#either that or me touching her reminds her of the incident and she now has a trauma and is upset

[theyungihven]

The Demon's Infatuation • Sex Demon Yunho

CHAPTER 1

↬ pairing: dom demon yunho x sub female reader

↬ genre: smut, romance

↬ warnings: breeding kink, cream pie, pain kink, unprotected sex, hip bruises, biting kink, slut-shaming, choking kink, hard core dom yunho, yunho is OBSSESSED,

↬ word count: 1.2K+

↬ author’s note: this full novel length fic is a dedication to my boyfriend alex and the demon that visited me at night two years ago every full moon night

Summary :

It might sound crazy to say that I've become a demon's infatuation and you might ask me, 'how did you even end up in this place?' Well well, even I don't know how it happened and whenever I ask him or confront him about our first meeting, he avoids the topic by sensually kissing me and making me forget about the question with an orgasm. I can't leave him because I can't live without him either. He is as if an intoxication I cannot get out of my body and desperately need in order to stay sane. He says, 'no one will love you like I do, darling' but how do I tell him that no one has ever loved me and no one ever can because my soul belongs to him, so does my heart and they worship him day and night.

She's just an innocent heartbroken girl who just wants to be loved for once despite her flaws and imperfections and he's a wicked demon who wants nothing but to corrupt her soul to till all she can think of him. What can go wrong if he takes a little interest in her? Heaven along with Hell are not going to collide with the Earth, or will they?

What could exactly go wrong if I sit alone under the full moon at midnight?

What could exactly go wrong if I sit alone under the full moon at midnight? Nothing. So I don't give it a second thought and make myself comfortable in the chair placed out in the balcony, bathing in the moonlight. The faint melody of my favourite song plays in the background through my phone as it echoes through the balcony.

The balcony is my only safe space these days. It provides me comfort and solace when I desire it the most, in moments of utter hopelessness. It sports a pretty popular viewing and gossiping spot for my family on the first floor as it opens up towards the roadside. It also serves as a common concrete stairway to the rooftop.

The moon attempts to brighten up my gloomy mood as I dwell into my sadness. The cool breeze, which is as light as a feather, ruffles the tall green trees lining the streets and also caresses my cheek. It reminds me that I haven't been completely abandoned by this world and also that there are still some forces which appreciate my existence. 

Now, I cannot hope but wish that someone touched me in a similar manner. I wish someone held me like a mother holds her dear child, like a lover holds his significant other, like a child holds onto his dying pet. 

However, no matter how much I try to forget the incident that happened this afternoon, I can't seem to get it out of my head. I cannot get that picture of the people I once considered to be my friends, mocking me for liking a guy. I cannot forget the words they called me just for daring to like the most popular guy of my grade. 

They make me feel as if having a romantic interest in a boy or just simply liking someone is the biggest sin one could commit on the Earth.

My body shakes as the turbulent storm inside me rises to the surface and brews a great tsunami. It drenches my cheeks and my face as it brings destruction and mayhem along with it in the face of a heart-wrenching pain in my chest, hopelessness and a wave of absolute sadness which hits me like a speeding truck. Somehow, the hopelessness inspires me and convinces my mind to beg whoever deity is willing to listen to me. 

So, I do. 

“To whoever is listening,” I manage to say despite the water rising in my chest as it tries to suffocate me by drowning me in the lake of sadness but I need to beg the deity. So, I continue with my remaining energy, “I want a guy, who will love me for who I  am, despite my flaws and imperfections.” 

The dam breaks as the sea of sadness drowns me in it and finds an outlet through my eyes and the salty water flows along with my last words, “I don’t care about how he looks, or even if he’s a human!” At the end of the sentence, I end up on my knees, upon the cold white marble of the moonlit balcony, as the still water gushes out of my eyes and my body trembles like a tree against strong winds. 

An eerie silence follows, as I recover from the tsunami’s devastating damage but it isn’t long when I hear a deep chuckle, which is so crisp and clear as if the person is sitting right beside me. I look up and around to identify the potential maker of the noise, but end up meeting with disappointment when I fail to do so, but it doesn’t fail in sending a chill down my spine and my body on high alert. 

“Hello? Anyone here?” I say, but come to regret the decision of doing so in the next second when a shadow appears out of nowhere, sitting on the stairs leading to the rooftop. It leans back, placing its hand on the step as its lips curve up in a creepy smile. 

Its eyes glow a bright red and just one look at them is enough to send chills down my spine. When my body registers its glowing red eyes and black shadowy figure, its first instinct is to recite holy verses. I do as my mother taught me to wherever I encounter the child of the banished angel. However, I fail to pronounce them properly, as my tongue fails at cooperating with my mind and my body screams RUN. 

I do. I run, for my dear life.

I run inside as my fight or flight system takes over with the adrenaline coursing through my veins, at the highest concentration ever in my life. My poor heart tries to keep up with all the sudden increase in cardiac output, but the picture of his creepy smile still lingers in my mind,   as if imprinted onto my neurons. 

The first thing my itsy bitsy brain thinks of as a distraction is the radio my grandfather made for me. I turn it on, tuning the dial to search for stations while expecting some soothing tunes to play and it does. I breathe a sigh of relief when the radio plays Sparks by Coldplay, my all time favourite.

However my peace evaporates into thin air when the radio goes off tune and randomly switches channels only to land upon the frequency 66.60.

An eerie voice follows, which says, “you cannot run away from me, kitten.” 

I don’t even dare to touch the radio and follow my instincts this time. I run downstairs to my family who look at me as if they saw the stars when the sun rules the skies. I am breathless as I stand in front of my mother, who looks at me in surprise while I struggle to form sentences in my head as I sweat ridiculously.

“You look like you saw a ghost.”

“A cat.”

“Yeah, yeah, a shapeshifting cat.”

“As if anything of such kind exists in this world.”

“Dumb humans”

TAGLIST

@yunhogrippers @strbryjoonie @haram-monbebe @atinism @yvnhoos @st4rhwa @lomons

[oh-koenig-my-koenig]

Fit for a King - "Jealousy looks good on you, Colonel" (dual POV)

Fit for a King - Masterlist

After the incident last week, König is pent up, all he can think about is f*cking Müller and it’s making him uneasy, so he snaps at people and is a grumpy mess in general. It really doesn’t help that she is becoming friends with one of the other recruits. Müller has got enough of this and a plan to get the Colonel up and working properly again before their next mission… (5.5k words)

a/n: this got kinda long, but i wanted to give them the proper first time they deserved... also we love a good switch moment around here

(NSFW under the cut, explicit scenes)

König POV:

I’m so wound tight I can’t even think straight. All I can think about is Müller and her perfect fucking pussy. But I restrained myself from visiting her again because well… it didn’t fucking help the last time. Tasting her again, feeling her come against my mouth, just made everything worse. Ich bin so knietief in der Scheiße (I’m so knee-deep in shit). The others that are getting on my nerves are not helping either. Horangi buggers me to talk about what happened last week (and with who), Ridgeback is on my ass because of the next mission and one of the recruits keeps hanging around Müller which is driving me up the wall. And I can’t let any of this get to me.

Today is training day and all of the old and new operators are running drills, Horangi and I are riding them hard, not letting up on the tempo. They’re currently crawling through the mud on the obstacle course, the people leading in the race already climbing up the ropes of the tower. With satisfaction I see Müller amongst them, right beside Aksel and the other new recruit, I think, his name is Santos. Spanish dude specialized in bomb defusal. When I see him, he’s almost always talking to her. A thing that was hard to ignore before, but keeps grinding my gears, the closer I get to her. He’s more like the guy she should be with. Younger, easy to talk to, handsome (definitely not hiding under a mask if he doesn’t have to), makes the others laugh (definitely making Müller laugh as well), shit like that.

Not like her Colonel who was perving on her before, who behaved like a total asshole when he first met her, almost turned her into human mush when he ran into her. Who basically stalked her, ever since… she turned up here. Whose idea to give her comfort was to finger her until she came in his arms. Which was totally selfish even if I told myself that it was just for her pleasure. Who did the same shit again when begging to eat her out. Who made her come until sweet hot tears streamed down her face. And who dreamt of nothing more than making her take his dick. And whose guilt is eating him up right now.

Now I’m standing here, barking orders at the team because that’s what I know how to do. That’s where I’m most comfortable.

Horangi leans to me: “I think, we can let them to the feed trough, huh, Köni?” Köni. He always calls me that. And after all this time I stopped trying to dissuade him from this pet name. It’s kind of endearing, really. “Fine.”, I grunt, then I call out to them. “Feeding time!” They all scramble to get to the mess tent first, to get something to eat. Gulasch is on the menu today, a beef stew from Hungary which always reminds me of home because it was one of the dishes my grandma made regularly on Sundays. I sigh. And follow them. My eyes are on Müller again in an instant. She’s standing in line, with Santos and Aksel, and they’re all chatting and laughing. I hear her contagious laughter which makes me smile, but nobody sees anyway how the sides of my mouth turn up. She’s sweating and there’s dirt all over her arms and front, her cheeks have a slight red tint to them from the physical exertion which looks oh so similar to the blush that covers her face when she’s all hot and bothered. Verdammt noch mal (Damnit).

Her laugh chimes up again and then I see her touching Santos’ arm for just a moment and the glance they exchange… It’s been a while since I felt the ravaging of jealousy in my gut, but it’s familiar enough, and I have to slowly breathe through it to calm myself down. Get a grip of yourself. This woman doesn’t owe you anything. It’s all in your head, du Hund (you dog). She thought you fucking hated her for the first few weeks that she was here. “What’s gotten into you, Colonel?”, I hear Horangi’s voice from right beside me. He only calls me Colonel to get on my nerves, it infuriates me even more (have I mentioned how fucking unlikeable I am even to the people that like me?). I shoot him a look and he just laughs. He knows not to take me too seriously, ever. “God damn, who were you looking at with those eyes? I don’t see any dead bodies.”, he just keeps on joking and follows my gaze that strays back to Müller, Santos and Torvald. Because I can’t stop looking at her. They’re laughing again and the faint sound of her laughter dissipates my frown, even if it’s somebody else that’s making her laugh.

“Why would you…” His sentence trails off as the gears in his head are turning. “Has that something to do with… last week?”, he asks. “When, you know-“ I shoot him another look in hope to make him stop speaking. It does not work. ”Müller?! Are you fucking kidding?”, he says, way too loud for my liking. “Keep your voice down, G’schissener (shithead).”, I press through clenched teeth. He looks at me incredulously. “오 젠장 (oh shit), for real? Fraternizing… you?!“, he asks. I don’t dignify it with an answer, ignoring him completely now, but my eyes rest on her again. He just giggles, and I sigh deeply. I’m so knee-deep in shit. Who could’ve thought that the mouse really can fell the tree?

______________________________________________________________

I don’t need to look around to know that his eyes are on me. Every time I find him in my point of view, our gazes meet because he’s already there, watching me. And it shouldn’t get me all hot and bothered. But those gazes are the only thing I get. He’s avoiding me otherwise after he visited me last week. I try to play it down like it might have been a one-time thing, but then I catch him looking at me again and the way I heat up under his gaze alone… It can’t be a one-off. Also, when he cornered me and told me what he wanted to do to me, he didn’t stop at eating me out. So, why would he now? The last few days I’ve kind of waited to get cornered by him again, for him to steal me away in a moment when we both can’t take it anymore and just need to rip each other’s clothes off. But that didn’t happen. Quite the opposite. He avoided me at every possibility.

My eyes scan the line behind me and there he is. Standing tall, half a head taller than everybody else. Horangi is right beside him and he’s all upbeat and chatty (a state I’ve only ever seen König in when he’s drunk or fighting), but the man himself looks like Drei-Tage-Regenwetter (a term I still remember quite fondly from my German lessons because three-day-rain is nothing for a norse men, but apparently, they don’t like weather like that on the continent). Oh, he’s in a bad mood and we’re on the other end of it, feeling the effects in today’s drills. When we make eye contact, the familiar tingles erupt all over my body and even across the distance I feel the heat in his stare.

Aksel chuckles beside me. “What has gotten up the Colonel’s ass?”, he comments. More like who’s ass has he not gotten into. I think to myself. That’s pent-up sexual frustration if I’ve ever seen it. “I got my ass handed to me yesterday.”, Santos pipes up. “In training. I actually thought he was gonna rip me a new one.” He shakes his head, but his grin doesn’t falter. “It made me so nervous, I actually cut the wrong wire. Which only made him madder.” We laugh. “Oh no, Santos.”, I say as I’m still laughing. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.” He just grins at me. “Ah don’t worry, if I can defuse bombs when the literal diavolo is spewing insults at me, I can do anything.” My eyebrows shoot up as his words register. Goddamn, the literal devil. Man, I don’t want to get on his bad side. I glance at him and his eyes – again – are already on me. But, oh boy, do I want to get on his good side.

