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Cole | he/them | main blog: mageofcole | ASK BOX OPEN TO PROMPTS Current Fandoms: - Star Wars - The Mandalorian - Republic Commando - Justice League/Unlimited

[colehasapen]

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[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) So many reasons I would fight to stay  DC COMICS

A03

Kyle falls in love as easily as breathing. Kindness is a love language, and smiles carry promises that steal Hal’s breath away more often than not. He doesn’t know what Kyle sees in him, doesn’t know why the other Lantern would ever pick him when he could have anyone else; Hal is a broken wreck of a man, with blood-stained hands, and Kyle - Kyle’s gentle, and kind, with the heart of a dreamer and a desperate desire for love. Kyle’s already been hurt by the world, and he doesn’t need Hal ruining him, like he ruins everything.

He’s so young, and innocent, and yet so burned, but he keeps reaching into the open flame that is Hal Jordan, ready and willing to take his hand. Kyle had proven over and over again how unafraid he was to get burned with every attempt he’d made to get past Hal’s walls, and bring back that little ember of goodness still inside him.

And he’d stoked that ember into a blaze.

Out of everyone, it was Kyle who brought him back. It was Kyle who showed him that little bit of unrestrained kindness that brought what little good remained of Hal to the front. It was Kyle would offered him his hand, who didn’t try to drag him back or beat him down, but instead wait patiently, over and over again, until Hal made the conscious decision to take back that part of himself that he’d buried deep after so much tragedy and loss and drag himself back into the light.

Kyle becomes his guiding light, and Hal doesn’t even notice. A beacon in the dark, always lit and ready to guide him home, and without even being aware of it, Hal falls in love.

Maybe at first, it’s a level of protectiveness over the younger Lantern, and even quite a bit of hero worship. Hal may be known as the greatest Green Lantern, but Kyle? Kyle is the greatest Lantern. He embodies emotion, lives and breathes them to the point where he’s become the White Lantern, the wielder of the entire spectrum and an avatar of life, and while he may no longer have the White ring, he still has the title on his very long and impressive resume. Hal admires him, looks up to him even. Undoubtedly, Hal would kill for Kyle, for his smile, and his light - he’d die for him too, though he’d always look for another angle if it meant that Kyle would be happy.

Kyle is a treasure, and Hal treats him that way.

Sure, they snark and poke at each other for their own amusement - Kyle’s a little shit in his own right and Hal’s never been one to stand down from a challenge - but they always have each other’s back. And by the stars, it was a good view too.

Hal falls in love with the young Lantern who guides him back to the light, who stands by him and reaches for him, and Hal returns those little things tenfold. Hal returns the favour; he defends Kyle, he cheers him on, and if anyone had a bad word to say about him, they’d have Hal to deal with. Kyle falls in love so easily, so desperately, that Hal worries that by returning his feelings he’s taking advantage of him, that he’ll hurt him like he’s hurt so many people; but then Kyle turns those big green eyes on him, lays those delicate artists’ hands on him, and all the worries and fear melts away, bringing forward the Man Without Fear, and Hal takes what’s offered. Every single time. Since Parallax, since the Spectre, Hal has kept careful control of himself, but Kyle - Kyle knows all the buttons to push, every lever to pull, that makes Hal feel like the impulsive young man he had once been. He reminds Hal of that swoop that always came with flight, the weightlessness and the rush of adrenalin.

This thing with Kyle - Hal wouldn’t give it up for anything. Hal grasps at it - at him - with his blood-stained hands, and he can’t bring himself to let go. He would, of course, when the day came that Kyle realized that he deserved better than Hal - someone younger, more worthy of him, who would hold Kyle’s hands with a fragileness that Hal doesn’t possess, who can look at art and see the same stories Kyle does - but until then, Hal will hold Kyle close and thank him for every moment he had given him.

Kyle gives so much that sometimes Hal is terrified that someone will take more than Kyle has. Kyle is selfless, giving, and he thinks with his heart, and that can be a dangerous combination. Someday, Kyle will give so much that he has nothing left, and he’d do it with a smile, because that’s the kind of person he is.

Because Kyle is a hero.

The ring feels heavy on his finger, and Hal sighs. Unable to sleep, he lifts his hand, staring at the faint glow of the power ring sitting innocently, and damningly, on his hand. It’s a sign of a lot of things; of responsibility, of failure, of second chances he doesn’t know yet if he deserves, and even after so long of having it back, Hal still doesn’t know how it came to be.

Kyle is a hero, one many of them could strive to be more like, and Hal doesn’t know what he did to deserve him. He doesn’t understand what he did to make the solid, warm presence next to him become reality. He doesn’t know why, out of everyone, Kyle could have chosen him. Hal was a wreck, anyone could have told him that, any one of his many exes could have told the younger man just how horrible he was, and how Hal would never deserve such goodness in his life.

Kyle may not have been perfect, but he was pretty damn near it, and Hal - Hal was broken in so many different ways. He’s too old, too damaged for Kyle, but it was still Hal who Kyle had given everything to.

“What are you thinking about?” A sleepy voice draws Hal from his head, and he turns his head to meet Kyle’s foggy eyes as the younger man rolls over, throwing his arm - warm, solid, and alive - over Hal’s hips.

“Nothing.” Hal assures him, lowering his hand into Kyle’s inky hair and smoothing his fingers through the sleep-mussed waves. “Go back to sleep.” He looks dangerously attractive this way, eyes half-lidded and gleaming in the faint moonlight streaming through the blinds, bare skin surrounded by messy sheets, and face faintly flushed. There’s dark marks scattered across his skin like large freckles, stretching across his shoulders, down his chest, and up his neck, and Hal finds himself staring at the one he had placed just high enough that Kyle’s uniform wouldn’t fully cover it. A physical sign of what they had been getting up to during Kyle’s Earth leave.

Kyle hums thoughtfully, but the more he blinks, the more the lingering sleep fades from his eyes, and he splays himself dramatically across the lower half of Hal’s body, cheek resting on his stomach and he stares up into Hal’s gaze. “Nah.” The younger Lantern says lightly, and the way the moonlight catches his face makes Hal wonder if he really was completely blind to the meaning of art, with the way it steals his breath away and makes Kyle’s eyes glow. “I’m awake now.”

Hal huffs thoughtfully, hand settling on Kyle’s lower back, tracing his fingers around the little mole near his ass that tended to stand out when Kyle wasn’t wearing clothes under his uniform, and he smiles slightly at the shiver than travels up the younger Lantern’s spine in response. “It’s your leave.” He points out playfully, getting a petulant look in response, “You really should be sleeping.”

Kyle scoffs, before straightening, throwing a leg over Hal’s hips pointedly, hands on either side of the older man’s head, “I could think of dozens of other things I could be doing right now.”

Hal’s eyes spark at the challenge, and he shifts his hands to Kyle’s hips, thumbs rubbing at the other Lantern’s navel, tracing wiry muscles formed through intense training but softened by an artists’ lifestyle. “I’m sure you could, beautiful.” Hal purrs, getting a cheeky grin in response.

“The question is if you can keep up, old man.”

Hal twitches, because that hits a little too close to the thoughts that had haunted him earlier, and Kyle’s brows furrow in response, his playfulness melting away. “Hal?” The younger man probes, green eyes darting across Hal’s face, searching and categorizing what he sees. “You okay?”

“You deserve better,” Hal finds himself saying, “I’ll ruin you.”

Like I ruin everything else. Hal doesn’t say. He's a broken, ruined wreck of a man with gray at his temples and lines starting to carve themselves into his face. He's already made it so much further than his father before him, and Kyle - Kyle who sees the good in everyone, including someone like Hal - deserves so much better.

Kyle’s expression ticks down to a faint frown, eyes flaring stubbornly. “You won’t.” His chin sets in determination, brows furrowing, and he sits up.

Hal sighs, throwing his arm over his eyes, “I hurt you,” he whispers. “I manipulated you - hurt you. Used you.”

“Parallax did.”

“I was Parallax.” Hal says bitterly, meeting Kyle’s eyes from the crook of his elbow. “Everything Parallax saw, everything he did - that was me. Parallax wasn’t even there until after I’d already destroyed the Corps, Kyle.”

“And you’ve gotten your redemption, Hal. Parallax is a virus that could have infected any of us, just because of our connection to the power battery.” Kyle tells him, expression so earnest that Hal wants to believe him. “You wanted to redeem yourself so badly you changed the spirit of vengeance into the spirit of redemption.” The younger Lantern smiles, and a part of Hal quivers in fear at the genuine love in Kyle’s eyes. “You won’t hurt me, Hal. I know you won’t, even if you don’t. And do you want to know why I know?” Hal’s voice is hoarse when he responds, “I’ll bite.”

“Because you’re a good person.” Kyle says unhesitatingly, “And I believe in that.”

“Well,” Hal’s laugh is shaky, and neither of them draw attention to it as he gathers himself, “if the Torchbearer believes so.”

Kyle’s smile is like the sun peeking through the clouds on a rainy day, signalling to the world that somewhere there would be a rainbow. He leans down again, gently sweeping their lips together. Tender and sweet, and all the things Hal never thought he’d know until Kyle.

“I know so.” Kyle tells him, and it carries as much weight as their Oath.

Maybe someday Hal will be able to believe in himself as much as Kyle seems to.

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) I tried hating you but the anger is gone  DC COMICS

A03

Barry remembers what it's like to be in love. He remembers the fluttery, soft feeling in his stomach when their hands brushed, the warmth in his cheeks when their eyes met across crowded rooms. He remembers gentle words and whispered promises, and he remembers holding his whole world in his hands. He remembers thinking to himself that they'd always have each other, that they'd be together through thick and thin.

Barry remembers being in love, and he remembers learning that love wasn't always good enough. Love wouldn't survive everything, and people wouldn't either.

Once, Barry had held his whole world in his hands, but that had made it all the more painful for it all to be ripped away. One thing after another, until there had been nothing left but tears, and rage, and suffering - his own, and that of others. It hadn't filled the gaping hole in his chest, hadn't made him feel better, but he had told himself no one else would feel that pain again if he could help it.

No one else would lose their child. No one else would have to see the boy they'd raised and loved like their own turn to dust in front of their eyes. No one else would have to sacrifice themselves.

No one else would have their mentor, the closest thing to a father they’d had for a long time targeted because of who they were connected to.

No one else would see a city reduced to rubble, and then learn afterwards that a member of their own family had burned with it, unable to outrun the blast.

No else else would have to want so desperately for the little life inside of them to grow up big and strong, only for it to be taken away from them because some bastard wanted them to hurt.

So Barry had stood back. He had stepped aside and stayed quiet and done as he was told because it meant that no more innocents would have to suffer. He'd beaten down his own morals and ripped away everything that made him a hero, because he'd sacrifice himself so that no one else would have to.

He'd turn himself into a monster if it meant that the fighting would end.

He could understand Superman's pain, his rage and anger, because Barry had felt them both, first when Wally had died to save the world, and again when Zoom had stolen that little blossom of hope he'd held inside of him. He could understand why Joker had to die, he could understand the leap in logic Clark had followed, because Lois and her baby had been innocent.

Innocence hadn't saved them, but Superman had promised them a world where it wouldn't happen again, if only they followed him.

Barry had always been a follower.

A follower, and a coward.

So Barry had followed. He’d followed Superman, he’d followed Hal; he followed them so far that he almost doesn’t recognize himself anymore. He’d once thought to himself that he’d follow them into hell, but he’d never thought it would be a hell of his own making. Barry had walked himself into failure, all while telling himself that he was trying to make the world a better place.

He’d lied to himself. He lied to himself after every death, after every injury and cruelty. He’d kept lying to himself, unwilling to see past his own suffering to see others hurting just as much because of his own actions. He’d clung so tightly to the illusion of peace that he’d ignored the bodies he was stepping over to get there.

He’d already lost Wally, he’d lost Jay, he'd lost Bart, he’d lost the baby, he'd even lost the Rogues, and he hadn’t wanted to lose anyone else.

But then he lost Iris.

Barry’d been in love with Iris for so long that he almost didn’t remember how  not to love her, but she’d seen him for what he truly was, what he had been trying so desperately not to look at; a monster and a coward. She looked him in the eye and laid it all out, every single one of his failures, and then she walked away, and for once in his life, Barry hadn’t followed. He’d been angry, and hurt, and it had been a painful knot in his chest that made it hurt to breath as all those soft fluttery feelings turned caustic and poisonous.

Barry had been in denial, but his eyes had begun to see past the illusions he’d made himself.

Nothing she had said was a lie.

When Iris had left them, Barry had turned around and clung so tightly to Hal that he’s surprised he hadn’t choked the Lantern. He knows now that Hal had been struggling just as much as he had been, had been floundering after the loss of Wally, their child, and then Iris, but all Barry had seen at the time was someone to hold onto. He’d been grabbing for any stability he could, and Hal had been there. Hal had always been his rock, just as Barry had always been a beacon to guide him home, but loss had sent them both into free fall, and neither of them knew that they didn’t have a safety net until they hit the unforgiving ground.

This time, it was Barry who walked away.

Shazam -  Billy’s  death had been the last straw. He had been the one to finally shatter the world Barry had built for himself.

Superman had killed a  child.

Barry couldn’t look away anymore, he couldn’t avert his eyes or plug out the sounds again.

