#they named him son after that incident and it makes son embarrassed every time
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Meanwhile on the resolute after a campaign where a lot of new shinnies in the 501st were in:
Rex: Commander, why is the general crying on the floor next to the medbay?
Ahsoka: He was in the medbay checking on the injured troops.
Rex: And? That usually isn’t one of the things that makes the general cry unless someone dies.
Ahsoka:
Ahsoka: He accidentally startled a injured shiny awake and Skyguy started frantically apologizing but the shiny hugged him and he was drugged up so he also accidentally called Anakin “dad” in Mando’a.
Rex: Oh force
#ahsoka tano#captain rex#anakin skywalker#ahsoka and rex#rex and anakin#anakin and ahsoka#ahsoka and rex are besties#anakin and the 501st#anakin is a father to ahsoka and the 501st#anakin is such a dad#star wars the clone wars#clone wars#the clone wars incorrect quotes#star wars incorrect quotes#I just see him as a person who cries whenever he gets a drop of affection from someone#he’s my emotional little princess who pretends to be tough#get anakin some therapy man#they named him son after that incident and it makes son embarrassed every time
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Favourite headcanons pt. 2
Schmendrick being bi and not shy about it. One of his biggest heartbreaks was caused by another wizard he fell head over heels for. Said wizard was emotionally manipulative and made game of Schmendrick’s efforts to become a real magician, constantly reminding him how he could have chosen a more fitting companion for himself instead of Schmendrick. Took Schmendrick a while to recognize the pattern of abusive behaviour, not wanting to admit to himself that his partner did not respect him as a person. The last straw: when Schmendrick was asked to pretend to not know him while at a gathering of wizards, so he would “have not embarrassed him”.
Lìr being secretly aware that Haggard would not have kept close anything that did not make him happy and this, deep down, makes him hope that Haggard cares at least a little about his adopted son. Too bad Haggard hasn’t gotten rid of him simply because he is curious to see if Lìr is really the one who is going to take down his castle, according to the prophecy.
Up to the moment he had reached for his full power, Schmendrick had carried a pouch of gunpowder around his neck. What for? To quickly blow up in the unfortunate case he would have been sentenced to the stake for sorcery in unwelcoming regions and cities while he was still powerless and unable to free himself by magic, instead of slowly burning.
Mabruk being the one who had taught Haggard how to “train” the Red Bull to do what he wants. He knows about the unicorns being kept captive into the sea but doesn’t lift a finger. When he is let go, he does not talk out of pure spite.
Schmendrick being mildly claustrophobic due to have been sealed in a barrel by other apprentices for almost an entire day and dared to get out of it, in a mockery of his skills and of him coming from a family of coopers. Nothing paralyzing, but he would start to be very uncomfortable and fidgety in constrictive spaces.
Molly and Cully first met while he was trying to steal hens from her family’s chicken coop and she threatened to beat him up with a log, scaring him away. They started to regularly meet at dusk since then, before they eloped after Molly had become known as “the bandit’s wife” around her small village and everyone was afraid to talk to her in fear of repercussions.
Lìr has almost gotten engaged to the princess in distress sent to him by Schmendrick at the end of the book – feeling it was his “duty” to. She was the one to realize they could never be happy together because he was in love with someone else. She becomes a great friend and a loyal counsellor, one of the few with whom Lìr feels comfortable to confide. When she dies after a horse ride incident, Lìr’s mind begins to go adrift.
Schmendrick and Molly never using pet names between them and very seldom saying they love each other out loud. When they do, it means that the situation is god-awful. Lìr knows that when Schmendrick calls Molly “beloved” it is time to seriously worry.
Sometimes Molly feels the need to be alone for a while. She had been surrounded by people all her life and rarely had the opportunity to go on her own adventures. Every now and then she would announce Schmendrick that she would leave for - dunno, a couple of weeks or a month? - and he would just be like “’kay bye, travel safe and please let me know when you are coming back. Have fun!” because they both trust each other so much.
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Oasis: 1, Latikam: 7, Casarin: 10, Hydrel: 18
(oasis) What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?
Approximately 10 minutes. This assumes "nothing" does not include keeping a watch out, navigation, watching to make sure casarin is paying attention, making snide comments and flipping off other pilots while on the ship. If he's being responsible she likes to go harass alex in the back. On land she's always wandering off on her own away from casarin either picking up essentials he's forgotten again or non essentials lol. She can also be found playing "lets throw bricks at susarikas" (he loves it) to pass the time.
If there's NOTHING to do, she's trapped just waiting, she'll usually pull something she uh found in the street (finders keepers) and carve into it with her knife. No this is mine, see its got my name on it and a little pony too, oh and on this side its got a snake eating a watermelon.
(latikam) What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?
The thing with living for centuries is that at a certain point, everything and nothing causes nostalgic, its the experience of every vazuvyr. BUT latikam has lived through the occupation AND does not live in his homeland anymore, in a way he is a child who remembers past lives but cannot apply any of it to this one. The biggest trigger is that mokubat learned how to cook from vokutlvek, and while they have their different styles every now and then something lines up, he can taste his brothers work in his sons. Its... a lot. Thats the taste he's known through centuries of heartache and love and pain and joy and healing, yet for once he's not here for it. The person who's always been there to run to, lay his head on, and protected him isn't there this time. Somehow disorientating and grounding at the same time.
Seeing casarin and hydrel also remind him A LOT of vokutlvek and azrem. Their stupid little dramas, playing footsies at the table, shoving food into his mouth. Latikam said "I know what you are".
(casarin) What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?
God why did you have pick THIS one for him how did you hone in on this choice. My man keeps repeatedly telling a very specific lie about how okay he is. "haunted" probably isnt the word Id pick exactly. During sf its less of the burden of knowing he lied and more of the fear of someone finding out the truth. And in act 2 when someone confronts him about it he doubles down on "everything is fine" until he's dragged kicking and screaming to the warm saucer of milk. At the end of his life he looks at those years and realizes how stupid he was for putting himself through it and not asking for help, especially now recognizing fjinmars and adaen saw the problem and wanted to help him but he never gave them the chance, but at this point he's too preoccupied by the good run they had and how thats going to be gone.
A specific instance he told this lie to his mother, who he never lies to because she is telepathic, clocked him immediately and he broke down about the whole thing. The thing that hurts him is that he doesnt know why he lied, mama never made him feel bad about this before, he just... felt guilty and embarrassed about all this. idk.
(hydrel) What embarrasses them?
The austisms. He's had people "just tease" him for his expressions and taking things literally and when he's last to the joke. Doesnt like to ask what people mean by things because that usually makes it worse. It's not obvious in the main script but its worth noticing how much differently he acts with his family vs with casarin. Weird. Sure its nothing. Also bringing up past incidents is the fastest way to get 🧑🤝🧑-- points with him, VERY embarrassed when he realized after the fact he overreacted or was rude when he didnt mean to be. Just let him learn and move on.
Also extremely embarrassed if you catch him farting lmao. How dare you accuse him of having a bodily function. I want a bestie divorce.
#''love how these all came back to casarin in some way'' yeah im mentally ill for him#sf#oasis#casarin#hydrel#latikam
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Hope 2 | R.L
Paring: Remus Lupin X Wife!Potter!Reader
Summary: Life is unfair in numerous ways but it seems like it’s out to get the Potters in every way shape and form.
The huge eight-foot man who introduced himself as Hagrid was bringing Harry around London. It was amusing to see Hagrid turn his cousin - Dudley - butt into a pigtail after trying to eat his birthday cake. It was the first birthday Y/n, and Remus hadn’t shown up. Harry didn’t blame them. Of course, to be fair, they didn’t know where Harry was.
“Um, excuse me, Hagrid?”
“Yes, ‘Arry?”
“Where- Where are we going?” Harry questioned hesitantly, and Hagrids lips curled into a smile, “‘Er gon’ meet with som’ of yer folks.” Hagrid answered.
Harry wanted to jump with joy, “Moony and Y/n?”
Hagrid nodded, and Harry smiled brightly. It took a couple of minutes and walking of a couple more blocks. But eventually, they were coming up on an old-looking building made of black stone bricks. In front of the door was a familiar sandy-haired male with green eyes. He was accompanied by his wife with h/c hair and gleaming e/c eyes.
“Y/n! Remus!”
Y/n turned to see her little nephew running up to hug her tightly, “Hey Harry.”
Remus ruffled his hair while Harry hugged his aunt, “Hey there, mini Prongs.”
“I missed you.”
“Awe, I missed you too, Harry.” Y/n replied, pulling apart from Harry, “I’m sorry we didn’t show up right away. But we’re here now. I hope that’s okay. We wouldn’t miss your birthday for the world, okay?”
He nodded, “I know. I can always count on you.”
“Good.” Remus stated, “Now c’mon mini prongs. Gotta get your school supplies.”
Walking into the Leaky Cauldron with Hagrid, they were greeted by multiple people. Many people were flabbergasted by meeting the famous Harry Potter and were welcoming to see Y/n Potter. In the back of the Leaky Cauldron, Hagrid tapped his wand against the brick wall, causing it to open into Diagon Alley. Harry’s mouth was agape at this new form of Magic.
It was astonishing. The narrow alleyway was packed with people. Clusters of them walking in groups. Some were carrying animals, or brown-wrapped items Harry could suppose were books. Y/n smiled and intertwined her hand with Remus’. She could remember the first time she stepped into Diagon Alley. James was acting like such a prat.
“Woah!” James gasped, “Look at all the cool stuff!”
Fleamont chuckled, “Yeah. Isn’t it cool, sweetheart?”
Y/n nodded, completely entranced in the stonework in the alleyway. It was littered with different shops, and the roads were an uneven stone. Euphemia and Fleamont shared a look of pure glee. Their children were magical born, and they were finally experiencing it first hand. Of course, they had their incidents where Y/n would make lights flicker or James blowing plates.
As they began walking, James began to run off, bumping into people left and right, “James! Get back here!” Fleamont scolded, but he was out of sight.
Euphemia sighed, “He’s gonna be a handful.”
“Definitely.” Fleamont agreed, running a hand through his dark brunet hair, “Perhaps he’ll be even worse than me.”
His wife glared at him. Despite James disappearing, they took Y/n into Flourish and Blotts to get their books. They needed books such as The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1), A History of Magic, Magical Theory, A Beginners’ Guide to Transfiguration, One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, Magical Drafts and Potions, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and finally, The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection.
They didn’t find James until they reached Quality Quidditch Supplies. He was already eyeing the new broom on display. His mouth seemed to be salivating at it. Y/n rolled her eyes at James, drooling over a piece of wood. Euphemia chuckled and motioned Fleamont to reel him back in. It seemed that Euphemia would never get a break, and her heart would be in a constant attack of worry. They had a mischief Quidditch player on their hands.
“C’mon Harry,” Y/n beckoned, “Lots of stuff to get.”
His smile faltered just a tad, “But I don’t- I don’t have any money.”
Harry’s embarrassment made the tips of his ears red, “That ain’t true. ‘Course ye got money.” Hagrid replied bluntly, making Y/n nudge him harshly, “Hagrid!”
“What?” Hagrid queried, confused, “‘S not like ‘m lyin’.”
“Yes, but you don’t just say that.” Y/n scolded, laughing lightly.
“Oops?”
Harry looked up at his flustered aunt, “Come on, Harry. We’re going to Gringotts.”
They began walking to the bank of wizardry. The goblin at the front allowed them to the vault, where Harry was able to pocket a couple of handfuls of galleons, sickles, and knuts. Hagrid made a separate trip for Dumbledore as the other three waited patiently. When they exited Gringotts, Harry began to buy all his supplies.
Their first stop was getting him a wand at Ollivander’s. Harry pushed the door open, and it sounded a bell off, but no one appeared the be in the shop. Remus and Y/n stood behind him as he let out a hesitant, “Hello.”
It took a minute, but then an older male appeared with hair as white as snow and wispy as whiskers. Ollivander smiled brightly at the familiar people in his shop and at the little boy who resembled the older female greatly.
“Ah, Y/n Potter.” Ollivander said, “James broken his wand again?”
Y/n released a shaky breath, “No, not this time.”
“We’re here actually for Harry here.” Remus motioned to Harry, “He’s getting his first wand. He starts at Hogwarts this year.”
Ollivander's lips quirked, “He yours?”
“No, sir.” Y/n shook her head, “He’s James and Lily’s son.”
“Where are they? I’d love to see them, you know.”
Remus shifted awkwardly, “You haven’t heard?”
Ollivander shook his head, “My parents are dead.” Harry informed, “Someone killed them.”
Everything clicked into place in Ollivanders mind. How stupid could old age make him? He had just sounded terribly insensitive, “‘M so sorry. Pardon me and my old age. I didn’t mean-“
“It’s perfectly fine, Ollivander.” Y/n smiled reassuringly.
The older man smiled and began giving Harry wands. The first one was horrid. It made wands on the shelf fall onto the ground, making a vast clatter noise. The boy smiled sheepishly and placed it back in the box. The next wand caused a shatter of a vase which Harry cringed at. It took a couple of minutes until Ollivander came out with the following wand. It was 11 inches long, made of holly, and possessed a phoenix feather core.
Harry waved the wand, and nothing disastrous happened. Remus and Y/n smiled with joy. Ollivander charged him seven galleons for it, and Harry placed down the golden coins with glee. Ollivander could remember the way James had done the same while Y/n beside him. Their identical toothy grins as Fleamont paid the man.
“My wands cooler than yours!”
“No way!”
James nodded in triumph, “You’re just lame.”
“And you’re boring!”
“No way!” James gasped, “I am far from boring!”
Y/n crossed her arms, “And I’m not lame.”
Euphemia chuckled, redirecting her children to look at the counter while the two parents stood behind them, “Ignore them. They like to try and be better than the other.”
Ollivander grinned, “Ah, siblings. What amazing pairs they make.”
Fleamont scoffed, “Yeah, try having two at the same time. Felt like the crucio curse.”
“What do you say?” Euphemia beckoned, and both twins turned to Ollivander, smiling gleefully, “Thank you!”
“They’ll be a handful.” Ollivander informed Euphemia and Fleamont, “But they’ll change the world, and they’ll do it together.”
The older man smiled at Remus and Y/n as Harry went outside to see Hagrid carrying a giant golden cage with a beautiful snowy owl inside, “That boy is something else.”
Remus chuckled, “We know. Little mischief-maker, just like James.”
“Perhaps he is,” Ollivander replied, “But he’ll change the world.”
The rest of the day went by blissfully. After getting all his school supplies, they retreated into the Leaky Cauldron to eat dinner. The tavern was practically empty as they sat at a long narrow table. Hagrid at the head, Harry to his left, Remus across, and Y/n beside Remus on the other side. They were eating in silence before Harry spoke up.
“What happened to my parents?” Harry questioned, and before anyone could answer, he continued, “Truthfully. No lies.”
Hagrid and Remus turned to the female at the table who swallowed thickly, “Something horrid, Harry.”
“How horrid?”
“Harry-“ Remus began.
“A death I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, even my worse enemy.” Y/n answered, staring at the soup in front of her, “The way they died doesn’t matter.”
Harry crossed his arms, “I believe it does.”
“In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t.” Y/n replied, taking deep breaths in and out, trying to stay calm, “It doesn’t matter how they died. They’re dead, and they aren’t coming back.”
Tears collected in her eyes when she muttered, “No matter how badly I want them to.”
Hastily Y/n wiped her face and placed her napkin on the table. She sniffled before standing and pushing her chair in. Y/n leaned down to kiss Harry on the forehead before retreating to the room they got upstairs. Harry sighed and stared at his bowl of soup that remained steaming hot. Remus rubbed his face with his palms.
“Harry,” Remus called, and Harry’s green eyes met similar ones, “Your parents died at the hands of a very evil Wizard. He went as dark as one could go.”
Harry looked intrigued, and Remus continued despite his throat beginning to constrict, “His name was Voldemort, but most people call him ‘You-Know-Who.”
Hagrid flinched at the actual name being said, “James risked everything to try and save you and your mother. When he died, Lily tried to save you. In the end, it all worked out because you were saved. You didn’t die like you were supposed to.”
“Why did aunt Y/n leave the table?”
“Talking about this is still hard for her.” Remus replied, and Harry could see the tears in his eyes too, “It’s hard for me too, but- but you need to know.”
“What were they to you?”
“James and Lily were everything to me, Harry. Everything and so much more. Your mother saw the good in people when they didn’t see it themselves. Your father? Well-“ He chuckled, “He was a trip and a prat. But he cared for those around him. Treated me like family and took care of me like a brother.”
Harry fiddled with the sleeve of his sweater, “James was a mischief-maker that one.” Hagrid said, “Always up to no good.”
“Him and that Sirius boy.” Hagrid chuckled, “Dynamic duo those two.”
Remus let out a tearful chuckle, “Yeah, that was Padfoot and Prongs.”
“Always up to no good.” Remus whispered.
The following day Remus had waken up to what he swore was the most perfect sight. Y/n was still sleeping beside him. Her head was nestled under his chin, drinking in his body heat. Her hair was laid against the fluffy white pillow. Their legs were intertwined together. Gently Remus kissed her forehead before seeing the clock read about nine o’clock.
Remus took five more minutes to admire her before waking her up. He began to kiss all over her face, and Y/n scrunched her nose, waking up as his lips kept attaching to a new place on her face. He smiled as she opened her eyes to meet his green ones.
“Mornin’ love.”
His Welsh accent was to die for, “Morning, Rem.”
“You ready to take Harry to Platform Nine and Three Quarters?”
Y/n shook her head, “No. Not really.”
“Hey,” Remus said softly, stroking her hair, “You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
“There are so many memories there, Rem.” Y/n replied, “Like- Like meeting Sirius for the first time.”
“Or seeing you come back after fourth year with an entirely new style.” Remus chuckled, “Or- Or seeing James almost fall out of the train.
Remus caressed her cheek with his thumb, “We’ll make it through, love. Harry needs us today.”
“Yeah.” She replied breathily, “He does.”
They both ventured out of bed into the cool air of London. Remus, Y/n, and Hagrid walked Harry to Kings Cross. When they arrived, Hagrid had departed from them to do something for Dumbledore. Harry was bluntly confused when his ticket read Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Last he checked, that wasn’t a platform.
As they reached the main floor of the train station, Remus and Y/n recognized the Weasleys almost instantly. Molly had embraced them tightly as they all went through the platform. Harry gave his trunks to the man at the end of the train and turned to the only family he had left. His eyes glistened with tears, and he tried to hold them back but failed.
“Harry,” Y/n knelt to his level, “You’re gonna be okay. I promise. James and I made lots of friends at Hogwarts.”
He smiled at the mention of his father, “Do you think… Do you think he’d be proud of me?”
“They’d be beyond proud, Harry.” Remus replied, smiling, “You’re everything they wanted you to be.”
Harry turned back to Y/n and hugged her tightly, “Please make sure you write to us.”
“‘Course, Auntie.” Harry replied as they pulled apart, “Love you guys.”
Y/n stood beside Remus, “We love you too, sweetheart.”
Harry smiled and wiped his cheeks before hopping on the train. He found a compartment alone and watched out the window as the train began moving. Y/n and Remus watched as the train hauled by. Kids who started waving their last goodbyes to their parents.
“Mum, dad!” James exclaimed from inside the compartment, “We love you!”
Euphemia and Fleamont chuckled tearfully, “We love you guys too!”
Truthfully James never wanted to leave his parents. They were his entire world. When Kings Cross was no longer in sight, he plopped down in the seat beside Y/n, who put her head on his shoulder. His left arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her tightly to his side.
“We got this, sis.” James assured, “We always have each other.”
It didn’t take long for Harry to get in trouble. As a matter of fact, it made Y/n laugh that within the first month, he had already managed a detention. She had settled for a letter rather than a Howler. Remus had made sure to tell him his fair of scolding words (“Say hi to Minnie for me!”). Harry smiled when the letter arrived in the morning.
Harry definitely made sure to say hi to “Minnie,” which made McGonagall smile like an idiot despite her usual strict nature. She could see and hear James saying the name when she gave them detention or Sirius’ pouty face begging her to have some form of mercy on them, for they had just turned the Slytherin robes red. Ever the dramatics that Black.
When he arrived back at the Platform, he nuzzled into Y/n and Remus’ arms before departing to the Dursleys. But all was good because in just a month he’d see them again for his birthday, which he did. They took him to Diagon Alley to get his second-year stuff along with some ice cream to celebrate his twelfth birthday.
He spent a week of his summer with them in their little house in London. It was far better than Privet Drive, and he felt a lot safer. But after the week was up, he was forced to return to the Dursleys. Within a week of being back, he’d managed to screw everything up. A thing named Dobby had quite literally dumped puddling all over one of the Dursley’s guests, and that got him trapped in his room.
Thankfully, Ronald Weasley, who had become his close friend, had saved him. Harry went to the Burrow for the first time and met everyone else. Molly had notified Remus and Y/n of his entrance. Sadly, they couldn’t make it to the Platform for reasons. Molly wouldn’t tell Harry, but he was okay with it.
Until Ron and he smashed into the brick wall, making them late for the train. It was then Ron had a brilliant thought of taking the flying car to Hogwarts. It did work until they got stuck in the Whomping Willow and then got caught by Severus Snape. A letter was sent home to Y/n and Molly. Both of which made two very different Howlers to their children.
Molly’s howler was scolding them, and it made Ron’s ears turn pink. Y/n and Remus’ howler was a different story. The moment it opened, laughter rang through the Great Hall. Familiar laughter of Remus and Y/n. It made McGonagall furious and happy at the same time.
“Merlin Harry!” Remus’ voice rang out, “You’re brilliant, aren’t you!”
“Remus, we’re supposed to be scolding him!” Y/n retorted jokingly, “I’m scolding myself for never thinking of it!” Remus replied.
Y/n chuckled, “Obviously, you shouldn't have done that, Harry; however, as long as you’re not harmed, we aren’t mad. Just be more careful next time.”
Remus was still dying of laughter, “Remus is still dying of laughter. We love you, Harry. Stay safe.”
Ron looked appalled with the coolness of the howler, “Bloody hell, you have a cool family.”
“They’re pretty cool.” Harry shrugged, smiling.
Y/n and Remus would be lying if the whole petrifying thing didn’t scare them. They were worried for Harry’s safety but weren’t surprised when Harry ended up saving them all like last year. When they were on the Platform, Remus began getting on the train with him after kissing Y/n goodbye.
He was grunting and groaning at every movement. The bags beneath his eyes looked more prominent than usual. Remus moved sluggishly, which was very unlike him. But Harry didn’t question it until he began to get on the train at Harry’s side.
“Uncle Moony?”
“Yes, Harry?” Remus replied after sitting in a compartment, his cloak covering most of his body.
“Why’re you on the train?”
He chuckled, “I’m your new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.”
Harry smiled, and Remus fell into a dreamless sleep after a rough full moon the night prior. Hermione and Ron joined them not too long after as Harry began telling them about Sirius Black. The year went by as eventful as usual. Harry found out the accurate way his parents died along with Remus and Y/n. Peter Pettigrew being the culprit and then leaving before someone could catch him.
Afterward, Sirius had been staying in the guest bedroom at Y/n and Remus’. He didn’t want to go back to Grimmauld Place. That was the last place he wanted to go. So despite not wanting to be a burden, he took the position that Y/n offered him. Ever so kind, just like James. When he walked through those doors, Y/n had hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek.
“It’s good to have you back, older brother.”
Sirius could’ve cried on the spot, “It’s nice to see you again, little sis.”
The next couple of years were a trip. Fourth-year Harry had managed to get his name pulled out of the Goblet of Fire, leading to a new adventure of challenges. After finishing his fourth year, Cedric Diggory had died, marking the return of Voldemort, which had traumatized Harry in more than one way. That summer, he decided to stay with Y/n, Remus, and Sirius. They were all fantastic help throughout the entire thing. Through his nightmares, Y/n would make him hot chocolate and sit on the couch with him as he talked.
Fifth-year was dreadful. Delores Umbridge had come into the office as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, and the Order of the Phoenix reformed. Her detentions were terrible and horrid, especially for the first years. They were just kids, for Merlin’s sake. It made Y/n fume when she saw the back of Harry’s hand. The night they ventured to the Department of Mysteries was almost the worst night Harry could have dreamed of.
Sirius had almost died if Y/n wasn’t as quick as she was. Bellatrix was stunned to see her spell deflected but kept firing nonetheless. When they got home, it was silent. Remus had made tea for himself and Sirius while making hot chocolate for the other two. Harry had laid his head on Y/n’s shoulder and fallen asleep.
Truth be told, sixth year wasn’t any better. Dumbledore had died, and Harry was left to find the rest of the Horcruxes. It was then Sirius learned the actual death of his brother, making him mourn him all over again. Seventh year Harry, Ron, and Hermione ventured out to find the rest of them.
When Harry returned to Hogwarts through the passageway to the Room of Requirement with Snape as headmaster, the war had officially started. In the end, everything had fallen into place. When Harry used the resurrection stone, he saw them. He saw James, Lily, Remus, and Sirius. Harry almost wanted to laugh at seeing them all together. They looked so happy.
“Where- Where’s Y/n?”
Remus gave a solemn smile, “She made it. She’s still out there. Waiting for you.”
“Does that mean…”
“Turns out my sister is a tougher cookie than I thought.” James stated, and Harry turned to him, “She misses you.”
James chuckled, “As I do her.”
Harry turned back to Remus, “Does she know?”
“She was there when it happened.” Remus replied, “I had to give her one last ‘I love you’ and kiss goodbye, right?”
A noise rumbled from a distance, “It’s time, sweetie.” Lily stated.
Harry released a shaky breath before dropping the stone on the ground. He had to do this for Y/n, for Ron, for Hermione, for everyone. He was ready. When he stepped in front of Voldemort to die, all he could think about was his Aunt's eyes. The way they glittered with tears when she let him go for the first time. The way they creased when she smiled at his first Christmas. The way they gleamed with mischief when she gave the Weasley twins new prank material.
His last words would be ones he’d never regret, “Thank you, aunt Y/n, for everything.”
Because through everything, she was the only constant. She was the only one to hold him through anything. Through every nightmare, every battle, every tear, every smile. She was there with her radiant smile and caring nature.
When Harry defeated Voldemort, the world stopped. It was done. It was over. But the pain wasn’t gone. The trauma wasn’t bypassed. This was more than a war. Harry walked into the Great Hall to see crying parents, kids, and siblings mourning their dead loved ones. His eyes zoomed on Y/n sitting crisscross beside her husband, holding his hand tightly.
Wordlessly Harry sat beside her and leaned his head against her shoulder. Y/n tilted her head onto his. No tears fell from her eyes despite everything she had gone through, two wars, friends dead, parents dead, brother dead, and now husband dead.
“His last words were- they were,” She choked, and Harry rubbed her shoulder, “I love you more than Moony loves the moon.”
Harry smiled, “Dad said you were a tough cookie.”
Y/n chuckled, and Harry relished in the sound, “He said that if anyone could get through this, it’s you.”
“Damn it, James.” She said to no one, still holding Remus’ hand.
“We’ll get through this.” Harry said, “And we’ll do it together.”
“Together.”
#remus x you#remus x y/n#remus x reader#remus lupin#remus lupin x reader#remus lupin x you#remus lupin x y/n#james potter#james Potter x you#james potter x reader#James Potter x y/n#potter reader#Harry Potter#harry potter fanfiction#harry potter imagine#sirius black#sirius black imagine#sirius black x reader#Sirius Black x you#Sirius Black x y/n#marauders fluff#marauders imagine#marauders#marauders x reader
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Auntie ‘Soka and Little Leia (and Rex)
The counterpart to Uncle Ben and Little Luke (Original Post, Chrono)
Listen. You all knew this was coming.
This got... very long and detailed and I’m going to have to clean it up and post to AO3. As in, this was supposed to be 2-3k and is literally ten times that long. It crossed 25k. And the initial section actually glosses over a bunch, actual fic-style writing starts at “That, of course, is when things get interesting.”
Warnings: discussion of various canon traumas (most relating to being child soldiers), general PTSD, several scenes featuring dissociation or panic attacks upon being triggered, and canon-typical violence.
Rated T, gen.
I still want there to be de-aging nonsense involved so Ahsoka is physically a late teenager despite having a solid two decades of field experience behind her (we’re pulling her from Malachor).
Leia, much like Luke, is now six. She just came from being a rebellion general. She is not happy about being a child. She was already short, this is just mean. She’s a human espresso.
UNLIKE BEN, Ahsoka is not happy about this turn of events. Being seventeen-ish is not helpful in the outer rim. She’s a female togruta, young and healthy, and in the Outer Rim, caring for a small human child. Sure, she has her lightsabers and plenty of combat experience, and she can keep them safe, but she’s just one person, and a major target for those looking to make some quick cash. It doesn’t matter how good she is; she needs sleep at some point.
It makes my heart happy to treat Ahsoka and Rex as two halves of the same black ops specialist so you know what, he’s there too! He’s physically like... 10-12 in natborn, maybe. They’re not sure, because clones age weird. He’s moderately more useful than Leia (who is very competent but also physically six, and short for that age), but he’s still... very small.
Reminder that none of them have been born yet.
Ahsoka has a harder time explaining WHY she has children with her, since she's barely more than a kid herself, and clearly unrelated by species. She sometimes just says “Oh, my adoptive brother’s kids” since it’s kind of the truth for Leia and she’s not touching the actual truth about Rex with a ten foot pole.
Ahsoka definitely knows about Leia being a Skywalker, or at least has suspicions that Bail never outright confirmed but was conspicuously quiet about. She does tell Leia about it, but it’s not like that means anything, right? Just, you know, your dad was my teacher! I don’t have to tell you he became Va--oh shit, you already knew that part. Well, fuck. What do you mean he had a son? OH SHIT, PADME HAD TWINS.
Alt take for explaining why she’s got kids: She’s my foundling, I know her name as my child (Leia shut up!!!)
(Ahsoka can fake Mandalore. Sometimes.)
That said, there is... significantly less gambling and significantly more theft to get to Coruscant.
As previously stated, Ahsoka is a black ops kinda gal, and more importantly, she looks like a fairly attractive young woman in the Outer Rim, with two children in good health. She’s a target, and also not the kind of person one generally gambles with. If she does gamble, people get upset when she doesn’t lose, in ways they don’t get upset about Ben doing the same, because she’s, again, a cute teenage girl. It’s exhausting.
As things go, she largely ends up stealing from people who deserve it and/or smuggling herself and her charges into someone else’s ship. They’re small, they can hide. Sometimes she can get them all passage by working as a mechanic, she’s good at that.
Once they’ve got a handle on when they are, they have to decide on Names. None of them have been born yet, so technically they could use their own names without anyone Knowing. Rex and Leia might not even be born, depending on how successful they are at, you know, stopping the war and everything. Ahsoka, though, she’s going be born in two years, and there’s no reason to prevent it, so... she doesn’t want to steal baby-her’s name. That would be mean.
Leia is already calling her “Auntie ‘Soka” when she can for reasons like “selling the bit” and “manipulating adults” and ��making us both feel better after we had a mutual breakdown about Anakin being Vader.” Ergo, she decides that whatever new name she picks better include that in some way, and decides on “Sokari” because it sounds pretty.
Overall, they don’t... they don’t actually make it very far before there’s an Incident. Again, teenager with small children. They spend a lot of time hiding out in space ports looking for an opportunity.
That, of course, is when things get interesting.
Specifically, Ahsoka spots a Mandalorian.
She doesn’t recognize the armor. She does recognize the sigil, and thinks ‘well, they’re more likely to help than some,’ because from what she’s heard, the Haat Mando’ade are Decent People Overall. Her view is a little biased, mostly on account of the sheer level of grudge she has against Kyr’tsad. It’s fine! The True Mandalorians have the same grudge, right? And Mandalorians like kids and Ahsoka hasn’t slept in five days and it’s fine. It’s fine! IT’S FINE.
“Oh shit,” Rex whispers, before she can suggest anything. “Oh fuck.”
“Stop cursing,” Leia hisses, elbowing him. “People are going to notice.”
“That’s the Prime,” Rex panics, mostly quiet. Ahsoka’s heart drops, because fuck is right. “That’s Fett.”
Leia isn’t impressed. Ahsoka just angles herself between Fett and Rex and hopes that he doesn’t see them. That’s just asking for trouble.
Unfortunately, Ahsoka is in fact running on none sleep with left trauma, and doesn’t notice Fett walking up and dropping into a seat across from them until he’s actually done so, removing his helmet to glare a little more efficiently.
“Wanna explain why your kid has my face?”
Ahsoka later tells herself that he’s killed Jedi and that’s why he can sneak up on her, and that she can be forgiven some slip-ups with the exhaustion being what it is, and that she’s obviously going to be dealing with some emotional instability in light of the sudden return of teenage hormones and new forms of anxiety that are markedly different from those she was dealing with a few weeks ago.
What Ahsoka wants to say is “that’s kind of a long story,” or “maybe he’s a cousin,” or “kriff off, I don’t know you,” or maybe even “he’s a clone.”
What Ahsoka actually does is burst into tears, which is embarrassing for her, for Fett, for the kids, and for the entire rest of the bar.
It really is the straw that broke the eopie’s back. Even when she was actually this age, she didn’t exactly cry much. Objectively, Fett quasi-aggressively asking a valid question shouldn’t send her into a panic. She’s been through torture and worse. She shouldn’t be crying.
But she is, sobbing her eyes out with no control, and he’s just sitting across from her and looking uncomfortable while Rex wraps his little arms--oh Force he’s so small--around her, and both ‘children’ glare at Fett.
“So, I’m going to take it she didn’t kidnap you from a loving family or do something illicit with a blood sample,” Fett says, after it becomes obvious that Ahsoka’s not going to be ready to talk any time soon.
“She didn’t,” Rex says stiffly, with just the right emphasis for Fett to catch what’s implied. Ahsoka just keeps her head down, eyes pressed against the heels of her palms, trying to get her body to stop rebelling against her.
Fett’s eyes dart to Leia, who folds her arms and draws herself up, every bit the unimpressed princess. “My father claimed her as a sister, so she’s my Auntie ‘Soka.”
The man dithers a bit, the conversation clearly not going where he’d expected. “Right,” he says. “You--you’re all kids. I thought she was a little older, at least, but I didn’t have a good look at her face before.”
She is older, but actually admitting that is only going to make this worse, both for her pride and for her chances of making it out alive.
“Where are you staying?”
“What?” Leia bites out.
“You’re kids, you’re alone, and you’re clearly not okay if you were trying to hide the one with my face as blatantly as you did, and then... whatever this is, when I confronted you,” Fett explains. Ahsoka lifts her head to glare at him, but it’s probably not doing much with the way her eyes are rimmed with red and still wet. “Don’t give me that look, ad’ika, your kids looked as confused and horrified by that as the bartender did. They obviously didn’t think it was normal either.”
Well, kriff you too, Ahsoka thinks.
“And what do you mean by ‘blatantly,’ here?” Leia challenges. It’s adorable, but Ahsoka watched this tiny girl shoot a man last week, and wonders when people are going to start taking that seriously.
“There’s a lot of people in this galaxy, and I don’t exactly have the clearest memory of what I looked like at that age,” Fett says, slow and careful like he thinks they’re dumb. Ahsoka decides to chalk it up as being because Leia’s visibly six. “I would have thought it was just a coincidence if you hadn’t put in effort to hide him.”
Leia huffs, and Rex glares harder. Fett just sighs, like they’re all going to give him grey hairs.
“You can explain whatever the hell’s going on,” Fett says. “I’ll let you stay on my ship, there’s a spare bunk and you’re small.”
“For free?” Rex demands.
“A night on a bunk in exchange for information,” Fett clarifies. “We can negotiate from there.”
Ahsoka takes a few moments, notes that both of the others are waiting on her for the decision, and cringes. She doesn’t feel steady enough to carry that. She has to anyway.
“Rex?” she asks, voice rasping after the breakdown of the past few minutes.
“Yeah?”
“How much?”
He looks up at her, eyes calculating, and grimaces. “We don’t want Order 66. A warning is better, even if we... share information.”
She nods, and turns to Leia. “Any premonitions, princess?”
Leia glowers, cute and furious. “No.”
“No, don’t tell, or no, you aren’t getting any vibes about sharing info one way or the other?”
“The latter,” Leia clarifies, huffy to the last.
“Right,” Ahsoka says, and then just... hesitates. “Fett...”
“You’ve got conditions,” he guesses.
She bares her teeth in what could have, through a squint and perhaps a few drinks, been called an apologetic smile. “Just one, really.”
“Yeah?”
“No hurting, killing, or turning us in for bounties,” she says. “Any of us.”
“You’re children, I wouldn’t.”
She blinks at him, slow and careful. She hesitates. She reaches down, out of sight, sees him stiffen.
