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Chapter Text

*prologue is explict, chapter 1 (at the bottom) is not

28 BBY

Prologue | Irizi’ell’unaris

The ship fragmented, weakened by the acid eating away at its hull and blown apart by the following barrage of laser fire.

It was… beautiful. 

The thought startled Zi’ell. For a moment she was disgusted by the thought, finding beauty in such destruction and death.

Why had she come to the lower deck viewport of the Springhawk during the battle? It was something she had never done since she had witnessed it the first time when she had first become an engineer aboard the ship. She had more important things to do in combat: figuring out what was being broken on her ship, and fixing what problems she could on the fly. But this time, when the barrage of fire against the shields had died down, she had asked Lasria to cover for her, and sprinted to the viewport. 

Why? 

Because she wanted to watch Thrawn destroy them. 

Zi’ell remembered how it had felt, seeing the empty, dead eyes of the Vagaari’s victims. She remembered being so angry at them. More than that, she had been angry that the preemptive strike rules prevented anything being done about it. She had wanted vengeance on behalf of those lost.

So now, she watched them burn. Could she be sure that anyone aboard this ship were the same as those that had been involved in the deaths she had witnessed? No. In fact, it was unlikely they were.

Zi’ell almost looked away, but she was frozen. She didn’t want to look away. Why should she? Perhaps they weren’t the same ones, but perhaps they were. And regardless, they subscribed to the same horrible philosophies. 

It had required so much strategizing on Thrawn’s part to get them onto a smaller ship, abandoning their slaves as they had before. Zi’ell hadn’t seen him in two weeks. But this time they hadn’t lost them. This time, they didn’t have their shield of innocents. 

She watched in a trance as the parts of the ship drifted apart, set to drift forever out into the Chaos. She realized she had been there a long time when the ship began receding from view as the Springhawk repositioned itself to jump out of the system. 

The image of the ship falling apart replayed in her mind as she found herself walking through the corridors. She passed other officers celebrating, patting each other on the back, many of them heading to the mess hall. It took some time, on a ship as large as the Springhawk , to make it to her destination, but she finally found herself outside Thrawn’s quarters. 

Zi’ell pressed the door chime. When there was no response, she was pulled from her daze. Right, he hadn’t messaged her. He wouldn’t be waiting for her. In fact, she probably shouldn’t be here at all. After a few more heartbeats just facing his door, she turned to go back the way she had come. 

“Head engineer?”

She looked up. 

Thrawn was standing in the corridor, eyebrow raised. He looked over his shoulder, then approached her slowly. 

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I was just… coming to congratulate you.” She looked him up and down.

“Did you watch?”

She nodded.

The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. “Stay.”

She smiled and stepped aside for him to open his door with his biometrics. The moment she had walked in behind him and he had turned to face her, Zi’ell took hold of his uniform tunic in her fists and pulled him down to kiss him hard. 

She shoved herself into him, making him step back further into his room.

Thrawn’s hands gripped her hips firmly and held her against him. 

Zi’ell kissed him rough, pushing her tongue between his lips. She wanted him, needed him. 

Behind her squeezed-shut eyes, she saw the shattered ship, drifting away as it shed its shielding and hull, propelled off into space by the fire. Molten metal and gasses flowed from it, exposing whatever was protected inside to the unforgiving darkness.

Zi’ell ran her hands over Thrawn’s skin desperately as together they shed their clothes and drifted into the bedroom. Zi’ell pushed him firmly onto the bed and stared down at him, bare and vulnerable before her. 

Thrawn looked up at her with a raised eyebrow as he sat, legs spread, on the edge of the bed. 

Zi’ell took a fraction of a step back from him. She met his gaze and blinked quickly, blood still racing with heat. Vulnerable?

Thrawn’s lip twitched. His voice was low and soft, but held ferocity. “Come here, Zi’ell.”

She obeyed. Her body trembled involuntarily as he ran his hands up the curve of her back and then took hold of her rib cage with his thumbs firmly stroking over the sides of her breasts.

No, he wasn’t vulnerable at all. 

Zi’ell looked down at him with parted lips as she slid her knees up on either side of him on the bed. 

Thrawn was her commander. He was formidable and fatal to underestimate, as his enemies had discovered today. After today, the Vagaari and other pirate low-lifes they associated with would learn to fear the Chiss. They would tremble at the mention of Senior Captain Mitth’raw’nurodo. 

“Thrawn…” Zi’ell moaned softly as she dug her nails into his shoulders and she sank down onto him. Every time he entered her, she would wonder for a moment whether she could take it, but now she forced herself down quickly, which sent a shaking up her spine and prompted her to throw her head back. 

Thrawn sighed out a long breath and slid his hands back down her to grip her hips. 

Zi’ell ground against him, moaning each time. 

“Quiet…” Thrawn hissed, though he encouraged her to increase the pace. 

“They’ll all be off celebrating, nowhere near your quarters,” Zi’ell said, beginning to breathe hard. She took hold of his chin firmly in one hand and kissed him, breaking the kiss only to let out a moan as she moved him around inside her. 

Thrawn groaned. 

She pushed his shoulders hard and he laid back onto the bed. She pressed her palms to his chest and fucked him harder, moaning loudly. 

“Zi’ell…” Thrawn hissed, digging his nails into her.

She stopped her motion, putting as much fire in her voice as she was able. “I don’t care if anyone knows. A commander deserves to be rewarded for victory. I know you. I know what you like. And that means I know when you’re holding back. Now fuck me like you deserve whatever you want.”

The next second, Zi’ell was on her back. She cried out as Thrawn thrust into her with such force it was nearly painful. One of his arms was wrapped beneath her, holding her close to him. Thrawn breathed out heavily in her ear as he drove into her again and again. 

“Bite me,” he hissed. 

“ What? ”

“Keep yourself quiet,” he spat. “Bite me.”

With another strong thrust making Zi’ell cry out loud and eliciting a growl of frustration from Thrawn, Zi’ell obeyed, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. 

Thrawn hissed at the pain but fucked her faster. 

Zi’ell moaned, nearly whimpering, as she tasted his sweet skin. 

But fuck , it was good. 

Thrawn wanted her body with the same ferocity that he wanted his enemies destroyed. As her body became more and more overwhelmed by the sensations, she envisioned him on the bridge, giving orders in that calm, collected voice as the ship before him was reduced to scrap. 

“Come for me, Zi’ell,” that same voice said firmly in her ear.

She trembled as her hips lifted into him and she came undone at his words. 

“Good…” Thrawn said, the ferocity in his voice waning as he too began to shake slightly between her thighs.  

Zi’ell laid her head back onto the bed. A delicate filament of saliva trailed from her open lips to the purple bite mark on Thrawn’s shoulder. It broke as Thrawn collapsed onto her, breathing heavily. 

Zi’ell wrapped her arms and legs around him, contentedly taking in the scent of his hair. 

When he had caught his breath, he lifted himself up onto his elbows and looked down at her. The softness in his gaze shook her, making her almost embarrassed by the violent intensity she had just felt. 

He leaned down to press a gentle kiss to her lips, lasting three quick heart beats. “That victory was for you,” he whispered when he pulled away. 

Zi’ell felt warmth spread over her chest, as well as the accompanying feeling of vulnerability. She smiled, nearly laughing, as she felt her cheeks flush. How strange, to feel vulnerable at the expression of his affection for her when she was lying naked with him still buried deep within her.

He smiled softly down at her and pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

Zi’ell embraced him more tightly. She was startled by the realization that there was nowhere in the universe she would rather be than at his side. 

Wherever he went, whatever enemies he fought, she wanted to be there. Whatever damage she would have to repair, she wanted to keep his ship in the perfect condition for her to witness victory after victory after victory. When she finished her fighter, the best fighters the Fleet had ever seen, she wanted Thrawn to be the first to deploy them. She would be the lover in his bed and the weapon in his hand. 

2 BBY

1 | Mitth’ia’safis

The sun was beginning to set as Thias walked slowly through the market. The smell of the Lothal street food that had become so familiar to her over the past months on the planet wafted through the warm evening air between the buildings. Thias had never felt much at home with her feet on the ground before, but this city and the plains surrounding had become home to her in such a short time. 

Mother would be annoyed with her for being late to dinner, but she would forgive quickly, especially if Thias brought dessert home with her. And especially since tomorrow Thias wouldn’t be coming for dinner at all. 

It had taken a lot of convincing, but Father had allowed her to take the entrance exams for the Imperial Academy. It had been satisfying, seeing the look on his face when she had scored so well she could have been accepted to the most prestigious Academy on Coruscant. She wondered if he had thought she would fail, given how difficult it was to talk to him and Mother about the possibility of attending the Academy at all, even though they had let her take the exam. 

But finally, with a lot of compromises on both sides, they had all agreed she could attempt flight school at the Imperial Academy on Lothal. Thias understood why they were concerned, especially after reading more into the history of the Empire’s relationship with Force-users. But she wasn’t worried. She didn’t really care much for having a part in the Empire, but she did want to be able to fly. And as far as she could tell from her research, the best way to be able to fly anything anywhere was having graduated from Imperial flight school. She could serve her few years following graduation in her Father’s fleet, flying her Mother’s TIE Defenders. Whether she wanted it or not, that’s what she would end up assigned to with Father’s influence and desire to protect her. But staying on Lothal would be nice. And then she could decide to do whatever she wanted to. 

Thias smiled as she approached her favorite fruit stall. As she did, she could see the young human girl, Noa, sitting on the stool behind her mother, head bent over the drawing on her lap. 

When her mother, Lior, saw Thias, she turned to tap the girl on the shoulder.

Noa’s face brightened and she sat up straight on her stool, swinging her legs. 

Thias nodded to her and reached into her pocket to take hold of the smooth stone she had found on her latest speeder bike trip over the plains. She laid it on the counter of the stall and Lior smiled, picking it up and handing it to Noa. 

Noa examined it carefully, eyes wide. 

Lior raised her eyebrows at Thias as they both waited to see what would happen next. 

It had become a kind of ritual, this exchange. When Thias had first explored this market, she had sat at the stall across from Noa’s stall to eat and when she had moved to leave, Lior had startled her by handing her a drawing from Noa. It was certainly a child’s drawing, but it was recognizable as a picture of Thias. 

“We have never seen one of your people here,” Lior had said. “She is interested in you.”

Thias had wanted to thank Noa for the drawing. But Lior had told her how Noa couldn’t hear. So Thias had offered Noa the only thing she had on her, an interestingly shaped rock she had picked up during her exploration of the planet. Noa had been overjoyed. And Thias had made sure to have another rock in her pocket the next time she had visited the city. 

Now, Noa took the stone and set it next to the eight others on the windowsill behind her. She returned to the drawing in her lap and, after a few finishing touches, extended it out to Thias. 

“Ah, she liked that one,” Lior said warmly. 

Thias nodded, taking the drawing and examining it. What species would be represented in this one? 

“She always gets so excited to show her father the stones you’ve given her when he gets home from the factory. Thank you. We… don’t have much to give her these days.”

Thias’ heart sank. She hadn’t exchanged much conversation with Lior. “It will be a while before I come back again. I am… starting at the Imperial Academy.”

Lior’s demeanor shifted. “I… I see.”
“But it is the Academy here on Lothal. I will be back on this part of the planet to visit my mother before too long. I just don’t want her to think I am gone because I didn’t like her art.”

Lior nodded, looking at Noa. “I’ll make sure she knows.”

Thias nodded, carefully rolling up Noa’s drawing to put it into her bag. “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

2 | Mitth’ell’unaris

“We could still fly you there,” Thell said in Cheunh, as she walked with Thias through the Lothal spaceport.

“It’s just to the other side of the planet, Mother,” Thias responded in Basic. Thell wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact Thias always seemed to insist on talking in Basic, even when it was just the three of them. “It’s hardly worth the fuel for an interplanetary craft.”

Thell bit her lip and glanced at Thrawn. His warm half-smile didn’t reassure her, so she looked back to Thias. 

Her hands felt empty. She nearly asked Thias if she wanted help carrying her bag for the third time. But she knew she didn’t want to just carry Thias’ things. She wanted to hold her daughter. She wanted to pick her up like when she was a toddler and prevent her from walking one more step away from her. 

She had argued with Thrawn plenty about whether Thias should be allowed to go. Though funny enough, it seemed neither of them could agree on whether she should or shouldn’t. Sometimes she was feeling guilty about all Thias had suffered, never really allowed to pursue what she wanted, while Thrawn worried about whether the Empire would discover her Third Sight, though he always seemed to dodge around answering exactly what it was he was afraid of. Thrawn had been surprised when Thias had passed the exams, though she had only been studying for a few months. Thell could see Thias’ pride, how she didn’t hunch over quite so much. She wanted to see more of that. And maybe flying in the Imperial Academy was the way Thias could have that.

Other times, Thell felt the withering gazes of many of the humans she worked with. She overheard the things they would whisper, thinking she didn’t know Basic well enough to understand. The frustrating part was that sometimes she didn’t. But she knew those sneers. And she remembered how Eli had warned them about what it was like for aliens in the Empire, the stories he had told her of how Thrawn was treated in the Academy. And Thrawn had already been a seasoned military commander. How would they treat her daughter? Her quiet, awkward Thias who hadn’t even fit in among her Chiss peers? And when she would discuss this with Thrawn, he would point out that the best way for Thias to get out from under all that was to earn a reputation for herself, following his path of demonstrating inarguable competence. If Thias achieved reputation and rank through education at the Academy, fewer people would sneer, even if they wanted to. 

And so they had gone around in circles. But Thias had made the decision herself. When it had come down to it, Thias had simply calmly stated: I’m going to fly. 

She was going to the Academy. But implicit in the statement had been the underlying threat, of finding some way to fly whether her parents liked it or not.
Thell hadn’t ever heard sentiment like that from her daughter before. And it had left her wondering how much was going on under the surface that she was missing. Did Thias resent her for her attempts to protect her all these years? Thias seemed to have even more difficulty expressing her feelings than her father did sometimes. And now, Thell didn’t have the time to try to dig it out. 

To soon, the shuttle was in front of them. 

Thias stopped and turned around to her parents. Thell felt guilty at how her glowing expression fell when she met her eyes. “I’m going to be fine, Mother. This isn’t a funeral.”

Thell sighed and pulled Thias into a tight embrace even though she knew her daughter didn’t typically like them. She could tolerate one hug for the next weeks without seeing her at all. “Do I really look that sad?”

Thias pitied her and reciprocated her hug. Thell would never get used to the fact her little girl had to bend slightly to hug her comfortably now, being nearly a head taller than her. But the embrace was comforting all the same. 

“I love you, Mitth’ia’safis.” Thell said, annoyed at how her voice sounded tight. She had sent Thias off to school before, back on Naporar. And she wasn’t really going that far. She wanted to keep things together for her. 

Thias sighed deeply, then returned the Cheunh words quietly. “I love you, Mother.” She allowed the hug to continue another two heartbeats before she squirmed and Thell reluctantly let go.

“Remember what I told you,” Thrawn said. 

Thias nodded. 

“Be safe,” he said. “And it will only take a call for you to have my help.”

“Thank you,” Thias said, returning to Basic. 

Thell knew that was Thrawn’s way of telling her he loved her without putting her in the awkward position of feeling obligated to say it back. It was a kind way to show her respect. But it still saddened Thell that it wasn’t a statement Thias was ready to make. 

“I’ll be back before too long, Mother. You’ll need someone to test out your fighters.” Thias grinned. 

The warmth on her face brought a smile to Thell as well. 

“Yes, that’s right. I’ll work extra hard to bring you home sooner.”
Thias nodded to Thell, then to Thrawn. And just like that she turned to go. 

Thell took Thrawn’s hand and held tightly to his arm. She found herself wondering bitterly how many more times she would be standing in a damn spaceport watching the back of someone she loved recede from her view. 

“She’s coming back.” Thrawn said in Cheunh, as if reading her mind. 

She could only sigh. They waited in silence, watching Thias board the shuttle and eventually watching it take off and disappear into the blue Lothal sky. 

Thrawn squeezed her hand. “Let’s go home, love.”

Thell nodded, then began walking with him back out of the spaceport. “Home?”

“Yes, your place here on Lothal. Or the Chimaera with me if you wish.”

He had missed the tone of her voice, but her silence following seemed to make him understand. “Love…”

“What?”
“I thought you were settling in well here on Lothal.”

The concern in his voice made her wish she hadn’t said anything. “You don’t miss home still, every now and then?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “Thell, everything I do here is for our people.”

“But you don’t want to go back?”

“I can’t. Not yet at least.”

“But do you want to?”

Thrawn was quiet for a while. “For your sake. And for the sake of my friends there. But I couldn’t forgive myself if I simply went home when there is so much to be done here. And I am the only one that can do it.”

Thell nodded. They walked outside the space port and through the Imperial district. It was silent a long time before Thell spoke. “And when you’re old? Where do you see us?”

“Together,” he said. 

“We’d better be,” she scoffed. “You promised not to leave me again. And you’ll be making up for that the rest of your life.” She looked over to see his small smile, ensuring he knew she wasn’t angry. “But where? What are we doing?”

“I don’t see the future,” he said. “But I don’t see myself doing anything but protecting you and Thias and our people.”

“You’ll never stop working until you’re just about dead.” She shook her head. 

“What else should I do?”

“Fine then,” she said. “Where do you want to be when you die? In those last days when you can’t command a ship?”

Thrawn went somber, as he repeated his previous answer. “Together.”

“But where?”
“Where do you want to be when you die?”

Thell considered it, but the words came quickly. “The forest on Rentor.”

Thrawn was quiet as they approached her quarters. When the door had shut behind him, he turned to her and pulled her close, kissing her softly on the forehead. 

Thell smiled and put her arms around his neck. 

“Then Rentor it is,” he said.

Thell kissed him shortly, then laid her head against his shoulder. “Can you stay with me long?”

“I can stay with you all day.”

“How did you manage that?” She exclaimed looking up at him. 

He reached a hand up between them to caress her cheek. “I knew today wouldn’t be easy for you. Best for you to not come home alone to an empty house.”

She leaned her cheek into his palm and smiled, projecting her gratitude. But he was right. The empty house would be hard, when he did have to go be Grand Admiral again. Even when Thias had left for Taharim back in the Ascendency, Thell had had Thalias and Borika to keep her company. Now, she would be alone. The last time that had been the case, she had been pregnant when Thias. She could almost shudder at the memory of the pain that came with that time. 

Thias had brought a light to that darkness. With those wide scarlet eyes, curious about everything. And the tiniest blue fingers…

Thell blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek. 

Thrawn wiped it with his thumb. “It’s alright, my love.”

Thell’s throat felt tight so she only nodded. Thrawn was with her. There was no reason to feel alone. And even when he had to work, he would still see her often. She could still talk to him. But still the tears rolled. 18 years later, Thell could still be surprised at how motherhood had changed her. 

“Come sit,” Thrawn said.

Together they sat on the couch and Thrawn pulled her into his lap. She nuzzled into his neck as the tears continued to drop. 

“She was such a sweet little girl,” she said softly.

“Tell me,” he said, stroking her back with his thumb as he held her. 

“All she ever wanted to do was fly,” Thell laughed through the tears. “I think it’s your fault.”

“Oh?”

“You bought her those toy ships. They were always her favorite. The beginning of a substantial model ship collection.”

Thrawn let out a breath of a laugh. “I suppose I had some influence on her after all. Tell me more.”

“I’ve told you all these stories about her so many times now.”

“Tell me again,” he said. “You get to relive the stories in your memories. I have to live them through you.”

Thell sat up from him, wiping her eyes. She ran her fingers through the gray in his hair above his ear. “Once I took her to the Family Homestead.”

Thrawn smiled, already knowing where the story was going, but nodded, encouraging her to continue. Thell wondered if she would ever be able to tell the stories enough times, that it would almost feel that he hadn’t missed them. But with him here, it was strange how, whenever she recalled the memories of Thias’ younger years, the memories didn’t feel quite as heavy as they did back then, underscored by Thrawn’s absence. Increasingly, she was able to see that perhaps her life with Thias had been, at least for the most part, a happy one.

Chapter Text

3 | Mitth’ia’safis

Thias felt as though her neurons were ringing, almost itching in her skull, as she finally searched down the long hallway for her dormitory. All the ceremonies and speeches and crowds of human faces all staring up at her with so many mixed expressions… the day had been so overwhelming. Thias felt frustrated with herself. Hadn’t  she been preparing for this? Why was she still practically shaking? Even now as she walked down the hall, piercing black pupils traced her movements. Why were their eyes all so focused and pointed? There was no ambiguity about where they were looking.  Thias was fighting to ignore their thoughts and feelings, but couldn't escape the sensation that she was wading through a soup of disgust and disapproval. She again cursed the fact she was so noticeably tall. She wanted to just shrink down and avoid their gazes. 

Thias felt a moment of relief when she finally found her dormitory, but the relief dissipated swiftly as she realized that her two roommates were already inside. By their expressions, they weren’t too happy to see her either. One of the girls was quite short and had pale yellow hair and blue-ringed eyes , still in her dress uniform. The other girl was taller (though she still had to look up at Thias) and had skin and hair and eye rings that were more brown. She had shed her uniform tunic, wearing only her undershirt and slacks. 

Thias shuffled inside and set her bag down on the bunk that was empty of the other girls’ things. She swallowed hard and turned to face them. 

The yellow-haired girl broke the silence after the door to the hallway had hissed shut. “Well, do you speak Basic?” It was an innocent enough question, but there was something in the way she spat it out that put Thias even more on edge. She had the same accent as many of the other more aristocratic types that Thias had come across in the Empire so far. 

Thias nodded quickly. 

The other girl spoke. “Of course she can speak Basic. They wouldn’t admit a student that can’t speak Basic.”

The first girl scoffed. “I would have thought so, but apparently they’ll admit all kinds of students these days.” She turned her back to Thias as she unpacked. 

Thias cleared her throat. She intentionally suppressed her accent as much as she was able. “My name is Thias. What is yours?”

“‘Thias’ what?”

It took Thias a moment to understand that she was asking for her family name. The tightness in her gut increased. “Mitth’ia’safis.” Saying the ‘alien’ name only made her feel more foreign. 

The other taller girl extended a hand to Thias. “I’m Leesee Kanverlee.” 

Thias shook it. 

Leesee continued once she had released her hand. “You’re… you’re related to the alien Grand Admiral.”

The yellow-haired girl whipped around, a number of different emotions quickly passing over her face. 

Thias nodded slowly, wishing even more that she could shrink and disappear. She had hoped it would take a little longer before she became widely known only for her relation to her Father. But there were few aliens in the Empire, and even fewer Chiss. 

“Where are you from?” Leesee continued. 

“Naporar,” Thias said.

The yellow-haired girl scoffed. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It is a planet… outside the Empire.” She had almost said ‘in the Chiss Ascendency’, but realized that recognizing the Chiss as a sovereign power over their worlds would not do good for the image of her loyalty.  

The two girls looked between each other, making Thias wonder if what she had said was still not the right choice. The collar of her uniform was beginning to feel tight. “Where are you from?” she asked Leesee. She couldn’t get in more trouble just repeating the same question she had been asked, could she?

“Virgillia . Outer Rim.” 

Thias made a mental note to look up the world later. It wasn’t one of the ones she had studied for her exams. She looked nervously at her other roommate again. 

She scoffed again. “Well, since you didn’t bother to ask me, I suppose I’ll introduce myself. I’m Hilla Typh.”  

Thias felt nearly sick. Couldn’t she do anything right?

“My father governs Imperial territory G5-623.” Hilla tilted up her chin. “He earned that position from decades of Imperial service.” 

Now this name was finally something Thias did recognize. The planet formerly known as Kashyyyk and homeworld of the Wookiees . She raised her eyebrows, trying her best to come off as disarming and friendly. “Your father is Grand Moff Tolruck?”

Hilla’s proud expression instantly soured. Her voice became quiet and distinctly bitter in tone. “Well, no. But he reports to him.”

Thias felt her cheeks flush and she glanced between Hilla and Leesee, who was now unpacking things with her back to Hilla. Leesee had a fraction of a smile on her face now. Thias could only feel confused. 

“I’ll have you know,” Hilla continued, regaining some volume, “without my father’s work, the whole Empire would not be where it is. Without him, we would be severely lacking in laborers.”

Thias had no idea what she should say, feeling utterly lost and certain that she already wanted to completely start over even though it was just the first day. 

Hilla apparently interpreted her expression as confusion over her statement. “Oh come on. I know it’s not widely publicized because some of the mynocks parasitizing our senate would have a fit, but everyone worth anything knows that the Empire relies on our export of Wookiees for mining and construction.” She sneered. “Especially the relative of a Grand Admiral.”

“Forgive me, I… I didn’t mean any offense.”

The blue-ringed black dots of Hilla’s eyes made an arched deflection towards her eyelids and she turned back to her things on her bunk. 

The two girls didn’t say another word to Thias as they settled in their things. When they left for the mess hall, Thias decided she would skip the meal. She resolved that once training began, she would force herself to go to all meals, but tonight she needed to be alone. 

She laid down in her bunk, conscious of how her feet barely didn’t hang over the edge, and closed her eyes, all the images and sounds of the day settling in on her. She managed her breathing carefully as panic threatened the back of her mind. 

Through all she had experienced that day, and despite her own tendency to ruminate on what she ought to have said and done differently, her mind continued returning to Hilla’s words. 

In her studies of Imperial worlds, she had read about how Imperial territory G5-623 had a particularly intense Imperial presence, as the Wookiees had originally pushed back against the transition from Republic to Imperial rule. She had even read about the territory’s close trade connections with many other critical Imperial worlds. What did Hilla mean by ‘our export of Wookiees’? Weren’t Wookiees a sentient species? Did she mean the organization of Wookiees who desired to work offworld? The dark feeling in Thias’ gut told her that wasn’t the case. 

As her mind tumbled over all she had heard that day, one question continued to surface: How much did her Father know about the darker sides of the Empire? 

Chapter Text

4 | Mitth’ia’safis

Thias’ vision blurred with the need for sleep as she slowly made her way down the dimly lit hallway towards her dormitory. She thought back to when she had first arrived here, how she had so quickly realized she didn’t belong. She could almost laugh now at how much she had underestimated that fact. 

That had been before she had had the utmost displeasure of meeting Corad Vance. Thias clenched her teeth. Vance. The only pilot above her in the class rankings. And her least favorite sentient individual she had yet to meet in her life.

Thias had realized within the first week that Vance was becoming a group leader for a handful of cadets. She knew the type: that loud mouth with just enough experience behind it to draw in followers hoping to gain status from proximity. She also knew what was coming next. The group would identify enemies: more quiet types or those with obvious differences who happened to have competence that rivaled their status. And Thias was the obvious choice. She always had been, even in her time among her own people. 

From there began the purposeful exclusions and pointed laughter, which would eventually escalate to outright insults and taunts. Even those Thias could perhaps have found a friend in would avoid her to avoid the subsequent loss to their own status. Leesee had been friendly enough the first two weeks, but now she just shot Thias pitying glances every now and then.

Second best . Father had told her. You can avoid raising some suspicion about your abilities if you always let at least one human keep the first ranking .

That had been easy enough to agree to at the time. But that was before Vance. Someone needed to put that megalomaniac in his place. Why did this always happen? Why did she have to put up with this? At least back among her own people, she had been allowed to be the best. She could show her value. But here, she had to just let these idiots think that Vance was a better pilot than her. Because apparently it was even more dangerous to have her abilities in the Empire than back in the Ascendency.

Thias fumed. It certainly didn’t help that Hilla was practically obsessed with him. She couldn’t get a break from it even in her dormitory. Her things had developed a tendency to disappear or relocate themselves to inconvenient places, making her late for trainings and classes and getting her reprimanded. She was sure that Vance and all of Hilla’s friends thought it was hilarious. 

She had taken to avoiding her room as much as she could, but she had yet to discover a good place at the Academy where she could truly be alone. And she certainly couldn’t be caught sleeping outside her quarters so eventually she would have to find her way back there. But even that was beginning to take its toll on her. Her lack of sleep was beginning to affect her performance. And when she did sleep, she would wake already feeling panic clawing at her lungs. She had to be on guard and alert all the time, the way they sought out making her life difficult. Today, she had almost fallen asleep in one of her classes. But still, she had waited until well after cadets were supposed to be back in their rooms to go to bed. 

When she made it to her door, she stood there a few long minutes, steeling herself to go inside. At least the hallway was empty and quiet. 

But she did finally put her palm to the panel. When the door slid open, her heart quickly jumped into her throat as a cacophony of laughter and a number of piercing eyes met her. 

The focus of her vision quickly jumped between the faces. Hilla, Vance, their whole entourage. Then she noticed the bottles and the smell. Alcohol. She fought the animalistic urge to run that came with the level of panic she felt. 

“What are you doing here, blueskin?” Vance slurred out. 

“I… I live here,” Thias said.  

They all laughed. The sound made her gut even more tight. 

“You…” her sleep-deprived, panicked neurons struggled to figure out how to respond. All she could think about coherently was the open door, the loud laughter, and the illegal substance in her room. The last thing she needed was a formal reprimand. “That’s not allowed here.”

The tone in the room shifted as some eyes darted between Vance and each other. But Vance just scoffed and kept laughing. 

“You won’t tell anyone,” he said.

Thias looked at him in confusion. How could he say what she would or wouldn’t do? “Why not?”

Suddenly Vance was at his full height, one of the only humans in her cohort that actually cleared her height and could look down at her slightly. “Because you would severely regret it.”

The urge to run struck Thias again. But she held her ground as she clenched her fists. 

“Now get out,” he said. “We’re not finished in here.”

Thias simply stared at him. She slowly stretched out her Second Sight, attempting to sense whether he was bluffing. She was suddenly struck with the image of herself, bloodied on the ground. 

She took an involuntary step back.

He sneered. “Go on.”

“Yes, please go,” Hilla said, looking at Vance for his approval. 

Thias backpedaled the rest of the way out of the room and let the door slide shut. 

She just stood there, shaking and struggling to control the rate of her breathing for a long time. But eventually the exhaustion took over and she just continued backstepping until she could slide her back down the wall behind her. She sat on the floor of the hallway, wiping away tears and angry at herself for crying. 

What should she do? What would happen if she reported them? It was clear that Vance really did intend to hurt her. Of course, he wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, but how much damage would she incur first? And would her superiors look kindly upon her snitching on her peers? They already seemed unsure about how to feel about dealing with an alien cadet. 

It would be easier to tolerate if only she could sleep, if only she could have peace in her own dorm. Could she make a good enough argument to get transferred to a different room without reporting Hilla? Even if she could, would it only make her look weak for being unable to tolerate their abuse?

She reached into her pocket, feeling her comm. Father could fix it. Quickly she jerked her hand back out. The last thing she wanted was to become like them, toting around the power of the names of their relatives and connections. She didn’t want her Father to intervene. How much would it take for his name to stop following her around? She certainly wasn’t going to contribute to that.

The panic was swallowed up by her rising anger. She was angry at the humans on the other side of the door, angry at her Father for his looming reputation, angry at the Empire for having something against people with Third Sight, and most of all angry at herself for just sitting and taking it all. 

She took a few measured breaths, the need for sleep crowding out most of her other thoughts. She would solve this herself.

—   

You’ll be flying soon. Thias repeated the phrase over and over to herself as she stood at attention, helmet clutched tightly under her arm. Commandant Berandt was going over the guidelines for the simulator today, but Thias had been at the Academy long enough now to know the drill. She let the words flow over her ears without processing. 

The schedule had been posted all week: today was dogfight day. And Thias was itching for a fight, even as her eyes burned from her sleep deprivation. 

At some point after Thias had fallen asleep in the hallway last night, she loosely remembered getting kicked awake by Vance as he left her room. She had been too tired to remember all the words that had been thrown her way and had only dragged herself up from the floor, eventually ending up in her bed.

Before she knew it , the briefing was over and the first pair of cadets headed to the neighboring TIE simulators. The rest of the cadets were permitted to break formation to gather around the view screens that would show what was happening in the sim. 

Thias hung back, as she always did. She was tall enough to see over most of them. Besides, the more she could avoid—

Thias stumbled and caught herself as something pushed her from the side. 

Vance sneered at her and Hilla held back a laugh as he walked to stand next to her. 

Thias was fed up. Second best, she reminded herself as she fumed. The thought made her lip twitch.

In dogfights, students were paired according to pilot rank. Every dogfight she had to not only tolerate Vance’s name glowing above hers on the rankings, but had to tolerate a direct defeat by Vance himself. 

Vance stood with Hilla and a few of the others in their group in front of her. She knew he was standing in front of her just to block her view. 

That was fine. She didn’t need to see how her peers were performing. He wouldn’t get her to move to the side.

She hated how they talked about the pilots low in the rankings, jeering at the ones that lost. She hated how they seemed to gain so much joy from the humiliation of others. She hated the way they stood, the way they held their helmets, the way their behavior changed when the eyes of superiors were watching. She hated them. 

Time was distorted by her emotion and sleep-deprived haze. It was Thias’ turn before she knew it. 

As she stood next to Vance, waiting their turn, he smiled at her. “There’s only one top pilot. It would be embarrassing for the Empire if it was someone like you.”

That snapped something in her. “Why do you say this?” she hissed out. “Are you scared that I’ll take the title from you?”

He laughed, though she could sense he was surprised she had actually talked back. “You’ve never beaten me before. And you never will, blueskin.”

Thias’ was bubbling with rage as she donned her helmet. Putting that helmet on, stepping into the cockpit, it usually brought her so much peace. But now, it only increased the fire in her as the hatch of the simulator was sealed behind her. 

This was the tool she could use to fight back against him. She wasn’t helpless. She was stronger than him. Smarter than him. Better than him. She was the best pilot in this whole program. Maybe the whole Empire.

Second best . Father’s voice. She grit her teeth. 

The dark viewport screen became peppered with stars as the simulation began. The controls of the ship were one with her, an extension of herself. This was her place. This was what she was meant for. 

She saw Vance’s simulated TIE approaching in a wide arc in the distance. 

My flying bird. Her Mother’s warm smile, her embrace after Thias’ first flight with Zicheri. My flying bird. The same words, the ones that had always made Thias roll her eyes, when she had told her Mother about being the top pilot of her class at Taharim. And when she had finally told her how difficult it was to make friends, how cruel her peers could be: My bird, those idiots have no idea what they are dealing with. You’ll fly higher than they ever will.

Second best.

“ Ravri’ihah vah! ” Thias cried. She stretched her senses out, passed the controls of her ship, passed her feelings, and into the moment just approaching seconds ahead in the future. 

Her muscles moved involuntarily, more sure of herself on the controls of this ship than she ever was in her own body. The simulator rotated around in space, mimicking the turning of a real fighter. She relished the sensation of the centrifugal force on her organs, the tug of her seat restraints on her body. She belonged in this seat. 

And Corad Vance did not. 

She dodged every incoming blast, not even taking a graze. Her jaw was clenched and sweat accumulated inside her helmet as she swung the controls to meet his every attack with her own. 

Vance might be a good pilot, but she was a great one. 

She finally moved her fighter through the tightest spin she had tried on the simulator, pulled out of the spin at just the right moment to dodge the burst she could sense coming from behind her. The next split second she was upside down and behind him, and Vance’s fighter evaporated in a shower of sparks.

Thias couldn’t help but laugh out loud. It felt good. Better than anything. She felt truly awake for the first time in weeks. 

She rewarded herself with one whole minute alone in her helmet, hands still on the controls, after the simulator had returned to its resting position and shut off. 

When she did finally exit the simulator, her peers were silent.

“Excellent work, Cadet Thias,” Commandant Berandt said.

Thias could detect the surprise in his voice. But that was fine. She didn’t even look at Vance when he got out of his simulator. She didn’t need the satisfaction of his expression. 

Instead she simply looked up at the updated rankings on the viewscreen. Her name glowed above Vance’s. That was satisfying enough.

Chapter Text

5 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

Thrawn narrowed his eyes as he examined the cylindrical model in front of him. From the old jedi temple records, it was a model of a lightsaber, the weapon of the jedi. From Thrawn’s reading about the religion, he understood that the creation of the lightsaber was an intensely personal process. Thus, the design of this weapon ought to have much to tell him about its wielder, making it worth having a model of the hilt cast for study. 

This particular lightsaber had been designed by Kanan Jarrus. 

Jarrus and his band of Lothal rebels had become a frustrating thorn in the Empire’s side. There were few of them, but their boldness was beginning to encourage unrest among the Lothal civilians. That unrest was beginning to take a toll on manufacturing. Sabotage was running rampant, despite the Empire’s attempts to rout out and replace saboteurs. 

Jarrus needed to be dealt with. Swiftly. Thrawn had collected all manner of art and information associated with the Rebels, tangible and hologram, which now surrounded all the walls of his office.

From the physical similarities between this lightsaber and the one in the jedi records, as well as those between adult Jarrus and the padawan who was listed as the creator of the saber, Thrawn had determined that Jarrus’ true name was Caleb Dume. It was disquieting to Thrawn, knowing that Jarrus and his apprentice could cause so much trouble given that Jarrus had never completed his jedi training himself.

He wondered again how similar the abilities of the jedi were to those of the sky-walkers, a question he had been pondering since his encounter with Anakin Skywalker so many years ago. He knew they were connected of course, but always questioned to what extent.  Could the sky-walkers of the Chiss do much more than navigate? 

And what about Thias?

Thawn felt that heaviness in his chest that he couldn’t seem to convince to go away. The feeling was a frustrating distraction that hadn’t disappeared since Thias had reappeared in his life. Even now, as he stared at the lightsaber image before him, it was difficult to consider its contours and edges. 

Thell was always telling him to worry less, feel less guilt about the situation he had put her in. But Thell didn’t understand the extent of it. How could she? The fact she had brought Thias out of the Ascendency showed she would never see things the way he did. 

The guilt Thrawn felt about the fate of his daughter extended far beyond his absence in her life and her current position, an outsider among humans and unable to pursue her true potential. The true depth of it was in the fact that Thrawn had never intended for her to exist at all. He had never been prepared to be a father. 

When he had taken risks in the Ascendency before she existed, he had taken those risks upon only his own shoulders. Thell had made the conscious decision to be with him despite those risks. Of course he would think of her in the decisions he made, but ultimately he could be comfortable with the fact she had chosen her fate. 

Thias had no choice at all. She couldn’t choose to be born to a father that wouldn’t be there at her birth. She couldn’t consent to the risks he would take that would lose her status within her family and remove her father from her life entirely. She certainly couldn’t choose to be born with abilities that set her apart from her peers. 

After the initial guilt of leaving Thias and Thell, as Thrawn had waited to be discovered by the Empire on lonely planets, Thrawn had been overcome by a new feeling which had itself brought new waves of guilt: relief. 

When Thrawn had left the Ascendency, there had been relief. He was again only responsible for taking whatever risks were necessary for the sake of his family and his people. The risk would only be to him. He could make whatever decisions were necessary without the attached risk to his daughter. This relief had disappeared the moment he had heard Thell’s voice on the Chimaera . That was ultimately where the heavy feeling in his chest came from. And that was something he could never tell Thell. 

The more Thrawn was around his daughter, the more the feeling grew. She should never have been in this position, with so little choice over her own destiny. He could see how she was withering in his shadow. 

He couldn’t help but wonder what success she could have found without the association to him. He also couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if he had never told Thell about the sky-walker program. It would have devastated Thell, even more than she already had been, to lose Thias. Thrawn wondered whether she could have withstood it, remembering the depth of pain he had seen in her when he had left her. Of course, knowing the fate of his sister, he too had always questioned whether it was right to pull sky-walkers from their families. But he also knew how central the sky-walkers were to the Fleet, and he could see how Thias fantasized about being on her own.

He also wondered whether Thell’s dependence on Thias was good for his daughter. He could see how much Thias decided how to act based on her mother’s feelings. What would Thias choose for her own life if she was free from the influence of her parents? 

Ultimately, Thrawn had decided to allow her to attend the Imperial Academy despite the risk for exactly this reason. Yes, it was dangerous for someone of her abilities, but what kind of life would she be living without any opportunity to develop herself? He didn’t know her at all. How could he truly decide what was best for her? But now it seemed that even that path was beginning to become tortuous for her. 

As if in response to that very thought, the comm on his desk began to chime, indicating an incoming call, with origin at the Academy. 

Thrawn took in and released a long, slow breath. All he could do for Thias now, was attempt to help her has much as he could moving forward. He accepted the call. 

A holo of Thias appeared before him. He was instantly struck by how tired she looked. She usually had such a neatly maintained appearance but her uniform was wrinkled and some wavy strands of hair hung around her face rather than being tied back. She didn’t meet his eyes. 

He struggled to find the words to start the conversation, now even more concerned than he had been. 

“You’ve been watching my rank,” she said first. 

It hadn’t occurred to him that that fact might frustrate her. “I… yes, I have.”

“So you’re disappointed that I got in trouble.”

Thrawn tried his best to display the confusion he felt. “No, of course not. I read the report. I sent you that message asking you to call me so that you could tell me what actually happened.” 

Of course he had been keeping an eye on her from a distance. She had been doing exactly as he had instructed, to do her best while avoiding suspicion by allowing some humans to generally outperform her. Then this week, she had taken the top place in the rankings. He hadn’t truly seen this as a problem, trusting that it would be a temporary fluctuation unworthy of much note to the humans. But only a day later she had plummeted all the way to the bottom, something that could only happen with a formal reprimand. Sure enough, he had found the report.

Thias continued to avoid his eyes. “Those ebeucot planted shit in my stuff. And reported me. Navuct'acan't bircisb .”

He was a bit taken aback by her Cheunh cursing, having never heard her curse before in any language, though he supposed he should have known she would be capable of it with Thell as her mother. But the explanation was exactly what he had suspected. He remembered the vitriol he had faced from his human peers at the Academy. He had hoped that Thias would find a friend, as he had found Eli, but it seemed as though she was facing it alone. “Because you are Chiss?”

Thias crossed her arms. “Because I’m better than them.”

So the humans had lashed out at her for taking the first rank. Thrawn nodded. “Are you in danger?”

Thias shook her head. “They got what they wanted.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this? There are things I can do to help. Starting with getting your record cleared of this.”

“No. I don’t want your help.”

Thrawn couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows. “Thias—”

“Did you have someone to swoop in and fix everything for you?”

Thrawn tilted his head. “I was allowed to… express my full potential without risk. And that doesn’t matter. You didn’t do anything wrong, so your record should be cleared.”

Thias’ lip twitched, finally looking up at him. “My record should be cleared if I can demonstrate what kind of pilot I am and earn their respect whether they like it or not. Having you just step in and wipe it away would be almost like admitting fault. And it would make me like them.”

He attempted to search her eyes for what was happening behind them. Even in the hologram, it was painful. She had his eyes, but the depth of hurt expressed in them made him see Thell all over her face. 

Thias’ gaze shifted away again, but seemed to catch on the model on his desk. “What’s that?”

Thias had never expressed an interest in art before. Was she just trying to change the subject? Regardless, it was clear that she was done talking about her situation at the Academy. 

“It is the model of a weapon. I’m studying it to learn about an enemy of the Empire.”

“Is it…” she seemed to be choosing her words carefully, then spoke very quietly, “a Jedi weapon?”

It wasn’t often that Thrawn found himself surprised. He was certain he had never told Thias of the jedi. The less she knew about force-users, the less danger she would be in with her abilities. He spoke slowly. “Yes… did you learn about the jedi at the Academy?”
She was quiet, looking between the lightsaber model and his face. “Yes.”

