Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You walk into the woods behind a house
there in that country
you find a temple
built eighteen hundred years ago
you enter without knowing
what it is you enter

so it is with us

no one knows what will happen
though the books tell everything

burn the texts said Artaud

— Adrienne Rich, “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children”

After, Kallus will wonder if they knew about him and his changed allegiances. He’ll wonder if it had been a test he was set up to fail. Why him, if not? Why would Thrawn send him to the facility, allow him to see this tiny, strange glimpse into the Emperor’s plans if not to see how he would break? He’ll wonder if they thought he’d be unmoved when they brought the children before him for their final test, or if they’d anticipated that he would take some sort of action when there was just the one left, her small face burnt and bloody, her hands in shaking fists at her sides as she was led away. They couldn’t’ve known, Kallus will think later, just how far he would go. After all, until he was lifting that blaster, he’d no idea what he’d be capable of.

The course on the shuttle had been programmed by Thrawn himself, Kallus’s pilot told him immediately as he sat down on the little craft. The lieutenant, Olaffson, was so proud of the fact that he’d been picked to come along as escort on the mission, even if it was just to ensure the landings and take-offs went smoothly. It brought the first stirrings of unease to Kallus’s gut, however: he was perfectly adept at piloting a simple shuttle himself so why was he not making this journey on his own?

He wondered if he’d be able to get a glimpse of the coordinates at some point on the twelve hour journey, if it’d even be worth the trouble. He’d no idea what was on the little backwater facility Thrawn ordered him to inspect, just that he’d been given his marching orders to head out immediately after the first briefing of the day.

Kallus reviewed files on his personal datapad during the trip and avoided small talk with Olaffson, who eventually left him to his silence, tipping his cap over his eyes and promptly falling asleep. His breath whistled through his nose in a manner that ensured Kallus himself would be getting no rest.

After an hour of this, he paused his reading and switched his code cylinder out for Olaffson’s to review the flight log, committing the coordinates to memory in case it did, indeed, prove an important facility, hidden as it was on the edges of the Unknown Regions. He switched their code cylinders back and returned to his datapad, preparing a new burst to send his handler at the Rebellion with whatever he found at this facility.

Daily datawork and espionage complete, there were six hours left on the journey so Kallus took a stim from his pack and settled in to watch the stars pass along the hyperspace route, mind drifting. He thought of the Spectres, briefly, and wondered if Wren had passed on his message at the Academy to Garazeb, however facetious though it was. It had been a life for a life saved on that moon, but there was so much more to it than that. They would never be even, Garazeb Orrelios and he, not until Kallus was watching the last embers of the Empire burn to nothingness — and even then he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Kallus dug the thumb of his left hand into the palm of his right, the leather of his gloves creaking under the pressure. What he’d done, in the name of order and the Empire and something he thought was greater than himself, would never be wiped from the ledgers of the galaxy. It was too much, too horrible, to balance. But he could work to shift the balance for others, even if he was too far gone, and he could work to earn Garazeb’s respect, perhaps even his —

He snorted quietly. He said, lowly, “I almost thought friendship, Olaffson, how idiotic is that?”

Olaffson’s breath whistled.

“Yes, quite,” he said. 

Kallus stared at the stars. Friendship, happiness, love — those were words for other people, he thought. They always had been, since he was a boy in the orphanage and missing the warmth of his mothers’ arms. When he’d been shunted to the Republic, and shortly thereafter Imperial, Academy based on his test scores, he’d long learned to harden his heart and focus only on himself. Leave it to Garazeb Orrelios to unlock that unused core of him as well. 

His mothers would’ve loved Garazeb, he thought. These days, he could no longer recall their faces or their voices, but he knew that with absolute certainty. 

He sighed quietly to himself, crossed his arms across his chest, and continued to watch the stars, allowing his mind to carefully go blank for the rest of the journey.

The planet, when they landed, was just beginning its day cycle, though it was dark and exceedingly rainy, shaking the vessel like a kite in the wind as they broke atmo. On their approach, Kallus had observed the land below carefully — land being somewhat of a misnomer. It was a water planet, dotted with tiny structures that reminded him of deep sea mining facilities. 

They were brought in to land on the biggest of the structures that Kallus could see — which was still quite small — one with a long strip of landing platform that led to what looked to be a compact compound. He thought it must go below the water, and wondered how far down it reached.

As they received their landing instructions, the voice on the comms also informed them that Olaffson was to stay with the shuttle while Kallus went for a tour of the facility, alone. He exchanged a look with Olaffson, who shrugged, and said, “Not unexpected for me, Agent Kallus — anyway, I’ll stay dry this way, eh?”

“Yes,” said Kallus. He smiled tightly and went to the back of the shuttle, adjusting his bo-rifle on his shoulders and his sidearm at his hip while he waited for Olaffson to engage the landing struts and drop the rear hatch for him to exit.

When it opened into the downpour, which was worse than their landing had suggested, he was greeted at the end of the ramp by a slip of a woman, her dark, pleasant face shadowed by the umbrella she carried. Beside her was a sallow, craggy-faced older man in a poncho who nodded once and then turned on his heel to march ahead of them as the woman took Kallus under the shelter of her umbrella.

As they walked from the landing pad to the facility, the woman apologized for the inclement weather — it was usually raining, she noted, but not quite so hard as this — and introduced herself as Doctor Alle Sangrur, the head researcher or the program, and the man with them as Captain Josef Bronte, their head trainer.

“We’re very honored to have you here, ISB-021,” she said. “Welcome to the Farm.”

“Please, Doctor Sangrur,” he said, “call me Agent Kallus.”

“Agent Kallus,” she corrected, smiling. “Again, we’re honored to have you here, and today of all days! Grand Admiral Thrawn said he was unhappy that he himself could not make it, but that you would be pleased to do an assessment in his stead — and to give you access to whatever you need to do so!”

He smiled at her, and Bronte, who did not smile back, despite the fact that Kallus’s ambient suspicion was ratcheting up, and beginning to mingle freely with his earlier unease.

Trap, said a voice in the back of his mind. 

“Yes,” he found himself saying as they entered the compound, “yes I am — only, the Grand Admiral, in his haste to get me here, neglected to tell me what I’d be assessing, and just what you do here at your fine facility — you called it the Farm?”

“Oh!” said Sangrur. She glanced at Bronte, who flipped his hood back and was smirking slightly.

“Then you're in for a real treat,” the man said. His voice was as rough as his face and he spoke with no irony, despite the smile. Whatever it was Kallus was about to watch, the people who worked the facility genuinely enjoyed it.

“We’re a weapons facility, of a sort,” Sangur said, stepping forward to take the lead. “This first level is just communications and various admin offices — the real interest is below! And, well, the Farm is a bit of a play on our project header. You’ll see!”

She walked them towards a turbolift, using a code cylinder to call it to them. She was saying as they piled in and began their descent towards the bottom of the Farm, “There are ten levels total. The top three are research labs, the two below are medical facilities, and then the next few are quarters for the on-site staff, which is broken into two types: research and training. Captain Bronte’s staff is often in flux, because it’s dependent on training needs. Right now, we have just two additional handlers and trainers in residence, and a support staff of twelve guards. I have a team of ten scientists and researchers. Below the staff quarters are the final three levels, which are the testing facilities, where we are headed.”

“Forgive me,” said Kallus. “That seems a small number of staff to have on-site, from what I recall of other weapons facilities I’ve observed.”

“Well, the Farm is not your typical facility!” said Sangrur with a lively smile. “And we don’t have your typical weapon! We of course started out with more scientists — the Kaminoans actually pioneered most of our research, previously, but we progressed past the need for them. And we’ve narrowed down the prototypes significantly from then, as well.”

“Oh?” Kallus’s unease became a stone in the pit of his stomach. The Kaminoans had —

“We’d begun the project, oh, fifteen years ago?” she was saying, leading them now out of the turbolift and into a narrow, nondescript hallway. “After today, we’ll be bringing back more staff to begin phase two of the project. All right, here we are!”

Sangrur stopped in front of a door and used her code cylinder to enter the room, waving Kallus and Bronte in before her. It was an observation deck, looking out to a large, empty training area below. There were several humans arrayed in the observation room already, two men and two women. The men were introduced as part of Sangrur’s research team and the women as handlers under Bronte.

“Are they here yet?” the man asked.

“Not yet,” said the taller of the two women. She pulled a comm unit out of her uniform pocket and pressed a button before replacing it.

Below, a door slid open. Sangrur waved Kallus forward to join her at the glass.

“These are our prototypes,” she said, grinning.

Kallus stared.

Arrayed before them, at parade rest, were five children, dressed in identical black body gloves. They were of varying ages: standing in a cluster together were three, tall sandy haired teenlings, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, with terrible frowns and dark eyes, two boys and one girl; the boys were completely identical, down to their haircuts. Near them, but not with them, was a slightly older girl, willowy and shrewd-eyed with jet black hair in a sharp crop and a severe set to her jaw. The youngest was just by this girl’s elbow, a full head shorter than the rest, a tiny, dishwater blonde with her hair in two thick plaits that nearly went to the small of her back; she could be no older than ten, he thought. And they all had two — little gods, little gods, karabast  — lightsabers, the blonde youngling spinning one of hers absently in her palm.

“Those are the last three of S Batch,” Sangrur was saying, pointing to the dark-eyed triplets, “CPTS units 006, 009, and 014. That’s the last of D Batch, CPTD-005, and the little one is the last of K Batch, CPTK-021.”

“Like you, eh?” called Bronte.

Kallus continued to stare at the children — the weapons Thrawn had apparently sent him to review — as they stood in silence below  him.

Sangrur was still talking. “Our glorious Emperor has tasked us here with a division of Project Harvester— hence the Farm, you see? — called Project Rebirth. Before the Jedi traitors fell, we were able to get several DNA samples. These prototypes are the beginning of a new generation of clone soldiers for our Emperor, a new breed of Inquisitor, if you will. Only these ones, all Force sensitive of course, trained by the Inquisitors themselves and by former clone soldiers before they were all decommissioned, will have none of that pesky Jedi training that sometimes befouls the Inquisitors.”

“All loyal,” said Bronte, joining them at the observation window now, “to our Empire and our Empire alone. The perfect weapon.”

“I see,” said Kallus. He was staring carefully above the heads of the children, concentrating on his breathing. His hands felt numb at his sides. 

Clones , he thought. Clones of dead Jedi. Oh, gods.

“Would you like to?” asked Bronte.

“What?”

“See,” he said. He pressed a control next to the window — an intercom — and said, “CPTS-009, tell Agent Kallus what we are about to begin.”

“Game Day,” said the female sandy-haired triplet— no, clone . She had a vague accent, dropped rhotics and flat vowels — she sounded not unlike Garazeb, he thought. The teenling raised her chin and smirked, tossing her messy hair over her shoulder, as she added, “To determine who is strongest.”

“So,” said Bronte, “would you like to see it?”

“Of course,” said Kallus evenly.

“Come sit by us,” said one of the handlers and he went, mechanically, to sit between the two women in the front row of seats. The two researchers settled in the row behind them, and Sangrur and Bronte flanked the handlers.

Below, three of the children filed out of the room at a gesture from Bronte, leaving behind the D Batch girl and one of the S Batch boys. They stood across from each other, perhaps six feet between them, and lit up their ‘sabers, casting their faces in a dull, red glow. They inclined their heads and then, without warning, the S Batch boy, 014, he thought, flew at CPTD-005.

Kallus had only vague memories of the Jedi, before the fall of the Republic, had only seen them in action against the droids of the Sepratist forces, and he’d seen footage of Kanan Jarrus in action against the Grand Inquisitor. What he watched now was nothing like that, he thought, and he fought to keep his face impassive as, with growing horror, he watched the children viciously attack one another. They weren’t pulling their blows, lightsabers bright and crackling with power, thrumming as they crashed again and again, sizzling when they glanced off fabric and skin, drawing welts and burns: they were fighting with intent.

Over the sounds of grunting and growling, over the sounds of children attacking one another, the researchers and the handlers in the room were calmly telling Kallus about the training regime the children before him had been enduring for the last fifteen years.

They’d started with many more units, about thirty per batch. As Sangrur said, they’d had genetic samples from many of the Jedi, collected before the rise of the Empire, though these three batches represented those favored by the Emperor himself. The ranks had been whittled down over the years — culling out weaker units through a combination of observation, training, and of course these Game Days, until there were only the strongest left.

“We actually used the model from ISB training,” Bronte commented. “I never had the pleasure, myself, but I’m told it was very successful.”

Kallus, who vividly remembered being twenty and getting handed a live weapon to begin Team Day with his fellow trainees, the instructors not quite discouraging a body count to end the day, barely suppressed a flinch.

“Of course,” said the handler on Kallus’s left, “we had to modify it a little.”

Below, the D Batch girl let out a wild yell and thrust her ‘saber through the chest of the S Batch Boy.

“Interesting,” said the handler on Kallus’s right. She reached over him to drop a few credits into the waiting palm of the other woman, and Kallus watched, biting down on the inside of his mouth until he tasted blood, as the boy’s body was borne away.

“Too bad Eighth couldn’t make it,” said the other handler, counting her credits. “She said D005 would surprise us.”

“D005 was favored to go out first,” said one of the researchers impassively, leaning forward to speak into Kallus’s ear. “S Batch are the favorites from this group of trainers. They’ve always been stronger, faster, angrier, though that in turn makes them harder to control, of course.”

“You’ve rigged it?”” asked Kallus.

“Only as much as we ever do,” said the handler on his left. From the corner of his eye, he could see her sharp-edged smile.

Below, the door opened again and the little K Batch girl was brought in. Her braids had been pinned, now, into a crown around her head.

“Oh,” said one of the researchers, “this was the Commander’s favorite out of the whole batch, before he’d been decommissioned.”

CPTD-005 didn’t wait this time, launching herself forward at CPTK-021. The bigger girl was obviously tired but she was strong, he’d seen that before, and she obviously had the size advantage in this particular match up. But, as Kallus watched and listened to the researchers and handlers comment on the action, he learned that CPTK-021 was extremely adept at fighting and disabling opponents much larger than herself, using her innate speed and maneuverability to her benefit. She was also, one handler said as an aside, the best at this particular form of lightsaber combat, the dual wielding called jar’kai, even though she favored something called the reverse grip, no matter how hard the Inquisitors tried to train it out of her.

It was her, Kallus found himself thinking as he watched that deadly, vicious little child spin circles around CPTD-005. It was CPTK-021 and one of the other S Batch children who they wanted at the end.

The battle between the two children raged on as Kallus watched. He couldn’t look away. He owed it to these children to bear witness to what was happening. Kallus would remember these children, every one of them, no matter what happened, and when the last one was standing —

What then? he found himself thinking. What would he do? Could he allow this building, this project, to continue to grow? Could he send a communique to the Rebels and turn back to matters of the ISB, hoping for the best? Who would the Rebellion even send to take on a facility such as this, that housed deadly children and had Inquisitors regularly walking the halls? Jarrus and Bridger, and the rest of the Spectres? 

He didn’t know if he could stomach the thought of Jarrus coming face first with the terrible, twisted remnant of his people, of Garazeb raising his bo-rifle against one of these children. But he would have to — he would have to. After all, wasn’t the intelligence he could provide from within the Empire more beneficial than the life of a murderous little clone?

Twenty minutes after this second match up had begun, CPTD-005, clearly growing more and more tired, swung wildly at CPTK-021. The smaller child moved gracefully out of the way of her ‘saber but the erratic swing pulled 005’s other ‘saber hand around. CPTK-021 had moved, but she hadn’t moved far enough, and it put her in exactly the wrong spot.

A horrible shriek, like a lothcat getting its tail stomped on, rose from the training area.

Kallus gripped the edge of his seat. He was surprised no one could hear the leather of his gloves creak beneath the pressure. To his left, the handler there stood, shocked, and to his right the other said again, “Interesting.”

Below, CTPD-005 was frozen, staring wide-eyed at the little CPTK-021, who had dropped into a crouch, face ducked down and towards the floor, hidden in shadow. Her lightsabers jutted out behind her, hovering just a few inches above the ground, unwavering in her still steady hands.

“I’m,” started CTPD-005. “I’m so—”

CTPK-021 looked up. A nasty burn crossed the girl’s small face. It seemed huge even from the distance the observation deck provided, bisecting her face from ear to ear, just below her eyes. It was a miracle it hadn’t taken the girl’s nose clear off.

With a wordless growl, CPTK-021 launched herself out of the crouch and towards CTPD-005, moving through the air at an unnatural speed. CTPD-005 only had time to make a belated stumble back, unable to even lift her ‘sabers, before she was taken to the ground with a heavy thump and the sick crunch of bone breaking.

Little CPTK-021 stood. She held out both hands and the ‘sabers she had dropped as she had thrown herself at the other girl snapped back into her waiting hands, igniting into their fresh, bloody red as soon as they hit her palms. CPTD-005 lay on the ground at her feet, neck broken.

CPTK-021 stared down at the body, a strange, indecipherable look on her small face.

The door slid open once again and CPTK-021 dropped back into a crouch, lightsabers glinting, the girl hissing like a wild animal as two guards entered the room. They had to edge carefully around her to get to the other girl’s body, and CPTK-021 twitched like she wanted to lash out at them too, like she wanted to protect the body from further harm. Her eyes flashed as she watched them take her away, a feral, high-pitched growl rumbling from her little throat.

Sangrur pulled a datapad from her jacket and made a few notes while the handlers once again exchanged credits and horrible smiles over Kallus.

When this is all over , Kallus thought, watching as the doors opened and CPTS-009 came flying out, yelling. He felt as if his mind had gone very far away from his body. He thought, When this is all over, I will burn this place to the ground.

And perhaps he could get away with it. Perhaps they would take him on that tour of the facility, and he could find his way to where they kept all their research and he could sabotage it, somehow. He could corrupt the DNA samples and destroy years of research and plant incendiary devices on timers and destroy it all from within, and no one would be the wiser. Perhaps he could get away with the destruction, and continue on as Fulcrum still.

CPTK-021 was a little wounded animal, vicious and cornered, lashing out with her ‘sabers and her mind, using the Force with a little flick of her wrist to shove CTPS-009 into the wall. The other girl didn’t even have a chance.

Kallus wouldn’t have a chance. Who was he trying to kid? What was he trying to prove?

Honor , he thought with that same distant numbness, and he pictured Garazeb’s face in his mind, the way he looked at the bo-rifle Kallus wore on his back even now. He thought of their hands, reaching towards each other.

He would destroy the facility. He would go down with it himself if he must. He couldn’t —

These children —

Below, CPTK-021 was spinning like a top, her lightsabers striking the chest of CPTS-009 again and again and again until the girl fell and did not get up.

He couldn't —

CPTK-021 was still standing, little chest heaving as she gasped wordlessly for air. The burn on her face seemed to glow red, and her little body glove had been split open in several places on her legs and arms, contact burns shiny and angry through the cut fabric, but she was standing, ready. Is she crying? he wondered, watching her little girl shoulders strained tight, her throat working.

He wanted to say, She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to do this.

None of them wanted it. How could no one see it? CPTD-005 had been horrified when she realized what she’d done to CPTK-021 — she’d tried to apologize . CPTK-021 had stared with confused grief at her body, having reacted on instinct to the hurt. She hadn’t wanted to kill the other girl, but she had to. They all had to.

Below, the last S Batch child was brought in, the other boy, 006, and they were just children, Kallus wanted to scream, they were just little kids —

CPTS-006 launched himself at the little K Batch girl with a roar, working to overpower her, knowing that she’d faced two opponents already, that he was fresh and ready, undamaged, unhurt. He had a smile on his face that had yet to falter. He managed to land several glancing blows, drawing more of those feral little shrieks and growls from CPTK-021; but the girl was quick, brutal despite her size, giving as good as she got. She was trembling under the strain of the fight but there was no give up in the girl.

They fought viciously for what felt like hours but was truly just a handful of minutes and Kallus’s mouth was filled with blood, biting the insides of his cheeks until they were raw as he watched, helpless to stop the horror of what continued to unfold before him. His throat hurt.

Suddenly, the boy’s dark red ‘sabers moving like a blur, CPTS-006 sunk his blade into the left shoulder of CPTK-021, just below the girl’s collarbone, forcing her to drop one of her ‘saber’s as she grabbed at his wrist to still the blade from ripping up through her shoulder. He reeled the smaller child in close, her toes barely touching the ground as she hung in his grip. He held the shorter of his two ‘sabers up to her face, tracing the line of the burn from CPTD-005 with it. They stared at each other. CPTS-006’s grin, which hadn’t yet faltered, widened now. He bent his head in to press their foreheads together.

CPTK-021 reared back right after and slammed her face into CPTS-006’s. The boy’s grip loosened just slightly, in shock and in pain, and CPTK-021 put her own remaining ‘saber into his chest as she stared into his eyes.

The pair of them stood there, locked together by their blades, looking at one another. CPTS-006 stared down at little CPTK-021. He shut the ‘saber that was embedded in the girl’s shoulder off, letting go of the ‘saber to instead hold onto the fabric of her body glove, and he let go of his second ‘saber as well. He raised one hand, shakily, up to her face. He touched her cheek, just below the burn, and said something so quietly that the microphones in the training area couldn’t pick it up. CPTK-021 tipped her head towards his once more, gently this time, pressing them together for a moment, two, and then pulled her ‘saber from his chest. He hit the ground and did not move again.

CPTK-021 stumbled a little, with CPTS-006 no longer there keeping her aloft, but she stayed standing. Once again, she put one hand out and called the ‘saber she dropped back up to her palm, shut her other blade off, and turned to stare, expressionlessly, up into the observation deck.

Kallus stared down at her and finally allowed his eyes to meet the girl’s. They were a startling blue above her wound, like the skies above Lothal during the summer harvest season, and, for just a moment, they were so impossibly sad.

Bronte stood and went to the intercom. He pressed it and said, “Good girl. But that move with CPTD-005 was sloppy, and you lost hold of your ‘sabers twice.”

She nodded.

“Report to the cold room for punishment,” he said.

Head held high, CPTK-021 limped from the room. Her hands were in fists around her lightsabers, knuckles white.

“Have the medics meet her,” Bronte said, turning back to address the handlers in the room. “Tell them to clean and bandage everything but her face. That, she keeps.”

The handler on Kallus’s left nodded, pulling out her comm unit and typing away.

“What’s the cold room?” he asked.

“Solitary confinement,” said the other handler. “Single cell, no bed, no blankets, kept there until we’ve deemed them properly disciplined. The Inquisitors implemented that one, from their own training.”

“I see,” he said. “How long do you typically keep them there?”

“Several days, depending on the unit,” she said. “K021’s always been quick on the uptake though, so probably no longer than two. Just before infection sets in, if she’s lucky.”

“And then what?” Kallus asked.

“We’ll begin the process of harvesting her DNA,” said Sangrur, making notes once again on her datapad. “It’s actually the part of the process we’ve been most excited about. We’re going to create new batches based on her DNA profile, and enmesh it with other DNA we have on file. We’ll be using the aging process the Kaminoans used for the clone soldiers, this time around, as well, so the Empire will have its new soldiers faster, though it’ll be at least two years before they’re in field — the Emperor believes the cultivation of their anger and hate is key to their success, and who are we to disagree?”

“And her,” he said. “CPTK-021. What will happen to her?”

Sangrur glanced at Bronte, who said, “Be utilized to train the new batches as well, I imagine, and she’ll be sent into the field alongside men like yourself, Agent Kallus, to bring order to the galaxy and help hunt down traitors and root out sedition. But she’s just a prototype, in the end, and the newer models will be made more for longevity in mind.”

“And that’s all allowing her survival of the harvesting process,” commented one of the researchers.

“I’ll take that bet. K021’s godsdamn hardy,” said a handler.

“Sure,” said the researcher. “Two hundred cred?”

“You’re on.”

“Ah,” said Kallus. “Well. Thank you all. This has been very illuminating.”

He pulled his sidearm and neatly shot everyone between the eyes, starting with Bronte and the handlers, only one of whom managed to get her hand on her blaster before she hit the ground, and ending with the researchers.

Doctor Sangrur, however, he left alive when he at last turned his blaster on her. She hadn’t even risen from her chair, too in shock, her datapad still on her knees, fingers loosely around it. She was staring at Bronte, collapsed against the observation window, and the blood splatter two feet above him on the transparisteel.

“Get up,” he said. Her eyes, huge, cut to the blaster he held on her and filled with water as she fought back tears. Of terror, he thought, and then, Good. She should be scared. How many children had she raised from infancy and then ordered to their ends? How many had fought to the death below them while she watched on and took notes? How many of them were scared? How many died, terrified and alone, at the hands of those who were practically their siblings?

Kallus said, “You’ll take me to where you keep the genetic samples of the Jedi, and the children. And you’ll take me to where you keep all of the hard copies of your research.”

“It’s the same place,” she said, voice thready with fear. “The main research lab. Level Dorn.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Get up. I won’t tell you again.”

Sangrur stood, datapad clattering to the ground. She nodded jerkily, eyes shiny, and Kallus grabbed hold of the collar of her jacket, pressing his blaster into the small of her back.

“Go,” he said.

Together, they walked out of the observation room and back towards the turbolift. They rode several floors up and went silently through the blank, featureless halls of the Farm. There was no one about but them as they walked into a room filled with databanks and cold storage tubes for tissue samples.

“Copy all of your research onto this,” he said, handing her the compact external drive he’d taken to carrying on missions since he’d become Fulcrum, and Sangrur nodded, moving to sit at one what looked to be the main terminal, directly in the center of the room. “If you move, I will shoot you. If you attempt to alert anyone, I will shoot you. If you do anything I do not like, I will shoot you. Understood?”

“Yes,” she said.

Kallus took up a position behind her, his blaster trained at the back of her head. He kept his eyes on the screen, watching as she began the data transfer. Occasionally, he glanced over at the cold storage tubes, assessing. He’d need to find the armory — it’d be back below, of course, where they trained their weapons — and get explosives and incendiary devices. All of this would need to be destroyed, absolutely. He didn’t even want to make the copies but he knew he’d have to: he’d need to go through every data file from this place, determine what they had done, what they had been planning to do, and if they were capable of beginning again.

Destroying the entire facility would be a good first step to ending that before it began, he hoped.

It took very little time for the data to copy, perhaps just half of an hour, and Kallus was thankful. He was on the clock now. The cold, methodical parts of him had taken over, running the show and keeping the frightful, awful sick terror he felt at bay, but there was still so much that could go wrong — especially given how unprepared he was when he kicked this chain of events into motion.

He hadn’t thought before he took those first shots. He’d barely been thinking at all. He’d just kept picturing the girl’s eyes, and the freckles he thought he could see on either side of the burn. And if he’d had a thought, it had been, perhaps, just: what would Garazeb do?

Any minute now, the bodies in the observation room could be discovered. No alarms had yet been sounded, which was a good sign. He was in the clear until that happened, or Sangrur grew a set and tried to alert the guards of the Farm. He watched her shaking hands type, and reckoned he would be okay there as well. She didn’t have it in her. When push came to shove, in the Empire, it was save your own skin first and last, and to hell with whatever else happened.

He glanced again at the cold storage tubes and the back to the data terminal. A bar indicated that it was sixty-two percent downloaded.

“Does this facility have a self-destruct?” he asked.

In the reflection of the terminal screen, Kallus watched the tears in Sangrur’s shiny eyes finally spill over. She whispered, “Yes.”

“Do you know how to set it?” he asked. “Don’t lie to me. I’ll know that too.”

“Why are you doing this?” she said instead, her mouth twisting into a grimace. “You’re betraying your Empire!”

“I betrayed myself first, by not stopping you before you began,” he said. “The self-destruct.”

Sangrur turned in her chair. “They’re just clones!”

“The self-destruct,” he said again.

“You need two code cylinders. Mine, and Captain Bronte’s.” Her voice broke on his name. “You set it from the main terminal in the admin offices.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Give it to me.”

The terminal flashed: download complete.

Sangrur said, “You won’t be able to. It’s too well guarded.”

“Give it to me anyway,” he said, “and the drive.”

She did. 

“Are there back-ups for the data elsewhere?”

Sangrur shook her head. “Just these files, and reports. We’re on a closed system, to protect the experiment.”

“Delete the originals,” he ordered.

“The self-destruct,” she insisted again even as she typed and began the deletion process, “you won’t make it.”

“Then take me to the armory first,” Kallus said. “It won’t hurt to have a Plan B.”

Sangrur stared at him with her wide, wet eyes. He twitched his blaster upwards and she went.

They left the room, heading back into the corridor. If he couldn’t get to the self-destruct — and it seemed like he might not, he wasn’t sure if he could risk heading back to the observation room to get Bronte’s code cylinder without getting caught; it felt like he was working on twice-borrowed time now — he would get as many explosives as he could carry and rig everything he could in the research lab to blow, and then whatever else in the facility he could to boot. A good charge in the armory, he thought, would begin things nicely. He should comm Olaffson, too, and get him to prepare the shuttle for launch.

“The cold room?” he found himself asking suddenly as they approached the turbolift again.

“What?” said Sangrur.

“The room where you sent the girl,” he said. “Where is it?”

“She’s just a clone,” repeated Sangrur.

“And I’d like to know where she is,” Kallus said.

“We’ll pass it,” she said, “on the way.”

He nodded. “Good. Keep walking.”

They went down a level in the turbolift and continued to walk through more of the Farm’s featureless halls before Sangrur stopped them at another door. Kallus used the code cylinder he took from her before to open the room up, moving to keep Sangrur in his eyeline as he did so.

The alarms finally began to blare as the door opened. Time was up.

Inside the dark of the room, as cold as the name had implied, little CPTK-021 was huddled in one corner. She had bandages and compresses wrapped around her shoulder and her arms and legs where she’d been tagged by the other children’s lightsabers; the burn on her face was open to the cold damp of the room. She looked up at the noise of the door sliding open and stared at Kallus, backlit as he was by the hall and the strobing lights of the hall. Her eyes traced over him, then the blaster in his hand, pointed at Sangrur’s temple, then Sangrur’s wan, tear-stained face. Her lip curled, almost imperceptibly, with what Kallus thought was contempt, and hatred.

“Cadet,” he said. Her head cocked. “Do you know where the armory is?”

A split second of hesitation, the girl’s eyes flickering once again between him, his blaster, and Sangrur, and then she nodded.

“Wait,” said Sangrur.

Kallus shot her without looking and she dropped to the floor. He stepped over her body and into the room.

“My name is Agent Kallus,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Mission, agent?” she asked. 

He stared at her, jaw working. She had a small, shy voice, quiet in a way that suggested disuse, but even in those two words she sounded so like Garazeb, even more so than the other girl had — or like the old clone soldiers, he thought. Perhaps that comparison was more accurate, more apt. 

“Yes. I’m taking you on a mission,” he told her. “Our first target is this facility itself. Would you like to help me?”

Her blue, blue eyes looked down at Sangrur’s dead body. There was no expression on her face now, even a tiny, barely hid one. She asked, more haltingly than before, “Mission, agent? Handlers?”

“No more handlers,” he said. “Dead, like her.”

“You?” she said.

It felt like a galaxy’s worth of questions, all truncated into a single word, but there could only be one answer. “Yes.”

“Okay.” The little girl stood, wobbling once. She grit her teeth and did not flinch.

“Cadet,” he began. He couldn't think of anything else. He wouldn’t call her what they called her. She was a person, a child . He wouldn’t call her by the number they shared. They were both people. He said again, “Cadet, you’re injured, and we have to move. We no longer have the element of surprise.”

“I move fast,” she said. It wasn’t a protest, just a simple statement of fact.

“I know,” he said. “I know you do. But not now, cadet. I’m going to carry you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She stared at him for half a heartbeat and then nodded. Kallus crossed the rest of the way into the room and, with one arm, scooped her up onto his right hip. She was so light, a feather, and over warm for how cold the room was; and anger, now, suddenly, burned through the numb fog he’d been operating under since he lifted his blaster in the observation room.

He turned back to the door and returned to the hall, stepping casually over Sangrur. Blaster in his left hand, he pointed it to the ground and rested his finger on the trigger.

“The armory?” he asked.

The girl pointed to their right. 

“Two lefts,” she told him, “then right.”

He nodded and set off. The girl was looking over his shoulder as they went, he realized, watching his back. He’d have to get her a weapon of her own when they reached the armory.

Sangrur’s code cylinder let them in without a problem, and Kallus wondered if they knew what was happening yet. Had they discovered the bodies and not yet determined who the shooter was? Were they waiting for him to emerge from the turbolift on the top level, clustered together and whispering, unable to contemplate why he’d done what he’d done? They obviously had no idea he’d gone for the girl, or they would’ve made their way onto this floor long before they’d reached the armory, perhaps even when he was gaining her strange allegiance in that cold room.

Once inside, Kallus set the girl down on the ground, making sure she was steady on her legs before he took his hand from her slim shoulders. He paused, thinking, and then he handed her his blaster, asking, “Do you know how to use this?”

She nodded and Kallus said, “Good. Now, keep an eye on the door, and shoot anything that moves,” then turned to start grabbing supplies.

There was a plain sack that he immediately began to fill with explosives and whatever incendiary devices he could. He grabbed, too, anything that looked like it could be useful. He didn’t have a plan beyond this, beyond blowing up the facility, but he had the girl now. He would need to think further ahead.

The shuttle, he thought. They would set as many charges they could, in as many places as he could get to, and then they would get to the shuttle. After that  —

After would come when they were on the shuttle, he thought as he bundled a group of explosives together and set a timer for fifteen minutes. That would be enough time, he reckoned, for the two of them to get back to the data room, lay charges there, and begin to make their way up to the surface of the planet and whatever waited for them there.

He pulled out his comm to contact Olaffson, who answered with blatant confusion. “I hear alarms, sir,” he said. “Is the facility under attack?”

“Yes,” Kallus told him, eyeing his bundle of explosives. It was not a lie, merely an incomplete truth, though covering his tracks was now far, far beyond him. It no longer mattered how he handled men like Olaffson: from the moment he sat down in the observation room, even if he hadn’t quite known it, Agent Kallus was no more. “You must ready the shuttle, so we can leave as soon as I am aboard with the weapon prototype.”

“Of course, sir,” he said, and then, “Prototype? Sir —” 

Kallus shut the comm off before anything else could be said.

With the bag of explosives and supplies on his left shoulder and the girl settled again on his right hip, blaster in her hands, they returned the way they came and went into the turbolift.

He doubled them back to the main research lab, setting the girl down again so he could lay charges all around the terminals and the cold storage tubes where the DNA samples waited for their terrible futures. He synced them to the timer he’d set down in the armory, scooped the girl up again, and began to lead them out. He dropped charges here and there as he went, the girl pointing out an area for him every so often while she studiously watched his six.

No one crossed their path as they went, and the trepidation that lay at the base of Kallus’s spine finally made itself known as they began their final ascent in the turbolift to the surface. Everything in him had been uneasy and charged, dangerous, like a live wire, since he’d set foot on this planet, and now it was at last coming to a head. They would be waiting for him  — for them  — on the landing pad, fish in a barrel. They would only have the element of surprise, that they were working together.

Twelve guards, he thought. He’d taken down the two handlers Sangrur had said were in residence back in the observation room. He doubted they would have thought to arm the scientists, probably opting to keep them somewhere safe until the threat was neutralized, calling for support even now perhaps. Twelve, and the two of them.

Kallus had had worse odds.

As they approached the final exit of the facility, he sank to the ground, depositing the girl before him.

“Cadet,” he said. “There are twelve guards waiting for us outside, and they don’t want us to complete our mission. Who want to keep you here.”

The girl looked down at the blaster she held. It looked so large in her small hands. She glanced back up at Kallus and told him, “I’m better with my ‘sabers.”