She unclips her sabers from her belt and puts them on the table.
His eyes are fixed on the weapons the second they enter his line of sight, and don’t move as he clearly realizes why she made the condition she did.
“I left years ago, because I couldn’t stay without it ruining me,” she says. Still slow. Still careful. She’s so tired. “But if I want to keep Leia safe, I have to get back to Coruscant.”
His eyes finally lift from the sabers, expression blank. “Just her?”
“Rex doesn’t have the same monsters coming after him,” she says. “If it were just me and him, I’d worry less. Leia’s a different kind of target.”
“You’re putting a lot of faith on the table by telling me that,” Fett says, voice flat and toneless. “Considering my occupation.”
“She’s a child,” Ahsoka says, feeling heavy and boneless. “Even with what I was and will be, even with what money you would get from the right buyer, you wouldn’t.”
“There are other risks.”
“There are.”
They stare at each other for too long, probably, and then Fett jerks as Rex kicks him under the table. The boys glare for a moment, and then Rex says, “If she weren’t good, I’d still be a slave to those who grew me.”
Fett blinks, and then nearly growls the word, “What?”
“She freed me,” Rex reiterates. “While I was trying to shoot her.”
Ahsoka lifts a hand and puts it on his far shoulder, pulling him into her side. She doesn’t meet Fett’s eyes again, because part of her is back on Mandalore, dodging her own soldiers and crying out as her family dies across the galaxy.
Fett breathes in. Breathes out. He puts a hand to his head, visibly frustrated. “Fine. A good Jedi kid, and two smaller kids, one of which is apparently in some way mine.”
Rex makes a face, which is fair, but also not helping.
“To the ship,” Ahsoka says, putting her sabers back on her belt and sliding out of the seat. “I’m... I’m Sokari.”
“You already know my name.”
“I do.”
---------------------------
Fett watches her like she’s a predator, which has the benefit of being accurate and slightly flattering. She lets other two take care of most of talking, and then Fett tells her to sleep first, and talk in the morning.
“You’re dead on your feet, jetii,” he snorts. “And that crying jag didn’t do you any favors. Sleep.”
So she does, and Fett doesn’t even wake her. He just lets her sleep. He watches her in the way of a guard. She sees him when she gets up to use the ‘fresher in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t even comment when she collapses right back into the mediocre cot she’s borrowed for the cycle.
Rex and Leia are safe, her hindbrain tells her, even in the depths of sleep. Her mind curls around theirs in the Force, and she trusts that they are here. They are not happy, but they are alive and unharmed, and that has to be enough.
When she stumbles her way to true wakefulness, groggy and loose-limbed, Fett greets her with caf.
“The kids wouldn’t let me near you,” he tells her.
“They’re good,” she says, cupping her hands around the mug. She feels wobbly, in every sense. Her body, her mind, her emotions, her connection to the Force. Nothing is on-kilter right now. “Did they tell you anything?”
“They waited for you,” he says. “But the little miss needed a nap of her own. They’re down in the other bunk.”
“I didn’t notice,” she admits. She should have. She’s Fulcrum. She’s a veteran of the Clone Wars. She’s... she’s supposed to be better than this.
“How long?” he asks, and then when she squints up at him, he clarifies. “How long did you fight?”
“My last fight--”
“No, whatever war you came out of,” he says. Her chest twists cold. “I don’t know if the Jedi sent you into it or if you waded in yourself once you left, but you move like a soldier.”
“I was,” she confirms. “But... but I don’t want to talk about the details. Not until the other two are here.”
He frowns at her. “Is there anything you can talk about?”
She shrugs and looks away, trying to take solace in the warmth of the caff she holds above the table, as if it can hide her, guard her, from the disgraced Mand’alor across the table.
“Jedi?”
“I’m not officially a Jedi,” she says, voice quiet. “Not anymore.”
“Then what do I call you?” he asks. “We’re not exactly close enough for names.”
“Torrent,” she says. “It’s not--I can’t claim my family name anymore. But I can claim Torrent, so I will. And if you want a title, I was a commander.”
“Bit young for that.”
“I got the rank when I was fourteen,” she says, and watches his face do something complicated and unpleasant. “Don’t. I know your own culture puts children on the field that young.”
“Not in command.”
She shrugs. “Yeah, well... the soldiers were technically younger. Adults, but...”
Ahsoka can see the way he casts about to figure out what species grows at that rate. He guesses a few, and she shoots all of it down.
She won’t tell him. Not until Rex is awake.
This part of the story is his.
--------------------------
When Leia tries to sit alone, a foot away on the bench like a proper adult, Ahsoka refuses to let it happen. She pulls the younger girl to her side and quells protests with a glance. It’s a decent skill, but she’s not sure how long it’s going to work on her niece-in-spirit.
“Your body needs the chemical release of skinship,” she says, and Leia glares at her. “I spent way too much time with the boys to not know about this. Deal.”
Rex sits close enough to knock their knees together under the table, and his warmth is the old comfort she needs.
“Do you want the story you’ll believe, or the truth?” Ahsoka asks.
“What’s the difference?”
“One of them involves something so impossible that even most Jedi wouldn’t believe it,” she tells him.
Fett folds his arms and leans forward to rest them on the table, challenging but oddly open. “Try me.”
“Time travel.”
He blinks, just once, fully controlled. “That’s a tough one.”
“There were only three Jedi left alive when I died,” she says. “Or... whatever it is that happened to me. I think I died. All I know is that one moment, I was thirty-two and dying, and the next, I was... seventeen again, and had these two with me. All of us younger than we were. None of us have even been born yet.”
She refuses to look him in the eye. “They both outlived me by... six years, maybe. Got caught up while traveling instead of dying. Leia was twenty-two. Rex was thirty-five. I’m not technically the oldest anymore. I mean, physically I am, but that doesn’t mean anything, and it’s not exactly doing us any good, and--”
Rex bumps his shoulder to her arm. “I dunno, Commander. I’ve spent a long time looking older than I should. Nice to look younger for once.”
She shoots him a small, pained grin. “Could be worse, yeah.”
“Let’s say I believe you.”
Her attention snaps back to Fett, who’s looking damnably blank, and is showing even less in the Force.
He waits a second for her to relax back into her seat.
“Let’s say I believe you,” he repeats. “How’s ‘Rex’ connected to me? What’s so special about Leia there? And what war did you fight in that has you acting like a veteran?”
“Three years in the clone wars,” she whispers, glancing to Rex and forcing herself to not go for her sabers to defend against an attack that her paranoia says is coming and the Force says is not. “Then almost all the Jedi were wiped out at once, and I spent a year... drifting. Then black ops for the next fifteen.”
“Black ops,” he repeats, still damnably flat.
“There was a Sith Empire,” she says, and she can hear her own tone growing somehow emptier. “Glassing planets. Enslaving entire species. Committing genocides all over. Of course, there was a rebellion, and of course I joined it. I was one of the only people left with Jedi training. For all that I’d left the Order, I still had a duty to the universe.”
His eyes flit to Leia, who shrugs and tries to look prim. “I was adopted and raised by one of the founders of the rebellion, a movement built on the desire to instate freedom and democracy in a galaxy that had lost even the pretense.”
“That why you’re special?”
Leia smiles, thin and patronizing. It doesn’t fit on her little face. “I’m special because my biological father was one of the most powerful Force users in history, and his Fall to the dark side and choice to become a Sith is why the Emperor’s rise was nearly uncontested. I do not like power, but it’s in my veins and I can’t change that. Force users are... a lucrative trade, and I’m still the size of a child, so I can’t fight back. I’ll be safer in the Jedi Temple, even if I don’t want to be a Jedi.”
Fett looks to Ahsoka, makes to ask a question, and then shakes his head. Not the time, maybe.
“So, that’s all... very complicated and I don’t know how much of it I believe, but it doesn’t explain...” he trails off, and sighs. “My kid, or whatever you are. I heard you mention clones.”
Rex grins. It is not a kind expression.
“Let me tell you about Kamino.”
---------------------------
Ahsoka has no idea if Fett believes them. Either he thinks they’re telling the truth, or he thinks their delusional kids. Whatever the case, he offers to take them closer to the Core. Ahsoka quietly offers to take a look at his engine in return, and then pretends not to notice when Fett awkwardly drifts to and away from Rex.
“They put chips in our brains to make us kill the Jedi we respected, cared for, even loved. I tried to shoot ‘Soka, Fett. She was seventeen and risked her life to get that chip out of my head while I was trying to kill her. I have never hated myself more than when I woke up and realized what I’d almost done, and I was one of the few that were able to fight it. I heard the stories of dozens of brothers who woke with their chips having degraded and chose to eat their blaster rather than live with the guilt of the orders they’d followed without question because of a thrice-damned Sith slave chip in their head.”
“So no, I won’t call you father or acknowledge you as clan until you do something to prove you’re worth it, shared blood or not.”
What Ahsoka does get out of the arrangement, for all that Fett’s route mostly takes them on a meandering path that isn’t faster than their previous system, is sleep. She gets to rest. She gets to trust that Fett won’t kill Rex, out of guilt for something he hasn’t done, that he won’t kill Leia out of a worry that she’s just a delusional child, a real child, that he won’t kill ‘Sokari’ because it would ruin any chance of gaining Rex’s favor, ever.
She’s not safe, won’t believe she can be until she’s in the Temple and Sidious is dead dead dead, but she’s safer than she’s been in a long time.
Every night, Ahsoka wakes up and stumbles to the little galley, deaths and torture sparkling behind her eyes with the energy of a thousand lost Jedi, ten thousand mourned brothers and sisters.
She is not the only one of their little group to be a survivor of a near-total genocide, but Rex could not feel his brothers die in the Force, even if his nightmares featured what they heard of suicide missions by the emperor’s favored shock troopers, and Leia had... Alderaan had more off-world survivors than there had been Jedi at all.
It’s not worth comparing their pain. It’s stupid to even think it. Part of her can’t help but do it anyway.
“Caf?”
She feels a lek twitch in response to the voice of the only other person on board who can reach the top shelf. “I probably shouldn’t.”
“Whiskey?”
“That’s a definitely shouldn’t.”
“Hoth chocolate?”
“...please.”
She doesn’t lift her head from her arms until the mug clicks down in front of her, ceramic on plastisteel.
“Do I ask what it was this time?”
She shrugs. “It’s hard to explain to non-sensitives.”
“Try me anyway.”
Ahsoka twists the Hoth chocolate in her hands, takes a sip as she thinks. “The Force isn’t just one thing. It’s... energy and philosophy and spirit, a sense of being that ties the entire universe together. Sentient and inanimate and living and dead, empty space and lush forests and stifled cities. For those of us who are sensitive to it, it’s possible to feel the life of everyone around you, theoretically possible to feel entire systems. If you have a Force bond, like a master and padawan, that can stretch across planets, even systems if one or both are particularly powerful.
“So just... just imagine, for a moment, what it’s like to feel the screaming of all those Jedi in the Force as their trusted men shot them down.
“Some of them were close enough that I could feel them die,” she manages. “I... it’s horrible. It’s horrific. It’s not something I can ever forget, and I want to. I want to forget what that moment was like. Not that it happened, but...”
She can feel the tears. Fuck..
“You want to dull the edges.”
“Don’t we all?” she asks, scrubbing the back of her hand across her eyes. “Leia lost her entire planet, billions of people, and she was forced to watch. Rex... Force, I can barely imagine, and I was there for most of it.”
Fett watches her, measuring. “From what he said, they were as much your brothers as his, by the end.”
“No,” she immediately denies. “They could have been, maybe, but the ones I was closest to died earlier, and then I left, and by the time the Empire rose, all but a handful were... no. Rex, I will claim as a brother in all the ways that matter, but I don’t get to do that with the rest. I don’t have the right.”
“You’re hard on yourself.”
“Fate of the galaxy, my good bitch. Guess who’s got it on her shoulders.”
He snorts at her, and nods at the mug. “Drink your Hoth chocolate. We’re landing in eight hours, and you’ve got kids to look out for.”
---------------------------
There’s a twitch in the Force when they land, something pulling at her in a way she barely feels. She’s had her shields up so fully for so long that it’s natural to hide away what she is to the point where she can hardly tell what anyone else is, either. It takes more than a moment to remember how to let herself spread out across the world.
“Auntie ‘Soka? Why’d you stop?”
She doesn’t have an answer to Leia’s prodding question. “I don’t know.”
It’s almost familiar. Old and half-forgotten, not the same as what she remembers, but--
“This way,” she says, and wanders off into the crowd. Leia and Rex follow without question. Fett curses and rushes through the rest of his transaction with the docking attendant. The sound of him jogging after them is almost funny, with the armor, but she can’t focus on that.
Ahsoka slips between people with the ease of a career built on such a habit, children trailing like ducklings. She knows this feeling, she knows this person, what is she missi--
“Oh,” she breathes, going stock still. She knows that face. She knows those braids. She even knows the presence.
Younger than Ahsoka had ever seen her, but unmistakably Master Billaba.
“Torrent, what the hell?” Fett demands, finally catching up. “You can’t just run off like that!”
“It’s Depa,” she says, eyes still fixed on the woman parsing through a datapad with an irritated vendor. She has a padawan braid. It doesn’t feel like Master Windu is on-planet, so this might be a solo mission, a... oh. Senior Padawan, Knight Elect. This is the kind of mission taken to test if she’s ready to be promoted.
Ahsoka feels light-headed.
Fett waits for her to elaborate, but she can’t. This was Kanan’s master. This was a member of the High Council. This was a woman who died and--
“You need to sit down,” Fett says, not a touch gruff. He puts a hand on her shoulder and guides her off the main walkway. “I’m... going to talk to the woman in the Jedi robes. You three just stay there and don’t get kidnapped.”
Ahsoka nods, feeling like she’s not quite inhabiting her own body.
It’s Depa.
Her eyes track Fett without conscious control, and her montrals pick up the sound.
Depa looks up when the armor comes close enough, free hand tensed in a way that says she’s preventing herself from reaching for a saber in reaction to the heavily-armored individual standing several feet away.
“Mando,” the woman says. “May I help you?”
“Are you Depa?”
Depa doesn’t do anything so dramatic as gape or step back, but she does blink rapidly for a moment. She then folds her hands down in front of her, drawing her spine up ramrod straight. “I am Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, yes. May I ask why it is that you need to know?”
Ahsoka imagines Fett grimacing, or rolling his eyes, or maybe dithering. She can’t tell from this angle, and he has a helmet on besides. It turns his awkward silences into judgmental ones.
“I’ve had some Jedi kids on my ship, hitching a ride,” he says at length. “One of them recognized you and then just... froze.”
“You have our younglings in your care,” Depa says, carefully not accusatory, but close enough to be a warning.
“Not quite,” he says. “The one that actually came from the temple is seventeen. One of ‘em isn’t Force Sensitive, and the last one is but hasn’t been to Coruscant before. They’re trying to get the little one to the Temple for her own safety.”
Depa considers that, and then passes the datapad to the vendor. “Lead on.”
It’s surprisingly simple, really. Fett did all the talking.
And then Depa is standing right in front of her.
“Like I said,” Fett sighs. “She froze up.”
“Hello,” Depa says, hands laced together inside her sleeves. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Ahsoka shakes her head. “I know of you. I’ve seen you spar. You’ve never spoken to me.”
All true. A little misleading, but it’s fine, it’s all fine.
Depa waits a moment, and then says, “You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“Sokari T-Torrent,” she manages. The words feel clunky in her mouth, the sound abrasive for all that it’s just her own voice, no different from usual. A little shaky, maybe. She can feel a cool breeze on her upper arms. Shouldn’t she have armor? She should have armor. “It... it’s been a long time since I’ve seen another Jedi. I’m having a hard time believing you’re real.”
“I see,” Depa says. “Perhaps we should take this somewhere more private? You seem a little unsteady.”
Ahsoka lets herself be led back to the ship, in the company of Mand’alor Jango Fett, Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, Princess-General Leia Organa, and good old Captain Rex.
It’s like the start of a sick joke.
---------------------------
Fett and Depa talk where she can hear, but they rarely address her directly. Both seem to realize that she’s not particularly useful right now. Leia and Rex are pressing up against her at the little table in the galley, and Ahsoka lets them.
This is real. She can feel Depa in the Force, recognizes her energy even if it’s not quite what it will-was-could-have-been. This is happening.
It’s a textbook Traumatic Stress Response case, one of them says.
Fett has his helmet off. Ahsoka’s sure that’s wrong for some reason. She thinks he might already be on wanted lists. Should she worry about Depa trying to arrest him?
Depa asks about Rex at one point. Fett tells her that someone cloned him without his knowing, but the kid is more comfortable with Ahsoka so they’re still working on what that means for him.
It’s more or less true. Rex squeezes her hand the one time someone suggests separating them. She’s not letting that happen unless Rex wants to leave for whatever reason. They’ve worked apart before. They can do it again.
“Auntie Soka? You’re shivering.”
Is she?
Leia cuddles in closer, and Ahsoka runs a hand over her hair. It’s an absentminded motion, and for all that she knows Leia’s hair is fine as silk, it feels like plastic in the moment.
“I don’t think I’m okay,” Ahsoka announces. The words hang in the air like lead balloons, and she can feel Depa staring at her. “I haven’t been for a very long time.”
“Yeah, we noticed,” Fett says. “Do you need to lay down, Torrent?”
Does she?
“No,” she says. “I... I don’t know what I need.”
“The spicy drink,” Rex tells them. “It’s grounding.”
Right. That.
Fett goes to grab it, and Depa continues to watch.
“How long ago did you leave your master?” Depa asks. “Or... did he die?”
Ahsoka closes her eyes and shakes her head. She can feel the shivers now, tremors in her biceps and a shudder she can’t control in the height of her ribcage. Her teeth grind together, jaw like stone.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Depa assures her. “I’m... going to recommend you see a mind healer on Coruscant.”
That was a forgone conclusion.
A cup clinks onto the table. Fett’s back. “Drink.”
She does.
Depa and Fett continue discussing it as “the adults” at the table. She’s older than both of them. Rex is older than all of them. Ahsoka follows about half of what they say. She agrees with most of it. Rex bullies his way into speaking when she doesn’t, without her even asking, because he knows her mind as well as she does. Fett rolls with it. Depa lets him.
She’s going to reach out to the Temple and see about getting them a ride back to Imperial Center Coruscant.
Fett makes Soka go to bed, taking Leia with her.
---------------------------
She feels more like a person come morning.
Depa’s sitting at the table, datapad in her hands and caff on the table in front of her.
“Good morning,” Ahsoka says, rough and croaking, and Depa’s eyes flick up to meet hers. She nods a shallow hello.
“Feeling better?”
“Much,” Ahsoka says, and goes about gathering a breakfast. There’s definitely some dried meat in here. She can get something fresh when they stop by the market later.
“I was hoping to speak with you about your options,” Depa tells her, once she’s sat at the table. “Fett and your friend Rex took care of most of the negotiation, and I feel like I have an idea of what would work best for you.”
Ahsoka nods slowly. “Okay.”
“There is a Master-Padawan pair a few planets away,” Depa says. “The Council informed me when I spoke with them about you and your wards. They’d be headed back to the Temple in a few days anyway, and the Council has agreed to extend an offer to Fett to handle the transportation. The presence of a Jedi Master on board will allow for him to get in and out of the Core unmolested, and we’d like for you and yours to have a Jedi escort, given what happened yesterday afternoon.”
Her complete spiral into nonbeing?
“I understand,” she says instead. “I suppose Fett agreed because he’s still trying to get Rex to like him?”
Depa shrugs. “That part isn’t my business.”
Of course it isn’t.
“Rex can stay with me for a while, right?” Ahsoka finally asks. “I know it’s not exactly protocol, but I’m...”
“In need of a support system until you’ve seen a mind healer, and against all odds, the child is part of it,” Depa summarizes. “Yes, I recognized as much. I think the Council will be able to allow some leeway there. I don’t know if he’ll enjoy it, given that all the others his age are Initiates, but we can adjust as necessary. On that note... Do you know Leia’s midichlorian count?”
“No,” Ahsoka says, and hesitantly adds, “But her biological father was my Jedi Master, and I’m told his count broke records even as a child. Given what Leia’s shown so far... it’s why I’ve been in a hurry to get her to the Temple.”
Depa frowns at her, clearly working through the implications of a Jedi having a daughter and still teaching... and then visibly dismisses the situation, eyes closing to breathe in the steam of her caff.
Biological father certainly implies a child that was raised by her mother or adopted out so the Jedi father could remain in their chosen career without a conflict of interest or duty.
She’ll tell the council the truth, or... at least Master Koon. Master Kenobi is still a padawan, but she can tell Master Koon.
She already told Jango Fett, of all people.
“Padawan Torrent?”
Her head snaps up. She hasn’t been a padawan in over fifteen years. It’s weird to hear. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I asked if you wanted some time to think it over before I presented the offer to Fett,” Depa says.
Ahsoka gets the distinct feeling that Depa is planning a report to the Council that has ‘needs a mind healer’ underlined at least three times.
“No, I’m--I’m fine. That sounds like a good plan.”
“I’ll speak with him, then. Would you like to come with?”
"No, thank you.”
---------------------------
Fett agrees. Ahsoka’s pretty sure it’s all to do with Rex and maybe Leia. It’s probably nothing to do with ‘Sokari.’ She’s a Jedi, an adult in mind and in body, or at least close enough to count. She’s a damn sight more ‘enemy’ to Fett than the other two are. Not as much as Depa, maybe, but Fett’s been playing nice with her for Leia’s sake.
He plays nice with Ahsoka for Rex’s. That’s all.
They’re only a few planets over from the meeting point, and they have a few days to hang around before the escort meets them. Depa hadn’t given them a name--apparently it could have compromised the opsec for the Jedi team--but Ahsoka’s pretty sure she’ll be able to identify almost anyone. She gets the feeling that the Force is going to send her a familiar face, just as it did Master Padawan Billaba.
Ahsoka lets herself feel the world around her. It’s dark and dreary, in the sense that the beaten-down port is full of petty crimes and less petty horrors, but it’s still lighter than most of the Empire had been. She sneaks away from the ship at night, ignoring Fett at her back, and performs a bit of vigilante justice while she can. She’ll be banned from doing so as soon as she’s reinstated as a Jedi, probably, but for now... for now, she can look at the drug cartels and ‘they’re not slaves, really’ workers and do something to help.
She doesn’t use her sabers. She doesn’t need to. It’s been a long time since she has, for small fry like these.
“What are you doing?” Fett asks her, landing heavily behind her back.
“Chip removal,” she says, hand pressed to the slave’s leg. Her eyes are closed, but she can hear him shifting. “Let me concentrate, I don’t have a meddroid for this.”
He’s silent until she finishes, and waits until the people she’s helped are on their way to the planet’s freedom routes. He doesn’t ask what she did with the owners.
“You’ve done this before.”
“Regularly,” she confirms. “You?”
He doesn’t answer that, just ambles over to the the chains and stares down at them.
“Fett?”
“You go through this like it’s as easy as breathing,” he says. “It’s... impressive.”
“I guess?” she hesitates to continue. “I’m... I don’t think of it that way. This is the easy stuff. A time-waster that helps people. If I wanted to help for real, I’d been going after Jabba or Sidious or--”
“How old were you?” he asks, turning on his heel to face her dead-on. The vocoder of his helmet pulls the emotion from his voice. “When did this... these missions, the slavery battles, when did that start for you?”
“Fourteen,” she says. She’s not entirely sure, really, what counted as a mission for ending slavery and what counted as just a part of war, but she can round down. “Maybe fifteen. It’s a bit of a blur.”
“And you just kept doing it.”
“Of course,” she says. “If I have the time and the energy, if I need to do something and there’s nothing official on my hands, why not?”
He doesn’t answer her.
---------------------------
Rex greets them before she does.
Ahsoka, in her defense, is asleep at the time. It’s a restless sleep, but it’s enough that she doesn’t sense the nearing Force signatures until they’re almost at the ship.
She recognizes one of them.
“Auntie ‘Soka?” Leia questions, when she lurches to her feet and starts pulling on her boots with all the energy of a zombie. “Where are you going?”
“Jedi,” Ahsoka grunts. “Here.”
“I see.”
Leia dresses to follow her, in a little coat that’ll withstand the chill of the outside air, and Ahsoka makes it to the cargo hold just in time to hear Rex saying, “I’m not shaking your hand until you put your gloves on, Vos.”
She laughs to herself, breathless with the knowledge of what she’s about to find. She jumps the railing of the upper walkway, drops down just in front of the Master-Padawan team, and keeps her back to Fett and Rex. “Hello, there.”
One human, one Kiffar. She knows the latter.
“Would you be Sokari Torrent?” the Master asks.
“I am,” she says, with a slight bow. She can tell there’s a bit of judgement for how she’s dressed, but they’re covering it well. A Shadow and his trainee know the value of armor better than most Jedi bother with. “I’m afraid Padawan Billaba didn’t inform me of your names before we met.”
“And yet your friend knew my padawan,” the Master says.
“By reputation,” she says, as smoothly as she can. “I’ve encountered Quinlan Vos before, though I doubt he remembers--”
“I’d remember someone like you,” Quinlan interrupts, with a grin she’s sure is meant to be charming and rogueish.
He’s... very young for her, and not her type. Mostly, she wants to pat him on the head, but that probably wouldn’t go over very well. She still looks like she’s younger than him.
“Anyway,” she says, turning back to the master, “I’m afraid I still don’t know who you are, Master.”
“I am Tholme,” he says, with the bow that a Master gives a Padawan. She feels a little slighted, but it’s fine. She looks the right age, it’s fine.
It’s not like they know.
“It’s nice to meet you, Master Tholme,” she says. “My charges are Rex Torrent, the young man behind me, and currently coming down the ladder is Leia Antilles. I’m sure you’re aware of Jango Fett.”
“The Mand’alor,” Quinlan volunteers, and Ahsoka can almost hear Fett’s teeth grinding.
“Don’t call me that,” he says. She’s sure he’s got a hand drifting for his blaster.
“There isn’t a whole lot of room on the ship,” she says before the men can get into whatever weird contest she’s sure someone might start. Her bet’s on Fett. “But Leia and Rex are small enough to share with me, so I’m sure we can make it work.”
“There’s spare rolls for anyone comfortable with sleeping in the hold,” Fett grunts. “Or on the floor in the passenger room.”
“Well, I guess I could ask for a little help fi--”
“Vos,” Ahsoka snaps, letting her voice take on the kind of ‘obey me or get fresher duty’ irritation that she’d perfected back when the rebellion still had her managing people, before they’d realized she was more use in the field. “Do not.”
There’s a moment’s pause, and Tholme looks unimpressed with that raised eyebrow, but the kind of unimpressed that’s split between his own padawan and the stranger before him.
“Um,” Quinlan says. “I just--”
“No,” she cuts him off. “No flirting.”
It’s weird and uncomfortable and she’d have maybe been okay with it if she was actually the seventeen-or-eighteen-ish(?) that she looked, but she’s not. She’s in her thirties and Vos is... what, twenty? Twenty-one? No.
He stares at her, and she wonders momentarily if she’d gone too far in the direction of judging his intentions in the Force and preempted actual flirtations.
“I’m sorry?” He offers, looking confused, but ashamed. “I, uh, I’ll keep that in mind.”
She definitely preempted the actual flirtation.
Fuck.
Ahsoka closes her eyes and breathes in. Breathes out. Opens her eyes. “Right. That was... I’m not sure how much Padawan Billaba told you about me.”
“Enough,” Tholme says. He moves forward and puts a hand on Quinlan’s shoulder. Ahsoka has no idea if it’s to comfort him or hold him back. “I didn’t share most of it with my padawan, but I have a general understanding of what’s going on.”
Quinlan darts a look at his teacher, but Ahsoka doesn’t acknowledge it. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
“Thank you for your understanding,” she says, and bows, and stiffly turns away to walk to the galley.
---------------------------
Leia squirms into the bench seat, shoving her way under Ahsoka’s arm like a particularly wriggly tooka.
“What was that?” Leia demands, the authority of a rebellion general rather useless in the squeaky voice of a child.
“What was what?”
“The whole thing with Padawan Vos,” Leia says. “You blew up at him before he even did anything.”
That’s pretty true.
“I felt the flirtation coming before it happened and reacted inappropriately because I panicked. I’m significantly older than him, but I can’t tell him that, so it’s just awkward and uncomfortable and... I’m not okay, Princess. I haven’t been for a long time.”
“Yeah, we can tell.”
“Leia.”
“What? I need therapy too! Captain Rex needs therapy! I’m pretty sure Fett needs therapy! You, Fulcrum, you really need therapy. None of us are okay.” She huffs, wiggling impossibly closer. “I don’t like it, but it’s true.”
“I know,” Ahsoka groans. “I just... I just need to hold out until the Temple.”
“Will you be able to hold it together if you see someone you actually care about?” Leia demands. “What are you going to do when you see Kenobi?”
“Stop.”
“I’m serious, you--”
“Leia, that’s enough,” she snaps. “I was fighting that war before you were even born, and I’ve dealt with the consequences since. I know the risks and I’ll thank you to remember who taught you to control your own mind.”
Leia stiffens, sucking in a sharp breath. “That was uncalled for.”
“You’re not the child you appear to be,” Ahsoka reminds her, not a little sharply. “You want to dish it out, be ready to take it. What will you do when we see Bail Organa? When we see the toddler that is Anakin Skywalker?”
“I get it.”
“I’m not sure you do,” Ahsoka mutters. She isn’t surprised when Leia ducks out of the embrace and leaves the galley. She lets the girl go, guilt warring with the memory of how Master Kenobi had more than once spoken that way to Anakin at the height of the war. The fact that she’s an adult in the body of a child isn’t an excuse for poking at Ahsoka’s open wounds. It was cruel and unnecessary, and unbecoming of a... not a Jedi. A princess. A politician.
She rests her head on her arms and zones out. She should meditate, but that seems like... too much effort.
She can feel Vos and Tholme setting up in the room they’ve been assigned. Neither seems particularly angry. Most likely, Tholme’s given the absolute shortest explanation of ‘child soldier, dead master, highly traumatized and emotionally unstable’ to Vos to smooth over the incident in the cargo hold. Rex is with Leia; he’s agitated, but less so than Leia herself. Fett’s annoyed, in the cockpit, but he seems annoyed as often as not. There’s a shudder at lift-off, and a few minutes later, they’re in hyperspace, headed for the Core.
Fett finds her, falls into the other bench in full armor, and drops his elbows onto the table. The helmet clunks down a moment later.
She doesn’t lift her head. “What do you want?”
“Do I need to keep Vos away from you?”
“What?”
“Vos. He made you uncomfortable. Was that him being someone that hurt you in the future, or just the interaction being awkward?”
She lifts her head. She stares at him. “What?”
He leans back and crosses his arms. “Do you need me to tell Vos to stay the hell away from you?”
She’s gaping. “You realize I’m thirty-two, right? I can handle my own battles.”
“You’re also traumatized as hell and everyone can see it,” Fett argues back. “If Vos himself is a trigger, I can handle it.”
“He’s not,” she tells him. This is strange. Fett’s being strange. “He was actually a friend of my grandmaster’s. I’m just uncomfortable with the flirting because I’m a lot older than he realizes, and I can’t tell him that.”
He nods sharply, and then looks away. The silence sits.
“Thanks for asking?” Ahsoka says, well aware of how her confusion over the offer turns it into a question. “I mean, thank you for... caring.”
I guess, she finishes in the privacy of her own head. Or at least pretending to.
Fett makes a face, still not facing her. He eyes the galley instead. She can guess where his thoughts are going. The galley is... not very big, especially with six people on board instead of one, but she’s sure they’ve stocked up enough. On the off chance they do go through more than expected, because of how many growing bodies are in residence, they can stop off and buy more. They have those resources now.
Jango never does ask what she did with the slavers.
“Who’s going to cry if I spice things properly?” he asks.
“Probably Leia,” she says immediately. “Vos will try to power through it even though he’s going to be overwhelmed. No idea about Tholme, but I think he’ll keep a straight face whether he likes it or not. Rex and I are fine, ‘hot’ was pretty much the only flavor of seasoning the GAR had.”
“GAR?”
“Grand Army of the Republic.”
He finally looks at her.
“You already knew I was a child soldier, Fett; don’t act surprised.”
“That doesn’t mean I like hearing about it.”
“I was fourteen. That’s old enough by Mando standards, Fett. Just think back, when did you get on the battlefield?”
“I take your point,” he says, lip curling unpleasantly. “It just hits different now that I’m old enough to look back and think of how damned young fourteen really is.”
Ahsoka shrugs. “Yeah, well--”
“You said the clones were ten.”
There’s the rub, isn’t it?
Of course it was about the clones.
“...closer to seven, by the end. Kamino was just making speedies at that point. Triple growth on the average instead of double, but averages in that case meant they’d been growing at double rates for six years and then got forced through four growth cycles in a single year to beef up the army when we kept losing men.” She looks down at the table, picking at a scratch in the plastipaint with her nail. “Rex and the rest of the ones from the beginning were basically twenty in mind and body, even if they’d only been decanted ten years earlier. The speedies... I always wondered. They’d gone from functionally twelve to functionally twenty in a year. That’s not... even in Kamino, that can’t have been normal. They didn’t act like adults, not the way the originals did.”
Fett rubs at his face, groaning. He swears under his breath in three different languages.
She pities him, if only because he hasn’t actually done any of this yet. He’s paying for the crimes of a man he likely won’t ever become.
She kicks him under the table. “Wanna make tiingilar and see how long it takes Vos to start crying while he insists it’s fine?”
---------------------------
Dinner is when the questions start. Some are relatively easy. Others, not so much.
“My Master was Leia’s biological father,” is an easy truth to share. “She inherited his power, so I need to get her to the temple for her own safety, because home no longer is.”
“Yes, her adoptive parents were unfortunately killed rather recently. We’d prefer not to talk about it.”
“Rex is with me. Where he goes, I go, and vice versa.”
That one gets her an odd look.
“I thought...” Quinlan trails off, gesturing between Rex and Fett.
Fett keeps his face impassive, but his discomfort and guilt leak into the Force. “I didn’t know Rex existed until I ran into these three in a spaceport cantina a few weeks ago.”
Quinlan blinks at him, looks at Rex again, and then turns back to Fett with a grin that might have been described as ‘saucy’ if he were less smug about it. “Wild oats, huh?”
“Are you shitting me right now,” Leia whispers, and Ahsoka elbows her.
“That was inappropriate, padawan.”
Quinlan’s grin fades as Fett just continues to eye him.
“Um, so--”
“How old is the kid?” Fett interrupts.
Darting eyes answer him, as Quinlan tries to gauge Rex. “Ten? Maybe twelve?”
“And how old am I?”
“...early thirties?”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
Quinlan’s grin fades further as he does the math.
“I’d have been between fifteen and seventeen when he was born,” Fett says, tone flat. “Between fourteen and sixteen at conception. I know damn well I wasn’t doing anything that could have resulted in a kid at that age.”
Quinlan rallies. “So, brothers?”
Tholme sighs loudly, hand over his eyes.
“I’m a clone,” Rex says, and Ahsoka can feel the amusement he gets out of Quinlan’s confused shock. They’d both had plenty of respect for Master Vos, but Padawan Vos was nothing but trouble. “Harvested genetic material, grown in a tube, inconsistent aging meaning I don’t even know how old I am for sure.”
“I broke him out,” Ahsoka adds, which is half true.
“There was a chip in my head,” Rex adds, with a bright smile. Quinlan’s discomfort grows. “She got it out. Also, lots of brothers. None of them are... around anymore. The creators were trying to make an army.”
Vos and Tholme have no response. Fett looks like he’s been carved out of stone. Leia’s just ignoring them and picking at her food.
Ahsoka lifts a hand and, without looking, Rex high-fives her.
---------------------------
“Drop your elbow.”
Ahsoka tries to cover her smile at the dirty look that Leia shoots Fett. Fett remains unimpressed by the glare of royalty, just gestures for the girl to do as he said.
“I know how to fight,” Leia grumbles. “I took lessons. I was good at them.”
“And I’m better,” Fett says, leaving no room for argument. “You want the Torrents to take over?”
The Torrents. Rex and Soka. She likes being referred to that way. Like they’re a team that never got split up.
Force, she wished they’d never gotten split up.
“Again,” Fett orders, and Leia moves through the Mandalorian kata with ill grace in her emotions and all grace in her sweeping limbs.
Well, as much grace as an undersized six-year-old can, at any rate.
“Think he’ll ask me to spar her again?” Rex asks, dropping down into the seat next to Ahsoka and passing her a drink.
“Maybe,” she acknowledges. “I think he’s wondering if it’s worth asking Vos to spar with her, so she gets more experience with size differences.”
