An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Relationships: Leia Organa/Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger/Tristan Wren, Luke Skywalker/Han Solo, Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Leia Organa
Characters: Sabine Wren, Leia Organa, Ezra Bridger, Tristan Wren, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader, Han Solo
Summary:
Leia has been assigned the dreary task of capturing the last Jedi and bringing them, alive, to her father in order to regain her honorâif any such Jedi still exists. Ezra, meanwhile, has been able to keep under the radar since emerging from stasis several months agoâlargely because he finds himself resigned to being the last of his kind. Sabine? Sheâs tired of everyoneâs apathy, and ready to do anything to fight back.
She just wasnât expecting an opportunity to come so quickly in the form of the emperorâs daughter catching wind of Ezraâs existence.
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You knew what was going to happen.
The night your revolutionary ship made landfall, you saw it.
--
A veritable ocean of violet, for lack of a better term, pooling across the floor at the end of a grueling battle. Broken horns. Broken bones.
Broken hearts.
You watch through a spectatorâs view as one ancient curling horn harder than iron is pounded into the stone beneath a body you would have to be truly blind not to recognize. Beneath a heart beating blood out of veins torn wide as rivers.
You only wish it was half that poetic, to wake up screaming.
--
Hours ago, but not many, Barron had left the company of the assembled warriors to go and take on the largest of them all deep within the heart of his own dwelling... and you knew he would not return. Your eye remained on the horizon even long after the shape of him had faded from sight and it was only at Karkatâs insistence that you returned to the group to try and organize. There was still a war to fight, after all, and the loss of both leaders would not be the end of it.
But all plans discussed may as well have been in a language you didnât understand. You didnât focus on the words around you, and you didnât respond to inquiries about the state of you - everyone assumed, correctly, that you were distressed over the martyrdom of your matesprit. They still had hope for his return, though, and you wouldnât take that from them. You couldnât. You smiled when they said he would come back triumphant, but it never quite reached your eye.
--
When the ambush began, it was less of an ambush, more catching a speeding bullet in your bare hand and throwing it back at twice the speed. The company had been prepared. The second the first body hit the dirt -- courtesy of the defected laughsassin lurking the edges of the group -- the tension snapped like a wire and all hell broke loose.
Dorian could say heâs used to being alone. He could say he knows what itâs like when itâs only his footprints in the snow, and when heâs the only one huddled tightly under a thin blanket, waiting for something to change. He could say heâs a solitary creature, bundled into a box scarcely bigger than a bathroom with just enough window for him to stick his head through if it hadnât been messily boarded up a decade ago.
He could say that, but it wouldnât be true.
Heâs acutely aware of the lives around him, but not in the same way Ash is. He doesnât hear heartbeats or feel pulses from miles away. He doesnât hear the soft murmurs of the living, the sounds people make just being alive and in close proximity to him. Dorian sees instances. He sees a face and his mind takes a freeze frame and spreads its echoes across a card table the size of a cosmic football stadium. Thousands of images multiplying infinitely.
Infinity in a single person, wired together in red.
Sometimes he pulls those wires. He can shuffle the ends around and watch an entire human existence fall apart at the seams and the wires will melt with the vicious nosebleed dribbling into his mouth.
Pathways, he calls them. Dried up creek beds. âTimestreamâ sounds too fake and complex for something so base.
With Ash around, it was always so simple to block those things out. Dorian wouldnât fixate on one detail or image and become lost in the tide of existence that swept him out into some kind of temporal sea, because Ash was the pulse in the veins of his entire life. She kept him moving. She kept him warm and on his feet, but without her, everything slowed down. He was cold and his lips were blue and everything was sluggish in ways they could only be sluggish in to a time traveler.
People are too slow, he decides. He could learn everything about someoneâs past and future before even hearing their name. Like reading a Wikipedia article about a movie before seeing it. He knows what happens. Nothing surprises him, so he drifts, completely removed, not even feeling human by the time he returns to his rathole on the second floor. Humans, he thinks, are a lot like ants. Or at least what heâs read about ants⌠He was born after the climate shifted, after so much life was wiped out by change too rapid for evolution to keep up. Heâs seen ants, but only in books and videos.