“I imagine,” he said, “but they hadn’t been with everything else in the armory, and I’m afraid we don’t have time to go looking for them. We have to act.”

She nodded.

“Do you see my bo-rifle?” he asked, pulling the weapon off his shoulders. “I am very, very good with it, but I’ll need both of my hands to fire. I want you to climb up on my back, because we can move faster together than we will apart, and I want you to hold on, tight as you can.”

She nodded again, and scaled him with a nimbleness that belied the injuries he knew her small body was riddled with. She settled herself high on his back, her knees locked into his sides just beneath his armpits, with enough force that it would’ve been painful if Kallus hadn’t had such a high tolerance for it. She rested her left arm across his chest, hand fisted in the restrictive collar of his uniform, and kept her other arm free to hold the blaster at the ready.

When he felt her steady on his back, he settled his bo-rifle more comfortably in his arms and stood.

Twelve it was waiting for them in the pouring rain, arrayed in clusters on the way to the shuttle. Kallus, perversely, almost wished he would be able to give his report to Thrawn, after: he’d have much to say about the security for this particular facility. He’d allow, of course, that they weren’t prepared to be overtaken by an ISB agent and one of their own small, deadly weapons, but it was, still, honestly a bit embarrassing. Hadn’t Thrawn warned them that Kallus was coming and that they were to set this trap better for him?

Only one of the twelve guards got a hit on Kallus, a glancing blast high on his thigh, but training and sheer bloody-mindedness kept Kallus going. He ducked and weaved along the open, slick terrain of the landing platform, sprinting them towards the shuttle.

On his shoulders, the girl was a steady, sure shot, as cold and methodical as any agent or trooper Kallus would’ve trained  — as good as Kallus himself, if not better with her Force enhanced reflexes. She got off two to three shots for every one of the guards and it was almost too easy to break through these forces and get to the waiting craft.

Kallus only stumbled as they arrived onto the shuttle, slipping just a little on the slick surface, and Olaffson was there, face pale, eyes wide.

“Agent Kallus?” he began, raising his own blaster hesitantly. “What —?”

The girl shot Olaffson before Kallus could. One clean shot to the hand, and then one to the shoulder. Disarm and then disable, he thought. She wasn’t sure if they would need him alive for their mission but had identified the lieutenant as a potential threat to it nonetheless. The part of him that was still removed from the proceedings, watching through his eyes like a passenger to himself and assessing calmly, was pleased to see that she could make non-lethal calls, because until this moment, he hadn’t seen her take one.

You’re just a baby, he thought, gods, karabast, dear one, what had they done to you?

“Cadet,” said Kallus. “Restrain Lieutenant Olaffson while I get the ship into orbit. We’ve taken out the guard, but they will no doubt have requested reinforcements, and we must leave while we are still able.”

She slid off his shoulders and dropped soundlessly to the floor, nodding at him as she approached Olaffson, crumbled as he was on the floor.

He watched her for a moment as she patted Olaffson down, the man groaning, before coming up with the binders he’d had on his belt. Confident that she had it handled — she was, after all, without a shadow of a doubt the most dangerous being on the shuttle — he headed into the cockpit and sat down before the controls.

Olaffson had believed him, clearly, at least enough to get the ship prepared for launch. He guided the ship up and out of the atmosphere, just as small explosions began to rock the little compound below them. Kallus watched as the shuttle rose, satisfaction curling in his chest, but he knew it was no time to rest on his laurels.

Once safely out of the planet’s orbit, he punched in a random set of coordinates and the white streaked black of hyperspace filled the space around them. His hands were shaking against the steering console, he saw, trembling uncontrollably as the adrenaline of battle began to leave his body.

A new adrenaline, of course, was simply usrupping it however. He’d typed in the first random coordinates he could think of, some planet a sector over that he’d had in the back of his mind since his trip in — gods, had that only been a few hours before? It felt like he’d been awake for days, but it had barely even been a full cycle for him since he’d woke aboard the Chimera and been given his marching orders.

And now, suddenly, he was a fugitive from the Empire, completely and totally. He’d thought, maybe, he’d see this day come — but it had felt so far away whenever he imagined it, and just that: imaginary. It had been so much more realistic to think of himself as dead, and perhaps for quite some time, when the Empire finally fell to the Rebels.

Yet here he was: fleeing a water-logged planet where he’d killed six people without hesitation, and then however many guards had been in his way. Had his explosives in the facility killed the rest of the researchers and scientists? Had the large charge in the armory breached the walls, water filling the halls? And he had a child with him! Not just any child, of course, no, he had a Jedi cloned child who’d been raised since infancy to be an unquestioning, terrifying weapon.

He had no idea where the Rebellion was, and even if he did, he knew he couldn’t turn to them. He was completely and utterly burned, and no one in their right mind within the Rebellion would believe Agent Alexsandr Kallus of the ISB had been acting as Fulcrum if he’d turned up on their doorstep. Could Garazeb have begun to suspect, perhaps, after the message from Wren? Karabast, he hadn’t even known his own handler’s name , out of safety, and the Empire would be hunting him, the bloodhounds already snapping at his heels, his and his little stolen child. He’d be putting Garazeb, the Spectres, everyone , at risk if he tried to find them.

Kallus thought of the small file of data he’d been preparing the last time he was on this shuttle. It would be useless now, the facility hopefully either completely destroyed or simply rendered useless. He had the research, but he still needed to go through it and — then what?

His rig back in Bridger’s old tower had a failsafe. He’d programmed a message and a series of data-bursts to deploy after two ten-days of inactivity from him. It had, in the past, worked perfectly: he’d always been able to swing by the tower in that time frame, or send one of his reprogrammed MSE droids to reset the countdown if he’d gone too far afield to make it back in time.

But there’d be no return for him now. He was never going to be able to set foot on Lothal or any of her neighbors without being recognized; as it was, he’d be hard-pressed to get himself and the girl to somewhere even halfway safe. His last message as Fulcrum would send in less than a ten-day now, pinging off several relays until it found itself with his old handler, that lieutenant he’d never physically met, whose voice he’d never heard unaltered.

“This is Fulcrum,” his message began. “If you are receiving this message, I have been compromised in some way: found or captured, most likely dead. What follows will be several packets of data, information I have been slowly obtaining from the Imperial databanks. I had hoped to sift through this information myself, in time, to bring you intelligence of utility; obviously, that is no longer an option and your teams will have to parse the data yourselves. I am also including several unfinished personal reports and analysis on several Imperial officers, a packet on Imperial strategy, and a list of codes currently in circulation. I only wish I could have given you more. May the Force be with you, and the Rebellion. Fulcrum out.”

As far as last messages went, he’d thought it pretty good. He wished now to have added something more, something of himself. He wondered how he’d be remembered by the Rebels. Would they think him captured? Would they try to rescue him? Or would they write him off, assume that he was dead and gone, whoever he had been, mourn the loss of intelligence and move on to the next?

It was what he would do. 

It was what he had done.

He wondered if Garazeb would notice when Agent Kallus stopped coming ‘round, disrupting their missions. He wondered if he would question it. He wondered if he would miss him.

The girl slipped into the cockpit silently, the gentle shift of recycled air and Kallus’s own knife-edged hypervigilance the only things alerting him to her presence, and climbed gingerly into the cockpit chair. She was favoring her shoulder, of course, and her right leg.

She was barefoot, he realized suddenly when his quick assessment of her physical state made its way from the top of her head down to her dangling feet, too short to touch the ground. How had he missed that?

The big toe of her right foot was missing its nail, he saw as he stared, and several others were crooked, as if they’d been broken and healed poorly. She was missing two toes entirely on her left foot, the smallest ones, clean neat scarring in their place. Amputated.

Kallus sucked in a sharp breath and knew, with perfect, sudden clarity, that he had made the right decision. There was more he could’ve done as ISB-021 for the Rebellion, but that would have been true no matter when he stopped or had been stopped. But for this girl, with her burnt face and sad eyes and vicious, mean anger — he had done the right thing.

There was more to be done for her, too. He could find someone for her, somewhere out in the galaxy. There would be someone like Kanan Jarrus out there, waiting for the opportunity to take in some Force sensitive child and protect and raise them. He would find someone like that, or even maybe someday bring her to Jarrus himself, and he would see that she was safe from harm. He would protect her.

But first, he thought, they would need to ditch the shuttle, tend to their wounds, and get the girl some shoes.

Chapter Text

They would leave the shuttle one sector away, as he’d planned, on that half-remembered little planet he’d punched in as explosions and rain rocked the vessel.

As soon as the girl had joined him in the cockpit, Kallus had begun disabling the onboard trackers all Imperial shuttles boasted. There were three total and the girl’s small, steady hands were helpful in the removal process. She’d done it without question when he’d asked, only looking at him from the corner of her eye, just slightly askance, watching as he used an electrical charge — from a live wire he pulled from the open control panel where they’d pulled out the second tracker — to disrupt them one at a time, and then to turn the charge gentle to himself and the trackers beneath his own skin. She had watched that even closer. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, if she was confused or curious; he was still trying to figure out how to explain to her what was happening, and operating in silence, and letting her think it was all part of the mission, was the easiest thing for now.

He reckoned she might just assume the facility was compromised and Kallus had been sent to extract her, get her somewhere safe and lie low while they awaited new orders from the Empire. At least, he hoped that was the case.

It was hard to tell what she was thinking when she followed his orders so silently and exactly, patiently, the perfect little genetically engineered clone soldier.

She’d looked confused, truly confused, when he had told her to wait in the cockpit while he collected the onboard medkit to treat her face and their new wounds. Like all her other hard won expressions, it was fleeting, something one could easily believe they imagined, but Kallus was watching her closely for whatever tells he could find, and this one had told him that she found his compassion — no, not even that, just basic godsdamn decency — unusual, baffling.

Out in the passenger area now, he took a breath, counting in his head. It would do him no good to get worked up about each new horror he discovered within the girl: he knew the worst of them, and nothing should surprise him of her reactions, he thought.

She had barely been human to the people of the Farm. She’s just a clone! Sangrur had protested.

Kallus pressed his thumb into the blaster wound on his leg, relishing the sharp pain, using it to keep himself on track. There wasn’t time for this!

He shook his head and went to where he knew the medkit was kept. He glanced quickly at Olaffson, slumped in the corner, and then did a double take, stepping quickly and quietly closer. He wasn’t bound and at first glance he seemed to simply be unconscious, but his chest was still and —

There was a neat blaster hole in the soft hollow of skin beneath the chin of Olaffson. Contact burns from the muzzle of the blaster ringed round it — the girl, because of course it had been the girl, had gotten in close, tucked the blaster under his head, and pulled the trigger. He would’ve died instantly, and painlessly. He might not have even been aware that was why she was there in front of him.

He looked over his shoulder back towards the open archway into the cockpit. She was still sitting in the copilot’s seat, staring out the front of the ship as the stars rocketed past. She seemed even tinier here, out of context. She couldn’t be much taller than a meter, maybe one and a quarter or so, and when he’d held her, he would’ve put her at twenty-five kilos. Her face and body were thin, no baby fat to speak of, all sinew and muscle and bone: she’d been strip-mined of every extra calorie and bit of fat to create the deadly weapon of her body.

Kallus counted to ten again and grabbed the medkit. It wouldn’t be much, he knew, the shuttle lightly stocked for simple journeys like the one he’d been on, but there’d be bandages to swap out for the rain-drenched ones on the girl, some bacta to start to treat the girl’s face as best he could, and burn cream for his leg if he was lucky, so he wouldn’t have to use up the bacta supply.

When he returned to the cockpit, the girl didn’t stir. He put the little box on the still-open console between them and said levelly, “I thought I told you to restrain Olaffson.”

The girl turned slightly in her seat. Her eyes flicked to the medkit and then Kallus. She said, “He would have compromised us, and he wasn’t mission necessary.”

He stared. It was the most she’d spoken yet. She had a flat, almost toneless delivery, and she met his eyes square on, fearless. Her fingers flexed, though, rhythmically, against the edge of the seat. It was a gentle tremor that belied how she felt, and nearly imperceptible if he wasn’t looking as closely as he was: afraid of her own defiance.

“He might’ve been,” Kallus said. “How could you have known?”

“He was only a lieutenant, who did not attend the Game Day event with you,” she said in that bloodless tone. “Why would he wait aboard the ship if he was not simply a pilot for your journey here? He didn’t have clearance to see. You ordered me to restrain him while you took the ship into orbit. You did not need him. He wasn’t mission necessary, and he would’ve compromised it had he lived.”

She held his gaze still, unblinking. Waiting.

Perhaps it was not her defiance that she feared, he thought then, but the consequences of it.

“I would have left him with the shuttle,” he told her, “where he may or may not have been found, long after we had gone, and he would have had no idea where to even begin to look. I respect your assessment, and it’s true that he may not have been mission necessary, but it was also not necessary to kill him.”

Her fingers relaxed. She nodded, once.

“In the future,” he added and then adjusted, “for the mission — we cannot kill, unless we absolutely must. And only me. Do you understand?”

The girl’s tiny brow furrowed.

“Do you understand, cadet?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said after a moment but her brow was still knitted together.

Kallus counted, once more, to ten.

“Now,” he said. “We need to treat my leg, and your face, and change your other bandages.”

She looked down at her arms and legs and then back to him. She said, “I — agent?”

“You may call me Alexsandr,” he said, softly, and opened the medkit. “Your bandages, beneath your tunic — they’re wet from the rain, and if we don’t change them, we’ll risk infection. We need to make sure they stay dry, until the skin below is healed — same with the wound on your face.”

“But I was sloppy,” she said.

“When?”

“The move with D005,” she said. 

“So?” he asked. “Why should that stop us from bandaging it up? From letting it heal properly?”

“It shouldn’t’ve happened,” she told him. She seemed upset, confused; it didn’t show in her voice, still flat, still level, but her eyes had widened just slightly and her breath had picked up. “It has to — I have to keep it.”

Punishment , he thought. They’d sent her to that room. She was supposed to have been there for days. They would have left it like that, untreated, the girl completely alone, and the wound would’ve festered in the damp there, grown inflamed. What would they have done, after? Lanced it, stitched it up, pumped her full of antibiotics, and told her to wear the scar with pride?

“That goes against our mission parameters,” he said. This would be the best way to get through to her, to couch it in these very specific terms. “We need to blend in, be unnoticed. I cannot travel with a youngling who has a visible wound like that. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said with something not unlike relief. “If we’re detected, the mission could be compromised.”

“Indeed.” 

Kallus pulled out a sachet of bacta from the kit. There were six, in total, and no burn cream for his leg as he’d hoped. He’d have to use some of the bacta, then, at least half a sachet. He’d prefer to save everything for the girl’s face but he needed to be as close to fighting fit as he could be, if the Empire found them. But half a sachet he could do, especially if the girl’s other wounds had been treated halfway decently at the facility.

For how cavalier they were, for how disposable they’d found each of the clones, surely they would’ve still understood their value as weapons — or, if not that, then as the property of the Emperor.

He bit the inside of one of his raw cheeks, sick to his stomach. He couldn’t think of it, not now, not when they were so barely out of reach.

“Come sit on the console,” he said, pulling the open kit into his lap. The girl did as she was told — no surprise there, of course, her momentary lapse of control before all but forgotten — and settled in so that he could smear the cold gel carefully across the angry burn. She didn’t flinch, not once, as he touched her, even though it must’ve hurt like all Corellian hells.

Her eyes stayed on his face the entire time, flickering from his eyes to his nose, his facial hair to his freckles. He wondered what she saw there. He wondered what she was looking for.

“I’ve always thought it smells like fresh daro root,” Kallus said, dabbing the bacta into the wound. She had freckles too, a galaxy’s worth of little constellations, half of them gone now beneath the plasma burn.

She tilted her head minutely.

“The bacta,” he told her, tossing the empty sachet back into the kit. “Have you ever had fresh daro root?”

She shook her head. It seemed, he thought, that she’d used up whatever allowance of words she had given herself earlier and had retreated into silence — out of nature or out of something that had been beaten into her, he couldn’t be sure. He hoped for the former but suspected the latter.

He assessed his handiwork, glancing again at the small kit. There were squares of sterile gauze and a single, small roll of the stuff. There was nothing that he felt comfortable covering the wound with, without it drawing even more attention to it. It would be fine, he knew, to leave it with that glossing of bacta and nothing else; it wasn’t ideal but it worked.

“It’s a type of root vegetable. It’s good, maybe we’ll find some for you to try when we land,” he said as he moved onto changing the bandages beneath the sleeves of the loose tunic she’d been put into before being sent to the room. She hadn’t gotten hit, as he had, in the firefight, his body acting as a shield for hers as she traveled on his back, and the pre-existing plasma burns had been treated well. The wrappings weren’t too damp, either, which boded well. Her shoulder, of course, was the second worst injury on her small body but, when he pulled down the neck of her tunic to inspect that, he saw it too had been irrigated, cleaned, and stitched up before she’d been sent to her confinement. He asked, “Did they pack this with bacta before it was closed?”

She nodded.

“We’ll put a little on externally all the same,” he said. He could use the other half of the sachet he was planning to use on his leg. It would afford the girl a little additional pain relief and they’d have four sachets left to take with them, then, to ration between her shoulder and her face.

He didn’t mind if his leg scarred. What was one more?

She had scars too. He tried to notice them with a sort of clinical dispassion as he tended to her arms and shoulder, but it was proving challenging. Shiny burn scars of varying age and size here and there across her forearms and biceps, a thick white keloid at the back of her right elbow, tiny, fine white lines skittering across her knuckles. He had some like that too, from brawling with the other children at the orphanage, before.

He pulled her collar back over her shoulder and said, “I saw you favoring your leg.”

She hummed.

“Cadet,” he said. He’d need to find something else to call her, he thought, but it worked for now and she responded to it without hesitation.

“Knee,” she said. “Sprain.”

“Thank you,” Kallus said. “We’ll wrap it. Please roll up your legging.”

The girl did as she was told and Kallus used the length of gauze to stabilize her slightly swollen right knee as best he could.

She continued to sit on the console after he was done with her and he had turned to his own needs. She watched his hands as he used the medkit’s small, dull scissors to cut at his uniform pants, opening the hole around his burnt thigh wider. He hissed as the fabric pulled his skin where they’d been fused together by the bolt.

When he reached into the kit for the half-used sachet, a small hand was already there, handing it to him. He glanced up to flash the girl a quick smile — her face stayed blank — and then applied the bacta to himself. The hand offered him a square of gauze next and the roll of bandages, to hold it in place.

“Thank you,” he said again.

She nodded, hopped off the console, and returned to the copilot’s seat.

Kallus closed up the medkit and went to check the read-outs of the shuttle.

The shuttle dropped out of hyperspace eight hours after they had left the planet that housed the Farm, twenty-four hours after Kallus had been sent to inspect it, thirty hours since Kallus had awoken aboard the Chimera to begin his day. He had held his breath as the shuttle deaccelerated, half expecting to see the Chimera itself hanging before him when they did, but the only thing that had greeted them was the marbled-green planet he’d directed them to.

It wasn’t much, the planet, but it boasted a decent spaceport. His Imperial clearances — still good, he didn’t know whether to be suspicious or thankful; perhaps both — got them landed quickly and efficiently. The dock where they put up their landing struts cleared out without question too when Kallus ordered it, too, so there would be very few witnesses to him disembarking with the girl.

He bundled her up in Olaffson’s jacket, the girl swimming in too much fabric, and contemplated the cap the lieutenant had worn for just a moment until he’d realized it had been on the man’s head when he’d lost his life.

“I’m going to carry you again,” he told her. “Duck your face against my shoulder, like you’re asleep.”

She nodded and allowed herself to be picked up, settling on his hip and ducking her face as asked. Between her hair, unpinned once again into those two long plaits, and the oversized collar of Olafsson’s jacket, her face would be obscured.

As they descended the ramp and walked from the landing berth, into the crush of bodies of the spaceport, Kallus was hyper aware of his slight limp, the bandage wrapped around his leg. The rest of his uniform was still presentable but those things felt like neon lights on his body, flashing.

But no one glanced twice at them, just two more refugees, a father and daughter perhaps, disappearing into a throng of people as they ventured forward towards a new, better life somewhere else in the galaxy. 

He swallowed his anxiety and pushed them forward.

Kallus worked quickly to gather what supplies they needed. He had a small stash of credits he always carried on his person that he used to purchase a change of clothes for both him and the girl, as well as shoes for her and a few other necessities before heading back to docking bays where the larger transit vessels were taking off and landing. 

His credits had only afforded them those few things stuffed in the sack he’d once filled with explosives back on the Farm and now those new items and the remnants of the shuttle’s medkit. There was some left behind but not nearly enough to buy passage to another planet — and he couldn’t risk attempting to pass the shuttle off as stolen and selling it.

Honestly, he’d much prefer sneaking onto a ship as it was, uncaring of where it was bound, than purchasing a ticket. Anything at all to help keep the Empire off their scent, he thought.

He was staring intently at the ship before him when the girl shifted suddenly and dropped out of his hold. He glanced sharply down at her but she only stared back at him. She touched his hand gently and then pointed at a ship. She cocked her head slightly to one side. He nodded, not quite sure what he was agreeing to with this silent theatre, and then the girl was pulling the too large jacket over her head like a hood and slipping away into the crowd.

For a moment, Kallus was gripped with panic and he stepped forward with a jolt, aiming to follow. Since he’d found Olaffson’s body in the shuttle’s hold, a part of him worried that his new charge would be a trigger-happy little liability as he worked to get them to safety, and now, as she melted into the people around them, he worried again.

He shouldn’t have, he found, when the girl appeared again, mere minutes later, and gestured him forward. She guided him to the side of one passenger ship one a crowded platform to the left, where there was an open, unattended docking bay. She took his hand and led him in, pulling him along behind him, an impatient child rushing her guardian somewhere. She still had the jacket over her head.

They turned a corner and suddenly they were in a hallway surrounded by passengers and crew alike. The girl didn’t hesitate, though, or even slow down, dragging him behind her as if she was a tugboat and he was a much larger ship in her wake.

She stopped them before a cabin door and dropped his hand. She looked up at him from over her shoulder and then back and forth down the hall; Kallus nodded once, turned, and took up a sentry position, leaning back against the bulkhead. His much greater mass blocked the little girl from view as she quickly, expertly sliced her way into the access panel.

The room, once they entered, was completely empty. There weren’t even sheets on the single berth tucked in the corner, just a few paces from the door itself. It was incredibly small, barely fit for one sentient of average size, let alone a man of Kallus’s stature accompanied by a child, even one that was comically small compared to him, frankly. But beggars — or stowaways — could not be choosers.

He looked at the girl, who had sat herself up on that same berth and was watching him inspect the room.

“How’d you know?” he asked. “That it would be empty?”

She stared at him with that same blank expression that seemed to be her default. This time, though, Kallus sensed a bit of attitude behind it, which was fair, he thought. He probably should be able to guess how a little Jedi clone located an empty room for them to overtake.

Snorting to himself, he kept up his survey of the room. There was a small alcove boasting an equally small table and single chair, and then a door leading to what proved to be a refresher the size of a closet.

Still, it was a room with no paper trail that would lead to them. He wondered where it was heading.

Kallus dropped the sack on the table and unlatched his bo-rifle from his shoulders, then his sidearm, before returning to the sack and laying out their supplies. He picked up the pile of clothes meant for the girl and went to hand them to her.

“These are for you,” he said. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up and change into them?”

She took the bundle and gave him a sharp nod, standing.

“Be careful of your bandages if you use the water option,” he added.

He watched the girl disappear behind the door, thinking. Her hair was a dirty, plain blonde, and she was terribly thin and small but he could just say she was younger than she was. The only thing truly distinctive about the girl was the recent slash on her face; it would most likely still scar, even with their rationed bacta sachets — fainter though, he thought, than if she’d been left in that place. The change of clothes would probably be enough to keep her under the radar until she grew a bit more. He, however, was another story.

Agent Kallus was too recognizable by half. Slicked back hair, distinctive facial hair, a rigidity of body indicative of years and years of military service. He was impressively tall for a baseline human — which he indeed was, despite the insinuations of a dozen, more, subordinates and rivals over the years, looking to sabotage him — and built to go with that height. He couldn’t hide or camouflage that but the rest?

He’d found, in that shop on the planet, a package of hair dye. A new color and style would start him off, and his beloved but atypical facial hair would have to go, he thought, resisting the urge to cup his cheeks as if in farewell. It had been its own type of uniform over the years, an armor and shield. He’d be sad to shave it off but knew it was for the best.

When the girl exited the ‘fresher, a smart five minutes later, her face was freshly scrubbed pink and her hair was still in plaits, now damp and rebraided. He’d gotten her a new tunic, a sort of dusty orange and a tad oversized just to be safe, with a little funnel neck that she could pull up over her face and ears as a sort of makeshift balaclava and leathris leggings. She’d pulled on the oiled green canvas poncho he’d found as well but was holding the small bantha hide boots in her hand.

She held them out to him.

“You can put them on later,” he told her, “and you won’t need the poncho in here, I think. I need to take care of my own hair now  — you should rest, it’s been a long day.”

The girl looked at the shoes in her hand and then back at Kallus, the smallest line between her tiny brows, but retreated to the cot.

Kallus went back to the table, gathered his supplies, and went into the ‘fresher himself. He took a quick blast in the sonic as well and applied the dye to his hair, standing in the powered down little cubicle and staring, unseeing, at the wall. The adrenaline had returned as soon as they landed but was fading again now, and he knew he’d be feeling that whiplash of energy for some time until he’d gotten them somewhere halfway safe.

He thought again of just heading out to find the Spectres and throw himself at Garazeb’s mercy. Surely, even after all Kallus had done, they wouldn’t hold it against the girl. Her they would take in without hesitation nor question and would keep her safe, or secret her away to wherever it was they took those other little Force sensitive younglings; and for his part, he knew that he could go back out into the wild and be content with that knowledge, that she would, for the first time in her short life, be safe.

What he wouldn’t give for that same safety, that same care, he thought and then ruthlessly smothered it at the source. It didn’t matter now. It had never mattered. It wasn’t something he should have.

When his hair had finished processing, he turned the water option on and quickly rinsed it out. He turned the sonic back on, using the hot air to dry himself and then stepped out to put on the Shata leather leggings he’d found for himself, slipping his old boots back on as he went.

He opened the ‘fresher door, pressing the button to keep it open, and glanced out. The girl was still on the bed, turning the shoes over in her hands. The look of confusion was back but disappeared as soon as she looked up to meet his eye.

Satisfied, Kallus turned to the mirror in the small room and began to shave, carefully, with his pocket knife.

From the corner of his eye, he watched as she watched him from her perch on the edge of the berth’s cot. Kallus had never spent much time around children, an only child of only children — and then when he’d been at the orphanage, the children there weren’t something with which he could build a baseline — but even he knew enough that this one was as unnaturally still as she was quiet. Her eyes tracked every movement he made, watched as he shaved his face and then tied the top length of his freshly sandy brown hair into a knot best he could before cutting the rest into a close fuzz against his scalp. When he turned his knife to his own bicep and dug out the first of his implanted trackers, she’d only cocked her head to one side for a better angle.

He had just the two he needed to remove. One there in his arm and the second in the soft muscle between his hip and abdomen. He’d kept regular track of where they were, before, and was thankful they hadn’t drifted far since his last check. They were disabled still from the electrical charge on the shuttle, probably just a few hours, give or take, out from coming back online. He’d leave them on the transport when he was done, tucked somewhere in cargo, he thought, so that when they disembarked and the ship left again, they’d think they were still on it. It would keep them off their trail for another few days until they would truly disappear somewhere.

As he was bandaging the incision he made on his stomach, Kallus sensed a bit of movement to his side. He glanced over and saw that the girl had jumped down from her spot and had come closer to stare at the bloody trackers in the sink. He watched as she looked at them, then him, then back again.

“Tracking devices,” he said. “From the Empire. A recent development for all upper command staff aboard Grand Admiral Thrawn’s ship, but for this — mission — we’ll need to disappear entirely for a bit.”

He’d been the reason they’d been implemented, no doubt, watching the movement of his staff to see where they were going and when, to determine which had begun to leak information. He'd learned quickly how to disrupt them temporarily with those electrical charges, and to do so often enough when he was clearly visible about the Chimera until it was assumed something was malfunctioning with his chips. They’d been planning to replace them after he returned from his mission to the edge of the Unknown Regions; he’d been dreading determining his next subterfuge to undermine the new ones.

She reached into the sink and touched one of the trackers. She looked back up at him, unblinking, and lifted her hand to tap at the hollow of her throat with two fingers, leaving a small, bloody smudge behind. She reached behind her back to tap her left shoulder blade too and then down to spot just above her right knee. She pointed to his knife.

It took him a moment to interpret this silent theatre.

“You have trackers as well?”

She nodded. She said, “For missions. They worry we’ll disappear.”

Shit, he thought. He hoped they had yet to realize she was with him, that he’d taken their weapon when he’d destroyed the facility. That would certainly negatively impact all this subterfuge.

“I’ll have to take them out,” he said at length. “This mission requires us to disappear as completely as we can.”

She nodded again.

“Take a seat on the head,” he told her. “It’s going to hurt.”

He needn't have bothered telling her, he reflected as he cut first into the soft skin of her throat. It was harder for him, he suspected, than it was for her. His hands were steady and sure but he could feel his heart rabbiting in his chest, a queasy feeling in his gut. But she just sat there, unflinching, her eyes fixed alternatively on the wall behind him or the top of his head, depending on where he was in relation to her.

The one at her throat was easy, sitting just beneath the skin, and the one above her knee wasn’t too difficult either. The one in her shoulder, though, was lodged into the bone of her scapula and the remains of the shuttle’s medkit did not contain any locals. She weathered it though, once again, and he thought of her various scars, her crooked toes and the missing ones. A little field surgery in a questionable refresher was nothing to her.

After he stitched her shoulder closed and used another sachet of their rationed bacta to daub at the new wounds and apply another coat to the plasma burn bisecting her freckled face, he shooed her back to the cot while he finished changing. 

He’d picked up a tunic, a friendly mossy green, along with a sandy undershirt that poked up through the neck of the tunic, reminiscent of his uniform collar in the simple rise of its shape but not nearly as constricting. When they disembarked, he’d layer his cuirass over it — he wished, briefly and with a small snort, that Sabine Wren were here to give it a fresh coat of paint; he’d do it himself soon but it was amusing to think of what she’d do to the thing — and a poncho for himself not unlike the small one he’d gotten for the girl. His bo-rifle would disappear beneath it easily but would still be accessible. Some strange impulse had seen him buy cloth as well, to wrap around his forearms, wrists, and palms. It reminded him of the gloves that lay atop his uniform, bound for the trash chute, and the fabric binding around Garazeb Orrelios’s bo-rifle.

Kallus pocketed the trackers to dispose of later, rinsed the remains of his hair and blood down the drain, and was about to go return everything to his sack, perhaps suggest they find something to eat — he’d felt the transport lift off when he’d been dyeing his hair, and the telltale little shift when the jump to hyperspace was made — when he realized the girl had returned to the ‘fresher again, silent as a shadow.

“Yes?” he asked, looking down. She was staring up at him, her blue eyes inspecting his freshly shorn face and hair. He rubbed at the sharp edge of his jaw, said ruefully, “I know. I look quite strange without all of that, don’t I?”

She shrugged then, suddenly, before he could stop her, grabbed his blade from the edge of the sink and took it to her two braids. She sheared them off near her chin, in one clean cut but not quite evenly, he saw, when she looked up at him with a little smile that didn’t reach her blank eyes. He blinked. She must’ve thought, watching Kallus change his appearance, that she was expected to do the same.

“Here,” he said. “Let me even it out for you.”

The girl watched him just as closely as she had before as he took the knife from her and carefully eyed the edges of her new little blunt chop. She tensed as he went behind her, shoulders rising just so, and Kallus adjusted them until they were both facing the mirror. He smiled as reassuringly as he knew how at their reflections.

“Better, mishka?” he asked.

She cut her eyes to look into his in the mirror.

“Ah,” he said. “Well, I didn’t — it’s something my parents called me, when I was much smaller. It’s a nickname. It means ‘little bear,’ in my mothers’ tongue.”

“Little bear,” she parroted back.

“Yes.”

She stared. The corner of her mouth twitched downward.

He thought quickly. He wasn’t sure, exactly, how to explain his discomfort to her, his desire to find something else to call her and that the nickname from his mothers had simply slipped out. He decided to use the ruse of the mission once again, because orders and mission parameters seemed to be the fastest, and easiest, way to get her to go along with him. 

He disliked this though; it felt too much like using her, and abusing the trust she put in him. He thought she would go along with him, if he told her the truth. He could see how damaged and troubled she was, beneath the perfect little soldier persona she projected — how much she chafed at and feared the Empire, same as him. But he worried all the same, and knew that he needed to do this slowly, until he could get her somewhere safe, among those like her, who could help her.

She would need to be deprogrammed, he knew, and perhaps his life was always meant to intersect with hers in this way — that he was meant to put her on the path, same as Garazeb had put him on his own. It warmed something in his chest, the thought that he could be to someone as Garazeb had been to him. That he and Garazeb could share something other than a legacy of pain.

So he explained, “I need a name to call you, in public, that won’t arouse suspicion. When you went on missions before, what were you called?”

“Designation CPTK-021,” she said.

“No,” said Kallus. “I meant —  a name, that they called you. Or, better yet, something you’d want to be called.”

“Designation,” she repeated, more slowly this time, “CPTK-021.”

“My name is Alexsandr Kallus,” he tried. “I was called an agent of the ISB, but some people have called me Alex, if I was close with them. Or Fulcrum, that’s something I’ve chosen, for myself, to be called, in place of agent.”

She stared.

“Before,” he said. He knelt so that they were closer to eye level for one another. “Did you have a nickname?”

“Mishka?” she offered.

“Yes, like that. Maybe one of the others called you something, because you were friends,” he said, a bit haltingly, especially when she sort of — winced, he thought, at the word. Friendships were not encouraged, he imagined. He ventured, delicately, “Perhaps your old commander? I’d heard that he was fond of you.”

The girl’s eyes dropped to the floor, just for a second, and a strange looked flickered across her face. He couldn’t name it, beyond a sort of infinite sadness, and it was gone as quick as it had come. She looked up at him once more, searching his reflection for something or other.

“He called me little sister,” she said hesitantly, “and the others called me kay-two-one, or just kay, after the rest were gone.”

“Okay,” he said. “Would you want to be called Kay, perhaps?”

She just stared at him again and he stared back.

It hit him then: she didn’t understand how to want things. 

She was a weapon, first and foremost. She hadn’t even looked twice at him, back in the facility, when he’d called her one over his comm to Olaffson. She had been raised not as a child but as an object, a tool for war and destruction. She’d been a soldier and an assassin for the Empire, an asset, and assets didn’t have wants or needs: they had objectives and orders. They were told what they could have.

He wondered abruptly what it would have been like if this all was happening earlier. What if he’d been sent before he’d crash-landed on Geonosis’s moon? What if he had been sent to the Farm before he’d begun to question and to look for answers, before Garazeb had planted the seeds of doubt in him with guileless claws? What if another Alexsandr Kallus had gone? What if it had been the one who had buried his honor and sense of justice in a part of himself that could not be reached? Who had locked those things away, because all that mattered was pain and vengeance and order? What if that Kallus had stood in that observation room, watching as the clones of dead Jedi fought one another until there was only one left standing?

That Kallus would’ve done his duty. He’d have taken the girl, still, but it would have been under the cold eyes of researchers and trainers as they watched him take a prototype weapon, once again, to raze the galaxy in their Emperor’s name. That Kallus would’ve turned her loose and watched her burn planets with a smile.