So he had started to listen again, he started to act instead of follow.

Barry saves people again, and it had started with Batman, back even before Billy. It had started with  Bruce; Bruce who was Barry’s friend, Bruce who Barry was supposed to hate - but Barry’s too empty for hatred.

He had been angry for so long that he wonders if he’ll ever feel anything again.

Changing sides isn’t easy, but Barry never thought it would be. He turns his back, he walks away from  Hal.  He asks Hal to  come, to leave Superman behind and become a  hero again, and when he refuses Barry ignores Hal pleading with him to stay with him. It hurts to leave Hal, it’s agony to hear the terror in his voice when he’d told him there was no leaving Superman, but Barry can’t stay anymore. Hal won’t come with him, and Barry walks away. He knows he’s not going to be welcomed among Batman’s rebellion with open arms, he’s spent too long following behind Superman for that to happen, but he doesn’t let the cold reception get to him, doesn’t let the ache in his jaw stop him.

He needs to make it right after all, even if it’s likely none of them will ever trust him again. Even if it’s likely he’ll never wash the blood from his hands, the least he can do is try to prove to them that he’s genuine. To prove that he wants to repent for what he let happen, for what he did, and the people who died because Barry was too cowardly to make his voice heard, or too blind to see.

Bruce’s people don’t trust him, but Barry doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t even trust himself anymore. He lets them put the monitor on him, he lets them glare and whisper. He can feel them watching him, he sees the way they shy away, he knows the doubt. He doubts himself too, he wonders, sometimes, that if it starts getting too hard, will he fall back into the habits he’d developed? Will he kill again if things get too slow, too irritating?

Who will suffer if Barry has a bad day?

They’re afraid of him.

Barry’s afraid of him too. He’s afraid of what he could do, he’s afraid of what he’s done. He’s afraid that someday he’ll go too far again, and he’s afraid that once he starts on that road again, he won’t be able to turn back. He’s already lost everything, and he’s afraid that someday, he’ll decide to throw away whatever is left.

Some days, all that fear gets to be too much for him to handle.  Everything gets to be too much. The memories and the what-ifs rise in a tidal wave that not even he can outrun, and they sweep him back out to the sea of misery. He drowns in it.

He just wants it all to end.

It’s during one of these episodes that Batman finds him.

Barry’s folded himself into a dark corner, his head buried in his knees as everything gets to be  too much. Sometime, in between the moment his heart and started hammering in his chest and the world had started to get fuzzy, he’d ripped off the helmet, and his hands had found their way into his hair where he’d started to  pull  as the weight on his chest grew to be crushing. He’s probably vibrating, a distant part of Barry knows, and it’s probably set off one of the many alarms Batman has linked to him, but Barry can’t bring himself to care. All he can think of is the empty yellow and red suit, the warped helmet, the hole where Metropolis used to be. All he can hear is the ragged sound of his own breathing and the voices of the doctors telling him the baby hadn’t survived Zoom’s attack.

He remembers that kid, the one who had thought he was strong enough to fight back, the one who had wanted to do the right thing, and the sound of his back breaking when Wonder Woman and Superman put him down with the intention of keeping him down.

Barry could have stopped them.

But he didn’t.

All he did was watch, and then run away when it got too much and he’d seen the face of a kid who learned that his idols weren’t heroes any more.

He wants it to stop.

“Flash.”

He’d go back if he could. Bruce had told him to restart everything, but Barry had been too scared then, that he’d just make everything worse.

“Flash!”

Why shouldn’t he? It would be easy to just start running. He’d erase himself from the timeline, and maybe the next Barry would be  better . Maybe the next Barry wouldn’t fail everything and everyone.

Maybe the next Barry would be fast enough.

“Allen!”

Better yet, maybe the Speed Force would decide that he was unworthy, and Barry Allen wouldn’t survive the lab accident that had given him his powers.

“God dammit -  Barry! Snap out of it.”

Barry comes back to himself with a stinging cheek and a gasp. He feels like there’s cotton stuffed in his head, like there’s a vice in his chest and a knife in his guts. Batman - no, that’s  Bruce, the helmet is  off - is kneeling in front of him, hands on Barry’s shoulders and expression drawn with stress, making the premature age lines all the more obvious around his stormy eyes.

“I-” Barry wheezes, blinking tears out of his eyes as he stares at Bruce in shock, then at where the vigilante’s hands are resting on his shoulders. The warmth of the touch is seeping through his costume, it makes his skin tingle even with the layers between them, and Barry wonders almost hysterically how long it had been since someone had willingly  touched him without intending to hurt him. “Bruce?” His voice is a choked rasp, and with a panic dissipating, the numbness starts to set in again.

The touch, however, stops it from settling in.

Bruce is frowning at him. When was the last time he had smiled? When was the last time  any of them had had something to smile about?

Barry used to like it when he smiled.

“What just happened?” Bruce demands, but despite the harsh tone, the hands on his shoulders are still gentle, and Barry can only blink at him, a little dumbly. He’s a little too busy thinking about how nice the warmth of another person’s touch is to really give Bruce’s words much thought. “Barry.”

Barry jolts, “I - uh-” he stutters, “-sorry.”

Bruce’s frown is easing slightly, back into that emotionless mask that he’d been wearing for -  how long had he been wearing it? He’s studying Barry now, like he’s trying to gauge how much of a threat he is now that Bruce had seen him panicking. “Does that happen often?” He asks blankly, and Barry shakes his head, a little frantic.

“No!” He says desperately; he needs to stay on Batman’s good side. He needs to put his best foot forward, after all the shit he’s put Bruce through over the years. He just wants to do at least one thing right in his life.

Hal and Iris aren’t here to guide him through his attacks. He doesn’t have a lightning rod to draw him back anymore.

“No - no, it’s just - I’ll be fine once the shaking stops.” Barry tells him, “I’m sorry.”

Bruce is still staring at him, “How long has it been happening?”

Barry lets out a bitter, shaky laugh, “Years.” He says, arms moving to curl around his stomach, and he sees Bruce’s eyes follow the movement, sees the moment Earth’s greatest detective connects the dots. He’d had a front row seat to what state Barry had been in after Zoom’s attack had almost killed him. Barry knows he’d been in the Watchtower when Barry had been brought in, covered in blood and barely hanging onto consciousness because he hadn’t been able to fight back against the other speedster. Batman would have seen the medical reports when they’d been added to his file, would have known the extent of the damage Barry’s body had taken.

He knows what Barry had lost. He knows just how much Barry had personally related to Superman.

Bruce is quiet for a long moment, studying Barry as the shaking slows, and his hands stay on his shoulders, a grounding influence that helps the speedster drag himself out of the storm of emotions he had fallen into. Bruce has always been good at it, helping Barry slow down; it’s always been something that Barry’s been grateful for, and he’s been missing the other man’s influence and presence in the last years.

Back when he’d first noticed that Superman wasn’t listening to them anymore, he’d wished that Batman were there, because Bruce had always been the one that Superman would turn to. The one they’d  all  turn to if they needed someone to talk them down from something, to point out when their logic was flawed; Bruce had always been the best of them, no matter how much the man hadn’t believed them when they’d said it.

None of this would have happened if they’d just listened to Bruce.

“You told me once to change the timeline.” Barry says helplessly, staring up at Bruce with pleading eyes. What he’s pleading for, he doesn’t know; condemnation? Permission? Just someone to hold him?

Slowly, Bruce nods his head, an acknowledgement of the statement, “And you told me that it was something you’d only consider once we’d already exhausted all of our options.” He points out.

Barry’s laugh is almost hysterical in response, “I could just make everything worse.” He says shakily, “But what difference would that make? Everything’s already fallen apart.”

“True.” Bruce agrees, “But there’s still hope we can do better. That we can fix this. We can’t give up that chance just yet.”

It’s almost ironic hearing this from Bruce, a known realist. Barry had always been the hopeless dreamer, the one who always tried to see the bright side in a situation, the one who always urged the others to do the same. But now? After everything that had happened, everything he had lost, everyone who had suffered? Barry can’t see any possible light in their dark world.

“We’re not just fighting for ourselves, Barry. Or the people we’ve lost.” Bruce’s hands tighten on his shoulders, “We’re fighting for a future for everyone else on this planet. A future where they can make their own choices and no one has to live in fear of being heard saying the wrong thing.”

“I don’t know what the right thing to do is anymore.” He admits, “I don’t know how I can fix what I’ve done.”

“All any of us can do is try.” Bruce tells him quietly, and Barry meets his eyes, blue to blue. He sees the sadness there, the numbness and helplessness that he knows all too well. They’d both lost  everything; their children, their friends, their futures. Anything they had planned for themselves had fallen apart. They’d lost love and friendship to anger, and to hate, and then they’d lost that too.

What more  could they lose?

When Bruce starts pulling away from him, Barry rocks forward almost desperately, not wanting to lose the tiny connection they had made, not wanting to let Bruce slip away from him again after getting a glimpse at the man he had cared for after so long of nothing. He stops at the last second, however, and he stays where he lands on his knees, staring up at Bruce as the man slowly offers him a hand.

“Come on.” Bruce’s voice washes over him, “We’ve got work to do.” Bruce is watching him with a quiet seriousness, the same loneliness Barry feels echoed in his eyes.

He’s offering him a choice.

And Barry?

He takes the hand, and he chooses the future Bruce sees.

[colehasapen]

Hey! So awhile ago I sent u an ask rambling a bit about Din in ur family au but I don't think u ever answered it, did tumblr eat it or?

Oh I got it lol - I just wasn't sure how to answer it so it's still in my inbox while I puzzle it out because I wanted to give you a drabble to go with it lmao

[mageofcole]

Dear Followers

I’ve been considering opening up fic commissions, if enough people show an interest in it. Please let me know if this is something you’d like me to do!

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) I see ghosts in their smiles  DC

A03

Bruce never fully understood the relationship between Flash and Green Lantern. At a glance, they were so different that logically one would think that they'd fight more than they had, but that had never been the case; Barry and Hal had bickered, had argued, but rarely ever fought. Barry had been mild mannered and polite, while Hal was brash and confident, but these differences hadn’t driven them apart, in fact, it had brought them together. The two of them had been a pair on and off of missions, though many hadn't known the true extent.

Not until it was too late.

The Founders though, they’d all been well aware. They’d had a front row seat to the evolution of the relationship between the two of their more colourful members. They’d seen the two of them go from acquaintances to teammates, to friends, and then to lovers. They’d all teased them in their own ways, found them wrapped around each other in some way or another; they’d interrupted dates for missions, had stumbled across them in embarrassingly compromising situations, had even offered them their blessings, because despite everything, Barry and Hal were good for each other. Somehow, despite being the two most scattered members of the League, they managed to ground each other.

Barry and Hal had been a good pair, but Barry’s death had been the start of Hal’s downward spiral. Barry’s death had been a wake up call for them all, in the same way Jason’s death had been for Bruce; they’d all known, of course, that they were flirting with death everyday, but it hadn’t truly sunk in for a lot of them until Barry had sacrificed himself to save the world.

Now, they were both gone. Both dead; and despite all the differences Bruce had had with them - Jordan more so than Barry - he  misses them.

He misses the old Flash and Green Lantern, more than he ever thought he would. It makes the fact that there’s two new heroes in their place all the more painful.

Wally West and Kyle Rayner.

Bruce has known Wally since the boy was a lanky teen in yellow following his uncle like a cheerful, friendly shadow. He’s known the young man since he was a child, and it’s strange, seeing him in Barry’s place. It’s thrown all of them off balance, having one of the children they helped train standing among them. Wally’s the Flash now, a young man, but Bruce still looks at him and sees the child that used to come over every weekend to play with Dick.

Kyle Rayner doesn’t have that same history. For all intents and purposes, he had been a normal kid until the ring had chosen him and he’d become the last Green Lantern in the galaxy. He’s a nice enough kid, of an age with Bruce’s own boys, with a relatively clean record that paints an image of a friendly, easy-going artist with his head in the clouds. He’s good at what he does, despite learning it all on his own, and mostly competent despite how new he was at hero-ing. But Hal’s actions had proved that they had to be wary of Lanterns, proved that Bruce had gotten too complacent around his teammates, and he wouldn’t make that mistake again. Bruce keeps the new Lantern at an arm’s distance, close enough to stop if he loses it too.

Watching them together is like looking at ghosts.

"It's like watching  them all over again." Clark’s voice is nostalgic and sad, and Bruce very pointedly forces his eyes away from the two young men huddled together near the back of the cafeteria. Superman’s eyes are distant, but there's a light of understanding inside of them when he meets the other hero’s gaze.

Clark knows him too well.

Despite not answering verbally, Bruce inclines his head and grunts.

Wally and Kyle had been a couple no one had suspected, not with the way the two of them bickered. They’re both young, rash, impetuous, and it tends to lend to an image of two young cats hissing and spitting over territory; somehow, without any of them really noticing, the two youngest main roster members of the League had drifted together and meshed despite everything. The arguing had gone from genuine antagonism to something fun and easy that others often found amusing in darker situations.

Now, it wasn’t surprising to see them tucked together with some game or another, or surrounded by snacks in the common room. There had been plenty of talk between the older members of the League, those who had known about their predecessors’ relationship, about another iconic Flash-Green Lantern duo, to the point where Bruce almost decides to not put the two young men on missions together any more, just to avoid having to look at ghosts every day.