“Hm?”
“She flinched at his face again,” she tells him. “The whole... thing with Boba, I guess. She still won’t tell me why Fett triggers her sometimes, but he’s not pressing her to spar with him, and there’s only so much she can get out of fighting me. Asking Tholme would be presumptuous, but Vos is just a padawan. I think it’d work out.”
“And you?”
She looks at him, already feeling a cresting wave of bullshit she doesn’t want to deal with. “What about me?”
“Are you going to spar with the Jedi?”
She should. She hasn’t sparred with a saber since she got tossed back into a body only half-familiar to her. She’s let Leia borrow the shorter one to learn some basic blocking moves, Shii-Cho and then, with hesitance, the first Soresu form. Another time, she loaned it to Rex to practice some attacks; they both know that the next time he picks up her saber in battle, having lost his weapons or she her grip, it will be neither the first or last time he wields a sword of light. None of that, however, is... sparring.
None of that is against someone who knows what they’re doing.
How long has it been since she sparred with anyone other than Kanan and Ezra?
How long has it been since she sparred without the looming specter of Darth Vader in the back of her mind, without fear of the Inquisitors, without the knowledge that any saber held by someone other than her two friends would be red as blood and twice as drenched.
Would she be able to hold back as she fought?
“I should,” she acknowledges, eyes on where Fett is nudging Leia’s feet into position for some kind of leveraging flip. She’s so small. “It would probably be a good idea to spar against a master at some point.”
“Do you think you can?” Rex asks.
“I never knew him,” she says. “And he isn’t Dark. It should be fine.”
Rex nods, taking her word for it. They watch as Leia stumbles on a final move, and Fett gestures for her to sit down and get a drink.
“That man is a terror,” she informs them.
(She’d once described him as a slave-driver. She had not made that mistake twice.)
“Least it’s not Kamino!” Rex tells her cheerfully. When Leia refuses to look impressed, he laughs at her.
Ahsoka has a half-second’s warning before heavy boots thud to the ground next to her. “What’s Kamino?”
“Hello, Vos, it’s nice to see you too,” she drawls. “I’m good, thanks for asking, and yourself?”
The boy-not-quite-man rolls his eyes. “Hi, Torrents; hi, tiny one.”
Leia glares at him next.
“So, Kamino?”
“Planet by Rishi,” Rex says.
“Why were you there?”
“They specialize in cloning.”
Ahsoka covers her mouth as the conversation drops into the same awkward gap that always happens when Quinlan stumbles into a subject he didn’t know to avoid.
“Like... you were made there, or you were researching how it works for your own--”
Ahsoka slaps a hand over his mouth. “Now’s a great time to stop talking.”
He licks her palm.
She bares her teeth and arches her fingers just enough to press nails into his cheek.
He bites at her palm, and she yanks her hand away.
“You’re all children,” Leia accuses, conveniently forgetting that Ahsoka and Rex are both over a decade older than her.
“I can throw you the length of a swimming pool,” Ahsoka tells her. “One of the fancy competition-ready ones that would make a Tatooinian cry. You are absolutely the child here.”
“Using the Force is cheating, sir,” Rex informs her.
“Only if there’s a competition,” Ahsoka shoots back. “And proving that a certain princess is a small child is not a competition. It’s a declarative fact.”
“I’m going to rip open the seams on all your tops except the ugliest one,” Leia decides.
“Try me,” Ahsoka challenges. “Adi’ka.”
A low, rough cough interrupts them. “Are you done?”
Fett has his arms crossed, and an eyebrow raised. He knows they’re all adults here, and is entirely unamused. As the silence drags, the eyebrow climbs a little higher.
“Done with what?” Quinlan finally asks, thereby volunteering himself to spar in hand-to-hand with Jango Fett, as one does.
“Poor, poor Vos,” Rex laughs, watching as Fett barks out orders at Quinlan every five seconds to fix his footwork, to stop dropping his guard, to stop wasting energy on flips instead of just dodging the easy way.
“Throw him!” Ahsoka calls. To her delight, Fett obliges.
The thing is, Quinlan isn’t bad at brawling. He’s got training, endurance, skill. The man knows what he’s doing, objectively. He’s just not a match for Fett, and is used enough to relying on his saber that his hand-to-hand skills are rusty. They are perhaps less rusty than those Jedi who don’t take questionable jobs in the Mid-Outer Rim, and Ahsoka’s got a suspicion that Vos regularly gets into bar fights in his downtime, but none of that is enough for him to actually do more than survive against Fett without his saber.
Even the saber wouldn’t help, if Fett had his armor.
“Whose idea was this?”
Ahsoka cranes her head back and smiles. “Hello, Master Tholme. Vos... volunteered.”
“Did he know he was volunteering?”
“No comment.”
Tholme snorts, crossing his arms and eyeing the spar in front of him. “I thought Fett hated Jedi. Giving us a ride for the sake of you three is one thing, but why is he teaching my padawan?”
Ahsoka shrugs. “Constructive bullying?”
There’s a small twitch of a smile, quickly gone. “He said something wrong, I’m guessing?”
“There was no way he could have known,” she dismisses. “We’re just, like, ninety-percent tragic backstories.”
“You’d think the Force would warn him,” Rex notes.
“That’s not how the Force works,” Leia chides.
“No, no, he’s right,” Ahsoka corrects. “The Force does sometimes step in to stop a person from saying something stupid. However, Padawan Vos is at an age where people think they are very rational while being more irrational than they likely ever will be again.”
“Do I want to ask what you were doing at that age?” Tholme asks.
“Running bla...” she trails off, then whips around to gape at him.
He smiles, bland and unassuming. “Does Fett know?”
“Know... what?” Ahsoka asks.
“That you’re significantly older than you look,” he says, voice just low enough that the sparring duo can’t hear him. “All three of you.”
Ahsoka turns back to the spar, only catching Tholme out of the corner of her eye. “He knows.”
“Mm. Were you planning on telling the Council?”
“Yes.” That part was never in question. “How did you figure it out?”
“I am a good investigator,” he says. “And you rely a little too heavily on your physical forms to obfuscate. Were it just one of you, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the pattern repeated across three is a little easier to discern.”
“I hoped the whole ‘child soldiers’ thing would be a bigger distraction,” Ahsoka mutters. She glances at Leia and Rex. Both of them are used to being in charge to some degree, giving orders and making contingency plans, but in this... in this, Ahsoka is in charge. They’d decided that at the very start. It didn’t matter that Rex had lived longer and had more experience, or that Leia had held the highest Rebellion rank of the three of them. Ahsoka had been agreed as leader, and they were relying on her.
They’re waiting on her orders. Stiff and unhappy, in Leia’s case, but they trust her.
“Will you be telling Vos?” She asks.
“No,” Tholme says. “Your secrets remain your own unless they endanger us, and I’ve a feeling they won’t be.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Rex jokes, smile not reaching his eyes. “I’ve been working with this family for too long to trust that trouble won’t find them around the next corner.”
“This family?” Tholme repeats.
“Sokari was telling the truth about her master being Leia’s biological father,” Rex says. He shrugs. “I worked with him, with his wife, with both of his kids, with his master and his padawan. All of them, to a one, are trouble magnets.”
“Ah, but that’s not the secret that’s putting us in danger,” Tholme points out. “Simply existence as a Jedi.”
Rex shrugs. “Fair enough. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.”
Ahsoka lurches to her feet, turning with a smile and dancing backward into the the stretch of empty cargo hold they used for such things. “A spar, Master Tholme?”
He looks past her, to Quinlan, and raises a brow. “Would you not prefer to spar with someone a little closer to your level first?”
She barks out a laugh. “Master Tholme, I’m afraid I’ve spent more of my life fighting to survive than having normal friendly spars. My style is more lethal than the average, and you’ve already seen what war’s done to my mind. I ask to spar with you because, if I lose control, if I slip in time or react on an instinct that isn’t appropriate, I trust that you’ll be more able to stop me than a senior padawan.”
He smiles. “Yes, I gathered as much. Still, better to ask. Shall we wait for them to finish up?”
Ahsoka shrugs, turns, and yells. “Clear the deck!”
Rex snorts behind her, and lowly mutters, “Sir, yes, sir.”
She smirks at him over her shoulder. “At ease, Captain.”
“That’s ‘Commander’ to you, I got promoted,” he sniffs, chin held high.
Heavy steps herald Fett’s arrival at their little group. “The hells are you doing?”
“I’m going to have a spar with a Jedi Master, and I want you and Vos to not get stabbed.”
“I’m not that easy to injure in an actual fight, let alone by accident,” Fett grouses. He looks up and over at Vos, who is already significantly taller, if a fair shot less built. “This one, on the other hand...”
“Hey!”
Ahsoka laughs and backs into the center of the cargo hold, drawing her sabers. “Don’t worry, Vos, I won’t play dirty. You’ll probably get your master back in one piece.”
He wrinkles his nose at her. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself there, aren’t you? He’s a Jedi Master and former Watchman. You’re... what, eighteen?”
Ahsoka raises a brow and activates her sabers, tapping the blades together and watching as more than one person winces. “Wanna bet on how long I last?”
“No,” he says immediately, stepping back to join Rex on the bench. “You’ve already blindsided me enough. I’m not dumb enough to fall for whatever you’ve got up your sleeve.”
“I don’t have sleeves.”
“Armwarmers-slash-greaves, then.”
“Greaves go on the legs, these are vambraces.”
He throws his hands up in the air. “I’m just going to stop talking now!”
“Good plan,” Leia snarks, and then literally hisses when Rex ruffles her hair.
Tholme lights his saber and sinks into an opening stance.
Ahsoka mirrors him.
---------------------------
She wins, but barely. She's had a few weeks to practice her forms, has sparred hands-only with Rex and Fett, but this is her first real try at using her sabers against a person, instead of a blaster or thin air, since she arrived in the past. She’s only mostly adjusted to her body.
But Tholme is a healer and a watchman, not a duelist. Ahsoka held her own against Ventress, against Grievous, against Maul when she was this age. Still adjusting to her body or not, her lineage is one of battle, and it bled true.
“You’re terrifying,” Quinlan tells her after they’re done, smiling like the sun as he hands her a towel. “Please never turn that on me.”
She laughs at him. “Would you believe that I’m out of practice?”
“Out of practice with what?” he asks, horrified and fascinated. “Fighting Sith Lords?”
“Among other things,” she says, and smirks when he chokes on his drink. “Multiple darkside users who claimed to be Sith, at least. One being a full Lord, one that was disowned by his master, and one that was apprenticed to a Banite apprentice, so she wasn’t technically allowed to be a Darth because of the rule of two.”
Tholme meets her eyes past Quinlan’s shoulder, head tilted and eyes half-shut in consideration. He’s taking her seriously. He knows what she’s not saying.
“How...” Quinlan trails off and shakes his head. “You know what, no. Asking you people questions never ends well.”
“Good plan,” Ahsoka says, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Also, you need to spar with Fett more. Your footwork is shit.”
“It is not,” Quinlan gripes. “You’re all just scary good at this stuff.”
“You mean surviving?” Leia pipes up, and smiles innocently when Quinlan turns to pout at her.
“You’re getting bullied by a six-year-old,” Rex informs him.
“Yeah,” Quinlan sighs. “I know.”
Ahsoka laughs, and it’s fine. It’s all fine. For a week, everything is honestly great. She trains, she laughs, she works through the nightmares.
Then fucking Denon happens.
---------------------------
Denon is a city-planet on the intersection of two major hyperlanes. It’s the kind of place where they stop for two things:
Fuel.
Paperwork.
Technically, there’s a whole mess of paperwork they have to fill out to continue along this specific hyperlane, since they aren’t official Republic ships, and don’t have the licenses to just pass along like ships that are pre-registered to the Trade Federation or the like. They could sneak past--literally all of them know smuggler’s routes--but it’s honestly less of a pain to do things legally. They have a Jedi Master. They have cash. Some of that cash wasn’t quite legally acquired, but nobody needs to know that.
It’s supposed to be a pit stop. That’s all.
It’s just a pit stop.
But no, the galaxy isn’t that kind and Ahsoka’s luck is currently being compounded with a Skywalker, two Fetts, and Vos, which means that of course they run into trouble. Of course they do. There was never any other option, was there?
“Motherfucker,” Ahsoka snaps, lifting her head up and slamming her drink on the table.
The glass is empty. That’s good. They’re in a restaurant right now, a little splurging after weeks with only each others’ company, and spilling the sugary child-friendly juice with that move would have drawn way too much attention from the servers.
“Language,” Tholme says, voice idly unconcerned.
“Sir?” Rex asks, kicking Ahsoka under the table. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wr--that jackass,” she hisses, getting to her feet. “Rex, grab a blaster, I’ve got shebs to kick.”
“Okay,” Rex says, grabbing one out of Fett’s holster and scooting out of the booth before anyone can tell him not to. “Whose?”
“I didn’t even know that he was... osik, I don’t have jurisdiction,” she realizes. “I don’t have any record of wrongdoing. I can’t arrest him since we don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing...”
“Are you two going to explain what’s going on?” Vos asks. “Or sit down, maybe?”
Ahsoka makes her decision. She eyes the window--the restaurant in question is a little dingy, but it’s also several dozen stories in the air. “Rex, remember the thing we did on Geonosis that you hated?”
He pauses, and then sighs heavily. “Yes, sir. I remember the... yeeting.”
Hah. That slang doesn’t even exist yet.
“Great. With me!”
It’s a good thing the windows are forcefields instead of transparisteel. A bit of a twist to the energy and they’re gone.
She only hears a little screaming before the wind tears all noises away while they plummet.
They land lightly--of course--and Ahsoka wraps them both in a don’t notice me aura. Nobody even notices that they’ve just come from above. It’s great that she can just Do These Things again, and get brushed off as Weird Jedi Shit, instead of worrying about the Empire. She’s missed being able to jump out of windows without fear.
Rex follows her as she starts running through the city. They don’t have comms, and he’s still so small, which means he can’t keep up with her even if she runs at normal speeds without Force enhancement.
“Should you carry me?” he asks, before she can figure out if it’s worth suggesting. She did it a few times before they joined up with Jango.
“It’s not... urgent, I think,” she says. She hesitates to speak, even as she keeps jogging with Rex at her heels. “Honestly, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can ding him for so we can attack him. It’s all well and good that I can beat him right now, but all the crimes I know about haven’t happened yet, so it wouldn’t be legal...”
“Commander?”
“Hm?”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
She scrolls the conversation back mentally, considers, and says, “Oh.”
“Who’s getting steamrolled?”
“Uh, Maul’s here,” Ahsoka admits.
“Ah,” Rex says. He makes a face. “I understand the desire to jump out a window, now. I don’t agree with it, but I understand.”
Ahsoka laughs. “I mean, I just... every time I’ve seen him for almost twenty years, it’s been like... on sight, you know? We’ve never not attacked each other, except when I needed him to cause problems on Mandalore. But I always knew I was in the right, then.”
“So... what do we arrest him for?” Rex prompts.
“Um... carrying a lightsaber without a license?” she hazards. “We’ll need Tholme there. Hopefully I can just shout at him and he’ll attack me, but I think he only went full nutjob after Master Kenobi cut his legs off. He might be too controlled to try to kill me just for yelling at him.”
“...do we have to stalk him?” Rex asks, sounding like he’d most likely sigh if he weren’t mid-run.
She scoops him up and swings him around onto her back before she answers. “I think we have to stalk him, Rex’ika.”
“Don’t call me that.”
---------------------------
Maul is... exceptionally sneaky, actually. Either that, or he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. Ahsoka’s betting on the former, because she’s seen this particular skocha kung take over a planet before anyone realized he was the most dangerous person around.
Or maybe he’s just not committing crimes, and is in fact just here to buy groceries.
He’s examining a papaya.
She fantasizes about jumping across the market and greeting him with a heel to the cheekbone.
“Are you imagining a flying kick, Sir?”
“Yeah...”
“He’s examining a papaya, Sir.”
“I know...”
“Does he know we’re here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? Do you think I should go hit him?”
“No.”
“Should I hit on him?”
“No, Sir. I would not advise that.”
“He’s looking at the neloms.”
“I can see that.”
“Why does he have to be so bo--did he just fucking bite a nelom?”
“It appears so, Sir.”
“Like... like rind and all. Just bit the little fucker.”
“Seems it.”
A scuff of metal. “What the fuck are you two doing?”
Ahsoka tips her head around to peer through the grate. “We’re spying, Fett, what does it look like we’re doing?”
Rex cranes his head. “We’re hanging upside-down from a fire escape to get a look at a suspected Sith Apprentice that is currently shopping for various fruits, Mand’alor.”
Ahsoka waves. “Hi, Master Tholme.”
“Sokari,” the master greets. “This seems a very conspicuous way to spy.”
She shrugs as well as she can from this angle. “Yes, but you see, this way’s more fun.”
“Is it now.”
Rex shifted. “He’s on the move!”
“To kill someone?!”
“No, to the deli meats.”
“Kriff.”
---------------------------
Apparently, Tholme and Fett had told Quinlan to take care of Leia, as Leia had wanted to finish her juice and refused to get involved in the Torrents’ nonsense. According to her, if they couldn’t be bothered to explain the nonsense, they didn’t need her.
This was true and accurate.
Quinlan shows up while they’re still stalking Maul, having moved to a low rooftop for a decent vantage point with less likelihood of being spotted. He’s giving Leia an eopie-back ride, and the pout on her face at needing it is adorable. She pouts harder when she sees them.
“Are you even trying to hide?” Leia scoffs.
“Not really,” Ahsoka admits. She’s got Fett’s binoculars out. “I’m not sure he’s caught wind of the fact that we’re here yet.”
“Or he has and he’s just biding his time to escape while we’re distracted,” Tholme points out.
“Meh,” Ahsoka says, avidly devouring the visual that is a teenage Maul glaring at leafy vegetables. “I just want him to do something so I have an excuse to beat his ass.”
“Do I get to know who?” Quinlan asks, setting Leia down on the roof. “Or are we going to keep being completely unwilling to share information?”
“Baby Sith Lord,” Ahsoka says. “He’s fifteen. A child.”
“A baby,” Rex agrees.
“You’re... that’s... ugh,” Quinlan groans as loudly and as dramatically as he dares, flopping down to the rooftop. “Master Tholme, please tell me this isn’t a real Sith.”
“He’s Dark,” Tholme confirms. “Sith is... up for debate until we have evidence.”
“He’s a bitch is what he is,” Ahsoka mutters. She observes the teenager in question stop to poke at some pink tomatoes. “E chu ta, break the law, already!”
“Does he have a lightsaber?” Quinlan asks. “If he has a lightsaber and no Jedi ID or specialty license, we can probably arrest him.”
“Auntie Soka doesn’t have a license or ID,” Leia points out.
“She’s got a Jedi escort,” Tholme says. “And if our supposed Sith is polite and plays nice, we can probably escort him to the Temple as well.”
Rex snorts derisively.
“Do you know why he’s on Denon?” Fett asks.
“No clue,” Ahsoka admits. “Evil reasons, probably.”
“You’re useless,” Leia tells her.
“Thanks, princess, how’s that attempt to open the jam jar by yourself coming?”
Leia says something very inappropriate for a princess, for a child, and for a lady. It’s fairly appropriate for a soldier, which is admittedly what she’s been for a few years now. Ahsoka sticks her tongue out at the girl like the mature operative she is.
“I wish we could still get him to lose his osik by just showing up and insulting him,” Rex mutters, low enough that Quinlan probably can’t hear.
“I wanna punch him in the face,” Ahsoka confesses. “I want him to try to punch me in the face, and fail.”
“Don’t bully the baby Sith,” Rex admonishes.
“He’s a Sith.”
“He’s fifteen, it’s tacky.”
“But it’s Maul.”
“I know, but you’re tw--significantly older than him.”
“But... but it’s the motherfucker himself.”
“...you can bully him a little, but only because he’s a Sith.”
Fett steals the binoculars. “You can borrow them again when you stop acting like children.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rex says, dry as Ryloth. “I’m ten.”
“Pretty tall for your age,” Ahsoka mutters, and then giggles.
“Don’t steal my jokes,” Rex says. He elbows her, hard.
“You know,” Quinlan says, slow and tired. “Master Tholme and I are trained investigators.”
Ahsoka and Rex look at each other, and then up at him.
“Okay?”
“...do you want me to find actual evidence of this guy doing something criminal?”
“Oh, yes please.”
---------------------------
Quinlan, as it turns out, is not overselling his skills. He does catch Maul doing something illegal later that day. It’s a little more ‘stealing corporate secrets in the dead of night’ and less ‘torturing people for kicks,’ but it’s still enough to legally arrest him. Quinlan attempts to do so.
Quinlan does not succeed, and is forced to jump out a window to avoid getting cut in half. Maul follows, steals a passing speeder by throwing out the driver, and takes off. Someone--looks like Tholme--drops back to save the driver, but the rest of them give chase. Ahsoka gleefully takes point on that, of course. She’s the best pilot.
(Rex looks bored, but someone is likely to puke by the end of the night. She hopes it’s not Leia, who insisted on coming for some fucking reason.)
“How the kriff is a teenager that good?!” Quinlan yells, clinging to the edge of the speeder to avoid getting tipped out as Ahsoka swerves around a corner with a wild laugh.
“He’s a Sith!” Leia shouts over the wind. “What do you think?”
Quinlan is not impressed by the claim of Sith.
Ahsoka screeches as she drifts across four lanes of traffic and into an alleyway to pursue Maul. He’s pretty good at dodging cross-building walkways, but she’s better. She bares her teeth, hissing, and tries to pick a plan.
“Vos, how’s your aim with Force throws?” She calls to the backseat.
“Uh, decent?”
“Great! Fett’s the projectile!”
Vos takes a second longer to process that than Jango does.
“I’m wh--”
He cuts off, screaming, and is flung forward by Quinlan to crash headfirst into a teenage Sith.
“Take the wheel!” Ahsoka commands, not waiting to see who follows the order, because Fett and Maul are both getting to their feet, the other speeder is about to crash, and she’s not sure who’s going to win that fight.
She jumps from the speeder they’ve been violently dragging around Denon, and lands feet-first on Maul’s... shoulder.
Hm.
That definitely dislocated something.
“You should wear armor!” she chirps at him, drawing both sabers and grinning as he whirls to face her, eyes wide with hate.
He’s utterly silent.
That’s disturbing. Expected, but disturbing.
“Did you just throw me?” Fett demands, higher pitched than she’d normally expect.
“No, Vos threw you.”
“Because you told him to!”
“Yeah, it’s a good strategy!”
“It is not!”
“Why not? Throwing people was standard practice in the GAR.”
She can’t see his face, but she’s pretty sure he’s about ready to strangle her.
Ahsoka cannot, at that point, continue snarking with the father of her best friend, because there’s a red lightsaber coming for her throat, and she should probably worry about that. Maul’s very good at killing people and she’d like to avoid becoming part of that statistic.
As she is quickly reminded, he is... fifteen. And shorter than she’s used to. And already injured.
It’s really, really easy to take him out, actually.
At some point, the other speeder was safely recovered before it caused property damage, and their own is landing a few meters away with Vos and the kids.
“You have Force-negating cuffs, right?” Ahsoka asks.
“No, Master Tholme has them.”
“Oh,” she says, and grimaces. “I guess I’ll just... keep sitting on him then.”
Maul snarls, and she raps him on the skull. “Stop that, it’s uncivilized.”
Rex snorts.
Jango makes a noise that is incredibly frustrated with the lot of them, and turns on Rex. “Was she telling the truth?”
“About?”
“Throwing people being standard practice for the GAR.”
Rex’s face goes pained. “It was in the five-oh-first. And a few others.”
“What’s the GAR?” Quinlan asks.
“None of your damn business,” Fett snaps.
Quinlan throws his hands up in the air again. “Come on! I just proved I know what I’m doing!”
“And their tragic backstory is none of your business, prudii!”
Quinlan blinks at him, and then glances at Ahsoka. “Um.”
“He called you a shadow since your training, um, seems to be pointing in that direction,” she says as carefully as she can. “We were theorizing.”
“Wh... you actually paid attention?” Quinlan asks, looking horribly confused. “I thought I was just annoying you.”
Ahsoka laughs at him. “Oh, Vos... I’ve been running black ops for... much longer than most would guess. Trust me, I know another spy when I see them.”
She smiles as kindly as she can, because she hadn’t actually meant to make him feel left out or unwanted or... well, she’d been pretty patronizing, especially for someone seemingly younger than him. The smile does not work. Quinlan just looks kind of horrified about how young she just implied she started spy work.
Granted, she’d been sixteen for Zygerria...
Deciding to ignore him for a bit, she shifts on Maul’s back and pats him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Baby Sith. We’re going to get you lots of nice therapy. Mind healers, no Sith tortures, all that fun stuff. Maybe some plushies.”
“You’re also getting therapy, right?” Quinlan asks. “Please say you are. I’m required for the specifics of my training and if anything you’ve said is true, I feel like you really need it and I’m scared of what’ll happen if you don’t.”
Ahsoka laughs, knowing exactly how empty it sounds. “Oh hell, if I didn’t get therapy, I imagine Kix would rise from the grave to force me into it.”
The name means nothing to anyone except Rex, and... ah, yeah, she told Fett about Kix a few weeks ago.
“No more throwing me without warning,” Fett grumbles, dropping to sit on the ground next to her. “Especially not at baby Sith Lords.”
“I am not a child!” Maul spits.
“He speaks!” Ahsoka cheers. “Aw, I knew you could do it.”
“’Soka, I told you not to bully him,” Rex complains. “It’s tacky. You’re being tacky.”
“I’m allowed to be tacky,” Ahsoka declares. “I’ve died twice, that’s, like, permission from the universe.”
“You’ve died twice?” Quinlan asks, back in ‘fascinated horror’ territory. “Wait, no, I shouldn’t ask--”
“Too late! The first time was on a planet that doesn’t exist and my Master lost his mind, killed a god, and used the good favor of another god to have me brought back to life at her expense. Not in that order.”
“I--what? No, that’s--what?”
Ahsoka smiles brightly. “You asked.”
Tholme finally shows up with the cuffs.
---------------------------
“You should eat something.”
He glares at her.
“Baby Sith Lords need to eat.”
He keeps glaring at her.
“Maul, you’ll never get big and strong and ready to kill if you don’t eat your vegetables.”
He bares his teeth.
“No, I don’t eat my veggies, but I’m a Togruta, so if I eat too many vegetables I throw up.”
Rex kicks her thigh, right on the faulds. “What did I say about bullying the Sith Lord?”
“Not to.”
“And what are you doing?”
“Making him eat his vegetables.”
“Soka.”
“Rex’ika.”
He kicks at her again. “Get up, we’re swapping out the watch.”
“But I wanted to hang out with my favorite little criminal mastermind.”
Rex drops to the floor and presses his forehead to her shoulder. “How the hell is being around this guy the first thing to make you cheer up in weeks?”
“I’m allowed to be mean to him.”
“He’s going to bite you.”
“I’ll bite back.”
Rex jabs a finger into her ribs, and she squeaks. “Go get something to eat, Commander.”
“Fine,” she huffs, rolling to her feet and moseying along to the galley. She walks in on Tholme and Fett having an argument about the ways in which Jedi and Mandalorians differ. Quinlan’s on the side, watching with wide eyes, and little Leia’s drinking a juice box at his side, tucked up under his arm and occasionally saying things to fan the flames. Ahsoka assumes she’s enjoying herself.
She opens the cooling unit, looks over the contents, and pulls out a raw leg of eopie mutton. She leans against the counter, bites into the chilled-but-not-frozen meat, and uses the back of one hand to wipe the blood off her chin. The ‘real adults’ don’t notice.
“I’m like ninety percent sure you’re doing this to mess with me but also...” Quinlan trails off, staring at her with horror. “Why?”
“A girl’s gotta eat.”
“Yeah, but all the obligate carnivores I know are like... generally holding to basic rules of courtesy when it comes to not grossing people out,” Quinlan says. “Like, I don’t chew with my mouth open. You don’t... eat in the most intimidating--did you just crack the bone with your teeth?!”
Ahsoka smirks at him, using her free hand to take away the shard of bone so she can suck out the marrow without eating the bones themselves. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t polite society. We’re in a galley on a bounty hunter’s ship, and I’ve been living on the run or in an army for most of my life. Table manners are optional.”
“No, they’re not,” Leia orders. “Fett, it’s your ship, tell her to--”
“--and another thing!” Fett snaps at Tholme, clearly paying less than no attention to the food argument.
Ahsoka keeps on eating, trying to catch wind of where the discussion’s at. Mostly, it seems to be at ‘talking past each other.’ Neither of them seems to have fully grasped more than the absolute most basic parts of the other culture, and that’s only enough to insult each other, not actually have a constructive conversation. She’d have expected more out of Tholme, at least. He’s not exactly young.
“Hey, quick question,” she says, in a moment where both of them have paused for breath and the opportunity to seethe. “Fett, when’s the last time you worked with a Jedi, or any member of a Force-based religion, before I popped into your life?”
His nose scrunches up as he makes a face.
“And Tholme, when’s the last time you worked with anyone from the Mandalorian system?”
Tholme’s reaction isn’t any more gracious than Fett’s.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. “Vos, were either of them actually interested in that conversation, or just looking for an excuse to yell?”
“Now listen here, jetiika--”
“Fett,” she snaps. “I am not a child.”
“And neither am I,” he growls right back. “This is my ship, and I damn well don’t need you treating me like a misbehaving youngling. You’ve got a problem, you bring it to my face, not get all smug about people’s tempers blowing over.”
Well, then.
She smiles thinly. “Of course.”
He stands with his arms crossed, in full armor save for the helmet. She puts aside the eopie meat and wipes her hands, smiling until she can put her hands on her hips and let it drop to a challenge.
“You know, I’m just--I’m just gonna go,” Quinlan mutters, pulling Leia out with him, the girl hanging from under one of his arms. “This, uh, this looks like a problem for... you folks. Um. Yeah.”
He sidles out.
Tholme doesn’t.
Fett rubs at the bridge of his nose, and then gestures at the table. “Sit.”
“I’d prefer not to.”
He drops his hand and glares at her. “We have another week on this ship together. We are going to have this conversation. Sit.”
She sits, right on the warm spot left behind by Quinlan and Leia. She crosses her arms, lifts a brow, and waits.
Fett takes the seat across from her. Tholme leans against the counter.
“We all know you’re older than you look,” Fett says. “I heard Tholme mention it, I know that much has been shared. You’re acting like an actual teenager, and I’ve... I’ve put up with a lot. I am trying to keep things civil, particularly with you. I’ve tried to be friendly. You’ve been fucked up since we met, fine, everyone’s got trauma. The thing where you’ve started talking shit to our faces for what seems like your own amusement? That has to stop. You’re older than me, Torrent. Fucking act like it.”
She blinks at him, slow and not exactly happy, and turns to Tholme.
The man shrugs. “I was planning to put up with it until we arrived to the temple and handed you over to some mind healers. Fett doesn’t have that kind of time.”
There’s a curdle in her stomach, defensive and angry and guilty.
“You’ve been... a bitch,” Fett finally says. “You know that. I’m not going to mince words. You’ve been holier-than-thou and rude and condescending, and aiming that at Antilles is one thing, when you’ve apparently known her since she was a toddler and taught her things. Aiming at the rest of us isn’t going to fly. We’re all adults trying to share a space. Stop acting like... just like you have been.”
There is no defense to be made that they aren’t both already aware of.
She closes her eyes and tries to strangle the burst of irrational rage.
Their accusations aren’t unfounded.
They deserve an apology.
She is in the wrong.
She’s felt freer than she had in years, and in that freedom allowed herself too much rein, let herself lace her words with barbed wires and poison instead of sparks and spices, comments that were cruel instead of just joking. Too familiar. Too comfortable.
“My behavior’s been inappropriate,” she finally says, the words clumsy and too big in her mouth. “You’re right about that. I’m sorry, and I’ll endeavor to keep a tighter rein on my less pleasant behaviors in the future.”
At least she only lashes out with words. It could be worse.
She opens her eyes, fixes her gaze on the wall behind Fett, wrestles her expression into stiff neutrality. “Am I dismissed?”
“...uh, no, not after that,” Fett says, sounding just a little horrified. “What the hell was that?”
Tholme hisses out a breath. “Let her go.”
“No, this needs to be discussed, that’s not a healthy rea--”
“Fett, let her go,” Tholme insists, low and heavy.
Fett looks between the two for a moment, seems to come to a realization he doesn’t like, and then gestures almost violently towards the door. “Fine. Go.”
She walks out, doesn’t sprint. She’s stiff. She’s controlled. She’s the one that fucked up, so it’s fine if she doesn’t feel great right now. Getting called out on one’s own failings as a person isn’t something to get upset about if the failings are real. The feelings are real and normal, but this was her fault, and so it’s up to her to fix it, and she can’t let them know it hurt her, because this was her mistake.
She goes to the cargo hold.
---------------------------
Ahsoka works out her frustrations on Fett’s punching bag. She does not augment herself with the Force, just uses raw strength and technique, ignoring the tears that press at her eyes.
She’s fine.
It’s not weird. It’s not odd. It’s not strange to not notice she’s been kind of a bitch since her mood came up with the whole Depa thing, and then Maul. She’s been mean, mostly to Vos and Fett, and nobody’s confronted her about it until now. They let her have room for her trauma, and she hadn’t reined it in. She’s just gotten worse.
‘Snippy’ she’d always been, but age apparently hadn’t fucking tempered it.
“Um.”
She catches the punching bag, breathing heavily and covered in sweat. She hasn’t worked out all the twitchy, nervous energy yet.
“Vos,” she greets, once she’s caught herself enough that her voice won’t waver. He’s on the other side of the bag, but she knows his voice. “Do you need something?”
“You’re kind of... projecting,” he tells her, drifting to where she can actually see him. “Not self-loathing, but, um, recrimination? You just don’t feel very good and I was hoping to help”
Why in all the Sith hells does he have to be nice.
“I got called out on my behavior and wasn’t ready to face the fact that I’d kriffed up,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine. And I’m... sorry. I haven’t been fair to you and was using you as an easy target for some of my ruder comments.”
“I mean, I kind of figured,” he admits, coming closer. “I’ve been tutored by Shadows before, and a lot of them act like you. I just assumed it was more of that.”
“I still shouldn’t have let myself run loose like that,” she says. “I’m... it wasn’t appropriate. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” she says. “Not with... not with you. Or anyone other than Rex and a mind healer, really. Most of it is...”
She trails off, distantly noticing that her eyes are tearing up enough to blur her vision, and her nails are digging into the bag in a way Fett won’t appreciate.
There’s so much that beat her down, never quite breaking her, that she doesn’t even know what made her act the way she does.
“Want to spar?”
She looks over at him, wonders what he sees that makes him want to fight her when she’s visibly unstable.
He smiles, kind and easy, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s genuine in intent, if not in energy. He wants to help. “You all keep saying I could work on my hand-to-hand. Just take off the armor so I don’t break a finger, maybe.”
“You’re serious.”
“No, I’m Quinlan.”
She’s going to wipe the floor with this boy. “You sure you wanna fight me?”
“You won’t be able to meditate until you do,” he says. He’s right, damn him. “The other option is that I go get your... vod, I think? I go get Rex and you two can talk it out since you trust him with more. I don’t want to do that, though, he’s still a kid.”
She eyes him, lips pressed together and mind awhirl with emotions and thoughts she’d tried to beat out of her head and into the bag. “Ever fought someone without the Force?”
“...yes?”
“Was it cuffs?”
“Oh, you meant me not having the Force,” he realizes. “Er, no. Is... is that something you’ve done a lot?”
She smiles at him. “You’re planning on Shadow work. That means getting captured and stripped of everything you are at some point, Force included. Unfortunately, the cuffs are in use on a very annoying Dathomirian right now, so we’ll have to make do with you shielding like your mind’s a Kessel Spice Mine.”
“...do I want to know how often you’ve been captured?”
“No, you don’t.”
When he comes at her, it’s easy to dodge. It’s easy to tap him on target points, little pokes that show she could take him out, but isn’t going to until he’s learned something. He stays grinning throughout, letting her take the lead, and he treats her like... like a knight. Like a teacher. He’s stepped back and gone from trying to impress her as a fellow padawan, to proving himself to a full knight.
She’s not sure when that change happened, or why or how, but it makes things much smoother. She wants to think that it would have even if she hadn’t gotten a wakeup call from Fett.
So she treats him the way she treated Ezra, for the year she’d spent traveling with Kanan. She treats him as a student that’s willing to learn, good but not yet great, competent but not yet ready to survive. She draws him into the kind of chest-heaving exhaustion that tells a fighter just how much energy they waste.
