Kanan Jarrus had always been alone. Kanan had left attachments behind along with the name Caleb. He told himself he liked it that way. That he wasn’t lonely. He had no idea how wrong he was until Hera. Spending every day with Hera (and Chopper) on the Ghost felt amazing. He hadn’t felt so comfortable with someone since he’d left Janus Kasmir.
He’d almost run off more than a dozen times. Being here… relying on someone, being relied on. It was frightening… he was afraid to let himself become that person again. Someone who could be trusted and counted on.
Hera always seemed to know when he felt like bolting. She had a way of just showing up, when his heart was hammering and he was on the edge of running. (running again? all you ever do is run, Caleb. A coward to the end.) She would ask him questions then. Not about anything big like the temple or his Master, but little things. ‘What was your favorite toy as a child?’ (a carved bird that the crechemaster had given him) or ‘What’s your favorite food?’(crumblebuns with spiced tea. His master used to make them). And slowly Kanan would calm. Answer the questions truthfully and more honestly than he would with anyone else.
After all Hera knew what he was. She knew and she never asked his real name, or about the temple. She wanted to know about him. Not about what he was. For some reason it made trusting her, and being someone trust worthy easier. Every day… he felt more and more like he’d do anything for her.
For some reason that part didn’t scare him at all.
Tag: star wars rebels
Star Wars Rebels fic: On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone (Chapter 22: Syndulla’s Gamble)
Ten years after she vanished during an Imperial raid on a Twi’lek colony, Cham Syndulla sees his daughter Hera for the first time in a hologram – now wearing the uniform of an Imperial agent and apparently working closely with a human Inquisitor. All Cham wants to do is to bring his long-missing child home to what remains of her family, but he soon finds that Hera Syndulla is only interested in two things: her duty to the Empire and her loyalty to her crew, a mismatched collection of outcasts brought together by Hera and her pet Inquisitor.
With Cham and the Rebel agent known as Fulcrum in pursuit, a new mission takes Hera and the crew of the Ghost to the planet Lothal, where a chance meeting with a Force-sensitive teenager awakens something long buried in the Inquisitor once known as Kanan Jarrus…and has dire consequences for Hera, their crew, the Empire, and the fledgling Rebel Alliance.
Chapter 22: Syndulla’s Gamble
257K, AU, WIPChapter preview:
“So what is this place?” Sabine asked, leaning around to peer between Kanan and Hera as the Ghost came out of hyperspace. She could see contacts begin to pop up on the boards as they approached, but all that was visible through the viewport was a big amorphous blob that didn’t look like any space station or planet she had ever heard of before. Ezra, in the other passenger seat, was gaping unashamedly. With only four seats in the cockpit, Zeb had gone up to the gun turret to cover their backs in case something went wrong.
“It’s an old asteroid mine that was abandoned during the Clone Wars,” Kanan said. “Local pirates took it over and use it as a clearinghouse – pirates and smugglers can come in and sell their cargoes in a safe port without having to pay import taxes to the Empire or worrying about being arrested. The flightmaster takes a bigger cut than in other ports, but a place like this has its attractions.” He frowned at the viewport for a moment. “Most clearinghouses move around, though; the Empire has a tendency to shut them down whenever the local governors change. Or whenever the flightmasters turn over, which is pretty often. Not a long life expectancy in that job.”
Hera flicked her gaze at him. “You’ve never brought me here.”
“I haven’t been since I was Ezra’s age. I wasn’t certain it was still active, but it came up in one of the security briefings last month.” Kanan frowned again, fiddling with the knuckle plate on his armor.
Sabine was used to seeing him in street clothes on the Ghost, but he had had a tendency to stick to Imperial colors – black, gray, and occasionally red accents. Now he was wearing green, the same shirt and asymmetrical armor he had worn when he had picked up Ezra the other day. Even with the lightsabers on his belt alongside his blaster, he didn’t look like an Inquisitor anymore.
Except in the shoulders. He still carried himself like one, like an Imperial officer; so did Hera. Sabine wasn’t certain that either of them would ever lose that entirely.
Star Wars Rebels fic: On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone (Chapter 22: Syndulla’s Gamble)
Reunion AU backstory scene – Kanan’s capture. I think this is the first time I’ve actually written Kanan’s capture in the moment, so to speak; Backbone shows the aftermath, but there was never any intent to write the confrontation itself, and the only other version I’ve written has been the hologram Beneke watches in the double Imperial concept.
Previous: Cham, Hera, Hera backstory.
About 2.8K below the break.