But they were good at what they do, and they work well together, despite their bickering, almost like they know instinctively what the other needs in the thick of things without needing to communicate. They tend to poke each other into going beyond their limits with well-placed quips and jokes, and they get the job done quickly and efficiently.

It really was like looking at Barry and Hal again, and maybe that wasn’t a good thing, considering Barry’s death had just been the start of Jordan’s spiral.

Clark offers him a sympathetic smile, “The kids are growing up fast.” The Kryptonian hums slightly, slanting him a slight look. “I always thought it would be Dick and Wally in the end.”

He’d thought the same too, but Dick wouldn’t appreciate his thoughts on it.

Bruce winces slightly, “Nightwing’s happy with Starfire and Oracle.” He says. He’d always thought the same, with the way his ward and Barry’s nephew had been as teens; he knew they’d tried it, had experimented together quite frequently, just like he knew they ended it on good terms as friends, because it was what worked best for them, in the end.

They’d been good together, but they’d decided they were better as friends and teammates, and Bruce would respect that choice. It was the least he could do, after everything he’d put Dick through.

Clark nods his head, right as a burst of laughter drags both of their attention back to where Kyle and Wally are sitting. At some point, Kyle had flipped his sketchbook construct to show whatever he had been drawing to the redhead, who had dissolved into cackles at whatever was on the page, snickering into his food. As they watch, the young Green Lantern grins boyishly, leaning forward to give the speedster a quick peck on the cheek before shoving a hand full of fries into Wally’s mouth and laughing himself.

Around them, the noise had drawn the attention of other heroes in the cafeteria, and Bruce doesn’t need to look to see that they’re all softening at the sight of the two young men.

“They’re their own people.” Bruce says finally, “Their own heroes.”

Clark nods, expression soft, “It’s different.” He admits, “But sometimes I still end up calling them by another name.” He shrugs, looking repentant, when Bruce frowns at him. “I called Wally, Barry the other day during monitor duty, because he said something that reminded me too much of him. I mean, it’s not surprising that he  would act like Barry - but it throws me off sometimes.” Clark looks sheepish, apologetic, “It’s strange, having Wally working with us. He’s a good kid, but-”

“-But he’s not Barry.” Bruce agrees with a sigh. “We always knew he would take over as the Flash after Barry.” Barry hadn’t exactly been quiet about it; he’d been so proud of his nephew, and would tell anyone who listened that Wally would become the Flash someday, that he’d be even better than Barry.

“I’d always hoped it would be because Barry retired.” Clark says sadly, “Have a few kids; they did such a good job with Wally. Maybe he and Iris would have managed to talk Hal into coming with them - Hal never could deny them anything, even if he tried to act tough.”

But they were all dead - Iris first, then Barry, and then Jordan.

“Kyle’s a good kid, too.” Superman continues, “Ernest, creative, even if he’s a little rough around the edges. The Lanterns would have loved him - probably would have taken him under their wings.”

Bruce grunts, and Clark slants him a knowing look. As much as he likes Rayner as a person, or how much he reminds him of Dick, he can’t trust him, not after Jordan proved to them how dangerous an uncontrolled Lantern could be.

“He’s  not Hal, Bruce.” Clark points out, “And Hal did the right thing, in the end - thanks to him.”

“Jordan proved that I was getting too complacent.” Bruce says blankly, “Every hero here is just one bad day away from becoming the very thing we fight.”

Clark sighs, leaning forward to press a kiss against Bruce’s cheek, there and gone. “My break’s over.” The Kryptonian says apologetically, smiling. “You should go home and get some sleep, Bruce. A full eight hours, at least.”

Another laugh rings out, and Bruce turns his head just enough to see that Wally had scooted his chair closer to Kyle’s, their knees bumping, and he’s moving to playfully pull the dark haired Lantern closer to press their lips together with a cheeky grin. The ketchup smeared across the artist’s cheek was proof enough of what they had been doing before.

It’s damningly charming, and sweet, but all Bruce can think when he sees them is that there’s a chance they could end up in the same situation as Barry and Hal. There’s too many ghosts in his head, too many skeletons in his closet, and two of them wear crimson and green.

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) What is a legacy? DC

A03

When Wally had first met Earth's new Green Lantern, the  oh-so great Torchbearer, he'd wanted nothing to do with him. Wally - he'd grown up with Hal, then later John, and even Guy, and now all three were gone. He'd grown up with Hal dipping in and out of his Aunt and Uncles' house like he lived there. He'd grown up coming down to breakfast in the morning and seeing Uncle Hal there too, having just come back from space to crawl into bed next to Uncle Barry. When Aunt Iris had been killed, and Uncle Barry started spiraling out of control, it had been Uncle Hal who had kept everything together, who had promised Wally that he wouldn't let Barry out of his sight, that he'd watch his back. It had been Uncle Hal who Wally went to after Uncle Barry's death and the weight of being the Flash was too heavy.

Uncle Hal had been Wally's Green Lantern.

But Hal had broken too. He'd gone crazy and killed the Corps and then vanished. Hal had caved under the pressure no one had known he was under until it was too late, and when he'd come back he was mad.

Wally hadn't wanted a new Green Lantern, wouldn't give him the time of day, until he'd found himself outnumbered during a meeting discussing Hal - Lord Parallax - and had tried to argue that his Uncle needed compassion, understanding, and  help , not a fight. They'd called him too close to the situation, too young to know what needed to be done, like Wally hadn't been a hero since he was thirteen, like he was still the little kid in yellow who followed the Flash around and started at them all in childish awe. They could never separate him from the child he could be, but the new Lantern had never known him then, and had stood up and agreed with him.

It had worked too, because in the end, Hal had taken the hand being offered to him, and died to save the world.

After that, Wally had found himself seeking the Lantern out on his own. They still bickered, but Wally found that it reminded him more of the playful ribbing of Uncle Barry and Uncle Hal than any genuine bad blood. He got to know him, started genuinely thinking of him as a friend. He learned that his name is Kyle Rayner, that he’s two years younger than Wally and an independent artist that struggled to pay his bills now that he couldn’t spend all his time on commissions. He’s told that Kyle was well-liked growing up for being generally friendly and easy-going, but didn’t actually have friends until art college because he was just a little too weird for other kids to want to be around him long enough to actually hang out. He learns that Kyle’s mother is an Irish immigrant, that she was his biggest supporter growing up, and that he doesn’t know his father because the man walked out on them when Kyle was still very young, that the only memory of his father Kyle has is vaguely of him speaking Spanish. He learns that Kyle is multilingual, that he grew up speaking English and Gaelic, and learned Spanish in school. He learns the hard way that Kyle is lactose intolerant, and allergic to nuts. He learns funny little anecdotes about Kyle learning to draw before he learned how to walk, he learns that Kyle loves spicy food but doesn’t eat it often because the right spices don’t exist in space.

He learns a lot about Kyle, and it leads to Wally learning about himself as well.

He’d always known he wasn’t straight. He liked and dated girls, of course, he thought they were beautiful, but there was also a part of him that lingered a little too much during training. There was a part of him that looked at certain friends and said,  damn I’d like to kiss him. Dick had been the first, back when they’d still been young sidekicks just starting out, and it had continued on wards for a bit too. It had been reciprocated too; they’d messed around together a bit, but they’d ended it on good terms because Wally wasn’t ready to completely come out yet. He’d been happy for Dick, when he’d started dating Kori, then Babs, and then more and more people. After Dick had been Roy, for a little bit, because Roy was the cool, rebellious older boy, but it wasn’t long before that little crush faded away and Wally started looking at him like an older brother. He’d had that really embarrassing teenage crush on John Stewart for a while, the one that had made Hal burst a gut laughing at him for, before ruffling his hair and telling him under no uncertain terms that it wouldn’t be happening.

Well, Wally had known for a while that he liked men too, even if he hadn’t exactly come out to anyone but those he was closest too. His head was filled full of his dad’s hateful words, something he was working hard to shut out. Kyle though, he didn’t hide the fact that he was trans, or that he was pan - he’d grown up in California and now lived in New York, both of which had more of a thriving community than the likes of the small Midwestern Blue Valley Wally had lived in before moving to Central after getting his powers, and then Keystone after he became the Flash and living in Barry’s house was too much for him.

Kyle was - well, he was nice. A breath of fresh air, really. He was a fellow hero, a member of the main roster, so he knows Wally’s identity and understands the demands of being a superhero better than a civilian would. He’s his age, but didn’t grow up with him, and he  gets  what Wally is going through, standing in someone else’s shoes and being judged as less worthy compared to his predecessor. Before Wally knows it, he finds himself drifting closer and closer to Kyle, to the point where he’s heard older heroes whispering between them of another Flash-Green Lantern team up.

Apparently it brings back nostalgic emotions to see a Flash and Green Lantern dozing off in the rec room, lights dim and some silly movie or another playing in the background. Wally’s just glad he and Kyle have more control than Uncle Hal did, and haven’t been found in a cleaning closet somewhere.

Now, Wally is pretty sure he knows how Uncle Barry felt whenever Hal would stumble into the house at all hours of the night after a long mission in space to pass out in the bed next to him. He’s gotten used to the faint green glow that accompanies Kyle powering down, the faint hum of the Lantern uniform against his skin before it melts away to whatever civvies Kyle happened to be wearing before getting called out. There’s a soft warmth that comes with waking up in the morning to find Kyle sprawled out next to him, lit up by the soft golden light streaming in through the windows as he breathes, deep asleep. There’s a giddiness that comes with finding more and more of Kyle’s things slowly being added to his apartment; it starts with pajamas and extra clothes, but soon Wally is finding art supplies scattered around, or Kyle’s favourite butterscotch shampoo in the shower.

It’s how Wally realizes that he’s in love with his teammate.

He’s staring down at the innocently placed soap he remembers seeing before in Kyle’s shower when it hits him. Nowadays, Kyle spends more time at Wally’s apartment than anywhere else other than the Watchtower when he’s planet-side, and not out rebuilding the entire Green Lantern Corps on his own. Wally isn’t even sure when it started, that he started bringing more and more of his things to Wally’s small Keystone apartment. He thinks back to the sketchbooks and half-finished paintings scattered around the rooms, of the lactose free milk he didn’t think twice before buying when grocery shopping, of the space in his drawers made for Kyle’s clothes and the paint stained shirts in the laundry basket. He thinks about the lack of nut products in his apartment, of the boxes of tampons and pads he doesn't even blink over stocking up on anymore.

Wally moves so fast he’s dry instantly, bursting into his bedroom where Kyle lays among rumbled sheets. His white t-shirt had ridden up in his sleep, and the waistband of his track pants down, exposing a thin line of the packed core muscles that came with the training they all endured in the League. Somehow, his dark hair looks artfully tousled, inky against the sheets, and lashes just as dark are fanned across sun-browned skin and freckles.

He’s unfairly pretty.

“Kyle!”

Kyle jolts, ring flaring green as he stares around groggily, looking for a threat, “Wha-”

“Are we dating?” Wally blurts out, uncaring of his nakedness in the face of his realization.

Kyle blinks once, twice, looking fuzzy, before he groans, long and dramatic as his uniform dissolves into green sparkles and he drops back onto the bed, throwing an arm over his eyes. There’s a long moment of silence, before the Lantern snorts, and then bursts into breathless giggles.

Wally flounders, “I’m serious!”

Kyle slants a look at him from under his arm, brown eyes warm and almost honey gold in the morning light, “I’d hope we’re dating.” Kyle tells him, voice thick with sleepy amusement, “Otherwise I’ve  really been overstepping.”

Wally blushes, feeling a little silly, now that he’s thinking about it. They - they really  have been dating, haven’t they? “Oh.” Flustered, Wally rubs a hand down his face, hoping to brush away the burning in his cheeks.

Kyle snickers again, expression warm. “You’re adorable.”

Wally groans, “I’m never going to live this down, am I?” He mutters, listening to Kyle dissolve into giggles again.

“Oh, definitely.” The Lantern teases, before sitting up and stretching with a yawn. “Well,” he drawls, amused, “now that I’m awake -” brown eyes rake across Wally’s body, and an eyebrow quirks, “- got a reason for this  visit ?” His voice takes on more of a purr, and Wally blinks in confusion.

Then he remembers.

“Oh.” Wally squeaks, red spreading rapidly across his  completely naked body. “I - shower -  soap - it’s just-” he cuts himself with an embarrassed groan. "I'm making this worse."

Kyle doubles over from the force of his laughter, holding his stomach as he wheezes, hand flapping. “Kidding -” he gasps, “- I’m just kidding.” The Lantern slides off the bed, still snickering, to press a lightning-quick kiss to his lips that, for Wally, lingers for so much longer. “Go have a shower, babe.” Kyle tells him warmly, “I’ll make some breakfast.”

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) There are things that we can have, but can't keep DC

A03

Hal isn’t on Earth when Barry dies. He’d been in deep space, running a mission for the Guardians that needed him to go completely radio-silent for a month and a half. It had been an absolutely miserable time, but he’d managed, telling himself that with every day that passed he was closer and closer to being able to go back to Earth, that soon he’d be able to sleep in his own bed and hold his boyfriend close. He doesn’t even  know until he’s returned to the Watchtower, and goes looking for him.

