#but yeah they left the decision of what to draw to me. i suggested what i was thinking of drawing and they went

[azaracyy]

one of my finished ych commissions. other finished artwork can be found here. the tailmon is based on the twitter meme / trend of tailmon with pikachu build

#brace yourself long tags of rambling ahead #so i tend to ask my commissioner's permit to post a watermarked smaller version of the art on twt #im a person of my word so im not gonna assume or much less abuse that to simply cross-post to every platform im in #this one is a bit special bc the commissioner is an old friend #tldr we were talking about life and career being the typical adults and they randomly went 'ok draw smth for me' and just... paid #so it's like.... a joke commission? but also not bc the pyment is real?? #but yeah they left the decision of what to draw to me. i suggested what i was thinking of drawing and they went #'do it. finish 2023 with a bang' lmaooo idk if this is banger enough but i clearly had a blast. record breaking fastest comm i've ever done #back in school i doodled pikachu everywhere like breathing so it helped #apparently im given the freedom to share the art however and wherever i like too so yeah bc this is a meme and it is best shared with ppl.. #its kinda cool how we now have the ultimate answer to the question 'which is better digimon or pokemon' tho #upon which im just gonna show this chonky polite tailmon #tailmon #gatomon #digimon #png #finished commission #dood you probably wont see this but ty for the random commission :'))

[julianalvarez9]

acting on it / martin ødegaard

author's note: been avoiding writing smut for this man for ages. i started this back when arsenal played liverpool so it's been A WHILE. not proofread bc i just needed to get it out quick. needless to say this isn't real, don't know the real reason why they took him out so yeah, fiction :)

warnings: smut with plot. badly translated norwegian pet names (?, kinda hair pulling, kinda choking, kinda public sex (they could get walked in anytime) ¿?

wc: 2k words

summary: suggesting to take martin out of the game to avoid any serious injury backfires when he blames you for being subbed off.

"why did you tell him to take me out?".

you knew this talk would be coming, but still, the loud thud when the norwegian shut the door a bit too hard startled you. the draw was rough for everyone at arsenal, and at some point, felt almost like a loss. the players got into the dressing room with their heads hung low after clapping for the fans, and apart from some encouraging pats on the back, you didn’t really get to talk to anyone in particular.

you saw how angry martin had left the pitch when arteta decided to take him off, but he hadn’t said anything: of course he hadn’t. he was a good captain, and he wouldn’t ever question the gaffer’s decisions. at least, not publicly.

but under the anger, he knew it was a good decision: he wasn’t asking for the ball and leading his team like he used to do at every game. like he was supposed to. he knew his performance was below average, but he refused to attribute it to the minor discomfort he had during the week. he was fine during warm ups and the entire first half. he couldn’t afford to get injured now, at this point.

being seated during the last ten minutes of the match was the worst thing for him. seeing how the win slipped through their fingers felt like a knife being turned on his stomach. and even if martin knew they still had the top position secured, the lead they had against city was cut short, and they hoped it wouldn’t be something they turned to regret at the end of the line.

martin was observant, not only off the pitch, but during games, too. he frequently saw the bench, awaiting for instructions offered by the manager or movement in the sidelines, signaling some players being subbed in. when he saw you, the team’s physio, talking to arteta, he knew he would be the player to be taken off.

“you were only meant to play 60 minutes, martin. you played 80,” you reasoned. before the game, you had been consulted how many minutes was the norwegian able to play, without risking an injury. knowing martin, you were sure that he wouldn't appreciate being subbed off if there was still a match being played, but you were aware that mikel was considering the bigger picture -there were still games that needed to be won, and it would be immensely more difficult if they were without the norwegian on the pitch. you understood arteta's worries about his key player being sidelined for way too long if he were to make the matters worse.

he wasn't happy with your response, but he didn't say anything else: he stayed in the way of the door, impeding the way out, whether intentionally or not, trapping you in the room with him. the frown is still visible on his features, glooming his usual prince charming looks for something darker, almost malicious. you think that he's maybe transported back to the game, reliving again and again what went wrong, and you try to ease his worries. "not everything is your fault, you know? you have to take care of yourself first”.

he scoffed. "i'm the captain. everything is my fault".

at this point, you've grown tired. all you want to do is finish packing your things, and get home as fast as possible. but the presence of the norwegian is stopping you from completing the checklist you have in hand. "what do you want me to do, ødegaard? i’m doing my job, which is to keep you all healthy," you say, while finishing to check the last thing you had on the list, assuring that you aren't forgetting anything. you throw the little notepad to the desk, while sitting on the empty space, as martin watches your every movement like a hunter keeping track of his prey. "you can't play 90 minutes every three days: you need to rest, or you'll get a serious injury. if you have any problems with it, talk to arteta”.

you're mirroring the frown he had for the last five minutes, and martin can't stop thinking about how cute you look while trying to act mad at him. "quit the attitude. i'm supposed to be mad, not you".

now it's your turn to scoff. "you are making me mad by trying to take your frustrations on me, like i'm in the wrong for doing my fucking job".

"if you think this is me taking my frustrations on you-” his blue eyes turn almost dark gray, and martin takes big, rushed steps towards your figure, making his wider frame tower over yours. he lifts his hand, brushing a string of hair that had fallen from your makeshift ponytail behind your ear, and his hand rest softly on the side of your neck, with his palm surely covering half of your skin.

he looks for hesitation in your eyes, something that would tell him to back off, but he can't find any. instead, your breath is ragged, and you're trying really hard to keep eye contact with him while trying not to visibly shut your legs in a way that lets you ease some of the tension. "this would be me taking my frustrations on you," he corrects, now his thumb resting across your neck, restricting your airflow but just slightly.

you're not sure if you feel dizzy because this is what you wanted all along, ever since you've crossed paths with the norwegian, or due to how intoxicating you find his touch: either way, you gasp for air, and it has martin smiling wickedly, in a form you haven't really seen before. "oh, does my pretty girl like being choked?".

the whine you emit is, surely, pathetic, but it fires something inside of him. his grab on your neck is a bit rougher after hearing the sweetest sound he had only dreamed of hearing, but it’s not enough to worry you about the possible marks he could be leaving. still, you can feel it, just as you can feel the desk behind you that would not really leave you any space to escape, if you wanted to. but you don't want to, although you probably should remember where you're at, that you're working and he's a player.

the smallest glimpse of reality comes back to your senses when you hear a sort of commotion outside, and you're cut back from his spell, just barely. "martin, we-".

he hears the hesitation in your voice, and is quick to lure you back in, his kisses leaving a wet trail under his way. "i know we can't. and i know we don't have enough time. but i need this, i need you. will you let me?. the way he's whispering in your ear makes your skin flourish in goosebumps, joined by how he's nudging at your neck, while smelling your perfume, driving you mad. he realizes when the smallest whimper leaves your lips and is proud of his doing, showing by the way it oozes out of his mouth when he whispers "that's my good girl".

your hands are quick to find their way under his shirt, having the chance to feel the toned abs you've never dared to look at before while trying to keep up with the feverish kisses shared between you two. the second his mouth trails down to your collarbone, you slip a playful "eager, aren't we?" when you realize his hard on pressed against your leg. "could say the same about you," he bites back, after his leg graces your center and you're eager to rub yourself against it.

you two don’t even get to take your clothes fully before he slides into you. his right hand is covering your mouth, helping you in silencing the moans that seem impossible to contain, while he isn’t much better at keeping quiet. especially, when your hands are pulling on his blonde hair, driving him crazy. you’re coming undone under him, and martin can’t help but groan at the sight of you, a wreck for him, while taking him so well.

through his grunts, he can barely manage to warm "not gonna last long if you keep on squeezing me like that, kjaere," but it’s to no use, given that you’re still clenching on him tightly, your warm walls swallowing his length fully as he snaps his hips in and out of you in a relentless pace. the desk underneath you shakes with force, given that you’re perched against it while trying to stay on your feet.

it’s not long before your whole body is shaking under his frame, as his left hand lifts your leg up, now hugging him by his waist in an attempt to bring him impossibly closer. you let out another moan that gets muffled by the hand he still has over your mouth, and you’re grateful for it, because in your hazy mind filled with pleasure, you can’t mute your sounds as your orgasm approaches.

“where?” he asks, looking deep into your eyes to ensure you won’t be too loud, before freeing your lips to speak. your voice comes out hoarse when you reply where you want him to cum. “i-inside, please-”.

the norwegian has to crush his mouth to yours in a bruising, hard kiss, before his sounds are the ones that alert the outside world of what's happening in your little workspace. his bruising pace fails when he's on the edge, and a soft moan that slips out of you and directly onto his ear makes him lose it. he's deep into you, coating your insides which provoques your own frenzy to disinvolve.

everything gets too much for you, and you’re not sure you can wrap your mind around your surroundings, but martin keeps you afloat, holding your figure flush against him. "hey, you're okay, i'm here," he reassures, his soft touch grazing your cheek in a loving way when he sees your eyes glaze over. it's purely because of the mind shattering orgasm you just experienced, but he cares, wants to know you're okay. the gesture is intimate, certainly feels almost more intimate than the moment you've just shared, and once you reassure him that you're okay, he kisses the crown of your hair before proceeding to dress himself properly.

"you like the armband, right? i'm bringing it next time," martin shows his million dollar smile before picking his shirt from the floor, and puts it again in a quick motion, smothering the creases in hopes that no one that sees him leaving your office could figure out what went down between you two.

"already thinking about the next time, ødegaard?".

the door knock startles you both, and breaks the atmosphere previously held in the four walls. his hair is a bit messy after you pulled endlessly from the locks not even five minutes ago, but he makes a quick move to tame it, passing his long fingers through his gold strands and setting it in place, exactly how he likes it, before you open the door to find just the one person that you didn’t want to see.

"oh, i knew you'd still be here," arteta calls upon seeing you, still in the secluded area you work in. he doesn't find it weird that you remain here, knowing that you’re the first one to arrive and the last one to leave, just like he is. instead, his eyes furrow when he sees better into your eyes, still a bit glassy.

"martin, did you make her cry?".

his hands are in his pockets, trying to hide off the tent still present in his joggings. it doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to gather a believable enough excuse, and you’re kinda impressed about it, figuring that he might have thought about this more than you thought. "she was upset about the game" he explained, lips pursed without giving out much emotion, quite like how you saw him answer the interviews he did post-match. "told her to not worry too much. we'll win next time,” martin smiled, turning his stare to you now. “for you, right?".

#martin ødegaard x reader #martin ødegaard x you #martin ødegaard imagine #martin odegaard x you #martin odegaard x reader #martin odegaard imagine #football imagine #football x you #football smut #football x reader

[chuuyadelune]

now that i have recovered from the emotional shock of seeing *that* akutagawa scene from chapter 88 animated in HD 4K (i thought i’d have another week to emotionally prepare myself LMAO), i just wanna be a little bit of a nerd and say that i really liked the cinematography/composition this episode.

in particular, i really enjoyed the anime’s decision to draw visual parallels between this fight and previous fights (in particular, the fight against francis, which is important because it is the first time they worked together).

after all, this fight is the culmination of everything they’ve done together. from the combining of their abilities, coming to an understanding with each other, realising the potential of beast-beneath the moonlight-rashoumon… bringing back similar shots that were used in previous fights is SUPER effective at highlighting the parallels and how far they’ve come, in my humble opinion.

here are a few things i noticed:

- first of all, both of them activating their abilities one after another is an explicit nod to S2’s fight;

- the confrontation/conversation in the hallway from S2 (to an extent! they’re on the same sides, which caught my eye);

- akutagawa blowing up the engine room on the ship, and kyouka doing the same during the first fight between him and atsushi (S1);

- and a similar angle being used for black tiger claws / koukko zessou as a nod to the fight in the S3 finale.

the parallels — though maybe less explicit, *are* still there in the manga? like, the entire “structure” of the fight so to speak is very similar to the francis fight in S2 — akutagawa finding atsushi, taking place on a(n air)ship, breaking away from the fight to strategise before confronting the final boss (then, francis, and now, fukuchi) is undeniably a nod to that fight? i love that this is given its due in the anime as well.

another thing about the cinematography this episode i loved was them using the clock as being the indicator of fukuchi’s fuckass space-time sword doing its thing. that was a really nice touch, in my opinion; the cuts in between were jarring and disorienting and really helped put us into sskk’s shoes.

and as for the background design alongside the clock itself — there were a couple of things about them i enjoyed:

- the number of floors / levels of the ship in the back (5, as a nod to the five ways an angel decays, the DOA)

- the blue of the clock is meant to be reminiscent of fukuchi’s sword, i’d argue, with the way both of them pops out of the sunset/orangey-red lighting

- the clock’s design being super ornate and gold plated reminds me a *bit* of a tabernacle (where they keep unused eucharist in a church) — and thus brings up connotations of sacrifice. that white bridge-thing beneath the clock as well reminds me a lot of an altar, too (see the image above the last to see what exactly i’m referring to, because image limit)

okay, yeah, that one might be a bit of a stretch, sure. but its placement as being above them, combined with the two tables/boxes to the left and right of the ship’s bow (which looks very much like a cross, btw) gives it a distinctly religious, altar-kinda feel, i’d argue. and crosses have been used in S4 as symbolism as well!

(tbh, there could even be a bit more imagery i’m missing, because — the angels of the DOA refers specifically to the buddhist conception of an angel. i’m not too familiar with buddhist imagery, but i thought that this was worth pointing out regardless!)

the last thing i want to say is that the red and blue symbolism went CRAZY this episode. i don’t have much else to say because it was super obvious — they even reused the same “black tiger claws” shot from S3, after all — but i do wanna point out that the symbolism even went into the carpets. the fucking carpets.

like, the shift: it’s red when akutagawa’s leading the conversation but changes to blue after atsushi’s suggesting of the submersible as a strategy? i mean, i don’t know if this (or anything i’ve said, to be fair) was intentional or not, but it’s a cool detail anyway!

personally, i enjoyed this episode, the action was great, and all of this too was a really neat addition as well! and now… uh. we wait for the chaos to get worse i suppose !? (laughs nervously)

#while i haven’t been enjoying S5 as much as i did S4 i think they still did pretty good w this episode #there was a lot i really enjoyed about this episode!! #studio bones will always deliver on the action. we can count on that bit at least LMAO #next week though…. it’s shin soukokover #bsd #jem rambles #bsd s5 #bungo stray dogs #bsd spoilers #atsushi #akutagawa #shin soukoku #bsd atsushi #bsd akutagawa #bsd sskk #sskk #i do mourn the loss of some of the nuance of their characters but. they did say at the panel the anime focuses more on action sooo 🥴 #you win some you lose some i guess #only reason i was able to make this post btw is because ive watched bsd so many times to the point shit’s literally engraved into my brain #it’s bad for me NDLDGAJ #bsd analysis #bsd anime analysis #bungo stray dogs season 5 #bsd season 5

[seidenbros]

hi ❤ may I request a fic where the reader goes 😳 everytime they see eddie's lips and one day he can't help but ask why they keep looking at him (in a teasing way)?

Hello love! Sorry that it took a while to get this done, and even now, it's rather short, because I'm down with a cold (so I hope this makes sense and isn't messed up due to my drugged up brain). It got a little suggestive, more than I thought it would, but I hope this is kinda what you were picturing 💚

Requests are open | prompt lists for inspiration | Stranger Things Masterlist

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Reader Word count: 1334 Warning/Tags: slightly suggestive, fluff, eddie being a tease (let me know if I missed anything)

Lips Like Honey

It was bad, really bad, but you couldn’t keep your mind from wandering, couldn’t even say when this had started, but at one point, your eyes had landed on Eddie’s lips when you’d been sitting at the table in the cafeteria and you’d wondered what they would feel like on your own lips, on your skin. You’d quickly shaken your head to get that idea out of your head, cheeks burning with embarrassment, because this was nothing you should think about someone who was your friend - and Eddie was your friend, wasn’t he? A couple of weeks ago, he’d asked you to sit with them, since you’d realised that you liked the same stuff, that you were in great company with the boys of Hellfire, and it had proven to be the best decision. Ever since then, you’d been looking forward to your lunch breaks, and to the Club meetings that you were allowed to join to get to know the game.

“You can join us for the next campaign, you know? Make your own character.” Eddie pulled you from your thoughts, your eyes landing on his lips again, which they tended to do even more when he was speaking. Your own lips opened, but closed again, while you slowly looked up at him like he’d just caught you doing something illegal.

“We’ll definitely help you!” Dustin said before Eddie could say what had been on the tip of his tongue. Probably for the better, because he didn’t really want to embarrass you in front of the others, but he’d definitely noticed you staring at his lips again and again, and it made him curious. Especially because you tried to hide it all the time, because you always got so flustered after you’d stared at his lips probably a moment too long. He’d also noticed you squirming in your seat, but ever since he’d noticed, he hadn’t caught you alone.

“Yeah… sounds good,” you managed to say, giving Dustin a faint smile, before you concentrated on your sandwich. That way you didn’t have to look up at Eddie again, whose eyes were boring into you.

Even in class, you began daydreaming when he was there. He didn’t even say anything in class, but he focused on scribbling something down in his notebook - probably lyrics that just came to his mind - or started to draw something, but you couldn’t see what. Because your eyes were glued to his lips again, to the way the tip of his tongue was sticking out. Something he always did when he was concentrating on something.

You cursed yourself for your vivid imagination, because the pictures in your head immediately made you squirm in your seat. You were lucky that your teacher was so focused on delivering his speech, because you wouldn’t have realised if he’d talked to you in that moment. Because in your head, you were somewhere private, Eddie’s lips moving all over your body. Normally, these thoughts were reserved for your dreams that always left you frustrated, because Eddie was nowhere near when you woke up.

“Y/N? Hey, can you hear me?” Eddie snapped his fingers in front of your face, which made you jump a little, hand on your chest to calm your racing heart. You quickly glanced around only to see that everyone except for you two had already filed out of the room because the lesson was over. “You alright? You kinda zoned out there for a bit.” He couldn’t hide the smirk on his lips, because he’d caught you staring again. And you were doing it now as well, only for a moment, before you caught yourself and scrambled up to put your books in your bag and get going.

“Yeah, fine. Just…” You wet your suddenly dry lips with your tongue trying to come up with an explanation. “Just a lot on my mind.”

“You sure that’s it?” Eddie leaned back against his table, arms crossed over his chest, while he kept looking at you like he just caught you doing… what you’d been doing.

“Yeah… yep. See you later!” Nearly tripping over your own feet, you made it out of the room and down the hall, because you just needed to get away. Away from him, away from school to hopefully get a grip.

It probably helped that you didn’t see Eddie until the next Hellfire Club meeting for the end of the current campaign. You’d promised that you’d be there, and you really thought you’d be alright. The meetings were always so lively, so energetic that you had to follow, that your attention was drawn away from Eddie, even though you loved listening to him, and watching him talk. But it was better for you to get that distraction. What you hadn’t expected, though, was that Eddie was in the room alone by the time you arrived. You were usually the last one to get there, and so you’d thought it would be the same right now as well. But it was just the two of you.

“Where is everyone?” you asked, putting your bag down next to your usual spot next to Eddie, because you had the perfect overview from there, and it would have been weird if you’d chosen a different spot today.

“They’re running a bit late as it seems.”

“All of them?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m the one who is already here,” he said with a smirk, because he’d told everyone that they would start half an hour later except for you. Because he’d realised that you’d been keeping your distance, even avoiding him, after you hadn’t spent your lunch breaks with them. He had a pretty good idea what this was about, but he had to find out, had to make sure, and therefore, he wanted to be alone with you.

“So, I haven’t seen you in the last couple of days. Everything alright? You sleep well?” Eddie inched closer to you, leaning over to put his face even closer to yours. “Have any nice dreams?”

His voice dropped lower, and when you cast your eyes downward to his lips, you could see that lopsided smile that made you swallow. You were glad that you were seated right now, because that voice mixed with that look did things to you, that you didn’t want to say out loud.

“So tell me… why do you always look at my lips?”

His words made you hold your breath. You’d been way too obvious for your own good, and you’d had a feeling that he’d caught up with that, but that he asked you about it now, made you wish that the floor beneath you would open up and swallow you whole. At least until he kept talking.

“Been thinking about what they could do?” He leaned even closer now, his lips brushing against your cheek, while his hand landed on you thigh for leverage. “How they would feel on your skin?” He’d seen right through you, and you couldn’t suppress a whimper when his lips made contact with the shell of your ear. “Because I’d gladly show you. Been thinking about this as well.”

“Eddie…” you whispered, but it came out more like a moan. That sound made Eddie’s grip on your thigh tighten, and he pulled back a little.“Just say the word and we can make these thoughts reality.” Now, his eyes were lingering on your lips, waiting for you to say something, but before you could do that, the door opened, making you both pull back when the others filed into the room. Your heart was still racing in your chest, and Eddie’s look told you that he was still waiting for an answer - and he’d get that answer once you finished that campaign, knowing that it would be torture for Eddie. But after weeks of dreaming about him, of torturing yourself, it was only fair that he got to suffer a little before you yelled yes from the top of your lungs.

Tag-list: @violetpenguinkris @tellhound @ghosttownwherenoonegoes @spideyanakin-interacts @bellamy-barnes @beepisbeep @snapefiction @hardysbitch @give-em-hellfire @sadbitchfangirl @ravenclawkimmi @lacrymosa-24 @ruinedbythehobbit @samlealea @hacker-ghost @kirsteng42 @princesseddie @anaisweird @harringtonfan4 

Let me know (send me a message) if you want to be on one of my tag-lists. I have one for the Promises Series, Eddie x Reader, Steddie and Steve x Reader 💚

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x you #eddie x reader #eddie x you #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things x reader #stranger things x you #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfic #staffi writes #eddie munson #eddie munson x y/n

[darkwaveho]

The thought of y/n and Monica being in a healthy relationship just makes me melt. I usually don't like fluff, but they're something special 😤💕.

When you have time (and if you want to), can you please give us a small drabble about Monica and y/n? Maybe the two of them are living in bliss with Nat scheming while she's in prison 👀. I wonder how Nat will react when she hears y/n and Monica are in a relationship (I just know she'll have connections in prison lol). Do you think that if Nat were to break out of prison while Monica and y/n were together that she would go back to Natasha?? Would Nat go crazy when she finally finds them? I love how your AU's have AU's 🤣.

Also the lack of Monica Rambeau fics on this app sucks 😫.

Damage control

Split decisions

Parings: Monica Rambeau x reader, Natasha Romanoff x reader (Past) 

Warnings: 18+, fluff, abuse, violence, cursing suggestive themes, mentions of murder, shitty parenting, hints of Stockholm syndrome. 

 A/n: Sorry it took so long anon hopefully you like it. I tried to add in as much as you asked for but I might’ve forgotten a few things. my bad if I did lol <3

Damage Control masterlist

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

Monica enters her house with a sense of uneasiness, she doesn’t know what it is, but something felt off. she assumes positions drawing her gun from her holster and walks further into the room. the living room is empty nothing there put left over honeybun on the coffee table. she falters in her steps when she hears a noise coming from the kitchen.

during this time, you were always on the couch waiting for Monica to get back from work. no matter the time you waited, she brought you a sense of comfort and stability that you never knew you needed. Monica walks into the kitchen raising her gun higher to the eye level of the other person in the kitchen, she releases a breath and lowers the gun.

“Yn? What the hell?” 

“Yeah, what the hell Mon! I could’ve killed you; you know!” you yell at her for scaring you.

Monica had words at the tip of her tongue but seeing you and actually taking in your full figure she had new words forming with a burning question. “What are you even doing with that?” she points with one hand as she uses the other to safely put her gun back in the holster.

“I thought I heard something in the basement.” She takes the gun from your grasp. “Where did you even get this from?” 

“I’m not telling you, you’re a cop Mon.” She rolls her eyes and moves you to the couch. “You sure this is just about a noise you heard?” She rubs your hand soft and tenderly. “Yeah of course, what else would it be about?” 

“Yn, it’s okay to talk about it, to talk about her.” You shake your head. “Okay, another time then? In the meantime, please no more firearm’s sweetheart.” She holds your chin and places her soft lips on yours. “Another one.” She accepts and plants another kiss on your lips. You hum in satisfaction. “More.” She giggles and plants multiple wet kisses to your face knowing you would keep asking her for more. You pull her on top of you falling back on the couch. 

“So, what else did you do today other than have possession of an illegal firearm?” You scoff knowing she’s not going to let it go and she’ll most likely press you for more information about who you bought it from later. “Watched tv, ate doughnuts.” You give her a look of mischief. “Looked through your panty drawer and I finally opened that box you have hidden away in the back of your closet.” Her eyes go wide with shock. 

“What?” 

“I knew you’d be surprised, you’re really freaky Monica.” You wiggle your eyebrows in a playful way. She gasps and slaps you shoulder. “I think it’s sexy. You’re a lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets.” 

“That’s an invasion of privacy and I could have you arrested you do know that right?” 

“Oh, you’ve been dying to cuff me haven’t you Captain?” you wiggle your eyebrows playfully as you tease her. despite you staying with Monica you two haven’t done more than just making out. intimacy was different with her versus Natasha, getting Natasha to open up more and be vulnerable was like pulling teeth you hardly ever got her too emotional and real with you. 

“Shut up” she hits you with the couch pillow and laugh at the shrieking noise you make from being hit. her laughter comes to an abrupt stop when she sees the look you have in your eyes.

“Y/n, no.” she sends you a warning as she tries to pull away from you. “Why not?” you grin at her and add more strength around her waist. you pull her back on top of you and start attacking her neck with your lips.

 “Fuck, b-because we-” she loses herself with the sensation you send through her body. “Because what?” you pull away from her soft neck to taunt her more before going right back in. placing your lips upon her neck you focus on her soft spot and suck right below her ear. her hands halt any advances you had running rapid in your mind, and you respect her boundaries even if they were tortious. “Mon you’re killing me here, you can’t be nice and say sweet things to me. I’m still not used to it, and it makes me horny.” 

“Y/n, my mind still hasn’t changed about that.” she softly scratches your scalp with her hands tangled in your hair. once again you respected it but that didn’t mean you couldn’t come up with a compromise.

“Okay, what if we just watch each other.” you wiggle your eyebrows hoping she would get the hint. “Watch each other...” she waits for you to continue and fill in the blank.

“Yeah, I can watch you touch yourself while you watch me touch myself.” her jaw drops form shock “And I’m the freak?” 

“Don’t look at me like that, you mean to tell me that watching me naked completely spread out in front of you while pumping my fingers inside of myself doesn’t make you squirm?” you trail your hand along her chest as her breaths become shorter. “Your heart is beating really fast Mon, tell me if I slide my hands in your pants will I feel the same throbbing sensation underneath your panties.” Monica lost in your seductive trance she shakes her head and clenches her eyes standing up from the couch and untangling her limbs from yours. 

