#does it matter? either way I kinda wanna. fuck around with other names

[zero-braincells-left]

why do names have to be so hard :(

#i finally get around to actually perceiving myself as Zero #a name which i have no problems nor discomfort with #but still decide “eh im bored let’s do something new” #hello????? #i think it’s bc I feel weird going by that irl #But half of my other name ideas aren’t “socially acceptable” either #and i thought I didn’t give a fuck anyway?? #my friends dont and they’re the only ones I’d ask to call me that so #does it matter? either way I kinda wanna. fuck around with other names #BUT NONE OF THEM WORK RIGHT?? #I’ll probably like one in a few days and then hate it again huh (the genderfluid curse)

[gloxk]

Sneaky linkin’

(Eren Y. Armin A. Connie S.)

A/N: i’m not COMPLETELY back, but I am making a slight improvement w my mental health… so here’s sum slight for yall🤷🏽‍♀️. I kinda hate this but maybe yall will like it..ion know. Luv ya tho. 17+.

Synopsis: Aot men as sneaky links.

Warning: Smut.. F/M

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Eren! ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏 ———Back seat bandit

Eren..is definitely a back seat bandit. It’s mainly because he has a nice car, why not show it off?

Now, all i’m going to say is (Persian rugs- jacquees version.) Oh lawwwd, he definitely plays that while giving the most sloppiest, nastiest, messiest, back arching back shots ever. This man does NOT play.

Hair puller, choker, dirty talker. He’s the type to make you tell him how good he’s fucking you. “Uh-huh, right there? You like that baby?” And you better tell him too.

The hair pulling thing just comes by instinct. You could be giving this man the sloppiest head ever, deep throating him till hes hitting the back of your esophagus and all. The type of head that makes him feel like he’s shifting reality. He will tug your hair to get a real good look at your face, saliva dripping down your chin and red coating your face. A face that just screams ‘ Am I making you happy?’. He would stare at you with a shit eating grin just while the camera flash hits your face.

Degrading as fuck. He would just say some shit to boost his ego during sex. “I know you like that shit, stop acting like you don’t.” & “You can scream my name louder than that. Try again.” & “Stop fuckin running.” Don’t be fooled now, he’s also going to talk you through it and give you reassurance. “You doin so good f’me.” & “it’s all yours mami.” & “You look so pretty right now.”

Ugh this man just loves to have his hand wrapped around your body. Around your waist, neck, thighs, hands—it don’t matter to him. He loves touching on you. Any time yall link his hands just find their way over your body.

Connie! ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏 ——— Any time any where

Connie..is the type of guy who can fuck ANYWHERE. Car, room, closet, random family bathroom at a gas station—he don’t care.

If you’re down, he’s down. Y’all could be out shopping and he fucks you in the dressing room.

This man LOVES when you ride him. He would just watch you in awe while you bounce up and down on him.

Definitely a talker during sex, he loves telling you how good you’re doing. “Mhm—fuck—I love when you do that.” & “Cmoonn look at me while you do it.” & “Arch that back mama.”

Now, he’s a recorder. He records everything. He has a little folder in his phone dedicated to your link ups.

Although he’s gonna dick you down anywhere he can, his favorite place is the shower. Got some music playing in the background (P power - gunna) while he’s plowing into you. The shower couldn’t even cover up your loud moans.

Pull out ? Nah, “You wanna be grown, let’s be grown baby.” He doesn’t believe in wasting, so either you sucking it up or taking that shit.

Armin! ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏 ——— munch

Armin..is an eater. He’s gonna eat like it’s his last meal every fucking time. His tongue game is vicious. Absolutely diabolical, the messiest head you will ever get.

Salvia dripping on the couch, tears falling from your eyes due to overstimulation, legs locking around his head—he still wouldn’t stop. He won’t stop till you force him to.

Hold on now, Armin ain’t just an eater, he got good dick too. He’s a saint that’s gonna fuck you like a sinner. Let him get some liquor in his system and you’re going to be begging for round 2.

Speaking of drunk Armin, he’s gonna fuck you against a wall. Just something that’s going to happen one way or the other. One leg in the air while the other dangles just above the floor, his hands gripping on your ass so hard it leaves a mark.

Oh it doesn’t stop there either, he’s going to stumble his way to the bed and take you there too.

Hella vocal whimpering, moaning, whispering. He’s going to let you know your pussy good. “God-you feel so fuckin good.” & “Please keep doing that.”

Loves teaching you new things, different kinks, positions, anything of the sort. I know he just loves exploring and experimenting things with you. He’s a freaky freak for sure. <3

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whore…

#eyena writes♡ #eren jeager smut #eren jeager x reader #eren x black fem!reader #eren x black reader #eren x reader #eren x y/n #eren x you #eren yeager #eren smut #armin x black reader #armin x y/n #armin x you #armin fluff #armin x reader #plug connie #connie x black reader #connie smut #armin smut #aot smut

[jar-of-something-else]

sleeping w/ the mercs [IT IS LIKE THAT]

these are so badddddd bro literally ignore this i just need practice and the mercs are my victims pinky promise i'll get better

yeah the title is the exact same as the tf2 headcanons from my main SO WHAT

if ur under 16 please don't interact 👍🏻

afab reader i’m sorry guys :( gender is totally neutral though

obviously this is under a cut

warnings/includes: MENTIONS OF SYRINGES/NEEDLES, SCALPELS, AND MEDICAL STUFF IN MEDIC'S SECTION!!!!!! AND KNIVES AND BLOOD IN SNIPER'S!!!! these are so bad, pyro is insane, medic is also insane, sniper is depraved, actually everybody's depraved, i'm depraved and also so so sorry

mostly what they're into/how they behave, nothing super reader specific in these ones

Scout:

-he’s got enough experience but he isn’t as good as he says he is, he’s got the spirit though and that’s what matters

-really good with his fingers but he can't find the clit half the time so help him out a bit

-absolutely an ass man but isn’t into anal

-scout usually likes positions where he can easily see/touch your ass (doggy, reverse cowgirl, etc)

-definitely says cringe shit in the bedroom, 100% refers to himself as daddy (which is canon i think?? i remember him having a voice line where he does that, could be wrong tho)

-has tried (and failed) to call you kitten on the regular but reverted back to the usual (still cringy) nicknames he calls you after demo made fun of him

-he never shuts up so the dirty talk is CRAZYYYY

-calls you stuff like doll, baby, babe, and uses pretty girl/boy/baby and babygirl/boy/doll when he's close

-even though he’s a little clumsy with it, he really does like giving oral, just give him a little direction; BUT likes receiving oral even more, sorry abt ur knees babe 💔

-definitely into semi-public sex, he won’t do anything in front of people but you bet your ass he’s finding some alleyway or storage closet to get freaky in

-does get jealous pretty easy and even though he’s usually not too rough with you he is not above manhandling when he sees fit

-the dog tags stay on, do with that what you will

Soldier:

-good GAWD

-literally so mean but mean in a hot way so that makes it okay

-absolutely nickname crazy; most of them aren't very cute or sexy (i.e. cadet, maggot, etc) but cupcake always makes an appearance

-very much into verbal degradation because of course he is, is also very into manhandling and just kinda tossing you around but he doesn't wanna hurt you too bad

-rarely ever fucks on an actual bed, usually it's the nearest wall/table/chair/couch, any surface you could lay/sit on really

-no the helmet is not coming off but that adds to it

-the honey IS going on though, maybe not his full body but it will make an appearance (he’s def into foodplay)

-tiny bit of a size kink, i think soldier is one of the taller, bulkier mercs so there's a very good chance he's much bigger than you in one way or another

-would absolutely be interested in a threesome with demo let's get real here

-very attracted to body hair bc i say so

-likes positions where he's very obviously the one in control/with the power; very into restraint either with some device (handcuffs, rope, etc) or with his own hands

-VERY loud, so good luck with that lmao

Pyro:

-man,,,,

-obviously into temperature and wax play

-the mask and suit do not come off, but pyro has a plethora of toys to use on you instead 😊

-gets off on the idea that he's some faceless person you can't really understand that has complete control over you and your body

-does occasionally lift the mask up just above his nostrils to kiss you, though, scarred lips be damned

-does babble a lot, even though it's all muffled; the nicknames he uses are surprisingly cute, he'll call you stuff like sugarplum, marshmallow, firefly, sugar cube, and other sickly-sweet names

-doesn't like showing you his bare skin/body because of their burn scars, but pyro does enjoy grinding if you wanna help him out that bad

-derives most of his pleasure from making you feel good, though, so he isn't really looking for any type of physical release on his end

-pyro's are kinda short i just can't think of any more rn i apologize 💔

Demo:

-WHAT A MAN 😍😍😍

-#1 lover out of all the mercs get fucked spy

-i think his build is very similar to soldiers, maybe an inch or two taller, so he definitely has the same lowkey size kink

-is also open to a threesome with soldier

-absolutely a service dom but he teases so much

-FAKE SYMPATHY!!!! FAKE SYMPATHY!!!!!!!

-likes when you call him by his name more than any of the cheesy titles dudes usually want their significant other to call them but he is always referring to you by any nickname he can think of; the most popular ones are lamb, sweetheart, lass/lad, my girl/boy/baby and "poor, sweet thing"

-loves talking to you and making you talk back to him even when you're literally on a different planet; makes you tell him what you want him to do even though he knows exactly what you're gonna say

-also slightly into dumbification (not to the extent medic or engineer are, though, he just thinks it's hot)

-very much into face and thigh riding

-foreplay alone could last as long as an hour if he's feeling "mean" at that particular time

-THIGH MAN!!!!!! LET'S GO!!!!!!!!!!

-makes you hold eye contact with him, sometimes the eyepatch comes off 🥴

-likes giving a whole lot more than receiving but he isn't about to turn down a blowjob if you offer

-waking you up with oral, it's his version of breakfast in bed

Heavy:

-and you thought demo was a service dom 🙄

-literally will do whatever you ask him to he does not care, as long as you feel good he's content

-very obvious size kink and it's very easy to exploit, but heavy doesn't take too kindly to teasing (he isn't about to stop you, though)

-speaks mostly in russian so unless you're fluent you can't really understand him but you get the gist of what he's saying by the tone in his voice

-outside of whatever russian bullshit he's spouting out, he calls you his "leetle bunny"

-tries to be gentle with you because of how big he is, but if he's provoked he can and will get wild

-as stated above, he can and will get wild, which includes his dirty talk; russian praise will turn into demeaning english muttered in your ear

-BREEDING KINK !!!!!!!!!!

-doesn't tease you on purpose, but he goes slow enough to where you think he's fucking with you (no pun intended)

-begging is never necessary but it is a guilty pleasure of his

-doesn't ask to receive oral often but watching you struggle with it does kinda turn him on even more

-face sitting extraordinaire, yes he does make the stupid eating sounds like in the game and yes he does it on purpose to try to make you laugh

-LET HEAVY FUCK NASTY GOD DAMN IT!!!

Engineer:

-WHAT A MIGHTY GOOD MAN 😍😍😍

-much stronger than you'd think he is and he does use that to his advantage

-slight temperature play when the gunslinger is involved, it's just a little colder than room temperature but it's a very stark contrast

-loves conflicting his speech with his actions; he'll sweet talk and praise you while he's railing you into next week

-speaking of, he'll call you anything but your name. honeybee, honey, darlin', sweet girl/boy/baby, baby girl/boy/doll, any nickname that sounds hot in a southern accent he's callin you

-he absolutely has a daddy kink but won't tell you unless you have one too and approach him first, chances are you're younger than he is and he doesn't wanna make you think he's a weirdo

-all in all, the dirty talk is INSANEEEEEEEE

-absolutely into dumbification, he knows he's smart and he gets off on the power imbalance when you're babbling about nothing and he's still perfectly present

-also slightly into dacryphilia? it's not attractive when you're crying from pain, sadness, frustration, etc but he likes making you feel so good you're overwhelmed and all you can do is cry for him

-might forget to take the helmet and goggles off, but if you want him to keep them on then by all means he will

-would absolutely abide by the cowboy hat rule (if you don't know what that is, basically if a cowboy puts his hat on your head y'all are fuckin' later on)

-very much into bigger people, the extra chub around the thighs, chest, cheek, and stomach areas are a weakness of his

MEDIC!

-the moment we've all been waiting for

-kinda like soldier in the fact that he's mean in a hot way, but it's less bully-mean and more absolutely deranged mean

-of course he's into degradation and medical play, definitely dacryphilia and dumbification (for similar reasons engineer is), another merc with a slight size kink cause medic is big as hell

-likes to get you on the operation table and trace a syringe or scalpel (or both if he's feeling patient [haha get it]) along your body purely for the fear it evokes from you

-wants to get you scared/vulnerable and that's how he starts his foreplay; totally into the whole predator/prey thing but not in the same way sniper is, medic is more into metaphorical or psychological hunting rather than the actual thing

-FAKE SYMPATHY!!!!!! FAKE SYMPATHY!!!!! FAKE SYMPATHY!!!

-teases, edges, and overstimulates you to the point of tears and gets this stupid smug look on his face while cooing at you

-calls you demeaning names, like pet, but he's got some cute ones he uses too; täubchen, maus, schatz, and liebling (dove, mouse, sweetheart, and darling) are very prevalent in and outside of the bedroom

-if you're okay with it, medic does like to use you as a bit of stress relief when everybody else is getting on his nerves

-is 100% down for a doctor/nurse or doctor/patient roleplay let's get real here

-also into semi-public sex, sometimes he'll leave the medbay door unlocked and slightly ajar purpose just to mess with you

-though he is very rough with you most of the time, he likes to save his more tender moments for when the two of you are in an actual bedroom and not his workspace

Sniper:

-wild. like genuinely doesn't know what to do with himself when he's horny he just goes fucking crazy.

-even though he gets crazy insane, he doesn’t really know what all to do and it frustrates him; he doesn't have much experience when it comes to sexual acts with another person involved so please give him some pointers

-absolutely into knife play come on

-if you have a period, he'd also be down for period sex he does not care about blood in the slightest

-isn't all that nickname-heavy like some of the other mercs here, but he does sprinkle them into his dirty talk. it's usually the same things he calls you outside of the bedroom, like 'roo, darl', and love

-into body worship, giving or receiving. he likes making you feel beautiful and he likes feeling good about himself too

-would definitely want you to suck him off while he does target practice and i know this is such a popular headcanon but come on guys

-another popular headcanon is sniper being into predator/prey dynamics which like,,,come on. it's literally perfect. you're telling me this nutcase dude wouldn't be into scaring the shit out of you by physically hunting you down. it's basically canon idc

-likes biting and leaving marks on your neck/shoulders in very visible areas because he's kind of a possessive guy ngl

-as much as he likes people seeing the aftermath of what he does to you, sniper is a very private person so he really wouldn't be all that into sneaky sex. the closest you'll get is his sniper nest while he does target practice on cease-fire days

Spy:

-despite being an asshole on the regular, he's a very attentive lover

-into body worship but only giving, he already knows he's fine and he wants to make sure you're never insecure about yourself

-bilingual babe 😍 speaks in french so much you can't really understand what he's talking about but he's more than happy to give you a translation

-also has a daddy kink let's get real here

-KNIFE PLAY!!!!!!!!!!

-heavily into power play as well, similar to pyro because he'll keep his clothes (including the mask and gloves) on while you're completely bare to him

-likes buying you lingerie

-likes getting and giving head the same amount, he has no real preference cause it's gonna end in sex every time anyway 🤷‍♀️

-french nicknames ONLY!!!! mon cher (my dear), ma chérie/mon chéri (my darling), amour/mon amour (love/my love), gentille fille/garçon/bébé (sweet girl/boy/baby), mon ange (my angel) [currently using my basic understanding of the french language for evil]

-semi-public and public sex spy does not give a fuck he has a cloaking device for a reason 🙄🙄

-if you don't already have one he will give you an accent kink

#i'm so SORRYYYYY #tf2 fans please don't beat me over the head #i just need practice </3 #yeah i included some salt n peppa references too i couldn't help myself #tf2 headcanons #tf2 x reader #tf2 smut #scout x reader #soldier x reader #pyro x reader #demoman x reader #heavy x reader #engineer x reader #medic x reader #sniper x reader #spy x reader #smut headcanons #god i am so sorry

[goldenchunkycat]

Somnophilia with Neteyam

[Ok not doing a oneshot but here is the somnophilia thing @devilish-mirage and anon]

In aged up!Neteyam’s eyes you're the prettiest woman (after his mother of course). During day time, when he has nothing to do, he would love watching you do your thing. Let it be fishing, dancing, or whatever is your hobby, you're just really pretty when you're doing an activity that you like. Sometimes you get angry at yourself or at other and you frown. Neteyam think you're cute when you do that. But in all honesty? Neteyam could kiss the ground for you.

So imagine when you're sleeping next to him ? So peaceful ? I think that the thought of being comfortable enough to share your bed with him would excites Neteyam. Despite being mean he's a praiser, and I kinda feel like this type of person get sexually arouse from knowing that their other significant is comfortable around them. At least Neteyam does. Anyway. There's night when Neteyam would come back late from the hunt. You would already be sleeping. So the guy would climb on the bed, gush over your cuteness, and then open your legs for him. There's no 50% with the blue boy, it's either 0% or 100%, and he would easily flip from 0 to 100.

Obviously, you guys talked about it before. Lemme tell you that after you had this discussion he fucked you hard. Boy was too excited ♡ He waited some time before doing it because he wanted you to forget about it. Going back to Neteyam fucking you while you're sleeping.

First of all he would be very careful and gentle, he don't wanna wake you up, where's the fun in that ? He would gently remove the cover and stare at your body for a good five minute. He's so infatuated with you. Then he would keep the unnecessary touch to the bare minimum. Just enough fo you to be able to take him but not much so you don't wake up. He would definitely finger you or eat you out first, depends on his mood, but again, he would be very gentle and take it slow. He would absolutely love it if you whimper and moan silently, moving around while trying to be comfortable in the sheets. Sometimes he would stop what he's doing to take a look at your face and he would be even harder - if that's possible - if you're getting hot and bothered. But sometimes he would be relentless and carry on his ministrations because he just want to dip it and then cuddle you. Once you're prep enough he would finally give in and fuck you. Again, it would depend on the day. If he's feeling very horny he would lay you on you back and fuck you missionary because he wants to have a look at your beautiful breast, if he's feeling cuddly he would lay you on the side and take you from behind - big spoon thing you know ? And if he wants to take risks he would lay you on your stomach, grab your hips and thrust into you from behind. No matter what position he put you in, he would come if he hears you call his name while your sleeping. You would be mad and a tiny bit aroused when you wake up because the man just let his cum drip from your hole. In his defense he said that you thighs looked pretty covered in his cum ♡

Small scenario suggested by @devilish-mirage:

When Neteyam and some hunters came back to the cave where his people were spending the night, everyone was sleeping. It was dark outside and, judging by the smell that was remaining in the air, everyone ate and went to sleep.

The hunter made his way towards you, who were sleeping in the depths of the cave, and watched your sleeping form a frown on his face. You both agreed to slip out of the group tonight to indulge your desire for each other somewhere in the forest . You were traveling for a week now, to meet another clan, and during this enormous amont of time nothing happened between you two. Nothing. Not even a blowjob. You even forbid him from making out with you when he tried to take you when the Na'vis were well ahead of you two. He was mad. So why were you sleeping when you finally allowed him to fuck you ?

"No Love, I won't stand for it..." he murmured while crouching down, removing the fur from your sleeping body.

"Neteyam, where did you put the meat ?" a voice murmured a few feet away from them.

"The cave above this one." Neteyam answered softly while he laid you on your back and put the cover over the two of you.

"Which one ?" another voice asked after some time.

Unbothered, the boy kept on taking off your bottoms as he laid his body on top of yours, trying to feel every inches of your skin against his. "Left one."

Eventually, they stopped asking him questions - not that he was bothered by it anyway. Looking at your sleeping face, he smiled and kissed your forehead, intertwining his fingers with yours, the other hand massaging your private part.

"So pretty with your eyes closed..." he murmured, kissing your eyelid. "She really thought that she could go to sleep and leave me like this ?" he laughed quietly, genuinely amused by your forgetfulness.

Slowly, he slipped one finger into your cunt, waiting a moment before adding a second. He worked his way into your pussy, keeping an eye around him. Everyone was still asleep, unaware of the fact that their favorite warrior was fucking his girlfriend while she was sleeping. And you were still asleep too. You flinched, moved, shivered, whimpered, but you never woke up; you were a heavy sleeper.

"Today's hunt was pretty good." someone whispered from a corner of the room. "Neteyam caught a good amount of prey."

"As usual." another boy laughed as he shifted in his cover. "What do you think, Neteyam ?"

"Yeah today was..." Neteyam paused and glanced at your sleeping face as he entered a third finger in your pussy. "Very good."

Your mouth parted and, just-in-time, Neteyam pressed his lips against yours, silencing your moan.

"I can't have you making those pretty sound with everyone around..." Neteyam whispered in your ear, removing his fingers from your vagina. As he was about to turn you on your side, a silhouette loomed over you. Discretely, Neteyam rolled his eyes and after adjusting the cover on you two, turned around towards the person who was disturbing him at this hour of the night.

"You forgot an arrow in the forest, I'll just put it here."

"Sure, thank you." he smiled as he adjusted his position in order to hug you from behind, not caring that the man wad still standing next to you.

"I've never notice it before but your arrows are way more lightweight than ours. What kind of wood did you use ?"

"Oh. Hum. Can we talk about it tomorrow ?" he laughed, looking embarrassed, faking guilt on his face, "I'm just really tired..."

"Yeah sure ! I'll go to sleep too. Good night."

"Good night !"

Neteyam waited for the man to lie down in his bedding and, once no was roaming around the area, turned his attention back to your sweating body. The cave was crowded so the air was thick and hot and Neteyam's ministrations did not help at all.

Carefully, he lifted your head and slipped his arm under it, covering your mouth with his slender fingers. His other hand traveled down your body, gripping and lifting your thigh. He positioned the tip of his cock on your pussy before eventually thrusting slowly. Whenever he was fucking you in your sleep he was always attentive to the sounds you were making and the way your body reacted. He did not wanted to wake you up, if you were sleeping it meant that you were tired. So he thrusted in and out at a slow pace. He was making love to your body.

Due to the slow pace he was fucking you to, he waited a good amount of time until he felt that familiar feeling in his lower belly. He muffled his moans in your hair, gripping your thigh a little harder. He lifted his head and looked at your face - again. You were frowning and pouting, your eyes tightly closed, and he was able to tell that your mouth was agape as puff of air was hitting his palm at irregular intervals. You were so pretty. So he came, silencing his cry by bitting your shoulder. Your upper body moved away from his at the feeling of his little fangs on your skin but you remained peacefully asleep, unaware how Neteyam used your body to get off.

Huffing, Neteyam released your thigh and slide in fingers on your still connected private parts (?), smiling when he felt his cum dripping around the base of his penis. He removed his hand from your mouth and put it in your hair, stroking it in a lazy way as he adjusted his hips and fell asleep, his cock still inside of your pussy.

Masterlist

#avatar the way of water #avatar 2 #avatar 2022 #atwow x you #atwow x reader #neteyam #neteyam x reader #neteyam x you #neteyam smut #neteyam headcanons #neteyam scenario #atwow smut #x reader #smut

[seek--rest]

I'm nosy and I also love enabling people to rant, so tell us the reasons why you think spideychelle and irondad hate Peter (I kinda know with irondad tho). Anyway, go off, rant away!

I should give a disclaimer since people lack the emotional fortitude to scroll by opinions they disagree with: this is just an opinion, based on years of being in both of these fandoms and what I’ve been witness to.

To me, there are large swaths of both irondad and spideychelle that do not seem to give a shit about Peter Parker (and as a result, Spider-Man).

IronDad is a bit more obvious to anyone who has been around fandom for a bit. It’s in the name; the inordinate focus of 80% of IronDad fics are about Tony: his fears, his worries, what he thinks about Peter, how his life has been changed from being around Peter. If it’s a whump fic, it’s about how Peter being hurt harms Tony. If it’s a “team” fic, it’s about how Peter can defend/support/have so much hero worship for Tony. If it’s a “family” fic, it’s about Peter is Tony’s long lost son and how that affects him or how learning how to be a Father figure matters for Tony— not the literal orphan who watched his uncle die and is raised by his single aunt, Peter Parker. Even in fics that are in Peter’s POV, you can throw a dart and hit a fic that will most likely be revolving around how Peter fits into Tony’s life compared to the other way around. And if you wanna argue about this, ask yourself— how many fics can you think of that genuinely and truly have Peter’s life and friends at Midtown that don’t debase them into memes or complications where Tony shows up as a cameo one-liner, compared to the alternative?

If you can name those, but you can’t give specifics for the alternative— that gives you a picture of how imbalanced things are.

Spideychelle is a bit trickier, not just because it’s a smaller fandom (which is its own issue and in large part because of IronDad utterly consuming MCU Spider-Man fic which is a problem because he is fucking Spider-Man and should have enough fic and a presence to not be ALWAYS subsumed into Tony Stark’s life but I digress), but because this is not just giving a shit about Peter— but more not giving a shit about Spider-Man.