(Ahsoka may have had her own style, but her grandmaster had been the pinnacle of a Soresu user. She’d spent years on the frontlines of a war. She knew the worth of conserving energy, and she’d teach it to any who stepped in to challenge her.)
“Who taught you to fight like this?” He asks, when they’ve taken a handful of moments to circle each other. His steps are heavy, sure, planted. Her own are light and ready.
“Soldiers,” she says. It’s true enough.
“Not your Master?” he asks, just as he tries to kick for her upper arm. It’s a safe question. For anyone else, it would be a safe question.
But for Ahsoka, it’s another chink in the armor, after a maelstrom of emotion, a storm of self-loathing, a dervish of instability.
She doesn’t break right away.
She spirals. She fights Quinlan, but doesn’t quite see him. Her strikes get sloppy, her feet stumble. She can’t make herself meet Quinlan’s eyes, not when the scrape of his heel against the metal sounds like the rasp of a breathing machine. Her shields get fuzzy, she knows, and she leaks what she feels into the air, making it sour and thick. She doesn’t notice, because all she can see, all she can--all she can hear and feel and--
She drops to her knees and grabs at her head, trying to stop it.
“Sokari?”
She breathes. In and out, harsh and jagged but natural in a way that the damned respirator wasn’t.
Her master her teacher her brother the traitor the hound the executioner
Her face is hot. Something prickles. It might be tears.
She tries to say something, tries to say a name or a request, tries to make anything come out of her mouth that isn’t the broken wail of a woman who hasn’t let herself think about how she died.
She feels herself pulled into someone’s arms, and she can’t quite tell who, but they’re bigger than she is, and feel warm and worried. They care. They don’t understand, they’re scared, but they care.
Her hands shake, clutched to her chest and she can’t breathe she can’t make herself take in enough air to do a Force-damned thing the empire is going to feel her her shields are down and broken and her emotions are spilling and the empire is going to find HER ANAKIN IS GOING TO FIND HER AND--
“COMMANDER!”
Rex.
Rex is here.
Her breath is coming so fast that she’s hiccupping more than she’s actually inhaling. She feels small hands in gloves on either side of her face, and then her forehead presses to something warm.
Rex. A Keldabe kiss. Her brother, her partner, her other half. He’s here. He’s calm. If he’s calm, then things are fine.
“What happened?” Light voice, high voice, small and distant. Leia. Little Leia little princess Leia she’s in danger she’s in trouble Anakin will--
“Commander.”
No. Here and now. She needs to focus on here and now. Her throat feels cold. She breathes too fast, still. She can’t stop it.
“I don’t know.” That’s Vos. He was... they were doing something. He was here. Talking to her. “We were sparring, and she just--”
Right, sparring.
“I don’t know if I said something?” He offers, voice pitching up, unsure and worried. Is he the one holding her? He’s the one holding her. That’s embarrassing.
“Commander?” Rex prompts. “Commander, can you open your eyes?”
She tries. She can’t. She shakes her head.
“Soka?” he asks, voice quiet. “Where are you?”
“F-F-Fett,” she manages. It’s enough.
“And where were you?”
His voice is so soft. So worried. She held him the same way after Mandalore, after Order 66, after all his brothers, all her friends...
“Soka.”
Her mind is spinning, and suddenly all she can hear is Anakin Skywalker is dead. I destroyed him.
Her breath hitches, and she wails.
“Commander,” Rex tries again, but her head is a vortex of Then you will die and Perhaps this child and not the Jedi way.
Our long awaited meeting.
I destroyed him.
Then you will die.
She can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can only see that yellow eye that’s too familiar but belongs to a stranger can only hear a voice that shouldn’t exist can only mourn and break and--
“Soka?”
“Malachor,” she manages. “I--h-he--I died.”
“What did you say?” someone asks. A vod. It’s the right voice, almost, rough and business-like, not accusing anyone yet, and... and... no. No. Not one of her boys. It’s Fett.
“Um, right at the end? I asked her who taught her to fight like this,” Quinlan says, nervous. “And she said it was soldiers. And I joked, I asked that it wasn’t her Master, and she didn’t answer that. A couple minutes later, she just started...”
“Oh, Soka,” Rex whispers, pulling her closer. “Commander, just breathe with me.”
“H-h-he, he just--R-Rex, he j-just--and I c-c-couldn’t--”
“I know,” her captain whispers. “I know, just breathe with me.”
“He k-k-k-killed me,” she sobs, falling out of the Keldabe and into too-small arms. “I l-loved--he was my broth-ther and--and he just--he killed me, he didn’t even stop.”
“I know,” Rex whispers. “Soka, I know.”
Of course he does.
---------------------------
“It was just bad timing,” Rex says, once they’re in the room she’s been sharing with her little family, curled up under a blanket and watching the floor like it has all the secrets to how she lost her world three times over.
“Is there anything we need to keep in mind?” Fett asks, gruff and uncomfortable. She wonders if he’s angry that she took his necessary confrontation and turned it into this mess.
“Don’t bring up her Jedi Master,” Rex says, and pulls her in when she shivers. Her eyes squeeze shut before she can stop them, tears beading up again. “Just... don’t. It’s too soon.”
“He’s--”
“He Fell,” Ahsoka interrupts. “I thought he died, but he became a Sith. And fifteen years later, we ran into each other, and I refused to join him in the Dark, so he tried to kill me.”
Fett swears, low and muffled. She thinks he has a hand over his mouth.
Quin and Leia aren’t there. She thinks they’re keeping an eye on their Baby Sith prisoner. That’s good.
“Soka,” Rex whispers, and she buries her face in his shoulder. She’s too old to be this kind of mess. She’s thirty-two. She’s Fulcrum. She’s...
She’s in need of a lot of therapy.
“We can avoid the subject unless you bring it up,” Tholme promises. “Definitely until the Temple. Is there anything else we shouldn’t talk about?”
Ahsoka can practically feel Rex’s deadpan look. “Sir, we’re a trio of child soldiers ripped from everything we know. Every other sentence is a risk. We’re just... working our way through.”
There’s a knock at the door. Oh. Quin and Leia.
“Just figured we’d drop this off before we went down to visit Mr. Grumpy-Face,” Quinlan whispers. He still thinks Leia’s a child. He’s trying to make things less terrible for her. That’s nice. “We decided he’ll be less angry if he tries Hoth chocolate, and made some for everyone.”
They definitely made it for Ahsoka herself, and Maul was an afterthought. Still. It’s sweet.
“Commander?” Rex prompts, jostling her a little to try and get her to sit up.
“Gimme a sec,” she manages. It takes longer than it should to push herself away from him, to accept the mug that Leia gives her, too-serious worry in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her soul.
She doesn’t look six. She doesn’t even look twenty-two. This girl was always too old for her skin, forced to grow up in the hostile fear of the Empire.
“Thank you, Princess.”
She sips.
She can barely taste it beyond the ashes she imagines coating her tongue.
I destroyed him, her memory echoes. His slightest hesitation before he made the final move, it haunts her. She almost reached him. If only she’d tried harder, yelled louder, been better...
She shivers.
“Do you need help falling asleep?” Tholme asks. “I’m a regular healer, not a mind healer, but...”
She probably should.
She takes another sip of her drink, willing herself to taste it. It’s good. She likes it. She knows she does.
“Can you make it dreamless?” she whispers.
“It doesn’t always work, but I can try,” he tells her.
She nods. “When I finish the chocolate.”
“Of course.”
---------------------------
Everyone’s careful around her for days. The whole decision to be nicer doesn’t mean anything when she’s walking about in a daze of too few emotions, drained of everything she could feel in favor of a grey cloud of fluff in everything she does.
She does forms. Single saber and Jar’kai. Ataru and Djem so and Soresu. Reverse grip, regular grip, partial reverse on either side.
Again. Again. Again.
She loses herself in the motions, not meditating so much as just empty.
Rex worries. Fett worries. Vos worries.
Leia and Tholme keep their shields locked up tight, and she doesn’t know how they feel. She thinks Leia might be judging her. She think Tholme might be pitying.
Maul simply hates. It’s an old and familiar sensation to walk into, and she takes unthinking comfort in his rage. She’s silent instead of snippy, when she plays the role of guard, and they stare at each other in silence. His eyes burn, and she wonders how much he’s heard of her nightmares.
“You need to talk,” Rex tells her, when he finds her with a cold cup of caff, eyes fixed somewhere beyond it all. She lifts her head. “Soka.”
She just stares at him.
He sighs and pulls her into a hug. “Commander, please.”
She can’t.
Ahsoka stares at the wall behind him, resting her chin on his head. Her neck itches under the lek at the back of her head, a little tingle of a feeling that she can’t bring herself to do anything about. The pale light of the galley is sharp against the chipped paint of the metal that surrounds them. It hurts her eyes to look, but it’s not the deep and dark lit only by red--
Then you will die, her memory growls.
She flinches.
“Breathe,” Rex tells her, too-small hands clinging at her back. “Just breathe, ‘Soka.”
She curls in tighter and tries to just breathe.
---------------------------
“Tell me something good.”
Ahsoka blinks. She looks at Leia. She doesn’t have the energy to parse that.
Leia chances a look at Rex, who isn’t leaving Ahsoka’s side any more than he has to, and Fett on the other side. Tholme’s asleep and Quin’s on Baby Sith duty. It’s just people who know, right now.
The little girl across the table, the child senator, the spy, purses her lips and huffs in irritation. “You knew my biological father before he became one of the worst people in the galaxy. Both of you did. Tell me something good about him.”
Good things.
About Anakin.
“You fought a war as a Jedi,” Leia prompts. “Surely you must have done some good things with him, or at least thought you were.”
Did they?
Every mission ended in tragedy or was just a ploy of Palpatine’s. Every saved life was just...
Wait.
“He built Threepio,” she finally says. “Your father wi--I mean, Bail wiped Threepio’s memory after the Empire rose, for your safety, but Anakin was the one who built him.”
Leia sits up, eyes brighter. “I didn’t know that. I... was Artoo involved? Did he build R2D2, or...”
“No,” Rex says, “But Artoo was his favorite astromech, and they always pushed each other into stupid stunts. We risked a hell of a lot to save that droid, more than once, and I didn’t find out until you started working with the Rebellion full-time, but Artoo and Threepio were the witnesses for your bio-parents’ wedding.”
Leia gapes at him. So does Ahsoka. (Fett doesn’t know enough to care.)
Rex grins, and if it looks a little forced, that’s fine. “He had a holo recording. I was one of the few people left that knew about the marriage that might have wanted to see, so Artoo offered. It was... sweet.”
He waits, probably for Ahsoka to add something herself, but she has nothing.
“I think that’s when they swapped droids, since Threepio was more useful to a politician and Artoo did his best work when we set him loose on the enemy.”
“He never changed,” Leia muses. “Did he always swear that much?”
“Yes,” Ahsoka answers, as Rex laughs. “Always. All the binary I learned started with the best swears.”
She tries to think of another good memory, something else that Leia might appreciate. Her mind ticks back to saving Stinky, which is just a terrible option, because that mission started with Hutts and ended with the Battle of Teth. That massive loss of life, all for the son of the creature that had put Leia in chains.
She wonders if she has anything in her memory that doesn’t end in blood and graves.
“Soka.” Rex.
“Hm?”
“Remember that time Fives and Echo got lost in the undercity their first time on leave, and we had to get the General to help us find them?”
She does.
He’s right, that’s a good story.
“Okay, so what you have to understand,” Ahsoka says, already digging the faint details out and dusting them off, “is that these boys were ARC troopers, top-notch, terrifyingly competent once they got through specialty training, and loyal as hell. Echo had memorized the reg manuals front to back, and Fives was... well, Fives ended up being the only person to figure out the chips before they went into action. Point is, the Domino twins were good... eventually. Just like everyone else, though, they started out shiny.”
---------------------------
“Tholme’s hiding something.”
Ahsoka wonders if Leia will just leave if she ignores her enough. Probably not. This was the girl that got kicked out of boarding school for leading a sit-in at age seven. She’s got patience.
“His job requires him to hide a lot of things,” Ahsoka says instead. “Not as many as Vos will have to, eventually, but a lot.”
“He’s hiding something from us,” Leia insists, visibly frustrated that Ahsoka isn’t as upset about this as she is. “Something important.”
The way she says ‘important’ is clumsy and impacted by the missing baby tooth. She can’t say the r. It comes out as ‘im-poh-ten,’ which is adorable, and if Ahsoka comments on it, she’s probably going to get punched by a six-year-old.
“The Force doesn’t care,” Ahsoka says. “I trust his intentions, if not him as a person.”
“If you don’t trust him, then why trust his intentions?”
“Leia, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I trust one and a half people in the galaxy,” Ahsoka points out. “Me not trusting a person isn’t a sign of anything except my paranoia. The only person I trust fully and without reservation is Rex. Even you, I only mostly trust, because my brain starts screaming if I think too hard. That’s why you’re the half.”
“Okay, whatever, paranoia aside,” Leia barrels on, “He should tell us. Whatever it is that he’s hiding, we deserve to know. We’re not children that he can just hide things from for our own good.”
Ahsoka presses her lips together. “Leia. Princess. I know you’re used to holding all the cards--”
“This isn’t about me being a control freak!”
“It is, though,” Ahsoka soothes, and smiles. “Your mother--the bio one--was the same way. You spent years as one of the leaders of the Rebellion, so obviously you’re used to having all the information, and people reporting to you... but Tholme is a Jedi Master. He reports to the Council and the Republic. Do you know how many people I kept secrets from while I was a padawan? We’re an unknown, Leia. They have no proof that we’re on their side, especially since we’re traveling with Fett.”
Leia crosses her arms and glares as hard as she can.
“I’m not going to bother him,” Ahsoka says. “I’ve already had, like, five unrelated mental breakdowns. I’m putting this on hold until we get to the Temple and I can trust that there’s a healer on hand to sedate me or something.”
“You... want to be sedated?”
“Leia, this... really should be obvious, but a Force-Sensitive losing their osik the way I have been isn’t actually safe. I know I broke a weapons rack last week.” Ahsoka gestures vaguely. “If the Jedi Master isn’t telling me something for reasons that might relate to my clear and obvious mental instability, I’m going to assume he’s got a point.”
“So he should tell me or Rex.”
“We’ll be on Coruscant in four days,” Ahsoka soothes. “Just... let it be. They won’t hurt us.”
“You don’t know that.”
Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t have to. The Force leads me in all things, including this.”
Leia isn’t impressed by that, but Leia isn’t impressed by much in the first place.
She strides off in a fit that is, perhaps, more influenced by her six-year-old emotional control than she’d like to admit. Ahsoka lets her. It’s not worth the argument.
It’s only a few minutes later that Fett strides in, takes the seat Leia was just in, and asks, “What would it take for you to teach me how to use a jetii’kad?”
She blinks at him. “You want to learn how to use a lightsaber?”
“Yes.”
“...why?”
“Viszla.”
“I see.”
She does.
Ahsoka taps her fingers against the table, eyeing him with the kind of interest she copied from Master Kenobi, years ago. Fett doesn’t fidget, but she thinks he might want to. He just looks back, waiting for her judgement.
“You’ll need to justify it,” she finally says. “It’s a significant difference from what you actually did, so I need to know your reasoning for doing it, and your plans for once it’s done.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s step one,” she corrects. She tilts her head, considering. “My standards for you aren’t built in a vacuum, and you know that. Explain to me what you plan to do and how you plan to do it, and if I approve...”
“You’ll help me achieve it.”
“Maybe,” she allows. “A lot of that depends on Rex.”
“I expected as much,” Fett says. “He is... an admittedly large part of the reason.”
“He would be,” she says. She gives the silence a few more seconds to sit awkwardly between them, and then stands up. “I’d guess you’ve been brainstorming already. Do you have it written down or is it mostly just in your head so far?”
“I’m still... debating options, so to speak.”
She grins, and the shape of the predator’s smile, the baring of teeth... that almost makes him step back. She can see it in the twitch of his muscles. Smart man.
“Follow me,” she says, and doesn’t wait for him to stand. She strides out with tooka-light steps, hears the heavy beskar tread behind her, and goes to the cargo hold. Fett’s confusion grows tangibly behind her, especially when she tosses him a wooden quarterstaff. She picks up the other and spins it in one hand.
“You’re going to fight me,” she tells him, stretching and letting the staff help with the process. “And while we fight, you’re going to tell me what your plans for Mandalore are.”
He mimics her, but there’s a frown on his face. “And why staffs?”
“You and I, we’ve only sparred bare-handed,” she says. “I need a feel for how you fight with a weapon anyway. These are a good start.”
“Not the beskad?”
She grins, and the twitch is back. “No. That can wait. We start with the staffs.”
He takes a stance, and she mirrors him. She lets him strike first with a weapon, but she’s the one that asks all the questions.
(He is the only one on the ship that can fight her one-on-one right now, and he can win. Still, she makes him work for every inch, and what she doesn’t win in bruises, she wins in words.)
(Fett might yet be a proper Mand’alor, but Ahsoka learned war from her brothers, negotiation at the knee of a general and in the shadow of a prince, and government at the side of duchesses and queens.)
(If he wants her help uniting his people, he needs to prove that he can hold them together once she’s gone.)
---------------------------
Ahsoka’s interrogation of Jango’s plans is thorough, and she’s not the only one involved. She brings Leia in, and has her join in on the grilling. She maybe laughs as the twenty-seven-year-old survivor of Galidraan, the Mand’alor, a man who has killed Master Jedi with his bare hands, gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly.
Still, Leia knows this better than any of the rest of them do. The girl might have grown up heir to a monarchy, but she got a classical education and was drilled on democracy and all associated forms of government. Where Ahsoka knows military protocol and law enforcement, intersystem relations and defensive measures, Leia knows agricultural subsidies and welfare programs, infrastructure and education.
Ahsoka may know how to find out if someone’s breaking a zoning law, but Leia knows why it exists in the first place.
“And I grew up in a cult,” Rex says, when an argument on that topic breaks out. Everyone that hasn’t heard the joke-that-isn’t-a-joke stares at him. “The Jedi grew up in a religious meritocracy; Leia grew up in a monarchy; and I grew up in a cult.”
Ahsoka elbows him. He’s not wrong, but still.
Unfortunately, Ahsoka is about forty-seven percent sure that Leia will put her foot in her mouth when it comes to Mandalorian culture, blunt as the girl is. That prefrontal cortex isn’t anywhere near as developed as it should be, either, so impulse control for the princess isn’t great. Ahsoka refuses to let Leia and Fett talk about ways to mend the breaks between tradition and the pacifism of the New Mandalorians without either Rex or Ahsoka herself as a mediating presence. Tholme sits in a few times, but while he knows that Leia isn’t really six--though not about the time-travel, yet--Quinlan doesn’t.
They admittedly end up doing this while he’s on Maul-sitting duty.
“It’s like he doesn’t even care about making nice with the people that, at this point, make up the majority of his people!” Leia grumbles one night, as Ahsoka kicks over a step stool so the girl can brush her teeth. “He may not like the New Mandalorians, but from what I understand, it’s still early enough to prevent the majority of the cultural bleaching you brought up. If he stays this stubborn--”
“Leia,” Ahsoka says, and the girl’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m aware of your reasons for not trusting his intentions. But if I may say? Chill.”
“He’s not even trying!”
“He’s trying a hell of a lot harder than he did in the original timeline,” Ahsoka reminds her. “Brush your teeth.”
“I’m not a--”
“Teeth.”
It’s a little worrying, how the child’s brain affects Leia, but... well. That’ll pass in time, hopefully. Until then, Ahsoka gets to be the aunt she should have been. This includes tucking Leia in, which the girl grumbles about despite the fond waves of comfort that enter the Force around her. Ahsoka doesn’t call her out on it, just brushes back wisps of hair to plant a kiss on Leia’s forehead, and then does the same once Rex stumbles in, grumbling about the limitations of a cadet’s body, but far more ready to follow the protocol that is bedtime.
Rex doesn’t pretend to not like getting tucked in, for all that he’s sharing with a grumbly, already-asleep princess. He smiles up at Ahsoka, lets her hug him, and pretends they can be a normal family for five seconds.
Quinlan’s making a late night snack for himself in the galley. Tholme is guarding the Baby Sith. Fett...
Ahsoka goes to the cockpit, takes the copilot’s seat, and watches hyperspace pass them by.
It takes long minutes before either of them say anything.
“Do Jedi believe in souls?”
His shields are up, locked up tighter than the innermost chambers of the Imperial Palace. She has no idea where he’s taking this question. She has to cast about for an answer.
“That depends on how you define a soul,” she finally says. “Leia told me about Force Ghosts. A Jedi Master who underwent the right meditations and training could pass into the Force upon their death without losing their sense of self. They could remain themselves, to an extent, and interact with force-sensitive individuals. I don’t know if they could last that way indefinitely, but depending on your definition, I could argue those ghosts were evidence of a form of soul.”
“So you believe that the dead pass into the Force, but that what passes could be a soul. Something must exist for a sense of self to disappear at death in a way that impacts the Force as you understand it, and many would use the word ‘soul’ for that something.”
“Mm,” Ahsoka considers it. “I’d say that’s pretty accurate. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
“What about those not yet born?”
Her fingers feel cold, and she finds herself no longer able to watch the passage of hyperspace as passively as she had, and her eyes catch on streaks and motes of what is not dust, her vision unable to keep any more still than her heart.
“Oh,” she hears herself say. “The clones.”
It’s a long time before he answers, but the walls come down. He carries a confused sort of grief with him, guilty and a mite resentful. His questions have been building for longer than she’d thought. His voice is rough. “I’ve taken plenty of lives, but I’ve never known the name of someone I erased from existence before they were even born.”
“The stories we told Leia about the brothers.”
There’s a grunt of agreement from Fett, so those dots at least connect.
“I take it my answer wasn’t helpful,” she manages to say.
“Will they still exist?” Fett asks. “Will they be born elsewhere? Or is... is a soul something that only comes into existence after the body does?”
“I have no idea,” Ahsoka admits. “I want... I want to think that I’d be able to find them eventually, to recognize them, if their souls are still born into this world elsewhere.”
“And if your Sith finds someone else to build his army out of?”
Ahsoka looks at him, sharp and pointed. “You wouldn’t.”
“They’ll be doing it anyway, if their plans are as ironclad as you say.”
“You’re already associating with Jedi,” Ahsoka says, fighting the urge to break his nose. “They wouldn’t approach you, not now. They can’t leverage your anger against you. They won’t know everything, but they’ll know that you have friends among the Jedi.”
“You think they can’t come up with better lies?”
He has a point. He has more than one point and she hate hate hates it.
A Jedi does not hate.
I am no Jedi.
“You’re going to have to convince me,” she says. “Especially if you want to somehow balance this with the darksaber thing. I won’t teach you how to fight with it if you’re not planning to retake Mandalore.”
“That’s how they’d sell it,” he says. “Retaking Mandalore. An army ostensibly for the Jedi, and ultimately...”
“You’d build an army of slaves.”
“No, I’d be the inside man for when they build that army anyway.”
She holds his gaze. She looks away first.
“Torrent?”
“I’m thinking.”
He lets her.
“I’ll need to talk to Rex. Probably Leia.”
“Understandable.”
“I don’t like this.”
“I’m only just considering it. It’s an idea, not a plan.”
“That’s the only reason I haven’t ripped your throat out with my teeth.”
“Hyperbole doesn’t suit you.”
She glares at him, and leaves, her mind chopping up and laying out every possible angle on Fett volunteering to do the exact same thing as last time, but somehow worse.
Great. Just what she needed.
---------------------------
Ahsoka isn’t there for the shouting match between Rex and Fett, but she doesn’t have to be. She can hear it form clear across the ship, and Rex comes to her afterwars. He’s been crying, which isn’t as surprising as it could be. These bodies are still prone to such things, and will be for years. She doesn’t comment.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
“We need to take out Sidious before he starts anything on Kamino.”
“Agreed,” she says. “It’ll be hard, though.”
“I don’t care.”
“What did Fett say?”
“That if it wasn’t going to be my brothers, it would be someone else’s. Either we stopped the cloning from happening at all, or we mitigated damage by being there.”
“I don’t think Sidious is going to tap him for it,” Ahsoka admits. “Not unless you’re willing to stage that kind of fight publicly enough for Fett to claim the Jedi poisoned you, family, against him. It could work, but it’s a gamble.”
He knows all of this.
“I miss them,” he says, and she cards her fingers though the curls he’s managed to grow in the past weeks. “I just... even at the end, I had Wolffe. I knew Boba was out there; I wouldn’t be surprised if the beskar let him survive a Sarlacc. I had brothers. Not as many as I used to, but there was always someone. I miss them all, so much it hurts.”
“It wouldn’t be them,” she reminds him. She pulls him closer, puts her cheek to his head. “It would be the same process, the same faces, the same training, even, but the boys themselves...”
He clings to her and shudders.
“Rex?”
“I can’t force them to grow up the way I did. I want them back. Sidious is going to make the army no matter what. Someone’s going to suffer, and I don’t want it to be my brothers, but they won’t exist otherwise, and...”
“And it’s an impossible choice,” she summarizes. “And it sucks.”
“It’s sucks Gungan balls, ‘Soka.”
She laughs, and feels him smile against her shoulder. Good. He needs to smile more.
“He’s still trying to get me to like him,” Rex says. "He’s still making an effort, and he never did that for anyone except Boba, and it’s weird. I don’t know what to do with any of that.”
“Gain a brother,” Ahsoka whispers, and she feels him jerk against her. “If that’s what you want.”
“He’s not vod.”
“Same blood as all the rest, and you’re older than him, so he’s not really in a position to be a parent to you like he was to Boba,” she says carefully. “You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to, but... I think he’s trying. I think this means a lot to him, and that he isn’t any more sure of what to do than you are. You don’t have to forgive him for what he did in the future, you don’t have to accept when he reaches out, you don’t have to ever talk to him again after we reach Coruscant if you don’t want, but I think... I think it’s worth at least considering what you have to gain. I think it’s worth looking at what he’s trying to give you.”
Rex huffs. “Why couldn’t he just be the shabuir I knew in training?”
“Something happened between now and then?” she offers. “I don’t know. I never met him in the original timeline. I just know the guy that keeps trying to get on my good side so you’ll like him.”
He outright scoffs. “Soka, that’s not the only reason he’s trying to get on your good side.”
“...I’m a former Jedi who talks trash to his face,” she says slowly. “And I cried on him. There is no reason for him to be nice to me, other than you.”
“He thinks you’re cool and a good person and wants you to be his friend.”
“Bantha poodoo.”
Rex grins in a way that goes straight to smirking. “Soka, I’m not joking. Jango Fett wants you to be his friend.”
“Kriffing why?” she asks, more than a little horrified. “I’m a mess, look like I’m ten years younger than him, have gleefully kicked his ass in front of an audience; I even told Vos to throw him at a baby Sith Lord. Putting up with me is one thing, but I’m... I’m only barely not a Jedi. I’m a historical enemy of Mandalore, and part of the community he hates more than anything, and--”
“And his reaction to you kicking his ass was pure Mando,” Rex says. “In that he now thinks you’re a badass, and thus worth being friends with.”
“I can’t believe that. I physically cannot.”
“Soka, just accept it. The Mand’alor wants to be friends with you.” He scratches at his scalp. “I mean, he met you while you were protecting what appeared to be children, and it’s apparently still early enough for him to care about that.”
She leans back in her seat, eyes on the wall ahead of her and back against the cool metal of the other side. Rex falls back with her. She wonders if Rex changed the subject so they didn’t have to talk about deciding how many of his brothers get to exist, and whether or not he can swallow the bitterness of his history to have a connection with at least one member of his blood. She doesn’t ask. If he wants to change the subject, that’s his right.
“I don’t... no.” She denies it as well as she can, and then the implications dig a little deeper. “Is this me accidentally signing up to be the Jedi Order’s official liaison to the Mand’alor?”
“I mean, this point in time... they’ve got Kenobi for the Duchess, yeah?” Rex shrugs. “Good relations with the system are probably a good thing, and you’ve got a stronger connection than Tholme and Vos.”
“Ugh,” she says. She rubs a hand against her head, and then lurches to her feet. “Fine! Fine. If it’ll get him to retake Mandalore before the Sith decide to bribe him with an army he doesn’t get to keep, I’ll teach him how to fight for the kriffin’ Darksaber.”
“That’s what makes the decision for you?”
“Well something had to!”
They only get one lesson in before Coruscant, but the lesson lasts a full day, and Ahsoka’s got his comm number. Fett’s a quick learner anyway, and Tholme was there to give pointers where Ahsoka couldn’t.
He won’t measure up to a Jedi in saber-to-saber combat, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to learn enough to turn all those skills with a beskad to something that works with a jetii’kad.
(The balance of a saber is wrong to those used to a physical weapon. The inertia doesn’t work the way anyone expects. There’s no need to worry about damaging the blade.)
(Fett is good. Ahsoka is better. And, bless his heart, he knows it.)
(She will mold him into the shape of someone who not only can, but should rule a system with a history like that, and he damn well knows that too.)
---------------------------
“Dropping out of hyperspace in T-minus twenty seconds.”
The Slave I is not, in fact, a Venator-class starship, or anything else near the size and smoothness of the ships that Ahsoka grew up on. This is a bounty hunter’s vessel, and the drop to real space jolts like nothing else. Ahsoka’s in the copilot seat for the return, but Tholme’s going to swap with her as soon as they’ve got confirmation that there were no problems with exiting hyperspace, and nobody’s shooting at them.
“We’re not going to get shot at,” Tholme had assured her.
“I always get shot at,” she’d told him.
“I have our clearance,” he reminded her, seeming more amused than frustrated. “There’s no need to worry about getting shot at.”
“I also always get shot at,” Jango had thrown in.
“Okay,” Tholme had allowed, after several minutes of his trust in the Temple warring against Ahsoka and Jango’s learned paranoia. The looks Quinlan had darted around the room when Leia and Rex also claimed ‘chronic getting-shot-at disease’ had been a treat. The paranoia of a Watchman and a future Shadow was great, but the paranoia of three revolutionaries and a galaxy-wide criminal was greater. “You can take us in close enough to get in radio contact, but the second we have to ask for clearance and a vector, I’m in the seat.”
She’d agreed, of course. She was paranoid, not inexperienced.
“We’re much less likely to get shot down by ground control if you tell them we’re with you,” she’d said, to his hilariously apparent metaphysical exhaustion. “Obviously.”
“Good enough,” he’d sighed.
What that means is mostly just that Ahsoka gets to watch the distant star at the center of Coruscant’s system grow rapidly brighter. She can pick out the constellations she’d grown up with, the stars the creche had projected on the ceiling every night, the ones that she may not have seen from the surface, but had greeted her and then sent her on her way every time she left on yet another campaign that lost her men their lives for a Sith Lord's wretched plans. These were the shapes and stories she’d never seen again as Fulcrum, a woman so hunted that to come within a dozen subsectors of the planet was to court her death.
For sixteen years, she hadn’t ventured closer than Alderaan, save for a single trip to Chandrila.
And now, maybe twenty minutes away at this speed, was the Temple. It was home.
A home that didn’t know her, that had sentenced her to death, that had hosted the rampage of her former master... but home nonetheless.
“Stable?” Fett grunts.
“Thrusters are good,” she confirms.
“I meant you.”
Ah. “I’m... fine. As good as I could be, anyway.”
She hesitates, but manages to speak before he does. “You?”
“I’m not the one walking into an entire building of triggers.”
“Only because you’re not entering it,” she says. “It’s the home of your ancestral enemies who, bad info or no, killed off a whole lot of your friends.”
“I get to leave,” he says. “You don’t.”
She plans to needle him a bit more, maybe on something a little less based in both their traumas. She needs to talk, if only to fill up the silence and keep herself from reaching out to all the lights in the Force. It’ll be too much, she knows.
Tholme enters the cockpit. “Change of plans.”
“Better be a good reason,” Jango says, voice flat.
“Leia’s crying.”
Ahsoka’s unbuckling herself before she can process the words fully. “What?”
Leia doesn’t cry for no reason. Her emotional control is as difficult as the body makes it, but she doesn’t just cry. There’s always a cause.
“I don’t know. Rex said to get you,” Tholme explains. “She was saying a name. He seemed to recognize it.”
Not good not good not good. If Leia was feeling the Emper--No. She cuts the thought off there. No catastrophizing. Information first.
“What name.”
“Luke. Mean anything to--and she’s gone.”
Ahsoka ignores him, just sprints to where she knows the ‘young ones’ are. They’re all in Maul’s room, because nobody wants to be alone with him now, but it’s the worst time to leave him without supervision. It’s not the worst option; he mostly refuses to talk, still.
This holds true, because he definitely isn’t talking when she bursts in. He’s sitting on the bench, in a corner, hugging his knees and watching Quinlan try to calm Leia down.
“Captain, sitrep.”
“Vos and Tholme attempted to show Leia how to reach out to feel the Temple from a distance. They felt that it would be a good use of the time, and an interesting exercise at this distance. She attempted to do so, struggled for several minutes, and then reacted with shock. She has repeated the name ‘Luke’ several times since then, and we’ve been unable to fully calm her down. I asked Tholme to get you, as you are the only Force-Sensitive on board that understands the situation in full.”
“Understood.” She nods to him, and then goes to nudge at Quinlan. “Vos, move.”
“Torre--”
“You can sit behind her, hold her in your lap like you did when we had lunch the other day, but I need to get in her face.” She waits for him to comply, and then drops to her knees and takes Leia’s hands in her own. She radiates calm and assurance, even though she knows Quinlan’s probably been doing the same since this started. She dips her head enough to get in the girl’s line of sight, waits for her to meet eyes.
“Princess,” she says, and meets Leia’s eyes. “What did you feel?”
“Luke.”
From this distance... they’ve got half the system to go, at least, and Leia’s training shouldn’t reach that far for anything more than the fact that the Temple is there. Ahsoka could feel unshielded individuals from here, if she focused, but she’s also been doing this much, much longer. The twins theory holds more water than ever.
“Can you show me?” Ahsoka asks, instead of asking for more clarification. She squeezes Leia’s hands and smiles. “In the Force?”
Leia nods, and closes her eyes. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time in a while that Leia’s needed Ahsoka to guide her through.
Luke’s light, for all that it’s unfamiliar to Ahsoka, is brilliant among the rest of the signatures in Coruscant. Like Anakin and Leia, he’s a star in his own right, but he’s brighter. He doesn’t have Anakin’s bitterness or Leia’s righteous anger, just... light. Ahsoka had asked Leia to show her instead of looking for herself because she’d expected to not recognize the boy, but she needn’t have. He’s unmistakable.
He’s so bright that she almost misses the other signature that she does recognize. She shies away, knowing that it would be there, but... but it’s almost twinned with another nearby. Not identical, but different in a way that comes with age, with trauma, with... death.
Leia hadn’t arrived alone, after all.
Why would Luke?
Her eyes snap open, her hand coming up not-quite-fast enough to clap over her mouth as she gasps. She feels a shudder, one that starts in her shoulders and reaches deep into her ribcage, finds a home in her chest and doesn’t stop.
“Oh fuck,” Quinlan whispers. “Torrent? Um, Sokari?”
Rex steps closer. “Commander?”
“That shabuir faked his death again,” she manages. “Three times, Rex!”
He blinks at her. “...I know way too many people who fit that description, Soka.”
“Master Ke--” she cuts herself off. He might have changed his name, just like she had. There’s already an Obi-Wan here. Rex seems to be figuring it out, but she needs to give him another hint.
“He pulled a Hardeen,” she stresses, and Rex’s eyes snap shut with a tired groan.
“Who?” Leia asks, her own tumult of emotion paused in the wake of Ahsoka’s shock. There’s a hope and relief to her, and Ahsoka belatedly realizes that her main worry had been that she’d misidentified what was going on, that she’d given herself a false hope. Ahsoka’s internal reaction, her approval and awe at Luke’s presence, had trickled over enough to give Leia the reassurance she’d needed.
Unintentional as it was, Ahsoka was glad that she’d succeeded in helping her charge.
“Er...” she trails off. “I don’t know what name he’s going by, right now. We’ve spent so long in hiding...”
“The man Luke knew as Crazy Old Ben,” Rex says, and Leia’s eyes light up.
“Oh,” she breathes. “General O--no, names. The High General, then.”
“Yeah,” Ahsoka says, not a little soft. “Yeah, I guess death didn’t stop him any more than it stopped me.”
“I could have told you that,” Leia says, smiling far too widely. She squirms where she still sits on Quinlan’s lap. “He was... he taught you, right?”
“As much my master as the official one,” Ahsoka says. She glances as Quinlan, feels Maul’s gaze on the back of her head. “Your f... my official master was very young when I was assigned to him. He wasn’t ready to teach, wasn’t even ready to be a knight, entirely, so my training was split between him and his master.”