He nodded, unable to shake the feeling she was keeping something from him. Or perhaps she was just hesitant to speak on the subject at the Academy. But that could be tested. Would she entertain continued discussion of the subject? “This lightsaber is a model of the one that belongs to a jedi named Kanan Jarrus.”

Thias’ face was still as stone. “He is an enemy of the Empire?”

Thrawn nodded. “He helps to lead some rebels on Lothal.”

Thias stared at the saber for a long time before she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “I did not know there were still Jedi.” She had taken on an almost glazed-over look.

What was she hiding? He suspected she had at least made the connection between the jedi abilities and her own. And given her propensity to seek comprehensive knowledge on any new subject of interest, she had probably already thoroughly searched any accessible Imperial databases on it. She knew much more than she was saying. But why conceal it from him?

“Only a few,” he said. “It’s possible Jarrus is the last one.”

“So, in the near future there will be none, as the records say,” she said. Her tone was uncharacteristically dark. “Since you are involved.”

Did Thias identify with the jedi? Because of her abilities? Did she see her own father as part of the reason the Empire was dangerous for her? That possibility was disturbing. But he supposed, from that perspective, it was partially true. That dark guilt in his gut intensified in strength. It would be better if she had never come here. It would be better if his actions could have no direct effect on her. “I would rather not kill anyone, Thias.”

“Of course. Forgive me.”

Her formal language only added to the feeling of unease. He could feel the distance between them. He was unsure of what to say. 

Eventually, Thias spoke again. “I should go to bed. Tell Mother I love her.”

Thrawn nodded. “I will, but Thias…”

She looked at him expectantly, the exhaustion showing on her face. It made his heart feel so heavy.

“I want to help you.”

“I know.”

He sighed. “There could be other things I could do. Just to make things easier for you.”

She shook her head. 

“At least tell me if it gets worse?”

She was still a few seconds before she nodded. “Don’t make Mother worry about me.”

That heavy feeling. She worried so much about Thell. Thrawn nodded. “I… I’m proud of you, Thias.”

She gave him a nod, then disconnected the holo. 

Thrawn leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. He wondered what his experiences as a cadet would have been like if he had never met Ar’alani or Eli. He would have likely been kicked out of Taharim without Ar’alani. And even if he hadn’t, there were countless social and political situations after that which she had helped him through. And without Eli, he would have struggled to communicate, as he was still learning Basic, and would have lagged much further behind on human social customs. 

Thias was alone. She had always been alone. And he had been the first person to leave her.

Chapter Text

6 | Mitth’ell’unaris

Thell smiled at Bryndhi as she walked into the conference room. Bryndhi smiled back only briefly and she pulled at the collar of her uniform tunic. 

“You are not nervous, are you, Dr. Janil?” Thell asked as she sat next to the human engineer. The humans in the engineer corp weren’t ever outright unkind to Thell, at least wearing a mask of cordiality out of respect for her connection to a Grand Admiral. But Bryndhi was genuinely kind. Though they weren’t very close, Thell felt she was the closest thing she had to a friend here. 

Bryndhi laughed a little. “I don’t know how you can always tell exactly how people are feeling.”

Thell grinned. “The Chiss are less expression than humans, though most of our expressions have the same meaning. And Thrawn is even less expression than most. I have been trying to read him since I was a young girl.”

Bryndhi’s brown skin took on a slightly reddish hue over her cheekbones. “Um… ‘expressive.’ That’s the way to say ‘expression’ as an adjective.”

Thell sighed. What a frustrating language with such inconsistent rules. “Expressive,” she said. “Thrawn is less expressive than most.”

Bryndhi nodded, looking down at her hands folded on the table. 

Thell had previously encouraged Bryndhi to correct her grammar to help her better learn the language, so she knew the human’s sudden bashfulness was coming from the casual discussion of Thrawn. “There is no need to be nervous. It is like I say: he is not very expressive. He is much less intimidating than he appears. He does not think about his…” she couldn’t find the word for ‘subordinates’ in Basic. “...those below him the way many people do.”

Bryndhi nodded to her appreciatively, but didn’t seem to lose any of the tension surrounding her. In fact, she stiffened even more as Dr. Daglinov and Director Polc walked in the room and took their seats. 

Both nodded at Thell and Bryndhi. Thell was comfortable with the silence that settled over the room. Daglinov was the opposite of Bryndhi. Even a slight slip up of her Basic vocabulary or grammar and he would be rolling his eyes. It had been worse before she had proven her skill by dramatically advancing the TIE Defender project over her short time working with the humans. But that still wasn’t enough to earn real respect from the man. 

The door opened again and Governor Pryce walked in, followed by Thrawn. Thell smiled at him, trying to hold herself with an air of pride. If they were going to hate her for being in her position by virtue of her connection to Thrawn, she might as well lean into it. She smiled warmly at Thrawn as he entered but his eyes lingered on her no longer than the rest of them as he quickly glanced over everyone in the room. 

As the others began to stand, Thrawn held up a hand. “At ease. I would like to keep this brief.” Everyone settled into their seats as he continued. “I understand the TIE Defender is ready for a test of its hyperdrive capability?”

“Yes,” Thell said. 

“With all due respect,” Daglinov began. 

Thell had come to realize that that particular Basic phrase almost always preceded a disrespectful statement. She resisted rolling her eyes.  

“The only available prototype that is theoretically capable of a hyperspace jump is Engineer Thell’s personal design. And it was only completed yesterday.”

Thrawn raised an eyebrow. Good, Thell smiled to herself. Make him say it out loud.

“I only mean that perhaps we ought to have more input from the Corp and close supervision of assembly before we potentially waste one of our best pilots.”

Thell sat forward, “You are still doubting the quality of my work?” 

Thrawn held up a hand and she sat back. She narrowed her eyes at Thrawn. It had been a long time since she had been a subordinate on his ship and she didn’t like being dismissed that way. 

Daglinov crossed his arms. “I don’t mean to offend. Perhaps I’m just paranoid given the recent string of sabotages in the factory. We should be as sure as possible that no such thing can occur here.”

“Are you suggesting I would sabotage this project?” 

Thrawn again held up his hand, this time coupled with a pointed glance in her direction. 

Thell seethed over the bored and annoyed look Daglinov gave Thrawn. Patronizing ass.

“Obviously not, Engineer. If you would let me finish, you could see that. The funding for this project is already limited and we can’t afford a failed test and a lost pilot. In addition, it would be harder to prove that sabotage occurred, as it is always possible for an untested prototype to fail and only a single individual knows the design well enough to look for evidence. These facts make this particular prototype a prime target for saboteurs. ”

“And how would a prototype you design make that any less likely?” Thell spat.

Pryce spoke up. “I agree with Dr. Daglinov’s concern, mostly around the funding of the project. Forgive me for bringing it up but it’s important here that Engineer Thell is not an Imperial officer. She is still an outsider. A consultant.”

Thell narrowed her eyes at Pryce now. Splenetic bitch. 

“Of course, I know the value that Engineer Thell provides for us,” Pryce continued looking between Thell and Thrawn. “But it wouldn’t be good for our project to spread around the idea that it is being solely designed by an outsider. Losing an elite TIE pilot in a test failure would certainly draw attention to the subject.”

“However,” Thrawn said, “this project also has pressure to produce real evidence of progress within the month. And Engineer Thell’s prototype is the only design completed.”

Thell tilted up her chin and stared at Daglinov. Exactly. Where was his hyperspace-capable TIE? “My prototype will work.”

Daglinov tilted his head. “We simply have yet to see your work fly before. That is a lot to ask of a pilot.”

The room was silent as they glared at each other. 

Thrawn sighed, stroking his chin. “There is a potential pilot that has flown in her work before.”

Everyone looked at him.

“Cadet Mitth’ia’safis.”

“A cadet?” Pryce scoffed.

“Her capability is not in question.” There was just enough sharpness in his tone that it was clear there would be no further argument of the point. Thell smiled with pride. “She has experience with Thell’s work and is not yet considered one of our elite TIE pilots.”

“Still,” Pryce sighed. “Another outsider.”

“No,” Thrawn corrected. “Thias is a cadet at the Imperial Academy. Assuming the prototype is a success, no one would look twice.”

“And if it wasn’t,” Director Polc cut in, “there is less risk to the funding of the project since it was simply a cadet and the prototype of a… consultant.” He nodded a few times as he mulled it over then looked to Thell. “Does this solution satisfy you, Engineer Thell?”

Thell glared at him. “If you could please refrain from referring to my daughter as if she is a catrt'apant csah k'un'ci, I would appreciate that.”

Polc looked at Thrawn in confusion. 

Thrawn sighed. “Expendable resource.”

Thell felt herself blush, embarrassed by her slip into Cheunh. But she continued. “That aside, yes, I would prefer my prototype to be tested by a pilot I know to be excellent.”

“Forgive me,” Polc stuttered out softly, looking between Thell and Thrawn. 

Yes, you had better grovel, she thought to herself. Don’t forget that’s your Grand Admiral’s daughter too.

Thrawn waved his hand. “It’s settled then. Cadet Mitth’ia’safis will fly the test. How will it be carried out?”

Thell looked at Bryndhi. 

Bryndhi blinked a few times then cleared her throat. “We think the prototype will launch from the Chimaera, or… or any other of the ships in your fleet above the planet. Whatever is convenient…”

“The Chimaera will do,” Thrawn said. “I would like to oversee the test personally.”

Bryndhi nodded. Thell tried to send her reassurance with her expression. Bryndhi cleared her throat again then started again. “The prototype will launch from the Chimaera, then perform a few test maneuvers in the system. After that, it would make a short hyperspace jump to the Garel system and dock with the orbiting station there, where we would collect detailed system diagnostics before it made the jump back to the Lothal system.” 

“Any objections to this plan?” Thrawn asked, looking around the table. When no one spoke, he leaned back and said, “Excellent. We’ll hold the test in two weeks. I’ll request Cadet Mitth’ia’safis from the Academy immediately so she can have time to prepare.”

—

Thell let out a long sigh as Thrawn slid his arm under her neck in bed in his quarters on the Chimaera and pulled her close to him. 

“What are you doing still awake?” he whispered in Cheunh.

“How did you know I was awake?” 

“You sleep with your mouth open.” He kissed her shoulder softly. “And I can hear it.”

She laughed, snuggling back into him. “What do you mean you can hear it?”

“Don’t make me say it,” he said, his tone light. “I don’t want to have that fight again.

“I do not snore!” Thell shoved her hips back into him for emphasis. 

He held her more tightly and whispered. “Only slightly. Just through your nose.”

“Oh, you prick.”

He kissed her shoulder again. “I don’t mind it. I missed it, sleeping without you for so long.”

Thell sighed deeply, savoring the sensation of his lips on her shoulder and then the back of her neck. His hand moved down her and settled on her hip, pulling her into him. But the conversation in the conference room earlier in the day still weighed on her mind, and she found herself leaning against his pull. 

“Love?”

“What?”

He leaned back from her. “What’s wrong?”

“What makes you say that? Why does something have to be wrong?”

“Thell…”

She huffed. “Why don’t you defend me? When they questioned Thias’ competence, you just told them not to. Can’t you do that for me?”

“Love—”

“And not only that, but you just hush me up from defending myself. It’s embarrassing.”

“Thell, the outbursts simply weren’t helping your position.”

“Outbursts?”

Thrawn sighed. His tired exasperation and subsequent silence persuaded her to take a deep breath. 

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. 

He continued, his voice steady and soft. “I just mean that if you want me to defend you, you need to give me the opportunity to. If you just jump on everything that is said, especially before the humans have even finished speaking, I can’t say anything. You need to trust me to handle things. I have been living among these people for years now.”

“But—”

“Thell,” he said, pulling her close again. “Trust me to take care of you. I know that I haven’t always made that easy on you, but you must.”

She huffed again, but this time allowed him to pull her in. “You certainly haven’t. And since when are you suddenly good at playing politics?”

“Politics?”

“Yes, all that keeping everyone happy and where you want them. Not causing a stir.”

“It is necessary for this project.”

“So it is a new skill? Or was it simply ‘not necessary’ back home?” When the words were out, she felt a tinge of regret, but didn’t back down. 

Thrawn was silent. Thell always hated that long pause, the sign of him carefully choosing his words. What would come after always had a nasty tendency to make her feel immature and reckless in comparison. He always took everything so seriously. Sometimes she wished he would just yell. Put out raw feelings. Get angry. She wasn’t sure if she wanted that because it would make it easier to figure out what he was feeling or because it would make her feel better about her own position at the end of arguments. 

“It is… a skill that I developed over time. Depending on the goal, keeping everyone happy can get in the way of what must be done. Sometimes one must do what is necessary, and then play the game to the best of one’s ability to mitigate the consequences.”

“So, you are saying that back then, you disregarded politics intentionally to do what was ‘necessary,’ but didn’t yet have the political skill to make everyone happy with the results?”

“No. I disregarded politics to do what was necessary and then negotiated the best results possible to avoid punishment for those who were also just doing what was necessary while satisfying the other parties involved.”

“Negotiated?” Thell felt suddenly out of breath, as if Thrawn had plunged a knife into her back as he lay against her. 

“Thell…” Thrawn sighed heavily.

Her mind was suddenly filled with the vivid, terrible scenes leading up to Thrawn’s exile. How many times she had begged him to do something, anything to change what was happening. In all the years since, even in her darkest moments when she had felt the most alone, she had never considered that Thrawn could have possibly had any choice in the matter. 

“Thell, you already know I negotiated with them. Like how you and Thias were able to stay in the Family.”

The racing slowed. Right. She did know that. Of course he would have negotiated. He would have gotten the best situation for everyone involved, though it was already decided he would be exiled. But somehow that thought couldn't stick the same way now. 

Wasn’t it strange, how Ar’alani and Thalias and all the others just… went about their normal lives? They had always been so kind to Thell and Thias. But what if what Thell had labeled as pity all these years also masked guilt? Had they all let this happen?

All these years, she had looked back on that moment as the day he was taken from her. But what if instead it was the moment he had left her. 

She remembered the first words he had said to her when they had been reunited in a new light. What are you doing here?

Thrawn kissed her shoulder tenderly again. “My love, let’s not dwell on that time. We are together now. And our family will all be together soon. I just arranged for Thias to come test your prototype.”

Thell tried to push the thoughts away. It was just all the heartache of that time coming back again, putting thoughts in her head. Of course Thrawn wanted her. How many intimate, joyful moments had they shared since their reunion? And besides that, she was actually accomplishing things here for his cause. He was right. Dwelling on the past wouldn’t help her at all when the future was bright.

Thell released some of the tension in her body. “I’m so excited to see her.” She sighed. “I just hope she’s excited to see me.”

“What do you mean? Of course she is.”

“Thrawn, she hasn’t answered any of my calls this whole time. And I only sometimes get one word answers to my messages.”

“My love, that has nothing to do with you.” He squeezed her a little more tightly in his arms. 

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Thias has a lot going on at the Academy. It’s… stressful.”

“You know because it was stressful for you? Thias isn’t you, Thrawn. Even when she was at Taharim, she still found time to talk to me. I’m just trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong…”

“You’re not doing anything wrong. I know she isn’t me. I just… I know what she’s going through.”

Thell narrowed her eyes, though she was facing away from him in the dark. “Thrawn if you lie to me right now, I’m going to be furious with you. Has she been talking to you?”

That damned long pause. “Only once.”

Immediately Thell wormed out of his arms and sat up in the bed, facing him. “You didn’t tell me.”

“She asked me not to.”

Thell turned on the lamp next to the bed and stared daggers at him as he blinked back at her.

“I am being honest like you asked, but you are furious anyway.”

“Of course I am! You’re keeping secrets from me about my daughter!”

“Our daughter.”

“What happened to her, Thrawn? What would she tell you but not tell me?”

“Thell, calm down—”

“Oh, you know better than to say those words to me.”

“Thell, please. She didn’t tell me either. I just found out because I’ve been watching the data about her class to keep an eye on her.”

“I asked you to do that. But you’ve been telling me she was fine.”

“And she was. Always in the top few pilots. Until recently. But she’s fine. Just some difficulties with her human classmates. I’m still monitoring the situation. And she directly asked me not to interfere. Or tell you about it.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to tell me?”

“Probably because she doesn’t want to worry you. I didn’t ask. I just respected what she asked of me.”

“Thrawn, I’m her mother. It’s my job to worry about her. Neither you nor her get to try to protect me from that whether you like it or not.”

“And I’m her father. I can worry for her too. We can share that.”

Thell scoffed. “You don’t get to only share that when it’s convenient for you.”

Thrawn’s eyebrows raised slightly, the frustration in his expression replaced with hurt. He blinked at her quickly. 

“Tell me what happened to my daughter.”

When he finally spoke his tone was quiet and resigned. “She’s struggling with her classmates, just as we all expected. I had hoped it would be easier than it was for me, since she has her connection to me, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I don’t know all that happened before this, but I do know that after she briefly took the top place in the rankings, her classmates hid illegal drinks in her things and reported her.”

Thell nearly gasped. She had never thought things could go that far. 

“Thias has been climbing up slowly from the bottom of the rankings since. With a formal reprimand on her record.”

“You have to fix this.” Thell remembered years ago when she had looked away for only a second and her little girl was pushed over by other children at a park. She remembered how Thias had resisted telling her which children had done it. But she also remembered how tightly her daughter had wrapped her chubby little arms around her neck after Thell had spoken to the other parents. Hugs were so rare from that little girl. 

“I told her I would. But she specifically asked me not to.”

“We’re her parents. We know what’s best for her.”

“She’s eighteen. Shouldn’t we take what she wants into account?”

“She has always been this way. She doesn’t like accepting help. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need it. Like you said, we were expecting that being related to a Grand Admiral might at least earn her some level of respect. If her peers are acting this way, they must believe you won’t do anything. So do something. Thias might not like that idea, but if it makes those idiots leave her alone then that’s what she needs.” 

“Thell, we might not understand the full situation.”

“If there was anything I could do to help her, I would in a heartbeat.”

“I’m not sure if that is always the right decision.”

Thell scoffed and swung her legs over the side of the bed, standing. 

“Thell…”

She picked up her tunic from the floor and put an arm through one sleeve. 

“What are you doing?” The exasperation in his voice was almost enough to make her stop. But her feeling of helplessness drove her to continue getting dressed. Thias wouldn’t speak to her, wouldn’t even tell her what was going on. And she had no power, nothing she could do to help her. This was all the agency she had. 

“If you’re not going to work with me to help our daughter, then I’m certainly not interested in sex. I have a bed to sleep in on Lothal.”

Thrawn sat up in the bed. “Of course I want to help her. I’m just not certain that is the best way to help her. And do you really only stay with me on the Chimaera for sex?”

“I—”

“Thell, we are nearly sixty years old. We’ve been together for half of that—”

“Married. But not together.”

Thrawn closed his eyes, clenching his jaw and tilting his head as if she had struck him. 

She stopped gathering her things, suddenly wondering if she had finally pushed him too far. 

But the silence was long. 

“Fine, Thell. I will fix Thias’ records. But on one condition.”

Thell stared. 

“You have to stop doing this. I…” he sighed, the anger and hurt in his face melting into exhaustion. “I want to help you process through all that happened. I want to understand what you and Thias went through without me. But you have to stop throwing it at me out of nowhere. Especially when you are trying to get something from me.”

Thell felt her anger shrink, replaced by uncomfortable guilt.

“It… it hurts, Thell. I was alone for two years before the Empire found me. I was able to make a friend in Eli, but I missed you every day. I was never without guilt, knowing you were alone all that time. I am trying my best to do right by you and Thias now that you are here, but… I…” The words seemed to be sticking in his throat and he closed his eyes. 

Thell’s eyes filled with tears. 

Thrawn took a deep breath and forced out the words. “I understand it can be hard for you to… hold things in. But we need to be able to discuss things like adults. Like I was saying: we are nearly sixty. We have been married for nearly half of that. And you have been part of my life much longer. We are parents, working together to decide what is best for our daughter. For you to reduce our relationship to sex is…” He shook his head. “I don’t have the words.”

“I—”

He held up a hand. “In addition, I am one of the most powerful individuals in the military that rules most of the galaxy. And that is not the military of our people. You have to understand this is a precarious role. I am always going to do what I think is best for our family on that scale. I want to be there for our family on the scale of day-to-day interactions as well, of course I do. But truthfully, I do not have time to be mediating conflict there as well. I want to decide what is best for our daughter together, but those must be productive conversations. Not debates. And certainly not throwing insults and threatening to leave.” When he was finished, he just stared at her. His gaze was tired and his typically rigid posture showed his exhaustion as well. 

Thell bit the inside of her lip. She studied his expression, the lines in his face, the gray in his hair. 

“I am sorry, Thell,” he said. “For everything. Deeply sorry. More than I could ever say. So this is the last time I will say it. And we can move forward.”

Thell nodded and looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry too. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.”

“We have both been through things we did not deserve. It is not productive to dwell on.” Thrawn turned back the covers, inviting her back to bed.

She set down her things and took off the things she had put on. “You’re right,” she said as she got into the bed and turned out the light. She felt as though she didn’t deserve to be close to him as he pulled her into his arms again, but that was what he wanted. And as he said, it wasn’t productive to dwell on. “Let’s focus on giving our daughter the life she deserves instead.” 

Thrawn nodded against her.

“I love you, Thrawn. I’m sorry.”

“I love you too, Thell. And it’s alright. Just say it once.”

Chapter Text

7 | Mitth’ia’safis

Thias could remember a time when she had felt fear, anxiety, or a drive to succeed out of spite if nothing else. Now all that was left was exhaustion . A kind of exhaustion that was heavy in her very bones. She felt detached from her body, as if she was piloting it from a distance. But it didn’t respond to her like when she was piloting a fighter; it was more like she was piloting a massive, lumbering freighter that was constantly resisting her guidance. 

Drag herself out of her bunk. Eat. Train. Shower. Eat. Attempt to sleep. Fail. Do it again. 

Time blurred together. Thias couldn’t be sure how long it had been since Father had done exactly what she had asked him not to do by fixing her record and rank. At first she had been so angry she had considered refusing his request for her to test Mother’s TIE. But her desperation outweighed her anger. The opportunity to leave this place was something she couldn’t let slip away. The rage had fallen into her exhaustion along with everything else in the time since. 

Father’s intervention had caused a shift in the ways her peers attacked her. They were certainly intimidated by the likely involvement of a Grand Admiral. But it also seemed to renew their hatred for her and the fact that an alien was a Grand Admiral at all. Their direct actions against her had shifted into more subtle disturbances of her routine and sleep. It was never something she could pin on a specific person. Just a million little things that wore her down bit by bit until she had reached the barely-functioning state she was in now. 

But tomorrow she would get a break from it. She would get to see Mother and be back among the diverse population of the Lothal city near the factories. 

That comforting thought allowed Thias to settle into her body just enough to derive some pleasure from the hot water of the shower running over her shoulders. She just needed to make it through one more night. She even fantasized about performing so well on the test flight that she was pulled out of school to keep flying in the Seventh Fleet. The idea of returning here was already painful and she hadn’t even left yet. She would talk with Father, as much as she didn’t want to, but she could worry about the return to the Academy once she had had a full night to rest away from here.

Eventually the water shut off, signaling the end of her allotted shower time. Thias retreated back into herself as she dried herself off in her corner of the shower room. 

She wondered whether there would ever be a time when the humans would get bored of gawking at her in the showers. She had long since decided against looking up at them to see if they had yet. She would dry and dress herself with her eyes glued to the floor. She always did so slowly, waiting for nearly everyone else to leave before she attempted to cross the room to the door.

Thias thought about Noa, her young friend at the Lothal street market. She would have to be sure to find a really fantastic stone for her to make up for how long it had been since she had seen the girl. Thias hoped she would remember her and forgive her for the time missed. 

She considered whether she would journey out towards the old jedi temple again to find a stone. She craved the feeling of stability and connection that the place gave her, but that was swallowed by the sinking sensation in her gut when she remembered the small communication device the jedi had buried among the rocks. 

The jedi that carried the same lightsaber she had seen her father studying.

How could her own Father help to hunt down the jedi? He was helping to create the very danger that forced Thias to hide her own connection to the Force. He had claimed that Kanan Jarrus was involved with a group of rebels on Lothal and with the way people here discussed them, they sounded like violent terrorists.

But if that was the case, why had Kanan been so kind and understanding of her? He had been so unlike most of the humans she had encountered on this planet so far. He had seemed more like Eli: the good kind. If Kanan was a terrorist, she hadn't heard of anything happening on Lothal that could be described as terrorism. At most, the rebels here solely targeted the Empire with most of their attacks being more of a minor inconvenience to the general public. 

And if the Empire had really killed all of the other jedi, didn’t Kanan have some right to be angry with them? If she was like him, did she have the same right?

She reminded herself that she had only spoken with the man once, but the thought only made her mind dwell longer on the image of the communication device waiting at the temple. He had said only to use it in an emergency. And the last thing Thias wanted was for her Father to find him because of her.  

Warning bells suddenly flashed in her mind just before a pair of boots appeared in the corner of her vision on the wet tile, startling her back into her body. Thias looked up and pulled her towel around herself tighter at the sight of Vance. 

“You are not supposed to be in here,” she stuttered out. Though Taharim Academy had showers shared between everyone, the Empire had their showers separated by sex. She had been around humans, and Vance in particular, long enough to know this wasn’t right. “What do you want?” Thias looked behind him and her panic peaked, realizing that she was the last person left in the showers. 

Vance crossed his arms. “I want to apologize.”

Thias blinked in her sleep-deprived haze. Apologize ? She studied his face, completely unsure of what was going on in his head. But her Second Sight gave her a flash of a boiling heat that was difficult to separate into component parts. Anger was there, but it wasn’t alone.

He took a step closer to her and she stepped back, heart racing, stomach dropping. They might have been similar in height, but now, in such close quarters, she was struck by how much larger he was compared to her. She did her best to keep a cool expression even as panic sunk its claws into her chest. 

“Look,” he said, taking another step towards her as Thias took another panicked step back. “I’m sorry you got the impression I’ve got something against you.”

Thias couldn’t help express her disgust on her face. What did he mean, ‘impression’? Vance and the others hated her. No question. And she was tired of their games. “That is not an apology. You are all xenophobic assholes.”

He sneered. “Aw, come on. That’s all jokes. You know that.” He took another step towards her. 

Thias stepped back, almost against the shower wall now. “Do not come any closer to me.” She kept her voice steady and firm, attempting to put her Father’s cold intensity into her tone.

“Hey, I’m just trying to talk. Make things right.” 

“I said do not come any closer to me.” She looked past him, eyes darting between the door and her uniform on the bench nearby. 

“I’m sorry , okay?”

“Fine, just leave me alone.” Her voice trembled ever-so-slightly at the end of the sentence, betraying her fear.

He took another step closer and extended a hand, as if to shake hers. “There, now we can be friends.”

Forcing an unimpressed look upon her face and glancing between his hand and the smug expression on Vance's face, she tried to make it clear that the last thing she wanted to do was shake his hand. 

He didn't move. 

“My hands are full,” she said. It was true, she was still holding up her towel. Didn’t he realize that? With horror, she realized he most certainly did realize that. Perhaps that was the whole point of cornering her in the shower. She felt her ears grow hot with rage, just as fear tightened her throat.

He smirked at her. “Aw, don’t be embarrassed. I’m sure you look perfectly normal.” He raised a brow. “Though I suppose I could be wrong. You are blue.”

Thias narrowly avoided his reaching hand, as he reached forward again. The moment she felt the cold metal of the shower wall behind her, her fear pushed her to action. She took hold of her towel with one hand, holding it shut as tightly as she could and shoved Vance hard with the other.

She was shocked to see him fly away from her as if he had been struck with something much stronger than her hand. She couldn’t take time to think about it. With him sprawled upon the tile, she snatched her folded uniform and ran from the showers as quickly as she could. She ignored the other students that she raced past in the hall and didn't stop running until she was safely inside her room with the door shut.

Hilla and Leesee stared at her as she stood breathing quickly, hair still dripping wet, against the door closed behind her. 

“Are you okay?” Leesee asked.

Before Thias could say anything Hilla scoffed, “You know you’re supposed to get dressed before you leave the showers, right?”

The vitriol in her tone was the reminder that even in her own quarters, Thias wasn’t safe. It felt like something in her cracked. Thias felt tears welling in her eyes and she felt her whole body trembling. She strained to hold the escaping emotion and tears as her stoic mask began crumbling. “Vance… he tried to…” Her burning neurons struggled to form words. 

Hilla’s face contorted with contempt. “Be careful what kind of accusations you throw around, blueskin. Who would believe you ?”

Thias faced her bunk and struggled against her shaking hands as she finished drying off and dressing herself, facing her bunk. She felt like screaming or disappearing entirely.

“Thias,” Leesee said softly. “Are you saying he—”

“She’s not saying anything,” Hilla barked. “Whatever happened, she’s confused.”

“Hilla—”

“No, I know him! He wouldn’t! And certainly not with someone like her !”

Some fire came into Leesee’s voice. “You’re just saying that because you’re obsessed with him! And he’s not interested in you !”

“Shut up!” Hilla yelled.

Thias covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut against the grating sound of their argument rattling her skull. Eventually she heard the door hiss open and shut as someone stormed out. In the sudden silence, Thias tentatively lowered her shaking hands to her bed and pulled the covers back. Carefully, she slid beneath them and pulled them back up over herself. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't hide beneath them to make blocking everything out easier. It would make her look weaker than she already did. She made peace with facing the wall and squeezing her eyes shut, tears slipping out from beneath her lashes.

“Thias?” Leesee said softly. 

Thias didn’t answer. Laying in her bunk and facing the wall with eyes shut, trying to block out everything. 

“Thias, are you okay? I mean… of course not. I just… I’m sorry.”

Thias clenched her jaw. 

“I’ll go with you. If you want to report him. I… I’m sorry I’ve never said anything before.”

Her neurons felt as though they were screaming in her skull. She didn’t want to think about him. She wanted him to just stop existing. She wanted to just stop existing.

As she lay in her bunk, barely able to string coherent thoughts together through the exhaustion that had slammed into her once again, she knew with absolute certainty that when she left the academy tomorrow, she would not be coming back.

Chapter Text

8 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

Thell held Thrawn’s arm and practically bounced with excitement as the shuttle landed. She stood on her toes in an attempt to see over the crowd as the humans filed out. 

“Do you see her?” she asked. He would never patronize her by saying it, but Thrawn found her thick accent lovely. 

Just as she had spoken, Thrawn could see her. “Yes, ch'eo ch'acah , she’s there.” But he knit his brow as he watched her shuffling slowly off the shuttle with her gaze trained on the ground. 

She was so hunched over, her duffle bag seeming to weigh down her shoulders, that she was barely taller than many of the humans around her. The moment Thell laid eyes on her, she started waving wildly. Thias spotted them, but her demeanor didn’t change at all. She looked… older. It had only been a few months, but Thias looked weathered. That guilt settled heavily in his gut. Things were worse than he had thought. 

Thell dropped his arm, breaking away to run to Thias, who didn't even stiffen as her mother's arms wrapped around her. Her travel bag slid from her shoulder and hit the ground hard.

Thrawn approached and picked it up for her. It was heavy enough that he wondered whether she had brought back all of her things rather than just what she would need for the next week. But now certainly wasn’t the time to ask. She had dark bags under her eyes and it seemed as though her legs were barely holding her up. Her face was so blank, she could have been a carved statue. 

“Oh my flying bird, I missed you so much!” Thell grinned and squeezed her tightly.

Thias didn’t look at Thrawn, but he could see her eyes grow even more dim. She only spoke to Thell in a whisper. “I want to go home, ticsen'aci .”

Thell stared up at her, cupping her face in one hand and running her thumb along her cheek. Her eyebrows pinched together and raised over her eyes. “My bird, are you okay?”

Thrawn could see Thias’ lip quiver slightly. “Let’s take her home, Thell.” He tried to communicate the seriousness in his tone. 

“Right,” she said hesitantly, as she looked between him and their daughter. 

She wrapped an arm around Thias’ back and together they walked in silence out of the port, Thrawn following behind them. He watched as she kept looking up at Thias. From his new viewpoint, Thrawn could see that Thias' usually neat bun was the most dishevelled he'd ever seen it, dark strands of hair sticking out of it at odd angles. Again, he was struck by the difficult question of how he was to fix whatever problems had left her so battered. What would Thias do if he just pulled her from the Academy? Would it be better at any other Imperial Academy location if she transferred? Could Thell stand either of those options?

He had thought that bringing her back to test the TIE Defender would be a good opportunity to check in with her and figure out how to support her better. But now he wondered whether she would be ready to fly at all given the state she was in. He could practically feel the exhaustion emanating from her. How much worse had things been than he realized? 

After what felt like an eternity, they arrived at Thell’s home. 

“Do you want something to eat?” Thell asked, switching over to Cheunh.

Thrawn walked past them to set Thias’ bag down in her room. When he returned, he stopped in the doorway just in time to see Thias burst into tears. 

Thias practically collapsed into her mother's embrace, Thell, alarmed, asking, “Thias! What’s wrong?”

Thias shook with sobs and held Thell tightly. Thell buckled under the pressure of holding up someone much taller than her. 

“Are you alright?” Thrawn asked, stepping towards them quickly but too late to catch the fall completely, but he guided them to the ground. The question felt idiotic once he had said it.

“What happened, my bird? You can talk to me,” Thell said, her voice pitched with emotion as she held her daughter, whose knuckled were a lighter blue where they gripped Thell’s uniform. 

Thias just continued to wail. He caught the red glow of her eyes only a moment before she hid her face from him against Thell’s neck.

He didn’t know what she needed at all. Really, he didn’t know her at all. Each of her sobs added to that ache in his chest. Feeling panic rising into his throat, he started to back away, but Thell glanced at him with wide eyes, betraying panic of her own, so he froze, kneeling next to them.

“Mitth’ia’safis,” Thell began, shaking her head slowly, “when I find out who made you feel this way…”

Thrawn tensed as Thias' head shot up, her eyes suddenly blazing.

"You—" she choked on her sentence, trying to compose herself once more with a short intake of breath and a slight shift back out of her mother's embrace. "You just don't understand!"

“Thias,” Thell pleaded,  “I can’t understand if you don’t tell me what’s going on!”

“You can’t understand!” She whined, face contorting with anguish. Thrawn was struck to his core by the loneliness carried in her voice. 

“Help me try, my bird. Let us try.” Thell shot a pained glance at Thrawn, her eyes wide and glistening with tears of her own. 

Thias let out an anguished yell of frustration, her loneliness overcome with exasperated anger as she glared at her mother and yelled, "You can't understand!" She turned to him, gaze fiery with accusation. "And he won't listen!"

At Thell's inquiry of, "Who? Your father?" Thias' face crumpled once again and fresh tears fell from her brightened eyes.

Thrawn clenched his jaw as Thias fell back into her mother's embrace. So things had truly gotten worse for her because he had intervened. He had monitored the records so closely. She had continued to attend class on time, stayed near the top of the rankings, kept a clean disciplinary record. He had thought it had worked out for the better. Clearly, he was wrong. When had he ever been able to navigate those political games? There was always something he would miss, something that would fall through the gaps. Things never turned out exactly how he wanted. He just didn’t have that skill. Now, his daughter was falling through his fingers for a second time. What would Thrass have done? He had been trying to be there for her, as his brother had been there for him, intervening on his behalf. It was the support had longed for among his people and in his time at Royal Imperial. But he was not his brother. 

“I want to go home ,” Thias groaned. 

“Love—” Thell started, her voice filled with pity.

“But I don’t belong there either,” Thias continued, her sobs quieter now. “I don’t belong anywhere.”

The resignation that had briefly surfaced in her tone earlier now returned in full force. It hurt more than anything to see his daughter so close to giving up and being helpless to do anything that would perhaps pull her back from that edge.

“You belong right here, my bird. You will always belong right here.” Thell squeezed her. 

But that wouldn’t be enough. Thrawn understood that more than she knew.

He knew the struggle to prove oneself; the struggle to earn respect from one's peers and colleagues; the struggle to keep one's head high in the face of being shunned and hated on principle before ever being given a chance to make one's own impression upon another. He knew the hollow feeling Thias undoubtedly cradled within her chest; he cradled the same kind in his own and it screamed now with her sobs as much as it had screamed when he had given the Ascendancy everything and been given nothing but exile, dishonor, and the knowledge that his family would have to live with both of those things. That hollowness, for him, at least, would not be filled. Not even by the comfort of Thell’s embrace.

But unlike Thias, Thell hadn’t been the only one that had cared for him. While he never felt he “belonged”, he hadn’t been so alone. 

Thias was even more alienated than he had been. Somehow she had inherited his “otherness” that seemed to set people against him from the start. But additionally, she had a power that the whole galaxy seemed to fear and desire to control. 

Thias’ crying grew quieter and quieter as Thell held her, gently stroking her back, until all that remained was an irregular hitch in her breath.

Thell looked up at him and a tear trickled down her cheek. Thrawn tore himself from his thoughts and willed his body to action, carefully kneeling next to her, a hand on her shoulder as he peered down at Thias.

Her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open slightly. She looked more like Thell when she slept. 

“I’ll take her to bed,” he whispered. 

Thell squeezed her a little tighter, arms trembling from the strain. 

“She needs to rest, love.”

Thell relinquished her hold and let Thrawn slide his arms underneath Thias’ legs and back to lift her. 

To Thrawn’s surprise, Thias wrapped her arms around his neck as he did. She buried her face in his shoulder and let him carry her to her bedroom. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat but the tightness only grew. 

Her room was dark, lit only by the moonlight from the window. The room was nearly bare of any sign that someone lived there. She kept it as tidy as military barracks. He laid her in her bed and pulled her blanket over her. She rolled over, turning her back to him and curling up to sleep. Gently he untied her hair, holding the fastener in his lap. He stayed there a while, gently running his fingers over her hair. 

His memory of the last time he had held his daughter and put her to bed struck him like a barrage of laser fire. She had been unfathomably small, her whole hand barely large enough to encircle his finger. The idea that that small creature was the same being as the one before him now was too strange to fully comprehend. 

He had promised to protect her. 

Thrawn glanced behind himself to see Thell leaning against the doorframe with a sad smile on her face. He ran his hand over Thias’ hair once more, then opened the drawer of the shelf next to her bed to put her hair fastener inside.

He paused, seeing a neat stack of rough paper, with a drawing scrawled on the sheet that he could see. The instability of the lines betrayed the developing motor skills of a child, but the drawing was clear enough that he could tell it was Thias, sitting at a stall in the Lothal market. 

He was tempted to pull the drawings from the drawer, but, with another glance at his daughter, he decided to simply drop the fastener in the drawer and slide it closed quietly. Perhaps he would ask her about them some time. For now, he would take the drawings as a sign that Thias wasn’t as completely alone as he thought.

He stood and walked to Thell, closing the door behind him. He pulled her into his arms.

“How did we do it all wrong?” she asked. 

“None of this is your fault.” He knew the blame rested only on his shoulders. It certainly wasn’t Thell’s to bare.

“But what happened?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed, resigned. “She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

Chapter Text

9 | Mitth’ia’safis

Soft, warm air brushed Thias’ hair against her cheek. She didn’t often let her hair down from its usual tight bun, but today she had wanted to feel the wind through it. 

Thias had slept for a whole day, then spent another mostly lying in bed. But today, finally feeling some strength return to her, she had gotten up with the sun so that she could slip out with her speeder bike before Mother could ask any questions. 

Now, she sat cross-legged on the dirt, with her back against the stone of the jedi temple. She felt like she could truly breathe, the tightness from her chest finally melting away. The grass rustled, drowning out her restless thoughts.

She savored the kiss of the warm sun on her eyelids, her feelings spreading out into the world like ripples on a lake as she sunk down beneath its surface. She remembered when she had first discovered the temple and met Kanan Jarrus, the Jedi her father was hunting. In the times she had visited the place since, she had found herself wishing to find him there again, but something in her always knew that wouldn’t be the case. 

She found herself fantasizing about how different things might have been if she had taken his offer to leave the Empire with him. Normally, she wouldn’t even entertain the idea. How could she leave Mother like that?

But after all that had happened— Thias felt her gut turn as she considered the idea of returning to the Academy in a few days. The image of Vance’s sneering face, Hilla’s yelling, the panic in her throat… No. She wasn’t going back. 

She was not going back. 

Still, the images and sensations clung to her consciousness and drove her emotions up. She felt the urge to curl up and disappear, as she had been trying to do in her room the past two days. She tried to focus instead on the natural world around her, imagining those feelings being taken up by the rocks and the grass, dispersed in the connectedness between things rather than held so tightly within her. 

Slowly, the tightness in her chest released and some sense of peace returned. She took a few slow breaths before she let her eyes flutter open. 

Thias gasped as small rocks clattered to the ground. Had they been floating ? She blinked quickly, staring down at them, watching for any sign of movement. But the rocks just stayed still. 

She looked around, searching for signs of other people, half hoping once again that Kanan would be there. But there was no one.

She turned back to the rocks. She reached out to touch one, but stopped short, feeling a tugging in her gut. With a hand outstretched toward the stone, she pictured it hovering above the ground just as she had seen moments ago. 

Nothing happened. Thias let her arm fall to her side. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, though no one was around to see her. She narrowed her eyes at the stone. 

She closed her eyes and brought back the same emotions she had just been overwhelmed with. It was painful, but she intentionally directed them outward again, this time more pointedly towards the one rock. She breathed deeply, stabilizing herself, then reached her hand. 

Holding as still as she could, she barely cracked open one eye. Both eyes shot open as she saw the rock hovering just beyond the tip of her fingers. The rock clattered to the ground again. 

Thias let out a short, incredulous laugh. When Kanan had told her that the abilities of a Jedi extended beyond Second and Third Sight, she had thought that perhaps the Chiss were simply limited in their connection to the Force. Apparently that wasn’t the case. Not for her, anyway.

Her gaze was immediately drawn to the place between two large boulders, where she knew the comm Kanan had left for her was buried. She closed her eyes and felt for it beneath the inches of dry dirt. Once she could feel the metal contours in her mind, she pictured the small particles of rock and old plant matter shifting and sliding beneath it, ferrying it to the top and to her grasp. 

She could feel the object resisting her, demanding more concentration, so she allowed her being to further sink into the lake of energy surrounding her. Her racing heart echoed in her ears. It felt as though the waters were parting before her touch. What lay beyond them? Would she find answers to all her questions? Was she finally losing her mind? Thias poured herself into that connectedness between all things, stretching out with desperation; she would not be alone one second longer.

She fliched when she suddenly felt the cold, smooth object on her outstretched palm. Thias looked down at it in wonder. Okay, not losing my mind , she thought as she pulled the device to her chest and brushed the dust off of it. 

Her thumb hovered over the activation button. There was someone, maybe more than one someone, that  understood what she was experiencing. Who could perhaps teach her to embrace her abilities rather than hide them. Her heart ached with longing. So why couldn’t she do it?

Thias felt her chest grow heavy with shame as she remembered how Mother had held her only three days ago. How she had brought her meals the following two days even through Thias had refused to touch them at first. As much as she wished to just disappear, she just… couldn’t. No matter how much she hated how the humans here treated her, no matter how much conflict and frustration she felt towards living in her Father’s shadow, no matter how much she hated having to hide her abilities, she couldn’t do that to her Mother. Or at least without a good explanation.

And Mother definitely wasn’t ready for that conversation. Even if Father wasn't actively working to hunt down Kanan Jarrus, Mother wouldn’t take kindly to Thias just going off into the galaxy on her own.

