#Hera loves him and so she supports his plan (once she's checked if he's sure) and so she causes him to forget her 😭

[hephaestuscrew]

The most dramatic action that Minkowski takes towards Eiffel in the finale (sending him back in the Sol) is going against Eiffel's choices in an attempt to prevent him coming to harm. In contrast, the most dramatic action that Hera takes towards Eiffel in the finale (the memory-wipe) is causing him to come to harm in order to enact a choice that he's made.

In a sense, these actions are conceptual opposites. But they are both taken with love and respect for Eiffel. They are both extremely selfless actions which Minkowski and Hera find painful to take.

They are also both actions which could be considered to be harming Eiffel. Both of these actions involve doing something to Eiffel that Minkowski/Hera would hate to have done to them. And both of those actions are taken with the awareness that they are fairly likely to result in losing Eiffel in a sense (either because he's headed back to Earth while Minkowski is on the Hephaestus, or because he's losing part of what makes him him). That's part of what makes those acts painful and complicated and significant.

Minkowski and Hera both care about Eiffel so deeply, and their care often expresses itself in contrasting ways because they are very different people. The finale emphasises these different manifestations of their care. Love can be 'I will do whatever I can to keep you safe, even when that's not what you want'. Love can also be 'I will support the choices that you make to bring about our common goal, even when that causes you harm'. The way Minkowski's care for Eiffel manifests is tied up in her sense of responsibility for her crew's safety. The way Hera's care for Eiffel manifests is linked to how she's had to fight for her own autonomy.

Neither of their actions in the finale are perfect or typical expressions of love, but in their very different ways, they both act with love, and that's important to me.

[lookatthestarrynight]

Laughter is the Best Medicine - Chapter Three

Poe Dameron/Doctor!OFC: Poe Dameron has joined the Resistance at the request of General Leia Organa, and he’s finally arrived on the Echo of Hope, the Resistance’s floating base of operations. While on board, he meets the Medical Director of the Resistance and... falls in love? We’ll see.

I’ve also posted this on AO3. Check my masterlist to see what I write for. Please only like, don’t reblog. Hope you enjoy, let me know what you think!

No warnings. :) 1787 words.

After Dameron left the med-bay – a thing many of the nurses, doctors, and myself were glad to see happen – I went back to regular life on the Echo of Hope. No more running around tracking down a runaway pilot, no more hair pulling over missed meds and potentially pulled stitches (which had happened on his last escapade – and he didn’t try again after that). None of that. Instead, I was back to waffling over paperwork and monitoring physicals on most days, and a surgery or two on other days. For a good few weeks, nothing seemed to be happening, and then the General announced we’d be moving permanently into the Resistance’s planetary base: D’Qar.

           And then all my good routines and restful nights went out the airlock. Again. Luckily, though, the task of getting the med-bay on D’Qar operational was a priority, so in the matter of a week I was moved into my new quarters – a pinch larger and a whole lot warmer than the one I’d had on the Echo of Hope – down the hall from the med-bay, and all of the offices, patient rooms, and surgery rooms were up-and-running. Now, beyond my regular obligations to the med-bay and the Command Center, I had a bit of free time on my hands – there were fewer dangerous missions off-world right now because so many people were being devoted to moving and security.

           And with that free time, I made myself a whole new temporary schedule (at this point, it was temporary schedule number three of many). I’d wake up in the mornings, get ready, get breakfast, and stick my head in the med-bay to see if they needed anything. Then, I’d wander off the base – with my commlink in hand, just in case someone dropped a heavy box on their foot or something idiotic like that – and explore the forests that surrounded the base. I’d come back for lunch, although I’ve forgotten to do that once or twice already, and then I spend the rest of my day in the med-bay helping with existing patients and any new arrivals. Then: dinner with Ilia, Shana, and my newest acquaintance, a mechanic named Nira. And then back to the med-bay, to my office, to file paperwork in the holonetwork and send notes to the Command Center. There had been a few days already where’d I’d been dragged from my newfound temporary routine to attend meetings in the Command Center. In these lovely, but terribly boring, meetings, I often found myself next to Poe Dameron at the big roundtable – which he found to be incredibly entertaining. In fact, the first time I was called to a meeting and he realized who his table buddy was, he’d slung his arm around my shoulder and loudly announced:

           “Well, I’m glad I get to be next to my favorite Medical Director – she saved my life after all!”

           To which I’d snorted and haughtily replied: “And I’m sure I could just as easily un-save it, too, Commander.” The Command Center had gotten a rather big laugh out of Dameron’s feigned betrayal – wherein he yanked his arm off of me, spun me to face him, and opened and closed his mouth in surprise and then said “Well, I never—!” (which made everyone laugh just a bit harder).

           I didn’t mind going to meetings, but it was nice when I could leave the meeting and run off into the forest for what I viewed as a much-needed break. There was a little path that led from the tarmac of the landing zones and hangar to a little stream and clearing that was quiet and devoid of any real activity. I’d taken to bringing my holopad and a snack from the cafeteria with me as week two of the Resistance relocation wore on.

           Today, I’d had another one of those lovely Command Center meetings, and the instant it was over, I’d made straight for my hideaway, but Dameron caught up to me on my way through the hangar.

           “Hey! Hera!”

           I stopped, frowning, and turned towards him, “Yeah?”

           He walked the last few feet between us and stopped a bit before me, “Where are you—” he paused, catching his breath, “Where are you rushing off to?”

           “I’m ‘rushing’, as you say, down that path right over there,” I said, gesturing vaguely to the tree line, “And – am I mistaken in seeing that the ‘Resistance’s Best Pilot’ is out of breath?”

           He made a face. “You walk fast, okay? And one of the Admirals wanted to have a word with me – Stavon, the one who talks agonizingly slow – so I had to run to catch up with you. That’s beside the point though – that forest could be dangerous; you don’t know what’s in there!”

           “I’m not dead yet, and I’ve been going down there the whole week,” I reached up a hand to shush him, “And before you say anything, I’m well-versed in the art of self-defense, alright? No need to worry.”

           “I can’t help but worry about you, Hera.”

           I stared at him. “I’m going to take that as a compliment, I think.” I whirled around and continued towards the path, stopping a few meters from the tree line and turning back to Poe, “You want to join me? Then you can see for yourself that I am in no danger whatsoever.”

           Poe gave me a funny look, glanced back at the hangar, shrugged, and caught up to me. For the first half of the walk, he was very quiet, but once we reached what I estimated to be the half-way point – about five minutes in – he piped up:

           “So, where are we going, exactly?”

           “There’s a little clearing with a stream down this path. I’ve been, uh, coming here for the last week or so, just to clear my head in the mornings.”

           He nodded, swinging his arms a little exaggeratedly for a moment.

           “I think you’ll like it… it can be our little secret.” I said, glancing up at him.

           “Our little secret, eh? That sounds like a lot more than just a little clearing to me,” he teased, smiling.

           I flushed, “Not – not that. You know what I mean.”

           “Do I?”

           I stopped and looked at him. “Oh, come on. You know what I meant, Dameron.”

           He laughed, looping his arm around my shoulders and guiding us further down the path. “I know what you meant; I was just teasing.”