Quinlan pops in at that moment, “Your grandmaster was military, too?”
We all were, she thinks. Even you, in your own way.
“I landed in their care mid-battle,” she says carefully. “It was a complicated situation.”
He nods, and she vaguely notes that he’s got his arms wrapped around Leia, and his chin tucked on top of her head. She isn’t sure if Leia’s noticed, but Quinlan’s picked up ‘baby’-sitting duty so often recently that she’s fairly certain he’s all but declared her ‘little-sister shaped.’ It doesn’t matter that Leia’s older--she’s still taking the juice boxes and gummy snacks that Quinlan shoves at her every single snacktime.
“Do you think...” Rex trails off, something uncomfortable twisting in the Force, even though his face keeps it mostly hidden. “My brothers. If the General survived and... and made it back...”
“I didn’t feel any,” Ahsoka says, because she knows she’d have noticed if it was anyone she’d met, and likely any clone at all. They all felt different in the Force, but they all held a spark that made her know it was one of them. “I’m sorry, Rex’ika.”
“A long shot,” he says, that dash of hope shriveling up. He must see something in her face, because there’s a curl of warmth in him, even if his smile is brittle. “It’s fine, really. I have you, ‘Soka.”
Rex and Ahsoka. Two halves of one whole.
She can’t wait to hear the lectures on attachment, the way people who haven’t seen her wars try to criticize her for clinging to any chance at still having a will to live. She can’t wait to see them justify telling her that it’s selfish to hold her sanity in her hands and refuse to let the grief take it away. She can’t wait to stare someone down for asking her to ‘learn to let go’ after she’s lost her family, her life, her universe three times over.
Most of the Jedi are more sensible than that, are reasonable enough to see those shades of grey and how to approach rules in the spirit they are meant instead of the rigid letter, but there will be some.
There will be more than enough telling her she is wrong to hold her oldest, closest, best friend as dear as she can.
Attachment, they’ll say.
What they’ll mean is ‘codepedence.’
They won’t be entirely wrong.
She reaches out for him, lets him fall into her side and stay there, closes her eyes and reaches out for the man she’d long called father, when they’d still been in each other’s lives.
This time, past the deafening flare of surprise-love-hope of the little star next to him, she can feel him reach back.
---------------------------
The second the ship has landed, even before Tholme and Fett are done with the checks, Ahsoka’s waiting at the exit. She strains her hearing so she’ll know the second the system will let her open the massive door of the cargo hold.
Leia clings to her side, and the boys stand to her back.
Quinlan’s stressed enough that she can feel it like a cloud. She is very much not trying to feel that stress. Quinlan’s stress levels, back where he’s got Maul so he can keep an eye on Ahsoka and the Baby Sith at the same time, are so low on her priorities list that it’s a a little sad.
It doesn’t take long for her to be able to punch the button and open the damn door.
It opens slowly. She bounces on her toes, because there’s a beacon of light and a steady, familiar glow on the other side, and she’s so, so close. She can’t see through the crack yet, because it’s day in this part of Coruscant, and the sunlight is blinding against the dark of the hold. So close. She’s so close.
“The hell’s wrong with you?”
Fett? Fett. He’s already here to get off? This door’s slow.
She doesn’t answer him, because the door is finally open enough to let her out, and she leaps through the gap.
She lands on a pourstone floor, feels pebbles and grit compress under her boots, frantically looks around as her eyes adjust to light and--
The High General, the Negotiator, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, looking just as he did when she first met him, if a little less armored and a little more fed. The hair, the beard, the crinkle in the corner of his eyes. His spirit is a little older, his smile a little more strained, his posture a little more tired, but it’s him.
He spreads his arms, low enough that she could have dismissed it if she’d cared less for hugs, except she’s almost as small as she was when they met.
And every other hug she’d given back then had been, functionally, her being a living missile aiming her montrals for someone’s organs.
She’s a little more aware of how to avoid stabbing her friends in the intestine now.
“Master!”
She sprints for him, collides and sobs, feels him stumble back and then sink to his knees on the too-hard floor, and can feel the tears pouring out of her already. Her breath hitches, and she wails like a child, and that last part of her that couldn’t even grasp at safety shreds itself. His arms are tight around her, warm and strong and Master Kenobi don’t you dare leave again.
It doesn’t matter that Sidious is out there, that the Republic’s been building towards war for a century, that even now someone’s kicking up the Trade Federation. Her dad is here.
“I’ve missed you too, my dear,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, the bristles of his beard scratching along the skin of her forehead. Off to the side, the binary suns that are Luke and Leia grow brighter in proximity, so bright she can barely bear it.
(“Fett, why the kriff are you reaching for your blaster?!”)
(“Torrent said her master tried to kill her.”)
(“Different guy, that was a different guy, put the blaster away.”)
(“You could have just warned me.”)
(“I didn’t expect you to go for a shot on sight!”)
(”Calm down, Jetiika, if I was going to shoot on sight, we’d already be in a firefight.”)
She ignores everything.
“If you fake your death one more time, I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”
He tries to pull away to talk to her more directly. She does not let him. He apparently resigns himself to this, because he just adjusts how he’s sitting and pulls her in closer.
“In my defense, I was far from the only one presumed dead that took advantage of that status, by the end,” he says, letting her slump into his lap and cry herself dry. “I’m proud of you. You know that, I hope.”
She nods against his chest, smearing tears and snot across the linen and wool. She doesn’t care that they’ll need a thorough washing. She can have her public breakdown and it’s fine because Master Kenobi is here.
He doesn’t even know what she’s spent the past fifteen years doing. Luke wouldn’t have known. He doesn’t know she’s thirty-two and broken, beyond a shadow and cut down by her own master. There’s so much he doesn’t know but the Force rings with the truth of it: he’s proud of her anyway.
“I’m going by Ben, now,” he mutters against her montral. “There’s already an Obi-Wan here, after all. Still, I remain a Kenobi.”
She can’t make the words come out of her mouth. She’s overwhelmed, so much so that speech is a mite bit beyond her.
Sokari Torrent, she presses along the frayed bond that’s knitting itself back to life with every breath they take. Leia was already calling me Auntie Soka, and Rex and I both took Torrent, for...
“For the men you lost,” he mutters. “Yes, that’s fitting.”
He smells like sapir tea and a spiced beard oil.
There’s a whirl of activity about her, greetings and ‘a Sith apprentice?’ and introductions. She distantly notes when Fett almost shoots Dooku before Rex shuts that down and advises the Master to leave the area before things spiral out of control. She feels Ben stand, and she stands with him, clings to his side like a child and trusts that whatever happens, whatever needs to happen, he’ll take care of it until she can stand on her own two feet without swaying.
Rex grabs her free hand, and she feels herself settle back into her skin, bit by bit.
She’s back at the Temple. The twins are safe. Her grandmaster is here. She has her other half.
They can save the galaxy this time.
She’s alive she’s home she’s okay.
She’s okay.
Everything’s going to be okay.
#Ahsoka Tano#Captain Rex#Leia Organa#Jango Fett#rex and ahsoka#Quinlan Vos#Tholme#Depa Billaba#Obi Wan Kenobi#Ben Kenobi#Maul#Darth Maul#time travel#de aging#ptsd#trauma#child soldiers#Phoenix Files#Uncle Ben and Little Luke#Auntie Soka and Little Leia#disaster lineage
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can u do one where chishiya thinks he lost ur kid but when u guys check the bedroom she's just there sleeping peacefully.
This must be every parent's worst nightmare, losing your child no matter under which circumstances >.<
Although you asked for a daughter, I wrote their child as a son this time, because the last two “Chishiya-as-a-father”-oneshots have been with a daughter already (: And a reader on Ao3 said they hope for a son to appear in one of the next oneshots, haha!
Worst Nightmares
Dreams have always been something that other people had to cope with. Not Chishiya. At least not until the comet incident and the cardiac arrest.
He has never been able to explain to himself why he started to have dreams after that, just like he has never been able to explain the weird pieces of memories that shouldn’t exist, or connections to people that shouldn’t be there. He doesn’t know why you have felt so special from the very first moment he has met you, why he has been sure to have seen your face in at least one of the weird dreams that began to haunt him after the apocalypse.
Chishiya’s dreams still are not what most other people dream about. He doesn’t dream of any kinds of fantasy worlds or his deepest wishes, no. On the rare occasions that he dreams, it’s scenes from his past. Or rather, a past that he doesn’t remember to have lived, but it feels too real to ignore it. And his mind wouldn’t come up with such fantasies. The explanation has to do something with the comet, that’s all Chishiya knows. He managed to accept the fact that he will never get closer to an answer than that throughout the years, especially since you and your child became part of his life. The wife he never thought he would have and the son he was always afraid to face, and yet here both of you are, perfect and immaculate with everything you say or do.
After so many years of trying to surpass his father, he has finally come to accept that he doesn’t need to be better than him. He is now, although that’s not important any longer. He has you. He has the family that consists of so much more than the family he has known as a kid, and he finally lives a life that is not fake or outer appearance, but a life that is real. As real as it can be in a world trying to rebuilt itself.
So many years since the comet has crashed down onto Tokyo, and the traces are still visible. People carry the obvious scars on their skin just like buildings do, but the invisible damage is much deeper. All those dead people that left holes in people’s lives and infrastructure, and while Chishiya has not lost anyone dear to him (there has not been anyone dear to him during that time), he experiences it too. With every sentence someone else speaks to him, with the way people treat each other, memorials on every corner of the street to honor the ones who are not here anymore. They will never know how much they’re missed, making the memorials pretty much useless for the dead, but Chishiya knows that it’s not their main purpose anyway. Those memorials are meant to make it easier for those who remain to cope with their loss.
There has once been a time where Chishiya would have called that pathetic; embarrassing even. Now… now he understands.
Being a father and a husband himself, and not such a shallow one his father has been, he now knows the fear of losing the only people dear to him. Thinking that you might disappear, or his son… after the comet, Chishiya has managed to leave the black-and-white world and fill his hollow shell with emotions only thanks to you. With his family gone, there would be nothing left. Not even a shell to fill.
That is what makes the dream so disturbing. Chishiya knows he must be dreaming, and yet he can’t wake up. All he can do is run along the house, searching for his son and not being able to find him anywhere. He calls his name, and there is no answer. Just silence. Not even the ticking of the clock on the wall or the scratching of his feet over the carpet, which is just another indicator that he’s dreaming. But this is not a memory from his past. Neither his real past, nor the distorted one that feels so real although he can’t remember any of it outside of his dreams. This is nothing he has ever experienced, and it somehow scares him.
Knowing that his child is not there, that it has vanished from the surface and he can’t find it. His son is old enough to go on short adventures on his own, be it the visit of another friend or a stroll through the forest nearby but he has never been away from home for too long. And Chishiya has never had such a bad feeling with it.
Even in his dream, he can’t leave the house to search other places, and something inside of him knows that it’s not needed to do so. With a confidence that can only happen in a dream, Chishiya knows that his son is gone and that he won’t come back.
Looking out of the window, he notices that the sky is slowly turning red, not the natural color of dusk but a deep blood red, and gleams of it descend to the ground. Suddenly it’s dark, even though it has been brightest day just a second ago, and a single flash lights up the area around the house. A lone child stands on the lawn, face hidden underneath the shadows while the rest of its body is painted red.
Then, with another flash, it’s gone.
Chishiya’s head snaps back, bumping painfully into the chair he must have fallen asleep in, and he blinks a couple of times to examine where he is. It’s your living room, and the clock on the wall is happily moving with every passing second. He can hear the wind outside, can see the first stars of night blinking through the windows.
Back in reality. What a weird dream, so… different!
He can still feel the dread inside of him, the fright of losing the only ones dear to him, and the feeling won’t ease while he just sits in his chair, so he jumps back to his feet on an instant, causing his head to turn for a moment.
“Oh? Shuntarou?”
You eye him from the sofa, a book lowered into your lap and curiosity on your face, together with a decent smile. “Enough resting already?”
Chishiya looks around frantically, scanning the room for another human being. His son isn’t here.
Confused by the feeling of panic, he mutters the name of your son. “Where is he?”
“Uh… in his bed? Sleeping? Have you taken a look at the clock recently?” you seem confused now, not used to such a weird behavior coming from Chishiya. Not that he’d blame you; it confuses him as well. And yet he has a feeling that he won’t be able to calm down unless he has made sure that your boy is okay.
“You sure?” he mutters while heading to the stairs, “wouldn’t be the first time for him to sneak out of the house without us noticing.” Chishiya quickly climbs up the stairs and barely hears the heavy pants behind him, indicating that you’re following as fast as possible, however still confused.
Uttering a dry laugh, you reach for his arm to hold him back. “Sure, but never so late in the evening! Shuntarou, what is going on?”
Not eager to make you overly concerned, he gently frees himself out of your touch and continues to hurry to the child room. “It’s… nothing. I simply want to check if everything’s alright.”
The bedroom is silent and dark except a single nightlight casting stars at the ceiling, and as Chishiya quietly opens the door, light from the hallway floods the area around it, not quite reaching the bed itself. In the dim light, it is hard for him to make out the figure of his son, and the panic increases when he can’t make out anything other than the blanket at first.
But when he steps closer and pulls the blanket down a bit, he can finally spot the dark hair spread out on the pillow and can hear the deep breaths of a child dreaming the most innocent of dreams. His son even carries a smile on his face, indicating that whatever he’s dreaming must be nice, and the boy doesn’t stir at the sudden interruption.
Chishiya sits down next to him, simply watching the child sleep, completely ignorant of the world’s problems. His son is fine. Whatever this dream was – there was nothing real about it. And it won’t become reality in the future.
After a couple of minutes have passed, he touches the boy’s shoulder for a last time before he quietly gets up again and leaves the room as silently as he has entered to not wake the boy up. Once the lights of the hallway don’t reach the inside of the bedroom any longer, he leans against the door and lets out a long sigh.
You mirror his pose as you lean against the wall and watch him with a smirk that contains both humor and the deep love that never seems to fade. “Are you going to tell me what exactly just happened, hm?”
Chishiya shakes his head, but more to get rid of the dark thoughts than to deny your question. Everything’s fine. Everyone’s fine.
“Nothing. Just… a bad dream.”
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All Characters, the Nicknames MC has For Them, and the Events That Follow: A Wholly Unnecessary Thread
Warnings: None, unless you count demon boys being butthurt about being called out
Enjoy my stupidity!
Lucifer👿🖤🥀☕🍷
Luci
Pridey Pants
Gordon Ramsey of Life
Mom
Loosen-up Luci
Jesus's emo brother
*cough* Daddy *cough*
The results of these nicknames....they were not pretty. MC calls him Luci? He doesn't LOVE it. Does that small scary smile that MC knows (or should know) not to push.
Pridey pants...ohhh boy. MC says it at dinner....is absolutely terrified when he doesnt do anything. After dinner, follows MC into the hallway to dole out *ahem* punishment
Beel is the only one to understand the Gordon Ramsey one. Starts booming laughter
Mom. Oho. This is the second worst. Happened when MC asked Luci to pass them a steak knife. Ended up with the knife being thrown into the table, inches from MC's hand.
Ah. The worst one. Jesus's emo brother. He doesnt even know where to begin. The brothers AND Diavolo have to SPRINT away to keep from cackling like crazed lunatics. Simeon is the only one who openly laughs. Kitchen duty for 2 months. Absolutely worth it. Would do it again without hesitation.
Mammon💛💵💰💳
Mammory Gland
Finding Nemo Seagull (Mine! Mine!)
Crow
Tan Elsa
Greedo
General Greedous
"Ehhhhh? What's a mammary gland?"
*muffled Satan laughter*
Mc has to explain the crow one, because apparently it isnt common knowledge that crows love shiny things?
Tan Elsa. Levi was crying when this one slipped out of MC's mouth. All Mammon could do was be offended. After much, MUCH coaxing, reluctantly agreed to dance to "Let it Go" in a dress.
Levi💜🐍🎮🕹
Has a thing for degradation, so you can really only insult him with anime stuff
Levi Heichou (if you get this, we can be friends)
Leviathan the lonely
Snake man
Mermaid Boy
Snekky snek
Levia-hand
He could ignore all of them.....except for
LEVIA-HAND
I mean come on!
"MC did you really have to go there? That was really-"
"Below the belt?"
"UGH MCCCCC"
*distant suggestive Asmo noises*
Satan💚💢📚
Angry bean
Grumpy kitty
Nerd
Angry librarian
Blond, angsty James Charles
Fashion disaster
There isn't a single one of these that DOESNT make Satan want to break something.
Who is James Charles? Fashion disaster?! "I happen to dress very nicely, thank you very much"
"How am I a librarian? I just read, it's very different, honestly MC"
Refuses to even acknowledge "grumpy kitty"
Asmodeus😘💋❤💅
Asmo-dick-us
Ass-mo
Momo
Polly Pocket
The kinky one
*jokingly* slutttttt
He, surprisingly, doesn't mind any of them. He thinks it's really cute that MC has nicknames for him. He always encourages you to call him them more often, and even makes a bunch of them for MC. His favorite one is Momo, because:
"Its just so cuuuuuuute!"
Beel🥺🍔💪🏻
Sexy Vacuum man
The last Weasley
Snack Buddy
Hungry Bean
Un-beel-eavable
These all make the boy SO HAPPY
MC cares enough to make nicknames for him?
*happy Beel noises*
Wait. MC thinks he's sexy?😳
What's a Weasley?
He has a snack buddy?☺☺☺
Belphie🙁💭💤🛏
Sloth man
Sleepyhead
That bastard with a choking kink
Killer grip
The emo twin
Black Sheep
"I woke up like this" master
He wants to be mad. He really does. But there's a problem: he can't argue with ANY of them. Kinda makes him smile just a LITTLE
Is glad MC has forgiven him enough to actually JOKE about the choking incident.
Spends a lot of time trying to get someone to explain what "emo" means. Levi knows what it means, and refuses to tell him because he thinks its funnily accurate
Dia👑💮🔥
Double D Dia
Big Tiddy Divvy
King of the Boobs
Díablo
Milk man
Firehead
The rich, gay uncle
There isnt a single minute he doesn't find these hysterical. He thinks it's a charming human world custom, to give someone a nickname. He also thinks it shows how comfortable with him MC is.
His favorite is easily DD Dia. Mc noticed his body? *smirk* interesting
Why are so many of them boob related? MC does realize he is a male, right?
The rich, gay uncle. Diavolo has no words. Absolutely shook.
Lucifer overheard some of these...was appalled MC was harassing the PRINCE with their ridiculous nicknames.
He was about to go off on a terrified MC, when Diavolo stepped in laughing and told Lucifer....
"Calm down, Mom."
Mc nearly choked on their own suppressed laughter
Barbatos had to quickly usher them away so MC could openly laugh and therefore breathe
Barbatos 🧐👀🐀🕓
Barbie
Simply one hell of a butler
Sebas-chan
Time warp man
Chuck E Cheese
The cake maker
Understands every single reference, is actually surprisingly cool with it, as long as MC doesn't embarrass him with it.
Diavolo catches wind of what MC is calling Barbaties, eventually starts adopting the nicknames
The only one Barbatos doesn't like is "Chuck E Cheese", because he hates rats so so much. How dare they compare him to one of those disgusting creatures?
Simeon🌙🤍🌹🌈
Boomer
Dad joke central
Beautiful man
Sinful shoulders
Angel Dad
Sin-ammon Roll
Simeon can't decide between being flattered or appalled. He's not THAT old. Nor is he a father! Well, maybe more of a father figure in regards to Luke, but still! He doesn't tell THAT many dad jokes.. right?
Blushes intensely at Beautiful man and Sinammon roll. Wonders if MC really means that or is just teasing him.
Eventually he makes the stupid decision to ask Asmo....wrong move. Asmo ends up laying out all of Simeon's desires towards MC, the week following he can't even look MC in the face. MC has no clue what happened and starts to think it was their fault.
They confront Simeon about it after a while, and Simeon full on breaks and confesses to MC
Asmo takes full credit for this happening
Solomon😑🖤💫🧙🏻♂️
Shady Lady
The sus one
Kinky dude
Draco malfoy
Doesn't mind MC having insulting nicknames for him....he has them too. Starts swapping them with MC to see who can make the other laugh harder.
Sometimes, the brothers will sit in and listen while they exchange them, and they'll keep score and vote on who wins
Eventually, Diavolo and Simeon get involved
Barbatos caters these events
Luke😇👶🏼🌸🧁
Baby angel
Son
Woof
Puppy
Little doggo
The poor boy has no idea which one he hates more. Gets so flustered whenever MC calls him one of these that his whole face turns red
Simeon tells him its adorable every time without fail
This makes Luke even worse. All MC has to do is call Luke one of the names and its fair game for Luke hunting
The only one he actually...kind of...likes is Son. He likes the idea of MC as a parent figure.
Which leads him to realize: what if MC and Simeon got together! Then MC WOULD be his parent
Gets Solomon and Barbatos to help bring MC and Simeon together
They end up bombarding the two with an obnoxious Valentine's day-esque cake
Did it work?
#obey me#obey me headcanons#beel obey me#leviathanobeyme#lucifer obey me#mammon obey me#simeon obey me#luke obey me#solomon obey me#diavolo headcanons#obey me lord diavolo#headcanons
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Unlikely Companions (Daryl Dixon x Female reader/ PLATONIC! Carl x Reader)
Summary: Carl was running for his life, being chased by walkers after he went on his own looking for Sophia. When he is corned by the walker a stranger woman saves him. She is looking for her Fiancee for the old world, but offers her help returning him to the farm. They bond over the days in the woods and she learns she might have another reason to find the farm.
Words: 3.1 k
“Carl?” Lori shouted across the farm. She hadn’t seen the boy all day and was starting to get nervous. “Have you seen Carl?” Maggie shook her head. “Not since breakfast” She answered in her southern accent. “Maybe he is with Rick? Or Shane?” Lori just nodded, but didn’t feel any safer. Where was her son?
Carl was running for his life. The two walkers were closing inn. He knew better than to shout and call for help, knowing it would probably attract even more walkers, but right now he didn’t care. “MOM!” He quickened his pace. “DAD!” Two walkers turned into four as two more appeared at his side. Tears was now streaming down his face as he was sure he was going to die here. He looked back again, ready to face death. But the walkers didn’t close inn on him. Instead arrow after arrow filled the air and all the walkers dropped. When Carl turned back around, fully expecting to see Daryl standing there, was surprised to see a stranger. “Are you okay?” The stranger asked him. Carl looked up at the woman. He was inn shock and didn’t know what to say. “You got a group? A family” She continued to ask him. When she tried to approach him, he backed up. “Hey, you don’t need to worry, I won’t do you any harm. Look” She dropped her cross bow and unleased her knife from her holster. When both fell to the ground, she could see him relaxing more. “Can I ask your name?”
“Carl, Carl Grimes”
“Well, Carl Grimes. I’m (Y/N) (L/N). I’m looking for my fiancée. But I can help you return back to you family. Someone as young as you shouldn’t be out here alone”.
Carl was still unsure about her. Remembering her mother’s speech about stranger danger. But those were the rules of the old world. Here in the new world they should accept help form anyone who invites it, right? After thinking it through, he nodded. “Okay, okay. This is a good start. How far away is your camp?” Carl looked down, a bit embarrassed. “I don’t know”
“Do you know the directions?” He shook his head. “Well shit, looks like were in quiet a pickle huh?” She smiled at him, trying to ease him. “I don’t know this area, never been here before. So, I say we head in one direction and hope for the best. What do you think?” He nodded. “Great! Lets go then!”
And so they started to wander. (Y/N) in front, with Carl a meter behind. “Sooo, do you have a favourite movie or something?” He just stared at her. “What! Come on, were going to be stuck with each other for a while, might as well get to know each other”. After a minute of silence, he spoke. “Iron Man”
“That’s a good movie! Mine is probably that or Pride and Prejudice”. Carl scrunched up his nose almost in disgust. “But that’s so girly! All they do is talk about their feelings and kiss!” She looked back at him, offended by his remarks. “And!? It’s a great love story that is still relevant to this day” She played up her offence more hoping it would make him laugh. It did. “Its still so girly” He said between giggles. “Never mind, were is the nearest walker. I’m feeding you to it” (Y/N)’s giggling was now a full on laughter. “Nooo!” Carl was laughing too. (Y/N) was relieved he was laughing, afraid the incident had traumatized him badly.
Back at the farm, panic was settling inn as no one knew were Carl was. “Who was the last to see him?” Rick asked the group. “I saw him after breakfast” Andrea spoke up, she and Carol was comforting Lori, who was having a full blown break down. “He probably went out looking for Sophia alone” All looked to Shane. “I’m mean why else would he suddenly leave”.
“I think your right, but he is still healing from the gun wound, he wouldn’t get far. And if a walker got him, he wouldn’t have much fight in him”.
“My baby!” Lori cried out in agony. “We need to send out search groups, he couldn’t have gone far”. Everyone agreed with Rick. “And with some luck we might find Sophia as well” Daryl nodded at Carol. She smiled back.
The sun had set and the night was creeping closer. (Y/N) had set up an alert system around the small camp they built for the night. Barb wire around them with empty cans tied up. They would rattle if a walker came close and waking them up. It was how (Y/N) had been sleeping every night.
“Go to sleep, I’ll look out for walkers” (Y/N) said leaned back against a tree. She had laid down her sleeping bag that he could use. “I wont fall asleep” Carl complained. “Try”.
“Can you tell me a story” She looked at him weird. “Aren’t you a bit old for fairy tales?”
“Not fairy tales, stories about your life, from before this?” She still looked at him weirdly. “My mom used to tell me stories from her collage days so I could fall asleep when I was younger. Can you please?” When he looked at her with those poppy eyes, (even though it was hard to see with only their small campfire as a light source), who could say no?
“Okay kid, one story than you go to sleep. Deal?” He nodded “What do you want to know?”
“You are engaged right, how was the proposal?” She giggled at the memory but started to tell about the best day of her life:
“Daryl! What are we doing here?” She was a bit frustrated as the redneck pulled her along the streets. It was midday and pretty damn hot. She pulled down her dress skirt as the wind picked up. “Have some patience’ damn woman” She giggled at his bruteness. One of the things she loved about the man, one of many. When they stopped in front of a new bookshop, he could see the hearts in her eyes. “I dint know they opened a new bookshop here!” She exclaimed. “Saw it last night and thought you might like it” Lies. He had known they were opening here for the past month, doing everything in his power to make sure you dint know. They actually had opening night a week ago.
Now it was her turn to drag him along. It surprised her to see the shop empty, seeing as the streets were pretty full. But she didn’t think much of it. Running between shelves after shelves, the one book in hand turning into two, than four and now finally six books. But when she turned around, all the books fell too the floor. Because there before her was her lovely boyfriend, down on one knee with a ring between his fingers. “Oh my god” She whispered into the silent shop. As if on cue, the speakers played her favourite song.
“(Y/N) (L/N), you are the love of my life. And I just want to be your man’ for the rest of your life. And, shit you know I aint’ good with my emotions, but when I’m with ya’ it seems so easy. Shit, I’m messing it all up” He was stumbling over his own words, clearly forgetting a pre-rehearsed speech. “no, please continue” tears were forming in her eyes. “I love ya’ (Y/N), my Sunshine. You book crazy mad woman. I love everything about ya’. So, will ya’ marry me?” He was ready for a rejection, ready to see her walk out of his life forever. But she didn’t.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, a million times yes” Tears were streaming down her face. He stood up and kissed her. His arm wrapping around her waist, bending her down a bit so he could kiss her more passionately. Like in the movies. They only broke off so he could slip the ring on her finger, it fit her perfectly.
“Did he rent out the bookshop?” Carl asked, clearly very invested. “Yeah, cost him way too much, but he didn’t care. That idiot was never good with money” She giggled at the memories. “What about after, what did you guys do?”
“Nah nah nah, the deal was one story than you go to sleep. I can tell you more tomorrow”. Carl huffed in annoyance but turned around in the sleeping bag. “Good night”
“Good night Carl”.
“Rick, it’s been a whole night! Where is he?” Lori was completely lost; she hadn’t slept all night. To worried about where her son was. “What if his trapped, oh god! What if those walkers got him?”
“We can’t think like that! He is fine. He has to be” Rick did everything he could to try and look confident and comfort his wife, but the worry was eating him up as well. The same thoughts were running through his head as well. Those terrible images of his baby boy being ripped apart by the walkers.
“Okay, open your mouth” Carl did as instruct and tried to catch the berry she threw into his mouth. She missed, but only with an inch! “You suck!” Carl teased her. “Hey! I’m not the one with a tiny mouth!” She teased back. “Alright, lets start walking big man”. He nodded and helped her clean up the camp. “Can I ask a question?” The boy asked as they continued to walk. “Sure”
“What happened between you and your fiancée? Why aren’t you together now?”
She took a deep breath. “When the outbreak happened, we weren’t together. He was off god know where with his brother, probably bailing him out or something-” Carl looked at her questioning, “That’s another story. But yeah, we weren’t together. I was at campus and that turned into a mess, I lots a lot of friends there. Mass panic and everybody evacuated. I and a couple of other students bunkered up a dorm room. Living of the instant noodles and beer we found. That lasted maybe 4 days. So, we left and split off, I wanted to go into the woods, where he would be and the rest wanted to go to back to Atlanta. And since than I have been looking for him. Living in the woods like a mad man.” Tears started to form in her eyes when she relived the horrible times at the campus.
“Sorry I asked”. He looked down. “Its alright” She smiled at him. “What were you studying?”
“Heh, literature. Not much help in the apocalypse, I guess”.
“Than how did you learn to use the bow and hunt?”
“He taught me” She smiled at the memory, and thanked him desperately for teaching her:
“Why do I need to learn this? I live in the city, I will never hunt or live in the woods!” Daryl just scuffed at her and placed the bow he bought in her hands. He had brought her out to the woods after her classes to teach her hunting. “ya’ need to be able to fend for yourself and feed yourself” She just looked him with a raise brow, but eventually gave in. “Fine, fine. Teach me”. A smirk played out on his face, happy with his little victory. Truth be told, he needed to know that you could fend for yourself and be independent, in and out of the city. It eased him at night, in a weird way. “Why cant I learn the crossbow like you?”
“First bow, than crossbow. Alright Sunshine’”
Shoooo! The arrow flew through the air and hit the squirl in the head. “Score!” (Y/N) exclaimed. She fastened the squirrel two her belt, joining the five others she had shot. “We eating good tonight!” Carl looked at the squirrels with a lot of scepticisms. “What? Don’t tell me you’re a picky eater”
“No, it just looks so weird like that” They bickered back and front while they walked in the direction, they thought the farm was inn. They had changed their direction a couple of times, hoping to get closer and see sign of life.
They had spent the entire day walking, and as the night came closer they found a spot to camp up. Carl set up the wires while (Y/N) started a fire to cook the squirrels. While they ate, Carl told her about his family and the people they were in the camp with. “What the hell! You got shot?!”
“Yeah!” Carl had a proud grin on his face, finally having something that made him look cool. “Shit, man your tougher than me if you can bounce back like that”. He laughed and continued to brag about the experience. It was a nice conversation. He talked a bunch about his family, mostly about his dad. Clearly his hero. But than he mentioned a familiar name.
“Wait! Daryl? Daryl with a crossbow?” Carl just nodded. “Does he have a west with angel wings? Brother named Merle?” When Carl nodded again. Tears started to from in her eyes. She was going to be reunited with Daryl, her Daryl. He was alive. That night when Carl finally fell asleep, her mind wandered to all the amazing memories with the man.
It was cold in the room. The window was wide open and letting the moonshine lighting up the small bedroom. (Y/N) and Daryl was huddled together for warmth on the bed. It had been an long night. From a failed date after the place Daryl wanted to take her to was closed, she got catcalled which ended up with her having to drag Daryl of the stranger. And when they got home, he showed her his scars. She was the first romantic partner he had ever shown. The night ended with their naked, sweaty bodies pressed together, while both worked to please the other. It was their first night together, her first night with anyone. When they lied down together basking in the aftermath of their climax, it was one of the happiest times in her life. He wrapped his arms around her and puller her on top of him. Her head resting on his chest, with his arms wrapped around her, caressing her back with one hand, the other squeezing her thigh. “I love ya Sunshine”.
“(Y/N)!”
“(Y/N)! Wake up!” Carl shook her awake. “What’s happening” She immediately reached for her bow and charged it ahead of her, ready to attack any enemy that threatened them. “I can see the farm!” The night had made it harder to see a head of them, but now that the sun was lighting up the world, they could see the farm a head of them. (Y/N) realised her bow and the breath she was holding. They packed up the camp at record time, both wanting to reach the farm as quickly as possible. The walk over to the farm was quiet. When they reached the outcast of the woods, a voice stopped them from going any further.
“Well, well, well, look at that. Do you guys see this fine piece of ass” A man walked out from behind a tree with a gun raised at them both. Three other guys came out, all with their weapons raised. “Sure do boss. Haven’t seen a woman this fine in what feels like ages. I’m just aching to be inside of her”.
(Y/N) placed herself protectively in front of Carl. “What do you guys want? Our food, weapons? You can have that, just leave us alone” Her voice trembled a little afraid of what they will do to them. “Oh, we don’t need your left overs or those teeth pickers you call knifes, no baby. We want something different” He grabbed his crotch when he said the last part. “Carl, run”.
“What? I cant leave-” “Carl! Run!” One of the guys tackled her down. Holding her down on the ground. “Get the kid” The boss said to the guy closest to Carl. “RUN!” She shouted before her mouth was covered. Carl finally ran away, when the guy ordered to catch him started to run after him.
When he made it out of the forest and ran across the fields to the farm, he started to shout out for help. “MOM! DAD!”.
“Do you guys hear that?” Glenn asked the group as they sat around planning the move for the day. “That’s Carl” Lori ran towards the field and saw her son running across it being chased by a stranger.
“Carl!” All the guys saw it too and started to run to Carl. The guy chasing him, saw the men running towards him and turned around to warn the others. “Carl!” Rick finally got to hug his son after being missing for 3 days. But the hug was cut short when Carl pushed free. “We need to head back, (Y/N), the girl that helped me is back there and the guys are attacking her!” He pulled his fathers hand and started to move back to the woods, but Daryl stopped him.
“(Y/N), as in (Y/N) (L/N)?” When Carl nodded Daryl took off and ran towards the forest. The others followed, but this time Carl was pushed back behind them. When they got closer they could hear her voice yelling for them to get off. They reached the area Daryl did not hesitate to shoot the guys around her, holding her down while the main guy was cutting up her clothes. When she got her hands free, she leaped on the last guy and grabbed her knife they had forgotten to remove from her belt. When he was pushed to the ground she didn’t hesitate to stab him in the chest. She didn’t stop after one, two three or four. Blood splashed on her face and torned shirt. Her hands were covered in blood.
Rick took a step forward, but stepped on a twig that snaped in two. She leaped up and raised the knife up, ready to protect herself against another attacker. But when she saw Daryl standing there, she dropped the knife. Sobs wracked through her body and she took a stumbling step forward. Daryl closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her waist. He didn’t care that she was covered in blood, just happy that she was safe. She was alive.
Her knees buckled and she fell down, taking him with her. They were both on their knees holding each other and crying into each other’s necks. Right now, nobody else mattered. Not Rick, Glenn or Shane who was staring at the scene in front of them. Not the bodies of her attackers lying around them. No one. Only them as they held each other for the first time. It seemed as Carl had led her back to her family just as much as she had helped him back to his.
A/N: Part 2 is out! You can read it here : Part 2
Please ignore any spelling mistakes as English is not my first language :)
#the walking dead daryl#daryl x y/n#daryl x you#daryl fanfiction#daryl dixon#daryl x reader#the walking dead#twd#carl grimes
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Betting On You - Part III
Casually walks in and dumps this 500 years after the first two parts.
Previous parts
---
From that day onwards, Wei Ying started to see Lan Zhan more and more. Before Lan Zhan had come to their rescue that evening, they had mainly been content with a short greeting (in Lan Zhan’s case, usually just a nod of acknowledgement) as they passed each other in the hallway of the apartment block.
Now, however, things had started to change. Lan Zhan would stop every time they met and greet Wei Ying with actual words. He would even inquire about A-Yuan’s well-being, about Wei Ying’s well-being, and ‘stealthily’ feed A-Yuan healthy snacks if he was with Wei Ying.
(It wasn’t stealthy at all, because Lan Zhan checked with Wei Ying first whether A-Yuan had any food intolerances and if snacks between meals were appropriate for children his age.)
Wei Ying was tickled by the fact that Lan Zhan was sneaking his son healthy snacks. The worst part of it was that A-Yuan genuinely liked them, and so the snacks and Lan Zhan had a meteoric rise in A-Yuan’s esteem.
