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False takes a swing of the drink in her glass, licking her lips when some spills out of her mouth. Ren laughs at her, accidentally knocking his plate of desserts onto Hbomb’s lap.
“Agh, Ren!” H cries, though there’s no bite to his words.
Fruit lifts his glass to the ceiling, its content swishing and pouring out onto the table. He opens his mouth to say a toast, and he must say one in his mind because he downs his drink without saying anything.
“Sorry, dude!” Ren giggles, his cheeks dusted pink. “You know how I get when I have the good stuff in my system.”
False definitely knows. He once let her enter a fighting tournament with his lightsaber which was not only stupid, but dangerous, with them both being intoxicated.
She only did some light maiming to the other guy. However, no matter how stupid, she did look badass. Presentation prevails over everything, sometimes.
“The good stuff being the drinks? Or the spice-“
False interrupts Fruit’s teasing, only because her Jedi friends probably shouldn’t admit to doing illegal things in public.
“-Let’s not go there.”
“Oh, Falsie!” H grabs one of the small cakes from his lap and takes a bite, his mouth full when he chuckles. The rest of the desserts fall on the floor when he sits up to take a good look at her. “Falsie! Falsie!”
She takes another drink, ignoring when the blue liquid spills onto her chin. She waits for H to continue but he never does, continuing to giggle and chant her name.
“…I feel like I’m missing something here.”
Fruit reaches over with a napkin and wipes her chin. She swats his hand away.
“Ouch! Remind me not to spar with you!”
Even if she wanted to spar him, or any of them, it’d be an incredibly unfair fight. As good as she is in fights, she can’t go head to head against anyone that’s Force-sensitive.
But they did try once!
She might’ve ended up with a bruise on her forearm that refused to fade for a week when H hit her with the hilt of his lightsaber after grossly overestimating her, but it was a fun experience.
“We already did,” Ren deadpans. “The council would kick us out of the Order if they knew!”
She doesn’t know what would warrant getting kicked out, but she does know that the council has been overworking her friends way too much. She wouldn’t exactly oppose it if they left the Order, but she keeps that selfish thought to herself.
This is the first time the four of them have been able to get together in months, after all. It’d be nice to do this more often.
While she’s been out and about, busy on her adventures across the galaxy, she still checks her communicator to see if any of them have messaged her. More often than not, at least one of them is checking up on her or asking how her day was.
They’re the ones not allowed to have attachments, but she’s the one who tries to pretend she hasn’t been looking forward to this since they all got deployed to the Outer Rim.
She cares about them, and that’s already a lot for her to admit. This is war, and False doesn’t like to get friendly with people during war.
But they’re Jedi.
They aren’t like her, packing up and leaving when a planet or city exhausted all it has to offer. They aren’t like her family, weak and cruel and dying of their own foolishness.
She’s something like an eagle, Ren once said. She flies where she fits and leaves when she doesn’t, refusing to sit still and pretty in a cage.
But these friends she’s found? The ones that take time out of their days to talk to her, that are here in a bar this fine evening and spilling expensive alcohol?
These are the ones she’d rest for.
False refills her glass from the pitcher Ren bought, lifting it for a toast. She intends to actually make one, unlike Fruit.
“Screw the council!” H shushes her, but she continues. “To the end of the stupid fucking war!”
Fruit’s the first to raise his glass alongside her. “To the end of the stupid fucking war!”
H and Ren simultaneously raise their glasses. The four of them clink their drinks together and down them as if it were the last drink of the night.
It’s not. It’s far from their last drink, but she savors her beverage and the moment as if it’s the last one they’ll ever have.
Fruit’s in his dormitory when it happens.
He hears explosions, shouting, and panic. He can see flames on the other side of the temple when he peers out from his balcony, can feel the dread settling deep in his stomach.
