center of gravity, but you can’t. You tumble to the ground, tears hurtling down your cheeks. Din follows you, clinging to you all the way down. “You just need to stay away long enough for me to defeat Gideon, kill him, and get the Darksaber back to Bo-Katan. Once he’s dead, once this is over, I’ll come back for you. Do you understand me?”

You’re not coherent. You want to scream, you want to barter, you want to plead. You want to do so much, but all you’re capable of is sitting there and crying, breaths long and dragging, the air barely getting in your lungs. “Please don’t leave me,” you sob, finally, and Din deflates too.

“Nova, I’m supposed to protect you,” he says quietly. “This is for your own good. It’s selfish of me to keep you close when I’m the one putting you in danger. You—” he stops, sighing. The baby is crying now, too. Your heart keeps breaking in your chest. Every time you realize what’s happening, it shatters again and again. “I’m going to kill Gideon. I’m going to protect you.” You’re still a mess on the ground. Din drags something over to you, and you realize it’s your bag, stuffed with food and bacta and credits. You just cry, trying to scream, but it’s like all the noise has drained out of you. “I’ll come back for you,” Din repeats, and then he’s gone. The ship is boarded and in the air before you can move, and you finally, finally scream, but it’s drowned out by the thrusters. You sob, loud and horrible, like a wounded animal, as the dust settles around you. You reach for your necklace only to realize it’s still in the baby’s fist. Every shred of proof of the people you loved is gone, off in the stardust somewhere while you’re stuck here, grounded and drowning, heart broken in your chest, crying out for all four members of your family lost out there in the crush of space.

*

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*

I AM SO SORRY AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! i love you all and i'm so grateful to have you here with me. i am literally breaking my own heart writing this, but now i can finally tell you all that THIS is the foreshadowed brokenhearted moment that we have been building to. yes i have already written both their reunion scene and makeup scene. the pain will not last longer than absolutely necessary!!!!!

CHAPTER 23 SHOULD BE UP NEXT SATURDAY, MAY 29TH AT 7:30PM EST!! i am unfortunately having another big slew of health issues, and after my doctors' appointment next week, i will at best have invasive testing ahead of me and at worst need surgery. i will not know until Wednesday, so please just be patient with me as i figure out when i can write!!! as always, i'll update you on tiktok (padmeamydala) and here as i get news!!!

thank you all so much again, not only for understanding my erratic, hectic posting these last few weeks, but for being here and caring about me and my health and wellbeing just as much as you care about Something More! graduation went so well, thank you all so much for all your well wishes!!! i promise we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming SOON!!!

xoxo, amelie

[helbertinelli]

There are things I just do not like about TCW, especially with a certain guy I won’t even name and Anidala. But there are moments I do like. The episode where Anakin is capture has a few moments I really like.

They’re:

The way Anakin looks at Padmé when they are waiting for the Gungan sub. It just shows how much he loves her.

The way Anakin helps Padmé into the sub. Putting his hand on her back so she doesn’t fall. It reminded me of all the times Anakin offered Padmé his hand in AOTC.

That Padmé makes the trade for Anakin.

When Anakin is released Padmé helps him walk and she places her hand on his chest over his heart.

For me they always have a happy ending, screw Palpatine.

Are there any moments from the show you like?

My favorite Anidala moments are from the Malevolence arc.

I love it when Anakin tells Padme to jump to him and they embrace and then he's like "The things you do to get me alone." That's the cutest thing.

I like how the two of them set up the trap for the droids (? I forgot who it was for... but yeah). It was a cool moment of them working together and it reminded me of them plotting to catch Padme's assassin in the AOTC book.

And I liked when they got back on the Twilight and Padme got to the guns, Obi-Wan was like "You really know your way around here." That was pure gold.

I love the episode when the Gungans capture Griveous. It's one of my favorites episodes ever because it has Jar Jar and Anidala. Grievous getting defeated by Gungans was everything! And then yeah all the Anidala moments are extremely cute. :)

I also love the episode where Cad Bane takes over the Senate and Padme has Anakin's lightsaber with her and she tells Bail "I can't be searched!" and he's like "wtf kind of illegal/controversial thing is she hiding?"

And then at the end, she gives Anakin his lightsaber back like "you dropped this..." And Bail is like "that boy didn't have his lightsaber when he came in!" And then his face is like "this was it? That's the secret? You guys are hooking up? And here I thought it was something dangerous..." I do love Bail kinda knowing but not knowing about Anidala, so it was cute.

Oh and at the beginning of the episode when Bail almost catches them going at it and Anakin has to hide under her desk, but he's really bad at it.

I like the "this lightsaber is my life and now it's yours" or whatever that line was. That was peak romance.

I like Anakin fighting his way through Cad Bane's goons and saving everyone without his lightsaber. I love it when Anakin is crazy stupid powerful and when we really see why he's the Chosen One.

I guess a honorable mention is the episode when there's that virus and Padme gets kidnapped and Anakin goes completely berserk on the droids and he's about to do the same for the scientist guy, but then he chooses to save Padme instead. Like he's actually controlling his rage and he's using it to his advantage (killing a lot of droids really fast).

I just love when Anakin is saving Padme because someone is threatening her like a dumbass because they don't know her husband is Anakin Skywalker the most powerful Jedi in the entire world and he'd do anything for her.

I saw this video that was like "Can Anakin defeat Starkiller" and they were like "if Padme was in danger, Anakin would totally win, no doubt there he gets crazy powerful when it's about saving Padme." I just love this. TCW should have allowed Anakin to "hulk out" for Padme a lot more, especially considering how much they put her in the role of damsel in distress.

Like I for sure thought that in the Mon Cala arc, when they're captured and held in the eel prisons, that Anakin was going to do something super badass with the Force and break out of the eel cell (the ceel if you will) and save Padme (when her air bubble popped) and Riff Tamson (or whoever was there with them) would have had a really bad time finding out why Anakin is the Chosen One. But they never did that. It was just Anakin frowning and getting electrocuted. It was so lame. If they're going to put Padme in danger in front of Anakin, they need to be ready to let Anakin basically go all out to save her. Let him show his true power.

In ROTJ, we see Anakin doing the same when Luke is in danger. Like he only has one arm and he can't lift his arms above his head, but his son is in danger so he gets super mega powerful and he just grabs Palpatine and holds him above his head and throws him in the reactor. It was amazing!

But anyway, from the virus episode, I also love how it ends when Padme holds Anakin's hand briefly and they say something like "I'll see you soon" or something like that. It was cute.

Aside from Anidala moments, I also liked the episode with the younglings (Gungi is best Jedi!!!) when they go to get their kyber crystals and then they run in with the pirates and the droids call Grievous and they're like "they're miniature Jedi!" And before that call Grievous is already like "I'm one more stupid comment away from losing it" and he hears "miniature Jedi" and you can see the life draining right out of him.

I also like the Bombad Jedi episode where Jar Jar wears a Jedi robe and everyone thinks he's a Jedi. I do like the Anidala reference with Anakin leaving his robe on Padme's ship. 😏😏😏😏 I love when Padme is captured and she hears there's a Jedi there, she makes up this plan on the spot to fool the droids that the Jedi is already in her cell, it was hilarious.

And I like the episode/arc with Jar Jar and Queen Julie. True love right there! Also, Jar Jar working with Mace Windu was everything!

[chamomileteainabuttercup]

18, 20, 39 and 41 for reyrose please? Thanks :)

Nice! I don't get to talk about them all that much (the sequel trilogy turned out so poorly that discussing it just isn't much fun) but I really like to imagine a life they could have together. A lot of this requires ignoring stuff I didn't like, primarily from The Rise of Skywalker. We're going to an AU where Rey is most certainly not Palpatine's granddaughter; she's a "nobody" in the positive sense that she doesn't carry the baggage of being descended from anyone with a significant history. Whatever she does, she's doing of her own accord. Plus, she certainly did not have a romantic attraction or attachment to Kylo Ren. She was simply trying to do what she thought might work to bring peace, despite her natural aversion to him. Also in this AU, Rose got to do stuff that mattered! I don't have many specifics because it would require writing a whole different plot for the movie, but she did!

(oh and the big bad/puppetmaster was Jar Jar, but that's well beyond our scope here)

On to Rey and Rose!

18. What are their dates like? How long do/did they date? Do they ever feel the need to take a break from each other?

For Rey and Rose a really good date is a day out rummaging through junkyards and pawnshops. Rey is great at finding things, Rose is great at fixing things, and together they find all kinds of technological curiosities that they repair, restore, or refashion into something new. They don't necessarily have a lot of dates as such because they're both pretty busy working with their friends to re-establish peace and democracy across the galaxy, but when they have a day off together that's how they like to spend it. Rather than needing a break from each other, during their busy times they wish they could see each other more, and not be too tired to enjoy their time when they do. (It's like having a partner who's going through medical school, but both ways.) When things aren't so busy but they can't take a whole day to do something nice, they work on their fix-it projects together, share a meal, or have a movie night in with Finn and Poe.

So whether that qualifies as "dating" or not, mileage may vary, but that stage of their relationship goes on four or five years before they decide together to make it permanent and get married.

20. What does their home look like? Their room?

Once things calm down enough that they can have a home of their own and spend a lot of time in it (so a few years on from when they meet, a little after they marry), they buy an old scrapyard and set up Rey and Rose's Salvage and Repair, and live in a house they build at the back of the yard. I'm not sure what planet this is on, and it might well be Tatooine; I'm happy with Rey going to live there but I don't want her to take the name Skywalker. After all, Tico is a good surname, if she needs one, and again, it doesn't have baggage.