He hated him, that Kallus. He lived beneath his skin, alongside him. His second skeleton, that Kallus, all calcified fear and anger — he wanted to root him out of his body, like an infected tooth, be free of him, but he knew he’d never be gone. No matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did, no matter who he saved or why, that Kallus would always be there. Both skeletons held him up, and he knew could not stay standing with only the one left.

The girl was still staring at him.

“You know, I was called ISB-021, before,” he told her, “so perhaps you’d like to borrow my name, until you pick your own?”

She cocked her head to the side, like a bird.

“Sasha,” he said. “It’s a nickname for Alexsandr. My mothers called me that, too, once. What do you think?”

“Sasha,” she repeated in her little flat accent.

“Yes,” he said. “Us 021s should stick together, don’t you think?”

“Sasha,” she said again, quietly, almost to herself. Her nod this time was smaller, quicker, but somehow, he thought, more genuine.

“Very well,” he said. He held out his hand. “Now, shall we go find ourselves something to eat?”

The girl — Sasha, now — stared at his hand for a split second and then took it. He stood, and they slipped from their small, stolen quarters and into the transport once more.

Much later when they returned to their borrowed berth, when he watched her curl up beneath her poncho for lack of a blanket and he lay on the back on the floor, willing the adrenaline to leave his body long enough for him to rest for the first time in some thirty-six hours — it occurred to him that she never had put the shoes on when they left.

They sat neatly lined up on the metal grating of the floor, perfectly parallel with the edge of the cot. 

He stared at them for a long time, listening to Sasha’s even, deep breathing, until unconsciousness eventually took him.

The ship made two stops before Kallus decided it was time for them to disembark on the third. He’d learned that they were headed towards the core when they made quiet, careful conversation with the other passengers and, as nervous as going that direction made him, he wanted to put as much distance as he could between them and the planet where they’d ditched their stolen shuttle.

They disembarked quietly among the other passengers, Sasha’s hand in his once more. He explained to her that this would be another short layover, a day at most, to gather supplies and whatever else they needed to be able to board another transport vessel. For Kallus, this meant tapping into a skill he hadn’t accessed since he was much younger.

He’d grown up in the lower levels, back on Coruscant. They were dirt poor, both his mothers working at a munitions factory where they traded off working double shifts, so Kallus would always have someone home with him in the evenings. They were poor but his mothers had loved him and, when he was small, it hadn’t been something he noticed overmuch: his mothers protected him from the knowledge as best they could, but all children grow up, he knew. 

He was eight when he started skipping his classes once, twice a week to head to the mid levels and pickpocket anyone who was an easy target. He was careful to inject the money quietly into the family, going out to do the shopping and coming back with more than the money they gave him should have bought, saying that there had been a sale on this or that.

It hadn’t mattered too much, in the end, how well he hid it: there was an explosion at the factory when he was eleven and, having no family to speak of beyond his mothers’s bodies, never recovered, he was sent to a mid level orphanage — and from there, eventually, ultimately, the Academy.

But it was never something he forgot, being poor, having to scrape by. When he stopped remembering their faces, the sound of their laughter, the feeling of being less than lingered, and grew. It grew into fear and hatred for the people he was told took everything from him — the Republic wealthy, the Coruscant elite, the other that came in and destroyed. It grew, until the Empire overtook him.

And yet here he was now, again, in the crowded streets of some Mid Rim planet, dipping his hands into the pockets of strangers and relieving them of their wallets.

The planet they were on boasted a good-sized open air market, not too far from the spaceport where they’d landed. He spent a few hours at it, carefully moving in and out of groups of people, not lingering, not staying in one place for too long. Sasha came and went, sometimes sticking as close to his heels as his own shadow, or going further afield, looking at the stalls and wares of the vendors. She was never gone long, as if sensing when he became aware she’d been gone just too long and turning up as soon as the thought crossed his mind.

He tried not to let the knowledge that she probably was sensing those thoughts discomfort him too much. It wasn’t her choice, he told himself firmly, if she was. It was something thrust upon her. She never had any choice at all in the matter.

It was another one of those such moments, Sasha off inspecting a stall filled with hand blown glass orbs when he last saw her and Kallus just beginning to absently wonder how long it had been, when his little shadow returned to him, ducking under his arm to tuck herself into his side. She tugged on the hem of his shirt. He looked down at her, briefly, checking visually that she was alright, before returning his eyes to the crowd, looking for another mark. The two hundred credits he’d so far rustled up would barely get them a room for the night, let alone passage to another system.

He was terribly out of practice with this. These days, his sleight of hand was more used deftly switching code cylinders or, before that, a quiet assassination in a crowded cantina. He sighed.

Her foot tapped his ankle and he glanced down again. She had both her hands tucked into her sleeves but pulled one out when she saw he was looking at her. In her hand were a fistful of credits. She pushed them into his hand and watched as he put them into his pocket.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

She stared at him, unblinking, before dipping her hand back up her sleeve and pulling it out again. This time, she had two slips of flimsy and when he accepted that as well, he couldn’t decide if he was impressed or troubled: she’d somehow procured two tickets on a passenger vessel to a backwater in the Outer Rim for that evening.

She was still watching him, waiting for a reaction, as he inspected the tickets. She’d so easily accepted praise and condemnation in one breath back at the Farm, ready to be held at fault even through her successes, ready to be punished at the drop of a hat.  He thought of the way her fingers had flexed, just slightly, as he’d chastised her for killing Olaffson instead of restraining him, her confusion when he tended to her face; of the way she’d held the boots in her hands, turning them over and over, like she’d never seen something like it before.

He stared at her and she stared back. He could see her small shoulders begin to raise, so imperceptibly, the smallest of microexpressions. He thought: she was a resourceful child and sharp as a pin. She’d crawled through the ductwork of the ship when he asked, sat stoically as he’d dug the tracker from the flat of her scapula, and had followed him, unhesitatingly, from the only home she’d ever known. What were a few sticky fingers now and again? After all, he’d set this particular example; and while his skills had started those years ago in the lower levels, hers no doubt came from the same place that ending up warping his, turning a light-fingered grab of a cred into a shiv to the gut of a Rebel sympathizer.

Kallus quirked up a corner of his mouth and put the tickets in his pocket. Her shoulders released. He said, “One hour, then meet me back here. Whoever has the most credits picks lunch.”

This time, the small smile she gave him reached her eyes.

Sasha won, which wasn’t a surprise, if he was being honest. She’d gathered nearly four hundred credits, while Kallus only added another two-fifty to his tally. It would be enough to get them started, wherever her little stolen tickets brought them, afford them one or two more changes of clothes and meals for a week. Perhaps they’d be able to get more, after lunch, and he’d be able to get his hands on more bacta.

She chose a little noodle stand, staffed by twin Twi’lek brothers who couldn’t have been older than twenty and who smiled warmly at Sasha and gave her a second helping of noodles without charge. She must’ve lurked around there, earlier, because they seemed familiar and not off-put by how quiet she was.

“Has she always been like that?” asked one of the brothers when he dropped their plates in front of them on the little counter.

Kallus raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Mute,” he said. “It’s only that we tried a little Basic handspeak with her before and she didn’t understand.”

“It’s recent,” he told him.

The young Twi’lek nodded. “Oh, that’s hard. She’s a smart kid, though, your girl. I can tell. She’ll pick it up fast, and you’ll have a real problem on your hands, eh?”

He looked at Sasha from the corner of his eye. She’d picked a bowl of noodles, blood red and spiced the Mandalorian way, and both Kallus and the Twi’lek brothers had cautioned her against it but the heat — staggering, it made Kallus’s eyes water from beside her alone — didn’t appear to be affecting her the slightest. She was shoveling them into her mouth like she hadn’t eaten in days, which —

Sasha turned to look at him, slurping up a stray noodle as she went. She smiled. Her teeth were stained red from the sauce.

“Yes,” he agreed, smiling too, “I imagine I will.”

Chapter Text

The warrant for his arrest hit the wires six months and a ten-day after they had begun running, and Kallus was frankly shocked it hadn’t come sooner. He supposed that the Imperial machine had been reluctant to let slip they had such a high-profile deserter, and had been waiting until the last possible moment to announce. He wondered what had pushed their hand.

The tickets Sasha’s sticky little fingers had procured those months ago had seen the passenger vessel depositing them on a tiny planet in the Chopani sector, a little too close to Myto’s Arrow for his liking, and they’d quickly hopped onto another shuttle as soon as they’d had the ill-gotten funds to do so. That one had taken them towards Arkanis, where they’d stayed for a ten-day before a parcel of stormtroopers had paraded through the city they’d been sheltering in. Kallus had been looking for legitimate work that day, had left Sasha to her own devices in their little rented rooms and been glad of it as soon as he’d spotted the troopers. He’d turned on his heel and started back toward their rooms. 

As he’d went, he caught a glimpse of black duraplast and had picked up his pace, taking back alleys and small corridors rather than the direct route: he hadn’t seen enough to tell if it had been a death trooper or worse, but he knew their time on Arkanis was over; and when he’d gotten back to the rooms, Sasha had been waiting, sat stiff-backed and alert on the sopha and their small rucksacks packed at her feet. He hadn’t asked how she’d known; he hadn’t wanted to waste the time, getting the answer to a question he could guess at well enough.

They’d gotten on the first passenger vessel that had been in the docks, uncaring of their destination, and once they’d landed they’d turned around and headed onto another. They’d bounced from one vessel to the next, planet to planet, until they’d ended up on one of Ossus’s moons with only a handful of credits left to their names, and where they’d been ever since, renting a new room in a new city every few ten-days.

Now, Kallus smiled grimly at the thought of the official warrant hitting finally. Perhaps it meant Thrawn himself had been foiled by Kallus’s hiding of their tracks, that he’d grown frustrated and enraged at his inability to find him, that they had to call in the common, garden variety bounty hunters to do what the long arm of the Empire failed to do. The bounty on his head was high, too, higher than usual for the rare defector with his rank and access, but there was no mention of the girl. That was their first mistake, he reflected.

The second was that they only used his most recent security photo. They’d made mention that he would try to change his appearance — as he indeed had — but it was one thing to imagine a man without his distinctive facial hair and another entirely to actually see it. They should have gone back in his file and pulled out a photo of him from his Academy days; he’d of course aged, grown sharp-edged and hard-eyed, but he had been clean shaven then. Two halves of an imperfect picture were better than none. He wondered which of his old colleagues was running his case, if perhaps it had been kicked higher up the chain to Colonel Yularen himself.

Failure would sting even worse if it had, he thought. His old mentor stymied, and the Grand Admiral thwarted.

Would the Rebels talk about him now? Would they wonder what he had done, what crimes he had committed to be hunted so? Would they suspect him of something greater? Would they whisper to each other in the unknown corridors of their sometime bases, in back alleys and in sympathetic cantinas, about the ISB agent branded a traitor to the Empire?

That was what the bounty called him: a traitor. They called him traitor, dissenter, and thief. They said he stole prototypes — he had — and plans —  occasionally — and as much data as he could. They said he betrayed the glorious Galactic Empire again and again and again. They said he sold secrets, and a part of him balked at that in particular, both angry and proud: he’d sold nothing. He’d given everything he had for free.

He wondered if Garazeb guessed at it. He wondered if Garazeb knew. Of all the beings in the galaxy, only one had every part of Kallus — at least, had the parts that mattered — and that was Garazeb. That was Zeb.

And now, he thought, there was Sasha.

Sasha, who had been the one to see the warrant. They’d gone to market early that morning, picking up a few things for Sasha to take back to their bare apartment while Kallus looked for daywork. She’d slipped away from him, as she often did now, growing bolder with each passing excursion as she remained unpunished for whatever it was she expected to be punished for. She was usually at a data terminal or a baked good stand, drawn by scent — he learned early on she’d never had fresh food before that day with the noodles, only nutrient packs and ration bars.

She’d been at a data terminal this time when he went looking for her. She was engrossed in whatever she was reading, not even acknowledging him as he had come to loom over her shoulder though he knew she was aware he was there.

After a moment, she had tapped on the screen to enlarge it and show him the scowling version of him that lived in his Imperial ID. She shrank it quickly after, blink and miss, and then directed his attention with a few more taps to the relevant information. He’d moved, subtly, to block both the screen and her with his greater mass.

“Hmm,” he had said, reading. 

Now, Sasha craned her neck round and stared up at him. It was arresting, that too serious little face, all freckles and sunburn and shiny pink scar tissue, her eyes infinite and still and too, too knowing. He felt pinned under her gaze, a Sriluurian butterfly under glass, fragile and trapped, as she scrutinized him. No one that small should have eyes like that.

“There’s no mission, is there,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“There is,” he said. “But not the kind you’re used to.”

She nodded, once.

A little soldier, through and through: she didn’t question him then and she didn’t question him now. Each answer he ever gave, short or vague or nonexistent as they were, was never inspected for long. She accepted whatever he gave her as a new mission necessary, as a new order, as just another thing for her little girl shoulders to bear no matter the strain. 

Even now, his answer received that nod and she moved on to the next thought, to the next mission. He had work to find and she had pockets to pick until he found work and sent her back to their rooms. He could feel her eyes on him, though, every once in a while, but whenever he looked down at his little shadow, she was never looking back.

This was life on Ossus’s moon:

The market in the morning, a single father and his quiet daughter out for groceries. 

If he was lucky, he’d find a few hours work each day by the afternoon. Usually, some mechanic or other would ask for his help, or the proprietor of a junk shop would come calling. Sometimes, he’d end up hauling lumber or rock or soil somewhere.

If he wasn’t lucky, he’d join Sasha in their rooms. He’d set up rudimentary learning modules for her on a datapad that had shown up in their rucksacks one month into being on the run. He’d found some corrupted datachips with Republic textbooks on them at one of the junk shops he’d found work at, history and Galactic Basic and simple maths. He’d cleaned his little blackmarket finds up best he could and gave them to her to read, along with a primer on Galactic Basic handspeak, since she was more comfortable in silence than not most days.

In the evenings, they’d cook together and then sit quietly practicing the handspeak with each other. Occasionally, he’d put on a holo drama, but both of them had trouble following along. They didn’t understand the type of people that made up those shows. They seemed so foreign to both of them, soft and yielding in a way that would be deadly to people like them. They understood each other.

Kallus was constantly thinking: was it safe? Had they been here too long? If they stayed another ten-day, was that wise? Should they try another planet, another system? Would he find a Jedi there? When she touched things, he’d learned she experienced some connection with them: an echo of someone’s longing on a jogan fruit, a feeling of curiosity on a data terminal, the imprint of a thought or a touch or a feeling. She was good at blocking them out, she told him when he noticed her lost in thought over a keypad in their apartment block, and it wouldn’t be a problem — though gloves would help, she’d added, careful, like she wasn't sure how he would take the suggestion. He bought her gloves.

He was so ill-equipped for this, he’d thought that day. He needed someone like Jarrus, needed to find Jarrus and Garazeb — they could get her the help that she needed.

At the beginning, their first few ten-days on Ossus's moon, he’d enrolled her in a school. He’d been entertaining the idea of staying in one place, keeping his ear to the ground for Rebellion business, maybe even starting up his own network of informants as he searched for a Jedi to hand Sasha over to. Ossus and its moon had seemed so safe, he thought, out of the way but not so much that news never reached them. They could begin some semblance of life here.

One day, another child at the school had invited Sasha to play with xe and xyr friends after school. They’d wanted to play soldiers of the Empire. She broke xyr arm in three places, and had blackened another child’s eyes. Someone had lost a tooth. Sasha had been standing amidst the melee, eyes flat and face still.

Kallus had taken her straight from the park back to their rooms, grabbed their bags, and left town.

She’d been confused when he’d done it. She’d said, “That’s what soldiers do.”

He hadn’t been able to answer.

She stuck to the rooms, now, on one of Ossus’s moons, reading her datapad, unless she was with Kallus at the market, to get groceries and pickpocket the unsuspecting. He knew he should put a stop to that, of course, but she was always so proud when she slipped him whatever she’d gotten at the end of the day — always a reasonable amount, never enough to get them noticed, she was a consummate professional. He knew it was the only way she thought she could contribute to the mission.

He slipped Rebellion propaganda onto the datapad whenever he could, along with his black market Republic textbooks. He might not understand what she needed as a Jedi — and he knew he would never be able to get his hands on those types of texts — and he knew that he couldn’t help her with the anger and the hatred the Empire had bred within her. He had those things too, and no matter how he wanted to stop, he didn’t know how. But he could offer her a glimpse into Rebel values, could show her that.

At night, they would often share the same bed. It would get cold, and sometimes, she had nightmares, and if the bed was big enough for both but they didn’t have two, why not? It was also, Kallus knew, easier than arguing with Sasha about whose turn it was to sleep on the floor, because Kallus knew it would never be the girl’s turn but she would still stubbornly insist until he bundled her up against him.

He felt like he could protect her best like this: shelter her smaller body with his and hold the nightmares at bay with his arms. She always denied them but he knew they were there, and if he could let her distract them both with her ice cold godsdamn feet up against his legs, it was a small price to pay.

(She’d laughed, was the thing, the first time she ever brushed her feet against him. Startled, he’d sworn a blue streak in Huttese and she’d let loose a chortle that nearly stopped his heart. He hadn’t thought she could laugh.)

And so this was life on Ossus’s moon:

An anonymous father and his quiet daughter and their little changeable, rented rooms: ordinary people on an ordinary planet living ordinary lives.

That evening, when they returned to their small rented quarters, Kallus sat Sasha down at the small, scrubbed wood table that had come with the rooms.  For a moment, the girl had a look on her face that said she would rather face a firing squad than this conversation but, as always, it was gone before the emotion had a chance to overstay its welcome.

Kallus felt not dissimilarly, but knew that this moment was long overdue. He’d been telling himself it was for the best, that she needed time to adjust to the world that existed outside of the water-logged, rain-shrouded facility of the Farm. He’d told himself it was for her protection but, now, he wondered if it was himself he’d been trying to protect.

“Sasha,” he began. She looked up from her inspection of the tabletop. He said, “Let me first apologize, for the way you found out: I always meant to tell you myself, first — I’d been waiting, I suppose, for the right moment and it had not yet come. And now here we are.”

“Tell me what?” she asked in her broad, slightly nasal little accent. “That you’re a traitor?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I think you are too.”

She stared. “How?”

“How does anything start?” he said. “By degrees, until you are too far gone to stop. I used to live on a planet called Coruscant. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures — it’s the seat of Galactic power, where the Emperor lives. It’s — vertical cities, buildings stacked on top of one another until the surface has disappeared. I was born in the lower levels, in poverty, and, when I was a little older than you, my mothers died. I had no other family and so I was plucked, by the old Republic children’s services, and deposited into an orphanage. Sometimes I think it would have been better to have left me where I was: I could fend for myself, provide for myself. I could have lived quite easily on the streets, not faced the institutional abuse of the orphanage, the abuse of my peers. I would have been a different person, made different choices. Become someone else entirely.

“After a few years there, I was taken from the orphanage, too, sent to an Academy, based on my test scores,” he continued. “A year after that, the Republic fell and the Empire rose. I was fast tracked from the Academy to what had become the Imperial Navy, and, from there, to the hallways of the Imperial Security Bureau. It made sense, to me, to join them. It made sense, to me, what the Empire was doing. And it was the right thing, I thought. So I followed blindly, without question.

“On a planet called Onderon, my first time as a field agent, I was caught in an explosion while suppressing the rebels there. I was paralyzed in the blast, and all the boys and girls in my unit died, or were as good as dead. A mercenary was working their way through us, one by one, killing the wounded. It was a Lasat. I’d never seen one before. To this day, I don’t know why he let me live. Perhaps he thought my wounds would take me. They didn’t. When they finally found me, and I received medical attention, the Empire used the pain and fear and hatred to bend me further to their views. I don’t say this to make excuses: I allowed it to happen. I didn’t question it.”

“You were afraid,” Sasha said, quietly. “That they would hurt you again.”

“I was, yes,” he said. His eyes burned. “Very much. So I did as they asked, again and again and again. I thought I was doing the right thing. On Onderon, and after. They sent me to Lasan, where I allowed my hatred to run my body. The being who had killed my boys and girls, who had let me live, broken and in fear — that was where he’d come from. That was where he’d been made. And I thought. Well. I don’t know what I thought. We were told they were in open rebellion against the Empire, and they were, but there was the chance for negotiation, I’m sure of it now. There was one cell, two, I assumed, that I would need excise, like a poisoned root on a tree. But they were honorable warriors, all of them. I fought several in hand to hand combat — one even gave me his weapon, because I’d bested him in combat and proved myself the superior fighter. We could have quelled it. Instead, we massacred them. All of them, all that we could get our hands on. I fired the weapons they gave us once, and couldn’t bring myself to do it again. Something in me — their bodies, dust. I turned my bo-rifle, the weapon one of their own had given me because I fought honor, on them instead. Still, I'd fired it once, and once was enough. Was too much. That was the day I gave up my honor. Gave it up so completely I forgot I ever had it until —

“I was assigned to Lothal, a little later. There was an unusual level of rebel activity there and, once again, it was my job to suppress it. I met the Spectres: rebels, on a ship called the Ghost. A Twi’lek pilot, the daughter of revolutionaries; a man I’d later learn was a Jedi padawan, survivor of the Great Purge; an Imperial defector from Mandalore; a Force sensitive boy; a murderous droid; and a Lasat. One of the beings I was promoted for wiping out.

“I chased them. I chased them down hard. I hated them. I hated him. Garazeb Orrelios. I trapped them, once, on a space station above Geonosis. That was the day everything changed again. The station was rigged to explode, and as I chased the Lasat, we ended up in an escape shuttle, hurtling toward one of the moons. My leg was broken in the crash and the moon was — ice, frozen, and populated by large, carnivorous beings. Orrelios and I had to rely on one another for survival and I saw — something. Something in me changed. There was more to the story, that I hadn’t yet seen — that I willfully ignored in my pursuit of pain.

“Orrelios — Zeb — he opened my eyes, Sasha. He told me to look for answers to questions he had raised, doubts he had found in my heart, the heart I forgot and he unlocked. So I did. And what I found — the things I’d done in the name of the Empire, in the name of what I thought was right. I was so wrong. I participated in genocide and slaughter and was complicit in fear and hatred and murder. The Empire doesn’t want to protect the galaxy, Sasha, it wants to destroy until there's nothing left but the Emperor’s will — and his will is destruction and subjugation and terror. And as messy as the universe is, it is beautiful, and it is good, and it cannot be turned to this darkness the Emperor craves.

“One night on that moon, and I was new. There is nothing that I can do that will absolve me of my sins but I knew I could help the cause of the Rebellion. I became a Fulcrum agent, for the Rebellion, a point on which a lever rests, a point on which the tides of war can pivot, and change. I fed information to a handler, who passed it onto the greater organization. Plans and troop positions and codes and supply facilities. I would not allow another Lasan. I would not allow the Empire to destroy the galaxy.

“And then there was you — there was the Farm,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was walking into, until I was already there, and you, and your brothers and sisters, were before me. And they made you — I couldn’t leave you there. Even if it meant no longer being Fulcrum. Even if it meant no longer giving myself to the rebel cause. I wouldn’t let you become what they were making you.”

“Why?” she asked. 

“Because every life is precious,” Kallus told her. “You are. And you are not the things they made you do.”

“But I did them.” Her eyes searched his face. “And it wasn’t the first time.”

It was his turn to stare.

“It wasn’t the first time,” she said, speaking to her hands now, neatly folded on the table before her. “There were more of us. Before. We fought. Each other, the Inquisitors, the handlers. The clones. They taught us. You are a weapon. This is what you’re meant for. We — hated, like you hated. We liked the hate. We hurt. That’s what they wanted. Sometimes, they would take us on missions. The Inquisitors. They would check us out, like our ‘sabers. And we would do as we were ordered. We would hunt, and kill. It wasn’t hard. It’s what we did. Sometimes, they had ‘sabers too. They were traitors. But —”

She drew one finger, shakily, against the grain of the table. “Commander was always there, at the beginning. He didn’t — he didn’t like it, I don’t think. What they made us do. But he understood. A blade is sharp for one reason, and one reason only, do you see? What we are. I — it made him sad. That’s why they took him away. He called me little sister. They didn’t like that. We weren’t siblings. We were batches. We were —. The first Game Day, I was eight, I think. They split us into two groups. They blindfolded the others. They gave us blasters. Dee Five was blindfolded. She knocked the blaster out of Dee Twelve’s hand, and they blindfolded Dee Twelve instead. Gave Dee Five the blaster. Commander tried to stop it. He was screaming. They took him away. Little sister, he said to me. Little brother, he said to Zero Zero Six. Please. And they took him away. We did it anyway.”

Kallus quietly got out of his chair and crossed to Sasha, dropping to the floor before her. He gripped the edge of her seat, knuckles white.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, firm. “They made you do that. You didn’t have a choice. Do you understand? You are a child and you didn't have a choice. They made you.”

“We never saw him again,” Sasha said. “Commander was gone. All of the clones were gone. It was just the Inquisitors then, and the handlers. We trained and slept and fought and went on missions and did it again. And again. We would be punished, if we didn’t. We’d be punished if we did. They didn’t care. Little sister, he said. You’re wrong. We had a choice. But we didn’t take it. Or we took the wrong one, like Dee Five. But she’s gone now. I did that.”

He reached up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, thumb brushing the raised, pink keloid across her tiny face. He said, “That wasn’t a choice.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No,” he said.

“It felt like a choice,” she told him. “They wanted the best. We wanted to be the best. I wanted to be the best. They didn’t want weakness. That’s why they did it. That’s why they — having weaker sisters and brothers — you look out for them. You protect them. There’s a sense of justice. They meant to teach us fear but they taught us that instead.”

“Oh, mishka,” he said and Sasha tipped forward into him like her strings had been cut, her face pressed into his collarbone. He wrapped his arms around her.

“I hate them,” she said quietly. Emptily. She wasn’t crying. “I hate them. I want to watch them burn.”

Kallus ran a hand through her soft hair, pressed his lips to the tiny hollow of her temple. He told her, “I know.”

He kept a diary in his head, these days. It wasn’t much, just a collection of thoughts, memories. Regrets. Kallus had a lot of regrets, which was only fair. And it was only fair, too, that he couldn’t correct any of them. He carried them with him, in his heart, in his head.

It felt like something new appeared each day, especially after the conversation with Sasha that night over the kitchen table. He should’ve known, somehow, earlier, about the Farm. Why were there no signs? Why hadn’t he known something like that existed? He should have been able to save more than just Sasha. He should have acted earlier, not waited until she was the only one left standing.

His only comfort was the data he’d gathered showed there were no other facilities like it scattered around the galaxy. The Farm had been a unique, deadly experiment for the Empire, and nothing had survived except what he’d learned.

He’d crushed the data, after. Sasha knew, but would never speak of it, and once Kallus had her safe and secure with some ex-Jedi or covert of Rebels, he would be the only one to truly know what she was. The Farm’s legacy would die with him.

Kallus wrote to Zeb, in this diary in his head. He’d write those regrets down to share with him, those and others. He apologized, again and again, for Lasan. He was glad he didn’t actually write those down, weak and lacking and trite, each and every one. Something so big was never forgiven. He told him about all the missions after Onderon. He told him about the things he’d done on Lothal, and how he’d been proud of it all, once. It made him sick now, and he thought, Good. It was what he deserved, and he knew Zeb would agree. Absolution wasn’t for people like him; he'd said as much to Sasha, and that was fine. He was happy with that. He’d done too much, and not enough.

He told him about the girl and how she was growing emotionally now in leaps and bounds since that night. She’d never be unscarred — the way she watched other children, careful and wary and longing, was clear enough evidence of that — but he could see her healing. She acted like a real child more and more each day.

Do I give her that? he asked Zeb in one entry. Was he giving her this safe space to grow and change? Was his heart big enough for the both of them?

He wanted to think so, but he knew it probably wasn’t true. He was only keeping her safe, a port in a storm, a waystation to somewhere else. They’d leave Ossus’s moon, soon, and he’d begin his search anew for somewhere safe to place her.

Maybe I’ll find you, he wrote to Zeb.

It was a nice thought, but perhaps only that, in the end.

Two ten-days after the arrest warrant and their conversation around the table in their rooms, Sasha found a Rebellion symbol etched into a wall in the market. It wasn’t quite like Wren’s work, but close enough that Kallus and Sasha both guessed at what it was.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IT MEANS, asked Sasha. She tended to prefer handspeak in public, if she had something more than a single question or statement to give, more comfortable using this new tool at her disposal than carrying on a conversation with him aloud. She was so clever at it, too, picking it up impressively fast, outstripping Kallus enough that he would sometimes have to guess what she meant based on body language and facial expressions (those, while small, coming more frequently too since their conversation). They were even making up some signs between them, like the one they’d developed for Inquisitor or the one they’d made for Jedi. 

“Could be anything,” he said, then, PERHAPS THERE’S REBEL ACTIVITY PLANNED FOR THIS MOON. OR PERHAPS THERE ARE JUST SYMPATHIZERS ABOUT AND ARE B-R-O-A-D-C-A-S-T-I-N-G THEIR A-L-L-E-G-I-A-N-C-E.

Sasha mulled this over. WE SHOULD FIND THEM. THEY COULD HELP US! FIND LOTHCAT!

He raised an eyebrow. She made the gesture again and he noticed she had added a little flourish with her fingers and was baring her teeth. She said, FOR G-A-R-A-Z-E-B.

He snorted. She’d become taken with the Spectres, and Garazeb in particular, after his story. She wanted to meet Jarrus, too. She wanted to meet a real Jedi.

PERHAPS. He shrugged. HERE. MAKE SURE NO ONE IS LOOKING.

Sasha’s eyes glazed over, her mouth twisting into a frown. “Now.”

Kallus grabbed the small knife he kept in his boot and quickly etched the Fulcrum symbol next to it.

“Good job,” he said, when he was done. He reached out his hand to her and she grabbed it, starting to walk again, not looking back. 

WHAT DID YOU DO? she asked.

A CALLING CARD, he said. WE’LL COME BACK TOMORROW TO SEE IF WHOEVER DREW THAT FIRST SYMBOL RECOGNIZES MINE.

She nodded firmly and they carried on with their errands.

Kallus would never be sure if the Fulcrum symbol he drew had somehow affected things the next afternoon. He thought it a distinct possibility, though, when he and Sasha were walking through the market to check on the etching, to see if there was anything new, and a group of Stormtroopers appeared at the far end of the market from them, checking people’s papers.

He turned to take Sasha’s hand again but she was already reaching for him, pulling on his tunic with a frown.

“I forgot my datapad,” she said, just loud enough to be heard by a group of beings to their left. “We have to go home! I wanted to go to the biblioteka for a new holonovel. We have to go home!”

Thank the little gods for this tiny strategist, he thought; and Kallus scooped her up, settling her on his hip as a father would with his beloved daughter but really so they could move faster as a unit. He said, “Of course, mishka, we’ll go right away.”

They turned and started back towards their rooms, where they immediately grabbed their rucksacks, packed and waiting as always.

“How long do you think you can keep us hidden?” he asked.

Her mouth twisted in thought. “Ten minutes? But if I can do it off and on, longer.”

“Try that,” he said. “I’ll carry you so you can concentrate.”

She nodded and allowed herself to be carried once more.

They weren’t too far from the largest spaceport on their little moon, which, in hindsight, probably was why the troopers got to their market so quickly. For their next planet, they would need to get farther off the grid. It would make them harder to find, should someone indeed come looking, but the flip side was that it would be harder for him to look for leads on Jedi.

Not, said a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like an amused Garazeb Orrelios, that you’ve been trying too hard at that.

At the spaceport, they got lucky: there were three transports taking off within the hour. One was traveling along the Triellus Trade Route, through the Arkanis Sector, and the other two were Core-bound vessels. He’d been thinking about Hutt space as their next destination for a while now, but there was something appealing in the idea of heading towards the danger of the Core. They wouldn’t expect him to be so bold, he thought, and it would be so easy to disappear into the crush of bodies there.

“Arkanis Sector again?” he asked Sasha. “Or should we try for the planets along the Commenor Run?”

“Triellus Trade Route,” she said. “One of those.”

“We’ll purchase for both, and then shall we rock, flimsi, scissors for it?”

Sasha flashed him a tiny smile and held out her fist.

She won, of course, best two out of three. Kallus didn’t purposely lose, nor did Sasha exactly cheat; but the kid, he thought, watching her wiggling her brows at him, fear of the troopers all but forgotten, and drop from his arms to skip towards the vessel — well, the kid did have a bit of an unfair advantage, what with all the Force business.

Kallus shouldered his pack, unconsciously checking how well his bo-rifle was secured beneath his poncho, and followed her aboard.

They disembarked before planned end of their journey, as had become their custom, a random decision to stop their travel early at that particular planet, based on Sasha’s restless gaze and Kallus’s own distaste for the Hutt controlled trade route they were traveling along.

Of course, they landed on a Hutt controlled planet regardless: Tatooine wasn’t exactly the safest rock in the galaxy, but something this lawless had been in his long-term plans, after all. They set down in Mos Espa and Sasha was delighted to disembark and discover sand, happy as any child who’d spent most of their life on a water planet would be.

She might not ever have seen sand, he reflected, watching fondly as she darted off to one side of the docking bay to immediately remove her boots and dig her toes into the sand. After quickly making an exchange of creds for the local currency, he walked over to join her, rolling his eyes but keeping a lookout, and heard her snort in laughter as she shuffled her feet along.

“Having fun?” he asked.

Sasha nodded. She bent at her waist, folding nearly in half with all the agile grace of a being who thought basic physics didn’t apply to her, to inspect the grains below her.

He gave her a minute and then held out his hand.

She glanced up, nodded again, and put her boots back on before joining him, taking his hand into hers to walk out of the docking bay together and into the crush of bodies at the spaceport. He reeled her in a little closer.

“It is dangerous here,” he told her as they walked, hand in hand.

“We’re dangerous,” she said with a sharp little grin. Her blunt human teeth glinted at the edge of her lips.

“Yes,” he allowed, “but it is dangerous in a different way. It’s lawless, the way things are when they’ve spent too long outside the view of the Republic and now the Empire. Slavery runs rampant on these planets, and a little human like you, even scarred, runs for a good price. We must be careful, as we had been before, but now for reasons like that, and other villainy. You must promise me that, whenever we are out, you’ll stay close to me and let me know if you sense anything.”

She was glancing over her shoulder, eyes squinting against the twin suns, but looked up to nod. She returned to her surveillance of their surroundings immediately after.

Satisfied for now, Kallus took them out of the spaceport and into Mos Espa proper, looking for a cantina where he could begin to get a feel for the place and start looking for work and lodging for the both of them.

He felt eyes on his back as they moved. He was accustomed to this: trauma-induced constant vigilance as well as his own upbringing in poverty and then his career in a ruthless, ladder climbing at all costs organization such as the ISB, had his head constantly on a swivel, waiting for the shiv to come at him from any direction.

“Put your hood up,” said Kallus. He jerked his chin at the cloaked creatures haggling at food stands and junk shops as they passed. “You’re a Jawa for the next hour.”

Sasha did as she was told without question, flipping up the hood of her poncho until her face was shadowed as well as pulling the cowl of her tunic over her nose. She dropped his hand to move just outside his reach and raised her arms slightly.

Little gods, how much had changed in just two ten-days, he thought, watching her mimic the movements of the Jawas in the streets around them, arms outstretched and her walk just this side of silly.  No time at all had passed but, now that she no longer thought they were on a mission for the Empire that used and abused her — now that she believed herself truly free of the Farm and the Empire —

He thought again of finding a Jedi, releasing her into their charge. He thought of Kanan Jarrus swooping in and taking her as his padawan alongside Bridger. He thought of handing her off to the Spectres, to Garazeb, as he wanted, longed to do, and he thought of never seeing her again.