“I- should go check in with Darcy and Jimmy about something.” she avoids eye contact as she fetches her cellphone. “And it’s your night to pick, what do you want for dinner?” she tries to focus on anything she an in this room to stable herself from pouncing on you right now. you sit against the cushions slightly disappointed from the rejection. Monica doesn’t wait for an answer as she walks into the kitchen for her abandoned items.

“Pussy.” you mumble under your breath. “What was that sweetheart?” you hum and snap your eyes up at her waiting figure. “Oh, I said pizza.” you send her a tight-lipped smile that she knows is dripping with sarcasm and annoyance, but she doesn’t speak on it.

“Pizza it is then, I’m going to go wash the hard day at work off of me and then we’ll order, okay?” your eyes follow her every movement as she approaches the couch, the pout and scowl on your face had her feeling bad for unintentionally working you up like that. she gives you a quick kiss and runs up the stairs to cool herself off from the heated moment. 

-----------

“Five minutes, so make it quick.” the guard unlocks the steel door allowing the woman to step pass the threshold. the sound of the door closing and locking on the other side alerts the woman that was staring at the cold stone wall. “Natalia.” the woman breathes out an airy response. “Melina.” 

“Has she been found yet?” Natasha’s voice comes out raspier than normal, as she wets her dry chapped lips. Melina sighs doing what she never did before. she took pity on Natasha. seeing her like this at her lowest. “We’ve been looking, and word is going around that she’s...” Natasha’s eyes shoot up to the eye level of her mother’s. “She’s what?” the response comes out harsh and panicked at the same time. “That she’s been seeing that detective lady.” the ear screeching sound of Natasha’s nails scraping against the concrete floor. “No, no, she wouldn’t stoop that fucking low.” 

“I’m afraid she has.” 

“No, you’re lying and whoever told you that is a fucking liar as well!” 

“You mind your tongue!” the voice booms through the room. everything went silent as Alexei’s voice was heard through the other side of the door. finally hearing the creaking of the steel door, revealing his figure his steps into the room. Melina parts her lips to ease the tension, she was always trying to ease the tension between them. this time she’s not winning the battle.

“Leave us.” Alexei’s voice comes out firm with no room for arguing. After quickly sending Natasha a soft smile. Melina leaves as Alexei keeps his gaze on Natasha’s unease figure. “Don’t look at me like that, you got yourself into this mess, and dragged my baby girl along with you!” Natasha clenches her eyes as Alexei yells echos through the confined room. “What was it you said to me all those years ago? hm? ‘I can handle her father; she would never do anything to hurt me or Yelena’ “Look at where you and your sister are now! he sees Natasha clenching her jaw like she wants to charge at him. “What is it? are you upset? you want to hit me? is that it?!” he snatches her up from the ground and shakes her a few times until he gets an answer. “C’mon hit me then.” 

“Whose fault is this?” 

“You’re even weaker than I thought, I should’ve put a stop to whatever you two had going on.” a slap was too generous. way too generous. the punch to Natasha’s face was long overdue and well deserved in Alexei’s eyes. she grunts from the contact as she stumbles to the ground. “I. asked. you. a. question.” each word followed by a slap, a shove or the angry Russian’s fist.

“Mine!” her releases her from his hold and throws her to the ground. he turns away from her and waits for the door to opened. “Is Yelena, okay?” 

“You have no right asking about my daughter when you couldn’t protect her like you were supposed to! she suffers because of you, because of what you did and what you allowed that selfish bitch to do! Yelena was placed in solitaire confinement, she got into a fight, and she was also stabbed. What? is that not what you wanted to hear? you want me to lie and tell you she’s doing fine in her cell?  I’m not going to help ease your guilty conscious you can rot and suffer within these walls for all I care, my only concern is my daughter.” he knocks once against the door and leaves without another word. an hour goes by before a guard enters the room, walking towards Natasha he stops at her feet and holds a cell phone out to her. she furrows her brows and takes the phone she wasn’t expecting her usual guard to be on duty today. she says her thanks and shoos him from her room to stand outside. Natasha dials the number she’s been keeping in close contact with over a month now to weigh her options. the phone rings a few times before it picks up. 

“What do you need now?” The man’s voice laced heavy with his accent it was barely morning where he was after all.

“I need you to get me out of here, I don’t care how just do it, and I mean soon Rick.” she hangs the phone up and on queue the guard enters the room retrieving the phone and leaves again. Natasha wouldn’t stay another moment in this cell, in this building knowing you were out there parading around with the bitch that put her in here. 

----------

“You do know I haven’t heard a word you just said right?” you prop you head up with your elbow on the table popping a few of Monica’s French fries in your mouth.

“You’re unbelievable you know that? how are you going to ask me about my day and not actually listen?” she tilts her head slightly with a smirk on her face, showing you that she wasn’t upset about it.

“What? can you blame me, you’re gorgeous.” she shy’s away taking a sip of her sweet tea. you can’t help but focus in on her lips. how soft they were and how badly you wanted them on your body again. despite the heated moment you two had in her office two months ago there hasn’t been anything that heated going on between you two. part of you thinks Monica is holding back because of lingering, pestering feeling for Natasha that wouldn’t go away. you admired her for that. for caring and having feelings like a normal human is supposed to, this was something you weren’t used to. patience. the date goes on until Monica gets a call to head back to the office. she pays and you both exit the burger joint hand in hand as you walk to Monica’s car.

“Shouldn’t I be the one walking you to your car?” that was another change in your life, you had a car now, not being escorted around all day like before had its pros and cons, but you loved the freedom to do as you pleased. “Hush Mon, I want to walk my lady to her car. My car is in the back because I couldn’t find parking and you did pay for lunch so why not?”  

“So, buying you lunch makes us even because you walked me to my car? who knew this got you to turn on your gentle woman act.” 

“Well, you could see it more often if you let me pay for the date for once.” you roll your eyes at her stubbornness but then again, the money you had belonged to Natasha and Monica didn’t want that kind of money being spent on her, or you spending the dirty money in general. “And I could pay you in other ways if you would just let me, you know I’m good for it.” you swing her hand and bat your eyelashes at her innocently. 

“You don’t have to pay me at all y/n, I like doing things for you, just enjoy them.” you roll your eyes and fold your arms. Monica giggles at your reaction and struggles a bit to pull you closer to her. “Fine I’ll let you pick the next date.” 

“And you’ll let me pay for it? I mean the entire date Mon, I pay for everything, got it?” 

“Fine bossy.” she playfully rolls her eyes and unlocks her car door.

“Yeah, well you’re very stubborn.” you open her door for her and close it when she’s seated

“Takes one to know one.” one thing about Monica was that at work she could be tough and demanding but with you she could be childish and carefree. you loved it. you loved the playful banter between you two. “Real mature, Miss Rambeau.” she beckons you with her finger pulling you in for a soft kiss. “See you at home.” she gives you a wide smile as you lean away from her car repeating the same farewell as she drives off. “See you at home.”

-----------

You smile to yourself as you walk back to your car unaware of your surrounds, you’re oblivious to the car that trails you. it isn’t until you fell the hand of a person grip your jacket and spin you around to face them. to say you were at a loss for words were an understatement. 

“Hello, sweet face.” your ex-girlfriend stands in front of you with excitement in her expression and long blonde hair. “Did you miss me?” you only stare at her with your mouth parted, this can’t be real she can’t be here right now. aware of your silence Natasha keeps talking anyway. “I thought about you saying how hot I would look as a blonde, do you like it?” she noticed your eyes constantly going back to the top of her head, so she answered the question for you.

“You look good, I see you’ve been playing house with that bitch. I had a lot of time to think about what’d I do when I finally got out of that place…none of them ended up being this way, with me being calm and civil.” opposite to the meaning of the words her tone came out harsh and frantic. “Do you know how much self-control I had to not slaughter her right there in that seat?” 

“No letters, no calls, no visits.” hearing her entitlement after everything she’s done upset you. she could be a real bitch at times, but this was getting old fast after not having to deal with it for two months.

“I thought maybe that whore would be doing all of those things.” you shrug it off nonchalantly, while you barely hold yourself together on the inside. she grows angry with the tone and the harsh response. backing you up until you hit the brick wall.

 “Nat-” you flinch as Natasha bring her hand near your face. she places her finger against your trembling lips. “Shhh, I’m not gonna hurt you.” she studies your face intently, remembering every single detail of your face right down to every pore.

“Did you miss me?” her eyes stare deep into yours, searching for an answer even if not verbal she could tell. The emotion in your eyes gave her all she needed; your body language was all she needed. part of you missed her yes, but you were still angry and hurt about what she did. if she thinks you turning her in to the feds was enough for her to be forgiven, she was sadly mistaken. 

“I missed you too.” she leans her forehead against yours. she inhales deeply and quickly cringes from the scent she’s not used to. you changed things about you that Natasha loved. major things such as the way you communicated, to minor changes like the clothes you wore, or the perfume you chose. she could live with those changes and adjust but she knows for a fact that your love for her hasn’t changed. even if it is buried deep down in the pits of your heart. 

“I sat in my cell thinking about a lot of things. I thought maybe I can fuck the anger away when I got my hands on you for what you did.” The calmness she showed moments ago has dissipated. “And then I found out about you and her and I know longer wanted to bring you pleasure and pain. I just wanted to bring you pain and agony for letting her fuck you!” none of it might be true but she doesn’t know that, plus you wanted to get under her skin. 

“Who said she was doing the fucking? I basically have my tongue inside of her every night” Natasha’s ego dropped majorly at your response. either way you put it she would be angry but saying it in her face that you gave another woman pleasure hurt her, contrary to her doing the same thing when she cheated on you with Amber. her hand finds purpose around your neck, squeezing your airways tight as she backed you up against the cold bricks. her other hand squishes your cheeks together. 

“Stick your tongue out.” you look at her with frantic eyes this was a bad idea. she sticks her finger in your mouth grabbing the tip of your tongue with her pinched fingers. you find the will to breathe as her hand releases your throat. your relief was quickly forgotten when you felt the tip of her knife against your tongue. “Maybe I should cut it out, hm?” she pinches your tongue when you don’t answer her. so much for not wanting to hurt you. Natasha moves the metal away for you pocketing the knife and releases your tongue. you release the breath you were holding on to. “I’m really, really trying here. don’t mention anything like that again!” she spits the words out calm but harshly.

“You’re a damn hypocrite you know that? You want to be forgiven for what you did but I do it and I’m the trader, I’m the cheater and I’m tarnished right?”

 “No, never tarnished you just made a mistake, like I made a mistake.” her voice goes softer the anger she had fades away for the time being. placing her forehead against yours, she exhales deeply.

 “You were just upset, hm? you got your payback, now you can come home.” her breathing picks up momentum. her lips attempt to graze yours seeking to kiss you after two months of being without them. turning your face to dodge each attempt. “Nat, stop.” she doesn’t listen she couldn’t her mind was too intoxicated with you at the moment. she growls from being denied and slams her lips on yours. pushing her tongue past your lips, you fight for a moment before things fizzle away and next thing you know, you’re actually enjoying her touch again. enjoying her kiss, her tongue, her. seeing you let your walls down she makes her next move, sliding her hand under your waistband. she caught you off guard, but you’d be damned if you just gave her your body so easily like this. you harshly bite down on her lip causing her to step back in stinging pain. 

“Ah!” she stumbles back softly rubbing her thumb against her wounded lip. she looks at her thumb as the iron liquid runs down her fingertip. “Why so rough baby? I thought we could have a soft welcome home moment.” she says before she spits blood out on the concrete ground of the alley way. “Fuck you!”

“Well, if you play your cards right, I just might let you. being locked away in isolation really made me horny.” Rarely has Natasha ever let you have full control over her, maybe it was the fact that you mentioned having control with Monica that got her to lay the offer out on the table. the sound of the car door opening catches your attention and you can’t form words from seeing her. what could you say to make her understand your reasoning for doing what you did? your eyes follow her as she approaches, she looks more serious than before.

“Lena.” your breath hitches seeing your best friend, she stood there not giving you the time of day let alone a glance. “We need to go now Natasha we have things to do.” she sighs and nods to her sister before turning back to you. Yelena didn’t say anything to you. she didn’t yell or even make an annoyed facial expression. nothing. she treated you like you were nothing to her. Natasha turns your gaze back to her as she holds your chin. 

“I want you with me, we can go anywhere, and finally go on that vacation trip. for a much longer time than we originally planned but that’s just until things cool down. We can make the most of it.”  she squeezes your hand softly. a very different display of affection from just moments ago when she tried to forcefully shove her tongue down your throat.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it.” She rubs her thumb against your cheek. “Don’t have me waiting too long for an answer.” She was hoping that you would agree on your own instead of her using the backup plan to just drag you out of that house when Monica’s at work. Natasha was being civil, for now. this was how she could reel you back in on your own freewill with sweet words, hope, and broken promises. “I just got out of prison please don’t make me get my hands dirty within 8 hours of being released sweet face.” she traces your lips with her thumb, quickly pecks your lips and walks to the blacked-out car waiting for her. your heart drums through your chest as you replay everything that just happened. Natasha was free. she wanted you back, and she subtly not so subtly made a threat of harming Monica if you didn’t do as she said.

-----------

“Y/n, I have to tell you something important.” she looks for you downstairs in your usual spot that you wait in until she comes home. she tries to remain calm and push the intruding thought about your wellbeing to the side. she cautiously jogs up the stairs to her bedroom to find you frantically looking for something in the dresser.  “Y/n? what are you doing up here?” 

“Hey, what’s wrong love?” her hand softly caresses your back as she moves you to sit on the bed. her smile fades as she opens the door and sees the bag on the bed.  “Are you going somewhere? did I do something?” you quickly dismiss her overthinking. “No, you didn’t do anything you’re perfect.” 

“Okay, so what’s the problem and what’s with the packed bag?” she places her hand in yours linking your finger together. “She’s back.”

“I know.” 

“You knew?”

“I came home as soon as I found out.”  you hum and turn your gaze back to your linked fingers. “Why didn’t you tell me when you first found out?” you shrug your shoulders. “I don’t know, my mind was running at a million miles a minute. I thought she would be put away for good.”

“Yeah, so did I, but the evidence was dismissed even though we had the warrant and everything.” she turns your face to look at her. “That still doesn’t explain the bag sweetheart.” you sigh, releasing a shuddered breath. “I can’t.... I can’t stay here anymore Monica.” 

“W-what?” 

“I don’t want her to hurt you.” 

“She will, she will hurt you and I’ll never be able to live with myself if I let that happen.” 

“Where is this coming from?” 

“After our lunch date I was walking back to the car, and she cornered me and pulled me into the alley. she said she wants me to come back home and that she expects an answer soon. that’s bullshit! she’s not giving me an option she’s only making me think that I have one.” 

“Do you want to go back with her? I can protect you just don’t go, please.”

“I can handle myself...I can protect you y/n.” 

“Sorry to break it to you Mon but Natasha doesn’t care about a damn badge or the law! and she definitely doesn’t care about killing you especially since we’ve been shacking up for two months!” you shoot up from the bed with Monica following right behind you. Monica might be calm on the outside right now but on the inside she was anxious. anxious of what would happen, how she could fix this, and anxious about you leaving her and her never seeing you again.

“We weren’t just shacking up, at least not on my end. In the beginning I just wanted to help you and keep you safe but, you mean so much more to me. you mean more to me than you mean to Natasha. she isn’t capable of loving you, not the way that you deserve so please, stay.” she stands in front of you with tears pooling in her eyes as she begs you to remain with her. 

Two women holding special pieces of your heart makes every decision harder. did you want to stay with Monica and potentially cause Natasha to reign terror and hell on the woman you’ve grown close too over the last two months? or did your heart still beat for Natasha even after everything she’s done?

#monica rambeau x reader #natasha romanoff x reader

[vacationship]

Gif @chefkids

LONG POST

Ever since @sydcarmyfan posted (link below) about how the EXIT SIGNS may actually/also indicate Carmy's path to safety with Sydney (and not just a foreshadowing that he exits the business/Syd), I've been pondering this other third moment where there's an exit sign with Carmy and Nat. Overall, I see a dual meaning of the exit sign and the way it shows up in different scenes: When do we leave? When do we stay? Who do we leave? With whom do we stay? When there is trauma, this decision is often very confusing. The exit sign may be indicating that Carmy, in Syd's words, needs to decide. And Nat is subtly suggesting this as well (as @chefkids pointed out, below.)

I also connect the exit signs with the flight response, of the fight/flight (mobilize) and freeze/fawn (submit) nervous system responses. Yeah I'm back on my trauma stuff on this show but I can't draw a lot of precise connections on this post; I may need to do another one.

First, those other two exit signs:

In 1x8 the exit sign shows up half lit in the way back, a comforting scene of togetherness with the crew clearly showing that Carmy is safe and does not need to exit/flee/escape. All are happy and settled, calm and connected, laughing and joking.

In 2x1 with the exit above Sydney and Carmy's heads, while I agree that it shows that Sydney and Carmy have this potential to find safety with each other, it sticks out to me that the blaring alarm doesn't bother Carmy. He thinks it’s just in his head, and he's used to ignoring his inner alarms and going along with the others. An alarm stimulates the flight response: “make your way to the exit sign.” We know with this arc that Carmy ends up trapped in the fridge, and in this scene he says "we're trapped" when Syd says "we're dialed."

While Sydney ended up dialed with Richie and the crew in 2x9, Carmy ends up trapped because he doesn't listen to his inner alarm or instinct about Claire. The alarm in this scene may be warning Carmy (and us) that he's ignoring himself and going along with things. He is actually doing this with Sydney as well. He was devastated when she left, and so he is going along even though the pursuit of a star makes him feel trapped. Maybe that's why he later goes along with Claire instead (subconsciously), because it's easier and known.

Carmy's task is to learn to decide when to exit situations that are not good for him and when to stay and fight for who and what he wants. Staying is not the same as freezing, and it does not mean he his trapped.

So now this exit sign:

Everything about this scene feels visually intentional, from the way Carmy's finger is pointing up at the exit sign which hovers forebodingly in the dark, in contrast to the yellow cast around Syd and Nat (yellow being the past, I'll try to link the color study someone did.) Then there's the red ladder directly across from Carmy that Nat then blocks while wearing her green-blue jumpsuit, and the lighter green panel framing Carmy. The chefkids post that I grabbed this gif from was excellent, they say about Nat bringing up her pregnancy:

Natalie wanted him to hesitate leaving to drop off the permit, but she didn't want to say why. She's letting Carmy figure out his feelings on his own while very subtly looking out for Sydney's.

Every time something seems random it's actually so meaningful. Nat suggesting he is taking care of her around her pregnancy may be her trying to make Carmy look better in front of Sydney who is frustrated with him (you're just taking care of me, right? not running away?) She's also revealing to Sydney this family trait of care-taking and fixing: "no one asked you to" is what she says to Carm when he says he's going to fix the restaurant, and I can easily imagine her saying the same here: I didn't ask you to drive instead of me.

And a more meta comment with her character as a pregnant person is that he is actually better off nurturing what’s inside of him. Instead of exiting or fleeing with a different wrong person (which we the audience know ends up retraumatizing him) maybe pause and consider what’s really the safety plan: staying here and nurturing yourself/inner child/new beginning with the restaurant and Syd.

Instead of doing that, Carmy is pointing up to the exit sign, telling us that he is going to leave, and I see it as he is in a flight response with Claire, not just by delivering the permit with her that day but by engaging with her at all. It seems ironic that Carmy would go toward a person who represents his past and his family, when he's clearly triggered about his past/his family/his family's restaurant business that he is now revamping, but revisiting is not only a common way that we try to heal ourselves, it also makes sense that it would be Claire who he would flee with: she represented fantasy and mental escape (forms of flight) to him back then, and so he reverts to that.

Then there is the red ladder. Talk about a potent symbol, especially blocked by a pregnant woman. Ladders take us up, and Carmy is pointing up at that exit sign, almost but not quite at the ladder. Where does this ladder go? To the exit sign in the dark? Or to someplace different? Ladders symbolize ascension, progress, evolution, taking steps to reach a goal, initiation, passage of life/time or a lifespan, and pyschological or spiritual journey. Red symbolizes many things: energy, passion, sexuality, power, stop/go no further, among other things. There's biblical symbolism of a red ladder going up to heaven and a white ladder coming down.

The red ladder in this scene seems to be that Carmy's exit with Claire is not the path of true progress and passion that he could be on if he followed Nat and Syd. Nat is his older sister, and she's further along on the path of psychological health and life, doing/having what she wants--a good relationship, a family, an important role at the new restaurant--that we assume Carmy also wants, or we want for him. He certainly looks confused in the scene why Nat brings up her pregnancy (sister, what language are you speaking to me right now?) Nat blocking the ladder is saying she's on her ladder, but that Carm isn't currently on his ladder. And her words are asking him to stop (red) and think: why are you leaving right now? What are you doing? The yellow feels like their connection to the past as siblings and green like new growth. Is this it? I don't know. I feel like there's more/other interpretations.

But I guess I'm at a stopping point myself. Symbols are endless. What does anyone else think?

Thanks to these two posts that I saw on the same day, I kinda smashed them together, lol.

#sydcarmy #sydcarmy meta #long post #carmy and his trauma

[babiejeeves]

good lord I’m so sorry these are sketchy but I have longwinded character design explanations that I need to get down asap

spoilers and unneeded character ramblings below the cut and in the annotated sheet

woo okay so when I started MAG I had a very clear image of Jon’s character in my head. A very old, very grouchy old man w/ some trace of South/East Asian descent who definitely had like a coin collection or something. So when I find out Jon is much younger than I first thought I was left scrabbling in my brain because okay, he’s young, but then in addition the widely accepted depiction of Jon is so far off from what I initially envisioned. (not that I don’t LOVE the design, I simply think I would do it injustice in my art style)

woo okay so when I started MAG I had a very clear image of Jon’s character in my head. A very old, very grouchy old man w/ some trace of South/East Asian descent who definitely had like a coin collection or something. So when I find out Jon is much younger than I first thought I was left scrabbling in my brain because okay, he’s young, but then in addition the widely accepted depiction of Jon is so far off from what I initially envisioned. (not that I don’t LOVE the design, I simply think I would do it injustice in my art style)

So after that I was terrified to touch his character at all. Like I was all the way through s4 before I started really jotting things down for Jon. I was having such a difficult time with it that I worked on it throughout all of s5, and finished 200 and still had no idea what to do for his design. So I kinda gave up, turned to fanart and fics to look for inspiration, and then started to see that the fandom literally had a separation of the characters’ development. Tags like “s1 Jon” or “s4 Martin”. So then my brain turned on again and said “okay, so I need to draw different people!” And so I did.

Hopping into s1 Jon’s design, I hate it. I hate it so much. I toiled for a good two hours for this one sketch and I hate it. But that’s it’s intention and I find it hilarious. S1 Jon killed me dude. He made me so uncomfortable and annoyed but he was written so well that he kinda turned into a hard to swallow pill. So I made that my design. The hard ass, the skeptic, everything about Jon that I, Tim, Sasha, Martin HATED and I made it s1 Jon. So yeah, my s1 Jon design makes me writhe in pain but I revel in the fact that I accomplished my goal for him in that respect.

s2-s4 Jon is like pinnacle accomplishment for me. I tasked myself to make Jon not differ in appearance too greatly, but to appear younger, as in those seasons he is incredibly naive and paranoid, in an indignant-child kind of way. All the same, he is fighting with existentialism. Gotta love juxtaposition ig. Anyways, the differences are self explanatory for the most part. The untucked shirt, the mismatched socks, the unkempt appearance all around. Children and existential adults both have trouble keeping up with appearances and hygiene, hence those decision. The body language is a given too lmao.

S5 Jon is still kind of up in the air as to my decisions on his design. If you’re an character design over-analyst like me I love suggestions. And god forbid if you read all of this thank ya kindly lmao.

#tma fanart #tma #the magnus archives #the magnus pod #jon sims #jonathan sims #character design

[ncisfranchise-source]

Would you go as far as JD (Todd Lasance) did to get his son back? The Australian Federal Police (AFP) sergeant made a decision in the NCIS: Sydney finale that has to come back to haunt the team at some point.

After his son was kidnapped — by a clown at his birthday party (a.k.a. nightmare fuel) — JD chose to go along with the demands: a swap of a wanted criminal (Georgina Haig‘s Ana Niemus, obviously not her real name, given how it sounds like “anonymous”) the team had been after all season. He also trusted “Ana” with a gun, which, after using to kill the kidnapper, she then turned on him. She did leave JD alive, but she took his keys and the kidnapper’s gun and escaped.

But JD doesn’t regret any of what he did, given his son is alive — and that’s something Lasance can completely understand. The end result “completely justified all of his choices, particularly to push outside of what would be acceptable as law enforcement,” the star tells TV Insider. “I’d do the same thing. Being a father, there’s no decision that JD made that I would personally question, even though it does push the elements of staying in the constraints of the law.”

That part of the show, asking where a person’s moral compass is and where they draw the line, is something he appreciates. “He almost blows the case,” Lasance points out. “He obviously loses their prime suspect, but he’s also planted these little seeds in her to make her question her own alliance as well. So he’s so strategic. He’s so smart with stuff.”

But what he didn’t see coming is the shocking reveal at the end of the episode. Before Ana left JD and his son, she gave him the kidnapper’s phone and suggested he use it to “phone a friend. You might be surprised who answers.” And when he called the number on it, back at the team’s headquarters, the phone of the Department of Defense’s Rankin (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) rang. Mackey (Olivia Swann) and the others ended the season staring him down; JD has no idea who’s on the other line.

“He has suspicions of his actions and his integrity, but I think that’s the cliffhanger that I was dreaming of,” Lasance says. “When I read that line from Mackey, ‘Are you going to get that?’ in the script, I threw my script. I was like, ‘You have got — this is epic.’ The fact that she goes for her gun and he’s standing there. There’s one number related to our ultimate enemy in the series that he has been potentially covering for and associated with throughout the whole season. I love that juice. That’s the best. That’s fantastic writing. That’s fantastic plotting from our writers and Morgan [O’Neill], our showrunner. So, yeah, integrity speaking, he was suspicious of him, and I think he had questionable actions, but to be associated solely potentially with our biggest enemy figure, I don’t think they thought that that was possible, which is great for the story.”

It was how “emotionally driven” JD is that Lasance wanted to push in the finale. “I didn’t want to hold back on any of that, and there are scenes in there where I pushed the emotion a lot more than what was on the page,” he shares. “Some of the scenes didn’t require him breaking down or him losing it, but on the day, I listened to a lot of scores. I brought in my daughter’s favorite stuffy with me, and I had that in my pocket in some of the scenes or just off set and I’d step aside and just sort of spend time with it and listen to music. And then I looked at photos of my son prepping for certain scenes. So some moments came to me that weren’t planned, that weren’t on the page that they used in the show as well.”