Not that irondad is free of these tropes (which so much of irondad being starker lite is a topic for another day), but spideychelle focuses on the romance: the getting together, the smut, the relationship, etc. Spider-Man is an obstacle and not in the fun story way. It’s an annoyance, something to be overcome, disregarded or completely ignored because what people really want is tomdaya rpf the romantic journey. It’s far more likely to shoot a dart and find a fic that revolves around the feelings and the relationship between the two of them, with the Spider-Man aspect of who he is being something delegated to a one line reference to patrol or exposition of how Peter “used to prioritize” the city over MJ but “chooses better now” which— sure. But in a vacuum, if the focus is just constantly smut, constant romantic yearning, constant hyperfocusing on either Peter and MJ (because fuck Ned, Flash, May, or literally anyone else right?) that also tends to be no powers or Spider-Man as a non-entity, then I have a hard time believing that people actually give a shit about Peter. Peter is Spider-Man, if you remove that from the equation, he’s just another romantic love interest for the MC the writer projects on.

(And that to me is where the blatant hypocrisy comes in because the sins of irondad are long and many but spideychelle fandom being pretentious as hell, claiming to truly love Peter MORE than irondad, only to ignore Ned and Flash and May in the same ways that IronDad does is ridiculous. IronDad is terrible about Peter’s side characters— and terrible in deeply misogynistic and racist ways, full stop end of story. But spideychelle, while not always or explicitly racist and misogynistic, is really no fucking better if Peter’s best friend doesn’t exist except to give Wisdom or May becomes “MJ’s sole maternal figure” like… do we not all see the connections here)

It’s why my ultimate Thought is that both fandoms have a lot of great strengths but also are absurdly hypocritical about the other in ways neither seems to be self aware about.

IronDad focuses so hard on Spider-Man that Peter Parker doesn’t exist; at best, he’s a flingy little hero that the Avengers can fawn over or a wise cracking whump target that Tony can worry over and at worst, he’s an OOC sobbing little sad sack that couldn’t breathe without Tony and needs cuddles with him and him alone to survive the big bad world. When it comes to Peter’s life, world, friends, family, internal motivations, the focus of the story isn’t Peter as an end to itself— it’s Tony.

Spideychelle focuses so hard on Peter Parker that Spider-Man doesn’t exist: at best he’s a sarcastic little flirty shit that MJ has always been deeply obsessed with and has never known love before until he came into her life or an awkward idiot who can’t form a sentence in front of her and at worst, he’s just a white guy with a dick that sees MJ as another hole. When it comes to Peter’s life, world, friends, family, internal motivations, the focus of the story isn’t Peter as an end to itself— it’s the relationship (not even MJ as a person, which is somehow even worse).

It’s disappointing not just as a Peter Parker fan but also to the detriment of both Tony and MJ— both of whom are characters that have so much potential and are both debased into the most basic and bland characterization they can be that are almost co-dependent to Peter Parker.

Now before someone gets themselves into a snit, I’m not saying fics that combine the best of them don’t exist. Clearly, they do. I love reading them. But they’re not the default— in both “sides” of fandom— and it’s why I’ve been constantly frustrated since 2019 that Peter Parker is the one connecting thread to these two aspects of fandom.

It should not be so fucking rare for anyone to give a shit about Peter enough to see him as that focus, that even when TALKING about MCU Spider-Man— the fandom isn’t even fucking about him, it’s about these relationships.

#seek speaks #i just know someone is gonna read this and say #‘seek is so mean about what people like she’s trying to run fandom’ #girl go to therapy how is that even possible #if one person’s opinion can ruin you that badly that really is a you problem #you have the backbone of a chocolate eclair #‘let people enjoy things’ and I enjoy thinking critically about what I love so #cause let’s be clear: I love it here #I love fandom #/eye/ am still creating the works that I want to see and reading extensively #can you say the same?

[cookiewarriorexpert]

(One word, Genderbent you)

You looked at the male for what seemed to be hours, but he looked at you back like he was thinking like you.

“Are you me?”

“I think so?”

“Oh cool! I kinda wanna see my girlfriends genderbents but I think I’ll be in a whole lot of trouble if I come home late, but looks like I’m stuck here, wanna grab a cup of sugary drinks?” Said the cheery male, you looked at him like a brother.

“Hell yes! Let’s go!” You said as you jumped him, clinging to his back like an overjoyed kid as he began to walk to yours and his favorite bakery while holding you piggyback style.

But it seemed like ingo and emmet fans were watching you interacting with another man, to be fair you were blocking his face from view. So what do the fans do? Spam Emmet and Ingo with photos of this ‘Affair’.

WHOOP WHOOP THATS THE SOUND OF THE POLICE!*

You were giggling with your genderbent version the whole way, having way too much fun and also saying a bunch of things at the same time while also trying to jinx him.

“So how’s the girl versions of the subway bosses?” You asked curiously.

“If ya mean Emma being super clingy and whiny along with Inko being a dictionary and is way too self conscious, then ya feel my pain.” Said your male version as he smiled while staring with wide eyes, drinking the same sugary drink.

“I feel ya dude, I feel ya. Boy do we need a vacation.” You joked, both you and him looked at each other silently and suddenly before laughing your asses off.

“Oh my god! Emma and Inko would jump me if they see me with you…… probably their fans would take this situation wrong……… and they would get the wrong idea………. and confront me……. WAIT! Did you alert your boyfriends!” Asked your male version, you paused, no you didn’t.

“Oh shit! You’re right!”

“I am right bitch! Oh my what do we do!? If I know Inko and Emma, and I definitely know a lot! Arceus forbids I know what will happen to you!” Said You genderbent version as he freaked out for your ability to walk and for your body.

Then he looked horrified as he noticed two people looking around for a certain someone.

“Okay quiet down, your boyfriends are here and they are pissed, wow Emmet looks terrifying! Why does he have to be the genderbent version of my girlfriend?!” Whispered your male version as you turned around like an idiot before looking back at him.

You looked horrified when you saw two other figures looking around as well.

“Hey ummm, I think your gfs are here and they don’t look happy either!” Whispered you as he also turned around and looked at you.

“Hey (Name)/ Hey (A/v Name)” the two pair of twins said in unison, they both didn’t sound happy then they quickly turned to look at each other before backing away.

“Who are you?” Said Emmet.

“I am Emma, who are you?” Demanded the female subway boss.

“I am Emmet, This is Ingo. Whatever this is doesn’t matter, we just saw (Name) with another man!” Said Emmet.

“Well this is Inko, this situation doesn’t matter to us as well, and we just saw (A/v Name) with another Woman!” Said Emma looking pissed aswell as Emmet with the same angry smile.

“The jig is up. Looks like we will be hitting the sheets faster than you can say,’Haha! I’m so fucking screw.’”

“Same here man. Emmet, Ingo, this is a huge misunderstanding, this is my other version, my male version, sorry for not telling you sooner.” You said as your other version explained as well.

They looked at you then at your male version, Emma and Inko looked at you as well. You and your male version stood side by side.

Both you and your male version do look similar, they do indeed look scrumptiously gorgeous, as well as having those eyes that look so innocent, as well as having well a lot of similar things that they could list.

“Hmp! Well we can’t stand the thought of you going out with another Man/Woman!” Whined Emma and Emmet as they cling to you and your male version.

After being basically dragged back home they proceeded to stare at you and your male version, it was like two sheep with four wolves that were starving.

“Why are staring at us? We apologized, hey wait what are you doing with those handcuffs?! RUN BROTHER RUN!!!! Fucking Arceus why!!!” You yelled as you dragged your male version as four subway bosses chased after you and him.

You then proceeded to lock yourself and (a/v name) in the bathroom, you both grimaced at the banging door, hearing Emmet’s and Emma’s giggles were so goddamn horrifying.

“Is this hell?” Asked (A/v Name) as he held you close like a stuffed plushy.

“No……… it is so much worse, it’s heaven.” You replied.

CRACK!*

THEY FUCKING BROUGHT A HAXORUS?!?

Emmet and Emma stared through the large crack with a terrifying smile.

“Heresss EMMA/EMMET!!”

Cue you and (A/v Name) Screaming like little girls while holding each other*

Ten thousands years later………

“Hey how u holding up?” You asked while limping, he only stared at you before shaking his head, his voice was gone, along with the ability to walk properly.

“These damn bitches are too good for their own good! Why did we decide to fall for them hard?” You asked while give him a cup of water.

He only shrugged as he started to turn on the Tv and began to watch the show how it’s made.

Ingo and Inko were talking about some stuff before looking a bit guilty about what happened last night, maybe they overdid it a bit too much.

“Darling are you alright?” They said in unison as they caress yours and (A/v name)’s cheek.

“Besides is getting handcuffed to the bed, getting fingered in every hole, getting said filled in every hole, having to deal with so many hickeys and bite marks that me and my boy here so fucking traumatized, aaaannndd having to Emmet and Emma having to shove up a vibrator up our asses and set it high…….. oh my Arceus what a list, but anyways yeah we good, but please try to be a little more gentle. Can’t have my bro with a fucked up mouth.” You pleaded to Inko, (A/v name) was looking super depressed and laying on the couch was already so pitiful to look at.

Ingo and Inko both spent the entire day helping you and (A/v name) around while Emmet and Emma are pitching in new ideas to fuck up the body.

Pretty sure that you have to sleep with one eye open from now on

#emmet x reader #ingo #ingo x reader #pokemon ingo #ingo and emmet #subway boss emmet #submas emmet #subway boss ingo #alternate reality #emmet pkmn

[ask-bigsistermoon]

❇ hey Moon i made a very bad mistake. I mean its kinda not my fault but still it is my fault to some extent . i was messing around with how adaptable and good at surviving to say it the simplest. i can make my avatars because i was bored . well the answer is : EXTREMELY ADAPTABLE and well i made 3? new avatars... Accualy 2 avatars all of the avatars i made were put to a test of how good at surviving they are . their goal was : SURVIVE UNDER ANY CONDITIONS. All of them passed with 100% . to put them on that test i needed to cut my connection to them making them seperate enteties that can operate without me pozzesing them . i. Was observing each one of them with my overseer avatar to see how well are they at what i made them good at . after the test i regained the connection to them and they stopped being a seperate entity. I i would like to add that i was kinda basing these avatars off creatures from my world and other universes . well theres where the mistake occured or rather i say an error. The third avatar. The one that was doing WAY better than the first and second and must i say it was too good at surviving and adapting went rouge . by that i mean i was unable to regain connection to it - im not able to control it , the " avatar" became its own thing. i made a monster Moon. i didnt even wanna use this avatar i was planning on getting rid of it because it was just... Really hard to control it even before cutting connection. the ' avatar' looks as if Carrion moster from Carrion had an unholy child with Rot and some poor slugcat , its as big as a Miros bird at least the main body because the Legs can change their lenth ,it had the ability of the weird insects from the paincones - it can immobilize a red lizard in seconds , it also has the ability of Spitter Spider-paralizing darts , and big spider - it can revive itself for a short amout of time , and of course Long legs great hearing and the legs if it grabs you therses no escapin it , it also has way too many fucking mouths and eyes it grew them after i lost connection to it , it also can regenerate by eating . it can eat anything , its really smart too . i pray to whatever cruel god there is that this thing cant reproduce even tho i dont believe in god . its currently near Pebbles leg in the memory crypts massacaring Miros birds and i think its heading his way. This avatar is REALLY agressive and it should be killed under any circumstances . killing it in a way that it wont revive itself with its ability should do the trick because i didnt connect these avatars to the cycle before the test at least i hope ,i didnt connect them . i sent a similar message to NSH and a warning to pebbles because no way in hell would he believe me if i explained it to him like i explained it to you and NSH . also i think its good to add that this thing doent give a f about the rain it does nothing to it . it just walks around like its nothing while it rains eating any poor animal that didnt menage to find shelter before the rain came . its also not blind unlike DLL heres the picture of this frobbiten spaghetti monster avatar that i took with my overseer avatar , it was kinda hard to get a good picture of it because it tried to eat the overseer avatar :

Also happy halloween 🎃 i think i should name the overseer avatar i had it for how long? A week , two weeks?? And it still doesnt have a proper name . i mean this thing doent have a name either . im gonna go warn Pebbles. Also idn how long it will the jellyfish take NSH said they will tell me when theire done❇

Oh, I see.. Im afraid I cannot help you, no matter how much I'd want to.. Quite an interesting creature tho.. Fits these seasons perfectly..

(Beautiful beast tho, 10/10. Love the shit)

#rainworld #rain world #rain world ask blog #rw #big sister moon #bigsismoon #big sis moon #bigsistermoon #looksothemoon #iterators #iterator #lookstothemoo #looks to the moon #lttm #lookstothemoon

[hauntedlibrarian2222]

Part 1.E

October 11th, ####

So, I’m finally back from the hospital. Collin kept the library in— really good shape, actually, despite the ‘Tony Incident’ (as he’s named it). Kinda.. kept it in better shape than I do, myself, which is— kinda embarrassing. But, oh well, the extra help was.. nice? I really need to make time to properly thank him; he does way too much for me and I do way too little for him. Maybe I’ll get him another book? Either way, I think I’ll, uh, have to condemn myself to small talk. I wanna figure out what he likes and get him something nice, it’s the least I could do for him, having saved and covered my ass for the fourth time. I always thank him, it just.. I dunno, it doesn’t feel like enough.

Either way, I got back today. It was weirdly quiet, but my lovely and dependable friend, the fucking ankle biter, was still roosted in it’s corner as per usual. It seemed.. sad, though? Usually, when I look at it, I just feel.. anger— but not my own. But this time it was sadness? Just overwhelming, choking, acrid sadness. And, weirdly enough, after staring for a bit it.. left. It fucking left. Or, uh, it more so disappeared. But that’s something it’s never done before, ever.

Maybe Collin found it and knocked some sense into it, pfff. That’d be funny.

Other then that, though, the library was normal. Tony was in the upstairs, as per usual; and through a rasped, hoarse throat he complained to me about Collin. That marks maybe the second time he’s spoken to me.

“Curator,” He spat “What was up with the.. thee.. blonde.. the blond? Why?”

“Sorry, that was just Collin. I— uh, I’m sure you noticed I was out for a bit—“

“They came upstairs!!”

“.. Yes, I know. They told me.”

With Tony giving a distressed whine that rattled against his throat, they’d slump against the railings.

“Whyyyy..”

“I— was out, for a bit. Uh,.. hospital. I left him in charge of cleaning, and he- just.. went up there, man. I told him not to, but it wasn’t to— like.. spite you, or something.” I raised my free hand defensively, the other still wrapped around a stack of books I was returning, “Promise?”

With another rattled whine, he’d then groan— dramatically pulling himself off the railing.

I don’t think I ever described Tony, have I?

“Fineee,.. will he be baaaack?”

“Yes, but not to clean. They won’t disturb you.”

“Good.”

Sticking out a dried and old tongue, Tony would then slink away into the darkness of the upstairs. The bulbs were still busted; no matter how many times I’d replace them, they’d break. I’m pretty sure it’s him breaking them, honestly. It’d check out, he really likes his ‘darkness disappearing act of the century’, as he calls it.

Tony was.. interesting. He was relatively humanoid, but wore clothes akin to what you’d probably imagine some medieval farmer to wear. Honestly? I’m convinced he’s a ghost, or something. The ends of his hands and feet are frayed— they fade out. Plus, his skin is.. dry, and old; same with his tongue; same with his previously blue eyes, now just really a faded and milky gray. Typical ‘ghost’ crap, I’d think. It’s weird, but I’ve gotten used to it. He just looks.. normal to me, now.

Oh, he also wears a hat; a hat he stole from me, actually. I dared to leave one of my beanies out one day, only for it to disappear. Then Tony had it. When I asked for it back, he just cracked a scraggly smile and disappeared again.

.. He’s.. really weird looking, now I realize. Not bad weird, just.. weird.

Same with Collin, kinda. He never dresses with the weather, and he’s.. massive. Around this time of year, it’s usually— pretty cold. About 10°C in the day, 4°C at night; stuff like that. These days, he usually wears a damn tank top, just a thin ass tank top, with an old aviator’s jacket. Except he only wears the jacket inside? I don’t get it; I don’t get him. He’s the most.. normal-weird person I’ve ever met, and it’s so disorientating.

It isn’t necessarily bad, though. I wouldn’t call it bad, I wouldn’t— really call any of him bad. He’s just.. weird. Pff.

The day went on normally, after that. As normal as it is here usually, anyhow. I set some books away that had caught dust, checked that all the shelves were still intact, fixed the boiler, and some other stuff. All very mundane things. Now, I’m kind of just.. sitting around, really. I’ve got a book I plan to read, that’s about it.

Today’s been calm.

Previous | Next

#hauntedlibrary #hl #ic #in character #1.E #story #paranormal fiction #paranormal #fantasy #writing #multiple parts

[hellmouth-manor]

why do you have to be such a mega bitch? because you can be || heather || trial 3.1 || re: #girl

The thing about being so disgustingly, transparently awful was that you usually attracted people of like minds to yourself. Cassie, to Heather, had been an exception when they first wandered into this manor. She was kind, quiet, and polite. She was everything that Heather herself wasn’t and could never be, no matter how much effort she put into her airheaded sorority girl act. There were some lengths that she was simply not willing to go.

This, though, changed unexpectedly. 

Two women stood in the Gluttony dorm, eyeing each other and testing waters. A snarky comment here, a laugh without any reservations there. Soon enough, there was an easy and digestible alliance formed. 

Watching Cassandra finally shed her skin and shine brilliantly as the terrible husk of a person that makes up “Yukiko”, Heather simply smirks and snickers at the reactions of everyone in the room. The shock and horror, the betrayal and hurt--Seriously, had they all not learned their lesson about the sort of people that Hell held in residence? 

How many times were they going to continue to be surprised by “good people” showing their true colors? How many more times were they all going to stand around and gape and stare in awe at the “shock” of yet another person revealing just why they were here in the first place?

Eventually, she just leans against her podium and twirls her hair around her finger, pouting dramatically and putting on doe eyes.

“Uwaaaaahhhh, Cassieeeeeee…You said you wouldn’t abandon me to being the worst woman alive here! Come on! Uuuugh. You better make good on your promise to bring up some of the good shit when you come and show your sexy demon form off, okay? I soooo won’t forgive you if you break that promise, and I won’t help you go shopping either. I’ll just fill your bag with stupid turtlenecks that you can’t get on because of whatever horns you end up getting, bitch.”

She speaks casually, like this was a normal day for the two of them and they were just hanging out in Heather’s room once again where no one could be suspicious as to why sweet Cassandra was laughing along at something mythic bitch Heather said.

(There’s something to be said for this casualness. It’s the same flavor of “fine” that Yukiko walked in on with Heather the days after Olwin’s death where Heather’s sole focus was on appearing as unbothered and lax as someone could after causing someone else’s death. 

There is no way for her mind to come up with a way where this, too, is her fault. No, staring at Yukiko, there’s just a bubbling thing in her stomach that she doesn’t know what to do with. What is there to say when you’re experiencing a loss that isn’t your fault? Each time Heather has experienced someone she cares for being hurt, it has always been by her hand somehow. Some way. Yukiko brought this upon herself--is reveling in it, even. 

Instead of guilt, Heather is just left with something she's not sure how to name, but I can for you. Its name is sorrow--mourning.)

“Well, see you soon, girlie. Hope it’s not too fucked up, whatever they do to you. Would kinda ruin the vibes of enjoying whatever the hell you wanna call that.”

She says with a wave of her hand towards Hibiki before wiggling her fingers at Cassie in a temporary final farewell.

#ch3 #trial #heather

[astralsys]

intro post?

i made this account for fun maybe? fun as in i just wanted to fuck around and vent a little into the void under an account that's not much connected to my other ones idrk. dont have much of an online presence really wanted to see how this will play / work out. even tho i already have an account on here that i use personally to gush about things cause i can't help it probs not gonna use this that much.... probably cause i'll forget this exists, anyways comma!

collective info about me:

💫 ✨ | Astral System | ✨💫

Either call me Astral or K!

They / Them ( NO plural prns / &!!! /srs i hate it fuck off people who use that )

Trans Non-binary Aroace Bodily Adult

Masc / Neutral, System, Alter, Human / Person

Proff Dx’ed w/ D.I.D. ( adult dx'es ) system of 5 in recovery since 2018, dx’ed also w/ MDD & AuDHD ( childhood dx'es )

( ‘m only say this cause one of my parts may leak that info out by accident, dont know better dont have a consensus with privacy atm, and i would rather just say it now instead of worrying about it being outed later idrc if you think ‘m faking or not ‘ve been dx’ed for over 6 years now idc what rando’s on the internet think about me tbh )

❌ ❌ Other Info Never Disclosed ❌ ❌

DNI: Minors, NSFW shit, Queerphobes, Racists, Ableist, Pedo’s / Zoo’s, Proship / Anti’s discourse

Mspec “Lesbians” / “Gays”, Male “Lesbians” Queer ID’s based off people, Rad Inclusive, Transmed, BaB (+ all other queer exclus)

Any "System’s" ( No Matter What "Type", i dont want to see you fuckers fuck off with your “plural community” all of you are fucking bullshit ), “Endogenic System’s”, / “Mixed Origins System” / Tulpa, Pro “Endogenic” / Pro Non Traumagenic “Systems” Whatever Fucking “System Origin” You Fuckers Keep Coming Up w/

“Medically Recognized System” / “Dx”, Self Dx’ers, Pro Self Dx, “M.U.D.” / “M.U.I.”, ( Medically Unrecognized Disorders / Illnesses )

Anything on Pluralpedia! Any Discourse!

i dont wanna see it or you i will block you on sight. i dont care, i am not your friend I don’t want to be your friend leave me alone and out of this shit.

—

specific info about me:

K or Astral ( not giving you my full name )

They / Them, Fey / Fem, Ae / Aer ( + other neo’s )

Trans Non-binary Otherkin / Alterhuman Agender Aroace

Host of 5 ( also not giving you their names who fucking does that? )

‘m an adult ( id w/ body age not getting closer than that )

interests / dislikes / triggers private fuck off idc 'm not trying to make friends here

i hyperfixate on a lot of things due to both having asd and adhd and it effects my life way too much it’s annoying af i actually fucking hate it… having both is a fucking mess istfg, also chronic depression that’s so cool who doesnt luv that? been dealing with that one for years and it sucks it really sucks i dont wanna keep feeling this awful my entire life, but its not gonna stop for me i think atp.

having D.I.D. isnt something i am ever gonna get into specifically, cause why the fuck would i? why do people have the need to tell others about their extensive personal med hx "oh you have to know all about my / our "system" and everyone apart of it! and every single disorder i / we self dx'es myself / ourselves with too!" ( just had to put the plural pronouns cause that's how these people talk ik 've had personal experience with these kinda people ). do these people not understand anything about internet safety omfg do you not listen to yourself at all? you’re not going to know anything regarding my med hx that i havent already given you cause to be honest i dont trust any one of you with me and my fragmented self and you don't really need to know. my alter’s are not something i talk to anyone about online or irl really. my trauma also isnt something i am ever gonna talk about honestly me even typing all of this out is insane to me what is wrong with me….

credit: banner @/Suyasuyabi427 pfp @/muku_69.0

#astralsys.tx #fronting astral: k #dni /srs #intro post #system intro post #asd dx’ed #adhd dx’ed #mdd dx’ed #d.i.d. system dx’ed #i was dx'ed w/ d.i.d as an adult #and i found out as an adult #other’s came earlier in life #i don’t remember typing some of this #memory bad ig #| ✨💫

[planetdream]

who in stray kids would cockily let out a « yeah? » and thrust his fingers faster when they feel that you’re close. no cause I keep imagining this scenario with at least 2 members oof 💔 just him fingering you till you’re gripping his wrist in pleasure and chuckle a « yeah ? so good? » when you’re about to cum.

all of them <3 but in different ways though....

chan, minho, changbin, and jeongin do this a lot, just because they loveeee talking to you while they're fucking you. plus, they know the things that they do to you <3

— chan has his fingers deep inside of you, curling them so that they perfectly nudge against your spot. "yeah? my baby wants to cum?" and perfectly increases his speed, not messing up his rhythm or anything. loves that you get so wet it's all leaking and pooling in the palm of his hand.

— minho gives you that "yeah? gonna fucking cum?" as his fingers are moving inside of you. his speed is fairly fast but slows down when you're clenching around his fingers. completely removes his finger with a light smack at your pussy. you both have played this game before, so he's almost appalled at the fact that you think you can cum freely. guess he just has to teach you a lesson now...

— your moans are already the most beautiful music to changbin, so when you're mumbling a mixture of his name and many incoherent sentences, he can help but give you an admirable little "yeah? it's that good?" now he's gotta fuck you till you're coming all over his fingers. doesn't move your hand away when you grip at his wrist; just holds onto it and tells you that you gotta take all of him.