The house is by no means beautiful; it's functional and sturdy and designed to largely keep itself warm or cool depending on the climate. Their room is sunny and always a little messy and dusty because neither of them is particularly houseproud, but it's not dirty or chaotic. They always have a few rescue droids around the place that they're rehabilitating - ones that have been abused or badly damaged and need some TLC both to get them running smoothly again and to help them regain trust and confidence. Some go back out into the world to find new jobs and some become permanent residents - one of those is Professor Huyang, who they found on a scrapheap during the alternative third-movie plot I haven't fully figured out, and who helped Rey to make herself a better lightsaber and taught Finn how to craft his own too. Huyang is the closest thing to a Jedi mentor they have - since Anakin's lightsaber was cut in two in The Last Jedi, I wanted a new lightsaber quest to be part of the story, and it was meant to tie in with Finn's Force sensitivity coming to the fore and Rey trying to help him get to grips with it while still learning about it herself.

39. Who initiated the relationship? Who kissed who first?  When did they realize they were in love?

This is very much a romance that grew out of a friendship which had a bit of an inauspicious beginning. When Rey needs to go on her quest, Rose, having recovered from her injuries, volunteers to go with her so she doesn't have to do everything alone. That's a good reason but it's also a way to get some distance from Finn, who she's realised is in love with Poe, and now she feels mortified about her grand romantic gesture for him. Finn is a Good Boy who's grateful for her feelings although he can't reciprocate, and doesn't want Rose to feel badly but it's not really in his power to help her with that. She needs time to get over the disappointment and embarrassment without having to see him being all in sync and starry-eyed with his extremely handsome and dashing fighter-pilot boyfriend who is all (bites lip) at the sight of him.

To begin with she also feels awkward with Rey, because she's Finn's best friend and also has this whole legendary magical vibe about her that's a bit intimidating - but a few days on the Millennium Falcon with her and seeing the Magic Knight Hero who floats rocks with her mind also chews with her mouth open, and will happily eat a brick of uncooked noodles as a snack, and has the most delightful scrunchy-nosed smile, and is just as much of a greasemonkey and gearhead as she is (and they need to spend a lot of time just keeping the Falcon going, and there's nothing like solving problems together for making friends), and she soon gets over any awkwardness and realises Rey is a kindred spirit.

Both of them are conscious of their liking for each other growing into a romantic attraction, but they're awfully busy avoiding the First Order and fixing their ship in flight and questing for kyber crystals and encountering Jedi ghosts and realising the Falcon's computer with the "peculiar dialect" is sentient and building a new droid body to transfer L3-37 into so she can live again, so it's a bit hard to find a good time to talk about it. At the end of a tiring day they're sitting in the lounge of the Falcon where the holo-chess table is, feeling pretty exhausted, and Rose leans her shoulder against Rey's, and then her head, and Rey takes her hand between both hers, and they sit quietly for a couple of minutes more, each becoming sure that the other feels the same way, before something goes bleep and the lights go off and they have to get up and find what's wrong and fix it.

While Rose has both hands busy with tools, her hair flops over her eyes and she asks Rey, who's holding the flashlight for her, if she can get that. Rey gently brushes it back with her fingers and pauses with her hand on Rose's cheek, and Rose looks up at her, and the first soft kiss is mutually initiated. And at that moment the whatchamacallit Rose is trying to reset gets its act together and the lights all flicker back on very prettily. It is nice.

Incidentally, Rey has no idea Jedi weren't supposed to have romantic relationships or get married. Either Luke didn't know either or he didn't get around to telling her (it's not mentioned in the ancient texts she saved because they predate that rule, which cynical people say really had a political rather than spiritual purpose, preventing the concentration of power in the hands of Jedi dynasties). It doesn't become a problem. Over the years Rey gradually rebuilds a reinvented Jedi Order (one that's a lot less hierarchical and order-y), finding people of all ages with talent that went undeveloped during the dark period, and a few who've had some training and have been living off the grid - like this one little green kid who lives in a flyspeck on the map called Mos Pelgo with his elderly dads who are nevertheless younger than he is.*

41. Are they party-goers? What are they like when they’re drunk? Does it happen often?

The Rebellion/Resistance does love its victory parties and peace celebrations, and naturally they go to a lot of those. There's also Finn's birthday party. Finn doesn't know when his actual birthday is. Poe has picked one out for him and throws him a rager of a party every year. They don't get drunk with great frequency, they're more likely to have a drink or two to relax together and leave it at that, but Finn's birthday party is the annual occasion when they predictably do.

When Rose gets tipsy, she gets very red in the cheeks and laughs till she snorts - it doesn't take much. She's a happy, friendly and cuddly drunk who everyone wants to take care of. Also kind of sweaty.

Drunk Rey can go one of two ways, giggly and silly along with Rose, or feisty and belligerent. Everyone hopes for silly Rey, who won't do anything worse than jump in a pool with all her clothes on. Belligerent Rey wants to prove how much she loves her friends by fighting anyone who she thinks she overheard saying one word against them. Belligerent Rey has to be pushed in the pool to cool her off.

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

*I haven't decided why he stopped attending Luke's school before disaster struck and as a placeholder will use "Expelled for drinking ink."

[smokahuntis]

Balance

Chapter one: The Almor Forest

Warnings: Violence, angry Kylo.

Summery: Avara, a girl adopted by Luke Skywalker at a young age runs away from the Jedi temple just in time for it to crumble. Thinking her family and best friend died inside she ran away and created a life for herself. 10 years later she finally connects to someone from her past in meditation.

Authors note: I’m really hoping to make this a series! I really like the idea and my OC, and I hope people are interested! Bringing this character to here wouldn’t have been possible without my friend @patersonshoney as well so please followed her

I was a jedi, once upon a time. It's been a long time since those days. My name is Avara Skywalker, and I am a grey jedi.

It’s been 10 years since that day, the day the temple fell and was destroyed. She was 17 when it happened, but she remembered it like it was yesterday. Avara wasn’t in the carnage, rather she was in the sky. Deciding to leave the jedi temple that night, to find her true way with the force. Leaving behind her saber and her best friend, her family. She never felt like she belonged there, she was never trained the same or connected to the other jedi the way Ben did. She was different, she always knew that. So, she had to leave.  

That night still haunted her, as she took flight in the stolen x-wing, only to watch her former home completely crumble under her, her family and best friend inside. Call it luck that she decided to leave when she did, but she regretted it with every fiber in her being. Blaming herself for not saving Ben, or Luke. She searched for their force signature’s for too long, and still found nothing, they were gone, at least to her knowledge.  

Now she was a nomad, in the mountains of Kivoro, guarding a small fishing village. She originally came here for rest, but ended up finding herself dealing with their raider problems and protecting them. It wasn’t long after she got there that she found kyber in the mountains, forging a new saber for herself she felt more at home than anywhere she’d ever been.  

“Avara?” a voice called into the hut as footsteps followed. Elaria was the girl who watched over Avara, making sure she ate and was healthy. Elaria stopped in her tracks seeing Avara meditating on the back porch. She was always so entranced when she saw Ava in her element, she loved watching her.  

Avara knew she was there; she knew she was coming before she even left her house. “Elaria...” she smiled a little and put her feet on the ground. Turning to the small girl she hummed at the basket in her hand. “I’m out of food already?” she asked taking the hood of her cloak off.

“you should be, but I see you still haven’t eaten your craw fruit.” she said setting the basket down and starting to unpack food for her.

“to call that fruit is embarrassing.” Ava said with a soft chuckle as she helped her unpack the food.  

“the elder believe it makes you live longer.” Elaria said softly.  

“they must want me to live forever” she said pulling out more Craw fruit from the basket. Rolling the wrinkly blue fruit in her hand before she put it with the others.  

“they like you” Elaria smiled “they don’t like many outsider’s, well I mean you’ve lived here for like... ten years now, I suppose you aren’t an outsider anymore.” she chuckled.

“no, but you can definitely tell I'm not from here” Ava said looking at her softly. It wasn’t hard to tell she wasn’t from here. Everyone here was tanned, or darker, their hair curly or in braids. She respected them, and they respected her. Kivoro was a peaceful village, they didn’t fight back when the raiders came, they just gave them what they wanted. So when Avara showed up 10 years ago, Elaria was quick to ask for help. Ava didn’t hesitate, she’s defended them for so long the elder’s accepted her as their own.  

“that’s because you don’t tan” Elaria teased her and pinched her sides.

“that's because some of us can’t” ava pushed her hands away with a smile and finished putting the food away. Elaria smiled at her softly before thunder rolled outside. Avara looked outside at the clouds and then back at her. “you should head home, it’s a long way off the mountain”  

“you're not going out there are you? Into the storm?” Elaria asked as she grabbed her coat and watched her intently. Avara looked back at her and nodded.  

“It’s the best time to connect to the force” she smiled softly and grabbed her old wooden staff, decorated at the end with feathers and seeds of craw fruit in a small pouch to protect her. She got the staff a few years ago after hurting her leg, it was a gift to help her move around better and feel safer. Since then, Avara has adapted it into Everday travel.  

“be careful...” Elaria said before hugging her quickly and heading out to get home before the rain fell.  

Soon Avara made her own way into the forest, her saber and staff on her side. Careful with her footing, especially around the large rooted trees of the Almor forest. She found her way out her often, to meditate, catch peace of mind. The forest alone felt like pure balance. It wasn’t good or bad, dark or light. It was balanced and it was perfect peace. She projected herself into the forest in her sleep even. When her dreams became nightmares, she knew she could escape to the Almor.  