Among those is one that arose during a scene JD shared with Doc Roy (William McInnes) about family and the cost of what they do (and who pays it). “That was one of my favorite scenes, and we didn’t plan any of that emotion,” according to Lasance. “I remember working with William on it, and at the end of shooting the scene, we just turned to each other and gave each other a hug and pat each other on the back. It was just one of those unspoken moments.”

He continues, “Working with Will, he’s so phenomenal, and we were so engaged on that scene that the emotion that was coming — there’s actually more, and they cut around some of it. When I was looking at photos of my son on the phone, tears started streaming down. They cut around little things like that to keep that emotion in check so that the payoff is a lot higher at the end. But when Will was telling me his story, there was no acting in that. I was listening to that story myself as a human, father, and brother to Will. A human connection was there, and it was all real.”

Count Lasance in as someone who’s hoping there’s a second season of the first international series in the hit NCIS franchise. “If we go again, I spoke to the showrunner about his ideas as to where he wants to take the show and where he’d want to pick it up. It’s awesome. It’s super exciting where they want to go, and obviously, the relationship’s now opened up with his son and his ex-wife and the team,” he says. “It’s game on now, which is great. So it’s exciting for the show and the characters to see where they’re going to go.”

#ncis sydney #interview

[jheselbraum]

Rewatching Change Your Mind its really baffling to me the writing choices the crew made about Volleyball this early on. So far everything we have on her suggests that she was taken from Pink because she did something that fundamentally treated her like a person in some way, or that she had cooked up some hairbrained scheme that Volleyball wound up punished for for not reining her in. There's nothing narratively in any of the flashbacks we get in Change Your Mind or Together Alone to suggest that Pink physically or psychologically hurt Volleyball, just that she got caught in the crossfire of the rest of the diamonds abusing Pink. There's nothing, that is, until Volleyball says as much in Future. In the moment I never noticed how out of left field it felt and I guess the art book, specifically the "Don't break this one" drawing, sort of masked how little of that was actually evident in the show, but on a rewatch? It's kind of disappointing how much of a misdirect it feels like. I think having the crack in her eye be Pink's doing was always the plan but with the way these flashbacks are written it honestly makes the reveal feel more like a gotcha. Like a "Oh haha, I can't believe you fell for it. Of course Pink is the one who hurt her! This isn't a shocking reveal out of left field, you misunderstood!" Especially with how the narrative treats the concept of thinking Pink couldn't have done it or even just being shocked about the fact that she did ("It looks like I'm still making excuses for her" "Is that what I've been doing?") and the narrative gotcha for expressing vs bottling up your feelings (the Pink Volleyball knew was loud and destructive and constantly expressing herself to the detriment of others, which is bad, and the Pink Pearl knew kept everything bottled up inside, which is worse, and Rose Quartz struck a pretty good balance between the two all things considered, which according to the narrative was apparently also bad. Steven, who is a child, who's had the diamond powers unlocked for what, a week? A couple weeks? Isn't allowed by the narrative to be upset by what's going on, because even though he can't control his powers, even though he doesn't know how to, his anger is upsetting Volleyball. Which, fair enough I guess, but the solution to that problem is for Steven to go into another room or something. At the very least it'd be nice if the narrative didn't act like the fact that he literally cannot control his powers, let alone how his powers affect other people emotionally, is some kind of moral failing on his part, Volleyball's trauma and Pink's decisions notwithstanding).

Like, we know that when diamonds change so do their powers. Yellow went from proofing gems in an instant to being able to alter the forms of cracked or corrupted gems, even if their gems weren't complete. Blue went from being able to force any gem into not just tears but straight up sorrow, to being able to spread joy to others. White went from imposing her being onto others to the inverse, letting others possess her. Which. Interesting narrative choice, but it's not really a stretch to think that after what happened to Volleyball, Pink's powers changed because she changed. That she went from being able to destroy physical structures and gems alike to being able to heal them (fascinating narrative choice to have your healer character's powers be tear activated but then narratively treat her like a crybaby by the way). For the rest of the diamonds this power change is framed as an objectively good thing, a sign that they're growing and changing for the better. But for Rose, for some fucking reason, that's not good enough and she's still framed by the narrative as being awful after she changed. She's the only character besides Bluebird the show can't seem to forgive and God, does it feel like they just keep tacking on reasons for that when things come out of left field like this. With Bismuth, yeah okay. We know from the start that there's a bubbled gem in lion's mane. We know that something isn't right when Bismuth is unbubbled and seems. Nice. Chill. When Pearl says Rose lost track of her at that battle. Spinel shows up completely out of nowhere, without so much as a mention of Pink ever having a garden before (which, didn't the diamonds hate organic life before? Why give pink a garden full of it?) And now this with Volleyball, where it may not have been their intent but it certainly feels like the crew were just lying to us about what Pink was like when she was with Volleyball. The horse has been dead for years at this point, we get it. You don't want us to like Rose Quartz.

[sknolls]

I want to show off some of the concept art I made for SJ prologue styleground.

A lot of the stuff here was just trying out a bunch of ideas to see if anything stuck. We originally were going to have a picnic style credits but the idea was cut due to it simply being way too much work.

We spent, like, a month(?) or so planning out the prologue's styleground before any work really began.

This is the first concept art that actually resembles the final version of the styleground. I was like "what if there were giant berries in the water?" But we decided against it because they looked soggy and gross (this idea got reimplimented much better by nerferd, they made some concept art too but I don't feel like I should share it here without their permission).

Here's an annotated version of the artwork, to communicate the decision making. The idea was for the prologue to be based off the San Juan Islands because an Archipelago would be a really strong symbol to represent the collab as a whole, and the San Juan Islands are really close to irl Celeste Mountain.

The idea behind the Archipelago was for a few things. I really wanted the Prologue to embrace the vastness of SJ without pressuring the player to experience every screen of every map. Especially since most players will never even reach the GM Heartside and I want them to be as welcomed as players who intend to 100% everything. An Archipelago is a sum of islands. Each island can be very different from each other but they combine to make a cohesive unit. Kinda like this collab. You also don't have to explore every island in an Archipelago to say that you've experienced it. It also served as a callback to Spring Collab 2020, which this mod is heavily based on. The thing that made SC so special was that the entire modding community got together to make something special, which is the exact same thing SJ was striving to do. So, having similar prologue aesthetics was meant to communicate that sentiment. And it was meant to welcome people who played SC and really enjoyed it.

I also wanted the prologue to tease at the lobbies and maps (maps idea was scrapped because it wouldn't be fair to only tease some maps and trying to tease all of them wouldn't be feasible). Beginner is beach, intermediate is a forest, advanced is a mountainside. These could all theoretically take place in the same physical space as the prologue. Meanwhile expert and gm are beyond the horizon (technically I suggested saying the GM lobby canonically takes place inside the sun but that didn't bite).

This was the final concept art I made for the prologue. Celeste Mountain was included off to the left because I wanted to communicate "you've conquered your mountain now look at all this cool stuff you can do."

After that I made a beta styleground.

The final thing I did was make an animation for the first trailer.

I'm not sure experienced with animation but I wanted to give it a try. This is was the first instance of someone drawing the mountains curved.

After this, life shit happened and I didn't contribute much, so nerferd took over. The way the look evolved was definitely different, but not in a bad way. My style was much more literal and I think the abstract looking islands do a lot to sell the point that these maps aren't meant to inhabit a literal space together. I also like how the underwater berries tease the player a bit (even tho I initially complained about it, seeing ppl play through the prologue first time did a lot to make me understand the decision better). But yeah, SJ Prologue Concept Art.

#celeste strawberry jam

[melodyalanaroster]

Thunderbird Rising

A couple of years had passed since Nathaniel and Alana had left the Black Tower for their globe-trotting adventure. They had been to many places, seen and done many things, and had decided that it was time to come home. Alana bought a shop in the local shopping district and was turning it into a geeky paradise. Nathaniel had made it known that he wanted to join the police force and Alana had begun work on drawing up the necessary forms and agreements to ensure Nathaniel can fulfill his dream.

“So, you really wanna join the police force?” Sam quietly asked as she sat in a chair next to a bed in the Black Tower’s infirmary. Kentin was asleep in the bed with his eyes bandaged. “Yeah... Don’t get me wrong, I know it was the R.D.R and the Roster Family that got me out of my situation in college... But the police force did do their best to try to help me get out of it... And I want to help people.” Nathaniel explained. “And becoming an actual member of the R.D.R was out of the question. I completely understand that.” Sam nodded. “So? How’s he doing?” Nathaniel asked. “His eyes are healing as they should. He should be back to normal in a few weeks. I’m actually surprised it took him this long to come to this decision.” Sam explained. “What caused him to do this?” He inquired. “Between the basic inconvenience of having glasses, and the fact that he kept losing them, he saw no reason to continue having them... He’s not like my sister, his glasses aren’t, literally, a symbol of his power and position.” She explained. “I get that. Alana could get the same procedure done at any time... But she chooses not to.” Nathaniel nodded. “She has no reason to get it. One press of a button on the frame of her glasses instills fear and admiration into everyone that’s near her.” Sam rolled her eyes. “Despite the fact that she’s no longer “active”...” He sighed. “They can say she’s “no longer active” all they want... She’s HIS Grim Reaper. As long as she’s alive, she’s “active”. You should know that by now.” She shot. “I know it’s been a few years since I became “Lord Nathaniel” and started standing at her side, but I’m still not used to it.” He muttered. “Well, get used to it. Its why you’ve been trained the way you’ve been. Not just by HIM, but by us.” Sam nodded. “Do you think that being at your side could be a reason why Kentin got the procedure? It takes away one of his physical weaknesses.” Nathaniel suggested. “Possibly. I wouldn’t rule it out as a potential reason... But it probably isn’t a primary one.” Sam sighed. “Well, do you think I can get into the force?” He asked. “You? I don’t see why not. You’re smart enough on your own to get through the tests... Hell, you’d probably make a decent general in the military.” Sam smirked. “Well, its a good thing I don’t wanna join the military. There’s enough generals in this family.” Nathaniel laughed.

★

Nathaniel, Alana, the Red Death, the Prime Minister, the Mayor, the Chief of Police and Inspector Eric Ward had all convened in a conference room in the Black Tower. “Welcome everyone.” Nathaniel greeted as they all sat down. “Lady Melody, Lord Nathaniel! Welcome home!” the Prime Minister greeted. “Thank you ma’am.” Alana smiled. “Can someone tell me why we’re here?” the Mayor asked. “We are here to discuss a request that has been made to see if we can make it possible without throwing a wrench into our relations.” the Red Death stated. “And what request is this?” the Chief of Police asked. “I want to become a police inspector.” Nathaniel stated.

“That is preposterous! You’re a high ranking member of the R.D.R!” the Mayor blurted out. Alana stood up. “Technically, he’s not. He’s simply at the top of my “Immunity List”. While he has received training, he has not signed any documents to formally declare himself a member of this organization.” She explained. “So, he’s a civilian with an extreme amount of privilege and clearance?” the Chief of Police asked. “Yes.” Alana replied. The Red Death stood up and walked over to Nathaniel and Alana. “Mr. Jacott’s desire to become a police inspector is not an impossible dream. Surely we can work things out to make it a reality.” He suggested. “But how? His clearance will cause a bleed between the two organizations.” the Mayor’s skeptical tone continued. “I have a proposition that I believe will work for both organizations. Nathaniel will go through the testing and training it takes to become a proper inspector. He will not use R.D.R resources to aid his work. His office at the station will be the same as everyone else’s. He will have an office in the Black Tower that will be exactly like his office in the station, just in case there comes a point where he can’t leave the tower. However, I request that either a Paladin, or a Paladin In Training always keep an eye on him. In the event that his police work puts him in a situation that will cause him harm, we will extract him.” Alana suggested. “So, a Paladin will be following him?” the Chief of Police asked. “From a distance, yes. That Paladin will allow us to always know his location and secures his safety.” Alana explained. “And who is to say you won’t use it for your own personal gain?” The Mayor asked. “And why would I do that? I love and trust Nathaniel. Not to mention how I’ll be busy with my shop. The only time I’ll remotely think about using it is if he doesn’t give me any form of life signs for a full day, or late at night if he works late. Even then, I’ll ask a simple “yes or no” question... That being “Is he okay?”.” Alana raised an eyebrow, her tone didn’t change, but she was offended by the question. “Mister Mayor, you forget your place. Despite her current official title being “Agent Thunderbird”, she is still our “Grim Reaper”, you will give her the respect she deserves.” The Red Death ordered. The Mayor looked at them as if he had been neutered. “The goal of this meeting is to ensure that Mr. Jacott gets to do the job he chooses, to the best of his ability, and with the cooperation of the organizations involved. The Paladin’s presence is a form of insurance for us.” The Red Death announced.

The meeting continued for another hour. Everyone asked several questions. Eric was assigned to be Nathaniel’s partner. “This is great! We get to work together!” Nathaniel cheered as he walked up to Eric. “I expect great things from you!” Eric beamed. “This is going to be interesting.” Alana slyly smiled as she walked up to them. “I know you’re going to be amazing.” She grinned as she kissed Nathaniel on the cheek. “You know? When I was questioning you at the station a couple of years ago, I never thought this would be the reason why you had taken over his case.” Eric smiled at Alana. “Yet, you continued to attempt to interrogate me as if I was one of your criminals.” Alana rolled her eyes. “I apologized profusely for that.” Eric stated. “And if I didn’t forgive you for it, even a little bit, you wouldn’t be Nathaniel’s partner.” Alana coldly remarked.

★

Sam, Lynne, Seraphina, Agatha, Viktor, Kentin, Nathaniel and Alana stood in front of the Cozy Bear Café, curiously. “Why did Verity and Rini call us here?” Viktor asked. “I don’t know... All I know was that this place was up for sale recently so that Clemence could run off with her lover. But, for the last few months, the “For Sale” sign has been gone...” Alana replied. “What a reason to run off...” Agatha sighed, wistfully. Lynne looked at her sister with a sarcastic smile on her face. “You did that at one point... Remember? When you met that knight at a Ren Faire? If Seraphina and I didn’t track you down, you’d probably still be in the German countryside with him...” She remarked as she rolled her eyes. “I remember that... Our family had to figure out the schedule for the Faire and calculate how long it would take us to get to their next destination, so we could wait and catch you! You were gone for six months by that point and mom was worried sick! All for a boy! What was his name? Lancelot? Arthur?” Seraphina asked. “Alastair. His stage name was Galahad... And the family would have loved him! Hell, I loved him... Until he started developing a taste for creatures of the night...” Agatha began to look sad as she spoke. Alana looked at her aunt, remembered the contents of the Roster Family Vault in the deepest part of the basement to the main estate, and instantly realized why Agatha looked sad at the mention of her lover getting interested in vampires. “Oh Agatha...” She thought. “Please, if you two were really in love, you would have stayed together, despite that phase he was going through... And he would have come after you after we brought you home.” Seraphina rolled her eyes.

Right as Agatha was about to respond to her sister’s remark, the doors to the café burst open to reveal Verity and Severina looking quite optimistic. “Thank you all for coming! Please come in!” Verity mused. “We’ve got good news!” Severina smiled. The interior of the Cozy Bear looked very different to how Alana remembered it. It was no longer the boring café with slightly mismatched table sittings, the occasional fake plant, and a randomly placed couch. It had, clearly, been renovated to be more modern and artsy. The, once empty, main section had new places to hang artwork that included a small shelf. The new furniture had a more high class, clean, feeling to it. The entire back section of the room had been turned into a colorful lounge area with art all over the walls. The radiator was gone and the bar itself had been redone to have a brick like tile look. Instead of two separate doors that led to the kitchen and the restrooms, there was only one door that opened to a small hallway to get to them. One wall had a photo collage that showcased Verity, Severina and all of their friends and family as well as a shelf filled with Lynne’s entire catalogue of books. “Well? What do you think?!” Verity asked. “I think it’s a café.” Lynne commented. “It looks a lot better than it used to.” Sam nodded. Alana looked at her best friend and her godmother. “You two bought this place, didn’t you?” She asked. “YES!” Severina cheered. “Why? Its just a college café.” Seraphina questioned. “As much as I enjoyed dipping my finger into the fashion industry, it wasn’t “Me.”... I wanna get into art! But, I also wanna do something that is kind of different, so I wanted to have a café gallery! A place where people can come in, get a nice cup of coffee and a snack and also purchase artwork!” Verity explained. “And Rini? What about you?” Alana inquired. “As happy as I am to model for Universal Her, they’re only super busy during Con season... And this is a nice change of pace. As it is, it’ll keep me close to here so I can hang out with you at Thunderbird Studios, or with aunt Agatha!” Severina beamed. “V, Rini, you two don’t even need the money... Our company is doing just fine... So, why?” Viktor puzzled. Alana nudged Viktor in the ribs. “Do you not remember why they are spreading their wings and flying so freely now? Just because they don’t need the cash, that doesn’t mean they can’t do anything... That’d be like asking me the same thing about my shop.” She defended. “Exactly! As it is, the profits from this will mainly go towards four things. Our employees, ingredients, supplies, and a bit towards charity.” Verity clarified. “Employees?” Sam asked. “Yes! We’ve hired a couple of sweet girls. Hyun Sohn’s little sister, Dambi will be joining us in a couple of months after she gets settled at Sweet Amoris. And a girl who says she knows Sami and Mels! Her name is Nina.” Verity explained. “Nina? Are we talking long blonde hair and greyish purple eyes?” Alana inquired. “Yes! That’s her!” Verity mused. “I didn’t know she was still around...” Sam commented. “She never left. I think she’s in her Senior Year at Sweet Amoris this year. Sweet girl.” Alana replied. “I like her! I think I might take her under my wing!” Severina cheered. “More power to you!” Alana laughed.

★

Nathaniel sped through the process of becoming a cop. Acing every test, surpassing his limits, and impressing all of his superiors. “This isn’t the work of the R.D.R, is it?” The Chief of Police asked. Nathaniel shook his head. “No. The only training I’ve gotten from them is how to fight, and most of that was Alana and her sister.” He explained. “Well, as much as I respect the Grim Reaper and the military’s Juggernaut for their work and expertise, their techniques for fighting will only come in handy in dire circumstances. Your intuition and mental ability will take you far here.” The Chief commended. “As much as I want to promote you to the title of Inspector, you do need to spend some time on the beat. Are you up for it?” The Chief asked. “Definitely!” Nathaniel beamed.

That night, Alana sat on the bed, tablet in hand, as she worked on getting things ready for her shop. “Okay, I’ve discussed the importing of goods with my connections in Japan, talked with several of mom’s and Nate’s actor friends about maybe having D&D nights and other cool events, ensured that there are plenty of my props to fill a ton of shelves and discussed things with people in Disney and other companies to allow their products in my shop. I just need to talk to aunt Verity if we can partner up and possibly have a delivery service between her café and my shop, discuss things between Anteros and Sweet Amoris to possibly allow clubs from those schools to host events with me, and talk to Leigh to see if he and I can partner up on cosplay clothes. If he does go along with it, it will benefit us both.” She muttered to herself. “I thought you still resented Rosalaya.” Nathaniel commented as he entered the room. “I told you years ago, I resent Rosalaya and Alexy, I hold no resentment towards the Ainsworth boys. Aside from that, there’s a child in the situation, if I can aid an innocent’s life in being decent, I don’t mind doing it. I just refuse to do anything for Rosa, and I’m sure as hell not going to babysit. But, working with Leigh has proven beneficial in the past, so, I’d like to do it again.” She explained. Nathaniel stood before her wearing his police officer uniform which consisted of black pants, a blue short sleeved button up shirt, a police hat, a tactical belt, a badge  and a pair of handcuffs. She looked up and her jaw dropped. “Woah.” She sighed. Nathaniel smirked. “Nothing else to say, Miss Roster?” He cooed. Alana sat there, motionless, speechless, her eyes glued to him. She bit her lip. “Now, come on, say something.” His smirk becoming more devilish. She remained silent, the look on her face and her body language making her thirst very obvious. He walked over to her, took her tablet out of her hand, placed it on her nightstand, and kissed her, passionately. “Now, Miss Roster, I know you are charged with possession. I’m going to have to search you.”

★

Alana stood in her shop and looked around, proud. The shelves were covered in items from various series’ and genres. The walls had posters and art pieces from various artists. There was a section for table top games, a sitting area with a tv and console games of all kinds, a reading nook, a book section, a manga and anime section, an artistry section, a cosplay section and the usual shelves. Rayan had made it a hobby of his to help her around the shop as she got things ready when he wasn’t busy with his school work. She didn’t mind it at all, he was a fellow nerd and he thoroughly enjoyed helping her. He even made a few suggestions for items that she didn’t think about. “Thanks for all your help, Rayan.” She smiled. “Anytime. And you can bet, I’ll be a regular around here!” Rayan cheered. She got the shop’s website ready and made it perfect. One of the paladins volunteered to be a full time employee for the shop. “You sure you want to mostly leave the Tower behind, James?” Alana had asked. James was a well built, light skinned, boy with short brown hair and brown eyes. He was wearing black pants, black shoes, a black belt, and a black T-Shirt with a poster design from Star Wars: A New Hope on it. “Yeah. I’m not gonna lie, after that last Purification, I was kind of tired of all the bloodshed. I continued to train and everything, but, I took a leaf from your book and begun to train a member who was right underneath me to become my successor. When you requested a Paladin to become the main employee for the shop, I jumped at the chance.” James had explained. “I must admit, I feel kind of selfish asking, not just one, but two Paladins to do my personal bidding.” She replied. “Don’t. We all love and care about you. Plus, the Red Death approved of it, so, it’s okay.” James explained. She thought back to her conversation with Leigh. It was very cordial, but he was okay with a collaboration between the two shops. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” Alana had smiled. “It’s alright. I understand why you and Rosa are no longer on speaking terms, and you’ve never been truly rude to the three of us since you split from her. I’m more than happy to work with you.” Leigh had grinned. “Thank you Leigh.” Alana had beamed.

The building Alana had bought to be her shop was once a very large antique store near Leigh’s in the shopping district of that sector of the city. She had successfully converted it into a “geek’s paradise” as well as a second location for her work shop. She even made sure to include a series of lounging areas and tables. People had begun asking when it’s going to open, to which, Alana would always reply “It’s not ready yet, it will be soon!”. When she created the social media accounts for it, people would always comment “I can’t wait to see what you have in store for us!” and other things like that. “It looks like there’s a lot of hype surrounding this place!” James commented. “Yeah, I just hope I can live up to it.” Alana sighed. “You don’t have to live up to it. It doesn’t matter if this place is the most hopping place in the country, it just matters that you’re happy and enjoying yourself.” He replied. “Yeah, but, considering some people just wanna come in here because I’m me, I don’t wanna disappoint.” She sighed.

★

The day had finally come. The air seemed almost electric. “My shop is opening today!” Alana cheered as she ran around the living room in Death’s Domain. “Eric and I will definitely be there!” Nathaniel cooed as he sat at the dining table, eating a plate of bacon and eggs. “I’m so nervous! This shop is what I’ve been working towards for over a year...” She almost stammered. “Alana, you’re going to do great tonight!” Nathaniel smiled. “Are you sure? I really hope you’re right.” Alana stammered as she stopped running around the living room for a minute and looked at him nervously. Nathaniel got up from the table, walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her lovingly. “Melody Roster, you moved hell itself to get back to me. You are the next head of the main line of the Roster Clan, the R.D.R’s Grim Reaper, Lady Melody, and the Patron Saint of Lost Children. You have brought down child traffickers, corrupt priests, drug cartels, Achille Mekina and Carol Dubois. You can do anything you set your mind to and everything you set your mind to turns out wonderfully. This will be amazing.” He reassured.

That afternoon, the street that Thunderbird Studios sat on was closed off. Crowds had begun to gather around the shop. Several of Nate’s actor friends decided to show up to support their friend’s step-daughter. Many of Lynne’s and Verity’s friends made sure to get to the event early so that they could get early access. Nathaniel, Armin, Eric, Sam, Severina, Kentin, Viktor, Castiel and Lysander stood at the front of the crowd, excitedly waiting on the doors to open. “Holy crap! Is that Levi Pugh?”, “Shit! That’s Ryker Ross!”, “Scott Blue is here too!”, “The Roster Family decided to invite some of their major friends!”, “I wonder if I can get a picture with those guys!” people muttered. When everyone had gathered, Alana and the mayor stood in front of the shop. “Welcome everyone! Thunderbird Studios has been a dream of mine for several years now. I began working on cosplay props when my mom was in the hospital, and I was allowed to keep working on them for a little bit during my rise to power. Even through my darkest moments, working on anime and sci-fi cosplay items has been a passion of mine. And now, I get to share that passion with you all! May you all find as much love, fun and adventure in this endeavor as I have, and welcome to Thunderbird Studios!” Alana happily boomed. “Amouria’s youth now have their new hangout!” The Mayor cheered as he and Alana used giant scissors to cut the red ribbon in front of the shop and James opened the doors.

“Oh my god! Is that Sailor Saturn’s Silence Glaive?”, “Are those Japan exclusive figures?”, “Signed comics?!”, “Woah! Those light sabers are cool!” People chattered as they looked through the shop’s wares. “Melody! This place is insane!” Scott cheered as he, Levi and Ryker walked up to her. “Seriously! Your prop making skills are amazing!” Levi beamed. “I’m so proud of you kiddo!” Ryker smiled. “Thanks guys! I couldn’t have done it without everyone’s help!” Alana grinned. “Mels! This place is so badass! I can’t wait to have Universal Her send some of their upcoming collections here!” Severina mused as she ran up to Alana and gave her a big hug. “Go ahead and count me in as a frequent visitor!” Armin cooed. “I thought you lived too far away from here to be around so often?” Nathaniel looked at him, slightly accusingly. “Well...” Armin looked nervous. “Really? You haven’t told him?!” Alana asked, shocked. “Told me what?” Nathaniel asked. “I can’t believe you haven’t told him yet!” Severina blurted out. “Told me what?!” Nathaniel inquired, clearly getting slightly annoyed. “Ever since the terrorist attack on the nation’s satellites, several years ago, I’ve been tasked with boosting cyber security for both the R.D.R. and the Astarian military. Now, I’ve been transferred to an office in the aristocratic section of Amouria so that I can boost VKT’s security. As soon as I’m done with that, I’ll be working with the local police force to do the same. I’ll be moving into a really nice apartment here in the city very soon.” Armin explained. “Why didn’t you tell me this?!” Nathaniel burst. “Because! I was kinda planning on surprising you at work!” Armin laughed. “So? The gang is gonna stay together?” Sam asked as she and Kentin walked up to them. “Are you two staying in Astaria?” Alana asked. “Well... Now that my eyes have fully healed, the Military wants us to go to a different country... But I really don’t want to.” Kentin looked down. “So, I decided to tell King Julius that we’re not going to a new post and will be staying here.” Sam replied. “And I’m guessing that he and Crown Princess Ariadne want to present you two with proper titles for all of your service?” Alana raised an eyebrow. “YUP.” Sam nodded. “Why don’t you take the titles?” Lysander asked. “Because our family has been turning down formal titles from the Astarian Royals for centuries. We don’t do what we do for glory. We do it because its the right thing to do.” Alana explained. “Despite the fact that the Roster Clan has done a lot to deserve titles over the centuries.” A voice called from behind them.