— *deep breath* jeongin loves the effect he has on you. loves that he can make you all stupid and horny with not a coherent thought in that pretty little head of yours, just like you do him. when you're trying to fight back a little bit but he just moves his fingers so skillfully, you forgot you were mid-sentence before he gives you a "yeah? so good my lil dummy can't speak? wanna cum for me?" it's only right that he lets himself be a menace, removing his fingers and thrusting them into your mouth.

the other four: jisung, hyunjin, seungmin, and felix don't say it too much idk ?? but sometimes they just have to indulge at the moment :)

— hyunjin gives you a dreamy little "yeah? come for me, baby" just because he's a sucker for seeing you cum all over him. he knows how hard you cum when he's holding you open, his fingers skillfully fucking in and out of you. when you clench so hard around his fingers he can hardly move them around so now he has to suck your clit into his mouth....yeah...

— menace seungmin mhmm... "yeah? you gonna cum from just this?" like he's not sending you to a whole other dimension from how he's fucking you with his fingers. yeah he's gonna be a tease and you're likely not going to be allowed to cum either. so he'll move his fingers very, very, slowly inside of you; kinda just getting you close enough to the edge but without the satisfactory release.

— jisung is another sucker for making you cum. he's addicted to you clenching around his fingers (and later his cock) and when he gets to taste the sweetness that coats all around his fingers ?? "yeah? cum for me. give me all of it" only his fingers have been inside you but he's quite possible more fucked out than you are. keeps fucking you till your coming all over his hand, literally just creaming all over his fingers and he can't wait to lick it up

— now felix knows the things his voice does to you, he's not even gonna hide it. "doing so good for me. yeah? gonna make you cum?" he's so soft but can definitely fuck with your head, it's insane. slow thrusts of his fingers in and out of you while his other hand massages over your tummy. he doesn't notice it, but he's licking his lips so much, just waiting for your release—he can already feel it coming, no matter how much you try to hold back and wait for him to fuck his cock into you. just needs you to cum right now, and he'll give you a treat after <3

anyways hope u enjoyed this :) sorry for any errors besties rip

#💌 — mail time #✰˚. !! dream.hardhours #☁️ — daydream.skz #stray kids smut #yes the changbin and jeongin ones were self indulgent who cares #bang chan smut #lee know smut #changbin smut #jeongin smut #i.n smut #han jisung smut #hyunjin smut #lee felix smut #seungmin smut #skz smut #lee minho smut

[jungkussyficrecs]

Let's Talk About Sex

A/N Idk what this is but uh hope you enjoy.

Summary: Jungkook has been your best friend for a long time. Recently he's been hiding something from you, and you need to find out what it is.

Warnings: mxm, future fxm, female reader, handjob, more to come ;) in the future, future poly?, it's kinda already happening but yeah, maybe a little angst?

Part 2: Let's Talk About Us

Part 3: Let's Talk About Love

Masterlist

Realistically you know Jungkook has sex. The hickies that peek over the collar of his shirt. That one time you saw condoms and lube in his room. There was also that one graphic text that popped up on his phone from someone named ‘J’ There's also that fact that he is a healthy, young male with way too many hormones. Thrusting his hips in the face of thousands of people can only do so much.

There is only one issue with this realization: Jungkook has never talked to, let alone been seen with, a girl besides you.

Now, Jungkook is hot. Jungkook is really fucking hot. (Another realization that's been plaguing your brain recently). BUT despite his risque outfits on stage, accidental buttons coming undone, full sleeve, facial piercings, and quite possibly the most gorgeous face ever, Jungkook has never ever EVER flirted with a girl. The possibility of him being a virgin was something you considered often until the hickeys started showing up a few years ago. No matter how many times he tried to hide them, it never worked.

However, there is one thing in your friendship with Jungkook that is never spoken about, and that is sex. Always assuming Jungkook was too shy (or abstinent) to talk about it, and on your end there wasn't much going on either.

(Other than that one night with Taehyung that Jungkook doesn't know about and NEVER will if you have anything to do about it)

Either way, you and Jungkook are best friends and have been since you were growing up next door to each other in Busan. This secret hookup or girlfriend is eating away at you. So, there's only one thing left to do.

...

'Noona, why are you sitting on me,' the man who has been plaguing your thoughts grunts from underneath your thighs.

After thinking for a very long time, rushing over to Jungkook's place to bug him about all of the unanswered questions you have seemed like the only appropriate course of action.

'I have a very important question to ask you and I don't want you to run away.'

Those doe eyes you've grown to love widen even more than you thought possible,

'Should I be scared?' he asks

'Probably,' you hum in agreement and after a moment of pretending to be in deep thought you utter the words that change your friendship forever,

'So, let's talk about sex'

Suddenly the room spins, and next thing you know you have a face full of overpriced sofa cushion. Whipping around you come to face the very reason you just did parkour. It's Jungkook's fault, and the man in question is on the opposite side of the room. His eyes are wide and darting back and forth. He's avoiding eye contact like it'll kill him if he looks into your prying eyes.

‘What the hell was that for, muscle pig. You’re gonna give me whiplash.’ you whine while rubbing your neck.

‘Sorry you- you just took me by surprise.’

Ah there he is. The shy jungkook who couldn’t look you in the eyes for weeks after he saw you in a sports bra for the first time ten years ago. The tips of his ears are tinting red just like they always do when he’s feeling particularly embarrassed, ‘w-why do you wanna talk about… you know–that stuff?’

Sweet, sweet jungkook. Trying to pull the innocent card to cover up the fact that he’s been keeping secrets for a while now, ‘I know your secrets JK. So, why don’t you just tell me.’

All of the sudden the atmosphere in the room changes and his shy yet cute look changes to something more fearful.

‘How did you find out?’ he manages to stutter out. His face is beet red and his hands look a little shaky.

“I’ve seen the hickies, condoms, lube, and the naught texts for ‘J.’ It doesn’t seem like you were trying very hard to keep it a secret.’ You’re laughing a little, but Jungkook isn’t. You know the look on his face and it’s similar to the one when he was getting chewed out by his managers for his car accident. He’s worried. About what–you don’t know.

He rushes over to you and grabs your hands, ‘noona please promise me you won’t tell anyone. If anyone ever found out our careers–’

‘Jungkook,’ you interrupt. His voice had started to get that telltale waiver in it indicating that what was going on was truly worrying him, ‘I’m not going to tell anyone Jungkook. Why would you even think that?’

‘It’s just I don’t know how you feel about the whole thing, and I know same sex relationships are really taboo in Koreas, and I just don’t want you to tell anyone, but I didn’t know if you’d even support it, and if you didn’t support it then maybe you’d tell people, and–’

‘Jungkook,’ you look at him wide eyed and place your hands on his shoulders. This is a lot to process in a short amount of time. Not a bad thing, just surprising, ‘First of all, I would never ever think differently of you for who you’re with. You’re my JK and your significant other will never change that.’

‘Oh thank god,’ he lets out a sigh of relief and throws his arms around you while tucking his head into your neck. You can feel how warm his cheeks are it seems like he was on the verge of tears, ‘I’m so glad–’

‘Ah ah ah. I’m not done yet. Secondly of all, the only thing I was insinuating was that you were hooking up with someone. I hate to tell you this, but you outed yourself on that one my friend.’ you tell him.

Suddenly he goes stiff in your arms and his head snaps up to look at you, ‘But, you said you knew my secrets.’

Smiling at him to let him know everything is gonna be okay you say, ‘Jungkook, what part of saying I saw the evidence of your sexcapades made you think I knew every little detail?’

‘Well you said you saw the text from ‘J’ so I assumed you’d figured that out’ he mumbles under his breath.

You pause. If he’s saying he thinks you;d figured it out, that means it has to be someone you know. Wracking through your brain you think about all the possible J names you know. The only one you know of who’s single and ready to mingle(or at least you thought until today) is– ’Oh my god you’re dating Jimin’

He looks into your eyes, cheeks turning even pinker, ’oh. Uh yeah. I’m dating Jimin. Just Jimin’ He’s avoiding your eyes. You can tell he’s hiding something, but knowing him, it’s better to wait it out. A lot of things have been revealed today, and pressuring him could just make things worse.

‘Jungkook,’ you say softly.

He looks up at you, unease fills his eyes, ‘yeah, noona?’

‘I think that’s great. You deserve to be happy,’ you smile at him. Hoping to conceal the disappointment in your tone.

It seems to work a little, ‘Really? You don’t think it’s weird?’ That uncertainty is still there. Hidden behind the galaxies in his beautiful eyes.

‘No, JK. I think it’s awesome. You found someone who makes you happy. And apparently some who makes you feel good if you know what I mean,’ you wink at him.

All of the sudden a whole new blush takes over his face,

‘Y/n’ he whines. His head finds its way back to your shoulder. A moment of silence passes before he speaks up, ‘thank you for supporting me noona.’

‘I’ll always support you, JK.’

You both stay like that for a while. Realistically, you know there’s something else he’s scared of telling you. You’ve known about Jin and Namjoon’s relationship for awhile, and you’ve always been supportive. You’re just happy to know he’s being taken care of. Jimin’s a great guy, and they both deserve to be happy. You probably should’ve seen it sooner now that you look back on it. Lingering glances or touches. God damnit, that bite mark they claim was a drunk accident. Man, you’re dense.

…

Later when you leave Jungkook’s place, you shut the door and lean back against it. Trying to blink away the tears that sting your eyes, you need to suck it up. At the end of the day you don’t know what you were trying to achieve by interrogating him. He was never going to be more than your best friend, but a part of you was hoping that he was just hooking up with someone and you still had a chance.

As you're walking to your car you see Jimin pull into a parking spot. A smile is on his face, probably because he’s about to see his perfect boyfriend. You like Jimin, but you can’t help but be jealous.

…

‘Yeah, baby?’ he pants against Junkook’s mouth, ‘Thinking about your noona always gets you excited doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ Jk whines out, hips bucking up into the hand wrapped around his cock. He’s so beautifully flushed and pliant like this. Bending to the will of his boyfriend’s skilled hands.

‘Do you wish this was your noona, baby?’ The hand around his length gets tighter and begins jerking him faster while the other finds its way down to that perfect spot right behind his balls.

Jungkook keens. The loud moan that falls from his lips– an indicator that he’s rapidly approaching his orgasm.

‘Come on baby, you know you aren’t allowed to finish until you answer hyung.’

Jungkook tosses his head back and forth on the pillow, ‘Yeah, I want noona to touch me–AH please hyung, let me cum.’

His hyung leans forward and presses a kiss to his lips, ‘Go ahead kook-ah, cum for hyung.’

Jungkook’s mouth parts, eyebrows furrowed as he hurtles toward his orgasm. Fingers pressed to his perineum and the hand around his cock have never felt so good as the images of his noona fill his head. His head flops back against the pillow and his eyes squeeze shut.

‘Fuck, I’m cumming,’ Jungkook grunts.

Hot spurts of cum shoot from his cock. His release paints his toned stomach, and the hand wrapped around him. He moans out–a beautiful sound with his mouth wide open. His orgasm face is similar to the face he makes when he eats something particularly delicious. Almost as if it’s so good he’s angry. Hips are thrusting into the hand that helped him finish as little shocks of oversensitivity started to take over.

He pushes his hyungs hand away so he can finally breathe.

Just then footsteps are approaching the room. Jimin walks in fresh out of the shower, ‘Oh man, I missed out on the fun.’ He whines. A small smile on his face as he approaches the bed, ‘Hyung you know I wanted to play with Kookie.’

‘Oh Jiminie, we’re just getting started. You should hear how worked up our kookie gets when we mention his noona.’ Yoongi smirks.

#jungkook smut #jungkook x reader #jimin x jungkook #jikook #yoonkook #polybts x reader #polybts #ot7 x reader #namjin #taehyung x reader #bts fic #bts smut #yeah idk #i hope you enjoy #jungkussyrecs #jungkussywrites? #smut #fluff? #angst. #please be nice im nervous #jungkook #jimin #yoongi #namjoon #jin #hobi #taehyung #hoseok #lta series #LTA

[bratz-kitten]

random thoughts on the moon signs

moon in pisces is literally my favorite placement ever. something about these people makes me feel safe. as a capricorn moon, i repress my emotions constantly and i’m deadly afraid of showing vulnerability, but pisces moons give off this vibe of constantly being consumed by their emotions – and it’s fascinating. you make me feel like it’s okay to express my deeply emotional side; even better, you encourage it. you’re the type of people who i love crying with while eating ice cream, even cuddling with. your empathy and passion for your interests is your biggest strength.

moon in aquarius reminds me of that shrek quote of him being an onion – you guys have layers upon layers upon layers. my brother is an aquarius moon and sometimes i feel like i’m the only person who knows how emotional he really is. you hate showing this part of yourself – it’s hidden safely from prying hands; you racionalize your emotions, repress them, attempt to conceal them; but ultimately, your deeply compassionate and intuitive nature will be shown – even if only to the very few you trust. your dreams are your biggest strength.

i have never met a cancer moon without raging mommy issues yet who was deeply attached to their mother. you always share this very close bond and she’s very present in your life – yet its so obviously this very toxic dynamic. you guys get this fame for being the only ones with ‘stable’ emotions because your moon is exalted but you’re like.. not. your emotions aren’t stable; much on the contrary, and even if you’re very emotional, you don’t particularly like showing it. most of the cancer moons i’ve known are iffy about expressing their feelings. you joke a lot about your trauma, though, and so you give people the impression of knowing you when really, they don’t know the half of it.

moon in sagittarius makes it feel like life is worth living. you dream so much and so high; you’re so open about your love for adventure and freedom, so optimistic and fun-loving – to the point where most people don’t understand how turbulent your emotions are underneath the façade. you give off the vibe of the funny friend who’s depressed and afraid to show it because you’re supposed to be the one who raises the spirits. doesn’t it hurt when you try opening up to others and they almost seem bothered by it because they prefer it when you’re just this bubble of fun? you need to learn to take that weight off your shoulders – stop trying to entertain others and realize that they’re the ones who need to entertain you. this is your show, baby. your resilience is your strength.

is it possible to be a capricorn moon without having strict parents and a terrible childhood in which you had to raise yourself? because i think it’s kind of a given. it’s so funny how literally everyone sees you as this cold, unemotional, strong person yet you probably cry everyday. a lot of problems with self-worth every time you’re in a bad place mentally, which is constantly. extremely calculating – you always do shit with a clear purpose in mind and it can come off like you’re using people for your own gains. your ability to survive even unsurmountable odds stacked up against you is your strength. i almost feel like you thrive on pain because that’s how you’ve learned to grow and adapt.

moon in aries people are so smart, and most of all, dedicated. you make me want to get my life together so bad – you’re the type of people to set a goal and go through with it no matter what. you’re always on to something, looking for opportunities and recognition. you see what you want and you go for it. you’re so easy to rile up and lose it, though, it’s so funny how you’re so bold and passionate yet so big of a crybaby (all aries placements are tbh).

moon in scorpio stop being so pessimistic pleathe i will kiss you in the lips just don’t lose your faith in humanity /yet/. trust is the most important thing in the world to you which is funny because you have raging trust issues. so sensitive but you cover that up with anger. you be looking like you wanna commit sporadic murder when on the inside you’re just so hurt. you’re so dependable, things might be in deep shit but as soon as you’re in the room i know we’ll find a way to fix it. if the l*ve of my life doesn’t end up being a scorpio moon i’ll be so pissed.

moon in leo YOU’RE SO INFURIATING PLEASE SHUT UP OR I’LL FUCK YOU??????? massive egos, you know you’re the shit and you won’t shut up about it. likes to start arguments just to rile everyone up and then laugh maniacally in the corner at the chaos they created. always have a wicked plan in mind and i’ll go along with it because you’re also stupidly endearing. the best friends, literally always there when you’re down and sosososo supportive. i’ve noticed that feeling insecure is quite possible the worst thing you can feel, it’ll start to take a toll on your physical health. your ability to be a fucking idiot but also a /pretty/ idiot is your biggest strength.

moon in virgo if you say “well actually, that’s not how that works” one more time i’ll throw hands. incredibly nit-picky and obsessive but also the types of people to have a pile of dirt on their room?? mom friend, WILL take care of her babies/friends. you always ruin the mood yet.. you’re so fun to be around? how does that even work? i could listen to you talk for hours. i don’t think you know what the concept of relaxation is. also pleathe stop with that need to fix others. the fact that you’re so focused on your goals and willing to do just about anything is your biggest strength (it’s also kinda scary).

my mom’s moon is in libra and ma’am can you please stop transferring your mommy issues onto me? i get it, you had a codependent relationship with her and she showed you she loved you while also constantly criticising you and treating you like an extension of herself. my bestie is a libra moon too and it’s also like that. just.. mommy issues and insecurities for days. a passion 4 fashion and people love to be around you. also, i can’t understand how you feel. like, you’ll cry a lot and love so hard yet when you break up with someone you’ll never spare a thought about them again? it’s almost like you can turn your feelings off. which is funny, because that’s supposed to be a capricorn moon thing but i’ve never met one who can stop caring, they just act like they’re heartless to protect themselves. either way, libra moons can switch from sweethearts to cold and aggressive in a literal second and it’s scary but also cool.

moon in gemini please don’t ever shut up you have so much to say, your interests are so fascinating and the way you talk with so much passion about literally anything makes my heart do the flippy thing. also so complicated, can you name one person in this world who fully knows and comprehends you? very secretive, people feel like they know you because you talk a lot and are very open about certain things but as soon as something actually serious happens you turn into allison dilaurentis real quick.

moon in taurus why are you so pretty? you’re so extra too, you always leave the house looking straight off the runaway. you’re literally so caring for your friends and overprotective too, possessive of even them. you prioritize comfort a lot, wether it be on your home or concerning yourself. you’re very good with people, i feel like you’re the ex that your ex-boyfriend’s mom doesn’t ever shut up about because she misses you and wants you to be The one. you need to learn that change isn’t the enemy!! change is fundamental for personal growth. hold grudges for a crazy amount of time. very weird sense of humor, in an oddly endearing way. your mentality of “if they’ve hurt you, they’ve hurt me too” is your biggest strength.

#astrology #capricorn #aries #gemini #scorpio #libra #virgo #taurus #aquarius #sagittarius #leo #cancer #pisces #moon in the signs #aries moon #leo moon #sagittarius moon #capricorn moon #scorpio moon #libra moon #virgo moon #taurus moon #gemini moon #aquarius moon #pisces moon #cancer moon

[scarlettriot]

Stood Up

You (Y/N) get stood up from a date and Kaminari decides to do something about it.

Pairing: Kaminari/F!Reader

Contains: Fluff, Flirty Denki, Established BakuSquad Friendship

Warnings: 18+ Below the cut, Minors DNI! Swearing, Electro-Stim, Overstimulation, use of pet names (cuddle bug & cutie), oral (F receiving), consensual recording

A/N: Well, here we are with the third in my Stood Up series. There is also Bakugo & Kirishima if you're interested. This one took me way too long and it's also my first time writing Kaminari at length. I hope you all like it :)

Word Count Starting Below: 2,461

You slipped your foot into the silver heels you had picked out. Something a little fancier since this was a first date after all and you wanted to make a lasting impression. Not only that but this was your first first date in a while. Being a Pro Hero made life busy and dating difficult.

Practically the entire day leading up to this very moment revolved around you either getting ready or babbling with excitement to your closest friends.

An alert chimed on your phone with a text from your date, a smile sliding onto your face expecting to read some message about how they were on their way and that they'd see you soon, but that wasn't what you were met with.

Instead, it was a screenshot of your Instagram page, multiple of them actually, all of you and the ridiculous photos you took with your friends but mostly with one Denki Kaminari. The most recent of which was from a tea shop he met you at just earlier that day so you could show him the shoes for your date.

The message below was simple and more than enough to leave a sour taste in your mouth, this isn't what I want to see when I'm supposed to be taking you out tonight. What, one date a day isn't enough? Why are you even dating? Does your blonde boyfriend know?

You giggled at what they were implying, quick to explain how these were all your friends, they had been since high school! They are people you spent what little free time you had with. Especially Denki, your best friend since you were 15!

That joy you felt started dissipating within the next few messages. You hadn't even had a first date and they were already jealous, and that was something you didn't have room for in your life. So, you slipped the heels off your feet and put them directly back in the box to return when you had the time. Tight black jeans and fitted top were exchanged with a hoodie and sweats although your makeup and hair stayed done, you didn't have the energy to undo your hard work.

Instead, you slid back into your computer chair, your headset snuggly back on your ears and before you notified everyone you were back online, you took a moment listening to the chatter of your friends.

"Shitty Hair! Fuckin' pay attention!"

"Yeah, man! We're getting slaughtered over here!"

"Less yelling at Kiri! More shooty shooty!"

"All of you are hopeless..."

Eijiro chuckled out an apology that was accompanied by a lighter giggle also coming from his mic. "Think this is gonna be my last round for a bit, guys."

"You're so fuckin' whipped." Bakugo scoffed, before screaming profanities.

"Is it whipped if I'm the one who's wanting to get her into bed though?"

You clicked your mic back on then. "Hey, remember last week when Kats forgot his push to talk so we all heard him getting head and we party whipped because someone couldn't focus?"

"You better shut the hell up right fucking now!"

Everyone else roared with laughter. "Yeah! At least I have the decency to mute myself!"

"Hey, wait a sec, why are you online, Y/N!" Denki noted, "You should have already left!"

You screenshot your messages to the group chat because it was far easier than just explaining the ordeal.

"Cute shoes." Eijiro and Kyoka commented at the same time.

There was a lull as their game ended and the messages were read.

"Ya don't need 'em if they're gonna have their head so far up their ass like this."

"I agree." Hanta chimed in. "They're not worth your time."

"Still, sorry they turned out to be a shit." You could hear the frown on Kyoka's face, "I know how excited you were."

"Right, you doin' okay, Y/N? I can stick around and we can all shoot some things!"

"Thanks, Kiri but I'll be just fine! Go spend time with your girl!"

One by one, everyone signed off. You pulled up Spotify and Stardew Valley, something of a comfort for you to get lost in for the rest of the night.

Less than an hour later, you noticed your phone lighting up with your best friend's familiar smiling face. "What's up, Denki?"

"Open your door! I have my hands full and don't wanna put everything down to get my key!"

You sprang from your desk and rushed to your door. Sure enough, on the other side was Denki with bags in both hands and his phone tucked between his ear and shoulder. You grabbed it and a bag before he had a chance to drop anything like the klutz he was. "What's with all this?"

"I feel bad."

"Why? You didn't stand me up?"

He fiddled with the edge of a paper bag. "Yeah, but, we both read those messages and no one said anything but they didn't just call our group out, they called us out.

"Denks, it doesn't matter to me-"

"But, it does to me! You were so excited about this and I got in the way, unknowingly but, still! So, I gotta make it up to you now!"

He pulled out take-out boxes from your favorite restaurant. Two bottles of your favorite wine. Your top three favorite movies and video games, and a board game you both had been meaning to try. "I mean, if they think I'm your boyfriend I kinda gotta live up to the hype, right?"

You really wanted to insist that none of this was necessary. That just because some person that neither of you really knew that well, assumed something about your relationship that didn't mean he had to blame himself for it.

But, you had to admit, this was really sweet. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to you that he knew everything you liked but it was nice. Instead of sitting across from a stranger, making awkward small talk, and trying to learn about one another, you were barefoot in your kitchen, laughing with your best friend while he plated dinner and you poured the wine.

Formalities were out the window. Both you and Denki were eating dinner in your living room, laughing and drinking just as you'd done a million times before. You snapped a photo of the delicious food on paper plates, toasting good times with your cheap wine, ready to post them to your Instagram.

"Gonna make them more jealous..."

"I think they made it pretty clear they don't want to see me so why should I care?"

He shrugged. "I just thought they might, you know, come to their senses that they obviously lost."

"I don't really care either way." You wandered back into your kitchen, putting away the leftovers, "They can forget I exist or they can stalk my page like a creep. If someones' gonna try and tell me I can't be friends with my friends or just not listen to me, then I don't want them in my life. No matter how good-looking they are."

Denki watched you from the sofa, a bit of a lopsided grin on his face that had butterflies taking flight in your stomach. "What?" Laughing to hide the bit of a crush you always had on the man. It was unavoidable you told yourself. His personality was infectious and had 15 year old you head over heels.

He pushed back bright blonde hair back off his forehead and just shook his head. "Nothin'. Uh, what's next? Video game, board game, or movie?"

You peaked on the counter at the options. "Well, we probably should have checked this but the board game needs at least four people to play... guess we'll have to save that for our next game night. Is a movie okay?"

Of course, it was.

You brought over the DVD with a refill of wine and he pulled a blanket down off the back of your sofa.

It really didn't take long, just fifteen minutes or so, and you were curled up into Denki's side. You'd make grabby hands for your wine glass and he'd pass it over with that damn grin again.

And not long after that, he'd pulled out his phone, angling it to take a picture of the two of you. "What are you doing?" You could see him on his own Instagram, tagging you, with the caption, Check out my cute cuddle bug.

"I thought you didn't want to make them more jealous."

"I decided I don't care either. You're mine tonight, their loss. And since you're mine tonight, I get bragging rights." He snapped another quick picture of you rolling your eyes at him, and then he kept snapping them.