           I huffed. “Nearly gave me a heart-attack, thinking I’d have to, like, talk my way out of that one.”

           He grinned. “I’m a little smarter than you give me credit for, I think.”

           “Yeah… you probably are.”

           It was then that we came upon the clearing and Poe stepped away from me, slowly spinning around as he took it all in, amazed.

           “Pretty great, huh?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest with a smile.

           He turned back to me, his eyes shimmering with that look again. “Yeah, pretty great.”

           Quietly, I walked to the edge of the stream and sat down on one of the larger rocks, and Poe joined me a few seconds later. We sat in silence for a while, taking in the beauty of the clearing, and then my commlink ruined it by beeping. Loudly.

           I groaned and pulled it out of my pocket. “Director Nova speaking?”

           “Director, we’re gonna need you to swing by the med-bay… some idiot dropped a box of munitions on his foot… it’s not looking too good.”

           I sighed, dejectedly looking at the stream trickling by my feet. “I’ll be there in 10.”

           “Thank you, Director. We’ll be waiting.” I clicked off the call and shoved my commlink back in my pocket, standing up.

           I turned to Poe. “Well, duty calls. You gonna stay here?”

           “Uhhh, yeah. I’ll embrace the calm a little longer before I get called back,” he said with a small smile.

           I nodded. “See you around then, Poe.”

           “Same to you, Hera.”

<> 

           By the time I headed to the cafeteria that evening, I was exhausted. The munitions box incident had turned out to be quiet a lot worse than I expected, and it had taken me two hours and the assistance of three medical droids and an apprentice doctor to effectively reorganize a smashed foot and invest in some artificial regrowth on the parts that were far past recovery. It had occurred to me in the middle of the surgery that – even though I had been proclaimed to be the best doctor in the galaxy by the General – I could probably be even better if I had the might of the First Order supporting me… but I couldn’t stand for that.

           The cafeteria was already in the swing of things when I walked in and Shana caught up to me the instant she saw me, walking with me to the line.

           “Soooo, where did you go after the command meeting? Ojo told me he had to call you on the commlink to find you!”

           “I, uh, went to the forest for a bit of peace and quiet.”

           “Alone?”

           “Yeah… isn’t that the meaning of peace and quiet? You do it alone?”

           Shana stared at me. “Not always, H. And besides – you weren’t alone – a little birdie told me they saw you go down there with the Commander.”

           I groaned, turning to her fully. “Which one? There’s more than one.”

           “Which birdie? Or which Commander?”

           I gave her a pointed look, stepping forward in the line.

           She grinned. “Okay – The Commander, Commander Dameron.”

           I nodded. “Right, well, your little spy must’ve been seeing things, because I wasn’t –”

           It was in that moment that my plans of getting out of this conversation, or indeed of never hearing about it again, went right out of the airlock – Poe arrived, looped his arm around my shoulders, and knocked me a little off balance, righting me immediately afterwards by pulling me further into him.

           “How’d the munitions box injury go, Doc?”

           I huffed. “Terribly. It went terribly.”

           “I’m sorry to hear it, then,” he pulled his arm off of me, turning to better face me, “You wanna join me and some of the other pilots for dinner?”

           Over his shoulder, I could see Shana silently laughing and mouthing Do it! “Uh, sure, I guess, yeah. Might as well.”

           “Sweet. I’ll introduce you to the squadrons – I think you’re gonna love Jessika and Karé. And Snap.” His eyes twinkled as he backed away, heading back to the boisterous table of pilots – something told me I’d be even more tired by the time I left.

           Shana giggled as he walked away. “Something you want to tell me there, Doc?”

           “Oh, kriff off.”

[veritascara]

Jacen Syndulla: Answers to All the Big Questions

After the bombshell finale revelation that Kanan and Hera actually had a son, I found myself pouring through all the Kanera moments in the rest of the season again to reassess what was going on between the two of them. In hindsight, I found some things did look different—really different. And the questions Jacen’s existence brought had some reasonably good clues left along the way to help solve them.

Because we’re all dying to know how this green and orange kid came about, right?

So here you go, this is the fruits of my (mostly unscientific) labor. Fair warning, I’m tackling this whole situation from the perspective of a married person, a parent, and a nurse—birds and the bees and all that.

Putting everything below a cut because this got a *little* out of hand.

When did Hera get pregnant/when did Kanan and Hera find the time to have sex?

The short answer: Most likely on Lothal, during Flight of the Defender.

The long answer: Based on what I see throughout the series, there’s no clear evidence that Hera is pregnant before their return to Lothal, although they have had a sexual relationship for many years. Kanan is on edge about their relationship early in season four, and I get the sense that this is an ongoing argument—that after the Zero Hour disaster, he’s been pushing to make their relationship more public and is getting increasingly frustrated with her focus on the Rebellion and busyness, but that’s all there is to it. Hera gives no outward signs that she’s pregnant until the very end of the series (we’ll get to that), and the prisoner uniform she wears in Jedi Night makes a big show of the flatness of her belly.

When the rebels return to Lothal during The Occupation, we finally get a moment to see them in relative privacy. They are romantic and loving as ever and both seem more relaxed away from the larger rebellion. And here we get Kanan’s “Huh, I just realized, it’s been awhile since we spent some time alone” line, followed by Hera’s “And when we do it’s in situations like this” response. While this has been discussed before, it bears repeating that Kanan’s comment is very much ‘parent code’ for “It’s been way too long since we last had sex.” And the disgust in the way Hera states “situations like this” makes it pretty clear that she would much rather be enjoying the kind of situations he’s suggesting as well, rather than the one they’re stuck in.

I don’t know what Kanan’s definition of “it’s been awhile” is, but I do know that even in the healthiest married relationship, there can be phases where busyness and sheer exhaustion take over, and because you have to work, and you have to make sure you keep the kids alive, the something that has to give usually ends up being sex. Before the two of you know it, it’s been weeks and you’re desperate for a little energy and no screaming children (or in their case, troublemaking teenagers) around to interrupt you.

Cue the next day and Flight of the Defender. I don’t know what else to say other that when two parental adults talk about wanting to spend ‘some time alone” one day, and then the next day find themselves child-free for hours without a whole lot to do . . . they do each other.

They had good, old-fashioned sex, okay.

Ta-da! Baby.

Did Kanan know about the baby?

The short answer: Yes! I think there is good narrative evidence to support this.

The long answer: From what we see in the show, he probably knew almost right away. At the beginning of Kindred, we get the beautiful scene where Hera approaches Kanan while he meditates in a field, the morning after Flight of the Defender. They talk about how they keep getting drawn back to Lothal, and Kanan says “There’s more to it, I’m just not sure what.” The next time we see them, Sabine and Hera are preparing for her flight, and Kanan approaches her, now uncharacteristically agitated. It’s still morning, and we can safely assume he has just returned from his meditation. It’s not a huge leap from there to guess that something he learned while meditating, probably regarding why they are on Lothal, has upset him. He immediately launches into an unprovoked argument with Hera regarding the safety of the old u-wing ship and the future of their relationship.