Avara put up her grey hood as she sat under a large true, taking in deep breathes as the rain finally started to trickle down into the forest around her. It was the calm she needed. The jedi closed her eyes and started to drift into the force.  

A pure calm embraced her in its warmth as she drifted deeper and deeper into the balance, she had created for herself. However, it didn’t last long, all too quickly she was connected to something, someone, all too familiar. She's never felt something so dark and light at the same time, no balance between, just a war.  

It started to become more clear where she was, and soon she opened her eyes to a black and white training room. Only one other in the room with her as he fought a droid. There he was, the familiarity she felt so warmly embrace her, the person she believed to be dead.  

“ben?” she questioned, bringing the man from his training, causing him to turn to her quickly. The saber in his hand raging with the broken crystal inside it as he looked at her. His hair a mess over his face as he growled.

“who are you?” he asked deeply, confusing her even more. All these years she believed that Ben solo had died, and now he stands in front of her, and doesn’t know who she is?  

“Ben, its me...” she said stepping forward towards heim, his saber only raged on as he pointed it at her.  

“i don’t know you!” he yelled and watched her every movement.

“Ben-” she started but he stopped her all to quickly.

“Ben is dead!” he yelled, she could feel the imbalance haunting his head, she felt ben, she saw ben, but this man was not ben. She took him in quickly and pulled her saber from her waist and held the silver hilt close to her.  

“don’t make me do this... put the saber down ben-” she said calmly but he wasn’t having any of it as he finally made a swing to her.  

“I am not ben!” he yelled as his saber swung to cut her down from where she stood. She was quick to react, lighting her saber so his red met the pure white of her blade.  

As their blades met, unstable red against the pure balance of white, the world around them changed as they now stood In the Almor forest. Lighting up the area around them with the light of their weapons. She pushed him back quickly and moved back. Nothing was stopping him as he tried to hit her side, she was faster them him, jumping over the red fury as he swung low. She tumbled and rolled on the earthy ground, looking up at him

“you know me ben! Please! Try to remember" she yelled before she had to meet his saber again with her own. That’s when she saw it in his eyes, the fear, the anger. The war.  

“Ben solo is dead” he sneered looking down at her. She watched his eyes before she pushed him back again and their battle finally started. Their sabers clashed over and over, but they never left a mark on each other. She trained with him all those years ago, she knew his moves, she just had to react faster now that he fought with anger, he swung carelessly.  

She decided then to play along with his new persona. “if ben solo is dead, then who are you?” she asked as she held her saber in front of her face, deflecting his attacks.

“Kylo ren” he growled and tried to his her with his hilt, but she goes down quickly and moved between his legs.

“well, Kylo ren, you need training” she growled back as she swung, cutting his chest and pushing him back as they fell into the training room again. He ground and hit his wound to try and relive pain so he could continue to fight, but she pushed him down again and looked at him. She remembered his face so clearly; he was just grown up now. “I'll save you, ben” she said before she cut off their connection and she was back in the forest.  

Taking in deep breathes as she processed what just happened between them, her best friend was alive, and he was hurting. She had to save him, whatever it takes. But right now, all she could do was think about everything she’s done in memory of ben, every time she spoke to herself wishing he was there. Every time she cried herself to sleep thinking she lost her soulmate. It made her hands shake, her legs feel weak, she felt just as lost as he was, as she fell to the ground and let out a heart wrenching sob, holding her necklace she constantly wore, the necklace he gave her all those years ago.  

Elaria didn’t find Avara till the next day, covered in fallen leaves before she had her brother pick her up and take her back home. “I'll take care of the rest” Elaria said and made her brother wait outside before she searched Avara for wounds, tending a burn mark on her arm and redressing her. “what have you gotten yourself into ava...” she whispered and left a warm cloth on her forehead before she started making a warm soup for her.  

Avara woke up slowly and looked over at Elaria and sighed softly as she relaxed. Leaning her head back and closing her eyes again as she pictured last night over again. “You’re awake…” Elaria said softly. Avara nodded softly and opened her eyes to look at her.

“I’m awake…” she whispered and sat up slowly. Elaria poured soup into the bowel and walked over it.  

“Slow down- don’t push yourself” she said as she helped her sit up and moved her bed tray over so she could eat. “What happened to you?” she asked as se removed the cloth from the girl's head. Placing it down in the bowl of warm water next them she pat her forehead dry as she began to explain.

“I saw him last night” Avara said plainly as they began to eat slowly. “Ben.. I saw Ben” she said after a small pause, looking at Elaria as she watched her soup in front of her. She’d told Eli of Ben many times. Stories from growing up or soft memories of how sweet he was. How much she missed him. Eli knew, Eli knew a lot.  

“what do you mean you saw him?” she asked softly not wanting to push it.  

“I was meditating, and then it was like I was there, in the same room as him.” Avara said calmly as she took another spoon full of her soup. Her hands where a little shaky but she was careful not to get too much so she didn’t spill anyone on the clean linen below her. “but he didn’t seem like the ben I remembered, he was all grown up, and he was... dark, its like all the light inside him was stripped out and replace.” she said looking at her curly haired friend.  

“is that how you got that burn?” she asked as she pointed her wrapped arm. Avara nodded and sighed, she hadn’t even noticed it last night when she was fighting with Kylo. She was to distracted mentally and physically. Too tired after to even register what had happened.  

“ I suppose yea” she sighed and looked at it before looking back at Eli.  

“you need to be more careful” Eli scolded her and shook her head. Taking the spoon from Avara’s hand and feeding her, herself so ava didn’t make a mess.

“you think I didn’t think about that?” she said looking at her before taking a big spoonful of hot soup in her mouth and groaning at the heat, before swallowing it down. “I didn’t meet him on purpose... I thought he was dead.” she sighed.

“Well, what do you plan to do?” Eli asked looking at her friend.  

“i don’t think I should stay here; in case he decides to track down the girl he connected to.” Avara said stretching her arms and pushing herself from the bed so she could move her legs.  

“you want to leave?” Eli asked helping her up and making sure she didn’t fall. She always took such good care of her, even when she didn't need it Eli was there to help.  

“It’s for your safety, he’s unstable, its hard to tell what he would do if is stayed.” Avara said looking off her creaky porch at the cave that help her old X-Wing. The one she stole all those years ago. “plus, I can still feel ben, if I can save him I want to try” she looked back at her.

“does your ship even run?” Elaria asked watching her.

“We’ll see...”

Tag list: @jediminddicks1000 @petalsrdead @everythinggeeky @patersonshoney @a-dorin @onabouteverything @blxwjobsforclones

[bedlamsbard]

Part 9 of the other side AU concept! I did split this one when it started getting long, so there are some scenes snippeted earlier that aren’t here because they’re in part 10. (Which should be the final part but who knows, since I’m doing this for fun and will continue until I’m not entertained anymore.)  I also want to add a gentle reminder that despite its length, this is concept writing, not a polished, chaptered, titled fic like Backbone or Gambit.

Previous: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

5.3K below the break.

***

“I have something for you.”

The younger Kanan sounded unspeakably weary, for which Kanan couldn’t blame him.  He said gently, “Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.”  He felt the younger man eye him, hesitating on whether or not to say anything else, then he said, “This happens pretty often.”

“I’m –”

“Not as sorry as I am.” The kid scrubbed his hands back through his hair, letting his breath out in a sigh. “It’s fine.  You were – I know what you were trying to do.”  He put a shoulder against the wall, scuffing a foot absently against the floor.

“Kid –”  Kanan hesitated, turning his head briefly in the direction of the common room door.  He was aware of both women in the other room, having some kind of argument with Chopper about either fruit or repairs; he couldn’t figure out which of the two it was without putting more than glancing attention to it.

“I’m starting to feel like you’re just calling me that to get a rise out of me.”  His voice was dry, with a hoarse note to it after the previous night’s screaming.  Kanan had noticed that he always spoke a little hesitantly, as if he was never quite certain he should be doing so at all.

“The alternative is a little confusing, but I’ll stop if you want.”

He felt the younger man’s brief amusement. “It’s fine.  I know what you mean.”  He tapped a finger against his forehead.  “And you don’t do it the way the rest of the Inq – the way it is at the Crucible.”

He stepped back from the wall, letting the door to his room slide open behind him; Kanan followed him inside.  It was on the tip of his tongue to apologize again, but he stopped himself; words only did so much when it came to Jedi.  Instead, he said, “Will you be all right?”

They both knew he didn’t just mean after the events of the previous night.  The other Kanan sighed and said, “I don’t know.”  He turned his attention to his hands, studying his unmarked palms and the faint scars across the backs of his knuckles.  “Would you be?”

“I was lucky.”

“Every other –”  He hesitated for a long moment, then grimaced and finished, “– every other pet the Hunter had died.  So maybe I was lucky too.”

“You’re alive.”

“Yeah.”  He snorted. “I guess.”  He gestured at the meditation cushion and Kanan took a seat, folding his legs tailor-style.  His automatic impulse was to let his mind roll out, but he kept a hold on himself instead, studying the younger Kanan without reaching further into the Force than he had to.

The kid turned away from him, opening the drawer beneath his bunk.  Kanan felt the bright flare of the holocron’s awareness and the other Kanan flinching away from it, unwilling to test himself by bringing it out.  He turned around with his – with Caleb Dume’s �� lightsaber in his hand, offering it to Kanan.

“I know you don’t have yours,” he said quietly. “And I don’t – I can’t – it’s a Jedi’s weapon, and I’m – I’m not a Jedi anymore.”