"Denki! Why!"

"Because you're cute, cuddle bug! I like having all the pictures of you that I can!"

Even as you tackled him back down on the sofa, pinning him below you, he still managed a photo. "Bet if I post this one, they'll really get the wrong idea."

You could have moved. You were the one on top of him and you had his arms above his head. You had the power here and yet you just lingered above him.

"Y/N? Not that I'm one to complain about having a beautiful person such as yourself pinning me down, like, it's kinda hot, but..." Looking down into half-lidded golden eyes, you wondered why you had to become best friends with such a damn flirt! "Are you gonna take advantage of this situation we're in or are we just gonna keep dancing around this for another decade or so?"

You couldn't have heard him right? No... no this was your brain playing tricks on you because he certainly hadn't had that much wine tonight. You sat upright on his lap. "Another decade then, Y/N?"

"You- ha- you should stop that, Denki."

He leaned up, moving his arms around you, "Gimme a good reason to and I will."

You didn't have one. And not just because you've been in love with him for ten years but also because he was your best friend. The only reason to not go through with it was the possibility of losing your friendship if something bad were to happen but, you really didn't think anything would.

Denki might have been a serial flirt but he was surprisingly loyal in all the relationships he'd been in, not that there had been all that many serious ones.

"I'm not hearing anything." He teased, his face getting closer to yours. You could count each and every one of the faint freckles that littered the balls of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. "But, I promise, if you tell me no, I'll stop, won't push this any further."

This whole thing seemed like a frickin' whirlwind, happening faster than your brain could really process the situation but you didn't want it to stop either. You wanted to take it further, didn't want to say no.

Which was why you coiled your arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. There was that small little buzz of electricity that tickled your lips when he'd kiss your nose or cheeks that was now playing on his lips, on his tongue when you welcomed him in.

He leaned back again, pulling you with him until you were both a pile of needy hands and breathy pleas. Everywhere his hands roamed you felt that faint trail of shock against your skin, making the little hairs on your body stand on end.

Clothes were shed, tossed haphazardly around your living room, both of you pausing to laugh when Denki managed to land your hoodie over a lamp. His attention was drawn back to you quickly though, still perched on top of him but now he had your chest on full display since you'd forgone a bra when your date canceled.

Electrifying tongue twirled around your nipples, sensitive normally, now it felt like you knew what it was like when he fried his damn brain. He was eager, relentless even, pulling and sucking, another hand giving your other breast a similar treatment. He had you so focused that you let out a broken moan when slender fingers found their way into your panties.

"Fuckin' hell, Denki."

The bastard winked up at you, nipple still between his lips and before you could retort, he sent another small jolt through you.

You were blatantly grinding down on his hand, reaching behind you, you found him completely solid, barely being contained in the tight black boxers he wore. You had enough sense to tug them down and wrap your hand around him making his teeth sink into your soft flesh, whining when you stroked him.

"Y/N..." He whimpered, his hand momentarily distracted from his ministrations gave you enough time to shift in his lap to scoot forward putting his cock in front of you. In one swift motion, you had his length between your slick. "Oh fuck, cutie!" Golden eyes were squeezed shut while you moved along him, feeling that pleasant curve he had, you could only imagine what it was gonna be like to have him inside you.

"You're being a little tease, ma-makes me wanna do all sorts of things to y-you."

He was kissing your neck, your chest, shoulders, and arms, anywhere on you that he could reach. His hips bucking up into you, just trying to hit that perfect angle.

Strength and agility were something most overlooked when it came to Denki Kaminari but when the man wanted something bad enough, he found a way to get it.

He had your ass rising up in the air with a harsh thrust of his hips and a small squeak from you, giving him exactly enough time to scoot down on the sofa so you were sat atop his face. If you complained, he didn't hear you. Denki already had your thighs around his head and his tongue devouring you completely.

Little shockwaves rocked you while you cried out his name, hands fisting blonde locks just trying to stay upright.

One orgasm from you apparently wasn't enough, neither was two but on the third, Denki finally relented, allowing your heartrate to come back down and your gasping breaths to come in more steadily.

You slid back down his body, his erection now smack against your ass. His hair was recked, face completely flush but he had the biggest grin on his face that you'd ever seen.

Denki kissed both your cheeks, "You are so amazing, cutie!" Kissed your lips, "You taste better than anything I've ever had!" And one more on the tip of your nose. "Doin' okay?"

You nodded, starting to really gather yourself again, and by this point, you really just wanted one thing.

"I wanna... Denks... can I take care of you now?"

"Sure, cutie! How do you want me?" The wiggling eyebrows had you rolling your eyes and pushing him on his back again.

It took little effort for you to position yourself above his cock, and with how slick you were, his bright pink head slipped right inside. He held your hands while you scrunched up your face, sliding all the way down him until he was completely sheathed within.

The curve was immaculate. Hitting in just the right way that had you moaning with just a couple thrusts from him. Before long, you were eagerly bouncing on his cock. Riding him hard so he filled you up each and every time.

You barely registered him reaching for the coffee table, his phone now in his hands. "What're you doin'?" You practically slurred, slowing only slightly. He tapped the camera lens with a wicked grin. "Seriously?"

"We could make 'em really jealous now..."

Somewhere in your brain, you knew your date wouldn't give two shits, in fact, this probably would have only validated their thoughts about your's and Denki's relationship but with his cock stuffed so deeply into you, kissing your cervix in the most beautiful way, you really didn't give a damn.

You and Denki put on the best possible show you could think of. You were overstimulated, sore, and completely elated! He balanced the phone against the wine bottle so neither of you had to try to hold it.

This way he could play with your breasts or squeeze your thighs while you dug half-moons into his chest. Shocked with the playful zaps he sent right to your core.

Your makeup you'd didn't feel like taking off now ran down your cheeks with tears. Your hair was a mess thanks to him pulling at it.

Denki had you howling through another two orgasms, telling you how perfect you were, how nice you felt squeezing him so tightly, your nails felt so good against his skin.

It was only when you collapsed against his chest did he hoist your hips up so he could ram into you, pulling out just at the last second with a strangled cry of your name.

He wiggled himself free, grabbing a towel from your bathroom and cleaning you both up before stopping the recording.

"You're, hey you're gonna send that to me right?" You asked when he handed back your hoodie off the lamp.

He dropped a kiss on your lips, plopping down beside you on the sofa again and you noticed your email already up and the video uploading. "Obviously, we share all our videos and photos. Why would this be different?"

#mha #bnha #mha smut #denki kaminari #kaminari #kaminari smut #denki kaminari smut #mha fluff #denki fluff #denki smut #denki x you #mha x reader #kaminari x reader #denki x reader

[hollyhomburg]

Before I Leave You (Pt.4)

(Omegaverse au, Mafia au, Bts x Reader)

Summary: Yoongi makes his choice, so does Moonbyul.

Pairing: Beta! Yoongi, Omega! Reader, Omega! Jungkook, Omega! Seokjin, Alpha! Namjoon, Alpha! Hoseok, Alpha! Taehyung, Alpha! Jimin,

Tags: Graphic material, Death, Murder, Dead bodies and dying described in detail, brief suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, depression, DARK THEMES, guilt, blood, a touch of blood kink? drugs, murder/crime themes, guilt, kinda fuck or die vibes? finally fluff at the end, mating marks, 

W/c: 7.1k

A/n: here is the moment you’ve all been waiting for! the big d word moment!!! my carpal tunnel is acting up, I will probably not be able to get the next chapter out for a few days or until next week. Chronologically the next chapter continues after part 1. 

(PLEASE READ TAGS FOR CW BEFORE YOU PROCEED)

Previous part — Masterlist

Part 4: If I Have You 

Pulling the trigger is the easiest thing you’ve ever done. 

Geumjae’s body flinches back from the force of the bullet. The ceiling splattering with the spray of his blood. It hits the side of your face too, your white shirt crested with red at the shoulders, dripping down your throat along with the blood from your mating bite. It’s a percussive splatter, noisy as it hits the wall.

People never talk about how blood gets everywhere during a murder. Yoongi is unable to stop his flinch when Geumjae’s brain matter and viscera splatter against him, just a little. 

Yoongi didn't think you'd actually do it. 

He watches you shove the body away from you, hard, what's left of his head, an empty vessel, hitting the floor with a hollow thud. His hands leave you for the last time, but the pain isn't finished. 

Yoongi barely has the forethought to lunge forward, knees scraping, wrestling the gun out of your hand before you can turn it on yourself. The barrel of the gun is hot when Yoongi's hands close around it and yank it away from your own temple. The smell of burning skin joins the metallic scent of murder. Your scent is a mess- it’s barely had a chance to mix with Geumjae’s burning wood-burning bread and wrath, rainstorms, and gunpowder. 

He shouts your name but you don't respond. 

Yoongi yanks the gun from your hands, probably hurting your fingers but panicked when he hurls the gun to the other side of the room and takes your hands in his, wrestling with you and screaming your name until the fight goes out of you. 

You’re hyperventilating when you stop struggling. Both of your wrists pinned above your head in both of Yoongi’s hands, his knees pressing your legs to stillness in a way that could be sexual but isn't- it's the easiest way for him to restrain you- both sprawled on the bloody floor. Yoongi’s crying, tears dripping down his nose, every other drop shines pink from what's on his face.  

“Yoongi please- please just let me go- I don’t want to become a ghost- I don't wanna become a walking corpse.” The way you look breaks his heart, your neck so bruised and bloody, your face swelling too from Geumjae’s hits. The way your eyes hold only darkness and no warmth as you look at him and beg- beg him to let you take your life. Your pupils are so small he can't see them at all. 

“Let me die Yoongi- please just- if you do one thing for me- let do this. let me go."

Yoongi looks at your mating mark and can already see the thin tracery of ink spreading under your skin- inky blackness spreading from your mating bite and up your throat. A piece of someone who’s dead inside of you, shot through with silver to make it stand out more. 

It’s like some silly zombie bite in a bad horror movie but it’s so much more haunting, The veins in your eyes are even starting to discolor. You have maybe a few minutes before the mating bite takes you over completely and you’re mated to someone dead.

Zombie movies were nothing more than fear of this taking root in common culture, everyone fears losing their mate. What else is more terrifying than something that takes your humanity in the way that this has taken yours. This is every person’s worst nightmare- a death sentence.  

‘Ghosts’ are what society has dubbed the women and men who live after losing their partners. Most of the time they live without alpha or a pack- unable to bond to anyone else ever again once their mates are dead. Mating bites are a one-time thing. 

When one-half of a mated pair dies- a person's body has a peculiar way of letting outsiders know how to treat them gently- The mating mark turns black like a brand. A mark to let everyone know that they would never have another person to take care of them- to love them.

But you aren’t alone- you’re not alone because you have Yoongi and he’s right here with his wide palms on you. Hands that where always made to fix things, but you aren’t just some broken toy that needs a bit of glue.  He’s too late, just seconds too late and only inches away. 

He grips both of your forearms in either of his palms hands, pulling you closer. Making you sit up, dragging you into his lap like carrying your weight in his arms will fix this. Anything to hold onto you- to not lose you too soon. 

"Stop- just stop, I've got you- I've got you," Yoongi repeats it more for himself than he does for you.

But there are wounds in your body that can’t be fixed by simple hoping. There is a limit to what one person can take. Despair is one hell of a drug and while Yoongi fights and fights there is no undoing what Geumjae has done to you.

But maybe…

Yoongi dares to hope; “It’s only a half bond if we-“ he falls silent as the idea settles over him like a bucket of cold water. His brain rushing over everything he’s ever learned about mating bites and beta’s; all of the statistics and articles that Namjoon had shoved down his throat when Jungkook had first stopped having seizures. 

The medical mystery that betas were; how they were able to heal unseen hurts and maybe- maybe this was like that. Maybe the solution to this problem lays in Yoongi’s veins, in his mouth. 

His jaw aches at the very suggestion of it.  “I’m a beta- and betas don’t usually mark- because- because they’re stronger than alpha and omega bites.” 

It’s the only truth that makes sense. All of the stories of omegas and alphas going crazy after being bitten by betas, not being able to move from them too far, extreme clinginess- a bond that was too close, too strong, stronger than anything else in their life. You weren’t supposed to bond with someone so deep, the bite almost seemed to do more harm than good. 

But you’re already dying and there isn’t much worse that could happen to you.

You don't have anything to lose but Yoongi does. You shake yourself free from his arms and pull back. Recoiling from what he’s offering to do for you; tether him to you forever when you might not make it. 

You can already feel the mating mark taking hold- It's already starting to cloud your judgment, deep down, the part of you that cares if you survive this is already winking out. The blankness sinking through your every inch, The emptiness. You’d be surprised if you lifted your hand to your chest and found your heart still beating. 

“Yoongi- No- you don’t have to- you’ve already got a pack and don’t- don’t bind yourself to someone like me.”

It’s the same argument that you had before but there’s no force behind it- every stupid excuse you had for him not to love you is moot now that your husband is dead next to you. But you're done; Every breath takes more effort than it should and you feel so heavy. You look down at your lap and feel the lethargy sinking beneath your bones like lead. Hidden hands gripping around your throat cutting off your words.

You feel like you’re choking on something. 

You’ve felt depressed before (how could you not have given what your life was like before Yoongi). And having a mating mark from someone deceased feels like that but worse, like it's turned up by a factor of three. A weird mixture of dizzy, absent, and dissociative. You have never felt less connected to your own body, it feels foreign.

You are nothing but a soul inside a body, craving release. A thread of black that wants to tug you down to where ever Geumjae is now. 

The sinking sadness says to you with gentle hands- this is a fine spot. You can just sit here, It’s okay. You don’t have to move, you can just sit here until you die. As long as no one bothers you and hurts you again, you could just sit here, as long as it was quiet and peaceful. Things don't even have to be good, you don't need good things, you just need it to not hurt anymore. Until the earth reclaims you like it takes abandoned buildings. 

 A sharp pain that goes through your heart, an ache so deep that it speaks to cavernous places, wakes monsters that you didn’t know where there. 

You’ve never really wanted to die before, maybe as a passing thought- but didn’t everyone think that way? it’s so different now- where the thoughts are all consuming, running over your words in your head like oil spreading and staining cloth. 

Die- want to die- want- want- want die- wanna go- wanna be quiet- wanna fall asleep and not wake up- want to- 

But if you decided to lay here and not get up again, Yoongi would stay too.

He would try and get you to move, probably beg and try to get you to live. Even if he never bit you, he’d stay next to you until the end, just to hold your hand so that you didn’t have to be completely alone. You thought dying would feel more lonely,  But maybe it doesn't feel that way because Yoongi’s here. 

His hand closes around yours, his thumb rubbing soothing circles as he cries. And you think if you want one thing; it's for him to stop crying. Out of all people- Yoongi doesn't deserve the hurt (but maybe you're biased because you love him).

That tips the scale in his favor.

Geumjae’s blood is pooling on the floor. His body gives a twitch, the last remnants of his misfiring nerves as he dies. You feel the painful jerk in your mating bond. Yoongi watches the muscles of your neck twitch. 

Neither you nor Yoongi pays him any mind. 

"You don't have to do this Yoongi." Yoongi’s hand on your cheek- is like a balm to those words, pushing them out of your head. “You can’t take it back. If I die- you could die too.”

“But I want to” he kisses your cheek- and the contact lights a flame down your neck to your touch starved heart. The heat flares to light and the next second your body and your mouth are aching to bite. Your instincts an avalanche around you begging you to complete the bond that’s tearing through you making you shake. He kisses a little closer to your lips, cheeks wet and cool against your skin.

Geumaje and Yoongi were related by blood at all, maybe your instincts can’t tell the difference. 

“I don’t care if it does- I can’t- I’m not going to just let you die” his voice breaks on the last word. Not when it was me who was too slow to save you; He won’t say the words or whisper his guilt into the open air. 

“Please sweetheart- let me.” He kisses your lips. So soft- achingly soft, Your first kiss, you wish it had happened under better circumstances.

You hate that the first kiss you and Yoongi share tastes like blood.

But there would be more- there could be more kisses if Yoongi manages to do what he’s saying he can. The mark on your shoulder is already healing, the blackness stretching to scar treacherously fast. Normal mating bites usually take a day or so to heal, but not yours, it’s already scabbing and sealing in the poision.

If you’re going to try this- if it’s going to work- it has to be now. The bond is advancing, regardless of the fact that Geumjae is barely dead, barely cooling beside the two of you.

It’s barely been 10 minutes since you shot him. And if you listen carefully- you can hear sounds in the rest of the house, maybe someone else from the gang here- about to come upstairs and discover the mess of you three. muffled voices and heavy footsteps grow louder by the second. 

Yoongi is safe but you’re not. “Yoongi,” you say, his name a broken hymn on your mouth. Musical- and Yoongi can’t think of a time when he wouldn’t want to hear it. Hoping for more of this closeness and maybe one day, a love that doesn’t hurt.

You get the feeling that even if you are broken beyond repair, this man could fix you. Wide hands and careful fingers that rub the blood away from your skin, hands made for making things and mending things when they break. And maybe you’re selfish enough to let him bind himself to you- broken as you are.

You press your forehead to his, you have to ask one more time. "Are you sure Yoongi?"

He nods, quick and small, "I'm sure." there isn’t anything in his eyes that makes you doubt him.

"Okay," you say softly, tugging him closer, tilting your chin up to the sky, your skin stings where it stretches around the mating mark. "okay. Come here then."

Your hands tangle in Yoongi’s hair as you guide his mouth to your throat, and his mouth sliding into the space where Geumjae was just minutes ago. He lingers for just half a breath before sinks his teeth over the mating mark, a little deeper- his mouth a little wider. He makes the bite a tiny bit offset.

Your breath hitches, back arching. His hands-on your waist go hard, holding you closer to him, as close as he can get you. Unlike before when Geumjae’s bite was agony, this feels like heroin- like every drug mixing together sending you up and up.

If you looked down and saw your hands were tipped in gold you wouldn’t be surprised. For a second you think you can taste colors, and then the chocolate sea salt of Yoongi settles over your tongue delicious, like ambrosia- fuck it’s so strong, it’s halfway between a headache and a high. You gasp when you feel it, feel Yoongi all over, Goosebumps rising on your arms as he touches you. The smell of ocean breeze and chocolate filling you in a way that Geumjae’s scent didn’t.

Geumjae’s bite was nothing compared to this, a whisper to a symphony. 

This must be what a mating bite feels like when you want it. You cry out. Gripping the lapels of his coat. Yoongi’s heartbeat thunders in your ears, the only thing you can hear, until the beat matches to your own, heartbeats pumping in sync.

Your blood tastes sweet and he wonders what it says about him that he likes the taste. He gulps at it- once- twice- and then a third time just to make sure the mark sticks, maybe he could suck a little bit of Geumjae out of you.

His kisses get feverish, lapping up your blood with wide laves of his tongue, moaning a little. and this time when you kiss- with your blood in his mouth, they get hurried and rushed like he can consume you, each one sweeter than the last. There is one moment of nausea, only one moment where Yoongi sees the black tracery receded and feels it dim. 

Maybe it’s not gone, but at least it's buried.

Yoongi can almost feel you, can almost feel the bond, but not yet. Your scent, it's all cake-sweet now. You kiss him until your jaw aches until your lips feel bruised. Until you know the sounds below actually are people, rushing around trying to find Geumjae. Calling out your names. 

Yoongi is the first to break apart, the room spinning. “Do me” he lifts the edge of his shirt, picking out a spot that he likes, the meat just above his hip. A spot is half-hidden by his shirt and his pants.

Not everyone likes to have their mating marks on their neck (you certainly would have chosen to have yours another place had you been given the chance). And Yoongi stretches out so that you can get your mouth on him, your mouth on the spot he wants to bind your soul to his.

He holds one of your hands in both of his hands so gently as you cup his hip and bite down, even as you begin to make out the noise of gang members coming up the attic stairs. Yoongi bites down a moan, lets you take one gasp of blood into your mouth before your teeth leave his skin.

The high rushes over him and he knows his pupils are mirrors of yours, black and dilated. He just has time to wipe his blood from your mouth and get you as close as he can, before the attic door creaks, the barrel of a gun pushing it open. And the gangsters enter the room with practiced steps.

Yoongi pulls his shirt back down just before they have a chance to see.

You play the part, slumping against him and letting him take the reigns. the people must take it for pain even though you’re shaking not with sobs, but from the feeling of Yoongi’s soul intertwining with yours. Full body shivers and something solidifying between the two of you. 

Together you shake, Yoongi is barely aware of the gangsters clearing the room. 

You feel like you can taste his thoughts, though you can’t actually hear what he's thinking. You can feel the way they tumble like small waves over each other. You feel concern and something else, something that feels an offal lot like love shoot down the fledgling bond as Yoongi’s arms pull you up, firmer against him.

It makes shivers rise on every inch of your skin, the pleasure he feels when he touches you that you're now hyper-aware of. It's what your body has been craving- the completion of the bond.

You both bleed- your blood dripping onto the floor. One part sacrament and sacred love and another part poisonous longing for a man you hated so much more than you ever loved him. This feels strange, it feels wrong, and that you have one part of you reaching out for something that’s not there. And then this- with Yoongi, right and front of you and inside of you. Completely occupying your heart and your mind and your body.

Accept for that one poisoned inch; you might not be completely his, but it's enough now, the bond with yoongi occupying those thoughts you'd had minutes before.

The gangsters don’t touch Geumjae, at least until Moonbyul enters the room, unarmed. Yoongi’s cousin eyes Yoongi from the door. There isn’t enough room in this torture room for the 12 or so gangsters and the three of you, they press against the walls, guns at the ready.

Moonbyul approaches Geumjae’s corpse, turning him over with her foot to see his blankly staring face, turning it towards the heavens instead of hell. For a moment, Yoongi thinks she might actually kick him. She plucks her pink handgun from the floor. Someone passes her a rag and she wipes it free of blood and fingerprints.

Her eyes on Yoongi are hard; a bit of mirth playing on the edge of her mouth as she plays her hand. A queen in a room full of pawns and knights, and the king underfoot. Her hand of aces. 

Betting it all on a simple game of roulette- red or black- will Yoongi challenge her or not. Yoongi doesn't miss the way her finger hovers on the trigger. 

“I suppose this entire situation would be concerning to me- if you hadn’t already named me as Don.” she nudges Geumjae's body again with her foot. "I guess he didn't take it well?"

She lies effortlessly, taking the moment to seize power. So this was what she was waiting for. Yoongi doesn’t challenge her words for fear of what she might do right now, not that he really would anyway. 

Yoongi tips his head forward in difference, “No he didn’t,” 

Moonbyul tucks her gun back into her waistband, and holds out her hand to pull yoongi to his feet. 

Yoongi takes you with him, small and still a little high in his arms. You hide your face in Yoongi’s shoulder, Holding onto him tight. You don’t know if you could take it if they tried to separate you now. 

Yoongi has to swallow to continue, struggling to think before he speaks with so many new sensations shocking his body. He's intimately aware of the way you shift in his arms, arms tightening around you at the very idea of you moving more than an inch away from him right now as you settle onto your own two feet. still a little unsteady. 

“He- he mated her against her will, and then he tried to kill us when I told him I wouldn’t- and- and after-” It’s not a lie- not really, but it still feels that way. Moonbyul doesn't need to do anything more than that to nod to call her men off, and they all relax around the room. 

They instantly fade from engaged concern to understanding. The other heads of household will probably grill Yoongi more. But you’ve both got time to get your story straight. For now, they need to clean up the body.

It helps that threatening the beta is a punishable offense; no one will question Yoongi killing him- especially since they’re brothers. Most of the families tend to think that inner house spats that family's business. Yoongi doesn’t know which of his relatives will inherit the title of head of the Min family, but it won't be Yoongi.

You’re small and silent in Yoongi’s arms, so vulnerable, he keeps you a few paces away from any of the mobsters, bites down a growl whenever any of them come too close to his mate. It’s just the mating bond making it’s self-known. You are his. No one can touch you.

Yoongi has never been a possessive man, but now he is. The mating mark tearing through him and screaming at him to protect, to provide, to nurture, and keep safe. He strokes down your back as his cousin quietly orders the others to clean up the mess and Geumjae’s body. The family has cleanup crews on call for this very reason.

They quietly offer to burn the house down to stage the death but Yoongi doesn’t care. He guesses it belongs to him now or maybe you. It depends on which bond the family will consider more important; the bonds of a half mating or the bond of brotherhood.

“I’ll handle it-“ his cousin has the good grace to offer comfort to Yoongi that way when he gets you into her car. she doesn't say anything about the dents in the side.  

Yoongi doesn’t quite hate her for any of this, but he doesn’t trust her the same way he did before either. She’s gotten what she wanted- the Don position. Plucked it from Yoongi’s hands.

“You haven’t had a chance to call the heads of house and tell them about your decision yet, but after that, you should be free to go” she reads him easily as always, The only other manipulator up to par with Yoongi himself in the gang. She knows that not an inch of Yoongi wants to stay in this house or this city a second longer.