“I’m gonna talk to him later.”, I simply say. The two men look at me in disbelief. “Like what?”, Aksel wants to know. I shrug. “I don’t know, ask him what’s going on. We can’t have him wired up like this when we’re about to go on a mission next week – which he is going to lead.” – “Greit, du blir gal. Maybe try it after he had a few drinks and is babbling Austrian nonsense.”, Aksel suggests. I laugh, a hollow sound that doesn’t reach my eyes. I know when someone’s drinking away their troubles, I’ve been there before. “Good idea.”, I just say.

Tracking him down at this time of night is not difficult. If he’s not drinking with Horangi, he’s training in the gym. So that’s where I’m headed as I didn’t find him at the bar, with a plan in mind that doesn’t really involve that much talking. I’m taking initiative for once, because it seems like he won’t do it despite being all wired-up and grumpy.

I enter the gym and as I thought, there isn’t anybody here except him. He turns around at the sound of the door and stops in his tracks as he sees me. “Colonel.”, I greet him. “What are you doing here, Müller?”, his voice is thick with exertion and something else entirely. “I wanted to talk to you.”, I tell him as a half-truth. Oh, I want to do so much more than just talk to him. “What do you want to talk about?”, he asks, sounding a bit hesitant. He’s still just standing there, in short gym shorts and a grey tanktop that shows off his arms and the tattoos on them. Even when training he has his mask on. Does he ever take that thing off?

“Jealousy looks good on you, Colonel.”, I tease him as I come a few steps closer. “Not jealous.”, he rumbles. “No?”, I ask. “Then I was imagining the whole ordeal with Santos today?” He doesn’t even look at me, his eyes are fixed on the ground before him as he mumbles something in german. “What?” – “I said, it was nothing, I’m sorry, okay?”, he deflects. “So, you weren’t at all mad when I talked to Santos and Aksel today?” His head whips in my direction when I say Alejandro’s name. Bingo. I take another step towards him, just inches between us now. “And the bad mood you’re in ever since last week doesn’t have anything to do with… sexual frustration?” Boldly, I put my hand on his chest, slowly trailing down his abs. He catches my wrist, his eyes boring into me with a stare of pent-up frustration and lust. “What’re you doing?”, he asks, leaning down a bit. The slight menace in his voice only spurs me on. “Doing what I waited for you to do the whole week.”, I tell him with a sultry smile. I pull my hand from his grip and get the chair that is always standing in the corner and nobody ever sits on. Until now.

“What are you doing?”, he repeats his question from before as I set down the chai beside him. “Relieving some of the built-up tension that clearly has you on edge.”, I say calmly as my hands move to his shoulders as I stand behind him, massaging lightly, and it’s like flicking a switch as soon as my palms dig into the tensed-up muscles. He relaxes against my touch, groaning ever so slightly. “Let me take care of you, okay?”, I whisper moving to his front, my hands squeezing all the tense spots as I trail them along. When I look up at him again, the frustration has already dissipated a little bit, curiosity shining through the pent-up lust. I can’t help but smile at him a little bit, then I take a step back. I look down, seeing the way his shorts are tented, and my smile turns into a smirk.

“Pants off.”, I tell him. “But-“, he tries to protest, yet I interrupt him with the click of my tongue. “Pants off, Colonel.” He strips without hesitation, letting the shorts fall down to the floor and- he doesn’t even have anything on underneath. My eyes drop down of their own volition and they snap back up in an instant when I see his dick. He’s grinning at me, even through the mask it’s obvious. It only gets more prominent at my reaction. My god, I must look like a deer in headlight, the way my eyes widened. I mean, I knew he would be big like the rest of him. I felt him against me before. But my god. I don’t think he’s going to fit.

I clear my throat. “Sit.”, I tell him, just as he told me a few days ago in the van. He takes a few steps back until his calves hit the chair and he takes a seat, leisurely leaning back, his thighs spread, his dick hard, resting against his shirt-clad stomach. The way he casually sits there, looking at me with the confidence of a man who just made someone’s chin drop over the size of his dick, the macho-esque attitude shouldn’t be this fucking hot.

The cockiness in his expression falters a bit as I pull out the rope I had hidden in the waistband on the back of my pants. “Arms to the chair.”, I order him, and after a slight hesitation he follows suit. I tie his arms to the side of the chair, taking my time with the knot on each side, making sure it’s not too tight, but tight enough to keep him strapped to it. I mean, we both know that tying him to a chair with just some black rope doesn’t really restrain him, but he still accepts it.

I bend towards him, so that my boobs almost hit him in the face, and whisper into his ear: “Being so good for me.” He thrashes against his restraints and I know he could escape them. He totally could. But it doesn’t seem like he wants to. I straighten up again, looking at him, relishing the way his shoulder muscles tense and even through the shirt I can see the way his abs and pecs move with every rugged breath. His gaze is on my face as I strip my own pants and then the panties. I let his eyes follow me over to his shorts and bend down, stretching down enough to show off my ass and flash him my pussy. “Fuck.”, he grunts and the rope around his arms is aching under the strain he’s putting it through. I put my panties in the pocket of his shorts and as I straighten back up and strut in his direction, I tease him: "For later, right?" His breath goes fast and ruggedly, but he doesn’t answer.

I come closer and closer until I'm standing over his right thigh. I lay my hands on his shoulders and from the way he's looking at me, he's totally enraptured by what I'm doing. And that's before I take my seat on his thigh, my already embarrassingly wet pussy against his firm muscles. He groans and his head rolls back as I roll my hips tentatively, once, then another time. "You feel so good underneath me.", I whisper to him while my hand trails down his stomach, itching to finally touch his dick. He's had his fingers inside me twice already, he made me come with his mouth, but I didn't get to play with him yet, so I'm going to take my time.

I drag a finger over the tip that is already leaking pre-cum, and not just his cock, but his whole body twitches. I repeat the movement a few times, then bring my finger to my mouth and lick his arousal off it. Taste him like he tasted me. He almost whines, his eyes fixed on my lips. Maybe I enjoy sucking on my own finger right now, putting the idea of sucking him to the forefront of his mind, and maybe I also enjoy it a little bit too much with the way it's making him squirm in the chair.

I release it with a pop, then I drag the digit, now wet with my spit, over his whole shaft. "Fuck, you're killing me.", he grunts, soft sounds and held back moans rising up his throat. "Hmm, the whole last week I imagined what it would feel like to finally touch you... To take you in my mouth...", I tell him as my fingers close around his dick and I oh so slowly start to move them up and down his length. His eyes flutter shut and his hips jerk up, pushing into my hand impatiently. “You want it faster, huh?”, I tease him, and he nods with a heavy swallow which makes me chuckle. I let go of him for just a moment and he groans again, another jerk of his hips. “So impatient…”, I say with a little ‘tsk-tsk’, then I lick my hand to make it more slippery. I grip him again, barely reaching around his dick with my fingers. I jerk him off with hard strokes, trying to find a rhythm with his desperate movements. Holding onto his shoulders with the other arm, I start to move myself, grinding on his thigh in the same tempo. Almost like I’m riding him, just not quite where he’d want me to be.

“Oh fuck, I never thought I’d be jealous of my own thigh.”, he mumbles which pulls a giggle from my lips. “Well, as I already said, jealousy looks good on you.” I twist my hand around his dick, going up and down his length, while I hump his thigh, dragging my pussy over his hard muscles, relishing the friction against my clit. “You’d like me to ride something else rather than your thigh, huh?”, I tease him, moaning as I roll my hips again. He nods desperately. “Please, oh fuck-“, he breathes harshly. His eyelids flutter as I squeeze his cock harder.

It is intoxicating to see him at my mercy like this. And from the way he looks at me, he seems to enjoy it as well, his gaze all hazy and fixed on me, almost begging. I let go of him and stand up, a stain of wetness left on his thigh. He whimpers and that fucking sound sends a shiver of arousal down my spine. "I'm going to fuck you now." I straddle his lap, lowering myself onto his dick. We both groan in unison as we’re close like this for the first time, and then I start to move, grinding on him like I did his thigh before. “Wait, wait a second.”, he suddenly says. I stop in an instant, searching for his eyes. “Is it save? I don’t want to… you know.”, he whispers, searching my expression with worry, not finishing his sentence. I nod softly. “I had my tubes tied a long time ago. So don’t worry.”, I tell him, adding: “And I’m clean.” He takes a labored breath. “Okay, me too…” He halts for a second. “I didn’t want to… ruin the mood or anything, I just… had to ask.” My hand reaches for his face, laying where is cheek must be under the fabric of the hood. Realising that this is the first time I actually touched him like that. His breath hitches, then he relaxes again, snuggling ever so slightly into my touch. “You didn’t, it’s good we talked about it.”, I say, in earnest. His gaze is pulling me in and I could have stayed like this forever. Forget about everything else. Maybe also wishing that we were somewhere – someone – else. Boring, save civilians. With normal jobs. Not mercenaries. Normal people with normal problems. Not soldiers with more baggage than they can carry, even between the two of them.

“Then please, woman, fuck me.”, he asks, with hoarse desperation. I smirk at him. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” I pull back a bit, grabbing his dick to position him at my entrance. Slowly I sit back down as he pushes into me, inch by inch. “Oh fuck.”, this time from my lips. He stretches me out way beyond what I’m used to and suddenly I’m glad that I’m so embarrassingly wet already. “I don’t think I can-“ – “You can.”, he interrupts me. “You’re doing so well for me, taking my dick like this. Come on, Liebes.” His praise washes over me and I timidly move my hips to get him to fit. I’m finally sitting on his lap again, this time with him fully seated inside me. “All good?”, he asks softly as my head falls onto his shoulder. “Yes, just… so… full.”, I breathe. He chuckles lightly, a sound that I’m positively addicted by now. I roll my hips, slowly starting to find a rhythm. He huffs and groans, straining against the ropes again. “My god, you’re so fucking tight, you’re gonna make me burst.” My movements get more confident as I slide up and down his length, coming back down hard, which hits spots inside me that make me moan with every pass. “You sound so fucking good.” His mumbled praise spurns me on, so I’m fucking him harder, skin slapping against skin as I jerk myself down on his cock. Our moans intermingle, echoing on the walls of the gym and I can feel how my wetness coats him, spreading over his lap as he pushes inside me. His chin drops down to his chest, his eyes fixed on the spot where we are connected. I slow down a bit, my hands digging into his shoulders as I fuck him slowly. Up until he almost slips out of me, then down again, feeling his whole length deep inside me. He groans as his dick pushes into me over and over again, my pussy stretching around him. “Fuck, this- ach du schei-“, he curses softly, his gaze not straying away, as he pulls on his restraints. "Please, I need to touch you.", he pleads, the whole chair aching by now. “Please, let me touch you.” – “I can’t deny you when you beg so prettily.”, I coo which only elicits a less than satisfied grunt from his throat, that makes me giggle a little bit.

I free his right hand, and I don't even get to the other one, because he's faster, and with that he already picked me up and I could only hold onto his shoulders, as he carries me over to the training mattresses. The very same I threw him down into, just a few weeks back. Seems like forever ago now. I’m getting pushed onto his dick with every single one of his heavy steps. “You little brat.”, he rumbles. “Teasing me like that…” His right hand comes down on my ass cheek, spanking me, just once but hard. I yelp in surprise, but it turns into a moan when he presses inside me again, bottoming me out. He’s carrying me so casually like I weigh nothing. “When all I want to do is fuck you like you deserve to be fucked.”, he growls. I want to retort something cheeky like ‘Oh, you seemed to enjoy it plenty.’, but he drops onto the mattresses and sets me down in front of him.

"König!", I squeal, yet he doesn't even wait a second until he starts fucking me into the ground. "Yes, Liebes?", he grunts between two pushes of his hips as he sits back on his knees. This position hits me deep inside, stretching me around his dick deliciously. His hands grip my thighs, pulling me against him with every stroke and all the possible answers get drowned out by the flow of moans from my lips. Oh, how the script has flipped and now I'm at his mercy, getting jerked on his cock as he pleases, deep, hard, with a force that almost makes it painful to take him, even with how wet I am. Incoherent ramblings are the only thing I can manage right now as he hits the sensitive spot inside me, over and over and over again. "Oh, don't say you can't take it after teasing me so mercilessly, Prinzessin?", he playfully mocks me - the gremlin voice coming out to play - as one of his hands trails up my body until it closes around my neck. Leave it to the human battering ram to make this kind of missionary into the most intense position I ever had sex in.

I look up at him, his mask moving with every snap of his hips. It’s a miracle that it stays on like that. His eyes find mine and I think I don’t ever want to look up at somebody else. Fuck, the way he looks at me while fucking me rough like this, it makes me want to burst. I don’t think anybody else could compare anymore. The waves of arousal tear me from my thoughts before I can dwell on them for too long. “You like that, huh?”, he asks me, his voice all gravelly. And I just nod, unable to do anything else than just take what he’s giving me. I’m already all fucked out and my vision blurs as hot tears stream down my cheeks, and he squeezes my neck ever so slightly as he pulls my whole body against him. I can feel the orgasm coming on swiftly, building up with every roll off his hips. The room is filled with his grunts, my moans, the sound of skin slapping against skin, the erotic noise stoking my arousal.