She looked over her shoulder to see if he was watching, eyes glittering above her masked face, and he smirked in acknowledgement, lifting a hand to crook his finger at her. His chest was hurting and he didn’t know why. He blamed the heat.

She returned to his side and they slipped into the next cantina that they saw, quiet now at the middle of the day cycle on Tatooine while the suns were high. There were still people about, though, and he made for a table not too far in a corner but with enough cover for them both to feel comfortable. They sat, Sasha blocked from view behind his body and melting into the shadows as she practiced that little “notice me not” of hers, projecting carefully into the Force that every eye but Kallus’s, and occasionally the server delivering them drinks, would skip over her without a thought.

Kallus made small talk with the server — a surprisingly small Bothan — when ve brought them their drinks. He stated that he’d just arrived planet-side with his daughter and was looking for a new start for the both of them, and would ve know of any quick work he could pick up as they were getting their feet beneath them here?

The Bothan smiled broadly, as much as a Bothan could smile, and nodded. “Oh, sure,” the being said, “there’s always work for day labourers out on the moisture farms, just below the Mospic Range.”

“Is it tough work?” asked Kallus.

“Is it tough?” ve snorted. “Tough ain’t the half of it. Under the twin suns most of the day, though some like their help working overnight, if you don’t mind your sleep cycle taking a hit every once in a while. What’d ya do before?”

“I was a mechanic,” he told ver, “back on Naboo.”

Vis brows shot up. “Now that's a pretty planet. Why’d ya want to leave someplace like that to come to someplace like this?”

Kallus cut his eyes to Sasha and then back to the Bothan, who nodded in understanding. A man traveling with a young child with a passing resemblance meant, almost universally to the people he’d come in contact with, the loss of another parent and grief setting their feet on their journey.

“You should try the Redsands homestead,” ve said. “Ma Drerra always like a deft hand with the ‘vaporators. Tell her Tannis at Brontide sent you her way.”

“Thank you kindly,” he said. “Do you have directions by any chance?”

The Bothan waited for Kallus to fish out Sasha’s little stolen datapad from their rucksacks and then rattled off the information for him once more, along with the directions to the Redsands homestead. Then, ve bid the goodbye with instructions to flag ver down when they wanted their drinks freshened, and bustled off to see to the other patrons of the cantina.

They sat for a while longer at their table, listening to the chatter of beings around them, picking up snatches on the comings and goings of Mos Espa at large from the conversations they overheard. Kallus made plans in his head as they sat, inventorying what they had and what they would need. Both of them would need new options for daywear while they called Tatooine home, their existing tunics fine for the more temperate climes they’d been living on before but now far too much in the heat of the desert planet. He’d have to ask the Bothan or some other being about ideas for lodging — anything near the spaceport itself would be far too expensive even for just one night.

Kallus was on his second drink now. Beside him, Sasha had pulled down her cowl so she could drink the Moogan tea he’d ordered for her when they sat down, and he could see her little nose wrinkling up beneath her scar tissue as she took a sip. She was barely even halfway through, clearly unsure of the taste. It made him snort into his own Skyhopper, which had her sending him a betrayed sort of look.

Then, suddenly she was tensing up, jaw tight and eyes wide for a brief moment. Her hand grabbed at the folds of his poncho, the oiled canvas creaking beneath her fingers. Even after she gathered herself and cleared her face of expression, she was still holding onto his poncho tight enough that he knew it would leave an imprint.

He resisted the urge to look around them.

“What is it?” he asked in an undertone. He tried to keep any urgency from his voice, but it was rare for Sasha to get as spooked as she suddenly was. Even when they were about to be set upon by the occasional thief at a spaceport, before, she’d always been calm — excited, even, spoiling for a fight, a predisposition for violence that he never thought she’d be rid of, not truly. Same as him, he thought.

He wondered, briefly and horribly, if they’d been followed from Ossus’s moon. He thought they’d covered their tracks well enough, disembarked those few planets before their purchased tickets implied they would. But could someone have predicted what they would do and found them here?

“I,” she started. Beneath her hood, her brows were pulled together in a frown.

Kallus touched her wrist, gentle. “Do we need to leave?”

“No,” she said. She sounded uncertain. “No?”

“Sasha,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. No. It’s — I thought I felt something.”

“What?”

Her eyes darted around the cantina, searching, before returning to Kallus. He made the gesture for inquisitor that they’d developed between them but she shook her head and said again, “No.”

“Okay,” he said. “I trust you’ll tell me when you need to.”

“Thank you,” Sasha said quietly. She looked at her Moogan tea but Kallus didn’t need to be Force sensitive to sense her thoughts were elsewhere, and badly scattered.

He drank his own Skyhopper, watching her from the corner of his eye in between scanning the room himself for threats. Her small hands were opening and closing, gently, around the earthen mug before her, an unconscious, absent gesture. She was so gifted at masking any and all emotions, even the smallest thing she ended up letting slip felt like one of Sabine Wren’s explosions: colorful, loud, and dangerous.

Eventually, when Kallus’s glass was empty and he was reaching into his pockets to drop a handful of wupiupi he’d picked up at the port onto the table, Sasha tapped his shin with the toe of her boot. He glanced down at her.

“It wasn’t,” she said, and made the inquisitor gesture. “But it felt — almost like that? I can’t — “

“It’s okay,” he said. “I told you.”

“But I knew it,” Sasha said. She looked up at him, eyes wide, luminous above the scar. She looked frustrated and confused. “It felt like something I know, but I don’t know. It felt like me, I think, and you, and something else. It was — kind. It was kind.”

“Kind?” he repeated. She nodded. He smiled, just a little, even though his head was spinning, thinking a million things at once and nothing that he could land on with certainty. He thought, as he often did in these situations, of Garazeb, but he could not say why. He said, “Then that’s good, I think.”

Her eyes searched his face. Whenever she found what she was looking for, she nodded seriously and said, “Good. Okay. Yes.”

“Yes,” he agreed. He raised his hand to flag down their Bothan server for the third and final time. “Now, let’s see about finding rooms for the night, shall we?”

Chapter Text

Sasha was on edge.

She had been, Kallus knew, ever since the cantina in Mos Espa, though the moods came and went with no real rhyme or reason, unpredictable as wind in a sandstorm shrieking through the malaqeef of their temporary home and those around them. Honestly, it was almost impossible for him to tell when one set upon her, parsing out this new anxiety from the latent paranoia he knew they would both never be rid of, but he knew they were there. 

The wariness she’d exhibited then had shadowed her eyes and kept her shoulders squared for the few days they’d remained in Mos Espa while Kallus made inquiries into work. Whenever he gently questioned her, she’d insist that it was nothing, that what she had sensed was there and gone and reiterating her belief that, whatever it was, had been benign in nature. She was too well trained at both masking her emotions and general subterfuge for glaring hints, but he could see her grow distant, as if she had retreated within herself while she cast her senses about her. It was there and gone, too quick for him to feel comfortable with calling her out on the behavior.

He’d hoped that when they’d left Mos Espa for Mos Taike, where he’d found them a set of rooms above a junk shop and a speeder that would reliably get him to Ma Drerra’s moisture farm each day without too long a commute — he’d hoped that’d be the end of it, that they’d be leaving behind whatever bit of darkness that had been dogging their heels.

Indeed, they’d gone a whole two ten-days without incident before the day at the market that Sasha’s hand had tightened, suddenly, within his; and the part of Kallus’s mind that would ever be cataloguing threats and counting exits slammed itself to the forefront, already turning his body to the closest egress from the market and into the shadows, calculating how long it would take them to get to their rooms and collect their bags, planning the quickest route back to Mos Espa and the spaceport.

But Sasha had relaxed her hand just as suddenly and she’d pointed with her freehand towards a nearby stall, filled with portion breads and bantha jerky. Her mouth had quirked up at one corner, even as the little line between her brow lingered, furrowed in thought.

THAT LOOKS GOOD, she’d said and that had been that, the two of them moving on as if she’d never gripped his hand so tight he’d felt the fine bones there grind together under the pressure. She’d barely said a word about it later that night, when he’d asked, just that she thought she felt the presence again but it was gone too quickly for her to locate. 

Kallus hadn’t pressed her, but, the next morning, when she was in the sonic and he was tidying up the mess of blankets that covered her small pallet, he’d found a knife beneath her pillow. It was small, barely the size of his hand, and looked blunted. It would have more use buttering toast than anything else, and even then he wasn’t sure how good a job it could manage. He wondered where she got it.

He’d left it there and went on about the day, and never mentioned it to her. He still carried his bo-rifle with him at all times, after all, despite how foolhardy he knew it was to be a human of his stature with such a distinctive weapon. He could only imagine how closely she’d grip those blood red ‘sabers of hers if she still had them, comforting in their deadly familiarity.

Whatever it was she sensed, whatever it was that she kept sensing, now and again and again and again, semi-frequent but so, so random, troubled her; and, so, it troubled Kallus, unable to do anything but wait for that thrice damned Force of hers to provide —   something, anything.

And life went on, despite those changeable moods and Kallus’s own constant wariness at anyone who looked at either of them for too long. Life was in Mos Taike as it was in Mos Espa as it was on a moon in orbit around Ossus as it was on Arkanis or any other planet they’d walked on in their year together after the escape, after they began running and never stopped. They lived simply, without complication except for the complications that they themselves were: a traitor and a stolen weapon, waiting for the final axe to fall, if ever it would.

Their rooms above the junk shop were spartan, bare except a small table to dine at and two small pallets on which they slept. It was cheap, and occasionally Kallus could pick up work below if he wasn’t needed at Ma Drerra’s or with any of the other families with whom she worked; but it was near the slave quarters, and that Kallus was growing to regret.

It sickened him and tormented him, which sickened and tormented him further, knowing that it was not so long ago that he would’ve set foot on a planet such as this and turned a blind eye to the pain and suffering around him, that he would have gone on to be complicit in the institution that bolstered and fed the systems that encouraged and thrived upon sentient slavery.

Sometimes, he’d lay abed at night, awake with the fury at his inability to do anything about it for fear of drawing too much attention to himself and to Sasha — it gnawed at him, like a rabid lothwolf. He wanted to storm the compounds that housed the Hutts that controlled all the trade on Tatooine and he wanted to burn them to the ground, as he had with the Farm. If Sasha wasn’t with him, he knew he wouldn’t hesitate to put the plans he dreamed of into motion; but she was, and it was too dangerous for them to draw that kind of attention to themselves. And if he gave the slightest indication — well, there would be no stopping her from joining him at his side too, he knew, gleefully helping him to light the matches. 

It was a perplexing thought, and a heartbreaking one, at times. She rarely left their rooms, unless she was by his side, and she even more rarely interacted with other beings when they were out, always watchful for whatever presence that creeped up upon her so unawares. She preferred handspeak still, too, only speaking aloud when particularly excited about something (which was, indeed, as rare as the sometimes little smiles she’d bestow on him), and she was so suspicious of anyone approaching either her or Kallus that she’d practically hide behind Kallus’s legs if someone approached her. (He suspected this was purely because that position afforded a better angle on his hold-out blaster in the event of attack, or even his bo-rifle hidden beneath his poncho, which he’d been teaching her to care for as he told her stories of the Spectres at night.)

The only beings he’d seen he reliably interact with in any meaningful capacity since coming to Tatooine had in fact been the Jawas — she’d managed to befriend several when they’d attempted to pickpocket Kallus and Sasha had taken extreme umbridge at the action, breaking the leg of one and the wrist of another before stealing a blaster off the collapsed body of the first; this had gotten her companions for life out of them — and the elders of Mos Taike’s slave community.

The Jawas, Kallus could almost understand: theirs was an association of mutual and respected violence and petty theft. (He dreaded her meeting Syndulla’s terrible droid.) It helped, too, that she was an incredibly quick study and, on top of the conversational Huttese and Bocce she’d picked up since coming to Tatooine, was working on learning Jawa Trade Talk and what she could of the language proper too. She was learning their culture and had earned their respect by beating them at their own game. Nor did she have any bad associations with the near humans: they didn’t represent or look like anything that had previously hurt her.

Kallus saw, on a daily basis, how she looked at the beings around them. He saw how she observed and dissected every interaction and conversation around them, cataloguing and making threat assessments. He saw how she looked at adults and children alike as if they could, at any moment, attack. Afterall, that had been all she’d known, dancing on a knife’s edge, waiting for the game to be rigged, finally, against her. Karabast, he half-suspected the only reason she followed him was out of some misguided loyalty to the authority he once represented in her life as a weapon of the Empire.

(It was his biggest worry, someday leaving her with a Jedi like Jarrus: that she would perceive whoever it was as another threat, another authority figure that was just waiting for the chance to hurt her, to cultivate her anger and pain, to send her to her death just because they could.)

He hadn’t thought she’d look at the beings of the slave community any differently but, as he watched her occasionally go out of her way to greet an elder with a gesture or a little half-bow, he wondered: did she see, perhaps, the Commander who had called her little sister and who had, against his will, been forced to harm them? He wondered: did she see her sisters and brothers, pitted against each other for entertainment? He wondered: did she see herself?

He harbored the suspicion that she didn’t quite stay inside the confines of their rooms, while he was out at Ma Drerra’s homestead or picking up odd work in the junk shop below. He knew she slipped out occasionally — their coffers were occasionally topped off with cred and peggat that Kallus knew he himself hadn’t added, and the knife had been a clear window into activities he wasn’t aware of — but it was the idea that his eleven standard or so, emotionally distant little killing machine was out potentially helping to foment a slave rebellion that gave him pause.

But, when he saw her dip her head in a grave nod to an elder or watched her eyes slowly track a known slave trader across the market, he found himself with another thought: eventually, they’d need to leave Mos Taike, and Tatooine, behind them. Eventually, he’d have enough saved up for a ship built for two and they could sail through the black, searching for the Spectres or a Jedi he could entrust her with. Eventually, helping to disrupt a planet’s slave trade wouldn’t harm them.

Freedom. It had seemed such a small word, before, when he thought he had it. It was only now that he understood what it truly meant. He had taken so much from so many, and he had been trying to give back as much as he could before the events at the Farm unfolded.

Perhaps Mos Taike could be where he, eventually, started again.

It had been six months of relative quiet on Tatooine as they settled in, for all of Kallus’s concern at Sasha’s anxiety and the unrest he felt about the slavery around them. Of course, this was ultimately unsurprising, he thought. Hutt Space had stayed isolated, for the most part, from both the old Republic and the Empire, an autonomous empire of greed and strife. He supposed that was why the Emperor had let it stand: it espoused the same lack of virtues as he had. The Rebellion therefore had little cause to plant seeds on places like Tatooine, choosing other planets where the Empire posed more of a threat to daily life to gain support for their cause. It was a good planet for them to get their bearings again.

But something beyond the Hutts, the spice trade, and the stain of sentient slavery lay in wait for them in the sands of Tatooine. The Wizard of the Wastes was there.

They weren’t long on Tatooine before they began to hear of him. Where they were, it was indeed almost instantaneous with their arrival, the name whispered and shouted in equal measure in cantinas all across the High Range as Kallus travelled for work. The moisture farmers with whom he found employ shared rumors over mid-meal, and one or two claimed to have sighted the Wizard as he came to market in the towns that dotted their little slice of desert.

Some said that he was a dangerous shaman and others said he was a benevolent magician. He rarely came to town, they said, preferring to trade with the Jawas as they traveled across the Wastes or even, they shuddered to share, the Tuskens, but occasionally there would be something he’d need in town, or trade he couldn’t get. He had a herd of Bantha he cared for, one migrant worker told Kallus, and would often travel among them as they moved from one oasis to another. He was never in one place for very long and he was friendly, when you ran into him, but disquieting and too knowing. You agreed with him when you didn’t think you were going to and you forgot you’d been in his shadow until long after he’d been gone.

“A relic from a bygone age,” said a humanoid at a cantina one afternoon, his lip a snarl. “Let him alone to die in the sands, we have no need for his kind any longer.”

Others ignored this, and put it more simply: the Wizard of the Wastes was just a man, and men go mad when they live alone too long in the dunes of Tatooine. It was just the way of things — the way of the desert.

Kallus, who was suspicious and, frankly, nosy both by nature and by profession, kept his own council on the subject as he gathered what information as he could on this Wizard. It would be just his luck, he figured, that he had stumbled upon something Jedi adjacent on this dustball of a planet — and that, whomever or whatever the Wizard was, that that was what was causing Sasha so much distress and confusion.

HE’S KIND TO THE SLAVES, Sasha reported once, her hands moving quickly as she signed in the half-light of their rooms. She told him that she heard the Wizard would help runaways disappear, if you came to him in need. She seemed intrigued by these stories; Kallus wondered if she suspected what he did of the Wizard.

So he collected his information, his rumors and whispers on this and that, and turned them quietly over in his mind. He catalogued them and threw out what he deemed unnecessary or too unverified. It seemed unlikely that he was part of the Rebellion in some capacity, even though it did seem that he’d occasionally go out of his way to disrupt the trade around the Hutts — he was just a lone being, causing trouble now and again. Nor did he think the Wizard was a renegade Inquisitor; those were often found and dealt with summarily, and Sasha seemed so certain that what she occasionally felt on the edge of her awareness was something kind. It seemed much more likely that the Wizard was, indeed, a Jedi in hiding, or even just an untrained Force sensitive that had learned to get by out in the Wastes.

Either way, the Wizard was someone Kallus knew he would need to meet, if only to confront him on why he was apparently dogging their footsteps so. He told Sasha to make inquiries within the slave community, and he kept asking around with the other migrant workers on Ma Drerra’s homestead and the others nearby. 

No one suspected what he was up to, he thought, though he knew they found his own quiet, too watchful child unsettling in much the same way they found the Wizard; but the people of Mos Taike, the inhabitants of Tatooine, minded their own business first and foremost. You helped out your neighbors in a dust storm and rallied together in the drought season, but otherwise you kept to you and yours, and the rest of the galaxy be damned.

The twin suns of Tatooine were getting to him, Kallus thought as he trudged up the stairs to their rooms early one afternoon. He knew Sasha was inexplicably enamored of the desert, but he missed a water shower something fierce and they both were too fair by far for the high suns. Their skin simply burnt red under its gaze before fading back to paleness, dotted with even more freckles after, and beginning the cycle again. The scar tissue across Sasha’s face, pale pink now, seemed larger whenever her cheeks were burnt; and the other moisture farmer and migrant workers would poke fun at Kallus, wrapped up in a balaclava and goggles and bucket hat like some kind of mummy, but his nose was in a constant peel if he wasn’t covered from tip to tail as it were.

Unlocking the door to their small rooms, he called, “Sasha! I’m back!”

Often, Sasha was at their little table, reading her datapad, when he returned for the day, or she would be practicing empty-handed katas, keeping her small body in shape. But she would almost always drop what she was doing to come greet him at the door, especially if he was home early like he was now, curious as to why.

Yet there was no Sasha at the door waiting for him, or reading at the table, or stretching in the open space of their living area. The sonic was empty and she wasn’t napping on her pallet. Her knife was no longer under the pillow.

Kallus fought to keep his heart steady, fingers clenching at his sides.

He told himself that there were any number of reasons that Sasha wasn’t in their rooms as he went back out the way he came. He knew sometimes she’d slip out while he was gone. She could have gone to the market by herself for something, or she could’ve decided that she wanted to explore around them again or go practice her Jawaese. Perhaps something had broken and she was down at the junk shop, bartering for a part.

She was not in the junk shop. She was not at the market. She was not at the small sweetmeats stall the Jawas often frequented.

Calmly, precisely, Kallus walked over the border into the slave quarters. He’d never been there properly before, just looking from a distance, and the residents eyed his too stiff back and calculating eyes warily.  After a moment, perhaps only ten feet deep into the quarters, a Twi’lek woman of indeterminate age approached him.

“I’m looking for my ward,” he said, level. He raised his hand around the height of his navel. “She’s this tall, a large scar across her face. Blonde. Very quiet.”

“Ah, our little sister,” the woman said.

He felt a muscle in his jaw jump. “Yes.”

“Follow me,” said the woman, and lead Kallus through the winding alleys of the slave quarters.

The stacked adobe house he was brought to was cool inside, well insulated from the heat despite where it was. He thought it must be one of the older houses of the quarters. It had several rooms, a mixed bag of beings in each, all watching him warily and curiously as he was led through, until they got to an upper level that let out onto a small, covered balcony.

There were a few older women and beings, the many mothers of the slaves of Mos Taike, sitting on cushions out there and, among them with a glass of blue milk and a fresh little black eye, was Kallus’s errant charge. As always, her face was carefully blank as she looked up at him. He wondered how long she’d known he was coming. She never told him outright from what kind of distance she could sense him, but he was certain she’d known since he’d gotten to the front door, perhaps even before.

ALEXSANDR, she said. She’d devised the gesture for him, her fingers in a claw shape drawing along the outside of her jaw. It had taken her making the sign four or five times before he realized it was a reference to his old facial hair.

For herself, she would make the sign of sister then draw a line with her thumb across her face. He didn't think it was as funny as she clearly did.

“I thought I’d find you somewhere like this,” he said, signing as well as speaking.

She drained her blue milk and stood, offering a bow to the elders.

There was another child, he realized abruptly, sitting just in the shadow of one of the elders. He would have missed them entirely except for Sasha now pausing to offer a stilted incline of her head to them. They were older than Sasha, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, and masculine presenting. They had a large red mark on one of their cheeks, beginning to blacken and purple right along the ridge of bone there, and the imprint of a much larger hand at their throat. 

Kallus glanced at Sasha’s hands and the pale linen gloves he’d gotten her to replace the old leather ones from Ossus’s moon that she found to be too hot under the harsh Tatooine skies. There was dried blood across both knuckles and a rip on the back of the hand of the left one. 

“Do I want to see the other being?” he asked. 

Sasha flashed him a quick, mean smile.

“There is no need to worry. It is taken care of,” said one of the mothers. She spoke slowly, as if gauging Kallus’s reaction. They were all watching him, careful and expectant. He wondered how they thought this was going to go. To his own ear, he had sounded long-suffering, but he allowed that they could have heard something darker in his voice.

He sighed and crooked a finger at the girl, beckoning her to his side.

“You know better,” he said, and then, WE CANNOT DRAW ATTENTION TO OURSELVES.

She practically skipped over to him, settling herself against the line of his leg. She tipped her head back to stare at him, said, I KNOW, and then, “He was going to kill Tomi.”

The child in question, Tomi, flinched but said in an unwavering voice, “He was going to kill me. Little sister saved me.”

Kallus glanced between Tomi, the mothers, and Sasha. Everyone was still watching him expectantly.

He sighed again. 

“Then I’m glad you were there to intervene.” Sasha flashed him another quick smile, this one bright as the stars and warm, and he tapped her on the tip of her nose, adding, “And I am especially glad that the mothers were there to make sure nothing else happened.”

He looked back up at the assembled elders. The woman who had spoken before inclined her head to him.

“Thank you,” he said to her, “for protecting her from the consequences of her actions. If trouble should find you for it, I ask that you allow me to handle it. It is the least I can do.”

The woman inclined her head again and Kallus took that as farewell. He bowed deeply to the mothers before him, Sasha doing the same at his side, and turned back to the Twi’lek that had led him there.

One their way out of the home and the slave quarters, they were ignored. Or, perhaps more accurately, he thought, he himself was ignored. Sasha received nods and the occasional wave, to which she nodded back, her face once again settled into blankness.

THAT COULD HAVE ENDED VERY BADLY FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE, he said as they walked.

Sasha darted out from his side to walk backwards in front of him, signing quickly as she did so. THEY WOULD HAVE KILLED HIM. I SHOULD HAVE LET THEM KILL HIM?

NO, Kallus said. THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT.

WHAT DID YOU MEAN? she asked. I STOPPED IT. I DID THE RIGHT THING.

YES, YOU DID, he said. BUT YOU COULD BRING TROUBLE DOWN ON THESE PEOPLE IF YOU KILLED SOMEONE OF STANDING AMONG THE HUTTS.

Sasha stared at him in silence, not quite a glare but not quite friendly either. It was as good a confirmation of any as to what she had done to protect the other child.

IT WON’T, she said eventually. THEY WEREN’T IMPORTANT.

HOW DO YOU KNOW? 

I LOOKED, she said and then wiggled her fingers.

Kallus fought the urge to pinch his nose. “That was equally  —” 

DANGEROUS, he concluded, forgetting himself for a moment. This was not a conversation they should be having in the open, half-invented handspeak or no.

“We’ll discuss this at home,” he said.

She heaved a little sigh, which normally would have prompted a bit of a laugh from him  — whatever Jedi he found to look after her was going to be in for a moody, rude surprise when she hit puberty, he thought  — but not now. He was too worked up from what could’ve been something truly terrible. 

He kept a close watch on his arrest warrant, and the bounty on his head was steadily climbing as the Empire went month after month without recovering him and what they were now referring to as stolen weapon plans. There was nothing to indicate there was any sort of general knowledge that the aforementioned weapon plans were actually a dangerous if tiny Jedi clone, but he didn’t doubt that, should she get picked up for outright murder, something would be coming after them.

Before him, Sasha had flipped her hood up as they crossed back over the border into Mos Taike proper. She returned to his side and muttered, almost subvocal, “I bet Captain Orrelios would’ve been proud of me.”

Kallus stopped in his tracks and reached out to turn Sasha to face him. She stared blankly at him, no hint of emotion, and he said, fighting to keep his own face impassive, “Yes. I think he would. And I am proud of you. You did the right thing, protecting that child. But that doesn’t preclude me from worrying about you, and not liking your methods.”

Her eyes searched his.

“They are still looking for us, Sasha,” he said. “They will never stop looking for us. Things like that  — I can’t protect you, if something like that were to happen again and the wrong people witnessed it.”

“I want,” she said. She shook her head and her little bloody hands flexed at her sides. She said, I WANT TO DO THE RIGHT THING.

“I know,” he said. “I know. So do I. Come along. We’ll do kebabs for latemeal, what do you think?”

She nodded and Kallus tucked her back up against his side as they walked.

He thought that would be the end of it, perhaps one last little lecture before bed later when he was able to fully debrief her on what had happened — perhaps he could find an alternative for her other than cold-blooded murder, which he knew was all that she knew how to do, through no fault of her own. But as they grew closer to the market, and the stall he’d been thinking of for their meal, he could feel Sasha at his side growing tense beneath his arm.

At the very edge of the market, she stopped suddenly, digging her feet into the sand. Kallus barely had time to glance down at her before she was off like a shot into a nearby alleyway. Kallus immediately raced after, hoping that the action read more to the few bystanders around them as a child having a tantrum and their parent following.

The alley was empty when he got there. He ventured down it, searching, but there was nowhere to hide, the smooth adobe walls that lined the sides offering no alcove or shadow to conceal oneself in, and it did not let out to another open area. It was a dead end.

Cursing under his breath, he hissed, “Sasha, what in the stars,” and turned back where he’d entered.

There was a being at the mouth of the alley. A head or so shorter than Kallus, swathed in folds of dark brown cloak, he could just make out a human face, a slowly whitening beard and bright blue eyes.

“Hello, there,” said the Wizard of the Wastes. He sounded a bit like Kallus, an affected Coruscanti accent, too posh for the sands of Tatooine, but friendly, warm.

“You,” he said.

“Me,” agreed the Wizard. “You’ve been looking for me.”

“And you’ve been watching me,” Kallus countered. “Me, and the girl. Why?”

The Wizard’s head cocked to one side and he reached up to draw back his hood, which was when Sasha dropped from the heavens to land in a crouch between him and the other man. She growled, low, in the back of her throat.

Kallus shifted his weight as minutely as he could, planting his feet in the sand and putting his right shoulder forward slightly. His left hand dropped behind his hip, ready to grab for his bo-rifle. His body was a tightly wound spring, torn between fight and flight. If the being before them really was a Jedi, he didn’t know if he would be able to grab the girl and get past him. He thought maybe he’d be able to buy her enough time to get away, if he could convince her to run.

“Why have you been watching us?” he repeated.

“Well,” the Wizard began, finishing the motion he’d started from before and pulling the hood of his cloak back from his face. It was indeed a kind looking face, prematurely weathered from the sands of Tatooine, his hair sun-bleached and thinning perhaps. He took a step forward, then another when they didn’t move, and said, “You’re both most interesting things to come to Tatooine in some time. Especially you, young one.”

He was just before Sasha now, one hand out as if to shake.

With a snarl, Sasha bit him.

“I suppose I should have expected that,” the Wizard said, smiling warmly down at the feral little child that was latched onto his outstretched hand. “Truly, I mean neither of you any harm. As you said, I’ve been watching you and I do believe we are past due for you father and I to have a conversation, I think. If that is quite alright with you, my dear?”

The girl grumbled something and Kallus, bemused despite the adrenaline still coursing through his body, found himself saying, “You’ll have to stop biting him if you want to say something, mishka.”

Sasha unlatched her teeth and spit into the sand, retreating slowly backwards until she bumped into Kallus’s legs.

Still smiling, the Wizard briefly inspected his hand. For his vantage point, he didn’t see any blood but could just make out a neat little row of indented marks. He resisted the urge to pat Sasha on the head.

“Now,” the Wizard of the Wastes said, “I do think we should take this conversation somewhere more private, don’t you? My home is a bit of a journey, and I came on foot, but I can guarantee no one will overhear us out there.”

“I have a speeder,” said Kallus. “It will be a bit of a squeeze, but I do believe it will fit all of us. I’m — Alexsandr, and this Sasha.”

“Call me Ben,” the other man said. 

Ben’s home was, of course, out in the Wastes. It was a typical desert structure, sat atop a ridge of hills, and looking like it had been carved into it by wind and time more so than a man’s hand. A lone ‘vaporator stood off to one side, well maintained to Kallus’s now somewhat expert eye.

They’d never been to the Wastes before, though Kallus had traveled nearby for work. On the speeder ride, Sasha had sat snugly in Kallus’s arms, a pair of oversized goggles keeping her eyes from the sand whipping past, and he could feel her head turning this way and that, curious despite the anxiety he could feel rolling off her in waves.

Ben had sat behind Kallus, just as close as Sasha, given the confines of the speeder bike, and he had to beat back his own anxiety at having what could be an exceedingly dangerous stranger at his back.

Inside the home, Ben had settled them all around his small soapstone table. Kallus sat on a trunk, Sasha squished up next to him, and Ben perched on the low carved steps nearby. He’d given them both cups of strong-smelling tea  — shig, if Kallus wasn’t mistaken  — and had settled back to watch them carefully across the rim of his mug.

“I sensed you by chance,” said Ben at length, “that first day in Mos Espa. I had needed a part for my ‘vaporator that I could only find there, and it seems I also found you and your bright, strange light there. I’ve been — curious, I suppose. I apologize if I’ve frightened either of you, but  — it’s been sometime, since I sensed anything quite like you.”

“Like what?” asked Kallus.

Ben smiled a small, mysterious little smile. “Like myself.”

“You a Jedi?” asked Sasha.

The smile grew slightly wider and just a little strained. He said, “There are no Jedi anymore, young one. There haven’t been for a very long time, I think, longer than any of us thought.”

Kallus was startled to hear himself say with a sort of vehemence, “You’re wrong,” and shut his teeth with a snap, blinking, unbalanced by his own conviction.

“Am I?” asked Ben. “Am I really?”

“Yes,” he said. “They’re still out there. Hunted, yes. Dying, yes. But they are out there. I knew one, before. He was trying to change the galaxy. And  — and her. She comes from the Jedi.”

Ben’s head cocked to the side, like a curious bird, and his eyes were so blue, so knowing. Kallus felt like he’d seen him somewhere before. He felt like he knew him. But how? He couldn’t. 

His jaw worked, thinking. This familiarity that he felt was dangerous, he just knew it  — but at the same token, wasn’t this what he’d been searching for? Could this man, this Wizard of the Wastes, be whom he was meant to entrust the safety of Sasha, her skills and her life, to? The people of Mos Taike called this man mad, a relic of a bygone era, a sorcerer, a magician. 

But he looked like just a man, perhaps one borne down by the weight of time and loneliness in the Wastes, but just a man. He hadn’t seen anything special from him, other than the preternatural calm he exhibited in that alley when faced with the mounting anxiety and fear of two dangerous people, itching for a fight. Could he trust this, the most important of his secrets, to such a man?

Beside him, the little secret in question took a sip of tea and immediately spit it back into the mug. She pushed it across the table slowly, like she thought no one was watching.

Sasha had said, from the first, that what she felt had been kind. She hadn’t been able to say anything else, muddled and confused, but she had said he felt like her, in some way, and she had said he felt kind. And it had been six months since they’d landed on Tatooine, since they’d apparently quietly crossed paths without knowing in Mos Espa, and this strange Ben had been watching them the whole time. There had been plenty of time to look up who and what Kallus was and to turn them into the barely there provincial Imperial offices over in Mos Eisley.

“You called her my daughter, earlier. She’s not,” he found himself saying. He fought the urge to reach for Sasha and pull her even closer, tuck her into his lap and shelter her with his body, to protect her from what he needed to say. “I was an agent of the Empire, the ISB. And she is a prototype weapon of the Empire. They’d been cloning dead Jedi, turning them into assassins, a new breed of Inquisitor. I stole her from an Imperial facility over a year ago, and have been on the run ever since.”

The other man stroked his beard. “Why this one?”

“I was the only one left for him to steal,” said Sasha in a bloodless, just the facts, sir tone. She pointed at the mug in front of her and said, in the same tone, “That was disgusting. Why would you drink that? Is it a Jedi thing?”

Ben’s face seemed caught between amusement at this and something else, something darker. Horror, Kallus thought. The only one left for him to steal. He’d put together so much from so little so quickly and Kallus knew, with perfect clarity, what the man had indeed once been. He wondered if he looked at Sasha and saw one of his dead friends, his dead family.

It was cruel, he thought, to bring this impossible child to him. But what else could he do?

“It’s not a Jedi thing, merely personal preference, and I’m sorry to have inflicted it upon someone so unwilling, my dear,” said Ben eventually, mastering his face into an expression of calm bemusement at the latter portion of Sasha’s blunt proclamation. His eyes flicked to Kallus, barely there, and continued, “But it’s past time for latemeal. Should we continue this conversation in the morning? I’m sure there are questions you have for me, Alexsandr, as I have for you. And you are welcome to stay here. It’s not much, but there’s some space below that we can make up for you both.”

Kallus nodded his assent. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

Ben gave him one last, quick searching glance and waved him off, declaring that they were now his guests and that he would take care of things. It had been some time since he had guests, he said, but not so long that he had forgotten the way of things, and so the three of them shared a quiet and passing strange meal together, all politesse and glancing looks to cover the tense, strained atmosphere.

After, they were led to the cellar beneath the main rooms and were given blankets and furs to make up a small pallet for them to share. Ben bid them goodnight after and retreated upstairs, and Kallus sat Sasha down before him and began to finger comb the sand out of her hair, grown long again after her impromptu chop aboard that first passenger vessel.

He scrubbed her face with a little cloth, dipped in a bowl of water, while she wrinkled her nose, and cleaned up her bloody, scraped knuckles, before he set her loose in the space to clean himself up a bit after the journey. He watched from the corner of his eye as the girl carefully snooped about, gloveless hands ghosting over the objects around them.

After he was cleaned, he joined her in her quiet inspection of the place, cataloguing what he saw. There was nothing outright suspicious, just a normal workbench and other things one might find in the root cellar of any home, desert or no, until Sasha pointed out a keypad locked box, set into the shadows at the back of the workbench.

“Should I open it?” she asked.

“We’re guests here,” he said. “We should try to make a token effort. And I doubt it’s anything nefarious, just personal.”

She made a face, fingers tracing the edge of the keypad. She said, “Everything feels sad here.”