Her throat grew tight as she caressed the device. Not yet. But maybe, with time, Mother could be persuaded. First, she needed to just focus on how to tell her parents she wouldn’t be going back to the Academy and what she was going to do instead. Perhaps if the TIE Defender test went well enough she could just serve as test pilot. Perhaps if Father was going to insist on intervening in her life, he could get High Command to make her a TIE pilot without returning to the Academy. 

But the thought had a bitter taste. How long would she fly under him? What would she be asked to do? Shoot rebels out of the sky? There was a reason the Defender project was so secretive. Thias shook her head. 

She couldn’t figure it all out right now. She sighed deeply as she closed her fingers around the comm. She pulled herself from the ground and stepped to the small divot in the dirt. She put the device back in its place and buried it again. Not today. The loneliness tugged at her heart and she set her jaw.

Thias walked back to the small stone she had lifted with her abilities. No, not “abilities”. The Force. The stone she had lifted with the Force. It wasn’t a very exciting stone, just a few simple sedimentary lines across its surface, but it meant something to her now. Hopefully Noa would be able to feel that it was special despite its drab appearance.

Thias carried the stone to her speeder and slipped it into one of her saddle bags. She mounted the bike and flew across the plains towards the city. 

She smiled into the wind in spite of herself, hair whipping through the air behind her. At least for today, she was in control of her own life. She could make her own decisions and be who she wanted to be. When she visited the temple or the city in her civilians clothes, she didn’t have to be “Cadet Mitt’ia’safis” or “the Grand Admiral’s daughter”. She remembered the name that she had given herself when Kanan had asked it. 

I am Ia Safis. I am a Jedi .

Even the thought felt rebellious and scandalous, making her smile even more widely. But wasn’t it true? She could use the Force. She was powerful and strong. It wasn't her fault that people– even Father– were afraid of that.

Thias parked her bike outside the city and pulled the stone from her bag. She held her head a little higher as she walked through the streets. It seemed quieter than normal in town, though she supposed it was the late afternoon, when many shops and booths shut down between the morning and evening rush. 

Though there were no other Chiss, the higher proportion of aliens in the town felt even more comforting than it ever had in the past. The humans didn’t really give her any more attention than anyone else. 

She felt excited as she turned down the street where Noa and Lior’s stand was. She felt a little guilty for not coming to see the girl right away, but that was alright. She was here now. 

But as she walked down the street, she began to slow, frowning. Many of the stalls were empty or missing all together. Her gut twisted at the sight of an Imperial poster– advertising work in the factories– stapled to the front of one empty stand..

A Rodian behind one stand looked utterly dejected. 

“Where is everyone?” Thias asked in Basic.

The Rodian made a buzzing sound that Thias couldn’t interpret. “You new in town?”

“I… It has been a while.”

The Rodian simply shook their head. 

Thias took that as a sign to continue on. She quickly walked the rest of the way to Lior and Noa’s stand, her heart sinking as she saw it empty. A tide of emotions washed over her as she ran her hand over a blaster burn gouged into the front of the stand. She clenched her jaw. 

Her other hand tightened around her stone. 

“Been a while since I’ve seen you ‘round ‘ere.” Thias turned to see an older human woman exiting the apartment next door. She hobbled over to lean against her stand next to Lior’s. “Noa asked about ‘the blue girl’ all the time.” The older woman signed the words with her hands as she said them, like how Noa would have. 

“What happened? Where are they?”

The older woman scoffed. “With that new admiral and all those new projects, the Empire’s been running low on laborers for their factories.” She spat the words “Empire” and “factories” with disgust. “They came through ‘ere ‘bout two months ago, dragged people off. Claimed they were Rebel sympathizers. But that’s just their excuse.”

Thias could only blink in horror.

The woman had vitriol in her voice. “They probably made Rebel sympathizers, dragging people off all over town.”

“Noa?” Thias stuttered out.

“Don’t know,” the woman shook her head. “She ran off when it happened.” She sighed deeply. “They took Lior. Haven’t seen Noa since. I tried lookin’ for ‘er, but I can only get so far.” She gestured to her cane. “And that poor girl can’t hear anyone callin’ for her. I worry. The Empire doesn’t take kindly to the ones they don’t deem useful.” She looked down at her cane again. 

Thias’ hand shook as she gripped the stone. She looked to the window sill behind the stall. The other stones were still there, though they were no longer in a careful straight line.

In a daze tinged with mounting fury, she stuttered, “They… they can’t do that. They can’t just… take people!”

The woman laughed bitterly. “Don’t tell them that, dear, or you’ll be next. The Empire don’t care.”

That new admiral . 

Thias’ blood boiled. “I’ll make them care,” she spat, then turned to storm back the way she had come. 

All that she could feel was blind rage and desperation. She found herself shaking uncontrollably as her blood boiled. She wandered the city, calling out for Noa even though she knew there was no use.

She called, and called, and called until her voice was hoarse. She looked under empty stalls and down alleys where Lothcats scampered away at the disturbance. She asked strangers if they had seen the little girl, feeling more panicked and desperate with each shaking head. 

Eventually, night fell and the city lights came on, only to die out as Imperial curfew approached. She clenched her jaw at the sight of troopers roaming the streets. She felt the fear radiating from all the people in the city. She felt the apathy emanating from the troopers. That was the worst part. They didn’t even care . 

Eventually she found that her aching feet had carried her back to her speeder. She looked back at the city, thinking that if she just went and looked a little longer perhaps she could find her. 

Thias looked up, nearly snarling in disgust at the sight of the Chimaera blocking out a triangular section of stars. Her lip twitched in disgust. 

She mounted her bike and took off.

Chapter Text

10 | Mitth’ell’unaris

Thell let herself breathe out a long sigh and sit back in her chair as the other engineers filed out of the conference room. With Thrawn unable to attend, it had been satisfying to lead the meeting herself and make Daglinov wait to be called on to speak. But she couldn’t deny that she was sweating a bit beneath her uniform collar. Her neurons felt almost sore from the strain of shifting all her thoughts into Basic. It was such a ridiculous language. 

“It’s really great work,” Bryndhi said, arms crossed as she stood facing the holo of the TIE Defender before them. The two of them were the only ones left in the room.

“ We did great work.” Thell smiled.

Bryndhi shook her head. “No, just months ago we were still shaking our heads at the list of things the Admiral was asking for. But he knew it could be done because you could do it. The Empire is lucky to have you.”

Thell felt warm, unsure of how to properly respond in Basic. She settled for simplicity. “Thank you.”

Bryndhi smiled. “Let’s celebrate after the test, yeah?”

“Sure! I would like that.”

“Get some rest; it’s late,” Bryndhi said as she walked to the door. “It’s late and they’re loading them up on the Chimaera tomorrow, so if you start taking things apart now, you’ll be in trouble.”

“Alright,” Thell laughed. 

The door slid shut behind Bryndhi and Thell sat in silence, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair. The holo of the TIE loomed over her. Her best work was finally being implemented. She remembered how many years she had spent fighting to get funding in the Ascendancy, though she supposed there was a reason for their resistance. Her fighters weren’t well-suited to the fighting style of most of the Fleet; they were… aggressive. 

But in Thrawn’s hand, they would be put to good use. She knew how powerful they would be, and soon the rest of the Empire would too. The test would go well, and then it was only a matter of time before her design was spread through the entirety of Lesser Space. 

She smiled to herself, thinking back on the young woman she had been once. She had been resistant to the idea of becoming more than what she was. In a different timeline, perhaps she really would have stayed on Rentor her whole life. Perhaps she would still be Cryk’ell’unaris, a mechanic or a mathematics instructor. But then there was that boy with all those aspirations. 

He would change the galaxy one way or another and she would follow him across the universe. Thell smiled to herself; she had already. 

Somehow, he had dragged her into greatness with him, and despite herself, Thell couldn’t deny that it felt good. It felt good to be just building things, the way she always had. But she was the best. Perhaps the best in the galaxy. It was good to finally be in a place where that was recognized.

The image of the TIE turned slowly before her, edges and curves perfectly aligned. 

Her masterpiece.

The door hissed open on the other side of the holo and Thell sat up sharply. At the sight of Thias, she relaxed. She had been worried about where she had been all day, but resisted the urge to call her since Thrawn had encouraged her to give Thias space until she was ready to talk.  

“The briefing is over, my bird,” she said in Cheunh. She hadn’t really expected Thias to attend given the state she had been in the past few days, though she had been invited. But her uneasiness returned when she saw Thias’ face, stricken with emotion like Thell had never seen. “But that’s alright,” she added hastily. “Are you okay?”

“Do you know what they’re doing?! Do you know?” Thias cried out, her voice shrill. 

Thell stood from her chair, stepping to remove the holo from her line of sight and see her daughter clearly. The expression on Thias’ face was… anger. It was a ferocious fire that she had never seen in her quiet girl before. Having that fire directed at her made her heart race. “I don’t—”

“Forced labor!” Thias spat. “ Slaves !”

Thell blinked. What was she talking about? “Thias, I don’t under—”

“The Empire! They’re using slaves , Mother!”

Thell felt suddenly sick and struggled to string together her thoughts. “Thias, let’s just calm down and—”

“Do you hear what I’m saying ?”

“Yes, but I—”

“They’re evil , Mother.”

“Explain slowly. I’m trying to understand.”

Thias let out a frustrated huff.

“Slowly. What is making you say this?” Thell felt suddenly concerned about the thickness of the walls with the words Thias was yelling. “I’m sure your Father—”

“Are you saying I’m lying?”

Thell blinked, mouth hanging open. 

“I saw Mother.” Thias gestured furiously with her arms as she yelled. “Whole streets of town, empty . Taken to work in the Empire’s factories. They took her mother . A little girl. Left her orphaned . And I… I can’t find her.” Thias’ eyes were glistening and her voice was growing increasingly tight.

“I… I still don’t understand, my bird,” Thell said quietly. Her gut was heavy with a dark feeling. Could it be true? Could the Empire do something like what she was saying? But so much of what she was saying made no sense at all. She knew that Thias had difficulty communicating with words when she became upset, but the level of nonsense she was speaking made Thell worry that whatever had happened to Thias at the academy had pushed her into some kind of psychic break. 

Thias gestured aggressively at the TIE hologram. “Did they make the parts in the factories?”

“I… of course.”

Thias’ voice dropped low as she spoke between gritted teeth. “They are building your designs with slaves, Mother.”

“I…” Thell shook her head. “No, the factory workers are just locals.”

“Locals that were forced to work when they scaled up production. I saw , Mother.” Thias’ face was full of anguish, pleading. 

Thell’s heart was shattered. “That horrible woman, Pryce, makes decisions on the planet. Your father…” 

“He knows everything that happens here, Mother. Especially for your project.”

Thell shook her head. “When he hears about this, he will set it right, whatever it is that happened. We can look into this and figure out what is true together.”

The fire in Thias’ eyes increased with such ferocity when Thell reached for her comm that Thell froze in place, heart racing. 

“They’re evil , Mother. The whole Empire. They’re power-hungry xenophobes that will do anything to get what they want. They kill what they’re scared of. People like me.”

Thell shook her head. “Thias, you’re not making sense.”

“I’m making perfect sense!” Thias cried. “You’re not listening!”

“I am! I just don’t understand! What do you mean ‘people like you’?” Thell cried, eyes filling with tears. She wanted Thrawn, continuing to reach for her comm slowly. He would set this right.

“There used to be humans like me. Other species too. With the abilities I have. They called them “Jedi”. And the Empire killed them all. Because they were scared of them. They kill and they enslave and they…” she breathed heavily, shaking her head vigorously as if to dislodge a thought “...they try to take whatever they think will make them feel powerful.”

“Your Father—”

“He knows , Mother! He knows all this! Don’t you see that?!”

Thell scrambled. “The Empire can help the Ascendency—”

“What did they do for us? What is so important or so dangerous that it could be worth allying with slavers , Mother!”

“Thias, I… I don’t understand all that you’re saying. But I’m sure if we just call your Father he can help us understand.” She did her best to portray calm in her posture, but her muscles felt tense with rising panic.

Thias let out a yell filled with rage.

Thell gasped and jumped back as all the chairs around the conference table suddenly flew out into the walls. 

She looked to Thias, heart pounding. She saw a flicker of shock pass over her daughter's face before the rage returned. Thias’ eyes, usually avoidant, locked with hers. Thell found her hand trembling as she gripped her comm, staring up into those burning eyes. Thias’ gaze flicked to the comm and suddenly the rage loosened. A wave of different emotions passed over Thias’ face as she looked between her mother’s shaking hand and the chairs scattered around the room. 

“My… my bird…” Thell stuttered out. 

Thias stayed still. 

“Just… let’s just sit down. You’re… you’re going through a lot right now. We can figure this out.”

Thias just looked down at her own hands, which had begun to shake like Thell’s. 

Thell wanted to pull her daughter into her arms, but the fight-or-flight hormones coursing through her blood kept her rooted in place. “We’ll figure this out. I’ll call your Father and—”

Thias looked to the comm in Thell’s hand again and Thell was chilled to her core as all the emotion drained from Thias’ face. It was as if she was looking at a stone sculpture of her daughter. When she spoke, her voice was toneless. 

“You’re always going to choose him over me, aren’t you?”

Thell felt as though all the air went out of her. When she blinked a tear rolled down her cheek. Her mouth worked to say something, anything but she couldn’t find words.

Thias shook her head slowly, then turned her back on Thell. 

“Thias!” she called. “Thias, wait!” But the door hissed open. 

Thell moved as quickly as she was able to try to chase after her, but her foot caught on one of the toppled chairs. She didn’t catch herself in time and her head slammed into the edge of the conference table. She cried out in pain.

“Thias!” she called again, voice cracking, as more tears poured down her face as she clutched her head and she tried to pull herself up from the floor. “Fuck!”

She lifted her comm, still clutched tightly in her other trembling hand and pressed the button. “Thrawn, I need help. It’s Thias, she…”

She blinked, panic increasing more as her vision grew cloudy in one eye. She brought her hand down from her head, staring at warm, glistening read against the blue of her palm. She sobbed, thumb still holding down her comm button. 

“ Help ,” she whispered. 

Chapter Text

11 | Kanan Jarrus

Kanan pulled the strainer of dried meiloorun and other herbs out of the hot water. He could tell from the strength of the aroma that the tea was sufficiently infused. He set the strainer to the side and carried the cup over to the warm presence he could feel in the force.

He felt the worry radiating from Hera as he sat next to her at the table on the Ghost . He put the cup in front of her then felt along the table until his fingers brushed against her hand. 

It was on nights like this that he was overwhelmed with the longing to see her: when he felt her presence awake late in the night, and the two of them sat alone in the quiet. He knew her well enough to know her brow would have that small crease in the middle, her thin lips pressed together in thought. But the image seemed to get harder and harder to remember with time, which filled his heart with dread.

Hera sighed deeply and wrapped her fingers around his. He could feel the depth of her concern in her touch, gripping just tight enough that it wouldn’t be easy to slip away. These nights where she would wake up and be unable to return to sleep from the stress were becoming more frequent. He wondered how many nights like this he had missed before he had been forced to be so immersed into the Force with the loss of his sight, less able to feel her presence stir into wakefulness across the hall from his quarters. 

“You’re a good mom, Hera.”

She scoffed. “Not you too.”

“What?” 

“I don’t have kids, Kanan.”

He tilted his head. 

Hera laughed. “Zeb is almost twice my age.”

“So?” he smiled. “You worry about all of them like a mom. And what’s blood worth anyways when you choose to be there for them?” He wrapped an arm around the back of the booth behind her. 

She leaned into him, which filled his body with warmth. It was so rare he could get her to slow down long enough to be close to him. “Moms don’t take their kids into war.”

He shrugged. “They’d all get themselves killed without you one way or another.”

She scoffed again. “Aren’t you supposed to be trying to make me feel better ?”

“Hey, I’m trying.”

She sighed deeply and released his hand. He felt the warmth of the tea draw closer to them. “There’s just… there’s so much to be done. What if we lose? What if I drew them all into this for nothing?”
Kanan considered his answer. Of course, there were plenty of times he had tried to persuade her out of the Rebellion. It still sounded so nice to just run off together to some world the Empire had yet to ravage. But that wouldn’t be Hera. And that wasn’t what she needed right now. “Someone has to do it, Hera. Every step we take is… it’s something.”

“I hope so,” she said. “We need to hit them harder than we have been.”

“We’ll get there.”

She still radiated with anxiety.

“You’re the best person I know, Hera.”

She didn’t respond, simply leaning into him more as she sipped her tea.

Kanan settled into the moment, meditating on his closeness to her and the matter around him resonating in the Force. When he sank into it enough, he felt he could almost begin to see the outline of shapes in his mind, a kind of vision that he was still getting used to. 

As his awareness spread through the Ghost , he could feel the life emanating from Ezra and Zeb in their room, with Ezra glowing particularly strongly. In comparison, Sabine’s empty room felt strikingly cold. 

Suddenly he sat up straight, startling Hera. There was a searingly strong point in the Force in his own room, which he hadn’t felt when he had been there only an hour before. 

“What is it?” Hera asked, voice filled with concern.

Kanan pulled his arm from behind her and stood quickly. “I… felt something.” He went down the hall and into his room, following the Force to draw him to the shining point. He felt for the handle of the drawer under his bed and pulled it open. When the source of the feeling was in his hand, he sat back onto his heels. It was the cheap, encoded transponder that matched the one he had left at the Jedi temple on Lothal. 

“Kanan, what is it?” Hera asked from the doorway.

He pressed the button that would play a waiting message.

Between her accent and the deep emotion filling the girl’s voice, Kanan had to concentrate hard to work out what she was saying. “Hello,” the voice said. “We met months ago and—” her voice broke with what sounded like a sob “—and you left this for me, for an emergency. Well—” another sob “—please call me back within the next few hours. I wouldn’t risk contacting you if it wasn’t important. I have information you would want to know.”

The transmission terminated. 

“Who is that?” Hera asked.

He had thought it so strange that the Force had so strongly drawn him to meet her, yet months had passed without anything coming from the interaction. But the Force didn’t work on his schedule. “That Force-sensitive girl I met on Lothal,” he said. “She called herself Ia.”

“Didn’t you say she was with the Empire?”
“No, her mother was.”

“How secure is that comm?” 

Kanan shrugged. He could feel her annoyance. “Secure enough that they won’t find it if they’re not looking for it.”

“And if they are?”

“She’s the one down there. She’s in more danger than we are.” The comm chimed as he pressed the button to connect. 

“Kanan!” Hera admonished. 

He waved her off, waiting on edge.

The comm connected. “Hello?”

“Ia?” he asked.

“Yes!” the voice came back. Her emotion seemed to have cleared in the time since she had left the message.

“Are you safe?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you alone?” he asked, feeling Hera’s gaze bore into him, radiating with worry. 

“Yes, but I don’t have long. They’ll come looking for me eventually.”

“What’s going on?” he asked. 

“You’re with the Rebels, right?”

He didn’t respond, feeling Hera’s hand squeeze his shoulder.

The girl huffed. “I want to help. Do you at least know someone who might want to get their hands on a TIE Defender?”

Kanan and Hera were both quiet. Kanan thought of the conversation they had just had, of wanting to make bigger steps. The Defender was the Empire’s new strongest weapon against them. 

Hera spoke first. “Yes. We certainly do.”

Chapter Text

12 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

Help . 

Thell’s shaking voice replayed in Thrawn’s mind as he sped through the Imperial complex on Lothal, ignoring the stares. He stormed past the receptionist at the medical center. It had taken him too long to get down here from the Chimaera . Far too long. 

Thell’s back was to him, but she was sitting up on the edge of the bed, waving off the medical droid attending to her. He hadn’t realized how much tension he was holding in his brow and shoulders until it suddenly released. 

ISB Agent Kallus was facing her, holding his datapad. “Chief Engineering Consultant, we need your help to understand exactly what happened here.”

“I’ll take it from here, Agent,” Thrawn said. 

Thell turned to see him, her eyebrows lifting in relief. She had a rectangular bacta patch above her right eyebrow. The sight made Thrawn’s gut tight.

“But sir—”

Thrawn held up a hand. 

Kallus sighed. “Sir, we need to establish whether the Rebels could be involved here.”

“I told you,” Thell said. “I fell. It was an accident.”

Kallus looked as if he was going to argue but Thrawn spoke first. “I said, I will take it from here, Agent. Dismissed.”

Kallus shook his head and walked off. 

Thrawn walked around the bed to stand in front of Thell, cupping her round face in his hand as he looked at her injury more closely. He could see the skin around her right eye beginning to take on a dark purple hue that he was sure would only look worse in the morning. The sight made him clench his jaw. 

“Thrawn, I’m fine,” she said in Cheunh. “I really did just fall. But you need to find Thias. Now .”

“Tell me what happened,” he said. 

“Thrawn—”

“Tell me, Thell.”

Thell closed her eyes and shook her head, leaning her cheek into his palm. He was struck by how defeated and tired she looked; the bags under her eyes were well defined and her brow had developed permanent wrinkles from the expression of worry and concern. Her expression reminded him of how she had looked when he had finally come home and met Thias for the first time a week after her birth. He felt sick. He had been too late when she had needed him again. This was yet another time he had been too late to be there for her when she needed him. 

“Thias,” she said quietly, as though she was scared the other patients in the medical bay would hear, even though she was speaking in Cheunh. “She was saying these… horrible things about the Empire. She was so… angry. Thrawn, I’ve never seen her like that.”

Thrawn’s chest grew tight. “Thias did this to you?”

“No!” Thell sat up, shaking her head. Her round eyes stared sternly into his. “No, Thrawn. She would never. She just… well, I can’t really explain it. It was like she got so angry that the chairs in the conference room… moved. And then she ran and I–” she huffed “I fell over the chair trying to chase after her.”

The words felt like ice in Thrawn’s heart. He put as much calm into his voice as he could. “Thell, this is very important. Did anyone else see?” He wondered whether he could delete any footage from cameras in the room before Agent Kallus got to it.

Thell shook her head, eyes growing even wider.

“Did you tell anyone else about this?”

“Of course not.”

Thrawn’s mind raced. Almost every sky-walker was known only to have the ability of Third Sight; even Second Sight was extremely rare. Even with only these abilities, Thrawn had feared for Thias’ safety in the Empire. It was an anxiety that haunted him every day, especially when she had been at the Academy. But now …

“Where is she?” he asked.

“I told you, you need to find her,” Thell said. “Thrawn, this isn’t her fault. I’m not lying. She didn’t do this.”

“What was she saying?”

“Most of it made no sense. But she was angry about the Empire.” She raised her eyebrows suddenly, remembering. “She said something about slaves . I told her there was no way that could be true, that we needed to talk to you. That only made her more angry.” Her voice was rising in pitch. 

Thrawn felt even more cold. His daughter had jedi abilities, had been questioning the darker sides of the Empire, and had now disappeared only two days before she was supposed to perform the definitive test for the TIE Defender project. The last thing he needed was for Thell to get emotional.

But her eyes were glistening with tears anyways. “It… it’s not true, Thrawn. Is it?”

This was not the time for this conversation. He sighed deeply and decided a half-truth would suffice for now. “I will talk to her and figure things out.”

Thell nodded. “I want to help you find her.” She moved to stand quickly, then swayed.

“Slow down,” Thrawn said, holding her up. His heart softened. “My love, if she took off on her speeder, she could be anywhere on the planet right now. And you’re in no shape to go after her. I’m going to get you home and then you’re going to trust me to take care of it.”

Thell shook her head. “You had to let her have that damn bike.”

“We are not doing this right now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, shrinking and looking down.

“It’s alright.” Thrawn helped steady her as they walked from the medical center. 

“She will be fine,” Thrawn said as they walked.

“But what if she isn’t?”

“Do you remember when you were a midager, and you would go sleep in the forest when you were mad at your parents?”

“This is nothing like that,” she said. “You didn’t see her, Thrawn. Besides, she’s not a midager anymore.”

He didn’t say another word until they had made it to her home and he had gotten her inside. “Sit,” he said. 

Once she had sat at her dining table, he set about preparing her some food.

“What are you doing?”

“You need calories after losing blood like that.”

“Thrawn, she’s out there alone.”

“And I am more likely to find her when she inevitably comes back here.”

“You don’t understand how upset she was, Thrawn.”

“But I know she worries more about you than anything else. Whatever Thias might feel, she’ll always come home.”

“You don’t know that.” Thell’s voice was soft and tight with emotion. “Thrawn, she… she really might not come back.”

“Thell—”

“I mean it. She—” Thell choked on the words. “She said that I’ll always choose you over her.”

The words were cutting, even for Thrawn to hear. He clenched his jaw. But of course, that had been his thought when Thell had shown up on the doorstep of the Chimaera . All it had taken for Thell to pull their daughter from the safety of the Ascendency had been learning of where he was. And what was Thias supposed to do in the Empire? Pilot ships for him forever? The thought filled him with guilt. How could he think things like that, when Thell had been the one that stayed for their daughter? That raised her? Gave up everything for her?

You’re a good mother, Thell.” It was all he could find to say. “She’ll come home.”

He served her food and after some additional protest, she ate it in silence. He sat with her and pressed a kiss to her head. Despite his words, he was itching with the need to do something about this situation. But he believed what he had said: his best chance of finding Thias was to wait here. He couldn’t pretend to understand all Thias felt and experienced, but he remembered the way she would allow her mother to hug her, against her avoidance of being touched. He remembered how worried Thias had been that Thell would find out she was struggling at the Academy: how she had made him swear not to tell her. He felt another pang of guilt. 

Thias could hate him. That was fine; he probably often deserved it. But Thias felt responsible for Thell. Perhaps even as much as Thell felt responsible for her. That wasn’t good for a child, he knew, but for now it gave him the confidence that she would come home. 

It grew dark outside and eventually Thell had nodded off against his shoulder, despite her best efforts to stay awake. 

The moment he was confident she was asleep, he lifted his datapad from the table, careful not to disturb her with his movements. He navigated to the Lothal facility security records. It took some searching, but he found the footage from the cameras in the conference room. He felt cold, watching the chairs fly back from the table. It was unmistakable; Thias had moved them with the same kind of power that he had first seen in Anakin Skywalker so long ago. But he could also see the way she shrunk back immediately after. This was new for her. She was scared. He winced, seeing Thell hit the table exactly as she had said. He paused the footage. He quickly used his clearance codes to erase the recording, along with all recordings from cameras on the same circuit for days preceding the incident, to give the appearance of a technical malfunction. He would need to determine whether Agent Kallus had accessed the cameras already. But first, he needed to wait.

He sat still, doing his best to let Thell sleep, while responding to occasional messages on his datapad about the progress preparing the Chimaera for the arrival of the TIEs with sunrise the next morning. He breathed slowly, but the blood in his veins never stopped racing.

It was well into darkness when he heard the whine of a speederbike slow to a stop outside. The door hissed open, and Thias’ tall figure was framed by the doorway as Thell stirred against him. 

She stopped just inside the door, and they stared at each other. This wasn’t the worried, hunched-over child that he was used to seeing, or the scared girl he had expected after watching the recording. Thias stood tall, with shoulders squared and chin high. 

“Thias!” Thell exclaimed, scrambling up from the table and running to her. “Thias, I… I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright, Mother,” she said, holding up a hand and not breaking eye contact with Thrawn. 

“We can figure this out now, okay?” Thell asked. 

“Where did you go?” Thrawn asked, keeping his voice as steady as possible.

“To clear my head,” she said. Her face was blank, as unreadable as a statue.

“Come sit,” Thell said, taking a step back towards the table. 

Thias finally broke away her gaze and looked to her mother. Her demeanor immediately shifted. Her shoulders raised slightly, and her eyebrows scrunched together as she looked at Thell’s head. 

They all sat at the table.

Thrawn cleared his throat, folding his hands on the table. “Explain, Thias.”

“It’s over now,” she said, her expression going blank again. “I just needed to clear my head.”

“Your mother told me what happened, Thias. I need to understand why.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was monotone. “I was… overreacting.”

“To what?”

Thias let out a long sigh and crossed her arms over her chest. Thrawn could feel the vibration in the floor from her bouncing her leg under the table. “I found out where the Empire has been getting its workers for the manufacturing here on Lothal.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forcing the locals into labor. But you would know about that.”

Thrawn looked between Thell and Thias. “I… disagreed with the decision.”

Thias’ expression didn’t change. Thell looked shocked.

“And what did you do about it?” Thias asked, voice still completely steady.

“I’m still arguing against it. But I don’t have the final word about what happens on the planet.”

Thell just blinked in disbelief, shoulders sagging. Thias just continued staring.

Thrawn continued. “I have to be careful how hard I push against certain things to maintain my position. You know how they feel about non-humans.”

Thias tilted her head to the side. “So, it’s okay to let slaves build your ships and speeders because the xenophobes you work for would take away your job if you tried to do something about it?” 

“I didn’t say I wasn’t doing something about it. I’m being strategic about—”

“What would you do to stay Admiral, Father?”

Thrawn crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back into his chair. He looked over at Thell, who was staring down at the table. He remembered when those round eyes had stared in horror at the bodies of the Vagaari slaves. He remembered her tears and anger at the fact nothing could be done. He looked back to Thias. His own eyes stared back at him. 

He set his jaw. “I would do a great deal. If I were to act irrationally, to sacrifice this position, due to a swell of empathy, it would be a grave mistake. Not for myself, but for all our people and for the galaxy. Mitth’ia’safis, do you know how much power this Empire has? How much of this galaxy the Emperor rules over?”

Thias narrowed her eyes. 

“Our people called this part of the Galaxy ‘Lesser Space’, but we were mistaken; the fraction of the Galaxy that the Ascendency rules is insignificant against the Empire. There are threats to our people even within our own territory. To make the Empire our enemy rather than our ally, regardless of how evil it may seem, would be foolish. I will do everything in my power to advocate for the fair treatment of the people of this world. But I will not be a fool.”

Thias’ lip twitched but she didn’t speak. 

“Do you understand?”

She was completely still for a few breaths before she slowly nodded.

“I do all of this for you, Mitth’ia’safis. To make this galaxy safe for you and your children. I always have. If you ever doubt that, or have concerns about the Empire in the future, you will bring those questions straight to me, and we will discuss it like adults. Do you understand? I understand, despite your refusal to explain everything to us, that your experience with the Empire at the academy here on Lothal was extremely negative. But that isn’t her fault.” He gestured at Thell. “You don’t go… threaten your mother.”

“Thrawn—” Thell started. 

“No,” Thias said. “He’s… right. I understand.” But she crossed her arms even tighter, and he could see the muscle in her jaw trembling. 

“She didn’t threaten me,” Thell said quietly.

“Perhaps that wasn’t her intention,” Thrawn said. “But she still created quite the display with her… abilities. And you ended up injured.”

Thias winced. 

“Thrawn…” Thell said, touching Thias’ forearm in a gesture of comfort. 

“This is what she needs to hear, Thell. She’s an adult now.” He felt that guilt in his gut, watching Thias withering under his gaze. But she was lucky that she hadn’t already been killed or dragged off with a display like that. She couldn’t afford another one. And clearly these abilities were not controlled. Perhaps his lecture hurt her, but it would cause her even more pain to unintentionally hurt Thell more than she already had.

Thias nodded shortly. 

Thrawn sighed. “All of that said, Thias, I will not make you do anything you don’t want to do. If you do not want to be… involved in the Empire, I will not make you. You can live here with your mother. Take your speeder wherever you would like.”

“I want to fly,” she said. 

Thell closed her eyes and Thrawn could see the depth of her emotion in her tented brow. 

“Then that is your choice,” he said. “You do not get to resent anyone for that. Me or your mother.”

Thias nodded.

“Will you still fly the test?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, staring down at her hands that were now folded in her lap.

“Good,” he said. “You’re an excellent pilot. I would hate to lose you.”

She nodded.

“Will you return to the Academy after the test?”

He saw her jaw trembling again despite her apparent effort to appear emotionless. 

He sighed. “I could have you transferred to a different Imperial Academy, if that is your preference, though I… would worry about your safety there. Especially since your… abilities appear to be stronger than we realized. Though—”

“Are you afraid of me, Father?”

The sentence, uttered without any semblance of emotion, sent chills down his spine. Thrawn met her fiery gaze and tilted his head. There was so much happening behind her eyes that he couldn’t see. It was… unsettling thinking that perhaps the thoughts in his mind were not necessarily so hidden from her. “Of course not.”

“Maybe the Empire hunts us down for a reason.”

“Us?” Thrawn raised an eyebrow. His heart raced. 

The fire in Thias’ eye disappeared as she looked down and she shrank into herself, the same quiet girl he was used to. “Those of us with… Third Sight. That’s why you’re so worried about me.”

He narrowed his eyes. She was hiding something from him. Intentionally. It was more than some uncomfortable situation she didn’t want to relive from the Academy. She had a secret. “Thias, have you… met someone else? Like you?”

She shook her head. “Only Borika and Zicheri and Thalias… Vah’nya was the only one that had not faded. I’m just… tired of hiding because people want to use me or hurt me. And I don’t understand because I’m even so different from all of them. It isn’t going away.”

Hearing those names softened Thrawn’s tensed brow. He saw his daughter for what she was: a very confused girl with a good heart. Like Che’ri had been. 

“I just…” Thias continued “I thought it would be better here. But it isn’t. It’s the same.”

“Oh, my bird…” Thell said, squeezing Thias’ forearm. 

Thrawn felt Thias’ leg continuing to bounce beneath the table. She was still holding back. But that was enough for tonight. He let out a sigh and attempted to put on a partial smile. “At least here we can get you behind the controls of the best fighter in the Galaxy.”

Thell looked at him, the corners of her mouth lifting just fractionally. 

“And then you’ll send me back to the Academy.”

“Not if that is not what you want,” he said. “I will look into our options, and we can talk about it after the test, alright?”

Thias nodded.
“You are strong.” Thrawn said. 

She only shrugged. 

“You should get some rest,” Thell said. “Tomorrow is your last day before the test and you’ll be very busy.” 

“I’m sorry I hurt you, mama,” Thias said, her stony mask dissolving and tears coming to her eyes. 

“My bird, you didn’t hurt me,” Thell said, moving closer to Thias. 

“I did. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Thias shook her head as she buried her face in Thell’s shoulder. 

As Thrawn observed Thell comfort Thias and eventually persuade her to rest, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Thias’ apologies, which continued to be repeated over and over, weren’t about Thell’s head wound at all. There was something deeper happening in the girl that she feared would hurt Thell. He resolved to interrogate the administrators at the Academy until he had figured out exactly what had transpired there. 

Chapter Text

13 | Mitth’ia’safis

Thias’ heart raced as she strapped into her sleek, black TIE pilot flight suit. Beyond the racing torrent of her anxiety, she heard Mother running through the plans for the test one more time. 

“—then after those maneuvers, you will perform the jump. Do you remember the coordinates?”

“Yes,” Thias said. “But they’re in the navicomputer already.”

“But in case something goes wrong.”

Thias tried her best to give her a comforting smile, though she felt a bit nauseous at those words. Something was going to go wrong, at least from her mother’s perspective. “In the case that something goes wrong, I have never been known to struggle with navigation. I’ll come home.”

“I know, I know,” Mother huffed.

“What, you don’t believe in your ship?” Thias tried to stay as lighthearted as possible, doing her best to appear completely nonchalant. 

“Of course I do. I’m just making sure you know how to fly it.” Mother smiled too. 

That was good. But it only added to the guilt beginning to swirl with the anxiety in Thias’ gut. She had to focus on restraining the trembling in her muscles.

Mother sighed, returning her gaze to her datapad. “After you come out of hyperspace in the Garel system, you’ll dock with the station there. You have reviewed all the docking details? Confident with their systems?”

“Yes, it’s almost identical to every other Imperial station.”

Mother rolled her eyes. “Humor me. After you dock, you’ll exit the ship and the engineers at the station will run the diagnostics I asked them to. Once they clear you, you’ll just leave the station, jump back to the Lothal system, and then we celebrate!”

Thias nodded, turning her back to Mother to pick up her helmet and hide her face. That was the plan, as far as Mother knew. But when Thias arrived at the station, things were going to proceed a bit differently. It had been easy enough to get a hold of Mother’s engineer clearance codes and then transmit them to Kanan over the comm before she destroyed it. Mother trusted her and just left her things scattered about the house. Thias had never given her reason not to.

Hopefully, by the time Thias had docked with the Garel station, Kanan’s operatives would already have used those codes to infiltrate the dock. They would hold her at blasterpoint and commandeer the TIE, jumping out of the system along a different trajectory.

It was a simple plan, but good enough given that no one would see it coming. And it also gave Thias the ability to deny her involvement. There would still be consequences, of course. The Empire would expect her to die rather than allow such a precious piece of tech to end up the wrong hands.

She had been worried that Father had somehow put it together that night at the table. Since he was still letting her run the test, she had to assume she had barely wormed her way out of it. But after this? The chances that he figured out she had been involved were high. 

She just had to keep him from finding out before the test. Now that she was suited up with her helmet tucked under her arm, she felt she was in the clear. Thias even toyed with the idea of just telling him what she had done after the fact, as long as no one else was suspicious. What would he do? Let the Empire punish his own daughter? She would likely not be allowed to fly for the Empire again. But that was fine with her. Father would prevent it from escalating further from that. If he wanted to insist on intervening in her life, fine. She would let him clean up her mess for once. He could do what he wanted with her after that. She didn’t care. Her life wasn’t going anywhere here anyways. 

The one thing that did worry her, was the potential impact on Mother. Would they suspect her at all? A hijacking couldn’t really be attributed to the engineer. And Thias had made sure that the codes she had taken weren’t specific to her. They could have been stolen from any engineer ranked high enough to have access to the Defender project. But it would definitely set back her project. As much as that would hurt her though, it didn’t tarnish Thias’ resolve. Maybe Mother couldn’t see yet how evil the Empire was, but she wouldn’t want to be building for them if she did.

Thias watched the engineer crew scrambling around with their last checks as Mother barked out orders to them. 

“Are you ready?” Father’s voice asked from behind her, sending a wave of anxiety and nausea over Thias. 

She turned to him, avoiding his eyes, and nodded.

“I’m sure this will be easy for you,” he said. 

She shrugged. 

“We’re in position,” he called to Mother, who turned to him and nodded sternly before returning her attention to the fighter and the engineers. Thias focused her energy into her Second Sight in an attempt to probe his thoughts. Father lowered his voice. “Make your mother proud.” In place of suspicion, she only found a general sense of warmth tinged with guilt.

“She’s already proud,” Thias said, lifting her chin and turning away from him. She kicked herself for the act of defiance as she approached the TIE, worrying that any moment now he would call her back and call off the test. 

“I’m proud of you too, Mitth’ia’safis,” he called in Cheunh.

Her gut sank. She stopped long enough to offer him a nod over her shoulder, then made her way over to stand next to Mother. The engineers and droids had all been cleared away. 

“Ready, ch'eo ch’ol besbi ?” Mother said, looking up at her with a wide smile. 

“Yes, ticsen'aci .” 

“You just focus on flying today, alright? That’s what you’re meant to do. Don’t worry about anything else.”

Thias nodded, throat tight as she lowered her helmet over her head and sealed it shut tight. The last thing she needed was Mother, or anyone else, seeing her emotional right now.

She could feel the love emanating from Mother with her Second Sight. No, in the Force , like Kanan had explained. 

However, surrounding her Mother’s warmth, Thias was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of impending darkness. It drove Thias’ low-level nausea almost to the point of gagging in seconds. She swallowed hard and tried to shift her attention away from it, focusing on Mother’s optimistic smile. Would she ever see her mother smile again? Thias blinked. What a strange thought. Of course she would.

But the thought still drove her to impulsively throw her arms around Mother’s neck in a tight hug.

“Oh!” Mother exclaimed. She had probably been the one to initiate every hug in Thias’ life, so Thias could understand why she was startled. 

“I’m sorry for everything,” she whispered in Cheunh. 

“You don’t need to be—”

“I love you, Mother.”

“I… I love you too, Thias.”

Thias let go of the hug quickly.

Mother reached up, and, taking hold of the sides of her helmet, coaxed her down so she could press a kiss to the helmet’s forehead.

When she had pulled away, Thias nodded to her once before turning to climb up into the TIE, breathing deeply to will her emotions to subside. She settled into the cockpit and watched all the figures in the fighter bay of the Chimaera filing away. Mother waved furiously, grinning wide. 

But before long they were gone and it was just her in the silence of the ship. She closed her eyes, took one long breath, and let it out slowly, willing the anxiety to fade away in the face of the task at hand. 

She was doing something good, something that mattered , maybe for the first time. Something that she wanted for herself. 

When she opened her eyes, her hands flew over the controls, flipping switches and pressing buttons to bring the TIE to life. 

In minutes, she could feel the machine humming beneath her hands. 

“TIE Defender Pilot Mitth’ia’safis,” Father’s voice came over the comm system, “Prepare for launch.”

Chapter Text

14 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

Thrawn was relaxed as he observed Thias’ performance, the maneuvers that Thell had instructed her to perform only occasionally bringing her in front of the Chimaera’s viewport. He knew that she was a much more skilled pilot than these maneuvers required, and Thell’s fighter was more than well-suited to the task. He stood back, arms crossed, watching Thell as she stared at her datapad and directed Thias. Perhaps it was a breach of protocol to let Thell stand at the head of the bridge without him directly beside her. But the humans on his crew needed to see that she deserved the same respect they offered him. It was such a waste of time for her obvious competence to be questioned.

Thell’s shoulders were squared and she stood straight. Her hair was neatly tied back, the longer strands that typically framed her face braided tightly and wound around her hair fastener. Since taking control of the Defender project, he had seen her in this neat, professional form more frequently. It was uncharacteristic of her, but he found it pleasant in a certain way. She wore the refinement and undeniable competence well. There were many times that he had wished for her to be more like this.

He could see the officers in their places stealing glances over their shoulders at her.  It had taken time for those furtive conversations amongst his crew to fade after Thell and Thias had first appeared; he sensed this appearance, the first time many of them had seen Thell in person, would rekindle all of those conversations again. But with her regal appearance and cool attitude, he imagined that she wouldn’t be far from what they pictured when they thought of a Grand Admiral’s wife.

It was amusing to think that that was how she would be perceived by them. He smiled to himself, thinking of that wild girl in the Rentor forests that had gone on and on about the physics of spaceflight, about the features that would make for the best ship, about the most functional artistic design.

He had loved her ever since.

As if she had heard his thoughts, she half-turned to look back at him. “The first tests are complete… Admiral.”

Her round eyes shone with pride. It was true that she wore the refinement well, but he found himself missing the wide smile she was concealing. Her deference to him was almost unnerving. He remembered her crouched over her engineer station on the Springhawk with unbrushed hair in her wrinkled CEDF uniform. He remembered how she would roll her eyes and shake her head when he called the ship his ship.

He nodded to her, then stepped up next to her. “TIE Defender Pilot Mitth’ia’safis, prepare for jump to the Garel system.”

Now, he finally felt a tinge of worry. Of course he trusted Thell’s engineering with every fiber of his being, but still: the TIE had never been through hyperspace on its own before. Let alone while carrying the most valuable passenger in the Galaxy, as far as he was concerned.

The TIE Defender slowly taxied into view in front of the bridge view port, its three solar array wings glinting in the light from Lothal’s star.

“Ready for jump, Admiral,” Thias said.

He nodded to the comm station. “Garel station, are you prepared for interception?”

“We’re ready, sir. Fighters are launched.”

“Pilot, you are cleared to jump when ready.”

“Acknowledged.”

The TIE’s twin ion engines glowed, then it suddenly shot forward and disappeared.

Thell stared at her datapad for another moment before she held it against her chest and stared out at the viewport, waiting. Her brow was low and creased slightly in the middle, but her jaw was set.