"Oh, you’re taking my dick like such a good girl.", he coos, not letting up on the rhythm. The praise washes over me and pushes me over the edge. I come around him, high sighs filling the room until his hand clasps over my mouth drowning out the noise. "Fuck, you feel so fucking good.", he presses out between two heavy breaths as he fucks me through my orgasm. He rolls his hips one more time, then he spills inside me, filling me up with his cum. He slumps down on top of me, still inside me, and the only sound is our intermingled heavy breaths. His weight on me is heavy, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

I find my voice again first. "That was... Fuck." I mean, that's almost an English sentence. I have an excuse though, I just got my brains fucked out in the most delicious way. "Fucking torture.", he says gruffly, finishing my sentence, and it's clear he's referring to when I had him strapped to the chair. I chuckle as my hands reach for him, desperate for his comfort and warmth. "So, a new torture method you say? Maybe I can get some of the targets to talk like this.", I joke breezily, taking a jab at him and his little jealousy spree today. He shoots me a glare that says 'don't start, missy'. "I don't think that is in accordance with the rules, Mü-" He wants to say my name, but I stop him, putting a finger over the mask where his mouth should be. "My name is Karina.", I tell him. He looks at me all confused for a moment. "Well, people who've had me on my back, get to call me on a first name basis.", I repeat to him back his words. That's all it takes to pull a hearty laughter from him and I can't help but grin like an idiot. "Very well, Karina.", he says then with a twinkle in his eyes. He rolls off me, giving my hip a little spank as he gets up, then me pulls me onto my still wobbly legs.

We both get dressed, which only involves putting on our pants again, because apparently, he goes commando and my panties are sitting snuggly in the pocket of his shorts. He pulls me with him by my arm and out of the gym. The door falls shut behind us.

I want to ask where we’re going, but as we reach the sleeping quarters I know. He’s taking me to my room. We’re stopping right at my door and for a few seconds there’s just silence between us. We don’t know what to say. How to say goodbye, after what we just did. He’s taking a step toward me enclosing me between him and the wall. He looks to the side, first left, then right and finally down at me again.

“I don’t want to stop this…”, he says at last. “We don’t have to.”, I tell him, simply. He looks to the side dismissively. I grab his face – again – to make him look at me. “We don’t have to stop. I don’t want to stop either.”, I repeat with emphasis. He closes his eyes for just a moment, sighing deeply, and when he opens them up again, I see emotions in them that I never saw before. “It’s not gonna get better, Mauserl.” My brows furl in confusion. “What is?”, I want to know. “The… jealousy, if you want to call it that.” He makes a dismissive wave with his hand. “Me looking at you, even when you don’t even know I’m there. My urge to look out for you, even when I very well know that you can do that yourself.”, he confesses. “That’s okay. ‘Cause I’ll be here to tell you it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”, I tell him calmly, ignoring the flutter in my stomach that erupts because of his words.

“And the fucking?”, he asks then, his voice rough as his hand cups the side of my face. “We can keep doing that as well.”, I answer, sounding a little bit too breathless while looking up at him. “Yeah? You sure about that?”, he says, his eyes searching mine for any hints of doubts. I nod, swallowing hard. “Yes.” He nods. “Okay then.” Easy. Simple. Existing right next to each other and fucking when we feel like it. The unsaid implications linger in the air around us.

He leans down and presses a small kiss to my forehead, just like he did after he “comforted” me, through the hood, so I only feel the fabric against my skin. “Sleep well, Liebes.”, he says, then he lets go of me and leaves. I look after him. He always leaves after we’re done. I shake my head, not able to hold back the little smile forming on my face. I stretch, already feeling sore from the physical exhaustion of getting fucked. Oh yes, I’m gonna sleep well, I think to myself as I enter my room.

Aksel sits down next to me at breakfast as I gulp down my porridge. He looks at König who is waiting for his breakfast, putting an apple on his tray not before tossing it in the air once and catching it again, all while cheerfully whistling. The Norwegian beside me pulls one eyebrow up and says: “Hva sa du til ham (What did you say to him)?” I laugh a little. “I told him that if he keeps being a pain in the ass like this, I might miss my next shot.”, I joke. Aksel joins my laughter. “I see. Keep your secrets then.” But I don’t miss the side eye he’s giving me. I feign innocence and keep eating my porridge.

[losersimonriley]

I want to ask about all of it but please,,, a crumb of sundowning 🙏

Camus I would post sundowning in its entirety right here right now if you asked me to 💘

Here’s a hospital scene mixed with a little flashback:

He clears his throat, fully doubting this will do anything, but willing to try anything.

“Johnny?”

It’s the first time he’s said the name aloud since–

Since.

“Johnny?” She asks, flipping through the chart. “He goes by Johnny? There wasn’t anything in here—”

“No. No, just…,” he trails off, not knowing how the fuck he’s supposed to finish that sentence without giving the impression that they’re something they’re not. He does go by Johnny but you can’t call him that. Nobody else can either actually, unless it’s me. Right then. Jesus Christ. It’s almost a more embarrassing scenario than when he wanted to tell the nurse aide to let him be the one to bathe him.

He remembers Soap warning Alejandro not to call him Johnny. It feels like a lifetime ago. He didn’t know it at the time but that was only the first of several incidents to come from the name.

Soap has completely pulverised their only source of intel. Ghost would be seething about it if he weren’t so turned on.

Soap hadn’t lost it until the rat-faced bastard taunted him with the nickname he’d overheard Ghost use.

“Call me that one more time, ye fuckin’ wankstain, swear I—”

Soap rears back to put a boot in the man’s face, but Ghost finally gains the sense to put a stop to it. He grips Soap by the collar and yanks.

“Simmer.”

It’s unbelievable how quick the raging fire dies down. All from a simple touch and command. He vaguely wonders what else his sergeant might do if he only gave the word.

“Sorry.”

“Mind tellin’ me what the actual fuck that was about?”

“He called me Johnny,” Soap mumbles, looking off to the side.

It reminds him of a child explaining to a parent why he got into a fight in the schoolyard. Similar to a child, the reason is because of name calling. And this one is just a normal bloody name.

“I call you Johnny.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the only one who can.”

He’s said that before—weeks ago in Mexico. Ghost still doesn’t understand it, hasn’t asked, too hesitant about throwing a wrench in this little friendship they’ve started to build. It’s been so long since he’s had a mate like Johnny. Never, actually.

But throw a wrench he must do now because when Price finds out about their prisoner…well. He needs answers. Ones that make even the slightest bit of sense to himself at the very least.

“Why?”

“Because it sounds sexy coming out of your mouth, sir.”

Insubordinate little—

“I don’t know, Ghost,” Johnny sighs, running a bloodied glove down his face. “Supposin’ the both of us need to figure that one out.”

“Just a name I use for him.”

It sounds weak even to his own ears. Heat gathers in his cheeks and he can only hope the mask is high enough to cover the blush. She gives a thoughtful hum before nodding at him to continue.

Why is this so humiliating?

“Johnny,” he says with a bite. “Eyes open for us.”

Nothing. The disappointment that floods his body shouldn’t be so sharp. He’d expected this, afterall. He flops back into his chair.

Emily presses her pen down against Soap’s fingernail with more and more pressure each passing second. Simon digs his own fingers into his kneecaps and Johnny doesn’t open his eyes. Just as expected.

What’s not fucking expected is Johnny’s arm suddenly jerking away from the pressure against his hand.

Ghost shoots up out of his chair once more.

[hinatastinygiant]

1 | Haze

Pairing: Kaminari x Fem!Reader

Null & Void

The prison cell door buzzes open, breathing the silence that had become all too familiar. The sounds of boots echo through the hall as a guard hands over a pile of neatly folded clothes. The fresh fabric against your skin feels so good, like a calming reminder that you're no longer confined in that wretched place. Squinting your eyes against the bright sun, you sigh, taking in the freedom that surrounds you. Now what?

"Y/N!" a sudden familiar voice cuts out through the air. You look over to see your friend, Kendo, running toward you with a genuine smile on her face. Her hug is warm, and it makes you feel loved. She's the only person to hug you since the incident, and you feel yourself melting into the touch. "I'm so happy you're finally out. How have you been?"

Your reply is quite simple. "I need a shower."

"Oh, right," she grins as she guides you toward her car. "You can stay with me at the shop for a while. Shower isn't great, but it works."

"Thanks," you reply as you open the passenger door and step inside.

The car ride is silent. You have nothing to say to her yet, you don't even know how she feels about you right now. She never came to visit the prison and you sure as hell didn't have enough money to be making any calls that would be long enough to explain what had happened.

"I'm trying to think," she hums, finally breaking the silence as she travels along the once-familiar roads. God, one thing that hasn't changed is how shitty everything looks. Of course you had to be the small part of the population that didn't have any quirks or, really, means to defend yourself. "Not much has changed around here..."

Not much? you think to yourself as she takes a left turn that causes your heart to drop into your stomach. It's all changed.

"Sorry," she mutters, the car seeming to slow down as she drives her crappy car down the one road you wish she wouldn't.

Your neighborhood has indeed shifted, forcing you to catch up with a world that has moved on without you. Passing the remnants of your burned-down home, the painful reminder of your past, doesn't help much either. Your body aches as you catch sight of two teenagers graffiti the wall, leaving their own mark of destruction and chaos. The car speeds up, the tires squealing a bit as they take another left turn.

"It's okay," you reassure her, looking down at your lap.

"So, uh, did you make any friends while you were away?" she asks as though you had spent a year frolicking in faction two with all of the climate guardians.

"A few," you mutter, "but they're serving longer sentences so it doesn't quite matter. Oh, that reminds me, my parole officer is going to check in on me so I'm going to have to give her your address."

"Sure thing," she smiles softly as she parks the car outside of the small shop she calls home. She then reaches into the glovebox, grabs a small piece of paper and a pen, and jots down her address before handing it to you. "Here you go, I'm sure you don't think about address while you're-"

"Thanks," you mutter, getting out of the car and grabbing your bag.

"Oh," she says, popping the trunk and pulling out a few bags. "I got you some food and a few necessities." You can tell she has no idea how to handle your return. Why is she even letting you stay with her if she's this confused? "Come on, let's go around back."

Kendo guides you to the back entrance of the small building where she lives. She sets down her bags for a moment as she searches her pockets for her key and unlocks the door. You then reach for one of the bags she had set down.

"Thank you," you mutter as she opens the door and walks inside. You follow her past the first door and watch as she unlocks the one on the left. When it's open, she ushers you inside and sets the bag down on the bed. It's just enough space for the bed, nightstand, and plant, but it's nice. It's a room that you can call your own and not a cage with a cot.

"This room is yours," she tells you as she grabs the bag you had been carrying and places it beside the other. "Bathroom is attached on the right. I'm going to make us something to eat but shout if you need me, okay?"

"Sure, thanks," you nod as she walks out. You then enjoy the otherwise mediocre shower and dress in the clothes she had purchased. A simple shirt and jeans.

After the shower, you walk into the somehow even smaller-than-you-remember kitchen to see her standing over the stove. A delicious aroma fills the air. When she sees you, a small smile appears on her face.

"Have a seat," she nods toward the small table that looks as though it has seen better days.

You do so, watching as she pulls the pot off the heat and serves up two bowls of tomato soup. As you take your first sip, you begin to feel incredibly guilty for not clueing her in sooner. But just as you part your lips to explain, she speaks first.

"Hey, do you want to do anything this afternoon?" she asks rather cheerfully, catching you off guard.

"What?"

"I closed the shop for the day. I thought maybe we could spend some time together," she replies with a warm smile.

"You're being very... nice," you admit, a bit thrown off by her kindness. "But I think I'd rather just get some rest."

"Oh, yeah, of course," she shakes her head as though getting rid of some daydream where the two of you gossiped about crushes or something. She then rises to her feet and collects the dirty dishes before setting them in the sink. "I'll be here if you need anything."

Part of you wishes you would just call out to her and explain, but another part is thankful you haven't. You don't have the energy to talk about the details, and she probably wouldn't understand. Not yet, at least.

∿*̩̣‧̩̣₊̣‧̩̣*̩̣𐦍*̩̣‧̩̣₊̣‧̩̣*̩̣∿

"Please!" you cry, the words ripping from your throat in a desperate plea that echoes throughout the courtroom.

You always used to hate when your father would bring you along with him to work, especially when he'd make you tag along at some poor soul's trial. Except this time is worse, painfully worse. You're all alone, tears streaming down your face as you sit, overwhelmed by the accusations that have shattered your world. You didn't kill them.

Satou, your father's partner, places a gentle hand on your shoulder, attempting to offer you comfort, but you simply shrug him off. What use is he now in front of the Home Secretary and a jury of citizens that'll do anything to get a murderer behind bars?

But you can't help it. The grief is too strong and the wounds are way too fresh.

Monoma, that idiotic prosecutor who most likely has way better things to do than personally sentence you to jail, stands before the jury and clears his throat. "This woman," he summarizes just before they are ready to make their decision, "has killed her own father, her own mother, and her own little sister by arson. Fingerprint samples have been collected, and the evidence shows she was the only one who had touched those fuel canisters. I urge you, if there is no doubt in your mind that this woman, clearly hellbent on the destruction of our world, was ended the lives of her own flesh and blood, to find her guilty!"

