#was pellaeon actually bothered badly by thrawn being an alien? i know there was something but i can't recall

[elivanto]

Do you think that Pellaeon is pretty much just what Eli would have turned out like if Thrawn found him later rather than sooner?

WELL, i'm not sure? i'm inclined to say no, though? to me, pellaeon and eli are fundamentally different people tbh. i'm not about to write a whole essay on this because i don't think i know enough about pellaeon [proceeds to write whole essay 🙄] but whereas pellaeon grew up on coruscant (even though he apparently didn't like it much, thank you wookieepedia), eli spent his childhood and adolescence in wild space. so, like, the first big difference between them is their outlook on life, i guess (and, most importantly, their accent! shdfgdf)

if it wasn't for thrawn, eli would probably not have been interested in a command position in the navy at all and just done his supply officer thing, or even gone back to his family business after serving for a few years, if that's even possible when you're an imp (a bit unrelated, i love that when he's with the ascendancy he's like 'ummm excuse me, why am i a lieutenant and not a hotshot commander? how dare you, ar'alani? how dare you!!!' like chill you little space cowboy, you're doing almost exactly what you set out to do originally). and i guess that again it's a bit different with pellaeon, who served in the republic navy during the clone wars (ranked captain and in a command position) and continued that way in the empire.

hm, i could list more differences to make my point but honestly? i have no idea. maybe. like i said, to me they're fundamentally different characters but it's based more on a subjective feeling than actual textual evidence lmao. additionally there’s the fact that we only know eli as a (relatively) young man.

i do love that both of them were more or less bewildered by thrawn at the beginning and needed time to get used to him (but who doesn't...) and eventually became, for lack of a better word, fond of him. what i also love about both of them is that they're smart and able to think outside the box, ykwim?

so yeah, i personally don't think eli would've turned out like pellaeon but you can't deny that they're quite similar in some ways.

[bedlamsbard]

Part 12 of the other side AU concept, the second epilogue sequence!  At least one more sequence after this before I either start revising or just keep on going as concept writing.

Previous: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

About 4.6K below the break.

***

Humidity made the rock of the cliff face slick against his fingers, forcing him to pay extra attention as he made his way up it.  He clung to the seemingly sheer rock with his fingers and boot-toes stuck into grips too small for most humans to manage for more than a few meters, relying on the Force to keep him from falling.  Heights had never bothered him, but he still didn’t look over his shoulder at the vast spread of jungle beneath him; he needed all his focus for the climb itself.

“Sure,” Ezra Bridger muttered, the words so soft that they were closer to being a thought than voiced, “ninety-nine percent of the time it’s ‘sit in this cell until we can think of something better to do with you,’ but it’s that one percent of ‘you’re a Jedi, please do this incredibly dangerous thing that no stormtrooper can pull off’ that gets you.”

The unfamiliar weight of both the sniper rifle and the pack slung across his back made the climb a little more awkward than he would have preferred, but he didn’t mind it.  Going anywhere without a weapon right now would be a bad idea, not to mention the fact that he was still a little impressed that Captain Pellaeon had given him one at all.  More than one, as it happened; he had a blaster pistol holstered at his hip and a couple of vibroknives secreted elsewhere around his person.  Pellaeon didn’t know about the blades.

Despite the fact that the humidity was so thick that the growing fog was just short of being rain, Ezra couldn’t resent his current position.  If he fell – and it wouldn’t take much – then not only would it be an ignominious end, but it was likely that no one back at Chimaera Camp would even notice his absence for a few days.  If they did, Pellaeon would probably assume that he had made a break for it.  It was an option that Ezra had considered and discarded given their current circumstance, but he was keeping it open if those circumstances happened to change.  He knew roughly where they were in relation to the Chimaera’s crash site, but he was also aware that there was nothing space-worthy left on the star destroyer. Aside from the ships back at Chimaera Camp, there was only one other option to get offworld, and Ezra wasn’t quite that desperate yet.

