#ailtara

from 'breaking our chains':

Resplendent in fine silks and glittering jewels, she reclined on an enormous throne, surrounded by attendants.

from another modern au:

Okadiah sighed. “Go home, lad.”

and this... this is yet another soulmate au, because apparently you can never have enough of those:

\o/

fandom: star wars rebels

relationship: kanan jarrus/hera syndulla

rating: n/r

word count: 871

~

"Hera have you seen my comlink?" Kanan asked, leaning his head into the cockpit with a frown on his face. “I can't find it anywhere.”

 Hera didn't bother looking up from the diagnostic that was running. "Haven't seen it love.” She replied. “Did you check in the galley?"

"Why would it be in the galley?" He mumbled before turning and disappearing down the hallway. Hera slipped her bare hand into the pocket of her flight suit and wrapped her fingers around Kanan's comlink, a smile pulling at her lips.

It was a spur of the moment thing, she had seen the device sitting on the table in the lounge and scooped it up before he spotted it. Kanan pulled shit like this on her all the time. Stealing a glove, a tool from her tool box, and one memorable time, even Chopper (she suspected he wouldn't try that one again, not when the scars were still fresh). It infuriated her to no end, having to spend her whole day tearing her ship apart only to find that Kanan had it in his pocket the whole time. He was long past due for a taste of his own medicine.

But she didn't stop with the comlink. Kanan was by no means a messy guy but he left his fair share of odds and ends laying around. It was all too easy for Hera to grab them up and squirrel them away. By the end of the day she had built herself quite the collection and Kanan was none the wiser. Frankly, Hera found it hilarious.

"Hey you wouldn't happen to know where my boots went?"  Kanan walked into the galley in his socked feet, his hair still damp from his shower. Hera hid her smile behind the lip of her cup.

"You seem to be misplacing a lot of things today." She responded innocently. Kanan dropped down on the other side of the table and hid his head in his folded arms.

"I know." he groaned. He looked so pitiful in his socks with half of his armor missing. She almost felt bad for him, almost. Then she remembered the two day long search for her favorite grey cap and didn't feel that bad. In fact she was a little surprised that he hadn't caught on to the prank yet. "I don't know what's with me today." his head shot up suddenly. "Chopper!"

"What about him?"

Kanan pushed himself up from his seat "That bucket of bolts is stealing my stuff." he ran from the galley yelling loudly, "Where are you, you useless pile of scrap metal?"

Hera's shoulders shook from the laughter she was trying to hold back. His face when he finds out that she was behind it all was going to be priceless.

She cleaned up her dishes and went to her cabin to flip through the holonet while Kanan stalked Chopper throughout the ship. It was the perfect ending to the day, a grown man chasing down a droid in his bare feet. It wasn't until he invited himself into her cabin and collapsed on her bunk did she take pity on him.

"Rough day?" she asked, setting her datapad down to gaze at him stretched out on her bed. Her lekku curled at the site, heat pooling in her belly.

"You have no idea." he said. "I seemed to have lost just about everything and I'm pretty sure your good for nothin' droid is behind it all."

"Aw don't blame Chopper." She reached unto her pocket and pulled his comlink out. She tossed it at him, smirking as it bounced off his stomach. Kanan looked up in surprise.

"Where did you find it?" he asked as Hera pulled out the missing knuckle plate of his armor. "Where did you find that? What the kriff Hera? Where did you find all of this?"

Hera stood and walked over to her bunk, kneeling down to pull out his shoulder guard and boots out from her drawer, dropping them loudly on the floor. "Maybe you should do better at picking up after yourself."

Kanan's jaw dropped in disbelief. "You?! You've been taking my stuff?" Before Hera could respond, he reached for her and pulled her onto the bunk, his fingers digging playfully into her sides. Hera shrieked, her chest burning from laughter. Then he caught her lips with his and all thoughts fled from her mind.

Kanan was good at a great many things but when it came to kissing, Kanan excelled. She parted her lips with a breathy moan, letting him in while his fingers went from tickling to working on the buttons of her flight suit.

"Call it pay back," she breathed against his cheek as they broke apart. "For what you did to my cap."

"Well played Captain." he nipped at her collar bone. Her stomach flipped pleasantly at the mischievous glint in his eyes. "But you know that this means war."

Hera gripped the back of his neck tightly, bumping their foreheads together. "Do your worst."

Babe, you only bother me the way I love to be bothered, know what I mean?

29 - If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

Damn,seriously? I really want to say a prequel to @jhelenoftrek’s Longing BackwardBends, but at the same time I really want her to write it.