He’d been confused, at first, when he’d noticed the strange looks the heroes he passed sent him, the way they parted as he’d passed. He’d been confused until John and Diana had pulled him aside and broke the news to him as gently as possible.

Barry was dead.

Barry had died while Hal was in space, not even a week after he had gone radio silent. He’d died saving the world, over a month ago, and Hal  hadn’t been there. He’d had a hero’s funeral, there was talk of setting up a statue in memorial in Central City. He  died while Hal was in space; Hal had spent the month telling himself that soon he’d be able to see him again, soon he’d be able to touch and hold him again.

Barry was  gone.

Hal can’t remember what the last thing he had said to Barry was. He couldn’t remember if he had told Barry that he loved him, if he had said something deep and meaningful or something light and sarcastic. He knows they had had dinner before he’d left, he knows that Barry had smiled at him and kissed him goodbye, Hal knows that he had laughed and told Barry that he’d see him soon, but he can’t remember the conversation they’d had in full. He feels like he should, that he should remember the last moment he’d seen the man he loves in perfect clarity, because it’s what Barry - the amazingly kind and gentle man he’d fallen in love with, who loved Hal despite all the things he’d fucked up in his life - deserves.

Hal’s legs had given out on him, the green energy of his ring sputtering out and dying with his will as it had all sunk in. He’d dropped like a stone, numb with horror and eyes wide and unseeing, and it was only John’s strong arms looping around his shoulders and pulling him into a tight hug that had stopped him from hitting the unforgiving floor. He’d probably been in shock, because he hadn’t cried, hadn’t screamed or shouted or gotten angry, he’d just gone numb and silent, staring at the wall blankly as John had held him. He’d gone quiet, he hadn’t uttered a word, and simply let John herd him towards the zeta beams and take him back to Coast City, back to the apartment Hal rarely stayed in, because he was usually in space, or at Barry’s small house outside of Central City.

He knows now what was in their eyes -  pity. Pity because they all had some idea of the relationship between Green Lantern and Flash. It wasn’t like he and Barry hid the fact that they were a couple. They ate together, took missions together, watched each other’s backs and hovered over each other in the medbay; honestly, it was pretty obvious, even if there were a lot of people who wondered just how the mild mannered Flash and hot headed Green Lantern managed to get along long enough to begin a relationship in the first place.

But not a lot of people knew them as Hal and Barry. Didn’t know them beyond the masks they wore.

It doesn’t matter anymore, though, because Barry is dead.

Barry is dead, and Hal is alone.

Hal shuts himself away; he locks himself in his apartment, takes a leave from the League and the Corps, and stays huddled away in a darkened room, mind racing through regrets and memories. He wouldn’t even be able to go out if he wanted to, not as Green Lantern, because he hadn’t been able to light his ring since he’d learned, barely made it flicker despite it being a full charge, so John and Guy pick up his slack. Sometimes, he feels something other than the numbness of loss when he sees them on the news, doing his job for him, but even that isn’t enough to make Hal will himself to move again. Alan comes by, sometimes, but it doesn’t change anything, only makes him remember to eat because the older Lantern is always bringing food and has  mastered that look that makes Hal listen to what he’s saying.

He’s worrying them, he knows, worrying his fellow Leaguers too, but Hal’s never handled loss well, even since he was that kid staring at the flaming wreck of his father’s plane. He obsesses, the therapist had told his mother, back when they were still trying to pry into his head to pull out his thoughts so that he’d stop dreaming of flying someday, because his mom didn’t want to lose anyone else to the fires of a crashed plane but Hal was too stubborn to listen. Back then, Hal had been standing outside of the door, listening listening to his mom cry and beg the psychologists to  fix him, to make him normal; he’d been quiet and numb then too, because even back then, even at eight, he’d known that while his mom loved him, he was too much like his dad and that was all she could see in his eyes.

Hal had shut down back then, and he shuts down now too.

The what-ifs are loud, an ever-present shouting in his mind that he can’t block out. He wonders what could have happened if he had been there, if he’d been on Earth when Barry had run so fast that his body had burned up. Could he have stopped it? Could his ring have saved Barry?

They haunt him almost as much as Barry does.

When the door to his apartment opens, Hal barely looks up from where he sits on the lumpy old couch, staring out the window and watching the cars zoom past. He’s used to it at this point, the comings and goings of his fellow Lanterns, so he just keeps staring, hoping that whoever came to watch him stew in his depression would leave him to it. That is, until his visitor speaks up.

“Uncle Hal.” Hal jerks, head snapping up and around at the young, wrecked voice. Wally looks horrible, and Hal isn’t surprised - though he does feel guilty that he had forgotten about the speedster that had once run at Barry’s side. Wally had been Iris and Barry’s son in all but blood, and then, after Zoom had killed Iris, he’d only had Barry.

Barry, and Hal, who hadn’t let Barry out of his sight if he could help it.

But Hal had forgotten - so caught up in himself that he forgot about the boy Barry had been raising. God - Wally wasn’t even twenty yet, and he’d lost both of the closest things to actual parents that weren’t pieces of rotting shit he’d ever had, and now he was stuck with  Hal of all people.

“Wally.” He croaks, stumbling to his feet with all the grace of a newborn colt. Wally is pale, almost gray, with dark circles under dull eyes; he looks like he hadn’t slept since Barry’s death. “Shit, kid - I -” Hal stutters slightly, guilt burning in his gut, “- I’m sorry.” For not being here. For not helping Barry. For not being on Earth. For not being there for him in the aftermath.

Wally’s smile is shaky, and almost heartbreaking to look at, “It’s okay.” The kid says, shrugging. He steps forward, wrapping his arms around Hal’s torso, and folds himself against the Lantern, pressing his forehead against Hal’s collarbone. “Nightwing told me you were planet-side.” The words aren’t even accusing, but God knows Hal deserved that and more. They just sound tired, a soul-deep exhaustion out of place in such a young man.

Hal lets out a shaky breath, holding the young man close. Shit, he’s horrible - leaving Wally on his own, and not even having the balls to tell him that he’d come back. “I’m sorry.” Hal says again, uselessly. “How’re you holding up?”

Wally lets out a shuddering sigh, “I’m holding.” He says, bitter amusement in his voice. “Jay’s been - he’s been running patrols.”

“Yeah.” Hal sighs. Alan had told him, during one of his earlier visits; at the time, it had angered Hal, knowing that someone other than Barry was protecting Central, but now he’s come to terms with it. Barry may be dead, but crime wouldn’t have stopped, no matter how much the twin cities adored the Flash.

“I -” Wally’s voice cuts off. He goes quiet, hesitates, and pulls back, fiddling with the heavy golden ring on his finger.

His Flash ring.

Green eyes flash, harden, then Wally meets his eyes head-on. “Jay can’t do it all.” Wally says, “He’s retired. But -” he grows hesitant, “- but the world needs a Flash.” He finishes quietly. “And it needs to be me.” Wally ducks his head again, and Hal’s heart thunders in his chest. “I - I just - I’m not  him. It feels wrong.”

It was inevitable, Hal knows, that Wally would become the Flash. Barry had always told him that his sidekick had always had potential, had the goodness inside of him needed to be a hero, that he would make an amazing Flash.

But he’d always hoped that Barry would be here to see it happen.

“You’re not Barry.” Hal finds himself saying, then he winces.  Way to go, Jordan, just fuck it up all over again. He scrambles to recover, “But you can’t get your confidence from  him.” Wally looks at him with sad green eyes, and Hal reaches forward, placing a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “You’ve got to find it in yourself, Wally. You’re the Flash now, and that name means something to people.” Hal lets out a slow breath, forcing himself away from the foggy cloud of numbness he had fallen into. “I know it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be a heavy weight to carry, a heavy legacy.” He thinks of Abin Sur, and the expectations that had come with being his  replacement. “Barry - he was - he was the best. Not just as a hero, but as a  human being . That’s a lot to live up to.” Wally nods, but Hal isn’t done yet. “But you know what kid? You’re gonna do it. You know why I know?”

“...No.” Wally whispers, voice thick, and Hal moves his hand to gently press against the kid’s cheek, like Barry’s had.

“Because  Barry believed in you.” Hal says with a surety that he hasn’t felt since the moment Diana had told him what had happened. “He knew you’d be great. Always said that you’d be better than him, and I believe him.”

“What if I can’t be?” Wally’s voice shakes miserably, eyes shiny with tears, “I’m  not Barry.”

“There’s not going to be another Barry, kid.” Hal’s words tear past his throat, shredding his heart with them, “He’s dead. You’re not Barry, because you’re  you.”

Barry’s dead. He’s dead and gone, and Hal wasn’t there for him. He’d promised that he’d be there for him, once, and had planned to keep that promise; but, well, everyone had always told him he had commitment issues, hadn’t they? That he broke promises as easily as breathing.

May as well live up to that.

[mageofcole]

(ONE SHOT) I’ll try to explain the infinite  DC COMICS

A03

In another world, The Flash dies a hero, saving the world. He sacrifices himself so that others may live, and he’s remembered as a figure larger than life; everyone mourns The Flash as a saint, a paragon of justice and kindness, but no one remembers Barry. No one remembers the mild and gentle forensic scientist who was at the core of who the Scarlet Speedster was. No one but the man he raised, and the man who had loved him.

In another world, The Flash dies at the hands of Professor Zoom. He dies, and his wife is dragged through time, never to see her friends and family again. He dies as he’s dragged into the Speedforce, and he becomes just another speedster trapped outside of time and space as the world goes on without him. In this world, no one knows that the Flash that follows him is a different hero entirely, they don’t know that the child their hero had raised and trained would have to grow up too fast after the loss of another set of parents. In this world, people mourn Barry Allen, the good, kind man with a heart of gold who died in a tragic accident alongside his wife.

In both these worlds, Hal hadn’t known he’d loved his best friend, or maybe he had known but had never worked up the courage to admit it until he was looking down at that plain tombstone and he realized he’d never have the chance. In both these worlds, Hal keeps losing, and losing, and  losing  until he has nothing left, and yet people still ask for  more  . In the end, he stands with nothing but hate and fear in his heart and a burning desire to make it  right again. In both these worlds, Hal buries his best friend and loses half of himself at the same time. In both these worlds, Hal loses until he breaks, and he breaks others in return. He doesn’t die a saint, he doesn’t die a hero; instead Hal becomes the villain, and dies knowing he had destroyed any and all of his morals.

But  this isn’t those worlds.

Keep reading

[hecca-the-jedi]

*throws this fic into the universe*

Hi, I’m very new here but I was really inspired by @mageofcole‘s time travel fix-it au for Jangobi week and this wouldn’t leave my head. They were kind enough to let me share it with all of you so I hope you enjoy? 

Title: lost disaster on the ground

Rating: General Audiences

Relationships: Obi-wan Kenobi & Jango Fett

Word Count: 3220

Summary: 

Obi-wan Kenobi wakes up decades in the past, two infants in his arms, and it changes the course of this universe. Obi-wan doesn’t know why the Force sent him to Galidraan, but he knows he cannot waste the chance to save the True Mandalorians. There’s so much he needs to change, but he’s on Galidraan now so this is where he’ll start.

But what happens after a people are saved, after Luke and Leia are safe, and Obi-wan Kenobi is left to shudder underneath the weight of this new world?

Check it out here!

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) And the dreams that you dream of   DC COMICS

A03

It’s a weight off his shoulders.

Alan had known for a long time that his dirty little secret was dragging him down, had known that it was a vice around his heart and a collar around his neck that had stopped him from ever really being happy with himself. He’d lived his life hiding, and keeping secrets; for his own safety at first, and out of fear of change afterwards once it started becoming more mainstream. Back when he was a lad, being caught with another boy was as good as a death sentence - he’d heard so many stories of other kids and men like him being found in alleyways, of them being attacked and beating out in the open and still no one cared enough to help.

It was the norm, and Alan had tried to conform.

Alan Scott had known since grade school that he wasn’t normal, that he wasn’t like the other boys. Boys who would talk about how pretty Betty Noris was, or the shape of Dorothy’s assets. Instead, Alan had found his gaze lingering on the other boys during gym class, or the look of the bare chests of the men who would help his Ma move furniture. He’d known for a long time that it was dangerous, had known even before Jimmy and Robbie from the next block down had caught him and their kid brother behind the fish market. They had beaten Alan black and blue, had spit on him while he’d laid on the dirty ground and pulled Johnny away from him, promising worse if they ever saw him sniffing around their brother again, that they wouldn’t tell anyone this time that Alan Scott was a fag because it would drag their family’s good name down with him.

Johnny hadn’t been able to meet his eyes again after that, had sat on the opposite end of the classroom and kept to himself even more than he already had in the first place, and Alan had locked that part of himself away. He had hardened himself to everything around him, had become the kind of man expected of him.

But he hadn’t been fully happy. Not with himself, and not with his life.

Becoming Green Lantern had helped, it gave him a meaning that he hadn’t known he was missing. He made friends and comrades that would last him for decades afterwards, friends who knew and cared for him, no matter what Alan was. None of them were normal, none of them fit into the society of their time, for whatever reason. They were all freaks and outsiders, abominations who had all found themselves brought together by a shared desire for justice in an unfair world.

The Justice Society.