Thrawn stilled the urge to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, turning his gaze back to the viewport.

In just hours, this would be over. Once the test, the documentation, and the reports were all finished, he would take some time away from it all just for his family. Thias needed to learn to trust him, and that wasn’t going to happen from a distance. Something in her had truly been broken at the Academy, but Thrawn suspected it was likely the shattering of something that had already been cracked long ago. Thias had always felt isolated and afraid. He hadn’t been there to protect her.

The seconds continued to slip by. The bridge remained silent.

He would need to read much more about the abilities of the jedi and how they learned to control them. He certainly couldn’t allow her to leave for any further pilot training again until that was dealt with. But they needed to figure it out together; pretending like it wasn’t a problem wouldn’t suffice any longer. Acting like it would fade, as it typically did for most sky-walkers, wouldn’t help her. He and Thell needed to start treating the issue like it wouldn’t fade at all. Like it was part of her for life. Perhaps it would even get stronger. If that were true, the most important thing would be to keep her safe.

If it became clear that Thias truly wouldn’t be able to control and conceal her abilities, it would be difficult to figure out a good solution. Thrawn knew of the Inquisitors. If her power became known, Thias would be given the option to join them or die. While the Emperor kept the details of how his dark servants were created close to his chest, Thrawn knew enough to know that was the last thing he wanted for his daughter. Not to mention the punishment he and Thell would face for keeping her secret. The last thing he wanted was to be away from her again, but perhaps the only option would be for her to go back to the Ascendency. She didn’t seem too interested in being around him anyways.

But that possibility, and what it could mean for Thell, wasn’t something he wanted to think about. He would not lose his daughter again.

Thrawn clasped his hands behind his back. He saw Commodore Faro quickly glance away as he looked over at her. Amusing. She was interested in Thell as well.

The silence was interrupted by the sound of Thias’ voice, and relief washed over him. “Arrival in Garel System, Admiral. Jump successful.”

Thell bounced a little onto her toes before jumping into action, asking Thias about various system readings. Thrawn couldn’t help but smile fractionally at her barely contained excitement.

“It seems like all is clear,” Thell said in her thick accent. “Proceed to Garel station for—”

“Fighters, return to formation.” The station commander’s voice broke in. “Fighters, do you copy?” His voice gained sudden intensity. “Sir! We’re picking up readings from—”

“I see them,” said Thias.

Thrawn tensed at the sound of blasterfire. “Thias?”

“Taking evasive maneuvers!” There was concealed panic in her voice now.

Thrawn turned to Lieutenant Agral at the helm control, hands unclasping from behind his back. “Get us there, now.”

“Thias, what’s going on?” Thell called. Thrawn could see the unbridled fear on her face.

“Hyperdrive coming online in 2 minutes, Sir,” Agral said.

The sound of blasterfire continued, increasing with speed. “Garel fighters are firing on me!” Thias yelled, “And there’s four—” two loud bursts were followed by a loud explosion “no, three additional hostiles! I—”

The silence that cut through her voice was deafening.

“Thias?!” Thell called frantically.

No answer.

“Why are you firing on her?” Thrawn demanded, commanding his racing blood to slow so that he could maintain control of the situation. It wasn’t the first time that someone he cared about had been under fire. But never his own daughter.

“We’re not— er— I don’t know, sir!”

“Find out!”

“Sir! The TIE has been hit! It’s going down on the planet! Currently working to neutralize hostiles! Launching more fighters!”

“Thias!” Thell screamed.

Thrawn blinked, staring at the darkness peppered with stars beyond the viewport. There was movement around him. Sound. But every fiber of his being was devoted to willing the Chimaera to move, willing the stars he saw to become streaks of light.

In his arms, slightly lifted, waiting for action, he could almost feel the weight of the infant child he had once held in that dark apartment on Naporar.

He had promised her so much.

The stars became streaks, as he had willed them, and suddenly sound crashed in on his ears.

“Sir!” Faro was calling. He looked down at her standing in front of him. He blinked. Faro was staring, eyes wide, at the comms station.

Thrawn turned, seeing Thell was practically pushing Senior Lieutenant Lomar from his seat. Troopers were approaching with raised blasters.

“Thias!” She cried. “Thias, please say something!”

In a few steps, Thrawn had his hands gripping her shoulders, pulling her away from Lomar. He put as much calm confidence as he could into his voice. Control. He needed to focus on maintaining control. “It’s alright, Thell. She’s alright. They just knocked out her comms.” He nearly snarled at the troopers, “Stand down.”

She whipped around to face him and the look in her eyes made him almost withdraw from her. “Don’t lie to me!”

The silence on the bridge had taken on a new kind of tension.

“This does not help her.”

“Thias!” Thell called, as she lunged toward the comms again, barely not strong enough to break free from his grasp.

He firmly pulled her back. “Thell, calm down,” Thrawn hissed.

She shrunk back at the intensity in his voice and simply stared at the ground with panicked, wide eyes.

“She will be alright,” Thrawn said.

They dropped out of hyperspace.

“Prepare a shuttle!” he barked. “And launch fighters!”

“I’m coming with you,” Thell said in Cheunh.

“No, you’re not,” he said back firmly.

Her eyes darkened, glancing between him and the troopers behind him. “Try to stop me,” she bit out.

He could feel the tensing of her shoulders in his hands. He released his grip on her, nodding slowly. “Alright,” he said softly.

Garel station command came back over the comms. “Sending you last known trajectory for the TIE now.”

Chapter Text

15 | Hera Syndulla

“Walk me through it again,” Hera said, arms crossed as Ezra pulled on one of his stormtrooper helmets.

“You made the plan,” he whined.

“And you don’t always listen. I don’t like sending you in there alone.”

Ezra huffed. “Zeb flies me to the station in the Phantom. We use the codes from your contact to dock. I pretend to be a trooper, go to the fighter bay—”

“Which dock?”

“307.”

“Good, then what?”

“Commandeer the fighter.”

“Without hurting the pilot.”

He nodded, but tilted his head. “How are you so sure we can trust this person? They’re a random Imperial pilot.”

“Have I failed you before?” Hera said, though the words felt sour in her mouth. She didn’t know if she could trust her. She was trusting the Force, something she had never been able to feel for herself. The girl had sounded genuine over the comms, but emotion could be faked. “Besides, the pilot is a cadet. We know that cadets are most likely to defect when they first start to get a sense of what the Empire really is.” Hera tried to comfort herself with the thought of Sabine, who had also once been an Imperial cadet. Perhaps this Ia was of the same mind.

Zeb walked into the room. “And they’re lettin’ a cadet fly their special secret project?”

The reasoning that Ia’s mother was running the project didn’t sit well with Hera. It all sounded contrived and made her nervous. “That’s enough. Just get going.”

Ezra shook his head and climbed the ladder into the Phantom anyway. Once Zeb had followed him, Hera left to seek out Kanan in the cockpit.

All she could trust was that the Force had guided Kanan. But hadn’t the Force been his guide to Malachor as well? If it was the will of the Force that they should lose Ahsoka and that Kanan should lose his sight, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to follow its guidance.

Hera swallowed that thought quickly. Yes, her trust in the Force was tenuous lately. But she trusted Kanan with her whole heart. If Kanan trusted that this was what the Force wanted, then she would give it a shot.    

He turned toward her as she entered the cockpit. She would almost have thought he was looking at her, but of course he was listening for her footsteps and sensing her presence. “Ready?” he asked, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile.

She nodded, then caught herself. “Yeah, ready.” She settled into her seat, strapping in so she would be ready to move.

“Good luck, boys,” Hera said, as she felt the vibrations of the Phantom launching. “If anything at all doesn’t seem right, get out of there and rendezvous with us right away.”

“Got it,” Ezra said. “You can trust us.”

“Well, you can trust me,” Zeb said.

“Hey, I’m the one actually going on the station. You don’t fit in stormtrooper armor.”

“We trust both of you,” Hera sighed. “Now go get that TIE.”

“May the Force be with you,” Kanan added.

“You too,” Ezra said. “Going comm silent now.”

The anxiety in Hera’s gut swelled as the quiet seconds ticked by. She watched the Phantom head toward the distant station, eventually becoming barely visible against the stars due to the light reflected off of its hull from the planet below “I don’t like this,” she said.

“They don’t know we’re here,” Kanan said. From their position on one of Garel’s small moons, which harbored a strongly ferromagnetic core, their position would be obscured from any Imperial scanners.

She couldn’t help but voice her worry. “Assuming your contact didn’t get cold feet… or wasn’t setting a trap from the beginning.”

“I understand,” he said. “But I think you think we can trust her too. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”

Her seat creaked as she sat back into it. “I don’t know what to think. I just know we need a win.”

They both sat in silence. Kanan put a hand on her shoulder. He had been doing things like that more, just small physical comforts. She felt guilty when she accepted it; she could feel that he wanted more from her than she was able to give him now. He always had. Hera would never accuse him of not caring for the importance of the Rebellion— Kanan always did all he could to help individuals affected by the Empire— but she also knew that he likely wouldn’t be playing this active role if she wasn’t so involved in the cause. If she told him she wanted to disappear to some corner of the Galaxy that the Empire hadn’t thoroughly screwed over yet, there was no question in her mind that he would drop everything in an instant to do exactly that.

She sighed deeply, feeling the weight of his touch as the Phantom grew closer and closer to the station. Maybe if she had met Kanan in a different time, they could have had some kind of quiet life together. But this war was showing no sign of ending soon. They needed today to go well. Then they needed many more days like today if they wanted to turn the tide.

“I think they’ve docked with the station,” she said softly.

“The codes Ia gave us were good.”

“I can’t see them from here.”

“Yeah, but do you see blasterfire?”

There was a flicker in the distance and Hera sat forward in her seat. “There’s the TIE,” she said, “It really can jump.” Being confronted it with that way made her gut fill with dread. It would be a formidable weapon against the Rebellion.

“And we’re going to figure out its weaknesses," Kanan said.

Suddenly, the space around the station was filled with streaks of red and green.

“Kriff!” Hera exclaimed, flying into action over the controls. Kanan gripped his seat just in time as the ship leapt up from the ground. “Someone is firing on the TIE! Strap in!” 

Hera rocketed the Ghost toward the station and the battling ships started coming into view. It was a confusing mess of non-Imperial ships and standard TIEs all chasing after the Defender. No matter how advanced the TIE was, she could tell the pilot was extremely skilled as it narrowly dodged through the barrage. But with the number of ships, Hera could see it wouldn’t be long until her shields gave way.

“Who?” Kanan exclaimed, scrambling to strap in and barely succeeding before she banked hard to the right.

“I don’t—” She groaned in frustration as she recognized the symbol emblazoned on the side of one ship. “No, it’s Gerrera. They must have infiltrated the station before we did; there’s other TIEs firing on her too. We need to just get Ezra and Zeb and—” A bolt from one TIEs grazed the underside of the Defender, which let off bright sparks and started plummeting in an arc, succumbing to the gravity of the planet. “—she’s lost shields. She’s hit. Going down on the planet.”

Hera felt paralyzed as she lingered at the edge of the fire fight and prepared for Saw’s ships to notice and turn on her at any second.

“We can’t leave her, Hera.” She knows the stubbornness in his voice all too well.

She saw a new flood of TIEs suddenly launch from the station. “We can’t—”

"Hera.” Stubbornness with a hint of desperation. “We could still get something from this. She knows things. We can’t just leave her.”

She groaned. “The moment Imperials enter atmosphere, we’re leaving.” She pulled the Ghost into a steep dive, following the Defender’s path toward Garel.

“Hera, what’s going on?” Zeb’s voice suddenly came over comm.

“Get out of there,” Hera yelled. “Wait for us on our exit trajectory. We’ll meet you there soon.”

The hull of the Ghost rumbled as they broke through the atmosphere. Hera prayed to the Force that there would be something to salvage when they made it to the ground.

Chapter Text

16 | Mitth’ia’safis

Thias’ heart was in her throat as she gripped the controls of the TIE, pulling upward with all her strength as the machine fought against her, giving into gravity. Through the viewport, all she could see was the orange glow of the atmosphere boiling against the hull of the TIE with the friction of her entry.

The muscle memory of her crash simulations back at Taharim came back to her, but it wasn’t enough. She was going down hard. All the lights inside the TIE flashed red, a number of overlapping alarms screaming as she did her best, with trembling hands over uncooperative steering systems, to slow the ship’s descent. Now was not the time to allow herself to succumb to an overload spell.

She breathed as deeply as her tensed chest would allow. Her forearms screamed with pain and threatened to give way.

The TIE broke through the clouds. Through the glow, she could see the surface of the planet approaching quickly. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat, seeing she was on a trajectory toward the edge of a city.

She groaned, then with all her strength, forced the yoke of the TIE to the left, towards the empty plains, letting out a guttural yell.

The TIE rumbled and shook all around her, but it wasn’t spinning. That was good. She still had control. But the ground was coming up fast and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to land safely. Her eyes blurred with tears.

I’m sorry, Mother.

Thias closed her eyes and tried to relax. It would hurt less that way. She took one deep breath in, and as she let it out, she pushed out all the blinking lights and noise. She allowed her spirit to sink into the ocean of the Force as she did when she was navigating.

Her next breath came in sharply and her eyes shot open. It felt as though her bones were suddenly filled with energy, tingling and red hot. She still felt the Force all around her, though her eyes were open.

Fight. The thought filled her mind and she couldn’t even be certain that it was her own.

She yelled and pulled up on the controls with renewed strength, envisioning the whole TIE lifting, taking course level with the ground. She was shocked as it began to move with her command, whining under the strain. She laughed wildly in disbelief.

It wouldn’t be enough to get back into the sky, but if she could angle it just right—

The ground came up quickly and Thias closed her eyes, trusting the Force.

The impact threw her head forward with such force it felt as though her neck nearly snapped. But the vector of force remained aimed in one direction; she wasn’t tumbling.

The TIE carved into the ground for what felt like forever. The rumbling threatened to undo the tension in her jaw as she desperately clenched her teeth together to keep from biting her tongue.

Then the only rumbling was the blood through her veins. Thias gasped, realizing she had been holding her breath. Her quick breathing made her feel trapped in her helmet, but she didn’t dare remove it. The whining of alarms screamed over the creaking of metal.

She struggled to straighten her spine against the pain in her neck and her fear that somehow moving would cause the whole TIE to explode.

She blinked, seeing only clouds of smoke out the viewport as she breathed heavily.

Fire. Shit. She needed to move.

Slowly, she convinced her shaking hands to release the steering controls. With her right hand, she felt for the emergency ejection lever on the side of her seat. She found it and braced herself as she yanked it hard, but nothing happened.

Well, that system was out. She was going to have to do it the old fashioned way. She looked up, wincing in pain and beginning to breathe even more quickly as she grappled with the possibility of being trapped.

She unbuckled herself, then reached up. Her shoulders protested with sharp pain as she did, but she was able to get a hold of the ladder rung above her. She straightened her legs to the best of her ability and pulled herself up. Her whole body trembled, but she willed it into obedience: she had not survived an impossible crash landing just to burn to death slowly on the ground.

Thias was able to stand on her pilot’s chair to give herself the leverage she needed to get to the exit hatch. She took hold of the manual hatch release lever then took one deep breath to steel herself against the possibility that she wouldn’t be able to get it open. She exhaled the breath and cried out, putting all her strength into turning it. She felt a wave of relief wash over her as it gave way. She pushed it up desperately and struggled out.

Once Thias had her upper body out, she surveyed her surroundings. The TIE had left a deep gash in Garel’s surface, probably miles long. There was definitely a fire somewhere below her, from the orange light illuminating the otherwise dark plains. She had crashed on the night side of the planet.

Thias ducked, hearing the roar of engines above her. A ship appeared and its lights blinded her as it turned around to face her and started hovering to the ground.

The appearance of the ship made her look back down into the TIE. She struggled to remember why she felt she should be concerned about whoever was approaching her as she gasped for breath. Right, she had been shot out of the sky by some mystery ships and some fellow TIEs.

Had the Empire discovered her betrayal and set the TIEs on her? Or had Kanan betrayed her?

She squinted into the ship lights. They weren’t organized in any of the Imperial configurations she had memorized. Shit.

She gritted her teeth and struggled to arrange her adrenaline-fueled thoughts into some semi-coherent plan as she ducked back down into the TIE. She looked around her taking stock of her options. She swallowed hard, collecting herself. What was around her now was what they wanted. She locked her eyes onto the navicomputer. That was the most valuable. It was the system that interfaced with the hyperdrive and held the most information about what set this TIE apart from others. It also served as the “black box” for the TIE and would survive anything except an intentional self-destruct or complete disintegration.

She dropped back into her seat, groaning in pain. She leaned forward and set about separating the navicomputer from the console it was in. Thankfully, since it was meant to be extracted in emergencies, it wasn’t too difficult. As she worked, she continued glancing up out the viewport, watching the dark shape of an approaching figure. The moment she had the navicomputer out, she clutched it to her chest, startled by how heavy it was in her exhausted arm. She struggled to stand, breathing quickly.

She shifted the navicomputer to one arm, struggling to hoist herself and her valuable cargo back up the ladder and out of the exit hatch. She almost dropped it, but she was able to get the navicomputer onto the edge of the opening, then pull herself up after it as her muscles cried out in pain. Unable to persuade her body further, she simply sat on the edge of the hatch.

She quickly unholstered her blaster and pointed it at the approaching figure. “Don’t—” her voice cracked over the Basic words. She was startled by how emotional she sounded and swallowed hard. “Don’t come any closer!”

She struggled to put together what she was seeing as a straight beam of green light appeared before her.

By reflex, she raised a shaking arm in defense.

“Ia?”

It was Kanan. Her heart leapt. She could see him now, illuminated by the green blade coming from the object in his hand. Lightsaber. His blind eyes were covered by some kind of mask. But it was definitely him.

She forced down the sudden nausea that had risen, not interested in barfing inside of her helmet. Her arms felt too weak to move any more, let alone lift her helmet up. “Who fired on me?” The hand holding her blaster trembled, matching the trembling in her voice. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll blow this whole thing and you’ll get nothing!”

“Not us,” he said reassuringly, deactivating his lightsaber and putting it down. He raised his hands to show they were empty. “A terrorist called Saw Gerrera. He must have found out about the launch. But the Empire will be done cleaning up his crew any second. We need to go.”

Her stomach dropped. Relief washed over her. She hadn’t been betrayed. “The TIE…”

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“But—” a million scattered thoughts crowded her mind, all incoherent. Mother. If she was going to leave, Mother needed to come with her. It was going to be obvious she had betrayed them. The nausea washed over her again. All she wanted to do was to collapse, let someone else take care of all this.

“We don’t care about the TIE anymore,” Kanan said. “It’s not your fault. Now, you need help. Are you coming with us, or are you waiting for the Imperials? You won’t be able to contact us again.”

Never again. She looked at the glowing weapon of the Jedi in his hand. Then looked over at her Mother’s work, now a wreck. Her fault.

“I…” she looked at the navicomputer under her left hand. “I have the navicomputer.” She looked back up at him, seeing that he was joined by another figure. She was startled to see green head tails. A Twi’lek.

“Are you coming or not, kid?” the Twi’lek woman called. “It’s now or never.”

The human deferred to her, taking a step back. The human deferred to the non-human.

She looked down at herself, navicomputer under her hand. How would she explain this to her parents? How was she alright, but the TIE was just missing its navicomputer? But if she left it in place, Kanan and the Twi’lek would get nothing.

They wanted to help her, regardless of the TIE. Why?

Adjusting to the light, she stared at the lightsaber on Kanan’s belt. He was Jedi. Like she could be.

She remembered Noa, her drawings still in her drawer back on Lothal.

“We need to go, Kanan. Now.” the Twi’lek woman said.

She looked down at the TIE, eyes filling with tears. Somehow, she would find a way to make Mother understand.

She looked back at Kanan and the Twi’lek. She gritted her teeth and tossed the navicomputer to the grass, dropping down inside the TIE.

She flicked open the transparasteel guard over the self-destruct switch with her boot, then stomped the switch hard.

She clambered back up, ignoring the pain in her limbs, and climbed out as quickly as she could. The TIE creaked and shifted as she moved, making her heart leap. She leapt from the TIE to the ground, trying to roll to absorb the fall, but her shocked body didn’t cooperate and one of her ankles flared in pain.

She gritted her teeth. Nothing was broken.

"Get back!” she called. She scrambled in the rough grass, finding the navicomputer and then crawling as far from the TIE as she could with it clutched to her chest.

The explosion vibrated through the earth as she pressed her helmet visor to the ground. She laid there, breathing heavily, until she felt a hand grip her shoulder and turn her over.

“Come on, Ia!” Kanan yelled, “Let’s go!”

She was pulled to her feet, dazed as she felt the grass whipping against her boots and then clattering against a landing ramp.

She sat down hard the moment she was released, looking down to see the navicomputer still clutched to her chest.

“Hey, you’re alright,” Kanan said, patting a hand against her shoulder. “You did good, kid.”

Despite all the adrenaline and confusion, Thias felt a sudden glow of pride.

She dropped the navicomputer into her lap suddenly as the floor beneath her rumbled and tilted.

“Hold on!” Kanan said.

She gripped his arm, not aware enough of anything around her to find something else.

The ship rumbled beneath her and eventually leveled out. She breathed heavily. Tears fell from her eyes inside her helmet and she tried to blink them away. It didn’t feel real. Her whole body hurt.

Once the ship seemed to have stabilized, Thias let go of Kanan’s arm and slowly laid down on the floor of the ship, closing her eyes.

“As soon as we get out of here, we’ll take a look at you, alright?” Kanan said. “You’ll be okay. Honestly, I’m surprised you're still in one piece after that crash.”

Thias could only nod. Panic clutched at her lungs as she did her best to calm herself. This was all too much.

But the Force had saved her. She was sure of that. And she also believed the Force had led her here, just as it had led her to meet Kanan in the first place.

The ship seemed to slow completely, then rattle suddenly. Thias heard mechanical whirring through the floor. She sat up onto her elbows.

The Twi’lek’s voice suddenly came over speakers. “Phantom secure. Strap in to jump.”

“Do you think you can move?” Kanan asked.

Thias nodded, though she wasn’t sure. Her body felt stiff and fiery as she sat up fully and let Kanan help her to her feet. She watched him pick up the navicomputer.

He showed her to a ladder and she climbed it as quickly as she could manage. She couldn’t take in all the details of the space she was in, but with Kanan’s help, managed to find a seat to strap into just as the ship shuddered with the jump.

She swallowed hard, fighting a wave of nausea again as she thought about Mother, coming upon the wreckage she had left behind. With shaking hands, Thias reached up to press her helmet release. The helmet hissed and she pulled it off, suddenly aware of the sweaty strands of hair clinging to her face, but more relieved by the fresh air filling her panicked lungs. She closed her eyes, holding her helmet in her lap, and leaned her head back against the seat she was in. Her whole body felt heavy.

Though her stomach was sick with guilt at the thought, she couldn’t help but wonder how much easier life would be for her parents, especially Father, now that she was out of the way. Her hands trembled on her TIE pilot helmet.

“Karabast!” A new voice suddenly exclaimed, making her eyes shoot open. It wasn’t a word she was familiar with.

“Who are you?” Said the human boy, standing next to the huge purple creature in front of another ladder leading upwards.

Thias gripped the straps holding her into her seat, realizing the purple creature was pointing some kind of weapon at her.

“Calm down,” Kanan said, sitting next to her. “She was the pilot who helped us with the TIE.”

“What do ya mean ‘helped us’?” The creature— or rather, person, she supposed— exclaimed. “We didn’t get a TIE!”

Kanan held out the navicomputer. “We got the—”

“She’s like Thrawn!” The human said, hand on his belt. “She’s with Thrawn!”

Now, Thias really felt like she might throw up. “I—”

“What do you mean?” Kanan asked. “She helped us.”

“She’s—”

“Calm down, Ezra.” The Twi’lek woman was standing in the entrance to a hallway.

Thias looked over at her, locking eyes with her as the nausea became overwhelming. She gagged, then heaved over the floor between her feet, the vomit splashing on her boots. She coughed, feeling her cheeks grow warm.

The human boy, Ezra, made a sound of disgust.

“I—” Thias tried to speak, but vomited again. She could only stare down beneath her feet, disgusted and afraid.

“It’s alright,” Kanan said, unbuckling from the seat next to her. “She’s been through enough for today.”

She felt his hands on the buckles of her seat. She let him help her up as she stuttered. “My… my mother. She—”

“It’s alright,” Kanan said.

“Please,” Thias said as she stood, shaking. “Please let me try to explain.”

Kanan helped steady her as she looked at Ezra’s feet.

“My mother. She helped… helped design the TIE. She’s…” Thias struggled to find what she should say. What could she say? Clearly, they hated Father. Perhaps with good reason, with all she knew. “She’s… affiliated with Thrawn. We are… from his world. But I want no part in it… anymore.”

She felt even more guilty, lying to them on top of everything else. But there was nothing left in her stomach to feel sick.

“Please I… I’m tired of being alone. I’m… I’m not like him.”

The purple being lowered his weapon slightly.

“I’m Hera,” the Twi’lek woman said. “Welcome aboard the Ghost. That’s Ezra and Zeb. And you’ve met Kanan.”

Thias nodded. “I’m…” She stopped herself. With what she had just done, she had no right to call herself by her family name. Nor did she want to. She was fed up with the Mitth, fed up with all she had been expected to be, fed up with the world that asked her to hide herself. She wasn’t an important member of any family, she wasn’t a sky-walker, and she would never reach any real military rank now. She was just one person and she felt that it would be a long time before her tongue next formed Cheunh words. “I’m… Ia. Ia Safis.” Ia would no longer be her core name; it was her first name.

“Welcome aboard, Ia. I think you need some rest.”

She nodded. Every bone in her body cried out at the suggestion.

Kanan and Hera helped head her down a hallway.

“We can put her up in Sabine’s room,” Kanan said.

“Are you sure?” Hera asked quietly.

“I’m sure.”

A door hissed open and after a few steps, Kanan was helping her climb into a bed. The door hissed shut again and there was silence, apart from the hum of the ship and the muted sound of voices outside.

The heaviness took over and her eyelids slowly fluttered shut. She laid on her back in the new bed, on a new ship, with new people outside the door.

Ia Safis thought of her mother, as her body demanded sleep.

What have I done?

Chapter Text

17 | Mitth’ell’unaris

Thell gripped the straps of her seat as the dropship rumbled through Garel’s atmosphere, barely keeping herself from hyperventilating. She scanned her eyes over the troopers lining the center of the dropship, their blasters in one hand and the middle handrail in the other. They all pretended they weren’t watching her from behind their helmet visors.

The moment the ship began to level out, Thrawn unbuckled from his seat across from her and stood, steadying himself against the wall of ship. He moved to stand behind the pilot, looking out the viewport.

Thell unbuckled as well, but at the sound of her doing so, Thrawn looked back at her with fire in his eyes.

“Stay there,” he said, his voice low.

“Well, what do you see?” she called, startled by how shrill she sounded. “Did she land?”

Thrawn continued staring out the window, statuesque.

Her heightened emotions funneled into rage. “Thrawn!”

The trooper nearest to her flinched at the outburst towards his superior officer.

Thell huffed and continued unstrapping herself.

Thrawn whipped around, ice in his voice. “I said stay. You will sit in that seat until I tell you it is safe to stand.”

The trooper shifted his grip on his blaster rifle.

Her hands trembled on the straps. She nearly sat back down, but the glimpse of a small corner of the viewport not shielded from her view by Thrawn’s broad shoulders made his orders impossible to follow. She needed to know. She needed to see.

She shrugged off the straps and stood, wobbling across to Thrawn as the ship continued its descent until she was close enough to him to grab his elbow and stabilize herself. Her heart lurched even more than it had before, as she heard the clicking sounds of blasters cocking into ready position.

“No, Thell,” Thrawn said firmly, turning quickly and holding her shoulders to attempt to block her view and move her back.

But she saw. Her gut dropped and it felt as though her rib cage was collapsing in on her. All the air in her lungs was forced out in a scream. She saw, she saw, she saw, and she couldn’t stop looking. The end of her world.

“Thell—”

She screamed again, feeling as if she was being ripped in two. The dropship was tracing along a black gash carved into the surface of the planet. The line was punctuated by a deep, smoking crater. “No!”

The dropship began landing and Thrawn gripped her arm to keep her from running to the door. “Thell,” he said. He switched to Cheunh, his voice calm and steady. “Thell, you need to stay here until we know that it’s safe.”

Thell’s heart ached in her chest and she attempted to wrench her arm from his grasp. “My daughter,” she cried in Cheunh.

“Thell, please,” he said, continuing in their native language, taking hold of her other arm.

She pulled away and tried to turn away as the troopers turned toward the door and the ship settled to the ground. Thrawn took her by the shoulders and set her in front of him. “My love,” he said his tone soft, but holding desperation.

She met his eyes and the emotion in them compelled her to stand in place.

Slowly he released her shoulders and brought his hands to her jaw, running his thumbs over her cheeks. “My love, I need you to stay here until we know it is safe. We do not know what we will find out there. I… I cannot lose both of you.”

Thell nearly gagged on the tightness in her throat and her eyes welled with tears. “Don’t say that.”

“Stay. Here.”

She nodded slowly as he withdrew his hands from her. She watched him check his blaster in its holster and follow the troopers outside as the doors hissed open.

She stood still, heart pounding in her chest. The growing silence that came with the sound of boots on dirt getting further away weighed down on her. The tightness in her throat made it difficult to breathe. She thought of Thias’ arms around her only hours ago. Had she known things were going wrong?

Why hadn’t she held her longer?

A tear traced its way down her cheek as she stood frozen, the ship empty except for the pilot behind her.

The putrid smell of burning electronics suddenly reached her nose and her body sprang into action. In a few steps she was out of the ship and running towards the plume of smoke.

In her mind, she saw her daughter, still small enough to lift into her arms, burning in the wreckage. She choked on the tightness in her throat and ran faster.

“Look for signs of ejection!” Thrawn was calling out as she approached.

She saw his eyes widen when he spotted her. She tried to dodge him, but he was faster and his grip on the back of her jacket took the breath out of her lungs. She lost her footing and Thrawn tried to keep her on her feet as she struggled against his grip. She coughed, choking at the tightness of her collar. Tears poured from her eyes, stinging from the chemical smoke in the air.

“Let me go!” she wheezed out. “I need to find her!”

“No, Thell,” he said through gritted teeth. “You don’t need to see this.”

“I know my ship!” she said. Why couldn’t he see? Why was he trying to keep her from finding her daughter? “I can find out where she went!”

“Thell—”

She groaned loudly and flung her head back to knock him off of her. The back of her head made strong contact. His grip on her released immediately.

Thell fell to her hands and knees on the dry dirt. She cried out suddenly, hearing a blast and feeling a searing pain on the outside of her shoulder. She saw a burnt hole in her jacket with blackened skin peering through. She looked around quickly, then saw the stormtrooper with blaster aimed at her.

Within her next heartbeat, Thrawn was standing next to her. Another louder shot rang out and she covered her ears reflexively. The trooper’s head flew back as he crumped to the ground. She looked up, eyes wide with panic, seeing Thrawn calmly pointing his blaster at where the trooper had been with one hand, while his other hand held his nose, which was dripping blood onto his white uniform. After a few seconds of silence, he lowered his blaster and Thell scrambled to her feet.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

The burn on her arm throbbed with pain but she doubted it was more than a surface wound. She simply turned to continue quickly towards the crater. If he was following her, he didn’t try to stop her again.

The two troopers at the edge of the crater stepped out of the way for her as she stared down. Her gut churned with nausea. All she could see was twisted metal and smoke.

“Thias!” she cried, voice hoarse. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tried to pick her way down. Some of the loose dirt gave way and she ended up sliding most of the way. The air around her was hot as she finally stopped by jamming her foot against a chunk of metal.

The ship that she had known so well was completely unrecognizable. It was hard to tell what had been what.

A sob escaped her as tears blurred her vision. If Thias had not ejected, there would be nothing left of her. “Thias!” She screeched.

She held an arm in front of her face to protect her face from the scalding air as she grew closer to the wreckage. “Thias!” she cried again, sobbing.

All of her ability to think logically faded into desperation as she searched for any sign that Thias had escaped. Hot metal burnt her hands as she dug through the wreckage.

She was faintly aware of Thrawn distantly calling her name. But nothing mattered more than this. She sobbed and sobbed. Wiring cut into her palms and hot smoke scorched her lungs.

She couldn’t have known how long she had searched before she suddenly saw a flash of color through the smoke that instantly made her gut churn. She stumbled over the wreckage, heat seeping through her boots.

“Thell!” she heard Thrawn call, sounding closer.

She picked up the hot metal rod in her hands, running her thumb over the yellow stripes. Thell fell to her knees in the hot, blackened dirt, letting out a wail that came from deepest corner of her heart.

She continued wailing, unable to do anything else.

“Thell…” Thrawn said, close to her now. He pulled her into his arms, the burning sensation against her knees fading away. She leaned against his shoulder, his tunic crusted with dried blood.

“It’s…” she choked on the words. “The lever for ejection.”

“Shhh…” he ran a comforting hand over her hair.

“She—” Thell was beginning to hyperventilate now, breathing quickly between each word, “—didn’t get out.”

Thrawn flinched as she screamed and clung to him. “We’re going to keep searching,” he whispered softly.

“Did they get away?” Thell cried. “Did the rebels get away?”

“Thell—”

She screamed to interrupt him. She had no patience for being comforted. The physical pain that wracked her body was worse than any she had ever experienced. Worse than the speeder bike crash that had almost killed her as a midager, worse than childbirth, worse than losing Thrawn.

“They killed my daughter!” She screamed, wailing as Thrawn held her amidst the smoking wreckage.

Chapter Text

18 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

The hot dirt burned into his knees as Thell’s nails cut into his shoulder. His muscles trembled from the strain of holding her. The dried blood on his lips and chin pulled at his skin. He couldn’t be sure how long he had been there, but Garel’s star, which had only just been cresting the horizon when they had landed, was now shining down on them, adding to the heat.

Thrawn blinked slowly. His body ached and cried out for relief, but it felt distant. The wail of Thell’s cries cascaded over his ears but his own breathing seemed louder.

The sound of shifting dirt, followed by the heavy sounds of steps, drew his attention. The trooper froze as he turned his head to look at him. After staring at each other silently for three heartbeats, the tumultuous emotion in Thrawn’s gut boiled into rage.

“Report!” he barked.

“Yes, sir, of course, sir.” The trooper cleared his throat. “We…” his voice trailed off, then returned, nearly whispering, “we have found no sign of ejection, sir.”

Thrawn’s stomach churned. “Check again!”

“We’ve searched four times already, sir.”

“But have you found the navicomputer?” Thrawn heard the vitriol in his own tone. The voice didn’t sound like his.

“No, sir. The station is now reporting that their scanners detected a ship. It appeared on scene shortly after the ambush began, dropped to the planet, then—”

“Why wasn’t I informed?” he spat.

“They only just now discovered it, reviewing their records, sir. They were more focused on—”

“Find it!”

“It… jumped out of the system, sir. We believe they… scavenged the wreckage for the hyperdrive before we arrived.”

“Did they take the pilot?”

The trooper was silent.

“Did they take the pilot?”

The trooper winced, nearly whispering again. “From the state of the TIE…”

“Make your report!” There was a scratching pain in his vocal cords. The air was hot and filled with metallic smoke.

“We believe the pilot was likely… vaporized on impact, sir.”

Thell screamed again, her nails digging into him even more. Her wails were piercing.

The trooper continued, taking a step back. “The Chimaera is trying to hail you, sir.”

With that statement, Thrawn became aware of his comm’s incessant chime. He couldn’t be sure how long it had been going. He slowly loosened a shaking hand from its position wrapped around Thell to answer the comm.

“Sir?” Commodore Faro’s voice came through.

“Yes,” he answered. Now, he was startled by how calm he sounded.

“What’s going on down there? Do you need reinforcements?”

“No, Commodore,” he said. “We will be returning to the shuttle shortly. The TIE is lost. Standby to receive us.”

“Sir, I—” hearing the softening in her voice, he cut the comm.

Thrawn returned his arm to Thell, this time wedging it under her legs, as his other arm cradled her back. With a groan and trembling legs, he slowly rose from the dirt, holding her to his chest. He nearly dropped her, but she held him so tightly that he was able to reposition his grip to hold her with more stability. The trooper moved out of his way as he slowly ascended the edge of the crater.

“NOOO!” Thell cried suddenly. “Noooo! NO! She’s here!”

“No, Thell,” Thrawn said softly, holding her more tightly as she shifted in his arms.

She screamed, nearly deafening his ears with the proximity. The scream was followed by a second. “No! No!”

She thrashed, and despite Thrawn’s best efforts, she escaped his arms, dropping to the dirt.

“Thell!” he called, kneeling down to her as she scrambled.

“NO!” She screamed, hitting away his hands.

“Please, Thell.” His voice was soft. Desperate and tired. He could barely hear himself over her cries. “Please.”

Somehow, she got to her feet, and dodged his reaching hands to run back towards the wreckage.

“Thell!” he cried.

She stumbled in the shifting dirt, nearly falling on a sharp chunk of wreckage jutting out from the ground.

In less than a second, Thrawn had drawn his blaster from his holster, set it to stun, and fired.

The blue rings of energy slammed into her just as she was pulling herself up from the ground again. Her body collapsed.

Thrawn’s throat was tight as he pulled himself to his feet, shuffled back down the into crater, and knelt to lift her limp body into his arms, careful with the blaster burn on her shoulder. He brushed the dirt off her face tenderly. “Tisbun'ah ch'ah, ch'eo ch'acah,” he whispered, “Tisbun'ah ch'ah.”

Thrawn carried Thell up from the crater, muscles and bones protesting the effort. He boarded the shuttle with the rest of the troopers. Then, he strapped in as best as he could while still holding his wife’s limp form to his chest. He couldn’t bear to let go of her to strap her into her own seat. The troopers avoided looking in his direction.

He had killed one of them, hadn’t he?

Thrawn focused on keeping his breathing steady as the shuttle took off. He focused only on breathing and holding Thell tightly the whole flight. There is much to be done, he reminded himself over and over. There is much to be done.

When the rattle of engines beneath his boots had faded, the door of the dropship hissed open. The troopers patiently waited for him to slowly extricate himself from his seat without losing his grip on Thell. He wobbled to his feet, then faced the lights of the Chimaera’s docking bay.

“Sir!” Faro exclaimed.

“I am fine,” he said, stepping off the ship. “Engineer Mitth’ell’unaris needs medical attention.”

“Of course, sir.”

Thrawn walked her to the medical bay himself, only taking his hands off of her once she was comfortably laid in a bed with medical droids hovering over her. “Keep her sedated,” he said. “I don’t want her waking up without me here.”

Faro was behind him when he had finally turned away from her. “Sir, I can handle—”

“No need,” he said, walking past her.

The next hours, he spoke with Faro and others. He couldn’t be exactly sure of who, but he was handling the situation and the paperwork was getting done.

Incident report: Trooper casualty. Reason to believe danger was posed to other crew, under suspicion of Rebel activity taking place in the area.

Incident report: Pilot casualty. Rebel activity. Crash landed on the planet. Vaporized on impact.

Vaporized on impact.

Vaporized on impact.

Vaporized on impact.

The old visions of Thrass enveloped in flames flashed into his mind. Hadn’t those nightmares disappeared long ago? He’d thought they had disappeared. He’d thought he was free of them. He’d thought he’d overcome the panic—currently clinging to his throat—that those nightmares forced upon him.

Incident report: Rebel activity. Critical damage to the Defender Project. Potential acquisition of navicomputer by rebels. Rebels escaped.

Project updates for the Defender, picking up where Thell’s notes had left off. She couldn’t be expected to finish them in this state. All tests that were able to be completed, successful. Besides questionable destruction of navicomputer, all components destroyed before rebel contact. Overall, current model is still considered successful for desired purposes. Repeat test necessary to determine return hyperdrive capability, with new pilot.

Repeat test. New pilot.

Fire. Crushing impact, consuming fire.

“Sir?”

Thrawn looked up from his datapad. Faro stood on the opposite side of his desk, hands clasped behind her back. Her eyebrows were pinched together in the middle.

“I can take over, sir.”

“I am your commanding officer. I will tell you when—”

“With all due respect, Admiral, you haven’t slept in over 48 hours. I also haven’t seen you eat since you returned from Garel. Unless I misunderstand the physical limits of your species, I question your ability to command the ship in this state.”

Thrawn blinked, filled with anger, but the sluggishness with which his mind struggled to form a retort confirmed her point and the anger abated. He clenched his jaw, then looked down at his datapad, realizing that the words before him weren’t easily coming into focus. “Very well, Commodore.”

Faro’s voice was quiet and soft. “Get some rest, sir. I’ll have some food sent to your quarters.”

He nodded, ashamed.

She turned to leave, then stopped, turning back halfway. “I… I’m sorry, sir. About your daughter.”

The words hung in the air as the door to his office hissed shut behind her.

His daughter.

His chest was suddenly tight and shuddered as he tried to take a breath. The fire was in his nerves, in his mind, in his blood.

Thias.

He struggled to swallow, to breathe. He held his face in his hands, elbows propped on the desk. When breath finally came, it was shallow and short. No, not this. This had stopped a long time ago. But the panic set in and gripped his lungs.

No, no, no.

Thell’s cries of the same words seared through his ears, echoes from two days ago like a recorded message. Thrawn flinched and breathed faster, fully hyperventilating now.

He squeezed his eyes shut tighter. Then he folded his arms on his desk, laying his head down on them. Exhaustion weighed down on him even as his lungs ached with the lack of oxygen, pulling him into darkness.

Fire filled his mind as he struggled to pull his consciousness from the searing heat. He saw Thrass, his back turned to him as he fell to the ground in pain. But the image turned, revealing Thias clinging to Thrass’ arms as she screamed. Over and over, he watched them burn. Hair and flesh and sinew caught flame melting off bone before his mind’s eye.

There was nothing he could do.

There was never anything he could do before it was too late.

As Thias’ skull bubbled free of her tissues, her jaw opened and shut. Though the words couldn’t reach his ears, he felt them in his soul.

Ch'an'ruhoti. Liar.

He tried to call for her, but he couldn’t form words.

You promised.

Chapter Text

19 | Ia Safis

Ia groaned and attempted to roll over in her bunk, but was startled awake by the sharp pain radiating through her neck and shoulders. She winced and attempted to blink the stubborn grogginess from her eyes.

No.

The closeness of the ceiling above her, her feet pressing into the wall at the end of the bed, the exhaustion clinging to every fiber of her being.

No, I escaped this.

Panic leapt into her throat and her heart jumped into action so quickly it made her stomach churn. She rubbed her eyes vigorously, pain shooting through the muscles of her arms and shoulders. Her fists were wet with tears in an instant.

It can’t have all been a dream. It can’t. I sacrificed it all. That thought made her sick in a completely different way. Sacrificing it all had included her connection to Mother. The details felt foggy now. Would that be worth escaping this?

She wiped her eyes as best she could, then pushed her hair out of her face as she braved opening her eyes again. The lighting was extremely dim, but her bleary vision finally came into focus on the vibrant shapes on the ceiling less than a meter above her.

Relief washed over her, though tension remained in her chest. The colored lines were a drawing of an animal, which Ia now recognized as a lothcat.

She wasn’t in her bunk at the academy. She really was never going back there. The stiffness in her body verified it: she had definitely crash-landed. It was real. And she was on Kanan’s ship.