At the time this episode aired, this scene really bugged me. It felt like a forced attempt at creating “will they, won’t they” tension between an already obviously dedicated couple, and seemed drastically out of character for Kanan. But in hindsight, it makes a lot more sense. Fact 1: Kanan was meditating and is a Jedi. Fact 2: Conception usually takes place about 12-24 hours after sexual intercourse. From there we can infer that Kanan has seen or sensed something of their future child—either a vision or perhaps a shift in the Force itself with his conception (remember this is the next morning)—and this sets off a sudden surge of anxiety both for Hera’s safety as well as an unreasonable, but not unfounded, fear that she might put the Rebellion first before their child, just as she has to some degree with their relationship. He waits for her in the ship to talk to her again before she leaves, this time calm and apologetic, like the adult he is, but he never gets the chance to fully explain himself. She kisses him, and then has to leave rapidly before the Empire arrives.

The next evidence I see is Kanan’s reaction to Hera’s crash and capture in Rebel Assault. He tries initially to follow the others back to base, but quickly because too upset, to the point where he turns back alone to try to rescue her. When stopped by the wolves, he is angry and impatient to a degree we haven’t seen before. Even when Hera was nearly killed by Fenn Rau, he was calm and collected, but he’s out of control here, for no apparent reason. The wolves are able to recenter him, and he returns to camp, knowing that he needs Ezra to plan the mission because he can’t think clearly enough to do so. His overblown reaction makes more sense if he either knows about their child or at least the potential for his existence.

Lastly, in Jedi Night, we get this enigmatic line from Kanan: “Hera, there’s something I need to tell you.” Rukh interrupts their moment, and what he needs to tell her is never clarified. He dies before he can bring up the subject again. I can only assume in context that he wanted to tell her something significant, and telling her either about the existence of their child directly or indirectly as some enigmatic Jedi-esque line for her to remember later on would make sense here.

When does Hera know?

The short answer: Likely around the beginning of Family Reunion – and Farewell.

The long answer: As @mandaloriandragontrainer pointed out, at the beginning of this episode, we see Hera down below while Ezra is “talking” in the gun turret to his parents. She briefly touches her abdomen, a gesture we’ve never seen her do before. We see her do this at least once more later in the episode when they are on the bridge of the Imperial Command Center, after Thrawn and Ezra are taken away by the purrgil. This is the first change we get in her behavior throughout the series that is unrelated to her grief over Kanan’s loss and the strongest indicator we have that she knows she is pregnant here—but not the only one. When they go to invade the dome, Hera’s behavior is also significantly subdued. She waits until the last minute to enter the fight to get into the base, and does little physical fighting. When she does fight, it’s purely defensive, and she gets out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

Timing wise, this would also make sense. Unlike previous seasons, which stretched out over months, most of this season occurs in a matter of a few days, with days and nights clearly demarcated. Rebel Assault takes place only about three days after Kanan and Hera have sex, and Jedi Night occurs the next day after that.

From a medical perspective, while a fertilized egg begins developing immediately, pregnancy itself does not begin until implantation of the embryo, which occurs between 5-14 days post-conception. Assuming Twi’leks, as a compatible humanoid species, have pregnancies that are relatively similar to humans, Hera technically isn’t even pregnant until after A World Between Worlds. After that episode, an indeterminate amount of time passes before A Fool’s Hope, probably a few days, as Hera hunts for a way to smuggle herself off Lothal and meet up with their “extended family”—enough time for implantation to have occurred and the pregnancy to have developed enough for advanced Star Wars medical technology to detect it.

We can’t know how Hera would have known to even check for it (if Dave Filoni bothered to think about that); perhaps Twi’leks have specific symptoms that appear sooner than humans, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we see this from her the first moment we see her alone in her own ship, when she would have had a private moment to run a simple medical test.

Why does Hera not have a miscarriage?

The short answer: She wasn’t even technically pregnant yet.

The long answer: As pregnancy does not technically begin until after implantation, you cannot miscarry until after that point. It’s estimated that between 50-80% of conceived embryos actually fail to develop of their own accord and are simply flushed out of the body with menstruation without ever implanting. This is most often the result of genetic abnormalities that prevent further development. But aside from internal factors that cause the embryo’s demise, there is almost nothing else outside of it that can cause its destruction.

The uterus is perhaps the best-protected organ in the body—even better than the heart or the brain. It’s shielded by the pelvis on three sides, sacrum on the fourth, and muscular pelvic floor on the fifth, and it’s cushioned by the bladder and intestines everywhere else. Because an unimplanted embryo has no connection yet to the mother, it cannot be affected by drugs in the maternal system, nor does it have a heartbeat that could be interrupted by electrical shock. It cannot be detached from the uterine wall by trauma, and will just continue floating its merry way down the fallopian tube to its destination, regardless of what is happening externally.

Ultimately, assuming this is the stage of pregnancy that Hera was in, it’s the absolute safest point for her baby during the trauma she suffers in Rebel Assault and Jedi Night, and his development would be completely unaffected.

What if she really was pregnant earlier?

The short answer: It’s still possible that the baby might survive despite the trauma/torture.

The long answer: First trimester miscarriage is a complicated phenomenon that occurs for a wide variety of reasons. Yes, trauma and stress are risk factors for miscarriage, but risk factors are not causes in and of themselves. Even with horrific domestic violence, women do not always lose their pregnancies. The uterus does not rise out of the pelvis until around the second trimester (second twelve weeks of pregnancy), so even a few weeks along, the embryo or fetus is still well protected. Hera’s fight with Rukh is pretty brutal and would pose the biggest single risk, but as long as the uterus was small enough it might be okay. A few years ago there was an uproar when it was found out that Kerri Walsh Jennings won the Olympic gold medal for beach volleyball, a notoriously physical sport, when she was five weeks pregnant (which is three weeks post-conception).

Electrical shocks could pose a theoretical risk by stopping the pulsing of the fetal myocardium, but from what we see, the electroshock torture is designed to be superficial—causing pain upon contact with the skin and by inducing skeletal muscle spasms. It doesn’t penetrate deep enough to affect the victim’s heart, and likely wouldn’t make it deep enough to the uterus either. Being stunned by Pryce would probably be a bigger risk in that regard than the electrical shocks.

The vascular connection offered by the placenta does put the embryo at risk to adverse effects from drugs that can cross the placental barrier, but it is unlikely that a single dose of a short acting psychoactive drug such as the truth serum would have any major teratogenic (birth defect or miscarriage causing) effects.

What points would support an earlier conception date?

There are a couple lines of dialogue where it felt like it would make a lot of sense for Hera to have been pregnant earlier, once in Jedi Night when she first tries to tell Kanan something but gets distracted by his hair, then again later in Dume, when she says “Why did I wait so long to tell him” and “I thought we would have more time.” It’s these lines alone that give me pause and make me wonder if maybe she knew all along in that arc that she was pregnant and simply couldn’t get it out, foolishly thinking that her rescue meant she’d be able to tell him later, at a more private, meaningful moment. Instead she chose to tell him on the fuel pod that she loved him because it was easier for her. This concept is really appealing on an emotional level because it makes much more sense than Hera having never told the man she’s called “love” for years that she actually loved him, and breaking pregnancy news feels awkward even if the best of scenarios. But Kanan’s own response seems to indicate that her reticence to tell him she loves him is true, as do as their earlier arguments.

