RP, headcanons, and vignettes

[vronton-writes]

No matter what age she was, Lucy loved snowball fights. Even when the trite phrase "aren't you too old for this?" came out, she would only laugh and throw one at the asker.

Lucy fumed, finding herself, her brother, and her cousin completely dry and in the little room that Lucy slept in alone in the Scrubb's house. Pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling, she plucked the painting up from the floor, and put it back on the decorative mantelpiece. The hearth there was bricked up, with no space to put so much as a candle in it.

"Once again, we go to Narnia and we miss winter," she fumed, setting her jaw. She turned, looking at Edmund, who was staring at the sheathed sword in his hands. Eustace too, had a hard time tearing his gaze away. "It's not fair that it happened twice now," she added softly.

"One last snowball fight would've been grand," Edmund admitted after a lengthy silence, tearing his gaze away. Rhindon sang in his arms, and for once, he could hear it. Peter had always said the blade sang, but Caspian hadn't heard it, and neither had he until now. The sword was back in the world where she belonged, if not yet in her keeper's grasp. "But it wouldn't have been the same without Ner and Bel."

Edmund's wife, Belinay, couldn't get a snowball to hit the broad side of a barn, much less a moving target, but she was never discouraged by her teammates. Nerya was as much of a sniper as Susan, with pinpoint accuracy that usually would determine how the match would go within a few seconds of the opening volley. Tumnus had proven highly agile to the boys' team, much to the girls' consternation. Lucy let herself feel the grief that lay in her depths, the same as it did in all of them, save Eustace.

"We're going to need to ring up Peter," Edmund said gently, laying a warm hand on her shoulder. "That'll help some, and he'll want his sword back as soon as he can get it."

Eustace dashed out of the room to see about the telephone, earning an irritated but indistinct shout from Albert and Harold. Lucy clung to Edmund. "I don't know how they did it," she mewled. "How did Pete and Su keep such brave faces on when they knew... When Aslan told them..." She couldn't bring herself to speak the words.

"Peter's the High King," Edmund said, and didn't bother correcting himself to change it to past tense. "He's had to make difficult decisions that he didn't personally agree with, and sometimes even hated, and commit to them without a trace of complaint. Susan's composure has always been iron-willed. Too many people didn't take her seriously for her to not have perfected that façade."

Lucy understood Susan better now than ever before. Girls dismissed as silly, as emotional, as hysterical. Lucy understood very well why Susan had always leaned on logic and reason because emotion was always discounted. "I wish I hadn't been so..." Lucy stepped back, wiping her face clear of tears. "Her life was a lot harder than I realized."

"Part of it was she didn't want you to see it," Edmund shrugged, and slid the sword under Lucy's bed. There was no other place for it that it wouldn't be immediately seen and potentially confiscated in the meantime. "And you were too young to understand yet what a girl growing up in this world entails."

"And when we did grow up the first time, it was somewhere else," Lucy murmured. "Where our opinion was listened to and valued." It must have been a terrible shock, and then to be denied the very place they'd been accepted, cherished, and prized...

The thought scattered into pieces when Eustace trundled back up the stairs, breathless. "You can ring Peter up, I convinced them," he wheezed, bending over, hands on his knees. "Why can't I run like I did in Narnia?"

Edmund and Lucy exchanged a bemused look. "You've just come back to a body that has forgotten what Narnia taught it, but the lessons are still in your mind," she said, and Edmund slid from the room, gliding down the stairs as silently as a ghost. While Lucy distracted herself from her grief and distracted Eustace from the stitch in his side, Edmund waiting while the operator connected the call to Professor Kirke's house.

Mrs. MacReady was as unpleasant as ever, though Edmund was civil enough for her to not hang up on him immediately. His message to Peter was short, and even if Harold and Alberta had cared to eavesdrop, what he said wouldn't have made any sense at all.

The next day, Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace boarded a train for Oxfordshire. Rhindon never left Edmund's side except at need, finding comfort in the steady, low thrumming he could feel from it. Lucy was able to feel it as well, and Eustace could faintly feel it. If strange looks and glances came the Pevensie’s and Scrubbs' way, they were ignored. Rhindon only got lighter and lighter, the closer they got to Peter, and when Edmund and Peter were reunited at last, Rhindon weighed nothing at all, lighter than air.

Peter, unsheathing the blade and holding it in both hands, felt the surge of power scream up his bones, along his veins, setting his skin alight with flame. Blue light surged, making the words etched into the blade glow, and that same glow settled into Peter's eyes, otherworldly and electric.