Murmurs spread around the room. You can feel all eyes on you, but you don't bother looking up from the hands on your lap.

"I didn't..." you whimper, feeling so small.

"You'll be alright," Satou tries to comfort, but it only makes you more emotional.

"I didn't..."

Before you know it, the judge is looking over at the foreman and asking for a decision from the juror. As the foreman stands, his face stern and unwavering, his decision is announced: guilty.

The gavel sounds and a few people rise to their feet, clapping and cheering.

The weight of their judgment feels like a brick hitting your chest. Seven years in prison - a sentence that feels like an eternity. The grief, disbelief, and crushing weight of guilt bear down on you as the reality of your new life sinks in. The courtroom falls into an eerie silence as you're forced into shackles and taken out of the room.

Just as the door is held open for you, your eyes meet with Kendo's. Your best friend, once the one you'd go to for anything, looks at you as if she truly believed everything Monoma said. Of course that asshole was very convincing, but couldn't she tell when her best friend was being falsely accused of murder? She knew how much you loved your family, even though you didn't always have the same views as they did. You'd never kill them.

∿*̩̣‧̩̣₊̣‧̩̣*̩̣𐦍*̩̣‧̩̣₊̣‧̩̣*̩̣∿

A moment later, you wake up in a cold sweat with your heart pounding from the lingering weight of the nightmare that dragged you into a world of the past. As you pull the blanket closer to your chest and look around the dimly lit room, you sigh, knowing the only way to feel better is to talk with Kendo.

Except now it's the middle of the night as you slide out of bed and leave your room. Outside, the night air feels cool on your skin as you sit down on the small porch. You sigh as the weight of the past, the trial, and the sentence pressed on your mind. But just as the silence threatens to swallow you whole, Kendo emerges from the shadows and sits down beside you.

Her presence is comforting, like it always was. Silently, she passes you a cup of warm tea, a gesture that speaks volumes. She then pulls a cigarette from her pocket and lights it. You watch, waiting to see what her reaction will be as the smoke drifts through the air. She takes a long drag, then exhales.

Kendo knows you don't want to talk about it, understands the wounds are still too raw. Yet, you both know that there will come a time when the truth needs to be shared.

The steam from the tea swirls in the night air as she speaks softly. "I know it's not easy, and I won't push, but when you're ready, I'm here to listen. To share the burden, whatever it may be. Shaving six years off your sentence is no joke."

"I know," you nod and take a sip. The warm liquid is soothing as you swallow. The silence returns, but the weight of the past has dissipated. 

Null & Void

[youremyheaven]

Strange experiences I've had since rahu md started, how do you think Rahu mahadasha is linked with experiences with death (in surroundings or just in general, being more aware and sensitive towards it) ?

Rahu in pushya 10th, ketu and mars in 4th shravana and moon in uttarashada 4th. 8th lord venus in swati 1rst house.

I came across more and more suicide incidents since the beginning of this dasha..I never use to watch news before but now murder and death news are always too sticky to me.

What do you think am I being asked to learn or lean on?

i think nodal transits/dashas etc are very transcendental but difficult experiences. you have to be unnaturally grounded to make gains during this period. having a saturnian nak in rahu helps with stability a little bit because its Saturn's nature to restrict and Rahu's nature is expansion, so Saturn will "chain" Rahu's illusive nature but Rahu is still Rahu so there is only so much chaining and restriction that can take place. idk if any of the placements you mentioned can contribute to being more aware of death during this period. i wonder if you have 8h placements?? or 12h ones??? having 8th lord in 1st can point to increased consciousness of 8th house themes including death, occultism and transformation but i feel like its some other placement tbh

which year were you born in? is this perhaps an 8h or 12h profection year for you?

the inner most circle represents the house and the outer circles represent the age.

during my 12h profection year last year, a friend of mine passed away on her birthday under strange circumstances. it was really weird bc in the months leading up to her death i spoke to her a lot even tho i never did before and i had some truly heart touching moments with her. im a psychic medium irl and im often consulted by others, so her bf who is a good friend of mine insisted that i read for her even though i told him i dont think its a good idea for me to read for friends etc and im usually pretty firm but when he kept insisting, i gave in and i read for her. it was single handedly the strangest experience i had because i felt like i couldnt see her future at all, it was a complete blank. i picked up a lot on her personality and her past which both her and her bf confirmed to be true but she kept insisting on knowing about her future and was vv anxious about it and i absolutely couldnt see anything and that has never happened to me before or since. a few months later i had a dream about her and a few days after that, i wake up to text messages saying she has passed away.

i think the lesson with death is that it can come at any time, so one must not take life for granted. we should give it our all when we have time.

this is highly personal but for me with this experience, my biggest lesson was how kindness is never wasted and how even if you think no one is noticing, people are actually paying attention, so having goodness within and being kind to others goes a long way. this girlie's bf told me (a few months before she passed away) that he really appreciated me complimenting her outfit on Valentine's day bc i made her really happy and apparently nobody else had anything nice to say to her that day. it really doesnt hurt to be nice to others and sometimes we dont get very many chances to be kind either, even small interactions with others, if we can respond with love and kindness, it will make a big difference because you never know what the other person is going through or where life is going to take either of you.

what you learn from these experiences is up to you and how it makes you feel. death to me is always a reminder to be more kind and loving. the regrets that sting me the most have been my failures to be kind (i was a kid but still)

[aajjks]

reward!jungkook

once the call is over, you roll your eyes and go back to stalking the home syelle been staying at ever since the incident with her and jungkook. he thinks that conversation ‘spooked’ you but you’ll show him something better. something that’ll always remind him of the power imbalance between the both of you.

you raise your phone and snap a photo of syelle’s shadow standing near a window covered by curtains but judging from the shape of her body and short hair, it’s definitely her.

you then upload the picture and send it to jungkook before following the text with:

*sent a photo*

ps i’m sitting outside YOUR WIFE’S friend’s place

if you like choking, you’re definitely going to love this 😉

it would be too easy to walk in his house and take him where he rests but you’re not one to turn down a challenge and you know exactly how you’ll win.

you always do.

syelle sits on hoseok’s bed in deep thought. ‘needy’ by ariana grande on repeat over and the only thing the poor girl can think of is how she got to this point in her life. since when did she become to unattractive to her partner that he never touched her but he touched you. he admitted to loving you and never loving her.

it plays over and over in her head like a song but it keeps skipping back to that part. syelle wonders why she cared so much about him. why the hell did she take it upon herself to know what he liked and disliked? why couldn’t she just read the obvious sign and took it for what it was.

why didn’t she break up with him first? because this…

“you okay sy?” jorja knocks on the door. “yeah, i’m alright” she says before skipping the repeated song and playing another to slip her deeper and deeper into despair.

first, it’s ‘needy’ by ariana grande and now it’s ‘just might’ by summer walker.

When you send him that picture he’s shocked.

What do you want? Why are you stalking her? Did you wanted her all along? He doesn’t understand what you want. Because you don’t want him that’s for sure.

Do you want to kill him or do you want his wife?

Either way- he needs to save her from you. So without any hesitation, Jungkook puts on a shirt and he’s driving to hoseoks place.

He needs to talk to her last time and apologize to her. And then he will deal with you and yes, he didn’t bother replying to your message.

You just want to torture him.

Jungkooks in his car and he is recklessly driving to where his wife is staying. “FUCKING MOVE ALREADY.” He honks at the car.

He needs to hurry up.

And after a few minutes after cursing and driving like a drunk driver, he’s finally at hoseoks place. And he knows that he’s out but his wife is not gonna let him in.

He has to try.

Jungkook parks his car, and hisses at the pain in his jaw. Every part of his face hurts right now. But he deserves the pain.

Soon, he finds himself ringing the doorbell. He hopes that Syelle will come and see him one last time.

“SYELLE!??! SYELLE ITS ME JUNGKOOK PLEASE PLEASE I BEG YOU OPEN THE DOOR!”

[soundcrusher]

Of mothers and birds

Part six of my little story featuring my Phoenix and the sentient SG/Lost Light fom @cuppajj

So far, this is the longest part I have written. And I'm saying sorry if it gets a little bit confusing. Like with the last parts, I let my mind create whatever it came up with.

Enjoy!

Trigger warning: Manipulation and a small mention of death

.<.>.<.>.<.>.<.>.<.>.<.>.<.>.<.>.

Today was another day. Another day of doing the same thing Phoenix has been doing for the past… the past… How long has he been on the ship? It’s hard telling the time when there is no outside indication and your only way of orientation is the one you see as a parental figure. Parental figure… Phoenix still hasn’t asked Lightlost if he is his parent, if he likes him as much as his mother. 

His mother… He misses his mother. It doesn’t matter to him if she would want him back or not. Knowing her, she would probably open her arms as soon as he would turn up in front of her little shop and hug him as tightly as she could. Telling him everything was okay and that nothing could hurt him now that he was back. And then he would tell her about everything he’s seen and that he lived on board a ship together with Rodimus Prime and Lightlost. Maybe he could even take them to see his mother. They surely would like her, even if she was a Decepticon and they’re Autobots. Right? He was sure that at least Lightlost would like his mother. 

“Little bird, what are you doing here?” Phoenix raised his head from the data-pad he was reading to look at Lightlost, before averting his gaze to the rest of Swerve’s Bar. It’s fuller than before, or better said, he has made it fuller with four more corpses he’s found laying inside a workshop. The one mech, who looked like he could turn into a microscope and the small one, who seemingly had a camera in his helmet, were easier to drag in here than the big one with the weird mouthguard and a suitcase chained to his servo and the one with the big wheels on his shoulders. At least they looked like wheels. Either way, Phoenix was rather proud of how he placed them. With the camera bot and the one with the wheels sitting together at a table, while mister microscope and suitcase bot sitting at the bar. Well, they were more like leaning against the bar than sitting, but who would judge him for trying? 

“I… like it here…” Muttered the youngling, before looking back down at his data-pad. Phoenix didn’t know why he liked it here, at first he thought it was because of the purple bunny and his little friend, but then he started to carry his energon and data-pads here to read and refuel, and, well, it became a routine. One he would hate to break, if he was honest. “And I don’t even know why I like it here. It’s just… Maybe it reminds me of my mother’s shop. I used to be there all the time. Helping out with anything I could, while mother always worried about me hurting myself.” Phoenix chuckled as a specific memory came to mind of him accidentally falling into a pot of oil cake batter he has been stirring. But at least he didn’t hurt himself, not like when he accidentally touched an active hotplate. Phoenix could still remember how much that hurt and how his mother was quick to scoop him up and rush to a medic. 

“Is that so?” Asked Lightlost, as they sat down across from Phoenix. “I can see why you would like this place, even if it doesn’t remind you of something. The crew liked to come here for refueling, or just to have a good time. There hardly was a day when Swerve didn’t have his bar up and running. But then the… incident happened and everyone tried to hide somewhere and…” Lightlost let out a sigh. Sometimes, they missed the busy bustling of the mechs and femmes that used to roam their halls. But then again, if they wouldn’t have done what they did, all of them would have left them. Be it because they died, decided to stay wherever they explored or for another reason. At least, like this, they could stay with them until the end. 

It was quiet for a moment. Neither of them spoke, as Phoenix continued reading while Lightlost stared at the young spark. It was still strange to them how someone could bear a likeness to his captain without having any connections. Doesn't mean they weren’t happy about having discovered his little bird. 

At first, the likeness was the only reason why they decided to make the deal with Phoenix's captain. Having a bot who looked like Rodimus running around the halls was refreshing, dare they even say nostalgic. But after spending some time with Phoenix, they came to care for the young spark even more. After all, how long has it been since they had met a life so young. Sparklings, even after the war had ended, were rare. And yet, here Phoenix was. A young spark, who could still be considered a sparkling, sitting in front of them. 

“Your carrier and sire must be proud to have you as their youngling.” Said Lightlost, which caused Phoenix to look up in confusion. “My what? Are you talking about my mother and father?” He asked, which caused Lightlost to be the one confused now. “I am talking about your creators.”

There was another silence between them, before Phoenix broke it by laughing wholeheartedly. “Mother and father mean carrier and sire. It’s what humans call their creators.” He chuckled while shaking his head. “... Is that why you have been saying, what was it, mother when talking about your carrier?” For the first time in their long life, Lightlost was confused. Mostly because, while they have heard some of their crew talk in this human language, they could never understand it. Although, that also made them wonder how Phoenix could know some. “And where did you learn it?”

“My mother, ehm… my carrier taught me how humans speak and write. She was stationed there during the war and had made friends who taught her. Granted, most of the people were military folk and some didn’t get along well with her, but the others teached her.” Phoenix smiled, before closing the story he was reading on his data-pad and opening the option to scribble down notes. Then he wrote his name onto the pad like humans would write it. “See? Humans write differently than us Cybetronians. Most of the things carrier writes look like this, because she says it’s easier for her to take notes like this. Also, humans, depending on where you are on their planet, speak different languages too! Mother learned the English language, because most people she met spoke it.” He explained. 