And beyond those moments, we don’t get a single other visual clue before Family Reunion – and Farewell that Hera has any knowledge of being pregnant—no physical fatigue, nausea, or bloating that we can see, and no abdominal guarding (not even once) or holding back during fight scenes, even though she would have been a few weeks farther along and quite likely symptomatic. And while her belly wouldn’t show for quite a while since she is pretty tall, the show makes a pretty big point about just how flat her stomach is right up until the end. Combining those reasons with the evidence that supports her knowing only in the finale, and I can’t see that being the case.

Well, that’s all she wrote! Ultimately, these are my personal opinions, and they require some fill-in-the-blanks guesswork that others may not agree with. But their relationship arc as a whole and characters as individuals make more sense to me through the lens of what we know at the end, and hopefully some of you will find this useful as well!

[gondalsqueen]

Chapters: 18/18 Fandom: Star Wars: Rebels Rating: Explicit Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla, Ketsu Onyo/Sabine Wren, Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios Characters: Hera Syndulla, C1-10P | Chopper, Original Characters, Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, Alexsandr Kallus, CT-7567 | Rex, Mart Mattin, Wedge Antilles, Ketsu Onyo, Jacen Syndulla, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Ackbar (Star Wars), Lando Calrissian, Jan Dodonna, Ahsoka Tano Additional Tags: Pregnancy, vague mentions of abortion, future character death in the background, Season/Series 04, Established Relationship, Oral Sex, Chair Sex, Table Sex, sex during pregnancy, chapter 2 has lots of sex, Secrets, the best pilot in the galaxy, flying combat, character injury, canon torture, flight of the defender, rebel assault, Jedi Night, Major character death - Freeform, Grief, Morning Sickness, Counseling, Masturbation, Dreams, Traditions, Space family, Inappropriate bets, Lothal, Shopping, down time, Space Combat, Battle of Scarif, Rogue One - Freeform, hammerhead corvette!, Yavin 4, Stardust - Freeform, Alderaan, Death Star, labor, Childbirth, domestic life, Lothwolves, Dogfight - Freeform, Hoth, did i mention babies yet?, Babies!, One baby, Work/Life Balance, Advice, Bounty Hunters, Capture, this story has it all apparently, Return of the Jedi, Second Death Star, Existential Anxiety, parenting, Breakups, wine and cheesecake, wine and cheesecake needs its own tag, battle of endor, Battle for Coruscant, forces of destiny: an imperial feast, The New Republic - Freeform, Quests, letting go, Travel, ask me no questions i'll tell you no lies, but one of these days you'll get a surprise Summary: The end. Kind of. 

...

Something had happened to Ezra out there, something he wasn’t ready to talk about until after this vacation was over. None of them pried. He was...different, in a lot of ways. Grown up. He finally believed in his own adequacy. With that confidence came an edge of brooding that reminded her of Kanan, though. Hera hoped he stuck around where they could support him, whatever he was facing.

In other ways he was still their Ezra—surprisingly predictable given all the time that had passed, and still the baby of the crew until they adjusted their thinking and changed the way they treated him accordingly.

To no one’s surprise, he and Jacen got along well. Their bonding mostly consisted of wrestling, with some sword fighting and a little chase for variety. Hera could have done without the just-before-bed play that infallibly kept Jacen awake and hyper. She didn’t say anything, though, because the two of them had a lot of time to make up for.  

Tonight Jacen was trying to push Ezra into Alexsandr’s small fishpond. Since Ezra vastly outweighed him he was failing, but he made up for it by practically strangling his opponent in the process — by accident, Hera was pretty sure. Really, Ezra had bought this when he picked Jacen up off the ground and threw him over his shoulder.

Oh, and that was a knee in the face.

“Ow!” Ezra protested. “Kid, you are deadly!” He twisted out from under Jacen and somehow they both ended up on their feet, facing each other. Quick as a flash, Ezra tapped Jacen’s shoulder.

“Hey!”

“Block me, then. Like this.” He showed Jacen how to bring his hands up in front of him and deflect the blows. Then he tapped Jace’s knee. “Got you! This is how you block with your feet. Try to tap my knees.”

“Your shoulders, too!”

“Sure, if you can reach.”

Hera watched her son eye a nearby boulder. She hoped he was planning to climb on it and not throw it at Ezra.

Then they both went at each other, jumping towards a shoulder or knee and dashing out again, blocking on one side and darting in on the other. Ezra went easy on Jacen, but he sped up as they played and Jace kept pace with him.

The whole thing ended when Jacen got sick of it, yelled “ATTACK!” and somersaulted across the ground towards his target. He bumped harmlessly against Ezra’s legs, but in the attempt not to step on him Ezra backpedalled and, with a whirling of arms, ended up in the water.

Hmm. Somehow they had both ended up in the water.

“Bathtime!” Hera called.

“It’s not!”

“It is, in fact, a solid hour past BEDtime.”

Ezra hit the shower in Zeb’s place while Hera scrubbed the slime off of Jacen in the Ghost’s fresher. Forty-five minutes later they’d finished showering, cleaning teeth, a snack that he didn’t ask permission to get, and teeth a second time, and they were cuddled together on Jacen’s bunk reading their nightly chapter of whatever novel Jace had picked. Since he’d gotten old enough to understand them, he’d mostly chosen from a children’s series of adventure stories about — guess what? — Jedi. Hera, remembering her own childhood, couldn’t blame him.

She read: “Shuyen closed her eyes and took a deep breath, reaching out to the Force as she fell. She could feel the air rushing past her. The wind whipped at her face roughly, but it wasn’t enough to hold her up…”

Sabine passed by the door and stopped to listen for a minute. “Are you reading Knights of the Old Republic to him?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sending mixed messages, don’t you think?”

“He likes it,” Hera told her, aware of how defensive she sounded. “It’s a good story. Who am I to tell him what to like?”

Sabine held her hands up. “Fair enough. Carry on.”

Hera finished the chapter, the Jedi who had fallen off the cliff while being chased by Sith warriors arriving unscathed back at the temple. “That’s a good stopping place for tonight,” she told Jacen, smoothing his hair back. He’d started to grow it out and they were both learning how to manage the tangles that was causing, but right now it was clean and brushed and smelled like shampoo, and she breathed in the scent gratefully.

He nestled into to her side. “Mama?”

“Yes?”

“Is Rex going to come back?”

“No, baby, Rex isn’t going to come back.”

“But Ezra came back.”

“Ezra wasn’t dead, love,” she told him gently. “Nobody comes back from the dead.” She paused for a moment to let that sink in, then continued, “I know it’s hard. It hurts for me, too.”

“I like Ezra.” He was trying to think something out. Hera waited. “But...I’d rather have Rex.”

“I can understand that.”

“But that’s mean of me, right?”

“Well…” she answered as honestly as she could. “You don’t want someone to die. You just miss the person you love. I think it’s very normal. Probably not the best idea to mention it to Ezra, though. It might hurt his feelings.”

He nodded and she tucked him into bed with a song and a kiss. “Sleep,” she told him. “You are exhausted. Go to sleep.”

“Okay,” Jacen said around a big yawn.