23 - If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

Pressure, Ergh, I can’teven read that fucker. The characterisation of Janeway is so wrong it’scringeworthy, and the stardates are all messed up because online stardatecalculators weren’t a thing in 2001 (and it  bugs me, it really BUGS ME). Shame really,because I quite like the twist I put on ‘Ex Post Facto’ for the storyline, andI’m still happy with the rest of the Parallels series. In my defence I wrote it17 years ago. But please, if you read it, don’t judge me on that one ficbecause I swear to God I’m better than that.

25 - What do you look for in a beta?

Someone whosewriting I adore, if they write (lucky for me, all my betas do – have you metthem? Hi @caladeniablue, @jhelenoftrek and @littleobsessions90!). Someone who’sunafraid to speak their mind. Someone who’ll kick my butt and give me a freshperspective. Someone I enjoy talking to – because a good beta will talk to you,often about things that aren’t at all related to writing – and someone I trust,because if you’re going to give someone your rough draft, you need to trustthem with it.

26 - Do you beta yourself? If so,what kind of beta are you?

I do indeed.Mostly I beta for Helen and LO, but I will happily beta for just about anyone,depending on my availability. I always ask a writer what kind of beta they’relooking for and tailor my editing to the person. If you ask me to beta yourfirst ever story, I’m not going to pick up every tiny little thing I thinkcould be ‘better’ – I’m going to offer suggestions on plotting, characterdevelopment, sentence structure and so on. If Helen sends me a rough first draft,I’ll probably send it back covered in red pen and ‘C MINUS, COULD DO BETTER’but that’s because I’ve learned she can take it, and let’s be honest, the nextdraft she sends me is probably going to be Pulitzer material. You build up arapport with writers you beta for – you learn what they’re capable of – and youlearn not to impose your own style on others. Hopefully. Could be there are abunch of people reading this going ‘what the fuck is she on about, that disrespectfulbitch keeps changing my spelling to Australian’ or whatever.

@ailtara! babe!

2 - Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to? 

Fake Married/Fake Dating/Accidentally Sharing a Bed. OMG it kills me. Ilove it. And yet, so far I haven’t found a way to write it that hasn’t beendone 87 million times before. Then again, is originality really all it’scracked up to be?

7 - Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

(This is really hard today because I pretty much hate everything I’ve ever written right now, but here goes...)

The server brings coffee, and Kathryn busies herself withpouring it, with bringing the cup to her lips and closing her eyes to inhalethe fragrance.He can’t watch this. Even now, a decade since the last time he watched her makelove to her coffee, it packs the same visceral punch. It makes him feelunfaithful, and so he picks up his own cup and accepts the scalding of histongue as penance.“Tell me about your new perspective,” he requests, wrestling his fury into thepit of his stomach, where it has lurked since the moment she died, and was reawakenedthe moment she was born again.

Kathryn draws small patterns on the grained wood of the tabletop,and he watches surreptitiously as she gathers her thoughts. Finally, she looksup and says simply, “My death is a fixed point in time.”If she’d punched him, it would have shocked him less.“I’m not supposed to have survived assimilation,” she clarifies. “In everyuniverse, in every reality, every version of me that was still alive died thatday. At that very moment when the cube absorbed my consciousness into theCollective, I ceased to exist everywhere.”“Why?” is all he can manage.She heaves in a breath. “It’s a long story, but – suffice to say my death wasthe multiverse trying to right a wrong I caused, or will cause, in a futurethat will now never come to be. And my life was a gift that I don’t want towaste.”He watches the myriad emotions that cross her beautiful face. Her eyes, thathe’s always thought expressive, are luminous with secrets he can’t help wantingto explore. But therein lies danger of the kind he must resist, and so Marklooks away. 

Why am Ipleased with myself over these lines of prose? Well, to be honest, the storythey belong to is probably my favourite thing I’ve produced in some time. Totell the tale I wanted to tell, I had to semi-invent a school of philosophicalthought (and a LOT of research and a LOT of speculation went into thatbackstory, though the story itself contains only a few lines of it). I had toflesh out a character who’s very important to my heroine yet has receivedabysmally little development in canon or beta-canon. And I had to bring himfrom the place his head lives in the clouds, through his smashed-up heart, allthe way down to his basest, simplest, most instinctual self. Because that’swhat she does to him. And I really hope this story – and this passage inparticular – showed some of that.

17 - Do you write yourstory from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

I always usedto be a linear writer – it felt like cheating to skip ahead and write thescenes I really wanted to get to – but the more I write, the more I jumparound. Often I’ll write what I think is the beginning but then it turns out tobe the middle, or vice versa. I’m prone to writing stories that jump back andforth in time too. Prologues are awesome. Mostly, I start with a rough sketchand start writing what I expect to be the first sections, then flesh out theplot/timeline a bit more, then write sections and piece them together as I seefit.

I feel this on a spiritual level.