Lightlost nodded. Not in understanding, but because they could see that it meant a lot to Phoenix. “And what about your sire? Where is he?” 

“He left her as soon as I came into the picture…” Muttered Phoenix quietly. Talking about his father was always a difficult topic. Not because it hurt thinking about it, or because his mother was still bitter about him leaving. No, it was mostly because he didn’t know a lot about him. “ I… you would have to ask her, if you want the full story, but I know that they met after the war ended. Carrier was a tank, who tried to find a place in society that didn’t involve fighting, and he was a flier. They got together and were happy, until…” Phoenix let out a sigh, while his stabilizing wings lowered and his shoulders sagged down. Causing his wounds from when he got his main wings ribbed off to sting a little bit. “He took one look at me and had a fight with my carrier. Telling her how they could not raise something like me, but she refused to give me away. So, he left. That’s all I know.” He said, which was followed by a sad chuckle. “I guess, you could say that was the first instance of others avoiding me because of my resemblance to Rodimus.”

Lostlight shook their head while standing up. “He’s a fool for leaving such a wonderful youngling behind then.” They said with the same kind of edge when Phoenix asked about leaving, or when he was not happy with something. At least the youngling thought he could hear that edge. Also, the glint in Lightlost's optics didn't go unnoticed by Phoenix either.

After their conversation, Phoenix finished his energon and took his data-pad back to the captain’s and his room. Carefully laying it down on his bed before taking his place next to the captain’s chair. Leaning against it and staring into Rodimus’ red optics. Funny how he was always hiding his own optics for having the same color, and yet, here he was not shamed for not wearing his visor. Although, it was kind of strange to have such a good look at the captain’s eyes when his head was usually facing forward. “Did you move your head?” Asked the youngling curiously. After all, ever since he noticed Rodimus tapping his finger, Phoenix could notice other small things too. Like a small twitch of the optic or a very light frown whenever Lightlost would enter the room. It made him think that the captain didn’t like the other. Something he couldn’t understand, but his mother and experience taught him that not every Cybertronian had to like each other. 

“Why is it that you don’t like Lightlost?” Sighed Phoenix quietly, before he started to tell Rodimus about his day. Noting that the captain’s mimic would always slightly change whenever the occasion called for it. A smile, when he said something funny, a frown when Lightlost was mentioned, a scowl when he talked about his father and why he left and a curious twinkle in the optic when Phoenix was talking about his mother. 

“Maybe you have even seen her once. You can’t really overlook her. Especially with her paint job. I got that one from her, you know?” Phoenix’s remaining wings fluttered proudly, as he puffed out his chest plate. “I also learned a lot of things from my mother. It might not be an amazing talent, but thanks to her I can make the best oil cakes in the whole galaxy! Maybe one day I will make one for you too Roddy. Once you start moving more, that is.” He said, before chuckling. “I can’t wait to walk around with you. I bet I can run faster than you. But… you probably would have to learn to walk again… But don’t worry! I will help you! I’m good at helping after all.”

Rodimus couldn’t fight the soft smile forming on his lips, as he listened to the young spark. He was glad that Phoenix, despite the situation months ago, didn’t lose that part of his innocence. During the war, too many young sparks had to grow up too fast. Bumblebee was a good example, or a bad one. It really depended on how you were looking at it. Primus and Unicron together, Rodimus was sure that he was used as a chilling example for something at least once or twice. Maybe they even made him into a scary sparklings tale too. He wouldn’t blame the Decepticons for that. Honestly, now that he had time to reflect on his wrong doings and mistakes, he would feel honored to be used as a bad example. Maybe then more death and tragedies could be prevented. 

Speaking of preventing, he just heard Phoenix say that Lightlost didn’t know human tongue. That was… perfect! Well, this knowledge isn't useful now, with him still not being able to use his voice, but once he regained enough strength, he could speak with Phoenix using the organics language. Maybe that could give him an advantage over the Lost Light. Even if it was just a small one. Then again, there was still the issue of him not being able to talk with Phoenix now. And he needed to at least warn him now, to make sure that the kid wouldn’t fall even deeper into the Lost Light’s clutches. But he couldn’t do much. All he was able to do were the small movements of his fingers and hands. 

He was thinking about morse code, but he didn’t think that the youngspark would know what that was. Maybe Phoenix knew how to understand it from his mother, but Rodimus couldn’t be sure of that. At least, he didn’t get a reaction when he morsed SOS repeatedly while the kid was staring at his servos… His servos… The need to talk… Rodimus wished he could move his arms, because he had the urge for a facepalm right now. 

Chirolinguistics!

Drift, before dying, taught him how to speak with his hands. Why, by Primus and Unicron together, didn’t he think of that before? Granted, there was again the fifty-fifty chance that Phoenix wouldn’t know what that is, but it’s worth a shot. And if it didn’t work, he would just have to work harder on regaining his voice.

So, when Phoenix started to clean him again, Rodimus set his plan into motion. Waiting for when the youngling was cleaning his hands to quickly grab them. Looking at him, as Phoenix stared down in confusion and bewilderment. 

[Can you hear me?] 

Rodimus waited for a response. And when he was ready to give up, he got it.

[Yes]

[direwombat]

Who’s best at oral/oral sex headcanons | Do they have sexual nicknames or titles? | How long can they go? | Something they tried and won’t do again? + Katherine & Arthur?

ahhh thank you so much for indulging me! 💕💕💕 also sorry for taking so long to answer this lmao it’s been a busy weekend for me (nsfw under the cut obvs)

Who’s best at oral/oral sex headcanons

genuinely, i feel like they both aren't the best at it, but they both go in with a desire to please each other, so i think they learn pretty quickly. I'm inclined to say that arthur is probably slightly better at eating her out because he's probably a little bit more experienced sexually, in that he has probably had sex at least once whereas kat never had before him.

as far as general oral sex headcanons: i think arthur likes making her fall apart using only his tongue, and when they have the time, he’ll eat her out for as long as he can and make sure this is how her first orgasm finds her. and katherine struggled taking him in her mouth for a while, but after getting some tips from abigail and karen, she secretly started training her gag reflex. the night she tried taking him into her throat hadn’t gone the smoothest, and he had worried she was pushing herself too far too fast, but she insisted she wanted to try. he was very patient and helped coach her through it, and it maybe took longer than either of them would have liked, but the sight of seeing her big blue eyes looking back up at him with his cock in her mouth was well worth it. as were the low groans she was able to pull from him. 

Do they have sexual nicknames or titles?

like with jake and syb i don't think they have any names that are exclusively used in a sexual context, but arthur calls katherine his "little bird," which is funny because originally he started calling her tat because of her singing voice, but then he learned that her surname means "bird" in german. but i do think he enjoys using that term of endearment in bed whenever he gets her to make those sweet, sweet sounds that only he can pull from her. kat definitely calls him "liebling," and she also probably starts calling him "bärchen" whenever he starts letting his hair/beard grow out because he starts reminding her of a bear.

How long can they go?

oh they can go for a looong time, but they unfortunately don't get very many chances to really do that. dutch keeps both of them pretty busy, but every now and then they can get a full evening or even a full few days to themselves, where they really take their time with each other. arthur loves turning kat into a writhing mess on the sheets and will edge her for as long as he can, before trying to pull as many orgasms from her as possible. likewise, kat just likes touching arthur, doesn’t really matter where, and the more she can just let her hands rove over his body, the more she can tease him until he gently manhandles her like she wants.

but also whenever they’re on the trail for a long period of time/travelling on horseback for days, kat will occasionally join arthur on his horse, keeping his cock warm and riding him until the jostling of the horse brings one of them to completion (in kat’s case, she cums around him, and in arthur’s case, he pulls out and just ruins her underskirts).

Something they tried and won’t do again?

answered this one here but the tl;dr is that kat likes it when arthur roleplays the big bad outlaw and they tried rape roleplay once and it made arthur so uncomfortable that they had to stop the scene and they spent the rest of the night just cuddling with kat as the big spoon.

i would like to add to this tho: i think arthur called kat his "sweet little whore" during dirty talk once and it pulled her right out of the mood and zone out because her fiance back in austria was verbally abusive and would degrade her constantly. so while it wasn't something they purposefully tried, and even though he had fully meant it for as praise, after that incident arthur never uses that word with her ever again (which is pretty easy all things considered).

[tails-writings]

Scar (Writing Prompt)

(Yeah, I’ve been super busy a lot lately with studying, so my writing is gonna be dropping off a lot for a while. But I managed to barely conjure something up.

This has been kind of on the unfinished side for a while as well because of some...drama going on between me and an..ex RP partner in it. This fic here does involve a character of that partner’s as well (and this fic is of course very highly shippy and very fluffy in nature because we did ship our characters very hard when we did used to RP) but...because of a lot of things going on it took a hard push for me to even finish it regardless.

This has to do with an old verse that used to be part of a group RP thing that had long since disbanded (and was the verse that I once originally created Conrad for a while back), the verse doesn’t belong to me or the ex-partner at all, as instead it belongs to a friend that I still keep in touch with. I might try to do write more things to get back to that verse again for things, but I don’t know.

(Of course, the feedback form is still up for people to submit to)

“Dear…you never mentioned you ended up with any scars…” Belle observed while tracing her finger along one that seemed to run along her fiance's right shoulder. She ended up stopping the massages she was giving to Conrad once she took notice of the mark, a small show of concern for him before resuming her inquiry. “What happened over those 5 years?” The scar laid right along one of the indiscernible scrawls of text that marked much of the encyclopedia CV’s body. Though the way the scar healed, it almost looked as if someone had tried to rewrite over top that small area of text a little bit on him.

Conrad couldn’t help the small sigh, feeling the weight of Belle on top of his back as she began to lay on top of him and get a little comfortable a bit, still feeling her finger trace along that scar as they both laid in bed. “I had a predicament with a rogue during a mission…” He muttered, though he knew if she was to find one of the other small scars he had she would ask about that as well. “The incident occurred 2 years ago, do you recall hearing any information at this base regarding a particularly troublesome knife-based CV?” He knew that it caused issues for multiple bases near where he used to be stationed before his transfer, but he did recall having to write up the reports to send to the other bases after his team’s encounter with it before as well.

Belle thought for a bit, there were such rumours of such a CV that she could recall, but the details were vague. “I think so, I think it was something the higher ups would know more of. Or maybe he was caught before even coming this far.” she admitted, burying her face into his back some and bringing her arms around him a bit the best she could, wanting to hold him tightly now. “Even if you didn’t know…I can say that our team did not apprehend him at all, he managed to escape during the time we were sent on the task to stop him.” Conrad continued to explain, he had been through worse instances so it wasn’t like trying to explain this incident was painful…not like other things he had been through…but it was still a reminder of the risks that their job entailed. “Regardless, his abilities involved being able to form and manifest physical knives from his hands, unlike other weapon-based CVs where the manifested weapon remains attached to them, he was capable of completely detaching them from his body to effectively utilize as a throwing weapon.” Though he did leave out the fact that the other CV’s accuracy was fairly good, while not as skilled as his own marksmanship with his firearms, the rogue was still dangerous nonetheless.

Either way, he expected she would ask about that, then again them both getting injured on their job was going to be inevitable. He just wished he had been more careful at the time. “At least the wound wasn’t too deep to cause permanent injury, but it was still enough to leave that mark..” Though he couldn’t help but become a bit self conscious about it, much like the text that his body bore. Just nuzzling down a little bit into the pillow, still not wanting to move lest she fell off of him.

Belle couldn’t help but give a small pout at that answer, it still didn’t answer much. She knew what it was he normally did during the few missions they both had back when they lived on the island. “That is not like you, normally you don’t go on the front lines.” She muttered back, her concern evident in her voice as well as she began to rub his shoulder some, trying to help him to relax a little bit.

The rubs did help some as Conrad let off a small, and content sigh. At least now she was finally here to help chase away his own pains and worries. “I know…but we were in a confined locale. There were no vantage points to allow me to maintain adequate view of the field with my rifle this time around, and also I was required to be part of the infiltration team into the bunker that he holed himself up in.” He only explained it a bit more, then again everything else that happened after that went faster than even himself could process. “The next thing I could notice once we had encountered the rogue was that there he was trying to take each of my team out, he did not succeed in taking any life, but the injuries were enough to impede our progress in maintaining his trail.”

Still, he would have to look for the files to see if there was any progress on dealing with that CV, but that would be once he finally obtained the clearance to do so at this base. He may have been a Syn back on the island, but being on mainland now meant that his prior rank was useless anyways. And though he didn’t make it up the ladder yet at the prior base, he would have to see just how possible it would be here.

Though there was something that she didn’t mention that he was surprised about, and thus he was a bit curious now as he finally spoke up again. “Are you sure that it doesn’t look odd? I always thought it did due to how that portion of text seems to look out of place with the rest of it now.