Fruit steps away from the balcony, rushing inside his room when shots from a nearby ship begin firing on the temple. He finds himself panting, pulling out his communicator to see if anyone has messaged him about some sort of separatist attack.
The only message is one from False asking if Ren is alright.
His heart begins beating out of his chest. He goes to reply, his fingers drifting over the keypad, but footsteps outside of his door distract him. He puts his comm down, inching closer to the lightsaber he left resting on his nightstand.
When he hears his door slide open and the familiar sound of his commander’s boots, he sighs with relief.
“Illumina!” Fruit runs over to him.
He doesn’t process the blaster being pointed at his chest. He doesn’t recognize the cold look in Illumina’s eyes. Illumina’s never looked at him like that.
He misses the warning signs. If he’d been paying even the slightest bit more attention he would’ve noticed his commander balling one hand into a fist and the other holding his blaster.
It was too unfamiliar, too unlike him; so much that Fruit doesn’t immediately clock in.
One moment, Fruit’s standing in front of Illumina, instantly calming down in his presence because that’s the effect Illumina has always had on him.
The next, there’s a hole in his chest and he’s dead before he truly realizes what was going on.
H is singing a song when he takes his final breath.
He’s being sent to the Outer Rim again, not by any choice of his own. He decides to make the most out of packing, humming and whistling a little tune that False showed him.
He doesn’t know the words to her song or even where she learned it from. But it still wraps him in a comforting feeling that he’ll take with him when he leaves.
The tune is light on his tongue, his heart beating in time to the song.
He doesn’t hear when his door opens.
There’s a feather-light touch to his shoulder, and he’s facing Fundy. His commander has a stone-cold expression, something twisting in his gut to see Fundy so troubled.
“What’s happening?” H prepares to hear some bad news, standing when Fundy’s hand wraps around his blaster.
Fundy aims his blaster at him. H’s eyes go wide when he’s staring down the barrel. “You’ve been marked for termination by Order 66. Under this directive, any and all Jedi leadership must be executed for treason against the Republic.”
H doesn’t get a chance to protest or ask questions.
Fundy fires his blaster, H’s song replaced by a startled shout.
Ren’s last thought is of her.
The war is very much coming to a close. Even as the council prepares for a large fight, it’s obvious that it’s the one that’ll end the war.
They leave to go confront the chancellor. He waits excitedly by his communicator for news that the Separatists have been defeated and they’ll never be soldiers again.
To pass the time, he sends a message to her.
REN: falsie
REN: falsie do you have anything important coming up soon
He thinks he can hear her laugh. He can picture her eye roll because the four of them just saw each other and H is already leaving again, but here he is, yearning to spend another night with them.
With any luck, H won’t be sent anywhere because the war should be over any minute now. Surely, it has to end.
FALSE: my friend etho is going podracing to try to catch some cheater and i was gonna beat the cheater’s ass
FALSE: but i’m very interested to hear what you have in mind
Ren chuckles, looking up when he hears someone enter his lounge. He sees Doc and waves him over, inviting him to sit next to him on the sofa.
REN: care to get the gang back together for a night?
“Ren,” Doc says, his voice strained. It goes unnoticed, Ren too caught up in daydreaming about the future.
“Doc!” Ren leaves his communicator on his lap, waiting for False’s response. “To what do I owe the pleasure, my dude?”
It’s then that he realizes something isn’t right with Doc. He glances back down at his comm to avoid eye contact, but the sound of the blaster tears his gaze away from False’s message.
FALSE: i would love to
FALSE: ren
FALSE: ren?
She hears about the Jedi purge from strangers on the streets. They whisper rumors, something about betrayal and treason.
She hides in an alley when it hits her. She falls to her knees, clutching at her sides, and lets herself cry for once in her life.
“No. Absolutely not.”
Etho scoffs at her, collapsing on her bed. She pulls her blanket closer to her, running a hand through her tangled hair. Maybe she’d be more willing to listen to him if he hadn’t broken into her home.
