This is what happens when I read A New Dawn and watch the new Rebels episodes.

Alternatively: so a Trandoshan hoverball addict, a clone trooper, and an adoptive dad with massive issues walk into a bar.

The Former Things

From a certain point of view, it starts like this:

On the tiny Outer Rim world of Kalaban, in the imaginatively named Refinery Settlement Gamma, there is a young man renting out one of the spare rooms over the bar, and one day he wakes up with a sense of foreboding so strong it threatens to choke him from the inside out.

The Holonet reception is absolute shit this far into the middle of nowhere, on a planet that might not be the least interesting in the galaxy, but definitely gives the other contestants a run for their money. Durra the bartender hisses angry Trandoshan curses as it goes down during the mid-league hoverball finals and gives serious consideration to putting her fist through the screen. This is the fifth time - the fifth blasted time - that this has happened in the past month.

"Before halftime, too," she tells the bar at large. "It's a conspiracy."

This early in the day, the only patrons are her boarders. The graying old stormtrooper, already looking just this side of pickled, salutes her with his fifth glass of Corellian ale. The factory worker, his hair pulled back in its customary messy ponytail, uncovers his little niece's ears now that Durra's done with profanities for the moment and goes back to his breakfast.

"Useless uncultured heathens," Durra mutters. She points one clawed finger at the stormtrooper. "What if it's sabotage, Lock? What if the Rebellion is establishing a base here right this moment while you sit here and do nothing?"

"I'm not doing nothing," Lock the stormtrooper points out. "I'm drinking." He demonstrates his point by draining his glass and holding it out in search of a refill.

Durra pours him one and mentally tacks the cost of another shipment of Corellian ale onto his rent. "And you," she says, rounding on the hapless factory worker. "You could at least show some support for my tragic loss."

"I'm crying on the inside," the factory worker retorts with an eyeroll that would get him smacked if he were any older. By human standards he's very young; by Durra's standards he's practically an infant and shouldn't be raising his niece on his own.

Said niece, proving that she's the only one in the room with a sympathetic bone in her body, pushes her oversized goggles up onto her forehead and affects a little pout, complete with sad drooping lekku. Then she undermines the whole effort by bursting into giggles and hiding her face behind her cup of bean tea.

Figures, Durra thinks. "You are a terrible influence on that child, Harun. A terrible uncle and a terrible influence, you hear me?"

Harun the factory worker does a sort of full-body shrug and says something incomprehensible, on account of his mouth being full.

"This is why you should be glad I watch her for you," Durra continues, warming up to her new theme. "She needs me. She'd never learn anything like manners otherwise."

On cue, the little girl scrambles down from her seat to bring her plate and cup back to the bar. She is wearing one of her uncle's sweaters over her jumpsuit, the sleeves carefully rolled up so they don't fall over her hands, and a scarf has been wound around her neck and shoulders to keep out Kalaban's ever-present chill. "Are we gonna go to the market today?" she asks as she stands on her tiptoes to pass her dishes over.

"No, you're not," Harun says before Durra can answer. "You're going to stay here and practice your letters like I told you."

Well, that's more serious than Durra's heard him be in quite some time. "I need a new headlight for my speeder bike," she points out. "Which means the market. Headlights don't exactly grow on trees."

"Then get it on my day off."

She looks down at the little girl, who blinks up, enormous goggles slowly sliding off her forehead and in front of her eyes. One of these days Durra's going to pry the damn things away from her and replace them with ones that actually fit. For now she settles on reaching over the bar and tugging them back into place. "What's gotten into you?" she asks Harun.

"A hunch."

"A regular person's hunch," Lock slurs from down the bar, "or a you kind of hunch?"

Harun's gaze darts from one to the other. Five damn years boarding at the bar, five years with Lock as his alcoholic neighbor, and he still looks a little too much like a cornered animal for Durra's tastes.

Because this is the thing about Harun's hunches: the last time he had one, the refinery's chimney collapsed and almost took a shift crew with it, and the time before that the ore tug's engines failed, and the time before that Patula the baker got word that her brother on Rodia had been arrested for treason and shipped off to Kessel. Durra's not young by anyone's standards and more to the point, she's no one's fool. She served in the Kashyyyk Expeditionary Force way back during the Clone Wars - has the scars and occasional screaming nightmare to prove it, thanks so much - and she knows what that kind of accuracy means.

"Lock," she says, producing a full glass of glowing green Devaronian brandy without taking her eyes off Harun, "I will give you this on the house if you kindly shut the frag up."

He's only too happy to oblige.

"And now you and I are going to talk," she says to Harun as she stacks his niece's dishes out of sight behind the counter. "Do I need to close the bar? Because I want to know if something bad is going to happen before the morning drunks start coming in. It's hell getting bloodstains off of a duracrete floor."

Harun's blue eyes narrow and his face twists up into a scowl. "How do you even know that?"

"Worked as a janitor at a hoverball arena before the Clone Wars broke out." She casts one last baleful glare at the blank Holonet screen. "Now answer the question."

He does...whatever it is that he does. He probably thinks Durra can't tell, but his eyes unfocus in that creepy way humans have that she will never ever get used to, and all in all it's pretty obvious to anyone who's paying the slightest bit of attention. Even Lock's watching over his half-empty glass.