Kanan got to his feet. He felt the boy look up quickly, his eyes widening, and knew somehow that his gaze had gone immediately to a point three inches above his own head – where the Grand Inquisitor’s eye line would have been.  After a moment the younger Kanan swallowed, biting his lip.

After a moment, he said, “You didn’t see the worst of it.”

Kanan bit his lip. His sleep the rest of the night had been restless, a welter of incoherent dream fragments that he knew he had picked up from the other man during their connection, and some of it had been worse than he had imagined the first time he had touched the younger man’s mind.  He had woken up with the light touch of Hera’s hand on his shoulder and nearly flung himself off the bed, as if burned by her touch.  It had taken him three shuddering breaths to remember who she was and where they were, and who he was, for that matter.

He put his hand on the hilt of the lightsaber, just above the boy’s, but didn’t take it from him. The other Kanan started to release it, then stopped.

Kanan could feel the kyber crystal beneath his fingers, familiar but also not at the same time. It was just slightly discordant to his senses, a difference in resonance to his own so slight that he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t known his own kyber crystal so well.  The crystal is the heart of the blade…

He drew his hand back, and felt the younger man look up at him in surprise. “It’s your lightsaber,” Kanan said gently. “Reach out with your senses – can you feel it?”

“I’m not a Jedi,” the boy said again.  He turned his attention down to the weapon in his hand, his mind reaching out to the crystal and then flinching back even as Kanan felt it welcoming him.

“Why do you think that?” he asked quietly. “That you aren’t a Jedi, I mean.”

The boy looked up at him. “I’m an Inquisitor,” he said, his voice flat.  His free hand dropped to the lightsaber on his hip, then jerked away as soon as his fingers brushed the metal of the hilt. “I can’t be.  Not after what – not after.”

Kanan couldn’t tell if he had meant to say “not after what I did” or “not after what happened to me,” but he didn’t ask.  He said, “You didn’t bleed your crystal, though.”

“No.  I – my lightsaber was on the Ghost when I was…when my master took me from Naboo. When we got to Mustafar – to the Inquisition headquarters there, the Crucible – they put me in a room with four trainee Inquisitors, all armed.  I wasn’t. That’s where I got this.”  He touched the lightsaber on his hip again, then closed that hand into a fist.

Kanan put his hand out silently, and after a moment the other man took that lightsaber off his belt and put it into his hand.  He turned his mind to it, cautious, and felt the kyber crystal respond.

He could sense the boy’s sudden interest; he had felt the kyber crystal’s reaction too.  Without turning his attention from the lightsaber, Kanan sat back down on the meditation cushion, folding his legs in front of him.  When he dropped his hands to rest on his knees, the lightsaber stayed where it was, suspended in the air before him.  His mind ticked over the weapon, pulling it into its component parts.

It had been the standard Inquisitor’s double-bladed lightsaber with its circular guard before, he found.  At some point the younger Kanan had dissembled it and reassembled it to his liking, clearing the crystal of its taint when he had done so; the second kyber crystal that made the dual blade possible was gone.  Casting his mind out further, Kanan couldn’t sense it anywhere on the ship – though with unaligned kyber crystals it was always hard to tell – so the boy might have left it on Mustafar or lost it somehow.

He lifted the remaining kyber crystal gently away from the other components to examine it on its own. It was attuned to the other Kanan, but only weakly, the way any item in the possession of an active Force-user would attune itself to them over time.  The boy’s fear had kept him from sinking into it inasmuch it was possible with any random kyber crystal, rather than the one he had found on his Gathering.

Kyber crystals weren’t sentient, not like people and not the same way holocrons developed a kind of low-level sentience over time.  But they weren’t not, either, and Kanan could feel this one responding to him with cautious interest and gaining enthusiasm. The other Kanan hadn’t hated it – either he was too good a Jedi for that or he had saved those strong emotions for the Grand Inquisitor, either consciously or otherwise – but he had both resented and feared it.

He could sense the crystal’s previous owners entangled in its matrix.  It puzzled him for a moment; amongst the Jedi kyber crystals were only ever passed down between Temple Guards, who set their own lightsabers aside as long as they served in that post, and he had never had any reason to examine a Temple Guard’s lightsaber closely.

The Grand Inquisitor was a Guard, he thought with a sudden start.  Not for the first time, he wondered how much of what he had seen in the temple on Lothal had been real.

Telemetry wasn’t one of his wild talents and this wasn’t really telemetry, but he still blinked in surprised at the flash of memory that he felt through the crystal.  It passed in less than a second, but even that was long enough for Kanan to be aware of the younger Kanan’s constant fear, that hot flash of satisfaction when he had taken it from the Inquisitor who had borne it previously, that Inquisitor taking it from another, and another before him, and then a moment, scraped raw and bare, when the crystal been removed from its original lightsaber and bled to its red sheen.  Beyond that, there was nothing, as though the trauma of its bleeding had wiped the crystal matrix of its memory of its first bearer.

I’m sorry, Kanan thought, for whatever that was worth. The idea of his own kyber crystal being stripped from his lost lightsaber and corrupted that way was unbearable, nearly as bad as the loss of his sight.  Kyber crystals were sacred to the Jedi; his own body was only flesh.

He felt the crystal align itself to him, the resonance of its silent song altering incrementally until he could barely tell it apart from his own body.  He let it settle back into the framework of the lightsaber hilt, his mind bringing the disparate pieces back together, settling firmly and comfortably into place.  When he raised one hand, the lightsaber fell neatly into his palm, feeling different somehow than it had when he had first taken it from the boy.

He raised the lightsaber in front of him, feeling the strong, familiar warmth of it in his hand. He depressed the trigger almost without conscious thought, the blade springing up before him.

“It’s blue,” the younger Kanan said, his voice harsh with longing. “It’s yours.”

Kanan deactivated the lightsaber and let his hand fall to rest on his knee.  “That weapon is yours,” he said, nodding at the lightsaber the other man still held. “You know it, I know it, your crystal knows it. The crystal is the heart of the blade; the heart is the crystal of the Jedi; the Jedi is the crystal of the Force; the Force is the crystal of the heart.  All are intertwined – the crystal, the blade, the Jedi – you are one.”

The other Kanan began to weep, harsh, gasping sobs that shook his whole body.  Kanan was on his feet in an instant, pulling the younger man into his arms as he wept.  The other man didn’t try to pull away, just leaned against him.  He was all turmoil in the Force, fear and pain and the open, bleeding wound that was his connection to the Hunter.  Kanan held him the way he would have held Ezra, but unlike with Ezra he didn’t need to speak out loud; just let the warmth of the Force pass between them in something more primal than words.  Words would have rung false, anyway; so he just held the other man, letting him cry as if his heart was broken.

*

“Do you remember when we went to that mountain resort in the Mid Rim?” Hera murmured, her lips against the back of Kanan’s shoulder.  His skin was warm against hers, still a little sweat-slick from their earlier love-making.  She felt comfortably relaxed, curled against his back with one leg thrown over his. “When that Imperial officer was supposed to meet with that spice dealer?”

“And he broke his neck skiing and we got to spend the rest of the week eating expensive desserts on someone else’s credit and having sex in front of the fire?” Kanan said, his voice warm and amused.

Hera flushed despite the fact that they were both naked in bed together.  Their – whatever it was – had still been new enough to be a little shocking to her, but she had been able to put that aside when they were on their op, undercover as an Imperial officer on a discreet vacation with his Twi’lek mistress.  The role had let her relax a little, to admit that, just for a little while, this was what she wanted – to shut the world out beyond the confines of their small suite.

“I think that resort is still there,” she said. “There wasn’t much fighting on that world – just a little in the cities, not out in the countryside.  I wouldn’t mind going back sometime.”

Kanan turned over so that they were facing each other. “I wouldn’t mind that either,” he said.  He kissed her, his mouth warm and comfortable against hers, and Hera smiled.

She put an arm around his shoulders to draw him closer to her and murmured, “Well, there isn’t a fire right now, but –”

“I think dessert’s right here,” Kanan said, grinning against her mouth.  He had one hand on her back, moving it lower to squeeze slightly and make her gasp.

Hera kissed him again to stop him from saying anything else.

*

“I’ll miss you,” the other Hera said.  Her voice was still a little hesitant, as if she wasn’t certain how to admit any of her own feelings to anyone else.  “It’s…nice to have another Twi’lek around.  And you’re not like –”  She flexed her fingers on the handle of her caf cup, thinking for a moment before she went on. “My family wants certain things from me, and I just…I don’t know how to be that for them.  You never wanted anything from me.”

“I wanted you to leave the Empire,” Hera said gravely.

“You never told me that,” the girl pointed out. “You never expected it.”

Hera opened her mouth to respond and then hesitated, thinking back on everything she had said those past few days.  She supposed she hadn’t ever come out and asked for anything other than help getting to Scarif, and she wasn’t certain she had ever asked outright for that either. She had stated her case, and left the two Imperials to make up their own minds.

“I didn’t need to,” she said at last.  She smiled at the other woman over her own cup.  “I didn’t have to.”

The other Hera sighed. “I wish I could have that kind of faith in anything.”

Hera flicked a glance in the direction of the cabins, where the two Kanans had gone to talk or meditate or both. “Nothing?”

The girl followed her gaze and sighed again. “I love Kanan more than anything,” she said, lowering her voice. “And I know he loves me.  But – it’s not him, it’s me.”  She looked down at her mug, turning it until the handle pointed directly at her, then up at Hera’s distressed expression and bit her lip. “Oh,” she said, even softer. “It’s me, then, not…us.”