"The High King has returned," Edmund murmured, feeling the strangeness in him settle into contentment. He'd done his duty, the sword was back with the king, and he delivered it, as he'd sworn to. He bowed his head, and then Lucy and Eustace followed.

Edmund looked up as a hand settled onto his shoulder, meeting Peter's gaze. "There's a war for us to end, Edmund the Just," Peter said. "Will you stand beside me one more time?"

Edmund's grin was so sharp it could've cut glass. "Until my dying breath," he said, touching Rhindon's lion-headed pommel. "Until the end of the world."

[vronton-writes]

She rolled over, wishing for a softer spot to sleep on, but no matter how she arranged herself, no matter what position, the ground was hard, cold, and inhospitable. Lucy was sound asleep to her right, and as she looked over to her left, she was unsurprised to find that Edmund was also dead to the world. He and Peter had learned quickly when to snatch sleep whenever and wherever it was needed. They’d been soldiers before they’d been kings, and still behaved like soldiers when push came to shove. Trumpkin was likewise fast asleep.

She didn't see Peter's sleeping form across the firepit that had burned down to embers. With a sigh, she sat up, threw some more wood into the pit and stoked the embers into flames before leaving the warmth of the fire and the ring of light it produced to search for her brother.

"Peter," she hissed.

"Here," came his voice, sounding high and thin. She followed it, finding him perched on an exposed boulder, his legs dangling from an overhang. She didn’t need to see his face to know he’d been weeping. She sat down beside him, offering her kerchief to him when he sniffled. She didn't ask him what was wrong, she already knew.

She leaned her head on his shoulder and looped her arm through his. Nerya always said Peter was more furnace than human, and she was glad for that warmth now. "Why couldn't I see him?" he mewled.

"I don’t know,” she replied softly. “He must know you’ve been looking for him. We’ve all been looking for him. And why did he trick us into leaving in the first place?" she asked. Despite her long suffering anger at their expulsion from the home they loved and knew, only weariness coated her words.

"I still dream about it," he admitted. "All the times I just spent wandering the land. Palla was getting to know it as well as I did."

"You can rest easy, knowing that she might have known it better than you did when..." Susan's mouth closed, pressing into a line. "Sorry," she murmured. Mentioning his daughter usually brought as much pain as mentioning his wife. Both were long gone now, as was the child he’d meant to announce was coming when they returned to the castle. "At least you have the letters from your trunk."

He snorted and shifted his weight slightly. "Letters I'm dreading to read, truth be told," he sighed. "I want to read them all right now, and at the same time... I don't know what I'll do when I get to the last of Nerya's letters."

Part of him had gone mad, that first week after they'd spilled back into Professor Kirke's spare room. Him, Edmund, and Lucy too, begging and pleading with a silent piece of furniture to let them go back to the lives they'd had, to the families they'd built. Even Susan had suffered a degree of that madness, standing before the wardrobe in the dead of night. She would not speak, but she'd implored it all the same.

All to no avail. Peter and Edmund, well used to violence, took their anger out on any fool that tried to challenge them. The ruled the roost in their school, the campaign of terror having started with Edmund's wicked old friend group, and ended with even the upper classmen parting before them like fish around a pair of sharks.

Susan was isolated in that regard. Peter and Edmund had each other, but there were too many years between herself and Lucy for them to have one another's backs. She never stopped being a queen, whether at Kirke's manor house, the new house her parents had bought, or at school. Girls flocked to her, the same as ever, lackeys and sycophants all of them.

"You'll cry," she told him matter-of-factly. "And then you'll come to me, and we'll both weep until we're exhausted." There was no admonition in her words about his tears. Crying was perfectly natural, and no matter what disparaging remarks they heard in England, tears flowed freely among the Four.

Her grip on his arm tightened briefly. It would be like losing Nerya all over again, and it hadn't been easy the first time. "Part of me is afraid of loving someone as deeply as you three loved Ner, Belinay, and Tumnus. I'm terrified of the pain I see you in. I don’t know that I could survive it."

"It's the price we pay for being happy," Peter sighed, though the wisdom he dispensed was bitter in his own mouth to her ears. "One day, we have to say goodbye, and usually not on our terms. I just thought I'd have more time--we’d have more time--before..."