The group turned in the direction of the voice and found a young woman with red hair, pink eyes, pale skin and elegant blue clothes walking towards them. “Well, holy shit... Does your daddy know you’re away from the palace?” Sam scoffed. “Were your ears burning Ariadne?” Alana asked, a smirk spreading across her face. “You know? Its only in establishments run by the Roster Clan that I don’t get formal greetings or introductions. I must say... It is quite refreshing.” Ariadne grinned. The Princess turned to Lysander. “Well... Well.. Aren’t you a nice tall glass of water?” She winked. “Um... Excuse me?” Lysander nervously blushed. “Watch out your Highness... You’re not even allowed to date beneath your station... Which means the only one here you could even be allowed to flirt with would be Viktor.” Alana snickered. “Melody! Sam! Its not fair! Most of your male friends may be “commoners” but they’re all so attractive! Even some of your female friends are easy on the eyes!” Ariadne whined. “I keep forgetting you’re bisexual...” Sam rolled her eyes. “You are not going to even try to use our friend group as your personal dating pool.” Alana sighed. “What are you doing here anyway? A “Geek’s Paradise” is beneath you.” Sam asked. “Well, I wanted to see the shop owned by the heir to the main line of the Roster Clan. I stopped by Ms. Mekina’s coffee shop on the way here. It looks like the two of you have quite the nice set up!” Ariadne beamed. “What, are you actually thinking you might become a regular here? Would your handlers even let you do that?” Severina asked. “I don’t see why not... The Roster Clan has been serving the Astarian Royal Bloodline for centuries. Not only did we give them refuge when the Romans and Christians were busy chasing all of the “snakes” out of Ireland and Scotland, but they’ve saved our lives on numerous occasions. The only reason they’re not knights and ladies is because they refuse the titles.” Ariadne shrugged. “But you don’t even like this stuff!” Sam blurted out. “Well, ever since you lot did that photoshoot at the Old Palace, I got a little curious... So I looked up what you dressed up as and I found out that it was from an anime. The dresses looked beautiful... I’d just need help watching it.” Ariadne explained. “Oh god.. You’re getting into Sailor Moon...” Alana laughed. “I’d love to help you with it! Its a lovely place to start when it comes to anime!” Severina cheered. “Hey, Melody? There are people that wanna see you!” Lynne chuckled as she walked up to them. “SHIT! I’m sorry! We’ll talk later!” Alana blurted out as she ran off.

“Heyyy! Lady Melody! Your place looks great!” Diego cheered. Diego was a man in his forties with tan skin, short dark hair and dark eyes. He wore his Inspector Uniform and kept his badge on his belt. He was standing next to Eric. “This place is cool! Are you gonna get vintage toys? May I suggest older Jurassic Park stuff?” Eric chattered. “I suppose I could look into that... I’m just not intending on getting anything from the new Jurassic World series... The lead actor gets on my nerves...” Alana remarked. “Cool!” Eric beamed. “Lady Melody? Do you think your father’s friends would mind if I got their autographs?” Diego eagerly asked. “I wouldn’t... Ryker, Levi and Scott aren’t here for publicity. They’re here because they wanna support me and hang out with my dad.” Alana shook her head. “Oh... Okay...” Diego looked down. “But! I’m sure they wouldn’t mind it if you went and said “Hi!”! You are one of Nath’s work friends, after all!” Alana smiled. “This is gonna be so cool!” Diego mused as he ran off. Alana watched Diego walk up to Nate, Ryker, Levi and Scott. After a couple of minutes, the five men were taking a picture. “Wow, I didn’t expect them to do that.” She happily shrugged. “This is so cool!” Rayan mused. “I’m glad everyone is enjoying this!” Alana cooed. Rayan pointed out a man standing next to Verity. “Why is he here?” He asked. “Who?” Alana inquired, confused. “Dan Aberny. He’s a major art dealer and collector.” Rayan explained. Dan Aberny was a white man with curly brown hair that covered his right eye and green eyes. He wore a black turtleneck, blue pants and a light grey trench coat that was fastened with a black snakeskin belt and gold hardware. Draped around his neck was a long pink scarf. “He’s probably a friend of Verity’s... I suppose it would only be proper for me to go greet him.” Alana stated.

“I don’t understand this...” Dan complained. “Its fun!” Verity cheered. “You’re not going to have this stuff in your gallery, are you?” Dan condescendingly asked. “What? Is my daughter’s work beneath you?” Lynne asked, getting annoyed. “Well... This isn’t real art...” Dan rolled his eyes. “Then why are you here?” Alana asked as she walked up to them. “Melody! Your place is magnificent!” Verity cheered. “Thanks, V. Now... Mister Aberny. If you think so little of my work and passions, why are you here?” Alana growled. “I was invited by Ms. Mekina. She wanted to showcase her goddaughter’s hard work and artistic talent... Yet, I see none of that. Just toys and frivolous wastes of time.” Dan shot. “Further proof that the aristocratic side of the art world needs a wake up call and a reality check. Because if you actually paid attention, you’d see that the pieces in this establishment took blood sweat and tears to create.” Alana shot back. She turned to Verity, annoyed. “Is this really going to be some of the company you keep? V, you know how much our families love this kind of thing. Hell, Rini’s main passion lately has been modeling for a geeky clothing line!” She asked. “Mister Aberny is a very major person in the art world. He’ll be quite helpful with my gallery!” Verity replied. “Well... I’m not gonna stop you from associating with the likes of him.... You know, the Anish Kapoor, snobby, classist, fools who don’t support any other form of art except their elitist bullshit... But I won’t have his kind in my shop.” Alana stated. “But Melody...” Verity began. “And to think... I was expecting much more from the Heir to the Roster Clan and The Great Grim Reaper... I guess I shouldn’t have expected that much... Your family isn’t even aristocratic!” Dan sneered. “What did you just say?!” A voice called. Within seconds, Ariadne appeared before them. “Your Highness!” Verity gasped. “Princess Ariadne, how lovely to see you again!” Dan smiled. “What did you just say about Melody and her family?” Ariadne spat. “Well... This comes as no surprise that the Roster Clan can’t even get into the Art World properly... Its just a shame that they’re dragging the Mekina and Chevalier families down with them!” Dan laughed. “The Roster Clan was offered a place among the aristocracy, centuries ago, by the first true Astarian King. They have chosen not to take part in the system, simply because money and power don’t mean much to them. Despite my family begging them to accept their rightful titles as lords, ladies, and knights in our court for centuries, they have rejected it. They are more valiant than most of the aristocratic families have been in quite a long time. On top of that, their influence is still sought by the Astarian Crown due to their courage, honesty, loyalty, and sense of justice. As it is, if you knew ANYTHING about the Rosters’ connections to the Mekina and Chevalier families, you’d know that the aristocracy has actually begun to give the Roster Clan more of the credit they are due since it was MELODY who saved both the Chevalier and Mekina lines from almost total ruin! Going even further... As you have acknowledged, Melody Roster is still the Red Death’s Grim Reaper, and you’re blatantly insulting her and her work in her shop... Thus proving that, you’re not very bright and possibly have a death wish.” Ariadne exclaimed. Everyone’s heads turned in the direction of the group. "I just expected more from this!” Dan blurted out. Alana pressed a button on her glasses, activating one lens. “Get out.” She icily ordered. “Now, Lady Melody....” Dan began. “She said GET OUT, peasant!” Ariadne barked. Alana looked around and noticed several people had their phones out. “This isn’t going to go well for me.” She sighed. “Your highness! I never expected this kind of brash action from the likes of you!” Dan scoffed. “Clearly, you don’t know the true nature of the Royal Family!” One of Ariadne’s guards stated. “Now, the Princess ordered you to leave.” Another guard ordered. Dan turned to Verity, who looked upset and embarrassed. “Darling! Don’t look sad! We can still work together! Just don’t expect me to help you obtain anything like this!” He beamed. He turned back to Ariadne. “I do hope to work with you and your family!” He cooed as he waved and walked towards the door. “Don’t count on it!” Ariadne shot. 

As soon as Dan was no longer in sight, Verity turned to Lynne and Yael and looked down. “This really isn’t going to go well for my café gallery...” She muttered. “It could work out... We’d just have to find up and coming artists who are liked by the elite and don’t have any interest in associating with him... Or walk on eggshells around him...” Yael nervously chuckled. Yael was a young white woman with bright blue eyes and short red hair. She wore a long sleeved, light yellow, shirt with a very deep neckline that plunged into her high waisted maroon pants. On the right side of her collarbone, she had a simple, black, dove tattoo. She also wore a long gold necklace, a gold leaf bracelet on her right wrist, and gold earrings. “V, I can’t believe you’d even want to work with someone like that!” Lynne did her best to not yell. “Lynne! He’s important to my business!” Verity blurted out. “Yet, he waltzed into my daughter’s business, on opening night, and treated her like scum! You do remember that she’s your goddaughter, right?!” Lynne was shaking with rage. “But Lynne... I need his help to make my gallery a success!” Verity blubbered. “Mom, calm down. I can fight my own battles. Verity, if you think you can balance working with someone like that, maintaining your place as mom’s best friend and my godmother, and actually make it to where you don’t get hurt in any way by the end of it, I won’t stop you... Just know, I will lose a bit of my respect for you for it.” Alana explained. “Oh dear... This really won’t turn out well...” Verity gasped. “Nonsense! He’s going to apologize and atone for his actions, or he’s going to find himself penniless!” Ariadne boasted.

“You really are disconnected from actual aristocratic life, if you think that, Princess.” Sam called as she walked up to them. “What?!” Ariadne blurted out. “Our family’s history with your family has never mattered to these people. They’ve always looked down on us. It was around the 1700′s, when the Aristocracy had begun taking more inspiration from French and English nobles, that they almost completely negated their own history and started looking down on us because we didn’t have titles, our estates weren’t as nice as theirs, and we’ve refused to follow their customs.” Lynne explained. “And, yes, we could have taken the titles that your family has been offering us and avoided a certain amount of animosity, but it would have always been there... Simply because, even when the original Celtic Nations were under different chiefs in this land, our family is, originally, from Ireland and Scotland. Not only that, the legends that we’re monster hunters and have a bit of the Fae’s blood in us has gotten our family a certain amount of persecution from some of the people. Yes, the persecution from the legends has waned in recent centuries, but part of the wariness is still there.” Alana clarified. “But it shouldn’t be like that...” Ariadne gasped. “Yeah... Well... It is. Its part of our reality, your Highness...” Lynne replied. “And it does get worse... There are some families who are trying to become part of the Aristocracy by any means necessary.” Alana stated. “Carol and Achille being part of that...” Sam added. Alana looked at Nathaniel and remembered what his parents had done. Nathaniel looked back at her, realized what she was thinking about, and looked down. “But... It’s not...” Ariadne stuttered. “Look... Even if we work hard to change things, it will take several generations before any real change happens.” Alana commented. “Well... Then we have to start somewhere... The Aristocracy in Astaria needs to be humbled and reminded of their history!” Ariadne declared. “Oh dear gods... Please don’t tell me that you’re gonna go on a crusade...” Sam blurted out. “But Samantha...” Ariadne began. “Look... If you wanna try to make this your passion project, fine... But don’t start a revolution...” Sam sighed.

Hours later, only the Mayor remained in the shop with Nathaniel, James and Alana. “I must say, Miss Roster, I wasn’t expecting that level of lively evening.” He grinned. “I was not expecting Princess Ariadne to show up and Verity to bring an aristocratic elitist.” Alana sighed. “Hey, it still turned out pretty well! A few people bought wands, and wanna see if you’ll make a few props!” James cheered. “It was quite fun! I may have to see if my sons will wanna wander in here!” The Mayor mused. “If they do, I’ll be looking forward to it! As for now, tonight was a decent success... But I wouldn’t call it perfect...” Alana stated. “But, it was decent. That’s always better than a disaster!” Nathaniel cooed. “You’re not wrong... But, for now, I’d like to go home. James, be sure to lock up, please.” Alana yawned. “I agree. Goodnight everyone.” The Mayor yawned as he walked away from the shop. “Don’t worry, Mels. I’ll lock up.” James smiled. “Thanks... Nath, let’s go home.” Alana let out a long yawn. “With pleasure.” Nathaniel yawned.

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Since Nate Films is based on Nathan Fillion, his friends’ names are based on actors that are known friends of Nathan. Levi Pugh is Zachary Levi (Pugh is Zachary’s actual last name). Ryker Ross is Ryan Reynolds. Scott Blue is Seth Green.

King Julius is a reference to Black Clover. In Black Clover, the Wizard King is named Julius Novachrono. Princess Ariadne is King Julius’ and Queen Sophia’s eldest child and the heir to their throne. Ariadne has 2 siblings. A brother named Urien and a sister named Lena.

There is A LOT of lore in this one!

#my candy love #my candy love love life #mcl #mclll #mcl fanfic #my candy love fanfic #my candy love fanfiction #mcl fanfiction #mcl fan fiction #the melancholy of melody alana roster #alana roster #Alana x Nathaniel #melodyalanaroster #mcl alana #my candy love alana #amour sucre #sweet amoris #amor doce #amor doce nathaniel #mcl nathaniel #fanific #fan fiction #my candy love fan fiction #sweet love #Sweet flirt #sweet crush #Sweet kiss #Corazon de Melon #corazon de bombon #cdm

[doyouevermakeasound]

Warning Signs

Story centered around my OC Noah.  

CW: Kidnapping, knives, gun, death, stabbing

First Chapter 

Previous Chapter

The groundwork for an attack on the capitol was being laid out when the first transmission came through.  Ruby Knowles strong voice shattered the noise of the room.

“People of Ropral, I come to you as a leader to guide our nation through a dark time.  There has been an attempted coup by the Homeland party aided by the Insurgents.”

The people in the room drew closer to the radio.  Kylan and Noah stayed towards the back of the room.  They met each other’s gaze before looking at the radio once more.

It sounded as if Ruby was suppressing the urge to cry, “We have done our best to fight off this attack but we lost good people.”  Her tone turned cold.  “It will not be in vain.”

Isa checked the volume and ensured that it was turned up all of the way.  

“To start off, we have detained the senators that associated themselves with the coup.  Senator Rihanni has been detained.  The movement dies with her.”  She paused for a moment to let the weight of the situation set in.  “The political party is finished, the Insurgents will be too.”

Someone in the room began to speak but were quickly silenced.

“You have one chance to make things right,” Her voice came clearly across.  “I have a list of people who should turn themselves in, then we can rid ourselves of this whole Insurgents situation.”  She practically spat the word as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.  “It will be better for everyone that way.”

“Is this being broadcast to everyone?”  Alen asked one of the people who first alerted them about the transmission.

They nodded.

She read off the names starting with Isa, the one who helped start the movement.  She continued onto saying other officer’s names including Kylans and Noahs.  “You have one week.  I suggest that you make the right decision or there will be consequences.”

Once the transmission ended there was a moment of silence as everyone weighed their options.  Isa’s voice cut through the silence.  “We need to remain strong.  This was to be expected, especially after we’ve been a thorn in Ruby’s side this entire time.  We continue making a plan on the Capitol to get to Renato.  We need to get pieces in place as soon as we can.”

Noah was on top of the building with Amiya who had their sights pointed over towards the Capitol.  He had his rifle in hand as he surveyed their surroundings and the other rooftops for other snipers.  

“How we looking Noah?” Alen’s voice spoke to him through the comms.  He was positioned across the way on the ground, ready to swarm in once the plan kicked into gear.

“Good, Amiya and I are in place.  I’m not seeing any other forces aside from the usual outside the building.”  He glanced over at Amiya who was still peering through the scopes.  “Are you in place?”

“Yes.” 

The time before an operation like this always had Noah on edge.  He resisted the urge to just continue pacing around the rooftop for fear of somehow drawing attention to the two of them.  He glanced over at Amiya who kept a close eye on things by the doors.  

“Why are you staring at me?”  She didn’t look away.

“Just making sure you’re good to go.”  Noah looked down at the front entrance of the Capitol building.  

She waited, “Yeah, I’ve got clear sights on the door.  If Ruby so much as peeks her head outside, she’s dead.  Isn’t there anything else you can do aside from just standing there?”

“Nope.  We just wait now.”

She let out a breath, “Well isn’t that just grand.  What time is it now?”

Noah peered at his watch.  “8:53.”  

She didn’t respond.  He watched her clench her jaw as she continued looking through the scope.  

On the ground Noah expected more guards, more soldiers, more security in general.  It made him nervous and this entire operation just felt… off.  He scoured the windows for anyone, they had some signs of life but nothing that was too ominous.  

He considered calling it right there but then again, when would they have another chance at rescuing Renato?  Sometimes once they lost track of someone, it was near impossible to find them again.  

A few more minutes passed, the doors opened up and several soldiers could be seen piling out of the building.  Noah could feel his muscles tense as they waited to see who would be making an appearance.  Renato appeared, head concealed by a bag.  

Amiya’s shot rang out and Renato dropped, Ruby hadn’t even made an appearance.

“What just happened?”  Comms descended into chaos.  

Noah turned to Amiya, “What the f-”.  She had pulled out a pistol and shot him in the chest, knocking him backwards, before running.  

He coughed and sat up as she started to exit the rooftop.  The bullet proof vest he was wearing stopped the shot but that didn’t mean that he didn’t just feel like a hammer had struck him right in the chest, knocking the air out of him.  “Amiya’s double crossed us,” He told comms.  He pushed himself up and began the chase as he unholstered his pistol on his right hip.  He ignored the burning of his lungs as he started to chase her.

She was going down the stairs as fast as she could, the sniper rifle banging on her back.  As soon as she realized Noah was following she aimed back with her pistol.  

He avoided shooting back but kept his gun out, he had questions that he needed answers for.  They reached the ground floor and the sound of a full scale battle outside filtered in.  He sprinted to tackle her.  Some shots rung out by his ears, nothing had hit but Noah focused on wrestling the gun out of her hand.  

She elbowed him in the ribs knocking him off of her, he wanted to curl up into a ball at the hit but continued fighting anyways.  The pistol went sliding across the floor, Noah still had his in hand.  He swung out and hit her with the butt of the gun.  That didn’t stun her as much as he would like.  

A punch landed in the square of his chest where a bruise was already forming from the gunshot, causing him to back off and triggered another coughing fit.  She scrambled for the pistol as he caught his breath.  He rolled onto his stomach and forced himself up onto his knees.  Amiya was grabbing the pistol and he lunged for her again.  The two of them fell onto the floor and Noah rolled on top of her.  The gun slid across the floor in the struggle.

“Why did you shoot Renato?”  He yelled before punching her in the jaw.  He ignored any pain in his hand as adrenaline coursed through his veins.  

She tried clawing at him and he fought off her hands before landing another punch on her.  It stunned her for a moment.  He then grabbed her hair and banged Amiya’s head against the floor.

“Why did you shoot him?”

Amiya’s hands gripped his hand in her hair.  “Fuck off!”

He lifted her head up again and slammed it down.  “Tell me!”

She grabbed his left shoulder and dug a thumb into the joint, he instantly recoiled, yelling in pain.  She was back on her feet and Noah was still on the floor.  She landed a kick on him before turning to grab the gun again.

He growled, “Get back here!” The moment he was back on his feet he resumed the chase and tackled her from behind.  She rolled underneath him to face him, he straddled her as he unsheathed his knife and stabbed right above her collarbone before twisting it.  As soon as the blade was sunk into her skin, Amiya was screaming.

“Fucking tell me!”

“I made a deal with Ruby!  Ahh!  Stop!”

He twisted further, “Why?”

She was trying to grab the knife from him, “This is a losing battle!  They have resources!  People!  You just have a bunch of people out in the woods!”

“What was the plan for today?”  He placed more weight on the blade and was sure it was now scraping the floor.  

“Renato dies, you and Alen captured!  Aargh!  Get off of me!”  She continued squirming underneath him.

“Should we be expecting back up out there?”  He referenced in direction of the gunfire by the Capitol building.

She nodded before hissing, “It’s a trap!  Renato came out too early though!  It didn’t go as planned!”

He punched her in the jaw before removing the knife and getting up to retrieve one of the pistols that had been displaced in the fight.  Before she had a chance to get back to her feet he shot her in the head.  

He placed a finger up to his ear, “We need to abandon this mission.  Back up is coming.  Amiya was part of a plan to get Alen and me captured.”  He grabbed the weapons from her body.

It was a moment before Isa came on the comms, “Abandon the mission.  Get out of there!”

He nodded and began to run towards the fighting to help give them a chance to leave together.  

#whump #hostage #knife mention #gun mention #death cw #stabbing #stab wound

[dreamsclock]

“how’s it feel?”

sam grits his teeth. to his left, hanging over the spectator dome, dream is grinning behind his mask. “not here,” he says, “not now, dream.”

(mcc / dsmp crossover with c!sam and c!dream!! warnings: scars, death, trauma, torture, abuse, prison arc, permanent injury, long term injury, trauma response, c!sam crit, c!sam hurt, c!dream hurt)

“how’s it feel?”

sam grits his teeth. to his left, hanging over the spectator dome, dream is grinning behind his mask. “not here,” he says, “not now, dream.”

admittedly, it gives him a little comfort to see how stiff dream is around him, and how stiff he is in general.

the masked man looks completely out of place amongst the laughing, playful spectators, one leg favoured over the other, a nastily healed scar on his face only just covered by the mask. sam knows it well, knows exactly how quackity had given it to dream, remembers dream’s sobs.

that’s all that gives him the courage now to lean forward, clad in MCC uniform, and snap a very low, very strained, “people will hear.”

dream’s teeth bare. “hear what? two friends talking? that’s what we are, right? we’re friends here. everybody’s friends.”

sam doesn’t flinch, but his laugh is curt and unhappy. “what do you want?”

“how does it feel?” dream repeats, a hard bite of satisfaction in his words. “to have the roles reversed? you lying about scars while i’m the one who listens?”

oh. so it’s about this.

because it’s always about this with dream, like sam hadn’t suffered when dream had escaped, like sam hadn’t been the one suffering every minute that dream had been locked up! dream is selfish, and that smug selfish satisfaction now makes sam’s blood boil.

because yes, he’d had to lie about the scar down his face: to anyone in MCC who asked, sam blamed a red stone experiment gone wrong, which they bought with a rueful caution to be more careful—

his eyes meet the smiling ones of dream’s mask.

yes. he’d be more careful next time. if he ever got dream back under his control…

but it had been a horrible role reversal, lying about his own wounds while dream had been there. the other man had been hanging around him like his shadow, there at his every turn, watching him intently through every game.

it’s hard not to feel like a prisoner.

absentmindedly, sam’s hand comes up, traced the scar across his face. “you know how it feels,” he returns, keeping his voice as even as he possibly can, “you know exactly how it feels, dream. what, are you here to mock me? to— to take revenge?”

dream considers him for a moment. that low mean grin turns into something thoughtful, almost scornful.

“i’m here to watch,” he says at least, tilting his head as the decision dome lights up again, “and i’m here to watch you, specifically. to be fair, you’ve given me a show.”

the lies, the defensiveness, the way the other server members avoid him. heat like humiliation curls in sam’s chest.

“watch?” he says, defensive, snappish. “you’re gonna pretend like you can’t play anymore to try and gain sympathy points from me, is that it?”

dream’s body language stiffens, draws back. sam prides himself in that: at least he has some power still, at least he’s not completely helpless against dream’s attacks.

“sympathy,” dream repeats, contemptuously, “yeah, because that’s what i want from you. astute, sam.”

“what else would this be?” sam demands. “you love MCC. you wouldn’t—”

“maybe i’m still trying to figure out how to play properly after being tortured for three months and locked up for ten,” dream suggests sarcastically, “just a thought. just something for you to think about.”

it’s sam’s turn to scoff. “you played fine in may.”

“i played fine in may because quackity would have killed me otherwise.” dream sucks in a breath through his teeth, and rocks back on his heels. one of his legs doesn’t bend like it should. sam remembers hearing it shatter. “that’s not the point.”

“then what is the point?”

a few of his teammates look over curiously. lowering his voice fearfully, sam steps closer to the spectator stand, draws satisfaction when dream flinches back, however minutely.

“what’s the point, dream? what are you trying to gain?”

“i get to learn about your strengths. weaknesses. i get to watch you in a competitive environment and… you know… figure out exactly where your faults lie. and i get to unsettle you.” dream’s breezy laugh is only a little strained. “it’s… strategic. very strategic, sam.”

because dream is always two steps ahead, and this is how: he watches. watches everything going on, manipulates from behind the scenes. when the decision dome lights up with a game, dream and sam both glance over automatically, and a slow smile curls around the ex-prisoner’s lips.

“buildmart,” dream says, in a tone implying he’d known it all along, “i always hated that game. good luck, sam. i’d watch my back if i were you.”

“what the hell are you planning?” sam says, voice rising a pitch in sudden unease. “tell me.”

dream spares him a pitying glance.

“just… be on your guard. that’s all i’m saying.”

he pushes off into the crowd before he can be questioned, but sam still feels the cold smiling mask watching him throughout the game, never wavering, never ceasing. a cold shiver runs fear down his back.

what is dream planning?

it’s not until much later, after the event, after he’s back on the server, that he places the unrecognisable sound in dream’s voice when he’d been talking to non-dream smp members: the lilt, the hint of something secret in his tone.

wistful. he’d been nostalgic.

and then sam remembers the dragging limp of his left leg and the awkward position of his arm, and the tremors in his hands that make aiming a bow hard and the dizzying fear of respawns that had almost crippled dream in the last MCC.

“maybe i’m still trying to figure out how to play properly after being tortured for three months and locked up for ten. just a thought. just something for you to think about.”

dream’s voice had been more bitter than sam had ever heard it before, and for a moment he’s struck with doubt. had MCC become unplayable for dream?

he dismisses it, after a minute, burying his face in fran’s fur. he has to.

and even if it had become unplayable, good.

evil things like dream shouldn’t enjoy things, shouldn’t experience happiness like that. he thinks of dream, thinks of his body, broken, bloodied, and feels a wave of satisfaction.

justice. it’s justice being served, and he doesn’t regret it even a bit.