Kallus wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. He’d be surprised if everything didn’t feel sad — the Jedi had been wiped out with one quiet command, the oldest to the youngest, by men they had trusted. He still remembered unearthing that report, in those early days of questioning, and how he’d felt himself detach from his body, cold and overcome.

He’d gone back to his quarters in a fugue and had been repeatedly sick into the small sink there. His mouth had tasted like ash and ozone, and he’d pictured Kanan Jarrus as a boy in the shadow of his Master. He had wondered what they’d been called. He had wondered what their last words to Jarrus had been as the first genocide of the new Empire began around them.

The first, and not the last, he’d thought, and he’d recalled Lasan and the shape his hands had made as the T7 dropped from them. The crying voices of Lasat children, the burning of buildings. He’d recalled Garazeb’s eyes, the only eyes of his kind left.

I’m sorry, he thought then, and now, and again and again. I’m sorry.

“I’m sure it does,” Kallus told her. “Lets go to bed.”

Once he'd settled himself onto his back in their rough nest of blankets, Sasha wormed her way close. She tucked her head in the hollow of his shoulder with her hands folded against her sternum, as she always did when they shared a bunk. One little foot brushed his knee, ice cold, and only constant exposure kept him from jumping.

Still, he must’ve tensed, or otherwise given a bit of shock away — Sasha let loose a small chortle and Kallus rolled his eyes.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Your frigid little toes have gotten me yet again. Honestly, mishka, we’re in the desert, how are they still so cold?”

She snorted, rubbing her equally chilly nose into his clavicle. He ran a hand through her fine, dirty blond hair, staring up at the ceiling.

After a moment, she said, “I’m supposed to hate him.”

“Hmm?”

“Ben,” she said. “The Jedi. I’m supposed to hate him. They told us — Commander said — they told us they were traitors. I’m supposed to hate him.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was supposed to hate Garazeb. But I don’t. I can’t.”

“They should hate us,” Sasha said, quietly. “They should. Why don’t they?”

Kallus stroked her head. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

If he knew, he thought, he could figure out how to deserve it.

"Will you tell me a story?" she asked. "About Captain Orrelios? The one on the moon."

"Of course," he said and told her again of that frozen night above Geonosis.

When he woke in the morning, Sasha was already awake, stretching out in an empty corner. He joined her and mimicked the katas she did — he kept up, for the most part, and considered himself to be in excellent physical shape and flexibility for a man his size, but the grueling moves she took him through really tested those beliefs — before they quietly emerged to the rooms above when they heard Ben moving about as well.

He smiled warmly at them — Kallus was beginning to think the man didn’t know how to be anything other than charming — offered Kallus caf and Sasha blue milk before suggesting that he take Sasha out into the nearby cliffs for a morning meditation.

“I’ll be going anyway,” he said, “if you’d like to tag along, little one.”

She glanced quickly at Kallus, who nodded. She turned back to Ben and said, “I’ve never done that.”

“I am happy to teach you,” he said, eyes twinkling. “We’ll be just beyond the first ridge, if you’d like to join us. Tatoo II has its second rise in about an hour, it’s quite lovely.”

“I’ll clean up below,” said Kallus, “and join you, thank you.”

Ben inclined his head, finished his own cup of caf, and stood. Sasha drained her milk and trotted after him, one last look at Kallus before she left. Kallus sat in the quiet of the empty home then, drinking slowly, before he too rose and went back down the stairs into the cellar.

He neatened the blankets while looking absently about and noticed that the locked box on the workbench was resting open, just a crack. He rolled his eyes and went to go shut it back up and put it away when his own curiosity got the best of him. 

It didn’t look particularly disturbed to Kallus’s well-trained eye. He figured Sasha must’ve touched one of two of the top items before getting spooked or upset about what she felt and leaving it all behind. He picked up the two notebooks that rested across the top against his better judgement, glancing at the wrapped bundle below them, before deciding just to look at the bound flimsi books.

One was a handwritten journal and he flipped through it, not reading much of anything in particular, perhaps two or three words a page, just enough to get a sense of things. It felt sad, though he wondered if he was just projecting, knowing what Sasha felt in the place, and somehow a strange sense of hopefulness, like a sun peeking through dense cloud cover.

He wondered, then, what someone with gifts like Sasha would feel if he truly wrote down those letters to Garazeb he composed regularly in his own head. He snorted, in a sort of amused horror.

He traded one journal for the next and, for the longest moment, he couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was seeing. They were all hand drawn little diagrams, and he considered himself quite the deft hand at engineering but this —

Kallus nearly dropped it when he finally realized what he was looking at: they were instructions on how to build a lightsaber.

Carefully, he put both notebooks back and locked the box back up, returning it to its home in its shadows.

Outside, as Tatoo II was rising again — and, indeed, it was a spectacular sight from out in the Wastes — he found Sasha and Ben sitting quietly together on the cliffside, cross-legged across from each other. Sasha’s eyes were closed but Ben’s weren’t, staring at her and the small whirlwind of sand that was spiralling before her in quiet contemplation.

He rose quietly when Kallus approached, stretching his arms above his head, and said, in an undertone, “For her age, she’s quite talented.”

He felt a grim smile pull at his mouth. “Yes. She rather had to be.”

“Hmm. Keep working with the grains,” said Ben and Kallus looked to see that Sasha had one eye cracked open now, observing. “I’m just going to go talk with your father for a bit.”

He started walking, gesturing for Kallus to follow, so he did. They picked their way across the cliffs, not too far away, within shouting distance and with a good view of Sasha in her silent work. They both stared at the rising suns, crawling upwards in the sky.

“I’m not her father,” he said. 

“You could have fooled me,” said Ben companionably. “We talked, a little, about you, before we got started. And to me — well, you care for her. You feed and clothe her, you protect her, you love her — does the biology of it matter so much to you?”

“I don’t,” he started. Love her, he wanted to say but the words were trapped in his throat. That wasn’t what — that wasn’t what this was, it couldn’t be, it —

Ben was staring at him expectantly.

“It’s not that I don’t,” he said, haltingly. “I want — I just — what I was, what I am, that’s not what — I am the Empire. I carry it within me. I ran, I tried, I did. I was a spy, you see, but the way I started out, the things I’d done. It’s too large. I can’t.”

“Sit down with me,” said the other man, taking his arm gently and leading him down to the sandy earth below. They sat cross-legged together, as Sasha was still, and Ben took his hands in his. “Breathe with me. Inhale, two, three, four, five — exhale, two, three, four, five. Good. Again, two, three, four, five, and out, two, three, four five. Center your thoughts. Keep breathing. Do you feel my hands? Do you hear my voice? Just breathe. Form follows function. Good. Good. Now, there you are, Alexsandr. Shall we start from the beginning?”

“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes briefly, before opening them and telling this strange Wizard of the Wastes his whole life. As he had with Garazeb, as he had with Sasha, he told him of Onderon and Lasan, but more, the darker parts, the worst parts. He showed him all the terrible, awful parts of himself because something in him said that this man would not judge him for it, that this man could help him carry it and would be glad to.

He told him of who he was and where he had been and all the horrific, unforgivable things he’d done in the name of the Empire. He told him of the moon over Geonosis, of the questions he started to ask and the answers he started to find. He told him of the woman called Fulcrum, who gave him the name too, and the ability to begin to erase the darkness from his ledger. He told him of that day at the Farm, when he’d sat there, a spectator to children murdering other children, credits changing hands above him, and how long it had taken him to realize there was one left and that she was as much a victim as any of them. He would always be the man who had committed his first crimes, he told him, and no matter what he did, nothing could erase that.

It all came spilling out of him, an eons old dam finally cracking under the weight of water.

Ben stared at him the whole time, his gaze heavy and infinite but kind, godsdamn, karabast, so kind — why did it always come back to kindness?

“I can’t love her,” he finally said, voice cracking, “because I cannot love. I’m not built for that. I hate. So much. And I’m happy to do it. Someone has to. Someone has to do the terrible things, and it’s me. It’s what I deserve. I’m good at it. That’s what I know. That’s what I do. So I have to find someone else for her, someone to teach her to be better than what they made her, because I can’t. She wanted to do good, because she is good. She is. I want to do good because I hate the people who taught me to do bad.”

He scrubbed his hands across his face. “I have to find someone, someone like you, like Jarrus, because if I don’t — she’ll learn from me, and I can’t have that. She needs someone who can take her and give her the training that she needs to master herself and the darkness that the Empire cultivated within her like a — like a terrible, bitter garden.”

“But why can’t it be you?” asked Ben.

“I’m not built for it,” he repeated. “Can’t you see it? The hypocrisy — me, of all people, teaching this impossible child how to be good.”

He stroked his beard, head tipped to the side. “Is it though? Could it not be her teaching you in return?”

“What?”

“You said,” began Ben, “again and again, that you are meant for hate. But you weren’t born into it. You were born into love and it was robbed of you, yes, but you weren’t born into it. She was, as much as anything can be born into hatred and fear and darkness. But I see her, and I think, what darkness is there that does not ultimately submit to the light? There is always light, Alexsandr, even in the blackest pitch. You speak of training her to weed what has been sown into her soul. But it’s not training she lacks.”

“But what they taught her —“

“And yourself? You were taught by the Empire, and the Republic before it, I suspect. Yet you are here. You turned your back. You rebelled. You took her, you ran, you are here. Why?”

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

“Yes. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. This is why she doesn’t need someone like me,” Ben said. “She doesn’t need the philosophies of a bygone age. She needs someone who will take the darkness of her childhood and give it light, and hope. You do that for her, Alexsandr. You have taken something touched by immeasurable fear and pain and anger and darkness and shown her love.”

He frowned. “I don’t —

“Do you know her — progenitor, I believe they would’ve called it?”

“No,” he said, briefly thrown by the abrupt change in topic. “While their files were quite thorough with regards to methodology and all other research practices, they left out who the original donors had been. If you will. I don’t believe the people at the facility even knew where their genetic samples had come from. It is my understanding, too, from what I gleaned of the reports, that the later — units — were genetically modified for more, well, desirable attributes. She was from the last five of the K batch — so she experienced what could have been significant manipulation of her genetic code.” 

“I suspect I do,” said Ben. “And she has risen above the heritage of sadness they would have provided her, regardless of if the Empire had twisted her or left her to grow on her own. And do you know why? Because you found her, and you teach her, every day.”

“But I’m terrible,” Kallus insisted. He could feel his eyes burning and ruthlessly dashed at them with the heels of his hands. “I’m a weapon of war, and I always will be. There’s a creation myth, from Ruusan. It’s where one of my mothers was from. She would tell it to me, when I was a boy. I don’t remember much of it now, but it was about a fraction of two peoples and how they raised arms against each other; but, eventually, there would be the end of war and the people would return to the way they were before, forgetting their hatred and animosity, and they beat their swords and axes once more into the tools of the harvest, and grow the land yet again.”

“I’ve never heard that,” said Ben.

“Well, it’s a pretty notion,” he said, “but, in the end, not all swords can be melted back into plowshares.”

He stared at him a moment again, eyes searching his face. At length, he returned his gaze to the distance, where Sasha sat meditating in silence still, and said, “Perhaps. But the sword does not always have to be a weapon. A sword protects, defends. It finds another purpose away from war. It does not need to be reforged to find new utility.”

“But the sword remembers,” Kallus replied.

“Yes. Yes, it does,” said Ben. He was still staring at Sasha. “But it seems to me that every breath that we take — it is a chance to be reborn, to become new within ourselves. With each breath, we can become something else, even as we retain our shape — as we grow, and growth, I suppose, can be a kind of death. But what transformation is not? Each breath is a chance, and to be reborn, then, into a new life, a better life, one you have chosen — yes, you must die, before dying — but I don’t think it’s a poor exchange. No, indeed, I think it’s the bravest thing a being could do: allowing part of yourself to die, so that the rest of you may go on.”

“But what if there’s not enough to go on?” he asked.

Ben touched his knee and pointed to Sasha. “Look. She’s trying to pull a grain of sand from the whirlwind before her. There are so many, the tiny sandstorm she has made so vast, that it is almost impossible to isolate a single grain and pull it forward. The concentration it takes, the immense focus — the center she must find within herself. Does she lose herself as she does it?”

“No,” Kallus said slowly.

“No,” agreed Ben. “She becomes more. But she is still the same. She is still the hurt, sad, furious little girl you pulled from that facility. But she is also the whirlwind and she is also the sand and she is that single grain she searches for. She won’t get there today. She won’t get there tomorrow. But someday she will call up the whirlwind, and she will find what she is looking for.”

Abruptly, Ben rose, dusting his palms on his legs as he did so. He looked down at Kallus, still cross-legged and emotionally wrung out on the ground below. His kind eyes had taken on a thoughtful gleam as he’d spoke, before, and it still lingered there.

“I cannot teach her,” said Ben, “not because I do not want to, because I do believe she would make an excellent learner — there are reasons that are not mine to give, why I cannot. Suffice to say, while you think you are a danger to her, I can assure you, there are greater dangers yet, me chief among them. But I would like to teach her meditation, that I do believe she will benefit from enormously. So here is my proposal to you, to the both of you: we will stay together, here, for as long as we deem it safe to do so, perhaps three months, four, and I will teach her to calm and center herself. I cannot promise that I will undo years of horrific conditioning in your girl — as I do believe, quite strongly, that it is you, Alexsandr Kallus, who will do so — but the techniques I will impart will help, to begin the process.”

“And in return?” asked Kallus.

“Always so suspicious,” he commented, smirking.

“It’s kept me alive this long.”

“Indeed it has,” Ben laughed. “I will teach her, and you merely stay here and go about your days as you had before. Help me about the area, now and again, and promise me you’ll keep her with you as long as you can. Don’t go giving her up to the next Jedi you cross paths with. I assure you: you’ll break her heart.”

Kallus looked again at Sasha and the little whirlwind before her.

I don’t deserve you either, he thought, but I love you all the same.

“Okay,” he said, and they shook on it.

When all was said and done, they got just a month together, out in the Wastes.

Sasha was delighted, especially after she made peace with her initial suspicion of Ben (though she still refused to accept any drink from him that wasn’t blue milk). She liked meditation, she confided in Kallus, even if it was sometimes boring. She liked clearing her mind and simply feeling all around her with her senses. Ben said she was a natural, despite her upbringing, which filled Kallus with a no doubt misplaced sense of pride for his murderous little shadow.

She also liked being as deep into the desert as they were, which both Kallus and Ben found amusing, though no doubt for different reasons. Kallus took the opportunity to show her forms with his bo-rifle, with Ben himself watching curiously from the sidelines as the girl took to the weapon as quickly as any expertly trained soldier might.

“You and I should spar sometime,” he said once and Kallus had nodded, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth. Ben didn’t look like much, but he suspected that was entirely for show: he had no doubt the man before him, still refusing to identify as a Jedi after all this time, would wipe the floor with him.

They closed up their rooms in Mos Taike with little fanfare and moved into the cellar of Ben’s hut, as he called it, curled together in their mess of blankets at night. During the day, she would meditate for long stretches with Ben while Kallus ventured back up to Ma Drerra’s and the other homesteads he’d found work at. Sasha would accompany Ben occasionally to tend to his Banthas, which Ben insisted was not actually his herd but a wild group that he checked in with from time to time. Sasha reported back after the third visit that they were not good animals to ride, which was disappointing to her and also clearly explained the limp she came back with as well.

In the end, it was when the Jawas came for trading day out near the oasis, all those in the far flung homesteads coming together to look for parts and supplies and things that the Jawas had picked up as they traveled from town to town across Tatooine. Kallus hadn’t been out of the Wastes for a few days, helping Ben with his own ‘vaporator maintenance, so it was a sick surprise to overhear one of the Redsand boys mentioning the squad of stormtroopers that had appeared overnight in Mos Taike, looking for something or someone, though they did not say what.

Kallus, who had been idly inspecting a droid on request from Ma Drerra, looked up to find Ben staring at him from across the encampment. As one, they looked over to where Sasha was, covered head to toe in an oversized brown cloak, palling around with the Jawa kids and hustling oblivious moisture farmers.

He looked back at Ben and knew they were thinking the same thing: Time’s up.

They returned to the hut one final time after the Jawas insisted the three of them stay for a meal together. Sasha had stuck close to Kallus the entire time, clearly having gotten wind that something was afoot in Mos Taike, and, when they returned, she disappeared without a word to the cellar before popping right back up again with the packs.

“The first rise of Tatoo I will be in a few hours,” said Ben, carefully staring into the middle distance of the hut, hand on his beard. “We should head out then, and travel when it is burning its hottest. No one else is out in the Wastes then, except perhaps the Jawa traders, but we needn’t worry about them.”

“No,” agreed Kallus. Sasha had ensured months ago that they had their strange allegiance and, even if they did talk to the stormtroopers who asked, it was doubtful they’d be understood.

“We should go to Mos Eisley,” Ben continued. “I’ll travel with you. It should help cover your tracks.”

“Thank you,” he said.

They set out as soon as Tatoo I had reached its zenith, crammed together on Kallus’s speeder bike once more. This time, the anxiety he felt with Ben at his back was for an entirely different reason, practically twitching every time he felt Ben turn to gently crane his neck over his shoulder, checking to make sure they weren’t followed over the open Jundland Wastes.

At the spaceport, they split up briefly to purchase three tickets each to the first ships leaving Mos Eisley in the morning and Ben guided them to a nearby cantina to wait, and where he would ultimately leave them behind.

They settled in at an empty table in a shadowed corner, eyes roving over them but never stopping, thanks to the combined efforts of both Ben and Sasha. They ordered drinks and nursed them for a moment.

“Here, my dear.” 

Ben dipped his hand within his robe and pulled out a small, worn pouch. Sasha looked at it with great interest, eyes wide and bright. Ben smiled at her, his own eyes twinkling despite the circumstances that lead them to this cantina, and Kallus was struck suddenly by how alike they looked. Over the last year and a half together, many had commented on Kallus and Sasha as they walked side by side through busy spaceports — a lovely family, how like you she is, was she always like that? — but Ben, in that moment, his eyes bright and years falling away from his face with that smile, truly looked as though he could be her father. 

I suspect I do, Ben had said, before, when he’d asked after her progenitor, if Kallus had known who the being was.

For a split second, Ben looked away from Sasha and met Kallus’s eyes, knowing and grave, before smiling back at Sasha and extending the pouch towards her. She held out her palm to receive it. Her eyes grew even wider. 

Ben asked, “Can you hear their song?”

She nodded.

“Yes, I thought you might,” he said. “They are not the same as you would have found for yourself, before. For one, they were found here in the sands of the Wastes — as you found me! I had thought them for another but I see now they were meant for you all along.”

He reached into his robes again and pulled out another item: a little hand-written notebook, Kallus realized, one that he had seen that first morning in Ben’s hut, after Sasha had broken into the locked box. The one, he thought, that contained the instructions on building a lightsaber.

“You’ll need this too, someday,” he said. “I’m sure your father will be most helpful, too, when the time comes.”

Then, he drained his drink and rose elegantly from the table. He bent at the waist to first drop a kiss onto Sasha’s brow and then bestowed the same gesture onto Kallus, who was startled and touched in equal measure by the gesture.

If they had stayed, Kallus thought, if they had been granted just this one mercy, he could have been her grandfather — he could have been Kallus’s own father, aged as he was beyond his years by the twin suns and trauma and heartbreak.

“Take care of each other,” Ben told them. His voice was heavier than he’d ever heard it before. He added, haltingly, “And if you ever run into that first Fulcrum again, tell them, from me — have hope. May the Force be with you all.”

“I will,” said Kallus.

“Thank you,” he said. He turned to go. “And, Alexsandr?”

“Yes?”

“There’s enough, Alexsandr Kallus,” he said, “I promise you, there’s enough.”

Ben melted away into the shadows of the cantina, and was gone.

Kallus knocked back his drink. He could feel Sasha’s eyes on him, questioning, so he turned to offer her a quick smile and asked, “Now, where should we go off to next?”

Sasha stared at him for a moment and then collected the tickets that they’d purchased, shuffling them around on the table before her with her eyes squeezed shut. She plucked one from the mixed up pile and handed it to Kallus.

“This one,” she said. “Let’s go here.”

He glanced at the destination — a little backwater along the Mid Rim — and grabbed one of the matching tickets, sticking them in the front pocket of his poncho. He swept the others into his pack, to dispose of later, and stood. He reached out a hand. “Shall we?”

She hopped up to take it, pulling her hood over her face as she went, and they walked, hand in hand, out of the cantina and into the galaxy together once more, looking to disappear.

Chapter Text

Dear Garazeb, he began. It was the middle of the night, two months before it all ended, and Kallus was wide awake, listening to both Sasha’s perfect, even breathing as she slept and the rain that had been coming down steadily since they landed on their newest backwater three days ago. He hadn’t been able to sleep well, since they’d left Tatooine in a flurry of anxiety and fear, too strung out on worry and a sense of dread he could not shake. Had anyone in Mos Taike spoken of them? What had happened to Ben? Had they been pursued? He couldn’t know.

To calm his mind, he wrote in his little mental journal, entry after entry to Garazeb, until he finally decided to put ink to flimsi, a final, physical manifestation of what had been growing within him all along. There were a handful of blank pages at the back of Sasha’s lightsaber construction manual from Ben, and he decided that they would serve his purposes perfectly so he’d grabbed it up, locked himself in the ‘fresher, put the notebook on his knee, and started to write.

Dear Garazeb, he wrote.

When this letter finds you, I suspect I will be long gone from this galaxy. I never thought it would come to this — I suppose I never thought any of this would happen. That night on Bahryn, with you, changed me more than you could ever imagine.

Or, well, it changed me more than I could imagine. You Rebels: you always have hope, don’t you? No matter what I’ve done, I believe you had hope that I would see the error of my ways, and turn towards the light. And I have, Garazeb, I have indeed, and I have you to thank for it — and the girl handing you this letter. Her name is Sasha, he wrote , and I love her as if she were my own.

If you have this letter, it means I am dead, or as good as. I am sorry, that I could not have done more, before. I don’t know if you and the others would have puzzled it out, or if the one person who knew what I’d become is around to tell you, but for six months after that moon, I acted as your Fulcrum agent. I would’ve continued to do so, until my capture and death at the hands of Grand Admiral Thrawn, if it weren’t for Sasha.

She’s a clone, he wrote. I discovered her under circumstances that she can share with you; suffice to say they were not ideal, nor humane. Far from it, in fact. It’s terrible, awful, what they made her and her siblings do. But by the time I could help them, she was the only one left. I took her and I ran, and I have been running ever since. Until, of course, whatever has caused this letter to fall into your hands.

I write this — I suppose I don’t quite know why I write this. Perhaps because you are the only person I care to know me, truly, you and my dear girl here. I’ve never wanted to be known — I don’t suppose I ever knew it was a thing to want, to be honest. But you. I would’ve liked you to know me.

I would’ve liked to have known you, he wrote. I’m sorry I can’t, now. I hope —

Take care of her for me, Garazeb. She’s so dear, so wonderful. She’s quite mean, which I hope you find as delightful as I do, and she’s funny. She’s trying very hard to be kind, so you must be patient with her there, but her heart is so big, Garazeb, so big. She’s worth it, more than I ever was. Oh, and she’s getting quite good with a bo-rifle. I hope she’s been able to hang on to mine, to give to you. I should think she’ll give us both a run for our money, as soon as she gets a little taller.

You’ll love her, he wrote, just as I love her, I’m sure of it. Take care of her for me, if this letter finds you before I do. And if I don’t —

I hope, Garazeb, that, someday, we’ll meet again, in a different world. A better world. 

I love you, he didn’t write. It would be too cruel, coming from him, an agent of the Empire, a murderer,  the Butcher of Lasan — a dead man, too, at the time of the reading of such a letter. It was better not to include it.

But he hoped he could read it between the lines, regardless.

It was six months in total that they had, at the end of things. They were not peaceful months, though there were peaceful moments now and again, bits of stolen happiness in between the terror and the fear and running over the two years they had together.

And it was happiness: he could name that feeling that fluttered beneath his breastbone now when he looked at Sasha and caught her sly smile as she lifted a wallet or snuck a yoba custard from some inattentive vendor’s stall. He was happy with her, this wonderful, terrible child of his, and he loved her, little gods did he love her. He loved her with a bright sort of fire, the intensity and heat of the burning meteorite Garazeb had handed him on Geonosis’s moon.

He felt a similar love for Garazeb, he knew. It thundered in his ribs alongside his love for Sasha, like two enormous birds of prey in the cage of his body, buoying him up, carrying him aloft on their powerful wings. Garazeb, he knew, would never love him back — how could he? — but it was enough for him to simply love , to feel and know and accept. It was enough — that was enough.

There was enough in him to walk forward, reborn, the old Kallus now just a shadow at his heels.

Kallus found himself smiling more than he ever remembered doing before, and laughing. He felt alive, he realized three months after they left Tatooine. He’d been dead before, asleep, but now he was alive in his body for the first time in years. It didn’t matter if that body was alight with fear and anxiety at being chased across the known worlds by some unspeakable horror: he was doing the right thing as he did so, his girl at his side.

As they bounced from planet to planet, he kept his ear to the ground in a way he’d never done before. He was looking for the Rebellion, looking to join up with them. He had half a mind that he’d be able to help them in a way he’d not before, perhaps behind the scenes in their intelligence offices — his codes were obviously long since defunct, but the Empire was indeed an empire, and empires were slow things to change. Much of his inside knowledge of people and troop movements and thought processes would not be so different from before.

He could stay safe on a base, with Sasha at his side, and perhaps, if he was lucky, from time to time, they would see Garazeb and the Spectres.

They didn’t run into anyone with much knowledge, on their travels, but they heard some: a base, on a planet near Lothal, destroyed utterly by Thrawn’s orbital bombardment but the Rebels miraculously alive. There was trouble on Mandalore, an uprising of some kind, which the Empire was attempting to put down with extreme prejudice. There were rumors of something on Lothal itself but nothing substantiated.

There were too many near misses for them, though, for Sasha and Kallus. The Empire, somehow, had seemed to have picked up their movements, starting on Tatooine; and, as unpredictable as they endeavored to make themselves by jumping from planet to planet without any rhyme or reason, something nipped determinedly at their heels. Sasha was exhausted most of the time, trying to keep their Force signatures — distinctive, she insisted they both were — undercover. She gave herself a nosebleed, once, and Kallus had tried to put his foot down, telling her to stop.

But she’d felt an Inquisitor, a few ten-days back. They’d just landed in a new spaceport, on some random planet that Kallus didn’t even remember the name of, and her body had gone taught as a bowstring beside him. Fear had poured off her in waves, and rage, so furious it felt like an actual heat from her small body. She’d tamped down on it as quickly as she could, smothering what she felt under a forceful blanket of calm, but he was already lifting her into his arms and turning them back to the ship they’d just disembark. He knew there would be no reasoning with her after that and kept his own council on the subject.

She had told him, four random vessels and directions later, that she hadn’t recognized the Inquisitor. It hadn’t been one that had ever visited the Farm when she was there, and she couldn’t be sure if it had felt her before she’d clamped down on her feelings, before she’d done her best to cloak them. She’d been clutching the pouch of crystals Ben had given her, which she wore as a little necklace, tucked beneath the folds of her tunic. Kallus had run a hand through her hair, kissed her temple, and told her it didn’t matter.

They changed their appearances as often as they could, and Sasha was delighted the first time he allowed her to dye her hair. (She’d lobbied hard for neon purple; he regretted telling her both about Sabine Wren’s personal style and how he liked the color of Garazeb’s fur. They eventually compromised on a pale, rosy pink.) Kallus fluctuated from clean shaven, to stubble, to a beard every few ten-days, thankful for his quickly growing facial hair. He still missed his old style.

Every third planet they bought tickets to; on the others, they opted to stow away, though sometimes they stole tickets, or bought just one, Sasha sneaking herself in while Kallus boarded with the rest of the passengers. But, most of the time these days, they just tucked themselves in with the cargo, and hoped for the best.

He wondered, as they bounced from the Outer Rim to the Mid Rim then Unknown Regions and back again, how they were being tracked. Was it Sasha’s presence, as she clearly worried? Or was it rumors of a man with Kallus’s stature and bone structure, a glimpse of his bo-rifle, that they were hunting down? He feared the former more than the latter: they would never truly be safe, even among the Rebellion, if they had some way of following Sasha’s Force signature.

He thought again of the Spectres, and how much safer she would be with people like that: with Hera Syndulla at the helm of ship, with Jarrus helping to mask her presence, and Garazeb —

Garazeb —

Oh, Zeb, he thought. We’re really in it now.

The end came in the Gordian Reach, on a tiny planet called Vaal. It was a pretty enough place to die as any, Kallus will think, later, but when they first landed, he was just taken with how temperate it was, grassy and warm, no humidity to speak of. They’d been on a few rainer worlds of late, and he was happy to see the wide savannas out the viewfinders of their passenger vessel as they came into the spaceport.

Later, too, he’ll have a brief moment to wonder: was it even them the Inquisitor had come to Vaal to find?

But, for now, it was the two of them, on as normal a day as they ever got. They’d gone to a local market, hand in hand as always and with their packs on their backs, never leaving them behind these days. Kallus was on a half-hearted hunt for some temporary work and Sasha lifted wallets and credfolds of the people she passed, putting them back when she emptied them and they didn’t hold her interest any longer.

He bought her some fried tubers when she saw them, her eyes huge, and he absently wondered if she would get scurvy one of these days. She didn’t exactly abhor all other vegetables and fruits, but she didn’t go out of her way to eat them if Kallus wasn’t putting them on the plate for her. He was looking for a baked good for himself, as well, thinking something sweet might be nice.

A familiar warble, half-remembered from a dozen holorecordings, more, faintly hit his ear. He was turning before he even registered that he recognized the sound and he caught a flash of orange and dirty white paint, a flash of mechanical arm, and it couldn’t be — what were the chances — here, here, of all the planets in all the systems —

Sasha grabbed his wrist, her spindle-like little fingers crushing the fine bones there together with her preternatural strength.

“It’s here,” she hissed.

Kallus felt his body go cold all over, all at once, like he’d been tossed bodily into a snowbank back on Bahryn, that damned frozen moon in orbit around Geonosis where all of this had begun.

An Inquisitor was on Vaal.

But for us? he wondered, and his eyes crawled back in the direction that he’d seen Chopper — Chopper! Here! He was sure of it — trundle off. Or is it here for them?

“Alexsandr,” said Sasha, her voice higher and more frightened than he’d ever heard before.

His attention snapped back to her and he dropped down into a crouch before her, heedless of the flow of bodies and foot traffic around them. Her eyes were wide, her shoulders pulled tight, but her face was set, resolute and her hands were in fists at her side. His brave little warrior, he thought.

“The spaceport,” he said. “Do you remember the pictures I’ve shown you, of the type of ship Garazeb and the Spectres travel aboard?”

She nodded.

“Go to the spaceport, and look for it,” he said.

“They’re here?”

“Yes,” said Kallus. He cupped the line of her small jaw and handed her his hold-out blaster. “Go now. Take the rooftops, not the streets, and run. I’ll lead it off.”

“How?” she asked.

He rose and, in one swift, practiced movement he pulled his bo-rifle from his shoulders, from beneath his poncho where it had waited so patiently for so long, and fired a shot, carefully into the market. He aimed for a blank stretch of wall, between two lightly occupied stalls. No one was hit by the blast, nor even grazed by shattering of brick and mortar near them; but screams broke out nonetheless, and fingers began to be pointed in Kallus’s direction.

“Go,” he ordered. “It’s okay. I’ll find you, mishka, I’ll be there too. We’ll leave with them together. I promise. We just need a little time. Go. ”

Sasha took off.

Against his better judgement, he watched her go, taking her in until she had disappeared into the crowd. He clenched his jaw, squared his shoulders, and sprinted off in the opposite direction. As he ran, he prayed absently to whatever gods might be out there, listening.

Be safe, he thought. Find them. Be safe. Protect her.

From the beginning, he’d known what he should do. Karabast, why hadn’t he done it? He’d had so many chances. How hard would it have been, at the beginning, to have found Garazeb and Jarrus, given her over to the Spectres for safekeeping and then slipped from her life before he became so attached? He should’ve left her on Tatooine with Ben, should’ve left her with the many mothers in Mos Taike even. They would protect her better than he was now.

He ducked into an alleyway, away from the shouting voices that tried to follow him. There was no outlet. He took a moment, gathering his breath and his strength, and turned.

It was Tatooine all over again, he thought, a cloaked figure in the mouth of the alley, waiting for him. Only this time it was not kindly, benevolent Ben with his mischievous blue eyes and all-knowing smirk. This time, it was a figure all in black, from the red-tinted visor of its helm to the pristine polish of its boots. It was impossible to say if the being was humanoid or not, though the shape was vaguely man like. It was shorter than Kallus but broader, he thought. It had two lightsabers, powered down, hanging from its belt.

“Where is she?” asked the Inquisitor. It used no voice modulator and spoke with a surprisingly clear, pretty tenor, though it dripped with malice.

“I’m sorry,” said Kallus. He dropped the rucksack on his shoulder to the ground. He wouldn’t need it any longer. “Who?”

The Inquisitor drew one of its ‘sabers. A sick red brightened the dim alley and the other gloved hand reached out to him. It said, “Where is my little sister?”

“Long gone,” he said. “You and the Empire will never lay a hand on her again.”

All at once, he felt a hand at his throat where there was no hand. His bo-rifle dropped from his hold in the shock of it, but he knew what this was. He fisted his hands at his sides, dug his fingers into his palms instead of scrabbling at his neck; he would not give this being the pleasure. The hand tightened, and grew tighter still. He felt his feet leave the ground, the toes of his boots scraping the duracrete of the alley. His lungs burned. The soft skin of his palms ripped under the pressure of his ragged nails. He hadn’t put on his hand wrappings that morning.

Garazeb, he thought as darkness began to creep in. Let her find Garazeb. Let her be safe. Please. Please —

From behind him, there was a high, shrill scream, like a lothcat shrieking. A small blur of tan and olive shot past, tackling the Inquisitor around the middle. It was so abrupt, and with such force, that the Inquisitor was brought to the ground and the invisible hand around Kallus’s neck vanished. He dropped like a stone to the ground, knees flaring with pain on his impact.

Gasping for breath, aching hands fumbling for his bo-rifle, he looked up. The blur had, of course, been Sasha. She was on top of the Inquisitor and was pummeling their face and mass with her small fists, wordless screams tearing from her mouth.

It lasted for mere seconds before the Inquisitor got their wits back and shoved at Sasha with the Force. She flew through the air but was able to turn her body as she went and landed on her feet, crouched, one hand on the ground and the other tucked behind her back. Her hair was wild around her face and her eyes were bright, burning. Kallus thought of that day in the facility when he’d first seen her. He thought of the fresh ‘saber burn slashed across her face, the set of her jaw, the sound that other girl’s neck made as it snapped beneath her little girl hands. How she’d put her ‘saber blade through the chest of the boy while staring into his eyes.

Sasha bared her teeth with a growl.

The Inquisitor started laughing.

“Oh, little sister,” they said. “Such spirit — such rage — you’ll do so well once I bring you home.”

Sasha narrowed her burning eyes, the curl of her lip fierce above those blunt, baby teeth. “I’m not your little sister.”

Kallus pushed himself to his feet, snatching his bo-rifle back into his arms and extending it fully as he rose. He rushed forward to put himself between Sasha, still crouched on the ground, and the Inquisitor, stalking forward. He raised his bo-rifle and the Inquisitor cocked their head. It chuckled, low.

“I’ve seen recordings of you,” it said. “You’re talented with your weapon of choice, Agent Kallus, I’ll give you that. But you’re no match for the Inquisitorius. I’m happy to see this to the end, you and I, but you won’t be getting out of here with the girl, Agent Kallus, or even alive. I’ll give my apologies personally to Grand Admiral Thrawn, of course — he so wanted to see you, one last time — but I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“You talk too much,” offered Kallus in return. He snapped on the electrified ends of his bo-rifle with a flick of his wrist.