(His son was turning into a goody-two shoes who loved rabbit food, and Wei Ying had never been more shocked. His own child!)
Before long, A-Yuan would break into a run and firmly attach himself to Lan Zhan’s leg as soon as he caught sight of him in the hallway. Lan Zhan didn’t seem to mind the sudden acquisition of a spider monkey clinging to him every time he left the safety of his apartment, and so Wei Ying stopped trying to discourage A-Yuan from greeting him in this way.
Lan Zhan would walk with them for a little bit if they were both headed out, and that was another thing that Wei Ying enjoyed. Because, as it turned out, Lan Zhan’s company was always enjoyable. And Lan Zhan was genuinely funny. Even if he had the habits of an octogenarian.
More than once, Wei Ying ended up chatting to Lan Zhan for so long that they ended up in the nearby park together, A-Yuan running off to play with other children while the two of them sat down on a bench, still chatting. Occasionally, one of them was required to get up in order to give the children on the swing a push, but otherwise, Wei Ying might have been tempted to sit there and chat all day.
If he was honest, it was a bit strange, suddenly having Lan Zhan around all the time, and trying to act like it was no big deal at all (LAN ZHAN WAS WILLING TO SPEND TIME WITH HIM OUTSIDE OF AN EMERGENCY, HOW), but being in his company was too comfortable for Wei Ying to question it.
Lan Zhan had an exceptionally good hand with A-Yuan, even though he had no children of his own, and more than once, Wei Ying found himself relieved for Lan Zhan’s presence. He was so… calm all the time, seemingly unflappable, even that time when one of the children in the park suddenly started vomiting all over the place, making some of the other children get upset and start crying in the process.
Lan Zhan just calmly stood up, took care of it, and herded all the upset children back to their parents.
As if it was easy.
“You’re incredible, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, much later, bumping shoulders with Lan Zhan as he shook his head. “Can you please leave some of that coolness for the rest of us poor schmucks?”
Lan Zhan levelled him with a gaze that clearly said that he had no idea what Wei Ying was talking about, and thought he was joking.
Well, Wei Ying was usually calling him a stick-in-the-mud, but he meant that endearingly! Lan Zhan was a very cool stick-in-the-mud.
Wei Ying might have said something along those lines, but then Lan Zhan reminded him that they still had to go shopping if they wanted to make hot pot that night, and Wei Ying got distracted counting all the ingredients he wanted in the hot pot.
---
A-Yuan had been put to bed with a belly full of delicious (though sadly very non-spicy) soup a while ago, and Wei Ying was starting to feel drowsy too. After eating far too much hot pot, he was feeling just the right amount of lazy and contented, and so getting up and leaving for his bed seemed like far too much of an effort.
And if he did that, he would also have to throw Lan Zhan out, and that seemed like more than he could accomplish right now.
“Lan Zhan,” he asked sleepily. “What is your stance on carrying adults to bed?”
Lan Zhan levelled him with another one of his flat looks, and Wei Ying chuckled to himself.
He couldn’t help it, it was funny! Just imagine Lan Zhan carrying Wei Ying to bed! It would be hilarious.
The next thing he knew, he was being lifted off the sofa, and carried to his bedroom in a bridal carry.
“Lan Zhan!” he exclaimed, but before he could do anything else, Lan Zhan had dropped him onto the bed like a sack of potatoes, stomping out of the room.
Wei Ying, feeling pretty awake now after the jarring experience of being carried around by a handsome man and then dropped suddenly, scrambled after him in a panic.
What the hell had just happened? It had just been a joke, he hadn’t actually wanted to ask Lan Zhan to carry him around! He was an adult, after all, and a parent at that, not a spoiled brat.
Wei Ying barely managed to catch Lan Zhan before he slipped out of his apartment, but when he stepped between Lan Zhan and the door, Lan Zhan stubbornly turned his face away and refused to look at him.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, in his best cajoling tone, but Lan Zhan would not budge.
“Lan Zhaaaaan,” Wei Ying sang, and Lan Zhan finally turned to glare at him.
Well, Lan Zhan could glare all he wanted, he was looking at Wei Ying. Which was all that counted
And Wei Ying would not stop saying Lan Zhan’s name however he pleased. It was a good name, and Wei Ying liked saying it.
“It was a joke, you know,” he graciously informed Lan Zhan.
That, however, had the effect of making Lan Zhan look even more constipated.
“I know,” Lan Zhan said, with a strange amount of feeling in his voice. “You are never serious.”
And with that, he gently removed Wei Ying from the front of the door, and left the apartment with a final click of the lock.
---
The next few days, Wei Ying walked around in a daze, trying to figure out what had suddenly gotten into Lan Zhan.
Try as he might, he couldn’t figure out what the issue was. Though Lan Zhan couldn’t be described being a clown, he did have a working sense of humour. He might occasionally roll his eyes at Wei Ying’s dumb jokes, but generally was a good sport. What had been different this time?
Wei Ying couldn’t figure it out. The more he thought about it, the more confused he was.
It didn’t help that A-Yuan was unhappy with him. The day after the hot pot incident, he had demanded to see Lan Zhan. He had become used to seeing him every day by now, and had been accordingly grouchy when Wei Ying had told him that they couldn’t go and see Lan Zhan right now. Wei Ying felt terrible for it, because there wasn’t a good reason to keep A-Yuan from visiting Lan Zhan.
But.
Well.
He wasn’t sure if Lan Zhan wanted to see them right now, and he also wasn’t sure if he was ready to face Lan Zhan after that. Whatever it had been.
He should probably apologise, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure what exactly to apologise for. And as long as he didn’t know…
… it was easier to just avoid the topic altogether.
Wei Ying might have carried on like that indefinitely, avoiding Lan Zhan like a pro and keeping A-Yuan from noticing his evasion tactics, but once again, Lan Zhan thwarted his plans.
Wei Ying had dropped off A-Yuan with a friend from childcare so they could play for two or three hours at the friend’s home. It was perfect, because now, Wei Ying was free to do all the housework and if he was quick about it, he might also get a short nap in.
Unfortunately, just when he had stuck the key into the keyhole of his apartment door, a familiar voice addressed him from right behind him.
He hadn’t even heard Lan Zhan approach.
“Are you willing to speak to me now?”
Wei Ying whipped around, and found Lan Zhan standing there in all his handsome glory.
Wei Ying laughed nervously, pushing his tousled hair out of his face.
“Willing to speak to you?” he asked, his voice probably a pitch higher than it should be. “When have I not been willing to speak to you?”
Lan Zhan just levelled him with a flat gaze, and herded Wei Ying into his own apartment by sheer willpower alone.
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying muttered as Lan Zhan closed the door behind them. “I know I should apologise, but I’m still not sure why exactly you got mad.”
Lan Zhan just sighed once, and stood in front of Wei Ying, simply looking at him without saying anything.
“Lan Zhan, if you keep looking at me like that, it’s going to look like you’re trying to flirt with me. I’m going to blush.”
Really, who wouldn’t, when such a handsome man was staring at you so intensely.
Lan Zhan shook his head minutely in apparent exasperation, and then…
And then he reached out, and gently brushed one messy strand of hair out of Wei Ying’s face.
“Wei Ying. I am.”
And.
This time, it wasn’t a joke. Wei Ying actually blushed. Not a delicate, a little bit of red peppering the apples of his cheeks kind of blush. No. A full-on tomato red blush. He could feel himself radiating the heat of vicious embarrassment.
Ah, he thought to himself, as Lan Zhan took his hand and lifted it to his lips.
I might be a little bit stupid.
And then he might have stopped thinking for a little while.
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It Means Nothing Ch.2
So I had several people ask for a chapter 2 of “It Means Nothing”. So here it is, I hope you guys enjoy! I do plan on continuing this, just not sure if from this moment or a time-skip. If you have a preference or something you’d be interested in having happen let me know! (I will not write anything that is sexual so please don’t ask)
Link to “It Means Nothing”
https://teamfreewill56-blog.tumblr.com/post/653839518026416128/it-means-nothing
“D-Dad?” Senjuro stuttered.
Kyojuro was also looking at Shinjurou shocked, but he quickly smiled, “You’re just in time Father, Senjuro was just bringing your plate in!”
“I’m sorry it took so long--” Senjuro said nervously and froze in place when Shinjurou took both sides of the plate and lifted it from his hands.
“It’s fine Senjuro.” He sat down and set the plate in front of him, Y/N took Kyojuro’s momentary distraction of greeting his father to take the plate farthest from Shinjurou so Kyojuro had to sit next to him. The current Flame Hashira looked at her baffled but then saw her little smile he gave her an endearing sidelong look as he sat down. Senjuro turned around and saw the bandage on Y/N’s forehead, his eyes widened. He has heard his father yelling earlier, he thought it has been at Kyojuro. She winked at him with a smile, “It looks great Senjuro.”
He weakly returned the smile, still nervous, “Thank you Y/N.” He sat down at his place.
“Mh! TASTY!”
“Brother you say that every time you eat it.” Senjuro smiled a little but tensed seeing how Shinjurou was looking at his older sibling. ‘That’s right Dad’s never seen brother act like that, what if he upsets him?’ He didn’t know what had caused the sudden change in Shinjurou but he was scared that if they did something wrong he might go back into his room and not come out.
“DELICIOUS!”
“Ah brother--” Senjuro said nervously, he froze when Shinjurou looked at him also.
“Yes?” His older brother looked up from his food with a sunshine smile.
“Ah..um, nothing. Nevermind. I’m glad you like it.” Senjuro smiled, lowered his eyes to his plate and focused on his food.
But it was too late for that, Kyojuro and Y/N both noticed he was nervous. Y/N was just as caught off guard by Shinjurou joining them as his sons were, even though Kyojuro wasn’t acting like it, but she wasn’t about to let surprise of the situation ruin such a huge step.
“Rengoku-kun, can I ask you something?”
Shinjurou didn’t know what to do about Senjuro’s unease, and now that he was actually paying attention to him--was seeing him face to face without the influence of sake muddling his brain, he saw how scared and nervous the boy was. He couldn’t hide the realization from his expression, or the flash of worry and guilt, and the burning embarrassment, a child shouldn’t fear their father. ‘What have I done…’ He looked at Y/N just as she finished her question, a bandage on her forehead because of him, the shame grew stronger. This girl had cared enough about both his sons to confront him, at the risk of her own safety. He’d thrown so many jugs at Kyojuro in the past while in a rage to be left alone, he had always missed, but what if he hadn’t? He could have blinded him, hurt him like he had done this girl, the more he thought about it the stronger the sensation of spider silk tracing underneath his skin grew. His throat felt like it was closing and yet both Kyojuro and Y/N looked at him with ease, attentive and alert but not an inkling of hostility.
“Just...Shinjurou, is fine Y/N. Go ahead.” He had no idea what she intended to ask, especially not after everything she’d said earlier.
She smiled, “Okay Shinjurou, is shrimp tempura a favorite dish in your family?”
“No,” His eyebrows furrowed and he then shot a stern glare at Kyojuro, “We did not get our hair from past Rengokus eating shrimp tempura, boy!”
“It is a very effective explanation all the same!” He flashed a smile at the patriarch. Kyojuro had never received any confirmation of Shinjurou actually listening to the reports that he gave him, he had always laid so still, and never spoke unless it was to tell him to leave, if that, or in an outburst. ‘But that was back when I first became a Hashira, and he called Y/N by her name, but she never introduced herself to him, I’ve talked about her when I’ve come back home.’
Y/N didn’t miss this either, having also heard about Kyojuro’s incident with Hairo. She chuckled, “Especially considering you made it up on the spot. Is it true that Rengokus have had it for generations?”
“It is indeed!” Kyojuro confirmed with a nod.
“The first performance of Flame Breathing was accomplished by a Rengoku, in the middle of exhibiting the breathing style the wielder’s hair and eye color changed to the colors of flame and Rengoku children have been born with it since.” Shinjurou explained. “There’s few records of the change, after his children were born the Rengoku clan started practicing the kankagari ritual.” He gazed at his eldest, “Do you know what that is, Kyojuro?”
“Yes! An expecting mother would watch a fire for two hours once a week until she had the baby. They thought it would make her child have flame colored hair and eyes, providing them with a strong spirit!” He tipped his chopsticks against his chin, looking up at the ceiling, “I remember Mother showing it to me because I wanted to know why Senjuro and I both had your features and not hers.”
Shinjurou’s eyes widened, the words cut right into his spine and lungs. He put his chopsticks down and closed his eyes.
“Babe.” Y/N said softly, Kyojuro instinctively turned to her at the sound of her voice, missing the agony and shock freezing his father’s features. She naturally had never seen Ruka, not even a drawing of her, she had no way to compare them. Yet having now seen Shinjuro face to face, and seeing how his father had just reacted to that statement, she understood why Shinjurou’s face was so pained. ‘Do you see it now Shinjurou? They were babies, they need you in order to remember.’
Senjuro’s eyebrows creased, trying to understand why Y/N had suddenly spoken so softly, what was wrong? He looked to his father, worried that maybe Kyojuro’s words had angered him but it was the complete opposite. “Sorry,” Y/N smiled, “Nevermind.”
“Dad?” Senjuro said softly.
“You do have her features Kyojuro,” Shinjurou finally spoke, “you have the Rengoku eyebrows, hair and eyes, but you have your mother’s face...you’ve always had her face.”
The words seeped down into Kyojuro’s soul, his mouth opened a little, the day he had made his promise to her flashed into his thoughts.
Warm tears flowed from Senjuro’s eyes as he heard these words, he wiped at his eyes with the butt of his palm quickly and rubbed his hand across his eyes and the meaning sunk in, through his brother his mother had been there. The kind and loving smile that always encouraged and provided him comfort was the same as the mother he had never met. An image from the descriptions he had been given of his mother started to suddenly take shape in his mind’s eye.
Shinjurou opened his eyes hearing the youngest Rengoku starting to cry, for once Shinjurou didn’t feel angry hearing Senjuro cry, except for the anger he felt at himself for having such a reaction. Instead he felt a powerful pull to help him, to provide him comfort. He started to get up but his eldest was faster, and tunnel-visioned. Using his incredible speed to not waste a second Kyojuro seemed to just appear beside his sibling, pulling him into a strong embrace, leaning over him protectively with his eyes closed, eyebrows furrowed as though concentrating. Senjuro’s back to their father, Kyojuro facing him fully. “It’s okay Senjuro. I didn’t know either.” Kyojuro gently told his little brother. The one simple movement from his eldest and Shinjuro immediately understood, while he had been wallowing in pain, diving into alcohol as far as he could to escape his pain Kyojuro had stepped into the gaping tear he had left. Taken on two roles that he had been far too young to be responsible for, a mantle that wasn’t supposed to be his.
Link to chapter 3: https://teamfreewill56-blog.tumblr.com/post/655790895084519424/it-means-nothing-ch-3
#rengoku#kyojuro rengoku#kyojurou x reader#rengoku x y/n#senjuro rengoku#shinjurou rengoku#rengoku kyōjurō#rengoku shinjuro#rengoku senjurou
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Hii, are you taking request? If it's not bothersome, that haikyuu as a parent was adorable XD and I would like to request something similar. How about Haikyuu as dads embarrassing their daughter/son, (maybe Kuroo, Bokuto, Oikawa and Atsumu) who would most likely do this 😂
HQ boys being embarrassing fathers
The length is pretty inconsistent depending on what situation I thought out for the character. I personally think I’m not that good with jokes he he he...
I HOPE U LIKE IT OMG
AND YES I TAKE IN REQUESTSSSS
Bokuto
We all know he is loud and we don’t even have to say it
You were usually the one who drives your daughter to school but today, you end up waking up late because a certain someone decided that you needed the extra sleep (yes he’s sweet but you have a meeting with the executives)
So you’ve now got two wonderful girls with Koutarou, they’re now 6 and 12 years old
“Koutarou don’t do anything weird, okay.” That was a fair warning for him but it goes right off his ear as soon as he zooms off because hE GETS TO DRIVE HIS PRINCESSES TO SCHOOL
Your youngest was the first he dropped off. He sent him off with a big smooch and an “I love you, little owl!” Your youngest shouted back an “I love you too!” to his daddy with a big grin before running off to her classroom.
The challenge came when he dropped off your eldest. Being in her school, your daughter doesn’t want everyone to see how much of a daddy’s girl she is so when Koutarou leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, she dodged
In a second, Koutarou’s hair deflated. Your daughter tried to reason, “Dad, not here. It’s my school!”
“Do you not love me anymore, baby owl? Have you found another guy to replace daddy?
“DAD, NO. You’re overreacting.”
“No, baby owl. You should kiss daddy when he wants one!” then he tries and leans in again but this time your daughter gets off the car and shuts the door on her father’s face leaving Koutarou to his despair
But alas, there’s a solution to it! Koutarou rolls down the window of his car and pops his head out and shouts “I LOVE YOU BABY OWL! HONEY BUNCH! MY SWEET LITTLE PUMPKIN!”
Your daughter is good as dead right then as the children around stared at her father, chuckling. Others even taking a video of what was happening. Your poor daughter is as red as a tomato as she bolted further into her school grounds.
“DADDY WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU EVEN IF YOU DON’T LOVE HIM BACK”
“Mom, save me.”
The video of that incident instantly graced the internet, going viral in under 24 hours. It was safe to say Koutarou is not allowed to drive your daughters to school again. But he’s happy he got his kiss from his eldest now.
Oikawa
Another dude here that is sweet with his daughter. Literally pours his heart to his sweet little angel and gives her everything.
Sometimes, you fade into the background with these two.
One Saturday, your daughter came with company. To your horror, it was a guy named Hiro. Although decent looking, you don’t like the fact that she is engaging in romance as early as her age.
But Tooru thinks otherwise, “Oh? My sweet little angel has inherited my charm!”
Your daughter blushes at her father’s comment and pulls her company into the backyard. Settling on the bench swing in there.
It was fine and everything’s going good with him and her company until Tooru’s voice rang from inside.
“Y/D/N-chan and Hiro-kun sitting on a tree~ K I S S I N G ~”
Your daughter turned and found his dad cruelly comfortable leaning on the ledge of the window overseeing the backyard, toying with a rose that she recognized were the ones you bought to put in the vase at the living room
As if once is not enough, Tooru repeated the verse again. Your daughter felt like bURSTING
She put her face into her palms, furiously blushing. She turned to Hiro who is now awkwardly laughing at the sight of your husband. She tells him, “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry for the existence of my father. Don’t mind his presence.”
“OuCH! Y/N-chan! Why’d you do that?! I was only entertaining our visitor! Come here watch them with me.”
Sawamura
HA you bet Daichi is the model father but yes, you are partially right. He’s pretty tight with some things but is still sweet. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t got some pretty embarrassing moments
You guys are in the mall for the weekend, shopping for new clothes as winter is approaching. You were separated from them when you followed a saleslady to find your size of the shoes you wanted
Your daughter was on her phone while her dad stood by her, shopping bags in his hands. He peeked into her phone a few times, finding her chatting with a guy. When she giggled to herself, it was peak protective father mode for Daichi “Sweetie, who are you talking to?”
“Oh. Just a friend, dad.”
Daichi scoffed to himself, skeptically glaring at the back of his daughter’s head. Thinking, “How could you lie to me, sweetie?”
Moments after, the father and daughter pair turned their heads to a guy’s voice calling out your daughter’s name. Daichi grew rigid as soon as he saw the boy
The boy, completely oblivious of Daichi’s mood, ran up to your daughter with arms spread. It was to Daichi’s horror that his daughter came into the guy’s arms and hugged him back. Daichi let them exchange a few words after but his aura is just hard to shake off with him staring hard at the guy. He soon bids goodbye, bowing at Daichi
But before he could go farther, Daichi talks to your daughter, rather LOUDLY.
“SWEETIE, I DON’T WANT YOU HUGGING RANDOM PEOPLE NEXT TIME” People around were already staring at them as Daichi continues his rant with a straight face
“Dad, geez, he’s a friend!”
“NEXT TIME YOU DO THAT THAT PERSON WILL MEET MY WRATH”
The next time your daughter had that friend over at your house along with some others, he was weirdly sweating and keeping very little space for himself
“Are you okay?” you asked the boy
“Ah, yes. Thank you, Mrs. Sawamura.”
Daichi smiled to himself while your daughter shook her head at the side in pure embarrassment
Atsumu
Atsumu has a big internet fanbase. He also keeps all his accounts active, especially his twitter. Your son blocked him in almost every platform with the exception of Instagram and Facebook for formality.
Atsumu is, rather, a supportive father to your son.
Example number one: once, your son posted a sad quote in Facebook and Atsumu commented with “Let’s have a boys’ talk later, buddy” your son deleted the post
When Atsumu came home that night he went straight to your son’s room knocking at his door. Your son was quick to reject his father, “NO DAD. THANK YOU BUT NO.”
The next one was when your son advertised Osamu’s onigiris with a picturesque post over at IG and the piss-haired twin didn’t think before he commented, “I can make better onigiris than Samu, buddy.”
You came home that night with about two days’ worth of rice on the kitchen and Atsumu wildly rapping at your son’s door. “YOU HAVE TO TASTE THIS BUDDY THIS IS BETTER”
#haikyuu drabbles#haikyuu dads#daichi sawamura#oikawa tooru#bokuto#Miya Atsumu#haikyuu fluff#haikyuu x reader#aeolus answers#aeolus breeze
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Tease? - solangelo fic
more fics by moi
request something here if you wanna
summary: just a bit of Solangelo in the honor of uncle Rick's new pjo book :)
TW: none
A/N: it was an idea that bugged me, wrote it in 10 minutes -ish? How bad is it? Be honest
credit fanart: @soraouu
"Leaking wound arm, internal bleeding, four broken ribs, artificial cut above the pelvis..." Will mumbled to himself while examining the knocked out demigod laying on the infirmary bed in front of him. Nico wasn't supposed to hear his voice in the chaos of noises from other Apollo campers soothing tones and the yelps of patients in pain. But to be fair, it was hard to ignore it and focus on his own task.
It has become a customary routine. Each friday, after Capture the Flag, the small italian would perfect his reading in english abilities while his tall, sunny boyfriend put on his serious doctor pants and aid the maimed and the wounded. At first, Nico tried his best to help. But after few jokes about Death Nurse and an embarrassing incident which confirmed the son of Hades was hopeless when it comes to medicine, Nico gave up.
Will brushed it off, explaining how his ADHD linked his half-blood brain to battle skills and surviving instincts, while his own was more inclined to pick up quickly on others' pain and the treatment in need.
So here they were, spending time together, apart. Except today ought to be special. Will wanted to take Nico on a date night, outside camp borders, chaperoned by Argus.
Nico, being a son of the big three and just as much of a reckless head as his cousins, though he'd never admit it out loud, managed to slip out of the careful watch of all Argus' eyes.
"What the Hades have you done?" Will panicked when the driver fell asleep on the left side of the road a few miles away from the strawberry fields.
"Can you not?" Nico arched an eyebrow, referring to the use of his father's name as a cuss word. "I just spiced his drink with some special plant based juice that just so happened to be hanging outside Morpheus' cabin. Now come on!"
Unbeknown to Will, Nico had his own plans for their date. The son of Apollo sheepishly followed the pale teenager, tugging at the yellow bandana loosely wrapped around his neck. It has been a gift from Nico a while ago, on their anniversary. The material was soft and it didn't itch one bit and the black, thin patter of a sun with long, swirling rays didn't fade no matter how many times his mother washed it. The good quality of it impressed Will, but it also made him feel self conscious about his own, surely cheaper, gift.
"Where are we going?" But just as he finished the question, a black limo parked out of nowhere in front of them. At the wheel, a skeleton bowed his head slightly to Nico. "Oh." Was all Will said before climbing in the back behind Nico as the driver Hades gave his son sped up.
"So," Nico grinned devilishly. "Where to?"
Will almost gave him the address he planed for the date, but he caught himself as another thought passed his mind. "We can go whenever we want?"
"As soon as we're back before Chiron finds out," Nico shrugged. "Why, Solace?"
Will's tanned skin contrasted with the flashing white of his teeth when his face broke into a genuine smile that warmed Nico's heart. "What would you think about meeting mom?"
°•▪︎~▪︎•°
The night was still young when Nico and Will left Naomi Solace's house, the french skeleton driver slaloming between cars on the highway. Will's heart raced faster than the car itself, a hand mindlessly tangling in Nico's wild, black curls as his brain judged every possible way to die in an accident and all the ways to make it out alive.
The two boys had an amazing time. And Will's mom was so happy to see her son and his significant other so early in the summer. She always missed him and it made her so very content to know her little boy is "alright and well cared for" - she had said so herself, with a wink in Nico's direction that earned a slight pink color to climb on his cheeks. And when they had to go back at Camp to avoid trouble, she packed them some sweets and hugged each tight and warm, making sure they knew they were welcome anytime they wanted. "Hopefully soon, dears."
Nico rested his head on Will's shoulder, ignoring the ticklish sensation his boyfriend's blond hair left on his cheek. He kept the gaze on the window, not really seeing the images flashing behind the glass. His slim fingers kept plucking out and fixing back on one of his rings.
Once back at Camp Halfblood, Nico practically dragged Will out of the way of a harpy. The boys took refugee in Cabin 13. The plan was for Will to sneak in his own cabin during breakfast agitation - when everyone sleepily walked their way to their tables. The only problem was, both demigods were filled with joy and adrenaline. Therefore, none could sleep. And they soon grew bored with the silence.
"We could play something," Will suggested. That seemed to brighten Nico's mood, almost scaringly so.
He grinned broadly, something that still made the son of Apollo smile with hope and pride after all Nico's been through. Until he held up a small, wrinkled package of cards. "Mythomagic?" Will groaned.
"Don't kill the fun, Solace."
"It's already dead and buried, di Angelo." Will dead panned.
"Come one, it'll be fun, I promise."
"I really don't want to, babe." Will whined, hoping the carelessly thrown pet name would make Nico weak in the knees and he'd drop the game he was so obsessed with.
"Every time one of us looses a game, they have to strip one item of their clothing." y pale half-blood couldn't believe what he was about to say. But he couldn't back off now. Will basically veered closer at the dare in his voice, clearly entertained by the question and willing to know what he meant.
"Interesting how?"
"Everytime one of us looses a game, they have to strip one item of their clothing."
One
Two
Three
Four
The deafening silence was finally broken by Will's colorful laugh. He has been staring in Nico's black eyes with his baby blue ones, wide with shock. For seconds, probably whole minutes, the son of Apollo had been incapacitated to move, think or speak. And then, when he broke into that sound laugh, Nico's eyes finally drifted away downwards. The son of Hades refused to break eye contact, stubbornly so. Even when doubt and embarrassment crawled up his mind.
"You can shut up now, Solace." He mumbled, flushed red once more. "Gods, it was just a silly suggestion. We can try to sleep." Nico made a move to stand up, meaning to get into one of the bunk beds and forget about what just happened. But Will's hand on his knee stopped him.
"I'm sorry, Nico," his voice still ringed easy with delight, but he frowned in guilt and regret. "I didn't mean to laugh at you, I just... you took me by surprise, that's all."
"Ok, fine. Whatever."
"Don't be upset, please," Will cooed.
"I'm not upset, Solace. Good night!"
"Nico!" Will tried again, his grip on the boy's knee tightening. "Come on, Nicks. I was being stupid. I'd love to play strip Mythomagic with you. Wow, that's something I never thought I'd say."
Nico seemed to consider before reluctantly descending back on the floor. He crossed his legs, bringing the cards out and fixing Will with a glare. "You're always an idiot, Solace. Should've got used by now."
The taller boy grinned at his boyfriend's antics, a good sign he was coming back into his own. "An idiot I might be, but you still want to see me naked and are too afraid to ask, hm?" He laughed at another wave of heated blush covering the mighty Ghost King's cheeks.
"Where's the fun in that?" He challenged.
°•▪︎~▪︎•°
The two demigods played the entire night. First time Will lost, he made a show out of taking off his shirt, winking smugly at Nico - who's gaze was definitely not glued to his boyfriend's lean muscled chest or back. The son of Apollo kept losing, no one able to confirm if on purpose or not, carelessly throwing away his socks, bandana and pants.
The first time he won, he almost woke the entire Camp with hos boasting. "Take that, di Angelo! Off with it."
Nico showed a composed face when he let one of his eyebrows slide upwards. A cruel, bemused smirk played on his lips when he slowly picked at his sock, looking straight into his boyfriend's eyes.
"Nico di Angelo, are you teasing me?" The sun kissed boy gasped.
"And what if I did, Solace?" Usually, Nico would redden at less than the soft implication. But now, his voice was steady, daring. "What would you do then?" His breathy tone returned, becoming promising even. The italian boy has practiced the look - bedroom eyes, according to Leo Valdez - and the lines, down to exactly how to say them and how to move, in his mirror for days. Ever since Will asked him out for tonight. Needless to say, his boyfriend was surprised, but highly entertained. He loved shy Nico, snappy Nico, sarcastic Nico and even angry Nico. Will absolutely adored sleepy Nico, who happened to be cute Nico as well. But this side of him? So bold and shameless? This was new. And Will certainly liked to discover it.
"Well, I suppose I'll have to keep winning to get my prize." The son of Apollo flirted back. And the son of Hades almost choked on his own breath, having to search into the folds of his brain for the instruction guide on how to properly inhale and exhale.
The morning found the two boys half dressed on the cabin wooden floor. Their legs entwined from when the pair decided to stretch in a more comfortable position and lay down. The game has been forgotten due to the sweet fogginess of sleep. Nico's head was placed on Will's chest, one tanned hand stroking his hair gently as both boys waited peacefully for breakfast.
"You know what, babe. I think I'm starting to like your precious game. We should do this more often."
Nico pretended to be asleep, but his traitorous heart beat faster and his fingers ran cold and stopped from tracing meaningless patterns on his Will's chest.
"Whatever, Solace. Get some sleep."
The early morning was filled with Will's laugh and Nico's muffled chuckles. They will play again.
#solangelo#nico di angelo#will solace#nico and will#will and nico#solangelo fic#solangelo imagine#solangelo one shot#uncle rick#riordanverse#fanfiction#my fic#my writing#fluff#cuteboys#fanfic#demigods#pjo fic#canon ship#gay fluff
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So Wrong
Characters: Lee Bodecker, Reader, Jane Bodecker, assorted OCs, also gonna go ahead and say Lee is kinda soft/dark in this one
Word Count: 8000
Warnings: Infidelity, alcohol usage, smoking, somewhat dub-con sexual stuff, but not really
Summary: The Reader is a young single mother and widow new to the town of Meade. She gets drawn into a social circle that includes the Sheriff’s wife, while also being drawn to the Sheriff himself.
A/n: I truly don’t know where this came from or why I wrote it. I watched TDATT and suddenly this whole thing just popped into my head complete with a Patsy Cline soundtrack. There’s infidelity on Lee’s part, and his wife is terrible, and these are fictional characters so I am trying to not feel guilty for making that happen.
There’s more to this story, probably extending into 1 or 2 more parts. I don’t know what to say for myself, I cannot pwp. Feedback and constructive criticism are welcome. Not beta-read, so please let me know if there’s an error.
Hope you enjoy!
Meade is as good a place as any to settle. Surrounded by wilderness and small towns, it’s quiet, far from anyplace and anyone you know. A welcome adventure and a place to dispose of your grief, finally - hopefully.
You pull up on a quiet street and sit there just a moment to breathe, to look at the life you had that is settled in between the few boxes and suitcases of belongings, the folded up flag, and the little boy you buckled into the seat.
Through a tangled web of connections, you are able to rent a little upper duplex apartment from the widow in town. She claims she doesn’t mind a little noise as your son stomps up the stairs and gives you an open invitation to join her at church on Sundays.
It is six days into your new residence, the first Monday in town when the apparent welcoming committee shows up at your door. She wears a gentle smile on her face and presents you with a warm pie still wrapped in cloth.
“My name is Jane Bodecker, my husband’s the Sheriff. I wanted to introduce myself…”
You know the routine after moving around a few times already. You imagine the conspiring during the luncheon after church yesterday, the ladies munching on dry cookies and deciding who would be the first to talk to you.
You nod and smile, and accept the offering.
“Some of us like to get together to play cards and socialize on Tuesdays, it would be nice to have you join us and let us get to know you.”
Of course she means that they are chomping at the bit to know why a single woman with no family ties has moved into town. You’re familiar with the ritual and know you need to go along if you want to make it work in this place.
You return her smile, “That would be so kind of you, as long as you don’t mind my son coming along.” You gesture to the little boy hiding in your skirts behind you.
“Of course he can. He can play with my boy, Robert. We will see you at two.” She leaves you with her address and directions over, telling you to look for the house with the red shutters.
Their house is in one of the newer, more developed parts, with some manufactured homes lining the street and looking boxy compared to the traditional farmhouses, but it's charming. The red shutters stand out, that’s for certain. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Jane is a proud host, head of the gossip chain, and is required to mention “My husband, the Sheriff” at least once per conversation.
You let the ladies ask their questions and nod politely as they give you the required chorus of condolences. You feel the shift when Jane steers the conversation to what they all want to know. “Now, I don’t mean to spread gossip, but some folks were wondering why you rented a place here instead of goin’ home to your family.”
Your shoulders stiffen, ‘so much for not putting me on the spot’ you think, but you still smile politely as you answer. “I have no other family. My daddy was gone when I was a girl and my momma dropped me off with an aunt and uncle when she was with husband number three and I don’t know where she is. They said it was the first thing she did that made a lick of sense,” you try to joke. “Well, they didn’t exactly approve of me and Jimmy, so when we married they told me not to go back.”
“And the boy’s other kin?”
“Ain’t no other kin. Jimmy’s family was small, they’re gone now.”
“Well, ain’t you a tragedy,” she says in a chirpy, high voice.
Your face tightens and you stare at your lap, “We get by,” you weakly mutter.
They all assure you that they have some nice gentlemen they can introduce to you, and go on about how fortunate you are they are pulling you into their group. You hear about faceless people and their minor transgressions, but get bored with it fairly quickly and use the time to look over the Bodecker home. It’s nice, a mixture of modest and a few state-of -the-art updates. There’s more dust than you expect, the sofa cushions look worn down, with only a few photos on display. The sheriff’s face shrouded in shadows in the one you can see, but you figure their son must take after him since he doesn’t have the pinched look his mother seems to naturally have.
You don’t even meet ‘her husband, the Sheriff’ until your third Tuesday afternoon of cards at their home. Jane herself is practically giving a campaign speech since the election so close. You never paid a lot of attention to local politics, and you try to give her your attention, but when she starts to ramble on it’s just too much. You happen to look to the side to avoid rolling your eyes and catch just when he strolls in, as if on cue with the uniform all perfectly in place. He scans the group of women until he stops on you, eyes lighting up with interest.
Your own breath catches in your throat at the sight of him as he removes his hat and looks you over.
“Well,” he drawls, “You must be the sweet new thing that’s got all the fellas in town rioting.”
You have to look down, lest the embarrassment make you combust.
“Now, Lee,” Jane scolds, “That’s no way to say hello. Come over here and introduce yourself properly.” She guides him over, and you almost say it with her when she recites, “This is my husband, the Sheriff.”
“Apologies, miss. I know you aren’t trying to get them all riled. Janey told me ‘bout your husband. War is Hell, shame to be losing boys like that.”
He holds his hand out to shake yours, his hold firm and warm and you are hesitant to let go.
“I appreciate that, thank you, Sheriff. Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” he nods, eyes flicking over you one more time. “What are your plans in this lovely town of ours?”
“Oh. Well,” you freeze up for a moment, it’s the first time someone’s asked and you don’t have your answer prepared. “Well, I was thinking that I would get a job. We get by right now, but once my boy is in school, I would like something else to do.”
Jane jumps on your answer, “Let’s just see if we can’t find you a bachelor around here. Plenty of boys can use someone to take care of ‘em, but if you want a man who will be home on time, you stay away from any of the deputies. I can’t remember the last time Lee wasn’t busy with something or other from the county. I suppose that’s the life we’ve chosen though, isn’t it?”
Her voice sounds overly sweet, but you can sense the daggers in her words. It’s the way he reacts, shifting on his feet and rolling his jaw like he’s annoyed. Jane doesn’t even pay attention to anything but the cards in her hand. Some of the other ladies nod, but the sheriff just lowers his head before he pulls Jane to the side to talk to her quietly.
You track his movements, fascinated until you shake yourself out of it. It’s been years since you felt like that or even saw a man that caught your attention - not since Jimmy. It’s alarming, unnerving.
The wave of guilt that washes over you is more than you can handle.
“Please excuse me, but we must be going.” You get up without waiting for any response and practically yank your son right out of the house as Jane calls after you that she will see you again soon.