“Please, just…” Etho sits up. She averts her gaze to avoid the look at the hope in his eyes. But what he wants from her… She won’t even consider it. “Will you at least try it?”
False pulls the blanket over her head. “What makes you think I’d want to be a part of a team again? To be the leader of a team?”
She can feel Etho shifting around. Something warm presses against her side and hands are moving the blanket. He has his mask off, grinning awkwardly at her.
“I’m not Bdubs! You can’t take your mask off in front of me and expect me to listen to you,” she reminds, going to cover her face again.
He grabs her wrist, preventing her from trying to hide from his pleas. She groans, kicking his shin to get him away. It only works to make him laugh.
“False, please. You’ve been avoiding the Rebellion like mad and I know it’s because you think they don’t want you.”
Her breath catches in her throat. He can read her all too well. She’s got to stop letting people do that.
“False.” Etho recaptures her attention, flicking her on the shoulder. “Not only do they want you in the Rebellion, but a group of people wants you as their leader.”
She shakes her head. She’s no good at having a team, not anymore. She never has been.
“You said Bdubs is on the team?”
Etho nods. “Yup! Bdubs, his buddy Joel, and their friends, Cub and Scar.”
False leans closer to him, narrowing her eyes when she feels him exhale on her cheek. “Then you go be their leader. Do it yourself.”
He senses the venom in her tone and watches her when she pulls away to stare at the ceiling. She crosses her arms, refusing to look back at him. She’d have to see the disappointment in his expression and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to handle that.
Finally, Etho gets up from her bed and moves toward the window he came in through, but not before leaving something at the foot of her bed.
After what feels like hours, she gets up to check what it is: a wad of bills that’s enough to buy a ship and coordinates to the rebel base.
After her family died at the hands of Separatist droids, she didn’t plan to look for another one.
It was their own recklessness that got them killed. They willingly went to a planet that they knew was invaded by enemies and left her alone on their home planet. She heard the news after the longest game of telephone she’s ever played in her life.
She doesn’t think they liked her very much. Her parents would disappear for weeks at a time, returning with riches they never shared with her. Her siblings were only good for getting themselves arrested for spice trading and breaking out only to redo things.
It wasn’t until she met Etho one day at a casino and the man caught her gambling her life away that she considered making friends again.
At this point, she had nothing left to lose. She had little money, her good-for-nothing family left her poor, she’d never felt more unwanted in her life, and it seemed like she wasn’t going to go on for much longer.
That night, the night before she was going to leave this shoddy planet and never return, she caught Etho’s eye. He needed a pilot and he saw the aviator goggles hanging from her pocket. He approached her with money and the opportunity of a lifetime.
She had to find a living for herself when she realized her family had thrown her to the wolves. She learned how to pilot well enough to make extra credits chauffeuring people around on their illegal escapades.
He needed her and she’s never been one to turn down money. She agreed to the job about as quickly as one can.
But then he admitted how deep this job went. She’d be piloting with Jedi.
Her life began when he introduced her to Fruit, Ren, and H.
It abruptly paused when they died.
She chooses to resume.
She’s going to keep living. The three of them left a hole in her heart, there’s no denying that, and it’ll likely never get repaired. The hole may get smaller as she slowly stitches it up, but it’ll always be there.
False has thrown away her life once before. She’s been doing it a second time since she found out about the Jedi purge and the Empire’s taken over the galaxy.
But she can’t go through this again. She doesn’t want this to be her life. She still won’t take Etho’s offer, but she doesn’t have to take it to investigate the rebels herself.
When she dreams later that night, it’s of blue spirits that take the form of her friends. Fruit says he’s proud of her for not giving into her bad habits again. H tells her she deserves to find the happiness she’s been chasing all her life. Ren puts a hand on her cheek and smiles, not a word spoken.
When she chooses life, living, and herself over plain old surviving, she buys a ship and sets course for the rebel base.