Itâs almost a good metaphor for how he feels about people, he thinks. Heâs seen them. Heâs watched them trek back and forth, living their finite lives, but heâs never really been one. Heâs never lived at the same time as them. Never really understood them.
But his head is starting to hurt again. He turns onto his side, tucking his cramped wings against his body because his blanket and a pair of socks are being used to keep a draft from coming through his window.
He looks at his phone. Itâs something special, he knows. It can contact anyone in the universe, like magic. And there are so many people out there, or at least he thinks so. Maybe thereâs a point to all this solipsism? Maybe heâs the only one who really exists, and heâs drifting through the memories of some detached universe.
Dorian doesnât remember what day it is. His sense of time has always been distorted but strangely perfect until he loses track of it. He doesnât remember if heâs been out of his little hovel today. Or was it yesterdayâŚ? He doesnât remember the last time he spoke to anyone -- it might have been weeks for all he knows -- and he remembers Ash again. How long has it been since heâd seen her? He wants to talk to her again -- because she was the person, the anchor, he went to when he felt adrift -- but not on the phone. He wants to see her face, and touch her shoulders and her rough, small hands.
But he shut her out. He shut her out when he shut down, and that was a long time ago, he thinks. Somewhere between his head being held under water until he saw white flashes and those weeks without sleep.
And thinking about her fills him with complicated images.
Complicated feelings.
But Wanda? Sheâs easierâŚ
Sheâs sunshines, and bullet storms on the other side of a set of blast doors, but Ash... Ash is a supercell tearing apart the northern hemisphere. Sheâs a natural disaster, the same as him, and he thinks that maybe Hurricane Ash and the Vesuvius of man-made fuckups need a little more time to remember who they really are.
But he needs someone now, not later. He knows what happens later if he doesnât have human contact now and it makes everything inside of him twist into greasy knots.
He pulls his phone into his jacket, where his arms and head are tucked inside, and he turns on the screen. It shows him the day and time, but like looking at a microwave after a blackout, the numbers donât make sense. They donât register as wrong so much as something else he needs to fix later. Something idle to set aside.
He finds Wandaâs number and stares at it for a long time. Maybe a few hours while frost grows on his eyelashes. The cold isnât bad, at least for him. Like Ash and her fire, Dorian is at least a little immune to its effects.
His eyes refocus after even more time passes and he messages one of the volatile redheads that have had such an immense impact on his life. He wonders how Wanda is doing, but kickstarting his brain into arranging abstract feelings into words is harder than it sounds.
All he can come up with is a simple, âHey. Miss you.â
His phone buzzes softly almost immediately, but is met with more silence while he stares into the light of the screen.
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Dorian is thirteen (he thinks) when he first meets Halley and what stands out the most is the color of his eyes. Mint green, it seemed, but clear and clean as melting ice. A color he first associates with things that are sweet and benevolent. Candy and small birds and old metal-frame beds painted white with swirls of gold trim. He looks at Halleyâs eyes, framed by thick glasses, and he feels like thereâs powdered sugar filling his entire body. Halley is docile. Heâs friendly. Charismatic, for sure, and at times, perhaps, Dorian could define his brother as sweet.
It only takes a year for the sweetness to become cloying. The powered sugar to dry his blood and clog his ventricles. The color becomes sickly, pale green light dimly illuminating an empty, barren stairwell, and Dorian can feel his teeth rot and ring in the back of his mouth whenever Halley speaks. Twenty years old with a voice as smooth as glass and as deep a blue as the ocean. Dorian decides that his voice is filled with just as many terrifying things lurking just beneath the surface.