It felt good to have his hands on the living stone of the planet, to feel fresh air – and yes, the fog – on his bare skin, to lick his lips and taste the slight tang of the moisture of a new world.  He had spent nearly all of the previous six years on the Chimaera; the Force was everywhere, but it was different in space than it was planetside.  After spending his entire life on Lothal, the months the Ghost had spent with Phoenix Squadron in deep space had been a shock to him.  It had been at least a little preparation for all those years on the Chimaera.

This wasn’t Lothal, but he was still attuned to the Living Force and he could still feel the thread of wrongness that ran through it here.  As far as they knew, this planet didn’t have a name, just the designation it had been given when they entered the star system; if it had an indigenous sentient species, they hadn’t run into them yet.  Ezra had no way of knowing what the planet should have felt like in the Force, but he could tell that there was something badly wrong here and getting worse by the day.

A few minutes later, he pulled himself up over the top of the cliff with a grunt and crouched there, breathing hard, then took out his water flask and drank sparingly.  The Chimaera’s scientists were monitoring the water in the stream that ran past Chimaera Camp and had found that its chemical content was changing by the day; Ezra had water purification tablets with him, but there was always the chance that whatever was leaching into the water table was wouldn’t be affected by the Imperial-issue tablets.

He put the flask back onto his pack and took the sniper rifle off his back, using the scope the same way he would have done a pair of macrobinoculars.  The scope was the reason he hadn’t brought a pair of macrobinoculars; if he had to he could remove it from the rifle to use on its own, and he might need the weapon.  While he had never been formally trained as a sniper the way that some of the stormtroopers and death troopers aboard the Chimaera had been, given the time needed to set up a sniper’s shot he could use the Force for nearly the same level of accuracy.  If not, well, a sniper rifle was still a rifle – this one was reconfigurable, so Ezra could always break it down into an assault rifle or a heavy blaster pistol.  While most death troopers used the BlasTech E11-D and DLT-19D that were standard issue, they often had the liberty to carry other weapons if desired, which was how Ezra had gotten his hands on the A280-CFE that was commonly used in the Rebel Alliance.  

The view from the scope showed him only the seemingly impenetrable tree cover of the jungle he had come through.  Ezra knew that there were a number of clearings in it, some large enough for a light cruiser like the Scylla or the Charybdis to put down in – and in fact the Seventh Fleet’s remaining cruisers were parked in two such – but even with the scope they were impossible to see.  It had a range of five kilometers on a clear day, which this wasn’t; a heavy blanket of fog mixed with the tall native trees of the planet, turning the view beneath him into a grayish-green sea.  With a sigh, he straightened up again.  He kept the rifle in the curve of his arm rather than returning it to his back, wanting to have it quickly to hand if he needed it; the few seconds it would take to swing it around could cost him his life.

The jungle began again a few meters from the edge of the cliff.  Ezra eyed it dubiously; having spent his entire life to the age of fifteen in grasslands he still found forests both disconcerting and distasteful. When he stretched out with the Force, though, he could feel the life within it – confused by the changes being wrought upon the planet, but still present.  The wildlife, he knew, would be his first hint of real trouble.

Right now it told him that there was nothing to be concerned with except for the planet’s native dangers. Still, Ezra hesitated, looking at the edge of the jungle and fighting down his nerves.  Annoyed by his own reluctance, he sank down into a tailor’s seat, resting the rifle across his knees.  He fell quickly and easily into a light meditative trance; he had years of practice, after all.  He didn’t let his attention roll out the way he had done when he had meditated the previous night at Chimaera Camp, but turned it inwards instead.  He just wanted a few minutes to clear his head.

He was, he realized, afraid.