From behind him, nearly simultaneously, there was the hum of another weapon igniting and Kallus could see, from the corner of his eyes, as Sasha unveiled the hand she’d been holding behind her back, one of the Inquisitor's ‘sabers held, fully powered up, in her reverse grip.

The Inquisitor’s hand dropped to their belt, just briefly. Kallus wondered if their eyes had grown wide behind their mask.

He smirked and launched himself at the Inquisitor, using the brief moment of surprise to his advantage.

It recovered quickly enough, too well-trained not to, and the scene rapidly devolved into spat curses and harsh breathing, the hum of deadly weapons and the smell of charred flesh. It was a dirty, brutal bout, and Kallus suspected nothing less for it, giving every last bit of himself over to the violence.

He screamed at Sasha to leave, to run, to find Garazeb, but the girl would not leave his side, dodging in and out of the fight with her too big borrowed weapon, tagging the being with its terrible dark mask on its arms, its legs. He resolved to fight harder, more; push himself further than he’d ever gone before. It would not end this way, not for her. He wouldn’t let it.

He kept himself between them as best he could, only allowing her those quick, fast slashes. It helped that the Inquisitor clearly valued the girl’s safety somewhat — had been tasked to bring her back alive at all costs, he imagined — and so was trying to avoid clipping her in the crossfire with Kallus. He and Sasha both used this to their advantage, Sasha causing distractions when she could so he could get in additional, vicious hits.

But the being was as tough, as dangerous, as it had advertised. It got slashes in on Kallus’s left arm and his right leg, the ‘saber so hot and deadly it took a moment for his nerve endings to catch up with the pain. It slammed the pommel of its ‘saber into his face too, bone crunching in its wake and blood pouring freely down his face.

He gave as good as he got. He’d been a child of the lower levels of Coruscant, and the smallest at the orphanage until puberty hit and he shot up half a foot in half a year. He’d been scrappy and resourceful and mean from a young age, and the Empire had only perfected that. He’d  spent years, too,  training his body for larger opponents, for faster ones, for stronger ones: his thirst for revenge on the Lasat who had scarred him so had honed his body into a very specific type of weapon, and that weapon was tailor-made for this type of battle. He knew how to take a beating and how to endure. 

He blasted the Inquisitor on one leg with his bo-rifle before getting in closer and slamming the end home with enough force that he could feel duraplast and bone crack alike beneath his blow.

The Inquisitor stumbled back for a moment and then was charging, bellowing with rage, back at Kallus. They locked weapons, the blade of the dark being’s ‘saber crackling against the end of his bo-rifle, and the Inquisitor hissed, “She’ll see you die, and it will only make her stronger in the darkness.”

With a snarl, Kallus reared back and snapped his head into the Inquisitor’s mask, just as he had seen Sasha do all those months ago with the boy at the Farm. The mask cracked under the pressure, just as the duraplast of its chestplate had, and his already broken nose shrieked in pain and protest but he didn’t let up. He spun away for just a bit more room and then thrust the bo-rifle into the same spot on its chest he’d landed in before.

The Inquisitor raised both hands and threw Kallus with the Force into the back of the alley, where he crashed side first into the wall. There was an audible popping noise as his shoulder collided first and then another crunch as the side of his face impacted.

Kallus hit the duracrete but did not allow himself to linger. His whole body burned with pain. Something in his face had broken in the impact — his cheekbone, maybe, or a crack to his jaw, the side of his face that had met with the wall was on fire — and his left shoulder had popped out of the socket. There was nothing to be done for it. He rolled onto his good side, spit blood — was that a tooth, too? — onto the ground, and struggled to his feet.

Sasha was before the Inquisitor as he made it to his knees. He wanted to call her name but he wasn’t sure anything would come out. He pushed himself against the wall, levering himself up.

The stolen lightsaber was so big in her little hand, the blood red shaft pointed behind her and to the left, just slightly. She had a knife in her right hand, a new one, sharper and deadlier than the one she’d hidden beneath her pillow on Tatooine what felt like a lifetime ago. He wondered where she’d managed to pick this one up, too, and what she had done with the blaster he’d given her.

“I don’t want to hurt you, little sister,” the Inquisitor was saying, “but I will.”

“Okay.” She threw herself at the being, much as Kallus had done, and it was taken aback in much the same way. Kallus almost started laughing where he was pushing himself up — what had the damned thing expected?

She was a good half a meter shorter than the being, and at least twenty stone lighter, and the Inquisitor clearly thought it would have her handled. But Kallus remembered that day so clearly: the first moment he laid eyes on her, so much smaller than the rest, almost delicate in comparison; the way she’d torn through child after child, taking down the boys and girls who’d been raised, just as her, to assassinate and murder grown Jedi; the prescision she shot with on the landing pad; the blaster hole beneath Olaffson’s chin, with its clean ring of muzzle burn —

There had never, ever been one ounce of give up in the child.

Sasha had gotten the Inquisitor onto its back again with one quick, surprisingly powerful swipe of her thin leg, and she was kneeling on its chest, the tip of her knife under its chin and her stolen ‘saber burning a hole through the duracrete next to the being’s helmeted head.

She leaned in close, eyes gone as cold as they’d been on Game Day at the Farm. She said, “I’m the best one.”

Kallus, finally upright again, limped forward with a purpose.

The Inquisitor bucked beneath her and threw her off. Sasha turned it into another neat roll and came up swinging. With a decisive swipe of her blade, she cleanly separated the Inquisitor’s right arm just below the elbow from the rest of its body. She finished the spin with a stab to the thigh with her knife, leaving it lodged there when the Inquisitor howled and brutally shoved at her with the Force.

This time, Sasha did not recover in the air with a graceful roll, nor did she land on her feet. She sailed past Kallus at an immense speed, like a piece of shrapnel from a bomb, and crashed into the back wall, where he himself had lately been recovering, with a terrible, sick crunch. She lay there, crumpled and still, her leg at a wholly unnatural angle.

A numbness swept over him that had nothing to do with adrenaline taking over and soothing his wounds. It had, in fact, everything to do with rage. He felt it course through his body, from his head to his toes, as hot as binary suns, as cold as Bahryn. There was something calming about it, the fury that filled him to the brim, like finding a terrible, perfect center within himself.

With one more flick of his wrist, his bo-rifle extended to its fullest.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he said conversationally.

“Will you?” asked the Inquisitor.

Kallus spit out another glob of blood and, yes, another bit of cracked tooth too. “Yes. I’m going to enjoy it.”

“How nice for you,” it said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It will be.”

They began to walk toward each other, step by step, ready to meet in the middle when suddenly the Inquisitor stopped and turned, just slightly, to the mouth of the alley. Kallus, still walking forward, looked too.

Standing there, confused but with their weapons at the ready, were Garazeb Orrelios and Kanan Jarrus. Garazeb’s eyes were darting back and forth between the Inquisitor, Kallus, and Sasha, still crumpled in a heap at the back of the alley; his ears flickered madly to and fro. Jarrus was stepping forward carefully, his ‘saber raised, and his mouth twisted into a frown. He was wearing a strange mask with no eyes.

Kallus grinned and he could feel a cut in his lower lip split open with the movement, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except the next few minutes, because now he knew that, no matter the outcome of this moment, no matter if he lived, no matter if he died to take this monster down and protect his daughter — if he died with it, everything would be okay. If he died, she would be safe: safe with the Spectres, safe with Garazeb, who would never let anything happen to her, would protect her like one of their own, not a single question asked.

I love you, he thought. Take care of her for me.

Behind him, Sasha was rising unsteadily to her feet and Kallus spared a glance back towards her, one final time. Her cropped, wild rosy gold hair was matted on one side with blood now, and it coated half her face too. Her teeth were bared, her nose scrunched up beneath the scar tissue there in a snarl, and she held the stolen ‘saber aloft in one hand still.

He would have preferred to have his last memory of her be smiling, perhaps rolling her eyes at him or stuffing her mouth full of tubers, grinning, but this — this was who they were: fierce, terrible creatures who wanted desperately to do the right thing. This was perfect.

A murmur of voices at the mouth of the alley — Garazeb, he thought, his deep rumble making some kind of wry observation, and then Jarrus, in return — and it was keeping the Inquisitor’s attention, split between the dual threat the two of them represented and the battered, beaten-down combatants  deeper within the ally. The Inquisitor began to turn, raising its ‘saber, the stump of its other arm gently smoking.

Kallus roared, “Face me!”

It spun back around in time to meet him as Kallus launched himself forward for the last time, fighting as viciously and brutally as he ever had before. His left arm hung useless at his side, but it didn’t matter. He was going to finish this, hell or high water.

Locked in combat with the Inquisitor, he was aware of Jarrus on the periphery of his vision, edging around the fight to try to get to Sasha and protect what he clearly thought was a defenseless child of somekind, despite the weapon in her hands. Garazeb remained at the mouth of the alley, his own bo-rifle raised, stock snug in that space between shoulder and chest, taking pot-shots at the Inquisitor when he could and laying down covering fire.

Then —

A blur of movement, the Inquisitor swiping at Kallus’s left side, unprotected as it was, and he tried to maneuver his bo-rifle to block but — pain, bright and sharp, a flood of saliva, his mouth turned bitter with adrenaline —

He felt his eyes widen and his mouth drop open as the ‘saber sliced into his side.

From somewhere, Sasha screamed in wordless fury and a shout from Garazeb too, rough and panicked.

No, he thought, narrowed his eyes, and, with a mighty heave, dragged his bo-rifle upwards. Not like this. No.

Years ago, after he’d accepted the bo-rifle from that Honor Guardsman, he’d sat in his quarters aboard a ship he now could no longer name and he contemplated the weapon in his hands. It had been a symbol, then, of his determination and strength and dominance — and, too, the terror of Onderon and the horror of Lasan. He’d modified it after as much to fit it into the cold aesthetics of the Empire and wear it as a trophy as he did to forget where it had come from, as much as he could. He’d ripped off the trappings of the Lasat he’d defeated and machined a different shape for it, sleek and soulless, a weapon of murder. Something that reflected him, as he was, as he had been in that moment.

He wished, briefly and fiercely, a split second now, that he would’ve had the chance to return it to its former state: to honor where it had come from, as he never had before. Perhaps Sasha would do it for him, he thought, with Garazeb at her side, teaching her.

But he couldn’t hate the design he’d crafted now, not when it was so useful as it was, the bladed end arcing upward and slicing cleanly through flesh and bone. He'd always kept it sharp.

The Inquisitor howled yet again as its ‘saber clattered to the ground and the arm that held it followed with a dull thud. It curled in on itself, groaning, mutilated limbs tucked against his chest.

Kallus stumbled back, his body no longer supported by the other being as he had been, locked in battle, and found himself tipping backwards. His body felt like a marionette with cut strings, collapsing without anything to hold it up. His head cracked against the duracrete and he once again tasted blood in his mouth. Had he bit down on his tongue? Or, no — he’d never stopped tasting the blood, he thought. It had always been there. His teeth —

He blinked up at the bright, clear skies of Vaal. Clouds swam above him and sounds echoed around him. He felt both stretched thin and too airy, empty, like candy floss. Had Sasha ever had candy floss? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think he’d been to any planet with her that he’d seen it. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had it. As a boy, surely —

There was another thud near him, dull and metallic both. He wanted to turn to look at it, to investigate, but his head felt too  heavy to move.

Strange. His tunic felt wet. Why was his tunic wet? The skies above him were so blue, surely it hadn’t been raining —

Sasha’s face appeared above him, bloodied all down one side and pale. Her eyes were huge. He could feel her small hands pressing against his side, hard. It didn’t hurt and that was strange too, because he thought it was supposed to hurt. It should hurt, that being had sunk its lightsaber into his side, had cut in, aimed to slice him in two, it should —

He raised his good arm to tuck a bit of bloodied hair behind her ear. His hand was shaking as he went but that was okay. He felt a smile tug at his mouth, fond. He told her, “It’s okay, mishka. It’s okay.”

“No,” she said, flat and still. It was like the surface of a lake, fed by a river, he thought. It was calm on the surface, but below —

“No,” she said again, “you can’t. You promised.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I can’t. I wanted to. I’m sorry. Garazeb is here, do you see? He’ll take care of you for me. He’ll protect you, as I did — better. It’ll be better this way. You’ll see. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Batya,” she said and it was — it was —

He blinked. Was there blood in his eyes?

Father, was what, he thought and then it skittered away from him, shy, afraid. He tried to grasp at it with both hands but his hands did not move. What? Again, there was —

Father was what she meant, she said — father, in the tongue of his mothers —

Oh, he thought. Oh, my dear one.

Me too, he thought. Me too.

She wasn’t crying, his fierce, wonderful, terrible child, but her cheeks were flushed and her voice was growing thicker with each word.

His fingers were still tangled in her bloody hair and he pulled them free to trace the lines of her small, dear face. He touched the hollow of her eye, the line of her brow. He ran his thumb just below the keloid remnant of the D batch girl, tall, severe D005. It was pale pink still but someday it would fade to white with age, he thought, and he wouldn't be there to see it.

He wouldn’t get to see it. His little girl — his bear cub — his Sasha, all grown up —

“It’s okay,” he told her again.

“I don’t want this,” she said. Her hands were still pressed into his sides and her blue, blue eyes were fading, the color beginning to leach from them, and, oh —

Oh, he thought. It was him. The color was fading because of him. The darkness was him, because he was dying.

He touched the edge of her scar again. He said, “You’ll be okay. I’ll always be with you. I’ll always be with you. You’re okay. My perfect girl —”

“Batya,” she said.

“Tell Garazeb — I want you to know —”

Small, blood-slicked hands cradled his jaw and Sasha whined in the back of her throat, an awful, hurt animal noise. She held his face and pressed her forehead, hard, against his.

“Please,” she whispered. “Batya, please —”

“I know I never said it, but I did,” he said, haltingly, “I did, I do — both, both of you — so, so terribly. I love you,” and he let go, free falling into the warm, fathomless dark.

Chapter Text

A steady but shrill beep penetrated the fog as Kallus found himself swimming absently back towards consciousness. An antiseptic yet coppery smell universal to all medical facilities was there too, so strong that it felt like he could taste it, like it was coating the back of his throat with every swallow.

His eyes cracked open and he blinked repeatedly until his blurry, too bright vision cleared some. He was staring up at a sort of craggy ceiling, almost popcorn-like, some sort of grey-white textured plaster. It was heavily pock-marked, as if it had been eroded by the elements overtime.  He stared upwards and tried to focus. His head felt waterlogged, too heavy for his shoulders, so he supposed it was a good thing that he was lying prone on his back.

There was a buzzing in his ears and the half-formed thoughts skating across his mind kept themselves just out of his reach. He was so tired. Why was he so tired?

He slipped back under the surface of his thoughts, into the dark of his mind, where he drifted in the aimless current, feelings and images in an ebb and flow he could not follow. It took quite some effort to claw himself back out of that place and he thought maybe he’d been asleep, then, but couldn’t recall. Had it just been the moment between one blink and another? The beeping was louder, though, the smell somehow even stronger, and his eyes opened with significantly less effort. He wondered if someone had turned down whatever med dosage he was being pumped to the brim full with, or if he was just becoming used to whatever it was.

With his new awareness, he was able to look around, tipping his head this way and that. He was in a small, single room, on a medical cot, with an array of machines humming and chirping away around him. The door to his room, he saw, was barred — or, more accurately, the small window out of the door was barred. The door, he assumed, was simply locked and most likely inaccessible from his side of the room.

Was he in the medical wing of a jail? It would make sense: a twist of a wrist showed that he was bound to the cot — though bound was perhaps too strong a word for the softly lined cuffs ringed his wrists and attached to the bed rails on either side. His feet, however, he could feel were free of restraints, and hanging, just slightly, over the end of the cot. They were warm; someone had put socks on them.

Both hands had IV lines leading back to the machines too, and there was a third in the crook of his elbow, he discovered, as he moved on to an inspection of his body when the room proved less helpful in information gathering. A blanket was draped over his legs, stockinged feet peeking out the end; and, as he looked down the length of himself, he noted that his torso, from below his navel to just over the bottom of his pectorals, was swathed in bandages. They didn’t look bloody or dirty — he might even call them freshly changed — but something looked odd about it. At first he thought it was the angle until he realized that it was not the bandages but his chest hair that had caught his attention; or, rather, the lack thereof. There were bald patches where he was attached to various wires and leads, and he felt an irrational burst of vanity. Someone had shaved him.

Beyond those thick bandages across his middle, he couldn’t see any other damage, and nothing felt particularly painful. He ached, of course, all over. It was a dull sort of pain, the kind that suggested that it could be much, much sharper and, yes, now he was feeling a bit of difficulty breathing. Something was pinching at his nose, which he suspected was a nasal cannula, but he couldn’t reach up to investigate it.

He rolled his head gently back and forth on the cot, looking about the odd, locked room in confusion. What was happening here? He was well taken care of, clearly, but restrained nonetheless. There was an inherent warmth to the place, and the care of his body — besides the chest hair, whispered the vain voice — which clearly indicated that he was not within the embrace of the Empire. But who else would have him like this?

Kallus turned his thoughts inward, trying to collect what information he could find there. What was the last thing he remembered? Everything was fuzzy and ephemeral as he tried to inspect his most recent memories. He couldn’t hold onto anything for too long, like he was grasping at water. 

Rain, he thought then. That was something he remembered. Rain, and lots of it — a downpour, cold and pelting, something that was a kissing cousin to hail — a small hand in his, fine boned and strong, steady, sure —

Sasha!

He jerked up in the bed, the monitors around him losing their gentle beeping with his agitation and upset. He couldn’t get far, trapped as he was, and the thrashing of his body did more to hurt and tire him than anything but —

Where in the godsdamned hell was his child?

The door to his room opened, the telltale sound of old-fashioned, metallic tumblers unlocking preceding it. The noise was faint, but he’d been looking for a clue and had recognized it with ease, and then a Mirialan woman in a white tunic with a matching headcovering entered. She had a blaster at her hip, incongruous to the otherwise sterile garb of a medic.

Prison ward, he thought again, with more conviction now. He focused on calming his breathing, dropping his heart rate back down, and he began to gather intel, the coldly rational part of him gladly taking the reins. 

The Mirialan woman approached him in a manner that suggested she was wary of him, stepping slowly and cautiously. She moved at a slight angle, keeping herself away from his legs though he couldn’t tell if it was because she was keeping clear of a potential threat — he was no Lasat, but his legs were long and he’d taken down his fair share of opponents grappling with them — or if it was just her approach to the machines around him.

She smiled warmly at him despite her movements and started tapping away at the machine to his left.

“It’s good to see you awake, Agent Kallus,” she said. Her voice was warm too, and she sounded genuine enough when she said it. She turned off the monitor she was working on and circled around him to the others on his right, shutting those off as well. 

This was the first mistake.

He stayed silent, blinking in faux confusion.

The Mirialan's tattooed brow pinched. “Agent Kallus?

“Where am I?” he eventually asked, trying to infuse as much uncertainty and sincerity into his voice as he could. “I’m — what — what happened?”

It was textbook: give as little as you can, he thought, just enough for them to begin to trust you, just a little until they started to let their guard down. It would be easy enough, these first few steps. He truly didn’t recall much of anything, and if he got her to tell him, it would only help him in both avenues of attack.

“You don’t remember?” the Mirialan asked.

He shook his head and then —

No, that was wrong. There was something, he thought. Had Garazeb been there? There’d been an alley, he could almost picture it, and he’d been on his back then too, Sasha, wounded, above him, and he thought he had heard Garazeb’s voice. The warmth of his fur, half-forgotten from that moon —

“You’re in an isolation room,” she was saying, pulling off the monitor leads that were against his chest and then taking one of his wrists gingerly in her hand, her fingers pressing lightly against his pulse. She glanced at a chrono on the wall but looked back at him very quickly. She didn’t want to take her eyes off him for too long. She said, “I can’t tell you where, as you haven’t been cleared for that information by Rebellion leadership. Truthfully, we were beginning to worry that you wouldn’t wake up. It’s been a few months.”

“Oh,” he said, unsettled and determined not to show it. His eyes flicked around the room again and up and down his own body. He was thin but he’d been thinner than he ever used to be for quite some time, meals inconsistent on the run as they’d been before — before. Either way, he couldn’t tell the passage of time  and corroborate what she said from just a single glance.

“I’m happy to see you hanging on to consciousness now, though,” she told him. “You’ve been having a bit of trouble with that.”

He swallowed the question he wanted to ask — he’d woken before? He had no memory of that — and frowned just slightly instead, blinking.

The Mirialan woman released him from her light grip with a quick little pat. “I’ll just go grab the doctor, shall I?”

He watched as she left the room, as the door shut behind her and there was no tell-tale clank and clunk of tumblers falling back into place with the turn of a key. This was the second mistake.

Kallus dislocated the thumb of his right hand with a practiced motion. He slipped his hand through the soft binders and the IV line on the top of his hand caught and was tugged free. It left a small trail of blood on the inside of the cuff and then on the sheets of the cot as he wiped the smear of red off his hand. He ignored the twinge of pain this caused and didn’t bother with more, knowing that it would stop soon enough on its own.

Using the middle and index fingers of his now freed hand, he deftly pulled the IV from his left hand and then grappled briefly with the old-fashioned lock on the binder. He reflected, briefly, how lucky he was that the tech around him was proving to be particularly antiquated. He would’ve popped both thumbs out if he needed to but he was glad not to.

He pushed his right thumb back into position with a wince and then pulled the third and final IV from his elbow. Finally freed of all the restraints, wires, and tubes keeping him in place, he carefully sat himself up in the bed. His clearly immensely battered torso protested loudly despite the drugs still coursing through his system.

Next, he reached up and, yes, there was a nasal cannula there supporting his oxygen intake. He pulled it out, more gingerly than he had with the IVs and breathing carefully and evenly as he did so. He couldn’t pull in a full breath, his lungs not quite reaching their complete capacity, but he had always had above average breath control. It had, of course, been brutally learned in his advanced interrogation technique classes, where the trainees had doubled as test subjects for each other, but he was proud of the skill despite its dubious origins.

When he’d pulled the cannula free, he’d felt a not insignificant amount of beard growth, which lended credence to the medic’s statement that he’d been unconscious for some time. He touched his head now too, skimming his hands over his scalp. While no one had tended to his face, someone had ensured that the style he’d adopted on the run had been maintained: the back and sides were all shorn close to his skull and the top length was loosely bound in a knot.

He swung his legs slowly around and planted his feet on the ground, waiting for his body to settle and calibrate to this new normal. His shoulder hurt, now that he was upright, but a visual inspection turned up nothing glaringly obvious and it was not nearly as painful as his torso and lungs, which practically burned now with the light exertion of his small movements. He resisted the urge to peel back his bandages and look at what lay beneath for clues.

It didn’t matter what had happened, only that something had; and that he had not only been separated from Sasha for an unknown amount of time but that they were in parts unknown with an unknown captor. The nurse had said Rebellion leadership, he knew, but, once, that was what he would have instructed an Imperial medic to say to a high value target who had just emerged from unconsciousness.

Sasha was his priority. He needed to get to her and then he could finish his assessments and begin a plan of action.

Kallus padded quietly and carefully on his socked feet to the door. Through the small, barred window, he could make out an empty corridor, the walls beyond the same sort of craggy, pock-marked grey-white as the ceiling had been.

He had a flashback to the Farm, its identical hallways stretching interminably on, nameless horrors at either end, and the rush of feeling, cold and furious, that followed made his hands shake. He knew it could have been the adrenaline of the moment, too, but the thought that something had happened to Sasha — if anyone had hurt her —

He’d burned an entire facility to ash and bare steel for her once. He’d damn well do it again.

The door opened as easily as he had suspected it would and Kallus ducked into the hall. He pressed his back against the wall and stepped quickly to the left, hoping that he chose correctly. 

He had, he was pleased to see, shortly thereafter, when the corridor curved suddenly to the right and let out into what looked to be a small triage room. There were a handful of medical cots and monitors, and it was completely empty except for two powered down med droids. They had both clearly seen better days, chipped paint and dented steel.

Kallus grabbed the first weapon he came across, a small scalpel left behind on a medical tray, and started towards the only door in the room.

Unfortunately, just as he was reaching for the keypad beside it, the door slid open and he came face to face with a Bothan about his height. For a split second, they stared at each other in shock. Kallus recovered faster and immediately reached out to grab the front of the Bothan’s jacket, spinning ve about so that vis back hit Kallus’s chest. He grunted in pain but curled his arm around the other being, locking ver in place and pressing the scalpel into vis neck. He couldn’t tell if he punctured vis skin — it was thicker than a human’s, he knew, so he didn’t think he had. He just hopped the motion carried the threat adequately.

He started to back them up, away from the door and the other beings standing there. It was the Mirialan nurse, just behind the shoulder of a dark-skinned humanoid, female-presenting and dressed in a similar manner to the nurse but lacking a visible weapon.

The Bothan in Kallus’s arms was the outlier, he thought, glancing down at their relatively normal spacer garb and the dual blasters strapped to vis upper legs. Ve had vis hands up, placating, and he figured he had a guard in his grip and not another medic.

For a moment, the room was completely silent as they all stared at one another.

Kallus wondered what kind of image he presented, with his bandaged torso and deeply unfortunate chest hair, his socked feet and that beard growth he’d felt when he’d freed himself from the cannula. He was grateful that someone had the presence of mind to put a set of sleep trousers on him as he had laid abed, unconscious. He was sure, no matter the threat he was, if he’d been in underpants, with his bandages and skinny legs and looking he had some sort of mange, he thought a bit hysterically, he’d be laughed right back into his little medical holding cell and locked away forever, the lunatic ex-Imp, shuttered away until he could be dealt with.

He backed himself and the Bothan up until his shoulder blades came in contact with something. Medical equipment, he guessed, given that it moved slightly when he hit it. He felt wild-eyed, mad and short of breath.

“Oh,” said the Mirialan nurse at last.

“Keo,” said the humanoid, their alto voice steady. “Perhaps you should go send for General Draven.”

“Of course,” she said.

“No,” said Kallus. “No one goes anywhere.”

“Okay,” said the nurse. She smiled but it was shaky, and she stayed rooted to the spot.

“Agent Kallus, I’m Doctor Arrowroot,” the humanoid said. “I think it would be best if you let Officer Baeling go, and sat down, so I could examine you. You’ve been comatose for some time —”

“No. I don’t care,” he said. “There’s a child. A girl. Sasha. Where are you holding her?”

The doctor and the nurse exchanged a quick look. The nurse, Keo they had said, made to step away again.

“Stop,” he said. “Don’t. Tell me where she is.”

“Agent Kallus,” began Arrowroot soothingly, “if you would just let Officer Baeling go, I’m sure we — ”

Kallus tightened his grip on the Bothan guard — his recently dislocated thumb protested at the movement but he paid it no heed — and pressed the scalpel in a little closer. The guard grunted. Kallus said again, “Where is she? Where do you have my daughter?”

There was some sort of commotion beyond them but Kallus kept his eyes locked on the two women. Keo had her hands raised to her shoulders, palms out, her shaky smile in direct contrast to the placid expression that stilled Arrowroot’s face. They were nervous and they were stalling for time, he knew. They had probably managed to signal for help, somehow, the minute he had gotten his hands on their Officer Baeling.

And it was working, he knew that too. He was too weak to get past them, but he wouldn’t allow this chance to slip through his grasp. If they knew he was this capable, even as drugged and disoriented as he was, they would up their security measures. His only hope, now, was to use the Bothan guard in his hold to barter for Sasha.

But, of course, a doctor, a nurse, and a guard did not a Rebellion leadership make. He needed to stall too, keep his distance and his grip, despite his fading body, until the ones with the power and the knowledge arrived to negotiate. 

Were they even Rebels? whispered the mean, paranoid part of his mind, that he could never really shut off and had begun, at the end, to sound like Thrawn.

You don’t know who has you, said the voice, not truly. Do you?

Shut up, he thought, fingers flexing on the scalpel, in the clutch of cloth from the Bothan’s jacket. Shut up, shut up, shut up —

Arrowroot was saying something, stepping forward with the nurse Keo, each of them holding their hands up now, and Kallus couldn’t quite hold on to what they were saying, his focus fading in and out. He pressed closer to the Bothan, half to restrain, half to keep himself upright.

Behind Arrowroot and Keo, five new beings slipped through the doorway, all with blasters raised and trained on his head. More guards, he knew, and he wondered if they were authorized to take those headshots they were ready for.

Another humanoid strode in, nodding briskly to the assembled guards and Arrowroot and Keo as they greeted him with crisps sirs before standing in front of the medics. He was tall, though not as tall as Kallus himself, and he had a sort of firm, no-nonsense and severe set to his face as he observed the action around him. However, when his gaze landed on Kallus, something in his eyes brightened, just slightly, and they flicked to take in the scalpel in his hand and then his socked feet. The corner of the humanoid man’s mouth ticked up.

Kallus blinked, confused. 

Behind the man, a few more guards appeared, lining the hallway or whatever was on the other side of the open door to the triage room. Kallus wondered just what kind of threat they perceived him to be, and if he should be flattered they brought so many to take him down.

A humanoid woman was the next being to enter. She went to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tall and Severe. She was dressed all in white and the way she wore her red hair was particularly distinctive. If he was her head of security, he would have long ago advised her to change her appearance up so she was not so easily recognizable. 

Just what in the galaxy had he done to earn an audience with Mon Mothma herself?

Turned coat against the Imperial Security Bureau, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the Empire itself, ran counter intelligence for half a year, and then capped it off by stealing a prototype weapon and torching the facility it had been made in before disappearing into the galaxy without a trace for two years, he thought and snorted.

Tall and Severe arched an eyebrow. “Something funny?”

“Just wondering how I’ve earned these honors,” he said with a tight smile and a jerk of his chin towards the assembled beings.

“Good to see you up and about, Agent Kallus,” said Mothma, ignoring both of them. “We’ve been waiting for you for sometime.”

“I heard,” he said, rather than demanding to know just what, exactly, the godsdamn hell was going on. He could feel himself fading fast and he was so angry that his chance had been blown like this, in the crush of bodies in this triage room. Where was she? What had they done to her? He was tired and angry and he wanted to scream until he lost his voice. “I don’t care.”

Mothma and Tall and Severe — the general Arrowroot had told Keo to send for, perhaps, he thought, Draven, was it? — exchanged a look.

“I’d heard you were mean,” said Tall and Severe. He was smirking again, like that delighted him somehow. “But I was led to believe you were unfailingly polite about it.”

“Not right now.”

“Pity.”

“Gentlemen,” began Mothma.

“Enough. Where is my daughter,” ground out Kallus.

The pair exchanged another look. 

“I imagine she’ll be around soon,” said Tall and Severe. His face had changed yet again, this time to something a bit fond. Mothma looked it too, and Kallus felt a sort of emotional whiplash. What in the stars was happening? Tall and Severe was saying, “Quite the little pistol you have there, Agent Kallus.”

“If you’ve hurt her,” he said, “I will burn this place to the ground.”

“I’ve no doubt,” said Mothma. “But I assure you, Agent Kallus, we would never, ever harm a child.”

“Even if I’m the father?” he asked.

She frowned, her eyes sad. “I’m sorry, Agent Kallus, that you even have to think that. Your past is not one that anyone could ignore, I know, but I also know what you have sacrificed for us, for the Rebellion —”

There was a commotion from beyond the triage room, muffled words and a few grunts. Kallus craned his neck to see what was going on, but the guards behind Mothma and Tall and Severe were blocking his view. 

Someone said, loudly, “You can’t go in there —”

“Batya!” a voice shouted, high and clear, and he stiffened, his grip tightening once again on the guard and his little stolen scalpel.

Sasha came rocketing through the assembled beings, ducking around the legs of the guards blocking her ingress and leaping over one’s shoulders with ease, but she didn’t make it past Tall and Severe as she tried to burst through him and Mon Mothma. He’d been ready of course, had said she’d be along with that strangely fond smirk of his that raised Kallus’s hackles — that was his child — and had obviously been warned in some capacity beyond Kallus’s awareness; he had grabbed her, too, with an ease that suggested he’d been around her more than just in passing. He’d plucked her from the air despite the fact that she had been moving with Force enhanced speed and feral determination, and even the most agile of beings didn’t often stand a chance when his girl sprung on them unawares. Kallus would be impressed if he wasn’t so distressed.

His Sasha, frightened and alone amongst these Rebels, no idea how they’d been treating her, or who had her in their care —

Tall and Severe tucked her against him, under his arm, not unlike a sack of tubers, as she kicked and wriggled furiously, spitting curses in an amalgamation of Ruusali, Huttese, Bocce, and Jawa trade talk that would make a lesser being blush. He, though, was unperturbed and merely offered a sharp click of his tongue as he said, “Calm yourself, young lady, it’s okay.”

“Stop pointing weapons at him!” Sasha shrieked. Her face was bright red with rage. “Let him go!”

Tears sprung to his eyes, prickling. He said, “I’m okay, mishka.”

Her hair was back to that dishwater dirty blonde of hers once more, the pink washed out, and it was a little longer than she’d been wearing it at the end, just at the tops of her thin shoulders. It was uneven; she must’ve got her hands on a knife again. She was bigger than he remembered, too, perhaps an inch or two taller, and her face had filled out some, gained the baby fat in her cheeks she always should’ve had. They hadn’t much during their months together, always scraping by, and no matter how small a portion he ate to ensure she got the most, she’d always burned through what calories she consumed. He’d wondered if there was something to do with her Force usage there too. And then, before —

Before —

“It’s okay,” he said.

He released the Bothan guard, giving ver a little push forward as Kallus was standing with his back to the machinery and couldn’t move away himself. He held his hands up and, carefully making eye contact with Tall and Severe, dropped the scalpel. It clattered to the floor, tinnily.

Three guards came forward, moving quickly to subdue and secure him, and two went to grab his arms while the third ducked down for the scalpel.

“Wait,” said Tall and Severe at the same time Arrowroot piped up, “Is that really necessary?”

It wasn’t, Kallus knew. His legs felt like barely set gelatine and he honestly hadn’t known how much longer he would’ve been able to keep himself upright, even with the Bothan taking more and more of his weight. But he thought it made the guards feel better, taking the big, bad Imperial into their custody so he couldn't do anymore damage to the Bothan that was patting at vis neck.

But they made to take him in hand; and perhaps while Arrowroot had been cautioning them that he was truly no threat, Tall and Severe had another motive, and that motive was thirty kilos of furious Jedi youngling who thought something was about to happen to Kallus.

With extreme prejudice, Sasha elbowed Tall and Severe in the groin. While he’d been prepared for her arrival, he’d clearly not be ready for the deadly combination of her Force, and genetically, enhanced strength and the terribly sharp elbows of your average twelve year-old human, nor the way she would chose to apply those things. She was unceremoniously dropped to the ground and she rolled into it, popping back up to sprint the rest of the way forward to the guards closing in on Kallus.

She popped the guard on the ground in the side of the head, at the temple, and then hamstrung another with a solid, vicious kick to the back of their knee, sending them to the ground before their fingers could close around Kallus’s wrist. The third guard, the only one who’d managed to get a hold on him, one webbed hand around his bicep, was brutally punched in the throat. They immediately released his arm to grab for their throat, gasping for air.

Sasha dropped to a crouch in front of Kallus. There was a two foot semicircle clear around him now, the injured beings falling back, as they all stared at the small child before them. She was holding the scalpel Kallus had had, flipped into her preferred reverse grip, arm raised in front of her and parallel to the ground with the blade pointing out at the assembled beings. From the back of her throat, she growled.