Hera tried to arrange her features into something less appalled and reached across the table to lay one hand on the other woman’s. “I would stay if I could,” she said. “Both of us would.”

The girl turned her hand palm up and curled her fingers briefly around Hera’s. “When I was at the Academy, I never –”  She hesitated over the words, frowning. “I…forgot who I was.  And I can’t be – I can’t be you, or who I would have been if I’d grown up with the Fleet, but I didn’t know what was…me…and what was – what was the Empire.”  Her hand moved briefly under Hera’s, as if starting to gesture before she stopped herself. “It’s…nice, I suppose…to have a baseline.”

“I’m not sure I’m much of a baseline,” Hera said mildly.

She lifted a shoulder in a brief, constrained shrug, the same kind of gesture Hera had seen a dozen Imperial defectors make over the past few years; uniformed Imperials weren’t prone to much in the way of expression, while armored troopers tended to exaggerate their gestures when they made them at all. “You’re something. And I can’t – I’ve never been able to remember anything from before the Spire very well.  It’s there, but it’s – it’s like it happened to someone else, or something that I watched in a holovid.”

She looked down again, not releasing Hera’s hand.  “Auntie said – but it’s not what happened at the colony.  I mean, it didn’t help, but – the Spire – my cell there – it was my whole world for so long.  It’s like my life ended there.”

Hera squeezed her hand, not knowing what to say in response.  If she had been one of her cadets back in the Alliance there were things she could have said, but this wasn’t a cadet or a recruit or another officer, it was…her.  It could have been her.

The other Hera looked up suddenly, heat flushing her cheeks. “May I ask you something?  You can say no.  It’s – it’s a little – a lot – personal.”

“Of course,” Hera said, bemused.  She squeezed the other girl’s hand again, then released her to wrap her fingers around her mug.

“You and Kanan – your Kanan.”  The girl bit her lip, not meeting her eyes.  “When –”

Hera bit her lip, not sure whether to blush, laugh, or cry. “Sometime around now, I think,” she admitted, after a moment where she got herself under control.  She could feel heat in her face, spreading up under her flight cap to the base of her lekku.

The girl’s eyes went wide. “That’s a long time,” she blurted out, then covered her mouth with one hand. “I’m sorry –”

“No, it’s – when did you?”

The other Hera looked down, blushing so hard that it vanished beneath the high collar of her shirt and the edge of her flight cap.  “About four months after Gorse,” she said, her voice small. “He was so beautiful, and he – he was so kind and he – I wanted him so badly.  I never wanted anything – or at least, I never wanted anything and got it before then.”  She put her hands over her face, breathing hard, then lowered them after a moment. “You don’t know what it’s like in the service if you’re a Twi’lek.  They’re – it’s –”  Her hands were shaking.

Hera reached across the table and took her hands in both of hers again. “It’s all right,” she said gently. “It’s over with now.”

The girl wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I thought I was broken,” she said. “People kept – telling me things about what Twi’leks – what Twi’lek women – were like, and I – I knew they were wrong, but they kept saying it, and I felt like I was going mad.  Or that I was broken.  Or both.  And he – I wanted him so badly.  I’ve never felt like that about anyone else.  He was – he still is – so beautiful, and I wanted him so badly.  I didn’t think that I – that I could feel like that.  He wasn’t like anyone else I had ever met, and he – he treated me like I was a person.  Like it didn’t matter.  Or – that’s not right.  Like it was just part of me.  Like me being a Twi’lek mattered because it was part of me, not – not because I was a Twi’lek.  Do you – do you know what that’s like?”

“A little,” Hera said. “It was different for me.”

The other woman looked at her uncertainly, but whatever she saw in Hera’s eyes must have convinced her. “What was it like for you?”

Hera hesitated, setting her teeth against her lower lip as she thought.  “I wanted to fight,” she said finally, trying to remember what had been going through her head at the age of eighteen.  “More than anything.  My father only cared about Ryloth, but I wanted something bigger.  Kanan – I met him on Gorse too – was part of that.  I couldn’t let myself think about anything past that.  He understood that.”

The other Hera nodded slowly.  “What happened?”

“Well, we both almost died,” Hera said, and the girl made a sound that was almost a laugh, though she immediately looked worried that Hera would be offended.  “It was complicated.  I probably made it more complicated than it needed to be; I never wanted to talk about it. We just – went on, I suppose.  And then we started getting a crew, and – it was harder because there were more people on the Ghost –”

The girl winced, for which Hera couldn’t blame her.

“– it was all right,” Hera hastened to assure her. “It was just different.  And then Kanan got an apprentice, and we started working with other Rebel cells –”

The other woman nodded in sudden understanding. “Everyone at the ISB knew about us,” she said softly. “But around other people it’s different.”

Hera nodded. “It was stupid of me,” she admitted. “We’d been together for a decade – sleeping together for most of that – and I just thought we’d go on.  He – knew.  He knew there was something coming.  And I wouldn’t –”  She took a suddenly shaky breath; this time it was the other woman who squeezed her hands.

After a moment she raised her head and smiled crookedly at the other Hera. “It’s good that he knows you love him,” she said. “And that you know.  I wish I’d had that when I was your age.  There’s nothing wrong with having a mission, but – I thought it had to be that at the cost of everything else for such a long time.  That cost us both.”

“I’m sorry,” the girl said gravely. “That sounds difficult.”

Hera didn’t think it sounded half as difficult as what she had been through, but she wasn’t going to say as much, since she wasn’t sure that there was anything she could say about it that wouldn’t sound like a veiled insult.  “Will you be all right, once we’ve gone?”

The other Hera nodded. “Yes. I don’t know what we’ll be – who we’ll be – but I think we’ll be all right.”  She glanced at the door the two men had gone through. “He’s better now. I didn’t think he ever would be.” She hesitated, then added, “I am too.”

Hera squeezed her hands. “I’m glad,” she said. “I wish –”  She wished a lot of things, but at the end of the day she needed to get the Cluster-Prism data back to the Rebellion and she needed to get back to her son.

“We’ll be all right,” the other Hera said again. “Both of us.  I – thank you.  I don’t know what would have happened otherwise, but…thank you.”

*

“This could be a little awkward,” Hera said thoughtfully.  She accepted her blaster from the other Hera with a faint smile, automatically checking the safety and the charge before holstering it; since she had never needed it she hadn’t bothered asking for it back before now.

Kanan smiled at her. “Awkward as in ‘duck, they’re going to start shooting’ or awkward as in ‘this is going to take a lot of explaining’?”

“Probably the second one,” Hera said.  She checked the bag slung over her shoulder for the fifteenth time that morning, making sure that she had the datacards with the Cluster-Prism files and the ISB files she had gotten from the other Hera, along with the box Bail Organa had given her for Leia. “Maybe the first one, depending who’s there.  I hope Zeb hasn’t decided to make a three-ring circus out of this.  Or Chopper.”

Chopper grumbled at the sound of his name and Hera smiled a little. “My Chopper,” she clarified. “Not you.”

Kanan grinned in reminiscence, then stepped aside to talk quietly with the other Kanan.  Hera turned away to give them some privacy, looking at her counterpart.  After a moment she held out her arms.

The girl hesitated, then stepped into her arms, returning the embrace.  Despite the obvious muscle in her shoulders and arms she still felt terrifyingly fragile to Hera, as if she might shatter under too much pressure. Hera pressed a kiss to her forehead and said, “You’ll be all right.”

She got a smile in response. “So will you,” the other Hera said.  She hugged Hera again, then stepped back.

Hera looked over in time to see Kanan put an arm around the younger man’s shoulders in a swift, fond embrace.  He said something to him, too low-voiced to make out, and the other Kanan nodded, his response equally soft.  When Kanan released him, he came over to Hera.

She put her hands out to him, smiling, and he took them. “Thank you,” she started to say, at the same time he said, “Thank you –”

Hera laughed, then released his hands so that she could hug him. “Thank you,” she said again. “I just – thank you.”

He hugged her back. “Thank you,” he murmured in response.  He didn’t clarify that, but he didn’t have to.

“Be well,” Hera told him gently, kissing each cheek.  She hugged him once more, then let go of him.

The other Hera was speaking shyly to Kanan.  Hera waited for them to finish, then saw both men wince in unison.

“Are you all right?” the younger Hera said, startled.

“It’s starting,” her Kanan said.  He gave Kanan a crooked smile. “I think we’re both going to be sensitive to that for the rest of our lives.”

“Forgive me for hoping it never comes up again,” Kanan said, returning the same grin.  He put his hand on the other Hera’s shoulder, smiling at her, then stepped back.

Hera held out her hand and he took it as he stepped up beside her.  She could feel the pressure coming, the air starting to hum as her vision flickered at its edges.  The younger Kanan and Hera backed up, as did Chopper.

“May the Force be with you,” said the girl.

The universe dissolved around them.

*

“– ait, there’s something wr –”

Luke Skywalker’s voice was garbled, as if coming over a malfunctioning comm.  Hera tried to respond and couldn’t; when she breathed in, there was nothing there and she gagged; she opened her eyes not to blackness but to nothing, to an absence.  She would have screamed if she could have.

The only thing she was aware of was Kanan’s grip on her hand.  She felt his fingers flex against hers, his breath hissing out between his teeth with effort.

“– ith me, togeth –”

The second voice was female, familiar, with the same quality of being barely there.  Hera flailed out wildly with her free hand, but there was nothing.  It was like being in vacuum, but worse; there were no stars, no planets, no pieces of shattered starships to orient herself with.  There was only Kanan’s hand.