#> writing !! #> mcc / dsmp crossover #> that one clock guy #> the warden’s burden

[timextoxhajima]

Nevertheless: Wishful Thinking [1]

[completed] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

synopsis: why would the college flirt want anything to do with the innocent heartbreaker? a [somewhat] nevertheless au featuring tbz's eric son young jae

genre [per chapter]: suggestive material, mentions of alcohol, SMUT *this series is a smut series so* please don't read if you're uncomfy. if you're underaged and you still wanna read, i'm not stopping you. i don't care because that's your responsibility to know what's fiction and what's not.

word count: 2.8k, half of which is probably filth

taglist: @from-xero

{this is a work of fiction}

"i'm sorry, i just... i just don't see you that way."

the boy tries his hardest not to choke (or sob) as he lowers his head, the bouquet of flowers in his hands crinkling when he brings it down to his side.

he huffs, using his tongue to poke the inner sides of his cheeks as his grimace pulls out into a smirk.

you look at him with utmost guilt, fingers awkwardly intertwined with one another as you scan the distraught on his face.

"so..." he slowly nods, looking up from the floor. "not even the most popular person on campus can win you over, huh?"

the label strikes a chord in you.

honestly, you were just waiting for him to say those words. you hadn't expected the campus star boy to confess to you tonight, much less at his own graduation party.

he was two years your senior and frankly way out of your league - leaving you with absolutely no clue how he came about to develop feelings for you.

you had wondered if he was merely capitalising on your growing reputation as the 'innocent heartbreaker'.

the pretty, new, freshman who just couldn't seem to stop heads from turning.

one of those heads was his.

wooseok scoffs, obviously unhappy and dissatisfied with your response.

how dare the pretty freshman reject the hottest boy on campus?

"okay," wooseok nods, still holding out the flowers to you. "at least take the flowers, would you?"

grimly picking the golden-wrapped roses from him, you scan his eyes, glossed with a layer of tears as his nose sours.

"wooseok-"

"no, don't," he interrupts you, sucking in a deep breath as he puffs out his chest. the yelling from outside his bedroom door calls the both of your attention.

"the party's still going on until morning, are you staying?"

with a light shake of your head, you hug the flowers close to your chest. your heart slows down, calming from the fact that he had brought you in here just to confess and not something else you were afraid of.

the guilt sinks in when you realise you didn't trust wooseok all that much.

"okay, well..." he clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. the silver shine off the school's logo on the varsity jacket glimmers under the room's ceiling light. "at least stay until we finish the first bottle of vodka? we have games later."

"oh, wooseok, i can't-"

"come on," he reaches forward and grabs your hands, his hands hot and warm. probably from the adrenaline he had to give himself to make this feat. "the first bottle."

you look up from his fingers and at his face, his fringe covering his eyes and casting sharp-angled shadows all over his lids.

your lips part, but before you can even utter a sound, he hops right in and exclaims with a grin on his face. "great! i'll see you around and come find me when you're leaving, okay?"

the smile lines extend from the sides of his nose and down to his lips, the shadow lines on his cheeks shifting as he turns on his heels, hands sliding off yours.

"i'll-" he points to his door, already reaching for the handle. "yeah. bye."

wooseok pulls the door open for him to exit, and right before he can shut the door behind him, his eyes come between the gap to take one last look at you.

the door clicks shut after he moves off first, and you're left with the roses in your arms, standing in the middle of his room, having just rejected the most sought-after bachelor in the school.

looking down at the roses once more, your finger-pads rub against the velvet petals, heart aching for him.

the neon lights in his room were casting a bright blue hue all over the walls and the carpeted ground, trophies for baseball and customised bats decorating almost every corner.

you turn to his bed, thinking of leaving the flowers on the cushion and leaving quietly through his window.

but your train of thought violently snapped into two when the party outside yells, followed by the loud thunking of the bass throughout the house.

the flowers are a reminder of how shit of a person you are.

you didn't ask to be a heartbreaker.

people tend to think you find joy in rejecting the brave ones who get their feelings across but you don't. not at all.

carefully laying the bouquet of flowers back onto his bed, you pull the door of his room open and step out into the hallway, the music blasting like everyone was deaf and hard of hearing.

the crowd in the living room comes into view when you start walking down the stairs - everybody jumping on beat to the likes of superbass and people yelling the all-time classic rap.

your knuckles whiten from gripping onto the wooden railings, unable to return yourself to the party when you've done broken the heart of the host himself.

so you turn on your heels, deciding to return to his room and crawl out through his window - only to be met by someone else.

"party's downstairs."

if you were the innocent heartbreaker...

then eric son was the vicious one - the male, sluttier equivalent of you.

"oh, well... party's not for me," you offer a tiny smile, slightly embarrassed to be caught making a u-turn.

eric tilts his head to the side, holding out an arm and resting it on the wooden railings. you lower your head, taking a step to your left in a bid to walk past him.

but you're stopped yet again by his arm reaching out, palm pressing flat into the concrete as he looks down at you.

you don't realise your fists are clenched (and sweating) until you rub them onto your dress.

"look, eric- i- i had a bad day and i just-"

"so walk out the front door," he raises a single brow, taking a step down and removing his hand off the wooden railing.

your feet fumble around each other in a bid not to topple down the stairs. turning to face you, he forces you to step back to maintain the safe distance between you.

"i don't want to make a scene-" the bad habit of picking your nails returns when your back hits the wall, and eric's standing an uncomfortable distance from you now.

"oh," he lifts his free hand and mirrors the other, keeping your neck between his forearms. but you are the scene. you can't just... leave."

a flustered chuckle runs through your throat as you lean your head back against the wall. "i don't have the time for this."

"make time for me," eric cocks his head to the side and glances down near the bottom of your face. "you can tell me about your bad day."

"i think i'll be fine on my own, thank you," carefully squatting and trying to shrink out from the wall-eric sandwich, your brows furrow as you shift.

but eric son buckles his arm and halves the distance he has between your faces, the sudden surge forcing you back upright.

now his breath is hot on your jaw and you turn away from him, lips pursed into a thin, tight line.

"the 'innocent heartbreaker'," he gently hums, fingers reaching up to play with the curled locks fallen around your upper arms. the fleeting brushes of his skin across yours draw out chills, and a harsh inhale twitches your facial expressions to his liking. "i can see why boys would fall for this."

with your eyes still glued to the party downstairs, you part your lips, wanting to explain yourself.

then eric, with the weight of feathers, reaches up to your chin and tilts it towards him.

his lips are parted as he slides his tongue across his teeth. he sighs softly, eyes travelling from yours to your lips and back up.

by now, you can feel his breath on your philtrum.

"you're pretty," he whispers, almost against your lips.

and your stomach plummets when he pulls away completely, the cool air rushing in to replace the bodily heat.

without breaking eye contact, even for a single second, eric pushes himself off the wall. lips drawn out into a wide smile, he adjusts his jacket and runs his hand through his hair.

"but not that pretty."

you don't realise your heart's racing until you feel your chest heaving, unknowingly panting from the unruly interaction the vicious heartbreaker has just provided you.

the world finally seeps back into view and into complete perfect audio, the music finally rumbling through you again when your eyes trail after eric, walking into the crowd jumping in the living room.

the taste of iron seeps out from the inside of your lips, and you dart your tongue across the mark that your teeth have left on your flesh.

clearing your throat and shaking the thought of eric out of your head, you turn back up the steps and head back into wooseok's bedroom.

the blue hues of the room start to sink into your consciousness again, the yellow shade of the bouquet wrap looking more like green under the lighting.

you take a moment to fester - over wooseok, over your reputation, over eric.

college just started and here you were, feeling guilty over something that wasn't even your fault.

the final decision comes to rest on your fingers in the form of pulling wooseok's window open, carefully lifting your feet and crawling under the glass.

now, troublemaker was playing, muffled but definitely loud enough to be heard at least 3 houses down the road. you climb onto the roof of his garage, eyes scanning to cars parked outside and along the road.

you stride to the side where you know wooseok had a wooden plating attached to one of the walls, fake vines intertwined between the planks.

it's a relief when your feet meet the concrete ground, and nobody was in sight - until you back up into someone's chest and you turn to find eric, again.

"what in the world-"

he cuts you off by grabbing your waist, slotting his lips between yours and holding your chin to align your faces.

you were nearly bought into it, but the consciousness seeps back into you and you rip your face off his, palms one his chest with his hands still on your waist.

"what do you think you're doing?"

"i could ask you the same thing."

"you already know I'm leaving."

"you can't leave just yet."

"why the hell not?"

"because I'm not done with you."

with a low huff, he hoists you up onto his hips, lips crashing onto yours as he walks you backwards, your shoulder blades hitting the wall where you had climbed down from.

there's a gentle rattle when he keeps you up against the wooden planks, his palms riding the skirt of your dress up and over your hips.

his fingers slide under the material of your underwear hugging your pelvis, hot skin gripping onto the flesh of your rear.

then you hear a tear amongst the mess he's making on your lips, and the material of your underwear loosens.

"what the-"

"shh," he smirks, now turning his head into your neck to nip on your jaw. your chest heaves from the sensitivity, the fluttering sensation of his lips on your neck drilling chills all through you. "make a sound and everyone will know you couldn't say no to me."

conscience returns to you for a split second.

"eric- we can't-"

before you can finish your sentence, eric drags the thin material out from under you and dangles it before you, his eyes clouded and dark.

the darkened patch of material on your underwear washes your face in pink and heat.

"you were saying?"

your stomach plummets, and you now register the coolness on your core. eric smiles, rolling up the material to shove it into his pocket.

"eric-" your fingers dig into his left forearm as they return to the wall by your head, his right carefully undoing his belt.

the clink of the metal followed by the zipper coming undone forms a knot in your stomach already, then his fingers coming to spread your neediness all over you forces a sharp whimper up your lungs.

"I've done nothing..." he shakes his head, sliding a single finger up and down your core. "and you are so wet."

he lifts his finger from under your skirt, his fingers glistening under the sharp, fluorescent lighting.

your hooded lids are just about tearing with the overwhelming ache that's throbbing through you, and he makes it worse by running his tongue all over his finger.

eric's pride swells when a whine escapes your throat, and he presses himself into you, chest against yours with his hands digging into your thighs. your arms circle around his shoulders, pulling him closer for a deep, slow kiss.

he prods against you, the throbbing ache spiking when his manhood rubs against your core. groaning into the kiss, your entire being squirms between him and the wall with the muffled music still blasting from the living room.

he doesn't bother to wait for you before he finds his manhood and aligns it with your entrance, gently prodding before sliding himself in like it was meant to be.

he buries himself inside you by holding your thighs around his hips even tighter, drawing a low and prolonged moan from your lips.

eric pulls away, pressing his forehead into yours to let you breathe. but he finds some kind of sadistic pleasure when he pulls his hips away, only to slam right back in, earning a sharp yelp from you.

"go any louder, princess, and i won't be the only one enjoying this."

he grins to himself, licking his lips before diving into your neck and picking at all the right spots. every kiss and nibble earned him a moan or a mewl and it ruins your pride over and over to know that you had just broken someone's heart tonight.

yet you were outside that someone's house, letting eric rail you like he owned you.

your fingers claw and grip at his shirt as you feel your back jerk and rock against the wooden plank. with every thrust he offers you, he sounds like he's laughing and panting at the same time, the hot breath on your neck making you writhe in a guilty pleasure.

he offers a few slower thrusts before grabbing your chin to look at him, eyes slightly fucked out and your thighs tired from keeping your body locked to his.

slowly pulling out and sliding back in, he takes the time to revel in the way your brows furrow and your lips fall apart, your curled hair now a mess around your chest and shoulders.

"that's it, princess," he leans into your ear and coos. "tell me how good that feels."

unable to form a coherent word in your head, you whine in response, pulling his face to yours and planting your lips onto his with every ounce of energy left in you.

his hands fumble under your skirt and find your sensitivity, pressing his thumb flat onto you. the pressure jerks you upwards and he takes the opportunity to reposition himself, changing the angle ever so slightly.

by some miracle, the tip of him buried inside you finds the magic spot, and when he picks up his pace, the knot starts to find you in eternal bliss.

eric pulls away again, huffing as he thrusts himself into you, fingers flicking and abusing you as if your legs weren't already shaking and convulsing around his hips.

"good girl," his breath is heavy on your jaw as he plants a few wet kisses there, his pants bringing you to some newer heights. your vision starts to fade into white with a few more thrusts and his fingers dig into your thighs when your lower body starts to spasm.

muscles flexing, your entire body squirms and trembles as you meet your high.

then eric hurriedly pulls out, the hot fluid dribbling all over the ground under you.

while you come down from your high, eric's strained grunts rumble through his torso under your arms. the vein that popped out on his neck was still there, and your senses only allow enough for you to focus on eric now.

he bites on his bottom lip and pushes his hair back with a deep inhale. he turns to you, eyes wide open and clear.

"not such an innocent princess now, are you?"

#nevertheless: wishful thinking #the boyz smut #the boyz scenarios #the boyz imagines #eric smut #eric scenarios #eric imagines #tbz smut #tbz scenarios #tbz imagines #eric sohn scenarios #eric sohn smut #eric sohn imagines #eric x reader smut #eric x reader #tbz x reader #the boyz x reader

[fandomlit]

neutral, chap. 9 (dream smp x reader)

series summary (in game!au) when an exiled tommy finally rebels against a manipulative dream, he finds safety in neutral territory, a place owned and guarded by you. staying in your safe haven opens up the younger one’s eyes to your way of life, while also revealing your deeper past before neutral; a past that involved a war for your love.

chapter summary george presents ghostbur and tommy a letter from king eret, who offers ghostbur the opportunity of his life (or death?). the boys keep you clueless to ghostbur’s dilemma, and you’re instead distracted by an urgent letter from technoblade which leaves you needing to get to him as soon as possible. the boys assure you that they’ll be fine and they’ll protect neutral in your absence, but an unexpected visitor makes an appearance just after you leave..

warnings swearing, mentions of death and war

previous | series masterlist | next

gif cred belongs to @minecraftgifs​

“morning, tommy,” y/n greeted when he finally dragged himself out of bed and into the kitchen. “i was just about to make breakfast. any suggestions?”

“uh..,” tommy hummed through a yawn. “i dunno. ghostbur?”

“i said french toast,” the ghost muttered quietly, a cup of hot tea already in hand.

“sounds good,” tommy nodded, taking a seat next to ghostbur at the table.

“you two are tired this morning,” y/n commented as she gathered her ingredients. “stay up late last night?”

tommy and ghostbur shared a look. “yeah. i guess.”

y/n gave them a curious look over her shoulder but decided not to say anything further. “alright, keep your secrets. i’ll figure it out eventually.” she hummed to herself as she moved to preheat the stove, and tommy drew his eyes to the table.

he didn’t know if they’d ever tell her what happened the night before.

“hey, you two.” the boys looked up from the game they had been playing to see george had entered the kitchen. he held out a letter to ghostbur. “it’s from the king.”

“eret?” ghostbur questioned, taking the letter with confusion.

george nodded, tucking his hands into his pockets as the boys looked to the regal, rainbow seal on the envelope. “he said it was urgent.”

ghostbur nodded. “thanks, george.”

“no problem,” george nodded in return. “take care of y/n for me, alright?”

“yes, sir,” tommy waved before george turned and left the house. wilbur broke the wax seal. “what do you think eret wants?”

“im not sure,” ghostbur muttered, his hand pausing opening the envelope. “they’re kind of unpredictable.”

“you think so?”

“i know so,” ghostbur sighed, finally taking the letter out of the envelope and unfolding it. tommy leaned over to read it with him.

it was two simple paragraphs of a letter, the handwriting neat and the message to the point. when tommy finished, he noticed ghostbur’s grip was tighter on the page. tommy’s wide eyes whipped up to his friend. his brother.

“holy fuck.” ghostbur’s distressed eyes turned to him. 

ghostbur gulped, looking back at the letter. he voiced, as if speaking it would make the idea any more real to them, “eret wants to revive me.”

“holy shit.”

“do you want a cup of tea, tommy?” y/n asked politely, snapping him from his thoughts of the night before. his head snapped up to see her gazing at him patiently. he finally registered her question.

“oh, sure,” he nodded. she handed him a warm cup. “thank you.”

she hummed in response. “you know, there are tales about what terrible things can happen to boys who don’t get enough sleep.”

tommy raised his eyebrows with a sarcastic look. “im not five, y/n.”

“i know,” she laughed as she mixed her batter. “im not either, but i completely believe in the nightwalker.”

“oh, you’re just as bad as phil,” ghostbur chuckled as he took a sip of tea. y/n gave him an amused glance.

tommy sighed, setting down his cup and resting his elbows on the kitchen table. “alright. i cave. what the hell’s a nightwalker?”

“you sure you wanna know?” y/n sighed dramatically. “i mean, you’re not five, tommy.” ghostbur let out a loud laugh at tommy’s deadpan expression.

“i can’t win with you, woman!”

she laughed out as she began to place soaked pieces of bread onto the pan atop the stove. “im just saying-” she cut herself off, looking over her shoulder as her brow furrowed. they allowed the room to engulf in silence, but tommy noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

“what-” y/n shushed ghostbur when he attempted to talk, quickly wiping her hands off. they strained their ears in the silence once more, and that’s when they heard it; the distance whooshing of distorted wind and distant calls.

“that’s the nether portal,” y/n spoke quickly, rushing out of the kitchen. the boys exchanged a look before following her down into the basement.

when they entered the portal room, a piglin was waiting for them. standing at nearly nine feet tall, tommy took an unconscious step behind ghostbur as the piglin swept his intimidating vermillion gaze over their trio. but his eyes locked on y/n, and he presented her a letter. a common theme of the last couple hours, tommy noted.

she took the letter, nodding politely to the piglin. he nodded in return with a soft snort before stepping back into the portal and disappearing back into the world beyond it, leaving only the remnants of a hot breeze in his wake.

tommy finally stepped forward when y/n unfolded the letter. “what is it?”

y/n gasped softly. “it’s from technoblade.” tommy looked back to watch ghostbur frown as y/n scanned the letter. “he’s hurt.”

“hurt?” tommy repeated, turning back to y/n.

“he’s hiding out at a piglin village,” she spoke slowly as she read, placing a stressed hand over her heart. “he says he got hit with a withering effect, took a couple bad hits to the shoulder.. he’s holding up, but resources are low.” she looked up to tommy, and he immediately saw the panic in her eyes. her hands were now shaking, her eyes wide and voice low and serious as she said, “he needs help. i..” she ran a hand through her hair as she let out a shaky sigh.

“hey, it’s fine,” tommy assured, placing a hand on her shoulder. “go help him.”

she shook her head, closing her eyes as she spoke, “no, i couldn’t leave you two-”

“y/n,” tommy cut as she looked back at ghostbur. she looked back to him. “we’re gonna be fine. i can cook now, ghostbur can..”

“tell you what to cook,” ghostbur offered.

“yeah. sure.” y/n smiled at the boys and tommy repeated, “we’ll be fine. go help our guy.”

she nodded. “i’ll go start packing.” she reached the doorway before remembering, “oh my god, the french toast!” her pace quickened.

neither of them spoke until they heard the trapdoor close after her. 

“have you thought any more about eret’s offer?” tommy asked quietly.

ghostbur shrugged, his gaze drawing to the floor. “couldn’t sleep last night, if that means anything.” tommy nodded, pursing his lips. “im not going without telling y/n, though. she deserves to know.”

“i agree,” tommy voiced. “that means you have more time to make your decision, then.” when ghostbur didn’t say anything, he continued, “‘cause who knows how long she’ll be gone with techno.”

“hopefully not too long,” ghostbur grumbled as he turned his body to the exit of the room. “shall we get some french toast?”

“as long as it’s not burnt.”

...

“there’s plenty of food and ingredients in the fridge, but make sure you’re tending to the gardens,” y/n listed quickly as she filled a satchel with potions. tommy tried to internally list them off as she packed them, but he found she had a few that he was unsure of. in any other moment, he’d question her under the sun went down. but she needed to leave. “the potatoes will be ready in a few days, you just need to dig one up to see if it’s ready before you harvest all of them. just make sure you replant, since potato season is nearly over. if anyone stops by, tell them im sorry, but please offer them a meal and be kind, tell them i’ll be gone a week at most. my recipe book is-”

“in the drawer to the left of the fridge, i know,” tommy spoke. “and the gardening book is right next to it.” y/n closed her bag, offering tommy a smile as he continued, “we’ll be fine, y/n. it’s only a few days.”

“i know, just..” she shook her head and guided them to exit the small potion room in the basement, making their way to the portal room. “i worry. i hate that i can’t be everywhere at once.”

tommy shrugged. “would’ve made the war a lot easier, im sure.”

she nodded with a considering look as ghostbur joined them. “probably. i’d rather not test the theory, though.” tommy chuckled and she offered him another smile. she opened her arms to him. “be safe.”

“i should be saying that to you,” tommy scoffed, returning her embrace. though tommy could admit, he felt uneasy about her going into the nether by herself, her warm embrace and the scent of sweetness lingering on her skin brought a kind of comfort to him just before she pulled away from him and turned to ghostbur. she was going to be fine; he was sure of it.

“wanna give me the speech about potato farming?” ghostbur joked, holding his arms out to her.

she shook her head with a laugh. “i know you kill every plant you touch. tommy’s in charge of the garden.”

ghostbur’s jaw dropped in offense as she hugged him, giggling into his chest. he couldn’t help but grin down at her, and tommy had to look away before he admitted to himself that the sight was endearing.

“be good, boys,” y/n smiled, shifting her bag and quiver on her shoulder. “treat neutral well.”

“yes, ma’am,” tommy nodded, and y/n offered one last wave before stepping into the portal. she was gone in a quick flash of purple and hot air. “so,” tommy sighed, turning to ghostbur, “what do you want for lunch?”

ghostbur raised his eyebrows. “chicken tacos?”

tommy threw his hands up as they began their walk out of the basement. “i can’t only make chicken tacos! there’s no growth in skill if i make the same thing over and over!”

ghostbur let out a scoff mixed with a laugh, earning him a curious look from tommy as they reached the ladder. “you sound like y/n.” tommy rolled his eyes as he climbed the ladder, ghostbur following after he lifted himself to the floor above. “she really is becoming your mother.”

tommy gave him a curious look when he reached the main floor. “did she say that to you?”

ghostbur shrugged. “she said you’re starting to feel like a child to her.” tommy raised his eyebrows, averting his gaze from his friend. “is that a bad thing, tommy?”

“no,” tommy said immediately. “it’s just..” he felt himself flush and nearly cursed himself. “she feels like a mother to me, so, it’s fine.”

ghostbur grinned at tommy’s embarrassed expression. “aw, tommy!” he slung an arm around the blonde’s shoulder, ruffling his messy hair with his other hand. “you have a mother figure!”

“ow, cut it out, man!” tommy yelled out, feeling his cheeks heat up further.

“no, it’s cute,” ghostbur laughed out, pinching tommy’s red cheek as he tried to wiggle away from the taller man. “you and y/n are an adorable mother-son duo! it’s precious!”

“no, it’s not!” tommy groaned, trying to push ghostbur’s cold hands away from his face. “i take it all back, y/n’s my worst enemy!”

“too late now, tommy! you’ve told me too much!”

“am i interrupting something?”

all motion stopped. the boys turned toward the main entrance of the home, ghostbur’s arm still slung around tommy’s shoulder as they both came face to face with a masked, cross-armed dream.

tag list <3 @vanhakirja @victory-is-here @inkyynki @airiour @sylum @kiritokunuwu @221bee-slytherin @bllatrixcarpnter @soullesstaco @stxrryb1tch @amibismexy @keiarma @akaichi-blog @runningoffofcaffeine @nonetookind @aquilla-favonia @feverish-dove @izuruamme @weeb-bb @bialin @justachillbisexual @kiritokunuwu @natalie-is-a-wall @woman-soot @boyleanti @nostalgic-writes @ahmya-4 @cryinqclouqs @littleliv5 @weeb-bb @truthdaze @dusky-purple-black @sadassflatass @dreamyteam @jaciahbabes @milanienne​ @sleepingalaska​ @valoinnit​ @etheriaaly​ @miavfx​ @aikochan4859​ @spilltheearlgrey​ @keiarma​ @cutiebear45​ @xxtwizztedxx​ @eko-ore​ @denkibutinsteadofpikachuitspichu @yoshirikuxd​

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#dream smp x reader #dream smp fanfic #dream x reader #dream fanfic #platonic!tommyinnit x reader #tommyinnit x reader #tommyinnit fanfic #ghostbur x reader #ghostbur fanfic #alivebur x reader #alivebur fanfic #wilbur x reader #wilbur fanfic #georgenotfound x reader #georgenotfound fanfic #gnf x reader #gnf fanfic #technoblade x reader #technoblade fanfic

[phoenixyfriend]

Auntie ‘Soka and Little Leia (and Rex)

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

Listen. You all knew this was coming.

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

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

Rated T, gen.

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

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

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

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

Reminder that none of them have been born yet.

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

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

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

(Ahsoka can fake Mandalore. Sometimes.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

That, of course, is when things get interesting.

Specifically, Ahsoka spots a Mandalorian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wanna explain why your kid has my face?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where are you staying?”

“What?” Leia bites out.

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

Well, kriff you too, Ahsoka thinks.

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

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

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

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

“For free?” Rex demands.

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

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

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

“Yeah?”

“How much?”

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

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

Leia glowers, cute and furious. “No.”

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

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

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

“You’ve got conditions,” he guesses.

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

“Yeah?”

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

“You’re children, I wouldn’t.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There are other risks.”

“There are.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You already know my name.”

“I do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My last fight--”

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

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

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

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

“Jedi?”

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

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

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

“Bit young for that.”

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

“Not in command.”

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

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

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

This part of the story is his.

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the difference?”

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

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

“Time travel.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Let’s say I believe you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That why you’re special?”

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

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

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

Rex grins. It is not a kind expression.

“Let me tell you about Kamino.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Caf?”

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

“Whiskey?”

“That’s a definitely shouldn’t.”

“Hoth chocolate?”

“...please.”

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

“Do I ask what it was this time?”

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

“Try me anyway.”

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

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

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

She can feel the tears. Fuck..

“You want to dull the edges.”

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

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

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

“You’re hard on yourself.”

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

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

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

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

“Auntie ‘Soka? Why’d you stop?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahsoka feels light-headed.

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

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

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

It’s Depa.

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

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

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

“Are you Depa?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then Depa is standing right in front of her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s like the start of a sick joke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Auntie Soka? You’re shivering.”

Is she?

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

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

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

Does she?

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

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

Right. That.

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

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

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

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

That was a forgone conclusion.

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

She does.