There were six big cells in the city jail, and Kanan had
been sitting in one of the men’s cells for the better part of three days
now. So far he had punched more people
than he could count, nearly been scalped in his sleep – there had been a Trandoshan
inmate who was fascinated with hair, right until he had tried his trick on a
Wookiee prisoner – and probably contracted some kind of unmentionable disease,
either from the vermin that were common in the cells, his fellow inmates, or the
slop masquerading as food.One of the few good things about the Force, Kanan mused,
stretching his long legs out in front of him, was that even in what passed for
dormancy it burned out disease and infection.
If he had been unlucky enough to contract something, the worst he could
expect would be a few uncomfortable days.
There were few illnesses that could truly affect a trained Force-user;
those that did were usually fatal.Kanan was only half-trained, but that was enough. He had been told that untrained
Force-sensitives had a tendency to get sick less often than their Force-null
comrades, but that was all. It was using
the Force, embracing it, letting it flow freely through mind and soul and body
alike, that let it destroy everything in its path. Or so Kanan had been taught.That had been a long time ago, though.
Okay long ago and far away, Mid-way through the second season of Star Wars Rebels; I started writing a Kanan Finds Obi-Wan on Tattooine fic. I could never come up with a proper ending for it so I kept pushing it back. but in light of recent Rebels announcements it’s soon going to be completely out of the realm of canon. But I really liked a lot of sections in it so I’m posting it here now! it’s about 2700 words. Enjoy
Another concept scene from the reunion AU; this one takes place before the other two, maybe around 4-6 months earlier. This is the “cuddling for warmth” bit that’s referred to in Hera’s scene. It was 0 F here last night: I would like a nice warm Jedi and a Twi’lek to cuddle up to, please, but I guess on the bright side I’m not in a cave on a mountaintop somewhere.
About 3K beneath the break.
“I don’t know your name,” Hera said.
Her voice broke the quiet of the cave. Outside the entrance, over which they had
rigged a portable shield generator that kept out the worst of the weather and
would, in theory, keep out any wildlife, the storm raged on – a howling
maelstrom of wind and snow like an inversion of the sandstorms Hera had known
as a child.Hera would have preferred the sandstorm, but they were
unheard of on Naboo. This world was too
wet for deserts.The Inquisitor blinked slowly at her from the opposite side
of the fire. Hera had moved as soon as
he had woken up, wanting to make it clear that just because they had shared a
blanket roll last night, there was nothing else between them. Given that despite her heavy winter uniform
and overcoat she was still shivering, she regretted leaving his warmth, but she
didn’t want him to get any ideas about her.“You’ve never asked,” the Inquisitor said eventually, his
voice soft and a little rough, with a faint Outer Rim accent.
Concept scene from the AU I’ve been working on the past few days while I had my meltdown. This is a little messier than I usually like for concept scenes, with broader strokes; I guess it’s basically the writer’s equivalent of a sketched storyboard. (The AU base is similar, but not identical, to the double Imperial concept I played with a while back.)
About 3.1K below the break.
This, Cham Syndulla knew, could go very wrong very quickly,
and if it did, then there would be no way to escape.There were only three of them in the dark, narrow
corridor. It was lined by closed doors,
all of them identical except for the numbers on them; ISB cadets didn’t rate
their own name plates. Cham just hoped
that none of them came out to sneak a midnight snack or use the refresher at
the end of the hallway. There was no way
that he could explain the presence of three Twi’leks in an Imperial facility.Just ahead of him, Alecto made a soft clicking sound with
her tongue to get his attention. Cham
hastened to her side, while Gobi stopped with his back to them, looking up and
down the corridor.The light on the control panel was glowing a steady red; the
door was locked. Cham drew the skeleton
key from inside his jacket, hoping that Neso back on the Forlorn Hope had been right about it. He could hear Alecto’s breath quickening as
he slid the keycard through the lock.The light turned green.
@syphrosine asked me to post the Felucia backstory scenes from Devil’s Backbone, so here is the first (of two or three). This was originally written in December 2015; I sat on it because at the time I thought there was a possibility it might be used in Backbone.
The Felucia operation is mentioned a few times in Backbone; it was the first major operation Hera and Kanan worked on after Kanan became an Inquisitor, a big joint operation that involved people from all branches of Imperial service to put down a deeply-rooted conspiracy headed by a nobleman to secede from the Empire. Hera and Kanan were the people who originally uncovered the Ghoshal plot, in this early piece of concept writing. It’s also mentioned in the first flashback in Chapter 20.
This takes place about four months after Kanan gets back from Mustafar the first time, four years before the present day.
About 2.7K below the cut.
It was raining, and Kanan still wasn’t back.