She crossed her arms over her chest, scanning her vision over the other drawings that practically coated the inside of the bunk she had climbed into last night. The colors were hard to make out with her low light vision, but she could see all kinds of animals and symbols and figures and patterns. Whoever’s bunk she was sleeping in was an artist of some kind, though this art was nothing like she had seen in the galleries that Mother had taken her to on Csilla or Naporar, or even that she had seen in their trip to Coruscant, which held the art of thousands of species. These drawings were… free. The artist’s hand had not set out with the intention of creating something beautiful for others to see; they had simply created something to fill the space, to declare the space as their own, and so that it wouldn’t feel empty. But in that act, what had poured out onto the metallic surface had turned out to be something far more personal. These were the images that came to the artist’s subconscious mind, the things they had created without thinking. The thought almost made Ia blush, feeling as though she were intruding into a private space.

Despite the pain in her body, the comfort that wrapped around her being in this space was unlike any she had felt since she was a young child in her Mother’s arms, perhaps even before her Third Sight had revealed itself.

A heaviness sank into Ia’s gut. Would she ever feel that again?

Did she deserve to?

Ia shuddered at the thought of Mother hearing of the destruction of the TIE. Tears came to her eyes again, this time coupled with a deep emptiness rather than fear. Would she be able to figure out that Ia had betrayed her? Would it be better or worse if she thought she was dead?

Ia tried to reassure herself that Father would take care of her, though the thought ultimately wasn’t comforting. She didn’t trust him to put Mother’s well-being ahead of his work. He had abandoned them after all.

She traced her vision over the drawings again, searching for the peace they had brought her. She was free now too. She was free. And soon, she would find a way to communicate with Mother and offer her that freedom too.

Ia closed her eyes, steadying her breathing and allowing herself to sink into the Force, though the tumult of emotions in her mind struggled against her efforts. She winced, feeling a searing energy just outside her door. She turned her head a bit too fast in that direction and groaned, clutching her neck, which only elicited more pain from her shoulder.

Her heart raced, but she reassured herself that it would just take time to integrate with Kanan and his crew. The anger that the human boy had felt towards Father sent a pang of guilt through her. Ezra, she reminded herself. She should have just told them the truth. And yet, the thought of doing so today made her want to just roll over and attempt to go back to sleep. But she wasn’t going to make any new friends that way.

Friends.

Her internal confidence that that was the direction she was headed with these strangers was almost as laughable as the idea that she even knew what behavior would lend itself to new friends to begin with. She shook her head at herself slowly, but all the trepidation and guilt in her couldn’t completely stamp out the hope.

Ia willed her body to shift over to the side of the bed and carefully slide down until her feet found two ladder rungs and then the ground. She noted the quiet hum she felt beneath her feet. The engines were running, but not at full blast. The hyperdrive wasn’t engaged. And she doubted that a ship like this one would have an engine that could be this quiet when moving. More likely, they were completely stalled.

She stretched her neck as best she could as soon as she had her wobbly knees under her. She was still wearing her flight suit, minus the helmet and breathing apparatus. She wondered idly how much of the pain in her neck and shoulders was from the crash versus sleeping in the damn suit.

Her chest felt warm when she saw the folded clothes just inside the door. Despite their hesitance towards her yesterday, these people were showing great kindness towards her.

Ia unfolded the clothes, examining the orange collared shirt and tan pants. The pants had patches sewn over the pockets, one sporting the same abstract bird pattern that adorned almost the entire left wall of the dim room. Did they belong to the occupant of this room?

She stripped off her flight suit but hesitated before changing out of the black undersuit. She picked up the clothes from the floor and ran a hesitant thumb over the soft, inviting material. It would be a shame to get these loaned clothes dirty. And she was certainly a mess after the events of yesterday. Perhaps if these people were being kind enough to offer her clothes, they would allow her to clean herself up before the inevitable questioning began. She hesitated there a long time before she took a determined breath, neatly folded the clothes again, and held them to her chest.

Ia steeled herself before she approached the door. When it didn’t open at her approach, she cautiously tapped the panel to the right of it, then jumped back when it quickly hissed open.

She clenched up, making eye contact with the piercing blue eye rings of the human boy Ezra. The door just across the thin hallway was open and he sat on the lower bunk in that room, facing her and staring.

Startled, her mind almost reverted back to Cheunh. “Rit– ah, um, hello.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You slept a long time.”

She swallowed hard. “I… had a hard day.”

He seemed to nearly smile, then think better of it. “What’s your angle?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

She wanted to shrink into herself, but remembered the freedom she was seeking, the freedom she had seen in the room she was still standing in. “Why are you here?”

“To stick it to the Empire.”

She tilted up her chin despite herself. “Me too.” The words felt outrageous and filled her belly with a smoldering fire.

His expression didn’t change, continuing to only exude suspicion.

Ia cleared her throat. “May I… use the refresher?”

His gaze finally broke away from hers to her relief, falling on the folded clothes in her arms. His nose wrinkled. Disgust?

“Yeah,” he sighed, standing up from the bed, though his slouched posture suggested reluctance. “Follow me.”

Ia followed Ezra to the refresher and felt relief at the prospect of getting clean despite the tension in the interaction. As she passed him to enter the refresher, Ia could see she was pretty much a full head taller than the boy, though she imagined they were nearly the same age.

“I’m going to go tell Hera and Kanan you’re up. They’ll want to talk to you when you’re done here.”

Ia nodded. “I will not take long.”

He left and she shut the door behind her. As quickly as she was able, she figured out how to work their shower and cleaned herself. By the time she was finished and pulling on the fresh clothes, she felt almost like a new person entirely. Her body still ached, but noticeably less.

The orange collared top fit her fine, but the pants were quite short on her long legs. But it would do until she could get her suit clean or get a hold of some other clothes. She picked up the undersuit and turned to face her fate, but stopped as her eyes scanned over the small mirror on the wall.

She looked… older. Worn. It was probably just the exhaustion and all the stress, carried in the dark bags under her eyes. But even with her hair hanging in damp, wavy strands around her face, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she looked like her father. Too much.

She peeled her eyes away from the reflection and left the refresher, heart pounding in her throat.

“Hey there,” said Hera. The Twi’lek leaned against the wall in the hallway. “I’m glad Sabine’s clothes fit you okay. You look pretty good for the landing you had. Must be a decent pilot.”

Ia shrugged, the gesture painful. “Nothing is broken.” She noted the name. Sabine. She wondered why the artist’s room was vacant. She could only hope they weren’t another casualty of the Empire.

“I bet you’re hungry. How about we get some food in you and have a chat? Then hopefully we can get you checked out.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to Ia before, but now that Hera had said it, she couldn’t deny that she was starving. “Chat” was a nice way to say interrogation, but Ia knew that was coming. It was only reasonable given the position they were in. She could appreciate Hera’s kind attitude about the subject.

She nodded and followed Hera into the ship’s galley, where Kanan was sitting in a booth that partially encircled a small table. Ezra was sitting on a chair backwards, his chin resting on his crossed arms on the back of it. The large purple creature— she struggled to remember the name she had been told— was sitting on an overturned crate in the corner. As her appearance, he straightened and crossed his arms.

There was already a bowl of some kind of stew sitting on the table across from Kanan. Hera sat next to him in the booth. “Here,” she said, motioning for Ia to sit. “Hopefully you like it, because this is what we have right now.”

“Thank you,” Ia said, her heart racing as they all stared. She moved to sit and the moment she had sat down, Ezra spoke.

“How do we know we can trust you?”

“Hey!” the purple creature said. Didn’t his name start with ‘Z’? “Kanan just said not to overwhelm ‘er!”

“I’m tired of just floating out here!” Ezra protested.

“Well, we can’t take ‘er back to base until we know we can trust her.”

“Which is why I asked!”

“That’s enough,” Hera said. “Eat, Ia. We can talk when you’re ready.”

Ia nodded slowly and lifted one spoonful to her lips. The stew was earthy and a bit bland but the warmth radiating through her as she swallowed, coupled with the emptiness of her stomach made it taste like one of the best meals she had had. She took two more quick bites despite her desire to resolve the tension immediately, just to silence her desperation for food.

She cleared her throat. “I come from the Chiss Ascendency. In what you call the Unknown Regions. For my people, it is… outrageous to leave. Rebellious. Or a punishment.”

“So why did you?” Ezra interjected. “And how’d you end up with the Empire?”

“I have Third Sight. The Force.” It was treason for her to explain all of this, even to civilians within the Ascendency. To outsiders, even worse. But she was not among the Chiss anymore. Perhaps never again. “For my people, this means that you are taken from your family when you are very young.”

Kanan sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest, but stayed quiet, so she continued.

“They erase your memory. And you become a Navigator. You use the Force to predict dangers in the Chaos for vessels that would pass through. It is a sacred secret. But my mother knew of this secret and kept my Sight hidden. To protect me from this fate.”

Ezra nodded, his brow knit together.

“Most ozyly– ah… navigators, they lose their Third Sight before adulthood. Mother thought we could just… wait. But it did not fade for me. And became difficult to hide. We were nearly discovered. I grew tired of living under that… fear and oppression. So, we left.”

She hesitated before she continued, eating another spoonful of her soup to stall. Would she reveal the truth? She flicked her vision between all the eyes trained on her. Her shoulders rounded forward and she shrunk down, training her gaze on her bowl.

“My mother knows Thrawn.” Her stomach churned. “He is an exile of the Chiss. She contacted him to find a place for us outside the Ascendency. She is an engineer, designed fighters for our people. So, he brought her onto the Defender project.” She put as much earnestness as she could into her voice. This next part was true. “We had no idea what the Empire was. I had never even met Thrawn. He was exiled before I can remember. And it turns out it is no safer for one with Third Sight– the Force– here. Perhaps even worse. When they sent me to the Imperial Academy on Lothal to get my pilot certification, I…” She looked at Ezra. “I saw how the Empire treats non-humans. And I saw how they oppress the people of Lothal.”

Ezra’s expression darkened, but his posture softened slightly.

“I will not move from one oppressor to another. I want no part in it.” She lowered her voice. “Even if that means leaving my mother.”

They were all silent. Hera and Kanan seemed to be communicating just by looking at each other. Ia wondered if that was a Jedi power she could learn.

She swallowed, nervous about the potential of revealing her hidden truth, but spoke anyways. “But you don’t have to trust my word.” She looked at Kanan. “You are Jedi. You can use Second Sight and see that I speak truth.” She stretched out her right hand part way across the table towards him.

“Second Sight?” he asked.

“I’m Jedi too, you know,” Ezra said.

Ia raised her eyebrows at him, a shred of excitement overtaking her trepidation. She looked between Hera and the creature in the corner. “Are you all Jedi?”

Hera smiled slightly. “Just them.”

“Can only humans be Jedi?” She asked, heart sinking just a bit.

“No, Zeb and Hera just aren’t. What do you mean by Second Sight, Ia?” Kanan asked, getting her back on track.

Zeb, Ia noted to herself. Zeb. “It is…” she considered her explanation. “It is like seeing in the mind. Strengthened through touch.”

Kanan nodded slowly, but he seemed confused.

“Forgive me,” Ia said, withdrawing her hand and feeling ashamed. “Few of my people have this ability, but I assumed you might since Jedi seem so much more powerful.”

“Well, each of us has our strengths,” Kanan said, “based on the skills we train. We do have some influence over the mind. I’ve just… I’m not trained in what you’re talking about myself.”

“I see,” Ia nodded. She restrained herself from asking more questions about how you train Jedi skills. She would have plenty of time to ask such questions if she could earn their trust. “I have Second Sight. Perhaps it is worth a try, as I can strengthen the connection and send what is in my mind more intentionally.”

Kanan looked at Hera.

“Is it dangerous?” Hera asked.

Ia shrugged. “It can be difficult having someone walking around inside your mind if you are not skilled. But I am well practiced. And I will simply be opening my mind for him to see, not entering his.” She thought of all her training with Borika and Thalias and Zicheri. A pang of longing cut through her heart. She missed them. Perhaps one day she would be able to tell them about the aliens that have Third Sight and show them her new Jedi skills. Unlikely, but it was a happy thought.

Kanan extended his arm across the table towards her. “Can’t hurt to try.”

Ezra rocked his chair forward to lean closer as Ia stretched her hand across and clasped the tan-colored fingers. She would gain Kanan’s trust, but she worried that if he discovered her connection to Thrawn now, it could erode that trust. She hadn’t exactly lied, but it was a detail they may not forgive her for leaving out. But trying not to think about something is only the surest way to make sure you think of it. So instead, as she closed her eyes and sank into the Force, she focused all her thought and emotion into her anger towards the Empire. That was what he would believe. And she couldn’t hold back.

The Force pooled all around her, rippling around the life in the room. She could feel Ezra and Kanan particularly strongly. The ripples belonging to Kanan moved closer to her and suddenly the connection between them became a rushing stream.

Ia gritted her teeth and poured in the jeering faces at the Academy, her disgust upon learning the Empire kept slaves, the fear and rage that slammed Vance against the wall, the desperation she felt screaming for Noa in the blaster-burned alley on Lothal. It all directed up at the Chimaera looming over her, looming just like her father’s reputation all her life.

She gasped and pulled her hand away, nearly spilling her soup and blinking at the sudden brightness in the room as she opened her eyes.

Kanan was staring down at the table, breathing slowly. Hera had a hand on his shoulder.

“Kanan?” she said, voice filled with concern.

“I’m alright,” he said, brushing her off. He looked at Ia and she couldn’t read his expression. Her heart pounded in her throat, and she blinked back the tears that leapt into her eyes from being submersed in the storm that turned within her. “She’s alright. She’s angry at the Empire. Really angry.”

His gaze was trained on her with intensity, brow low.

Perhaps his expression was fear.

“Well, so are we,” Zeb said.

“Welcome to the Rebellion, Ia,” Hera said. “Hopefully we can put your knowledge about the Defender project to some use.”

Ia nodded, lifting another spoonful of stew from her bowl, but lowered it quickly when she realized her hand was shaking. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

Chapter Text

20 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

“I assure you, this project is still on track,” Thrawn said, “All necessary tests have been passed in order to advance to the next stage of development. Let us not be superstitious and treat the loss of the TIE as a bad omen.”

Even in the hologram, Thrawn could clearly see the upward twitch of Grand Moff Tarkin’s eyebrow. “I am impressed with the results of the test. But the fact that the TIE was lost to rebels concerns me. There are spies among us who may know more about your project than we think. Especially with the missing navicomputer.”

“They may know of the project, but they are afraid of it. It was worth their limited resources to attempt to destroy our work.”

“This may be true.” Tarkin tilted his head to the side. “But they have not yet discovered the truth behind Stardust. This is an advantage.”

Anger boiled in Thrawn’s gut. He had been avoiding this conversation for a week. It was too difficult to remain neutral and calm right now. But Tarkin’s insistence could no longer be denied without making the Defender project appear weak. “The facilities on Lothal are already prepared to scale up production. The true potential of the Defender as a weapon has yet to be demonstrated. We need a squadron.”

Tarkin sighed. “You can have your squadron. But if those tests aren’t perfect, I’m afraid I won’t be able to guarantee any more than that.”

“Understood.” Thrawn talked through the necessary details, going through the motions until Tarkin’s hologram disappeared.

Keeping the Defender project running was about more than the power of the Empire and the future of the Galaxy. Now, it was also about keeping Thell. There were only so many excuses that he could use to keep a nonhuman civilian close to him. Before, if the project had failed, then his family would have been like any other Imperial family; they could have a nice home on Lothal or Coruscant and he could call and visit them as he pleased between his tasks. It would have been difficult to separate himself from them again, but they would have each other. Now, however…

Thrawn shook his head. Cold fear wound its way through him, tightening around his lungs and throat, as he walked from his office to his quarters. He stepped into the refresher, inspecting his appearance in the mirror. He was impressed with how quickly the bacta patches had reduced the swelling in his nose after it had been set. Thell’s strike had been hard, but it wouldn’t leave a lasting impact. He ran a thumb over the small lump remaining. Tarkin wouldn’t have been able to notice it. But perhaps Thell would. She didn’t need any more guilt hanging over her than she already did.

He pulled another bacta patch from the box on the counter and carefully positioned it over the bump. It would be undetectable by this time tomorrow, which meant he would have no excuse not to wake her.

It would be tomorrow, he resolved.

He could only keep her sedated for so long. The guilt he felt for keeping her in that state had been accumulating in his gut like a festering infection. It was only barely stronger than the dread that hung over him each time he thought of his wife. At first, he could justify keeping her there. There was too much to be done, and she would need him when she woke up. How could he choose to let her feel the pain waiting for her?

But after a week, he couldn’t lie to himself that it wasn’t partially selfish. Keeping her sedated wouldn’t bring back Thias. It only kept the wailing off his ears and out of his heart; it only allowed him to keep pretending he knew how to move forward.

When he went to bed, the room felt cold and empty. He had slept alone on this ship for years now. Even with Thell’s return, she hadn’t warmed the bed every time he slept. But never had he felt such a longing to have her arms around him, to feel the comfort that came with her scent, to hear the cascade of her laughter. If all went well, after tomorrow, he would have her in his bed again. But her laughter…

Grief flowed over him like blood from a fresh wound.

Perhaps he would drown in it as he slept.

Perhaps that would be a preferable fate.

—

Thrawn nodded to the medical droid as he held Thell’s limp hand. She looked just had he had left her yesterday and the day before that. Peaceful. The medical officers and droids had healed her burns and cuts. How easy it would be just to pretend that nothing had happened? That she was only resting?

With the cease of the sedatives, it was still an hour before he felt a slight twitch of Thell’s hand in his as he stroked his thumb over her freshly healed skin. Her calloused hands were purposed for building. They should never have touched the destruction of her creation.

Her creation.

He remembered how her hands had looked, wrapped around the infant child as she presented their daughter to him.

He pushed the thought out of his mind with desperation. She needed him. She needed him here.

He focused instead on her face, waiting for movement. He traced his gaze over the soft lines creasing her skin around her eyes. Her dark hair framed her cheeks in a wavy cascade. On one of his previous visits to her, he had pulled the last of her hair from the bun that had been holding it and brushed out the ash. Most of her hair laid softly on her shoulders, but the longer strands that framed her face, now unbraided, fell all the way to her waist, sitting next to her on the bed.

Thrawn’s gaze was drawn quickly back to her face as he heard her inhale more sharply. He tightened his grip on her hand involuntarily as her eyelids fluttered.

“Will you sit her up?” he said softly to the medical droid, and a moment later the bed was slowly moving to lift Thell’s head towards him.

She stirred more strongly, inhaling sharply again. Her brow crinkled and eventually her eyes began to squint open.

“I’m here,” he said. What else could be said?

Thell blinked at him, groggy.

Thrawn’s heart pounded heavily over the next long minutes as she shifted, wincing. She blinked slowly around the room.

It was a long time before she finally licked her lips and opened her mouth. Before any words could come out, her eyes fixed on his.

Her gaze was asking the question he had anticipated.

Was that nightmare real?

He clenched his jaw. I’m sorry, he thought, his heart feeling rent in two. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words aloud and force her to acknowledge their new reality. I’m so sorry.

Her red eyes glistened, her hand still resting limp in his. He watched helplessly as her next blink broke the water tension, sending a single trickle of grief over her right cheek. The next blink caused the same to happen on the left.

He braced himself, expecting her to scream, to sob, to wail, as she had at the crash site. But no more tears traced the tracks that the first had made. Her gaze dropped from his face, empty eyes pointed towards his belt but with no thought or direction behind them. Her parted lips held no intent to speak.

He stroked his thumb over her cold hand. Was he relieved she wasn’t screaming? Or was this worse?

Trembling, her hand began to slowly withdraw from his. He looked at her face, his tongue touched to his teeth about to speak her name in protest, until he realized she was lifting her arms weakly towards him.

Relief washed over him as he returned her outstretched posture and leaned forward to embrace her.

But then his nerves were alight as the next second passed too quickly to process.

Her arms dodging quickly under his, the tug at his hip, her chin lifting suddenly towards the ceiling.

Thrawn blinked. His left hand was gripped around her wrist and his right elbow was digging into her ribs as he forced her arm straight. His ears were ringing and his heart was pounding.

Thell strained weakly against him, shaking and letting out a single sob. Thrawn blinked again, passing his eyes over her face. The acrid scent of burnt hair assaulted his nostrils as he stared at his fingers, wrapped around Thell’s wrist, which were in turn wrapped around…

His blaster.

His heart pounded in his chest as he looked to Thell, grimacing in pain but unharmed, save some singed hair to the left of her face. He looked up seeing the blaster burn in the ceiling.

He looked back at Thell’s hand, trembling and straining, still squeezing the trigger.

When he spoke, his voice was low and shaky. “Let go, Thell.”

She sobbed once more. For a moment, she strained against him more strongly, but then her arm went limp and the blaster clattered to the floor.

Thrawn slowly lessened the force with which his elbow was digging in to her, finding that he was beginning to shake. He took both her wrists and pinned them against his chest as he pulled her tightly into his arms.

Distantly, he heard plastoid boots and cocking blasters behind him.

He cleared his throat, keeping his back to them. “You’re not needed here.”

“Sir—”

“Leave.”

The troopers listened and the steps receded.

Thrawn looked down at Thell’s face as she leaned her cheek against his shoulder. Her eyes had returned to being empty. No sobbing, no tears. “Thell—” he started, but was silenced by the tightness in his throat. The pain he felt couldn’t be located in his body but made him grit his teeth to endure it nonetheless. He let out a shuddering, pained breath. He wanted to scream, to cry out, to hit something until his knuckles bled. But all he could do was hold her as tightly as he was able.

“You have to stay,” he whispered, begging. “You have to stay.”

Finally, finally, she spoke, the word barely more than a breath. “Why?”

For me, he wanted to say. He needed her. But the selfishness in those words choked them out before they could reach his tongue. All the suffering in her life, she had endured for him. He had siphoned the life out of her like a parasite. But it was true that he needed her. The Galaxy needed her. Her life, her light, all the goodness that she represented. And their people needed them to keep fighting for their future, though their daughter, who had represented future for them, was gone. How could he ask Thell to go on for anything besides herself?

“To kill them,” he said, startling himself. “To make them suffer for what they took from us.”

Chapter Text

21 | Ia Safis

Ia gritted her teeth, nearly stumbling as she lifted the crate, and dropped it with a heavy thud on the others. Breathing hard, she swiped her sleeve over the sweat on her forehead. When she first arrived at Chopper Base she had been delighted by the heat. She had never been on a planet so arid; the sunniest days on Lothal were still temperate in comparison. After a few weeks of healing from her crash and slowly beginning to help the Phoenix Cell with more and more tasks around their base, she was beginning to resent the constant cloudless skies. The Chiss were adapted for the cold, not the blistering heat.

There had been plenty of water here once. Though she wasn’t permitted to leave the perimeter of the base, she could climb the stony fronds of the ancient coral where the Rebels had made their home and look out across the mesa. She could almost imagine the ocean that had been here. Once, she had even dreamed about swimming out across the perimeter of the base in a school of phosphorescent fish, like those she had learned about in her studies as midager.

She felt called out towards the openness, beyond the perimeter; it was a call similar to the one she had felt on Lothal. She shielded her eyes from the sun, staring out past the lines of supply crates, into the haze she could see between coral outcroppings. But she could also see the blinking light atop the beacon marking the edge of the base. No one was really allowed outside, because of the aggressive spider-like creatures that the beacons repelled, but she knew that she was particularly banned from leaving. She still had never been told the name of the planet she was on or the system it was part of, but she also didn’t ask. She didn’t blame them though, given only weeks earlier she had still been buried deep within the Empire. Additionally, with what she had told them about her navigation abilities, they knew it likely wouldn’t be too difficult to find her way back here if she escaped, regardless if she knew the name of the world. She broke her gaze away from the horizon and back to the last remaining crate on the hover cart.

Despite the secrecy and her restriction to the base, Ia didn’t feel like a prisoner. She continued to be surprised by how quickly and kindly these strangers had taken her in. They monitored her whereabouts on the base less and less as the weeks went on. Hera had asked her lots of questions about her species when helping set up some quarters for Ia in one of the large shipping containers that had been converted into living spaces on the base, making sure that she would be comfortable. She had been kind enough to answer Ia’s curiosity about the Twi’lek and Ryloth, though Ia could see the topic of her home was difficult. She suspected that that would be true for most among the Rebels. The Empire had its iron fist around too many worlds to count, and planets like Ryloth had been unstable even prior to the Empire, formerly having been a site of many Clone Wars battles. Ia liked Hera, but she was rarely at the base. Hera understood that she was quiet and needed space.

And then there was Sabine.

The human girl had greeted them when she had first arrived at the base. Although she hadn’t been introduced right away, Ia could tell that she was the artist behind the drawings in the room she had stayed in on the Ghost, and whose clothes she had borrowed. Her Mandalorian armor was brightly decorated in similar patterns. It was like she personalized everything she touched. Even her hair had been bleached and dyed white and bright violet. She was just so startlingly individual. She was fully her own person.

But despite her brash self-confidence, over the past weeks Ia had found that Sabine had trusted her more quickly than the others. This had been confusing at first, making Ia feel strange around her. But then she had learned that Sabine too had been at the Imperial Academy before defecting. She understood.

Ia stared down the last crate. She shouldn’t have to lift it by hand, if she really had the ability that Kanan and Ezra did. But those abilities were proving difficult to tap into. Kanan had been attempting to assess her Force abilities, but she was mostly stuck just watching Sabine and Ezra practice dueling with their lightsabers. She knew that Sabine didn’t have the Force, but there was some special significance in the black blade she wielded. She was strongly resolved to learn to wield it as the Jedi did. But Ia could tell that Sabine was becoming exasperated with her own lack of progress, just as she was. Sometimes she thought about approaching Sabine, just to talk, but the mere thought made her nervous. What did she have to talk to her about, besides struggling with training? Sabine probably didn’t want to dwell on that any longer than she needed to. And she was always so busy. Ia didn’t really know how to approach people anyways. Better not mess anything up and just focus on her own efforts. Ia struggled to produce the same results as she had seen when she had lifted the stone on Lothal. Or thrown the chairs. Her heart sank, as she remembered the bandage on Mother’s head.

Weeks. It had been weeks, and she still hadn’t figured out a way to tell Mother she was alright. She had thought about asking Hera about it, but it was still too early. Asking the Rebels to help her contact an Imperial while at their hidden base? It would go against everything she was trying to accomplish here. She shook her head in an effort to dislodge the thought. There was nothing she could do.

Ia fixed her gaze on the crate again and hesitantly held out her palms towards it. She steadied her breathing and tried to connect to the Force. She felt frustration wash over her as she yet again found the energy in and around her to be more like a tumultuous sea than the gently flowing streams that she would follow when she was navigating. There was no control, no order. She again let out a long breath and strained her fingers, willing the crate to lift.

She gasped, seeing it shudder and begin to lift, just as her heart lifted in her chest.

“Kanan said I should come help you,” Ezra said, startling her.

Her heart sank as the crate remained in the air despite her loss of concentration. Ezra was standing behind her, one hand outstretched towards the crate. Behind him, Chopper was pushing another hovercart of crates towards her.

Ia felt her cheeks grow warm, embarrassed that he had seen her failed attempt to use the Force. “I—thank you.”

Ezra closed his eyes, lifting the crate more and dropping it with a reverberating clang onto the others.

“How do you do it so easily?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Some people are just stronger in the Force than others.”

Ia nodded, eyes on the ground as she moved toward the new cart.

Ezra sighed, his boot scraping through the dirt. “I’m just kidding, alright?”

Ia looked up at him, brows knit together.

He rolled his eyes. Out of any of the Rebels she had met thus far, Ezra was the most reluctant to trust her. She tried to be as kind as possible, going out of her way to spend time around him and Kanan when they were around. But that only seemed to make him even more annoyed. Sometimes he even stormed off when she approached.

“You just…” he sighed, putting his hands on his hips. “You just have to keep training. I wasn’t so good when I first started.”

Ia straightened. “And Kanan helped you?”

“Yeah but– well he only has so much time, ya know? I still have things to learn too.”

Suddenly the realization hit her. He was jealous. It seemed so obvious now that she was embarrassed that she hadn’t considered it before. She had read about how the old order typically assigned each Master one student. In the Imperial database, this was a cautionary statement, that any Jedi discovered may not be alone. “But you can do so much! How much can Jedi do?”

Ezra laughed, taking hold of the top crate on the cart by hand. “You’ve never seen us in action for real, huh?”

She shook her head. She hesitated a moment before she steeled herself and moved forward to take hold of the other side of the crate and help him carry it over to the stack. She was tall enough in comparison to the human boy that it was a bit awkward but the gesture of helping him was important.

They moved the rest of the crates as Chopper watched. Sometimes Ia couldn’t help but feel that Chopper had a smug attitude about him. From the way the rest of the people talked to the droid, she couldn’t help but think that they felt the same. That was something very strange to adjust to among these people: the way they treated their droids. It was as if he was just as much of a person as the rest of them. Maybe that was true. Really, Ia had never thought about it much before. Droids just weren’t much of a thing in the Ascendency. And the Empire treated them as nothing more than objects, though she had always been fascinated by them. Interacting with Chopper and AP-5 the way the Phoenix Cell did was new, but also exciting. No wonder the Rebels were so kind and accepting towards non-humans if they saw even droids as worthy of some level of autonomy and respect.

When they had the last crate on the stack, Ezra let out a huge sigh and plopped down onto the empty hovercart to rest. Ia leaned against the stack of crates. She wanted to keep up this new semi-friendly energy between them. It would make getting more training from Kanan easier if he could see that she wasn’t trying to steal his Jedi master away from him. Sure, she found him to be a bit immature and overly competitive, but there wasn’t any real spite behind it like the other young humans she had met. The boy’s discomfort with her was limited to the fact she was still mostly a stranger to him, and a potentially suspicious stranger at that. He wasn’t off put simply by her existence as a non-human. Among the Empire, Ia had assumed that xenophobia was ingrained in human culture. It was something that angered her, even sometimes made her afraid, but ultimately didn’t surprise her. After all, her own people had an inherent tendency to turn their nose up to outsiders. But the more humans she met outside the Empire, like little Noa, and Ezra, and Sabine, she wondered how true that was. Perhaps rather the prevalence of that fear and hatred was as new as the Empire itself. The more frequently Kanan and Hera were at Chopper Base together, the more Ia began to suspect that Kanan had taken things even a step further and developed a real romantic attachment to someone outside his species. The idea was completely new to her but even Ia, with her difficulty picking up on things happening beneath the surface, couldn’t deny what she was seeing.

Respect and autonomy for droids, romance between species, and a warm bed for a newly introduced outsider such as herself. Things among the Rebels were so much stranger yet even more wonderful than she could ever have imagined. The Galaxy was a much larger and more variable place to explore than she had ever thought possible when she dreamed of it while she learned to fly above Thearterra back in the Chaos. She would explore it all someday, but for now, perhaps it wasn’t so bad to be stuck on this mystery world with these fascinating people who wanted to make the Galaxy a better place. Their idea of what the Galaxy could be sounded pretty good to Ia.

“What got you involved with the Rebellion?” she asked Ezra. “Training with Kanan?” She always hesitated to start conversations out of fear of saying the wrong thing and began to wonder whether that was the case here as he narrowed his eyes in response to her question.

“Something like that,” he said. He locked eyes with her and she looked away quickly, uncomfortable with the scrutiny.

“Sorry,” she said, shrinking into herself.

He sighed. “Nah, it’s alright. It was… well I’m from Lothal.”

“Oh,” said Ia, looking back up at him. His dark eyebrows were low over the bright blue rings of his eyes as he kicked his boot through the dirt again. “I’m sorry,” she said again, but this time relaxing her posture. He was opening up just a bit more.

“My parents…” he started again. “They were Rebels. The Empire took them.”

Ia could see the pain on his face. How many parents had the Empire separated from their children? And her father was complicit. She felt tumultuous. Bitter and guilty and sad. Perhaps it wasn’t as easy for him to understand. Hadn’t he abandoned her willingly? But Mother never did. She always stayed. Though Ia complained that her heart had always been with him, Mother had always stayed with her. Had Ia abandoned her?

“Kanan and Hera took me in,” Ezra continued. “They showed me that it’s possible for people like us to hit back.” He looked up at her, tilting his head to the side slightly. “The Empire hasn’t touched the Unknown Regions. What makes you hate them so much?”

“It’s just… it’s not right. How they treat people. How they control everything.” She could feel how superficial the statement was, though it was true. She needed to give him more after what he just said. She swallowed hard. “I’ve been hiding my whole life. Because of my Sight—my connection to the Force. I’m tired of living in a Galaxy where just a few people get to control everyone else. They seek to use or eradicate what challenges their power. I just… I don’t feel like something to be scared of.”

He nodded and grinned stupidly. “We’ll give them something to be scared of for sure.”

Ia couldn’t help but laugh. It was absurd. Two young people, barely out of their midager years, sweating under the sun of some remote system, talking about making the whole Galactic Empire afraid of them.

Even more absurd was the fact that here, among these strange and new people with strange and new powers, she almost believed him.

Chapter Text

22 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

“Thell,” Thrawn tried again. Thrawn sat on the edge of his bed, feeling completely worn through. His quarters on the Chimaera were dark. Thell’s back was to him, her hunched shape silhouetted in the glow from the holograms before her at the makeshift workstation he had set up for her. The wings of the TIE Defender framed her mess of hair, like the motif of the halo often found in human painting, used to signify divinity. There were times he had seen her as something like divine. He had done his best to worship her. But before him now was a being cursed, scorned once too many by fate.

Fate? Was this fate?

Thrawn had never believed in fate. A warrior carved his own path, made his own choices. But perhaps it was becoming easier to believe in fate than face the truth, which was that the suffering they endured together now had been preventable.

If he had planned the test differently, had someone he could have trusted better in the Garel System. He should have sent Faro ahead.

If he had pushed back more strongly against the human distrust of Thell and put aside his own pride in his family and his people, he could have pushed for a standard Imperial test pilot.

If he had eradicated these Rebels before it got this far. If he had been able to plug any leak in the channels of information about the project.

If he had never sent her to the Academy. Clearly, she had suffered there. Perhaps her reflexes would have been faster. Or at least their last days with her wouldn’t have been so tense. He could have given Thell more time with her. He wouldn’t have lost her while she hated him.

If he had just been strong enough to hurt Thell so badly before he left that she never thought about following him. If he had just told her the truth, that he had chosen to leave her. He had chosen to sacrifice her happiness and security in exchange for security of his friends. And for the opportunity to leave those politicians behind and feel like he was actually doing something to help his people.

If he had just told Bakif to fuck off when he asked him to return to the Springhawk.

If he had never apologized. If he had never agreed to marry her at all, no matter how she begged. At the time, how much he needed her and how much she stood to lose at being abandoned by the Irizi had persuaded him. But surely all the pain that that would have caused her couldn’t compare to this.

If he had had her transferred away the moment he found out she would be on his ship. That would have been the responsible thing.

If he had never let her kiss him before he left Rentor.

She should never have kissed him. Couldn’t she see that he could never love her properly? Never care for her as selflessly as she cared for him?

Hadn’t he told her she couldn’t follow him? Hadn’t he specifically said that she needed to put Thias first and keep her safe in the Ascendency?

If Thell had never—

Thrawn clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, collecting himself. When he had opened them again, he stood from the bed, picking up the tray of food and the small box he had brought for her in one hand. He slowly crossed the floor to her, standing at her side. “Mitth’ell’unaris,” he whispered, pleading.

Still, she ignored him. Her gaze was empty, as if he wasn’t there at all. The only movement was the tapping of her fingers at her datapad and the slight wavering of the light reflecting from her eyes as she shifted her focus over the lines of text.

“My love,” he whispered in Cheunh, reaching out to caress her cheek with a shaking hand. Her hair, long-unwashed, left residue on his fingers when he tucked it behind her ear. “You need to eat.”

When she had first come here from the medbay, all she did was sleep, woken only occasionally with night terrors, after which she would stare blankly at the wall, unresponsive to his attempts to comfort her. “I want to work” was all she would say. Eventually he caved and set up this workstation for her here. Since then, she lived at the desk and each day ended like this.

He would try to get her to eat and maybe speak with him at all. She wouldn’t even acknowledge his presence. Eventually he would set down the plate and lay down in bed. At some point, he would be too exhausted to continue watching her and fall asleep. In the morning, she would often be asleep at the desk. He would take the plate, from which she would have taken only a few bites of food, and leave her to her work. He wondered how much of the torment she held inside was resentment towards him, as she refused to eat or get up to use the refresher while he was watching.

Something needed to change. Today he was trying a different angle.

Thrawn set the tray of food on the corner of the desk keeping hold of the small box. He knelt down to get closer to her level as she sat at the desk. He looked up into her stony expression, eyes still refusing to fix on him.

“My love,” he said. “I brought you some news.” Predictably, she didn’t respond, so he just kept going. “We’ve intensified our efforts towards finding the Rebels. They have been lying low, but our interrogations of potential sympathizers are starting to turn up some leads.”

The tapping of her fingers on her datapad stopped. Warm hope spread through Thrawn’s chest.

“We think they have fled the system, but I’m confident that the system which they have made their base cannot be far. Fleeing Lothal entirely wouldn’t match their behavior thus far at all. I calculate that they will be returning, and soon. I think we can draw them into making an appearance, if you’re willing.”

At the mention of her participation, her chin fractionally dropped toward him, and the glow of her red eyes locked with his. He cleared his throat in a vain attempt to dispel the sudden tightness there. He was too desperate for her. He wanted to take her into his arms, tell her everything would be alright. Perhaps he wanted to hear the same. Or anything at all.

“They are interested in your project. Threatened by it. We know they have sympathizers in our manufacturing facilities. A slight withdrawal of security precautions in those facilities might cause some damage to our production, but I don’t think they will be able to pass up the opportunity to make an appearance.”

“Do it,” she said. “I don’t care what it takes.”

“I’ll have it done,” he said, holding out the box in his hand, desperate to keep her attention on him. “I have something for you.”

She glanced down at the box. “Do I look in the mood for gifts?”

Thrawn resisted the urge to wince and opened the lid of the box instead. “I am not attempting to distract you. You will leave this room eventually. I only want to help.”

Thell looked into the box, her expression somber. He saw her eyes fill with tears, which she blinked back.

“May I help you?” he asked.

Nearly imperceptibly, she nodded.

“We’ll need to wash your hair first,” he said, setting the box on her desk and standing, extending a hand towards her.

A tear trickled down her cheek. She nodded again. For a moment, he felt certain she wouldn’t move, that she would return to being a statue. But slowly, shaking, her rough fingers, still scarred from her burns at the crash sight, wound around his open palm.

Thell allowed him to help her up and walk her to the refresher.

He gently helped her to undress, got the water running, undressed himself, and stepped under the shower with her. With nearly ceremonial intentionality, he untangled her hair as the water flowed down her back. He tried to pour all the love he felt for her into his touch as he washed her hair and her body. Her eyes again took on some of that empty stare, but she was responsive to him as he moved her limbs as needed. He focused on attending to her as closely as he could, but he couldn’t help but feel concern over her obvious loss of weight. When all the soap bubbles had fallen away and circled the drain, he wrapped his arms around her. He wasn’t sure if she would be alright with it, but his throat was so tight the depth of his emotion would not be possible to hide if he spoke to ask her. To his relief, she laid her head against his chest. He closed his eyes, leaning his cheek against her wet hair, desperate for contact with her.

They stood like that for a long time, swaying slightly.

Thell was the one that finally spoke, her voice eerily calm and steady. “Will you be there? When I wake up from this nightmare tomorrow?”

Thrawn took a long inhale, the steam from the shower warming his lungs. “Of course I’ll be there, my love.”

“I can’t tell when it started. If this has all been a dream, since before I even found you again.”

If only she hadn’t found him again.

“Let’s get you dried off,” he said, turning off the water.

They dried off and Thrawn rung out as much water as he could from her hair with the towels. He walked her back into the bedroom and had her sit on the bed while he returned to the refresher to get a comb and one of her hair fasteners.

He collected the box from Thell’s desk and laid both on the bed, climbing up next to Thell. They sat together, naked and cross-legged, as he combed through her damp hair. Once he had detangled all of it, he carefully separated all the strands that hung just past her shoulders from the much longer sections over her ears which brushed the bed next to her hips. He gently tied up the top layer with the fastener.

He turned his gaze to the box and let out a long sigh before reaching inside and withdrawing the course thread. It had taken Rukh a long time to find, but finally he had brought it from one of the remaining craftsmen stalls on Lothal. The yarn was likely meant for garments or mending, but it would do. There was one strand dyed a deep red and another bleached bright white.

Red and white. Like blood spilled on snow. The traditional colors of mourning for his people.

Thrawn threaded the yarn through the large, blunt tapestry needle in the bottom of the box, then laid the threads across his lap with the needle resting on his knee. He coaxed Thell to sit at an angle to him, so that he could take hold of the long lock of hair over her right ear. Dividing it into sections and pulling it as tightly as he was able without hurting her, he started a braid, the reached for the needle on his lap, weaving in the yarn as he fastened it in close to her scalp, then carefully braided it into her hair.

When he reached the end of her hair, he tied it off tightly and cut the thread. Thell fidgeted with the finished braid, as he started on the other side. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her trace her fingers over the colored strands amidst her natural deep ultramarine fibers.

As he neared the end of the second braid, his gut filled with dread, the moment of connection drawing to a close. But as he trimmed the thread, Thell shifted on the bed to face him and reached out her hand towards what was remaining. He handed it to her and watched her trembling hands tie the red and white pieces together near one end.

She took his hand in hers, then laid his palm on her knee, as she looped the two threads beneath his wrist, then wrapped it the rest of the way around and tied it in a loose bracelet.

He clenched his jaw tightly as she did, willing his emotions to stay down. He didn’t feel worthy to mourn. She needed him. Once the bracelet was finished, she just held his hand, staring down at it blankly.

He reached behind her head, unfastening the rest of her hair and letting it fall around her face. “Will you eat, my love? And then will you come sleep in bed?”

She glanced over at the desk. “I have more I need to do. If we’re going to be able to get them.”

“Thell…”

“Just a bit more,” she said, shifting off the bed and finding fresh clothes.

Thrawn’s heart sank into his gut. But he was glad that when she returned to her desk, she at least pulled the tray of food toward her and ate as she scrolled on her datapad.

For now, this would be enough.

Chapter Text

23 | Sabine Wren

“There are many reasons they could be pulling back some security,” Ia was saying as she motioned toward the hologram of the Lothal factory. Sabine sat on the seat of a speeder, listening at a distance. It was just Kanan and Ezra going on this mission, but she still liked to know the details. “We should be wary of the possibility that it could be a trap.”

“That’s always a possibility,” Ezra replied, “But that’s never stopped us before. Ryder needs our help.”

Ia had provided a very detailed walkthrough of the factory, and the types of starcraft manufactured there. Sabine wondered how she knew so much about the factory if she had mainly been in the Academy, but Ia seemed to store a lot of encyclopedic knowledge about all kinds of things. Sometimes the Chiss came across as almost droid-like. It was often unnerving, the way you could never tell what direction her pupilless red eyes were looking and she always had the most serious expressions. Really with her stony demeanor combined with her height, being nearly as tall as Kanan, Ia was almost intimidating.

Almost.

The moment Ia started speaking, the intimidating presence dropped away. She seemed to always shrink down and turn her head anywhere except at the person she was speaking to. Sometimes there were words she didn’t know in basic. Her accent was strong and unique, making Sabine wonder what her language sounded like. Sabine could understand being hesitant to communicate in a language you were less familiar with, but there was definitely more than that going on. It was almost like Ia feared people. She always lingered on the edges of conversations. More than once, Sabine had seen her nearly say something or approach only to seem to think better of it and move away.