No one moved, staring wide-eyed at them, confused and unwilling to hurt the child that had absolutely no problem hurting them.

“Mishka,” he said. He sank shakily to his knees behind her. He didn’t reach out, too afraid to try to touch her small, trembling shoulders. He said, “Sweetheart, put the scalpel down.”

From the main entrance of the triage room, there was more movement as additional beings started filtering in and Kallus wanted to snap and snarl himself, to demand that the room clear out, that they not make a spectacle of him and his perfect, traumatized little girl.

“Sasha,” he said.

Shuffling footsteps, heavy and large, approached them but Kallus didn’t look up, his eyes locked on Sasha’s narrow back. Form the corner of his eye, he could make out the brown-beige fabric of Tall and Severe’s uniform trousers, apparently having recovered from Sasha’s surgical strike, and there was someone else in his shadow, larger and familiar, but the pain meds that had been keeping him aloft were ebbing from his system and he found himself flagging terribly.

“Sweetheart,” he tried again. His vision was wobbling. “Mishka —”

She hissed and spit, like a lothcat with a pulled tail, as Tall and Severe and whomever was in his shadow stepped closer yet. She shifted slightly in her crouch, rocking her weight back onto her heels. Her free hand slipped back to press into the floor, fingers spreading wide against the ground, bracing herself and providing leverage for whenever she inevitably sprung upwards and out. Her attack was practically a guarantee, the pair of them cornered, wounded animals in an unfamiliar, hostile place.

Kallus remembered it then, all in a rush: the alley on Vaal, the Inquisitor at the mouth of it, Sasha behind him. He remembered the heat of the being’s lightsaber against his leg, his arm. The taste of blood in his mouth, his teeth on the ground, and there’d been something bitter and metallic above the blood, like he’d put the muzzle of a blaster in his mouth. 

The Inquisitor had lost a ‘saber and then a hand to Sasha, and it had tossed her through the air like a package of tuber crisps. The sound she’d made as she’d hit the wall — it echoed in his ears now, over and over and over. The crack and snap of her leg, the blood on her face —

Unconsciously, he touched his side. It had tried to cut him in half. It had almost succeeded, before he’d removed its remaining arm, and then — what? The sky above him had been blue and Sasha’s face had been pale and drawn and the blood there, like a mask —

He should’ve died. He thought he had. Hadn’t he?

“Miss Kallus,” said Mothma. “Please. It’s okay, dear. You need to let the doctors through, and General Draven and Captain —”

“No! He promised me! You all promised me.” Her voice was sharp, overloud in the small room. Her grip on the scalpel was unwavering. She would kill Tall and Severe — General Draven — before anyone could stop her, Kallus knew, perhaps the person behind him too, the Empire’s perfect killing machine. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him, and you hurt him! He’s hurt!”

“He’s already hurt,” said Draven, almost kindly. “Little one —”

“No!” she shouted again. She was, he realized suddenly, crying. He reached for her but she was too keyed up, confused and on edge and hurting, and he was slow from his own pain. She dodged away from him before he even got close, jerking her body out of reach. She was saying, “No! You’re going to lock him up again! I won’t let you! If you want batya then you want me too. You take me too. You gotta lock me up too. I’m dangerous, more. You want me. He helped you. He’s Fulcrum! You want me! I did the bad things. I hurt people, I killed people. I killed rebels. They told us to. They made it so we couldn’t say no, but eventually it didn’t matter. I wanted to. Once it was the weaker boys and girls. Good soldiers follow orders.”

Someone in the doorway sucked in a breath.

Kallus closed his eyes. He said, sharp, “CPTK-021,” and the room went perfectly silent.

When he opened his eyes again, everyone was looking at him, half collapsed as he was on the floor. Sasha had turned, still clutching the scalpel, her eyes blank and terrible. Her face was too pale, now, and shiny with tears.

Flatly, she told him, “Sometimes, I enjoyed it.”

“I know,” said Kallus. He held out his hand. “Sometimes, I did too.”

Sasha made a horrible, choked sound, dropped the scalpel, and scrambled on her hands and knees towards him. She wrapped her thin arms round his neck tightly, burying her face against him, and collapsed into him with wild, awful sobs.

The force of her collapse was too much for his own weakened body. It took him out of his barely there crouch completely and landed him on his ass. Pain radiated through his entire being, but he held her back just as tightly as she held him. He rocked them softly, running his hand through her fine, dirty blonde hair and pressing kisses into the top of her head.

He wasn’t sure how long they were on the ground before he became aware that he was speaking, repeating “I’ve got you” and her name and “you’re okay” over and over. He was crying too, he realized.

“Papa,” she whispered, her voice raw and hiccoughing unsteadily around her breaths as she cried herself out. “Batya, papa, I’m sorry —”

“Shh,” he said. He cupped the back of her small head, dear, with one large hand and kissed her temple. She shuddered against him. “Shh, shh.”

There were footsteps close to them again and someone sat on their haunches next to their huddled bodies. The being reached one hand out and soft fur brushed against his hand as they too ran their digits down the line of Sasha’s back.

A familiar, beloved voice said, “Hey, now, little goblin, you got that all out? Good, because we gotta get your pop back to bed, okay?”

He turned his wet face up to that voice. Zeb was smiling gently at them, his ears forward and straight up and his eyes hooded. He looked both happy and sad, or as if he had been startled out of laughter by the sight of something solemn. He still had his larger hand on Sasha’s back, just touching Kallus’s own.

“It’s you,” he said, wondering.

“It’s me,” he replied. He leaned in close and slowly, carefully lifted them up together into his arms, like their combined bodies weighed nothing at all. Zeb cradled them against his chest. He said, “It’s okay. I’ve got you too.”

Kallus leaned into the steady, strong warmth of him and passed out.

The next time he woke, he was in bed once again, now with Sasha sprawled warm and deeply unconscious half across his upper chest yet mindful of his wounded torso. Her hair was in his mouth, there was sleepy drool pooling in the hollow of his clavicle, and her feet were little icebergs pressed into his thighs. He felt like he might start to cry again. He’d thought he’d never see her again.

As if she could feel his heart pick up speed at the thought, Sasha mumbled and shifted in her sleep, her hands tightening where she had them fisted against the sheets and face burrowing further into his throat. In return, he held her closer, lifting his chin to tuck her head beneath it, and closed his eyes again.

For a long while, he simply lay there, holding his daughter, listening to those eerily steady breaths of hers, and taking in the warm, familiar smell of her. Gunpowder and sand, he thought, and yoba custards. But there was something else there, too, something stronger, like clean, wet earth and ozone, and he opened his eyes, curious and confused.

He wasn’t, he was shocked to see, in that locked isolation room any longer. Unless he missed his marked entirely, he was in the berth on a ship, gunmetal grey walls and a comfy sleep couch that, inexplicably, felt like home. The ceiling above him was low and it took him a moment to realize that was because there was another bunk there. 

The lights were dimmed, just enough for him to make out some of the trappings of the room. A few posters dotted the walls, though he couldn’t see them clearly, and there looked to be a stack of laundry folded in one corner, waiting to be put away. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept somewhere that hadn’t felt utterly barren, except for Ben’s home, on Tatooine. This place, whenever they were, felt safe like that too.

The door to the berth slid open with a woosh and Kallus tensed for a brief moment, his hands tightening in the tunic Sasha wore, as he turned to look. It was Zeb in the open doorway, his huge frame blocking out most of the light from the hall. They stared at each other for a long moment and he released his grip on the tunic, smoothing his hands down the line of her thin back.

“Don’t worry,” he said, keeping his voice low. “She’s completely out. You won’t wake her.”

“She hasn’t slept so good the past few months,” Zeb offered. “I’d wake up most nights halfway through my own sleep cycle to find her doing calisthenics or meditating in the corner there.”

“Well, I apologize on her behalf,” said Kallus. “I’m assuming she didn’t. She has appalling manners.”

“Eh,” said the other being. “I’ve lived with Ezra. Now that’s appalling manners.”

They smiled at each other and then Zeb slowly, hesitantly, began to step forward into what Kallus was suddenly coming to understand was the man’s own room. The strong, familiar smell, the feeling of safety imbued in the space, the posters on the walls  — how in the galaxy had he not put that together?

And then another fact hit him, and he realized, with a hot rush, that he was in Zeb’s bed.

He thanked all the stars above him that he was already overwarm from both sleep and the little furnace that was Sasha, frigid feet aside, because, if pressed, he would be able to blame his blush on that.

Zeb sat down on the edge of the sleep couch, down near his knees, and reached a hand out. He ran it down Sasha’s back, unconsciously echoing what Kallus himself had just done. He said, “This one’s a little rough around the edges, yeah, but we’ll give her a pass on account of how cute she is,” and smiled fondly at her sleeping form.

Oh, fuck me, thought Kallus.

“How long was I out?” he asked, instead of doing something horrifically embarrassing, like voicing that particular thought aloud, and as a question. This was not the time, nor the place. He’d thought, when he had come to terms with the reality of his feelings, however long ago, in the sands of the Jundland Wastes on Tatooine, that he’d made peace with this. He was happy to love Garazeb, even knowing it would never be returned, and he needed to get ahold of himself. This was Zeb, who had obviously taken care of his daughter, and whose respect, and maybe even friendship, he thought he might someday be able to finally earn. That was enough.

“Three months,” Zeb was telling him. He had looked up from Sasha, though his hand was still resting in the middle of her shoulder blades, between Kallus’s own hands, and he had turned that fond smile on Kallus now. “They had you in a bacta tank for most of it, just pulled you out a ten-day ago.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah.” Zeb’s eyes flicked down to his bandaged torso. “It was — bad. Bad. Did a lot of damage, more than Kanan and Sabine first thought when we got you on the Ghost and started tryin’ to patch you up. Docs say you didn’t need that spleen thingy, but they had to clone you a new lung. That was the  — that was the thing that was pretty touch and go, there. Had me — had us real worried, won’t lie to you.”

“Oh,” he said again. He wasn’t sure what to say. What could you? He’d nearly died  — perhaps had, he thought, given how badly Zeb was impling he’d been fairing. They’d had to clone him a new lung, meaning he’d lost two entire organs to that Inquisitor’s attempted bisection. He almost wasn’t here, in this bunk, with Sasha and with Garazeb. He’d nearly lost this.

Kallus ran a hand through his daughter’s hair again. He kept the other next to Zeb’s on her back. After a moment, he asked, “Could you help me sit up, a bit? I feel odd, lying here like this.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to wake her.”

“I doubt anything short of orbital bombardment would wake her right now,” said Kallus. “Please?”

“If you want.” 

Zeb leaned forward and gently wrapped his large hands around Kallus’s shoulders. They got him situated up against the wall of the bunk while Sasha just shifted and mumbled again in her sleep, sliding down his chest and tucking her face now against his hip. Zeb reached out and tucked a bit of hair behind her ear.

“She’s a good kid,” he commented. “Absolute hell on wheels when she wants to be, probably never should've let her and the rust bucket spend any sort of time alone together, ain’t gonna sugar coat that. But she’s a good kid when she’s not out looking for trouble. Or starting it.”

“Yes, she rather has a knack for it,” Kallus said with a low chuckle. He sobered quickly though, adding, “I hope — I know it couldn’t have been easy, taking both of us in, especially when you had no idea who or what we were.”

Zeb waved him off. “I knew enough.”

He blinked, staring. “Still. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble, for you or for the crew of the Ghost, two ex-Imperials as we are. And she’s — I know she’s a handful —”

“Yeah, like I said, she’s lucky she’s cute, eh?”

“But she’s been through a tremendous amount,” he continued. “And I have such hopes for her. She’s got such potential, and such heart.”

“You both have,” said Zeb. His ears twitched and he lifted a hand to grip the back of his neck. “I mean, you’ve both been through a lot.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes.”

“And heart,” he added “Lotta heart.”

“Oh,” Kallus said again, and he felt wrong-footed and a bit stupid for it. Was that all he had to say again? He felt a blush burn at the tips of his ears and hoped the half-light of the bunk was keeping it hidden.

“Yeah,” said Zeb. 

“She stayed with you?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation. “Here, with you? You looked after her for me?”

“Well.” The other being was quiet for a split second, an odd looking passing across his face, and then he snorted. “I mean, not like she would’ve let anyone else, once she put her mind to me doing it. Stubborn as a bantha, this one, but I imagine she comes by it honest, eh?”

“She’s not mine,” he said, as much a reflex now as anything else.

Before he could correct himself, however, Zeb was rolling his eyes, ears flicking back and forth, saying, “Biologically, yeah, we puzzled that one out from what she told us right at the beginning. I might not know your line back six generations or anything like that, but I like to think I know you, Kal, and that little wild child right there is as Kallus, heh, as they come.”

They both stared down at her. Even in her sleep she was frowning. He ran his thumb along the scar that bisected her face and wondered if he had a matching one, now, across his torso, both of them forever marked. He smiled.

“She is, isn’t she,” he said at length.

“Yep.”

“It’s Alex, by the way,” Kallus said. He glanced up. “My — name. It’s Alex.”

“Short for Alexsandr,” said Zeb. He smirked, but there was a certain soft sweetness to it too, a secret shared. He said, “I know.”

Chapter Text

Kallus spent a day in Zeb’s berth, drifting sleepily. He was cocooned in a world of just Sasha and he, joined occasionally by Zeb, who brought him water and juice and chatted about this, that, and nothing at all when Kallus was awake. He’d faded out quickly, after that first conversation, and knew he’d probably be experiencing it for a while. Zeb had taken one look at his drooping eyelids and had risen from the bed to wordlessly shift him back down on his back. Kallus had few memories after that, though he could have sworn he felt a hand card through the long, loose hair on top of his head.

Sasha hadn’t roused at all, simply shifting whenever Kallus moved, continuing to curl around him and his aching torso, carefully, in her sleep. He was surprised, too, how deeply she slept — while he woke occasionally, drifting, he thought, more than truly sleeping — she remained dead to the world around them, and she had always been such a light sleeper, before.

He didn’t mind. He was happy just to lay abed with her, content to feel her small body move with her breathing, content to listen to her unconscious grumbles whenever he dared to shift under her and disturb her slumber — to know that she was safe and whole and alive. Zeb had said she hadn’t been sleeping well, and so Kallus would let her sleep as long as she liked.

Zeb smiled so fondly at them, too, whenever he stopped into the room to check in. It made Kallus’s chest ache in a different way, full to bursting with emotions he’d long be unable to name. 

Eventually, though, Sasha woke.

It was perhaps a full cycle since Kallus had woken in the berth aboard the Ghost before she finally roused herself. He’d been sitting up in the berth again — it was his longest stretch of time awake thus far — and picking at a bit of portion bread Zeb had brought by, his appetite not quite there. Zeb was, in fact, still there: he’d dragged in a folding chair from somewhere and was sitting with his feet up on the edge of the bed while they quietly talked about some holodrama they’d both seen years ago.

He felt Sasha wake, when she did. She shifted slightly and then stilled, her fingers flexing suddenly where she’d had an unconscious grip on his sleep pants. He gave her a moment to calibrate her senses before saying, mildly, “Hello, sweetie. Are you hungry?”

Zeb shot him a startled glance — even his heightened senses hadn’t picked up the change, which made sense, as Sasha’s breathing hadn’t even shifted, too brutally trained to give that away — and his ears pricked forward. They both waited.

After a moment, she rolled onto her back and blinked up at Kallus, looking far too aware for someone who had been asleep for something like twenty-four hours. He smiled softly down at her.

“Hello,” she said. He tapped her on the nose, and she scrunched up her face in response then sat up. Her eyes flicked to Zeb and then back to him, and something faintly embarrassed crossed her face before it was schooled back into stillness. She said, “No.”

Kallus raised an eyebrow.

I’M NOT, she said.

YOU’VE BEEN ASLEEP FOR A WHILE, he told her.

SO HAVE YOU, she said. Her eyes flicked to Zeb again. She shifted closer to Kallus, but made no move to do or say anything else.

“Garazeb,” he said after a moment. “Would you mind terribly bringing Sasha a bottle of juice and perhaps some redsprout wafers, if you have them?”

Zeb gave him a knowing look and rose from his seat. He said, “Think we might only have breadroot ones. Be right back,” and then ambled out of the berth.

Kallus waited. Beside him, Sasha was chewing on the inside of her mouth, staring down at the blankets that covered them and all but glaring at them, as if they offended her somehow. With a sigh and a roll of his own eyes, he set his portion bread aside and, one-armed, scooped Sasha up and into his lap.

She made a noise that he was hard-pressed to describe as anything other than a squawk and then growled, as if she had realized she’d made such an undignified sound and needed to save face. She tried to wriggle out of his grip, but she was clearly trying not to injure him in any way. She confirmed it when she said, “Your stomach! You’re hurt!”

“I am perfectly well enough to hold my child, thank you,” he said, “and would do so regardless if I was actively bleeding or not, considering the circumstances.”

Sasha froze in his arms and he used the opportunity to adjust his hold, turning her so that he could both cradle her against his chest — which, yes, did protest the movements but he couldn’t care less — and see her face. It was blank, of course, but there were two spots of color high on her keloid-bisected cheekbones and her eyes were darting quickly back and forth.

Gently, he turned her chin up so that she was facing him, even if she wasn’t looking at him.

“Sasha,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

Her mouth twisted.

“Please,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you do it?”

He blinked. “Do —?”

“The Inquisitor,” she said. She finally looked at him and he could see her eyes were wet. “You sent me away. Why did you send me away?”

“Because I wanted you to be safe,” he said.

“I was,” she said, sharp. “I was safe with you, and you sent me away. We could have fought him together. We could have done it together.”

“Sasha,” he said.

“It’s what I’m good at,” she told him.

“Sasha,” he said again. He took her small face in both of his hands. She looked so stricken. He felt tears spring to his own eyes. He said, “I know. You are so strong, and so fierce, and I am so, so proud of you. But it is my job to keep you safe. It’s my job to make sure you don’t have to do the awful things that they made you do, not anymore, and I’m so sorry that that was the way I had to do it. I couldn’t bear — if anything had happened to you, if that being had — I will die before I ever, ever let those things have you again.”

“You did,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. But you are the most important thing in my life, Sasha. I have never loved anything the way I love you. You are my child. You are my daughter. There is nothing I won’t do for you.”

She stared at him. “Daughter?”

“Yes.” Kallus ran his thumb over the ridge of her scar tissue. “Of course. I’m sorry I never said it before, and I’m sorry we never got the chance to — but you are my daughter. I love you.”

Her mouth twisted again, and then she turned in his lap and pressed her face in his chest. She mumbled, “Please don’t leave me again, batya. ”

“I will endeavor not to,” he said, running a hand through her hair. “And I promise — if something happens again, like that or even something smaller, if I am able to, I will discuss it with you; and if I cannot, I will tell you. But you have to trust that the decisions I make are to protect you.”

“Because I’m your daughter.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I will always choose to protect you, because that’s my job as your father.”

“But you promise to discuss it with me if you can?” she asked. “Because we’re partners too.”

He smiled. “Yes. We are. You and me.”

“You and me,” she repeated. “I — I love you too, Papa.”

Kallus blinked hard and pressed his cheek to the top of her head, holding her close. This wouldn’t be the end, he knew, for either of them: they were both too scarred and haunted for anything else. But it was a beginning, a new start, especially for Sasha. She could come back from this. She had, finally, a future that he could see, where they weren’t running from planet to planet, scraping by. He had seen it, like no ago, on Tatooine with Ben but now he could touch it. She would get past this. She would heal.

They sat together in the bunk for a long moment, Sasha cradled in his lap, curled together close enough that a credit couldn’t slot between them, before she pulled back to look up at him.

“What about Captain Orrelios?” she asked.

“What about him?”

She eyed him. There was a suggestion of a smirk about her mouth, barely there, and he had just enough time to think, Oh, no, before she asked, DO YOU LOVE GARAZEB LIKE YOU LOVE ME?

“What,” he said. The tips of his ear burned.

I READ THE LETTER, she said. She scrunched her nose up. “Also, I’m not stupid.”

“What,” he said again.

Sasha started to say something, eyes glinting dangerously, but he was saved by the soft sound of the door to the berth sliding open and Zeb entering. She shot him a look, too knowing as always for someone so small, and scrambled out of his hold to see what Zeb had brought her.

“Like I thought,” he said, holding out a juice in one large hand and a package of crackers in the other. “Only breadroot wafers, but we had that joogan fruit juice you like, goblin.”

Zeb exchanged a look with Kallus above Sasha’s head as she took the bottle of juice and immediately downed half of it. Kallus hoped he wasn’t blushing too badly after his perfect little nightmare child decided to find trouble at his expense.

“Weren’t hungry, hmm?” he said instead of calling her out, or simply expiring on the spot.

MAYBE, she said.

“Hey,” said Zeb. “You know I’m not good at that yet.”

“Sorry,” she said, signing as well. She looked over her shoulder at Kallus.  “Captain Orrelios only has four fingers — and he always did, too — so I’m going to learn a Wookie variant next.”

“That’s very thoughtful,” Kallus told her. She shrugged, as if learning another form of handspeak on top of the one she knew and all the other languages she’d been picking up was nothing at all. It probably was, with how she had been raised — a terribly kind word, he thought, for what had been done to her.

“Do you feel up for a walk?” Zeb asked him. “Doc Arrowroot is here to see you, and Sabine’s got a stew on, Sasha, if you want more than wafers.”

She nodded and he did too, though not as readily. He’d not been up and about since the incident in the triage room a full cycle ago, and that had obviously been fueled by adrenaline more than any real ability to get his feet under him. Zeb, of course, could sense his hesitation and came over as he swung his feet to the grated flooring of the berth.

Holding out one arm, he stood quietly as Kallus reached out and used the offered limb to lever himself up. Sasha watched quietly from near the open door, drinking her juice. She still had that dangerous, too knowing look in her face and Kallus quickly rolled his eyes at her and flashed her a quick sign — BEHAVE.

She sent him a rude gesture in return.

“Ha,” said Zeb. “I knew that one.”

“Sasha,” he said, exasperated.

“What,” she said flatly and, honestly, Kallus really did only have himself to blame. 

He let go of Zeb’s arm and carefully took a few testing steps. Sasha set her juice down and disappeared the package of wafers up her sleeve before coming over and pressing herself to his side. Now that they were both standing, he saw that her head reached the hollow of his sternum. He remembered when she barely came up to his hip. Had it really only been two years since that day at the Farm? It felt both like much longer and no time at all.

While looking down at her, he noticed his patchy chest hair again and grimaced. He’d gotten a hair band —  presumably from Jarrus, the only other being with longish hair on the Ghost — and had been able to tie up his topknot, as well as take a look at his beard in a small hand mirror while Sasha slept. His vanity had been satisfied to see that, while longer than he typically liked, the beard had been as well-maintained as his hair had been while he’d been unconscious, and, if he chose, he would be able to quickly bring back his old style. He was curious as to who had kept him neat and tidy, but hadn’t had a chance to ask yet. The abomination that was the remains of his chest hair, however — 

He glanced over his shoulder at Zeb. He asked, “Could I get a shirt, perhaps?”

Zeb’s ears twitched. “Ain’t a fan of everyone seeing what you got going on under those old Imperial blacks?”

Before he could retort that it had been some time since he’d been in uniform, Sasha cut in.

“They already have anyway,” she said. It was a toss up, then, on whether she genuinely thought she was being helpful or if she was simply making fun of him as she added, “You only had on smallclothes in that tank.”

“Thank you for that, moy mishka,” he said drily.

“Eh,” said Zeb. “Weren’t too bad a look.”

Kallus’s head snapped to look at him, startled, ears burning once more, but Zeb wasn’t looking back, instead rifling through the small chest of drawers on one side of the room. He pulled out a folded t-shirt and handed it over, saying, “But I got you, mate. Always hate when the medics gotta take some fur off to get their patches or whatever on. Be a bit big on you, though.”

It was a warm, burnt orange color, exceedingly soft, with a few holes in the collar. When he gingerly pulled it over his head, it did gape a bit at his neck but the length wasn’t too noticeably long and it did what he wanted it to do. It smelled quite nice as well, though he wasn’t about to say that when he had his little menace eyeing him at his side.

“Thank you,” he said again. “I imagine if your Doctor Arrowroot is here, I’ll be losing it soon enough, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Ain’t gotta fight me on it,” said Zeb. “Now, let’s get a move on, eh?”

They left the room slowly, Sasha tucked under his arm and Zeb walking just a pace behind them, ready, Kallus knew, to dart forward if he started to look like he might not make it. He felt remarkably well, he thought, considering, but he knew there’d be a hard limit to that — one did not get nearly bisected without there being some rather large lingering issues. He was lucky he hadn’t been marched back to the medical facilities of the Rebel base, and told he’d be there for months longer. Frankly, the fact that he wasn’t currently hooked up to multiple monitors, under the constant eye of medical professionals, and on a liquid diet to boot was astonishing.

Sasha kept pace with him as they walked and expertly, gently steered him through the halls of the Ghost. He had to remind himself that she’d been living there while he’d been unconscious, that she’d made this trek daily, no doubt, from Zeb’s rooms to wherever it was they were going.

Beneath the ambient hum of the Ghost, he could make out the faint sound of voices, which grew louder and louder with every step until they slipped through an open door to find themselves in the heart of the ship: the galley. Wren was at the stove, stirring a pot with one hand and keeping Bridger at bay with the other as he tried to taste whatever she was making. Both Jarrus and Syndulla were seated at a small table, Syndulla bent over a datapad with Chopper at her side, and Jarrus listening to the antics of Wren and Bridger. Kallus started at the sight of his milky eyes and the burn across them; when had that happened? Doctor Arrowroot was off to one side, looking at their own datapad as well.

Jarrus, of course, was the first to notice that they had entered the room, sighted or not, and raised a hand in greeting. “Alexsandr! Glad to see you up and about.”

“Thank you,” he said, pausing in the doorway as the rest of the crew turned to take him in. He was glad he’d borrowed that shirt as Bridger tossed him a wave and Syndulla rose from the table to approach him, Chopper wheeling along behind her and beeping companionably at Sasha, who nodded back..

“Hope you’re hungry,” said Wren with a salute of her spoon.

“Not for that,” cut in Arrowroot, with a gentle frown. “I know how you Mandalorians spice things. Bland foods, Agent Kallus, for at least a month.”

“Uh, I know. I helped stitch him up that first time. I’ve got buttered pearlgrain for him,” the girl said, sounding a bit offended. “And some steamed collard greens, if he’s up to it.”

Behind him, Zeb pressed a large, warm palm between Kallus’s shoulder blades. “C’mon, mate, ignore ‘em for a bit.”

“Yes,” said Syndulla, reaching a hand out to gesture him to where she’d been sitting before. “I know the doctor wants to check your stomach again, Alexsandr, and give you the rundown. Then you can relax and eat.”

Faintly bewildered, he allowed himself to be guided by Syndulla to the seat. Jarrus shifted to make room for Sasha to slide in first and then Kallus gingerly sat down, Sasha tucking herself back up against him once more. She was going to be clingy for a bit yet, he knew, and honestly he was quite pleased about it. He was himself rather reluctant to let his girl out of his sight any time soon.

Arrowroot was upon him almost immediately after he was down.

“Shirt up,” they said, barely even waiting for him to comply before their faintly cool hands were at the hem of it, helping him to hoist it up. Brusque but professional, they made quick work of the bandages next.

Kallus looked down, curious as to the condition of his torso. There was a pink line of scar tissue there, about four inches long across the front of his stomach on the left side and perhaps two inches thick. It curved around his side to no doubt be mirrored on his back. It was well healed but that was what nearly three months of bacta tank submersion would do, he reckoned.

“Looks like it’s healing quite well,” confirmed Arrowroot then with a click of their tongue. They dropped his shirt and began to ball up the bandages. “We had the bandages on as a precaution while you were unconscious but I think we can dispense with them. I’ve got a salve for you to apply twice a day, too — there’s no way for you not to scar, as I’m sure you know, but this will keep the skin from getting too rigid.” 

Their eyes flicked, most likely reflexively, to Sasha’s face, before they continued, “I’d like it if you rested as much as possible and kept off your feet for about another week, but, if you’re anything like the rest, I know that probably won’t happen. So I’ve sent some physio recommendations to Miss Kallus’s datapad, as well. I don’t imagine you’ll suffer too badly in mobility, given that you were in excellent shape, if underweight, when you were brought in, but better safe than sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Can I see?” asked Bridger. “The scar, I mean. I bet it’s sick.”

Sasha hissed and Bridger held up his hands, placatingly, said, “Hey, I’m being serious!” and then yelped.

“Chopper,” said Syndulla long-sufferingly.

The droid beeped and whirred, unrepentant. Sasha, Kallus could see from the corner of his eye, was smirking slightly and, yes, that friendship was certainly a match made in at least two of the Corellian hells.

“Of course,” said Arrowroot, obviously inured to the nonsense of the Spectres by now. “As I said to Mx Wren, I’d also prefer you to be on a bland food diet. We’ve had you on an IV nutrient drip until, well, yesterday, so take it slow on those as well. Now, I think that’s everything. Do you have any questions?”

He shook his head.

“Excellent,” they said. “General Syndulla has my comm codes if you think of something. I’ll send Nurse Keo by tomorrow to check in as well. Good evening, Agent Kallus, General, everyone.”

“I’ll walk you out,” offered Jarrus, standing from his seat. Arrowroot offered him a nod and then grimaced when they realized what they’d done, though Jarrus just smirked and waved a hand toward the open doorway. Arrowroot stepped briskly out, the Jedi following behind.

Quiet did not reign long in their wake. Almost immediately, Wren was turning from the stove with a flourish of her spoon.

“Grub’s up!” she called.

In an efficient, practiced sort of dance, the Spectres, minus Jarrus, broke into motion. Bowls and cutlery appeared and were set around the table or on crates — half of them floating, courtesy of Bridger — and Wren dished up servings of her spicy-scented stew into every bowl but Kallus’s, which instead received a small heaping of the sides, apparently. Syndulla brought everyone a glass of blue milk and, with Zeb sliding into Jarrus’s old spot and the others seating themselves either on the other side of the table, at a crate, or on the counter in Wren’s case, the group tucked into their meal with gusto.

“You okay there, Alex?” asked Zeb after a moment, glancing over when he noticed he hadn’t yet touched his food.

Kallus wasn’t, really. In fact, he felt rather like he’d be run over by a speeder.

“Am I under house arrest?” he asked after a moment.

“No,” said Syndulla firmly. “Of course not.”

“Of course not —?”

“No,” she repeated. “But you are on bed rest.”

“Hera laid down the law with the leadership,” said Jarrus as he returned to the galley. Bridger coughed something into his bowl of stew that sounded suspiciously like shouted in Ryl for ten minutes and Syndulla rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored him. Kallus stared around the room.

“Sabine, this smells amazing,” Jarrus was saying, settling cross-legged on the floor near Syndulla to tuck into his meal.

“Thanks,” said Wren. “I was trying out a new recipe.”

“But I don’t understand,” Kallus said. They all turned to look at him again. “Why would you —?”

“You’re part of the crew, Alex,” said Zeb. He jostled Sasha, which in turn gently jostled Kallus. “So Hera made sure they’ll hold off on any sort of debriefing, and you’re gonna be staying here with us until you can keep yourself upright for longer than ten minutes, and not just outta pure spite, neither.”

“Ha,” Wren said. “General Draven loved that.”

“Yeah,” said Bridger. “I don’t think anyone’s ever seen him this excited for anything.”

“You should probably prepare yourself for whenever he and General Merrick try to adopt the two of you,” said Jarrus, nodding his head towards Sasha. 

“Mm,” said Zeb, smirking. “That man’s probably already got the papers drawn up, just waiting.”

“I’m sorry. Why would your General Draven want to adopt us?” Kallus asked, completely befuddled. “And, I don’t — General —?”

“Merrick,” Zeb said with a wave of his hand. “Blue Squadron’s leader, and General Draven’s husband, Ashla bless and preserve him for it. Yeah, Draven’s real fond of both of you, and I think the two of ‘em always wanted a couple of sprogs but never had the chance, you know? So then you two come along, and it just sort of figures, I guess”

“But why us?” he asked again. “He was the man in the triage room, correct? So the only time we’ve spoken is when I was attempting to break out of a secure medical wing. I had a hostage.”

“Yeah, apparently he thought that was pretty funny,” said Zeb. Everyone had the decency to look a bit discomfited by that, though it made Wren snort. He continued, “I don’t think those Intel beings are right in the head. There’s one human who goes around with an old Imperial security droid he reprogrammed.”

Kallus, wisely he thought, did not say that he found that to actually be an inspired idea, and tried to get them back on track. “Zeb. Please. Why does he like us?”

“Well, when we got you both here, they rushed you to medical to get you dropped into that bacta tank soon as they could, and me and Hera and Kanan took the little goblin to meet the brass once she was cleaned up, with a bacta-cast and all,” he explained. “We spent an hour debriefing everyone, and this hellion stole three wallets, a set of keys, pulled a knife on General Draven himself, and announced that Ezra here was in the vents and listening to the debriefing before asking if we would like her to shoot him — all in the first ten minutes. Your kid is now the official mascot of Rebel Intel, by the way. I think she might still have Draven’s credfold, he told her she could keep it.”

He glanced at Sasha. She grinned widely at him, mouth full of stew, which rather answered that question.

Kallus looked back at the assembled Spectres, who weren’t acting like this was at all strange or any sort of cause for concern. In fact, it seemed like this was a rather normal day for them. He blinked rapidly. 

“Everyone,” cut in Syndulla, her voice calm and even. “I know we’re used to this, but I think we need to remember that, for Alexsandr, it’s not been three months since he got here. It’s been one day, for him, and a lot happened in that one day, and everything before that, okay?”

Wren and Bridger both muttered, “Sorry, Alexsandr,” and Zeb reached over Sasha to grasp him, briefly but warmly, by the shoulder.

Sasha poked him in the thigh and, when he looked down, said, EAT SOMETHING?

He ate a few spoonfuls of what was in front of him — bland, but, to Wren’s credit, still quite palatable. His stomach protested after about a quarter of the bowl, however, though he pressed forward for two more bites before giving up and pushing the bowl away from him.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” asked Jarrus now, softly. He was still on the floor but he had his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled beneath his chin. In that moment, he reminded Kallus strongly of Ben, sitting with Sasha in the desert, a whirlwind of sand between them and twin suns above them. He wondered what Ben would do, if he brought Kanan Jarrus to his door — what Jarrus would do, with another Jedi smiling gently at him — and he hoped that he would be able, someday, to find out.

He stared at the table and took a breath. “It’s all a bit of a blur, honestly. We were on Vaal, and there was the Inquisitor. Obviously, you all were there too, but I don’t quite remember.”

“We were all there,” said the Jedi, “but when I sensed a disturbance in the Force, I sent the kids back to the ship to tell Hera to get ready to take off. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew something was wrong. Zeb and I were pretty surprised when we found you facing off with that thing.”

“We got there right when Sasha got hurt,” continued Zeb, “and we watched when it tried to — when it nearly cut you in half.”

“After you took its other arm, you passed out, we thought,” Jarrus said, “and Sasha was in no condition to do anything. I killed the Inquisitor, and we took you and Sasha back to the Ghost. We still didn’t know what was going on, but we knew enough, from what we saw. Me and Sabine got you stabilized while we got into hyperspace, and Hera and Zeb took take care of Sasha.”

Zeb snorted. “Yeah, took care of. Little goblin had it handled.”

Sasha nodded primly.

“I did. I fixed my own leg. Bridger almost passed out,” she added, voice dripping with catty condescension as she reached out to grab Kallus’s abandoned bowl. Across the galley, Bridger himself rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything to disprove it.