"We all did," she murmured. "We had all the time in the world, and the world was ours to hold and keep." Lifting her gaze up through the trees, she spotted familiar constellations and found herself smiling at the small comfort that brought her. "How long do you think we'll get to stay this time?"

"I don't want to think about that," Peter replied, shaking his head vigorously. He couldn't bear the thought of having to leave again, even if this Narnia was nothing more than the barest shadow of what it used to be. She didn't want to think about it either, but her eye had ever been on the long game, things that would take years to reach them.

"I know," she sighed. But someone had to. And someone was usually her.

[vronton-writes]

When she opens the doors to her armoire, she always feels an initial spike of rage before the disappointment sets in. The clothes are all wrong; too short, too threadbare, too foreign to belong to her. And yet, every dreary scrap of cotton and wool contained in the armoire is hers. It’s just one more painful reminder that she isn't home. Home is lost to her, no matter where she looks or how often. Susan has never felt like settling for anything or anyone, and since being forced back to England, it's all she ever seems to do.

[vronton-writes]

A Seraph’s Journal cnt’d

I've been to so many ruins of nearly all shapes and sizes that they've begun to blur together. From small hovels and country churches to grand cathedrals, they all have one thing in common: the people sheltering in them died huddled together, all at once. Perhaps it was a cataclysm that ended their misery in one terrifying moment. It’s a much kinder thought than contemplating them dying by inches, in agony.

Today I found what I think might have been a city. Not a village, a city. It’s much too big to be anything else. What strikes me as odd about this site is, as I've excavated it, I discovered something important: it was abandoned before the meteor strike that hit its center. There are no dead out in the open, in the ground. There are some in the rickety towers that still stand, but it seems whatever drove the people out, they stayed away. I cannot imagine what could've caused them to do so. They left almost nothing behind, which suggests to me that it was a planned evacuation. If it was the Rot, I suspect the entire city would've been put to the torch. I’ve found no evidence of fire before the meteor strike.

It's odd having such a mundane mystery on my hands when there's so much strangeness in the world already. The scant documents I’ve found and bartered for that survived the world's end suggests there might have been hope, if only mixed with trepidation.

Jonas Falx invented or created something down in the deep, and he brought people down to it. In my experience, the deeper we go, the more confused we get, the less things make sense. In the deep dark, there is a growing unreality, much like the unreality that plagues this world in form of storms. What did Jonas create that filled him with such terrible dread? Where did the moaning creatures that roam the land at night come from? Why are the wolves so threatened by us?

All of these questions, and I may never have answers. To even think about going down into the dark is madness, but there’s no other reliable way to gather the resources we need. There are worse things than moaning Drifters down in the darkness. I do not know how any humans survived down there in their bunkers. Most days, I suspect they didn't for very long.

[vronton-writes]

A Seraph’s Journal #1

The world has moved on from that old world, covered it over in dirt and water like a new skin. It forgot the old, but the old refuses to be forgotten entirely. The broken bones of the old world pokes through the world's new skin,  ancient injuries that never healed, and never would. The new grows around it, trying still to hide it and make it forgotten, invisible. But we find those old places inevitably. Perhaps we expect something different, something new from the same tragedy told in each place that's found. But we never find what we're looking for. We only find the dead. And there are so many dead. In cellars, in homes, in churches, in towns, in fortresses, in castles, the dead tell us the same tale: the world ended long ago. They could not stop it. They were not saved. We stand in the green fields of their failure and, seeing a peaceful sunset, wonder if it was really failure at all.

[vronton-writes]

Even by Grineer standards, the Tenno were quiet. If they communicated, they did it amongst each other on a frequency that Kahl couldn't access. The one standing before him was ivory, ebony, and accented with gold. He frowned. Gold was such a soft metal, perhaps it was oxium instead. But even for Tenno, this one was unnaturally still. A poke and prod did nothing to get the Saryn Prime's attention, but he stopped, frowning at the child trotting up the ramp to his camp.

Pale skinned, hair as dark as the black of space, and eyes that were painful to look at directly, he took a step backward when the child--a girl child--called his name. "Who tell you Kahl's name?" he demanded, squinting. The girl's gaze was like looking into Sol itself and he had to look away.

Even so he saw her point to the Tenno. "Kahl...does not understand."

"The Saryn Prime is my warframe," the girl replied. "It's a drone, and I pilot it."

"Like... ship?" Kahl sat, mulling over the girl's words.