Halley has a mean streak. Dorian watches his foster brother watch their other siblings with something cold and malicious in him and something itches just on the edge of Dorianâs nerves. He wonders if this is the feeling rabbits get before being chased to death by a small pack of wild dogs. Thereâs a quiet danger lurking inside his brother and Dorian at that time had felt compelled to ask his brother what he could do. âPeople with different colored eyes have powers, right? What are yours?â
His question was answered when a slow, thin, wicked smile slid across Halleyâs teeth like a scalpel through prone skin. Dorian almost flinched when Halley pointed to a man on the street, tens of yards away, and said, âWatch...â
The man had been walking, leading a small horse because jeeps these days could be dangerous and expensive for the average civilian to operate. Dorian watched, peering around his brother, and waited. His ears started to ring.
Judging by the screams, the man is very aware of his actions as he uses dirty thumbs to gouge his own eyes. For a brief moment, even from this distance, they appear to have glowed.
Dorian looks up at Halley, struck with horror, and doubly so as he observes his brotherâs indifference. The calculating eyes of a predator deciding just which part of its prey to cripple first. Halleyâs eyes, they glow. Not just with hate but with influence. The ringing in his ears makes him feel faint and sick. He doesnât see what Halley makes the man do next. He just bolts in the opposite direction.
Dorian doesnât ask Halley about his powers again after that.
It was hard trying to have a peaceful evening in this city. Some errant explosion or invasion usually happened weekly and it always shook Lokiâs apartment enough for him to wonder why people still even lived here. What was the point? Was the insurance that good? Was the rent that cheap?
He had his TV on but wasnât really paying attention to it. With his thoughts occupied elsewhere, it took him a second for the knock at his door to register as a thing that was happening in real life and not on Breaking Bad, and then a shameful amount of time after that for him to remember that he didnât order any pizza. Not that he could anyway -- word kind of spread that he lived there and most places, pretty reasonably, were dubious about delivering fried noodles or two stuffed-crusts to the Norse God of Chaos. Besides, the door was invisible unless someone had permission to enter. The apartment didnât technically exist.
Loki turned his TV up louder and sank into his couch. Whoever that was could piss off, he wasnât in the mood for company.
But they didnât leave. Just kept knocking. So when he finally answered the door, Doctor Strange was there to greet him. He even had the audacity to smile at Loki after making a nuisance of himself. That answered one question at least...
Loki wasnât sure what to make of the rest of this, but luckily he didnât have to ask.
âYouâre friends with Ash Ramirez, correct?â
Loki narrowed his eyes at the word âfriendsâ, but Strange had his attention now and they both knew it. He hated being predictable, it was so against his nature.
âThought so. While youâre being uncharacteristically quiet, may I step in and have a word?â
âHff, must you?â Loki stepped back and opened the door wider. He didnât like any part of this, but it really was not every day that Stephen Strange himself called on any gods tooling around on Earth.
Doctor Strange entered a few paces in and didnât seem to be on edge or anything. Not that he would be, Loki supposed. Loki closed the door and eyed him suspiciously until the man turned around and leaned his head slightly to one side and down, looking at Loki from beneath thick eyebrows, one quirked just so in a way that inexplicably and very suddenly made Loki absolutely furious.
âThe medallion you gave her,â Strange began, almost with the look of a firmly scolding uncle, âItâs stealing her powers away.â
âYes,â Loki said briskly, âYes, thatâs what it does. Why are you here again? Surely not to lecture me.â
âYou invited me in.â Strange brushed his fingertips across one side of his mustache almost casually. âIn spite of everyoneâs better judgment... she trusts you. Tentatively, but itâs there. And very real.â
There was a weight to his words that Loki didnât like. When Strange leveled his gaze on him, Loki had to look away and that seemed to give the doctor the answer to a question he hadnât asked.
âYou need to tell her.â
âYou clearly misunderstand the point of my gift.â Loki pushed away from the door to go and turn the TV down. Be cool. Level-headed. Yes.