Belle couldn’t help the faint smile, planting a kiss near his neck, “No, It looks more like you tried to write your own addition to our story instead. Adding more of our future to it after surviving another mission.” He didn’t have to worry too much, he was still him to her eyes most of all, and thus something like this would not make any difference at all. “Though right now, I think you’ve gotten enough of a massage, how about making me your mission this time?” She teased a little bit, then again they did have a plan to enjoy the night together afterwards. There was a slight smirk on Conrad’s face from what she just said, knowing just what it was he promised to her regarding tonight as well. “I think I’ve already got enough of a ‘briefing’ now to be able to effectively carry this out, though you better prepare yourself.” 

[grey-eyed-menace]

Wizardess Heart MC!

My interpretation of the MC with some pretty noticeable tweaks, most glaringly, her parents aren't just a faceless backdrop sob story!

They have backstories, characters, and their entire fuckshow of a courting deserves it's own damn book considering how insane it all was.

They had to kill multiple people, navigate a Decadent Court for twenty odd years, and fake their deaths before they could settle down to get married, much less have a kid.

Justina Aldebrand and Kaye Verlice were some bad bitches, man. Assuming those are their actual names.

[Yes they're repurposed OC's, no I'm not telling you what fandom these little shits crawled out of, you'd laugh at me.]

I'll get to them later, though, maybe a couple dozen one-shot's surrounding their youth...

Anyway, meet Lyra Verlice the absolute trainwreck that was the result of their union, emotionally constipated and with absolute shit fashion sense, she's probably the local equivalent to The Chosen One, and fuck if she doesn't hate every single solitary moment of it.

A pretty big change from canon, so to speak, is that she attended a preparatory academy, Bedisa Private, before her application to Gedonelune Royal Magic Academy was finally accepted, causing her to, notably, lose her collective shit because Randolph likes playing 'It's Fate' rules and she had to hold all her plans to move upwards to Bedisa's sister college until after the trial period, after which she would either cancel or go through with them depending on her results.

Grateful, yes, but she has half a mind to beat him with a broom when it's revealed.

Her first days at the Academy are actually pretty calm, due to her more solemn nature, even as a child, Joel and her kept in touch over the years, if infrequently, and they help each other throughout the first four or so days without much issue.

And then she meets Luca Orlem, and then everything goes to shit.

It should be noted that, personally, Lyra has no ill will towards Luca years down the line, that doesn't stop the pure, irreverent, rage that boils through her every time she thinks about him in the following weeks and months after the Tower of Sorrow incident.

They'll be good friends one, day, definetly, it it starts with a whole slew of things involving the Spring of Unicorns and near-murder, but that's not for another six months, and this is a now issue, and she's a teen, and she hates this green haired shit more than anyone, or anything, else for a long time.

No romantic attachments happen during that storyline, she's seathing in rage over Luca's preferential treatment and idiocy, Elias and her largely do not interact for most of this entire bullshit, and Yukiya is pretty much firmly put in the little box of 'Oh, Dear God, You Remind Me Far Too Much Of My Father To Ever Be Comfortable With A Relationship' but she does notably mention that he's attractive.

She pretty much makes it into the Academy by the skin of her teeth.

[And she still debates beating Randolph with a broom some weeks later when it comes up that her Rejection of Transfer towards Felixia College papers didn't go through properly.]

Then Joel loses his Magic and suddenly she's scrambling around for an entirely different reason, and things stop making sense pretty damn quickly.

[Meanwhile, everyone and their mother takes one look at Joel Crawford and realizes the boy is fucking gone.

Kids been like since they were six and Lyra gave him one of her rare, bashful, smiles, it's just that, now, the girl recipient to his affections in right in front of him.

Klaus calls him pathetic, Joel threatens to throw Leonelli at his fucking face shortly thereafter.]

And so on, and so forth, everything moves forward quietly progressing through the seasons, with added filler and unique storylines, until the ending date, and you know.

Lyra graduates.

At which point, their might be more, might not, there could even be less!

Who knows?

Certainly not fucking me.

[As an aside I keep imagining Lyra asking Schuyler and Luca why the latter doesn't graduate early and have the start of his world tour begin in a foreign country.]

[vibe601]

I Still Can’t Believe Shekinah Was Crying Because People Robbed the Gucci Store**

Y’all, I have seen some dramatic moments in my life, but nothing quite prepared me for the spectacle of Shekinah Jo Anderson breaking down in tears over a Gucci store robbery. If you haven’t seen the viral clip, let me set the scene for you.

Shekinah, known for her larger-than-life personality and no-nonsense attitude, took to Instagram Live to express her sheer devastation over the looting of a Gucci store during the recent protests. As I watched her sobbing, I couldn’t help but be both amused and bewildered. Like, girl, out of all the things going on, this is what broke you?

She started off, mascara running down her cheeks, passionately explaining how she felt about the situation. “Y’all done broke into the Gucci store,” she wailed, voice cracking with genuine emotion. “What did Gucci do to y’all?!”

Now, let’s be real for a second. I understand that everyone has their priorities, and Shekinah’s love for high fashion is no secret. But the sheer gravity she placed on this incident was both hilarious and confusing. I mean, it’s Gucci. They’ll recover. But Shekinah’s tears, streaming down her face, made it seem like we had lost a national treasure.

What made this moment even more surreal was the backdrop of everything else going on in the world. We’ve got social justice movements, a global pandemic, and economic uncertainty. And here’s Shekinah, shedding genuine tears over some designer bags and belts. It was like watching a reality TV episode where the plot took an unexpected and absurd twist.

But let’s not just laugh off Shekinah’s reaction. There’s a deeper layer here. Her tears might have been about Gucci, but they also highlighted how people can feel deeply connected to different aspects of their lives, even those that might seem trivial to others. For Shekinah, Gucci represented a slice of normalcy, a touch of luxury that felt untouchable. Seeing it violated was a stark reminder that nothing is truly safe or sacred anymore.

However, that doesn’t mean we can’t chuckle at the sheer dramatic flair of it all. The memes and reactions on social media were priceless. People couldn’t believe that out of all the reasons to cry, a Gucci store robbery topped Shekinah’s list. But hey, if there’s one thing Shekinah knows how to do, it’s keeping us entertained.

In the grand tapestry of 2024’s wild events, Shekinah’s Gucci meltdown will go down as one of those “you had to be there” moments. It’s a reminder that in a world full of chaos, sometimes all we need is a bit of unexpected comedy to lighten the mood. So, here’s to you, Shekinah, for giving us a moment of levity and reminding us that even in the darkest times, there’s always something to make us shake our heads and laugh.

And who knows? Maybe next time, Shekinah will save her tears for something a bit more substantial. Or maybe not. Either way, we’ll be watching, popcorn in hand, ready for the next episode of her life’s unfiltered drama.

[dracharenae]

✹ —  ιяивяи || נαιмє ℓαииιѕтєя ::

A child — all the realms and all the people therein should have seen her as such, yet prisoner, hostage, heir, a kingdom’s worth of ransom were all that was held over her head, even in the eyes of the Martells. Peasants saw their children and their family as their own, for better or worse.. either kin to hold dear or be traded for a copper. High lords and ladies treated their own as possessions.. things, not people, to claim and starts wars over.

Even if she was a Tyrell, a Stark, a Waters, a Sand, Rhaenys was a child who should have only known joy. Jaime felt a mad sane man surrounded by another wave of King Aerys, and his sentimentality ( or general moral emotions ) spoke volumes. He was not a man of pure heart, though he and few others recognized the ugliness of the political dealings. Between feeding a child in Flea Bottom and filling his goblet with the finest wine, or half decent wine, Jaime would choose the wine. It had been the difference between he and the loved Rhaegar, and only man lived… Many greedy men lived.

As long as Rhaenys was kept alive however, the Lannister knew there was hope for something more beyond the stone walls of King’s Landing and the stench of poverty wafting over the city. Lions and vipers did not mix, but if several managed to sneak into the castle.. Jaime @irnbrn would be bothered to draw his sword. Thoughts such as those consumed his mind since Rhaenys was found alive while her mother and brother faced a terrible fate. The sworn brother cleared his mind with a deep inhalation and allowed a modest chuckle to pass through his mouth.

Why had he not been present to see the incident she referred to? It was for the best mayhaps, elsewise Jaime would have found himself doubled over with laughter. With hands free of gauntlets, a palm settled atop of her small head to ruffle dark hairs. He withdrew his hand seconds later and brought himself to his feet. The white and gold armor he donned clattered as body casually walked about before he settled in a lounging chair. Nothing was more uncomfortable than attempting to be comfortable in full armor.

     ❛Septas either believe their wards are stubborn mules or a lame and loyal dog. My septas thought much of the same of me as septa Myrtell thinks of you. I always wondered as a child, they act like their duty is the most horrid thing, so why even become a septa? ❜  They were too ugly to become whores or pillow girls, and there were plenty of ugly whores in the world. Jaime kept that bit of insight to himself.

     ❛  I’ve been informed one of the barn cats has created a nest and given birth to four kittens. The stable boy nearly drowned the poor things, but he was reminded that cats are preferable to rats. Would paying them a visit brighten a sluggish day, Rhaenys? ❜  

✹   —   SER JAIME EXTENDS A HAND, TUSSLING THE the thick curls of ebony hair which hang around her shoulders. at once the former princess moves from the touch, casting the golden knight a scolding glare - albeit a playful one - and proceeds to gently bat at his hand in return. even still, there is a teasing smile adorning her mouth. day by day, rhaenys is ceaselessly reminded how she has no friends within these halls. she is a ghost within her own family's castle, if even that. she is a prize and a trophy, the greatest robert baratheon likely could ever have hoped to gain. he had killed her father at the trident and robbed her of her mother and brother. he took her title, her family, and her name. he might have taken her life, too, were it not for her value . . . far better it is, indeed, to keep such a hostage alive. a dragon princess, now a bastard viper, is best left kept within her cage rather than buried beneath the earth. within these halls, she is a hostage. a burden. she has no friends here, save for one.

it is most ironic that rhaenys has found friendship in lord tywin's son. perhaps rhaenys would have sought to hate the kingslayer for being born a lion once, yet his title is reason enough to care for him. he killed her grandfather. rhaenys had no love for the old man . . . he was cruel and terrorized her endlessly. he burnt men, laughing as they died. rhaenys could not raise even an ounce of granddaughter love towards the man. she is glad he is dead. she is glad it was ser jaime who did it. and she is glad to have him as her friend, as her ally. as is, so far he's the only one she has left.

" i think they become septas because they can be cruel in the name of duty. who is going to argue with a child's caregiver, after all ? ? ? surely they know best. but my septa knows about the same as a dung beadle . . . even i know a great deal of things more so than her. i know the great histories of my dynasty . . . and she can barely keep track of their names. " rhaenys shrugs, popping another piece of chocolate covered fruit into her mouth. the taste is explosively sweet and it draws a genuine smile to her. " but i hate her as much as she hates me. so it is no loss. "

rhaenys has long since cared about whether or not someone likes or approves of her. if her septa so chooses to hold her in utter contempt, far be it from rhaenys to stop her. in fact, she welcomes it. let the old bag hate and resent her. it shall be all the sweeter in the future, when rhaenys makes the decision to take care of the old woman herself. shave her head bald, perhaps. hide dung in her bed. perhaps she can even hide poison ivy into her perfume. surely it would be doable. and, undoubtedly, it is an act of revenge to be met with some measure of consequence, but rhaenys shall simply have to prepare for that, too.

rhaenys' thoughts of haggard septas comes to a screeching halt, however, when ser jaime brings up a most delightful prospect; kittens. her brows raise and the curious look in her eyes becomes hopeful. " i expect i should like nothing more, ser jaime. "

[silverynight]

Friends

"I'm glad we're friends again!" Izuku says, grinning from ear to ear at Katsuki. He never thought he would be able to call him his friend without risking getting himself blasted away.

He's so happy he's going to use every chance he has to call Katsuki his friend.

"Tch!" It's the blond's response, but Izuku can see now that he's not actually irritated at the moment. Katsuki apologized a couple of weeks ago, Izuku told him he had forgiven him a while ago and now they're both trying to spend as much time together as possible like they did when they were kids.

There are things that haven't changed about Katsuki; he still gets angry whenever Izuku hurts himself but now he either takes the green haired boy to recovery girl or patches him up himself.

He does everything with a scowl on his face and mumbles aggressively about Izuku being an idiot for ending up like that, but he's very gentle when he's cleaning the wounds.

It always makes Izuku grin fondly at him. One day he can't stop himself and touches Katsuki right cheek as he looks into his eyes.

For a moment, Katsuki stares back, too surprised to scowl, before his cheeks turn slightly pink.

"You're such a good friend," Izuku beams, so lost in his own happiness he doesn't notice the way Katsuki grimaces after hearing the last word.

"Shut up, Izuku."

***

"My friend Kacchan and I will be there in a minute!" Izuku says happily before ending the call as Katsuki narrows his eyes at him.

"Whom were you talking to?"

"Todoroki."

"Half and Half already knows we're friends! Why do you have to remind him every FIVE SECONDS?"