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

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

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

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

She feels more like a person come morning.

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

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

“Feeling better?”

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

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

Ahsoka nods slowly. “Okay.”

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

Her complete spiral into nonbeing?

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

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

Of course it isn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She already told Jango Fett, of all people.

“Padawan Torrent?”

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

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

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

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

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

"No, thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’ve done this before.”

“Regularly,” she confirms. “You?”

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

“Fett?”

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

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

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

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

“And you just kept doing it.”

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

He doesn’t answer her.

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

Rex greets them before she does.

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

She recognizes one of them.

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

“Jedi,” Ahsoka grunts. “Here.”

“I see.”

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

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

One human, one Kiffar. She knows the latter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not like they know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Um,” Quinlan says. “I just--”

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

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

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

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

She definitely preempted the actual flirtation.

Fuck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What was what?”

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

That’s pretty true.

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

“Yeah, we can tell.”

“Leia.”

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

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

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

“Stop.”

“I’m serious, you--”

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

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

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

“I get it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jango never does ask what she did with the slavers.

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

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

“GAR?”

“Grand Army of the Republic.”

He finally looks at her.

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

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

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

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

Ahsoka shrugs. “Yeah, well--”

“You said the clones were ten.”

There’s the rub, isn’t it?

Of course it was about the clones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That one gets her an odd look.

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

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

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

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

“That was inappropriate, padawan.”

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

“Um, so--”

“How old is the kid?” Fett interrupts.

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

“And how old am I?”

“...early thirties?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

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

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

Quinlan rallies. “So, brothers?”

Tholme sighs loudly, hand over his eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Drop your elbow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm?”

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

“And you?”

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

“Are you going to spar with the Jedi?”

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

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

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

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

Would she be able to hold back as she fought?

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

“Do you think you can?” Rex asks.

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

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

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

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

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

Ahsoka has a half-second’s warning before heavy boots thud to the ground next to her. “What’s Kamino?”

“Hello, Vos, it’s nice to see you too,” she drawls. “I’m good, thanks for asking, and yourself?”

The boy-not-quite-man rolls his eyes. “Hi, Torrents; hi, tiny one.”

Leia glares at him next.

“So, Kamino?”

“Planet by Rishi,” Rex says.

“Why were you there?”

“They specialize in cloning.”

Ahsoka covers her mouth as the conversation drops into the same awkward gap that always happens when Quinlan stumbles into a subject he didn’t know to avoid.

“Like... you were made there, or you were researching how it works for your own--”

Ahsoka slaps a hand over his mouth. “Now’s a great time to stop talking.”

He licks her palm.

She bares her teeth and arches her fingers just enough to press nails into his cheek.

He bites at her palm, and she yanks her hand away.

“You’re all children,” Leia accuses, conveniently forgetting that Ahsoka and Rex are both over a decade older than her.

“I can throw you the length of a swimming pool,” Ahsoka tells her. “One of the fancy competition-ready ones that would make a Tatooinian cry. You are absolutely the child here.”

“Using the Force is cheating, sir,” Rex informs her.

“Only if there’s a competition,” Ahsoka shoots back. “And proving that a certain princess is a small child is not a competition. It’s a declarative fact.”

“I’m going to rip open the seams on all your tops except the ugliest one,” Leia decides.

“Try me,” Ahsoka challenges. “Adi’ka.”

A low, rough cough interrupts them. “Are you done?”

Fett has his arms crossed, and an eyebrow raised. He knows they’re all adults here, and is entirely unamused. As the silence drags, the eyebrow climbs a little higher.

“Done with what?” Quinlan finally asks, thereby volunteering himself to spar in hand-to-hand with Jango Fett, as one does.

“Poor, poor Vos,” Rex laughs, watching as Fett barks out orders at Quinlan every five seconds to fix his footwork, to stop dropping his guard, to stop wasting energy on flips instead of just dodging the easy way.

“Throw him!” Ahsoka calls. To her delight, Fett obliges.

The thing is, Quinlan isn’t bad at brawling. He’s got training, endurance, skill. The man knows what he’s doing, objectively. He’s just not a match for Fett, and is used enough to relying on his saber that his hand-to-hand skills are rusty. They are perhaps less rusty than those Jedi who don’t take questionable jobs in the Mid-Outer Rim, and Ahsoka’s got a suspicion that Vos regularly gets into bar fights in his downtime, but none of that is enough for him to actually do more than survive against Fett without his saber.

Even the saber wouldn’t help, if Fett had his armor.

“Whose idea was this?”

Ahsoka cranes her head back and smiles. “Hello, Master Tholme. Vos... volunteered.”

“Did he know he was volunteering?”

“No comment.”

Tholme snorts, crossing his arms and eyeing the spar in front of him. “I thought Fett hated Jedi. Giving us a ride for the sake of you three is one thing, but why is he teaching my padawan?”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Constructive bullying?”

There’s a small twitch of a smile, quickly gone. “He said something wrong, I’m guessing?”

“There was no way he could have known,” she dismisses. “We’re just, like, ninety-percent tragic backstories.”

“You’d think the Force would warn him,” Rex notes.

“That’s not how the Force works,” Leia chides.

“No, no, he’s right,” Ahsoka corrects. “The Force does sometimes step in to stop a person from saying something stupid. However, Padawan Vos is at an age where people think they are very rational while being more irrational than they likely ever will be again.”

“Do I want to ask what you were doing at that age?” Tholme asks.

“Running bla...” she trails off, then whips around to gape at him.

He smiles, bland and unassuming. “Does Fett know?”

“Know... what?” Ahsoka asks.

“That you’re significantly older than you look,” he says, voice just low enough that the sparring duo can’t hear him. “All three of you.”

Ahsoka turns back to the spar, only catching Tholme out of the corner of her eye. “He knows.”

“Mm. Were you planning on telling the Council?”

“Yes.” That part was never in question. “How did you figure it out?”

“I am a good investigator,” he says. “And you rely a little too heavily on your physical forms to obfuscate. Were it just one of you, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the pattern repeated across three is a little easier to discern.”

“I hoped the whole ‘child soldiers’ thing would be a bigger distraction,” Ahsoka mutters. She glances at Leia and Rex. Both of them are used to being in charge to some degree, giving orders and making contingency plans, but in this... in this, Ahsoka is in charge. They’d decided that at the very start. It didn’t matter that Rex had lived longer and had more experience, or that Leia had held the highest Rebellion rank of the three of them. Ahsoka had been agreed as leader, and they were relying on her.

They’re waiting on her orders. Stiff and unhappy, in Leia’s case, but they trust her.

“Will you be telling Vos?” She asks.

“No,” Tholme says. “Your secrets remain your own unless they endanger us, and I’ve a feeling they won’t be.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Rex jokes, smile not reaching his eyes. “I’ve been working with this family for too long to trust that trouble won’t find them around the next corner.”

“This family?” Tholme repeats.

“Sokari was telling the truth about her master being Leia’s biological father,” Rex says. He shrugs. “I worked with him, with his wife, with both of his kids, with his master and his padawan. All of them, to a one, are trouble magnets.”

“Ah, but that’s not the secret that’s putting us in danger,” Tholme points out. “Simply existence as a Jedi.”

Rex shrugs. “Fair enough. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.”

Ahsoka lurches to her feet, turning with a smile and dancing backward into the the stretch of empty cargo hold they used for such things. “A spar, Master Tholme?”

He looks past her, to Quinlan, and raises a brow. “Would you not prefer to spar with someone a little closer to your level first?”

She barks out a laugh. “Master Tholme, I’m afraid I’ve spent more of my life fighting to survive than having normal friendly spars. My style is more lethal than the average, and you’ve already seen what war’s done to my mind. I ask to spar with you because, if I lose control, if I slip in time or react on an instinct that isn’t appropriate, I trust that you’ll be more able to stop me than a senior padawan.”

He smiles. “Yes, I gathered as much. Still, better to ask. Shall we wait for them to finish up?”

Ahsoka shrugs, turns, and yells. “Clear the deck!”

Rex snorts behind her, and lowly mutters, “Sir, yes, sir.”

She smirks at him over her shoulder. “At ease, Captain.”

“That’s ‘Commander’ to you, I got promoted,” he sniffs, chin held high.

Heavy steps herald Fett’s arrival at their little group. “The hells are you doing?���

“I’m going to have a spar with a Jedi Master, and I want you and Vos to not get stabbed.”

“I’m not that easy to injure in an actual fight, let alone by accident,” Fett grouses. He looks up and over at Vos, who is already significantly taller, if a fair shot less built. “This one, on the other hand...”

“Hey!”

Ahsoka laughs and backs into the center of the cargo hold, drawing her sabers. “Don’t worry, Vos, I won’t play dirty. You’ll probably get your master back in one piece.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself there, aren’t you? He’s a Jedi Master and former Watchman. You’re... what, eighteen?”

Ahsoka raises a brow and activates her sabers, tapping the blades together and watching as more than one person winces. “Wanna bet on how long I last?”

“No,” he says immediately, stepping back to join Rex on the bench. “You’ve already blindsided me enough. I’m not dumb enough to fall for whatever you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“I don’t have sleeves.”

“Armwarmers-slash-greaves, then.”

“Greaves go on the legs, these are vambraces.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “I’m just going to stop talking now!”

“Good plan,” Leia snarks, and then literally hisses when Rex ruffles her hair.

Tholme lights his saber and sinks into an opening stance.

Ahsoka mirrors him.

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

She wins, but barely. She's had a few weeks to practice her forms, has sparred hands-only with Rex and Fett, but this is her first real try at using her sabers against a person, instead of a blaster or thin air, since she arrived in the past. She’s only mostly adjusted to her body.

But Tholme is a healer and a watchman, not a duelist. Ahsoka held her own against Ventress, against Grievous, against Maul when she was this age. Still adjusting to her body or not, her lineage is one of battle, and it bled true.

“You’re terrifying,” Quinlan tells her after they’re done, smiling like the sun as he hands her a towel. “Please never turn that on me.”

She laughs at him. “Would you believe that I’m out of practice?”

“Out of practice with what?” he asks, horrified and fascinated. “Fighting Sith Lords?”

“Among other things,” she says, and smirks when he chokes on his drink. “Multiple darkside users who claimed to be Sith, at least. One being a full Lord, one that was disowned by his master, and one that was apprenticed to a Banite apprentice, so she wasn’t technically allowed to be a Darth because of the rule of two.”

Tholme meets her eyes past Quinlan’s shoulder, head tilted and eyes half-shut in consideration. He’s taking her seriously. He knows what she’s not saying.

“How...” Quinlan trails off and shakes his head. “You know what, no. Asking you people questions never ends well.”

“Good plan,” Ahsoka says, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Also, you need to spar with Fett more. Your footwork is shit.”

“It is not,” Quinlan gripes. “You’re all just scary good at this stuff.”

“You mean surviving?” Leia pipes up, and smiles innocently when Quinlan turns to pout at her.

“You’re getting bullied by a six-year-old,” Rex informs him.

“Yeah,” Quinlan sighs. “I know.”

Ahsoka laughs, and it’s fine. It’s all fine. For a week, everything is honestly great. She trains, she laughs, she works through the nightmares.

Then fucking Denon happens.

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

Denon is a city-planet on the intersection of two major hyperlanes. It’s the kind of place where they stop for two things:

Fuel.

Paperwork.

Technically, there’s a whole mess of paperwork they have to fill out to continue along this specific hyperlane, since they aren’t official Republic ships, and don’t have the licenses to just pass along like ships that are pre-registered to the Trade Federation or the like. They could sneak past--literally all of them know smuggler’s routes--but it’s honestly less of a pain to do things legally. They have a Jedi Master. They have cash. Some of that cash wasn’t quite legally acquired, but nobody needs to know that.

It’s supposed to be a pit stop. That’s all.

It’s just a pit stop.

But no, the galaxy isn’t that kind and Ahsoka’s luck is currently being compounded with a Skywalker, two Fetts, and Vos, which means that of course they run into trouble. Of course they do. There was never any other option, was there?

“Motherfucker,” Ahsoka snaps, lifting her head up and slamming her drink on the table.

The glass is empty. That’s good. They’re in a restaurant right now, a little splurging after weeks with only each others’ company, and spilling the sugary child-friendly juice with that move would have drawn way too much attention from the servers.

“Language,” Tholme says, voice idly unconcerned.

“Sir?” Rex asks, kicking Ahsoka under the table. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wr--that jackass,” she hisses, getting to her feet. “Rex, grab a blaster, I’ve got shebs to kick.”

“Okay,” Rex says, grabbing one out of Fett’s holster and scooting out of the booth before anyone can tell him not to. “Whose?”

“I didn’t even know that he was... osik, I don’t have jurisdiction,” she realizes. “I don’t have any record of wrongdoing. I can’t arrest him since we don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing...”

“Are you two going to explain what’s going on?” Vos asks. “Or sit down, maybe?”

Ahsoka makes her decision. She eyes the window--the restaurant in question is a little dingy, but it’s also several dozen stories in the air. “Rex, remember the thing we did on Geonosis that you hated?”

He pauses, and then sighs heavily. “Yes, sir. I remember the... yeeting.”

Hah. That slang doesn’t even exist yet.

“Great. With me!”

It’s a good thing the windows are forcefields instead of transparisteel. A bit of a twist to the energy and they’re gone.

She only hears a little screaming before the wind tears all noises away while they plummet.

They land lightly--of course--and Ahsoka wraps them both in a don’t notice me aura. Nobody even notices that they’ve just come from above. It’s great that she can just Do These Things again, and get brushed off as Weird Jedi Shit, instead of worrying about the Empire. She’s missed being able to jump out of windows without fear.

Rex follows her as she starts running through the city. They don’t have comms, and he’s still so small, which means he can’t keep up with her even if she runs at normal speeds without Force enhancement.

“Should you carry me?” he asks, before she can figure out if it’s worth suggesting. She did it a few times before they joined up with Jango.

“It’s not... urgent, I think,” she says. She hesitates to speak, even as she keeps jogging with Rex at her heels. “Honestly, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can ding him for so we can attack him. It’s all well and good that I can beat him right now, but all the crimes I know about haven’t happened yet, so it wouldn’t be legal...”

“Commander?”

“Hm?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

She scrolls the conversation back mentally, considers, and says, “Oh.”

“Who’s getting steamrolled?”

“Uh, Maul’s here,” Ahsoka admits.

“Ah,” Rex says. He makes a face. “I understand the desire to jump out a window, now. I don’t agree with it, but I understand.”

Ahsoka laughs. “I mean, I just... every time I’ve seen him for almost twenty years, it’s been like... on sight, you know? We’ve never not attacked each other, except when I needed him to cause problems on Mandalore. But I always knew I was in the right, then.”

“So... what do we arrest him for?” Rex prompts.

“Um... carrying a lightsaber without a license?” she hazards. “We’ll need Tholme there. Hopefully I can just shout at him and he’ll attack me, but I think he only went full nutjob after Master Kenobi cut his legs off. He might be too controlled to try to kill me just for yelling at him.”

“...do we have to stalk him?” Rex asks, sounding like he’d most likely sigh if he weren’t mid-run.

She scoops him up and swings him around onto her back before she answers. “I think we have to stalk him, Rex’ika.”

“Don’t call me that.”

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

Maul is... exceptionally sneaky, actually. Either that, or he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. Ahsoka’s betting on the former, because she’s seen this particular skocha kung take over a planet before anyone realized he was the most dangerous person around.

Or maybe he’s just not committing crimes, and is in fact just here to buy groceries.

He’s examining a papaya.

She fantasizes about jumping across the market and greeting him with a heel to the cheekbone.

“Are you imagining a flying kick, Sir?”

“Yeah...”

“He’s examining a papaya, Sir.”

“I know...”

“Does he know we’re here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Do you think I should go hit him?”

“No.”

“Should I hit on him?”

“No, Sir. I would not advise that.”

“He’s looking at the neloms.”

“I can see that.”

“Why does he have to be so bo--did he just fucking bite a nelom?”

“It appears so, Sir.”

“Like... like rind and all. Just bit the little fucker.”

“Seems it.”

A scuff of metal. “What the fuck are you two doing?”

Ahsoka tips her head around to peer through the grate. “We’re spying, Fett, what does it look like we’re doing?”

Rex cranes his head. “We’re hanging upside-down from a fire escape to get a look at a suspected Sith Apprentice that is currently shopping for various fruits, Mand’alor.”

Ahsoka waves. “Hi, Master Tholme.”

“Sokari,” the master greets. “This seems a very conspicuous way to spy.”

She shrugs as well as she can from this angle. “Yes, but you see, this way’s more fun.”

“Is it now.”

Rex shifted. “He’s on the move!”

“To kill someone?!”

“No, to the deli meats.”

“Kriff.”

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

Apparently, Tholme and Fett had told Quinlan to take care of Leia, as Leia had wanted to finish her juice and refused to get involved in the Torrents’ nonsense. According to her, if they couldn’t be bothered to explain the nonsense, they didn’t need her.

This was true and accurate.

Quinlan shows up while they’re still stalking Maul, having moved to a low rooftop for a decent vantage point with less likelihood of being spotted. He’s giving Leia an eopie-back ride, and the pout on her face at needing it is adorable. She pouts harder when she sees them.

“Are you even trying to hide?” Leia scoffs.

“Not really,” Ahsoka admits. She’s got Fett’s binoculars out. “I’m not sure he’s caught wind of the fact that we’re here yet.”

“Or he has and he’s just biding his time to escape while we’re distracted,” Tholme points out.

“Meh,” Ahsoka says, avidly devouring the visual that is a teenage Maul glaring at leafy vegetables. “I just want him to do something so I have an excuse to beat his ass.”

“Do I get to know who?” Quinlan asks, setting Leia down on the roof. “Or are we going to keep being completely unwilling to share information?”

“Baby Sith Lord,” Ahsoka says. “He’s fifteen. A child.”

“A baby,” Rex agrees.

“You’re... that’s... ugh,” Quinlan groans as loudly and as dramatically as he dares, flopping down to the rooftop. “Master Tholme, please tell me this isn’t a real Sith.”

“He’s Dark,” Tholme confirms. “Sith is... up for debate until we have evidence.”

“He’s a bitch is what he is,” Ahsoka mutters. She observes the teenager in question stop to poke at some pink tomatoes. “E chu ta, break the law, already!”

“Does he have a lightsaber?” Quinlan asks. “If he has a lightsaber and no Jedi ID or specialty license, we can probably arrest him.”

“Auntie Soka doesn’t have a license or ID,” Leia points out.

“She’s got a Jedi escort,” Tholme says. “And if our supposed Sith is polite and plays nice, we can probably escort him to the Temple as well.”

Rex snorts derisively.

“Do you know why he’s on Denon?” Fett asks.

“No clue,” Ahsoka admits. “Evil reasons, probably.”

“You’re useless,” Leia tells her.

“Thanks, princess, how’s that attempt to open the jam jar by yourself coming?”

Leia says something very inappropriate for a princess, for a child, and for a lady. It’s fairly appropriate for a soldier, which is admittedly what she’s been for a few years now. Ahsoka sticks her tongue out at the girl like the mature operative she is.

“I wish we could still get him to lose his osik by just showing up and insulting him,” Rex mutters, low enough that Quinlan probably can’t hear.

“I wanna punch him in the face,” Ahsoka confesses. “I want him to try to punch me in the face, and fail.”

“Don’t bully the baby Sith,” Rex admonishes.

“He’s a Sith.”

“He’s fifteen, it’s tacky.”

“But it’s Maul.”

“I know, but you’re tw--significantly older than him.”

“But... but it’s the motherfucker himself.”

“...you can bully him a little, but only because he’s a Sith.”

Fett steals the binoculars. “You can borrow them again when you stop acting like children.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rex says, dry as Ryloth. “I’m ten.”

“Pretty tall for your age,” Ahsoka mutters, and then giggles.

“Don’t steal my jokes,” Rex says. He elbows her, hard.

“You know,” Quinlan says, slow and tired. “Master Tholme and I are trained investigators.”

Ahsoka and Rex look at each other, and then up at him.

“Okay?”

“...do you want me to find actual evidence of this guy doing something criminal?”

“Oh, yes please.”

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

Quinlan, as it turns out, is not overselling his skills. He does catch Maul doing something illegal later that day. It’s a little more ‘stealing corporate secrets in the dead of night’ and less ‘torturing people for kicks,’ but it’s still enough to legally arrest him. Quinlan attempts to do so.

Quinlan does not succeed, and is forced to jump out a window to avoid getting cut in half. Maul follows, steals a passing speeder by throwing out the driver, and takes off. Someone--looks like Tholme--drops back to save the driver, but the rest of them give chase. Ahsoka gleefully takes point on that, of course. She’s the best pilot.

(Rex looks bored, but someone is likely to puke by the end of the night. She hopes it’s not Leia, who insisted on coming for some fucking reason.)

“How the kriff is a teenager that good?!” Quinlan yells, clinging to the edge of the speeder to avoid getting tipped out as Ahsoka swerves around a corner with a wild laugh.

“He’s a Sith!” Leia shouts over the wind. “What do you think?”

Quinlan is not impressed by the claim of Sith.

Ahsoka screeches as she drifts across four lanes of traffic and into an alleyway to pursue Maul. He’s pretty good at dodging cross-building walkways, but she’s better. She bares her teeth, hissing, and tries to pick a plan.

“Vos, how’s your aim with Force throws?” She calls to the backseat.

“Uh, decent?”

“Great! Fett’s the projectile!”

Vos takes a second longer to process that than Jango does.

“I’m wh--”

He cuts off, screaming, and is flung forward by Quinlan to crash headfirst into a teenage Sith.

“Take the wheel!” Ahsoka commands, not waiting to see who follows the order, because Fett and Maul are both getting to their feet, the other speeder is about to crash, and she’s not sure who’s going to win that fight.

She jumps from the speeder they’ve been violently dragging around Denon, and lands feet-first on Maul’s... shoulder.

Hm.

That definitely dislocated something.

“You should wear armor!” she chirps at him, drawing both sabers and grinning as he whirls to face her, eyes wide with hate.

He’s utterly silent.

That’s disturbing. Expected, but disturbing.

“Did you just throw me?” Fett demands, higher pitched than she’d normally expect.

“No, Vos threw you.”

“Because you told him to!”

“Yeah, it’s a good strategy!”

“It is not!”

“Why not? Throwing people was standard practice in the GAR.”

She can’t see his face, but she’s pretty sure he’s about ready to strangle her.

Ahsoka cannot, at that point, continue snarking with the father of her best friend, because there’s a red lightsaber coming for her throat, and she should probably worry about that. Maul’s very good at killing people and she’d like to avoid becoming part of that statistic.

As she is quickly reminded, he is... fifteen. And shorter than she’s used to. And already injured.

It’s really, really easy to take him out, actually.

At some point, the other speeder was safely recovered before it caused property damage, and their own is landing a few meters away with Vos and the kids.

“You have Force-negating cuffs, right?” Ahsoka asks.

“No, Master Tholme has them.”

“Oh,” she says, and grimaces. “I guess I’ll just... keep sitting on him then.”

Maul snarls, and she raps him on the skull. “Stop that, it’s uncivilized.”

Rex snorts.

Jango makes a noise that is incredibly frustrated with the lot of them, and turns on Rex. “Was she telling the truth?”

“About?”

“Throwing people being standard practice for the GAR.”

Rex’s face goes pained. “It was in the five-oh-first. And a few others.”

“What’s the GAR?” Quinlan asks.

“None of your damn business,” Fett snaps.

Quinlan throws his hands up in the air again. “Come on! I just proved I know what I’m doing!”

“And their tragic backstory is none of your business, prudii!”

Quinlan blinks at him, and then glances at Ahsoka. “Um.”

“He called you a shadow since your training, um, seems to be pointing in that direction,” she says as carefully as she can. “We were theorizing.”

“Wh... you actually paid attention?” Quinlan asks, looking horribly confused. “I thought I was just annoying you.”

Ahsoka laughs at him. “Oh, Vos... I’ve been running black ops for... much longer than most would guess. Trust me, I know another spy when I see them.”

She smiles as kindly as she can, because she hadn’t actually meant to make him feel left out or unwanted or... well, she’d been pretty patronizing, especially for someone seemingly younger than him. The smile does not work. Quinlan just looks kind of horrified about how young she just implied she started spy work.

Granted, she’d been sixteen for Zygerria...

Deciding to ignore him for a bit, she shifts on Maul’s back and pats him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Baby Sith. We’re going to get you lots of nice therapy. Mind healers, no Sith tortures, all that fun stuff. Maybe some plushies.”

“You’re also getting therapy, right?” Quinlan asks. “Please say you are. I’m required for the specifics of my training and if anything you’ve said is true, I feel like you really need it and I’m scared of what’ll happen if you don’t.”

Ahsoka laughs, knowing exactly how empty it sounds. “Oh hell, if I didn’t get therapy, I imagine Kix would rise from the grave to force me into it.”

The name means nothing to anyone except Rex, and... ah, yeah, she told Fett about Kix a few weeks ago.

“No more throwing me without warning,” Fett grumbles, dropping to sit on the ground next to her. “Especially not at baby Sith Lords.”

“I am not a child!” Maul spits.

“He speaks!” Ahsoka cheers. “Aw, I knew you could do it.”

“’Soka, I told you not to bully him,” Rex complains. “It’s tacky. You’re being tacky.”

“I’m allowed to be tacky,” Ahsoka declares. “I’ve died twice, that’s, like, permission from the universe.”

“You’ve died twice?” Quinlan asks, back in ‘fascinated horror’ territory. “Wait, no, I shouldn’t ask--”

“Too late! The first time was on a planet that doesn’t exist and my Master lost his mind, killed a god, and used the good favor of another god to have me brought back to life at her expense. Not in that order.”

“I--what? No, that’s--what?”

Ahsoka smiles brightly. “You asked.”

Tholme finally shows up with the cuffs.

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

“You should eat something.”

He glares at her.

“Baby Sith Lords need to eat.”

He keeps glaring at her.

“Maul, you’ll never get big and strong and ready to kill if you don’t eat your vegetables.”

He bares his teeth.

“No, I don’t eat my veggies, but I’m a Togruta, so if I eat too many vegetables I throw up.”

Rex kicks her thigh, right on the faulds. “What did I say about bullying the Sith Lord?”

“Not to.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Making him eat his vegetables.”

“Soka.”

“Rex’ika.”

He kicks at her again. “Get up, we’re swapping out the watch.”

“But I wanted to hang out with my favorite little criminal mastermind.”

Rex drops to the floor and presses his forehead to her shoulder. “How the hell is being around this guy the first thing to make you cheer up in weeks?”

“I’m allowed to be mean to him.”

“He’s going to bite you.”

“I’ll bite back.”

Rex jabs a finger into her ribs, and she squeaks. “Go get something to eat, Commander.”