At the idea of leaving you to straighten up in Yoongi’s lap to listen in a little more, you share a look with Yoongi. Your mate, your body sings the eye contact makes you shiver in your seat. Yoongi pulls you closer, stroking up to your arm mistakenly thinking you’re cold. You pull yourself closer to him- but it feels like you can’t get close enough, He makes a dissatisfied noise in his throat.

Yoongi will have to get used to this feeling. Like his soul is walking outside of his body. It feels incredibly vulnerable and intimate- He can feel your panic, how physically you’re being torn apart right now, every few minutes you shake. Yoongi puts your legs over his and holds you close. Watching your face closely for every twinge of pain as the lights of the city flicker over you two.

The meeting with the heads of house is tense, though the usual group of is two short now, standing only at eleven members now that Geumjae is gone and Moonbyul is named Don. You cannot be Don and a head of house at the same time.

It takes every bone in Yoongi’s body to let you be taken into the other room by Moonbyul’s mate to check over your injuries. He stops her with a hand on her shoulder. He catches Moonbyul’s nostrils flare, but she doesn’t say anything. “Would you look at her bruises for me?”

Later Yoongi will check them himself, again and again until he's sure you're all right. But the sooner you get ice on the nastier bruises the better off you’ll be. Someone should look at your ribs and your head too- he has half a mind to take you to the hospital before you leave the city. He doesn’t know how long it will be before you’re stationary again. He’d stay in the city tonight if you needed to. But he can feel your panic down the bond, The sooner you both get out of here the better.

With Geumjae dead there is no true opposition against his cousin's rule. She stands at the head of the table like she’s meant to be there. And still- the heads of the families talk through the night, kicking the non-proverbial dead horse into the ground. There is little mourning for Geumjae, one granny who cries faintly in the other room while the heads argue. Yoongi supposes he should look more upset, but no one pays attention to him now that he’s made his choice.

No, what they spend most of the time discuss is you. Sat in the other room, able to hear all of this, the men and woman weighing your fate and deciding what to do with you. If Yoongi listens, he can hear Hyejin’s quiet voice. Can feel your discomfort as the ice hits your ribs, maybe broken, definitely badly bruised.

Yoongi flinches every time he feels the pain pulse down the bond. Maybe in time, it will feel less sensitive but right now- Yoongi can feel your hurts just as bad as he can feel his own. A part of him is reaching out into the other room, screaming in his ear to go comfort his mate.  

He has a mate. Yoongi can scarcely believe it.

The gangsters around the table remain blissfully unaware of that fact. Most of the heads are on the same page, and he won’t reveal his mating mark unless he absolutely needs to, he will let that secret stay secret unless necessary. It’s a good bargaining chip. They wouldn’t kill you if they knew it was going to kill him too. But still- it’s hard to hear them argue over your fate when he can’t intervene.

“You know the rules- no divorces and no separations,” one alpha says, he’s older- nearing 60, but Yoongi can’t excuse that cruelty with age. The youngest, the head of the Ahn house does the rebutting for Yoongi, and he bites his tongue.

“But it wouldn’t be a divorce; she’s his widow now and his ex-mate technically.”

“Yes but that’s only a half bond.” There is only one omega head, and the woman snubs her long cigarette out on the table leaving an ashy circle 

“It’s only the alpha bite that matters- or have you forgotten?”

To her credit, the omega doesn't back down. “Chances are she’ll die anyway why are we even talking about her, we should start transitioning already.”

“That’s easy to say- if she’s got nothing left to lose what’s to stop her from going to the police.”

“I can keep an eye on her,” Yoongi volunteers, jumping at the chance to turn the discussion to his favor. They can all go fuck themselves if they ever dare to try and hurt you. “You say she’s as good as dead anyway. So you shouldn't mind if she comes with me.” 

The likelihood of anyone living after their mate dies is in the teens. Yoongi knew that and even then he bonded to you anyway. He can only hope that with his bite coursing through your veins and your body confused that you’ve got better odds than that. Yoongi did what he promised to do, now your odds are both 50/50. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t go to the police.”

Through the bond he can feel your curiosity and a little bit of fear too, you’re listening in. And he does his best to let his calmness comfort you too. Your panic instantly relaxes and he senses you reaching out. If you were next to Yoongi you’d be holding hands, and it kind of feels that way. If you could ever hold hands with someone’s soul.

“You realize that if you make her your responsibility, anything bad that happens will fall on your head as well” their betas might be sacred- but they aren’t free from the rest of the laws of the gang.

“I understand.” The Don lifts her head, regarding Yoongi with a heavy look. “She’s his widow and whether we want to address it now or not, the law says she’s inherited his wealth.”

It's met with immediate opposition, several heads of house start speaking over each other at once,  but Yoongi speaks up again, shouting over them. A beta raising their voice is about as strange as one giving or getting a mating bite, everyone falls silent. “Give it to me or her- I don’t care.”

another few minutes and they’re ready to let you go. they vote on it, and only 3 out of 11 heads vote to have you killed. Moonbyul gives the all clear, “Then you’re free to go.” Yoongi doesn’t even say goodbye, going to you in the other room just as quickly as he can without outright running. The Don’s mate is crouched in front of where you sit. Your body is mostly clean of blood and you’ve been put in other clothes; a pair of sweats and a baggy shirt.

Yoongi can see all the bruises on the side of your face turning purple and Yoongi wants to cup your face and bring it to his, kiss away the pain coloring your skin like watercolors, but can’t do it here. “Do we need to go to the hospital?” 

“Not for her but maybe for you, no ones checked you over yet, have they?”

yoongi grits his teeth, seconds away from snapping at hyejin, he wants her to get away, get as far from you as possible. “i asked if she needed the hospital.” 

Hyejin stands when Yoongi crouches. shaking her head when it becomes clear yoongi isn’t to be argued with right now. “There’s something wrong with her- but I think you know what” her eyes hover on Yoongi’s hip.

 So at least she’s figured it out. She has the good sense to utter the words quietly. Though the people in the other room aren’t concerned with Yoongi anymore, they’ve already launched into discussions about transitioning power and re-defining responsibilities. It seems Moonbyul had a plan on how she wanted the family to run from the beginning.  

He shakes off his annoyance, “Thank you,” he says to the omega, holding out a hand to you, which you take, still not saying anything. Tiredness holding you down to the chair. The same kind of look you’d had when Geumjae had died. The mating mark has been taped over but some of the blackness is still there. Yoongi wonders when it will fade, if it ever does.

“I wish I could say I’ll see you soon but I don’t think I will.” You and Yoongi nod, your hands twined between the two of you. She knows that neither you nor Yoongi has a love for the gang. No one stops you and Yoongi when you leave the house. Immediately hailing a taxi. You stop only at Yoongi’s safe house for a spare 20 minutes, while he packs up a fraction of his belongings in a hurried rush, anything to get out before someone tries to change their mind.

If Geumjae had any hidden loyalists the beta that killed him and his runaway wife would be the first targets. Let alone their reaction if they knew who had really killed Geumjae. The quicker the two of you get away from the city the better.

You end up at the train station, Yoongi breaks the bracelets off of your wrist- the same ones that he saw you wear on you the first night- and the ones that he’s always thought looked like shackles. He yanks at them as hard as he can until they snap; kissing your wrist after each one is off. You throw them over the side of the chain-link fence and into the darkness- to be lost forever you hope. The symbols of all you’ve lost.

When you get on the train, you cuddle close under Yoongi’s jacket and into his warmth. He’s a protective barrier between you and the third seat that thankfully remains empty this late into the night it’s so late it’s nearly early morning. Most of the train is empty besides an elderly couple at the front. Regardless, the two of you sit behind them. Yoongi can’t take his eyes off of the potential threat. Actually flinches when the conductor comes around to stamp your tickets.

You head off into the night- your little box of light in a sea of street lamps and hidden dangers. You almost fall asleep a few times, head bobbing as you catching yourself before it hits his shoulder. After the third time this happens he pulls you in close, tucks your head close to his scent gland, and commands “sleep” in a voice that you cannot disobey.

Eventually, you wake, the car is bright with the midday sun and the car is half full. Yoongi’s eyes are bloodshot as they train on every passenger who comes in and leaves your train car. Yoongi holds your hand, rubbing his thumb up and down the back in an endless trail. A conductor opens the door of your train car to pass through, bunching a few tickets here and there from the new passengers who have boarded the train.

He passes by where you're bundled and Yoongi flinches so hard it wakes you fully. his shoulder accidentally nudging a bruise on your cheek, He murmurs his apologies, panicked hands fussing over you. He could feel that he hit one of your bruises and the horror of hurting you make him wide-eyed and worried. You catch his hands, pressing the pads of them to your lips. Yoongi's hands shake as they touch you, hours later, he's still high on adrenaline. 

“You need to sleep Yoongi” it’s been a long few days for both of you.

He doesn’t answer with more than a grunt. But you get off the train at the next stop and it’s nearing noon by the time the two of you stumble across the street to a motel, and it’s shitty and smells like cigarettes and the lady at the front desk asks if you need the hourly rate or the daily rate. Though she does give you a discount because Yoongi’s a beta. Eyeing the blood-soaked collar of his jacket and the bloody bandages on your neck.

You should be holed up somewhere safe away from prying eyes to adjust to your new mating bite- not in a hotel where the smells of other people assault your nose. Making you press close to Yoongi because everything smells so new and scary. Like your senses have been turned up and only Yoongi can quell their sensitivity.

you don’t realize that the attendant gave you two beds until you get to the room. you both stare blankly before you cough and separated. the closeness too much now that you’re alone and free from threats. Though it doesn't feel that way. 

you hate it- you don’t want to curl up across the room from Yoongi- you want to be next to him. you almost whimper when he He steps away to the other bed to set down his backpack. You want to cry, your skin feels irritated and itchy without his pressed to yours. You want him to touch you but you can’t stay it. Don’t know how to ask around the thickness in your throat.

He gets a clean shirt from his black backpack and helps you put it on so that you don’t irritate the mating bite. You can’t lift either of your arms much and neither can he but he pushes through the pain for you. He only has 2 or three sets of clothes that he grabbed from the cottage, and it’s all you’ve got.

“We’ll get some more clothes for you tomorrow.” He doesn’t say that you should have grabbed some of your clothes- because you both know you couldn’t handle staying in that house a second more than was necessary. You barely thought to linger long enough to grab your purse, which thankfully had everything you really need in it. 

Somehow he has athletic tape in his bag, and he spends a few minutes changing out your soaked through bandages, bundling up toilet paper, and taping it over your mating bite. Only after yours is taken care of does he let you do the same for his bite on his hip, and the burns on his hands. 

You pull his pants off and then his boxers down just enough so that you can get at it, small from your mouth, the skin around it irritated and pink. You try not to let your eyes hover on the small happy trail that traces from his belly button downwards. The band on his boxers is stained with blood- and you wonder how much it hurt to have it dig into it all day.

You curl up in separate beds, and only when you’re under the covers do you slide off your pants. leaving you only in a large shirt that smells like yoongi.  Yoongi does the same, says “goodnight” and shuts off the light but doesn’t turn away from you, keeping his eyes on you in the darkness. 

You’re silent for a few minutes, but you can tell that neither of you is falling asleep. Your bed feels cold and you wonder if he feels the same, you let the distance hurt for a minute before you give in.  

"Thank fucking god-" He peels back the blanket for you the second you make the move and dash across the cold room. you scoot into his warmth and he lets out a little ‘oof’ when you collide. Letting him pull you closer, put the blanket over your back, and make sure all of your skin is covered.

It’s not enough for Yoongi and he pulls you sideways so that he can get some of his weight on top of you. A growl building in his chest at the thought of anyone walking through the door right now.

He needs to check the lock, make sure that no one can possibly disturb you. Needs to- the instinct filling him so harshly he can’t breathe. He tries to pull away, but your hands tighten on him, and you let out a whine so heartbreaking that instantly has him releasing comforting chocolate, flopping back on top of you nuzzling under your chin, you feel like you’re drowning in it. 

Your love with Yoongi is still too new and raw to be close like this without feeling shy- and yet you can’t resist, your mating bond is like a fresh burn that you can’t stop picking at because it hurts. (Like there’s something dead there that you need to get rid of, you can’t heal around, you need to tear it out so that it feels more like bleeding rather than something that was carved out by hungry heat.) You fiddle with the bandage at your neck before Yoongi takes your hand in his, lacing your fingers together.

For a moment, you crave the release that blood might give you- and like he can feel it. Yoongi presses a kiss to the back of your hand. “Couldn’t sleep?” Yoongi says. You shake your head. The motel creeks and overhead you can hear someone else moving in an adjacent room. Yoongi gets his head on your pillow and adjusts his hand around your waist so that he’s not hitting the vicious bruise that Geumjae left with one of his kicks.

The last 24 hours have been such a tangle. It feels weird to not move now. Yoongi’s heart is still hammering; you can feel it under your palm. You’re both unwilling to relax and close your eyes even for a second even though you’re both exhausted.

You’re worried if you close your eyes you’re going to see Geumjae's face.

Yoongi left the light in the bathroom on for you. Sensing that the shadows would be too thick with nightmares for you to handle for long. You look at each other in the darkness before Yoongi lets out a shaky little giggle.

“Do you know what I just realized?” he says, the words quieted against the too scratchy bedspread. “We could have gotten a better hotel, we easily have enough money for it now” and that’s true.

If Yoongi’s orders were followed and the gang's accountant really did transfer all of your inherited wealth to your name then- fuck- both of you saw the bank statements. Both of you know how much money Yoongi’s family had amassed- the same wealth that Geumjae had inherited and now you.

“Fuck you’re right,” you say, ducking in so that you don’t have to meet Yoongi’s eyes. Geumjae used to hit you sometimes if you did that- and trained habits die-hard. 

yoongi kisses your brow, slow little pecks that travel down your cheeks, as unhurried as they are sweet. It's strange to be close to him now when it’s all you’ve wanted for the last few months. You never thought you’d get this. It feels like a daydream and a nightmare all at once.

“We could buy a whole house- or three” and even then you’d have more than enough money to live on after. For the rest of your days, comfortable and cozy even if you were foolish with the money. Yoongi still gets his stipend from the gang. No doubt to be greater now that he’s the only beta.

He stops his kisses, mouth hovering on your cheek, “We could do that.” he sounds like he’s barely containing his excitement. 

You’ll both be fine. Neither of you will ever have to worry about money again and it makes you feel sick and happy with something that feels a terrible lot like grief.

Even if you got that- the last 24 hours haven’t been worth it. You’re not entirely out of the woods yet. The mark on your shoulder is scabbing over and inky. But every few hours of closeness that the two of you have- Yoongi think’s he sees the color fade- just a little bit.

You don’t know where the giggle comes from but one moment it comes out of your mouth and you laugh, and Yoongi joins in the sound startling out of his chest. He presses his forehead tight against yours and sighs at the sound. You see the moment clarity falls on him and an idea settles into his mind the second it hits. And dim happiness settles over your bond.

Yoongi lifts your hand to his mouth and kisses your bruised knuckles. “Let's buy a house.”

You smile- tired from today but still willing to placate him. “Okay Yoongi, we can do that.”

Now finally, his eyes are starting to droop, every few seconds he tries to keep them open, but you know he's seconds away from sleep. His words slurred when they whisper, his sweet chocolaty breath tickling your cheeks. “Goodnight sweetheart- love you.”

“Love you too,” it’s the first time you’ve ever said those words to each other. It feels like the first of many times you’ll say it. Forever- you and Yoongi will be mated together until you both die. And who cares if that happens tomorrow or months from now. Who cares? Because you have him and that’s all that matters.

Yoongi holds you and knows- that he will love you- as long as he can.

He watches you sleep, waits until your eyes are closed. Until he can make sure you’re safe and warm. A gentle purring fills the hotel room, soft and peaceful. yoongi hears it louder when he presses his ear to your chest. He tries to keep his eyes open, but somewhere around the second hour- they fall closed.

Neither of you dream.

—————

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[phoenixyfriend]

Auntie ‘Soka and Little Leia (and Rex)

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

Listen. You all knew this was coming.

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

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

Rated T, gen.

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

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

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

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

Reminder that none of them have been born yet.

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

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

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

(Ahsoka can fake Mandalore. Sometimes.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

That, of course, is when things get interesting.

Specifically, Ahsoka spots a Mandalorian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wanna explain why your kid has my face?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where are you staying?”

“What?” Leia bites out.

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

Well, kriff you too, Ahsoka thinks.

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

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

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

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

“For free?” Rex demands.

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

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

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

“Yeah?”

“How much?”

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

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

Leia glowers, cute and furious. “No.”

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

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

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

“You’ve got conditions,” he guesses.

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

“Yeah?”

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

“You’re children, I wouldn’t.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There are other risks.”

“There are.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You already know my name.”

“I do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My last fight--”

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

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

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

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

“Jedi?”

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

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

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

“Bit young for that.”

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

“Not in command.”

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

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

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

This part of the story is his.

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the difference?”

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

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

“Time travel.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Let’s say I believe you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That why you’re special?”

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

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

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

Rex grins. It is not a kind expression.

“Let me tell you about Kamino.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Caf?”

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

“Whiskey?”

“That’s a definitely shouldn’t.”

“Hoth chocolate?”

“...please.”

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

“Do I ask what it was this time?”

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

“Try me anyway.”

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

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

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

She can feel the tears. Fuck..

“You want to dull the edges.”

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

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

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

“You’re hard on yourself.”

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

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

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

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

“Auntie ‘Soka? Why’d you stop?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahsoka feels light-headed.

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

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

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

It’s Depa.

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

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

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

“Are you Depa?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then Depa is standing right in front of her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s like the start of a sick joke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Auntie Soka? You’re shivering.”

Is she?

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

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

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

Does she?

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

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

Right. That.

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

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

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

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

That was a forgone conclusion.

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

She does.

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

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

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

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

She feels more like a person come morning.

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

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

“Feeling better?”

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

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

Ahsoka nods slowly. “Okay.”

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

Her complete spiral into nonbeing?

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

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

Of course it isn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She already told Jango Fett, of all people.

“Padawan Torrent?”

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

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

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

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

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

"No, thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’ve done this before.”

“Regularly,” she confirms. “You?”

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

“Fett?”

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

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

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

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

“And you just kept doing it.”

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

He doesn’t answer her.

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

Rex greets them before she does.

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

She recognizes one of them.

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

“Jedi,” Ahsoka grunts. “Here.”

“I see.”

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

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

One human, one Kiffar. She knows the latter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not like they know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Um,” Quinlan says. “I just--”

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

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

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

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

She definitely preempted the actual flirtation.

Fuck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What was what?”

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

That’s pretty true.

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

“Yeah, we can tell.”

“Leia.”

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

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

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

“Stop.”

“I’m serious, you--”

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

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

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

“I get it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jango never does ask what she did with the slavers.

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

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

“GAR?”

“Grand Army of the Republic.”

He finally looks at her.

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

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

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

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

Ahsoka shrugs. “Yeah, well--”

“You said the clones were ten.”

There’s the rub, isn’t it?

Of course it was about the clones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That one gets her an odd look.

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

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

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

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

“That was inappropriate, padawan.”

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

“Um, so--”

“How old is the kid?” Fett interrupts.

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

“And how old am I?”

“...early thirties?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

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

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

Quinlan rallies. “So, brothers?”

Tholme sighs loudly, hand over his eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Drop your elbow.”

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

“I know how to fight,” Leia grumbles. “I took lessons. I was good at them.”

“And I’m better,” Fett says, leaving no room for argument. “You want the Torrents to take over?”

The Torrents. Rex and Soka. She likes being referred to that way. Like they’re a team that never got split up.

Force, she wished they’d never gotten split up.

“Again,” Fett orders, and Leia moves through the Mandalorian kata with ill grace in her emotions and all grace in her sweeping limbs.

Well, as much grace as an undersized six-year-old can, at any rate.

“Think he’ll ask me to spar her again?” Rex asks, dropping down into the seat next to Ahsoka and passing her a drink.

“Maybe,” she acknowledges. “I think he’s wondering if it’s worth asking Vos to spar with her, so she gets more experience with size differences.”

“Hm?”

“She flinched at his face again,” she tells him. “The whole... thing with Boba, I guess. She still won’t tell me why Fett triggers her sometimes, but he’s not pressing her to spar with him, and there’s only so much she can get out of fighting me. Asking Tholme would be presumptuous, but Vos is just a padawan. I think it’d work out.”

“And you?”

She looks at him, already feeling a cresting wave of bullshit she doesn’t want to deal with. “What about me?”

“Are you going to spar with the Jedi?”

She should. She hasn’t sparred with a saber since she got tossed back into a body only half-familiar to her. She’s let Leia borrow the shorter one to learn some basic blocking moves, Shii-Cho and then, with hesitance, the first Soresu form. Another time, she loaned it to Rex to practice some attacks; they both know that the next time he picks up her saber in battle, having lost his weapons or she her grip, it will be neither the first or last time he wields a sword of light. None of that, however, is... sparring.

None of that is against someone who knows what they’re doing.

How long has it been since she sparred with anyone other than Kanan and Ezra?

How long has it been since she sparred without the looming specter of Darth Vader in the back of her mind, without fear of the Inquisitors, without the knowledge that any saber held by someone other than her two friends would be red as blood and twice as drenched.

Would she be able to hold back as she fought?

“I should,” she acknowledges, eyes on where Fett is nudging Leia’s feet into position for some kind of leveraging flip. She’s so small. “It would probably be a good idea to spar against a master at some point.”

“Do you think you can?” Rex asks.

“I never knew him,” she says. “And he isn’t Dark. It should be fine.”

Rex nods, taking her word for it. They watch as Leia stumbles on a final move, and Fett gestures for her to sit down and get a drink.

“That man is a terror,” she informs them.

(She’d once described him as a slave-driver. She had not made that mistake twice.)

“Least it’s not Kamino!” Rex tells her cheerfully. When Leia refuses to look impressed, he laughs at her.

Ahsoka has a half-second’s warning before heavy boots thud to the ground next to her. “What’s Kamino?”

“Hello, Vos, it’s nice to see you too,” she drawls. “I’m good, thanks for asking, and yourself?”

The boy-not-quite-man rolls his eyes. “Hi, Torrents; hi, tiny one.”

Leia glares at him next.

“So, Kamino?”

“Planet by Rishi,” Rex says.

“Why were you there?”

“They specialize in cloning.”

Ahsoka covers her mouth as the conversation drops into the same awkward gap that always happens when Quinlan stumbles into a subject he didn’t know to avoid.

“Like... you were made there, or you were researching how it works for your own--”

Ahsoka slaps a hand over his mouth. “Now’s a great time to stop talking.”

He licks her palm.

She bares her teeth and arches her fingers just enough to press nails into his cheek.

He bites at her palm, and she yanks her hand away.

“You’re all children,” Leia accuses, conveniently forgetting that Ahsoka and Rex are both over a decade older than her.

“I can throw you the length of a swimming pool,” Ahsoka tells her. “One of the fancy competition-ready ones that would make a Tatooinian cry. You are absolutely the child here.”

“Using the Force is cheating, sir,” Rex informs her.

“Only if there’s a competition,” Ahsoka shoots back. “And proving that a certain princess is a small child is not a competition. It’s a declarative fact.”

“I’m going to rip open the seams on all your tops except the ugliest one,” Leia decides.

“Try me,” Ahsoka challenges. “Adi’ka.”

A low, rough cough interrupts them. “Are you done?”

Fett has his arms crossed, and an eyebrow raised. He knows they’re all adults here, and is entirely unamused. As the silence drags, the eyebrow climbs a little higher.

“Done with what?” Quinlan finally asks, thereby volunteering himself to spar in hand-to-hand with Jango Fett, as one does.

“Poor, poor Vos,” Rex laughs, watching as Fett barks out orders at Quinlan every five seconds to fix his footwork, to stop dropping his guard, to stop wasting energy on flips instead of just dodging the easy way.

“Throw him!” Ahsoka calls. To her delight, Fett obliges.

The thing is, Quinlan isn’t bad at brawling. He’s got training, endurance, skill. The man knows what he’s doing, objectively. He’s just not a match for Fett, and is used enough to relying on his saber that his hand-to-hand skills are rusty. They are perhaps less rusty than those Jedi who don’t take questionable jobs in the Mid-Outer Rim, and Ahsoka’s got a suspicion that Vos regularly gets into bar fights in his downtime, but none of that is enough for him to actually do more than survive against Fett without his saber.

Even the saber wouldn’t help, if Fett had his armor.

“Whose idea was this?”

Ahsoka cranes her head back and smiles. “Hello, Master Tholme. Vos... volunteered.”

“Did he know he was volunteering?”

“No comment.”

Tholme snorts, crossing his arms and eyeing the spar in front of him. “I thought Fett hated Jedi. Giving us a ride for the sake of you three is one thing, but why is he teaching my padawan?”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Constructive bullying?”

There’s a small twitch of a smile, quickly gone. “He said something wrong, I’m guessing?”

“There was no way he could have known,” she dismisses. “We’re just, like, ninety-percent tragic backstories.”

“You’d think the Force would warn him,” Rex notes.

“That’s not how the Force works,” Leia chides.