“– n, think about your mo –”

Kanan’s hand flexed on hers again. Hera dug her nails into the back of his hand, terrified that she might release him by accident and lose him in the void.

“– the Force –“

Hera had the sudden sense of being thrown, disorientingly familiar as the familiar confines of the Ghost’s common room coalesced around her.  For an instant she still saw the younger Kanan and Hera where she had seen them last, then they were gone, replaced by Zeb and Chopper.  She staggered sideways, fighting back nausea and supporting herself on the holotable before she fell over.

“Whoa!”

“Mama!”

Hera jerked upright in time to see Alexsandr Kallus grab Jacen and thrust him behind himself before he could run to Hera, his hand on his holstered blaster.  Sabine was there too, her blasters already in her hands and raised, pointing at –

Hera flung herself in front of Kanan, who had very sensibly not moved. “It’s him!” she said. “I swear, it’s him!”

She took in everyone in the room with a glance – Zeb, Chopper, Sabine, Kallus, Jacen, Luke and Leia, Rex in the doorway, and –

Ahsoka Tano, one of her lightsabers already in her hand and ignited, her expression hard.  Kanan’s head was turned towards her, his white eyes fixed on hers.  Luke, who was holding the bell-shaped artifact between his hands, drew in a sharp breath; even Hera felt the air flex between them.

“It’s him,” she said again. “It’s Kanan, I swear.”

“We’ll see about that.” Ahsoka deactivated her lightsaber but kept in her hand as she stepped forward, gesturing Luke to stay back when he made to join her.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Kanan told her quietly as she approached.

“I could say the same for you,” Ahsoka said.  Her gaze went to the lightsaber on his belt, the one he had gotten from the other Kanan, then she said, “Don’t fight me.”

“Don’t give me a reason to.”

“He’s –” Hera started to say, but Ahsoka held up a hand to silence her.

“It’s all right,” Kanan said, turning a quick smile on her. “This won’t take long.”

“What –” Sabine started to say, then gave it up, her blasters still raised.

Ahsoka replaced her lightsaber on her belt and placed her palms on either side of Kanan’s head, her gaze boring into his.  Kanan didn’t pull away; Luke sneezed and Leia put a hand to her head, her expression pained. Jacen made a startled sound and Hera made a reflexive motion towards him before Kallus met her eyes.  She stopped.

Ahsoka stepped back suddenly, her breath ragged.  “I –”

Kanan wiped blood away from his lower lip where he had bitten through it. “That’s a little hypocritical, isn’t it?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then took a step back until she could sit down abruptly on the bench-seat, pressing a hand to her forehead.  Something passed silently between them, and Ahsoka’s hard expression softened.  Her shoulders slumped suddenly as she said, “It’s good to see you again, Kanan.”

There was a long moment of silence in the room, then Sabine flung herself forward with a shout, nearly bowling Kanan over as she hugged him.  Zeb was just behind her, sweeping Hera into the embrace as well as they almost knocked the holotable out of its seating.

“How!” Sabine said, not so much a question as an exclamation “How – it’s you?  It’s really you?  This isn’t a trick?”

“It’s me,” Kanan said, sounding slightly strangled. “It’s really me.”

Zeb yelled in triumph. Hera found herself laughing, effulgent with joy and success.  She could hear Chopper shrieking just behind her and managed to disentangle herself from the group embrace to kneel down and put her arms around her droid.  “I missed you,” she told him fondly, then looked up.

Kallus looked as gobsmacked as everyone else in the room, still holding onto Jacen’s hand as they came over. “Mama!” Jacen said, and Hera released Chopper to put her arms out. She swept her son into a hug, kissing his forehead and breathing in his familiar scent.

“Hello, love,” she said. “I missed you.”  She reached behind herself without looking, knowing when Kanan took her hand.  He knelt beside her, and Hera looked over at him, smiling.  She was crying; she didn’t remember starting, but she could feel the tears on her cheeks. “Jacen,” she said, “this is your father.”

[darthspideys]

antithesis // eight

din djarin x jedi! reader

summary: You expected to find another of yoda’s species, much less under the protection of a particularly stubborn mandalorian. Little do you know its that discovery that will change life as you know it, and put all three of you in danger you never saw coming.

words: ~2.5k

a/n: We are very close to the end here, I think I only have one or two main chapters left and then an epilogue! which is good because woop I finished a story for once but also sad because i’m gonna miss writing this one 

Ilum is cold. 

You’re wrapped up in one of Shara’s old coats, which you’re trying not to think about too much. You’re fighting against yourself, against your instinct to run at every second. On the way here, you’d imagine what would happen if you did, if you just got a ship and went off to some settlement in the outer rim. You imagined starting a completely new life, getting a new identity, and living out the rest of your days in anonymity. No longer the woman who helped kill the emperor, who led the rebels to victory in a few battles, no longer the jedi who everyone can’t help but gawk at. 

It’s not healthy and you know it. No one in their right mind would sit casually and imagine leaving behind everyone you love and have ever loved without a trace. Normal people would think of the pain that would cause their loved ones, the hours they’d spend searching for you even though you don't want to be found. But you’ve been through enough trauma for at least a lifetime, and the thought of disappearing from your life completely feels like somewhat of a relief. 

But you’re not running now.

Now you’re trying to find an ice formation on a planet that is full of ice formations. You’re not the best at planning things, usually you make some kind of rash decision based on incomplete information or impulse and then figure things out from there. This is one of those times, only a bit worse because again: Ilum is cold. 

“Are you sure it’s even still here?” Din asks. He’s closer than normal, standing so close behind you that he almost touches your back. The child babbles something from his place at Din’s side, which you don’t even come close to understanding. 

You sigh, “I am not sure.” 

“But you think so?” 

“It’s more of a feeling. I feel the presence of something here that’s important, but it could be residual-” You shake your head, “I have never felt so much pressure to be sure of something in my life.” 

“Really?” He sounds surprised, “Not even during the battle of-”

You spin around immediately, “You were talking to Kes, weren’t you?” 

He tilts his head to the side, which you are beginning to be able to decipher. He uses it to convey a multitude of emotions, and in this case, guilt. “Not for very long,” He says. 

Nice to know he still has a healthy amount of fear. You roll your eyes and laugh softly, “Well he loves to tell that story, little does he know I pretty much pulled that plan out of my ass.” 

“Now that sounds like the you I know,” He teases. 

You turn around and start walking again, and he follows. “I was a different person then,” You say, squinting briefly at some of the ice structures you pass. “I was more impulsive than I am now, if you can believe that and I was trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do with my life.” 

“And do you know now?” He asks. 

It’s a loaded question, but you're distracted briefly by something you think you see on the ground in front of you. “No,” You say quickly, bending down and digging through some of the thick snow covering the ground in front of you. 

“It’s a dead end,” He points ahead of you. 

“Maybe not,” You clear the snow finally and what you think is a piece of an image. “Move back,” you tell him as you get to your feet. You stand, and close your eyes then use the force to push all of the snow back and make the image appear. It’s the symbol of the old jedi order, the one you remember seeing a thousand times during childhood. “Found it.” 

“Isn’t there supposed to be a building?” 

“Give me a minute,” You smile at him, “One can only do so much magic in such a short period of time.” You look down at the symbol and realize that it is going to take a lot to open this on your own. You look back to Din, “Hand me the child.” 

He physically holds onto the pouch he’s holding the child in. “Are you sure?” He asks you. 

“No,” You tell him, “But I’m going to need him if we want to get this thing open.” 

He hands you the child, looking as nervous as you feel. It squirms in your arms, and you grumble, “Little fucking baby.” You put it down on top of the symbol, “Okay baby, just stand there, and be yourself I guess.” You bend down next to it, and place your hand right in the center. “Well here goes nothing.” To your surprise, the baby copies you and you think that maybe this whole thing will work. 

You close your eyes and try to channel as much of your energy as you can into the ground. It takes what feels like a long time, and by the time you feel the temple emerging from the ground with a lot of shaking and crumbling of the ice and rock around it you’re ready to take a very long nap. You collapse onto the ground and lie on your back for a while, until Din appears above you. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Is no an acceptable answer?” You groan. He sighs animatedly, “What? I was just kidding.” You try to get up, but fall right onto your back, and he shakes his head as he offers you his hand to pull you up. 

“You snore for the record,” You say, wiping the snow off your pants. “I say this because I thought it was cute last night until it was late and I couldn’t fall asleep even when I wanted to.” You start off towards the door to the temple. 

“You're blaming me for this then?” 

“Maybe I am.” 

“I could blame you for dragging me all the way out here.” 

“But you won’t.” 

And he doesn’t. 

The temple is massive on the inside. It’s still cold as it is on the planet's surface, but the pillars made of miraculously stable ice shoot high into the ceiling as you walk in. It’s beautiful, the way that the light reflects off the entire room, but you can see the damage from the empire. Holes burned into the side walls, the entryway to the kyber crystal cave barred shut. The force helped you find this place, but it’s power has weakened over the years. All of the crystals that once resided her have been taken, but the one in your lightsaber still hums and pushes against the hilt, like it’s trying to escape. 

“What are we looking for?” 

“I’m not exactly sure,” You say as you walk through to look around. He shakes his head again. “You can’t really know exactly what you’re looking for when you come to places like this. The empire found whatever temples it could and destroyed them, burnt some of them to the ground. Some of them have nothing left, and some of them have old pieces of archives.” 

“So we’re nowhere?” 

“You’re such a downer, this is closer than you were before you met me.” 

“A lot of things have changed since I met you.” 

“Haar'chak,” You curse, as the sound of class shattering fills the room. 