Sneaking out of the room a moment later she passed by the open doorway of Ezra’s bunk and caught a snatch of conversation. “...her turn for a while,” Sabine was saying. Then Ezra: “Coruscant is good place to stay, anyway. We’re going to need to talk about defenses. Maybe exploratory missions, but that might be a bad idea. IF they even decide to believe me.”

Keep moving, Hera, she told herself. She went to the cockpit to give the monitors one last check for the evening and tried to remember that Sabine and Ezra were adults and it was perfectly reasonable for them to live on whatever planet they wanted to. But maybe, maybe, maybe she’d get them back for a while. It was worth hoping.

Ezra joined her a few minutes later, a mug of warm hubba juice in each hand. “Best place to watch the sunset,” he explained. The summer sunsets on Lira San were amazing, oranges and purples breaking through the thick cloud cover. Hera swung the copilot’s seat around for him and he passed her a cup.

“Two more days and then Lothal, right?” he asked.

“If that’s still what you want.”

“Yeah. Sabine says it’s changed a lot. I can’t even remember before the Empire came anymore.”

Hera smiled. “It’s a good place. Not perfect, but Azadi made it pretty welcoming even before the Emperor fell.”

“You guys were there a lot.”

“Second home, but it will be better with you back.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, looking like his teenage self for the moment of the gesture. “Everything’s different, but it’s really good BEING back. I’m still trying to...fit in, I guess.”  

“Hey. You do fit in,” Hera told him, giving the chair a little kick to spin him towards her. “You’re one of ours. And Jace loves having you around. Chop and I are too busy to play with him as much as he’d like, and it’s been a while since we’ve had anyone else on the Ghost.”

“Yeah, Ezra Bridger, Jedi Knight, hero to six-year-olds everywhere.” He rolled his eyes.

Hera laughed. “At first that was the draw, sure. But he had a lot of...anxiety, too. He’d heard stories about you his whole life and he knew how important you were to all of us, and to have you standing before him in the flesh…” She shrugged. “But now I don’t think you’re Ezra Bridger, Jedi Knight. I think you’re his friend.”

“He’s really great, Hera. Thinks he can do anything. He...reminds me of you that way.”

She sighed. “He didn’t know you were a Jedi.”

“Okay.”

“He doesn’t know Kanan was a Jedi.”

A pause. “Okay.” Ezra didn’t push. Once he would have pushed.

“The hand game — those were forms,” Hera said. “Lightsaber forms. I’ve seen you practice them with Kanan.”

“Yeah, well…” Ezra ran his hand over the back of his hair awkwardly. “They’re kind of drilled into me, so I guess I just go there automatically when it comes to fighting. Is...that all right?”

“It’s all right,” she said, picking at the fraying edge of the seat cushion. “It’s good. There are so many things I’ve wanted to ask you about that.”

“About lightsaber forms?”  

She shook her head. “Ezra, I know this seems like a subject change, but...were you happy as a child? Or were you...confused?”

“What do you mean? I had kind of a rotten childhood.”

“Before that. When you were small, with your parents, and you could do things that nobody could explain. Did it confuse you or upset you?”

He considered her words carefully. “Let me think.” After a solid minute of silence, he said, “No. I heard things sometimes that I knew were true, and my mom said they were only my imagination. I think that’s not rare for kids, though. It’s just that in my case, they actually WERE true. The rest of the time, it was just fun to run and jump off of things without worrying about how I was going to land, or to know that people were probably going to believe whatever outrageous lie I told. Stuff like that. Hera… Jacen’s definitely Force sensitive. Does he use any of those abilities?”

“Oh…” she laughed to cover her worry. “Yes.” She’d watched for signs all of his life and could give a detailed list of ‘yes’es ‘no’s and ‘maybe’s. “He’s always been good at picking up moods, but I think he’s just a smart, social kid. Sometimes he knows things that haven’t happened yet, but only in a vague way — he has a feeling that someone’s coming to visit, or he knows we’ll find something around the next corner. He can climb and jump off of anything and he somehow hasn’t broken a bone yet. I don’t mean normal child risk-taking. You saw him take a dive off the Ghost the other day. And then there are the animals that seem to follow him around like he’s some kind of magnet.”

Ezra laughed.

“...which I blame you for,” she added.

“How is that my fault?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet, but the similarity is striking.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“I don’t want him to be a Jedi,” she said more seriously. “I don’t even want him to be a half-Jedi, partially trained. The Force asks...too much. We know how that ends and I won’t give him up that way. But… if I refuse to let him train when it’s available to him, he’s just going to do it anyway, and he’ll end up doing it behind my back, without my support. Or running off.” She thought of her own childhood. “It’s not my place to hold him back if that’s what he wants.”

“Well...does he WANT to be a Jedi?”

“He’s six years old. Every six-year-old wants to be a Jedi.”

“He’d be good at it. Kind. Flexible. Reminds me of someone else I knew.”

“Me too,” she admitted. “That scares me.”

“Hmm.” Ezra thought about that. “There’s not exactly a trade school for Jedi Knights. The few of us left with any ability have no idea what we’re doing. He’ll probably end up using those talents, but using them in some other field.”

“Maybe. But I don’t want to keep him locked away from the world — locked away from himself — because I’m afraid.”

“Hera, you’re not afraid of anything.”

She sighed and stopped picking at the worn corner of the pilot’s chair so he could see her hands shaking. “That’s not true, and I have changed.”

Ezra frowned. “You want me to train him?” he asked. “Is that what this conversation is about?”

“Not...yet. Not now. But I don’t want anybody else to train him.”

“Luke Skywalker is talking about starting a school.”

“NO. I like Luke. He’s a good kid. But he doesn’t understand the dangers… He hasn’t walked that path, and he doesn’t know what it takes to guide your student safely instead of just following the rules.”

“Hera, I don’t know either.”

“That’s okay. Falling is fine as long as there’s someone to catch you. You would never let anything bad happen to him.”

“Hmph.” Ezra crossed his arms and looked out at the clouds, that stone expression on his face. “I wish I could promise that.”

...

From Lira San they traveled to Lothal. Hera let Sabine show Ezra the sights because she had something else to show Jacen.

The bombed-out Imperial hangar wasn’t hard to reach, despite being perched on one of the dolmens at the edge of Capital City. If you took a shuttle, that is. Hera parked the Phantom halfway up the mountain and made them walk the rest of the way because “it will be fun!” Forty minutes into the uphill hike, Jacen wasn’t finding it particularly fun.

“Why couldn’t we just FLY up there?” he asked, perilously close to a whine.

“Because we’re taking a nice hike together and it’s going to be more enjoyable to see if you make it there yourself than if you just fly up and park.”

Poor kid — his hair was a sweaty wreck. “To be clear,” he said. “I AM getting a real birthday party tomorrow, with friends and cake and stuff, right?”

“Padawan’s honor. Sabine even made you guys those robes and staffs so you could dress up as High Jedi. Though I still don’t know what a High Jedi is.”

“It’s like a really wise, powerful Jedi,” Jacen explained. “Kind of like a wizard.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“It’s from Rangers of the Force.”

“I didn’t know you could read books that hard.”

“I listened to it.”