At first, Sabine couldn’t deny that this made her come across as suspicious. Like she was trying to listen in without getting too close to the rest of the team. But some of the questions she asked about things, like the Jedi, showed she really was totally clueless about Galactic history that Sabine took for granted. She seemed genuinely interested in finding ways to help. Kanan seemed to trust her well enough, and Hera was taking necessary precautions.  

Sabine tuned back in as Hera called an end to the briefing. She stood from the bike and approached Ezra, clapping him on the back.

“Ow!” he protested.

She grinned. “Stay safe out there. Leave some Imperials for the rest of us.”

“No promises. Guess that lightsaber training will have to wait for a bit, huh?”

She shrugged, looking over her shoulder. “Not unless one of you wants to leave your lightsaber with Ia.”

The Chiss looked up suddenly, like a womprat in headlights.

“Not a chance!” Ezra laughed, “I’m going to need this.”

“We’ll practice more when we get back,” Kanan said. “Come on Ezra, let’s go get everything prepared. We leave tomorrow morning.”

Sabine waved them off and walked back towards her bunk, looking at Ia as she passed. “I’m just joking around. You can loosen up a bit, ya know?”

Ia nodded vigorously.

Sabine shook her head and smiled to herself as she walked away. She doubted Ia knew how to “loosen up” at all. But she would learn the more time she spent away from the Empire.

---

“Smells edible,” Sabine said as she took the bowl of stew from Zeb. She had to admit, she kind of looked forward to when Zeb was cooking, though she would never say it to his face. The Lasat could make a mean bowl of stew.

“Just wait ‘til you taste it. This is a good one.”

Hera walked up. “Have you seen Ia?”

“Yeah,” Sabine said, gesturing towards the coral fronds above their head, “she’s been meditating all day.”

“Bring her some food, will you?” Hera asked.

“Sure,” Sabine said, taking a second bowl from Zeb.

It was a delicate dance, ascending to the next level of coral fronds without spilling the stew. She had to set the bowls down above her to hoist herself up at one point. But she made it.

Ia sat cross-legged near the edge of the frond, back to her.

“Hey,” Sabine said.

Ia startled so badly that it startled Sabine, and almost sent her tumbling back the way she came. But, she caught herself.

“Sorry—” They both said at the same time.

“I didn’t mean to—” Sabine started.

“No, I just, ah, I wasn’t…” Ia trailed off.

“I brought you dinner,” Sabine said. “You’ve been up here all day.”

Ia looked out towards the sunset. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Sabine walked towards her, extending the bowl. “I guess it’s my job to keep an eye on you while Kanan and Ezra are gone.”

“I will not try to go anywhere,” Ia said reassuringly, that serious expression still glued to her face. She took the stew.

Sabine gave her a disarming laugh, sitting down next to her. “I didn’t mean—” She sighed, dangling her legs over the edge of the coral. “I don’t think you will. I just mean that they’re leaving both of us here.”

“Oh.” Ia stared down at her stew. Hesitantly, she uncrossed her legs and scooted forward to hang her legs over the edge as well.

Sabine ate a spoonful of Zeb’s stew. He was right, it was a particularly good one. Ia ate too. Sabine watched the breeze toss around a single wavy lock of Ia’s deep blue hair that was free from her tight bun. Her previously sharp undercut was growing out now, shaggy and sticking out over her ears.

“I could help you cut your hair if you want,” she said.

Ia nearly choked on her stew

Sabine leaned away from her. “Only if you want. If you’re growing it out on purpose, that’s fine. I’m not saying it looks bad.”

Ia cleared her throat and reached a hand up, feeling her undercut.

“I cut mine and Ezra’s hair. Just an offer if you ever want it.”

“Sure,” said Ia. “Yeah, sure.”

“If you usually do it yourself you can also just borrow my stuff.”

“No I…” She looked down. Sabine noticed her cheek bones had flushed purple. “My Mother used to do it.”

The warm breeze blew over them again as Atollon’s sun continued to sink below the horizon while they ate.

“She’s still with the Empire?” Sabine asked.

Ia nodded. “She doesn’t… she doesn’t know what it really is. How what she does hurts people.”

Sabine raised an eyebrow. “I mean, she’s designing fighters right?” She felt bad as soon as the words were out. The anger she still felt towards her own mother had just boiled out. It had been so long since she had seen her, or any of the rest of her clan for that matter, but the wound of their continued alliance with the Empire stubbornly refused to scab over.

Ia shrugged, kicking her feet through the air as she ate.

“Sorry. I don’t know her.”

She shrugged again. “She doesn’t know what they do to people like me. She is…” Ia angled her head. Sabine gave her time to think of the word. “…controlled? What is the word for when you are convinced to do something you would not do on your own?”

“Manipulated?” Sabine supplied.

“Manipulated,” Ia echoed, imitating Sabine as best as she was able with her accent. “Manipulated. I think she is manipulated. I did not mean to leave when I did. I wanted to persuade her to leave with me. But I did not have time.”

“I believe you,” Sabine conceded, seeing this was a touchy subject. Despite her decision to turn on her, Ia was still attached to her mother. “I was an Imperial cadet once upon a time.”

“It was all I knew when I came here. I just wanted to fly.” Ia looked up at the hazy sky.

Despite her expressions being so unreadable, her pupilless eyes hard to discern, Sabine couldn’t help but feel the longing coming from her as she stared upward. “The Rebellion needs pilots,” she said.

Ia nodded, seeming to come back down to the ground. “Have you flown many places?”

“Lots,” Sabine smiled.

Ia glanced at her for only a second before returning to her stew, the purple flush returning to her cheeks. “What kind of places?”

Their empty bowls were long abandoned and the stars beginning to come out by the time Sabine finally stretched and stood to go to bed. Ia so was full of wide-eyed questions about all the planets, ships, and people of the Galaxy that it was hard to turn her away. Sometimes Sabine could almost swear she could see the information she shared being cataloged for future use, like when a droid paused with gears whirring. But slowly, it became endearing. It was pure curiosity. Almost childlike. It inspired her to see the Galaxy as a more exciting place herself.   

As she and Ia scaled back down the coral and parted ways to head to bed, she resolved to talk to Hera. Sure, Ia was recently ex-Imperial and had ties to high-ranking engineers and maybe even to Thrawn himself, but Sabine was convinced that Ia had been dragged along to the Empire and had never believed in it. Even Sabine had believed in some aspects of the Empire once upon a time. Ia was curious and enthusiastic. Ia needed to fly.

Chapter Text

24 | Ia Safis

Get out. The urge pulled her from her very core. Her fingers struggled with the harness around her. But it was stuck. She looked out the window of the crashed TIE.

What was going on? This wasn’t real. She had already survived this.

But the panic felt real enough. The harness wouldn’t unlatch as the small ship grew warmer and warmer.

You must move.

It was an unknown voice saying the words in her head, deep and booming.

The harness finally released, and she pulled herself upright, climbing the ladder towards the hatch. But the ladder kept growing longer and longer as the hatch grew further away. She felt the sweat coating the inside of her flight suit.

Run. You must keep running.

The sensation of hard metal ladder rungs became hard footfalls onto stone. She was running down a road, between closely packed buildings, pushing through a dense crowd. She was stumbling. Something was coming for her. She looked over her shoulder, unable to see her pursuer through all of the people. Typically, she could see through most crowds just fine with her height, but here she was: small and growing smaller. She clutched her side. Tingling pain spread through her like wildfire as she sank lower and lower, stumbling forward as best as she could. She looked up at the people around her, trying to call out, but her voice made no sound. Cold red eyes and stony blue faces refused to look her way. She fell to her hands and knees, staring down at the well-trodden stone street. There were flecks of something faintly sparkling ground into the stone

But what are you running from, child?

Ia’s vision grew darker and darker and the sparkling stone in her vision became stars. She was in the cockpit of a different ship, staring out at the speckled void. Her hands moved over the controls of their own accord and the ship rocked forward. The ship rattled. She was out of control. Just as quickly as they had appeared, the stars were replaced with the blinding orange glow of atmospheric entry. Tumbling forward, forward, forward. She strained to regain control, but harp pain in her left leg stole the breath from her lungs.

She fell to her knees upon an invisible surface, surrounded by darkness on all.

What are you running towards?

It was quiet. So silent she could practically feel it in her body.

Her own hands and body were all she could see in the far infrared spectrum of her vision.

Images flashed through her mind in the silence. A great explosion. A rolling crowd illuminated by fireworks. Shooting stars above towering buildings. Endless vertical columns shrouded in darkness. Anger. Fog. A racing heart. A lothcat chasing a small hovering droid. Running and running and running. Fear. A warmly lit table in a room with no windows. A path between stars.

In the back of her mind, she began to hear a faint humming. Turning her head to the left, she could hear it more clearly. Yes, someone was humming a song.

She was about to ask who was there, but recognition of the tune settled into some back corner of her heart.

Now she heard a different voice in her mind. My bird, Mother whispered, Come home.

Her father’s face, older and darker. The light in his eyes was shrouded in contempt and filled her with panic. Nine more faces stared down at her. Boiling in her gut. Snow-covered rubble. A heavy weight in her arms. Cold. Chains and scaled beasts.

My bird, Mother whispered, Be free.

Feeling a soft warm touch on the back of her neck, Ia turned to her right.

Human eyes the color of tree bark in warm sunlight greeted her. Red hot metal glowed in a forge. Blasterfire flew past her head. Showers of bright orange and green sparks. Many arms around her, bodies piled onto her. One pair of arms wrapped around her waist, skin on skin.

Ia’s breath caught and her eyes flicked open as she gasped for breath.

She became acutely aware of the cold night air evaporating the sweat from her skin. The worn shirt and pants that had become her sleeping clothes here at Chopper Base were soaked through. She looked around in the dim moonlight.

She was still on her knees, just as she had been in the darkness in her dream; a dream unlike any dream she had had before. But she was no longer in her bed in the repurposed shipping container. She inhaled sharply, having spotted the beacon marking the edge of the base sticking out from the ground a few feet behind her.

She was outside the perimeter.

Had she walked there in her sleep?

Her muscles tightened, about to move her to stand, but then she froze, gaze fixed on the creature that had just shifted on its arachnoid legs no more than 20 feet away. Another one chittered further back, partially concealed by a coral frond. Was she close enough to the beacon for them to stay away?

Was she still dreaming?

In her time on the base, she had seen the creatures come right up to the perimeter, aggressive. But now they kept their distance.

Trembling and moving as slowly as she was able, Ia cautiously began shifting one of her knees in the dirt. She felt a drop of sweat trickle down her back between her shoulder blades as she rose to her feet, second by slow second.

You must move. The booming voice said in her mind, just as it had in her dream, startling her.

Ia felt an overwhelming pull out away from the base. It was like the feeling that had drawn her to the Jedi temple on Lothal, but much stronger. It was so strong that she nearly stumbled towards it.

The creatures seemed to step to the side, parting before her.

For a moment, Ia looked back over her shoulder, the pull only momentarily overtaken by her fear of losing the trust of these people who had so kindly taken her in. She thought of the softness in the way Hera spoke to her; thought of the savory warmth of Zeb’s stew still in her belly; thought of the long talk she had had with Sabine earlier that same evening.

Hadn’t she found them by following this same feeling?

She needed answers for what she had just experienced, and she felt that the answers were out there, beyond the perimeter.

—

Practically in a daze, Ia trusted the Force to guide her forward. She couldn’t be sure how long, or how far, that she had walked out among the mesas. Her heart raced at each spider-like creature she saw, but, somehow, she had complete confidence that they wouldn’t harm her.

She rounded a peculiar twisting stone and froze.

The being that stood before her towered far above her. If the creature’s white eyes hadn’t been open, it would have been possible to mistake it as being part of the coral that jutted from the earth of the landscape she had spent an undetermined amount of time walking across. But the eyes were open.

And they were fixed right on her.

When the creature spoke, its great beard bobbing up and down, its voice resonated through Ia’s very bones. It was the same deep voice that she had heard in her dream. “It is about time, way-finder. I did not think that it would take you this long to find me.”

Ia could only stare in awe and confusion.

“Speak, child.”

Ia blinked. “Who… who are you?”

“I am the Bendu!” the creature roared. Ia was filled with fear but stayed rooted in place. The presence of the Bendu in the Force was nothing like what she felt near Kanan or Ezra. It was stronger. Her recent journey to meet it, and finally standing before it now, made her feel closer to the Force than she ever had. After weeks of struggling to connect to the Force at all, she felt starved for it. It compelled her to stay though part of her screamed at her to run. “And you…” the Bendu continued, “are very lost for a way-finder.”

“I… what do you mean?”

The Bendu chuckled, the sound putting Ia even more on edge than its roar had. “You think you are running towards something, but truly, you are running away. You run away when you ought to hold still.” Those words carried extra weight as they settled over her.

“I do not understand. How do you know anything about me?”

“I know a great deal.”

“I do not understand,” she repeated, shaking her head.

“It is rare to find a way-finder in this part of the Galaxy, but here you are. You have been running but you continue finding your way.”

“What do you mean by ‘way-finder’?”

“You know what you are,” he said, chuckling again. “Whether you can name what you are is a different matter. You have come here seeking something that I have. Perhaps I shall give it to you, if you can tell me your name.”

“I am not seeking anything,” Ia said, unsure if it could be possible to be more confused. “Did you not bring me here?”

He only chuckled again.

She sighed. “My name is Ia Safis.”

“Wrong.”

Warmth rose in her cheeks as her stomach churned.

“How do you know my name?”

“Do you know what you are?”

“What are you?” Ia shot back.

“I am the Bendu.”

A cold breeze moved over Ia’s skin as she stood still, facing the Bendu. He had brought her here. She was sure of it; it had been his voice in her dream. So why wouldn’t he tell her what he wanted? Why did he make it sound like she wanted something from him? Why should she play these games? Couldn’t she just turn around and go back the way she came?

She thought of what he had said about her running away. It stung. She wanted to be angry, but the truth in the words hung over her. All she had ever wanted was to fly away from wherever she was. Even now, amongst these new people that she wanted so badly to be close to, she spent her days longing for more. She had wanted to see what was outside the barrier.

There were too many unanswered questions. Perhaps these answers were the thing he said that she wanted from him. In that case, she would try to play this game. What did she have to lose?

“Mitth’ia’safis,” she said softly, the name feeling stuck in her throat.

“Wrong,” he said again.

She couldn’t help but hold out her hands in indignation.

“You are not what other beings call you.”

“Then how do I know what I am? Am I a ‘way-finder’?”

He let out a huff through his nose. “You must hold still,” he said again.

Ia narrowed her eyes. She thought about Kanan’s meditation to connect with the Force and how much she struggled to get her thoughts to quiet when she attempted to do the same. “I am Jedi.”

This earned yet another chuckle. “No, you are not. And you never will be.”

Ia’s heart sank deep into her chest. Never a Jedi? Could she never learn to be like Kanan and Ezra? Could she never be more than what she always had been? “I am Mitth.”

“You have already known you are not. Do not be thoughtless. Be still.”

Ia clenched her jaw, surprised by the tears that had come to her eyes. She blinked them back and slowly lowered herself to the ground, sitting cross-legged before the Bendu.

She closed her eyes, settling into stillness. It was challenging, as it had been the past weeks, to settle her racing thoughts. The tumult was strengthened by the confusion about all she had experienced tonight. When had she felt stillness before?

Ia remembered the first moment when she had flown a ship into orbit with her own hand. She remembered rising above the clouds, Zicheri in the seat next to her, coaching her every move. But then suddenly the rumbling of the engines faded as they broke out of the atmosphere. Zicheri went quiet, letting young Thias see what she had been able to do. It had been completely quiet. She finally had the ability to go places on her own. Whether she was allowed to was another matter, but the power was hers.

Ia remembered being tethered to the outside of the Steadfast and softly pushing off with her boots. She had just floated there in the void, bathing in all the connections between things in the Force, not even knowing what the Force was. How simple things had seemed back then.

Ia remembered having her back pressed to the conical Jedi temple on Lothal. She had just stayed there so long.

She had found these moments of stillness in the midst of moments that Bendu criticized, when she was running away. How could she not? How was she supposed to find stillness amidst all the chaos she often found herself in?

The thought struck her.

Finding the stillness amidst the chaos.

Like finding a way through the Chaos.

Way-finder. Walker amidst the sky.

She didn’t know who the Bendu was or how he came upon his knowledge. He may be strong in the Force, but that didn’t mean he knew her future. She had found her way to exactly where she was. Often, she wondered if that way was right. She had plenty of regrets. But she had made her way there regardless. She found paths that no one else could see. The Bendu might not see a way for her to be a Jedi, but she would make one.

“Ozyly-esehembo,” she said. “I am ozyly-esehembo.”

The Bendu laughed, this time more warmly. “Then rise, ozyly-esehembo.”

Ia blinked open her eyes, horrified to realize that the sun was beginning to rise. As she attempted to stand, her aching knees protested. How long had she been sitting like this? Would Kanan and the others realize she was gone?

The Bendu spoke, his tone dark. “Before I give you what you desire, I will first give you a warning. The dream you saw was a vision. It will not be the last that you have.”

Chills traveled down Ia’s spine.

“A vision of the future?”

“Past or future, may be or will be. These distinctions are meaningless. But what is certain is this: the great power you hold will become great pain if you attempt to be that which you are not.”

The images she had seen scared her. But it had all been so vague. How was she supposed to avoid that pain? How was she supposed to know what choices were the right ones?

“Now, ozyly-esehembo, extend your hand. I am neither Jedi nor Sith. I am neither Dark nor Light. In this way, we are similar.”

Ia extended her hands towards the Bendu, cupping her palms. So, was it an object he was giving her?

Bendu extended a massive, closed fist towards her, but did not open the hand. “If I was Dark or Light, I would not put this gift in your hands, ozyly-esehembo. But the stillness of balance is yours to find. Just as you found your way to what belongs to you.”

Chapter Text

25 | Kanan Jarrus

“Have you eaten yet?” Hera asked.

Kanan grimaced, knowing the scolding that was coming. “No.”

Hera sighed. “I thought you said you were ready to go. Here.”

Kanan extended his hand towards her, feeling the foil wrapper of a protein ration. “We have these on the ship. I wasn’t going to forget.”

“You’ll need all the energy you can get.”

“It won’t be too bad. We’re just checking in with Ryder and doing a simple infiltration.”

“What about handling Ezra?”

“Maybe you have a point.” Kanan chuckled, opening the wrapper. He took a bite from the bland paste, then turned his head as he felt Sabine’s presence approaching.

“Hey, Hera,” Sabine said, “do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” Hera said. “What’s up?”

“You should let Ia fly for us.”

Kanan raised his eyebrows behind his mask. Already, he and Hera had privately agreed that they could slowly begin trusting the Chiss more if this mission went off smoothly. But Sabine hadn’t interacted with Ia as much as he had in his attempts to evaluate her connection to the Force.

He was personally convinced that Ia was truly against the Empire. Hera trusted that Ia might hold anger towards the Empire at large, but she was concerned about Ia’s ability to truly fight alongside them while her Mother was still loyal.

“I’m considering it,” Hera said.

He could hear that motherly tone in her voice. She was so good at saying ‘no’, without making you feel unheard.

“I just think she’s a waste of a good pilot right now. You’re always saying we need pilots.”

“That’s true, but—"

“Hey!” Zeb yelled, footsteps resonating through the earth as he pounded up to them. “Ia is gone!”

“What do you mean gone?” Kanan demanded, quickly choking down the rest of the protein ration.

“I mean she left the base! She was supposed to help me with logs this morning and I can’t find her anywhere.”

Hera sighed deeply. “Right before you’re about to head to Lothal. Alright, everyone. No one leaves until we find out where she went. Sabine, go make sure all ships are accounted for.”

“Got it,” Sabine said, footsteps receding.

“Karabast,” Zeb growled. “I’ll go look again.”

“I don’t get it,” Kanan said.

“We don’t need to jump to any conclusions yet,” Hera said. “Try to find her your way?”

He nodded as all of them ran off. He reached out into the Force, attempting to locate Ia’s unique presence. He felt Ezra first, bright in his connection to the Force. Sabine was near him. Hera and Zeb grew further away. He tried to ignore those close sensations, expanding his reach.

No, he didn’t feel her near the base.

If she had escaped on a ship, the others would find that out. The only other place she could have gone was outside the perimeter. She knew about the arachnoid inhabitants kept out by the barrier. Why would she have taken that risk, when just yesterday she had seemed as though she was beginning to feel more comfortable here? Hadn’t she been making friends with Ezra and Sabine? Hadn’t Sabine just told them Ia felt trustworthy? Had they all read her wrong?

As he continued sinking into the Force, extending further and further, attempting to quiet his racing thoughts, the thought struck him suddenly:

Bendu.

—

The Force guided his blind control of the speeder along the path he had followed twice before. He braked hard as Ia’s presence suddenly seared into his consciousness ahead of him. It felt somehow less jagged than was typical for her. Relief washed over him.

“Kanan!” she called, some distance away.

He dismounted the bike and walked towards her.

“Kanan it—” her tone had taken on a tone of mild panic. “He was right here! I… I did not run away. He was just right here. He was—”

“It’s alright, Ia. I’ve met Bendu.”

“I had a vision,” she said, sounding relieved herself. “I woke up outside the perimeter. I did not mean to leave.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he said. “Let’s get you back to the base. Everyone is looking for you.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to cause problems for your mission.”

“You didn’t,” he said. “Bendu is an expert with disrupting plans.”

“What— who is he?” Ia asked as they both mounted the speeder.

Kanan shook his head, revving the engine. “I wish I knew. But he’s well-connected to the Force. You’ll have to tell me everything he said to you when I get back from this mission.”

He sped back to the base as quickly as he had come. It didn’t take long for the others to all gather around them as they dismounted the speeder.

“Where did you go?” Ezra asked, first to arrive.

“Ia met our friend on the mesa.”

“Oh,” Ezra said, going quiet.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” Hera said, walking up slowly behind Sabine’s light footfalls and Zeb’s heavy ones.

Chopper trilled with some kind of sarcasm. 

“I am sorry,” Ia said. Kanan could feel the anxious energy growing in her with everyone’s attention on her.

“What did he want?” Ezra asked.

“I… I do not know.” Ia said. “He gave me a rock.”

Kanan tilted his head.

“Whoa…” Ezra said.

“Kanan is that…?” Hera trailed off.

He extended his hand towards Ia. “May I see it?”

A small object was dropped into his palm. He could feel the Force resonating within it before he had even run his fingers over its sharp edges.

“Ia,” he said, filled with new respect, underlined by even more confusion about this girl that the Force had drawn him to meet. “This is a Kyber crystal.”

Chapter Text

26 | Mitth’ell’unaris

Thell swiped a finger through the hologram and the Defender dissolved as the simulator prepared to run again. She had made the smallest alteration to the way the wiring snaked around the hyperdrive. If her calculations were correct, it should keep the temperature in the forward capacitors 0.05 degrees cooler during a jump. She cycled the calculation over and over in her mind, waiting out the painful few seconds for the simulation to boot up.

She could not let her mind be still.

A trill of laughter pierced her ears.

She hadn’t been fast enough. She squeezed her eyes closed, heart jumping against her ribs as her chest tightened.

Small blue fingers clutched a toy ship. Thias ran around the room, giggling and making engine noises with her mouth. Her curls bounced as she leapt through the air and fell upon the sofa. Thell jumped and trembled as little Thias mimed a crash and explosion.

Thell opened her eyes as the simulation started up, the giggling still haunting the back of her mind.

The door hissed open behind her, and she wheeled around. Thias’ eyes stared down at her, filled with fear. She jumped back.

No, it wasn’t Thias. The eyes were set under a heavy brow and underlined with dark creases.

“Thell,” Thrawn said. “Have you eaten?”

Thell attempted to steady herself, hands trembling to almost drop her datapad. She nodded. She had been eating more. It felt like a waste of her time, and it was dangerous to be undistracted; that was when the memories seeped in and threatened to overwhelm her. But it helped with the shaking.

“Good,” he said, skirting around the simulation in the center of the room as he crossed over towards her.

He avoided her eyes. They were not Thias’ eyes, but they still held fear within them. Why was he afraid? How afraid had she been?

“I have news,” he said, sitting slowly on the edge of their bed. He looked tired.

She nodded, turning her attention back to the simulation as it began spitting out temperature readings. Forward capacitors were down 0.04 degrees. Close but not perfect. She frowned. Why was the navicomputer up 0.7 degrees now? She grit her teeth, envisioning the Rebels crawling over the ashes of her daughter and pulling the navicomputer from the wreckage of the TIE. She pulled up the model again, comparing the two most recent wiring configurations. She would fix this.

“They fell for it,” Thrawn continued.

She stood up straight, turning towards him.

“But they got away.”

Her lip twitched. She studied the weariness on his face. “There’s more?”

"They have a spy. I suspected it before, but now I am certain.”

“Who?” she asked, feeling ice cold rage in the pit of her stomach.

“I am not yet sure. But it is someone that is high enough rank to be privy of your project.”

The ice turned to fire. Could it have been someone she knew? Some human that she had looked in the eye?

“Do you think they were involved?”

He knew what she meant; involved in the test gone wrong.

He shook his head slowly. “I do not know. But it is likely.”

Before, the Rebels were a faceless enemy. A political evil striking out against a faceless pilot. But perhaps this saboteur had known her daughter and planned on her demise. Thell felt the trembling in her arms begin to worsen again.

Thias’ childhood imitation of the crashing ship and her high-pitched trills of laughter played over and over in her head.

“I will kill them,” she said, voice hoarse. The words scared her.

Thrawn’s brow tented over his eyes. He stood from the bed and pulled the datapad from her hands. She attempted to resist but his firm grip was stronger than her shaking fingers.

He pulled her firmly into his arms and she stiffened against him, arms limp at her sides as he held her. She felt panic rising in her chest as the smell of him enveloped her senses, worming its way into her brain and pulling out memory and emotion. “Thrawn—”

“You need to rest, Thell.”

“Thrawn—”

His voice was soft, barely a whisper. “They downloaded your plans, Thell.”

She froze, eyes wide.

“An unauthorized droid accessed the terminal in Section A2.”

She struggled against his hold, filled with panicked rage. “Then I need to change everything!” she cried out.

“Thell, please.” She stopped. His voice was tight with emotion. His hand rested heavy on her head. “Please.”

Never in her life had she heard Thrawn beg for anything.

Slowly, she surrendered, her head lowering onto his chest. The trembling spread from her arms over her whole body as she allowed him to hold her.

“Your design is perfect,” he said. His voice was so soft that she could barely feel the vibration of it in his chest. “We will test it again soon. Knowing what we are capable of will not save them.”

The tightness of his arms around her reminded of how closely Thias had held her before she left. She could probably count on one hand the times her daughter had embraced her unprompted. No more.

Thell tossed his arms off of her and backed away through the hologram of her model, wrapping her arms around herself, lightheaded and nauseous, breath coming in short, sharp bursts as the shaking threatened to overtake her completely. She shook her head, attempting to dislodge the memory.

How afraid had she been?

Had she known she was going to die?

How had he not known of the spy sooner? The rage that filled her put her on the verge of exploding or collapsing or both.

“Thell…” Thrawn said.

She locked eyes with him. Saw Thias’ eyes. The desperation within them melted her and replaced her rage with sudden guilt. His daughter’s eyes.

She clenched her jaw, tears spilling from her eyes and down her face.

“Do you think she was in pain?” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I do not know.”

“I just… what if I did something wrong?” The words choked in her throat. “What if she tried to get out and the ejection didn’t work?”

“You didn’t build it, Thell. You just designed it. You didn’t—” His throat was too tight to speak. His brow creased with the effort of struggling against the emotion behind his words. “She should never have been there in the first place.”

“I’m sorry” They both said at the same time. They looked up at each other.

“I will kill them,” he said. “I will find the spy. I will use the weapon you have built for me. You just need to rest now.”

Thell looked at the hologram, then focused on Thrawn on the other side of it. She stepped to the side of it, needing to see him without the glowing lines between them.

He was a wreck.

His uniform was tousled. Some of his hair hung loose in front of his forehead, no longer perfectly slicked back. His eyes were wet and his lips were pressed together in pain.

Struggling against the emotions and memories that pressed against her consciousness, she stepped towards him and caressed a hand against his tight jaw. He squeezed his eyes shut, leaning into her touch.

“You need to rest,” he said again, a hoarse whisper.

“So do you,” she said softly.

He jerked away from her, wiping away the tear that had escaped his eye as quickly as the water tension had broken.

Overwhelmed with grief and guilt, Thell cried, whole body shaking. Thrawn let out a restrained sob through clenched teeth.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close to her.

“She should never have been there,” he said again, holding her so tightly it was nearly painful. “She should never have been there.”

Thell had no words of comfort to offer, her throat tight, her chest even tighter. They clung to each other, sinking down to the floor.

The memories bore down on her now.

Neat rows of toy ships. The little hands clinging to her pants, wide crimson eyes staring out at the other children. The pencil held in a shaking fist and a hundred drawings of freighters and fighters and everything in between, waving slowly in the gentle warm breeze on Thearterra. Thell remembered searching all over for her at dinner time when she was just becoming a midager, finding her on the roof of part of the training facility, just staring up at the stars beginning to shine through the dusk. Some part of her had known then that Thias would fly away some day; the girl was itching to explore the whole Galaxy. But she had never had the chance.

Thell sobbed into Thrawn’s uniform.

They were supposed to be a family. All she ever wanted was for them to be a family.

You’re always going to choose him over me, aren’t you? Thias’ words returned again, piercing her heart once more. That had been in her last days with her.

Thell felt guilty, finding comfort in Thrawn’s arms.

Had Thias known she was loved? Did Thias know that she, not Thrawn, had been her reason for living?

They had never been a family. Not really. There had been moments it had been close, when Thrawn had gently caressed her pregnant belly. When he had woken in the night to care for her, the one time he was home with her before his exile. When he had given her the speeder and helped her study for the Academy.

Those moments felt like insults now.

What had she done wrong? She had always done everything she could to keep her family together.

Thell missed her parents, long passed now, ashes mingled in the stones on Rentor. Children were supposed to mourn their parents, not the other way around. She had joined the Irizi and then the Mitth. She missed those days getting caf with Thrass and Thrawn. She had mourned at Thrass’ record stone too, named her daugther after him. She had raised her perfect little girl with Thrawn’s sister and the others that shared her abilities. That had almost felt like family.

She had chased Thrawn across the Ascendency and the Galaxy, searching for that feeling of home.

She had almost had it.

Then the most precious thing in the world had been taken from her.

How much more would she lose, longing for family? Longing for a home and a warm pair of arms to return to?

Did she have anything else to lose?

“I could send you home,” Thrawn said, voice shaking.

“Why?” she cried out, clinging to him.

“Everyone—” he choked. “Everyone who gets close to me—”

“Then that’s perfect for me,” she sobbed. She dug her fingers into his shoulders. “To die in your arms would be a relief.”

Thrawn let out another restrained sob.

“Don’t you dare send me away. Don’t you dare suggest being away from me ever again.”

He nodded against her.

“Promise me,” she cried.

“I promise.”

They held each other and mourned.

Chapter Text

27 | Ia Safis

Ia, sitting on a low crate with her arms resting on the edge of the central holoprojector, yawned and put her head down on them.

“We can take a break if you need,” Hera said.

Ia sat up straight. “No, I am fine.” She looked up at the hologram circuits, numbers, and notes written in Basic slowly rotating, feeling lost in it. She had been going through every tiny detail of the stolen TIE Defender plans with Hera all day. She felt much less helpful than she hoped she would be. She could fly the thing and she knew lots of facts about it especially given how much time she had listened to Mother talk about it, but she wasn’t an engineer.

“Let’s see if they’ve made any changes to the navicomputer since we got a hold of the last one,” Hera said. She scrolled through the plans.

The navicomputer design glowed, looking just as it had when she pulled it from the Defender—the last ship she had flown. She groaned internally at the thought of how long it had been since she had been behind the controls of a ship. This exercise was feeling more and more pointless. Hadn’t they sent a copy of the plans to other rebel cells with real engineers? Wasn’t Sabine the one in their group who might be able to find something worthwhile in these plans?

It didn’t help her attention that the rest of the crew had been gone longer than expected on their mission to hopefully find allies in Sabine’s Mandalorian clan. She was worried.

The only thing she was succeeding at in looking at these plans was feeling useless to Hera. That, and losing time she could be working on her lightsaber with her new kyber crystal. There were things she didn’t want to think about right now and Mother’s role in the Empire was one of those things. Yet here it was, looming over her.

She tried to take some small comfort in all the Basic text. Despite her growing skills in the language, Mother couldn’t have written all of that. Obviously, she had a whole team for the project. But possibly, Ia fantasized, she had stopped working on the project after Ia had left. Maybe being faced with the existence of the rebellion against the Empire, coupled with Ia’s own questioning in the week leading up to her disappearance, had made Mother begin to question it. If that were true, then that was yet another reason it was useless for her to spend her time on this.

As if in response to the thought, Hera zoomed in on a particular part of the navicomputer’s internal circuitry. It glowed, red like an eye amidst the blue hologram. “Hold on, this region is being flagged as different from the data we have from the last one.”

The image came into focus and the sight of Cheunh text sent a shard of ice through Ia’s core: Cssuzah etah vim bsotah etah.

Find them and burn them.

Ia blinked, reading it over and over.

“Ia?”

Emotions washed over her too quickly to identify.

“Ia, do you know what that means? I don’t have a translation for it in our database.”

Her throat was tight. Simultaneous guilt and betrayal came to the forefront of the storm in her.

Mother thought she was dead. That was her fault. She had thought that was a possibility, but had convinced herself that somehow Father would have been able to determine she had betrayed them to the Rebels and lived.

But it was more than that. Mother blamed the Rebels. She had disregarded everything Ia had said to her about the Empire and turned into something that Ia couldn’t begin to comprehend.

Burn them?

Could she say something like that?

No human in the Empire could have written those words for her. And as much as she wanted to believe that Father could be responsible for the text, she knew it couldn’t be true. He wasn’t this deeply involved in the minutia of the designs. And despite his position in the Empire, she didn’t think he would take such an emotionally motivated action. Even when confronted with the death of his daughter. He would have to care about her more for that.

No, those were Mother’s words.

“Ia?” Hera said again, startling Ia with a hand on her shoulder.

Ia looked up at her, feeling her eyes welling up with tears.

Hera’s thin brows were tented above her eyes.

Ia struggled to form her thoughts into Basic words. “I… I am sorry,” she said. Her voice came out thin and hoarse. “I just need a moment.” She stood from her crate, slipping out from under Hera’s hand on her shoulder, and dashed off towards her shipping container barracks, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

“Ia!” Hera called after her, but she didn’t follow.

—

Ia sat on her cot, the morning sun sending slanting beams through the opening to her room. She held her kyber crystal between her fingers, surrounded by all sorts of metal parts and circuitry scattered around her cot and the floor. The small holo of the basic lightsaber configuration glowed at the very end of the cot. Besides that basic shape of internal components, it was all so free form. Kanan said she would feel how to put it all together. Right now, her feelings were a mess.

She felt bad for not talking to Hera. But she could barely think, let alone talk. She had laid in bed for hours, pulling her hair and gritting her teeth, trying to get her mind to calm down. Eventually, she had just fallen asleep. She would talk to Hera today. Just maybe not right now.

The crystal between her fingers made her skin tingle as emotion rolled over her. The hairs on her forearms stood up in response. Kanan was right in that it was connected to her somehow. The Force was a strange thing.

She still wasn’t sure what to think about her interaction with Bendu. If she was never going to be a Jedi, as he had said, why would he give her a kyber crystal? What was the point of building a lightsaber at all? At least with a lightsaber, she would be able to join Ezra and Sabine’s combat training, but there had to be more to it than that, didn’t there? She sighed.

What was the point of any of this?

She closed the crystal in her fist and flopped back onto her pillow, staring at bottom of the empty cot above her. She was glad that she was still the only one living in this container. If more rebels came to their base, she wouldn’t have a place to be alone that was completely hers. That was something she needed right now.

What was she even doing here?

She was only causing more problems for the rebels so far. Bendu said she wouldn’t be a Jedi. And now, because of her, Mother was falling deeper and deeper into the Empire.

She had made a mistake. No… she was a mistake.  

That thought had followed her around in the back of her mind for all her life, but now it was seemingly always at the forefront. Could she only make life more difficult for everyone around her?

A distant humming noise made her quickly sit back up. That was a ship. She tucked her kyber crystal back in its place in her pocket and leaned out of her doorframe, looking up as the Ghost flew by overhead.

Her heart lifted.

She turned back into her room and shoved her feet into her boots before going out towards the landing area. She avoided eye contact with Hera, giving her a tight smile when she saw her. Hera just looked warmly concerned, but didn’t try to start a conversation. Ia appreciated that. She would talk to her after.

The landing ramp of the Ghost hissed to the ground and Ezra came out, shoulders slumped, followed by Chopper, Zeb, and Kanan.

Ia’s heart sank. Where was Sabine?

“Sabine’s alright,” Kanan said, bringing her slight relief. “She decided to stay and fight alongside her clan.”

Hera put a hand on Ezra’s shoulder. “Mission successful then?”

“Yeah, mission successful,” Kanan said, “Clan Wren has turned on the Empire. And hopefully more Mandalorian clans will join them in pushing back.”

“I understand,” Hera said. “We’ll miss her. But that’s her place. She’ll do the most good for the rebellion among her people.”

Ia felt her own shoulders droop. Hera was right of course. Sabine was doing something that really mattered. So why did she feel so heavy?

“Hera?” she said softly, her heart racing with anxiety as soon as she had spoken.

Hera turned to look at her, raising her eyebrows.

“Can I talk to you?”

“Of course,” Hera said, looking briefly at the others before turning back to Ia. “Walk with me.”

Ia followed her back through the base towards the central holoprojector.

“In the plans,” Ia started, palms sweating.

Hera nodded.

“It was my language. Something written by my mother.”

Hera nodded again, not reacting strongly, which encouraged her.

Ia breathed deeply to calm herself. “She believes I am dead. She is angry at the rebellion. Before I left, she was more neutral but…” She swallowed hard. She stared down at her feet as they stopped walking. “It is my fault. She is likely putting even more effort into developing technology for the Empire than before.”

“What exactly did she say?”

The way Hera looked at her now was so reminiscent of the way Mother had always looked at her when she was scolding her for running off on her own; stern but mostly just worried because she cared. She needed that now. And she needed Hera to trust her. She steeled herself.

“Find them and burn them,” she whispered.

The silence that followed was long and relief flowed over her when Hera finally spoke.

“I understand,” Hera said. “Are you alright? I imagine that’s hard to hear.”

Ia nodded, feeling tears collecting in her eyes again, feeling undeserving of the kindness that Hera was extending to her. “I never thought— I thought she would be able to see what the Empire is.”

Hera put a hand on her arm. “It’s not your fault. We all make our own choices.”

Ia nodded, though she didn’t fully believe it. “I want to do something that matters,” she said. Like Sabine, she thought to herself. “I am not useful with these plans. I am no engineer. But I am a good pilot.” She stood up straight, looking Hera in the eye. “I want to fly in your squadron.”

Hera gave her a gentle half smile. “Welcome to Phoenix Squadron, Ia.”

Chapter Text

28 | Ia Safis

“We’ll be dropping out of hyperspace shortly,” Hera said, her voice grainy through the comm of the old fighter. “We’ll rendezvous with the others at the edge of the system before we head in for the extraction.”

“Got it,” Ia said. Though there was no manual piloting to be done in hyperspace, she had barely been able to keep her hands off the controls. Yes, it was an old ship, but it was a ship. A BTL-A4 Y-wing assault starfighter. Hera’s matching ship, visible through her viewport, shot through the tunnel of blue streaks just ahead of her.

Ia felt ridiculous, gripping the useless controls and grinning inside her helmet, but her excitement couldn’t be contained. She was flying again. And she was on a real mission to help the Rebellion. Her gut was turning over as she counted down the last minutes until they would arrive at Iego. She was nervous to meet the other pilots that Hera had recruited to the Phoenix Squadron, but she was comforted by the fact she wouldn’t be meeting them face-to-face yet; they could get to know her flying first.

Finally, the streaks of stars became points of light and Ia felt the slight resistance of the helm in her hands, signaling that she was back in control. The star at the center of the system was small from her vantage point, but the planet Iego loomed large in the distance, its glow interrupted by all the black dots she knew represented its many moons.

The view was beautiful, but it was what Ia felt in the Force that took her breath away. She had been feeling so distant from the Force lately, but this system, evidently teeming with life, was strong enough to pierce through. She had read that many of the planet’s moons had temperate or tropical climates and were home to many native species.

Ia flew alongside Hera, slowly moving toward the planet in a wide arc. It was faint, but Ia could the pull of its gravity in the way her ship responded to her guidance. Her proximity sensors picked up the other Phoenix Squadron fighters before she could see them out of her viewport, 3 X-wing fighters flying in formation.

“Welcome to Iego, Phoenix Leader,” a masculine voice crackled in over the comms.

“Thanks, Wedge,” Hera said. “Let’s make some quick introductions and get this mission going. Sound off.”

“Phoenix 2. I’m Wedge.”

“Phoenix 4,” said a nasal feminine voice, “Cleat.” Ia wondered about about Phoenix 3.

“Phoenix 5. Duke.” A deep voice.

All sounded human to Ia. Or at least had no accent to their Basic. She supposed Hera didn’t have an accent either.

She suppressed her own accent as much as she was able, trying to sound as confident as the rest of them. “Phoenix six. Ia.”

“Nice to be flying with you, Ia,” Wedge said. “Always nice to see another ex-Imperial pilot. We make great rebels, and we need all the trained pilots we can get.”

“What, us outer rim bush pilots ain’t good enough for you?” Duke said. Maybe he did have a bit of an accent. But not one that Ia had heard before.

“We need all kinds of pilots,” Hera interrupted. “Set course for Millius Prime on the other side of the planet. The Empire’s station in this system will be nearby. Dr. Fillibrund’s ship will be taking off shortly.”

Ia formed up with the others as they trailed after Hera, rocketing around the planet. She ran through the mission details in her mind again. A former-Imperial researcher had isolated herself in this outer rim system where she had been studying the unique medical properties of the plants on Millius Prime, only for the Empire to set up a post in the system. She contacted the Rebellion for a way out of the system before the Empire discovered she was living there and persecuted her for her defection, offering to trade resources and research she had collected in her time there. She had promised cures for potential bioweapons that she claimed the Empire was developing. The Phoenix Cell was close to Iego, so Hera’s squadron had been called in.

All she needed was cover-fire to escape the system safely.

The moon rose up quickly into view and Ia focused on maintaining her formation. Any second the Empire would—

“Unidentified fighters, what is your business in this system?”

Ia’s heart beating so quickly she could feel the pounding in her throat. Her fingers hovered over the trigger for her forward lasers. A tightly locked squadron of four TIEs peeled away from the small station as they approached.

Before Hera could respond, Ia’s gaze locked on to the small ship glowing in the atmosphere of the moon. Another squadron of TIEs departed the station, diving towards it.

“Phoenix 2 with me,” Hera said. “The rest of you, help the doctor.”

Ia watched for Cleat and Duke to break off and followed them, the first laser fire blasts streaked towards them from the TIEs. She remembered the feeling of being struck. The way her shields had burned away and her ship had shuddered. The fall to Garel.