You brush off the incident after having some time to think, convinced that it is just because you were caught off guard, and try to go on as normally as you can.
Your days end up filled with social calls, running errands or helping your landlady, and keeping your son busy. He asks to play with the Bodecker boy nearly every day, but you try your best to keep your distance when you can, especially when she starts trying to arrange dates for you even when you politely decline.
You look at the other ladies sometimes and wonder how many of them are just tolerating her the way you do. There’s just something grating about the way her voice goes especially nasally when she has something not-very-Christian to say, or the way she talks so openly and obscenely about the apparent whorehouse in town. She doesn’t even seem the least bit shameful when she begins to complain about her sister-in-law and the trouble she gets up to despite her brother being the sheriff.
Sheriff Bodecker, on the other hand, is a bit more friendly than you anticipated, expecting him to be cold or rude, but usually he’s the one pushing his wife to extend a coffee or supper invitation your way and making small talk when you are still around when he gets home from work or if he catches you around town. Your own mind suspects that it’s maybe just a sense of civic duty to know his neighbors, but it’s nice to have company nonetheless.
Conversation with him comes easily. He talks with you about interesting news stories, about the boys, about some of the other towns, and even plans for the county. It’s interesting, not just debate on whether the new curtains chosen by someone or other are tacky. There are times you get lost talking with him and need to be corralled back in by Jane or Steven getting antsy.
The way he draws your eye is a mixture of curiosity and interest. It makes you notice when he’s driving the patrol car or when you see him around town. You catch how tired he seems at the end of the days, how he’s usually got a piece of candy to slip to kids when they come by and are brave enough to ask. You notice how he knows everyone in town and seems to have an eye on everything, checking in at the shops and breaking up the young men when they start to roughhouse.
In a place like this, Jane Bodecker is far from the only gossiper in town, so while she might not share much about herself or her husband, plenty of others do. Some of the things they say are just nitpicking and you try to drown it out. They’ve been decent to you since your arrival, but it’s hard to ignore the constant whispers of how power went right to their heads.
When the election is over and she gets the right to continue to say “My husband, the Sheriff” you start to really see what they say. She loses the facade of playing the good wife, but still hosts her weekly card meetings to keep up to date. Instead of just coffee and tea, she starts slipping sips of whiskey and gives her opinion a bit more freely than before, and often hurling insults anywhere they can land.
It’s painful to watch her put down everyone, but especially the sheriff when he gets in her way. When you catch him sending a frustrated look at her turned back or rolling his eyes at her complaints about the town and its people, you pretend not to notice and remember to keep a smile on. Her outbursts get more and more unhinged and brazen, and the defeat and exhaustion in his stance makes you ache. There’s a hurt you can’t vocalize without overstepping, but it eats at you, chips at your patience bit by bit.
When the sheriff pulls the cruiser over one day while you’re walking between stores to say hi and make some small talk, you’re pleased. He seems less worn down, it’s nice to see.
“Oh, Sheriff, you’ve got some good timing,” you reach into one of your shopping bags, pulling out a paper bag of hard candies you bought from the candy shop. “While doing the washing, I found a handful of wrappers. Turns out the boys were getting into your candy stash. Thought you might need a refill.”
You hand him the bag and the smile he gives you in return makes your chest tighten up and ache.
“Sweet things from a sweet thing, thank you darlin’.”
You bit down on your lips, desperate to not react to his flirtatious words. “It’s nothin’, Sheriff.”
“Not to me.”
You start to sway from foot to foot, looking down at the sidewalk with a hum and trying to come up with something else to say. Silence hangs in the air for a moment before his radio crackles with a call from the station. You take the opportunity to make your exit.
“I’ll be seeing you, Sheriff.”
He shoots a glare at the radio, but looks back at you with what you could only describe as longing. “Sure will, Sweets.” Usually something like that would sound condescending, but from him it sounds endearing. He winks and pulls the car away, talking to the dispatcher while he drives.
‘Sweets...sweet thing...darlin’’ his voice repeats over and over in your head, fingers trembling and clumsy with the rush they give you and the way your heart races.
You get nearly sick when you recognize the feelings you’re having. It’s like it was when you were first with Jimmy. When you couldn’t even look him in the eyes because you felt too overwhelmed by your feelings for him. When you flushed and overheated when he got close and said pretty things. When you used to hold onto his hand and promise yourself that you would care for him every day and prove your love to him.
That’s when you realize you’re coveting another woman’s husband.
It’s Thursday, which means you need to head down to Main Street to visit the pharmacy for your landlady, Mrs. Martins, and gather some groceries for the week. You had made plans with Jane to let the boys play together while you took ran errands. You don’t have a good excuse to change the plan, but you can’t help but ask again, “You sure you don’t mind him being here?”
“Not at all,” she smiles, a bit wider and more manic than usual, “Now if that handsome Wilford boy happens to ask you for supper, don’t you worry about rushin’ back, ya hear?”
You laugh at her latest unsubtle attempt, “I will keep it in mind, thanks.” She and a few others had started to meddle, putting eligible bachelors in your path and setting up dates on your behalf. You do try. You talk to them, let them flirt, but none hold your interest. They’re boys - lanky and lean, still all reckless and rowdy. Not what you’re looking for, nothing like the solid, filled-out figure of a man, someone secure and stable and in a uniform. But that’s something to think about another day.
Wilford does indeed ask.
You do not feel so inclined to take up the offer, especially when he pinches the round of your ass as he asks you to consider dessert before any supper.
He has you pressed against the wall outside the hardware store, letting the sun blind you and bring tears to your eyes as the bricks snag the delicate threads of your dress.
He only backs away when a loud voice booms out, “There a problem here, son?”
He turns his head to find Lee pulled to the side of the road, window down and arm resting on the frame, his jaw clenched and eyes narrowed.
“No sir, Sheriff, just makin’ some supper plans, ain’t we?” Wilford looks back at you with a leer. Your hands press flat against the building and your knee twitches with the urge to jerk up and hurt him.
“I thought we were expecting you tonight, isn’t that right?” Lee asks you pointedly.
Your attacker looks back at Lee, then to you, and you nod. Finally, you’re given some space.
“I imagine you need to be moving along then?” Lee checks, waiting impatiently for Wilford to answer.
“Yessir.” He gives you a wicked grin and spins away to go back down the street. “Maybe another time when you’re free.”
You shake your head, eyes narrowed at his back as you glare.
Lee taps the side of the cruiser, “C’mere.”
You take a shaky breath and gather yourself with a nod before taking the few steps across the sidewalk. Leaning down you take a moment to look him over in his uniform, the badge gleaming in the sunshine and eyes clear blue as the sky.
“You alright, Sweets?” he asks, voice low and gentle. He’d taken to calling you that since the candy incident, always in that same tone - like it’s precious and important. The way it hits you right in the center of your chest hurts more than the physical damage done a moment ago. You know he isn’t asking if your heart is aching, or if you’re alright being lonely, or any of the ways you’re feeling it right now, but it strikes you in an unexpected way.
“I’m fine,” you smile tightly, “Thank you for checking.”
“These boys just don’t know how to handle themselves when they see a pretty lady.” Your cheeks ache as you try to keep from beaming at the off-hand comment. “Ya know, I’m getting ready to head on home, you need a ride that way? I’m guessing your boy is stirrin’ up some shit with mine?” He turns and scans the road and sidewalk around you, fidgeting a bit as he asks.
“I still have to make another stop and my car is at the end of the block, but thank you.” You stand up.
“Well, I mean it, you and Steven stay for supper tonight, I’ll square it with Jane.”
“You don’t hav’ta do that-”
“No worries, darlin’.” He winks, taps his fingers on the shell of the door by the painted logo and waits until you nod in agreement. “See you soon, then.” And with a nod he pulls off the curb.
You watch the cruiser drive away, then look up and down the street, but no one else is there. You finally manage to draw in a full breath, and rush to get to the cool air of the pharmacy to ease the flush burning you from the inside out.
You make it back to the Bodecker’s before the sheriff, glad to have a few moments to smooth things over with Jane since she clearly had not expected you to turn down the date she arranged for you.
“He wasn’t too much of a handful, was he? I told him before I left that he better mind you today.”
She waves you off, sitting back down at the table with her abandoned cigarette in the tray and a small glass of brown liquor.
“Well, the boys’ll sleep tonight, that’s for sure. They’ve been running circles round the whole damn house.” She ashes the cigarette before taking another puff and settling against the backrest of the chair.
You take a moment to look over the kitchen, a pot is just about to boil over so you make your way to it. “Can I help you out with anything? Give you a moment to freshen up ‘fore Lee gets home?”
“I suppose that’s the least you can do.” Her cheeks draw in another puff and she hums, taking her glass with her as she goes to their bedroom.
The boys run inside, breathless and sweaty, both shouting while they tell you about a nest they found outside before you order them off to get washed up themselves. You look down the hall, waiting to see if Jane was on her way back or if she was expecting you to finish her cooking. Rather than let it burn, you do just that, taking care of the potatoes, adding a few seasonings as you go, and pulling out the meatloaf from the oven.
The screen door squeaks and boots thud through the house when Lee enters and makes his way to the kitchen. You nervously look over your shoulder, catching him leaning against the door jamb, spinning his hat in his hand, a soft smile on his lips as he looks your way.
“This is a sight. If I didn’t know better I’d think I wandered into the wrong house.”
You let out a bit of a nervous laugh, then look back down to the greens you were tending to, “I am so sorry, I kept your wife busy longer than I should’ve. She’ll be out in just a minute.” You go back to busying yourself with finishing up the meal.
“Not complainin’,” he mutters under his breath, but you still hear it and it makes your breath hitch. Jane could set you on edge with her snide remarks, so could Lee, but for completely different reasons - some that had been dormant for so long you didn’t know what to do.
Just then Jane makes her grand reappearance, hair freshly combed and lips tinged with a touch of color; her cheeks look ruddy, but you can’t tell if it’s rouge or flush from the alcohol she’s been sipping.
“Don’t you go adding too much milk to my potatoes, nobody likes ‘em all runny. Here, let me,” she says and nudges you out of the way, “See you gotta mix in just a little bit right there.”
She overpours anyway, her hands moving unsteadily as she mashes the potatoes up, making them runny just like she warned you about.
From behind you, you see Lee go to the table, picking up the liquor bottle and examining the contents, making marks with his fingers against the side of the bottle and shaking his head. He takes a swig himself and sets it back down.
He mumbles something about being sober, then walks down the hall to where Jane disappeared, stopping to say something to make the boys giggle on the way before they wrestle each other at the bathroom sink to wash up for supper.
The meal starts off quiet, just the utensils scraping along the plates, but Jane being the gracious host, finally tries to perk it up with conversation.
“I know Wilford might be a little rough ‘round the edges for someone from a bigger town, but there are still several other young men I can introduce you to,” she offers, unprompted.
You choke a little before you recover and finish chewing your bite of food.
“You needn’t go through the trouble, Mrs. Bodecker. Really.”
“It’s just, you’re so young to be widowed already and all alone. What kinda home will it be for the boy with no man around? And don’t you want more kids? I bet you just glow. Some of the ladies at my bible study wouldn’t mind setting you up.”
The idea makes you squirm. No, you aren’t dead inside, but there’s no way for you to get what - who you really want.
The sheriff speaks up then. “My old man took off on my ma, sister, and me. That’s just the way shit happens sometimes,” he says and you feel the dark cloud start to clear just a bit. You nod at him, acknowledging the little bit of affirmation.
“What was your husband like?” Jane presses, digging a little further into that painful wound. “Maybe that will help me out.”
Your Jimmy didn’t have much to give you, but he gave you all he could. He gave you the kind of love that made your cheeks hurt from smiling, and your stomach swoop with butterflies. Your eyes flick toward Lee and you think again about how alike they seem to you, handsome, intuitive, assertive, strong-willed. He catches your gaze and pauses his chewing for a brief second while he waits for your answer.
“He was a good man, strong and fair. I’d like to think he and Mr. Bodecker would’ve gotten on quite well,” you finally say, smiling kindly at them both in turn.
Lee’s lips curl into a smile while he finishes chewing, then sits back with a stretch. “You’re makin’ me sound like an old man,” he whines, “Call me Lee when I’m not on duty.”
“Yes sir,” you automatically reply. “Lee.”
His smile grows. “Say, Janey? Why don’t you go get that jug of wine up for us?”
She nods and gets up.
“Wine?” you ask, surprised.
“It’s nothin’ special, someone up the road makes it. Tastes better than that church wine, but don’t burn like the shine some other folks are brewin’ up.”
Jane comes back with three glasses and pours generously for you all, her own motions increasingly sloppy from her afternoon drinking.
You sip at it, the taste a little tart, but not as acidic and thank them for their generosity.
“Jane, you do something different with the seasoning tonight?”
“No,” she answers, then goes right back to her chat with you, you think about speaking up, but she goes back to leading the conversation. “So, you still thinking about becoming a working gal?”
“Not right away, but yes.”
“Oh?” Lee asks, “Something at the diner? I think the grocery is hiring?”
“Nuh uh,” her voice takes on a nasty tone, “Nothing like that for her. She went to secretary school.” The lilt in her voice makes it clear that she doesn’t care for that little fact. “Can you believe that? School just to learn to file a paper or take a message.”
“There’s more to it than that,” you quietly defend.
“Jane, what the hell do you know? You haven’t worked a day in your life?” Lee asks.
Jane rolls her eyes, body slumping a bit in her chair. “Well, whatever you do, just make sure you don’t go working at the Tecumsah.” She snorts into her glass as she takes a sip. “That’s where Lee’s sister works. I told you ‘bout her before.” She gives you a look. “That place is a den of sin, if you know what I am gettin’ at.”
“You’re are gonna spoil my appetite talkin’ like that,” he says. He drops his fork and you startle, his glare at his wife making clear this is another sore subject.
“Wouldn’t be the worst thing,” she mutters. “I’m gettin’ tired of mending the buttons on your clothes.”
Your jaw nearly drops. You wring your napkin on your lap and scramble for something to change the subject and break the tension, “Jane, there are such lovely flowers planted right by the library, is there a gardening club around here that you haven’t told me about?”
She’s bored by the topic, but it does enough to distract her and send her on a tangent. You nod and hum while you pick at your food. Occasionally you glance to Lee at the side and find him looking at you appreciatively.
You keep turning the conversation away from yourself, getting her to talk about anything you can as she keeps refilling and sipping down more of her wine.
You use the next lull in conversation to make your exit.
“This has been lovely, and I am so thankful for everything today, but we really oughtta get back home. I need to make sure Mrs. Martins gets her items from the pharmacist and I need to try to fix the old projector she’s given me.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Lee asks, leaning forward.
“No idea,” you laugh. “I was hoping to puzzle it together.”
“I can take a look for you,” he offers.
“If you have a moment,” you turn to Jane, “And you don’t mind sparing him.”
She scoffs and waves her fingers, “Nah, take Robert with you.”
He grunts in response while the kids leap up, excited for more time together. You do what you can to clean up and ease the load for Jane, but she’s getting more irritable by the minute, so you shuffle to the door to leave.
You head to the driveway where your car’s parked, waiting for him outside while the boys chase each other around the cars. He steps out the door, swinging his key ring on his fingers, looking at ease without the uniform on, but still strutting with an air of authority. It makes your stomach swoop.
“The Martins place? What road is that on again?” he asks jarring you out of your staring.
“Just follow me, Sheriff. I mean - Lee,” You nod as you get into the driver’s seat, Steven climbing in on the other side.
“Don’t mind if I do.” He mutters it loud enough that you hear him. The tilted, teasing grin on his face as he climbs into his own car almost makes you certain it was his intention.
When you get out, there’s a lump in your throat and the air suddenly feels heavy. Thankfully, the short walk up your drive is quiet, the sheriff walking leisurely next to you and laughing at the boys as they race each other down the sidewalk.
“I gotta go in the back way,” you swallow thickly as you tell him while you open up the gate, “There’s a private staircase for us there.”
He nods and follows.
When you enter the small apartment, you’re grateful that you don’t have much to fuss over and that it is tidy by default.
“Why don’t you boys go play with the Lincoln Logs or race cars? Nothing too loud right now,” you suggest and push them off toward the small room Steven occupies. “I got the parts all together right here, but I think something is missing.” You point to the box with the projector parts and reels.
“No problem,” Lee’s voice is quiet in your small space. He takes out the parts and starts to fit things together, checking a few switches here and there after a couple of minutes before patting the top of it with a, “There you go.”
You smile widely, “That’s it? Really?”
“That’s it, Sweets,” he matches your smile.
You suddenly hate the idea of him leaving so quickly, so you look around for something else.
“Coffee?”
He nods. “It’s like you read my mind,” there’s a glint in his eye as he gives you a generous once-over.
You feel a flush and quickly turn away to the kitchen.
Your hands tremble as you fill the kettle with water and scoop grounds into the press.
The boys break into a fit of giggles and before you can call after them, you feel the warm presence of Lee shuffle up behind you. His boots scuff against the floor as he stops, then seconds later his arms cage you in from behind, his palms resting against the edge of the countertop.
His breaths are deep, his nose just tickling along the neckline of your dress and you feel your back stiffen at the rush.
“You’re so lovely Sweets,” he whispers.
Your breath shakes as you suck it in. “S-sheriff,” you swallow thickly, “Lee? What’re you doing?”
“You’re beautiful, y’know.”
You remain still, unable to whisper anything but his name again.
“I see the way you look at me,” he presses a kiss to your skin that’s so gentle and tender but nearly makes your knees buckle. “Like you want somethin’.”
“I’m not - I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you weakly deny.
One arm leaves the counter to wrap around your middle, pulling you even closer to him while he steps right up behind you, the whole front of him up against your back. The movement makes you gasp and arch just slightly. You’re unable to catch yourself from rolling your head back to lean against him fully and feeling him grunt.
“You don’t need to make any excuses. You want me, dontcha?” he talks with his lips pressed right against your neck, heavy breaths tickling at your hairline.
God, do you want him. The sudden feeling of a warm, masculine body against you is something you didn’t realize you missed so much. For years it’s just been you and your boy and focusing on the day to day, not thinking about the way a strong arm feels pulled around you with fingers just tickling at your sensitive skin - until suddenly that’s exactly what is happening. And how you’ve missed it, your muscles nearly seize up with tension as you try to fight how good it feels.
It’s like trying to drag yourself from a dream, slow and muted as you try to make sense of everything at once; a sharp clarity punches through hard and fast.
“Your wife,” you reach down to cover his hand with your own, ready to try to pry him off.
“That fucking pig? I don’t love her, I don’t want her. She don’t want me either.”
“Don’t say that. You can’t say that,” you tell him and start to pull away, squirming away but getting nowhere since he doesn’t budge an inch. He allows you to spin around between himself and the countertop. “Lee? What is this? What’re you doing?”
It’s a stupid question. You know what this is. You can remember moments like these with your late husband, but Lee is not your husband. You know his wife. You just spent the evening with her in their home.
He doesn’t answer. Instead his free hand starts to skim up along your side until his thumb catches at the curve at the bottom your breast, then slides up so that he can rub his thumb back and forth over your dress, teasing at your hardened nipple.
It makes you whimper and nearly fold in half with how sensitive you feel.
“I’ll make you feel so good,” he coos, his lips parted and eyes tracking the movement of his thumb.
You lift your arms to his shoulders, uncertain yet if you’re planning to push him away or pull him close when you hear the quick footsteps of the boys.
Lee steps back to give you some distance and your hands flutter mid-air as you try to compose yourself.
The boys start to whine over each other-
“Momma. Robert keeps knocking over my building.”
“No, he keeps takin’ the blocks I’m using.”
Some kind of clarity forms and you rush out a solution for them, “Why don’t you get out your TinkerToys and split it all up? Alright? Go back to the other room,” you nudge them away.
Problem solved, they run back to the room, leaving you standing in the kitchen, Lee lingering just feet away and the half-finished coffee press on the counter.
“Jane must be expecting you home by now.”
He grunts and shakes his head ruefully, “She’s probably passed out by now.”
“Oh,” you nod. You search for something, anything to excuse yourself and catch your breath, “I need to go to the bathroom. Excuse me a moment.”
You slip out of the kitchen and into the door just down the hall. Taking a moment to relieve yourself then press a cool rag to your cheeks. You’d nursed the glass of wine Jane had poured, so you knew deep down you weren’t tipsy, you were just overrun by the feelings the sheriff gave you. Once you get your first full breath in minutes, you feel better, calmer and more controlled. You look at yourself in the mirror and decide - you just need to send him on home.
You barely crack open the bathroom door when it’s pushed open wide, Lee wedging in when it’s wide enough and nearly slamming it shut behind him.
“Don’t hide from me, Sweets,” is all he says before he’s got one arm around your middle again, and the other holding the back of your neck while he presses his lips against yours. After gasping in surprise, you instinctively return the kiss - your tongue and lips tentative against his dominating mouth.
It’s strange - all of it so strange after so long. It’s been years since your last kiss and you feel clumsy, out of practice, but he doesn’t hesitate one bit, doesn’t seem turned off by your uncoordinated motions and hands that can’t keep still over his middle and shoulders.
He takes in a deep breath, pausing for just a second to position himself better, then he’s back on you, and you feel ready for him this time. One hand resting on his chest while the other hooks up around his neck, your fingers stroking through the soft, short hairs at the back of his head. He turns the both of you, pressing you against the vanity sink.
“Lee,” you whimper when he wedges a leg between yours.
“Shh, shh, sshh. I got you.”
His kisses are relentless and make you light-headed, gasping for breaths every time he slightly lets up. His hands push and pull, struggling against your dress and your undergarments until he’s freed one breast and can drop his head to suckle at your hard peak.
Your mouth falls open in a silent cry, mind painfully aware of the children in the room nearby. You crack open an eye to make sure the door is still closed and try to focus on the sounds the kids are making, but his tongue and lips are too distracting. He pulls as much of your breast into his mouth as he can, greedily swirling his tongue all over the sensitive bud, and pulling away with a loud pop.
You slap at his shoulder while he just looks up at you with a shit-eating grin.
“Feels good, right?” He places his hand to cup your breast, thumb flicking at your nipple. “Let me have you, I’ll make you feel so good, my sweet girl. Please?”
His own eyes close as he ruts up against you, his hard length pressing against your hip and sending a tremor through your body, practically shaking your bones. You don’t move though, your hands stay frozen where you hold onto him, but he continues to lead and coax you along.
One wide hand holds you at the back of your neck, just holding you in place. His mouth moves across your cheeks and at the hinge of your jaw. He whispers quiet promises of satisfaction, telling you how lovely you are and confirming every word with a kiss. His other hand leaves your breast after one final and quick pinch and grabs at the bottom of your dress. The fabric bunching in his fist as he gathers it until he can feel your thigh.
Then he teases you with just the tips of his fingers, sliding right up and over til he meets where your thighs meet. It tickles, makes you shake a little, and then you’re sucking in a hard gasp when he keeps going until he pets and presses over your sex with the pads of his fingertips.
“So wet,” he says on an exhale, pressing right where you feel your excitement leaking. “You want me too. It’s alright.”
To prove his point, he presses harder, flattening his hand until he’s cupping you and making your body jerk between him and the sink. You bend your knees to open your thighs wider with the touch, and he groans and presses hard against you again, the heel of his palm putting pressure to your throbbing clit. You struggle to not hook your leg right over his hip to let him in.
“Lee,” you start to beg, “Please. Oh my god, please.”
It’s so overwhelming you start to sob, the tears already prick at the corners of your eyes. Just being touched, feeling the warmth of him, and the words - it’s all that you remembered being with a man to be and more. His hand keeps a rhythm against you, driving you higher. You hadn’t had a man’s touch in years, but suddenly you need Lee like you need air.
“Please,” you say again. Your body tingles with electricity that has nowhere to go.
“So pretty. You’re so pretty, baby. I’m gonna take care of ya. Am I what you need?”
“Yes,” tears start to roll down your cheeks. He pulls back slightly until he can slip his fingers underneath your panties, gliding right through your arousal. You feel two of his fingers slide into you, and you squeeze around them instantly.
“Fuck,” he grunts. Your wetness drips down his fingers into his palm. He presses the heel of it against you again, right against your sensitive clit this time. “Come on my fingers, sweetness.”
He fucks you with his hand, his thick, solid fingers caressing you while he sends jolts of pleasure through you with pressure on your sensitive button. You squirm to get away, but the hand still at the back of your neck tightens and holds you down, making you take it.
“It’s alright,” he whispers, “It’s alright.”
And that’s it. You freeze for a moment as the pleasure peaks and then you’re trembling as the shocks of it rush through you in a blaze. You can hear the wetness drowning his fingers as he keeps pumping them into you while you clench over him repeatedly and sob as quietly as you can, which must not be very quiet because he starts to shush you and slow the movement of his hand, gently attempting to calm you down.
“You’re okay, s’alright baby, just breathe, c’mon,” you hear him coach, but all you can focus on is the thumping beat of your heart as it races and trying to catch your breath between sniffles, the tears falling freely down your cheeks.
His hand slides out from your panties to grab you steady at your waist, the hand from your neck moves so he can use his thumb to wipe away your tears. He presses his forehead to yours and tells you to breathe with him.
You blink your eyes open, eyelashes glittering with wetness and you take a minute to focus. Once things are clear, you tilt your head back to look at him. His cheeks are flushed, lips wet and rosy, and his eyes - they nearly glow as he looks you over. It’s something to see - awe, tenderness, pride all in the twitches of his lips as his lips turn up with a smile.
“Sweets, will you touch me?” he asks. For such a big man, his voice is suddenly so small.
“Lee, I can’t-I haven’t…” you struggle to find the words.
“It’s alright, that’s alright,” he assures you, circling your wrist with his fingers still sticky from your arousal, and guiding them to the bulge in his trousers. You flinch, but don’t pull away, your arm tenses, but goes with the motion. He presses your palm against the solid length, pushing down to give him some relief. His hips press against you in return and once he’s sure you aren't going anywhere, he lets go of your wrist, then starts to undo the belt and button in quick movements. He tugs the waistband of his trousers and boxers down together, just to release his cock.
You feel the fabric move under your palm, but keep pressing against him, your hand sliding just slightly out of remembered instinct. When the fabric of his boxers slides away and you’re met with the heat of his cock, you gasp. Your hand wraps around him, fingers circling around his shaft to hold him and pulling a strangled moan from him.
“Shit-fuck,” he hisses. “Won’t be long.” He wraps his hand over yours, pulling your fist up and down over him while he pumps his hips into it. Precome drips down from the slit, easing the glide.
His eyes close and he presses his temple to yours, his face pulls up in concentration, focusing on the pleasure, “You’re so soft, so sweet,” he rasps, “Want you so bad, want you all to myself.”
You can imagine it, if you’re ready to be totally honest, you have imagined it.
“Kiss me?” you whisper.
His lips meet yours roughly for a long press, then he tilts his head and licks at the seam of your lips, making you open up to him. His hand and yours start to speed up, he keeps guiding you up and down, just the slightest twist at the head with each stroke.
The kiss turns sloppy, more sharing air and pecks than anything as he spirals with the pleasure you’re helping to give him.
“You’re gonna -you’re gonna make me-” with a pained expression, he nudges you away, his hand stroking frantically as he leans over your sink until he starts to come, streaks hitting the porcelain as he chokes down groans. You watch his neck and face go red, trying not to watch, but you can’t help yourself and catch the way his cock twitches with his release, all swollen and red. You don’t think you could possibly blush more, but still fire burns underneath your skin.
When he finishes coming, he reaches for you again, pulling you into another hard kiss. “God, darlin’. Fuck,” he whispers while he attempts to catch his breath. “Fuck. Haven’t been tugged off like that since I was a deputy.” He chuckles, the laugh coming out in hard puffs of air.
You struggle to look at anything in the bathroom, eyes straying back to Lee, to his softening cock, to the come dripping slowly in the sink basin. Just then you hear the boys start to giggle and reality hits you again, making your chest seize up in panic.
“Oh, Lee. No,” you raise a hand to your mouth and quickly rush out the door, piecing your wardrobe back together as you walk back into the kitchen. You hear the water run in the bathroom and murmuring as Lee talks to himself.
Your movement must have distracted the boys because they manage to sound like a stampede heading toward you. You wipe at your nose and eyes as best you can before you turn to see what they want.
Both the boys pause, but it’s your son that speaks up, knowing how you look when you cry. “Momma, you alright?”
Lee exits the bathroom then, shirt tucked back in, belt and trousers back in place - only the flush from the neck up giving anything away. His eyes bore into you with heavy emotion that you are ashamed that you can read so well - concern, sympathy, desire. A mixture that you remind yourself you don’t deserve.
“Yeah, baby. I am. You know I get sad sometimes, I’ll be fine. Are you boys ready to say goodbye for tonight? I think it’s well past your bedtime.”
You grab Steven and fuss with his hair, with his messy shirt, and then turn him around and hold him against you like a tiny human shield. “Say thank you to the sheriff for fixing the projector and for letting Robert play.”
“Thank you, sir,” your son dutifully responds.
Lee can see what you’re doing and he’s not happy with it, his mouth going flat and shoulders heaving as you pressure him into leaving.
He just nods, then nudges at Robert’s shoulder, “Say thank you for indulging us.”
“Thank you,” Robert quietly says.
You send Steven down the hallway to get ready for bed, and then you follow behind as they step toward the door, Robert too tired from a full day of play to put up a fight. Lee opens the door to the back steps, telling Robert to be careful going down. When the boy starts down a few, Lee turns back to you.
Before you can react, he’s giving you another kiss, quick but meaningful. “We’re not done,” he whispers.
“We are. Go home, Lee.”
He gives you a long look before stomping down the steps. “Til next time, Sweets.”
...
#lee bodecker x reader#lee bodecker smut#lee bodecker angst#lee bodecker fanfiction#hoedecker club#hoedecker cult#tdatt fanfiction#my writing#fic title so wrong#lee bodecker x you#lee bodecker x female reader
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My Man - Shouta Aizawa X Reader (~1~)
You walked into the large gates of U.A., which had hardly changed since when you had last been here, in your third year as a student. You could still remember yourself running out of the gates with Shirakumo when the school ended, while Aizawa and Hizashi caught up from behind, running and shouting, carrying your school bags which you both had thrown at them.
You walked over to the teacher's lounge, for the very first day as a teacher at U.A. High, hoping you'd meet your best friends as soon as possible. You had missed them terribly, all of them, for the last ten years you were in America, for your mother's cancer treatment.
You sighed as you slowly opened the door to the teacher's lounge and walked in slowly.
"Ah." All Might's skinny figure said, "(L/N), you're here." Since the Kamino ward incident, when you saw the interview of the U.A. staff as well as the fight between the weird villain and All Might, All Might's true form had been revealed to the whole world.
"This is the new teacher I was telling you abou-" All Might said, but halted his speech as someone pulled you into a large bear hug.
"(NAME)!!" Hizashi shouted, "You're back." A wide grin made it's way to your face. "Hizashi!" you said, hugging him tighter. After a few moments of hugging, he let you go, only to start bragging and telling the others about all the stuff you used to do at U.A. together and how you used to be best of friends with him and Aizawa.
'Shouta,' you thought, remembering the guy you had loved all your U.A. years, 'Where is that brat?' Your eyes skimmed through the people but he wasn't there. Your lips tightened as you inhaled deeply and glanced around the room, and thankfully, you found him leaned against a wall in one corner of the room with a conflicted look on his face.
"Shouta!" you said, happily, running over to him and pulling him into a big tight hug. He didn't hug you back. "You brat," you said, as an odd sense of disappointment feel over you, "do you have any idea how much I missed you guys. Idiot."
"Y-Yeah, yeah." Aizawa said, pulling away from the hug and looking away. "I-Is there something wrong?" you asked him, taken aback by his actions. Aizawa shook his head in denial and turned to look at you again, but with the same gaze he had for you back when you were students. You smiled widely at him and playfully punched him. "Tsundere." you said, making him groan and look away.
"So, what do I do today?" you asked the rest of the teachers, who then handed you your teaching schedule while Aizawa and Hizashi left for their homeroom classes after giving you sad looks and you telling them to some to you in the lunch break.
_____________________________________________________________
"How were the classes?" Hizashi asked you, as you sat over with him, Aizawa and Nemuri Kayama (Midnight) for lunch. "Pretty good actually." you said, "It was class 1C and 1B today and the kids are pretty good."
"Oh, you haven't seen Shouta's class yet!" Hizashi said. You grinned and turned to Aizawa. "You gonna introduce me to your class or not?" you asked. "No." Aizawa said, blandly, "Don't even let them have an idea that you're related to me."
You and Hizashi laughed. Aizawa hadn't changed much, he was still the biggest tsundere you had ever seen.
"Who do you think was the most promising student in class 1B, (L/N)?" Kayama asked. "Please call me (Name)," you said, "And I think there were a few. That dork Monomoa is pretty good but he's kinda a brat and Kendo and Juzo were pretty good."
"Call me Nemuri too!" Kayama chirped. "And what about 1C though?"
"Some kid called Shinsou, looked as half-dead as Aizawa." you said, shrugging. "Oh," Nemuri said, "Looks like your son's got the lead, Aizawa."
You choked on your drink. "AIZAWA HAS A SON!?" you asked, sounding shocked from the outside, but your heart tearing apart from the inside.
"Not biological, he's adopted." Hizashi said, chuckling and patting your back. You stared at Aizawa who had his head turned away. "Wait," you said, "What exactly happened?"
Hizashi explained how Aizawa was now the legal guardian of Shinsou and how with a lot of requesting, Aizawa had finally, legally adopted Shinsou.
"God.." you whispered out, " and I thought he managed to get married." Hizashi began laughing again, remembering your and Shirakumo's old joke about Aizawa not being able to get married since he'd doze off during the wedding.
"Stop it." Aizawa groaned. "(Name), you have a class in 1A after the break." You grinned widely at him, "Now that's the spirit!" you said, patting him hard on the back, making him choke on his food, "Be the good boy."
"What the hell." Aizawa growled, looking away. "Aww..." you said, "Looks like our...uh." you said, glancing at Nemuri while Hizashi began laughing out lous realizing what you were gonna say, "Looks like our...sweet father's blushing."
Nemuri began laughing out loud for some reason. "I've never seen someone handle Aizawa like that before! He's actually blushing" she shrieked amidst her laughter. You chuckled, punching the back of Aizawa's head softly. He had never complained when you did stuff like this.
"God, (Name)," Aizawa groaned, "Grow up already, will ya?"
"I can't when you're still the whiny baby boy~" you taunted with a sadist grin. Aizawa groaned again, massaging his temples, while Hizashi smiled the widest he had in these last few years, his eyes going moistly. He had missed all this so much.
The bell rang. "To class." Aizawa said, sighing. "You won't enter until I tell you to." he said, taking the lead and walking inside the classroom.
You waited outside while Aizawa took his time talking to his class about something. "Why are you outside here?" Hizashi's voice came from behind you. "Because Shouta asked me to wait." you said, shrugging and sighing.
"Wanna go in already then?" Hizashi said with a mischievous grin, knowing exactly how much it'd piss Aizawa off. You grinned and nodded back.
You both burst into the classroom, drawing everyone's attention. "HEYA LITTLE KIDS!" Hizashi shouted loudly making you wince due to his high pitch.
"What the hell?" Aizawa growled. You flashed him with a grin similar to his signature sadist smile. "I WANNA INTRODUCE YOU TO YOUR A NEW TEACHER, (NAME) (L/N)!" Hizashi shouted. You waved out to the kids you recognized from the sports festival.
"PLUS SHE'S VEry close to your sensei and me!" Hizashi said, while Aizawa used his quirk to cut out his voice amplification mid sentence.
Something wrapped around your neck and you and Hizashi were pulled forward by Aizawa's special capturing weapons only to be faced by an angry faced, glowy eyed, hair standing up-ed Aizawa who growled, "Get out, both of you."
"Aizawa sensei, is that your daughter?" a girl with long green hair asked.
"Pfffftttt..." you and Hizashi clasped your hands on your mouth to avoid laughing out loud but it didn't work. It couldn't with what she had said. You both burst out in uncontrollable laughter while Aizawa groaned loudly and turned to the girl with a death glare.
"O-Only because she's got a black costume like yours and Present Mic sensei said she was close to you!" the girl blurted out hurriedly.
"Shut up or you'll regret it." Aizawa growled, making you and Hizashi, who were almost lying down on the floor clasp your hands to your mouth to stop laughing. If Aizawa got angry, he was deadly and you both knew better than to get him that way.
"Like I said," Aizawa said, "Principal Nezu has decided to let Shinsou into the class, and beside that, the new teacher will be assisting in today's battle training.
_____________________________________________________________
You cracked your knuckles and neck and plopped onto the couch in the teachers' dorm's common area. It was still just your first day and Aizawa had made sure to burden you with two piles of test papers to correct.