“Oh. Okay. Look, we made it.” Hera climbed the short flight of steps and crawled over the rubble blocking what had once been the workers’ entrance. Then she waited for Jacen to do the same.

“Whew!”

“It’s cooler up here.” Jacen spread himself dramatically on the floor.

“Yeah, we’re out of the sun.” She handed him the canteen and waited for him to take a long drink. “You recovered?” He nodded. “Good. Come see what Sabine did.”

He saw the mural as soon as he looked up, and his reaction was everything Hera had hoped for. A shout, and he rushed up to get a closer look. “It’s you guys!”

“Yeah.”

“You look like heroes! Like you’re from a holoshow.”

“Sabine makes good art.”

His brow creased in that thinking look. “Were you heroes?”

“Yes,” Hera admitted. “We were.”

“Sabine,” he pointed. “Ezra. His head looks small in this picture. Zeb and Chop. Hey, look at these lothcats! There’s you. Where am I?”

Hera touched her mid-section in the picture, right on the buttons of her flight suit. “Here.”

“So I came with you when you were heroes?”

“Sure.”

“So I helped save Lothal?”

“Let’s say you were along for the ride.”

But now he was pointing above mural-Hera’s shoulder. “That’s Dad.”

“Yeah,” she said softly.

“I don’t think I look very much like him.”

“Well, you’re shorter.”

“Hey!”

She grinned at him, but he shook his head and said, “Uh-uh. You’re sad.”

“Only a little sad.”

“You miss him.”

“Yes,” Hera said honestly, “but that’s not why I brought you here today. I need to show you something else, something… kind of secret.”

“Okay.”

Hera took a portable projector from her bag and placed it on the floor. “Come sit by me. Seven years old is big enough to see this.” They sat cross-legged on the ground and Hera switched on the projector.

“That’s Dad!”

“Yes.”

“What’s he got?”

Kanan was fitting together two metal tubes. He gave them a practiced twist, then ignited the lightsaber.

Jacen lost it. “WHAT?! Where did he GET that?”

“Hi, kid,” Kanan said to the recorder. “Thought I’d go through a few practice drills here, in case you ever need to see them when I’m not around.” He was talking to Ezra, but Jacen didn’t know that. Hera skipped past the part where he demonstrated the basic techniques and on to the segment where he showed the moves in practice by fighting ten combat remotes, leaping into the air, twisting, deflecting shots… He was using the Ghost’s hold as his staging area, which had irritated Hera to no end at the time because those remotes were firing live blaster bolts. The flip from the ground to the platform four meters above his head was awfully impressive, though, she had to admit.

“How did he DO that?”

Another of him and Ezra training together, both blindfolded, going through forms. Hera watched Kanan’s shoulder rotate as the blade spun, the twist of hips as he altered his stance. It was so familiar and so long ago, all at the same time.

“Mama, tell me.” He knew, but he didn’t want to say it.

“He’s a Jedi, Jace. He was raised in the temple on Coruscant and sent out to fight during the Clone Wars. One of the last Jedi Knights.”

“But...” he trailed off.

“I know it’s a lot to take in. Do you want to see a little more?”

“Yes!”

She’d edited this compilation carefully so they got no footage of actual battles. Next Kanan was tossing Sabine in the air over and over, a little Sabine — she couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He’d throw her impossibly high, and then she’d twist in mid-air, draw her blasters, and fire at a target. Jacen laughed. “Ah-ha, they’re good!” Another of that terrible competition he’d had with Zeb, where Zeb picked up Imperial speeder bikes and threw them at Kanan, who caught every one in mid-air. Okay, that probably wasn’t the best thing to include. One of Hera herself cradled in Kanan’s arms, the laughter near the microphone indicating that Ezra was recording.

“Ready?” Kanan asked.

“Go,” Ezra told him.

Kanan jumped up the Ghost’s ladder one rung at a time, tilted impossibly backwards, holding her. Hera from long ago shrieked in laughter. “I get five credits when I do this, right?” Kanan asked.

“Cheating,” said Ezra’s voice.

“I did TELL you I could do it.” Thunk, up another ring. Thunk, up the next. “See, what you want to do is bend your knees…” Kanan explained, annoyingly pedantic. “Then you absorb most of the shock, especially when you have to land rough.” He rolled at the last moment, still holding Hera, and came up on his feet on the upper platform, neither of them worse for the wear.

“Hey!” Hera-from-the-vid protested. “Warn me!”

“Okay,” Kanan said. “Roll up in a ball, I’m going to toss you to Ezra now so he can practice.”

“No, no, wait!” Ezra yelled. “Wait, let me put the recorder down!” The image went sideways and the recorder died abruptly on the sound of their laughter.

Jacen was watching with a wistful, half-jealous expression. “Nobody ever told me he was a Jedi.”

“Well…” Hera considered. “What DID they tell you?”

“Zeb says he could drink a whole gallon of milk in five minutes without throwing up.”

“Yeah, only part of that is true. And don’t try it.”

“Sabine said he loved you the very most, and he’d never let anything in the whole galaxy hurt you.”

She took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm. “That is true.”

“And that he was a really good dad and he understood when people got upset or lost their temper and he wouldn’t yell at them.”

“That’s true too.”

“But he wasn’t really Sabine’s or Ezra’s dad, right?”

“No, but he...took care of them when they were kids. Big kids. And he taught them a lot of things.”

Jacen’s eyes lit with realization. “He taught Ezra how to be a Jedi! That’s why they were doing those slow moves with the lightsabers.”

Her kid was too smart.

But now he was mulling over something else. “...He was my dad.”

“Yes.”

“He never met me.”

“Technically, no, but he knew you were on the way.”

“How?”

“You know how you can tell where animals are, even the small ones? You found Alexsandr’s baby chicks when the rest of us were looking in the wrong place.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the Force, Jacen. He felt you like that before you were born. I’ll bet you guys had whole secret conversations, what do you think?”

Jacen shrugged, clearly pleased by the idea. “So how come you never told me he was a Jedi? And you COULD have told me, lots of times.”

There was the question she’d been waiting for. “Because it wasn’t safe, Jace. The Emperor killed all the Jedi, even the little kids. Only a few of them got away, and then they had to survive by hiding because the Emperor was still hunting.”

“But he died when I was little.”

“Yes, but being a Jedi is still not exactly safe.”

“You mean people are still hunting them?”

“No, I mean they’re still...heroes. Which is good, but it also means that bad guys don’t like them much. You have to learn to keep yourself safe when you’re a hero, and that takes time. I wanted to wait until you were big enough to understand that a little.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t want to be a Jedi.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. If you want to learn to be a Jedi when you get older, I’ll be right there with you. But I want you to understand that there’s always more to these stories than what you hear. And I don’t want you to think that fighting makes you a good person. I didn’t love your dad because he was a Jedi. I loved him because he was kind and funny and understanding, and he couldn’t bear to see anybody in pain without trying to help. And because he never gave up on people. I see a lot of those qualities in you already. You don’t need a lightsaber to be a good person.” Oh, great, now she was sad again.

And Jacen had picked up on it. “Were you scared when he died?”

“So scared. But what do we say?”

“Be afraid,” he said quietly, “but do it anyway.”

“Right.”

A wolf howled nearby, in the middle of the day.