As Green Lantern, Alan could save people, could help people. Could slowly let out parts of himself that he had kept locked away for so long, ever since he was scrawny and twelve, and kissing Johnny Moore in a hidden part of the market. He could never  say what he was out loud, not fully, not without the words that he wouldn’t learn until much later in life, when more and more people like him started coming out of the shadows to live their lives openly and make their voices heard. He made friends and friends, people who didn’t care that Alan wasn’t right, because none of them really were either.

What was looking a little too long at men to aliens and immortals after all?

What was it to a man that could run faster than sound? A man who liked men and women equally and kept it hidden just as Alan did?

The Justice Society gave him Jay, and despite him being a raging ass, it also gave him unconditional love.

The Justice Society didn’t last forever, but the connections he made did.

Never before Alan had called what he had with Jay more than friendship, but they both knew it was more than that. Friends didn’t have the same sort of relationship Alan had with Jay, friends didn’t fall in love with each other and stay in love for as long as they had. Friends didn’t sleep with a married man, even with their partner’s wife’s permission. Joan was a lovely, wonderful woman, who deserved the world, and by god, Alan knows that Jay was willing to give it to her if she asked. The Garricks would never have blood children, not without the lack of trying, but Alan knows they considered the new generations of speedsters their own, just as they considered Alan’s children family.

Unlike Jay, Alan hadn’t been able to settle down. He hadn’t been able to keep up the facade he had built up, even if he had tried. He had loved Rose and Molly, had adored them, but not in the ways that they deserved. He had grieved Rose when she’d died, he had let Molly go so that she could find happiness, and he had kept going, kept hiding.

But hiding had taken its toll.

He has adult children now. Children with lives of their own. He’s old, and getting older, and the world is changing. It’s not perfect, he knows, but it’s so much better than the one he had grown up in. There’s still people like Jimmy and Robbie Moore out there hurting people like him, but this generation refuses to keep quiet or hidden. Alan is damn proud of them; he may wear a mask, but those activists? The ones who stood up and made themselves heard over the years and the ingrained belief that they were lesser because of how they were born or who they loved? Who refused to stay down despite everyone telling them to?

They’re the real damn heroes.

Alan wishes he was half as brave as them.

As it stands, he’s making the truth known. He’s coming clean, and it feels like the rush of adrenaline that comes with flying, that swoop in his stomach as his feet leave the ground. Telling Jen and Todd the truth had felt so,  so wrong, but so right at the same time. He’s an old man now; he’d been lying and hiding since before they had been born, and still they didn’t care. They loved him regardless of it.

They had called him brave.

Alan doesn’t feel very brave, not after all these years, but he does feel free.

It’s after telling his kids that Alan finds himself Keystone City, in front of a familiar little townhouse that Alan is pretty sure he knows better than his own apartment. He lets himself in like he always does, and wanders in, mind feeling like it’s moving as fast as Jay runs.

“Alan?” Jay is in the kitchen, drying his hands on a dish towel and looking soft and domestic, dressed down in slacks and a t-shirt he remembers Barry getting him as a gag on Father’s Day. He’s as beautiful as the day Alan had first met him. His hair is whiter, sure, and his face more lined, but his blue eyes are as kind and warm as ever, and standing in the golden light of the sunset, Alan wants to sweep him into his arms and kiss him.

God - Alan is getting sentimental in his old age.

Propping a hip against the counter, Jay folds the towel over his shoulder, studying him with a gentle sort of care that comes easily to the speedster, and Alan finds his worries melting away. “Everything alright?”

“I told Jen and Todd.” Alan blurts out before he can stop himself. Jay makes it so easy, to tell him everything, to bear his soul and put his heart in his hands. He knows that Jay would protect it, just as he protects everything else. He’d treat his heart with gentle love and sweet care that Alan still doesn’t know if he deserves to have. “I told them. About me.” His eyes slide away from Jay’s, a habit developed after years of not telling anyone.

After years of hiding.

“Alan.” Jay’s voice, deep and kind with the smooth Midwestern drawl Alan had first fallen in love with as a young man, draws him back. It grounds him in ways that Alan can’t describe. “I’m proud of you.”

“I love you.” He whispers, like a promise, and it’s loud in the bubble of space-time that is Alan-and-Jay. He’s never said it before, not out loud. He had been too scared to let it pass his lips or form on his tongue. Jay had been so much more patient than Alan ever deserved, letting him lead him on for as long as he had.

He can see the surprised delight in Jay’s eyes, the stunned part of his lips, and Alan wishes he could have been brave enough to say it years ago.

“I love you. I’ve been in love with you for years.” His voice is louder now, but it still shakes, and if possible, everything about Jay gets softer.

“I love you too.” The speedster says without hesitation, and Alan steps closer, into the bubble of his space, feeling the sparks of static electricity dance across his skin as it always does this close to Jay.

“Can I kiss you?” He breathes reverently, and Jay laughs faintly, gently taking his face in his hands, warm skin against his jaw.

“Do you really need to ask?” Jay teases, and Alan’s lips quirk.

“Yeah.” He says, like a sap, “I like it when you say yes.”

Jay’s blue eyes sparkle. “Well then,” he says with good humour, “my answer will always be yes, Alan.”

Like a fish on a line, Alan is reeled in, letting Jay pull him closer and tilt his head, before he presses their lips together.

[colehasapen]

(CHAPTER 1) ba’jurir  STAR WARS

A03

If there was one thing that Cody had to choose that shocked him the most about bounty hunting, he would have to say it was the speed in which information spreads. As Kote Cerasi, one half of a mysterious bounty hunting pair, he’s become somewhat of a rising star among the Guild. As ruthless and efficient at his new occupation as he was as Marshal Commander of the Third System Army, his new position as one of the best in the Guild comes with a slew of priceless intelligence that he passes on to Organa and his budding Rebellion. He’s made a name for himself, and his code is already as synonymous with this rise in fame as his  beskar’gam  is; his preferred hunt is  demogolke, those who dare lay a hand on children, and for those who had managed to catch a glimpse of the infants he and his partner toasted around at times, it wouldn’t have come as much of a surprise.

It’s his reputation that lets him hear the news first.

“Hey, Cerasi!” Cody barely tilts his helmet away from the bounty board as Karga approaches, a sly smile on his face. He’s considering a bounty on Bracca when he calls out for him, of a scrapper that had gotten too handsy with some well-off natborn’s daughter, so the other hunter doesn’t really hold his attention, even if he keeps himself aware of the man’s movements and location.

Karga’s useful for information gathering, but not much else in Cody’s opinion, though he had been slated for the position of a Contract out in the Outer Rim should a spot open up. Obi-Wan had decided that it would be beneficial for them to stay on his good side, to have their own in with the man for intelligence, but Cody didn’t trust the man as far as a cadet could throw him.

“Karga.” He greets with a gruff grunt, and the man watches him with greedy, intelligent eyes. “What can I do for you?”

Karga’s smirk widens, and he slides into the booth across from him, “Oh no. The question, my friend, is what can  I  do for  you?”

Cody’s head tilts more, a sign of his attention, “A job then?”

“Something of the sorts.” Karga equivocates, and from under his  buy’ce, Cody shoots the man a look that had once made his men fear the training coming their way if they didn’t get to the point immediately.

It had never worked on his  riduur though, because Obi-Wan was an unrepentant chaotic bastard when he got into the mood, but enough of the gist of it gets through the visor to make Karga squirm. Though it could just be the gold-on-black jaig eyes staring him down.

“You’ve made a name for yourself, Mando.” Karga says, “And I know talent when I see it; you could be the best.” Cody hums non-committedly, tilting his head pointedly. He’s been the best before, but now he’s only interested in keeping his small family safe. “A little birdy told me that Bane’s been dethroned, and his successor is easy pickings.” Karga leans in close, voice hushing, “And I’d throw my weight behind  you.”

“Oh?” Cody probes, uninterested, but it’s what the other bounty hunter wants to hear.

“It’s  Boba Fett.”

Cody’s grip tightens on the datapad he holds, breath punching out of him and feeling like he had been gut shot. Boba, his brother, Jango’s only son while the rest of them were products and tools. Boba who had been proof that Jango could be a good father, a good person, that he could have loved them but chose not to.

Boba who was innocent of the blame for how they were treated, and who used to sneak into training with the CCs when they had all been the same size. Boba who had once traded spots with Cody, back when they were identical, who had once let Cody have a taste of his life, of a life being something other than a mindless copy. Boba who had seen his father killed in combat and fell into the wrong sort of crowd.

Boba who had helped kill Ponds. Boba who hadn’t been able to pull the trigger.

Manda - he was still a child, out there alone and picking fights with the likes of Cad Bane. He was still a brother, a free brother without family on his side.

Cody lowers the datapad slowly, his attention on the bounty hunter, and when he speaks, his voice is gravelly. “How much for a head start?”

He finds Boba on Vanqor, hidden away in a small apartment and nursing his wounds. He’d left Obi-Wan and the ik’aade on the Jate’kara, docked in the hangar, and sent Threepio, Artoo, and Arfour to collect the supplies they’d need to look after a teenager while he hunts his brother down.

He finds Boba bedridden and feverish, surrounded by the smell of sick, and as weak as a Tooka kitten. The owner of the building, an elderly Rodian, hovers worriedly behind him; she had been trying to care for him, Cody knows, but didn’t know much about medical care for Humans, hadn’t had the money for the proper bacta for a Human either. She’d been glad that family had shown up to get him the help he needed.

“Thank you.” He mutters to the Rodian, passing her a pouch of credits, before stepping further into the room. He doesn’t need to turn to know the woman had given them privacy.

Cody grimaces with disgust as he pulls his buy’ce off, staring at the child absolutely swimming in ratty clothes too big for his body, and the pile of damaged beskar’gam piled in the corner. Boba’s pupils are dilated, his face so pale it’s unhealthy and gray, and limp curls are matted to his forehead with a mixture of sweat and puss, originating from the infected wound on his temple that the Rodian woman had tried to wrap.

The whole room stinks, and Cody wonders just how long his  vod had been bedridden.

“Boba.” He calls, forcing delirious eyes to meet his own, and Cody winces at the heat rolling off of his skin, hot enough to feel even through his gloves when he places a hand on the teenager’s sunken cheek.

The kid blinks at him slowly, confused. “Buir?” Boba warbles thickly, tears rising in his eyes, and Cody isn’t going to touch  that with a ten foot pole. Instead, he turns his eyes to the crusty gauze wrapped around his head, gently peeling it away, and immediately hisses in sympathy. The bone had caved in slightly, the skin around it burnt, and at some point, the skin had been split open, ragged and painfully swollen, allowing old pus to crust over it.

“Dank ferrick, Boba, what did you do to yourself?” Cody hisses - he hadn’t brought the supplies he’d need to deal with this here. He’d have to carry Boba back to the ship. He curses again, replacing his buy’ce to bundle the boy up with his dirty sheets, noting absently that he’d have to burn everything Boba is wearing once he’d gotten him cleaned up, but for now, it’s not safe to leave Boba where he is and in this state. Karga wouldn’t be giving him much of a head start, and soon there would be bounty hunters out for his brother’s blood, looking to gain the fame of killing the one to defeat Cad Bane.

Boba leans into the touch when Cody lifts him, curling into his chest with a watery hiccup, the heat of his skin scalding through his kute. “I missed you Buir.” He rasps, head dropping against Cody’s shoulder. The kid is too light, too small, and Cody curses the Galaxy that had turned the happy boy he remembers from Kamino into this.

He had no lost love for Jango, no fond feelings for him, but Cody wishes he hadn’t made the choices he had, that had led to his death and to Boba being left alone in the Galaxy. He wishes Jango hadn’t died, if only for Boba.

He has a long road to recovery before him, but Cody would help him, would take care of him, because Boba is family.

Cody has very little family left.

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[colehasapen]

(CHAPTER 7) there’s a river full of memory   STAR WARS

Previous // First

A03

The room still feels like him.

Hours out from Coruscant, Anakin is hidden away in the room that had been his master’s, curled up under his blanket and numbly signing off on the other man’s paperwork. His head and heart ache, a burning fury caught in his throat like rotten food, and yet he feels too  empty. Usually when he gets angry, it gives him more strength, strength that he would use to protect the people he loves from a fate like his mother’s. He’d never be too late again, he’d stop the from being hurt again - the Tuskens had just proven to him what Palpatine had been trying to show him for years, that the Galaxy needed stricter control, a heavier hand, all to bring about the peace that it deserved.

But now, after seeing Obi-Wan’s face, young and soft but with a look in his eyes that Anakin would have associated with the new slaves on Tatooine, the anger just makes him feel tired. Obi-Wan had looked at him with fear, had had the expression that Anakin had seen far too often on new slaves, those that hadn’t been born into the life, but had been captured and sold.

He remembers the Tuskens, remembers cutting them down for what they did to his mother. It hadn’t fixed anything, hadn’t made him feel better or brought her back, but he had avenged his mother. His beautiful, wonderful mother who didn’t deserve what had happened to her. Anakin would have made her a queen if he could, he would have killed those filthy Hutts and put her on a throne, but instead he had held her as she died.

At least he could comfort himself with the knowledge that justice had been swift and unforgiving. They had paid for what they had done to her.