But these blasts didn’t connect and she shook off the memory, pouring her focus entirely on the doctor’s ship.

It was sleek and completely silver, so stunning to look at that Ia struggled to pull her gaze away from it. She had never seen a ship like that.

Cleat and Duke sprayed laser fire towards the TIEs that pursued the ship. Ia broke off from them, coming in at a different angle, one with her ship as she lined up the Y-wings old targeting systems and spiraled in behind the TIEs. The first wave of fire from Cleat and Duke didn’t make contact, but as they fired a second volley, Ia could see perfectly where the TIE was going to end up as it dodged.

In a direct hit, the TIE erupted into spectacular burst of sparks, which Ia evaded as she continued in pursuit of the others.

The sensation of getting hit in her own TIE overwhelmed her mind again and her stomach was suddenly sick as she envisioned the pilot of the TIE she had just reduced to space debris.

“Nice shooting, Ia!” Cleat called over the comms.

Ia was pulled back into the moment.

“That’s one!” Duke called.

Her face warmed from the compliments. She steeled herself. She was one of them now, a Rebel. The Imperials had fired on them first. She had every right to respond to their strike with her own.

With the others, Ia traded more fire with the TIEs as the doctor’s silver ship wove between them, climbing further and further from the moon. Ia sent a second TIE careening out of control down towards the moon and Cleat took out a third. The fourth was beginning to angle away from them when Hera’s Y-wing swooped down and made short work of it.

“Good work, Phoenix Squadron. Let’s get out of here before they can send another squad. Dr. Fillibrund, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear,” said the doctor, sounding calm and collected despite the firefight.

“I’ve sent you the coordinates for rendezvous outside the system,” Hera said. “Prepare to jump.”

As soon as Ia saw the silver ship disappear from view she punched in the coordinates herself and followed. She could see another squadron of TIEs approaching in the distance as the stars turned to streaks. The sudden silence made her suddenly aware of how loudly and quickly she was breathing.

In only moments, the stars reappeared. She oriented herself to the space around her as she counted the other Y-wings that hovered around the silver ship. Iego was far off in the distance, the planet and its star larger than the surrounding points of light but not by very much.

“Nice flying, Ia!” Duke said, startling her. “That old ship flies better than any TIE, eh?”

“Yeah, it is a nice ship,” she said, responding as quickly as she could. It wasn’t quite true. She would probably prefer to fly the Y-wing over the average TIE, but it didn’t compare to the agility of the Defender. But she suspected that Duke wasn’t really hoping she would tell him that an Imperial ship was better. It was nice that he was complimenting her flying. It felt good. Like she was part of something.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Dr. Fillibrund said. “I still can’t believe I had to leave. But it’s better this way.”

“We’re glad to help,” Hera said. “If you’re looking for a new home, the Rebellion is in need of doctors. The information you have will be useful to us, but it would also be useful to have another pair of hands.”

“I’m grateful for the offer,” the doctor said. “I have spent too much time hiding after all that I did for the Empire. The weapons…” Ia could hear the tension in her voice as she trailed off. “The research I did on Millius Prime is a small step towards making it right. It’s time to put myself to use. I only hope that the Empire leaves the locals alone. Perhaps the Rebellion can help them.”

“We help everyone we can,” Hera said.

“The Diathim are a truly amazing people. They have already suffered enough in the Clone Wars. I hope that my leaving will not subject them to scrutiny. But I fear that if I had been discovered there, they may have been punished more harshly for harboring a defector.”

“Phoenix 2 will escort you to the Home Fleet,” Hera said. “You can put your knowledge to use there.”

“Thank you,” she said again. “I couldn’t have made it out of there without you. Truly. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Hera said. “Good work Phoenix Squadron. You can take it from here Wedge.”

Wedge, Cleat, and Duke took up positions around Dr. Fillibrund’s ship and moments later they all disappeared.

“You flew very well, Ia,” Hera said. “I’m glad to have you with us.”

“Thank you,” Ia said. She wasn’t quite sure of the right way to accept all these compliments. But she was glad for them nonetheless. “What kind of ship was that?”

Hera chuckled. “I’m not sure of the exact model, but it was Nubian. From the planet Naboo. They’re all quite flashy.”

Nubian. Naboo. Ia mentally stored away the words to look up later.

“Let’s get home,” Hera said.

Ia plugged in the coordinates. Just programming hyperspace coordinates had been the hardest thing to learn when Hera had shown her how to fly the Y-wing. There weren’t enough astromech droids to go around in the Rebellion, and Ia was certain that she should be the last person to have one, given that she could use her Third Sight— the Force— if she was truly lost. All the ships she had flown long distance through the Chaos had relied on this ability alone. The Defender was the only other ship she had flown with a proper navicomputer and that engineering was quite different from the Y-wing. But she had managed to learn it.

Home, Hera had said. Ia smiled. Atollon. The planet she had been living on had a name now. And she had been trusted with its coordinates.

Hera jumped to hyperspace. For just a moment, Ia hesitated to pull the lever of her ship, alone in the void. For the first time, she realized she wasn’t longing for more time to just float there alone. She had a place she wanted to be. Home.

—

Ia pulled her helmet off as her feet landed on the ground on Atollon. Atollon’s star, Ashbo, was inching towards the horizon, painting the sky in vibrant red and orange. She breathed in the warm night air, peace settling over her, the Force moving through her. Belonging and oneness.

Ia tossed her helmet into the cockpit of the Y-wing as she saw Hera waving her over to the other side of the landing yard.

“I’m getting a transmission from Ezra,” Hera said.

Ia nodded, chest swelling with pride. She stood tall, shoulders back as Hera answered the call. Hera was including her in the mission business.

“Ezra, how did it go?” Hera asked as Ezra’s face appeared.

“Great!” he said.

“Did you extract Kallus?” she asked.

Kallus? Ia raised her eyebrows. Agent Kallus was a Rebel? She had only interacted with the man a few times but he seemed like a complete Imperial loyalist. That also meant that the others had been on a mission to Lothal. She swallowed the anxiety that rose in her throat at the thought. They said the mission went great. There was nothing to worry about.

“Well plans kind of changed,” Ezra said. “He decided to stay. We framed another Imperial for the Fulcrum transmissions. But that’s not the best part. Get this— we snuck into Thrawn’s office!”

Ia clenched her jaw.

Ezra continued. “He’s been looking for us. But I deleted the base from his star chart! He’ll never find us now!”

Ia’s blood turned to ice and she felt suddenly faint. She blinked, struggling to process Ezra’s words. Thrawn was looking for them. Yes, he had been searching for Kanan before she had left. But Ia wondered if the belief that the Rebels had killed her was fueling his search.

“I see,” Hera said. Ia couldn’t discern her tone. “Hopefully that will keep him away.”

But it wouldn’t. Ia didn’t know her father well, but she knew that above all he was cunning. He didn’t miss small details.

She wanted to say something. She wanted to calmly suggest they should pack up now, since it was only a matter of time. Or maybe she wanted to yell, call Ezra an idiot. But she was frozen. She was only now beginning to earn their trust. Could she really tell them now that she had lied? That she knew Thrawn better than she had claimed?

But how certain could she be that this would mean that he would find them? Or was that only what she was afraid of? All this time she had felt that this new life could only be temporary. She feared even thinking of her parents; the thought of her father’s steely gaze and her mother’s restrictive embrace filled her with guilt and anger and too many emotions to name. It kept her from connecting to the Force. Even now, they held her back from finding the true potential in her abilities.

“Ia?”

She blinked, realizing that Hera had signed off the call and was looking up at her with tented brow. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “Just tired after today.”

Hera pressed her lips together. “You’re afraid of Thrawn?”

Ia swallowed. Then she nodded slowly. What else could she say? All her choices were stuck in her throat, equally hated and feared.

“It’s alright,” Hera said. “We all are. But we’re getting ready to take the fight to him. Soon. Very soon. But tonight, let’s get you some food and some rest. You deserve it after your first mission.” Her smile was warm.

Ia followed Hera beneath the coral fronds of the base, shrinking into herself as she passed into the shadows. She didn’t deserve Hera’s warmth, and she knew she wouldn’t be resting any time soon.

Chapter Text

29 | Mitth’raw’nuruodo

The past days on Lothal, and now on the Chimaera, had been a flurry of activity; he couldn’t afford to be distracted. But in only a few more hours, the Chimaera would make the short jump to the Rebel Base: Atollon, where his plan would be executed. Now, he could give Thell what she needed. “I’ve found them,” Thrawn said as he strode into his quarters.

Thell was sitting on the edge of the bed, her datapad held in her lap. “The same ones?” Her eyes were locked on his, undistracted and on fire. There was life there. “Are you certain.”

“Completely,” he said. “They—”

Thell’s datapad clattered to the floor, then her lips crashed into his as her arms wrapped around his neck.

Thrawn’s hands gripped her hips, nearly pushing her away in surprise. But his relief quickly overtook him. He closed his eyes, kissed her deeply, and drank in the affection as though he were dying of thirst.

Thell slid her hands down his shoulders and his chest, gripping his tunic. Long-dormant pathways activated across his nervous system as tingles spread over him and his heart pounded against his chest. She pulled at him sharply and he stumbled towards her. Before his rational mind could catch up, he was seated on the edge of the bed, and she was sliding her knees up on either side of him, mouth hot against his.

“When do we leave?” she asked in a breathy whisper, then kissed him again.

He held her biceps and gently pulled her back and away from him. He wanted to be close to her so badly, but there were things to be done. He shook his head. “We do not. You’ll return to Lothal before—”

She surged forward, interrupting him with a kiss. “Fuck off with that.” She tried to kiss him again, but he dodged her.

“Thell, I—” The kiss she pressed to the side of his neck made the rest of the thought disintegrate.

All this time he had been desperate for her to even look in his direction with her full attention. In months, she had barely let him comfort her. They hadn’t shared a kiss since before the crash. Her warm body had seemed cold as she slept as far from his touch as she could manage, and wasted away before his eyes. His very soul was desperate for her. Now, even her stubborn argument brought him relief; the obstinance was so distinctly Thell.

To see anything more than the empty shell he had been living with was a relief.

To be surrounded by her kisses, her warmth, even her foul language, was so much more than relief; it was enough to overwhelm his body and his mind entirely.

She kissed down his neck.

Absently, he was aware of her pulling at the fasteners of his tunic. He remembered what she had said: To die in your arms would be a relief. Fine. He was done arguing about keeping her safe.

He would make sure it wouldn’t matter if she stayed aboard his ship. He would destroy the Rebels so thoroughly that the Chimaera would never be in danger.

“Ashes, Thrawn,” Thell hissed in his ear. “I want only ashes left when we’re done with them.”

The venom in her words scared him. It reminded him of the violent person he feared she was becoming. He leaned back from her. Then he brought one hand up from her hips, gently lifting her chin so he could look into her eyes. Was it right for him to desire her so deeply when she was like this? He was reminded of the night they had shared on the Springhawk after she had watched him destroy the Vagaari slavers. Her ferocity had scared him then too… but he hadn’t stopped, and they had made love with an unprecedented fire.

He held her face gently, running a thumb over her cheek.

“What?” Her eyebrows were knit together above her round eyes, impatient and vibrant.

“I…” What did he want to say? All this time longing to be able to speak with her. To look her in the eyes. All the waves of emotion and desire passing over him.

She turned her face down and away from him.

“Thell.” He stroked her cheek again. “I just want to look at you.”
            She bit her lip. Despite the lines in her face that betrayed her years, he couldn’t help but see her younger self in the expression. She always bit her lip like that when she struggled with a particularly challenging problem. Or when she knew exactly what she wanted to say but couldn’t get it out.

He caressed her cheek again. He would wait as long as she needed. Her warmth and weight on him was enough.

“It can be hard for me,” she said finally, her voice soft. “You… you look so much like her.”

His heart sank. Internally he shamed himself for the fact he hadn’t realized sooner that her avoidance could have come from the resemblance she saw in him. A constant reminder of loss. It was followed by another wave of shame that he didn’t feel the same. Had Thias really looked so little like her mother? Or did he just know her so little that he could still only associate the features with Thell?

“I see,” he said. “It will be over soon.”

She nodded, closing her eyes and leaning her face into his palm.

“Did you identify the spy?” she asked, avoiding the subject.

“Yes.”

“Who?” she asked, eyes springing open and fixed on him again.

“Do not worry yourself. Trust that he will be dealt with.”

“Who killed my daughter, Thrawn?” Her grip on his half-open tunic tightened.

“Kallus,” he said. “Agent Kallus betrayed us. He’s in custody.”

“He should be dead.” Her lip twitched as she said it, near snarling.

“He will be.”

“They all should be.”

“They will be.”

And then she was kissing him again, her eyes squeezed shut.

He watched her with barely open eyelids as he kissed her back. Should he kiss her back? Should he stop her hands as they continued unfastening his tunic and wound their way inside? His skin craved her. Her fingertips slipped beneath his undershirt and he nearly shuddered with the pleasure and longing it brought him.

His own fingertips longed to trace over her the same way. To bring her pleasure and release.

Why shouldn’t he?

He deepened the kiss, one hand still cupping her face, the other firmly pressed against her lower back. They still had hours before he would be needed on the bridge. She deserved whatever she desired from him. If she wanted space from him, from the face that looked like their daughter’s, she would have it, even if that distance brought him despair. If she wanted the destruction of fleets, he would burn every ship in the galaxy. If she wanted his body, it was her right to have it.

She had changed with time and pain. He could hope that someday she would regain some semblance of the self she had been before it all.

But she was still his wife.

“I love you,” he whispered between kisses.

“I love you,” she said back.

Relief at hearing those words repeated back to him washed away his remaining inhibitions.

He kissed her desperately, taking her hips in both his hands and pressing her against his body. He kissed her neck and she moaned.

She moaned.

The warm sound of pleasure from her throat resounded through him, the antithesis to her cold avoidance.

They kissed each other everywhere they could find skin, pulling away clothes everywhere they couldn’t.

Before long, Thrawn had Thell on her back on the bed. Her only remaining clothing was her underwear hanging off one foot as he kissed all over her chest. She had lost weight to her grief. But all the curves were still there. He would show her body the love it needed to be well again.

The animalistic intensity with which they sought each other now left no room for thought of grief.

For now, that was what they needed.

Thrawn wrapped his arms under her legs and pulled her in, knees over his shoulders. He kissed her belly and along the inside of her thighs before he settled into licking up the wetness that lied between.

She moaned and moaned, and he lost himself in the sweet and acidic taste of her.

He felt her trembling climax again, and again, and again. Fresh slick would slipped over his tongue and her thighs shuddered rhythmically around his head. She cried out, groaning as he continued sliding his tongue over her fresh sensitivity, but she wouldn’t pull away.

Her pleasure was his own. He would fill her mind with nothing but pleasure.

When her moaning had fully devolved into high-pitched sighs, the red glow of her eyes barely visible between her heavy eyelids, he licked one more long stroke over her, then shifted out from under her thighs. He moved up the bed, closer to her face. She breathed heavily as he pressed a soft kiss to her shoulder.

“May I?” he whispered.

“Please” Thell stuttered out breathlessly.

He aligned himself to her and her shaking legs wrapped over him. He slowly slid into her still-pulsing warmth. Just entering her was enough to make him shudder.

“Th-thrawn!” Her voice broke over her name, throat raw from her previous pleasure.

He buried his face in her violet-blue hair and groaned as he rocked his pelvis back and forth, moving him deep within her.

They clung to each other, as close as they could physically be, their bodies slick and trembling. He continued to slowly make love with her, attentive to each second and each sensation. 

But with all the time away from her body followed by all the time spent pleasuring her again and again, it wasn’t long before he could no longer restrain himself from making the last few quick thrusts. His orgasm, the first in a long time, shook him and poured out into her.

His weight settled down onto her and they stayed like that for a long time, holding each other as they struggled to catch their breath. He pressed a kiss to her temple.

Thell held him tightly with one arm. Her other hand traced gently through his hair at the back of his skull, down his neck, and over his shoulder blade.

He knew he couldn’t stay there forever; there was a battle to be fought. But at that moment he couldn’t imagine moving a muscle. The scarcity of moments like this made him still too hungry for it. He felt like a starving animal preparing to hibernate through the coldest part of the winter; he needed to gorge himself while there was still food to be had.

But perhaps when he won this battle, when he ended things for these Rebels, the satisfaction of revenge would bring this part of her back to him permanently. Or at least more often.

Could she sleep close to him again?

Would she eat full meals? Leave this room?

Would she ever make art again?

He couldn’t be sure. But only hours ago he would have thought that it was impossible that he would find himself wrapped in her arms, skin-to-skin, buried deep within her.

There was hope.

Chapter Text

30 | Hera Syndulla

“We were so close!” Ezra cried.

“Evacuate all ground staff. We’re getting out of here!” Hera said. She grit her teeth. Ezra was right. They had been so close. But there was no time to dwell on that now.

The Empire was at Atollon, and the substantial Rebel Fleet that she had struggled to gather here, preparing to go to Lothal, was now at risk.

Klaxons sounded across the base.

“All personnel. Code K-1-0. Evacuate immediately.”

General Dodonna attempted to send a ship to flee the system, but it was pulled out of hyperspace. No. It was all happening too fast. She itched to be behind the controls of the Ghost. She wanted to blow the Chimaera out of the sky herself.

The holograms of General Dodonna and Commander Sato flickered across from her, barely making it through the Imperial jamming that had shut down the hologram of Ryder.

“What’s going on?”

Hera could see Ia jogging towards them on the other side of the hologram of Atollon’s system. She should have been in getting into her flight suit by now.

But before Hera could say anything, the hologram between them flickered out, replaced by Thrawn. She scowled.

“General Dodonna, Commander Sato, Captain Syndulla. At last, we meet in this theater of war, however briefly.” Thrawn himself was here in the system. She had assumed as much, but the confirmation wasn’t comforting. She wondered if Kallus was dead already.

“There is no escape, and your forces are badly outnumbered. This rebellion ends today.”

He was right about being outnumbered. His voice dripped with condescension.

“We’ll never surrender to you, Thrawn.” Hera said. Even if only a fraction of the Rebels gathered here survived, the Rebellion would continue. The Rebellion was much bigger than just this fleet now. But she had more hope for them than that. Perhaps they weren’t as ready as they had planned, but these were the same Rebels that had been preparing to take him on at Lothal. They would at least be strong enough to make an escape.

“You misunderstand, Captain. I’m not accepting surrenders at this time.”

Hera’s lip twitched with the anger she felt. Her blood raced through her veins, heart pounding with the urgent need to act.

Thrawn continued, each word making her wish more and more that his smug face was directly in front of her and within reach of her fists. “I want you to know failure, utter defeat, and that it is I who delivers it crashing down upon you. Now, let us proceed.”

The hologram fizzled out, replaced with the map of the system. She immediately jumped into explaining her plan to the rest of the Rebels. They could use the fact that Thrawn thought this was the entire Rebel fleet to their advantage. All they needed to do was get someone passed the gravity well generators to escape and bring in reinforcements.

Once everyone had their assignments, she turned out the hologram. She startled, seeing Ia on the other side. The girl was standing at the very edge of the wring of crates that surrounded the meeting area. She looked so much like Thrawn that Hera’s body had jumped at the sight of her under the circumstances. Of course, they were both Chiss, but this direct comparison made the resemblance between them stand out. Hera felt another wave of rage and dread wash over her, filled with fresh distrust.

Just then, Ia’s knees appeared to give out and she slowly slid down the crate behind her until she reached the ground. Her expression was empty, her eyes were wide, and Hera could see her shoulders shaking with panic. She softened. There were just too many emotions flooding over her right now and she needed to focus on action.

The Rebellion needed all the pilots they could get right now. And Ia was a damn good one, even if Hera still struggled to shake the doubt that she felt about her after the missions she had flown with her.

“Kanan,” Hera said, grabbing him by the elbow and lowering her voice. “Help me get Ia calmed down. She’s just by the crates over there. I want her flying one of the transports for evac.”

“Not a fighter?”

“No,” Hera said. She wanted to trust her. She needed Ia’s piloting. But she also couldn’t be distracted by her doubt during the upcoming fight, even if that doubt turned out to be misplaced. Thrawn would be targeting the evacuating transports, so Ia herself would be at risk if she didn’t fly with the Rebellion’s interests in mind. Even if she wasn’t struggling to trust Ia, she would still prefer to put a pilot as skilled as Ia at the helm of those ships. It would be a tight squeeze to get them out safely. She would put Ia’s hands on a transport and put her trust in Kanan to sense if something was wrong under the surface. “Go,” she said. Ia’s face showed even more of her distress now, red eyes wide. “She needs you.”

Kanan nodded and Hera turned to make more battle arrangements with the rest of the fleet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kanan kneeling next to Ia, a hand on her shoulder.

They all would survive this. She would make sure of it.

Chapter Text

31 | Mitth’ell’unaris

Thell stood at a window of the Chimaera, looking down at the planet below with disdain. All the ships had fled back to the surface. Cowards. She had hoped to watch them all shot down, just as they did to her daughter.

A troop of stormtroopers ran in formation down the hallway behind her, startling her. It had been a long time since she had left Thrawn’s quarters. But she wanted to see this, and the window in Thrawn’s quarters was on the other side of the ship, away from the view. She wanted to watch Thrawn destroy them. And she would stay here as long as she needed to wait to make that happen.

She needed it to be over.

The exhaustion and grief clung to her bones. She wasn’t sure if it would ever go away. But she felt strongly that the destruction of the Rebels would at least allow her to rest.

Do you see now that I would fight for you? She asked Thias in her heart.

She felt guilt for the pleasure she had experienced with Thrawn. Every time she considered taking comfort in him, those same words rang out in her mind again and again. You’re always going to choose him over me, aren’t you? Perhaps after this fight was over, after she and Thrawn had proven that they would fight for her, Thias would forgive her; she would stop speaking those words all the time. Could she sleep in Thrawn’s arms without hearing them? She felt so cold. She longed for some fraction of the warmth of the life that had come before. Thell’s life would be forever divided into “before” and “after”.

But what came next?

Thell struggled to think of anything that could come next in her life. She supposed she would just keep designing her fighters, but with more rest.

Maybe someday she and Thrawn could go home.

How long could Thurfian hold a grudge?

Wouldn’t being home on Rentor, even with no Family status at all, be better?

She wondered if there was another life where the two of them had just stayed there all along.

The Chimaera shuddered subtly as Thell’s vision was streaked with green. Massive energy blasts rained down on the planet below. Orbital bombardment.

She found herself smiling. It was almost over.

Glass them, she thought to herself. Turn them into nothing but rubble and scorched earth. We will reduce them into even less than they left of you.  

The stunning beams of light filled Thell with something like hope. It was beautiful, in a way.

Art.

This was Thrawn’s art.

Chapter Text

32 | Ia Safis

Ia sprinted towards her quarters. The sun was going down but the base was cast in purple and searing flashes of green as turbolasers slammed against the shield that had gone up around the base just in time.

She wondered how long the shield could hold. She wondered whether she would die here at the hands of her own Father. Perhaps Mother was there too, wishing for her to burn as she had written in the Defender plans. They would never know they had killed her.

Ia tripped at the entrance to the shipping container. She landed hard on her palms and knees. She cursed in Cheunh.

Her arms trembled as she stared at her own silhouette outlined in flashes of green light on the steely gray floor. The blasts against the shield overhead felt inside her skull. Her knees cried out in pain as she sat back onto them. She wiped her eyes with her stinging palm as they had begun to fill with tears. Her breath was coming in short bursts.

She couldn’t afford to lose control again. She put her palms on her thighs, searching for the Force to calm herself as Kanan had before. She tried to block out the sound of the pounding against the shield and of the blood in her ears, leaning into the tangible sensation of the pain in her bruising knees.

Move.

Suddenly the orbital bombardment ceased, and it was eerily quiet in comparison. She didn’t have time to wonder why.

She struggled to her feet and looked around the shipping container for her flight suit. It was a mess. Ever since they had started gathering the fleet here, she had had to share the container with other Rebels who weren’t as neat and tidy as herself. In the rush of evacuation, the small space had been tossed into even further disarray. She found her flight suit tossed on the floor. One of the others had likely thrown it there after realizing it wasn’t theirs. With shaking hands, she struggled into it. Only after she had fastened it up did she realize that she didn’t necessarily need a flight suit for a large transport like the one she had been tasked with flying. But better not to leave it behind.

She bent down and reached under her bed, relieved to find the metal box was still there. She opened it, checking that her kyber crystal and the pieces of her partially-built lightsaber were still inside. She closed the box and stepped to the entrance of the container. She looked back over her shoulder, holding the box tightly to her chest.

This had been home for a time. Now in disarray and perhaps about to be destroyed.

She turned and moved forward, willing her aching knees to carry her to the landing platform on the opposite side of the base.

She froze when she saw the shields overhead fizzle out, gripped with fear as she stared towards the sky. One of the evacuation ships— a GR-75 medium transport— roared overhead, rocketing up through the atmosphere. She started forward again. Hera needed her to fly one of those out.

Ia flinched as she heard laser fire and ducked for cover, pressing her back against another shipping container nearby, searching for the source of it. She heard the whine of engines, and looked back the way the transport had gone. She gasped, seeing fire and smoke billowing from the transport as it arched back down towards the planet. She was frozen in horror as the ground rumbled beneath her feet with the impact, the horizon lit with a burst of orange.

TIEs roared overheard and she cowered, clutching her box to her chest. Her instincts told her to run.

If she flew one of those transports, she would almost surely die. But maybe that’s why Hera needed her to do it. She trusted her to have a chance.

Ia grit her teeth. Keeping her head low, she started out across the base again.

More ships took off and the sky was filled with the roar of engines. Ia didn’t stop to see whether TIEs or transports or X-wings were being shot down. But the ground was rumbling constantly, some of the explosions close. In the center of the base, rebels she didn’t know were running to ships, but the base was mostly empty now. She picked up the pace, jogging towards the landing platform. To her right, she could just see the Ghost over the rows of crates. Hera was still here. She slowed, hesitating.

Another explosion, near the Ghost, made her crouch. The sound of synchronized boots made her freeze. Were there troopers here? She was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that in her rush to leave, she had grabbed her partial lightsaber but no blaster. She was unarmed.

“And now Captain Syndulla—”

Her blood turned to ice. The voice was distant but undeniable. Her Father was here. Not a hologram. In the flesh.

“I will accept your formal surrender. Or you will watch your friends perish, one by one—”

Should she run out? Show herself and beg for her friends?

This was all her fault.

She felt as though her body had turned to stone.

“—beginning with the Jedi.”

She took one step forward, but then the Force cascaded over her in such intensity she gasped. The presence that approached was almost painful in its power.  

The fear that paralyzed her was primal.

The sky turned black with clouds and Ia’s skin prickled with static. If anything else was said, she couldn’t hear it over the sudden crackling of thunder.

Bendu.

Blasterfire rang out and Ia ran as the ground and sky trembled. She dodged between crates, getting closer to where she hoped to find Hera and the others. But as she saw the Ghost begin to rise, she felt a sliver of hope and turned back the other way.

As soon as she was clear of the obstacles in the shipping yard, she sprinted full force toward the landing platform. There were two transports left and one was beginning to take off. She rocketed up the landing platform of the other one and past the Rebels looking out the windows in fear. In the cockpit, a young human man was sweating over the controls as he pushed buttons seemingly at random.

“Move,” Ia said.

He didn’t argue.

“Go tell them all to strap in.” She slid into the pilot’s chair, tossing her box onto the co-pilot’s seat.

The shaking in her body disappeared as her fingers flew over the controls. In moments, the engines were starting up. She did one last look over the base for any signs of stragglers that might be running to the ship but all she could see was a handful of white helmets.

It was time to go.

Goodbye, Atollon. She pulled back on the helm and the ship slowly lifted into the air. With that farewell, she accepted that she would never see this home again and prayed to the Force that she would stay airborne. She was not going back to the ground. How many homes had she left now?

G-75 medium transport, she said in her mind as she continued into the sky next to the other transport. G-75 medium transport. Focus on the ships. Focus on flying and focus on the ships.

She was not going to let these rebels die at her Father’s hand.

She had known this was coming. She had known that Ezra’s attempted deception wouldn’t work. But she hadn’t said anything. She had been covering her own skin. She had been too scared to lose this home and this new family. And now she might lose it all anyways, in the worst way.

The Ghost was flying with them now, leading the string of last rebel ships leaving the planet.

This new family.

She gritted her jaw.

VCX-100 light freighter. A wing star fighter. G-75 medium transport. Correlian Corvette. VCX-100 light freighter. A wing star fighter. G-75 medium transport. Correlian Corvette.

Lightning crackled around them. The A-wing nearest to her spun out wreathed in smoke and disappeared down through the clouds.

She pulled the helm with all her strength to escape the atmosphere. G-75 medium transport. VCX-100 light freighter. Correlian Corvette.

The clouds thinned and finally she was surrounded by stars. The space above Lothal was filled with Imperial ships. She could see the Chimaera among them. Tears came to her eyes as she wondered whether her mother was aboard. So close. Her heart ached to just tell her she was okay. She wouldn’t let this happen. 

Mama, I’m right here.

“Hera,” Ezra’s voice crackled over the comms, startling her. “We took out the Interdictor. You’re all clear.” Had he brought the help they had asked for? There weren’t many non-Imperial ships that Ia could see from her viewport.

“That’s the first good news I’ve gotten today,” Hera’s voice came back. Ia was relieved to hear her voice.

“Meet me at point 8-7,” Ezra continued. “We’ll lead the way.”

Ia punched in the coordinates and dodged between approaching TIEs as she tried to get clear enough to jump. A ship design she didn’t recognize, like a half circle with a cockpit in the middle, was already heading towards the jump point. It wasn’t Imperial. That’s all that mattered.

Other Rebel ships joined up next to her and she pushed the lever forward. Stars became streaks and they escaped Atollon alive. She startled, hearing cheering erupt in the compartment behind her.

Ia sat back into her seat, breathing heavily. She wasn’t even sure where she was going. Today, she had lived. But so many had died. Her eyes were welling up with tears. Her father was responsible. Which meant she shared in that responsibility.

Chapter Text

33 | Mitth’ell’unaris

            Thell paced in Thrawn’s quarters as the Chimaera trekked through hyperspace. But the ship had been taken off of battle-ready status. They weren’t pursuing the remaining Rebels. The Fleet was likely heading back to Lothal.

            They had lost them.

            She had watched those few ships get away. She had pounded at the transparasteel viewport, willing the Chimaera to go after them. But the ship had remained where it was. Eventually, Imperial shuttles had returned from the planet. It was over and they had lost them.

            How had this happened? They had them right here.

            She wanted to be angry. But right now, she was just worried. She knew that Thrawn had likely gone down the planet himself, when a different voice had begun issuing commands to the ship.

            How could the Rebels have escaped unless something had happened to him? He wouldn’t have allowed it.

            She wanted her revenge for her daughter. But now she was forced to confront that there were worse things than that dissatisfaction. To lose her husband as well… She would be alone in this foreign place.

            Finally, after hours of waiting, the door to the room hissed open and she was filled with relief.

            “What happened?” She asked, hugging him briefly.

            “They escaped,” Thrawn said bitterly.

            “I saw that. How? Why aren’t we going after them?”

            “We couldn’t trace them,” he said. “As for how, I’m still trying to figure that out myself.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “There was some kind of creature. Like a Jedi but far more powerful.”

            Thell shook her head. “It’s a curse.”

            “A curse?”

            She crossed her arms, continuing her pacing. “This… Third Sight. The Force. Whatever they call it. These powers. It’s a curse on us. It takes and takes. I should never have let her learn to use it.”

            “I don’t believe in curses,” Thrawn said. “It has its uses. Unfortunately, it seems that our enemies understand it better than our people do.”

            “Kallus,” Thell said, looking up at him suddenly. “He might know where they went. He’ll have to give it up eventually. He has to know something, that traitor—”

            Thrawn shook his head.

            “Escaped?” She spat.

            He nodded.

            “Is there another traitor? Or are these Imperials just that incompetent?”

            “I’m having it investigated.”

            “So, we’re back where we started? No clue where in the Galaxy they could be?”

            “Many of them died today.”

            “But not all of them. Not the ones we are after.”

            “No,” he said. “But I will find them.”

            “When?”

            Thrawn sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “Thell. You can’t wait for this to decide to live again.”

            She felt as if he had slapped her. “Live again? Live?” She sneered and shook her head. “I died in that crater on Garel.”

            “No, you didn’t,” he said firmly. “Perhaps part of us did. But you existed before becoming a mother. You had… dreams. Hopes. Goals.”

            “Are you telling me to just move on? From my daughter?”

            “Of course not,” he sighed. “But she wouldn’t want you to live like this. She always just wanted you to be happy. She hid a lot from you because of that. Who you were might be gone. But you must decide who you’re going to be. You didn’t die. Not yet.”

            She stared down in silence. She pulled one of her long braids into her hands, feeling along the white and red ribbons woven in with her hair.

            “I’m not asking you to shed the colors of grief,” he said, standing and taking her braid and her hands into his. “I am asking you to trust your revenge to me. I will find them. You are not meant for battle.” He caressed her cheek and she looked up at him. He looked old and tired. There were flecks of dirt from the planet on his cheek and his white uniform. “You are a creator, Thell. Not a destroyer.”

            Her anger still burned in her like a fire. But there was nowhere for it to go. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was saying these things because he cared. And he had done everything in his power to prevent them escaping. The Force had no entity or even a consistent name for her to direct her anger against. The Rebels were gone. All she could do was hold it.

            “When we get back to Lothal,” he said softly. “I want you to go back to the planet. You don’t belong here, rotting away on this ship. You’ll do better for the Defender engineering there. Your team needs you.”

            “They don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

            “They will.”

            “You don’t want me here?” The idea of returning to Lothal scared her. It was already hard enough, talking to people in a language she still struggled with. Having her authority questioned. But more than that, there was an empty bedroom waiting for her there. She hadn’t returned since Thias had left it.

            “Of course I want you here,” Thrawn said softly. “But that is selfish of me. I want you to return to Lothal. I have business to attend to on Coruscant, but I will return to you as soon as I can.”

            She nodded slowly. She was tired, having been awake ever since she first heard they had found the Rebels over a day ago.

            “Thell?”

            She looked up at him.

            “I promise that I will find them.”

            She nodded.

            “But there’s something else I need to ask of you.” He said.

            She tilted her head.

            “If I have the proper supplies delivered to you on Lothal, will you create again?”

            She raised an eyebrow. “I’m working on the Defender.”

            “And when you’re not, will you make art? Something for me to see when I return?”

            “I’ll think about it.” She let him pull her into his arms.

Chapter Text

34 | Hera Syndulla

With base surrounded by forest on all sides, it was difficult for Hera to determine whether the moisture that clung to her was due to Yavin IV’s humidity or her own sweat. As she was just leaving a very heated meeting with other Rebel leaders, she thought it was most likely the latter.

On a moon, without an easily tractable rotation relative to a central star, it was easy to lose track of time. The time on her datapad showed it had been nearly two days since she had slept, in the aftermath of evacuating Atollon.

“Hey,” Kanan said.

She looked up from her datapad and slowed her pace. “Hey.” What was it about her that he could always sense coming without seeing her? Did he know the sound of her footfalls so well? What did she feel like to him in the Force?

“Are we cleared to go?”

“You are. But they need me here.” She had been hit with blatant outrage at first, when she has asked General Draven and the rest of them to send the Ghost from orbit around Yavin IV straight to Mandalore. She had barely finished de-briefing their monumental failure and narrow escape and she was already asking for more fuel. She understood.

But Sabine’s clan had come to their aid when the rest of them had been unwilling to. And without their help, what remained of the fleet would have burned above Atollon. The timing was unfortunate, but the Empire was moving Sabine’s father from one Imperial prison to another; it was the perfect opportunity to repay their kindness and secure Clan Wren and their allies as resources for the Rebellion. Eventually, they had consented to her argument. The Ghost could go. And she would stay to fly with her squadron.

“I get it,” he said. He opened his arms to her, and she felt her throat tighten. All the tension and exhaustion she felt threatened to spill out right there in the middle of the hangar. She swallowed hard and took his hand, as she led him out towards the landing area where the Phantom was waiting. 

He sighed deeply.

She squeezed his hand. “There’s more I need to do,” she said. Her voice sounded tighter than she meant it to.

“There always is,” he said. But there wasn’t resentment in his voice. Just resignation.

She felt bad about that. She knew that he just wanted to help her when she finally crashed after all this. She knew that he longed for the time when it had been just their small crew against the Galaxy.

“I need you to go with them,” she said. “Keep an eye on them, you know?”

“I know,” he said, sighing again, then changed the subject. “Hey, have you heard from Ia?”

Hera frowned. “Her ship made it. You haven’t heard from her?”

“No,” he said. “I thought she would have checked in with you.”

Sudden chills passed over her and she pulled up her datapad, double-checking that Ia’s transport had in fact checked in. It had. But Ia herself hadn’t checked in anywhere that was recorded in the records that Hera had access to. Ia had been flying that transport, hadn’t she? Hera’s emotions suddenly oscillated between guilt and fear. Had she lost track of things in all the chaos of the past hours? No, there was enough death on her hands already. No, no, no. The image of that sweet shy girl left behind or shot down or captured by the Empire made her feel suddenly sick. The Empire. There were other reasons Ia might not have checked in. The nausea in her stomach grew. She couldn’t really be a spy, could she? She was so young and soft-spoken. And yet the Empire held her family, did it not? Guilt took over as the main emotion. Regardless, she would never forgive herself for thinking of Ia sooner.

“Come on,” she said, tugging Kanan’s hand toward the shipyard.

They wove between a number of ships before finding the few transports that had made it from Atollon. She released Kanan’s hand and stomped up the ramp of the first, not bothering to check which was which.

The whole ship was empty.

She retreated down the ramp as quickly as she came.

“Hera—” Kanan called as she ran by him to the next ship.

She didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. If she had just gotten their new base discovered right after losing the last one…

The second transport looked empty too and she almost started down the ramp before she barely caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She stopped, staring towards the cockpit.

Glowing red eyes peered around the side of the pilot’s chair.

Relief washed over her.

“Kanan!” she called down the ramp. “She’s here.”

“I am sorry,” Ia said, her voice barely audible as Hera approached her. “I did not mean to worry you.”

Hera sighed and crossed her arms. “What are you still doing on the ship?”

Ia was curled up in the pilot’s chair, elbows wrapped tightly around her knees. Up close, Hera could see that the blue skin of her face was powdered in a thin layer of Atollon’s dust, but streaked from past tears. Her eyes were puffy and betrayed deep exhaustion. Hera’s heart softened completely, uncrossing her arms and putting a hand on Ia’s shoulder. All the time Hera had been running around, putting out real and metaphorical fires since they had made it to Yavin, Ia had been here just sitting here alone. Forgotten until now.

“I…” the girl started, but her glowing eyes glistened with fresh moisture.

“It’s alright,” Hera said. “I’m sorry. I’m just glad that you’re okay.”

“Hey kid,” Kanan said, appearing next to Hera.

“I…” Ia started, stuttering as her blue bottom lip trembled. “I… I’m so sorry!” The Chiss burst into tears, burying her face in her hands.

Hera looked to Kanan out of habit, but his expression was concealed by his mask. She frowned, looking back at Ia.

“You did what you could,” Kanan said. “We all did.”

“Why are you sorry?” Hera asked. There was something about the way she hid her face, something about the intensity of the sudden emotional outburst despite the fact she was almost always completely stoic. Ia was holding something in that was just about ready to come bursting out. A tinge of fear crept back into her. She took her hand away from Ia’s shoulder.

“I— It’s all my fault!” Ia cried out and sobbed.

Hera clenched her jaw.

“That’s crazy,” Kanan said. “What do you mean?”

“My mother,” Ia said between sobs. She was nearly hyperventilating now as the emotion poured out of her. “My mother and my father think that you killed me, so—” she choked on the words.

Her father. Hera’s blood went cold with the sudden clarity.

“—so they—” she sobbed again. “They want to hurt you. I never wanted them to hurt you. I am so sorry. I never wanted to hurt anyone.” She shrunk down even more, taking her hair in her fists as she tucked her head down against her knees. “I am so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“Hey, hey,” Kanan said. “None of that is your fault.”

“I just—” She let out a whine that seemed to come from the deepest part of her. It startled Hera.

Ia wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, the sobbing less intense after the sound. Her next words came out in a whisper. “I just… wanted to make friends. I just wanted to do something good.”

Hera’s shoulders slackened. She remembered all the tears she had shed when she had run away from her father and Ryloth. How she had just wanted to do something good. Something that felt like it could make a difference against the Empire.

Hera sat in the copilot’s seat, swiveling it towards Ia. She put a hand on the girl’s elbow. She didn’t want to press her, but she needed to know. She spoke softly. “Ia, have you spoken to your parents since you joined us? Communicated with them at all?”

Ia shook her head but didn’t raise it. “No,” she said, her voice muffled from how tightly she had enclosed herself. “No, I didn’t want to make things worse. But now I think I should have just gone back so that they would stop coming after you.”

Hera nodded. She felt like she was only just now beginning to see the whole picture. Ia was still a mystery. But more things were making sense.

“I knew,” Ia said. “I knew when Ezra said that he deleted the base from his records. I knew it was only a matter of time. But I…”

“What do you mean?” Kanan asked.

Hera put her other hand on his wrist, trying to signal to him that she would handle it.

“I don’t know,” she cried. “I don’t know. I just knew. And I didn’t say anything. Because I wanted to stay with you all.”

“I knew too,” Hera said. “I just hoped that we could be ready in time.”

This seemed to calm Ia slightly.

Hera closed her eyes and sighed deeply out through her nose, before she fixed her gaze on Ia and asked her question: “Thrawn is your father?”

Kanan turned his head towards Hera in surprise.

Ia nodded. “I am sorry,” she whined. “I should have told you before.”

Hera sighed again, feeling strangely relieved. She had been right that Ia was hiding something. But it was out now. And now she could put her trust in the girl on a solid foundation.

“Ia,” she started, putting as much comfort and reassurance as she was able to into her voice. “If everything else you have told us is true, nothing that happened at Atollon was your fault. Thrawn was coming for us long before you joined us. You, your knowledge and your flying, have been an asset to the Rebellion. But no more secrets, okay?”

Ia was sobbing again, but Hera could see her posture relax slightly. “Everything else was true,” she said. “But my Mother and I were not exiled. We… we ran away. They were going to find out about my Sight… uh, the Force. The Chiss fear us too. Or seek to use us. I had never met my father.”

The girl stirred, lifting her head and wiping her eyes with the sleeves of her flight suit as she struggled to stop crying. “I only met him about a year ago. I learned what the Empire was like, that it was no safer for my Force abilities there.”

Hera looked at Kanan. His lips were pressed together in thought.

“And other evil things they have done,” Ia continued. “I was just too angry. I could not stay. That is all true.”

“I believe you,” Hera said. She meant it. Her heart was heavy for her. How alone had Ia felt, leaving behind everything she had ever known and then finding the alternative to be something as awful as the Empire? She remembered seeing her stumble from the crashed TIE, illuminated by the lights of the Ghost. She remembered her hesitation to join them. She remembered how she had run away upon discovering her mother’s message in the TIE plans. She remembered the panic on her face at the sight of Thrawn’s hologram on Atollon. Only a year ago, since she had met her father.

“I just wanted to make friends,” Ia said against softly, still rubbing her eyes. “But I understand if you all do not trust me.”