“No, no, he’s right,” Ahsoka corrects. “The Force does sometimes step in to stop a person from saying something stupid. However, Padawan Vos is at an age where people think they are very rational while being more irrational than they likely ever will be again.”

“Do I want to ask what you were doing at that age?” Tholme asks.

“Running bla...” she trails off, then whips around to gape at him.

He smiles, bland and unassuming. “Does Fett know?”

“Know... what?” Ahsoka asks.

“That you’re significantly older than you look,” he says, voice just low enough that the sparring duo can’t hear him. “All three of you.”

Ahsoka turns back to the spar, only catching Tholme out of the corner of her eye. “He knows.”

“Mm. Were you planning on telling the Council?”

“Yes.” That part was never in question. “How did you figure it out?”

“I am a good investigator,” he says. “And you rely a little too heavily on your physical forms to obfuscate. Were it just one of you, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the pattern repeated across three is a little easier to discern.”

“I hoped the whole ‘child soldiers’ thing would be a bigger distraction,” Ahsoka mutters. She glances at Leia and Rex. Both of them are used to being in charge to some degree, giving orders and making contingency plans, but in this... in this, Ahsoka is in charge. They’d decided that at the very start. It didn’t matter that Rex had lived longer and had more experience, or that Leia had held the highest Rebellion rank of the three of them. Ahsoka had been agreed as leader, and they were relying on her.

They’re waiting on her orders. Stiff and unhappy, in Leia’s case, but they trust her.

“Will you be telling Vos?” She asks.

“No,” Tholme says. “Your secrets remain your own unless they endanger us, and I’ve a feeling they won’t be.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Rex jokes, smile not reaching his eyes. “I’ve been working with this family for too long to trust that trouble won’t find them around the next corner.”

“This family?” Tholme repeats.

“Sokari was telling the truth about her master being Leia’s biological father,” Rex says. He shrugs. “I worked with him, with his wife, with both of his kids, with his master and his padawan. All of them, to a one, are trouble magnets.”

“Ah, but that’s not the secret that’s putting us in danger,” Tholme points out. “Simply existence as a Jedi.”

Rex shrugs. “Fair enough. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.”

Ahsoka lurches to her feet, turning with a smile and dancing backward into the the stretch of empty cargo hold they used for such things. “A spar, Master Tholme?”

He looks past her, to Quinlan, and raises a brow. “Would you not prefer to spar with someone a little closer to your level first?”

She barks out a laugh. “Master Tholme, I’m afraid I’ve spent more of my life fighting to survive than having normal friendly spars. My style is more lethal than the average, and you’ve already seen what war’s done to my mind. I ask to spar with you because, if I lose control, if I slip in time or react on an instinct that isn’t appropriate, I trust that you’ll be more able to stop me than a senior padawan.”

He smiles. “Yes, I gathered as much. Still, better to ask. Shall we wait for them to finish up?”

Ahsoka shrugs, turns, and yells. “Clear the deck!”

Rex snorts behind her, and lowly mutters, “Sir, yes, sir.”

She smirks at him over her shoulder. “At ease, Captain.”

“That’s ‘Commander’ to you, I got promoted,” he sniffs, chin held high.

Heavy steps herald Fett’s arrival at their little group. “The hells are you doing?”

“I’m going to have a spar with a Jedi Master, and I want you and Vos to not get stabbed.”

“I’m not that easy to injure in an actual fight, let alone by accident,” Fett grouses. He looks up and over at Vos, who is already significantly taller, if a fair shot less built. “This one, on the other hand...”

“Hey!”

Ahsoka laughs and backs into the center of the cargo hold, drawing her sabers. “Don’t worry, Vos, I won’t play dirty. You’ll probably get your master back in one piece.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself there, aren’t you? He’s a Jedi Master and former Watchman. You’re... what, eighteen?”

Ahsoka raises a brow and activates her sabers, tapping the blades together and watching as more than one person winces. “Wanna bet on how long I last?”

“No,” he says immediately, stepping back to join Rex on the bench. “You’ve already blindsided me enough. I’m not dumb enough to fall for whatever you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“I don’t have sleeves.”

“Armwarmers-slash-greaves, then.”

“Greaves go on the legs, these are vambraces.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “I’m just going to stop talking now!”

“Good plan,” Leia snarks, and then literally hisses when Rex ruffles her hair.

Tholme lights his saber and sinks into an opening stance.

Ahsoka mirrors him.

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

She wins, but barely. She's had a few weeks to practice her forms, has sparred hands-only with Rex and Fett, but this is her first real try at using her sabers against a person, instead of a blaster or thin air, since she arrived in the past. She’s only mostly adjusted to her body.

But Tholme is a healer and a watchman, not a duelist. Ahsoka held her own against Ventress, against Grievous, against Maul when she was this age. Still adjusting to her body or not, her lineage is one of battle, and it bled true.

“You’re terrifying,” Quinlan tells her after they’re done, smiling like the sun as he hands her a towel. “Please never turn that on me.”

She laughs at him. “Would you believe that I’m out of practice?”

“Out of practice with what?” he asks, horrified and fascinated. “Fighting Sith Lords?”

“Among other things,” she says, and smirks when he chokes on his drink. “Multiple darkside users who claimed to be Sith, at least. One being a full Lord, one that was disowned by his master, and one that was apprenticed to a Banite apprentice, so she wasn’t technically allowed to be a Darth because of the rule of two.”

Tholme meets her eyes past Quinlan’s shoulder, head tilted and eyes half-shut in consideration. He’s taking her seriously. He knows what she’s not saying.

“How...” Quinlan trails off and shakes his head. “You know what, no. Asking you people questions never ends well.”

“Good plan,” Ahsoka says, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Also, you need to spar with Fett more. Your footwork is shit.”

“It is not,” Quinlan gripes. “You’re all just scary good at this stuff.”

“You mean surviving?” Leia pipes up, and smiles innocently when Quinlan turns to pout at her.

“You’re getting bullied by a six-year-old,” Rex informs him.

“Yeah,” Quinlan sighs. “I know.”

Ahsoka laughs, and it’s fine. It’s all fine. For a week, everything is honestly great. She trains, she laughs, she works through the nightmares.

Then fucking Denon happens.

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

Denon is a city-planet on the intersection of two major hyperlanes. It’s the kind of place where they stop for two things:

Fuel.

Paperwork.

Technically, there’s a whole mess of paperwork they have to fill out to continue along this specific hyperlane, since they aren’t official Republic ships, and don’t have the licenses to just pass along like ships that are pre-registered to the Trade Federation or the like. They could sneak past--literally all of them know smuggler’s routes--but it’s honestly less of a pain to do things legally. They have a Jedi Master. They have cash. Some of that cash wasn’t quite legally acquired, but nobody needs to know that.

It’s supposed to be a pit stop. That’s all.

It’s just a pit stop.

But no, the galaxy isn’t that kind and Ahsoka’s luck is currently being compounded with a Skywalker, two Fetts, and Vos, which means that of course they run into trouble. Of course they do. There was never any other option, was there?

“Motherfucker,” Ahsoka snaps, lifting her head up and slamming her drink on the table.

The glass is empty. That’s good. They’re in a restaurant right now, a little splurging after weeks with only each others’ company, and spilling the sugary child-friendly juice with that move would have drawn way too much attention from the servers.

“Language,” Tholme says, voice idly unconcerned.

“Sir?” Rex asks, kicking Ahsoka under the table. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wr--that jackass,” she hisses, getting to her feet. “Rex, grab a blaster, I’ve got shebs to kick.”

“Okay,” Rex says, grabbing one out of Fett’s holster and scooting out of the booth before anyone can tell him not to. “Whose?”

“I didn’t even know that he was... osik, I don’t have jurisdiction,” she realizes. “I don’t have any record of wrongdoing. I can’t arrest him since we don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing...”

“Are you two going to explain what’s going on?” Vos asks. “Or sit down, maybe?”

Ahsoka makes her decision. She eyes the window--the restaurant in question is a little dingy, but it’s also several dozen stories in the air. “Rex, remember the thing we did on Geonosis that you hated?”

He pauses, and then sighs heavily. “Yes, sir. I remember the... yeeting.”

Hah. That slang doesn’t even exist yet.

“Great. With me!”

It’s a good thing the windows are forcefields instead of transparisteel. A bit of a twist to the energy and they’re gone.

She only hears a little screaming before the wind tears all noises away while they plummet.

They land lightly--of course--and Ahsoka wraps them both in a don’t notice me aura. Nobody even notices that they’ve just come from above. It’s great that she can just Do These Things again, and get brushed off as Weird Jedi Shit, instead of worrying about the Empire. She’s missed being able to jump out of windows without fear.

Rex follows her as she starts running through the city. They don’t have comms, and he’s still so small, which means he can’t keep up with her even if she runs at normal speeds without Force enhancement.

“Should you carry me?” he asks, before she can figure out if it’s worth suggesting. She did it a few times before they joined up with Jango.

“It’s not... urgent, I think,” she says. She hesitates to speak, even as she keeps jogging with Rex at her heels. “Honestly, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can ding him for so we can attack him. It’s all well and good that I can beat him right now, but all the crimes I know about haven’t happened yet, so it wouldn’t be legal...”

“Commander?”

“Hm?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

She scrolls the conversation back mentally, considers, and says, “Oh.”

“Who’s getting steamrolled?”

“Uh, Maul’s here,” Ahsoka admits.

“Ah,” Rex says. He makes a face. “I understand the desire to jump out a window, now. I don’t agree with it, but I understand.”

Ahsoka laughs. “I mean, I just... every time I’ve seen him for almost twenty years, it’s been like... on sight, you know? We’ve never not attacked each other, except when I needed him to cause problems on Mandalore. But I always knew I was in the right, then.”

“So... what do we arrest him for?” Rex prompts.

“Um... carrying a lightsaber without a license?” she hazards. “We’ll need Tholme there. Hopefully I can just shout at him and he’ll attack me, but I think he only went full nutjob after Master Kenobi cut his legs off. He might be too controlled to try to kill me just for yelling at him.”

“...do we have to stalk him?” Rex asks, sounding like he’d most likely sigh if he weren’t mid-run.

She scoops him up and swings him around onto her back before she answers. “I think we have to stalk him, Rex’ika.”

“Don’t call me that.”

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

Maul is... exceptionally sneaky, actually. Either that, or he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. Ahsoka’s betting on the former, because she’s seen this particular skocha kung take over a planet before anyone realized he was the most dangerous person around.

Or maybe he’s just not committing crimes, and is in fact just here to buy groceries.

He’s examining a papaya.

She fantasizes about jumping across the market and greeting him with a heel to the cheekbone.

“Are you imagining a flying kick, Sir?”

“Yeah...”

“He’s examining a papaya, Sir.”

“I know...”

“Does he know we’re here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Do you think I should go hit him?”

“No.”

“Should I hit on him?”

“No, Sir. I would not advise that.”

“He’s looking at the neloms.”

“I can see that.”

“Why does he have to be so bo--did he just fucking bite a nelom?”

“It appears so, Sir.”

“Like... like rind and all. Just bit the little fucker.”

“Seems it.”

A scuff of metal. “What the fuck are you two doing?”

Ahsoka tips her head around to peer through the grate. “We’re spying, Fett, what does it look like we’re doing?”

Rex cranes his head. “We’re hanging upside-down from a fire escape to get a look at a suspected Sith Apprentice that is currently shopping for various fruits, Mand’alor.”

Ahsoka waves. “Hi, Master Tholme.”

“Sokari,” the master greets. “This seems a very conspicuous way to spy.”

She shrugs as well as she can from this angle. “Yes, but you see, this way’s more fun.”

“Is it now.”

Rex shifted. “He’s on the move!”

“To kill someone?!”

“No, to the deli meats.”

“Kriff.”

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

Apparently, Tholme and Fett had told Quinlan to take care of Leia, as Leia had wanted to finish her juice and refused to get involved in the Torrents’ nonsense. According to her, if they couldn’t be bothered to explain the nonsense, they didn’t need her.

This was true and accurate.

Quinlan shows up while they’re still stalking Maul, having moved to a low rooftop for a decent vantage point with less likelihood of being spotted. He’s giving Leia an eopie-back ride, and the pout on her face at needing it is adorable. She pouts harder when she sees them.

“Are you even trying to hide?” Leia scoffs.

“Not really,” Ahsoka admits. She’s got Fett’s binoculars out. “I’m not sure he’s caught wind of the fact that we’re here yet.”

“Or he has and he’s just biding his time to escape while we’re distracted,” Tholme points out.

“Meh,” Ahsoka says, avidly devouring the visual that is a teenage Maul glaring at leafy vegetables. “I just want him to do something so I have an excuse to beat his ass.”

“Do I get to know who?” Quinlan asks, setting Leia down on the roof. “Or are we going to keep being completely unwilling to share information?”

“Baby Sith Lord,” Ahsoka says. “He’s fifteen. A child.”

“A baby,” Rex agrees.

“You’re... that’s... ugh,” Quinlan groans as loudly and as dramatically as he dares, flopping down to the rooftop. “Master Tholme, please tell me this isn’t a real Sith.”

“He’s Dark,” Tholme confirms. “Sith is... up for debate until we have evidence.”

“He’s a bitch is what he is,” Ahsoka mutters. She observes the teenager in question stop to poke at some pink tomatoes. “E chu ta, break the law, already!”

“Does he have a lightsaber?” Quinlan asks. “If he has a lightsaber and no Jedi ID or specialty license, we can probably arrest him.”

“Auntie Soka doesn’t have a license or ID,” Leia points out.

“She’s got a Jedi escort,” Tholme says. “And if our supposed Sith is polite and plays nice, we can probably escort him to the Temple as well.”

Rex snorts derisively.

“Do you know why he’s on Denon?” Fett asks.

“No clue,” Ahsoka admits. “Evil reasons, probably.”

“You’re useless,” Leia tells her.

“Thanks, princess, how’s that attempt to open the jam jar by yourself coming?”

Leia says something very inappropriate for a princess, for a child, and for a lady. It’s fairly appropriate for a soldier, which is admittedly what she’s been for a few years now. Ahsoka sticks her tongue out at the girl like the mature operative she is.

“I wish we could still get him to lose his osik by just showing up and insulting him,” Rex mutters, low enough that Quinlan probably can’t hear.

“I wanna punch him in the face,” Ahsoka confesses. “I want him to try to punch me in the face, and fail.”

“Don’t bully the baby Sith,” Rex admonishes.

“He’s a Sith.”

“He’s fifteen, it’s tacky.”

“But it’s Maul.”

“I know, but you’re tw--significantly older than him.”

“But... but it’s the motherfucker himself.”

“...you can bully him a little, but only because he’s a Sith.”

Fett steals the binoculars. “You can borrow them again when you stop acting like children.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rex says, dry as Ryloth. “I’m ten.”

“Pretty tall for your age,” Ahsoka mutters, and then giggles.

“Don’t steal my jokes,” Rex says. He elbows her, hard.

“You know,” Quinlan says, slow and tired. “Master Tholme and I are trained investigators.”

Ahsoka and Rex look at each other, and then up at him.

“Okay?”

“...do you want me to find actual evidence of this guy doing something criminal?”

“Oh, yes please.”

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

Quinlan, as it turns out, is not overselling his skills. He does catch Maul doing something illegal later that day. It’s a little more ‘stealing corporate secrets in the dead of night’ and less ‘torturing people for kicks,’ but it’s still enough to legally arrest him. Quinlan attempts to do so.

Quinlan does not succeed, and is forced to jump out a window to avoid getting cut in half. Maul follows, steals a passing speeder by throwing out the driver, and takes off. Someone--looks like Tholme--drops back to save the driver, but the rest of them give chase. Ahsoka gleefully takes point on that, of course. She’s the best pilot.

(Rex looks bored, but someone is likely to puke by the end of the night. She hopes it’s not Leia, who insisted on coming for some fucking reason.)

“How the kriff is a teenager that good?!” Quinlan yells, clinging to the edge of the speeder to avoid getting tipped out as Ahsoka swerves around a corner with a wild laugh.

“He’s a Sith!” Leia shouts over the wind. “What do you think?”

Quinlan is not impressed by the claim of Sith.

Ahsoka screeches as she drifts across four lanes of traffic and into an alleyway to pursue Maul. He’s pretty good at dodging cross-building walkways, but she’s better. She bares her teeth, hissing, and tries to pick a plan.

“Vos, how’s your aim with Force throws?” She calls to the backseat.

“Uh, decent?”

“Great! Fett’s the projectile!”

Vos takes a second longer to process that than Jango does.

“I’m wh--”

He cuts off, screaming, and is flung forward by Quinlan to crash headfirst into a teenage Sith.

“Take the wheel!” Ahsoka commands, not waiting to see who follows the order, because Fett and Maul are both getting to their feet, the other speeder is about to crash, and she’s not sure who’s going to win that fight.

She jumps from the speeder they’ve been violently dragging around Denon, and lands feet-first on Maul’s... shoulder.

Hm.

That definitely dislocated something.

“You should wear armor!” she chirps at him, drawing both sabers and grinning as he whirls to face her, eyes wide with hate.

He’s utterly silent.

That’s disturbing. Expected, but disturbing.

“Did you just throw me?” Fett demands, higher pitched than she’d normally expect.

“No, Vos threw you.”

“Because you told him to!”

“Yeah, it’s a good strategy!”

“It is not!”

“Why not? Throwing people was standard practice in the GAR.”

She can’t see his face, but she’s pretty sure he’s about ready to strangle her.

Ahsoka cannot, at that point, continue snarking with the father of her best friend, because there’s a red lightsaber coming for her throat, and she should probably worry about that. Maul’s very good at killing people and she’d like to avoid becoming part of that statistic.

As she is quickly reminded, he is... fifteen. And shorter than she’s used to. And already injured.

It’s really, really easy to take him out, actually.

At some point, the other speeder was safely recovered before it caused property damage, and their own is landing a few meters away with Vos and the kids.

“You have Force-negating cuffs, right?” Ahsoka asks.

“No, Master Tholme has them.”

“Oh,” she says, and grimaces. “I guess I’ll just... keep sitting on him then.”

Maul snarls, and she raps him on the skull. “Stop that, it’s uncivilized.”

Rex snorts.

Jango makes a noise that is incredibly frustrated with the lot of them, and turns on Rex. “Was she telling the truth?”

“About?”

“Throwing people being standard practice for the GAR.”

Rex’s face goes pained. “It was in the five-oh-first. And a few others.”

“What’s the GAR?” Quinlan asks.

“None of your damn business,” Fett snaps.

Quinlan throws his hands up in the air again. “Come on! I just proved I know what I’m doing!”

“And their tragic backstory is none of your business, prudii!”

Quinlan blinks at him, and then glances at Ahsoka. “Um.”

“He called you a shadow since your training, um, seems to be pointing in that direction,” she says as carefully as she can. “We were theorizing.”

“Wh... you actually paid attention?” Quinlan asks, looking horribly confused. “I thought I was just annoying you.”

Ahsoka laughs at him. “Oh, Vos... I’ve been running black ops for... much longer than most would guess. Trust me, I know another spy when I see them.”

She smiles as kindly as she can, because she hadn’t actually meant to make him feel left out or unwanted or... well, she’d been pretty patronizing, especially for someone seemingly younger than him. The smile does not work. Quinlan just looks kind of horrified about how young she just implied she started spy work.

Granted, she’d been sixteen for Zygerria...

Deciding to ignore him for a bit, she shifts on Maul’s back and pats him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Baby Sith. We’re going to get you lots of nice therapy. Mind healers, no Sith tortures, all that fun stuff. Maybe some plushies.”

“You’re also getting therapy, right?” Quinlan asks. “Please say you are. I’m required for the specifics of my training and if anything you’ve said is true, I feel like you really need it and I’m scared of what’ll happen if you don’t.”

Ahsoka laughs, knowing exactly how empty it sounds. “Oh hell, if I didn’t get therapy, I imagine Kix would rise from the grave to force me into it.”

The name means nothing to anyone except Rex, and... ah, yeah, she told Fett about Kix a few weeks ago.

“No more throwing me without warning,” Fett grumbles, dropping to sit on the ground next to her. “Especially not at baby Sith Lords.”

“I am not a child!” Maul spits.

“He speaks!” Ahsoka cheers. “Aw, I knew you could do it.”

“’Soka, I told you not to bully him,” Rex complains. “It’s tacky. You’re being tacky.”

“I’m allowed to be tacky,” Ahsoka declares. “I’ve died twice, that’s, like, permission from the universe.”

“You’ve died twice?” Quinlan asks, back in ‘fascinated horror’ territory. “Wait, no, I shouldn’t ask--”

“Too late! The first time was on a planet that doesn’t exist and my Master lost his mind, killed a god, and used the good favor of another god to have me brought back to life at her expense. Not in that order.”

“I--what? No, that’s--what?”

Ahsoka smiles brightly. “You asked.”

Tholme finally shows up with the cuffs.

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

“You should eat something.”

He glares at her.

“Baby Sith Lords need to eat.”

He keeps glaring at her.

“Maul, you’ll never get big and strong and ready to kill if you don’t eat your vegetables.”

He bares his teeth.

“No, I don’t eat my veggies, but I’m a Togruta, so if I eat too many vegetables I throw up.”

Rex kicks her thigh, right on the faulds. “What did I say about bullying the Sith Lord?”

“Not to.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Making him eat his vegetables.”

“Soka.”

“Rex’ika.”

He kicks at her again. “Get up, we’re swapping out the watch.”

“But I wanted to hang out with my favorite little criminal mastermind.”

Rex drops to the floor and presses his forehead to her shoulder. “How the hell is being around this guy the first thing to make you cheer up in weeks?”

“I’m allowed to be mean to him.”

“He’s going to bite you.”

“I’ll bite back.”

Rex jabs a finger into her ribs, and she squeaks. “Go get something to eat, Commander.”

“Fine,” she huffs, rolling to her feet and moseying along to the galley. She walks in on Tholme and Fett having an argument about the ways in which Jedi and Mandalorians differ. Quinlan’s on the side, watching with wide eyes, and little Leia’s drinking a juice box at his side, tucked up under his arm and occasionally saying things to fan the flames. Ahsoka assumes she’s enjoying herself.

She opens the cooling unit, looks over the contents, and pulls out a raw leg of eopie mutton. She leans against the counter, bites into the chilled-but-not-frozen meat, and uses the back of one hand to wipe the blood off her chin. The ‘real adults’ don’t notice.

“I’m like ninety percent sure you’re doing this to mess with me but also...” Quinlan trails off, staring at her with horror. “Why?”

“A girl’s gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but all the obligate carnivores I know are like... generally holding to basic rules of courtesy when it comes to not grossing people out,” Quinlan says. “Like, I don’t chew with my mouth open. You don’t... eat in the most intimidating--did you just crack the bone with your teeth?!”

Ahsoka smirks at him, using her free hand to take away the shard of bone so she can suck out the marrow without eating the bones themselves. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t polite society. We’re in a galley on a bounty hunter’s ship, and I’ve been living on the run or in an army for most of my life. Table manners are optional.”

“No, they’re not,” Leia orders. “Fett, it’s your ship, tell her to--”

“--and another thing!” Fett snaps at Tholme, clearly paying less than no attention to the food argument.

Ahsoka keeps on eating, trying to catch wind of where the discussion’s at. Mostly, it seems to be at ‘talking past each other.’ Neither of them seems to have fully grasped more than the absolute most basic parts of the other culture, and that’s only enough to insult each other, not actually have a constructive conversation. She’d have expected more out of Tholme, at least. He’s not exactly young.

“Hey, quick question,” she says, in a moment where both of them have paused for breath and the opportunity to seethe. “Fett, when’s the last time you worked with a Jedi, or any member of a Force-based religion, before I popped into your life?”

His nose scrunches up as he makes a face.

“And Tholme, when’s the last time you worked with anyone from the Mandalorian system?”

Tholme’s reaction isn’t any more gracious than Fett’s.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. “Vos, were either of them actually interested in that conversation, or just looking for an excuse to yell?”

“Now listen here, jetiika--”

“Fett,” she snaps. “I am not a child.”

“And neither am I,” he growls right back. “This is my ship, and I damn well don’t need you treating me like a misbehaving youngling. You’ve got a problem, you bring it to my face, not get all smug about people’s tempers blowing over.”

Well, then.

She smiles thinly. “Of course.”

He stands with his arms crossed, in full armor save for the helmet. She puts aside the eopie meat and wipes her hands, smiling until she can put her hands on her hips and let it drop to a challenge.

“You know, I’m just--I’m just gonna go,” Quinlan mutters, pulling Leia out with him, the girl hanging from under one of his arms. “This, uh, this looks like a problem for... you folks. Um. Yeah.”

He sidles out.

Tholme doesn’t.

Fett rubs at the bridge of his nose, and then gestures at the table. “Sit.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

He drops his hand and glares at her. “We have another week on this ship together. We are going to have this conversation. Sit.”

She sits, right on the warm spot left behind by Quinlan and Leia. She crosses her arms, lifts a brow, and waits.

Fett takes the seat across from her. Tholme leans against the counter.