“That’s a lothwolf?” Jacen asked.

Hera nodded. “I think they’re coming to see you. I don’t know why, though.”

“I do.”

“You do? Why?”

“They say goodbyes are over. It’s time for hellos.”  

[soibaremyskinandicountmysins]

Finally writing again... :)

Title Could This Be Perfection? Rating T Summary OMBaT outtake, Solara knew that she could never tell him, but she needed help, so she turned to the only person who she thought might help her. Warnings Violence, language, and some questionable humor. Disclaimer Why would Rick be posting fanfiction? Seriously, he'd just make another series for us to buy. (If you didn't get the sarcasm, I don't own anything you recognize.) Notes  Well, this won't help with the cliffhanger I left everyone on, but uh, at least there is something new to read?

Read on FanFiction.Net, AO3, or below.

Could This Be Perfection?

1

Getting pregnant hadn't been her first idea, but running away when she found out? Well, that one was her first idea, and the second and third idea. It wasn't that she didn't love Luke, but she wasn't entirely sure if she could trust him these days. She wasn't sure why, but he had been acting strangely ever since he had come back from his quest.

Solara wasn't sure, but she didn't really remember this. Sure he pulled away a bit, but she didn't think that it had been this bad. Maybe it was because she was older now and she saw things that she hadn't seen before, or he was just acting different around her because she wasn't some annoying ten-year-old desperately needing some kind of validation due to her father ignoring her.

Well, a part of her still desperately needed validation due to her father ignoring her, but she wasn't ten anymore. Her sadness had long since turned to anger, but if things were going the way that they did last time... Well, she could still be angry with her father and still fight for him at the same time. She'd rather be a knowing pawn versus an unknowing one. There was no way that Kronos would let her and Luke be together anyway.

So when her period was late, and the pregnancy test came out positive, she ran for it. She had no plan, no support to fall on, and no way to protect herself, but she ran anyway. If Kronos had already twisted his way into Luke's head, then there way no way she was going to let him know about her unborn child. She never once thought that Luke would hurt his own kid, but she didn't trust him to not take them away from her.

A week away from camp had passed relativity quickly and quietly. She hadn't been attacked, and no one had followed her either, so she thought that things were going well. At least they were until she came home to her crappy apartment and there was a god sitting on her couch.

"You chose the right time to leave," he said as he flipped through one of the books that she had lying around. It wasn't her's, just a loan from the library, but it made her uncomfortable to see someone so at home in hers. "He thinks that you just got tired of living at camp," he continued, "He has no idea about the little bundle of joy that you got cooking away in there." This was punctuated by a dismissive wave to her abdomen, and that made her even more uncomfortable than walking in to see someone lounging on her couch.

"How did you know?" she asked and finally stepped inside fully so that the door could shut behind her.

"My baby sister was nearby," he said dismissively, "She sometimes looks in on my kids. You're still considered pretty special, so she looked in on you. She was quite surprised to sense that you were pregnant."

"Wasn't my idea," she muttered, and edged towards her kitchen so that she could make some tea. "But, okay," she said. She held up a box of tea and showed it to him in question, he surprised her by nodding, but she pulled down two mugs anyway. She put enough water in the kettle for both of them, and then flipped the switch. "I'm still not sure why you're here though," she said, and she was slightly worried about pissing him off, but she'd happily blame pregnancy hormones. It didn't matter if that wasn't how it worked, it wasn't like he'd know anyway.

"I can't check in on my own daughter?" he asked.

Solara twitched. "You can," she said in a painfully neutral voice. The 'you never have before' was left unsaid.

He frowned, but he didn't say anything until the tea had been made and she was bringing over both mugs. He took the one she held out to him. "So, what is your plan when it comes to your kid?" he asked.

She sighed and sat on the couch next to him. She would have sat anywhere else, but she didn't have any chairs, and she wasn't going to sit on the floor in front of him. That was just way too much like submitting to him, and she might not be angry enough to fight against him, but she wasn't going to hand him even more power over her. "I don't have one," she said simply and took a cautious sip of her tea, "I left in a panic, and I haven't exactly thought beyond surviving for the next eight months."

He shrugged. There wasn't going to be help coming from him then. "You might want to," he said, "Eight months is not very long."

"I know," she said with a sigh.

2

Eight weeks along into her pregnancy, and it was only her father who had shown up out of the blue. If she actually could feel any kind of gratitude for him keeping his mouth shut about her, she would. She couldn't though. He always did something that inadvertently would piss her off, and she was quite happy to stick with one emotion when it came to him.

She still hadn't been attacked though. So tonight she was going to splurge for once. She was going to get some ice-cream, and she was going to get a movie to watch. Maybe it wasn't much, but two months and no attacks was pretty much a record for her. She almost thought that someone had set up wards around her apartment, but then she'd have to admit that one of the gods would care about her enough to do that, and that just wasn't something that she could comprehend.

Sure, some of them had taken an interest in her ever since she had dropped into this universe, but none had ever gone out of their way to protect her. Actually, she'd probably die of shock if any of them ever treated her like she either mattered, or was more than just an intriguing demigod who had appeared out of thin air. Though sometimes she wondered how they would treat her if they knew about the upcoming war. Probably not any different, but the thought usually was entertaining.

The movie sucked. The ice cream was great. She ended up sleeping on her couch from staying up too late after working for eight hours.

3

Eleven weeks in, and not once had she had to deal with anything strange yet. No weird cravings had driven her insane yet, and not once had she been subjected to any kind of nausea. She wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but her doctor, an older sibling actually, had told her that her baby was just fine, so she tried not to worry about the oddities of her pregnancy thus far. There were better things to worry about anyway.

Her father had decided to pay her another visit though.

"That's creepy as shit," she groaned when she woke up to see him sitting at the end of her bed watching her sleep. "Are you eating my cereal?" she asked a second later. Her eyes narrowed on the bowl in his hands. It was definitely one of her bowls, and she doubted that he'd actually bring his own food.

"We might not need mortal food to survive," he said after he swallowed his last bite, "But even gods can find Lucky Charms delicious."

"But it's mine," she protested. It was a terrible argument, but it had the advantage of being true. "And they're magically delicious."

He snorted and handed over a second bowl. It hadn't even gotten soggy yet, so she hoped that he hadn't been watching her for very long. (He was quite capable of making her a bowl before she woke up, but still have been there for hours.) "Got a plan now?" he asked.

She sighed and set the bowl on the night stand next to her bed before she sat up and picked up the bowl again. "No," she grunted, and then shoved a huge spoonful of cereal into her mouth.

He snorted. "You could ask for help," he said.

She glanced over at him in disbelief. "Who?" she asked. It was better than scoffing at him at least.

He grinned at her. "Oh, I'm sure you'll figure that part out."

While she was still trying to think of a reply, he drank the milk out of his bowl and disappeared. Surprisingly in the least flashy way that she had ever seen him do too. She might actually be proud of him for that.

She shook her head and smiled. So he could be tolerable at times, but that didn't mean that she was getting close to liking him. She wasn't into masochism.

