deercountry | Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls...

Ezra had things he took pride in, but if he minded the sort of vulnerability implied by 'cute', he wouldn't have shown her this picture. He just beamed.

"I think I have my dad's nose." And flips through pictures quickly, looking for the next one he wants. "And here's Kanan and Hera. I never called them mom or dad-"

He shrugs. "But they were my foster parents."

At the sight of the strange woman, Ariadne's eyes widened to the size of coins. It wasn't her kind face or pretty eyes. Not even the way she had her hand on her mate's chest. Nope. None of that.

"She's...she's green!"

If Ariadne wanted to meet Ezra's family before, that urge suddenly doubled. Someone green! Who wasn't an Alastrian?

Extraordinary!

Ezra glanced between Ariadne and the picture of Hera, confused by the strength of that reaction.

"Yeah. She's Twi'lek. They come in lots of colors, but green's not uncommon. Lots of species in the galaxy, in a whole array of colors. I've probably got some kind of non-human somewhere in my family tree. When I grow my hair out, it's less black and more blue."

She pressed her fingertips to her lips, as though she were trying to restrain her smile. Of course, it meant nothing here. And even less in Valeria. But the idea of it...that it was perfectly normal for someone to have green skin. That they could walk about, just like anyone else...it was so beautiful to Ariadne.

So beautiful and so anathema to everything she'd known.

And there was something even more beautiful in Ezra's confusion. That he was so matter-of-fact. It made her like his galaxy a whole lot more.

Shyly, she ducked her head, as she worked to restrain herself. She wanted to giggle, it was so wonderful. "Well," she said, "as someone with blue hair, I think it's a very, very good look!"

He'd seen her coloring change, and had realized on some level that she presented a more human look said....something. But it could just more convenient in Trench, which was almost entirely populated by humans. And she's alluded to her people being killed for being different, which he empathizes and sympathized with -

He was beginning to realize just how deep that fear of being regarded as other might go for her.

Keep it light, he told himself.

"I thought it suited you," he replies, matter of factly. "Sabine, her hair is brown naturally, but dyes it all the time. She'll get bored or well, be in some sort of mood, and switch to something else."

People in Ezra's universe were funny.

Savage had said almost the exact same thing.

But Ariadne just smiled and nodded and took it as a pleasantry, happy to change the subject. Especially when a convenient opening presented itself. "Sabine is another member of your family?" she asked. "Your adoptive one?"

He nodded, and flipped through pictures to land on another one.

"There we go. That's all of the...Specters, we called ourselves. The main crew of the Ghost. Sabine's the one of the far left. There's some other people who were around at times. Taught me some pretty important stuff, even. But not as close as sharing living space for years, you know?"

Did she know?

Ariadne had certainly lived in shared spaces throughout her life. First the forest. Then the palace. And Deerington and Trench. But she was only just beginning to understand the pleasure that came with found families.

So maybe she did know.

She smiled, her eyes examining the group. It was kind of incredible how different they all were. And yet still part of the same family. Yes, she definitely wanted that.

"Why do you call yourselves that? Specters, I mean."

Hmm. How to explain.

"Code names. For when we did job and missions. It was less important later when the Empire knew who we all were. But like, I was Specter-6, because I was the newest."

He paused. "You have to understand, when I come from anything - and I mean anything could be twisted by Imperial authorities into a crime punishable by work camps or execution on the spot. The Empire runs on fear."

"Believe me," she said softly, "I understand that."

The Empire and the Red Dragon weren't all that different. She supposed it was mostly a matter of scale. The Emperor conquered whole plants. The Red Dragon savaged kingdoms. She was sure he'd try to take on a planet, if he could.

Fortunately, he couldn't.

"I wish I had a cool," she was pleased with her use of the word 'cool,' "code name, like that. I just had to pretend to be courtiers a lot." Which was only fun half of the time. "I would have loved a title. Maybe...Valeria's Hand? That would sound cool, right?"

He was never happy when someone understood living under that sort of regime so intimately, but Ezra smiled sympathetically anyway, and then his smile got bigger at her use of 'cool'.

"Definitely sounds cool," he replied, firmly. "So who or what's Valeria? Or did you pull that out of thin air?"

She laughed. "Valeria is the name of the kingdom where I grew up," she said. "After my homeland was destroyed. I learned a lot of valuable skills there. How to read and to write."

A pause. She swept her eyes from side to side, a playful smile in the corner of her mouth.

"...how to find things that belonged to people and get them for other people."

"Had some jobs like that, too," Ezra admitted.

"Do Alastrians not have written lnaguage, or were you just not old enough to learn before you lost your family?"

It was an insightful question. One that no one had ever asked her. "We have an oral history," she said. "I can write the words phonetically, but if we ever had an alphabet, it's long lost. Probably under the same waters that swallowed up our island, a thousand years ago."

Ariadne never thought much about Alastrian history. Not that far back, anyway. It was a bit like a dream. One you'd just woken up from, one that was drifting away like smoke from a candle.

"My father hoped I would become the pack storyteller, when I grew up," she mused. "The keeper of all of our memories."

Ezra's been thinking a lot about history and cultural transmission lately.

"Seems like you probably would have reinvented one, in that long a span, if it fit your culture?" Ezra offers.

And then, even more pensively. "It's not true here, obviously, but I ever go back to my native time and place, there might be a point, very soon, when I'm the Jedi with the most training still alive, in the galaxy. All four and half years or so of it."

"That's a big responsibility," she said, in a gentle, knowing sort of way. She was far from the most...trained...Alastrian. But as far as she knew, she was the last of her generation. She might well be the last one alive, at some point in time.

Not a possibility she particularly liked. But probability didn't play to people's preferences.

It was fair.

"But then, maybe you're going to meet Luke at some point? I understand he's also trying to take down your Empire."

And she was pretty sure he'd managed to make some serious headway.

"Luke's great," Ezra says with honest enthusiasm. "He's got his father's raw ability, and I guess maybe he got his...groundedness from Padme? Or maybe just the aunt and uncle who raised him. I know enough..." He pauses.

"I'm almost certain I know exactly where he was, in my time. It lines up. And I know one way that the Emperor's rule could end, and in that future Luke was key. But he'd only had a few months training. He's...he's got the self-knowledge, the compassion, the commitment. He is a Jedi Knight. And maybe that's all the galaxy needs. Still, the techniques? History? Culture?"

He trails off.

She always felt a little flush of pleasure when talking about Luke. She was incredibly fond of him, mostly for the qualities that Ezra listed. The compassion. The commitment.

Also, he smelled really nice. Like, really, really nice.

Which wasn't to say Ezra didn't smell nice. But not the same.

And that, she supposed, was the point. They weren't the same. "Together, I imagine you two will be a force to be reckoned with."

A pause.

"Lowercase force. Not uppercase."

Ezra's mouth quirks in amusement, before he added, sincerely, "I hope we have a chance to see what we can do together."

"Well, that's the great thing about the multiverse," she said. "You have more chances than you ever dreamed of."

Which could be overwhelming, she supposed.

But she thought it was kind of wonderful.

He raises his tea cup. "To the big messy multi-verse?"

Ariadne tapped her mug against his. "To the big, messy multiverse," she replied.

And although she planned to take a sip, she had to wait until she finished giggling. It was a delicious giggle. A happy giggle. A friendly one.

Because she decided that being friends with Ezra was going to be a lot of fun.

Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls...

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