The fight on the Chimaera had been one thing, as had the handful of other skirmishes he had been involved in over the years, but this was the first time in more than six years that Ezra had been completely on his own, whether on an alien worlds or back on the Chimaera.  If he had died then, at least Grand Admiral Thrawn and the other Imperials would have known, assuming the whole Chimaera hadn’t been destroyed at the same time.  There was no real difference in being out here than there was being back with the Imperials, who had more reason to want him dead than anything else on this world and had come close a few times; Thrawn had twice had his own men shot over two such incidents.  Ezra had scars from the attempt that had come closest to succeeding.  On this world only Captain Pellaeon and a handful of other acquaintances – not quite friends – amongst the Chimaera’s complement really cared if he lived or died.  Some days Ezra wasn’t entirely sure that he himself did.

Kanan had lived like this for years, Ezra reminded himself, and often in worse situations than this one after his entire world had died.  So had Zeb.  Ezra could do no less than either of them, and refused to fail them.

It hadn’t been left to him to make any decisions one way or another for a long time now – not the kind of decisions that actually mattered.  He had been volunteered for this particular mission rather than volunteered himself, but hadn’t bothered to argue it even though others had.  It was something to do, at least.

Years ago he had asked Captain Rex about the Clone Wars, which Kanan only ever talked about when forced or when he had been drinking, which wasn’t very often.  The old clone had gone quiet, thinking about the question, and then said slowly, “When you go into battle – whether it’s a major push like Geonosis or a five man black ops mission – you go in understanding you’re already dead.  You can’t be afraid of dying.  You accept it – you take it inside of you.”

Rex hadn’t said whether or not he had learned that from the Jedi he had served with, but Ezra wouldn’t have been surprised if he had.  He let that knowledge fill him now, the reminder that in the Force he was both living and dead at once, and even if he was still drawing breath now, it was a state that could change at any point.  There was no point in being afraid of the unknown: what would happen would happen as the Force willed it.  All he could do was the best that he knew how.

He opened his eyes and got to his feet, tucking the rifle against his shoulder as he went into the jungle.

It was slow going. The undergrowth seemed to be thicker up here than it was in the lowlands around Chimaera Camp.  The tree cover was so thick that it blocked out most of the sunlight, leaving Ezra to pick his way through the jungle in greenish gloom, trying not to trip over creepers on the forest floor, which had leaf litter so thick that in places he sank into it up to his ankles, or hang himself on the vines that passed from tree to tree.  Many of the tree trunks were so wide around that it would have taken a dozen men holding hands to encircle them.  Nor was it silent.  Animals – he saw avians and snakes, along with some kind of small red-scaled reptile and the quick flash of a furry mammalian tail vanishing up a tree – called out constantly.  They weren’t much bothered by his passage, as animals usually weren’t, though more than once he heard them go quiet in response to some native predator passing through.  He sensed disquiet among them even as they went about their normal routines; they were as aware of the changes happening on the planet’s surface as he was.  More so; this was their home.

Mid-afternoon brought the downpour that Ezra had learned to expect after the past three days onworld. Rather than press on, he spent the time crouched on the upturned root of one massive tree, sheltering as best he could beneath leaves the size of his cell door back on the Chimaera.  The rain seemed to come down in sheets, like a solid wall of water despite the fact that by the time it reached him it should have been disrupted by the tree canopy. Ezra managed not to get drenched this time – the first day he had gone out to stand in it, to the horror and disgust of the sailors assigned to guard him.  Most members of the Imperial Navy hated and distrusted uncontrolled weather at best and planets entirely at worst.  This time getting soaked would be a hindrance – and besides, it wouldn’t particularly aid his already slow passage.  Ezra watched the rain fall from the dubious shelter of the tree and let his mind drift out in something that wasn’t quite a meditative trance – while most of the native wildlife had gone to shelter at the same time he had, it wasn’t a guarantee that the enemy would do so as well.

When the rain had passed and the sun had reappeared, Ezra recommenced his slow trek through the jungle. He hadn’t stayed completely dry in the downpour, but the scout trooper’s undersuit he wore was more or less waterproof; it still left him feeling uncomfortably like he had gone through a sanisteam in his clothes.  He paused twice to eat, the tasteless emergency rations that stormtroopers carried as a matter of course, and once to refill his water flask at a stream after he had tested the water with the Force and decided he didn’t need to use one of the water purification tablets.  By the time that dusk fell, casting the jungle into even further gloom, Ezra had, he guessed, advanced within a kilometer or two of his goal.

