#well. sorta

Qui-Gon eyed the board with a grimace. “Right, so the assets are on the plane headed for the Cayman Islands. Ani?”

“Yeah! Yeah. I can get you on that plane. So that’s… four tickets, coming right up.”

“Make it three,” Obi-Wan put in quickly. “I have an Air Marshal badge.”

Ahsoka frowned at him. “Wait, what if there’s a Marshal on the flight already?”

“There’s only one marshal for every hundred flights.”

Anakin’s choked-off curse was fairly audible over comms. “O-okay, you know what? I felt a lot safer not knowing that.”

“Same here,” Ahsoka muttered.

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.” Obi-Wan pointed out, amused.

“Make it two tickets,” Qui-Gon said, already thinking ahead. “One authority figure is good, two is better. Ahsoka, you’re about to get a day job.”

“Huh?” Ahsoka’s head came up. “Wait, doing what?”

Lifting a flight attendant’s suitcase required a minor bit of improvisation, with Obi-Wan as a disgruntled passenger providing an excellent distraction.

“Sometimes I feel bad about playing with people like that,” Tahl murmured, watching from a polite distance as Ahsoka switched the flight attendant’s suitcase with another, similar one. Tahl and Qui-Gon had also surreptitiously lifted a bag each from unclaimed luggage.

“She’ll get home and find that there’s nothing wrong with her cat, it was all a misunderstanding,” Qui-Gon shrugged. “And that she somehow picked up the wrong suitcase,” he added after a moment’s thought.

“Well. Small casualties,” Tahl shrugged.

“Tahl, did you, er—”

“Yes, Qui?”

Qui-Gon cleared his throat. “You checked the suitcases, I noticed. Did you—”

“Naturally.”

“Right. Let’s just—go.”

“So how did you know there’d be an extra uniform in her bag?” Ahsoka asked, catching up to them—already in uniform, in fact.

“Flight attendants are required to carry an extra uniform, in case something happens to the one they’re wearing.” Obi-Wan supplied.

“Or in case of unscheduled flights,” Tahl added, with a smirk.

Ahsoka eyed both of them uncertainly. “Seriously, how do you guys just know this?”

Tahl’s smirk grew positively feline, “Slept with a flight attendant.”

“Worked flight secur—what?” Obi-Wan didn’t quite reel, but it was a near thing.

Qui-Gon just laughed at them and waved them along. “Come on, later. Wouldn’t want to miss the flight Anakin is so kindly getting us last-minute tickets for. To the Cayman Islands. Do I even want to know?”

“Uh—no, not particularly, no,” Anakin said. “Those poor souls won’t suffer for it, anyway. I’m sure the company will reimburse them, or something.”

By the time Obi-Wan was on the other side of the security check, though, Anakin had already cleared everything up with their flight plan. Tahl and Qui-Gon, for some reason, were held up at the checkpoint.

“What’s going on there?” Anakin asked, trying not to sound anxious.

It was Obi-Wan who answered—not in any way reassuring. “Oh god, that’s embarrassing.”

Anakin sat up quickly. “Whaaaat’s happening?”

Obi-Wan growled into the mic. “Qui-Gon, couldn’t you have checked the bags you lifted? Just in case?”

“Oh—”

There was an awkward cough just before Tahl cut in with an excited “It’s our third anniversary!” to the guard.

Anakin was pretty sure he heard Obi-Wan choke back a laugh. “Didn’t want to know that either,” Anakin muttered darkly. Ahsoka had apparently decided that selective deafness was the better part of valour.

Qui-Gon seemed to be scowling. “Tahl, I thought you said you’d handed it off?”

“Well, now, I did think flying with two of those might be a bit excessive.”

“Good god, there were two.”

“Was that a facepalm? Obi-Wan, tell me he’s facepalming?”

Obi-Wan’s voice came back over comms, amused. “Yes, Ani, he’s facepalming, and not at you for once. Congratulations. Not-Anakin-Facepalm Tuesdays, new holiday. What terminal should we be at?”

It was one of the weirdest flights Rex had ever been on, and he’d even managed to sleep through most of it. One of the flight attendants had been… aggressively blunt about flight safety, and in general dispatched her job efficiently, but with the disaffected air of someone who was focused on something bigger than passing (throwing) snacks. There were some complaints. The complaints were also quiet.

Across the aisle, Rex spotted a man who’d come aboard without a carry-on, which was a little odd until the flight attendant moved to ask him something and he flashed her a badge. Air Marshal, Rex thought. Feel safer already.

Of course, that had to be the moment his sleep-deprived brain chose to inform him that, safe or no, said Air Marshal was really not bad on the eyes. He reflexively smothered that thought and decided that he may as well try to sleep through the flight. Honestly, hitting on an Air Marshal mid-flight? That sounded like a bad idea all around.

