Star Wars

General Audiences

abetment

“The day anyone around here can speak with any degree of authority about what constitutes a normal person’s behavior is the day I defect to the First Order.” He peers at her, switching gears on a hairpin, suddenly sympathetic. “Our job’s not easy, Pava. You know as well as I do there’s not always gonna be a later to look forward to.”

a hush

They’ve all heard tales since beginning their journey about even worse things that linger in the silence. Every port of call—what few they can find—only drags more stories onto the ship. They rot like chum on every deck, spreading death and fear wherever they go. Rumors can be found everywhere they turn. In the Unknown Regions, it’s practically a form of currency. And Kylo cannot stop them. He can only do what he can to ensure nobody turns his ships into another cautionary tale, a horror story that other reckless adventurers tell one another.

anabasis

“My fondest dream is shooting at you while you run away.” He turned his head into Ben’s neck and inhaled, biting his lip to keep from laughing at Ben’s wounded gasp of indignation. “How did you guess?”

the art of planetary motion

And there it is. Finn stops dead, yanking Rey back with him. If she was anyone else, he’d have toppled her by mistake. Instead, she twists with him and anticipates the way his hands settle on her shoulders. Because that’s what Jedi do. It’s spooky and cool all at the same time. “It’s his what now?”

asterisms

If asked, Poe could still name every constellation visible from the Massassi temple back on Yavin IV.

auspices

Lando’s life in ten drabbles.

burn the nights away

And no matter how often Ben told him not to do this to himself, told him not to come out to the hangar after the end of his shift to sit on a crate and watch the various nighttime arrivals and departures, Poe never listened. No matter what, he always found his way back home.

cages

From inside, the sound of the band warming up drew both of their attentions. And though Poe mostly heard his own sigh, he thought his kindred spirit sighed, too. “Not a fan?” Poe offered, incapable of staying quiet any longer.

That whole inability to keep his mouth shut thing. It could be a real drag.

denier

“Thank you,” Mon Mothma said, glancing around the command center. Not a single person paid her any mind. Too busy dashing off reports or monitoring comm traffic or planning strikes to notice her, they went about their business while all thought of Mon Mothma completing her own ground to a halt.

erosions

No, this beach is not Scarif, but its pull on him is overwhelming, as much a part of him as the Rebellion. It feels so real, the beach does. He wants to stay here, but he knows the truth. He knows the beach isn’t real. He’s always known this beach isn’t real.

espalier

“What do you think?” she asked, squatting until she was at Poe’s level. He liked it when she did that, smiling at her with the most beatific look on his face. And he didn’t disappoint now either, almost taking her breath away with how brightly he grinned at her.

He didn’t answer her. Instead, plopping down to make his point, he plucked a handful of blades from the ground and tossed them at his feet.

expenditures

Leia quirked a bitter smile her way. Regret tinged it, turned it dull where it could have been full and brilliant and beautiful. “You need someone who can—” She wiggled her fingers and Jyn felt a caress on her cheek that wasn’t caused by a breeze. There were so few people in the galaxy who had Leia’s skills. How they’d found her… Leia might think they had a one-in-a-million shot at success, but Jyn was sure she undersold it. Or maybe it was the Force interceding on their behalves. Chirrut thought so and Jyn wanted to believe, but… “—and anyway, you’re going to be the one with a target on her back soon enough. There’s no one better suited to smuggling these damned plans to where they’ll do the most good.”

hoarfrost in fragments

When all else fails, Poe thinks, tossing out a general distress call to whatever deities might be listening, be polite. “Master Skywalker.”

into epochs

His heart thuds in his chest and his stomach knots up and he feels sick in a way he hasn’t since before his first real swindle and Luke—Luke… “You look better than I thought you would,” he says, struck despite himself by the line of Luke’s tunic, the offset scarf settled across one shoulder and around his neck, everything a variation of dark gray, his favored shade over the years. “That color always did suit you.”

lacunae

Finn shifts on his feet outside Poe’s quarters, fist raised to knock on the thick, utilitarian door, far closer to the kind of thing you’d find in First Order barracks than Finn’s comfortable thinking about. Palm sweating, he grimaces and drops his hand. Wipes it surreptitiously down his shirt and tries to find his sense of calm. Deep breaths, he tells himself. He’s not gonna bite. You’re looking for lunch. Not a commitment.

Or,

Finn learns more about The Jacket than he cares to know.

palimpsests

So it was his own fault really when he—almost literally—stumbled across Ben Solo as he strode his way into the hangar bay, his boots striking the duracrete with a finality that brooked no argument. This was his place; he owned it; he’d earned it. That said, it shouldn’t have been easy to stumble over Ben; he was a large man and broad at that, but he’d managed to kneel behind a few stacked cargo containers at the exact same moment that Poe decided to round those selfsame containers and—

Bweeeeip whooooooaaaaooooo.

paper wings

Don’t do that, he thought. That’ll just goad him on. “At least it wasn't your pompous jackass of a nemesis who caught you on a routine mission through the safest hyperspace lanes known to the Resistance.”

“By the way,” spoke said pompous jackass over comms that were wired into the walls for the singular purpose of driving Poe up them, “according to the fr—excuse me, Ben Solo’s psychological evaluations, he was hurt by a romantic entanglement in the past, which makes him—”

permissions

K-2 recited his spiel, knocked over more than a few of his words in the process, and lost himself in a bog somewhere about the time he was supposed to explain that his central processors were malfunctioning and could Captain Andor please tell him on what level he might find the droid techs?