Hera stood, putting her hand on Ia’s shoulder and squeezing it. “Ia, our parents do not define us. They help shape us. Sometimes we see parts of them in ourselves when we least want to. But our choices are our own. They do not determine your destiny. You can still have friends here. But you need to be honest.”

Ia looked up at her finally, red eyes glistening. “I am being honest now.”

Hera nodded, looking between her and Kanan. “You’ve been honest with us. But everyone deserves the truth.”

Ia nodded solemnly, understanding.

“You should tell them yourself,” Hera continued, “After they return from Mandalore. Deal?”

“Mandalore?”

Hera nodded. “It was Sabine’s clan that helped us escape. And now they have a favor they need in return. Kanan was just about to leave. But I need you to stay here with me. The squadron will have things to do.”

Ia nodded. “I will fly for you. And I’ll tell them when they get back.”

“Good,” Hera said. “Now, we both need some food and sleep. Let’s get you out of here and settled in on base.”

“Thank you, Hera. I cannot thank you enough.”

“Thank me by keeping up the fight, okay kid?”

Ia nodded, wiping her face one more time, then finally uncurling her legs and putting her feet on the floor.

The three of them walked out of the ship. Hera noticed that Ia hesitated at the bottom of the landing ramp, scanning her surroundings. She led Kanan a few more paces ahead of Ia, out of her earshot before she stopped to wait.

“You’ve got to get going to Mandalore.”

“Hera…”

She looked up at him, the dark green mask separating her from the blue eyes she had known, now clouded with scar tissue. She had loved to see them crinkle with laughter. She reached up and caressed along where his beard met his cheek. He wanted more from her than she could give him. And he probably deserved it. But she couldn’t let herself fall into the soft embrace of rest. Of home. There was a war to be won. And the war needed leaders, not lovers.

“They need you to lead them, Kanan. And the Rebellion needs me here. I’ll—” she sighed and embraced him, feeling conscious of Ia’s presence behind her. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

He held her.

“I’ll see you then,” he said. “May the Force be with you.”

“May the Force be with you,” she whispered.

Only moments later, the embrace had ended and she was watching him disappear between the ships of the landing area, headed off towards the Phantom.

She straightened, turning back towards Ia. Finally, the girl walked towards her.

“What do you think of Yavin?” Hera asked as she grew close.

“I like all the ships,” Ia said. “I didn’t know the Rebellion had this many.”

The two of them started a slow walk towards the mess hall.

“The trees,” Ia continued, “make me think of Rentor. That is the planet that my parents are from.”

“Is that the Chiss homeworld?” Hera asked.

“No,” Ia said. “We live on many worlds.” After a pause of silence, she continued. “Our homeworld is Csilla. It is all ice.”

Hera registered the meaning behind Ia’s pause: An intentional display of honesty and trust, revealing the name of the planet.

When Ia spoke again, her voice was low and quiet. “Did many make it out? Of Atollon?”

There was nothing that Hera could say that would remove the guilt she knew that Ia carried. Just as she herself would continue finding ways to blame herself for the tragedy for months or years to come. All they could do was focus on the success of those who made it out.

“Yes,” Hera said. “Much of the fleet was able to escape. Even Fulcrum was able to escape the Empire.” Then, realizing there wasn’t harm in showing Ia her own display of trust, she corrected herself. “Kallus.”

Ia nearly tripped. “Kallus? Agent Kallus was a spy?”

She should have realized that Ia might have known him. “Yes, not all along. But he eventually found his way to our side.”

“Is he here?”

Hera found it hard to read the emotions on Ia’s face as they walked.

“Yes, somewhere on the base.”

“When I see him, I will ask him about my mother.” The statement seemed to hold a mix of determination and resignation.

“In time,” Hera said. She knew that Ia needed food and rest just as she did. She remembered how hard it had been the last time Ia had been confronted with her mother’s role in the attempts to squash the Rebellion. It was something that Ia needed to face. But not now.

Chapter Text

35 | Mitth’ell’unaris

Thell smiled to herself as she dismounted her speeder bike and guided it to its parking space in the garage attached to her home. The summer insects native to Rentor's equator were grateful to be thawed from their frosty hibernation for a few months, humming loud enough in the forest that she could hear the melodic tune despite the competing noise of the town. A neighbor, blue skin wrinkled with age, waved at her as she walked back out of the garage and climbed the steps to her front door.

“Back early from the studio?” the neighbor called. The Cheunh words in the accent of her home world filled her with a warm glow. It was good to be home.

Thell smiled, lifting the bag in her left hand. “Can’t be late when it’s my turn for dinner.”

The neighbor laughed and Thell turned to her door.

The steel of the door was dusty and showed the Basic numerals that represented her home with Thias. Thell hesitated, blinking. Was that right? She looked down as a Lothcat darted around the side of the house. A Lothcat?

The door slid open, bringing her back to the moment.

A brightly and clumsily painted model ship was suddenly thrust up towards her, clutched in small blue fingers. No, nothing was wrong at all.

“Wow!” Thell laughed, peering down past the ship at Thias’ round eyes, framed by her delicate curls.

Her daughter’s expression was serious, so Thell looked back at the ship, stifling her laugh.

“Wow, did you paint that today?”

Thias nodded once.

“I love the colors that you chose. It’s lovely.”

“Thias,” Thrawn said, “Let your mother come inside.”

Thell looked at him, startled. Thrawn.

He was sitting on the floor of the living area, surrounded by a mess of paints and brushes. The sleeves of his plain, gray shirt were rolled up to his elbows. Thrawn and Thias had certainly added some new permanent spots of paint to the many long-dried splatters already speckling the wooden floor.

Thias pulled the model ship back to the protective frock that she was wearing and toddled back over to the living area, expression still serious, as she plopped down amidst Thrawn’s crossed legs, attempting to grab the paint brush from his hand. He held it away from her grasping fingers, smiling softly.

“We can finish it after dinner, my bird.”

Thias groaned and tried to take it again.

“If you wait until after dinner then maybe Mama will help you with it.” He glanced up at her warmly, but when his eyes met hers, his expression dropped, suddenly filled with concern.

Thell reached up to her face and felt her cheek, surprised that her fingers came back wet. Tears were streaming down her face. Confused and embarrassed, she gently set down the warm bag of food and brought both hands to her cheeks, wiping away the tears. She wasn’t crying, was she? Why would she be crying?

When she pulled her hands away, Thrawn was standing close in front of her. He pulled her into his arms and the door finally hissed shut behind her.

“What’s wrong, my love?” he asked, kissing her on the head.

“I— I don’t know,” she said. But somehow the embrace that should have been comforting only confused her more. “I don’t know.”

“Did something happen at work?”

“No, I just… I guess I’m just happy to see you two together.”

He laughed warmly. “I always pick her up from Borika’s on your studio days.”

“I know, I know,” she said. But did she? Why had that name sounded strange coming from him? “I think I just need to eat.”

He nodded, taking the bag of food from the floor and walked towards the kitchen. “Then let’s get some food in you.”

Thell struggled to envision what her studio looked like. In her mind, she only saw her engineer’s station on the Springhawk.

She looked down as Thias tugged on her pants. Her pants weren’t the gray she expected, but the brightly patterned pinks and reds that she had worn so frequently before.

Before?

Thias pulled on her pant leg again and pointed towards the ship and brushes on the floor.

Thell leaned down and lifted her daughter into her arms as she squirmed. “After dinner, okay?”

She walked towards the kitchen where Thrawn was putting food from the containers in the bag onto plates. Thias settled herself, playing with Thell’s hair as she watched him. He was young. As he moved, she could see that he favored putting his weight on his left leg. The average person might not notice, but she had been with him through the whole period of his recovery and physical therapy. Sitting on the floor for so long with Thias was enough to make those joints stiff again.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Not bad,” he said. “It’s about that time in the term where some of the students start to really engage with the material. I think a good portion of this cohort will get accepted to Taharim.”

She smiled at him mischievously. “On their own merit or after adoption?”

He shook his head. A recurring debate. “Either requires significant merit.”

“Or significant connections,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him.

Thias started making repetitive popping sounds with her mouth. Thell imitated the sound back to her, eliciting a cascade of giggles as Thias clung to her neck. Thell’s arms were getting sore; the four-year-old was growing so quickly. But she resisted the urge to set her down without reason, denying that there would come a time that she wouldn’t be able to hold her girl like this anymore. But she was nonetheless relieved when Thrawn carried the plates to the dinner table, and she was able to set Thias on the stool next to her.

They ate together as a family. She and Thrawn talked to each other about his students, her art. The gallery exhibition coming up in the next few weeks. Preparing military science exams. Thell knew that Thias was not planning to eat any more when the girl started rocking in her seat and listing off ship names in her childish lisp. Thell sighed. Never “mama” or “dada” or answering questions. Thias’ stubbornness and selectivity of where she devoted her attention never ceased to amaze her. But she was sure that Thias would be a great engineer someday. Or maybe a pilot.

Thell’s heart felt suddenly cold in her chest. Thrawn trailed off from what he was saying, looking at her with concern again.

Without warning, Thias rocked her stool too far and Thell could only watch, frozen, as she fell in slow motion. She willed her arms to move, to reach out and grasp her. But her muscles were like cement.

Down, down, down.

Thias’ round face was shocked, instinctually grasping about for something to hold onto.

Out of the corner of her eye, Thell could see Thrawn moving, but coming from the other side of the table, he wasn’t fast enough.

Moments before the impact, Thias looked her straight in the eyes. Thell couldn’t help but interpret her expression as betrayal.

Her head hit the ground first.

—

The door to the Lothal home was the same steel gray as the rest of the Imperial homes in the district. It wasn’t unique at all. Insignificant. And yet, just to the right, peering out at Thell around the corner was that speeder bike, its white panels tinged with Lothal’s characteristic dust.

Thell’s eyes were locked on the door, attempting to ignore the bike in her peripheral vision and yet unwilling to take that final step forward to put her palm to the door panel. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead.

It was a hot day, and some insect was buzzing back and forth around her head. The scent of the fresh planetary breeze stood out in stark contrast to the recycled sterile air of the Chimaera. The brightness and life of the world pressed in all around her, discordant and overwhelming.

She considered just turning around and walking to the Engineer Corp, diving into her workstation in the clean and sterile facility. She didn’t need to face this. But the idea of facing the human engineers, after weeks of absence, sounded just as paralyzing. It was also weeks of only speaking in Cheunh. Of course, she had continued to use the necessary technical Basic in her work and brief correspondence with the team here, but that was nothing compared to all the stress that came with speaking it. She knew that her lack of confidence in speaking Basic made the other engineers underestimate her intelligence and competence. It was frustrating and shameful. But it felt that her tongue would never be able to easily form the difficult syllables. And she was not even close to being able to actually think in Basic, a skill that she was certain Thrawn had mastered, with the speed at which he could command. In contrast, she would always be seen as foreign and slow. The humans here would never understand that Thrawn had always considered her an intellectual equal. With all that had happened, she knew that she was not ready to endure their derision or their pity. She wasn’t sure that she ever would be.

And yet the Basic symbols on the door, indicating the numerical designation of the home, continued looming in front of her vision.

It was exactly how those numbers had looked on her door in the dream that she had had last night. She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to dislodge it from her mind. It had been another life. Too perfect. And yet still ending with a reminder of her failures and loss.

Thell swallowed hard, focusing her vision on the door again.

“Thell!”

She nearly leapt out of her skin.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you!”

Thell turned, softening when she saw Bryndhi who was clutching her datapad to her chest. “Dr. Janil,” she said. “I am sorry. I was…” She struggled to find the words. “…lost in thought.”

“Please, you know that ‘Bryndhi’ is fine,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  Thell nodded, thoughts feeling sluggish. She struggled to release the tension from the surprise from her system, as it was quickly replaced with the same anxiety she had just felt about reuniting with the local engineers.

But Bryndhi’s smile seemed genuinely warm. “I’m sure you might just want to get settled in,” she said, looking at the bag slung over Thell’s shoulder. “But I thought I would see if I could buy you dinner? Or even just bring you over some groceries?”

“Groceries?” The word was hard to say.

“Just some food. For your kitchen.”

Thell looked at the door again and down at her bag. She was hungry. And definitely wasn’t in the mood to face the shops. She found that her anxiety about going into the empty home was greater than her anxiety about socializing with Bryndhi, now that she was faced with the human’s warmth in person.

“Dinner sounds good. Let me set down my bag.”

Thell opened the door without looking inside or turning on the lights. She set her bag down just inside and let the door hiss shut again.

—

Thell was laughing. It had been a while.

She still felt as though she didn’t know Bryndhi all that well, but somehow the human engineer had known exactly what she needed. Thell had seen in the way that Bryndhi had looked at her through the dinner, that she was trying to make her feel better after everything that had happened. But she didn’t just sit there and pity her. She just acted like everything was normal. They had talked about the Defender project, with Bryndhi showering her in complements about how much she had been able to contribute at a distance. She asked Thell questions about her education and her people and Thell had tried her best to answer and return questions about humans and Bryndhi’s family. Somehow, that had devolved into a discussion of things that had shocked Thell about various customs of lesser space, which Bryndhi thought was hilarious. At some point, they had gone from a drink or two at dinner to a bar down the street. Thell had lost count of the drinks from there.

“And then,” Bryndhi was saying, attempting to keep her voice low between bouts of laughter, “my mother calls my comlink!” She was part way through a hysterical story which Thell was pretty sure was about some attempted cross-species coupling as a young person. It was becoming more and more difficult for Thell to understand her, both due to the increased slurring of Bryndhi’s speech and due to Thell’s increasingly sluggish thoughts. She kept starting sentences in Cheunh, then stopping to start over in Basic.

She had debated throughout dinner over whether to get out her datapad which was programmed with the translator that Thias had made for her. Eventually, with a few more drinks in, she had gotten it out. But Bryndhi didn’t seem to think it was embarrassing. And it hadn’t hurt her to use it as much as she thought it would. It just kept the conversation going more quickly, which distracted her better.

“What did you say to her?” Thell asked, laughing.

“Some horrible lie about being at my friend’s house. As if my mother didn’t work with my friend’s parents.”

Thell laughed.

“Were you so terribly behaved as a child?” Bryndhi asked.

“About the same.” Thell said. “I was terribly.” Something about that word didn’t sound right but Thell wasn’t sure how to fix it.

“What kind of trouble did you get into?” Bryndhi said, ignoring her mistakes.

“Many things. But mostly…” she searched through the dictionary on her datapad. “Driving?” She looked up at Bryndhi.

Bryndhi narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Flying a ship? Running away?”

Thell shook her head. “Speeder. Driving in a contest. To go fast.”

“Racing?” Bryndhi’s eyes widened with an incredulous smile. “That’s so dangerous!”

Thell laughed. “Not if you are good at it. Well…” She felt that old pang in her gut at the memory. “And sometimes then too.”

“Did you ever crash?”

“A few small times. And one bad one.” She typed in the next sentence she wanted to say to her datapad, getting more and more impatient with her inebriated language centers. She sounded out the sentence it gave back to her. “But repairing my bike after that is what got me into electronics and engines.”

“Wow…” Bryndhi said, sipping thoughtfully on her drink.

“I would have been a much worse kid if I had never crashed,” she said, sounding out each word as it popped up on her datapad. “My recovery period got me out of that crowd. Less drinking.”

Bryndhi raised her glass with a mischievous smile.

Thell laughed and raised her own, taking a long drink after clinking it against Bryndhi’s.

“Hmm…” Thell said thoughtfully. “That is also what led me to Thrawn.”

Bryndhi’s eyebrows raised.

Thell smiled, taken back to her time on the Springhawk. That was something the Chiss and humans shared; a mutual interest in gossip about superior officers. But she wasn’t really a member of the Imperial navy as she had been among the CEDF. And she was feeling particularly disinhibited. She typed on her datapad.

“I lost that racing crowd. All those friends.” She took another sip of her drink. “Spent more time on my art and got more into tech. Put tech into my art. By the time I was recovered, I thought I hated everyone and wanted to be alone all the time.”

“Ah, the tortured artist type.”

Thell looked up the word on her datapad and then laughed deeply from her belly. Yes, the Chiss had that stereotype too. Perhaps there was some universal biological connection between the melancholy and loneliness of artists. But she supposed that perhaps she was the tortured artist. She took a deep breath and let it out before taking another long drink. Yet, the more tortured she had become, the less art she had created.

Bryndhi leaned forward conspiratorially and comically attempted to whisper despite her intoxication and attempts to enunciate for the language barrier. “And the Grand Admiral was into tortured artists?”

This made Thell burst out laughing again. “Pretty much.”

There was at least one more drink amidst Thell’s stumbling account of how she had met Thrawn growing up. There were lots of holes in the story from there, but Bryndhi was probably only picking up pieces of it anyways. When their conversation became significantly more laughter than speech and Thell was struggling to even figure out the Cheunh words to type into her datapad, they decided they might have had enough. They asked the Ithorian bartender for two glasses of water and dramatically raced to chug them down before stumbling back to the Engineer Corp housing.

Before Thell knew it, she was alone in her home with the lights on, the door hissing shut behind her as she continued laughing. Her laughter died down as she was hit with the silence and stared at the huge crate in the middle of the living space.

She blinked at it in confusion for a while before she remembered what Thrawn had said about having some art materials delivered here. She glanced up at the doorway that lead to what had briefly been Thias’ room.

She squinted and felt that she could see Thias leaning against the doorframe. It wasn’t the young, toddler Thias that she so often saw lately in her nightmares and out of the corner of her eye. It was the tall, lanky near-adult who she felt that she understood so little. Quiet and thoughtful and stubborn. Thell clenched her jaw.

“Well?” she said, returning to her native Cheunh, when the image in her mind ceased to dematerialize. She knew she was being drunk and crazy and that she would probably be embarrassed if she remembered this in the morning. But she was full of liquor and anger and memories, with nowhere to hide from them in this empty house. “What do you want from me?”

Thias didn’t move. Her stare was accusatory.

“It’s too quiet in here,” Thell said, turning her back on the specter and going to the radio on the counter. She tuned it past the constant Imperial news channels until she found some station playing local music. Or she assumed it was local. She hadn’t heard enough music of Lesser Space to know what was Lothal or human or something else.

“You never got to go to a bar,” Thell said, walking over to the crate in the middle of the living space without looking back at Thias’ doorway. “You probably would have hated it though. Loud, lots of people. Maybe you would have liked sitting in the corner and people-watching. Don’t know if you would have liked drinking.”

She sighed, taking the lid off the crate and propped it up on the side of the box.

“Well, I am assuming you never tried when I wasn’t around. But you didn’t go out with friends much. Maybe in school, I don’t know. I always wanted you to get some good friends. Maybe not that kind though, I don’t know. But even if you didn’t have friends I would have bought you a drink when you were old enough.”

She pulled things out of the box, inspecting. There was a holopainting set, which she had expected. It was the easiest thing to transport. But there were lots of other materials. Metal sheets and the like which she would have once used in sculptures, along with the laser cutting and soldering tools she would need to work with them.

Would have once used…

“You know,” she continued. “I gave your dad his first drink. He would just hang around while I was building stuff. Sculptures and things.”

She pulled the sheets out of the box, examining the way each material reflected the light a little differently.

“I thought it was funny how different he was than the people that had been my friends. Kind of naïve honestly. So, one day I stole some liquor from my parents and brought it out there. He was totally new to it and got pretty out of it pretty quickly.” She laughed. “I was horrible. But it’s funny to look back on. But the way he looked at me as I worked that night…”

She unceremoniously dumped out the rest of the crate on the floor and then sat down hard amidst the mess, sorting through it. “I knew he loved me then I think. But I blamed it on the drink. And I didn’t know what to think about someone that could look at me that way. I’d only been with these guys who just thought I was hot or cool or something. Like he was looking at me right in who I am. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. I’m sure he didn’t even know. It scared me. I didn’t hang out with him for like a week after.”

She sighed, tilting her head. “And I never talked to him about it really. Maybe I should.”

As Thell laid the pieces down around her, she felt something inside her shifting. Maybe it was just the drink. But she was beginning to see how some of the materials could fit together.

“I wonder if you would have ever been in love.” She narrowed her eyes and laughed to herself a bit. “Maybe that just wasn’t your thing. If I ever find out that you were and didn’t tell me, I’ll never forgive you.” She looked over at the empty doorway. It really was empty this time. “Or maybe it’s for the best if you don’t. Maybe that’s how you end up like this.”

Chapter Text

1 BBY

36 | Ia Safis

Sweat trickled down Ia’s forehead inside her helmet and she blinked quickly to keep it out of eyes. The Y-wing rumbled all around her as she shot down through the atmosphere of Yavin IV. It was difficult to see where she was going through the smoke billowing out from Hera’s Y-wing just ahead of her, joined by matching plumes from a number of others in the squad.

They’re going to make it, she told herself over and over. The worst part was that there was nothing she could do. Her own fighter was blinking warning lights, but the damage was all non-critical. All she could do was hope for the best for Hera and the others.

“Base One, this is Phoenix Leader.” Hera’s voice crackled in over her comm. “Stand by—” it crackled in and out “—landings.”

Ia wondered whether it was her or Hera’s comm array that was damaged. She prayed to the Force that it was only hers. Ia was tired of missions based on hearsay from pirates and smugglers that so often ended in flames and repairs. But at this point the Rebellion was weighing the material costs of fighter repairs and risk to pilots against food, weapons, and ammunition. She knew Hera wouldn’t put them at risk if it wasn’t that desperate.

“Check your speed.” Hera said. “Angle— deflectors. Wedge, dump your—”

Ia angled her forward deflectors, worrying about Wedge. She gritted her teeth as the ground approached quickly.

Compared to the rest of the squad, she was able to pull off a relatively clean landing. The trail of smoke following Hera’s Y-wing took off much further down the runway but there were no explosions or bursts of flame.

Safely on the ground Ia’s shoulders sagged and she leaned her head back against her headrest, breathing heavily with eyes closed. They had made it.

When she had caught her breath, she checked over her ship controls, assessing the damage. Yes, her comm array was flashing a warning. Same with some of her stabilizers. But it could have been much worse. She moved toward her hatch-release lever but stopped when she saw the shape of the Ghost looming out of her window.

They were back.

She popped the hatch and pulled her helmet off, leaning forward to peer down the runway, immediately locking onto the bright colors of Sabine’s armor. Her heart leapt into her throat. Sabine was back too. Her hair was white now, with vibrant purple at the ends. Kanan and Ezra were with her and Zeb was greeting them. She started to pull herself out of the cockpit, but then realized that Kallus was standing on the other side of Kanan and immediately dropped back down, slouching below her dashboard.

Karabast. She hoped none of them had seen her. Most of them had been facing away from her. She internally cursed herself that she had been too much of a coward to approach Kallus despite the promises she had made to Hera. But every time she saw him around the base she was already ducking away before she had time to think about it. It definitely didn’t help that he seemed to always be with Zeb. She wanted to talk to him about Mother. She really did. But she wasn’t ready to have her conversation with the rest of the squad yet. And she certainly wasn’t ready to have both of those conversations at the same time. And maybe she also didn’t feel ready to confront what her parents thought about her now.

She scooted down to make herself even smaller in her fighter, resolving to wait until they were gone. She closed her eyes, trying to connect with the Force to calm her nerves. Sometimes interacting with people was worse than nearly crash-landing.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she got startled out of her attempted meditation.

“Safis?”

She looked up at Wedge who was standing on the ladder up to her cockpit, staring down at her. She stared back in confused embarrassment, unsure of how to react.

“Safis, are you good?”

It took her a moment to remember that she was Safis. She really wasn’t used to the fact that sometimes humans referred to each other by their last names. It was the least important part of a Chiss name, something she only really heard with her full name altogether, and then usually only if she was in trouble with Mother.

“Uh, yeah. I am good.” She shifted up enough to peer over the cockpit and see that Sabine, Hera, and the others were all gone. “I was just… cataloguing the damage.” She gestured towards her feet, the direction towards which she had been looking when he had roused her. “uh… down here. Everything seems okay though.”

He gave her a slight smile that was hard to interpret. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay. The rest of us were about to hit the mess and celebrate surviving with some of that awful Mon Cala kelp beer. Wanna join?”

She blinked. None of the other pilots at Taharim had ever invited her to something like that, let alone the xenophobic nerf-herders at the Imperial Academy. But she wasn’t sure about the drinking. She was only 18. Or was she 19 now? It was hard to keep track of the time that had passed on the human calendars, connecting it back to the Chiss time system. She had given up trying a long time ago. There wasn’t any good reason for it besides keeping track of stardays anyways. When would she go back there?

“Uh…” she sat up, seeing the whole squad waiting behind him. They had all come over to see if she would come with them. “Yes,” she said. “I will join.”

“Great!” Wedge said, extending his hand to help her out of the Y-wing.

As they walked towards the mess hall, she kept an eye out for any sign of Kallus or Sabine and the others. But she didn’t see them.

Secon Daree elbowed her as they walked and Ia almost apologized for being in the way. “How did you get out so much better than the rest of us, huh? You always fly so clean!”

Ia remembered how much the others had hated her for being the best in school. She felt the sudden chill of fear at being found out for her abilities. “Uh, I…”

“It’s cause she’s ex-Imperial Academy,” Wedge said.

“Then why don’t you fly so clean?” Duke joked.

“Nah, it’s cause you’re a Jedi, huh?” Cleat said.

“Jedi?” Duke asked. They all turned to look at her.

Ia blinked.

“Yeah,” Cleat continued. “You’re bunked right across from me. I’ve seen you trying to put together that laser sword.”

“No way!” Duke shoved Ia lightly in the shoulder. “That’s cheatin’!” He still seemed to be joking, not angry or afraid.

“I, uh,” she struggled to remind herself that the Rebellion accepted Jedi like Kanan and Ezra. That still felt so new. Warmth was spreading over her cheeks. “I… I’m not one yet, but…”

“That’s so cool!” Secon said. “Why didn’t you ever say?”

Ia just shrugged.

“You’re so quiet,” Secon continued, shaking her head as the group just kept walking. “Next time you talk we’ll all find out that you’re like secretly royalty or something.”

“I don’t even know what species you are,” Duke laughed.

“Duke!” Cleat exclaimed.

“What?” He shrugged defensively.

“You don’t just say stuff like that!” She punched him in the shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Ia said, the warmth from her face moving down to warm her chest. “I’m Chiss. From way out in the Unknown Regions.”

“The Unknown Regions?” Secon said, eyes wide. “See this is the stuff I’m talking about!”

“Come on guys, give her a break,” Wedge laughed as they approached the bar in the mess hall. He gave her a friendly smile as they all started ordering their kelp beer and rations. She tried to give him a grateful smile in return for taking the attention off of her.

When it came time to order, after the rest of them were already carrying their trays back to their table, she hesitated but ultimately did order the beer.

She decided that she was probably 19.

—

It must have been hours later by the time the squadron was starting to pick up their empty trays and mugs. Most of them were pretty drunk, but not Ia. She had taken one sip of the beer and decided that she thoroughly agreed with Wedge that it was horrible. It had been a struggle not to spit it out. That had earned her a lot of laughs, but without ill-will. She had offered the rest of it to Cleat who had accepted gratefully. Many more mugs had come and gone through the group but she didn’t mind sitting with them. It was funny to watch. First, their human skin would take on a bit of a reddish tinge. Then, they would start laughing a lot more than normal. Their Basic was a little bit harder to understand after they started slurring a bit but she was generally still able to follow the conversation. Now, as Duke walked his tray to the bin of used dishes, he was wobbling on his feet.

She stood, ready to follow them out of the mess, but then froze.

“But when?” Ezra’s voice carried as he walked into the mess hall next to Hera. “When do we help Lothal?” He was upset.

“Phoenix Leader!!” Duke called raising his empty mug as if in toast.

Hera smiled over at them warmly. Kanan walked up next to her.

Sabine was there too. She locked eyes with Ia and smiled, “Ia!”

Ia smiled back, heart racing.

Ezra noticed her too and the two of them approached, waving her over towards them.

Ia hesitantly started over. She took Sabine’s extended hand and was shocked to be pulled into a quick hug.

“It’s good to see you,” Sabine said, releasing the hug. “I was really glad when Hera said you got out of Atollon okay.”

“Hey Ia,” Ezra was saying, sounding like a distant echo as Ia stood blinking, hand still extended to where Sabine had just held it.

But Sabine had turned around and was calling back behind her. “Hurry up, I’m starving!”

Ia followed her gaze, then felt even more light-headed at the sight of Zeb and Kallus walking towards them. She was completely frozen. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t run now, they were headed right for her.

Sure enough, Kallus made eye contact with her and his expression suddenly twisted into shock. He took a step back. “Cadet Thias?”

And then everyone was looking at her.

She swallowed hard.

“She defected from the Imperial—” Sabine started, but her expression was confused.

“Your father believes that you’re dead,” he said. “How did you—” he took another step back looking at Zeb and the others.

Ia’s heart was racing and she couldn’t form words in her mind. No, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. No, no, no. She felt faint, the blood pooling beneath her locked knees. But she couldn’t move.

“Ia is—” Hera started.

“That isn’t her name,” Kallus said, tilting his head at her. “Do they know who you are?”

No, no, no.

“I—” she tried to say, but the words were dry in her throat. She looked over at Sabine, horrified by the distrust she saw written all over her face.

“Yes, we do.” Hera said, putting a hand on her shoulder. The sudden touch made Ia jump.

“That’s Thrawn’s daughter,” Kallus continued anyways.

“What?” Ezra jumped back, making Ia flinch.

“We knew,” Hera said, her tone even and calm.

“We did!?” Ezra cried, looking between Hera and Kanan with betrayal on his face. “Who is ‘we’?”

Hera sighed. “Kanan and I knew.”

Kallus shrugged. “As long as you’re aware.” He looked to Ia. “How did you of all people get into the Rebellion?”

Ia blinked quickly.

“How long have you known?” Ezra asked Hera, then looked at Ia. “Why didn’t you tell us? What does he mean that’s not your name?”

All she could do was keep blinking rapidly, trying to process what was happening. She couldn’t even look at Sabine. Her blood felt cold with fear but her face was warm with shame.

“Kanan and I have known all along,” Hera said.

Ia had waited too long to tell them, and now Hera was lying on her behalf to prevent things from escalating.

“We can trust her,” Hera said.

No, they couldn’t. The guilt felt too heavy to hold. She had been lying all along and too much of a coward to come out and tell the truth.

Ezra crossed his arms, glaring between her and Hera.

Zeb’s arms were crossed too. He leaned back from her, looking her up and down as if re-evaluating her.

“If this wasn’t a plot from Thrawn, then they really think you’re dead,” Kallus said. “It’s not easy to deceive Thrawn. How did you pull it off?”

“It…” she tried. Her voice came out hoarse and small. “It was an accident.”

Kallus raised an eyebrow, but he was smirking. “Well, you’ve got them pursuing the Rebellion like they think could bring you back by getting revenge. When I left, your mother was turning out new Defender plans faster than the other engineers could run sims to test them.”

Ia’s heart sank, the guilt so heavy her knees trembled under the weight. She stared at the ground. When she spoke, her voice was somehow even smaller. “Is she okay?”

Hera squeezed her shoulder. “Ia…” she said softly. There was too much pity in her voice. More than Ia deserved.

The mossy grooves in the stone floor began to wave about as her eyes pooled with tears. It was all too much. She blinked and felt the tension break. Before the tear could drop, she was covering her face with her arm and sprinting out of the mess hall as fast as her wobbling knees would carry her.

Chapter Text

37 | Sabine Wren

“Kanan—” Hera started, looking after Ia as she ran off from the group.

“I got it,” Sabine said, giving Ezra a shove.

“Hey!” he protested, but she was already running after Ia.

The bustle of Rebels leaving and entering the mess hall was parted before the crying Chiss and Sabine struggled to run fast enough to take advantage of the gaps between them. Sabine was fast, but Ia’s long legs propelled her even faster.

“Ia!” she called, beginning to feel a bit out of breath as she broke out into the landing zone. For a moment Sabine worried that she had lost her before she caught sight of the dark blue hair in a loose bun bobbing against the collar of an orange flightsuit moving towards the forest. At least Ia’s height also made her stand out above most of the species in the base. “Ia, wait!” she tried again, right as a ship started taking off just off to her right and drowned her out. She huffed and redoubled her efforts to jog after Ia.

It wasn’t until Sabine had crossed into the treeline that she began to wonder what she was doing. Why had she volunteered to be the one to go after her? Didn’t she know Ia the least out of any of them? She slowed down, being more careful with her footing on the dirt path into the trees. Really, it was more like mud. It had been raining not too long ago and the trees were still dripping. “Ia!” she called again, unable to see Ia ahead of her through the trees.

In response, she heard a wet slap. She winced and rounded a bend to see Ia with her palms in the mud.

Ia looked back over her shoulder at her, eyebrows pinched together in distress.

“Are you okay?” Sabine said, rushing over to her.

Ia just nodded, sitting back onto her knees and rubbing her eyes with her sleeve.

“Let’s just slow down,” Sabine said, trying to catch her breath. She kneeled and took Ia’s elbow to help her up.

Ia jerked her elbow away.

“I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time.

A huge drop of water fell from the trees above and landed on Ia’s forehead. She groaned in frustration and wiped it away, teetering on the edge of tears again.

“What do you have to be sorry for?” Sabine asked.

“I…” Ia started, wiping the mud on her hands on the thighs of her flightsuit. Her voice was small as she stared down at her lap. “I lied all this time…”

Sabine sighed. “You didn’t really lie. Just didn’t tell the whole truth.”

“That’s not—”

“Look, we all have secrets.”

Ia just stared at her with wide, wet eyes.

Sabine felt a heaviness in her chest as she realized why she had felt so compelled to go after Ia. She felt as though she could still smell that acrid smoke left over by the Duchess.

“We all have secrets,” she said again, forging ahead despite how recently the wound had been reopened, “and we all have pasts. Lots of us in the Rebellion joined up after we saw firsthand what the Empire was like from the inside.”

Ia looked down, struggling to look her in the eye. Was Ia even her name? Hadn’t Kallus called her something else?

“Okay,” Sabine said. “I’m not… good at this kind of thing. Let’s start over.”

She thrust out a hand towards Ia. Ia flinched back. Yeah, she wasn’t good at this thing. But she was here. At least Ia wasn’t actively crying right now.

“I’m Sabine. I’m a Mandalorian of Clan Wren.” She swallowed her nerves and pressed on. “But until recently, I wasn’t welcome among my clan.”

Ia’s eyebrows tented together even more. Maybe she was concerned, maybe she was confused. At least she was listening.

“I’m an artist and an engineer. I went to the Imperial Academy. And my pride was so great that I built a weapon just to prove that I could. And the Empire used it against my people.”

Ia sat back onto her heels, shoulders sagging.

“My family joined them, out of self-preservation. And when I couldn’t take it anymore…” Sabine fought to keep her outstretched hand from trembling. “I left the Academy and abandoned them. It’s been years since then. And I just got them back. I was finally able to stop the Empire from using my weapon, but only after they used it against even more of my people, including from my own Clan. And through all that, I never lost this family.” She gestured back towards the base.

Sabine’s heart raced at Ia’s lack of response. She huffed, face growing hot, and got to her feet. She extended her hand to Ia again. “Well, are you going to let me help you up?”

Ia took her hand, and got to her feet, but didn’t immediately release her hand. She gave it a tentative shake. “I’m Ia,” she said, barely above a whisper. She released Sabine’s hand, wiping her hands on her flight suit again. “Sorry for getting mud on you.”

“Is that your real name?” Sabine asked. She had been honest, hadn’t she?

“Kind of,” Ia said, seeming to shrink down as her shoulders rounded.

Sabine gestured at a fallen tree just off the path. “Let’s sit.”

Ia shrugged and followed her to the tree.

They both sat in the damp moss. Ia picked at it idly.

Despite her trepidation, Sabine could see that she was curious about it. Ia had seemingly bottomless curiosity for everything she encountered.

Sabine waited. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself more than she already had by begging. But finally she spoke.

“My name is…” Ia took in a deep shaking breath and let it out. “My name is Mitth’ia’safis.”

“Mitth’ia’safis,” Sabine repeated back to her.

Ia looked up sharply, grief suddenly gone from her face. “You said it right.”

Sabine shrugged. “It almost sounds like it could be a word in Mando’a.”

Ia nodded. “I would like to learn your language.”

Sabine’s face grew warm again. “Not all Mandalorians even speak it anymore.”

Ia shrugged. “No one here speaks my language. But it is still mine.”

Sabine smirked, her annoyance fading. “Okay, Mitth’ia’safis, what else should I know about you.”

“That is my name, but not what most people called me. That would be like calling you ‘Sabine Wren’. The Chiss go by our…” Ia tilted her head. “Center names? No, perhaps core name would be a better translation.”

“Ia,” Sabine said.

“Yes, but… before I was called ‘Thias’.” She seemed to shrink down, growing small again.

Sabine swung her legs up to cross them in front of her on the tree, facing Ia. Or Thias? “Explain it to me.”

Her voice was quiet again when she spoke. “The first part of our name is our Family. But it’s more like a… well, a Clan.”

Sabine raised her eyebrows. Was she just saying that to try to relate? She was unsure whether she should be offended at the comparison.

“Our Family is the most important thing about us. So, we say the end of our Family name as part of our core name. My Family was the Mitth. One of the Nine Ruling Families”

Sabine tilted her head. “So, you’re like a princess or something?”

The Chiss shook her head, more blue hair escaping her loose bun and falling around her face. Sabine noted that she had never re-shaved her undercut, which she had offered to help her with. The hair had grown out over the months but wasn’t long enough to be pulled back properly.

Ia shook her head. “It is not like real royalty. And I was very low-ranked within my Family. Neither of my parents were born into the Family. And we were nearly kicked out of it.”

Sabine noted that. The Families of the Chiss certainly were some kind of political structure, which was affected by both blood and honor. Perhaps Ia’s upbringing was more similar to her own than she had thought.

“But it was never that important to me,” Ia continued, “I just cared about my mother. So, when I left her I…” she shrugged. “The Family never really wanted us anyways.”

“Why not?” Sabine asked. So, Ia had changed her name more out of shame than secrecy.

“Because of my father,” she said. “He was exiled when I was so young I had no memories of him.”

Sabine searched her face. Did she resent him for that? Ia’s tone was always so flat it was hard to guess what she felt. “Thrawn,” she said.

Ia nodded, staring down at the moss between her fingers.

“You and your mother were exiled too?”

“That was a lie,” Ia said. “But our choices were limited.”

“What happened?”

“I have The Force,” Ia said. “Among my people, children like me are taken from their parents. Mother kept me secret. But they were going to discover me. Because of my own mistakes.”

Sabine just watched her, waiting.

“Around that time, we found out that…” She seemed to struggle with what to say. “Thrawn was still alive. And here. So, we ran away, hoping to find his help.” She had pointedly not called him her father.

“You left everything you knew to find help from someone you had never met?”

Ia shrugged. “I always dreamed of leaving. I wanted to explore outside. I never really… had friends.”

“Then you decided the Empire wasn’t something you wanted to be part of.”

Ia nodded.

“Sounds like you’re not as bad as me,” Sabine said, playfully shoving her in the shoulder. But Ia just shrunk down more.

“Hera was lying for me,” Ia said. “I didn’t tell her until she kind of found out on her own after Atollon.”

Sabine shrugged. That didn’t surprise her. “You’ve got friends now.”

Ia looked up at her, eyes filling with tears again.

“Your Clan,” she said, “Your mother…”

“What about them?” Sabine said.

“They left the Empire. They’re our allies now, even though they were with the Empire a long time.”

Sabine nodded. It’s what Ia needed to hear.

Ia wiped her eyes. “I… I miss my mother.”

Sabine’s heart sank. She knew that feeling too well. And she wished she knew how to make it better. But really, it never stopped hurting until the moment she had her mother back. Even now, it was hard to be away from her family again after all that time. There wasn’t anything that really helped. She squirmed and wiggled her toes around inside her boots. But how many people could Ia talk to about missing her mother who was building fighters for the Empire? Who could understand that but herself?

What had she done to cope?

She looked at Ia’s hair falling over her blue fingers as she buried her face in her hands. She sighed and reached over to gently brush the hair out of her face.

 Ia pulled back, cheeks flushed purple beneath her wide eyes.

“I… I know how you feel,” Sabine said. “It’s okay to miss someone even though… even though you’re something different than they are now. There isn’t really anything that makes it feel better. But there’s stuff that can make you feel better about who you are.”

“Like what?”

“Remember when I offered you that hair cut?”

Ia raised her eyebrows, cheeks growing even more purple.

“How about it? That can’t be comfortable with your helmet?”

Ia reached up and felt her hair. “It is not. But my mother is still the only one that has ever cut it.”

“And that will always be important. If you don’t want to, I won’t make you.”

Ia held the hair next to her face, where Sabine had touched it. “No. It needs to be cut.”

Sabine smiled, stretching and hopping off the log. “The let’s do it before you change your mind.”

---

“What do you think?” Sabine asked, holding clippers in one hand and a comb in the other. “Shorter?”

The floor of the Ghost’s small refresher was littered with chunks of dark blue hair. Ia had seemed nervous at first but had slowly asked Sabine to take more and more off after the first cuts had been made. Now she stood in front of the small mirror, running a hand through the short hair that flopped over her forehead, struggling with which way she should part it.

She squinted at herself, eyes reduced to glowing red slits. “What do you think?” she asked hesitantly.

“I think you should do whatever feels good,” Sabine said. “You’re a pilot so short makes sense. And it’s just hair. It’ll grow back. Your hair grew a lot in the months since I last saw you.”

Ia tossed her hair to the other side again.

“It’s your hair,” Sabine said.

“I don’t like it when my hair gets in my face,” she said, pushing the short hair away from her forehead with annoyance. “But when it’s long enough to pull back it it’s harder to get in my helmet.”

“Shorter then?” Sabine shrugged.

Ia turned, looking down at the clippers in Sabine’s hand. She bit her lip.

Sabine narrowed her eyes at her, smirking. She changed the setting on the clippers to increase the size of the guard and pointed the handle towards Ia.

Ia’s eyes widened, looking down at the clippers.

With Ia standing instead of sitting on the closed lid of the toilet where she had cut her hair, Sabine felt particularly confronted with Ia’s 2-meter height, being more than a full head shorter than her.

Ia tentatively took the clippers from Sabine’s hand. She turned to face herself in the mirror and Sabine whooped in encouragement as she turned them on.

After a moment’s hesitation, she took the clippers and touched the guard to her scalp as she ran the clippers in one long line from her hairline to the base of her neck.

She turned to look at Sabine, eyes wide with excitement rather than fear.

Sabine grinned wide. “Do it!”

In a few more strokes, the rest of Ia’s hair fell to the ground, leaving only two centimeters or so of length behind.

Sabine took the clippers back from her as Ia examined herself in the mirror, running a hand over the short hair.

Ia’s smile was genuine. There was no guilt or fear hiding behind it.

Sabine’s chest was warm for her.

Just then, she heard the hiss of a door and Ezra and Zeb’s voices down the hall.

Ia’s faced filled with anxiety again.

“Hey,” Sabine said. “You look great. They’re your friends.”

Ia nodded, looking at herself again and pulling her shoulders back to stand at her full height.

“Sabine?” Ezra called down the hall.

“We’re in here,” Sabine called back.

Ezra and Zeb appeared in the doorway.

“Whoa!” Ezra said.

“Ha ha!” Zeb laughed. “Some good ol’ Sabine therapy. Looks good on you, kid.”

Ia smiled sheepishly, running a hand over her head again.

“Yeah,” Sabine said, smiling warmly. “Looks like you, Mitth’ia’safis.”