He had done the right thing, he had made sure they couldn’t hurt anyone else. You had to put down animals like that, who had gotten a taste for human blood, or they’d do it again; Anakin had done his duty to make sure they wouldn’t. He’d done the right thing, Chancellor Palpatine had assured him of it. To be angry was to be human, Padmé had told him.

They wouldn’t have said those things if Anakin had been wrong. They understood him better than anyone, they were good, kind people who wouldn’t have loved him if he did something wrong.

And  yet - he thinks of the young face staring back at him with fear, holding his lightsaber in small hands, screaming through the Force to pay attention to him, to look at him instead of anyone else in the room. Obi-Wan had been trying to protect others from  him.

Obi-Wan could tell what he had done. Obi-Wan would tell people, and everything would be  ruined.

Maybe if he made him understand that the Tuskens weren’t  people -

The Order wouldn’t understand, they never do. They think he was too old and too angry to be one of them, but Anakin had proved them all  wrong, he had become the  best of them. He had lived up to the legacy Qui-Gon had laid for him, and he’s working to bring balance and justice back to the Galaxy. But if Obi-Wan told them about the Tuskens, they wouldn’t ask questions; they hate him, and if they knew, they wouldn’t hesitate to throw him out. The Chancellor had told him what they would do to him if they thought he had Fallen, had told him history that the Order hid from him. They’d lock him away from the rest of his life, would take away the freedom he had fought so hard for.

They’d punish Padmé for loving him.

He couldn’t let that happen. The Jedi would ruin Padmé, would take her away from him. They’d take Ahsoka from him, if they knew - her and Rex, and the rest of the 501st. They’d make the Senate punish Chancellor Palpatine for being his friend - they’d never liked the Chancellor, had never liked their friendship. They didn’t approve of any connections outside of the Order.

They’d lock him away, another pair of chains weighing him down, and-

The door buzzes, sliding open, and Anakin pulls himself from his head, bemusement shining through his spiraling thoughts. He could have sworn he had locked the room down.

“General.” Rex greets as he steps into the room. His Force signature is rolling with distress, with anger and a choking fury and drowning sadness, but his face shows none of this. He’s reserved, expression shuttered, and as he watches, the Captain reels everything back in behind the shields Anakin remembers Obi-Wan tutoring him how to make after Ventress had gotten into his head. It makes Anakin suddenly hyper aware that his Captain had left a Force imprint in his Master’s bedroom.

Well, it’s not too surprising. They work with the 212th so often, and Rex is nothing if not diligent with his paperwork, and Anakin knows how much Obi-Wan would prefer to avoid his office at any opportunity. It would be much easier for him to work with Obi-Wan, so that they could compare reports more comfortably. Obi-Wan even had those armour racks the clones liked to use for anyone who came in to do paperwork.

Honestly, they both work too much.

Anakin shakes himself from his thoughts, “Rex.” He says roughly, crawling out from under Obi-Wan’s sheets. He’s honestly glad to see his Captain; Rex is a good man, a stable rock in the storm of his head. Seeing him never fails to make Anakin feel more settled. Rex is a good friend, one of his best.

He hopes what Obi-Wan said hasn’t changed anything.

“How’re the -” he hesitates slightly, thinking of the two younglings on the biobed, curled around each other and watching him like spooked Tookas, “- kids?” It’s  weird; Obi-Wan and his Commander were two of the most adult-like adults that he knew. They’re serious and focused on their duty, enough that Anakin forgets that Obi-Wan is only in his thirties, and Cody is technically twelve.

To think of them as kids? It feels  wrong.

Rex flinches slightly - he’s close to Cody, Anakin remembers, to see him in such a state must be just as distressing as seeing Obi-Wan is for Anakin. “Commander Tano is showing them around.” The Captain says roughly, unhooking Anakin’s lightsaber from his belt and wordlessly handing it over. “It’s been a stressful day for them.”

Anakin laughs bitterly, “It’s been a stressful day for all of us.” He thinks back to how Obi-Wan had revealed his darkest secret. He’d always been afraid of it happening, that one day he’d share everything with his Master, and that the man would then turn around and betray him, that he’d chose the Code over Anakin.

But - well, hadn’t he already when he had disregarded Anakin’s visions of his mother’s death? The Chancellor sure thought so, and he was so much better with people than Anakin is. Anakin prefers droids to people, prefers mechanics to relationships, and Chancellor Palpatine just seems to know everything about how to talk to people.

Rex was a lot like him really - not good with people that is.

Rex dips his head in a silent nod, lowering himself to sit on the edge of Obi-Wan’s bed with a surprising amount of ease for his usually awkward Captain. “Kix is keeping an eye on them.” Anakin gets a flash of a memory from the clone, one Rex chose to share with him, of Ahsoka cheerfully leading the two small kids down the hall, Kix trotting along behind them as the Padawan and medic have an exaggeratedly playful conversation, trying to pull the boys out of their shells, and Anakin can’t help but smile fondly.

His Padawan would make an amazing Knight.

“General.” Rex hesitates, eyes conflicted and expression tense, and he’s quiet for a long moment, looking torn and physically floundering for words. Anakin waits patiently for the man to decide what to say. “What do you know about General Kenobi’s apprenticeship?”

Raising an eyebrow in confusion, the young Knight tilts his head, “His Padawanship?” He echoes in confusion. “Honestly, not much.” Anakin shrugs; Obi-Wan hadn’t spoken of it, so it must have been pretty boring.

It would have been nice though, having a Jedi like Qui-Gon as a Master.

“He was apprenticed to Master Qui-Gon Jinn, and was Knighted at twenty-five -” the pride of becoming a Knight younger than his perfect Master is a familiar thing, “- pretty normal stuff, really.”

Something  twists in Rex’s expression - in his entire being really. “Normal?” He repeats, and his tone, something Anakin can’t explain, unnerves him. “Sir, all due respect, but being sold into slavery  shouldn’t be normal.”

Anakin goes cold. “What?”

Rex stares at him, eyes burning, “Sir, this Obi-Wan Kenobi is twelve years old, and the last thing he remembers is a Fallen Jedi selling him into slavery.” Anakin feels sick. “He says he’s not a Jedi, that he was sent away -”

“No.” Anakin interrupts, his entire worldview turning on it’s head, into something that  doesn’t make sense. It can’t have happened - Obi-Wan was the perfect Jedi, they never would have sent him away. He couldn’t have been a slave, he would have told Anakin if he had. It would have helped him understand the pain Anakin was going through when he had first joined the Order. “No - no, that can’t be right.” Rex is watching him, brown eyes dark with anger, “He would have  told me!”

“I don’t think he told anyone, General.”

“He should have  told me!” Anakin barks furiously, flapping a hand, and he barely notices the clone’s recoil at the violent move.

Force, he’s so angry. He needs to talk to Padmé, or Chancellor Palpatine; they’d help him make sense of things.

“Get out.”

Rex falters, “Sir?”

“I need some time alone, Rex.” The Knight hisses out between clenched teeth, “Leave.”

Rex follows the order, like he always does, and he leaves Anakin behind to his thrashing thoughts. He fishes his comm out with shaking hands, plugging in a code he knows off by heart.

The Chancellor answers immediately, just like he always does.  “Anakin, my boy!” Already, Anakin finds his stress melting away as Chancellor Palpatine’s kind voice washes over him. The man always picks up. No matter how busy he is, he always puts time aside for Anakin, ready to lend an ear and his hard-earned wisdom.

Anakin used to wish Obi-Wan would be more like the Chancellor.

  “This is a pleasant surprise! What can I do for you?”

Anakin swallows, settling his nerves, and he talks. “I need some advice, Chancellor.”

Taglist: @a-mediocre-succulent @yellowisharo @spoofymcgee @roseofalderaan @everything-or-anything @bellablue42 @tumceteri-fratres @etainskirata @arkainea

[nibeul]

tumblr folks get to see something first for once because I have no self control and decided to finish this (I cannot say I’m surprised by myself). I’ve always liked the headcanon of Rex and Keeli being batchmates tbh, and well, I felt inspired draw something after taking a trip down memory lane when thinking about Ryloth. Keeli’s death always stuck with me as a kid, as did many clone deaths, though I haven’t really thought about his character until now. I highly recommend reading taab’echaaj’la by @mageofcole on AO3 since that’s what this piece is based off of, their writing is absolutely phenomenal (also that’s Cody handing Rex Keeli’s helmet)

RBs are very appreciated!!!

[colehasapen]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) do you dare look him right in the eyes?  STAR WARS

Jangobi Week Day 4 - Forced to Work Together

A03

Jango lets out a grunt of pain as he throws himself behind cover, vocoder crackling in his  buy’ce, his leg and side burning in pain.

Arla was going to be pissed with him. His  aliit’alor  had told him,  ordered him even, not to get involved in the Sith-Jedi shit currently burning its way through the galaxy, but here Jango is, trapped behind the combat lines, with a downed ship, a broken leg, a dead bounty, and a damaged jetpack, trying desperately not to catch the attention of either side.

Jango had thought he could skirt around the worst of the conflict, thought he could just get in and out with the bounty that would feed his aliit for a month. His hunt had gone off effortlessly, the smuggler he was chasing had a lot of credits on his head if brought in alive, apparently having pissed off the wrong royal family when stealing one heirloom or another, and with how tight credits had been since Arla had denied to let them join in the war between the  dar’Jetiise  and  Jetiise, had stepped back from the army to put the  aliit first, despite the Mand’alor’s support being given to the Sith. Their family had lost a lot in the last number of generations; their Buire, aunts and uncles, so many of their cousins - they had all fallen in the line of duty, leaving Arla to lead their  aliit  too young. The older generations had been decimated, leaving only a child who had only just passed her  verd’goten to lead more children, all younger than her. Jango himself had only been eight when their family had died, fifteen years ago, he barely remembers it or them, but he remembers how it hurt Arla, even years later. When the Mand’alor had begun gathering  verde, he’d almost volunteered, he had wanted the chance to bring glory to his small  aliit, but one look at Arla’s face, her wild-eyed fear, had kept him quiet.

Instead, he’d gone back to bounty hunting. He’d done what he could to help provide for the younger members, for Arla’s children, for their younger cousins and nieces and nephews, but refusing the Mand’alor came with consequences. It was hard to find employers who didn’t have connections to their king, it was hard to find people who would pay for his time. Clan Fett had been blacklisted for refusing to rejoin the war, and their farm could only provide so much.

At least there were plenty of stuffy royals willing to pay a premium to be able to claim they had a  Mando’ad at their beck and call.

The hunt for the thief had gone off without a problem, he’d tracked to  hut’uun to where he was hiding, thinking that cowering behind the war would keep him safe. Jango had tracked him down, had taken him into custody, but the moment he’d tried to leave the planet’s atmosphere, his ship had been shot down. Jango had barely survived, his bounty hadn’t, and if he manages to get off the planet, it means that he’s lost his pay.

He’s trapped behind  dar’Jetiise  lines now, trying to avoid the hunters sent after him. He doesn’t like  Jetiise  - what self-respecting  Mando’ad  does - but at this point, Jango thinks he’d prefer them to their darker counterparts. At least  Jetiise were easier to fool, and would be more willing to let him leave the planet with all his limbs intact if he explained that he’s not one of the Mando’ade following the  dar’Jetiise. They probably wouldn’t like him, simply on principle, but if he could prove he wasn’t a combatant they would be honour-bound not to attack.

That is if he could ever get out of this kriffing nightmare.

Jango curses again, pushing himself deeper into the mud when he hears movement. Thanking the Manda that his  beskar’gam  messes with the Force enough that the  dar’Jetiise hunting him for sport wouldn’t be able to sense him. If he could stay hidden long enough for them to walk right past him, then he could keep travelling in the direction that he remembers the  Jetiise camp being when he’d studied the planet.

Kriff - he hates this.

Heart pounding in his chest, Jango carefully regulates his breathing, and lets himself sink deeper into the black mud. His HUD can pick up a body traveling towards him, growing closer and closer, and the Jango’s grip tightens on his vibroblade; if the  dar’Jetii gets close, he’ll be able to fight back.

Another voice lets out a curse, there’s a heavy splash, and a Human comes stumbling over the bush Jango has hidden himself under. Jango lashes out, grabbing the  dar’Jetii’s ankle and  pulling. When the Human goes tumbling, Jango drags himself on top of them, raising his dagger, and moments before he brings it down, he finds himself staring into wide  blue eyes in a young, mud-stained face.

A  Jetii.

Jango has a moment to curse, jerking to a stop, before the  Jetii he’s caught lashes out and flings him off of them. Jango finds himself plucked off of the Human by an invisible hand, and thrown like a child’s toy. He hits the ground, pain exploding through his body, and as he lays there, reeling and gasping, he expects the  Jetii  to follow up on the attack. He expects to be carved open by a  jetii’kad for his stupid mistake, expects to find himself suddenly passing into the Manda, to see those who marched on before him to join their ancestors.

But it never comes.

Instead, a blue  jetii’kad  is leveled at his chest. The  Jetii stands over him, and Jango finds himself blinking in shock, looking up into the fierce expression and burning eyes the same colour as the blade. The Jetii is scrawny, but there’s power in their shoulders, not at all hidden by the pauldrons on their shoulders.

“Who might you be, Mandalorian?” The  Jetii demands, white teeth flashing amongst the black mud caked to their face in a fierce grin. Jango knows it's a demand, despite the generally cheerful tone in the  Jetii’s voice. “Why have you attacked me? Are you a servant of the Sith?”