âIf you want to make the best possible use of this second chance of yours and prove to everyone that you are indeed capable of change,â the doctor said firmly, âYou need to tell her.â
Loki put the remote down on the coffee table and turned a very incredulous look on Strange. So incredulous it may as well have dissolved any suspension of disbelief ever to exist. âOr what? Taco Bell Sorcerer Supreme or not, Iâm still a god. There is very little you can do to me.â
âI can tell her in your stead.â Strange raised his eyebrows in challenge and watched Loki freeze and the vaguely threatening rise in his shoulders sink back down. âMmm, I thought so...â
Loki chewed his words as guilt settled into him like unwanted company overstaying its welcome. Guilt and Loki had become fast friends over the last two years and Loki hated every second of it. It wasnât like him not to have an immediate answer, but there wasnât a lot he could say when Strange was right and that made Loki hate him even more.
The man already reeked of hubris and Loki wasnât about to inflate his ego, at least not without sounding like a brat.
âWhat concern is it of yours? Sheâll hate me either way!â Unfortunately even after thousands of years, Loki hadnât quite mastered the technique of not sounding petulant when backed into a corner.
Was he really that eager to risk undoing all the effort he had put into being slightly less of a prick to people? People who were self-destructive enough to befriend the embodiment of bad luck? No, that wasnât fair. They were people who were kind enough to give him a chance, even knowing what heâd done, what he was capable of. Who knew heâd done much worse but were spared the details. People who understood how important this was to him and who were risking a lot on their own by placing their faith in him. Strange understood that almost better than anyone else.
âWill she? Or will she respect your honesty? You havenât dug yourself as deep a hole as you may think. Itâs not too late.â Doctor Strange smiled in a knowing way that made Loki bristle as he turned away to leave. âShe will hear it from you, her friend, or she will hear it from her attending physician. The choice is yours, Loki of Asgard. She will be hurt either way, but to what degree is up to you. Good evening.â
Dorian always marveled at how things could go tits up in the blink of an eye and in ways even he didnât see coming. On that nightâs episode of Things Going Horribly Awry Really Fast, everything started when Dorian bumped something in Warrenâs shed with his wing. After that, the situation just snowballed into a fresh crisp hell that, really, neither of them needed.
He was near silent as he moved. That was normally a very useful skill to have carry over from oneâs days of espionage, but Dorian didnât quite take into account that he wasnât alone in the work shed, so when he toppled over a small unbalanced shelf, the last thing he expected was a knife against his neck.
Over the next few minutes, a lot of things happened all at once. Dorian reacted instantly to the threat, not even realizing that it was Warren, who also had reacted instantly to being startled by his things falling to the floor with a loud clatter. It was a series of instant reactions brought on by stress and past experience and neither of them particularly wanting to die.
Warren was thrown into another shelf -- the shed was a maze of shelves and things, all stacked up in rows that were kind of tight to navigate even for someone as wiry as him -- and the shelf went down with him. He snarled in that coywolf way he did that made Dorianâs blood run cold but both of them were stuck in combat mode now, locked into place by panic and instinct, and when Warren sprung out of the mess of Stuff with surprising agility for his condition, Dorian was too afraid to think about freezing time before the man hit him like a freight train full of angry dogs.
Before long the inside of the shed looked like it had been hit by the storm of the century and Dorian, with his exit blocked by Ashâs hulking werewolf of a dad, had scrambled to take cover under a pile of collapsed metal shelving. The ruddy brown dog beast that was Warren leapt onto the pile and the metal creaked under his weight as he reached down with his huge paws and Dorian couldnât exactly scream with a jacked up throat, but he probably couldnât have even if heâd wanted to. He was paralyzed with terror, jerking to avoid snapping jaws and vicious snarling as Warren stuck his head between the shelves to try and take a chunk out of Dorian.
Both of them were injured pretty badly for such a short altercation. People like them, they fought to win. To hurt. To put their opponent down fast and hard and be the last man standing, and so naturally both had deep cuts and broken bones, bruised and blood-stained -- Warren had busted teeth from taking a tool box to the mouth -- and Dorian was grounded with a broken wing that hung agonizingly bent against the wall he pressed himself against so that Warrenâs teeth couldnât reach him.