“What was that?”

“I broke a few things,” You stand over the shattered glass as he walks over to you.“I got a feeling.” 

“What kind of feeling?”

“Not a good one,” He puts his hand on your shoulder and you squeeze back briefly. “There’s something wrong here,” your eyes go to the door briefly but suddenly an instinct takes over your body and you pull Din to the ground. 

Before he can ask you what the heck you're doing, the shooting starts. Suddenly blasts of energy assaults the temple and you hold onto his arm as tightly as you can as the child whimpers. It feels like it goes on forever, but eventually it stops. You stand up and try to make your way to the doorway when they start shooting again. You hit the ground, hard, but otherwise unhurt and grumble, “For fucks sake.” 

Then it stops, and there is an eerie silence. You’re waiting for it to start again maybe, or maybe to get that feeling in the pit of your stomach warning you of what’s coming. You get onto your feet and finally make it to the doorway. You look to Din, who’s close behind as always, “Stay here.” You tell him, but you can tell he doesn’t want to, “I’m serious, you have to protect that thing.” He sighs, then nods, and you're off again. 

Terrible idea number 564, walking out into a firing squad and expecting that they won’t just shoot you down. They don’t, but the hubris is visible nonetheless. 

“I assume you came here looking for me,” You say. 

Gideon scoffs, “You think too highly of yourself, we also came for the child.” 

“Unfortunate thing is he’s not here, so I guess you're stuck with me.” 

He ignites the darksaber and holds it in his hand lazily, thinking that you would be threatened by that. The sith stands dutifully at his side, the bloodlust in her eyes clear: even if he didn’t come here for you, she surely would. 

“Though I’m sure you’re lying, jedi, you’ll have to do for now. What would you prefer we do with you? Kill you right here, or an execution somewhere more public?” He looks like he’s absolutely salivating at the thought of it. “Something to show everyone that their precious new republic is nothing but a scam, and the jedi are the false gods they’ve always been, doomed to fail by their own hubris?” 

You resent that. You ignite your own lightsaber, and hold it facing the ground at your side. In your hands, it's deadly, more so than in anyone else's and they should all know that. “You think you’re more powerful than me then?” You take a few steps down the staircase. “With what? That thing? Didn’t your mother tell you not to play with the adult toys? But then again that was the modus operandi for the empire back in the good ol days wasn’t it? Constantly messing with things that you couldn’t possibly understand. Got a lot of people killed that way.” 

“You mentioned mother, funny how you followed in the footsteps of yours.” He shakes his head, “Another disgusting rebel terrorizing the galaxy, good thing hers was snuffed out.” 

You don’t flinch, “I fought the war in her honor. Killed a lot of your precious soldiers as revenge, and then somewhere along the way I started to like it. I guess I have to thank you then, for bringing me some more. I missed knocking their little bucket heads together.” 

“I don’t think you’ll get that far-”

You see the look in her eyes, she’s tired of waiting for him to make the first move. She’s going to strike while she thinks that you're distracted. “Well let’s get on with it then?” You move into a defensive stance just as she makes a run for it. You do a backflip just as she slices forward, which surprises her enough that she almost falls all the way over. She recovers and makes another run for it, slicing wildy and preventing you from doing anything other than defending yourself. She pushes you back a few feet and you fall onto the ground, hurrying to get up before she makes another move. 

 Gideon is not keeping good enough control of the darksaber. As you take a step back to try and give yourself more room for a defensive motion, you call it into your hands. She jumps up and goes to slice right down the middle of your body, but you use both lightsabers in a crossed position to block her attack and push her back about twenty feet through the air.

 Somehow, she lands on her feet, and uses a wave of power to push you back a few feet which leaves tracks in the snow below you. She looks, more disbelieved than she has before, her hair is falling out of her perfectly made braids and swipes away some hair from her face. As she walks towards you, she drags her lightsaber on the ground menacingly melting all the snow so that the dark brown dirt is exposed. It leaves a long line of dirt right in the middle of the makeshift battlefield, she doesn’t run at you and she just walks and stares at you with daggers in her eyes.

 Gideon just stands off to the side and looks useless. He just watches in awe like you suspect Din is. Gideon has been playing with powers he doesn’t understand, and you think that maybe he’s just realizing that right now. She was never under his control, she was always using him for her own purposes seeking out jedi and killing them. If everyone had just stayed in their own lane, including Din she would’ve never been able to find you or the child she clearly wants so desperately. Or maybe you're just lamenting everyone’s else’s role in this to distract from the fact that you don’t know if you can win this.

 It’s fine, it’s fine, you can do this.

 You ready yourself and get in a defensive stance. You’re ready for whatever she wants to do whatever revenge she wants to inflict on you for gaining the upper hand. She stands a few feet away from you, and waits a few seconds before just laying into you. She slices her blade rapidly in that angry, uncoordinated way that the sith and some jedi fight. It usually wouldn’t work, but the speed and quantity at which she strikes makes it an effective strategy.

 You drop the darksaber to the side, unable to keep track of two lightsabers amid her attacks, and try to give yourself space to think of something to do. You throw her back again, and she’s too involved in her own attacks to stop you. You ready yourself for a defensive maneuver, and run for it making a jump high so you can come down from above her.

 Only she sees you coming. As soon as you jump, she slices, bringing the lightsaber across your torso with a sound that you can’t even describe. You fall to the ground, unable to move because the burning sensation is too strong. The thing about lightsaber wounds is that they cauterize instantly, not a drop of blood touches the white snow, but it doesn’t make the pain any less.

 You lay on your back, unable to get up, and just try to breathe. The breaths don’t come easily because your panicking and the pain blurbs everything. Suddenly, she leers above you with her lightsaber raised, you can’t move to do anything. She says something but you can’t hear it and she pulls the lightsaber up, holding it high above your body, the red blade bathes her face in it’s glow, and the light glints off the snow surrounding the two of you. The kyber crystal screams from inside of the lightsaber, she’s filled it with all her anger, rage, suffering, and clearly her hope for revenge on her enemies. They both have been waiting a long time to kill someone like you. 

 She moves to slice down, but suddenly something comes flying through the air. She stops it easily but when she turns to see where it came from you both see Din standing two feet away, holding the darksaber in his hand. Your first thought is, you have no idea how to use that. 

[luminioushope]

Title: Love Like Bats Summary: Wolffe sees Plo for the first time without his mask or his goggles. Wolffe has no idea who, or what he is. Plo is rather amused during the entire thing, even if Wolffe nearly blinds him.

Read here on ao3!

Wolffe surveyed the wooded terrain from atop of the ledge he stood on. There was ample cover for he and his men in the case of a surprise attack, and for the most part, the caves and trees made their camp hard for the Separatist forces to navigate. It even provided good air coverage. And with the new moon and supposedly forty-eight-hour night, he doubted the Separatists forces stationed on the planet would have much luck finding his men.

Even below, illuminated by small fires and torches, shadows stretched like dancing bats on the rocky ground, his men seemed to be somewhat at ease. The smell of local flora and whatever meat they’d managed to purchase at their last stop filled the air, and the shiny part of Wolffe fought the urge to join Sinker and Boost for dinner. It smelled good, mouth-watering. And Wolffe’s stomach groaned in protest as he refused to accompany his men.

He still had things to do. He’d give his men their rest, but he was due for a briefing with the general. They couldn’t wait in this camp forever. And with luck, they would be advancing against Separatist forces first thing in the morning.

Speaking of the General—a quick scan indicated that there was no Kel Dor life signs mingled amongst his men. A small flower of anxiety bloomed within the Commander’s chest.

This was not entirely typical of General Plo, especially when things were less tense. Of course, he first left the men to their own devices when they were granted downtime, but he was often pulled into one of their small groups or invited to eat dinner with them. He’d even taken to meditating beside them after Sinker had begged him to stop spending his free time alone in his room.

“We don’t mind if you make little rocks and plates float around when you meditate General! The Shinies think it’s cool anyway.” Sinker had told him, after he had grabbed Plo’s arm and dragged him to the outside of their circle. Ever since then, Plo had made it a point to stay with his men when permitted.

Thus, Wolffe was slightly concerned about the lack of the older man’s presence. It could indeed be Jedi things, or Kel Dor things keeping him away. But Wolffe liked to know where all the members of the pack were.

He chanced a call on Plo’s comm. Nothing.

A hike down his ledge and a quick conversation with some of the men told Wolffe that Plo had taken to the caves, quiet ecstatically. He’d left about ten minutes after they all settled, and the pack hadn’t seen him sense. No one had gone after him either. Not with the air quality in the caves. According to the briefing, the air was toxic to most species, and thus going in there without a bucket was not advisable.

He left no note, and hardly an explanation. He’d taken off towards the caves, practically darted the moment he’d turned his head towards them. Apparently, they’d all thought the Separatists had found them, only to be reassured by the general mid-sprint that there was something he had to see in the caves.

Wolffe nodded as the group of young troopers explained the situation to him, each bobbing up and down excitedly as they guessed what the general could be doing. All the while, Wolffe ran over what exactly the general could be so attracted to in the caves.

He’d told Wolffe once about how as a youngling some three hundred or so years ago, he’d gotten his first kyber crystal from a cave. Maybe that is what he wanted? It made sense. These caves were full of minerals.

Still, it would be nice for Wolffe to know exactly where he was and that he was safe.

“Thank you boys, I’ll go and look after him myself.” Wolffe said, “I’ll tell you what he’s doing when I see him again.”