“We all know you’re older than you look,” Fett says. “I heard Tholme mention it, I know that much has been shared. You’re acting like an actual teenager, and I’ve... I’ve put up with a lot. I am trying to keep things civil, particularly with you. I’ve tried to be friendly. You’ve been fucked up since we met, fine, everyone’s got trauma. The thing where you’ve started talking shit to our faces for what seems like your own amusement? That has to stop. You’re older than me, Torrent. Fucking act like it.”

She blinks at him, slow and not exactly happy, and turns to Tholme.

The man shrugs. “I was planning to put up with it until we arrived to the temple and handed you over to some mind healers. Fett doesn’t have that kind of time.”

There’s a curdle in her stomach, defensive and angry and guilty.

“You’ve been... a bitch,” Fett finally says. “You know that. I’m not going to mince words. You’ve been holier-than-thou and rude and condescending, and aiming that at Antilles is one thing, when you’ve apparently known her since she was a toddler and taught her things. Aiming at the rest of us isn’t going to fly. We’re all adults trying to share a space. Stop acting like... just like you have been.”

There is no defense to be made that they aren’t both already aware of.

She closes her eyes and tries to strangle the burst of irrational rage.

Their accusations aren’t unfounded.

They deserve an apology.

She is in the wrong.

She’s felt freer than she had in years, and in that freedom allowed herself too much rein, let herself lace her words with barbed wires and poison instead of sparks and spices, comments that were cruel instead of just joking. Too familiar. Too comfortable.

“My behavior’s been inappropriate,” she finally says, the words clumsy and too big in her mouth. “You’re right about that. I’m sorry, and I’ll endeavor to keep a tighter rein on my less pleasant behaviors in the future.”

At least she only lashes out with words. It could be worse.

She opens her eyes, fixes her gaze on the wall behind Fett, wrestles her expression into stiff neutrality. “Am I dismissed?”

“...uh, no, not after that,” Fett says, sounding just a little horrified. “What the hell was that?”

Tholme hisses out a breath. “Let her go.”

“No, this needs to be discussed, that’s not a healthy rea--”

“Fett, let her go,” Tholme insists, low and heavy.

Fett looks between the two for a moment, seems to come to a realization he doesn’t like, and then gestures almost violently towards the door. “Fine. Go.”

She walks out, doesn’t sprint. She’s stiff. She’s controlled. She’s the one that fucked up, so it’s fine if she doesn’t feel great right now. Getting called out on one’s own failings as a person isn’t something to get upset about if the failings are real. The feelings are real and normal, but this was her fault, and so it’s up to her to fix it, and she can’t let them know it hurt her, because this was her mistake.

She goes to the cargo hold.

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

Ahsoka works out her frustrations on Fett’s punching bag. She does not augment herself with the Force, just uses raw strength and technique, ignoring the tears that press at her eyes.

She’s fine.

It’s not weird. It’s not odd. It’s not strange to not notice she’s been kind of a bitch since her mood came up with the whole Depa thing, and then Maul. She’s been mean, mostly to Vos and Fett, and nobody’s confronted her about it until now. They let her have room for her trauma, and she hadn’t reined it in. She’s just gotten worse.

‘Snippy’ she’d always been, but age apparently hadn’t fucking tempered it.

“Um.”

She catches the punching bag, breathing heavily and covered in sweat. She hasn’t worked out all the twitchy, nervous energy yet.

“Vos,” she greets, once she’s caught herself enough that her voice won’t waver. He’s on the other side of the bag, but she knows his voice. “Do you need something?”

“You’re kind of... projecting,” he tells her, drifting to where she can actually see him. “Not self-loathing, but, um, recrimination? You just don’t feel very good and I was hoping to help”

Why in all the Sith hells does he have to be nice.

“I got called out on my behavior and wasn’t ready to face the fact that I’d kriffed up,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine. And I’m... sorry. I haven’t been fair to you and was using you as an easy target for some of my ruder comments.”

“I mean, I kind of figured,” he admits, coming closer. “I’ve been tutored by Shadows before, and a lot of them act like you. I just assumed it was more of that.”

“I still shouldn’t have let myself run loose like that,” she says. “I’m... it wasn’t appropriate. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she says. “Not with... not with you. Or anyone other than Rex and a mind healer, really. Most of it is...”

She trails off, distantly noticing that her eyes are tearing up enough to blur her vision, and her nails are digging into the bag in a way Fett won’t appreciate.

There’s so much that beat her down, never quite breaking her, that she doesn’t even know what made her act the way she does.

“Want to spar?”

She looks over at him, wonders what he sees that makes him want to fight her when she’s visibly unstable.

He smiles, kind and easy, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s genuine in intent, if not in energy. He wants to help. “You all keep saying I could work on my hand-to-hand. Just take off the armor so I don’t break a finger, maybe.”

“You’re serious.”

“No, I’m Quinlan.”

She’s going to wipe the floor with this boy. “You sure you wanna fight me?”

“You won’t be able to meditate until you do,” he says. He’s right, damn him. “The other option is that I go get your... vod, I think? I go get Rex and you two can talk it out since you trust him with more. I don’t want to do that, though, he’s still a kid.”

She eyes him, lips pressed together and mind awhirl with emotions and thoughts she’d tried to beat out of her head and into the bag. “Ever fought someone without the Force?”

“...yes?”

“Was it cuffs?”

“Oh, you meant me not having the Force,” he realizes. “Er, no. Is... is that something you’ve done a lot?”

She smiles at him. “You’re planning on Shadow work. That means getting captured and stripped of everything you are at some point, Force included. Unfortunately, the cuffs are in use on a very annoying Dathomirian right now, so we’ll have to make do with you shielding like your mind’s a Kessel Spice Mine.”

“...do I want to know how often you’ve been captured?”

“No, you don’t.”

When he comes at her, it’s easy to dodge. It’s easy to tap him on target points, little pokes that show she could take him out, but isn’t going to until he’s learned something. He stays grinning throughout, letting her take the lead, and he treats her like... like a knight. Like a teacher. He’s stepped back and gone from trying to impress her as a fellow padawan, to proving himself to a full knight.

She’s not sure when that change happened, or why or how, but it makes things much smoother. She wants to think that it would have even if she hadn’t gotten a wakeup call from Fett.

So she treats him the way she treated Ezra, for the year she’d spent traveling with Kanan. She treats him as a student that’s willing to learn, good but not yet great, competent but not yet ready to survive. She draws him into the kind of chest-heaving exhaustion that tells a fighter just how much energy they waste.

(Ahsoka may have had her own style, but her grandmaster had been the pinnacle of a Soresu user. She’d spent years on the frontlines of a war. She knew the worth of conserving energy, and she’d teach it to any who stepped in to challenge her.)

“Who taught you to fight like this?” He asks, when they’ve taken a handful of moments to circle each other. His steps are heavy, sure, planted. Her own are light and ready.

“Soldiers,” she says. It’s true enough.

“Not your Master?” he asks, just as he tries to kick for her upper arm. It’s a safe question. For anyone else, it would be a safe question.

But for Ahsoka, it’s another chink in the armor, after a maelstrom of emotion, a storm of self-loathing, a dervish of instability.

She doesn’t break right away.

She spirals. She fights Quinlan, but doesn’t quite see him. Her strikes get sloppy, her feet stumble. She can’t make herself meet Quinlan’s eyes, not when the scrape of his heel against the metal sounds like the rasp of a breathing machine. Her shields get fuzzy, she knows, and she leaks what she feels into the air, making it sour and thick. She doesn’t notice, because all she can see, all she can--all she can hear and feel and--

She drops to her knees and grabs at her head, trying to stop it.

“Sokari?”

She breathes. In and out, harsh and jagged but natural in a way that the damned respirator wasn’t.

Her master her teacher her brother the traitor the hound the executioner

Her face is hot. Something prickles. It might be tears.

She tries to say something, tries to say a name or a request, tries to make anything come out of her mouth that isn’t the broken wail of a woman who hasn’t let herself think about how she died.

She feels herself pulled into someone’s arms, and she can’t quite tell who, but they’re bigger than she is, and feel warm and worried. They care. They don’t understand, they’re scared, but they care.

Her hands shake, clutched to her chest and she can’t breathe she can’t make herself take in enough air to do a Force-damned thing the empire is going to feel her her shields are down and broken and her emotions are spilling and the empire is going to find HER ANAKIN IS GOING TO FIND HER AND--

“COMMANDER!”

Rex.

Rex is here.

Her breath is coming so fast that she’s hiccupping more than she’s actually inhaling. She feels small hands in gloves on either side of her face, and then her forehead presses to something warm.

Rex. A Keldabe kiss. Her brother, her partner, her other half. He’s here. He’s calm. If he’s calm, then things are fine.

“What happened?” Light voice, high voice, small and distant. Leia. Little Leia little princess Leia she’s in danger she’s in trouble Anakin will--

“Commander.”

No. Here and now. She needs to focus on here and now. Her throat feels cold. She breathes too fast, still. She can’t stop it.

“I don’t know.” That’s Vos. He was... they were doing something. He was here. Talking to her. “We were sparring, and she just--”

Right, sparring.

“I don’t know if I said something?” He offers, voice pitching up, unsure and worried. Is he the one holding her? He’s the one holding her. That’s embarrassing.

“Commander?” Rex prompts. “Commander, can you open your eyes?”

She tries. She can’t. She shakes her head.

“Soka?” he asks, voice quiet. “Where are you?”

“F-F-Fett,” she manages. It’s enough.

“And where were you?”

His voice is so soft. So worried. She held him the same way after Mandalore, after Order 66, after all his brothers, all her friends...

“Soka.”

Her mind is spinning, and suddenly all she can hear is Anakin Skywalker is dead. I destroyed him.

Her breath hitches, and she wails.

“Commander,” Rex tries again, but her head is a vortex of Then you will die and Perhaps this child and not the Jedi way.

Our long awaited meeting.

I destroyed him.

Then you will die.

She can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can only see that yellow eye that’s too familiar but belongs to a stranger can only hear a voice that shouldn’t exist can only mourn and break and--

“Soka?”

“Malachor,” she manages. “I--h-he--I died.”

“What did you say?” someone asks. A vod. It’s the right voice, almost, rough and business-like, not accusing anyone yet, and... and... no. No. Not one of her boys. It’s Fett.

“Um, right at the end? I asked her who taught her to fight like this,” Quinlan says, nervous. “And she said it was soldiers. And I joked, I asked that it wasn’t her Master, and she didn’t answer that. A couple minutes later, she just started...”

“Oh, Soka,” Rex whispers, pulling her closer. “Commander, just breathe with me.”

“H-h-he, he just--R-Rex, he j-just--and I c-c-couldn’t--”

“I know,” her captain whispers. “I know, just breathe with me.”

“He k-k-k-killed me,” she sobs, falling out of the Keldabe and into too-small arms. “I l-loved--he was my broth-ther and--and he just--he killed me, he didn’t even stop.”

“I know,” Rex whispers. “Soka, I know.”

Of course he does.

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

“It was just bad timing,” Rex says, once they’re in the room she’s been sharing with her little family, curled up under a blanket and watching the floor like it has all the secrets to how she lost her world three times over.

“Is there anything we need to keep in mind?” Fett asks, gruff and uncomfortable. She wonders if he’s angry that she took his necessary confrontation and turned it into this mess.

“Don’t bring up her Jedi Master,” Rex says, and pulls her in when she shivers. Her eyes squeeze shut before she can stop them, tears beading up again. “Just... don’t. It’s too soon.”

“He’s--”

“He Fell,” Ahsoka interrupts. “I thought he died, but he became a Sith. And fifteen years later, we ran into each other, and I refused to join him in the Dark, so he tried to kill me.”

Fett swears, low and muffled. She thinks he has a hand over his mouth.

Quin and Leia aren’t there. She thinks they’re keeping an eye on their Baby Sith prisoner. That’s good.

“Soka,” Rex whispers, and she buries her face in his shoulder. She’s too old to be this kind of mess. She’s thirty-two. She’s Fulcrum. She’s...

She’s in need of a lot of therapy.

“We can avoid the subject unless you bring it up,” Tholme promises. “Definitely until the Temple. Is there anything else we shouldn’t talk about?”

Ahsoka can practically feel Rex’s deadpan look. “Sir, we’re a trio of child soldiers ripped from everything we know. Every other sentence is a risk. We’re just... working our way through.”

There’s a knock at the door. Oh. Quin and Leia.

“Just figured we’d drop this off before we went down to visit Mr. Grumpy-Face,” Quinlan whispers. He still thinks Leia’s a child. He’s trying to make things less terrible for her. That’s nice. “We decided he’ll be less angry if he tries Hoth chocolate, and made some for everyone.”

They definitely made it for Ahsoka herself, and Maul was an afterthought. Still. It’s sweet.

“Commander?” Rex prompts, jostling her a little to try and get her to sit up.

“Gimme a sec,” she manages. It takes longer than it should to push herself away from him, to accept the mug that Leia gives her, too-serious worry in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her soul.

She doesn’t look six. She doesn’t even look twenty-two. This girl was always too old for her skin, forced to grow up in the hostile fear of the Empire.

“Thank you, Princess.”

She sips.

She can barely taste it beyond the ashes she imagines coating her tongue.

I destroyed him, her memory echoes. His slightest hesitation before he made the final move, it haunts her. She almost reached him. If only she’d tried harder, yelled louder, been better...

She shivers.

“Do you need help falling asleep?” Tholme asks. “I’m a regular healer, not a mind healer, but...”

She probably should.

She takes another sip of her drink, willing herself to taste it. It’s good. She likes it. She knows she does.

“Can you make it dreamless?” she whispers.

“It doesn’t always work, but I can try,” he tells her.

She nods. “When I finish the chocolate.”

“Of course.”

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

Everyone’s careful around her for days. The whole decision to be nicer doesn’t mean anything when she’s walking about in a daze of too few emotions, drained of everything she could feel in favor of a grey cloud of fluff in everything she does.

She does forms. Single saber and Jar’kai. Ataru and Djem so and Soresu. Reverse grip, regular grip, partial reverse on either side.

Again. Again. Again.

She loses herself in the motions, not meditating so much as just empty.

Rex worries. Fett worries. Vos worries.

Leia and Tholme keep their shields locked up tight, and she doesn’t know how they feel. She thinks Leia might be judging her. She think Tholme might be pitying.

Maul simply hates. It’s an old and familiar sensation to walk into, and she takes unthinking comfort in his rage. She’s silent instead of snippy, when she plays the role of guard, and they stare at each other in silence. His eyes burn, and she wonders how much he’s heard of her nightmares.

“You need to talk,” Rex tells her, when he finds her with a cold cup of caff, eyes fixed somewhere beyond it all. She lifts her head. “Soka.”

She just stares at him.

He sighs and pulls her into a hug. “Commander, please.”

She can’t.

Ahsoka stares at the wall behind him, resting her chin on his head. Her neck itches under the lek at the back of her head, a little tingle of a feeling that she can’t bring herself to do anything about. The pale light of the galley is sharp against the chipped paint of the metal that surrounds them. It hurts her eyes to look, but it’s not the deep and dark lit only by red--

Then you will die, her memory growls.

She flinches.

“Breathe,” Rex tells her, too-small hands clinging at her back. “Just breathe, ‘Soka.”

She curls in tighter and tries to just breathe.

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

“Tell me something good.”

Ahsoka blinks. She looks at Leia. She doesn’t have the energy to parse that.

Leia chances a look at Rex, who isn’t leaving Ahsoka’s side any more than he has to, and Fett on the other side. Tholme’s asleep and Quin’s on Baby Sith duty. It’s just people who know, right now.

The little girl across the table, the child senator, the spy, purses her lips and huffs in irritation. “You knew my biological father before he became one of the worst people in the galaxy. Both of you did. Tell me something good about him.”

Good things.

About Anakin.

“You fought a war as a Jedi,” Leia prompts. “Surely you must have done some good things with him, or at least thought you were.”

Did they?

Every mission ended in tragedy or was just a ploy of Palpatine’s. Every saved life was just...

Wait.

“He built Threepio,” she finally says. “Your father wi--I mean, Bail wiped Threepio’s memory after the Empire rose, for your safety, but Anakin was the one who built him.”

Leia sits up, eyes brighter. “I didn’t know that. I... was Artoo involved? Did he build R2D2, or...”

“No,” Rex says, “But Artoo was his favorite astromech, and they always pushed each other into stupid stunts. We risked a hell of a lot to save that droid, more than once, and I didn’t find out until you started working with the Rebellion full-time, but Artoo and Threepio were the witnesses for your bio-parents’ wedding.”

Leia gapes at him. So does Ahsoka. (Fett doesn’t know enough to care.)

Rex grins, and if it looks a little forced, that’s fine. “He had a holo recording. I was one of the few people left that knew about the marriage that might have wanted to see, so Artoo offered. It was... sweet.”

He waits, probably for Ahsoka to add something herself, but she has nothing.

“I think that’s when they swapped droids, since Threepio was more useful to a politician and Artoo did his best work when we set him loose on the enemy.”

“He never changed,” Leia muses. “Did he always swear that much?”

“Yes,” Ahsoka answers, as Rex laughs. “Always. All the binary I learned started with the best swears.”

She tries to think of another good memory, something else that Leia might appreciate. Her mind ticks back to saving Stinky, which is just a terrible option, because that mission started with Hutts and ended with the Battle of Teth. That massive loss of life, all for the son of the creature that had put Leia in chains.

She wonders if she has anything in her memory that doesn’t end in blood and graves.

“Soka.” Rex.

“Hm?”

“Remember that time Fives and Echo got lost in the undercity their first time on leave, and we had to get the General to help us find them?”

She does.

He’s right, that’s a good story.

“Okay, so what you have to understand,” Ahsoka says, already digging the faint details out and dusting them off, “is that these boys were ARC troopers, top-notch, terrifyingly competent once they got through specialty training, and loyal as hell. Echo had memorized the reg manuals front to back, and Fives was... well, Fives ended up being the only person to figure out the chips before they went into action. Point is, the Domino twins were good... eventually. Just like everyone else, though, they started out shiny.”

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

“Tholme’s hiding something.”

Ahsoka wonders if Leia will just leave if she ignores her enough. Probably not. This was the girl that got kicked out of boarding school for leading a sit-in at age seven. She’s got patience.

“His job requires him to hide a lot of things,” Ahsoka says instead. “Not as many as Vos will have to, eventually, but a lot.”

“He’s hiding something from us,” Leia insists, visibly frustrated that Ahsoka isn’t as upset about this as she is. “Something important.”

The way she says ‘important’ is clumsy and impacted by the missing baby tooth. She can’t say the r. It comes out as ‘im-poh-ten,’ which is adorable, and if Ahsoka comments on it, she’s probably going to get punched by a six-year-old.

“The Force doesn’t care,” Ahsoka says. “I trust his intentions, if not him as a person.”

“If you don’t trust him, then why trust his intentions?”

“Leia, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I trust one and a half people in the galaxy,” Ahsoka points out. “Me not trusting a person isn’t a sign of anything except my paranoia. The only person I trust fully and without reservation is Rex. Even you, I only mostly trust, because my brain starts screaming if I think too hard. That’s why you’re the half.”

“Okay, whatever, paranoia aside,” Leia barrels on, “He should tell us. Whatever it is that he’s hiding, we deserve to know. We’re not children that he can just hide things from for our own good.”

Ahsoka presses her lips together. “Leia. Princess. I know you’re used to holding all the cards--”

“This isn’t about me being a control freak!”

“It is, though,” Ahsoka soothes, and smiles. “Your mother--the bio one--was the same way. You spent years as one of the leaders of the Rebellion, so obviously you’re used to having all the information, and people reporting to you... but Tholme is a Jedi Master. He reports to the Council and the Republic. Do you know how many people I kept secrets from while I was a padawan? We’re an unknown, Leia. They have no proof that we’re on their side, especially since we’re traveling with Fett.”

Leia crosses her arms and glares as hard as she can.

“I’m not going to bother him,” Ahsoka says. “I’ve already had, like, five unrelated mental breakdowns. I’m putting this on hold until we get to the Temple and I can trust that there’s a healer on hand to sedate me or something.”

“You... want to be sedated?”

“Leia, this... really should be obvious, but a Force-Sensitive losing their osik the way I have been isn’t actually safe. I know I broke a weapons rack last week.” Ahsoka gestures vaguely. “If the Jedi Master isn’t telling me something for reasons that might relate to my clear and obvious mental instability, I’m going to assume he’s got a point.”

“So he should tell me or Rex.”

“We’ll be on Coruscant in four days,” Ahsoka soothes. “Just... let it be. They won’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t have to. The Force leads me in all things, including this.”

Leia isn’t impressed by that, but Leia isn’t impressed by much in the first place.

She strides off in a fit that is, perhaps, more influenced by her six-year-old emotional control than she’d like to admit. Ahsoka lets her. It’s not worth the argument.

It’s only a few minutes later that Fett strides in, takes the seat Leia was just in, and asks, “What would it take for you to teach me how to use a jetii’kad?”

She blinks at him. “You want to learn how to use a lightsaber?”

“Yes.”

“...why?”

“Viszla.”

“I see.”

She does.

Ahsoka taps her fingers against the table, eyeing him with the kind of interest she copied from Master Kenobi, years ago. Fett doesn’t fidget, but she thinks he might want to. He just looks back, waiting for her judgement.

“You’ll need to justify it,” she finally says. “It’s a significant difference from what you actually did, so I need to know your reasoning for doing it, and your plans for once it’s done.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s step one,” she corrects. She tilts her head, considering. “My standards for you aren’t built in a vacuum, and you know that. Explain to me what you plan to do and how you plan to do it, and if I approve...”

“You’ll help me achieve it.”

“Maybe,” she allows. “A lot of that depends on Rex.”

“I expected as much,” Fett says. “He is... an admittedly large part of the reason.”

“He would be,” she says. She gives the silence a few more seconds to sit awkwardly between them, and then stands up. “I’d guess you’ve been brainstorming already. Do you have it written down or is it mostly just in your head so far?”

“I’m still... debating options, so to speak.”

She grins, and the shape of the predator’s smile, the baring of teeth... that almost makes him step back. She can see it in the twitch of his muscles. Smart man.

“Follow me,” she says, and doesn’t wait for him to stand. She strides out with tooka-light steps, hears the heavy beskar tread behind her, and goes to the cargo hold. Fett’s confusion grows tangibly behind her, especially when she tosses him a wooden quarterstaff. She picks up the other and spins it in one hand.

“You’re going to fight me,” she tells him, stretching and letting the staff help with the process. “And while we fight, you’re going to tell me what your plans for Mandalore are.”

He mimics her, but there’s a frown on his face. “And why staffs?”

“You and I, we’ve only sparred bare-handed,” she says. “I need a feel for how you fight with a weapon anyway. These are a good start.”

“Not the beskad?”

She grins, and the twitch is back. “No. That can wait. We start with the staffs.”

He takes a stance, and she mirrors him. She lets him strike first with a weapon, but she’s the one that asks all the questions.

(He is the only one on the ship that can fight her one-on-one right now, and he can win. Still, she makes him work for every inch, and what she doesn’t win in bruises, she wins in words.)

(Fett might yet be a proper Mand’alor, but Ahsoka learned war from her brothers, negotiation at the knee of a general and in the shadow of a prince, and government at the side of duchesses and queens.)

(If he wants her help uniting his people, he needs to prove that he can hold them together once she’s gone.)

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

Ahsoka’s interrogation of Jango’s plans is thorough, and she’s not the only one involved. She brings Leia in, and has her join in on the grilling. She maybe laughs as the twenty-seven-year-old survivor of Galidraan, the Mand’alor, a man who has killed Master Jedi with his bare hands, gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly.

Still, Leia knows this better than any of the rest of them do. The girl might have grown up heir to a monarchy, but she got a classical education and was drilled on democracy and all associated forms of government. Where Ahsoka knows military protocol and law enforcement, intersystem relations and defensive measures, Leia knows agricultural subsidies and welfare programs, infrastructure and education.

Ahsoka may know how to find out if someone’s breaking a zoning law, but Leia knows why it exists in the first place.

“And I grew up in a cult,” Rex says, when an argument on that topic breaks out. Everyone that hasn’t heard the joke-that-isn’t-a-joke stares at him. “The Jedi grew up in a religious meritocracy; Leia grew up in a monarchy; and I grew up in a cult.”

Ahsoka elbows him. He’s not wrong, but still.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is about forty-seven percent sure that Leia will put her foot in her mouth when it comes to Mandalorian culture, blunt as the girl is. That prefrontal cortex isn’t anywhere near as developed as it should be, either, so impulse control for the princess isn’t great. Ahsoka refuses to let Leia and Fett talk about ways to mend the breaks between tradition and the pacifism of the New Mandalorians without either Rex or Ahsoka herself as a mediating presence. Tholme sits in a few times, but while he knows that Leia isn’t really six--though not about the time-travel, yet--Quinlan doesn’t.

They admittedly end up doing this while he’s on Maul-sitting duty.