"Sort of," the girl replied, and kindly put on a pair of optics. They covered her eyes, making the rest of her easier to see. Oxium implants were dotted over the girl's face and she was dressed in spacer's gear. She grimaced after a moment, switching off Kahl's comm unit. Kaeli wasn't being especially kind, and the girl didn't want to hear it any more than he did.

"I'm Riel," she said, introducing herself with a little bow.

"Kahl-One Seven Five," the Grineer replied dully. "Blue Girl angry for some reason."

Riel's grimace returned. "Can't trust Orokin," she replied. Kahl blinked. "Some might have decent heads on their shoulders, but they're still Orokin. I heard what she called you."

Kahl shrugged. "Kahl used to it," he sighed, looking away as the Riel’s mouth turned down in a deep frown and her hands perched on her hips.

"Get un-used to it," she told him, and he looked up at her sharply. "That's no way to treat an ally."

"Kahl likes Riel," he said, after a moment, and got back to his feet. He offered her his hand, and she took it, shaking it with surprising strength. She looked like a wisp of a thing, slight and skinny, but there was power in her and he could feel it.

"I like you too, Kahl," she said, grinning. "If the weather turns, you can board my ship. If you get hungry, we can make a quick run over to Cetus."

"Thank you," he murmured, and wondered why the Grineer hated the Tenno so much.

[vronton-writes]

The separation began as a crack. When they spoke the words of the Oath, his mouth remained closed, and his mind rejected the evil they wove into mantles. He wasn't where he was supposed to be; instead of joining his father, his uncles, his grandfather when they'd gone to take the ships from the Teler, he'd remained with his cousins.

The crack became a ditch when he saw the horrors that followed the taking of those ships, dug deeper and deeper with the cries from Findarato, from Angarato and Ambarato, from Artanis herself, weeping for their slain kin. He would have understood if they'd abandoned him, but they did not.

The ditch became a moat when he witnessed the unfortunate death of Ambarussa the elder and the beginnings of Feanaro's madness. Neither Maitimo nor Macalaure stopped him when he left for Nolofinwe's camp and the safety of his cousins' campfire.

The moat became a river when he was left with Nolofinwe's host to cross the Helcaraxe, and it widened and deepened with every life lost to the cold and ice. His uncles and father tried to build a bridge across that river when they'd caught up to Feanaro's supporters, only to find that Feanaro himself had perished. Maitimo refused the crown, giving it Nolofinwe instead.

The bridge was raized, the river becoming a canyon when his father and some of his uncles attacked Nargothrond. He forsook his name, forsook his heritage, spitting in his father's face and called himself Feanorion no longer.

The chasm only widened with each reported death from the family he no longer loved, and widened further still with Findarato, Angarato, and Ambarato's deaths. He only had Artanis to cling to, and she'd chosen another. But she never let him go, keeping a hand always about his wrist to follow in her wake. He only removed her hand when his folly and pride spelled doom for their people. Only then did he return the star to his armor and cloak. The descendants of Feanaro, after all, were doomed, Oath taken or not.

And even then, she did not let him go until she felt his spirit fly away West, to the home she was no longer allowed to return to. And when he went to Mandos, he found the chasm between him and his blood family was as wide as the ocean, and he was content to stay on his own side of it until the world broke.

[nymue-du-lac]

Tagged by @roguescarlett​ <3 <3 <3 If you want to do this, consider yourself tagged!

time for some original content and not fanfic!

“One does not usually see a Roman alone,” she said, making her presence known. He startled, eyes widening. Out of the mists produced by the river she walked, dark hair crowned with antlers, a simple dress of blue hanging from her shoulders to her feet.

He fell to his knees, prostrate. “Diana, goddess of the hunt and the wild, have mercy on me,” he begged. “I did not know you were here.” One also didn’t typically see the gods, though they were rumored to walk the earth, and this Isle on the edge of the world was said to be the land of myths, legends, and giants. He’d seen no giants, but she was taller than a man by a head and a half.

“Rise, Prefectus,” she said, and he returned to his log-stump seat, repairing his fishing net.

“I deserted the Legio,” he admitted. “The General is no longer the man I knew.”

“You’ve glimpsed the tangled knot of darkness in him,” she replied, sitting on a stone beside him. “But you’ve seen shades of it before, in Palestine, and in places before that. It was ignored before, but cannot be now. What has changed?”

His hands went still, and he nodded mutely. “I do not like being the play-thing of gods, nor sorcery, nor man,” he said at last. “Nor whatever it is that he serves. I will not be party to whatever dark plot he’s concocted.”