The advent of darkness slowed his progress even further.  He took out the night vision goggles he had gotten from the Chimaera’s death trooper captain – promoted from the ranks two years ago after the remaining death trooper officers had died – and put them on, blinking as the shadows of the jungle resolved into only moderately more penetrable shades of green.  While he had a glowrod, using it would be just as good as sending up a beacon, not something he wanted.  He could have passed through the jungle without needing to see at all, except that would leave him vulnerable to something he wouldn’t have thought possible six years earlier.

By the time he sensed the final setting of the sun sometime later, the jungle had been the next thing to pitch-black for more than an hour.  Ezra was silently arguing himself out of trying to find somewhere to sleep for a few hours when he felt the nearby animal life go silent, then recommence its noisy outcry.  The negation and recommencement of sound shifted in his awareness of the Living Force, and he swore wearily to himself.

Something was coming towards him.

He settled the rifle more closely against his shoulder and touched a finger to the night vision goggles, making certain that they were as firmly affixed to his face as possible. He had learned the hard way that what was coming left no trace in the Force – not of itself, at least.

Ezra could have gone up a tree, but he was city born and bred and could count on one hand the number of times in his life he had actually tried to climb a tree.  Even in this unfamiliar environment he felt far more comfortable on the ground that he would have perched on a branch – he was sure he could get up to one, but not positive that he could stay there, a hesitation he would never have had on a cliff edge or a high-rise.  He was absolutely certain that trying to fight on one would end with him flat on his back on the ground, and that was a best case scenario.

Instead he settled himself in the soldier’s stance he had learned from Rex, letting the rifle rest loosely against his shoulder as he let his awareness spread out.  Animals, frightened by the alien sight and scent of the intruders, fled their approach; plants flinched away from the heavy tread of feet.  Ezra felt them come closer and closer – a near-silent passage to anyone but a Jedi. The air felt close and heavy around him, the night sounds of the wildlife vanished into stillness or flight. Ezra let his mind fill with the blazing clarity of the Force, until in every way that mattered Ezra was the Force itself.  The Jedi were the sword hand of the Force, Kanan had said more than once; with or without a lightsaber Ezra was still a Jedi.

He fired even before he saw the flicker of movement in his night vision goggles.

The crack of the blaster shot broke the stillness of the night air, sparks flaring at the laser bolt struck armor it couldn’t penetrate. Ezra threw himself sideways, feeling the rush of air as the thrown thudbug just missed his previous position. He rolled and came up on one knee as he fired again, twice in quick unison, relying on instinct rather than the little his vision showed him.  He got one more shot off and then had to reverse his grip on the rifle, slamming it upwards two-handed to block the amphistaff blow aimed at his head.  Quick as the serpent it resembled, the amphistaff lost its staff form and lashed out, its jaws gaping wide.  Hissing, it spat poison at his eyes.

The night vision goggles cracked as the poison struck.  His vision blurring – knowing he had only seconds before they broke entirely or the poison dripped down onto his skin – Ezra thrust out with the Force.  The amphistaff’s bearer didn’t release the living weapon, but his arm and the amphistaff both swung wide, away from Ezra as he threw himself into a backflip, ripping the night vision goggles off as he did and letting them fall.

Darkness closed over him.

He pulled the rifle back to his shoulder and fired again; once more, sparks briefly illuminated his enemy as his shot struck uselessly off armor.  Then the warrior was on him; Ezra swung the rifle like a club, feeling it connect with his enemy’s skull.  Undaunted, the warrior lashed the amphistaff like a whip; the serpent slashed down across the barrel of the rifle, cutting the weapon  in two.