“I serve  no one.” Jango hisses, pushing back the pain, ignoring the memories of arrogant royals considering him nothing more than an exotic plaything. He’d needed the credits, had agreed to it, because he doesn’t have the reputation that would bring him the bigger bounties - not yet anyways. He’d agreed to anything to get the credits his aliit needed, but it didn’t mean he liked it.

He’d bend, but he’d never break.

“I’m just a simple man making his way through the galaxy.”

“A simple man, are you?” The  Jetii  says slowly, and Jango can almost imagine the eyebrow being raised under all that mud. “And you just  happened to have almost shoved a vibroblade through my eye?”

“Thought you were a  dar’Jetii.” Jango grunts, and the  Jetii’s head tilts.

“I was under the impression that the Mandalorians were fighting for the Sith?”

Jango growls, “Not  all  of us.” The Jetii continues to watch him, but those blue eyes don’t seem as intent anymore. “I was here for a bounty. Some  chakaar that was stupid enough to get caught stealing from a royal family. Pay was good, if he was brought in warm, but my ship was shot down.”

“Is that so?” The Jetii muses, but the  jetii’kad deactivates with a hiss. “Could I perhaps have a name, my new bounty hunting friend?”

“Jango.” He grunts, shifting to prop himself up on his elbows. “Jango Fett.” He stares up into bright eyes, mind still reeling to catch up with the situation he's found himself in. He had come far too close to loosing his head for comfort, and the faintest stirrings of attraction deep in his gut is annoying - he doesn't have time for another crush on another person with a nice smile who could have definitely killed him without trying. "And we're not friends."

The Jetii  beams  at him, far too charming for his own good. “A pleasure!” He says cheerfully, stowing away his  kad’au, “I’m Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it seems we’re in the same kind of trouble.” Kenobi’s blue eyes sparkle, and Jango glares suspiciously, “What say you to a temporary alliance, Jango Fett?”

“Well,” Jango says slowly, and honestly, he’d prefer a baby  Jetii  to a  dar’Jetii, even if it's an annoyingly pretty one, “if you can use your crazy magic to help with a broken leg, I’d be in your debt.”

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[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) you’ve got to run far from all you’ve ever known  STAR WARS

Febuwhump no.3 - Imprisonment

A03

As he’s carried through the oppressive halls of the Star Destroyer, Rex’s entire body aches and his stomach rolls. His head is fuzzy, the result of the stunner that had taken him down, and his chest aches where the Purge Trooper had tackled him.

He had been on Felucia, following a potential lead on Bly’s location, when he’d run into the trooper in black. He’s only heard rumours of Purge Troopers, of Stormtroopers so elite that they’d earned their own classification and higher quality weapons. Made to specifically hunt Jedi survivors, Purge Troopers were well known for never leaving survivors, and for fighting until they couldn’t fight anymore. They were rarely ever seen among the rank and file, only given the most dangerous of missions, and they were rumoured to be among the best of the clones.

Rex had been tracking any leads he could, to rescue any vode possible, but even after five years, it seemed like an impossible task. He’d gotten both Gregor and Wolffe out, but neither had had an activated chip, too damaged by the head trauma they’d received during the Clone Wars, but neither were in a good place to run missions. He had gone to Cut, had helped him remove his own and take his family deeper into hiding so that the Empire couldn’t find them. He knows that Clone Force 99 is free, he exchanges encrypted comms with Echo on a regular basis, but they never meet up, unwilling to lead possible tails to each other. Rex’s strength had been his anonymity; the Empire thought him dead, that he’d died with the rest of his men when the ship went down, and his face was simply that of another clone if he kept his hair disguised. It allowed him to sneak behind lines and collect intelligence to pass on to the fledgling Rebellion, because no one was looking for him. He had heard a passing rumour of Bly possibly being on Felucia, being on the planet where his Jedi had been killed, and Rex had acted as quickly as he could; he’d known what was going on between Bly and his General during the War, knew that the Commander didn’t just think of her as a General, and he knew that if he didn’t find him fast enough, there likely wouldn’t be anything  to save.

He had been right. He’d found Bly, found him where he knew Bly would have wanted to be, and he’d kneeled in front of those two graves and begged for forgiveness. For not being fast enough, for not listening to Fives, for not being there. The rumours had been right; Bly had been on Felucia, but he was already gone.

Someone had gone through the trouble of burying both the Jedi and the Commander, had known Bly well enough to know that he’d want to be buried with his Jedi, and Rex had wondered how long it could have possibly been - how the rumours could have been sparked.

Then he’d picked up Bly’s bucket, intent on giving his  ori’vod   one final  kov’nyn while he said his Remembrances, and he’d seen the blinking light of an activated signal.

Someone had staged it. Someone had known that a free clone would come looking if a signal was picked up, and had planted a trap at the same time as they buried Rex’s brother.

He hadn’t even had time to pull out his blasters before the Purge Trooper had been bearing down on him.

Rex doesn’t know how long he’s been unconscious since the trooper stunned him, he doesn’t know  why he was taken alive, all he knows is that there are stun cuffs humming around his wrists and the Purge Trooper has him slung effortlessly over his shoulder like he were nothing more than a sack of tubers. Rex is almost a little offended; he knows he’s lost weight since starting his hunt, knows that he hasn’t had the chance to eat the way that his metabolism demands when he’s not on Seelos where Gregor can fuss over him and shove food that tastes like ash down his throat - he has no doubt that his brother can cook, and cook well, but Rex just doesn’t have the energy to taste what he makes, just goes through the motions of chewing and swallowing to make Gregor happy and reduce Wolffe’s stress - but he hadn’t thought he’d lost enough mass to make it easy on the clone carrying him. He’s slung over a surprisingly soft pauldron, staring foggily down at the Purge Trooper’s swaying kama, and he wonders if he knows this trooper, wonders if he could knock the bucket off and place their face.

Maybe he could sway them away from the chip’s programming.

“Commander.” A voice Rex doesn’t recognize, can’t see, says, and the Purge Trooper pauses, gait skipping slightly. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve captured a traitor to the Empire, Sir.” The Purge Trooper says drolly, like they were annoyed at the interruption. “I’m taking the clone to the brig, so that it can be transferred to Kamino for repairs and reconditioning.”

Rex’s stomach drops, heart fluttering in fear. If he was taken back to Kamino, the Longnecks would put the chip back in his head, and everything that made him  Rex  would be gone again. Panic flares in his mind like a heavy fog, threatening to drown him with the memories of staring down his blaster at Ahsoka’s scared face and not recognizing her as his  vod’ika and Commander. He hadn’t seen her as anything but a target, someone to execute - a traitor, not even a person, and if he hadn’t warned her before being dragged under in that split second of horrified realization that Fives had been right, then she’d likely be dead.

“Trooper,” The Purge Trooper’s superior sounds annoyed, like they were dealing with a child that kept bringing feral animals into their bed. It’s almost the exact tone of voice Rex had to use when Tup had tried to slip a  ‘therapy animal’  onto the  Resolute. “You know your orders. Any rogue clone is to be  executed, not detained. If you continue to ignore regulations, I’ll have no choice but to have you returned for retraining.” The Imperial sighs, sounding tired. “I’ve already been far too lenient with your…  defectiveness … because of your skills.”

“CT-7567 is an exemplary soldier, sir, and can be put to use once repairs are complete.” The Purge Trooper argues, and Rex lets out a punchy little breath of shock where he’s still playing dead on the trooper’s shoulder. “He’s one of the best, General.”

  They know who he is.

“And  that’s  what you claimed the last time.” The Imp growls, “Right before CT-9021 destroyed itself  and  the transport it was on. That wasn’t even the first time either. Execute the clone and dispose of it, it’s  my position on the line if I allow your defect to cause any more damage to the Empire.”

The Purge Trooper’s entire body shudders at the order, and Rex’s hands clench against the other clone’s thigh. There’s a stun baton hanging off of the trooper’s hip, if he could reach it, Rex could possibly try to fight his way out of the situation he’s found himself in. But there’s an entire cruiser between him and escape, a cruiser he doesn’t know how to navigate with an unknown amount of Stormtrooper, of which is an unknown percentage of chipped vode, and there’s active stuff cuffs around his wrists.

“Sir, the Empire would lose a powerful asset-”

“CC-2224,  execute the traitor.”

Rex jolts, and it’s not just because he’s been dropped unceremoniously onto the floor. His head is ringing, his chest aches from the harsh landing so soon after taking on a fully armoured Purge Trooper, but all he can think is that it’s  Cody .

Codycodycody  - he’s here, he was just holding Rex. He had Cody within his grasp, after five years of desperately searching for him, looking for any sign that his  ori’vod had survived Order 66. Cody had been collecting unchipped clones, bringing them back to the Empire despite his orders to kill them. The big brother that had found Rex hidden away from the eyes of the Kaminoans all those years ago is still there, still thinking underneath the thrall of the chip, still trying to protect any  vod he could, just like how he had once promised to protect Rex from decommissioning.

Cody is staring down at him from behind the glowing red visor of a Purge Trooper, Rex can see the reflection of his wide eyes in the glossy black of his armour. He barely notices the blaster being leveled at him, too caught up with desperately trying to see his brother underneath the unfamiliar helmet.

“Cody.” His voice breaks -  gods, it must have been Cody who buried Bly, Cody who was probably one of the few people who truly understood the position Bly had found himself in when he’d fallen in love with someone he could never have. Clad in armour so different from those that Cody had chosen, had so lovingly painted to represent a part of him that the Longnecks would have never allowed, Cody just stares back. “Cody - it’s  you.” He’s almost too relieved to see him to feel the fear of his imminent execution. “You’re  alive.” Rex’s voice is bordering on reverent, but he can’t bring himself to care. It had been five years since he had last seen his brother. “Force - I’ve been looking everywhere for you -” he lets out a faint laugh, “- of course  you would be the one to find me instead.” His eyes flicker down momentarily, to look at the blaster aimed for his chest, shaking faintly, and a bitterly sad smile lifts his lips. “Well. I doubt this is the meeting either of us had in mind.” Rex raises his gaze once more to the expressionless helmet his brother was wearing, face illuminated in crimson.

If he were going to die, he’d rather it be looking into Cody’s eyes.

“It’s okay, Cody.” He soothes, “It’s okay. It’s not you - I don’t blame you.” Cody’s body shivers, “I love you,  ori’vod.”

Cody’s entire body jerks, twists, and Rex’s acceptance falls away to shock as his brother swings around to face the Imperial in white. The blaster fires, and the General drops, a smoking hole in their chest, their expression a dying mask of stunned confusion.

“Cody?”

“-execute the traitor.” Cody’s mumble is barely audible through his bucket, as his shaking hands fumble to throw his blaster as far away as possible. “Execute the traitor to the Empire. CT-7567 is an asset the Empire can’t lose.” He jerks again, movement punchy, as he moves towards Rex now and wordlessly lifts him to his feet. “How many - how many - how many are traitors?”

“Cody?” Rex repeats, stunned, as his brother hauls him through the halls, “What the kriff was  that?”

“General Medenhall was a traitor to the Empire.” Cody mutters, voice frantic. “Putting his own needs above those of the Empire. CT-7567 is an asset the Empire can’t lose. He had too much control on the ship. The others are traitors too.” Rex doesn’t even think that Cody is talking to him, wonders if Cody had ever been talking to him. It sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of his words - or trying to convince the chip.

“Cody you mad genius.” Rex says in numb shock, joy blooming in his chest.

Cody was fighting the chip.

“Good soldiers follow orders.” Cody hisses, grip tightening on Rex’s elbow to the point that it was almost painful, giving him a faint shake, and Rex gets the message to shut up and let his brother concentrate on the chip in his head. He shuts his mouth and lets his older brother drag him through the halls. “My orders were to execute the traitor. General Medenhall was the traitor. The asset needs to be secured.”

No Stormtrooper they pass looks twice at them, none of them seem to pick up that their General had just been killed and that the Purge Trooper that they all carefully don’t look at is muttering to himself. None of them seem to notice that he’s imprisoned in his own mind, fighting desperately against the chains. None of them seem to care that he’s dragging a prisoner behind him to Force knows where.

None of them stop them from reaching the shuttle bay, none of them stop them as Cody leads him onto a ship and closes the ramp behind them.

“Holy kriff Cody.” Rex whispers in awe, “You always were too competent for anyone’s good.”

Cody shakes his head, releasing his arm, but he doesn’t step away. Quivering hands grip at a black helmet, and Cody sways momentarily before he’s ripping off the Purge Trooper bucket and throwing it against the floor with enough force to make it bounce away from them with the sound of cracking plastoid.

For the first time in five years, Rex gets to see his brother’s face.

He looks younger than Rex now, his face is less lined by age, somehow, like he had actually aged  only the five years a natborn would have, but his temples have started to gray. It’s still his brother’s face, still the face that had haunted Rex’s nightmares for the last five years, when he hadn’t known if his brother was alive or dead. His scar is even more faded than it had been the last time he had seen him, had been given the chance to heal, the stress lines still etched into his forehead from scowling at datapads too often.

It really is Cody.