“He follows the path before him,” she said. “As you have.”

“And I have done so many terrible things,” he murmured, his form trembling. From one place to the next, the story was always the same. Rome sent the legion, and the legion butchered every living thing that got in its way. Too many dead faces haunted his dreams, and now they spilled over into daylight’s hours as well. “If Jupiter has given you the order to send me to the underworld, then I would accept my fate.”

Her smile was thin, but sympathetic. “You will not die this day, Prefectus,” she said. “But you must go south. The absolvent you seek will not come from me, though I would give it if you asked.”

He did not ask.

[vronton-writes]

"Tell me I'm not dreaming." Her breath caught in her throat, tears brimming in her wide eyes and glimmering like the sun on the sea, but hadn't yet spilled over.

He came closer, bringing the tangy scent of the ocean mingled with the mild but sweet northern pastures of his kingdom with him. His fingers brought searing heat where her skin had grown to know only cold and ice. "I'm real," he replied, bending to press his brow against hers. "I'm here."

The dam broke, as it threatened to. She trembled, tears rushing down her cheeks as if they were a riverbed. He enveloped her in warmth, burning away the ice until nothing was left and she stood before him raw and unarmored. "What did they do to you?" he asked quietly, mournfully. As the High King, he would've only asked that in anger. As the man, he felt horror, alarm, regret. She could not answer, the only sound she made was born of weeping both in sorrow and relief.

"Do you have to go?" she frowned, freeing her skirts from their daughter's grip. "Do all of you have to go?"

"According the law, we're the only ones who can hunt it," he replied, crouching down to tap their daughter's nose with his fingertip. His smile mirrored the peel of delighted laughter their daughter issued. "It will only be for a couple of days, you know how my sister gets on extended hunts."

She nodded. Her sister in law had very little patience for the stalking of prey, preferring to bring it down as quickly as possible instead of giving in to the extended chase the men preferred. "Do you think there's any merit to this wish-granting rumor?"

He shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "It sounds incredibly unrealistic in my private opinion. But if I'm wrong, I will gladly be wrong. If I’m right, we have venison for supper for a few days." He stood, kissing her cheeks. "I won't be gone long," he reassured her.

She shivered, hugging herself. "Why does it feel like this is goodbye?" she murmured to herself, and then pushed the thought away. If there was a wish-granting deer running around the country, they'd bring it back and give it to the one person who'd need the wish the most.

[vronton-writes]

Her faceplate was closed, but it often was of late with the instability rising from within the Inquisitorius' ranks. She had simple orders: Confirm Third Sister's death.

To say Jibiim was a hellhole would be to compliment it. She hated every step she had to take on this barren, odious rock. But she walked those steps, her footfalls echoing in the endless rock chambers until she reached her destination. The ship docking station was still full of the wreckage of the ship that Vader had torn apart. And before it lay a body.

A body that was still breathing, still fighting, and so, so afraid. Twelfth Sister hesitated, her lekku twitching in agitation. Third Sister had *tried*. So many of the Inquisitorius had been lost to Vader's fits of rage. But she'd failed. Vader still freely stalked the corridors of his Executor-class dreadnought.

Twelfth Sister moved, her hand straying from her sheathed vibroblade to the emergency med kit contained in pouch on her belt. She activated her voice modulator. "Stay still, I've come to help." She'd fulfilled her mandate. She couldn't confirm Third Sister's death.

Reva fought for a moment before the bacta injection brought sweet relief from the pain. "Why?" she managed to say, a little delirious.

"You weren't there, when Vader murdered half of us," the twi'lek replied hesitantly. "I swore I would never feel that afraid again after..." She could not say the words and applied another injection of bacta to her wounds. It only dented the sudden sting of pain from the organic regrowth spray. Reva let out a scream, and Twelfth Sister held her still so the first aid could do its work. After inspecting her work, she applied bandages and bound them. "He reminded me of the day I was powerless. You tried to avenge them. This is the least I could do."

Reva meant to argue, but fell silent and nodded. She glanced at the protective fabric that the twi'lek wore over her lekku, noticing a darker blue pattern peeking out at the top. She tugged it down and blinked in surprise at a long forgotten memory bubbled up.

In the creche, there'd been a little pale blue twi'lek girl with dark blue streaks on her lekku. She'd been in the care of one of the Temple Guards on his break, and he made a variety of silly faces to get her to laugh.