4

Fourteen weeks in saw her starting to get stressed about what was going to happen after she gave birth. She also had a bet going on with her doctor about whether or not it was a boy or a girl. He thought that it would be a boy because Apollo and Hermes mostly had male children, but she just knew that her child was a girl. She'd love them either way, but she just knew that it was a girl.

She had also begun to draw up charts of pros and cons on which god or goddess to ask for help from. The problem was that she wasn't sure who would care enough to help, and could also work around the Ancient Laws enough to help. Her father was right out, and even she admitted that he'd care about his granddaughter. He couldn't help her though, so she didn't bother to entertain the thought.

Artemis might help her, but she also had her Hunters, so Solara was reluctant to ask.

Ares, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus were just a clusterfuck of envy, jealousy, and rage that she had no desire to even go near.

Asking Zeus was a joke. After Luke revealed himself, she doubted that her child would survive, and she wasn't going to gamble on a fraction of a chance. (Not that she believed that there was one.)

She seriously doubted that Hera or Demeter would help her. She wasn't entirely sure why, but she doubted it all the same. She really didn't have a very good grasp on how they would regard her situation anyway.

She wasn't sure if Poseidon knew that she existed. Though that would be hilarious. 'Hey, can you help me protect my kid, who also happens to be the child of the guy who's going to try and kill your son multiple times?', yeah, right. Poseidon might be the most laid back of the gods, but he was still a god.

Solara groaned just thinking about the rest of them and gave the charts a disgusted look before she set them on fire. They weren't going to help her figure out who to ask for help. She'd rather just write all their names down and pick one out of a hat at this point.

5

For being twenty weeks along, she wasn't all that big. She might have been worried if she hadn't remembered that her mom had said that she hadn't gotten that big during her pregnancy with Solara, so she just ate when she was hungry. Her doctor almost looked like he wanted to lecture her, but he kept his mouth shut as long as she and the baby were in perfect health.

She had also told her doctor to keep his mouth shut on the sex of the baby, but judging by his pouting face when he looked, she assumed that she won the bet. She'd collect after she gave birth to her daughter. She was actually starting to get kind of excited to meet little Alice.

6

At twenty-three weeks she caved and asked Hermes for help. She also asked Hestia. They both agreed to help her with her daughter, and to hide her existence from not only the other gods, but also Luke, and what would eventually be the Titan's army.

Hermes wasn't too thrilled with keeping the knowledge of Alice from Luke, but he also understood that as the mother, it was ultimately Solara's choice. It was a choice that she hated. A choice that she hadn't even wanted to make, and she wished more than anything that she could trust Luke with Alice, but she couldn't.

Hestia didn't even bother to voice her opinion. Solara wasn't sure why, but she was also grateful for it. She'd had enough of people telling her what to do and what to think. She knew that keeping Alice from Luke wasn't fair to him, but it went back to trust. She knew that Hestia wasn't comfortable with lying, but Hestia also loved her family. The goddess would do almost anything to protect every member of her family when asked to. For that, Solara would always be thankful.

7

On the twenty sixth week of her pregnancy Solara was about ready to make a run for it as soon as she gave birth. She had heard that Luke was looking for her, and she was utterly terrified that he'd find her. She knew that there was no way that he'd ever let her keep Alice from him. Not with all of the issues that he had with his own father 'abandoning' him.

Solara wondered if maybe just letting him find her would end well. She could always lie about who the father was. Up until Alice was born at least, then he'd know.

No, staying gone was better. If he died like he had before, then there would be slightly less guilt for him to deal with. He never needed to know that he was leaving a daughter behind. If he survived...

Well, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it. She doubted that she'd have to though.

8

Alice was born at thirty two weeks. The stress had triggered labor, and by some miracle both Solara and Alice made it through okay.

9

Eight months later Solara packed up what few things she had accumulated over the last year and a half, and moved across the country. She'd been on her own for too long, and wile she knew that Hermes and Hestia were still looking after her and Alice, she just didn't feel safe where she was.

Though why she chose Florida of all places to move to, she had no idea. She hated the heat, the mugginess, and the city she lived in. Honestly, she should have at least gone to Orlando so that she could go to Disney world. Not she would have gone, but she would have liked to know that the option as there.

The only thing she did like, was the fact that she was able to live close to the beach. Her house wasn't that close, but she could walk to it if she so chose.

Solara grew to be happy in Florida. She never grew to like the weather, but she was happy with the life she was building there with her daughter. Alice had tons of friends in her pre-K class, and Solara herself had a few friends at the school where she was subbing. It wasn't a glamorous life, but it was theirs.

Best of all, no one even thought to look for her there. Her hatred of Florida was well known, and no one ever thought that she'd willingly go there. She was reliably informed that she was safe as long as she was there. Even when Luke was docked there waiting for the Fleece, he never thought to search for her there.

10

Alice was just turning six when Solara remembered that the war was coming to a head. Percy was months away from turning sixteen, and she knew that her time in hiding was coming to an end.

It was time to go back to New York.

11

Hestia and Hermes helped her move into an apartment building close to Olympus. As soon as the battle would start she was to bring Alice to Hestia. She would be kept safe while Solara fought in the battle, and if she jumped again, she had a blood oath from Hermes to keep her safe as she grew up. Whether that meant raising her for Solara, or just placing her with a family or at camp, Solara had no idea, but she knew that Alice would be safe.

Her darling daughter would grow up safe, happy, and loved. Solara couldn't ask for more than that. Even if she really wanted to.

12

The battle came. Solara hugged her daughter goodbye, and she joined Camp Half-Blood's forces in the fight. She prayed to the Fates themselves for the chance to stay behind after the battle, and if that wasn't a choice, then at least a chance to say goodbye to her daughter one last time before she jumped.

Thankfully she had been up on Olympus when the last wave hit.

Solara dropped everything she was doing to run to find Alice one last time. She knew that it might very well be the last time she ever saw her, and she'd rather die than to lose this chance. She would do every thing she could to make sure Alice knew how much she loved her.

Then she raced off to the throne room. She had to know.

13

"You denied me my child!" Kronos/Luke yelled.

"I know," Solara breathed, and she didn't bother to do much more than block his attack with her sword. There really wasn't much else for her to say or do. "I'm so sorry."

Kronos shoved Luke back again and turned to go after Percy. She doubted that he had any intentions of keeping her alive, but he wanted her to suffer later, not now. He was going to use Alice to hurt her, and fighting her wouldn't do anything for him now.

Solara stayed on the sidelines as much as she could. She helped drag an injured Annabeth away from the fight, but she didn't get much more involved than that. Luke would never listen to her with how angry he was with her, and she could only apologize to him for that.

Annabeth got through to him though.

Solara was happy for that, and she was able to apologize to Luke for hiding Alice from him, and she shared a picture of his daughter with him before he died.

She began to cry again, but before any of her tears could fall...

The world around her disappeared.

End Notes *ducks flying objects* Sorry! (For what you ask... Well, most of it.)

At present time chapter 12 has only about one sentence to it, but I'll be working on it. I have no idea when another update will happen, but my muse is slowly returning. (Maybe it's just too cold during the winter for me to write?)

Well, if any of you want to keep track of what I've been doing, then stalk my YouTube channel (link in bio), and stalk my twitter/tumblr/instagram (links in bio).

Title from the song Pretty Lies by VERIDIA

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