--

Aside from the terrible air quality (Wolffe knew, he tried to breath), the cave was quite stunning. With a shine of his headlight, he could see the reflection of tiny colourful crystals shining back. Plo told him that Kyber crystals called out to them through the Force.

Plo’s had sang to him, and apparently his mind had sung back to it.

Looking around at the crystals, Wolffe wondered if his General was wanting another.

“General?” He called out as he walked deeper, “Just coming to check-in on you. The men said you were looking for something in the caves. I wanted to see—”

A quick shuffle to his far right caught his attention, the fluorescent beam of his light settling upon a hunch formed hidden behind a rock.

The person—creature looked at him with wide, milky, white eyes. Wolffe gasped behind his bucket. He had never seen eyes like that before. They were so otherworldly, captivating.

“Hello?” Wolffe managed, as he moved closer to the creature. And the moment his light made contact with its gaze, it crouched lower and looked away.   Wolffe took in the large, gaping hole of a mouth, the beak, and the very, very sharp tusks. He stood there for a little while longer, staring at the creature that seemed caught in-between running away from him or staying put in its place behind its rock.

He wonders how it got there, and who it was.  There was something oddly familiar about it that he just could not put his finger on. Wolffe looks at his comm link, debating on dialling the General to help him with whatever or whoever this poor soul is. Though the moment he looked away, the creature shuffled in its spot. Immediately Wolffe turned his head towards it, his light catching its eyes again.

The noise the creature made was practically blood chilling, and Wolffe jumped to turn off his light.

“Sorry, I didn’t know it was still on.” He closed the distance between he and the creature, night vision activating immediately, “You must not like it, huh?”

The creature nodded; hands still practically glued to its eyes. A part of Wolffe’s stomach drops. He hoped he didn’t seriously hurt it.

“Hey, it’ll be alright. I’m...I’m a part of the Republic. I’m not sure if you know what that is, but I’ll comm my medic. He’s really good at dealing with non-humans,” Wolffe said as he tapped his comm, “Sinker—I need you at my location. I found someone here, I think they’re a local. My light may’ve hurt their eyes a little bit. They may have an aversion to it, like the General.”

Sinker was quiet on the other line, and Wolffe wondered if he even picked up. Last Wolffe saw him, he was practically stuffing his face. Chances are he was probably knocked out around the fire.

“Don’t worry, I’ll comm him again.” Wolhfe reassured the creature, who was now looking at him through the gaps in-between his four fingers. Four fingers? Wait? Were those talons? Was this—

“I’m looking at your location now, Wolffe. Are you sure that’s not the General that you almost blinded?”

Wolffe jerked his head back to the alien, who was now looking at him with very wide, watery, amused white eyes. He could make out large silver irises as well.

“If he has tusks, it’s him. His kind can breathe in those caves, make sure you’re not shining a light in his eye. I’ll be there shortly. Sinker out.”

Wolffe stood there for a short moment, taking in the alien-the General?

“Um...Plo? Is that you?” He certainly hoped not, because he practically blinded the thing. If the water in its eyes didn’t say that, then certainly the squeal it let out early did. But still, those white-silver, murky eyes refused to look away, wonder and amusement only growing as moments passed by.

Maybe it wasn’t Plo? Certainly the General would have said something by now. Then again, could one speak with a mouth like that? It didn’t look like he had any teeth, let alone a tongue. And the General spoke, all the time. So maybe this wasn’t him?

I assure you, Wolffe. It is me. Gentle yet assertive, Plo’s voice rumbled within his mind. Wolffe jolted. Not out of fear—telepathic communication was commonplace amongst the Wolfpack, especially with a telepathic general. but this entire situation was so, so strange.

And plus, he had almost blinded him.

“General! Plo! I’m so sorry, had I known it was you, I wouldn’t have even had my light on.”

Plo raised a hand to silence his commander before he went on his tangent.

The fault is mine. I should have let you know I was in here, he began, and please do not feel bad. I have had worse than your light shined in my eye.

From behind the rock, Plo summoned both his mask and his goggles, and Wolffe watched in awe as the creature from the cave became the general he knew and loved so much.

“Now, back to normal.” His voice was slightly strained through his mask as it adjusted to the filter.

“I don’t know. I think I liked the tusks and beak a little more.”

Even in the darkness of the cave, Wolffe could swear the General blushed.

“I like your eyes too,” Wolffe muttered, “they look like stars.”

“I take it that I did not make you uncomfortable then? With the staring?” Plo asked hesitantly.

“Of course not, Plo! I could look in your eyes all day.” The moment the sentence escaped his mouth, Wolffe felt like punching himself in the face. How could he say something so cheesy?

“I’ve never seen you without my goggles. You look different unfiltered.” Plo spoke after a small pause, “You look...illuminated.”

Wolffe stared through his visor, tilting his head at his general’s words. Illuminated? He’d never heard that one before, certainly not about a clone. But his general was unlike any other, and no matter how outlandish it seemed, Wolffe believed it.

“Thank you general.” He spoke, honestly, “I um…if you want to look at me or anyone really with your goggles off, I’m sure we could dim the light in the ship. I never realized how much you had to accommodate for us. It would be nice for you to be able to be yourself for a change.”

“I wouldn’t dream of risking your safety for me. I’m well accustomed to navigating your world, no need to change that.” Plo responded, “I must confess though, realizing I could breathe in this cave and see filled me with joy I haven’t felt in a very long time. I don’t even spend time in my quarters much—and I wouldn’t dream of asking your brothers to sleep with their buckets off whenever I happen to lodge with you all. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist."

“Maybe after the war, we could come back here? It’s nice enough so I can breathe outside, and good enough so you could breathe inside. We get the best of both worlds.” Wolffe inwardly groans again! Not only did he imply that the general leave the Order to stay with him, but he may have just tipped the general off on his feelings for him.

He had never been more grateful for his bucket than he was then. He was sure his face was redder than a Sith saber now. And when the General said nothing, Wolffe made to apologize.

“General, I didn’t mean—”

“You would want to spend your freedom after the war with me?” There was an emotion in his voice that Wolffe couldn't quite name. But of what he could name was hesitance, hope, and fear.

“Of course, General! You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met, I would love to spend my life with you.” And Wolffe spoke honestly now, wanting more than anything to soothe the anguish his General seemed to be going through, “If you’d want to spend your life with me, that is.”

“I wish more than anything that you and your brothers will see the end of this war, and will find your place far away from the Republic, far away from the Jedi. That includes me. And yet the feelings I have for you are mutual,” Plo confessed, “I would not ask you to spend the rest of your life with me, a Jedi. Nor would I want you to be tethered to me in any way, shape or form, but if would have me, I would be glad to—”

Plo didn’t finish, because Wolffe had slowly removed his mask and tossed his own helmet to the ground mid sentence . Afterwards, he took hold of the front of the Jedi’s collar and brought him down gently, placing a soft kiss just above one of his tusks. He broke kiss slowly, then placed his forehead against the general’s.  

“I don’t want to live with you Plo, I need to. You make me so, so happy. I couldn’t imagine leaving this war without you.” Wolffe smirked, “So let’s ask the boys to keep this place just a little clean when we’re done with the Seppies, alright? This is our future home, Afterall.”

And just like that, the General’s mind brushed against the recesses of Wolffe’s, sliding past his walls as the commander gave him permission to enter. All at once, the Commander was filled with the warmest sensation he’d ever experienced. It was as if his entire body had been bathed in sunlight, and all around him sweet music played. It didn’t take him long to realize that this was the general’s energy, his love.

Wolffe had felt it before. But only in small increments. And it had been hesitant, as if afraid to scare the commander away should he feel too much.

But now he felt it its entirety.  He was enveloped in Plo’s love.

Without much thought, he gasped deeply, practically swimming in the pure feeling of ecstasy.

Big mistake. Big, big mistake.

The moment the acrid air filled his lungs, Wolffe’s lungs lit ablaze. Damn. He’d been holding his breath when he kissed the general, when he’d spoken to him. He had expected to put his helmet on immediately afterwards, but hadn’t counted on the general sharing his affections with him like he did.

Regardless, Wolffe felt his knees buckle beneath him, and before he knew it, he was plunged into darkness.

--

When he came to, Plo and Sinker, along with some other concerned troopers, stood above the commander. One look at his surroundings told him he was in the medbay.

“How long have I been out?”

“Twenty-four hours,” Sinker didn’t miss a beat in his response, “we managed to blow that planet to dust while you were out sir, not a separatist droid in sight.”

Wolffe groaned.

“Casualty report?”

“None. We ran them into the caves. It was the General’s idea. He collapsed them all in.”

Wolffe looked at Plo in disbelief, who looked at him apologetically.

“Guess we’ll have to find a new home, huh?” Wolffe sighed, “couldn’t wait to blow up this one.” “I’m going to leave.” Sinker announced as he ducked away, “let me know when you two are done.”

“We’ll find a new place to live, but it was between the caves and the men.” Plo took a seat on the bed beside his commander, “and you know—”

“The men come first; I know. I know. I’m the one who told you that.”

“We’ll find a new place to live, a new life to have,” Plo repeated, stroking his Wolffe’s back gently, “it will take time.”

“This war has a way of ruining everything,” Wolffe said, somewhat bitterly. He knew it was just a cave, and he knew the likelihood of such a place surviving the battle was little to none, but he wanted to hope. Wanted to cling on to something.

“Then we’ll have to fight until it’s over,” Plo responded, “and all the while, I’ll stay by your side until we see the end.”

Even through his anger and his hurt, no doubt heightened by the medication Sinker put him on, Wolffe returns the sentiment. He held onto that image, that feeling of warmth, of safety, of love.