Ezra didn’t hesitate, just flung the remaining half of the rifle at his opponent even as he flung himself sideways again, avoiding the amphistaff’s attempt to get its teeth into his throat.  He twisted and came up with his blaster pistol, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger – a steady stream of blaster bolts, nearly all of which sparked uselessly off vonduun crab armor.  Only one penetrated between the joints of the armor, making his opponent grunt in pain.  His ears ringing from the blasterfire, Ezra thought he heard it echo oddly in the jungle, but he was already moving, grabbing one of his vibroknives with his left hand and slashing backhanded in the same motion.  With the Force behind it, the vibroknife cut through the amphistaff in the vulnerable place just below the head.  Halfway through the blade stopped, jammed against the creature’s seemingly indestructible internal structure.  It thrashed in the warrior’s hand.

It couldn’t cry out, but he could.  Ezra could neither understand the words nor sense the emotions that underlay them, but he released the vibroknife and got both hands on the grip of his blaster again, firing at the place he thought he had seen a vulnerable point between helmet and breast plate.

The blaster jammed.

Oh, karabast, Ezra thought – he didn’t have time to voice the words before his opponent’s free hand shot out and closed around his throat. He was lifted off the ground, armored fingers like durasteel cutting off his breath.  The blaster fell to the ground as he clawed at that implacable arm, fingers scrabbling over the plates of living armor that covered his opponent’s forearm.  He felt it twitch beneath his fingers, lending its strength to the enemy.

His opponent snarled something in his native language, his fingers tightening.  Ezra reached for the Force as his vision started to gray out, knowing that if he wasn’t dead yet then it was because the enemy intended to take him alive.  After enough suffering to make up for the death of his amphistaff.

Light flicked out like a whip, coiling around the warrior’s body.

Ezra had just enough time to feel astonishment before the brief flash of a jetpack’s repulsors heralded the being who slammed feet-first into the warrior, knocking him sideways. He dropped Ezra, turning to grapple with this new adversary as the glowing line of energized whipcord vanished. Ezra hit the ground, gasping for air but already reaching for another of his sheathed vibroblades.

Even now his enemy was absent from the Force, but the new arrival wasn’t.  Ezra didn’t bother to think, just drew his vibroknife, thumbed the switch on, and waited – with his amphistaff dead, or at least out of commission, the warrior was left with only whatever razorbugs or thudbugs he was carrying and his dagger-like coufee.  He heard the living weapon scrape against – or possibly through – what could only be beskar, and a grunt of surprise.  The brief burst of a short-distance repulsor sent the warrior stumbling back a step and Ezra struck in his moment of confusion, slamming his vibroknife up beneath the skirt plates of his armor to the vulnerable place on the inside of his thigh where most humanoids had a major vein.  He felt the weapon dig in and dragged it down as far as he could before the warrior cuffed him aside, sending Ezra flying to strike a tree.

He hit hard enough to black out for an instant, but was dragging himself upright as soon as he could, reaching for his fallen blaster through the Force.  The grip smacked into his palm hard enough to hopefully displace the jam and he raised it, aiming at the spot he thought the enemy was.

There was a blaster shot, not his, and in its flash he saw the warrior on his back in the undergrowth. It also illuminated the injured amphistaff making its way like a sidewinder through the leaf cover, with Ezra’s vibroknife still stuck into its neck.

Even as the flash faded Ezra fired.  His own shot wasn’t aimed at the creature, but at the hilt of the vibroknife, slamming the weapon those last few precious centimeters forward to sever head from body. Ezra heard it thrash briefly, dying, and then there was silence.

He would have liked nothing more than to collapse and sleep for a week, but he braced himself against the tree with his free hand and kept the blaster in his other hand.  His head was pounding; he knew he’d have bruises the next time he looked, to go with the bruises he still had from the Chimaera’s final battle and crash.

“Who –”  He coughed as his abraded throat protested. “Who’s that?”

Light sprang into being, the thin artificial life of a glowrod illuminating the Mandalorian woman standing by the warrior’s corpse.  After four years living with one, Ezra was hardly going to forget that particular silhouette.  His gaze traversed the slopes of painted beskar armor, noting the fresh scars on it from the coufee blade before settling on the helmet before the woman reached up to remove it.