Hera sat on the edge of her cot, kicking her heels like the
child she hadn’t been in years. It had
been hours since Kanan had caught her arm and pulled her aside, begging her to
go back to their tent and stay there.
Hera would have protested – she didn’t need to be protected – except
that it was the first time that Kanan had touched her since he had come back
from Mustafar, not to mention the first time that he had managed to say more
than a dozen words in a row. She had
gone against her better instincts, leaving Kanan alone in the command tent with
Commander Betzios and Agent Das.Hours ago now, and the rain had gone from a light drizzle to
a downpour drumming on the waterproof material of their tent. Hera had tried working through intelligence
reports, but hadn’t been able to concentrate, and she had already cleaned every
weapon in the tent. It was all she could
do to keep from getting up and pacing, which might at least have the benefit of
wearing her out enough to sit down again.She was about to do so when someone unfastened the tent
door. Hera shot to her feet, reaching
for her sidearm, then let her hand fall back to her side as she recognized
Kanan.
One of the things I occasionally do with concept work is to play with a pre-existing universe like Backbone even more closely than usual. This is essentially an exercise in characterization and worldbuilding; change one thing and how do the characters react differently? Or the same?
In this case I was getting frustrated with the present day version of a scene (Backbone proper, call it Chapter 25 or 26 given my apparently unending rewrites), and rolled back the timeline to see how it would go nine years earlier. This is a very short scrap of concept writing; I poked at it a little to see if it would go further but there’s not actually all that much I can do with it (that I particularly feel like doing, at least).
This is in my files as “rescue au concept.” About 900 words below the break.
Hera woke to a kind of foggy grayness that she identified,
after a few baffled moments, as symptomatic of being stunned. It took her a few more minutes, as the
grayness began to recede, to remember what had happened – not more drills, like
it had been the last dozen times she had been stunned, but –They had been on the transport on their way to Charna Major
for field exercises. Those field
exercises hadn’t been scheduled for another two weeks, but another group of cadets
from a different academy had had to change to a later date, so Hera’s group had
been moved up. The transport had come
abruptly out of hyperspace when it had hit a seismic charge, which meant
pirates or maybe rebels; both were known to leave seismic charges along known
Imperial hyperspace lanes, though Hera had always thought that seemed like a
very chancy method. Seismic charges were ostensibly more effective for ships traveling at sublight, rather than at
lightspeed, but this time they had worked the way they were supposed to.
Another couple of scenes from the scavenger AU concept – “scavenger AU” is a bit of a misnomer, but when I name files I genuinely go with whatever comes to mind first and then it just stays that way. (This is why Backbone still gets tagged as “agents of the empire,” since that was the working tag before it got a final title – that’s still the folder it’s in in my docs, as well.)
About 2.8K below the break.
When the TIE pilot had still been unconscious, Hera had
entertained fears of having the Ghost
commandeered and taken to the nearest Imperial base, where the commander would
undoubtedly take one look at her and recognize her as Cham Syndulla’s
daughter. But Kanan, upon waking, had
turned out to be a quiet and courteous passenger with no interest in taking
over the Ghost. Given the way he kept
grimacing, Hera suspected that he was still in pain from the blow he had taken
to the head when his TIE had been damaged.
He ate the food she put in front of him, then retired back to the spare
cabin to sleep.Hera had expected – she wasn’t certain what she had
expected. She had expected an Imperial
officer to be more of an ass, for one.I wonder – she
thought, taking a mug of tea back to her cabin and locking the door behind
her. It was just a suspicion, and a
far-fetched one at that. Hera wasn’t
certain how much of it was based on her observations and how much had to do
with the fact that Kanan just seemed too polite to be an Imperial.
A couple of concept scenes from the AU I’ve been working on the past few days in order to distract myself. I’ve got a vague idea of where it would go from here, but I don’t know if I’ll write more or not.
About 3.4K beneath the break.
Hera hadn’t actually been looking for the TIE fighter.
She had brought the Ghost
out of hyperspace in an unoccupied system, meaning to check whatever kept
rattling in the hyperdrive. It wasn’t
throwing up any redlines on her readings, but the fact that it existed at all
made her uncomfortable and she wanted to check it before she went back into
hyperspace. Out of habit Hera checked
her sensor boards before she left the cockpit, not expecting to see the faint
signature of a barely-powered starship.
Even as she stared at the boards, the reading faded out; the ship must
have finally lost what little power it had had left.Hera peered worriedly out the viewport, but trying to spot
anything in the blackness of space with the naked eye was usually a losing
prospect. She settled back down in her
seat and traced the energy signature’s last known location, then followed it,
wondering what it was that she would find at the other end.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 