“Fine,” she huffs, rolling to her feet and moseying along to the galley. She walks in on Tholme and Fett having an argument about the ways in which Jedi and Mandalorians differ. Quinlan’s on the side, watching with wide eyes, and little Leia’s drinking a juice box at his side, tucked up under his arm and occasionally saying things to fan the flames. Ahsoka assumes she’s enjoying herself.

She opens the cooling unit, looks over the contents, and pulls out a raw leg of eopie mutton. She leans against the counter, bites into the chilled-but-not-frozen meat, and uses the back of one hand to wipe the blood off her chin. The ‘real adults’ don’t notice.

“I’m like ninety percent sure you’re doing this to mess with me but also...” Quinlan trails off, staring at her with horror. “Why?”

“A girl’s gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but all the obligate carnivores I know are like... generally holding to basic rules of courtesy when it comes to not grossing people out,” Quinlan says. “Like, I don’t chew with my mouth open. You don’t... eat in the most intimidating--did you just crack the bone with your teeth?!”

Ahsoka smirks at him, using her free hand to take away the shard of bone so she can suck out the marrow without eating the bones themselves. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t polite society. We’re in a galley on a bounty hunter’s ship, and I’ve been living on the run or in an army for most of my life. Table manners are optional.”

“No, they’re not,” Leia orders. “Fett, it’s your ship, tell her to--”

“--and another thing!” Fett snaps at Tholme, clearly paying less than no attention to the food argument.

Ahsoka keeps on eating, trying to catch wind of where the discussion’s at. Mostly, it seems to be at ‘talking past each other.’ Neither of them seems to have fully grasped more than the absolute most basic parts of the other culture, and that’s only enough to insult each other, not actually have a constructive conversation. She’d have expected more out of Tholme, at least. He’s not exactly young.

“Hey, quick question,” she says, in a moment where both of them have paused for breath and the opportunity to seethe. “Fett, when’s the last time you worked with a Jedi, or any member of a Force-based religion, before I popped into your life?”

His nose scrunches up as he makes a face.

“And Tholme, when’s the last time you worked with anyone from the Mandalorian system?”

Tholme’s reaction isn’t any more gracious than Fett’s.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. “Vos, were either of them actually interested in that conversation, or just looking for an excuse to yell?”

“Now listen here, jetiika--”

“Fett,” she snaps. “I am not a child.”

“And neither am I,” he growls right back. “This is my ship, and I damn well don’t need you treating me like a misbehaving youngling. You’ve got a problem, you bring it to my face, not get all smug about people’s tempers blowing over.”

Well, then.

She smiles thinly. “Of course.”

He stands with his arms crossed, in full armor save for the helmet. She puts aside the eopie meat and wipes her hands, smiling until she can put her hands on her hips and let it drop to a challenge.

“You know, I’m just--I’m just gonna go,” Quinlan mutters, pulling Leia out with him, the girl hanging from under one of his arms. “This, uh, this looks like a problem for... you folks. Um. Yeah.”

He sidles out.

Tholme doesn’t.

Fett rubs at the bridge of his nose, and then gestures at the table. “Sit.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

He drops his hand and glares at her. “We have another week on this ship together. We are going to have this conversation. Sit.”

She sits, right on the warm spot left behind by Quinlan and Leia. She crosses her arms, lifts a brow, and waits.

Fett takes the seat across from her. Tholme leans against the counter.

“We all know you’re older than you look,” Fett says. “I heard Tholme mention it, I know that much has been shared. You’re acting like an actual teenager, and I’ve... I’ve put up with a lot. I am trying to keep things civil, particularly with you. I’ve tried to be friendly. You’ve been fucked up since we met, fine, everyone’s got trauma. The thing where you’ve started talking shit to our faces for what seems like your own amusement? That has to stop. You’re older than me, Torrent. Fucking act like it.”

She blinks at him, slow and not exactly happy, and turns to Tholme.

The man shrugs. “I was planning to put up with it until we arrived to the temple and handed you over to some mind healers. Fett doesn’t have that kind of time.”

There’s a curdle in her stomach, defensive and angry and guilty.

“You’ve been... a bitch,” Fett finally says. “You know that. I’m not going to mince words. You’ve been holier-than-thou and rude and condescending, and aiming that at Antilles is one thing, when you’ve apparently known her since she was a toddler and taught her things. Aiming at the rest of us isn’t going to fly. We’re all adults trying to share a space. Stop acting like... just like you have been.”

There is no defense to be made that they aren’t both already aware of.

She closes her eyes and tries to strangle the burst of irrational rage.

Their accusations aren’t unfounded.

They deserve an apology.

She is in the wrong.

She’s felt freer than she had in years, and in that freedom allowed herself too much rein, let herself lace her words with barbed wires and poison instead of sparks and spices, comments that were cruel instead of just joking. Too familiar. Too comfortable.

“My behavior’s been inappropriate,” she finally says, the words clumsy and too big in her mouth. “You’re right about that. I’m sorry, and I’ll endeavor to keep a tighter rein on my less pleasant behaviors in the future.”

At least she only lashes out with words. It could be worse.

She opens her eyes, fixes her gaze on the wall behind Fett, wrestles her expression into stiff neutrality. “Am I dismissed?”

“...uh, no, not after that,” Fett says, sounding just a little horrified. “What the hell was that?”

Tholme hisses out a breath. “Let her go.”

“No, this needs to be discussed, that’s not a healthy rea--”

“Fett, let her go,” Tholme insists, low and heavy.

Fett looks between the two for a moment, seems to come to a realization he doesn’t like, and then gestures almost violently towards the door. “Fine. Go.”

She walks out, doesn’t sprint. She’s stiff. She’s controlled. She’s the one that fucked up, so it’s fine if she doesn’t feel great right now. Getting called out on one’s own failings as a person isn’t something to get upset about if the failings are real. The feelings are real and normal, but this was her fault, and so it’s up to her to fix it, and she can’t let them know it hurt her, because this was her mistake.

She goes to the cargo hold.

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

Ahsoka works out her frustrations on Fett’s punching bag. She does not augment herself with the Force, just uses raw strength and technique, ignoring the tears that press at her eyes.

She’s fine.

It’s not weird. It’s not odd. It’s not strange to not notice she’s been kind of a bitch since her mood came up with the whole Depa thing, and then Maul. She’s been mean, mostly to Vos and Fett, and nobody’s confronted her about it until now. They let her have room for her trauma, and she hadn’t reined it in. She’s just gotten worse.

‘Snippy’ she’d always been, but age apparently hadn’t fucking tempered it.

“Um.”

She catches the punching bag, breathing heavily and covered in sweat. She hasn’t worked out all the twitchy, nervous energy yet.

“Vos,” she greets, once she’s caught herself enough that her voice won’t waver. He’s on the other side of the bag, but she knows his voice. “Do you need something?”

“You’re kind of... projecting,” he tells her, drifting to where she can actually see him. “Not self-loathing, but, um, recrimination? You just don’t feel very good and I was hoping to help”

Why in all the Sith hells does he have to be nice.

“I got called out on my behavior and wasn’t ready to face the fact that I’d kriffed up,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine. And I’m... sorry. I haven’t been fair to you and was using you as an easy target for some of my ruder comments.”

“I mean, I kind of figured,” he admits, coming closer. “I’ve been tutored by Shadows before, and a lot of them act like you. I just assumed it was more of that.”

“I still shouldn’t have let myself run loose like that,” she says. “I’m... it wasn’t appropriate. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she says. “Not with... not with you. Or anyone other than Rex and a mind healer, really. Most of it is...”

She trails off, distantly noticing that her eyes are tearing up enough to blur her vision, and her nails are digging into the bag in a way Fett won’t appreciate.

There’s so much that beat her down, never quite breaking her, that she doesn’t even know what made her act the way she does.

“Want to spar?”

She looks over at him, wonders what he sees that makes him want to fight her when she’s visibly unstable.

He smiles, kind and easy, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s genuine in intent, if not in energy. He wants to help. “You all keep saying I could work on my hand-to-hand. Just take off the armor so I don’t break a finger, maybe.”

“You’re serious.”

“No, I’m Quinlan.”

She’s going to wipe the floor with this boy. “You sure you wanna fight me?”

“You won’t be able to meditate until you do,” he says. He’s right, damn him. “The other option is that I go get your... vod, I think? I go get Rex and you two can talk it out since you trust him with more. I don’t want to do that, though, he’s still a kid.”

She eyes him, lips pressed together and mind awhirl with emotions and thoughts she’d tried to beat out of her head and into the bag. “Ever fought someone without the Force?”

“...yes?”

“Was it cuffs?”

“Oh, you meant me not having the Force,” he realizes. “Er, no. Is... is that something you’ve done a lot?”

She smiles at him. “You’re planning on Shadow work. That means getting captured and stripped of everything you are at some point, Force included. Unfortunately, the cuffs are in use on a very annoying Dathomirian right now, so we’ll have to make do with you shielding like your mind’s a Kessel Spice Mine.”

“...do I want to know how often you’ve been captured?”

“No, you don’t.”

When he comes at her, it’s easy to dodge. It’s easy to tap him on target points, little pokes that show she could take him out, but isn’t going to until he’s learned something. He stays grinning throughout, letting her take the lead, and he treats her like... like a knight. Like a teacher. He’s stepped back and gone from trying to impress her as a fellow padawan, to proving himself to a full knight.

She’s not sure when that change happened, or why or how, but it makes things much smoother. She wants to think that it would have even if she hadn’t gotten a wakeup call from Fett.

So she treats him the way she treated Ezra, for the year she’d spent traveling with Kanan. She treats him as a student that’s willing to learn, good but not yet great, competent but not yet ready to survive. She draws him into the kind of chest-heaving exhaustion that tells a fighter just how much energy they waste.

(Ahsoka may have had her own style, but her grandmaster had been the pinnacle of a Soresu user. She’d spent years on the frontlines of a war. She knew the worth of conserving energy, and she’d teach it to any who stepped in to challenge her.)

“Who taught you to fight like this?” He asks, when they’ve taken a handful of moments to circle each other. His steps are heavy, sure, planted. Her own are light and ready.

“Soldiers,” she says. It’s true enough.

“Not your Master?” he asks, just as he tries to kick for her upper arm. It’s a safe question. For anyone else, it would be a safe question.

But for Ahsoka, it’s another chink in the armor, after a maelstrom of emotion, a storm of self-loathing, a dervish of instability.

She doesn’t break right away.

She spirals. She fights Quinlan, but doesn’t quite see him. Her strikes get sloppy, her feet stumble. She can’t make herself meet Quinlan’s eyes, not when the scrape of his heel against the metal sounds like the rasp of a breathing machine. Her shields get fuzzy, she knows, and she leaks what she feels into the air, making it sour and thick. She doesn’t notice, because all she can see, all she can--all she can hear and feel and--

She drops to her knees and grabs at her head, trying to stop it.

“Sokari?”

She breathes. In and out, harsh and jagged but natural in a way that the damned respirator wasn’t.

Her master her teacher her brother the traitor the hound the executioner

Her face is hot. Something prickles. It might be tears.

She tries to say something, tries to say a name or a request, tries to make anything come out of her mouth that isn’t the broken wail of a woman who hasn’t let herself think about how she died.

She feels herself pulled into someone’s arms, and she can’t quite tell who, but they’re bigger than she is, and feel warm and worried. They care. They don’t understand, they’re scared, but they care.

Her hands shake, clutched to her chest and she can’t breathe she can’t make herself take in enough air to do a Force-damned thing the empire is going to feel her her shields are down and broken and her emotions are spilling and the empire is going to find HER ANAKIN IS GOING TO FIND HER AND--

“COMMANDER!”

Rex.

Rex is here.

Her breath is coming so fast that she’s hiccupping more than she’s actually inhaling. She feels small hands in gloves on either side of her face, and then her forehead presses to something warm.

Rex. A Keldabe kiss. Her brother, her partner, her other half. He’s here. He’s calm. If he’s calm, then things are fine.

“What happened?” Light voice, high voice, small and distant. Leia. Little Leia little princess Leia she’s in danger she’s in trouble Anakin will--

“Commander.”

No. Here and now. She needs to focus on here and now. Her throat feels cold. She breathes too fast, still. She can’t stop it.

“I don’t know.” That’s Vos. He was... they were doing something. He was here. Talking to her. “We were sparring, and she just--”

Right, sparring.

“I don’t know if I said something?” He offers, voice pitching up, unsure and worried. Is he the one holding her? He’s the one holding her. That’s embarrassing.

“Commander?” Rex prompts. “Commander, can you open your eyes?”

She tries. She can’t. She shakes her head.

“Soka?” he asks, voice quiet. “Where are you?”

“F-F-Fett,” she manages. It’s enough.

“And where were you?”

His voice is so soft. So worried. She held him the same way after Mandalore, after Order 66, after all his brothers, all her friends...

“Soka.”

Her mind is spinning, and suddenly all she can hear is Anakin Skywalker is dead. I destroyed him.

Her breath hitches, and she wails.

“Commander,” Rex tries again, but her head is a vortex of Then you will die and Perhaps this child and not the Jedi way.

Our long awaited meeting.

I destroyed him.

Then you will die.

She can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can only see that yellow eye that’s too familiar but belongs to a stranger can only hear a voice that shouldn’t exist can only mourn and break and--

“Soka?”

“Malachor,” she manages. “I--h-he--I died.”

“What did you say?” someone asks. A vod. It’s the right voice, almost, rough and business-like, not accusing anyone yet, and... and... no. No. Not one of her boys. It’s Fett.

“Um, right at the end? I asked her who taught her to fight like this,” Quinlan says, nervous. “And she said it was soldiers. And I joked, I asked that it wasn’t her Master, and she didn’t answer that. A couple minutes later, she just started...”

“Oh, Soka,” Rex whispers, pulling her closer. “Commander, just breathe with me.”

“H-h-he, he just--R-Rex, he j-just--and I c-c-couldn’t--”

“I know,” her captain whispers. “I know, just breathe with me.”

“He k-k-k-killed me,” she sobs, falling out of the Keldabe and into too-small arms. “I l-loved--he was my broth-ther and--and he just--he killed me, he didn’t even stop.”

“I know,” Rex whispers. “Soka, I know.”

Of course he does.

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

“It was just bad timing,” Rex says, once they’re in the room she’s been sharing with her little family, curled up under a blanket and watching the floor like it has all the secrets to how she lost her world three times over.

“Is there anything we need to keep in mind?” Fett asks, gruff and uncomfortable. She wonders if he’s angry that she took his necessary confrontation and turned it into this mess.

“Don’t bring up her Jedi Master,” Rex says, and pulls her in when she shivers. Her eyes squeeze shut before she can stop them, tears beading up again. “Just... don’t. It’s too soon.”

“He’s--”

“He Fell,” Ahsoka interrupts. “I thought he died, but he became a Sith. And fifteen years later, we ran into each other, and I refused to join him in the Dark, so he tried to kill me.”

Fett swears, low and muffled. She thinks he has a hand over his mouth.

Quin and Leia aren’t there. She thinks they’re keeping an eye on their Baby Sith prisoner. That’s good.

“Soka,” Rex whispers, and she buries her face in his shoulder. She’s too old to be this kind of mess. She’s thirty-two. She’s Fulcrum. She’s...

She’s in need of a lot of therapy.

“We can avoid the subject unless you bring it up,” Tholme promises. “Definitely until the Temple. Is there anything else we shouldn’t talk about?”

Ahsoka can practically feel Rex’s deadpan look. “Sir, we’re a trio of child soldiers ripped from everything we know. Every other sentence is a risk. We’re just... working our way through.”

There’s a knock at the door. Oh. Quin and Leia.

“Just figured we’d drop this off before we went down to visit Mr. Grumpy-Face,” Quinlan whispers. He still thinks Leia’s a child. He’s trying to make things less terrible for her. That’s nice. “We decided he’ll be less angry if he tries Hoth chocolate, and made some for everyone.”

They definitely made it for Ahsoka herself, and Maul was an afterthought. Still. It’s sweet.

“Commander?” Rex prompts, jostling her a little to try and get her to sit up.

“Gimme a sec,” she manages. It takes longer than it should to push herself away from him, to accept the mug that Leia gives her, too-serious worry in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her soul.

She doesn’t look six. She doesn’t even look twenty-two. This girl was always too old for her skin, forced to grow up in the hostile fear of the Empire.

“Thank you, Princess.”

She sips.

She can barely taste it beyond the ashes she imagines coating her tongue.

I destroyed him, her memory echoes. His slightest hesitation before he made the final move, it haunts her. She almost reached him. If only she’d tried harder, yelled louder, been better...

She shivers.

“Do you need help falling asleep?” Tholme asks. “I’m a regular healer, not a mind healer, but...”

She probably should.

She takes another sip of her drink, willing herself to taste it. It’s good. She likes it. She knows she does.

“Can you make it dreamless?” she whispers.

“It doesn’t always work, but I can try,” he tells her.

She nods. “When I finish the chocolate.”

“Of course.”

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

Everyone’s careful around her for days. The whole decision to be nicer doesn’t mean anything when she’s walking about in a daze of too few emotions, drained of everything she could feel in favor of a grey cloud of fluff in everything she does.

She does forms. Single saber and Jar’kai. Ataru and Djem so and Soresu. Reverse grip, regular grip, partial reverse on either side.

Again. Again. Again.

She loses herself in the motions, not meditating so much as just empty.

Rex worries. Fett worries. Vos worries.

Leia and Tholme keep their shields locked up tight, and she doesn’t know how they feel. She thinks Leia might be judging her. She think Tholme might be pitying.

Maul simply hates. It’s an old and familiar sensation to walk into, and she takes unthinking comfort in his rage. She’s silent instead of snippy, when she plays the role of guard, and they stare at each other in silence. His eyes burn, and she wonders how much he’s heard of her nightmares.

“You need to talk,” Rex tells her, when he finds her with a cold cup of caff, eyes fixed somewhere beyond it all. She lifts her head. “Soka.”

She just stares at him.

He sighs and pulls her into a hug. “Commander, please.”

She can’t.

Ahsoka stares at the wall behind him, resting her chin on his head. Her neck itches under the lek at the back of her head, a little tingle of a feeling that she can’t bring herself to do anything about. The pale light of the galley is sharp against the chipped paint of the metal that surrounds them. It hurts her eyes to look, but it’s not the deep and dark lit only by red--

Then you will die, her memory growls.

She flinches.

“Breathe,” Rex tells her, too-small hands clinging at her back. “Just breathe, ‘Soka.”

She curls in tighter and tries to just breathe.

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

“Tell me something good.”

Ahsoka blinks. She looks at Leia. She doesn’t have the energy to parse that.

Leia chances a look at Rex, who isn’t leaving Ahsoka’s side any more than he has to, and Fett on the other side. Tholme’s asleep and Quin’s on Baby Sith duty. It’s just people who know, right now.

The little girl across the table, the child senator, the spy, purses her lips and huffs in irritation. “You knew my biological father before he became one of the worst people in the galaxy. Both of you did. Tell me something good about him.”

Good things.

About Anakin.

“You fought a war as a Jedi,” Leia prompts. “Surely you must have done some good things with him, or at least thought you were.”

Did they?

Every mission ended in tragedy or was just a ploy of Palpatine’s. Every saved life was just...

Wait.

“He built Threepio,” she finally says. “Your father wi--I mean, Bail wiped Threepio’s memory after the Empire rose, for your safety, but Anakin was the one who built him.”

Leia sits up, eyes brighter. “I didn’t know that. I... was Artoo involved? Did he build R2D2, or...”

“No,” Rex says, “But Artoo was his favorite astromech, and they always pushed each other into stupid stunts. We risked a hell of a lot to save that droid, more than once, and I didn’t find out until you started working with the Rebellion full-time, but Artoo and Threepio were the witnesses for your bio-parents’ wedding.”

Leia gapes at him. So does Ahsoka. (Fett doesn’t know enough to care.)

Rex grins, and if it looks a little forced, that’s fine. “He had a holo recording. I was one of the few people left that knew about the marriage that might have wanted to see, so Artoo offered. It was... sweet.”

He waits, probably for Ahsoka to add something herself, but she has nothing.

“I think that’s when they swapped droids, since Threepio was more useful to a politician and Artoo did his best work when we set him loose on the enemy.”

“He never changed,” Leia muses. “Did he always swear that much?”

“Yes,” Ahsoka answers, as Rex laughs. “Always. All the binary I learned started with the best swears.”

She tries to think of another good memory, something else that Leia might appreciate. Her mind ticks back to saving Stinky, which is just a terrible option, because that mission started with Hutts and ended with the Battle of Teth. That massive loss of life, all for the son of the creature that had put Leia in chains.

She wonders if she has anything in her memory that doesn’t end in blood and graves.

“Soka.” Rex.

“Hm?”

“Remember that time Fives and Echo got lost in the undercity their first time on leave, and we had to get the General to help us find them?”

She does.

He’s right, that’s a good story.

“Okay, so what you have to understand,” Ahsoka says, already digging the faint details out and dusting them off, “is that these boys were ARC troopers, top-notch, terrifyingly competent once they got through specialty training, and loyal as hell. Echo had memorized the reg manuals front to back, and Fives was... well, Fives ended up being the only person to figure out the chips before they went into action. Point is, the Domino twins were good... eventually. Just like everyone else, though, they started out shiny.”

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

“Tholme’s hiding something.”

Ahsoka wonders if Leia will just leave if she ignores her enough. Probably not. This was the girl that got kicked out of boarding school for leading a sit-in at age seven. She’s got patience.

“His job requires him to hide a lot of things,” Ahsoka says instead. “Not as many as Vos will have to, eventually, but a lot.”

“He’s hiding something from us,” Leia insists, visibly frustrated that Ahsoka isn’t as upset about this as she is. “Something important.”

The way she says ‘important’ is clumsy and impacted by the missing baby tooth. She can’t say the r. It comes out as ‘im-poh-ten,’ which is adorable, and if Ahsoka comments on it, she’s probably going to get punched by a six-year-old.

“The Force doesn’t care,” Ahsoka says. “I trust his intentions, if not him as a person.”

“If you don’t trust him, then why trust his intentions?”

“Leia, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I trust one and a half people in the galaxy,” Ahsoka points out. “Me not trusting a person isn’t a sign of anything except my paranoia. The only person I trust fully and without reservation is Rex. Even you, I only mostly trust, because my brain starts screaming if I think too hard. That’s why you’re the half.”

“Okay, whatever, paranoia aside,” Leia barrels on, “He should tell us. Whatever it is that he’s hiding, we deserve to know. We’re not children that he can just hide things from for our own good.”

Ahsoka presses her lips together. “Leia. Princess. I know you’re used to holding all the cards--”

“This isn’t about me being a control freak!”

“It is, though,” Ahsoka soothes, and smiles. “Your mother--the bio one--was the same way. You spent years as one of the leaders of the Rebellion, so obviously you’re used to having all the information, and people reporting to you... but Tholme is a Jedi Master. He reports to the Council and the Republic. Do you know how many people I kept secrets from while I was a padawan? We’re an unknown, Leia. They have no proof that we’re on their side, especially since we’re traveling with Fett.”

Leia crosses her arms and glares as hard as she can.

“I’m not going to bother him,” Ahsoka says. “I’ve already had, like, five unrelated mental breakdowns. I’m putting this on hold until we get to the Temple and I can trust that there’s a healer on hand to sedate me or something.”

“You... want to be sedated?”

“Leia, this... really should be obvious, but a Force-Sensitive losing their osik the way I have been isn’t actually safe. I know I broke a weapons rack last week.” Ahsoka gestures vaguely. “If the Jedi Master isn’t telling me something for reasons that might relate to my clear and obvious mental instability, I’m going to assume he’s got a point.”

“So he should tell me or Rex.”

“We’ll be on Coruscant in four days,” Ahsoka soothes. “Just... let it be. They won’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t have to. The Force leads me in all things, including this.”

Leia isn’t impressed by that, but Leia isn’t impressed by much in the first place.

She strides off in a fit that is, perhaps, more influenced by her six-year-old emotional control than she’d like to admit. Ahsoka lets her. It’s not worth the argument.

It’s only a few minutes later that Fett strides in, takes the seat Leia was just in, and asks, “What would it take for you to teach me how to use a jetii’kad?”

She blinks at him. “You want to learn how to use a lightsaber?”

“Yes.”

“...why?”

“Viszla.”

“I see.”

She does.

Ahsoka taps her fingers against the table, eyeing him with the kind of interest she copied from Master Kenobi, years ago. Fett doesn’t fidget, but she thinks he might want to. He just looks back, waiting for her judgement.

“You’ll need to justify it,” she finally says. “It’s a significant difference from what you actually did, so I need to know your reasoning for doing it, and your plans for once it’s done.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s step one,” she corrects. She tilts her head, considering. “My standards for you aren’t built in a vacuum, and you know that. Explain to me what you plan to do and how you plan to do it, and if I approve...”

“You’ll help me achieve it.”

“Maybe,” she allows. “A lot of that depends on Rex.”

“I expected as much,” Fett says. “He is... an admittedly large part of the reason.”

“He would be,” she says. She gives the silence a few more seconds to sit awkwardly between them, and then stands up. “I’d guess you’ve been brainstorming already. Do you have it written down or is it mostly just in your head so far?”

“I’m still... debating options, so to speak.”

She grins, and the shape of the predator’s smile, the baring of teeth... that almost makes him step back. She can see it in the twitch of his muscles. Smart man.

“Follow me,” she says, and doesn’t wait for him to stand. She strides out with tooka-light steps, hears the heavy beskar tread behind her, and goes to the cargo hold. Fett’s confusion grows tangibly behind her, especially when she tosses him a wooden quarterstaff. She picks up the other and spins it in one hand.

“You’re going to fight me,” she tells him, stretching and letting the staff help with the process. “And while we fight, you’re going to tell me what your plans for Mandalore are.”

He mimics her, but there’s a frown on his face. “And why staffs?”

“You and I, we’ve only sparred bare-handed,” she says. “I need a feel for how you fight with a weapon anyway. These are a good start.”

“Not the beskad?”

She grins, and the twitch is back. “No. That can wait. We start with the staffs.”

He takes a stance, and she mirrors him. She lets him strike first with a weapon, but she’s the one that asks all the questions.

(He is the only one on the ship that can fight her one-on-one right now, and he can win. Still, she makes him work for every inch, and what she doesn’t win in bruises, she wins in words.)

(Fett might yet be a proper Mand’alor, but Ahsoka learned war from her brothers, negotiation at the knee of a general and in the shadow of a prince, and government at the side of duchesses and queens.)

(If he wants her help uniting his people, he needs to prove that he can hold them together once she’s gone.)