"You're a monster, you know." you told Aizawa, after Nemuri left you alone with your two best friends. It was pretty late already and everyone had left for their rooms. Aizawa flashed you his sadistic grin, and you flipped him off.
You finally walked over to your desk which was right beside his and started correcting the papers. "Coffee, anyone?" Hizashi called out as he got up from his seat. "Me." you groaned, circling out the dumbest mistake you had ever seen. "Get me one too." Aizawa said, and Hizashi walked off, towards the cafeteria downstairs.
There was some silence as you quietly corrected papers, glancing at Aizawa after every few seconds. Aizawa's eyebrows furrowed as he marked a paper and used his left hand to slowly rub his chin. 'Sexy.' you thought, blushing and turning away to your own papers. You corrected another one effortlessly, which was almost completely correct.
You looked back up at Aizawa who was holding out two papers, as though comparing them. He let out a 'tch' and scribbled something on both the papers and sighed, picking up the next one. "You want something?" he said, suddenly, making you jolt and look back at your papers.
Aizawa turned to look at you, wondering why you'd been glancing at him. "(Name)?" he said again, when you didn't reply.
"W-What did you write on those papers?" you blurted out, and thankfully, he seemed convinced that this was exactly what you were wondering.
"Ashido and Kaminari." he said, "Students in my class looks like they've copied each other's answers." You nodded and looked away. You exhaled out deeply, feeling all the feelings you had for him during your school years, which had still remained over this time, light up again.
"Shouta~" you breathed out subconsciously, thinking about how you and Shirakumo used to say embarrassing things to him during your school years to cause him to fluster up or look away, embarrassed, and Shirakumo and Hizashi always amplified it tenfold by passing embarrassing and sometimes even lewd comments to fluster him even more.
"Hm?" Shouta asked, making you jolt. You didn't reply, but instead, froze as deer infront of headlights. "You need something?" he asked. You didn't reply.
"(Name)?" he said, looking up from his papers to see you frozen, your eyes fixed on the desk. "Hey." he said, but you didn't reply. A million thoughts were running through your mind, half of how sexy he sounded, and half of what excuse you should make for your accidentally blurting out his name in your thoughts.
You felt a hand on your shoulder and jolted hard, falling off the chair.
"What the hell, (Name)," Aizawa said, getting off his chair hurriedly and crouching beside you, "What's wrong with you?"
You turned to him, biting your lower lip, unable to understand whether it was the fact that Hizashi had left you both alone or that he was crouched above you that was making you want to pull him and kiss him roughly.
"Are you okay?" he asked. You looked away and nodded, composing yourself and getting up. "Where were you lost?" he asked. You let out an awkward chuckle. "I was......correcting the papers!" you said, even more awkwardly.
Aizawa raised a brow at you, but turned around when the door of the teacher's dormhouse opened.
"Dad." Shinsou said, stepping in, but halting when his eyes fell on you. "Why aren't you in your dormroom?" Aizawa asked him, as you took the chance to compose yourself and sit down on the chair.
"I...needed to talk..." Shinsou said, awkwardly, "I'm...not disturbing something...am I?"
You felt heat rise to your cheeks. 'I wish you were.' you thought, as Aizawa replied with a quick "No" and walked over to him. They both talked to each other silently for some time before Shinsou left and Aizawa came back to sit beside you.
"Now," Aizawa said, turning his chair towards you and sitting down with a concern clearly visible in his eyes, "What happened? Is there something wrong? You never used to zone out."
You stared deep into his eyes, feeling a hot bubbly feeling in your heart. Shouta Aizawa, you'd liked him from your first year in U.A. and had always been a good friend of him and the other two boys, until the third year, when your friendship grew to get stronger and stronger, so strong that you four were almost inseparable, well, that was until Shirakumo died during his work studies, leaving the three of you heartbroken.
"I've...had some things on mind these past years." you said, after a sigh. You knew you had always been close to Aizawa, you and Shirokumo had taunted and annoyed him in tons, but he never complained since he loved you both. You hoped his feelings towards you were romantic but knew that he wouldn't understand until he was confessed to directly.
"Yeah?" he asked, patiently. You inhaled deeply, preparing yourself for confessing your feelings to him.
"I...." you said, as alot of heat rushed through your body, making you sweat slightly and rapidly increasing your heartbeat. "Y-You...I..." Aizawa sighed and got up, dragging you along to the couch and plopped down, pulling you beside him.
"Relax." he said, "Just say it."
"Y-You're ...cute?" you mumbled, nervously. Aizawa stared at you in disbelief. "I'm being serious. Don't joke around with me, (Name), what's wrong?"
You tapped your foot on the floor, thinking of the right way to say it but knew that you'd have to say it straight.
"Mm...Sh-Shouta.." you said, turning to him with trembling lips. Aizawa's gaze never left yours, as his hand made it's way to your head, slowly ruffling your head. "What's wrong?" he asked, his voice the softest you had ever heard.
You inhaled deeply, leaning forward onto him. "(N-Name)?" he said, leaning a little back, unsure of what you were doing. You climbed onto him and stared at him dead in the eye. "Shouta, I.." you said, about to say the words 'love you' but your brain did a backflip and you blurted out, "N-Need to tell you something." instead.
Aizawa stared at you, with creased eyebrows, unable to understand what was wrong with you and why you were almost climbed onto his lap. The thought made heat rise to his cheeks. He just hoped you didn't make it all more difficult for him.
You inhaled deeply bit your lower lip. 'I've got to say this.' you thought and said, "Shouta, I...listen, I don't know whether you feel the same way but I've....I've always..liked you..you know..romantically. Ever since our first year in U.A., I began developing these feelings...and stuff...I-It's no problem if you don't feel the same way but...we'll always be friends and that'll be enough for me. Shouta, I love you."
Aizawa's eyes widened and he winced hard, as though regretting something. You suddenly became aware of the several tears flowing down your cheeks.
"Dammit." Aizawa growled and pushed you off of him so hard that you fell on the ground. "Are you crazy!?" he shouted, turning around and rubbing his temples. "Are you fucking crazy!?"
"Sh-Shouta?" you mumbled, out, the tears in your eyes increasing and blurring out your vision. You crawled over to his crouched figure who was rubbing his temples. "Sh-Shouta...I-I'm sorry.." you mumbled, placing a hand on your back, which he swatted away immediately.
"Sh-Shouta..." you said, your voice turning into a whisper, as your tears drenched your cheeks. "Aizawa." he snarled, "You fucking call me Aizawa." Your heart dropped.
"B-But we're best friends, right?" you asked, in a scared, uncertain tone. "I don't think so." Aizawa growled, "I'd very much like you to fuck off."
Your heart broke.
You had never confessed to him in school because you had valued your friendship too much and weren't very ready for relationships then, but now, that you'd been so sure that he would have missed you, and thought that it was the right time to let him know, it hurt, it hurt so much.
"GO AWAY!" Aizawa shouted, making you flinch and jolt away. You got up, tears flowing over your wet cheeks, your body trembling and ran outside. You ran away outside the building and over into the forest-like grove of trees. It hurt, it hurt so much that you wanted to scream and cry madly.
"(Name)?" Hizashi's voice called you out from some distance away. You tried to silent your sniffs and sobs while you cuddled up with yourself under the large tree you were sitting under. It was evening already and the air was getting chilly.
"God." Hizashi said, jogging upto you, "I've been finding you for over an hour now." he said. You let out a hitched exhale, regretting not being quiet enough to avoid him finding you.
"C'mon." he said, pulling you up to stand with him, "Let's go. I need to tell you something." You, not being in the condition to respond or resist, just allowed him to take you wherever he was dragging you along. Hizashi walked outside the large tree grove, and took you over to a tree beside one of the gyms.
"Sit down, I need to tell you something." he repeated. You quietly sat down, still sobbing. Hizashi scanned you sadly, seeing your messy haris, sticking you your dirty, wet cheeks and your trembling body. He sighed and put his coat over you.
"I heard it all." he told you, crouching in front of you and ruffling your hair. "The reason why Shouta reacted like that was not that he didn't like you, (Name)."
_____________________________________________________________
Aizawa walked out of the teacher's dormhouse, his heart aching badly. He wanted to forget it, he wanted to forget you confessing to him but he couldn't. He wanted you to stop having those feelings for him but he knew you wouldn't. He sighed, rubbing his throbbing chest before turning towards the gyms, hoping to distract his mind. He couldn't bear the guilt of liking you anymore. It just hurt.
He walked over to gym beta, but what he saw made his heart clench tight. You were sitting against a tree, your hair messy and sticking to your dirty cheeks while your body trembled under Hizashi's jacket. Aizawa clenched his hand to stop his urge of consoling you. Your confession repeated in his mind.
It was taking alot to control his feelings, but Aizawa wasn't going to let him take over what was meant for Shirakumo. 'He wouldn't have wanted this, he would never have wanted her to cry like this.' a voice in the back of his head said and before he could even realize it, Aizawa had used his binding weapon to move over the gym and secretly jump onto the tree you both were sitting under.
"The reason why Shouta reacted like that was not that he didn't like you, (Name)." Hizashi said. Aizawa's eyes widened. 'H-He...He doesn't know...does he?' he thought, glancing down at Hizashi who was slowly rubbing your back as you lied against him, looking up at him with puffy eyes.
"Aizawa did that because....Shirakumo....he...he had the biggest crush on you." Your eyes widened, along with Aizawa's.
"It was our first year." Hizashi said, "After the sports festival, Shirakumo started to find you really interesting and he talked alot about you to us. By the end of the first year, you were a sort of good friend to us already, and that's when he told us that he had a crush on you. By the start of the second year, me and Shouta would sometimes tease him about you and stuff and we began to talk to you more and more. We all got closer and became besties, but by the end of the second year, Shirakumo told me something I hadn't ever realized before."
You looked at him with widened eyes. You had never known any of this. You had never know that Shirakumo had a crush on you.
"Shirakumo told me that you had feelings for Shouta." Hizashi said, " I was shocked and kind of sad for him but he was happy, really happy. When I asked him why he was happy, he told me that he realized in the beginning of the second year that Shouta had feelings for you, which he hid from all of us because he didn't want to intrude between you guys. Yeah, Shouta too, had a crush on you in school but he hid his feeling because he didn't want Shirakumo to feel bad about it."
Aizawa's eyes widened. He hadn't ever known that Shirakumo had known about his crush on you and despite his best efforts in hiding it, he failed to do so.
"Shirakumo told me that day, that you were perfect, not for him, but for Shouta, and that every little outing he had planned that year, and every little joke he made alongside you, about how Shouta got tired, or how he dozed off, everything was just so that you both could get closer. (Name), Shirakumo did have a crush on you initially because he liked you alot, but he wanted you and Shouto to be together."
Aizawa inhaled shallowly, feeling tears in his eyes. He had never known that the person for whom he had been hiding his feelings for you was actually trying to set him up with you, despite having the biggest crush on you.
"Remember the time when we went to the amusement part and you and Shirakumo ended up making Shouta so embarrassed that he hid his face in his jacket and ran away?"
You nodded. Aizawa breathed out, shallowly, remembering the day.
-
"Hey Shouta," Shirakumo said, "It's just ice cream. You're eating it like some five-year old eats broccoli." You began giggling, drawing Shirakumo's attention, while Aizawa felt his lips twitch into a small smile. He loved it when you laughed. Aizawa immediately composed himself, hiding his smile.
"(Name)! (Name)!" Shirakumo said, "Okay, I got an idea." You, Aizawa and Hizashi turned to him, while still licking all your ice creams.
"How about you give us some advice?" he said. "What sort of advice?" you asked. Shirakumo smirked.
"I bet all of us boys might have some crush or the other, right?" he said, leaning over onto Aizawa's shoulders. "Just tell us from the point of view of any other girl, what we look like." Aizawa froze, gulping hoping that Shirakumo wouldn't have found out about his crush on you.
"What you look like?" you asked. Shirakumo nodded, "Like Hizashi looks like the bright, loud and always cheery sort of person to any other girl, uh...like...what do you think girls see us as?"
"Oh...Ok, lets see...Hizashi as the loud and always cheery guy." you said, "You like...hmmm..the attractive and charismatic guy which every girl would want. Actually some girls do call you 'husband material' behind your back." you told Shirakumo.
"And what about Shouta?" he asked. You turned to Shouta who was glancing at Shirakumo with a worried gaze.
"Hmm.. to me he's like the cute supportive family guy who's a big tsundere on the outside. No, wait, you know what, this isn't about my choice, so, Shouta looks like the sexy tsundere guy who the girl'd call daddy or some shit like that." you said, with a wide grin. Shirakumo grinned and placed his elbow on your shoulder. "I wonder," he said, "I wonder who all thinks about him that way. Shouta, you've sure got some sexiness into you, huh."
Aizawa groaned and looked away.
"He'd get many options for wives," you said, with an evil smirk, "Only if he didn't doze of mid-wedding." you and Shirakumo said in unison laughing, making Aizawa groan and tell you to "Stop it already."
"AW." Shirakumo said, "Look, our sugar daddy's blushing." Aizawa exhaled out deeply in annoyance. "C'mon, sugar daddy." you said, as you and Hizashi laughed, "Don't be angry with us~" Aizawa choked on the large bite of ice cream he had taken on hearing what you said and glanced away blushing awfully.
You began laughing out loud. "Nah.." you said, "He's like a blushing little kitten." Shirakumo laughed out loud, "Damn, if I was gay I'd be totally onto him. "
"Me too...wait, I don't even need to be gay to like him.." you said, and then lightly punched Aizawa on the shoulder, "What d'ya say Shouta~"
You and Shirakumo burst into laughter as Shouto covered his face with his jacket and hurried away.
-
"That day, the main reason Shirakumo wanted you to tell us what you thought other girls would see us as was because he wanted Shouta to know what you felt about him. " You wiped your tears, which were no longer because of Shouta, but because of Shirakumo. 'That brat.' you thought shakily.
"You know, the day when he....died.." Hizaki croaked out, wiping his own tears, "Me and Shirakumo had made a whole plan that morning, of how we were gonna make you and Shouta go for the end of year school prom together. We even planned to tell Shouta that Shirakumo didn't like you romantically anymore since he wasn't making a move on you."
Aizawa wiped his wet cheeks as he sat silently on the branch, listening to everything.
"Even today, Shouta thinks that you and Shirakumo liked each other, well, not anymore since you just confessed to him, but...he wouldn't do anything, even if he still had feelings for you, because he didn't know the truth. He still feels guilty for liking you. Getting you both together was the only thing Shirakumo wanted that morning and then later, he died and you left the school shortly after that. Me and Shouta never even got to say goodbye."
You let in a shaky breath. "(Name), you leaving made Shouta confirm your feelings towards Shirakumo, and I'm not really sure whether Shouta still likes you or not, since he never once talked about you all these years, but I think it's time for me to tell him-" Hizashi's speech halted as he rested his head back on the tree, only to stare right into Aizawa's teary gaze from in the tree.
Hizashi sighed as he smiled sadly at Shouta who just bit his lower lip and closed his eyes. Hizashi turned to you. "I wish..." you said, tears still falling from your widened eyes, "I wish I hadn't taken a leave then. I-I could have saved him."
"It's okay, (Name)," Hizashi said, "You couldn't have, it just happened, it okay."
"I-If I wasn't sulking so much over my father's death and would've just gone to attend my work studies that day, I could have saved him!" you croaked out loud, shaking miserably. Hizashi pulled you into his arms and craddled you, his face bearing a shocked expression.
"What!? W-Why didn't you ever tell us?" he asked. "Why didn't you ever tell us about him dying. It's not your fault, (Name), it's not, trust me. I-Is that why you left?"
You nodded while sobbing into Hizashi's shoulder. "M-My mother had can-cer." you croaked out, "Sh-She needed to be taken to A-America and dad had died and..."
"It's okay." Hizashi said, "No worries, it's all okay. Everything's fine now. You're mom's okay...r-right?"
"She died a month ago." you croaked. Hizashi hugged you harder, glancing up at Aizawa who was hardly visible in the now spreading darkness.
"Let's go back in, it's cold here. We'll talk about it later, okay. You're back, I'm here, everything will be fine, I promise."
___________________________________________________________
There's a part two which was really fun to write.
Check that out too :)
#Aizawa#Shouta#Shouta Aizawa#Aizawa Shouta#Bnha#Mha#my hero academia#oneshot#anime#reader insert#angst#shouta x you#shouta x reader#Eraserhead#Hizashi#Yamada#Present Mic#Hizashi Yamada#aizawa x reader#aizawa x y/n
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Punishment time
Pairing: The Boyz Juyeon x Reader
Word count: 2.4k
Tags: smut, dom!juyeon, sub!reader, oral (receiving + giving) , 18+ , bondage, swearing, teasing, just extremely filthy
Summary: Lee Juyeon, oh that troublemaker. He is your best friend's extremely hot roommate who acts like a nice guy during the day. But when the night appears, he takes the mask off, turning into a beast and leaving all girls who come in his room a whiny, screaming mess. This is the story of how you became one of those girls.
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It was just another day at your best friend's Eric place. You've known each other ever since he moved to LA and after 6 years of friendship you were sad to find out he'll move back to Korea. He was always so sweet and kind, you two knew everything about each other and you used to miss him a lot. Luckily, when you decided to move to Seoul to improve your Korean language skills, you were glad to see him again. You were besties and he was even like a brother to you. Yet the problem here was not Eric. It was his new roommate. His name is Lee Juyeon. Since you were learning Korean, you knew his name meant "main character". The name itself already gives a very bold statement, yet you would never have imagined it would be to this extent. Okay, let me put it this way: You know how in every university you will have these obvious looking attention whore fuckboys. The charming but dangerous ones? When you met Juyeon... He didn't seem like such a guy. Not until you got to know him better.
You remember the first time he appeared while you and Eric were making ramen for lunch. He actually looked like a very nice and polite guy. He wore an ironed Lacoste shirt and basic jeans - he actually looked like a guy with class. One time even his parents came to the apartment and he would act it all out like he was the most rule abiding, lawful son there is. So, what was the matter then? It is those secrets that you only found out because you were Eric's bestie. When the night came down, a new Lee Juyeon would be born.
Every night you spent watching a movie with Eric or just casually chatting, you would hear questionable sounds coming from the room next to you. You never had the courage to talk to Eric about it, but he also must have heard the intensely loud moans and screams coming out his room. The goodie two shoes Juyeon during the day became a sex monster during night. You never saw "the action" but you often met his one night stands with extremely messy hair, makeup smudged everywhere looking like they've just went through 10 orgasms. The truth is, they probably have.
To be honest, you always wanted to experience how it is. All these girls looking like that made you jealous. They made you envy what they had. You wanted to taste him. You wanted him to be the reason why your makeup is smudged as well. You wanted him to fuck the shit out of you and make you not be able to walk for days. Your sexual desire kept on increasing and increasing every day when you came to their place and you visited a lot. Did Eric know about this? Not that you were aware.. I mean you've never felt romantic feelings towards Eric but you were always the one to change the topic once he mentioned Juyeon. You were too embarrassed to reveal the true you to your best friend. At least before THAT happened.
It was just another morning at Sohn and Lee residency. It was a weekend and you slept over again on a couch. You expected to sleep a lot but then a very loud and irritating alarm woke you up. It was not your alarm, it was Juyeon's. It was 8am in the morning and you wondered who it can be. You looked at the phone and you saw "Mom is calling". You would not bother if you also haven't seen 20 other messages from her saying "Lee Juyeon!! It's an emergency, pick up". What could it be? You thought that you should hurry up and give him the phone. Yet you fogot all the other circumstances.
You thought he is still sleeping. It was 8am indeed. Yet, opening the door of the room, you didn't expect to see this view: It was Juyeon laying on the bed and not one but 2 of girls laying on top of him giving him a morning blowjob. You froze to death and dropped the phone. His mom was still on the phone, though.. The "loudspeaker" button turned on and you could hear Ms Lee calling him and asking if he is there while in the background you could still hear his moans reacting to the blowjob not being aware of the call because of the pleasure from those 2 sluts in his bed.
You just stood there at the entrance of the room not knowing how to react. You froze to the instance of seeing him naked, of seeing these girls as well - it looked like a porn movie live. Yet a milisecond later fear started to take over your body as you realized his mom is hearing her son's moans live and you fell on the floor starting to hang up the call. But oh, it was too late. His mom's voice became louder and he understood what was happening. Those two girls started screaming and his face turned red as if he's about to explode from anger and embarrassment.
You not being able to deal with the situation ran outside their apartment and took the first taxi home. How should you even react to this? How should you even explain the situation to Eric? You just wanted to give his phone to him so he can talk to his mom, you would have never expected for everything to turn out like this...
Many weeks have passed since the incident and that was the last time you went to their place. You met Eric of course, but it was always outside - in restaurants or parks. Eric was understanding, honesly the whole situation was extremely funny to him and he always teased you and laughed about it. Yet you were extremely embarrassed about it and avoided going to their place because you couldn't manage to see Juyeon again.
But then, a situation happened where you just needed to visit again. You finished your meeting with Eric at 8pm and went home from the restaurant. Yet on your way back home, you realised you left your phone charger with him, since you borrowed it to him during dinner. You immediately texted him and agreed for you stop by quickly at 10 o'clock for you to take it. He said you should just ring and he would know to open the door so you can avoid the possibility of meeting Juyeon. So right after you headed to his apartment and rang the bell. The door opened. It was not Eric Sohn in front of you.
"Um, is Eric here?" you asked, looking straight into Juyeon's dangerous eyes trying to act like everything is alright. He didn't answer but took your wrist and leaded you in the apartment. "Eric told me he will here at 10" - you said. "10am not pm, baby."
"Now you're all mine", Juyeon continued. Shivers went into your body. You didn't know how to react. Juyeon let your arm go and you wanted to open the door and run away again, yet the door was locked. And then you heard the click with which the lights turned off, the small night stand lamp being the only source of the light in the room.
"Is this what you are looking for?" - said Juyeon, holding the apartment key in his hands. You came closer trying to snatch the key from him. He hates you anyway, you just wanted to leave it all. On the other hand, the surroundings made you feel weak. Him swrling of keys with his enormous hands made you remember how long you've dreamt of those hands choking you. Him looking at you with the smirk made you remember how bad you wanted him to ruin you, just like those other girls you used to see every night.
And that day, you gave it in. Despite of everything, you could not resist how much you were actually attracted to this man. He was the source of your wet dreams, those dreams that you've always waited to come true. You decided to be brave and you took a few steps in front. You are a strong woman after all. He watched you surprisingly not even stating a word until you were only an inch away from his face. His daze was still as stroking and intense as before, but now you were so close to him you could feel his bulge getting harder and his breath getting faster and more delicate. "You were a very, very bad girl, y/n. You know that, right?" he said, his lips being literally a millimeter away from yours. You moved your gaze from his lips to his eyes, realizing he expects an answer from you. You just nodded slowly and tenderly.
At that very instant, it's like the past was forgotten. He dropped the key on the floor and used those hands to pull you in to the most delicate kiss you've ever had in your life. With every second, with every touch, you knew this guy was hella experienced. His lips were like made for yours. His kisses were desperate. They were angry and they wanted more. He licked your lower lip slowly looking you straight in the eyes, which was the most irotic scene you've ever experienced. "Do I have the permission to ruin you, kitten?" he asked. "Do whatever the fuck you want with me, Juyeon" you said in breaks from the burning hot makeout session.
He easily took you in his arms, just like you were made of feathers. Your lips did not split up to the moment he got you in his room and slammed the door behind him. He brought you to his bed and slowly paused. The room was in the complete darkness, but the streetlight from the outside was shining directly to his face while he was looking at you below him. He looked beautiful, he looked ethereal. Not breaking the eye contant, he started taking his belt off. Afterwards, instead of throwing it on the floor, he took your hands and used the belt to tie your hands to the poles around his bed.
"Punishment time starts, love", he said, while raising your skirt and literally ripping your underwear. From the gentle tone he started acting rougher and rougher and rougher. His fingers went into your core and he smirked after the realization of how wet you already were for him. But like literally how couldn't you - it was Lee fucking Juyeon! His fingers worked wonders and you were so sensitive to his touch. Simultaneously he also left kisses at every sensitive spot you had. The neck, around your earlobe, later moving to your nipples, sucking them mercilessly. His hands continued focusing and going around your clit. You were flabbergasted. As if he knew your body better than you. The moans and breaths filled the room while you drowned in pleasure. Not much later your body started uncontrollably shaking followed by the most powerful orgasm you felt in your entire life. You were sweating so much, laying below him on cloud 9 while Juyeon watched you feeling satisfied.
He still had all his clothes on, though. You felt like you owed him pleasure as well, but he was patient to wait. Because he didn't finish with you yet. He got closer to your face and when you expected him to touch your lips again, he started going around your lips, kissing everything except the lips themselves. He was such a tease, oh my goodness. These lips then continued lower to your body up to the point when his head was between your legs. He took both of them in his hands and started doing magic with his tongue. Still not completely recovered from the previous orgasm, another wave of pure, severe pleasure took over your body. Since your hands were tied up, you could not do anything except scream and swear his name, which he seemed to enjoy a lot. Soon your 2nd orgasm hit you and you were just a shaking, screaming and sweating mess.
"Juyeon, let my hands go", you bursted. "I need to touch you, please". You felt the urge of giving it back to him, the reciprocity law focing you to pay him back. After he let your arms free, the real game started. You've never felt so much chemistry with a person before. You stayed in his room until 5am and you two couldn't take your hands off of each other. After feeling him completely thoroughly inside you, it's like he left a spell on your body which made you addicted - to his touch, to his lips, to his cock, just to the way he made you feel. You did it on the bed, on the floor, in the bathroom as well. He knew extremely well how to lead you and you just went along. You made sure he felt good as well, deep throating the veiny monster he had, which made him whine and turn you on even more.
After your multihour long session ended, you had so many thoughts in your head. You felt filthy, you felt like you betrayed your dignity, but on the other hand oh damn it felt so good. You had no idea how you will explain this to Eric, but now you couldn't think about it. Juyeon took the blanket hugged you from the side holding your hand. He started massaging your knuckles and came closer to your ear. "How did it feel, babe?", he whispered. "Ah Juyeon, I don't know what to say", you answered, not knowing how to express your state of mind and body.
"I'm glad you could take it all you deserve.", he continued. "Next time, I'll allow Eric to join too. Now that we know that you're like us, you are ready to meet the other side of him, too."
#tbz smut#juyeon smut#the boyz smut#lee juyeon#juyeon the boyz#kpop smut#kpop imaging#juyeon#tbz#tbz imagine#lee juyeon smut#kpop#the boyz scenarios#tbz scenarios#tbz drabble#tbz juyeon
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𝘈𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘔𝘦 𝘈 𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦
pairing: draco malfoy x fem!reader
word count: 2.3k
summary: Draco Malfoy. His name was registered in your mind as your enemy, plain and simple. A platinum blonde idiot who you’d find much more likable if he’s just shut up everyone in a while. But what would happen if your parents arranged for you both to attend the yule ball together- would some hidden feeling shine their way out?
warnings: mentions of arranged marriages, mentions of feeling anxious, feelings of self doubt, kissing, angry love confession, crying, a little angst, please contact me if theres more !
a/n: Also this is an au where the yuleball is in seventh year and no Voldemort <3
masterlist. // gif creds // taglist form.
When Dumbledore announced the yule ball to the school in the middle of the dinner, you were a bit excited. Excited at the idea that you’d have the chance to be asked to the dance by some nice boy and that could potentially lead to a relationship.
But being born into a family like yours, you couldn’t hope for much. Not even a week after they got the news, your mother and father made an arrangement with the Malfoy’s that you would have to attend the ball with their son Draco.
You could've sworn they had been trying to set you both up for some kind of arranged marriage. Maybe them pushing you together was a way to soften a blow when it finally happened? But still, out of any one they just had to choose him.
You had grown up with him, Draco, and if you hadn't already known— he was what you called a... bitch boy. He’d tattle about small things, throw a few temper tantrums, and cry to get his way. This is why even though your families had been so closely connected for years, centuries even— he was your enemy and nothing could change that.
That fact wasn’t hidden from your parents, not in the slightest. They saw the numerous dirty looks you’d throw at each other when you thought no one looking, not to mention the childish pulling of hairs and elbowing with shoulders.
But they also saw the good things about your relationship, how'd you do little things for each other that made a bigger impact than you thought, like it was second nature.
Like whenever another dinner party would come up where there were random families of investors, business owners or, just more snooty rich people— Draco would always make sure you were seated right next to him in the case that both of you had to show up.
It honestly wasn’t that much of a big deal from his view point. Only an idiot couldn’t tell that you found yourself uncomfortable around new people and him saving you a seat was just common decency.
And there was always little moments where they’d find you both curled into each other after one of the tense meetings you had to attend seeing as you’d be graduating soon and still had the responsibility of up keeping your family names once you were adults.
Draco would be there tenderly playing with your hands and venting. Because while he did come off as confident about everything in his life, how he had both the Malfoy and Black fortuned to fall back onto, you could tell he was still scared of the future— of growing up.
That fear is also what led to the very rushed apology he had offered to the golden trio for his past behavior. You did have to physically push him into them and he did choke up on the words of kindness that were supposed to make the apology sincere but he still did it.
They hadn't forgiven him of course, they just sort of stared like some one had cast an unforgivable curse on the boy seconds before, but at least they were now, they were civil towards each other.
And even though you did do those things for him, that didn’t stop you from not wanting to do this and neither did it stop you from impatiently waiting outside of the great hall doors.
Your dress was made out of nothing less of the finest fabrics and silks you could get your hands onto. You knew it wouldn't make a single dent into your families Gringotts account but you felt that the purchase would make some sort of statement.
“You’re five minutes late,” you seethed, watching as a head of white-blonde hair finally round the corner. His hands brushed his jacket in a smug manor, getting rid of the invisible dust particles.
It really wasn’t that much time, many other students could still be found wither waiting for their dates or just standing around to show up ‘fashionably late’.
But you knew Draco had spent those minutes staring at himself in the mirror and fixing his oh so perfect hair.
“Some of us like to look good when showing up to these things,” he sneered before eyeing you in disgust.
“Oh please, this dress cost more than the gel you have piled in your hair.” His eyes narrowed at you along with a scrunch of his nose as he offered you the junction between his folded arm to lead you down the steps.
The night had gone pretty well so far, both of you somehow never finding the right time to leave the others side as you had planned. It seemed as if your friends had all decided to hide themselves away from you both— like they were planning something. Of course, they were.
Blaise fucking Zabini
That idiot talked Professor Flitwick into playing a slow song, one that every couple had to join in on. And while that did sound good at eye view, you had to sign a paper at the begging saying if you coming as a couple or single. And the only people who had signed single to not face embarrassment were the staff—not counting Filch and Mrs. Norris.
Was this real, you being the living cliche of dancing with your enemy?
“If you step on my shoes one more time, I’ll leave you,” he growled into your, tightening his grip on your waist. Yeah, it was.
“What do you think I’ll do? Cry?” You asked in a mocking tone, sticking out your stuck your bottom lip out in a pout to taunt him even further.
Suddenly your front was pressed up against his back— your attention had been else where. Else where being reaching the goal of getting on his last nerve so when a husky voice whispered in your ear, you were shocked.
“Oh don’t act like I haven’t made you cry before.” He turned you back around swiftly, the only thing indicating what had just happened being the proud smirk on his face.
“Says you. Weren’t you the one who cried over a guy asking me out in fifth year?” You challenged, bringing up the incident that happened two years ago.
He hadn’t cried but he might as well have and you just needed something to tick him off for the moment. Whatever he had just did caused something to happened within you, and you weren’t sure if you liked it or not yet.
It was a situation that the blonde deeply wanted to regret—George Weasley asking you out. You and Draco had been finishing up on your work in the courtyard when he had invited himself to sit in between you and Draco and then proceeded to ask you out on a date.
Draco hadn't given you the chance to answer, a new found jealously fueling him to gather both of your things and drag you away from the scene.
He knew the chances were slim that you would reject the boy, and deep down tucked inside of him, Draco knew that the Weasleys were better than him— in some aspects.
Over the years Draco had found himself growing into a separate person from his parents, a person who had could think on their own and didn’t have to rely solely on his parents' truths.
And through that process, he realized that maybe his ideals were not the best out there. Including the way he treated many of his pears even if he was too proud to say it out loud.
That being said, he always stayed up wondering while you stayed. Why’d you even stick with him in the first place. And that’s what Brough him to find out his second greatest fear, loosing you.
Yes, you were insufferable at times, but you were still you. Someone that he liked having around and talking too. And someone that listened to him even if it was something as stupid as why gingers exist and why they shouldn't.
Yes that was an actual conversation that you had. In conclusion, you were a person he loved. But he never did think to tell you that because, why risk losing you over something that was most likely unrequited.
“I was protecting your future y/n. Would you like for your children to come out as gingers,” he spat as if what he had just made complete sense.
“Draco I was fifteen and he was sixteen at the time and we barely ever talked before that because you were always bad-mouthing his family.”
Now that you think of it, he had always been this way about you and boys. It was an ongoing thing where it didn't matter what blood type, what house, which people they associated themselves with, they were always ‘below you and you could find better’.
“Why do you always meddle in my relationships?” You were irritated. Maybe it was the close proximity of your bodies or maybe it was how oblivious he was.
“Meddle? You’ve never even been in a relationship,” he snorted making your point clearer than day.
“Exactly. Why are you so jealous of me wanting to break out of whatever shell we have enclosed over each other? What if I want to branch out and you know, talk to new people?”
Ouch.
It didn’t hurt that you considered him to be somewhat of an enemy, it was your thing—but you didn’t even consider him to be a friend?
“Alright then when about Pansy? I tried to break out of our ‘shell’ as you call it when I started talking to her.”
“Parkinson was not good for you then and now even more. We both know that.”
You weren’t a person who used the word hate. In most times it was used out of anger and would be regretted later on. But Pansy Parkinson? She was very deserving of the title of someone that you hated.
Commenting on someone else’s hair when she had been walking around with a bowl cut for the last last five years? It didn’t make sense to you how she always found a way to put her input in places where it truly wasn’t needed.
“Yeah alright. Then who is good enough for me y/n?”
“Oh I don’t know me,” you mumbled under your breath not expecting him to hear it— but he did.
That’s how you found yourself once again getting dragged away. But this time it was form the great hall to a more private place where none of the ears of Hogwarts could hear you both.
“What do you mean you’re good enough for me?” He asked with more disgust in his tone than wanted, and it crushed you.
You scoffed before going on, “Well I’ve known you since we were in diapers. Would it be so horrible to consider me good enough for you?” You asked watching as some emotion flickered past his eyes.
“I mean I know so many dumb things about you like how you hate the feeling of those sweaters that your mother always buys you and you turn them inside out. And then when she ask if you're wearing them you aren't lying to her face. Do you know how cute that is, that you don’t even harbor the ability to lie to your mum about something as small as that?”
Cute?
“And don’t get me started on how your favorite food is not that ridiculously priced stake that you try convincing people- even me. I know that it’s that tomato soup that your mum makes when you’re sick because it reminds you of being a kid. And guess what? I don’t even let the house elves make it for you when I say that they do—”
“Then who does y/n?” He asked softly while slowly bringing you to be trapped between his arms by one of the thick walls. He always had the suspicion be never thought you’d actually—
“Well I uh- I do it myself because I want it to have the same feeling of home as it always does and I sort of asked your mum the exact details on how to cook it like she does,” you explained peering up to look into his eyes.
“You hate the smell of tomatoes,” he said with a light laugh, it wasn’t out of amusement but pure adoration. Never did he think that you’d actually do that for him— of course, you were there when he was sick but it was more of making fun of his ‘weak immune system’ and throwing tissues at him.
“Well I love you more and don’t pretend like you don’t slip those house elves thank you letter—” You were once again cut off but instead it was by his hand reaching the side of your jaw to look up at him fully.
“Repeat that,” he whispered with a small smirk.
oh no
Tears started to cloud your vision, the realization hitting that you had may just ruin your relationship with your childhood- enemy- friend- frenemy?
“Don’t cry I’m not- I’m not mad at you. I’m happy, unbelievably so. I just need you to repeat exactly what you just said to me,” he said moving both hands to cup your face giving his thumbs access to wipe the liquid from under your eyes.
“I love you Draco and I’m sorry that I ruined this. We could honestly just forget it if you’d like.”
“I don’t want to forget anything. Would it be a surprise if I told you that I loved you back and that I have for a long time?”
Your eyebrows raised in surprise. Was he serious, or was this some sort of sick joke?
Noticing the worries floating around in your head, he gave you a look, one that wordlessly asked that if the next move he was going to make was the right one and that you would both be fine after.
And it was
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