“It’s like he doesn’t even care about making nice with the people that, at this point, make up the majority of his people!” Leia grumbles one night, as Ahsoka kicks over a step stool so the girl can brush her teeth. “He may not like the New Mandalorians, but from what I understand, it’s still early enough to prevent the majority of the cultural bleaching you brought up. If he stays this stubborn--”

“Leia,” Ahsoka says, and the girl’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m aware of your reasons for not trusting his intentions. But if I may say? Chill.”

“He’s not even trying!”

“He’s trying a hell of a lot harder than he did in the original timeline,” Ahsoka reminds her. “Brush your teeth.”

“I’m not a--”

“Teeth.”

It’s a little worrying, how the child’s brain affects Leia, but... well. That’ll pass in time, hopefully. Until then, Ahsoka gets to be the aunt she should have been. This includes tucking Leia in, which the girl grumbles about despite the fond waves of comfort that enter the Force around her. Ahsoka doesn’t call her out on it, just brushes back wisps of hair to plant a kiss on Leia’s forehead, and then does the same once Rex stumbles in, grumbling about the limitations of a cadet’s body, but far more ready to follow the protocol that is bedtime.

Rex doesn’t pretend to not like getting tucked in, for all that he’s sharing with a grumbly, already-asleep princess. He smiles up at Ahsoka, lets her hug him, and pretends they can be a normal family for five seconds.

Quinlan’s making a late night snack for himself in the galley. Tholme is guarding the Baby Sith. Fett...

Ahsoka goes to the cockpit, takes the copilot’s seat, and watches hyperspace pass them by.

It takes long minutes before either of them say anything.

“Do Jedi believe in souls?”

His shields are up, locked up tighter than the innermost chambers of the Imperial Palace. She has no idea where he’s taking this question. She has to cast about for an answer.

“That depends on how you define a soul,” she finally says. “Leia told me about Force Ghosts. A Jedi Master who underwent the right meditations and training could pass into the Force upon their death without losing their sense of self. They could remain themselves, to an extent, and interact with force-sensitive individuals. I don’t know if they could last that way indefinitely, but depending on your definition, I could argue those ghosts were evidence of a form of soul.”

“So you believe that the dead pass into the Force, but that what passes could be a soul. Something must exist for a sense of self to disappear at death in a way that impacts the Force as you understand it, and many would use the word ‘soul’ for that something.”

“Mm,” Ahsoka considers it. “I’d say that’s pretty accurate. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“What about those not yet born?”

Her fingers feel cold, and she finds herself no longer able to watch the passage of hyperspace as passively as she had, and her eyes catch on streaks and motes of what is not dust, her vision unable to keep any more still than her heart.

“Oh,” she hears herself say. “The clones.”

It’s a long time before he answers, but the walls come down. He carries a confused sort of grief with him, guilty and a mite resentful. His questions have been building for longer than she’d thought. His voice is rough. “I’ve taken plenty of lives, but I’ve never known the name of someone I erased from existence before they were even born.”

“The stories we told Leia about the brothers.”

There’s a grunt of agreement from Fett, so those dots at least connect.

“I take it my answer wasn’t helpful,” she manages to say.

“Will they still exist?” Fett asks. “Will they be born elsewhere? Or is... is a soul something that only comes into existence after the body does?”

“I have no idea,” Ahsoka admits. “I want... I want to think that I’d be able to find them eventually, to recognize them, if their souls are still born into this world elsewhere.”

“And if your Sith finds someone else to build his army out of?”

Ahsoka looks at him, sharp and pointed. “You wouldn’t.”

“They’ll be doing it anyway, if their plans are as ironclad as you say.”

“You’re already associating with Jedi,” Ahsoka says, fighting the urge to break his nose. “They wouldn’t approach you, not now. They can’t leverage your anger against you. They won’t know everything, but they’ll know that you have friends among the Jedi.”

“You think they can’t come up with better lies?”

He has a point. He has more than one point and she hate hate hates it.

A Jedi does not hate.

I am no Jedi.

“You’re going to have to convince me,” she says. “Especially if you want to somehow balance this with the darksaber thing. I won’t teach you how to fight with it if you’re not planning to retake Mandalore.”

“That’s how they’d sell it,” he says. “Retaking Mandalore. An army ostensibly for the Jedi, and ultimately...”

“You’d build an army of slaves.”

“No, I’d be the inside man for when they build that army anyway.”

She holds his gaze. She looks away first.

“Torrent?”

“I’m thinking.”

He lets her.

“I’ll need to talk to Rex. Probably Leia.”

“Understandable.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I’m only just considering it. It’s an idea, not a plan.”

“That’s the only reason I haven’t ripped your throat out with my teeth.”

“Hyperbole doesn’t suit you.”

She glares at him, and leaves, her mind chopping up and laying out every possible angle on Fett volunteering to do the exact same thing as last time, but somehow worse.

Great. Just what she needed.

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

Ahsoka isn’t there for the shouting match between Rex and Fett, but she doesn’t have to be. She can hear it form clear across the ship, and Rex comes to her afterwars. He’s been crying, which isn’t as surprising as it could be. These bodies are still prone to such things, and will be for years. She doesn’t comment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“We need to take out Sidious before he starts anything on Kamino.”

“Agreed,” she says. “It’ll be hard, though.”

“I don’t care.”

“What did Fett say?”

“That if it wasn’t going to be my brothers, it would be someone else’s. Either we stopped the cloning from happening at all, or we mitigated damage by being there.”

“I don’t think Sidious is going to tap him for it,” Ahsoka admits. “Not unless you’re willing to stage that kind of fight publicly enough for Fett to claim the Jedi poisoned you, family, against him. It could work, but it’s a gamble.”

He knows all of this.

“I miss them,” he says, and she cards her fingers though the curls he’s managed to grow in the past weeks. “I just... even at the end, I had Wolffe. I knew Boba was out there; I wouldn’t be surprised if the beskar let him survive a Sarlacc. I had brothers. Not as many as I used to, but there was always someone. I miss them all, so much it hurts.”

“It wouldn’t be them,” she reminds him. She pulls him closer, puts her cheek to his head. “It would be the same process, the same faces, the same training, even, but the boys themselves...”

He clings to her and shudders.

“Rex?”

“I can’t force them to grow up the way I did. I want them back. Sidious is going to make the army no matter what. Someone’s going to suffer, and I don’t want it to be my brothers, but they won’t exist otherwise, and...”

“And it’s an impossible choice,” she summarizes. “And it sucks.”

“It’s sucks Gungan balls, ‘Soka.”

She laughs, and feels him smile against her shoulder. Good. He needs to smile more.

“He’s still trying to get me to like him,” Rex says. "He’s still making an effort, and he never did that for anyone except Boba, and it’s weird. I don’t know what to do with any of that.”

“Gain a brother,” Ahsoka whispers, and she feels him jerk against her. “If that’s what you want.”

“He’s not vod.”

“Same blood as all the rest, and you’re older than him, so he’s not really in a position to be a parent to you like he was to Boba,” she says carefully. “You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to, but... I think he’s trying. I think this means a lot to him, and that he isn’t any more sure of what to do than you are. You don’t have to forgive him for what he did in the future, you don’t have to accept when he reaches out, you don’t have to ever talk to him again after we reach Coruscant if you don’t want, but I think... I think it’s worth at least considering what you have to gain. I think it’s worth looking at what he’s trying to give you.”

Rex huffs. “Why couldn’t he just be the shabuir I knew in training?”

“Something happened between now and then?” she offers. “I don’t know. I never met him in the original timeline. I just know the guy that keeps trying to get on my good side so you’ll like him.”

He outright scoffs. “Soka, that’s not the only reason he’s trying to get on your good side.”

“...I’m a former Jedi who talks trash to his face,” she says slowly. “And I cried on him. There is no reason for him to be nice to me, other than you.”

“He thinks you’re cool and a good person and wants you to be his friend.”

“Bantha poodoo.”

Rex grins in a way that goes straight to smirking. “Soka, I’m not joking. Jango Fett wants you to be his friend.”

“Kriffing why?” she asks, more than a little horrified. “I’m a mess, look like I’m ten years younger than him, have gleefully kicked his ass in front of an audience; I even told Vos to throw him at a baby Sith Lord. Putting up with me is one thing, but I’m... I’m only barely not a Jedi. I’m a historical enemy of Mandalore, and part of the community he hates more than anything, and--”

“And his reaction to you kicking his ass was pure Mando,” Rex says. “In that he now thinks you’re a badass, and thus worth being friends with.”

“I can’t believe that. I physically cannot.”

“Soka, just accept it. The Mand’alor wants to be friends with you.” He scratches at his scalp. “I mean, he met you while you were protecting what appeared to be children, and it’s apparently still early enough for him to care about that.”

She leans back in her seat, eyes on the wall ahead of her and back against the cool metal of the other side. Rex falls back with her. She wonders if Rex changed the subject so they didn’t have to talk about deciding how many of his brothers get to exist, and whether or not he can swallow the bitterness of his history to have a connection with at least one member of his blood. She doesn’t ask. If he wants to change the subject, that’s his right.

“I don’t... no.” She denies it as well as she can, and then the implications dig a little deeper. “Is this me accidentally signing up to be the Jedi Order’s official liaison to the Mand’alor?”

“I mean, this point in time... they’ve got Kenobi for the Duchess, yeah?” Rex shrugs. “Good relations with the system are probably a good thing, and you’ve got a stronger connection than Tholme and Vos.”

“Ugh,” she says. She rubs a hand against her head, and then lurches to her feet. “Fine! Fine. If it’ll get him to retake Mandalore before the Sith decide to bribe him with an army he doesn’t get to keep, I’ll teach him how to fight for the kriffin’ Darksaber.”

“That’s what makes the decision for you?”

“Well something had to!”

They only get one lesson in before Coruscant, but the lesson lasts a full day, and Ahsoka’s got his comm number. Fett’s a quick learner anyway, and Tholme was there to give pointers where Ahsoka couldn’t.

He won’t measure up to a Jedi in saber-to-saber combat, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to learn enough to turn all those skills with a beskad to something that works with a jetii’kad.

(The balance of a saber is wrong to those used to a physical weapon. The inertia doesn’t work the way anyone expects. There’s no need to worry about damaging the blade.)

(Fett is good. Ahsoka is better. And, bless his heart, he knows it.)

(She will mold him into the shape of someone who not only can, but should rule a system with a history like that, and he damn well knows that too.)

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

“Dropping out of hyperspace in T-minus twenty seconds.”

The Slave I is not, in fact, a Venator-class starship, or anything else near the size and smoothness of the ships that Ahsoka grew up on. This is a bounty hunter’s vessel, and the drop to real space jolts like nothing else. Ahsoka’s in the copilot seat for the return, but Tholme’s going to swap with her as soon as they’ve got confirmation that there were no problems with exiting hyperspace, and nobody’s shooting at them.

“We’re not going to get shot at,” Tholme had assured her.

“I always get shot at,” she’d told him.

“I have our clearance,” he reminded her, seeming more amused than frustrated. “There’s no need to worry about getting shot at.”

“I also always get shot at,” Jango had thrown in.

“Okay,” Tholme had allowed, after several minutes of his trust in the Temple warring against Ahsoka and Jango’s learned paranoia. The looks Quinlan had darted around the room when Leia and Rex also claimed ‘chronic getting-shot-at disease’ had been a treat. The paranoia of a Watchman and a future Shadow was great, but the paranoia of three revolutionaries and a galaxy-wide criminal was greater. “You can take us in close enough to get in radio contact, but the second we have to ask for clearance and a vector, I’m in the seat.”

She’d agreed, of course. She was paranoid, not inexperienced.

“We’re much less likely to get shot down by ground control if you tell them we’re with you,” she’d said, to his hilariously apparent metaphysical exhaustion. “Obviously.”

“Good enough,” he’d sighed.

What that means is mostly just that Ahsoka gets to watch the distant star at the center of Coruscant’s system grow rapidly brighter. She can pick out the constellations she’d grown up with, the stars the creche had projected on the ceiling every night, the ones that she may not have seen from the surface, but had greeted her and then sent her on her way every time she left on yet another campaign that lost her men their lives for a Sith Lord's wretched plans. These were the shapes and stories she’d never seen again as Fulcrum, a woman so hunted that to come within a dozen subsectors of the planet was to court her death.

For sixteen years, she hadn’t ventured closer than Alderaan, save for a single trip to Chandrila.

And now, maybe twenty minutes away at this speed, was the Temple. It was home.

A home that didn’t know her, that had sentenced her to death, that had hosted the rampage of her former master... but home nonetheless.

“Stable?” Fett grunts.

“Thrusters are good,” she confirms.

“I meant you.”

Ah. “I’m... fine. As good as I could be, anyway.”

She hesitates, but manages to speak before he does. “You?”

“I’m not the one walking into an entire building of triggers.”

“Only because you’re not entering it,” she says. “It’s the home of your ancestral enemies who, bad info or no, killed off a whole lot of your friends.”

“I get to leave,” he says. “You don’t.”

She plans to needle him a bit more, maybe on something a little less based in both their traumas. She needs to talk, if only to fill up the silence and keep herself from reaching out to all the lights in the Force. It’ll be too much, she knows.

Tholme enters the cockpit. “Change of plans.”

“Better be a good reason,” Jango says, voice flat.

“Leia’s crying.”

Ahsoka’s unbuckling herself before she can process the words fully. “What?”

Leia doesn’t cry for no reason. Her emotional control is as difficult as the body makes it, but she doesn’t just cry. There’s always a cause.

“I don’t know. Rex said to get you,” Tholme explains. “She was saying a name. He seemed to recognize it.”

Not good not good not good. If Leia was feeling the Emper--No. She cuts the thought off there. No catastrophizing. Information first.

“What name.”

“Luke. Mean anything to--and she’s gone.”

Ahsoka ignores him, just sprints to where she knows the ‘young ones’ are. They’re all in Maul’s room, because nobody wants to be alone with him now, but it’s the worst time to leave him without supervision. It’s not the worst option; he mostly refuses to talk, still.

This holds true, because he definitely isn’t talking when she bursts in. He’s sitting on the bench, in a corner, hugging his knees and watching Quinlan try to calm Leia down.

“Captain, sitrep.”

“Vos and Tholme attempted to show Leia how to reach out to feel the Temple from a distance. They felt that it would be a good use of the time, and an interesting exercise at this distance. She attempted to do so, struggled for several minutes, and then reacted with shock. She has repeated the name ‘Luke’ several times since then, and we’ve been unable to fully calm her down. I asked Tholme to get you, as you are the only Force-Sensitive on board that understands the situation in full.”

“Understood.” She nods to him, and then goes to nudge at Quinlan. “Vos, move.”

“Torre--”

“You can sit behind her, hold her in your lap like you did when we had lunch the other day, but I need to get in her face.” She waits for him to comply, and then drops to her knees and takes Leia’s hands in her own. She radiates calm and assurance, even though she knows Quinlan’s probably been doing the same since this started. She dips her head enough to get in the girl’s line of sight, waits for her to meet eyes.

“Princess,” she says, and meets Leia’s eyes. “What did you feel?”

“Luke.”

From this distance... they’ve got half the system to go, at least, and Leia’s training shouldn’t reach that far for anything more than the fact that the Temple is there. Ahsoka could feel unshielded individuals from here, if she focused, but she’s also been doing this much, much longer. The twins theory holds more water than ever.

“Can you show me?” Ahsoka asks, instead of asking for more clarification. She squeezes Leia’s hands and smiles. “In the Force?”

Leia nods, and closes her eyes. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time in a while that Leia’s needed Ahsoka to guide her through.

Luke’s light, for all that it’s unfamiliar to Ahsoka, is brilliant among the rest of the signatures in Coruscant. Like Anakin and Leia, he’s a star in his own right, but he’s brighter. He doesn’t have Anakin’s bitterness or Leia’s righteous anger, just... light. Ahsoka had asked Leia to show her instead of looking for herself because she’d expected to not recognize the boy, but she needn’t have. He’s unmistakable.

He’s so bright that she almost misses the other signature that she does recognize. She shies away, knowing that it would be there, but... but it’s almost twinned with another nearby. Not identical, but different in a way that comes with age, with trauma, with... death.

Leia hadn’t arrived alone, after all.

Why would Luke?

Her eyes snap open, her hand coming up not-quite-fast enough to clap over her mouth as she gasps. She feels a shudder, one that starts in her shoulders and reaches deep into her ribcage, finds a home in her chest and doesn’t stop.

“Oh fuck,” Quinlan whispers. “Torrent? Um, Sokari?”

Rex steps closer. “Commander?”

“That shabuir faked his death again,” she manages. “Three times, Rex!”

He blinks at her. “...I know way too many people who fit that description, Soka.”

“Master Ke--” she cuts herself off. He might have changed his name, just like she had. There’s already an Obi-Wan here. Rex seems to be figuring it out, but she needs to give him another hint.

“He pulled a Hardeen,” she stresses, and Rex’s eyes snap shut with a tired groan.

“Who?” Leia asks, her own tumult of emotion paused in the wake of Ahsoka’s shock. There’s a hope and relief to her, and Ahsoka belatedly realizes that her main worry had been that she’d misidentified what was going on, that she’d given herself a false hope. Ahsoka’s internal reaction, her approval and awe at Luke’s presence, had trickled over enough to give Leia the reassurance she’d needed.

Unintentional as it was, Ahsoka was glad that she’d succeeded in helping her charge.

“Er...” she trails off. “I don’t know what name he’s going by, right now. We’ve spent so long in hiding...”

“The man Luke knew as Crazy Old Ben,” Rex says, and Leia’s eyes light up.

“Oh,” she breathes. “General O--no, names. The High General, then.”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka says, not a little soft. “Yeah, I guess death didn’t stop him any more than it stopped me.”

“I could have told you that,” Leia says, smiling far too widely. She squirms where she still sits on Quinlan’s lap. “He was... he taught you, right?”

“As much my master as the official one,” Ahsoka says. She glances as Quinlan, feels Maul’s gaze on the back of her head. “Your f... my official master was very young when I was assigned to him. He wasn’t ready to teach, wasn’t even ready to be a knight, entirely, so my training was split between him and his master.”

Quinlan pops in at that moment, “Your grandmaster was military, too?”

We all were, she thinks. Even you, in your own way.

“I landed in their care mid-battle,” she says carefully. “It was a complicated situation.”

He nods, and she vaguely notes that he’s got his arms wrapped around Leia, and his chin tucked on top of her head. She isn’t sure if Leia’s noticed, but Quinlan’s picked up ‘baby’-sitting duty so often recently that she’s fairly certain he’s all but declared her ‘little-sister shaped.’ It doesn’t matter that Leia’s older--she’s still taking the juice boxes and gummy snacks that Quinlan shoves at her every single snacktime.

“Do you think...” Rex trails off, something uncomfortable twisting in the Force, even though his face keeps it mostly hidden. “My brothers. If the General survived and... and made it back...”

“I didn’t feel any,” Ahsoka says, because she knows she’d have noticed if it was anyone she’d met, and likely any clone at all. They all felt different in the Force, but they all held a spark that made her know it was one of them. “I’m sorry, Rex’ika.”

“A long shot,” he says, that dash of hope shriveling up. He must see something in her face, because there’s a curl of warmth in him, even if his smile is brittle. “It’s fine, really. I have you, ‘Soka.”

Rex and Ahsoka. Two halves of one whole.

She can’t wait to hear the lectures on attachment, the way people who haven’t seen her wars try to criticize her for clinging to any chance at still having a will to live. She can’t wait to see them justify telling her that it’s selfish to hold her sanity in her hands and refuse to let the grief take it away. She can’t wait to stare someone down for asking her to ‘learn to let go’ after she’s lost her family, her life, her universe three times over.

Most of the Jedi are more sensible than that, are reasonable enough to see those shades of grey and how to approach rules in the spirit they are meant instead of the rigid letter, but there will be some.

There will be more than enough telling her she is wrong to hold her oldest, closest, best friend as dear as she can.

Attachment, they’ll say.

What they’ll mean is ‘codepedence.’

They won’t be entirely wrong.

She reaches out for him, lets him fall into her side and stay there, closes her eyes and reaches out for the man she’d long called father, when they’d still been in each other’s lives.

This time, past the deafening flare of surprise-love-hope of the little star next to him, she can feel him reach back.

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

The second the ship has landed, even before Tholme and Fett are done with the checks, Ahsoka’s waiting at the exit. She strains her hearing so she’ll know the second the system will let her open the massive door of the cargo hold.

Leia clings to her side, and the boys stand to her back.

Quinlan’s stressed enough that she can feel it like a cloud. She is very much not trying to feel that stress. Quinlan’s stress levels, back where he’s got Maul so he can keep an eye on Ahsoka and the Baby Sith at the same time, are so low on her priorities list that it’s a a little sad.

It doesn’t take long for her to be able to punch the button and open the damn door.

It opens slowly. She bounces on her toes, because there’s a beacon of light and a steady, familiar glow on the other side, and she’s so, so close. She can’t see through the crack yet, because it’s day in this part of Coruscant, and the sunlight is blinding against the dark of the hold. So close. She’s so close.

“The hell’s wrong with you?”

Fett? Fett. He’s already here to get off? This door’s slow.

She doesn’t answer him, because the door is finally open enough to let her out, and she leaps through the gap.

She lands on a pourstone floor, feels pebbles and grit compress under her boots, frantically looks around as her eyes adjust to light and--

The High General, the Negotiator, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, looking just as he did when she first met him, if a little less armored and a little more fed. The hair, the beard, the crinkle in the corner of his eyes. His spirit is a little older, his smile a little more strained, his posture a little more tired, but it’s him.

He spreads his arms, low enough that she could have dismissed it if she’d cared less for hugs, except she’s almost as small as she was when they met.

And every other hug she’d given back then had been, functionally, her being a living missile aiming her montrals for someone’s organs.

She’s a little more aware of how to avoid stabbing her friends in the intestine now.

“Master!”

She sprints for him, collides and sobs, feels him stumble back and then sink to his knees on the too-hard floor, and can feel the tears pouring out of her already. Her breath hitches, and she wails like a child, and that last part of her that couldn’t even grasp at safety shreds itself. His arms are tight around her, warm and strong and Master Kenobi don’t you dare leave again.

It doesn’t matter that Sidious is out there, that the Republic’s been building towards war for a century, that even now someone’s kicking up the Trade Federation. Her dad is here.

“I’ve missed you too, my dear,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, the bristles of his beard scratching along the skin of her forehead. Off to the side, the binary suns that are Luke and Leia grow brighter in proximity, so bright she can barely bear it.

(“Fett, why the kriff are you reaching for your blaster?!”)

(“Torrent said her master tried to kill her.”)

(“Different guy, that was a different guy, put the blaster away.”)

(“You could have just warned me.”)

(“I didn’t expect you to go for a shot on sight!”)

(”Calm down, Jetiika, if I was going to shoot on sight, we’d already be in a firefight.”)

She ignores everything.

“If you fake your death one more time, I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

He tries to pull away to talk to her more directly. She does not let him. He apparently resigns himself to this, because he just adjusts how he’s sitting and pulls her in closer.

“In my defense, I was far from the only one presumed dead that took advantage of that status, by the end,” he says, letting her slump into his lap and cry herself dry. “I’m proud of you. You know that, I hope.”

She nods against his chest, smearing tears and snot across the linen and wool. She doesn’t care that they’ll need a thorough washing. She can have her public breakdown and it’s fine because Master Kenobi is here.

He doesn’t even know what she’s spent the past fifteen years doing. Luke wouldn’t have known. He doesn’t know she’s thirty-two and broken, beyond a shadow and cut down by her own master. There’s so much he doesn’t know but the Force rings with the truth of it: he’s proud of her anyway.

“I’m going by Ben, now,” he mutters against her montral. “There’s already an Obi-Wan here, after all. Still, I remain a Kenobi.”

She can’t make the words come out of her mouth. She’s overwhelmed, so much so that speech is a mite bit beyond her.

Sokari Torrent, she presses along the frayed bond that’s knitting itself back to life with every breath they take. Leia was already calling me Auntie Soka, and Rex and I both took Torrent, for...

“For the men you lost,” he mutters. “Yes, that’s fitting.”

He smells like sapir tea and a spiced beard oil.

There’s a whirl of activity about her, greetings and ‘a Sith apprentice?’ and introductions. She distantly notes when Fett almost shoots Dooku before Rex shuts that down and advises the Master to leave the area before things spiral out of control. She feels Ben stand, and she stands with him, clings to his side like a child and trusts that whatever happens, whatever needs to happen, he’ll take care of it until she can stand on her own two feet without swaying.

Rex grabs her free hand, and she feels herself settle back into her skin, bit by bit.

She’s back at the Temple. The twins are safe. Her grandmaster is here. She has her other half.

They can save the galaxy this time.

She’s alive she’s home she’s okay.

She’s okay.

Everything’s going to be okay.

#Ahsoka Tano #Captain Rex #Leia Organa #Jango Fett #rex and ahsoka #Quinlan Vos #Tholme #Depa Billaba #Obi Wan Kenobi #Ben Kenobi #Maul #Darth Maul #time travel #de aging #ptsd #trauma #child soldiers #Phoenix Files #Uncle Ben and Little Luke #Auntie Soka and Little Leia #disaster lineage