Izuku tries not to panic, he knew it'd be difficult to keep doing that without Katsuki noticing something, but he's not going to tell him the truth; he'll probably get mad.

"Sorry, I didn't notice I was saying that word, Kacchan!"

The blond huffs, clearly irritated.

"You don't call Half and Half your friend," Katsuki comments, it's clear that something's bothering him, but Izuku has no idea what.

But he can't tell him; he'll probably think it's ridiculous if he finds out Izuku missed so much their friendship he can't help but tell everyone they're friends now.

"It's different... We... My relationship with him is different."

"I see," Katsuki mumbles; Izuku has never seen him so serious or quiet before.

***

It happens again; Katsuki risks his own life to save Izuku while they were fighting a villain outside UA, fortunately, nothing happens to him.

Since they were helping Endeavor they have an interview about the incident; the girl asking questions seems really interested about Katsuki and Izuku's relationship.

"You two seem inseparable!" She giggles, taking out her phone. "The Twitter community talks a lot about you two very often."

Izuku has no idea what she's talking about, he's not often in Twitter, although Katsuki crosses his arms over his chest and blushes as he turns his head away.

"So, are you two–"

"Yes, we're best friends now!" Izuku beams. The girl seems disappointed for some reason; she looks over his shoulder where Katsuki is. The boy is grimacing like he just ate something disgusting.

The girl stops asking them questions and turns towards Endeavor and Todoroki.

***

He's walking towards Katsuki's dorm when he hears his loud voice coming from inside; he's talking to Kirishima.

"I HATE IT!" Izuku stops, surprised to hear so much emotion in Katsuki's voice. It sounds almost like he's in pain. He's about to knock and ask if he's alright when the blond speaks again: "I HATE WHEN HE CALLS ME HIS FRIEND! I HATE THE WORD! WHY DOES HE HAVE TO TELL EVERYONE WE'RE FRIENDS?"

"You should talk to him, Bakubro," Kirishima says. "It's not manly to hide your feelings like that!"

"No," Katsuki finally stops yelling, but Izuku hears him all the same. "I don't–I've been an asshole to him. I can't... be selfish again. This is clearly what he wants..."

So it's pity then, Izuku realizes. Katsuki doesn't want to be his friend after all. He'd like to walk in and tell him he doesn't need to pretend to like him, he doesn't have to spend time with him. The apology was more than enough.

But Izuku can't walk in. He's hurt; the ache in his heart is too painful at the moment.

He walks away instead, back to his room, a few tears escape from his eyes before he falls asleep.

***

"Are you ready for me to kick your ass, nerd?" Katsuki smirks, standing in front of the couch Izuku is sitting on. He seems to be purposely ignoring Todoroki and Uraraka next to him.

Even looking at him hurts, so Izuku glances at his own hands instead.

"I'll train with Todoroki today."

"WHAT THE HELL, IZUKU? WE ALWAYS TRAIN TOGETHER!"

"Not today," he mumbles, trying not to cry. "I'm going to train with Todoroki. We don't have to do everything together all the time. It's alright, Kac–Bakugo."

Some of their classmates are in the common room as well, Izuku knows they're listening to their conversation even though they pretend not to.

"Don't ever call me that again," Katsuki snaps; he is not yelling anymore, but there's an edge in his voice that makes it even worse. "And at least have the courage to look at me... Izuku."

He doesn't want to because he feels vulnerable, he'll crumble if he does that. But he does it anyway; Katsuki looks like Izuku just punched him in the face.

"Calm down, Bakugo–"

"STOP GETTING IN THE MIDDLE, HALF AND HALF!" Katsuki growls. "YOU HAVE TO RUIN EVERYTHING, HUH? WE WERE FINE UNTIL YOU–"

"This is not his fault, Kacchan! I know you don't really want to be my friend!"

When he hears Uraraka telling everyone to leave them alone, Izuku feels a wave of affection towards her.

"WHAT?"

"Come on, Todoroki-kun! We have to leave them alone!"

"Will you be fine, Midoriya? Are you sure you don't want me to stay?"

"FUCK OFF, HALF AND HALF!" Katsuki bares his teeth at him. "THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU!"

"I'll be fine, Todoroki. Thanks for worrying about me."

The boy with mismatched eyes nods and (albeit reluctantly) lets Uraraka grab his arm to yank him away from the room.

"I know you don't want to be my friend," Izuku repeats, even though it hurts him to say it. "You don't have to. I have forgiven you a while ago. The apology was more than enough. You don't need to try to make it up to me by pretending to be my friend."

"What the hell are you taking about?" Katsuki stares back with irritation and confusion written all over his face.

"I heard your conversation with Kirishima," Izuku mumbles, cheeks turning slightly pink. "I know you hate when I call you my friend."

Something like pain falls like a shadow over Katsuki's features for a moment.

"So you heard that, but didn't stick around to find out why I hate that word, huh?"

"I wasn't going to stay there! You sounded upset, besides... I just wanted to ask you something about our math assignment! I didn't mean to eavesdrop!"

"And the conclusion you came up with was that I was pretending to be your friend? That somehow I didn't really want to spend time with you?" Katsuki looks irritated, but when he takes Izuku's face in his hands, there's nothing but fondness in his red eyes. "Since when I do ANYTHING I don't want to? I thought you knew me well, nerd."

"But you said you hated when I called you friend!" Izuku protests, feeling suddenly ridiculous and very much confused.

"I do hate that word," Katsuki admits, his eyes glimmer with determination before he adds. "Because I want more."

Before Izuku can think what he means, the blond leans forward and kisses him possessively. It's a very good kiss; Izuku had no idea how much he needed that until Katsuki started kissing him.

However, it doesn't last long.

"I'm sorry, Izuku... I didn't–"

"Come back here, Kacchan," the green haired boy cuts him off, pulling him by the neck to press their lips together again.

They end up tangled on the couch; Izuku's lips are pink and a little bit swollen from all the kissing but he doesn't care.

"If you ever call me your friend after this, I swear I'll blast your face off, nerd," Katsuki warns, prompting Izuku to burst into laughter. The blond decides to shut him up with another kiss.

***

"So... I was telling Kacchan the other day–"

He gets interrupted by a growl coming from his lap; Izuku is kinda used to it at this point. Katsuki has his head over the other boy's lap and sometimes he gets angry when Izuku forgets to keep running his fingers through his hair.

However, Katsuki's growl wasn't because of that.

Watching Todoroki rolling his eyes and Uraraka trying to hide a chuckle, Izuku feels his cheeks turning slightly pink as he sighs.

"They already know..."

This time, Katsuki snarls as he glares at him.

"Fine! I was telling my boyfriend Kacchan the other day about this new All Might limited figures I found on this online store the other day..."

He tries not to find endearing when he notices Katsuki's satisfied grin, but fails miserably.

***

Patreon

[koushou]

an archon’s jealousy

pairing : zhongli x f!reader {fluff}

warnings : none! zhongli cuteness overload 

word count : 1.8k

a/n : genshin has taken over my life so enjoy my favorite peepaw 

the geo archon, once feared by all beings in teyvat, was known for his strength and abilities in battle, as well as his logical way of thinking and planning. his weakness? well, he’s definitely not great with emotions. especially jealousy.

“Ah, this painting reminds me of when an old friend and I had been travelling together for the first time, there was-” 

Zhongli turns around, smiling as he reminisces of events from hundreds of years ago, however turning into a frown quickly. 

His golden eyes scan the dining room, sighing as they fail to identify a certain someone. Placing his cup of tea down onto the polished wooden table, he walks out to the private balcony area of Wangmin Restaurant, breathing in the familiar fresh air of the nation he’d known for as long as he existed.

It had been two days.

Two days since he’s spoken to his lover, two days since the small quarrel you both had in the exact restaurant he’s currently standing in.

It had been quite a trivial matter in his opinion, when a young waitress working there had just been a tad kinder to the geo archon, leaving a few light touches here and there. Even “accidentally” spilling tea over herself, putting on a show of cleaning herself. 

Not noticing the dark glare of his lover from across the table, he offers the apologizing waitress a small smile, assuring her it wasn’t a big deal. As she walks away, he finally turns back to the now fuming Y/N who was shoving food down her throat to avoid speaking to him.

He chuckles softly, still unaware of the reason for your anger, “Love, slow down, the food isn’t going anywhere.”

Refusing to acknowledge his presence, you huff and continue chewing your food as if he wasn’t even there. Zhongli looks at you with a confused expression, but just before he had a chance to speak, the waitress returns.

She takes a few of your plates that were finished being used, occasionally sending small looks at your boyfriend, oblivious to the whole situation.

“I love your earring, Mr. Zhongli,” she bats her eyelashes at the man, your man, as she continues cleaning the table at record slow speed. 

“Ah, thank you.” He sends a small nod her way, not noticing the way she might as well be sitting on top of him with the close proximity of their two bodies. 

“Where did you get it from?” You roll your eyes while still focusing on your food, anyone could tell the way she was speaking in a faker, higher tone.

“Actually, they were gifted from an old friend of mine, we would travel together all the time and-” Zhongli goes off on one of his rants again, to the waitress’s pleasant surprise. To your shock, she takes a seat right next to your unsuspecting boyfriend who was still speaking, nodding along with his words. 

The audacity of this bi-

You slam your hands on the table abruptly, stopping Zhongli in his story as he looks up at you.

You shoot the coldest stare at him, one that even the geo archon, who had fought every monster, travelled to every corner of the world, swore sent shivers through his body.

“Love?”

“I’m finished, have fun on your date,” You spat, emphasizing the last word, and you could’ve sworn you saw the waitress roll her eyes.

Leaving Zhongli still in a confused state, you stormed out of the room, not paying mind to the distant protests of your boyfriend.

Zhongli sighs, snapping out of his thoughts, leaning against the railing of the balcony. He had walked out and tried to find you, but failed and you hadn’t appeared since.

After finally consulting Childe, the last person he’d ever want to speak to, about why you had acted like the way you did, he simply laughed at the man, claiming that you had been feeling jealous.

That had left Zhongli even more confused. Jealous? He was simply sharing his tales with a curious person, what was there to be jealous of?

He sighs again, ready to head back into the dining room until he spots a familiar figure below him.

You were standing below the balcony he was on, not seeming to realize he was there. Zhongli breathes a sigh of relief, oh how he missed seeing you. About to go down and surprise you, he stops in his tracks when he sees a young man walk up to you and begin talking.

An unfamiliar feeling seeps through his body when you laugh at something the stranger said, a wonderful sound he thought was reserved for him, and him only. 

You probably knew each other, that’s why you guys looked so close, right? Friends can laugh at each other, of course there was nothing wrong with the scene unfolding before the archon. That’s why the man’s hand had reached towards a stray strand of hair and tucked it behind your ear, right?

Zhongli grits his teeth, and makes his way down the restaurant as fast as his feet could take him.

He could hear you giggling upon walking out the restaurant’s doors, and quickly makes his way to you.

Walking up behind you, he slips an arm around your waist and pulls you softly back against his chest. 

You let out a surprised yelp, ready to attack whoever was touching you, until you turned and saw that it had just been your boyfriend, who seemed to be seething at the moment.

“Zhongli..?” Something about him seemed a little different, maybe it was the way he glared daggers into the other man who had just been talking to you and touching you. 

If looks could kill? Let’s just say The Wangsheng Funeral Parlor has an extra client today. 

“Hey love, I missed you,” Zhongli presses a kiss to your cheek, “Who might this be?” 

A bit flustered from the contact, you looked at the other man who seemed on the verge of peeing himself right there, and had to suppress a laugh.

“Ah, this is just a friend I met a few days ago when I was exploring, he-“

Before you could finish your sentence, the man stutters out an incoherent sentence and almost trips over himself running off in the other direction.

You raise an eyebrow, turning your head back to look at Zhongli who was still holding you protectively against him. He had created a small yellow meteor in his hand and was currently levitating it above his palm in a threatening manner.

He turns to you, putting the meteor away, smiling as he presses a kiss to your forehead. 

“Zhongli, you scared him away.”

He puts on a thinking face, nodding slowly.

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, no— That’s it? You probably scared the poor man into thinking you were going to murder him or somethin-”

He chuckles and raises your chin up to face him with one finger, “Then maybe next time, he should think before touching something that belongs to me.”

You huff, cheeks tinting the lightest shade of red before pushing him away.

“Whatever, I’m going now.”

You start to walk away, not before Zhongli catches your arm and stops you.

“Love, are you still angry?”

You could hear the concern in your boyfriend’s voice, and your heart softens a bit. In truth, you had already forgotten the incident back at the restaurant a few days ago and was about to apologize today when the man from before had stopped you. 

A lightbulb went off in your head, so you decide to play with him a little longer. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Snatching your hand back from his grasp, you continue walking away from your surprised boyfriend.

He quickly follows you, unsure of how to continue. He couldn’t just ask you if you had been jealous, could he?

As your boyfriend got lost in his thoughts of how to ask, you almost laughed at his intense thinking face while nervously walking beside you. 