The Grand Inquisitor. Reva shuddered. "Were you there?" she asked quietly. "When he--when Skywalker..."

"Skywalker's dead," Twelfth Sister went still. "He died trying to get to us before the clones did. Everyone knows that."

"You were there." Reva gripped the sleeve of the twi'lek's uniform. "It was him. He killed us, our family! I tried for them. That's why you're so afraid of him. You knew, somewhere deep down, exactly who he was."

"I never met Anakin Skywalker," Twelfth Sister insisted. Her hands shook, and she gripped her knees to keep them still.

"You didn't have to," Reva said quietly. "We all knew who he was. We all knew his name, heard stories about his heroism on the battlefield. We heard stories about his own padawan, and wished one day we'd get to be that lucky. You didn't have to see him to know him."

Reva gingerly sat up, groaning and wincing as she moved. She reached forward, tapping the twi'lek's faceplate. "Open up." For a moment, she wasn't sure that the twi'lek would. A long moment passed before it slid away, revealing a girl's face, cheeks wet with tears. She was no older than Reva had been when Skywalker destroyed their world.

"You were there," Reva said again. The girl could only nod and look away. "The Inquisitorius was never my family. But it was yours, and he took that from you, just like he took our first family from us. How many of us are even left?"

"I don't know," the girl murmured. She'd been given orders to begin her own hunt. Another padawan that had escaped; maybe someone they’d known, maybe a stranger. "You can't go back," she said, wiping her face.

"No, that would be suicide," Reva sighed. "But I might have an idea of where to go."

"Good," the girl said, nodding. "I'll take you there and scrub the log. I was supposed to confirm your death. Leave the sabers with me and that will be proof enough."

Reva gave her an unamused look, and separated one saber from its twin. "I may still need my weapon. What was your name, Twelve?" Reva asked. The twi'lek looked away.

Twelve hadn't thought back that far in a very long time, because those memories cut like glass. But her name surfaced among those painful shards, a brief, soothing balm. "My name was Jala." After a moment, she gave Reva a small comm, pressing it into her hands. “If you need to contact me. Use Trilla’s code, I’ll find you.” “If he ever finds out...” Reva hoped she’d never have to as she struggled to her feet, hissing softly. “He won’t,” the twi’lek assured her. Jala offered her a shoulder to lean on, and limped after the twi’lek back to the Inquisitor’s shuttle.

[vronton-writes]

He says "I want to go home" and his mother thinks he means the house that was destroyed by a German bomb.

She says "I want to go home" and her mother tells her that home is where the heart is.

He says "I want to go home" and his mother tells him his father will return soon.

She says "I want to go home" and her mother tells her that she's already there.

But home is not the parents they outgrew. Home is not Finchley. Home is not London. Home is not England. Home is not Earth.

[vronton-writes]

"I don't understand," Luke sighed, keeping the frustration he felt out of his voice and out of his face, but he knew the other two could feel it anyway. "I thought he..."

The pale blue twi'lek and taller human glanced at one another and then back to Luke. "It was the wrong thing to do," the taller human said at last. Kaar Sevari, shrugged. "But Jedi aren't perfect, and choices made in the past can be unmade. Just as a parent's choice to give a child to the Jedi can be unmade by the Jedi themselves if they decide the life wasn't for them."

Luke frowned, his brows furrowing. One more thing that neither Obi-wan nor Yoda had neglected to tell him, but their times were ending. "What about you two?"

The twi'lek spoke this time, her fingers straying to the disk hooked to her belt. "I'm afraid we'd be poor students, Master Skywalker," she said quietly. They'd both survived the massacre, but in different directions. Master Klakon had given his life to preserve Kaar's, and Jala had been young enough to be deemed worthy to be saved from the carnage by Palpatine, only to be made into an Inquisitor. "The dark side still calls to me, and until it's quieter, I do not trust myself with the Force. I will continue to work with General Organa, gathering the Alderaanians."

Luke nodded. That was vital work, and even good work for a Jedi. But Jala didn't call herself Jedi, much like the togruta, Ahsoka, did not. Kaar never denied being Jedi, but he admitted that the word had become painful. Order 66's horrors were never far away, and being reminded of them, having to experience those memories again were traumatizing.

"One day, he might change his mind again," Jala said, gentling her voice. Luke let out a snort of frustration, shaking his head.

"And that 'one day' might be well after we're all dead," Luke snapped, and then sighed, muttering an apology.