Rex was all the more certain of it when he missed the Out of Order sign on the door—he’d been a bit preoccupied, watching a fiery redhead talking urgently with a couple of the passengers up front—and walked in on a body in the lavatory. Knocked out, cold. Rex took one look at the knife in the sink, definitely ceramic, and at how neatly the man had been incapacitated, and decided he didn’t want to get into… whatever this was.

At the same time his opinion of the Air Marshal ticked up yet another notch.

Though, if ‘Air Marshal’ was all this man was, Rex would have to eat his own boots, and he didn’t relish the idea. The pair of passengers he’d been speaking with were a bit odd; one was a very tall gentleman, with long hair and a neat beard, and the other was an even taller lady, dark-skinned and green-eyed. Rex couldn’t quite bet on them being a couple, for all their marital-sounding disputes, but they were definitely drift-compatible. At least he caught their names in the midst of those small tiffs: Qui-Gon, he thought, and Tahl—Baker? Such a normal surname for such odd given names.

And if Rex hadn’t seen all three of them together earlier, he might actually have sounded the alarm when he witnessed their clever double act, surreptitiously checking the bags of the passengers behind them. Both Tahl’s lift and Qui-Gon’s handoff of the unsuspecting passenger’s bag were pitch perfect, but Rex also had the chance to note that they hadn’t taken anything.

If Rex had been hoping for a moment’s sleep on this flight, though, he’d been horribly mistaken. With less than an hour left to go, the trip went from intriguing to harrowing as the plane dipped into a rapid descent. He was surprised—thankfully momentarily distracted—when Tahl appeared next to him, a terrified young woman in tow.

“Mind if we join you?”

He shook his head, numb.

“Oh, Good. This is Marissa,” she said, sounding almost chipper as she stepped into the aisle, “and my name’s Tahl.”

“Pleasure,” Rex said tightly.

Tahl threw a sharp glance his way. “Done this before?”

He managed a quick nod.

“Don’t worry, my husband’s an engineer with the company, he’s up front, he can fix this.”

Engineer, Rex’s entire ass, but Tahl sounded absolutely certain that this was something that could be fixed, so Rex tried to smile. “Thanks.”

Who the hell knew, anyway. Qui-Gon could certainly pass for an engineer. Tahl still had that knowing look, though, and in a moment she took his hand and squeezed.

He didn’t actually remember the next few minutes. When he got his brain back in his skull, he realised that people had been cheering and clapping, and that they’d landed—though, where, he had no idea, hadn’t they been in the middle of the ocean? In any case, Tahl and Marissa both looked relieved. And the brusque flight attendant popped up out of nowhere and handed Marissa a ginger ale.

“Thank you, Ahsoka,” Tahl murmured, sounding infinitely patient. Rex decided that was pretty funny, for some reason. He doubled over laughing, probably on the verge of hysteria.

In a little while, they started letting passengers out of the plane. Rex didn’t get up, though. He decided to wait, get his breathing back under control. Tahl and Marissa didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere, either. The passengers in First Class were just beginning to disembark when Qui-Gon reappeared, the redhead on his heels.

Qui-Gon seemed particularly concerned. “Everyone all right?”

Tahl nodded, and Ahsoka replied with an oddly enthusiastic “Yep!”

“Obi-Wan, we need to do something about Erlick.”

Obi-Wan—the Air Marshal, apparently—just shrugged. “When I knock people out they tend to stay knocked out.”

“Fair enough. Still, probably want to hand him over to the authorities.”

“You know, if they’re doing this as carefully as I think they are?” Obi-Wan looked thoughtful. “There should be someone waiting on the ground to make sure he got the job done. Or, more accurately, that he went down with the plane.”

Qui-Gon grimaced. “And he didn’t.”

“Well!” Tahl rose and straightened out her blouse. “In that case, Genegrow’s taken care of all the loose ends for us.”

Qui-Gon turned to help Obi-Wan take the luggage out of the compartments, passing suitcases to the passengers around them. Tahl walked a pale and shaking Marissa back to her aisle, and Rex stood up and reached for his suitcase—which Obi-Wan seemed about to take with him. “I’m sorry, I believe that’s my bag.”

Obi-Wan glanced up at him and blinked, then cracked the brightest grin Rex had ever seen. “Oh. I believe you’re right, it is—I’m sorry.”

Rex grinned back like an idiot. “Not at all. Can I get your name?” He saw Qui-Gon give Obi-Wan a sideways glance and shake his head, but decided not to pay it any mind, especially since Obi-Wan didn’t look like he was about to refuse.

“I’m—”

He was interrupted by a loud crash and flight attendant’s scream. Obi-Wan glanced over his shoulder, and Rex noticed ‘Erlick’ had barrelled right through the flimsy door.

“Excuse me,” Obi-Wan apologised, his grin irrepressible. “I have to go make a scene.”

He did make quite a scene, and handed Erlick over to the proper authorities outside. Rex shook his head and figured it was bad luck.