Kallus wondered what had happened there, and then realized he probably didn’t need to think too hard on it. She’d been nervous around Ben, too, at first: she didn’t much like other Force users, no matter who they were, and other children had been especially difficult for her. Kallus had always talked up Jarrus, much as he could, knowing she’d be sensitive to an adult in power such as him — but Bridger, a Force sensitive teen she might view as competition for Jarrus’s favor?

No, it didn’t exactly take a hyperspace engineer to solve that particular puzzle.

He dropped an arm around Sasha’s shoulders and she burrowed closer and began to eat what Kallus had left behind. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and stroked his hand through her hair. He looked to Zeb, who was fondly watching them — they were all watching them, some with smiles and some (Bridger) with vague incredulity. Sasha surely had made an impression there.

“What happened next?” he asked.

“We came here,” said Jarrus, though he did not say where here was. “We’d kept you stable enough for the jumps we had to make but when the medics came aboard, we realized you were in worse shape than we thought. The internal damage — well, you’re okay now, Alexsandr, and that’s what matters.”

The smile he’d been wearing had gone a little tight, which told Kallus all he needed to know about that. He could read between the lines, could sense the tension in the room, could see, too, how no one could quite look at him, or at Sasha. It had been bad. After all, he himself had thought he was going to die in that alley on Vaal.

The Spectres must’ve thought he wouldn’t make it, maybe had even been told that he wouldn’t and — what had they done? Had they argued for him? Had they pushed for him to receive treatment for wounds any medic would’ve written off as unsurvivable? He wondered how long it had taken him to get to a place where they were confident he would survive. Almost three months in a bacta tank, injuries like his, a lightsaber wound so nearly catastrophic — the Empire would’ve written off a soldier that irreparably damaged. He’d nearly been there once before, on Onderon.

These beings, these Spectres —

He’d chased them, once. He’d hunted each and every one of these beings down, tracking them across Lothal and beyond. He’d burned with the desire to destroy them, and now here he was: breaking bread with them, sheltered in their home, cared for and protected and saved by them. After all he had done, after all he was, they were here, with him —

Kallus watched them begin to clean up the galley, smiling and joking now as they moved through the space, and he held Sasha a little closer, a little tighter.

He didn’t deserve this, and he couldn’t help but wonder when they would realize.

The days on the Ghost took on a sort of comforting pattern. Kallus had designs to keep himself mostly to Zeb’s berth, until he was cleared for that someday debriefing, but the Spectres weren’t really having that. He did spend the majority of his time in the berth, though it felt like that was simply by virtue of how long he was able to cling to consciousness, and Sasha was often with him then, curled together on that bottom bunk, drifting.

But the Spectres, specifically Zeb, despite making himself scarce at night from his own berth, seemed determined to have him out and about as much as possible. Zeb would bring him into the main hold, sitting next to either him or Sasha at the table and encouraging them to join the rapid fire conversations that always seemed to be taking place as the Spectres came in and out of the space. Zeb would clean his weapon and bring them food as they wanted it, or gather them up and bring them to the galley for the evening meal — the only set meal, it seemed, that the Ghost crew shared in between their busy schedules.

He wasn’t sure if the Ghost had been grounded because of his presence, or if there simply wasn’t a mission for the lot of them. For the first week of his residence aboard, he would see Syndulla come and go most regularly, attending briefings in the heart of whatever base they were at or bent over a datapad in the cockpit as she ran diagnostics with Chopper. Jarrus and Bridger were using this downtime to do Jedi things, he surmised, to which Sasha was often invited, though she declined as much as she accepted, still wary — she preferred to meditate in Zeb’s rooms, he knew, when Kallus himself was napping. Wren and Zeb both had shifts on the base in different departments, with Zeb in security and Wren teaching marksmanship and hand to hand to new recruits. Sasha was also usually invited along with Wren, who assured Kallus she only watched and gave critiques; he wondered how that went over, a twelve year old telling grown beings how to adjust their combat forms.

Still, they all seemed to go out of their way when he was present to include him in their comings and goings — to include him in the lives they had built, as they had obviously included Sasha while Kallus was afloat in the bacta tank. He was, he realized uneasily, being welcomed without hesitation into their family, and he wondered, again, how long it would take until they came to the conclusion that he wasn’t worth the effort — that he had done too much, and all of it terrible.

He tried to put it out of his head, but it lingered, especially when Captain Rex, the old Clone soldier, came around. The first time he had popped by while Kallus was conscious, he had greeted him warmly, with a familiar clap on his back, and then had scooped Sasha up without hesitation, settling her on his hip and seriously asking if she’d be able to take the frozen yoba custard he’d gotten with his lunch, and didn’t eat, off his hands.

Everyone had watched fondly as she’d nodded and immediately tucked into the frozen treat when it was presented to her. Sasha alternated, he knew from Zeb’s stories of her first few months with them, between being frankly obsessed with Captain Rex and extremely wary of him — the reminder of where she had come from, he told Zeb one night as they sat awake together in the galley, a man with the face of her first father figure, though she never herself called the Commander that, as well as the man who taught her to kill.

For Kallus, it was much the same, though his reminder was more stark: this was a man who had done horrible things for the Empire, as Kallus had done, but he had been a tool in a different way: trapped by the things that had been placed in the heads of each and every clone to make them obedient to the will of the Empire. Kallus had had a choice, every step of the way, and it was only Zeb who had pushed him to a different one.

He didn’t deserve the easy forgiveness that Captain Rex, and even Sasha, got from the Rebels. They were victims and, as much as he had been awfully formed by the Empire, he was not the same. 

Kallus wanted to do good, now, wanted to continue on the path he had been making for himself as Fulcrum, wanted to do right by his daughter and her new friends, wanted to honor what Ben had thought of him and told him he was capable of, what he himself had thought he was changing towards, but he knew, once again, it would never be enough. 

His precarious house of cards finally collapsed the day General Draven dropped by the Ghost. It was a week after the incident in the Rebellion’s medical facility, and Sasha was brutally leading Kallus through his physical therapy exercises in the hold of the ship, having taken the exercises being sent to her datapad as license to oversee them. She did a wonderful job, though merciless in her dictatorship of it, and never let him slack. 

“Papa, again,” she said, severely, from her perch on his knees as he completed another set of ten crunches. “One more repetition, then rest and water.”

“Yes, my little demon,” he said. 

She winked at him, a gesture she’d picked up from Zeb, he thought. She was a right terror about him too: she’d been obsessed with hearing stories of him, and all the Spectres, before but now that she could spend time with him and speak to him herself, she was definitely picking up habits and certain attitudes. He was glad to see it, her coming out of her shell more and more, even if he did catch her staring at him when he interacted with Zeb, an exasperated and knowing look in her eyes. Once, after he’d stumbled over the grating and Zeb had caught him with a smile and an abashed look, he’d seen her making a kissy face at them and he’d flushed to the roots of his hair.

While he was being put through his paces, Zeb was sat in the corner, cleaning his bo-rifle before his evening patrol duties and chuckling as he watched them.. One of his ears flicked suddenly and his gaze became distant. He said, “Get ‘em in fast, mate, because trouble’s coming.”

Sasha looked sharply at Zeb and Kallus froze mid crunch, which was when Zeb seemed to realize what he had said was ominous and winced, one hand going to grasp the back of his neck.

“Not that kind of trouble,” he said, contrite. “General Draven’s just outside the ship, arguing with Hera.”

“Oh,” said Kallus. Sasha, her expression relaxed now, poked him in the thigh and he started up again at his last set of ten.

When he completed them and she alighted from his knees to help him shuffle over to a crate for a respite, he could just begin to make out the murmur of voices approaching. He drank his bottle of electrolyte water, eyes on the entrance to the hold.

General Draven’s crisp voice preceded his body, saying, “I promise you, General Syndulla, I just wanted to chat with them, and you can kick me off your ship the minute you don’t like the direction the conversation is going.”

“I’m holding you to that,” said Syndulla as she entered, Draven looming behind her.

Kallus wiped a sleeve over his sweaty brow and began to rise.

“Please,” the tall human said, waving a hand. “Do not get up on my account. I merely wanted to say hello, and formally introduce myself to you.”

He sank back down. From the corner of his eye, he could see Syndulla sit down next to Zeb, her arms crossed over her chest and frowning slightly, and Kallus felt something in his chest tighten at the thought of the two of them keeping an eye on him, protecting him and Sasha from whatever was about to befall them.

Draven sat down on the crate next to him and turned to first address Sasha, who was standing, head cocked, just a meter away. He smiled — somewhat strange on his face, he seemed a man more given to smirking than anything — and reached into his jacket to pull a small, brown package from there.

“For you, little one,” he said, hand outstretched.

Sasha took it and opened to the top, peering in. Her eyes flicked up to Draven’s face.

“Yoba custards,” he said. “Antoc brought them back from his last patrol, and we thought you’d like them.”

THANK YOU, she said.

Draven dipped his head and then said, “There’s also a little something else in there I thought you’d like.”

There was the smirk Kallus was expecting, tugging at the corner of the man’s mouth, as Sasha blinked and then looked back into the package. She shook it slightly, shifting the contents, and a slow smile spread across her face then too.

THANK YOU, she said again.

“Of course,” said Draven.

She folded up the top of the package and glanced at Kallus, who flicked his fingers at her. Like a shot, she was gone, scrambling up the ladder of the hold to the walkway above, where Kanan Jarrus was now standing, and then disappeared into the Ghost.

“Do we even want to know?” asked Jarrus.

“It’s nothing,” said Draven.

Jarrus snorted and began to make his own way down on the ladder, joining Zeb and Syndulla in their corner.

“As I said the General Syndulla,” Draven was saying, turning his full attention to Kallus. It was laser-like, heavy and penetrating. He still had a bit of a smirk about his mouth, though, and his posture was relaxed. Kallus’s shoulders were pulled tight, however, as he spoke. “I merely wanted to introduce myself, as I fear we rather got off on the wrong foot before.”

“I take most of that blame,” he commented.

Draven waved him off, a casual dismissal. “Oh, please, hardly. It was perfectly understandable, coming from a man such as yourself, Agent Fulcrum. I wouldn’t’ve suspected any less from one of my agents.”

“One of your agents?” Kallus parroted.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I’m in charge of intelligence for the Rebellion. I oversee all Fulcrum operations in tandem with Commander Tano, though, of course, I was never your specific handler when you were operating. Lieutenant, now Captain, Andor had that pleasure. I saw all of your transmissions, however, and wanted to thank you personally for your final relay two years ago.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Yes. The intel you provided in those final bursts have been integral to several large scale efforts,” said Draven, “over the past few months, after we had everything decoded. In fact, the final liberation of Lothal wouldn’t have been possible without it, let alone Phoenix cell’s safe flight from Atollon.”

“Oh,” Kallus said again. “I didn’t know.”

“About Lothal and Atollon?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Garazeb told me that they were able to eradicate the Imperial presence on Lothal, with few casualties. But I didn’t realize that the data I had copied so long ago was helpful to those ends.”

“They were,” cut in Syndulla. “There was an ancient map of the sector that was decoded that led us to believe Thrawn was closing in, so we were able to leave without incident.”

“And the liberation of Lothal five months ago,” added Jarrus, “wouldn’t have been possible without the detailed schematics of the dome, and codes that you transmitted that allowed us to overtake it and, well —”

“Blow it straight to hell,” offered Zeb.

“You may have been out of the game, Fulcrum — Alexsandr,” said Draven, “but not so completely as I am sure you thought. The Rebellion owes you a great debt for your service. You risked much to bring us this data, even then, and you risked even more when you — I presume it was you — sabotaged that weapons facility on the Outer Rim.”

“It’s where they made her,” he said quietly. “They were going to make more. I couldn’t —”

From across the hold, Zeb growled.

Draven clasped Kallus on the shoulder. “She’s safe now. You both are. And that particular horror has been wiped out, I assure you. I’ve had our ears to the ground, since you both came here, and there isn’t even a rumor of anything similar anywhere else.”

“Good,” he said.

“Yes,” agreed Draven. He said again, “You risked much for us, Alexsandr Kallus, and I am honored to have you as part of the Rebellion — and as part of my team, in particular. I know you are still not quite ready for your formal debriefing, as General Syndulla keeps informing me, but I wanted you to know that. And I wanted to extend your official commission personally, Captain Alexsandr Kallus, before anyone else beat me to the punch.”

Kallus blinked. “What?”

“Welcome aboard, son,” he said, warmly, while Zeb whooped quietly from the corner and Jarrus initiated a slow clap of one. Syndulla, her arms still across her chest, shook her head at the antics of her crew but still extended a smile to Kallus, whose mind felt both like it was racing and like it was curiously blank.

He couldn’t — this wasn’t — they couldn’t want this.

“Now, I have other duties to attend to,” Draven was saying, rising and clapping Kallus again on the shoulder, oblivious to the tailspin he was in. “Alexsandr, Antoc and I would be honored if you would join us for family dinner on Primeday, so if you could send us a list of your dietary restrictions, that would be splendid.”

“Of course,” he said, entirely out of habit. He couldn’t focus on anything.

“I’ll walk you out, General,” offered Zeb, sending Kallus a quick wink and a warm smile that he barely registered. “I’ve got patrol with Rex.”

“Hmm,” said Draven flatly.

“C’mon, General,” said Zeb with a laugh, “Pretty sure kids can have more than two grandpas. It ain’t a competition between you and Rex for the goblin.”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” said Draven. His chin was tilted up, head held high. “And I’m winning. Alexsandr, General Syndulla, Master Jarrus.”

He and Zeb left the hold and, almost on cue, from somewhere in the ship, Bridger hollered out.

“The murder baby has a new knife,” he shouted, and then screamed. Faintly, Chopper whirled and beeped, and Sasha said, “Oops.”

“That sounds like a nightmare,” said Wren, appearing in the entrance of the hold. “Did General Draven arm Sasha again?”

“I am so not looking forward to her finishing those ‘sabers of hers. Someone’s gonna lose a limb, and it’ll probably be Ezra.” Jarrus groaned, scrubbing his hands across his face, and then rose. “I’ll go take care of — whatever that is, take them all out of a run, or something. Alexsandr, you really should’ve stayed in that coma. It sounds so peaceful.”

“I’m sure it does, dear,” agreed Syndulla, watching as Jarrus climbed the ladder and disappeared in the direction of the shouting and beeping that was now happening. She stood too and approached Kallus, who blinked up at her.

“Want to help Sabine and I with dinner?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said automatically, hollowly.

Syndulla cocked her head to the side. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he said. “No. What just happened?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. She sat down next to him,

“General Draven,” he said. “The Rebellion, the commission. Am I not — am I not your prisoner, here? Why would your Rebellion welcome me, after all I have done? The things I’ve done, before — I should be tried for them. I am a war criminal.”

“Oh boy,” muttered Wren. “It’s finally happening. He's cracked”

“Sabine,” hissed Syndulla.

Kallus ignored them. “Everything you are doing, I know it’s for Sasha. I know she doesn’t understand. She thinks what I’ve done — what she’s done — she thinks they’re equitable, but I know you know they’re not. I’m not the same. I’m not — I should be tried for my crimes. What I did to Garazeb’s people — I didn’t, I didn’t give the order but I was the weapon. I’ve been the weapon for the Empire. What I’ve done to you alone, General Syndulla —”

“It’s Hera,” she interjected sharply. “And yes. You have done terrible things. Yes, you hurt us, you hurt me and my family. But you don’t get to choose how we react to those things. You don’t get to decide whether or not we change our minds about you. And we have, Alexsandr. It wasn’t easy. They’re are days where it’s still hard. But the minute someone asked you to think about your actions, you did. The minute someone challenged you to be better, you did.”

“It’s not enough,” he said. “How can it be enough?”

“It’s not about enough,” cut in Wren, coming over to sit on Kallus’s other side. “Listen, you might be a war criminal, Alexsandr, but you’re our war criminal, okay?”

She shifted, slightly, and pulled out a datapad, tapping away at the screen.

“I imagine Draven being here was all about what you did,” she was saying, “but, honestly, he only has the barebones. I’ve been waiting for this moment since Skystrike.”

“Skystrike?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” she said. “‘Tell Garazeb Orrelios we’re even?’ Please, I knew something was up. So I kept track of all the Fulcrum intel we got as Phoenix Squadron, from that moment until Fulcrum went dark that day. And then after, when Ketsu sent me your arrest warrant, I knew. I knew it had been you, and I didn’t know when or how but I knew you’d find your way to us if you could, so I kept track. I made lists. I made you your own briefing, cold hard facts that you could put your hands on.” She handed him the pad. “These are the lives you saved. These are the worlds you helped to protect. This is the good you’ve done. Because I get it, Alexsandr. Trust me, I get it. You are always going to remember who you were and what you have done — you will never forget that because you will never let yourself forget that. But, sometimes, the only way forward is to erase your own history. And you did that.”

Kallus stared at the pad in his hands, unseeing of Wren’s figures and lists and names. 

Ben had told him he was enough. He had thought he was enough, enough to walk on on his own, but now, with these Spectres, day in, day out, he questioned it. He wanted to believe he had left him behind those years ago in that waterlogged facility, left behind that second, cancerous skeleton and walked forward until the shadow of him stretched thin and disappeared. But how could he be sure? How could he?

“I,” he started. He looked between Syndulla and Wren — no, he looked between Hera and Sabine. He felt a tear slide down his cheek. He said, “I want to do good. I want to leave him behind, the man I was. I thought I had. But he’s still here. He’s still here.”

“Is he?” asked Hera. She reached out and swiped her thumb beneath his eye. “I don’t see him. I just see you.”

After dinner, which Kallus had gone through mechanically with Sabine and Hera, and the rest of the Spectres sans Zeb who was still patrolling, he put Sasha to bed in the top bunk before slipping out and settling himself in the galley, bent over a cup of Sabine’s shig, which Sasha still disdained but Kallus had grown quite fond of. 

He stared at the steaming cup, lost in thought. A few hours out from the conversation in the hold, he found he had better control of himself and his emotions, and he was able to reflect more honestly on what had been said. He appreciated it, where Hera and Sabine had been coming from, if still not quite believing it. But if these people he had so harmed had decided he was worthy of their care and respect, who was he to not accept it?

He could still atone, he knew. He would never be done doing that. But perhaps he could continue to strive to deserve the forgiveness they so freely offered? The work of bettering himself, of learning how to be good and kind, would be a lifelong journey, and one he was proud to embark on. That, he realized, was the least he could do to honor the memories of all those he had harmed before.

It wasn’t for him to decide when enough was enough: it was for him to decide to keep going on the path, and keep going he would, until the end, whenever that would come.

He took a sip of the shig.

“Ugh,” said Zeb, “you too with that stuff?”

Kallus startled as the Lasat sank down next to him at the table, a covered plate of leftover dinner in his hand.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“It’s okay,” Kallus said. “I was just thinking, lost track of my surroundings.”

“Doesn’t sound like you,” Zeb commented.

“No,” he reflected. “I suppose it isn’t. But I feel safe here.”

Zeb smiled down at his food. “I’m glad to hear that, Alex.”

“Was your patrol good?” he asked.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he commented. “So suppose so.”

They sat silently together for a moment longer, Kallus sipping his tea and Zeb picking at his dinner, before Zeb cautiously asked, “You okay?”

He wrapped both hands around his mug and said, “I suppose you heard about the aftermath of General Draven’s visit.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sabine sent me a comm. You okay?”

“I am now,” Kallus told him.

“Good,” said Zeb. “Because Draven was right, and so were Hera and ‘Bine. You ain’t the man you were, and the man you are now — I’m proud to call that man my friend.”

“Am I?” he asked, rather thickly. His eyes burned and he reflected that he’d cried more in the last two years — in the last week — than he’d had in his whole life before this. It wasn’t, he thought, such a terrible thing.

“Of course you are,” Zeb was saying. He had turned in his seat and was facing Kallus, his ears upright and out, face earnest. “I know who you were. I know what you did. And, sure, a lot of it hurt, hurt me and mine, but you’re a better man than that. I’ve always known, well, maybe not always, but you get what I mean. You’re making the effort. You made the effort. You changed.”

“I’m still changing,” he said. “And I’m — I’m honored to be your friend. It means more to me than you could possibly know, Garazeb.”

For some reason, this made Zeb’s ears turn down. He raised his hand to the back of his neck again, that unconscious, uncomfortable gesture.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Was it something I said?”

“No,” the other being said. “Well, a little bit, but you couldn’t’ve known. And it ain’t fair of me to — aw, karabast, I should probably just come right out with it.”

Still, he hesitated, and Kallus turned in his own seat now, tucking one leg up underneath himself. Their knees were nearly touching in the cramped space and Kallus said, probably in far too ardent a manner, “You can tell me, Garazeb. I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

Zeb muttered something and Kallus leaned closer. 

“What?”

“I said, I wouldn’t mind it if you held it against me,” he said.

He blinked. He blinked again.

“What?” he said.

“Aw, karabast,” repeated Zeb. He covered his face in his hands. “This ain’t the way I wanted to do this. Look, you know how I’ve been making myself scarce from the berth?”

“Yes,” he said, slowly. “Are you — you know, it’s, it’s your room, Zeb, and I wouldn’t want — Sasha and I are used to sharing a bed and, honestly, she ends up in bed with me most nights anyway these days, so it’s not — it’s not an imposition, if that’s what you think. I mean, it’s your rooms .”

“No, no,” he said. “That’s not — it’s just that, uh, when you were, uh, out for a while there, Sasha’d given me that notebook of hers.”

“Notebook?” Kallus echoed, and —

Notebook, he thought, a bit hollowly.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, karabast.

“She was real adamant I read it,” Zeb was saying while Kallus was planning the untimely and sad demise of his nightmare of a daughter. It was a shame, but the tiny demon would have to go, and then maybe Kallus himself. “Seemed to think it was important that I did, and, well, it was addressed to me, so. I guess I just didn’t quite know, you know, how it was gonna work between the two of us now, and I got nervous, ‘cause maybe I read too much into it and I didn’t know if you still — wanted me — like that, or if it was just all that being on the run and distance and danger and whatever, and me being the first being to show you — to show you kindness, and I still wanna be your friend, no matter what. But the thing is, Alex, I’m pretty in love with you, and I don’t wanna put you in a tough spot, if you don’t feel that way anymore, but I guess, with everything going on, and you being all self-sacrificing and all that bantha fodder, I thought maybe I owed it to the both of you to say something. You’re both so important to me, and I just — I wanna be in your lives, and I thought you should know.”

“Uh,” he said. He wasn’t — what? “What?”

“I’m in love with you,” said Zeb. He smiled crookedly if sadly. “Have been for a while, I reckon. Maybe ever since that moon.”

“What,” he said again, perhaps even more stupidly than before, he reflected. If he’d been a droid, he’d say his executive operating files had completely failed. “Why? ”

“Why not?” he said. “I know you don’t think too highly of yourself most of the time, but you’re a good man, Alexsandr Kallus. You’re a good man, and a good Rebel. It took you a while to get there, sure, but you did. And I think you’re worth it, both of you.”

“Oh,” he said. “I — I don’t know what to say.”

Zeb’s ears flattened again but he said, gruffly, “That’s okay.”

“No,” said Kallus. He reached out to take hold of his broad shoulders and fisted his hands in the fabric of his jumpsuit now. “I didn’t mean — Garazeb Orrelios, I gave you my heart long ago, and I would never dream of asking for it back. I couldn’t. It’s yours. I think it’s always been yours.”

“Oh,” said Zeb now. His ears twitched. 

“Yes, oh. You have Sasha’s as well, you know. It’s just that — we’re hard, Garazeb. Sasha and I, we’re hard,” he said. It was simple, he thought, but true. He and Sasha were hard, and unlikely to ever get easier, even with all the help they now had. They’d been through too much and done too many terrible things; Kallus had always known that, had accepted it about both of them, but it still didn’t make it any easier to open this door to Garazeb, after everything. But they were hard, and if he wanted out, they would understand. “So I don’t know how you, of all beings, can want to give me yours.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, rather fiercely. “My heart ain’t yours to give. It’s mine, and I did. To you, and that daughter of yours too. I said it before: I know what you did. I know where you come from. And I know it’s — I know it’s a lot, Alex, I know there’s a lot of work to be done, but what in this galaxy is there that’s worth doing, and worth doing right, that ain’t hard?”

They stared at each other. Between them, their tea and food had grown cold; and, around them, the galley and the Ghost at large continued to hum with its ambient, soft noises. Somewhere, Chopper was grumbling at something, and Bridger was snoring, faintly. 

“I suppose you’re right,” Kallus said. He still had his hands on Zeb’s shoulder.

“Of course I am,” he said. He reached up one arm and placed a hand on Kallus’s face, the soft pads of his digits warm on his skin. He slid his hand backwards to then cup the base of his skull. He said, “You’re gonna have to get used to me being right about a lot of stuff, because clearly you can’t be trusted. Honestly, you should really let the goblin call more shots.”

“I should, shouldn’t I,” he said. He felt a slow smile begin to stretch his mouth.

“Yeah.” Zeb stroked his fingers through the fine, buzzed hairs on the back of Kallus’s head. “You know, I always did like that Imperial bastard smirk of yours, but, I gotta say, fatherhood and Rebellion looks heaps better on you.”

“Does it?” he asked.

“It does,” said Zeb.

They stared at each other again.

From the hall, Sasha called, “This is boring, batya. You gonna kiss or what?”

“Well,” he said, the smile on his face fit to break it now. “You did say I should let her call the shots.”

“I did, huh?” Zeb said. “Well, who am I to ignore a direct order like that?”

He began to tilt his head down, and Alexsandr met him halfway.

Chapter Text

Zeb had been strangely cagey for the last few days. Alex hadn’t noticed at first, caught up as he was in Rebellion business — the New Republic, he corrected himself, grinning widely. The New Republic. It would take some getting used to, thinking that, but, oh, it would be so worth it.

They had won, which Zeb had said was a given, even before the Second Death Star fell from the skies above Endor. Alex had been more reserved about it, though he privately hoped against all hope, even as the casualties had felt so high — they’d lost the heroic Rogue One squadron, nearly lost Antoc Merrick too; old Ben of Tatooine had turned out to be the long lost General Obi-Wan Kenobi, and they had lost him too when sacrificed himself to save Leia Organa and Luke Sykwalker, his protege; and so many, many more.

But they had come through the other side, and the Spectres with Alex and Sasha by their sides — and the surprise addition of young Jacen Syndulla-Jarrus just before the Battle of Yavin — had survived, battered, some not quite whole, but gloriously, wonderfully alive and finally free.

Kanan and Ezra, with Sasha in tow, had left shortly after Endor to accompany young Master Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, and the former Kashyyyk Rebel Cal Kestis (now Sasha’s own Jedi master, the two of them apparently meant to be on some Force ordained level, or so Kanan had said) on some sort of Jedi business, while the rest of the Spectres had helped to finish cleaning up the remains of the Empire and beginning piecing together the New Republic. Alex had tried to beg off with Zeb, Sabine, and Rex, claiming that the New Republic didn’t need old soldiers helping to set up a government, but Hera had leveled a glare at them and General Draven had come by to drag Alex himself by the ear to assist in the formation of an official New Republic intelligence agency.

However, Zeb had apparently formally put in leave for both of them to take some sort of vacation as soon as Sasha returned from her Jedi adventures; but Zeb wasn’t telling him anything about it, unusually tight-lipped and secretive about the journey. Alex had tried to pump Sabine for information, and then Hera, but while they each claimed to know where they were going, they wouldn’t tell him. They just said he’d enjoy it.

Alex had complained to Draven one afternoon, who had simply shrugged and said, “That’s marriage, son,” which had, of course, shut Alex up for the rest of the day.

Their relationship was widely known to the greater Rebellion — how could it not, he thought, with the two biggest gossips of the whole fleet aboard the Ghost in Chopper and Ezra Bridger — but they’d barely even discussed marriage among themselves, though Sasha had almost immediately started calling Zeb Dad after that first night on the Ghost.

It gave Alex pause. Was that what this was about? He could feel his face start to go flush, wondering. He would be honored, if Zeb asked, and delighted but he didn’t want to get his hopes up. He focused on his work instead and waited for Sasha to return home.

The Jedi contingent returned to Chandrilla after four months abroad in space. Master Skywalker and Ahsoka had apparently elected to remain behind on the planet they had determined would be the seat of the New Jedi Order, and the others had gladly left them. Apparently, Skywalker and Ahsoka had some rather legendary arguments on what this New Jedi Order would look like, and the rest were sick of it. Master Cal, whose ship the Mantis they had flown on their adventure, had dropped Kanan, Ezra, and Sasha off before setting course back to his personal stomping grounds on Kashyyyk, reminding Sasha as he went to practice her meditation and that he would see her when she returned from her vacation. She’d hugged him and bounded off to throw herself at Alex, who, alongside Zeb and the rest of the Spectres, had been waiting for them to return.

Sasha had stopped growing just after her sixteenth birthday, a source of great disappointment to her when Alex’s collarbone remained stubbornly in her line of vision, but Alex rather liked that his daughter remained — at least to him and Zeb — somewhat pocket-sized.

He spun her around in a full-circle, the girl laughing as she went, before passing her off to Zeb, who swung her up on his back. She’s always loved riding on both their shoulders, even now. She dug her pointy chin in Zeb’s head and said, “So when are we blowing this bantha-jerky stand?”

“This afternoon,” said Zeb. “It’ll be a long flight.”

“Wizard,” she said.

“How was your trip?” Alex asked, watching fondly as Hera and Jacen reunited with Kanan and Ezra as well.

“Whatever,” she said. She reached up to run a gloved hand through her dirty blonde hair, worn now as Alex first had long ago and still did, in a messy top-knot with an undercut. “Saw some ruins, listened to Ahsoka and Master Luke argue about attachment, watched Kanan roll his eyes a lot, beat Ezra in sparring everytime —”

“Fuck you, murder clone,” called Ezra without heat.

Sasha tossed him a two fingered salute, saying, “Up yours, Jabba,” while Hera said, longsuffering, “Not in front of Jacen, you two.”

“Please,” said Ezra. “Like Chopper hasn’t taught him worse.”

“Anyway,” Sasha continued. “Finding the site for the Temple was fun and all, batya, but I’m more excited to go see that Chava lady and the others on —”

She cut herself off abruptly, nose scrunching up beneath her pinkish-white scar tissue.

“Wait,” said Alex. “Who?”

“Karabast,” said Zeb at the same time. “Who told you?”

“No one, Dad, I promise,” she said, though she clearly thought it was amusing that Zeb had immediately started glaring at Ezra. She put her hands in front of Zeb’s eyes, wiggling her fingers. “You know what Master Cal says: it’s not my fault what these see or don’t see.”

Zeb growled, but just faintly, clearly put out. “Well, don’t ruin the surprise for Pop, okay?”

She straightened up on his back and tossed a general salute into the ether. “You got it, Captain Orrelios.”

“Wait,” said Alex again. “So I’m the only person who doesn’t know where I’m going on vacation?”

“Seems like it, bud,” said Kanan. He ambled over to throw an arm over his shoulder. “I wouldn't worry about it. Now, I’m starving. Let's get something to eat before we send these folks off, yeah?”

They took a corvette, borrowed from the Fleet with General Syndulla’s approval. Zeb was still being strange, though not as much now that Sasha clearly knew and seemed to approve of wherever they were going. He was nervous for Alex, mainly, Sasha told him, but felt better that she knew and could tell him it wouldn’t upset him.

“Upset me?” Alex had asked. “Why would it upset me?”

“You’re weird,” said Sasha flatly. While she’d grown out of some habits, she was still seventeen and it didn’t seem like she was ever going to phase out the blunt manner in which she spoke. “And you react to stuff weird.”

“Oh, like you don’t, mishka,” he’d said with a roll of his eyes.

“Yeah,” she’d told him. “But I’m cuter.”

He’d retaliated by grabbing her around the neck and rubbing his knuckles into her head while she shrieked in protest.

It was still strange, these years later, to have this — to have this family, him and Sasha and Zeb. It felt unreal, and there were mornings still when he woke in Zeb’s embrace with his heart beating fast and sweat dripping down his face, convinced it had all been a dream, that one day he would wake in his bunk aboard the Chimera again, with Thrawn staring him down with those blood red-eyes.

Sometimes, he thought it was possible. Thrawn was still out there, after all, one of the few leaders of the Empire who had managed to elude them in the fall of the Empire, in the aftermath of Palpatine’s death at the hands of his old attack dog, Vader. He wondered if they would ever find him. He knew the Spectres still hunted for him, Ezra in particular, who still blamed him for much of the tyranny Lothal suffered.

He tried to put it out of his mind though, and it helped to have his little family around him, laughing and joking and yelling at each other. He still couldn’t believe they’d all managed to survive.

As they got closer to their destination, no matter how Sasha had reassured Zeb, he got more and more jittery. Sasha threatened to sit on him more than once, or to practice her Force persuasion skills on him, which she was assured were some of the best of all the Jedi around.

Eventually, though, they got to wherever they were going. Alex was shocked to see, when Zeb lifted his massive hand from his eyes, that it was the exploded star cluster from all those years ago, where he had once chased Zeb and the Spectres, certain of their doom within.

“I don’t understand,” he said. Sasha, beside him, was practically bouncing on her heels.

“I told you, a long time ago,” began Zeb, “that Lasan was behind me. That wasn’t true, not really, but at the time I didn’t have the words to say that it was my past that was behind me. Because I could see a future, now, one that I never thought I would have again. Turn around.”

Alex did.

In the open doorway was an elderly Lasat, leaning on her cane.

“The Child has brought the Warrior home at last. The circle is complete,” she said in a warbling voice. Behind her was another Lasat, and another, and another — 

Alex was trembling. “I don’t understand.”

“You brought me here,” said Zeb, at his shoulder now. Sasha took one of his hands in her small one as Zeb did the same on his otherside. “When you chased us, and the refugees, Chava here, you pushed me to follow an ancient prophecy, one I never believed in. It said that we would find a new home for the Lasat but what I actually found was our ancestral home. Below us is Lira San, where my people came from.”

“There are,” he started. He swallowed. His throat was dry. “There are more Lasat?”

“Many more,” said one of the Lasat. They grinned.

“Oh,” he said.

“We welcome you to Lira San,” said the elderly Lasat — Chava, he supposed.

He turned to look at Zeb. He hissed, “Do they know who I am?”

“Of course,” said Chava, waving her cane at him. “All of Lira San know of the Warrior, and what he has done to reclaim his honor — and how he has brought the lost children of Lira San home. Now, come, there are many who wish to greet you, and the little Warrior.”

“Am I the little warrior?” said Sasha, clearly delighted. “I get a bo-rifle, now, right?”

“Thought about this much?” asked Zeb, putting his arm around Alex to march him up to the Lasat, who were all smiling at him.

“Of course,” she said, like he was simple. “I want one. I’ve always wanted one. I’ve only been learning on Papa’s since forever. I’m gonna attach my ‘sabers to it. It’s gonna be sick. Do you think the energy can be pink, like my ‘sabers?”

“Sure, goblin,” he said, laughing. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Wizard!”

“Zeb,” said Alex, tremulous.

They stopped and Zeb looked down at Alex, whose face, he knew, was pale, ashen. Zeb had been right to be nervous, he reflected. He felt like he was having a heart attack.

“Zeb,” he said. “All these beings — I — I don’t think I can.”

“Of course you can,” Zeb said, all confidence and pride. “You’re the Warrior. You heard Chava: they know what you did, and what you’ve done since then. You brought us home. It’s okay. They want you here.”

“How?” he asked.

“Because I do,” he said, like it was that simple. Maybe it was. He ducked his face down to rub his cheek against Alex’s and then pressed a kiss to his temple. “It’s okay. When have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Never,” he said, and allowed himself to be led to his future, bright and unknowable and perfect.