"Trust in the Force," Kaar told him, a phrase that Yoda and Obi-wan had repeated often enough. "Even if he only comes back after you're gone, trust that your future students will have the wisdom and ability to teach him when he's ready."

They were telling him to let Grogu go, and that was the Jedi way. Luke nodded. "I won't lie, it's a bit demoralizing that I can't seem to retain a student for very long. But you two, and Grogu, and Ahsoka can't be the only force users in the galaxy." Trust in the Force. Luke could do that, at the very least.

[vronton-writes]

We know nothing about her, but she is kind and patient and full of the same love for us that Margulis had. She becomes the intermediary between us and the Orokin, she learns our ways, praises our differing schools of thought. For a time, we think, perhaps when the war is done, we will put our swords down.

It does not last.

The Lotus reaches the same conclusion that we did lifetimes ago: the Orokin must fall. The Sentients, however, must fall first.

The enemy managed to crawl its way into the depths of Lua, hoping to stop the warframes at the source: us. The Sentients don't know what we are, what we can do.

Erra comes within inches of victory, only to be ripped apart by void energy at the Lotus's command. After Erra falls, so too does Hunhow, broken into pieces and scattered across the system, never to be rejoined.

With Hunhow's demise, the war is won. The remaining Sentients retreat, and the Empire, still wounded, celebrates. The Orokin will honor us. We ready our blades for one last battle.

They make it easy for us, gathering in one place, at the edges of the system. Only a few are absent, but it is no matter. We wait for the ceremonial drumbeats patiently until the striking of the last drum.

Chaos erupts after the Seven are slain in simultaneous, clean strokes. An enclosed space means our powers can reach to every bulkhead, pillar, floor, and balcony. The Dax defend the best they can, they have no choice otherwise. The Dax fall, even though we have no desire to slay them.

We leave carnage in our wake as we hunt down the Orokin, leaving the Grineer without masters, leaving the many corpus without a higher caste. When our work is done and our blades have been blooded, we take to our ships, scattering throughout the system, with few exceptions

Gara and Revanent stay on Earth, protecting the small human outposts that managed to survive the pollution, the Sentient war, and the outbreaks of Infested.

Limbo dances himself into the Rift and does not return.

Protea, severed from us during the war, remains in her prison with Parvos Granum.

The rest of us slumber while the Lotus takes control of Lua and pulls it into the void. She bids us goodnight, and to dream of a better system. And when the eons have carried on, year by year, decade by decade, century by century, until we've become nothing but legend and myth, we hear her familiar voice when it enters our Dream: "Wake up, Tenno."

[vronton-writes]

The war is fought on every planet, on every moon in our system. It is unceasing, but we are given moments of respite, or something else to fight. After all, we have also been tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind when the Orokin tried biological weapons against the Sentient threat.

Like many of their grand schemes, the Infested experiment is largely a failure. Infested consume anything in their path, mutating and twisting their victims until they are one with the hoard. We Tenno are immune, we cannot be turned. They try, and sometimes succeed, at tearing our warframes apart.

Warframes can be rebuilt. We, however, cannot be.

Though we do not age, we can still die. We learn this when Inaros Prime's operator is taken from us. Punishment for his insurrection on Mars after exposing the horrors of Continuity to us.

Still, we wait. The war is not over, but the hate in our hearts burns a little hotter. We take our anger out on the Sentients, the Infested, the fledgling cult that made currency their god in place of the Orokin.

While we hone our skills and bide our time, we are given an unexpected gift: someone else to call Mother. She calls herself the Lotus.

[vronton-writes]

The Orokin decided they didn't like her work. She is told she must stop, that we must be forgotten. She ignores every order, every directive. She assures us that we're worth her time and effort.

The Orders keep coming, and she keeps fighting for us, until her refusal can no longer be tolerated. Until she can no longer be protected. We hear her defy the Seven, we hear her mournful last words. 'My daughters, my sons, I want you to know that my last thoughts are of you.'

We bury our righteous rage, our fury, compressing it into an ever-burning coal that resides within our hearts, and we wait. We can do nothing in the moment, we can do nothing for years after her death. We can do nothing when Archimedian Silvana leaves, and we are left with no one.

But as all things do, the war that we are ignorant to reaches our shores on Lua. Where we were shunned before, now we are begged to help. The sentients will destroy everyone, we are told. Nothing they can do has stopped them. They have exhausted every measure and have failed.