“Ezra?”

He stared.  Then he tried to take a step backwards and couldn’t, his shoulders already braced against the tree trunk.  His mind didn’t seem to want to come to terms with what was in front of him, even as he lowered the hand with the blaster in it.  He slumped back against the tree, letting it take more of his weight.

“Hey!”  She crossed the space between them with a few quick steps and grabbed his shoulder, her grip solidly human and real. “Don’t you dare pass out on me now!”

Ezra reached up and closed his free hand around her forearm, staring into her face. “I’m not going to pass out,” he said. “They usually patrol in threes –”

“Yeah, we met the other two. They’re dead.  You want to sit down?”

“I’m fine,” Ezra said, or tried to say, but was already folding up.  He sat heavily, belatedly holstering the pistol he was still holding. “You changed your hair,” he said inanely.

“Yeah, I do that,” Sabine Wren said. “So did you.”

Ezra touched a hand self-consciously to what remained of his hair – long on top and pulled into a tail wrapped with strips of thin leather, close cut at the sides, because he had spent the past six years with sailors and stormtroopers who thought a buzzcut was the height of fashion.  He stopped with his fingers hooked through a strip of leather, stared at Sabine, and felt himself start to shake. “You’re real,” he croaked, even though the Force had already told him the answer. “You’re really here.”

“Yeah,” she said, her hand still on his shoulder. “I’m really here.  We’re all really here.”

When he looked up again, he felt as much as saw them ghosting out of the shadows at the edge of the glowrod’s illumination like the spectres they had been named for.  Ezra was too tired and overwhelmed for further disbelief; he pushed himself to his feet with Sabine’s help and stumbled into Kanan’s arms.

“I felt –” he said shakily, his voice muffled by the fact that he had buried his face in the other man’s shoulder.  He fisted his hands hard against Kanan’s back, aware of how gloriously alive he felt. “– in the Force, I felt something change, six months ago.  I felt you come back.”

“It’s me,” Kanan said, his voice gentle. “Yeah, Ezra, it’s me.”

Hera put a hand on his shoulder, smiling, and Ezra turned into her embrace, then Zeb’s.  He was shaking so badly that Zeb had to help him to a seat on an upraised tree root, one hand folded over his shoulder as though he couldn’t bear to let Ezra out of his grasp.  He wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t hallucinating – that he hadn’t been taken captive after all and this was some new torture.  Then he looked at Kanan’s calm white eyes and touched the Force again, gingerly, like prodding a sore tooth, and knew it wasn’t a trick.

“You’re going to explain that,” he said, a little wildly. “You were – I thought – I saw – I felt –”

“Yeah,” Kanan said again. “It’s a long story.”

Meaning not now.  Ezra took a shaky breath and leaned back into Zeb’s reassuring grip, watching Sabine crouch to inspect the fallen warrior.  She touched the scratches on her breast plate gingerly, then her eyes widened as a hand-size piece of beskar broke off in her hand – the coufee had cut nearly through it and the slight pressure of her touch had freed it. “What are these things?” she demanded.

Ezra sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Long story.”

“We saw the Chimaera,” Hera said, sitting down on his other side. She kept her blaster in her hand, resting across her knee, which under the circumstances Ezra thought was the wisest thing she could have done. “We were on our way to the rendezvous coordinates when Kanan sensed you, but we had to find somewhere safe to put down. Chopper’s with the Ghost about two kilometers away.”

Ezra rubbed his hand across his face.  “They’re from beyond the Unknown Regions – beyond our galaxy, maybe – and they’ve been making a push towards the Empire since it was still the Republic,” he said. “They’ve been tracking the Chimaera and the rest of the Seventh for months – years – and finally cornered her here. They’re warriors – shapers, they call themselves; everything they use is organic, alive – their armor, their weapons, their ships.”  He nodded at the warrior’s corpse and the dead amphistaff beside him.  “They’re called the Yuuzhan Vong.”