“Uh, I-,” He cleared his throat before speaking.

“I’m sorry for upsetting you that day, I did not realize that it would have made you feel jealous.” 

He takes both of your hands in his, softly enveloping them as he continues.

“From now on, I promise that I’ll only share my stories with you, and you only, so don’t worry, love.”

He smiles at you, as you suddenly burst out in laughter. 

“What is so funny?” Zhongli asks, confused.

“Nothing, nothing at all, baby,” You finally recover from your laughing and wrap your arms around his waist.

Leaning your head against his chest, you couldn’t help but smile at the way your boyfriend thought you were upset because he was sharing his stories with another person, when you had just been jealous of another woman being so close to him. It was adorable.

Deciding not to tease him any further, you lift your head up from his chest to press a kiss against his lips. 

His eyes brighten instantly. “So, does this mean you forgive me?” 

If Zhongli was a dog, his tails would be wagging expectantly at you with puppy dog eyes right now.

You giggle, nodding at him. “Of course I forgive you, just don’t talk to other girls like that again.”

You pout, as he chuckles and leans down to give you another kiss. 

“I promise, love.” He softly strokes your hair, running the strands through his fingers.

“I also didn’t like seeing you with that man, so don’t let anyone besides me touch you, alright?”

You smile against him, nodding and opening your mouth to speak again when your stomach suddenly rumbles.

Eyes widening, you push away a now laughing Zhongli, embarrassed.

“I assume you’re hungry, my love?” He teases at you, taking your hand in his as he begins to walk the both of you back to Wangmin Restaurant.

“Who was the one who cut my meal short two days ago? I barely had anything to eat recently because I didn’t have any mora on me.” You take your hand out of his hold, crossing your arms and looking the other way.

He laughs softly at you, taking your hand back and kissing your knuckles softly. 

“Ah, you haven’t been eating welI?” He looks at you with concern laced in his golden eyes.

“I apologize, darling, but… I have something to confess to you.”

You turn to him, curious at his words. “What is it?”

“I..do not have mora on me at the moment either.”

“What?! You’re literally the god of mora, Zhongli, but you don’t even-“

He cuts you off short with a kiss, smirking against your lips as he feels you blush.

Pulling away, he chuckles and shrugs. “We can go ask Childe, come on.”

You laugh and continue walking with him, “Poor Childe, at least he’s useful for one thing.”

Zhongli lets out a laugh, as you two walk off, hand in hand, searching for your human wallet.

[edwardskhakipants]

Forks, Washington. August 2004.

Esme and Carlisle stood in the middle of their grand living room, waiting for their five vampire children to arrive. Alice arrived first—prompt as usual. She settled herself gracefully onto the tufted sofa Esme had recently acquired, only to be immediately jostled by Emmett who heaved himself onto the cushions. A breath caught in Esme’s throat—she had lost many pieces from her beloved collection by that action—but it looked like this one was still in one piece. For the moment. Jasper took Edward’s normal spot in the only armchair, forcing Edward to wedge himself between Alice and Emmett.

“What?” Rosalie grumbled as she perched on the armrest of the couch beside Emmett, “Are we having another one of those How to Respect the Telepath in Your Life meetings again?”

“No,” Edward answered, fully aware of the intent of this meeting since it hatched in Carlisle's mind two days prior. “But there’s never a bad time to bring that up. Christ, Emmett, if you’re going to have a song stuck in your head for over seventy-two hours, the least you can do is learn the correct lyrics.”

Emmett’s eyebrows knit together, asking his brother a silent question.

“It’s ‘mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido,’” Edward answered.

Emmett’s brow furrowed doubtfully.

“No.” Edward shook his head, answering Emmett’s thoughts. “Why would he eat a beetle?”

Emmett grinned playfully and tilted his head towards Edward.

Edward wasn’t amused. “You know what it means.”

A silly grin plastered on his face, Emmett elbowed Edward in the ribs, silently egging him on.  

Edward’s eyes darted to Carlisle, then Esme, and he shifted in his seat. “Sexual desire,” he muttered.  

Emmett howled with laughter and clapped his hands once, “Wow, Eddie! You’re just going to say that in front of Esme!?” Edward scowled as Emmett’s bouts of laughter echoed through the room.

Esme ran a hand through her youngest’s ginger hair. “Boys,” she warned, and Emmett sucked in his laughter.

“Our meeting today has to do with all of you,” Carlisle began.

“We simply wanted to go over the rules of attending school with you kids before you start your second year at Forks High School,” Esme explained, unfolding and re-folding her hands in front of her. “There are already whispers, and we don’t want those whispers to turn into rumors.”

“I thought the only whispers about us at school were whether or not Edward liked girls,” Rosalie said, earning an eye-roll from Edward.

“No,” Alice chirped,” Some kids think we’re a cult.”

Jasper leaned back heavily in his chair. “We haven’t heard that one since the Seventies.”

“Kids are getting more creative these days.” Emmett nodded appreciatively.

Esme held up one, delicate finger. “Which is why it is best to take preventative action.”

Carlisle took the floor. “We thought a few reminders would be helpful before you started your first day of your second year,” Carlisle said. “We don’t want another incident like the one we had at the end of last year.”

Every head in the room turned towards Emmett.

“What?” Emmett threw up his hands in exasperation, “The water gun fight was the senior prank—I wasn’t the one who brought them to the school. Hell, I wasn’t even the only student who got suspended!”

“That’s true,” Carlisle agreed, “but you were the only student to shout, ‘Sit down, kids! Daddy’s gotta tinkle,’ and shoot the stream of the gun from your crotch.”

Jasper snickered—the sound was immediately silenced by a single raised eyebrow from Esme.

“I still don’t see the problem,” Emmett continued, “That’s not necessarily a vampire thing.”

Edward—who often mistook himself as the third vampire parent rather than the youngest son—sighed, “Yes, but it brings unnecessary attention to the family. Which is the first rule: do not bring attention to yourself.”

Esme ran her fingers through her son’s hair once more, “Yes, darling, you are especially good at keeping to yourself.” Edward’s eyes widened, despite Esme’s gentle touch, already aware of where her point was headed. “So much so, that I have been given the names of several child therapists to help my son through his depression. One was recommended for his exceptional work on spotting and treating the early signs of sociopathic behavior.”

Esme grabbed her son’s chin and forced him to look at her. “You have to talk to other people.”

Knocked off his high horse, Edward flinched back from Esme’s hand. “Friendship with humans never bodes well for us.”

“We’re not asking you to create lifelong friendships with humans,” Carlisle clarified, “We are simply asking you to be likable.”

“A nearly impossible feat for Edward.” Rosalie grinned. The comment went unnoticed, save Edward’s slight flinch. But the quick, little tick was satisfying enough for Rose.

“Look at your father,” Esme gestured towards Carlisle, “At every hospital he works at, he goes out of his way to ensure he is well-liked among his colleagues. He forces down countless lunches and coffees, solely to make sure they’re comfortable around him.”

Carlisle took over. “And your mother, a beloved member of her gardening club and a prized member of the PTA.”

“And neither of us have rumors started about us, and do you know why?”

All five teenagers grumbled the ingrained response. “Humans don’t want to spread rumors about people they like.”

“Exactly.” Esme nodded.

“I try!” Alice whined, “But Edward never lets me talk to any humans.”

“That’s because every, single thing that is about to come out of your mouth is incriminating. You might as well walk around with a neon sign that says, ‘I’m a psychic vampire’.”

Alice scoffed, “Is not!”

“You wanted to tell Nihal Howard not to audition for the musical.”

“And he broke his leg on opening night,” Alice challenged.  

“You were going to tell Christiana Ward that pink was not her color.”

“And she lost prom queen to Ashley Kirby.”

Jasper put a comforting hand on his wife’s knee. “Maybe try not to meddle so much, darlin’. Natural relationships, first.”

“They would have been!” Alice wailed, “I would have played it cool and casual and made friends and you all would have seen it! But everyone’s hurt and I have no friends at all because Edward won’t let me try!”

Edward rolled his eyes.

Carlisle suppressed a heavy sigh. “You have to let your sister try, Edward.”

Edward’s mouth fell open. “You cannot seriously be siding with her on this!”

But Carlisle stood his ground. He and Edward stared at one another for a few seconds, engaged in a silent conversation. In the end, Carlisle tilted his chin and Edward slumped back. Victorious, Alice used both pointer fingers to jab Edward in the side several dozen times at vampire speed.

Rosalie flipped her golden locks over her shoulder. “I don’t know how you all struggle so much. I have no issues with becoming well-liked at school while remaining inconspicuous.”

“Oh yeah, you’re so inconspicuous,” Edward grumbled, now extra-petty that he had been called out two times in one meeting. “You dress like you're on your way to brunch at your second husband’s country club in Beverly Hills and you make out with your foster brother. The perfect picture of discretion in Forks High School.”

“At least I don’t dress like a sad, old man.” Rosalie grimaced, disappointed in her comeback. The light, humorous insults that were required in family situations were Emmett’s forte; Rosalie’s insults were meant to emotionally cripple a person.

Edward sat up in his seat on the couch and turned to face Rosalie. “I think you missed the main takeaway in that you make out with your foster brother.” Edward turned back. “I can read your minds, and I still don’t understand what made either of you think it was okay to bring your relationship to school?!”

Emmett smiled, unperturbed. “It’s hot.”

“It’s disturbing,” Edward disagreed.

Esme frowned, “You kids don’t really do that, do you?”

“Would it help if Jasper and I became an official couple too?” Alice suggested.     Jasper perked up at the idea of being able to hold hands with Alice in public again.

“No!” Edward yelled at the same time Emmett and Rosalie muttered their acquiesce.

“It wouldn’t seem as weird if there were two couples,” Emmett agreed.

Edward dug his fingers through his hair. “Oh my god!”

“...maybe not, kids,” Esme intervened, but was ultimately ignored.

“So should we come out today like it happened over the summer, or make a little show out of it?” Alice asked Rosalie.

Rosalie waved a hand in the air. “Oh, it’s way more fun if you play up the theatrics.”

“A little more realistic, too,” Emmett agreed.

Alice looked to Jasper for his opinion. “It might be better if we were discreet about it,” she said. “Like we knew it was wrong, but we wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of our love.”

Jasper scooted forward to the edge of his seat. “Or we could let it be quiet and drawn out. Let others see our mutual pining, and root for us to be together.”

Gazing deep into the golden eyes of her soulmate, Alice sighed, “I love that.”

“If people wanted us to get together, it would normalize Emmett and Rosalie’s relationship.”

“Or Rosalie and Emmett could stop,” Edward suggested, bitterly. “That would be normal, too.”

“Oh, Edward,” Alice patted his shoulder, “You’ll find love someday, too.”

“That is not at all what bothers me about the situation.”

Carlisle made the decision for everyone. “Rosalie and Emmett, break up at school. Alice and Jasper, remain friends and siblings.”

Disappointment filtered into the room through Jasper.  

“I heard that,” Edward grumbled at someone’s thoughts.

“You were supposed to,” Rosalie shot back.

“We are also initiating a new rule,” Esme brought the room back to the conversation at hand, “No more correcting your teachers.”

A chorus of complaints rang from the couch.

Esme clicked her tongue, “I’m tired of defending you all from entirely preventable issues. I have emails from curious teachers wondering why my foster daughter is taking French 101, when she already appears to be fluent.” Esme looked at Rosalie, who immediately tucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “Or why my son, at the tender age of sixteen, could not only deadlift three hundred pounds in his first weightlifting class, but also give his coach tips on improving his posture.”

Emmett glanced over at Edward before he realized Esme was, in fact, addressing him. “What!?”

Jasper snorted. The sound was a mistake, for it brought Esme’s wrath onto him. “And not to mention the emails from not one, not two, but three teachers warning me that my foster son has an intimate understanding of the mechanics of a point fifty-eight caliber rifle-musket.” Esme held out her hands, almost pleadingly, “How does that subject keep coming up, Jasper?”

A noncommittal grunt was the only answer Jasper had for that question.

“No more,” she commanded. “You can get good grades but keep your extra knowledge on any subject to yourself. Whatever your teacher teaches is all you know. Understand?”

“But what if we—” Edward started.

“Understand?” Esme repeated.

The five teenage vampires understood, even if they didn’t want to. 

“I believe that all five of you will graduate from Forks High School!” Esme cheered.

The kids stared back, unable to muster the zeal Esme had over the prospect.

“Meeting adjourned!” Carlisle announced, and faster than fast vampire speed, the kids bolted from their seats. 

Esme was able to get in a few more reminders as her children flitted around the house and filed out to the silver Volvo.  “Remember to buy lunch with cash and not your credit cards. Emmett, please do not joke about being mauled by a bear. Do not address your teachers by their first names—I don’t care if you’re older than they are, Edward. Alice, please wear something a bit more causal, pet.”

When the house was finally empty, Carlisle pulled Esme backwards into his chest and began massaging her temples. The gesture wasn’t needed, but any touch from her husband was always welcome.

“Do you think they’ll listen?” she asked her husband.

“Not a chance.”

[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.