Dark wetness drips from his brother’s nose, tracing across the pained scowl twisting his lips, and his eyes look bloodshot, and Rex wonders how much pain his  ori’vod is in from fighting against his chip and its programming.

Fuck, he doesn’t know if Cody can fly in this state.

His gaze slides to the shock baton at his brother’s waist once more.

Slowly, making sure not to alert him, Rex reaches, curls his fingers around the hilt, and before Cody can react, he’s sliding it free. He activates it quickly, and, with an apologetic wince, the former Captain presses the sparking weapon against the unprotected patch of his brother’s side. Cody is seizing up immediately. He instinctively tries to pull away, but Rex follows. He blocks out the garbled noises of agony his brother releases, ignores the tears tracing through the grime on both of their faces, and he holds it there until Cody slumps, twitching, but blissfully unconscious.

“Sorry, brother.” Rex whispers, fumbling through his brother’s belt until he finds the key to his cuffs, and he’s barely aware of swapping them onto Cody’s wrists instead, as a last resort if he woke up while they were flying. “Sorry.”

Dead to the world, but no longer under the fist of the Empire, Cody doesn’t answer.

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[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) he says he wants to as well, but he is a liar  STAR WARS

Jangobi Week Day 3 - Undercover

A03

Jango sweeps through the halls like a violent summer storm, all but spitting in anger, teeth bared in a furious snarl under his buy’ce. They had been betrayed.  He had been betrayed.

Ben had betrayed him.

Almost a year ago, they had found a scrawny, underfed redhead barely out of his teen years wandering  Manda’yaim  , just another victim of  Kyr’tsad  and the Kalevalan pretenders. His story had been one that they’d all heard, orphaned by  Kyr’tsad as a child and raised among the New Mandalorians’ sickening idea of foster care. They’d all considered him one of so many unlucky children, but he’d proven that he was  Mandokarla  despite the  dar’manda  way the Kalevalans had raised him, without a connection of  aliit  or a proper education as a  Mando’ad. He hadn’t allowed himself to be brainwashed by their propaganda, had seen past it, and he hadn’t let Kryze and his ilk destroy his connection to the Manda.

They’d taken him into their homes, had welcomed him as one of them, and taught him what it had truly meant to be  Mando’ad. Jango’s own vod Myles had adopted Ben Naasad into his Clan, had made him Ben Rau of House Mereel. He had given him the name and soul that had been denied to him his entire life, had helped him forge his  beskar’gam  and complete the  verd’goten  that the  dar’manda New Mandalorians had never allowed.

Jango had fallen in love with him, had asked him to exchange the  riduurok  with him, and now he can’t help but wonder how much of it was a  lie. Ben - if that even was his name - had been a spy. He had been spying on them all along, passing on everything he learned to Kryze, the Republic dog that he is.

Had it all been a lie? Had the love Ben had felt for him, for all of them, been just a ruse? All that time together, all those times they’d fallen into bed together and given over pieces of themselves to the other. The warmth in blue eyes, the sweet lingering kisses and the teasing drag of graceful hands across Jango’s skin; had it really been  just a mission to Ben?

Jango had nearly torn the compound apart looking for his  ven’riduur after the Republic-New Mandalorian attack that had shaken his home, when he’d learned that Ben was missing. He had figured then that they’d purposely captured the intended of the Mand’alor, had taken his captive; Ben had been sick recently, could barely get out of bed in the mornings with throwing up everything he had eaten the night before. He had been clammy and feverish, and Jango had been trying to convince his  cyare  to go see a  baar’ur because he didn’t know how to help him. When the attack had happened, Ben should have been in the Mand’alor’s suite, resting surrounded by  verde who would protect him, but Jango had returned to his rooms, victorious in repelling the attackers, to find the guards he had assigned to his ill  ven’riduur unconscious on the floors.

The beskar doors that should have been protecting him had been cut away at the walls, by a  lightsaber. Jango had nearly been overcome with protective terror, seeing the melted, warped stone and his missing  ven’riduur  who had been too sick to even get out of bed that morning, who definitely wouldn’t have been able to defend himself against a  Jetii, no matter how skilled of a fighter he had grown to become over the year with the  Haat’ade.

It hadn’t taken long to organize an attack group; Jango’s people loved his intended. Ben was easy to like, spunky and feisty, but gentle and kind at the same time, a vicious fighter who cared so much for  ade that he spent most of his free time with the Clan children and Foundlings. He and his people had rarely ever attacked the New Mandalorians, saw it as dishonourable to fight those who wouldn’t even pick up a weapon to defend their own children, and kept most of their battles solely in negotiations - Jaster was especially good at cowing Kryze and his ilk, who took one look at the crippled former Mand’alor and thought themselves above him, who seemed to forget that it was  Jaster  who had made the  Haat’ade  who they are - but in working with  Jetiise, who had nearly killed Jango and his super-commandos on Galidraan, to take Jango’s  ven’riduur, they had given the Haat’ade an open invitation for  war.

It had been criminally easy to take over Sundari, to steal the city out from under Duke Kryze and his Kalevalan pretenders, and retake it for Mandalore. It had been far too easy for the enraged  Haat’ade to take the palace, to take custody of the children of House Kryze, to take the Duke’s youngest daughter and grandson as wards. Neither Bo-Katan or little Korkie would come to harm among the Haat’ade, instead they’d be adopted into a different Clan while House and Clan Kryze were dissolved and declared dar’manda, and the New Mandalorians and noncombatants that surrendered and swore to Jango as the Mand’alor would be given leniency and a chance to achieve cin vhetin.

It had been far too easy for all the trouble they had been giving him, but Jango had ensured his hold of  Manda’yaim.

While his verde had been taking the capital, Jango had gone hunting, intent on finding where his  ven’riduur had been hidden, and trusting his connection to the Manda to lead him to where he needed to go. He hadn’t been led towards the cell block like he had been expecting, instead, Jango had found himself marching through the guest wing of the palace, where the Duke’s most important visitors were to be housed. He had found his  ven’riduur  laying in a plush bed, looking a little green, wearing the distinctive robes of the  Jetiise, the shaggy red hair that Jango had so loved running his hands through shaved down to the cut of a  hibir. He’d jerked when Jango had burst into the room, staring at him with shock and fear as he’d fumbled with the hilt of a  jetii’kad, and for a moment, they’d only stared at each other as Jango tried to understand what he was looking at.

He had still been processing it when the Jetii had attacked. The large Human had come out of nowhere, but Manda’s warning and the widening of Ben’s eyes had given him the time he needed to dodge the green  kad’au  the could have taken his off of otherwise. The fight that had followed had been a blur; his anger and fury had given him the strength he needed to win though, but the moment the  Jetii’s body had dropped, Ben had  screamed .

Jango had known then, what it was that his  ven’riduur was.

A  Jetii  and a spy; but still, this was the man Jango had loved. He had ordered the  baar’ur to treat him, when they’d brought him back to Keldabe, but instead of being moved to their room, like he should have been if he hadn’t betrayed them, Ben had been locked away in a cell, to await his fate while Jango finished up meeting with his council and setting up a loyal governor to take over Sundari. He’d taken longer than he usually would, trying to work his way through the tangled knot of hurt betrayal in his heart, had tried to ignore the ache in his chest.

He’d only had one heart to give, after all, and he’d given it willingly to a man who had been lying about everything.

Jango meets Myles outside of the cell block. His  vod’s hurt is a palpable thing in the air around him; Myles had loved Ben too, just as much as Jango did, and his  vod’ika’s betrayal had hurt him just as much as it had the young Mand’alor.

Wordlessly, Jango claps his battle-bonded brother’s shoulder in support, and Myles’  buy’ce dips. They’re both silent for a long moment, taking strength from each other just as they would on the battlefield, before Myles speaks.

“It couldn’t have all been a lie.” He says slowly, and the vocoder in his  buy’ce  may hide a lot of things, but Jango knows his  vod just as well as he knows himself, he can hear the shakiness of unshed tears, the cracking of a broken heart, and Jango squeezes the other man’s shoulder. “Right?”

Jango thinks of the man he had fallen in love with; thinks of the genuine kindness and delight in blue eyes, and fiery spirit of a fighter that couldn’t be faked - the way he had  flourished  learning the ways of a  Haat’ad. Ben had kneeled at his feet and sworn to the  resol’nare, had declared his desire to follow the path for  cin vhetin. He had kissed Jango with such gentle passion, had let Jango show him how to make love, and had accepted Jango’s proposal to become one.

Not all of it could have been a lie. No one could have faked all that for over a year; not even a  Jetii.

A memory rises above his distress, of ancient texts and listening to his Buir late at night as they’d gone over the history of Mandalore. There were ways, old ones, to truly seek cin vhetin, Jango remembers, and once the idea is there, it takes root and flowers. Ben had sworn to  cin vhetin, had sworn to a fresh start, and there were ways Jango could lead him on that path. Ways that not even the  Jetiise could poison.

But he wants to hear what Ben has to say first.

“We won’t let it be a lie.” He swears to Myles, watching the way he perks up, despite his confusion. “Ben is one of us - whatever he was before doesn’t matter anymore. He swore  cin vhetin, and that’s what he’ll do.” With that, Jango steps past his second, feeling the other man fall in step behind him more than he sees him, and they sweep deeper into the cell block.

In front of him and just outside of the only occupied cell on this level,  Baar’ur  Nawara straightens. Helmetless, the Twi’Lek salutes, “Mand’alor!” Xe greets, and Jango nods to the older  Mando’ad.

Beyond the red laser shield, Ben sits huddled on his cot, back to them and eyes on the wall, and Jango can’t force his eyes away from his  ven’riduur  despite his words being for his  baar’ur. “Anything to report, Nawara?” A flinch travels up his  ven’riduur’s spine.

“'Lek  ,  alor.” A gesture of a hand signals for the doctor to speak, and Nawara only hesitates momentarily. “I ran some tests, to see what could be making him so ill, and I received some positive results.” Xe swallows nervously, “He’s pregnant, Mand’alor, just past eleven weeks. The fetal DNA is a fifty-percent match to yours.”

Jango stills, and he watches Ben - his  pregnant ven’riduur  - shiver. The joy of learning that he’s going to be a Buir is undercut by his anger at his  cyare  for leaving, but now, he can’t help but wonder how willing Ben had been to leave. He could have easily let the  Jetii  into their suite if he was really running, could have left, but instead the  Jetii that Jango had killed had forced his way in, had cut down the blast doors and taken him. Ben could have interfered in their battle at any time, could have leapt to the  Jetii’s defense, but instead he’d watched. He hadn’t even fought when Jango had sedated him for transfer back to Keldabe, and the Mand’alor knows that he could have.

Perhaps Ben had come to them as a spy - but it seems likely that he’d grown to genuinely want to be among the  Haat’ade.

“Why?” Jango’s voice pierces the silence that had followed the doctor’s words, but they’re not aimed at Nawara.

“I was given a mission.” Ben’s voice is quiet, thick with tears, but he doesn’t look at Jango, and he’s no longer using the Kalevalan accent he must have appropriated for his deception, it’s High Coruscanti instead, but Jango can hear the underlining burr of the Concord Dawn accent his knows his  ven’riduur  had picked up from him. “I was to infiltrate the  Haat’ade  and report back to my Master. To ensure you didn’t get more of a foothold on  Manda’yaim, and to support Duke Kryze and his Heiress’ claim to the system.” His head droops lower, “The Senate wants access to the beskar mines, but can’t move openly because of the treaties, not without looking like the aggressor to the other systems. I’m young enough that it was decided that I was the best option to complete this half of our mission; an orphan of the Clan Wars looking to join you would be more believable than a man nearing his fifties.” Ben’s voice breaks, and Jango wants desperately to hold him, to comfort him and wipe away his tears.

“But it wasn’t about the mission anymore.” Jango says slowly, “Was it? If it was just a mission, you wouldn’t have accepted my courtship, wouldn’t have let me fuck you -” Ben twitches, “- because you’re not that kind of person, are you, Ben?”

“It’s Obi-Wan.” Ben whispers, voice cracking, “Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“No, it’s not.” Jango states, voice confident, “You swore  cin vhetin. Obi-Wan Kenobi no longer exists.” Slowly, the Mand’alor steps forward, keying himself into the cell and pulling off his  buy’ce as he moves. “A fresh start - who you were before no longer matters.” He comes to a stop next to the cell cot, and slowly reaches out a hand. His fingers move through short, prickly strands of copper hair that lack the waves that he had grown to associate with his ven’riduur, and his nose crinkles at the sight of the ugly nerftail and braid he wore. Neither would be comfortable under his  buy’ce . Ben melts into the touch like he always does, hiccuping faintly on a sob. “You’re Ben Rau, of House Mereel, soon to be of Clan Fett.”

“This  wasn’t part of the mission.” Ben sobs, one hand pressing against his stomach as he lifts his head so that Jango could meet his  ven’riduur’s bloodshot eyes and see the tears trailing across freckled cheeks. His gaze is pleading. “Master Qui-Gon said I was getting too attached, and ordered my extraction.  You  were never part of the mission.” He shakes like a newborn striil, “I didn’t want to leave.”

Jango steps forward again, gathering his  cyare  into his arms and letting the younger man collapse against him. “K’uur.” The Mand’alor soothes, “I know, Ben.  Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum.”

In his arms, Ben breaks, but Jango is confident in his ability to help him put himself back together.

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