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

Ahsoka’s interrogation of Jango’s plans is thorough, and she’s not the only one involved. She brings Leia in, and has her join in on the grilling. She maybe laughs as the twenty-seven-year-old survivor of Galidraan, the Mand’alor, a man who has killed Master Jedi with his bare hands, gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly.

Still, Leia knows this better than any of the rest of them do. The girl might have grown up heir to a monarchy, but she got a classical education and was drilled on democracy and all associated forms of government. Where Ahsoka knows military protocol and law enforcement, intersystem relations and defensive measures, Leia knows agricultural subsidies and welfare programs, infrastructure and education.

Ahsoka may know how to find out if someone’s breaking a zoning law, but Leia knows why it exists in the first place.

“And I grew up in a cult,” Rex says, when an argument on that topic breaks out. Everyone that hasn’t heard the joke-that-isn’t-a-joke stares at him. “The Jedi grew up in a religious meritocracy; Leia grew up in a monarchy; and I grew up in a cult.”

Ahsoka elbows him. He’s not wrong, but still.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is about forty-seven percent sure that Leia will put her foot in her mouth when it comes to Mandalorian culture, blunt as the girl is. That prefrontal cortex isn’t anywhere near as developed as it should be, either, so impulse control for the princess isn’t great. Ahsoka refuses to let Leia and Fett talk about ways to mend the breaks between tradition and the pacifism of the New Mandalorians without either Rex or Ahsoka herself as a mediating presence. Tholme sits in a few times, but while he knows that Leia isn’t really six--though not about the time-travel, yet--Quinlan doesn’t.

They admittedly end up doing this while he’s on Maul-sitting duty.

“It’s like he doesn’t even care about making nice with the people that, at this point, make up the majority of his people!” Leia grumbles one night, as Ahsoka kicks over a step stool so the girl can brush her teeth. “He may not like the New Mandalorians, but from what I understand, it’s still early enough to prevent the majority of the cultural bleaching you brought up. If he stays this stubborn--”

“Leia,” Ahsoka says, and the girl’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m aware of your reasons for not trusting his intentions. But if I may say? Chill.”

“He’s not even trying!”

“He’s trying a hell of a lot harder than he did in the original timeline,” Ahsoka reminds her. “Brush your teeth.”

“I’m not a--”

“Teeth.”

It’s a little worrying, how the child’s brain affects Leia, but... well. That’ll pass in time, hopefully. Until then, Ahsoka gets to be the aunt she should have been. This includes tucking Leia in, which the girl grumbles about despite the fond waves of comfort that enter the Force around her. Ahsoka doesn’t call her out on it, just brushes back wisps of hair to plant a kiss on Leia’s forehead, and then does the same once Rex stumbles in, grumbling about the limitations of a cadet’s body, but far more ready to follow the protocol that is bedtime.

Rex doesn’t pretend to not like getting tucked in, for all that he’s sharing with a grumbly, already-asleep princess. He smiles up at Ahsoka, lets her hug him, and pretends they can be a normal family for five seconds.

Quinlan’s making a late night snack for himself in the galley. Tholme is guarding the Baby Sith. Fett...

Ahsoka goes to the cockpit, takes the copilot’s seat, and watches hyperspace pass them by.

It takes long minutes before either of them say anything.

“Do Jedi believe in souls?”

His shields are up, locked up tighter than the innermost chambers of the Imperial Palace. She has no idea where he’s taking this question. She has to cast about for an answer.

“That depends on how you define a soul,” she finally says. “Leia told me about Force Ghosts. A Jedi Master who underwent the right meditations and training could pass into the Force upon their death without losing their sense of self. They could remain themselves, to an extent, and interact with force-sensitive individuals. I don’t know if they could last that way indefinitely, but depending on your definition, I could argue those ghosts were evidence of a form of soul.”

“So you believe that the dead pass into the Force, but that what passes could be a soul. Something must exist for a sense of self to disappear at death in a way that impacts the Force as you understand it, and many would use the word ‘soul’ for that something.”

“Mm,” Ahsoka considers it. “I’d say that’s pretty accurate. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“What about those not yet born?”

Her fingers feel cold, and she finds herself no longer able to watch the passage of hyperspace as passively as she had, and her eyes catch on streaks and motes of what is not dust, her vision unable to keep any more still than her heart.

“Oh,” she hears herself say. “The clones.”

It’s a long time before he answers, but the walls come down. He carries a confused sort of grief with him, guilty and a mite resentful. His questions have been building for longer than she’d thought. His voice is rough. “I’ve taken plenty of lives, but I’ve never known the name of someone I erased from existence before they were even born.”

“The stories we told Leia about the brothers.”

There’s a grunt of agreement from Fett, so those dots at least connect.

“I take it my answer wasn’t helpful,” she manages to say.

“Will they still exist?” Fett asks. “Will they be born elsewhere? Or is... is a soul something that only comes into existence after the body does?”

“I have no idea,” Ahsoka admits. “I want... I want to think that I’d be able to find them eventually, to recognize them, if their souls are still born into this world elsewhere.”

“And if your Sith finds someone else to build his army out of?”

Ahsoka looks at him, sharp and pointed. “You wouldn’t.”

“They’ll be doing it anyway, if their plans are as ironclad as you say.”

“You’re already associating with Jedi,” Ahsoka says, fighting the urge to break his nose. “They wouldn’t approach you, not now. They can’t leverage your anger against you. They won’t know everything, but they’ll know that you have friends among the Jedi.”

“You think they can’t come up with better lies?”

He has a point. He has more than one point and she hate hate hates it.

A Jedi does not hate.

I am no Jedi.

“You’re going to have to convince me,” she says. “Especially if you want to somehow balance this with the darksaber thing. I won’t teach you how to fight with it if you’re not planning to retake Mandalore.”

“That’s how they’d sell it,” he says. “Retaking Mandalore. An army ostensibly for the Jedi, and ultimately...”

“You’d build an army of slaves.”

“No, I’d be the inside man for when they build that army anyway.”

She holds his gaze. She looks away first.

“Torrent?”

“I’m thinking.”

He lets her.

“I’ll need to talk to Rex. Probably Leia.”

“Understandable.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I’m only just considering it. It’s an idea, not a plan.”

“That’s the only reason I haven’t ripped your throat out with my teeth.”

“Hyperbole doesn’t suit you.”

She glares at him, and leaves, her mind chopping up and laying out every possible angle on Fett volunteering to do the exact same thing as last time, but somehow worse.

Great. Just what she needed.

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

Ahsoka isn’t there for the shouting match between Rex and Fett, but she doesn’t have to be. She can hear it form clear across the ship, and Rex comes to her afterwars. He’s been crying, which isn’t as surprising as it could be. These bodies are still prone to such things, and will be for years. She doesn’t comment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“We need to take out Sidious before he starts anything on Kamino.”

“Agreed,” she says. “It’ll be hard, though.”

“I don’t care.”

“What did Fett say?”

“That if it wasn’t going to be my brothers, it would be someone else’s. Either we stopped the cloning from happening at all, or we mitigated damage by being there.”

“I don’t think Sidious is going to tap him for it,” Ahsoka admits. “Not unless you’re willing to stage that kind of fight publicly enough for Fett to claim the Jedi poisoned you, family, against him. It could work, but it’s a gamble.”

He knows all of this.

“I miss them,” he says, and she cards her fingers though the curls he’s managed to grow in the past weeks. “I just... even at the end, I had Wolffe. I knew Boba was out there; I wouldn’t be surprised if the beskar let him survive a Sarlacc. I had brothers. Not as many as I used to, but there was always someone. I miss them all, so much it hurts.”

“It wouldn’t be them,” she reminds him. She pulls him closer, puts her cheek to his head. “It would be the same process, the same faces, the same training, even, but the boys themselves...”

He clings to her and shudders.

“Rex?”

“I can’t force them to grow up the way I did. I want them back. Sidious is going to make the army no matter what. Someone’s going to suffer, and I don’t want it to be my brothers, but they won’t exist otherwise, and...”

“And it’s an impossible choice,” she summarizes. “And it sucks.”

“It’s sucks Gungan balls, ‘Soka.”

She laughs, and feels him smile against her shoulder. Good. He needs to smile more.

“He’s still trying to get me to like him,” Rex says. "He’s still making an effort, and he never did that for anyone except Boba, and it’s weird. I don’t know what to do with any of that.”

“Gain a brother,” Ahsoka whispers, and she feels him jerk against her. “If that’s what you want.”

“He’s not vod.”

“Same blood as all the rest, and you’re older than him, so he’s not really in a position to be a parent to you like he was to Boba,” she says carefully. “You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to, but... I think he’s trying. I think this means a lot to him, and that he isn’t any more sure of what to do than you are. You don’t have to forgive him for what he did in the future, you don’t have to accept when he reaches out, you don’t have to ever talk to him again after we reach Coruscant if you don’t want, but I think... I think it’s worth at least considering what you have to gain. I think it’s worth looking at what he’s trying to give you.”

Rex huffs. “Why couldn’t he just be the shabuir I knew in training?”

“Something happened between now and then?” she offers. “I don’t know. I never met him in the original timeline. I just know the guy that keeps trying to get on my good side so you’ll like him.”

He outright scoffs. “Soka, that’s not the only reason he’s trying to get on your good side.”

“...I’m a former Jedi who talks trash to his face,” she says slowly. “And I cried on him. There is no reason for him to be nice to me, other than you.”

“He thinks you’re cool and a good person and wants you to be his friend.”

“Bantha poodoo.”

Rex grins in a way that goes straight to smirking. “Soka, I’m not joking. Jango Fett wants you to be his friend.”

“Kriffing why?” she asks, more than a little horrified. “I’m a mess, look like I’m ten years younger than him, have gleefully kicked his ass in front of an audience; I even told Vos to throw him at a baby Sith Lord. Putting up with me is one thing, but I’m... I’m only barely not a Jedi. I’m a historical enemy of Mandalore, and part of the community he hates more than anything, and--”

“And his reaction to you kicking his ass was pure Mando,” Rex says. “In that he now thinks you’re a badass, and thus worth being friends with.”

“I can’t believe that. I physically cannot.”

“Soka, just accept it. The Mand’alor wants to be friends with you.” He scratches at his scalp. “I mean, he met you while you were protecting what appeared to be children, and it’s apparently still early enough for him to care about that.”

She leans back in her seat, eyes on the wall ahead of her and back against the cool metal of the other side. Rex falls back with her. She wonders if Rex changed the subject so they didn’t have to talk about deciding how many of his brothers get to exist, and whether or not he can swallow the bitterness of his history to have a connection with at least one member of his blood. She doesn’t ask. If he wants to change the subject, that’s his right.

“I don’t... no.” She denies it as well as she can, and then the implications dig a little deeper. “Is this me accidentally signing up to be the Jedi Order’s official liaison to the Mand’alor?”

“I mean, this point in time... they’ve got Kenobi for the Duchess, yeah?” Rex shrugs. “Good relations with the system are probably a good thing, and you’ve got a stronger connection than Tholme and Vos.”

“Ugh,” she says. She rubs a hand against her head, and then lurches to her feet. “Fine! Fine. If it’ll get him to retake Mandalore before the Sith decide to bribe him with an army he doesn’t get to keep, I’ll teach him how to fight for the kriffin’ Darksaber.”

“That’s what makes the decision for you?”

“Well something had to!”

They only get one lesson in before Coruscant, but the lesson lasts a full day, and Ahsoka’s got his comm number. Fett’s a quick learner anyway, and Tholme was there to give pointers where Ahsoka couldn’t.

He won’t measure up to a Jedi in saber-to-saber combat, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to learn enough to turn all those skills with a beskad to something that works with a jetii’kad.

(The balance of a saber is wrong to those used to a physical weapon. The inertia doesn’t work the way anyone expects. There’s no need to worry about damaging the blade.)

(Fett is good. Ahsoka is better. And, bless his heart, he knows it.)

(She will mold him into the shape of someone who not only can, but should rule a system with a history like that, and he damn well knows that too.)

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

“Dropping out of hyperspace in T-minus twenty seconds.”

The Slave I is not, in fact, a Venator-class starship, or anything else near the size and smoothness of the ships that Ahsoka grew up on. This is a bounty hunter’s vessel, and the drop to real space jolts like nothing else. Ahsoka’s in the copilot seat for the return, but Tholme’s going to swap with her as soon as they’ve got confirmation that there were no problems with exiting hyperspace, and nobody’s shooting at them.

“We’re not going to get shot at,” Tholme had assured her.

“I always get shot at,” she’d told him.

“I have our clearance,” he reminded her, seeming more amused than frustrated. “There’s no need to worry about getting shot at.”

“I also always get shot at,” Jango had thrown in.

“Okay,” Tholme had allowed, after several minutes of his trust in the Temple warring against Ahsoka and Jango’s learned paranoia. The looks Quinlan had darted around the room when Leia and Rex also claimed ‘chronic getting-shot-at disease’ had been a treat. The paranoia of a Watchman and a future Shadow was great, but the paranoia of three revolutionaries and a galaxy-wide criminal was greater. “You can take us in close enough to get in radio contact, but the second we have to ask for clearance and a vector, I’m in the seat.”

She’d agreed, of course. She was paranoid, not inexperienced.

“We’re much less likely to get shot down by ground control if you tell them we’re with you,” she’d said, to his hilariously apparent metaphysical exhaustion. “Obviously.”

“Good enough,” he’d sighed.

What that means is mostly just that Ahsoka gets to watch the distant star at the center of Coruscant’s system grow rapidly brighter. She can pick out the constellations she’d grown up with, the stars the creche had projected on the ceiling every night, the ones that she may not have seen from the surface, but had greeted her and then sent her on her way every time she left on yet another campaign that lost her men their lives for a Sith Lord's wretched plans. These were the shapes and stories she’d never seen again as Fulcrum, a woman so hunted that to come within a dozen subsectors of the planet was to court her death.

For sixteen years, she hadn’t ventured closer than Alderaan, save for a single trip to Chandrila.

And now, maybe twenty minutes away at this speed, was the Temple. It was home.

A home that didn’t know her, that had sentenced her to death, that had hosted the rampage of her former master... but home nonetheless.

“Stable?” Fett grunts.

“Thrusters are good,” she confirms.

“I meant you.”

Ah. “I’m... fine. As good as I could be, anyway.”

She hesitates, but manages to speak before he does. “You?”

“I’m not the one walking into an entire building of triggers.”

“Only because you’re not entering it,” she says. “It’s the home of your ancestral enemies who, bad info or no, killed off a whole lot of your friends.”

“I get to leave,” he says. “You don’t.”

She plans to needle him a bit more, maybe on something a little less based in both their traumas. She needs to talk, if only to fill up the silence and keep herself from reaching out to all the lights in the Force. It’ll be too much, she knows.

Tholme enters the cockpit. “Change of plans.”

“Better be a good reason,” Jango says, voice flat.

“Leia’s crying.”

Ahsoka’s unbuckling herself before she can process the words fully. “What?”

Leia doesn’t cry for no reason. Her emotional control is as difficult as the body makes it, but she doesn’t just cry. There’s always a cause.

“I don’t know. Rex said to get you,” Tholme explains. “She was saying a name. He seemed to recognize it.”

Not good not good not good. If Leia was feeling the Emper--No. She cuts the thought off there. No catastrophizing. Information first.

“What name.”

“Luke. Mean anything to--and she’s gone.”

Ahsoka ignores him, just sprints to where she knows the ‘young ones’ are. They’re all in Maul’s room, because nobody wants to be alone with him now, but it’s the worst time to leave him without supervision. It’s not the worst option; he mostly refuses to talk, still.

This holds true, because he definitely isn’t talking when she bursts in. He’s sitting on the bench, in a corner, hugging his knees and watching Quinlan try to calm Leia down.

“Captain, sitrep.”

“Vos and Tholme attempted to show Leia how to reach out to feel the Temple from a distance. They felt that it would be a good use of the time, and an interesting exercise at this distance. She attempted to do so, struggled for several minutes, and then reacted with shock. She has repeated the name ‘Luke’ several times since then, and we’ve been unable to fully calm her down. I asked Tholme to get you, as you are the only Force-Sensitive on board that understands the situation in full.”

“Understood.” She nods to him, and then goes to nudge at Quinlan. “Vos, move.”

“Torre--”

“You can sit behind her, hold her in your lap like you did when we had lunch the other day, but I need to get in her face.” She waits for him to comply, and then drops to her knees and takes Leia’s hands in her own. She radiates calm and assurance, even though she knows Quinlan’s probably been doing the same since this started. She dips her head enough to get in the girl’s line of sight, waits for her to meet eyes.

“Princess,” she says, and meets Leia’s eyes. “What did you feel?”

“Luke.”

From this distance... they’ve got half the system to go, at least, and Leia’s training shouldn’t reach that far for anything more than the fact that the Temple is there. Ahsoka could feel unshielded individuals from here, if she focused, but she’s also been doing this much, much longer. The twins theory holds more water than ever.

“Can you show me?” Ahsoka asks, instead of asking for more clarification. She squeezes Leia’s hands and smiles. “In the Force?”

Leia nods, and closes her eyes. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time in a while that Leia’s needed Ahsoka to guide her through.

Luke’s light, for all that it’s unfamiliar to Ahsoka, is brilliant among the rest of the signatures in Coruscant. Like Anakin and Leia, he’s a star in his own right, but he’s brighter. He doesn’t have Anakin’s bitterness or Leia’s righteous anger, just... light. Ahsoka had asked Leia to show her instead of looking for herself because she’d expected to not recognize the boy, but she needn’t have. He’s unmistakable.

He’s so bright that she almost misses the other signature that she does recognize. She shies away, knowing that it would be there, but... but it’s almost twinned with another nearby. Not identical, but different in a way that comes with age, with trauma, with... death.

Leia hadn’t arrived alone, after all.

Why would Luke?

Her eyes snap open, her hand coming up not-quite-fast enough to clap over her mouth as she gasps. She feels a shudder, one that starts in her shoulders and reaches deep into her ribcage, finds a home in her chest and doesn’t stop.

“Oh fuck,” Quinlan whispers. “Torrent? Um, Sokari?”

Rex steps closer. “Commander?”

“That shabuir faked his death again,” she manages. “Three times, Rex!”

He blinks at her. “...I know way too many people who fit that description, Soka.”

“Master Ke--” she cuts herself off. He might have changed his name, just like she had. There’s already an Obi-Wan here. Rex seems to be figuring it out, but she needs to give him another hint.

“He pulled a Hardeen,” she stresses, and Rex’s eyes snap shut with a tired groan.

“Who?” Leia asks, her own tumult of emotion paused in the wake of Ahsoka’s shock. There’s a hope and relief to her, and Ahsoka belatedly realizes that her main worry had been that she’d misidentified what was going on, that she’d given herself a false hope. Ahsoka’s internal reaction, her approval and awe at Luke’s presence, had trickled over enough to give Leia the reassurance she’d needed.

Unintentional as it was, Ahsoka was glad that she’d succeeded in helping her charge.

“Er...” she trails off. “I don’t know what name he’s going by, right now. We’ve spent so long in hiding...”

“The man Luke knew as Crazy Old Ben,” Rex says, and Leia’s eyes light up.

“Oh,” she breathes. “General O--no, names. The High General, then.”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka says, not a little soft. “Yeah, I guess death didn’t stop him any more than it stopped me.”

“I could have told you that,” Leia says, smiling far too widely. She squirms where she still sits on Quinlan’s lap. “He was... he taught you, right?”

“As much my master as the official one,” Ahsoka says. She glances as Quinlan, feels Maul’s gaze on the back of her head. “Your f... my official master was very young when I was assigned to him. He wasn’t ready to teach, wasn’t even ready to be a knight, entirely, so my training was split between him and his master.”

Quinlan pops in at that moment, “Your grandmaster was military, too?”

We all were, she thinks. Even you, in your own way.

“I landed in their care mid-battle,” she says carefully. “It was a complicated situation.”

He nods, and she vaguely notes that he’s got his arms wrapped around Leia, and his chin tucked on top of her head. She isn’t sure if Leia’s noticed, but Quinlan’s picked up ‘baby’-sitting duty so often recently that she’s fairly certain he’s all but declared her ‘little-sister shaped.’ It doesn’t matter that Leia’s older--she’s still taking the juice boxes and gummy snacks that Quinlan shoves at her every single snacktime.

“Do you think...” Rex trails off, something uncomfortable twisting in the Force, even though his face keeps it mostly hidden. “My brothers. If the General survived and... and made it back...”

“I didn’t feel any,” Ahsoka says, because she knows she’d have noticed if it was anyone she’d met, and likely any clone at all. They all felt different in the Force, but they all held a spark that made her know it was one of them. “I’m sorry, Rex’ika.”

“A long shot,” he says, that dash of hope shriveling up. He must see something in her face, because there’s a curl of warmth in him, even if his smile is brittle. “It’s fine, really. I have you, ‘Soka.”

Rex and Ahsoka. Two halves of one whole.

She can’t wait to hear the lectures on attachment, the way people who haven’t seen her wars try to criticize her for clinging to any chance at still having a will to live. She can’t wait to see them justify telling her that it’s selfish to hold her sanity in her hands and refuse to let the grief take it away. She can’t wait to stare someone down for asking her to ‘learn to let go’ after she’s lost her family, her life, her universe three times over.

Most of the Jedi are more sensible than that, are reasonable enough to see those shades of grey and how to approach rules in the spirit they are meant instead of the rigid letter, but there will be some.

There will be more than enough telling her she is wrong to hold her oldest, closest, best friend as dear as she can.

Attachment, they’ll say.

What they’ll mean is ‘codepedence.’

They won’t be entirely wrong.

She reaches out for him, lets him fall into her side and stay there, closes her eyes and reaches out for the man she’d long called father, when they’d still been in each other’s lives.

This time, past the deafening flare of surprise-love-hope of the little star next to him, she can feel him reach back.

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

The second the ship has landed, even before Tholme and Fett are done with the checks, Ahsoka’s waiting at the exit. She strains her hearing so she’ll know the second the system will let her open the massive door of the cargo hold.

Leia clings to her side, and the boys stand to her back.

Quinlan’s stressed enough that she can feel it like a cloud. She is very much not trying to feel that stress. Quinlan’s stress levels, back where he’s got Maul so he can keep an eye on Ahsoka and the Baby Sith at the same time, are so low on her priorities list that it’s a a little sad.

It doesn’t take long for her to be able to punch the button and open the damn door.

It opens slowly. She bounces on her toes, because there’s a beacon of light and a steady, familiar glow on the other side, and she’s so, so close. She can’t see through the crack yet, because it’s day in this part of Coruscant, and the sunlight is blinding against the dark of the hold. So close. She’s so close.

“The hell’s wrong with you?”

Fett? Fett. He’s already here to get off? This door’s slow.

She doesn’t answer him, because the door is finally open enough to let her out, and she leaps through the gap.

She lands on a pourstone floor, feels pebbles and grit compress under her boots, frantically looks around as her eyes adjust to light and--

The High General, the Negotiator, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, looking just as he did when she first met him, if a little less armored and a little more fed. The hair, the beard, the crinkle in the corner of his eyes. His spirit is a little older, his smile a little more strained, his posture a little more tired, but it’s him.

He spreads his arms, low enough that she could have dismissed it if she’d cared less for hugs, except she’s almost as small as she was when they met.

And every other hug she’d given back then had been, functionally, her being a living missile aiming her montrals for someone’s organs.

She’s a little more aware of how to avoid stabbing her friends in the intestine now.

“Master!”

She sprints for him, collides and sobs, feels him stumble back and then sink to his knees on the too-hard floor, and can feel the tears pouring out of her already. Her breath hitches, and she wails like a child, and that last part of her that couldn’t even grasp at safety shreds itself. His arms are tight around her, warm and strong and Master Kenobi don’t you dare leave again.

It doesn’t matter that Sidious is out there, that the Republic’s been building towards war for a century, that even now someone’s kicking up the Trade Federation. Her dad is here.

“I’ve missed you too, my dear,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, the bristles of his beard scratching along the skin of her forehead. Off to the side, the binary suns that are Luke and Leia grow brighter in proximity, so bright she can barely bear it.

(“Fett, why the kriff are you reaching for your blaster?!”)

(“Torrent said her master tried to kill her.”)

(“Different guy, that was a different guy, put the blaster away.”)

(“You could have just warned me.”)

(“I didn’t expect you to go for a shot on sight!”)

(”Calm down, Jetiika, if I was going to shoot on sight, we’d already be in a firefight.”)

She ignores everything.

“If you fake your death one more time, I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

He tries to pull away to talk to her more directly. She does not let him. He apparently resigns himself to this, because he just adjusts how he’s sitting and pulls her in closer.

“In my defense, I was far from the only one presumed dead that took advantage of that status, by the end,” he says, letting her slump into his lap and cry herself dry. “I’m proud of you. You know that, I hope.”

She nods against his chest, smearing tears and snot across the linen and wool. She doesn’t care that they’ll need a thorough washing. She can have her public breakdown and it’s fine because Master Kenobi is here.

He doesn’t even know what she’s spent the past fifteen years doing. Luke wouldn’t have known. He doesn’t know she’s thirty-two and broken, beyond a shadow and cut down by her own master. There’s so much he doesn’t know but the Force rings with the truth of it: he’s proud of her anyway.

“I’m going by Ben, now,” he mutters against her montral. “There’s already an Obi-Wan here, after all. Still, I remain a Kenobi.”

She can’t make the words come out of her mouth. She’s overwhelmed, so much so that speech is a mite bit beyond her.

Sokari Torrent, she presses along the frayed bond that’s knitting itself back to life with every breath they take. Leia was already calling me Auntie Soka, and Rex and I both took Torrent, for...

“For the men you lost,” he mutters. “Yes, that’s fitting.”

He smells like sapir tea and a spiced beard oil.

There’s a whirl of activity about her, greetings and ‘a Sith apprentice?’ and introductions. She distantly notes when Fett almost shoots Dooku before Rex shuts that down and advises the Master to leave the area before things spiral out of control. She feels Ben stand, and she stands with him, clings to his side like a child and trusts that whatever happens, whatever needs to happen, he’ll take care of it until she can stand on her own two feet without swaying.

Rex grabs her free hand, and she feels herself settle back into her skin, bit by bit.

She’s back at the Temple. The twins are safe. Her grandmaster is here. She has her other half.

They can save the galaxy this time.

She’s alive she’s home she’s okay.

She’s okay.

Everything’s going to be okay.

#Ahsoka Tano #Captain Rex #Leia Organa #Jango Fett #rex and ahsoka #Quinlan Vos #Tholme #Depa Billaba #Obi Wan Kenobi #Ben Kenobi #Maul #Darth Maul #time travel #de aging #ptsd #trauma #child soldiers #Phoenix Files #Uncle Ben and Little Luke #Auntie Soka and Little Leia #disaster lineage