“That’s it.” His hand sliced brutally through the air. You can’t even stop yourself from hesitating with my title. “I’m going with you.”

petals after the fall

“Queen, uh, Soruna has requested an audience with you,” Connix says, self-conscious. And it’s so painfully obvious she doesn’t understand. Nobody requests an audience with General Organa. That’s just a little too monarchical for her Resistance contacts. And nobody except Threepio likes to bring up the whole princess thing for many and varied reasons.

prelude

“Hey!” The shout was accompanied by a fist punching him in the arm. Finn knew better than to flinch, though. He was used to it from this particular source. One of the few good things to have come out of this damned conflict, one of the few things he couldn’t regret. Rose glared up at him and planted her hands on her hips. She was dressed in her usual coveralls and they were dirty, also normal for her. A smudge of grease lashed across her forehead and it took every ounce of Finn’s self-control to not reach up and wipe it away.

prevail upon

“Perhaps not for some.” He thought of Commander Organa and General Calrissian and Mon Mothma. There was yet work for them to do and they were so very clearly chomping at the bit to do it. But for others—for Cassian… “The Alliance will restructure. And along with it, the army and navy.” He sighed and released Jyn’s hands with a brief, tight squeeze. “They need soldiers, peacekeepers. They may even need spies, but they don’t need me.”

“Cassian.”

“This—” He pointed up at the sky, that unbelievable, impossible sky. “—this was always the goal.”

quintessence series

fusee - quintessence 1

Turning on his heels, he grinned down at K, who stared back up at him, baleful. How Cassian knew that, he couldn’t say, given K was still such a recent addition to the base. In any case, K’s ocular sensors looked no different than usual, but Cassian saw judgment there all the same. And when K opened his mouth—figuratively anyway—he confirmed it. “When I said you needed to get out more, I didn’t mean it literally.”

diluvian - quintessence 2

“You’re enjoying this.” Tugging her forward, he pressed his lips against the top of her head, all the while glaring at the scene outside, willing it to bend to his desires. Her hair smelled vaguely of the astringent soap almost no one on the base liked to use except to scrub ship parts that had gotten too greasy. He just wanted to go home. “Who ever heard of a whole city coming to a standstill over a little rain?”

contiguous - quintessence 3

“I’m gonna—” Cassian gestured vaguely at the patch of dirt around their sadly very incapacitated shuttle and tried not to feel guilty about abandoning Bodhi to his work. If Cassian could help, it would be one thing, but this particular mechanical failure was above his paygrade and Bodhi had long since given up trying to explain its nuances just so Cassian might not screw up the repair. The next time Commander Organa wanted a manned shuttle to scout uninhabited planets, she could send someone else. “—out there. For a few minutes.”

revivify - quintessence 4

Bile burned a line up his throat and anger churned within his chest, battering at his rib cage, no target left to hurt except his own body and mind. The Empire no longer existed and yet a palpable stamp remained on this world, on so many worlds. Would they ever be free of the Empire’s noxious touch? Sometimes Cassian didn’t think so. Sometimes Cassian didn’t even expect to live long to see a galaxy that wasn’t still freshly scarred.

Jyn took his hand and squeezed it until his joints cracked together. “This is a good thing, Cassian. It’s a good day.”

espirit de corps - quintessence 5

He looked out onto the people around him, now so earnest in their grimness. Most of them had never been through this before. Some had, of course, and they appeared more tired than shocked, quietly upset, but careful in their expression of it. Tightness had settled around so many eyes. Despair.

Cassian hated that he’d had to put it there, but he and Jyn were the ones who’d stumbled across the whispers first. It only seemed right that they would be the ones to spread the news.

This was the job they’d burdened themselves with.

savoir faire

He slides further down the platform, a polite invitation for her to join him. Smiling in welcome, he scrutinizes her—or tries to—for signs of her reaction. Is she pleased? Or chagrined? Without daylight to go by, the figuring of it is difficult. And so he gives up for the time being, leaving it to fate as to whether he learns what she thinks or not. Because by the time he can tell, her face is placid. “What wonders would those be?”

strange bedfellows

“Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine. There is no other shelter hereabouts. Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past.” - The Tempest, Act II, Scene II

twined

Ahsoka had gone through the process—and more easily than most of her peers at that.

She hadn’t questioned why at the time. It was what good Jedi did and, frankly, the thought of losing her family was so much more troubling to her than losing a soulmate she’d never met. She had Anakin and Padmé and Rex and Master Obi-Wan and Master Plo and all the others. What did she need with a soulmate when she already had so much?

two-faced

Sana might hate her and she, she might be unhappy with Sana in turn, but Sana didn’t deserve to become a loose wire in the force field that protected Aphra—and Sana—from blackmail and exploitation, all the nasty things Imps did to one another to climb another rung of the ladder Aphra found far less interesting now that she was stuck somewhere on it.

She sneered and scoffed and shook her head, hair brushing back and forth over her neck. “I think I’d rather talk about Aphra.”

I don’t miss her, Sana thought, willing herself to believe it.

vortoscope

The Force crackles, shivering the way a person might if they touched their tongue to a broken tooth. Sharp and hot, before abating to a manageable throb. His face betrays nothing, so neutral that she almost distrusts her own senses as a result. But no. No. She’s not wrong. She’s never wrong.

Her leg slips off the throne, foot stamping against the marble. She leans forward, elbows against her knees. “You’re lying.” Her mind hones in on him, an awl ready to prick a hole in the fabric that holds him together. She could break him to get the truth from him if she wanted to. But she doesn’t. Because knowing she could is enough. Tilting her head, she narrows her eyes. Flat, she asks, “Why?”