We are their last ditch effort to win.

We see an opportunity, if we are patient. Margulis will get justice, we will have our vengeance. We take up the warframes, we take up blade, and gun, and bow, the weapons of the ancient worlds. We learn the ways of war. With this knowledge, we are given a name: Tenno.

[vronton-writes]

It was dark by the time Commander Rex’s comm chirped with a peculiar request. He wasn’t one for parties after a battle was done. He’d never been. Furrowing his brows, he read the missive and left the circles light by the Ewok’s many, many fires.

Down on the ground, there was a single fire burning, the smell of melting plasteel permeating the forest’s air. It was a familiar smell, one that was often left behind after a battle or skirmish had been won. Rex wound his way through the trees, stopping at the firelight’s edge. “You wanted to see me, General Skywalker?”

How strange it was to say that rank and name again, and this time it belonged to someone else. A whelp of a kid, skinny and bright-eyed. He could see that glint in Luke that reminded him of Anakin. But he saw Senator Amidala in that face too. Perhaps more of her, than him.

“Yes, thank you, Commander.” Luke turned toward him, only the edges of him lit, before gesturing Rex to come closer.

Rex came, looking down into the melting mask that was once Darth Vader. “Burying the enemy was not something we did, back in the war. The enemies were clankers--droids.”

“Maybe burying an enemy is odd,” Luke conceded, turning his gaze back to the flames. “But burying family isn’t. Leia said that you’re one of the last living soldiers from the Clone Wars. Did you know my father?”

“Anakin?” Rex rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yeah, we went way back. My battalion was assigned to him after he recovered from his injury at Geonosis.” He smiled, familiar, happier, memories bubbled up. “He was a lead from the front kind of General. Always had our backs on the battlefield, and off it too. It weighed on him, when we lost men. My brothers.”

Luke placed a hand gently on Rex’s shoulder. “Tell me about him?”

“One of the most brilliant Jedi knights I ever met,” Rex continued. “He wasn’t always a good listener, but he listened when it counted. We made it out of countless battles with only a few men, his lightsaber, and sheer bloody mindedness. Teaching a padawan while fighting a war brought him a new perspective. And none of us would be here if not for her.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “My father had an apprentice?” Rex winced a bit at the term. Apprentice. Something he’d heard Maul say back on Mandalore, and not at all in a way that he affiliated with the Jedi. “Padawan learner, they were called. Your dad’s was a Togruta named Ahsoka Tano.” She’d been just a slip of a kid at the start of the war. Far too young to be subjected to the war’s horrors.

But they’d all thrived in it, the chaos, the stress, the high stakes. Like the most stubborn of weeds growing in the cracks of duracreet, they’d all bloomed. Some called it the Age of Heroes. Sometimes, it had even felt like it.

“She was my best friend. And if anyone other than your dad had taught her, she wouldn’t have survived for as long as she did.” His throat caught, and he glanced down. Not a word since Malachor. And Ezra hadn’t been seen in so long, that he’d given up hope that Lothal brat still lived either. Wars took and took and took. Rex had given enough.

Luke smiled faintly. “I’m glad it’s not just me here to try and remember him. I’m glad you’re here too.”

“Thank you, sir.” Rex departed, leaving the son alone with his father. Luke couldn’t tell him. Vader’s shadow had cut Rex deeply enough, from what he’d heard about the Phoenix Squadron’s mission to Malachor V. He couldn’t know that Vader was the reason Tano was missing. The old clone had been through enough already.

As Luke turned away a moment, he saw a glinting in the trees. A young man stood there, one he recognized from old Clone War era propaganda. His father.

Thank you.

Just those words echoed in Luke’s head, and the apparition vanished.

[vronton-writes]

We are an inconvenience at best, a menace at worst, so we are taken to Lua where we can be forgotten. We are too dangerous, too unpredictable, they said. Confinement is the only recourse. It’s the only way to keep us and everyone else safe.

It is an excuse we permitted, not knowing any better. It is an excuse that one Archimedian refuses to accept. She, of all people, should have.

After all, we were the ones that hurt her. We took her sight. It is a shame we all bear.

But Margulis is possessed of a strength that few have. She saw us and didn’t see monsters. She saw survivors who are too young, too scared to be put in the position we found ourselves in. She saw children in need of compassion and understanding, even after we took her sight.

She bends her efforts into giving us the ability to live with every fiber of her being. She fights for it, for us, until her very last breath is taken by the jade light.