"Just keep Bia with you," Harun says at last, coming back to the present and wincing just a little at his niece's squawk of dismay. "You don't need to close the bar. Where would Lock drink if you did?"

In answer, Lock drains the glass and raises it in a sort of wobbly toast. "You're a good man," he announces in Harun's general direction, and then pitches forward face-first onto the bar, dead to the world.

There's a moment of silence while they wait to see if he's conscious or not. When he starts to snore, Harun looks back at Durra again, deadly serious.

"I don't care if it's with you or Lock," he says, "but Bia stays inside."

Durra flashes her teeth in annoyance. "Bia stays inside," she agrees, but only because it's easier than asking questions. "Anything else I should look out for? Crashing ships, maybe?"

"Something that isn't right," Harun says.

"Not helpful," Durra grumbles at him. "Damn kid."

Face-first on the bar, Lock snores on.

The Holonet comes on just in time to spoil the end of one hoverball game and start another before it goes back out. Durra hisses at her useless screen and pours the new Refinery Four shift boss an extra shot when he tells her it's a damn disgrace how badly the relays are maintained out here. She keeps Bia on an overturned bucket behind the bar, right where she can trip over her, but the kid is bored and doesn't want to practice her letters on scrap bits of plastisheet like her uncle told her to, so Durra puts her to work washing dishes.

"And wake Lock up," she adds as she dumps another glass in the soapy water. One day she will have enough money for a sonic washer. Today is not that day.

The girl dutifully uses her bucket as a stepstool and reaches over the bar to thwap Lock upside the head. He makes a "muh" sound and blinks blearily at her.

"Get up," Bia says with far too much authority for a five-year-old wearing giant goggles. "You've gotta be at the garrison in twenty minutes."

Lock makes a noise like a wounded rancor and shades his eyes with his hands. "You're evil."

"And you're still a stormtrooper at your age for a reason," Durra retorts with no sympathy whatsoever.

"I'm a lot younger than I look, you know."

"Let's hope so. You look like you have one foot in the grave." When Lock just groans at her about the evils of Devaronian brandy and how he is never drinking it again, she throws a dishrag at him. It sits on top of his gray buzzcut like a dripping wet hat. "Bia, take him to the garrison, will you?"

That gets Lock's attention, as she knew it would. "Harun wants her inside," he says as he removes the dishrag and throws over the bar into Bia's sink.

"Oh, so you were awake for that, were you?"

Lock shrugs at her and then winces like he wishes he hadn't.

"I thought that snoring was too over the top for you," Durra mutters. "Stop whining and get off your kriffing stool or I'll call Harun home and make him escort you himself."

He does, sliding in the general direction of the floor and landing more or less upright, but by then it's too late. The new shift boss is tilting his head in their direction. "Harun? That's your other boarder? Works at Refinery Two?"

Durra looks in Lock's direction. Lock, for all that he's swaying like he's caught in one of Kalaban's windstorms, manages to give her a stone-cold sober look right back. "Last I checked," Durra says to the shift boss, all complete disinterest. "What about it?"

"And that's his kid?"

"Could be." Out of view behind the bar, she nudges Bia's bucket with her foot; the little girl obligingly hops off it and goes back to the dishes, coincidentally hiding herself from view.

"Why doesn't he want to let her outside? He ashamed of her or something?"

Trandoshans don't smile, but Durra makes an attempt at it. It has the side effect of showing a lot of sharp pointy teeth. "Lock," she says, and right on cue the stormtrooper throws his arm around the shift boss's shoulders and leans his full weight on him, practically knocking him over. "This nice patron of mine is going to get you to the garrison. Try not to throw up on him."

"You're a good man," Lock slurs cheerfully at the captured shift boss, "a damn good man." But he locks eyes with Durra again and his mouth pulls into a grimace for a split second.

"And buy some sunfruit on your way home," she mutters after him, earning another sharp-eyed look and a groggy salute in reply.

She waits until they're out of the bar. "Bia," she says in an undertone, never taking her eyes off the door. "Is that anyone you knew?"

"Uh uh." Bia climbs back on her bucket and peers at the door too, her nose wrinkling. She keeps her voice quiet, just like Durra is, but the few other patrons in the bar are too preoccupied or drunk to pay them any mind. "Don't like him," she decides.

"Yeah? Why's that?"

Instead of answering, Bia holds up one of the plastisheets she was supposed to be practicing with. In between the Aurebesh letters, there's something that sure looks like a man getting run through with a stick.

Yeah, Durra thinks as if from a very great distance, that probably is how a little kid would draw a lightsaber.

"I don't like him," Bia repeats more emphatically. "I really don't like him."

Durra takes a deep breath and lets it out again. "How about you go hide in my room for a while?" she says. "Maybe lock the door behind you, rest on the top bunk for a while? How's that?"

Whatever Bia's uncle has taught her in the place of manners, it makes her react instantly. There isn't a single sound of protest as she flips the bucket right-side-up, collects the plastisheets and her stylus and any evidence at all that she even exists, and slips out the back door next to the drinks cabinet without a sound.

The Holonet flickers back on, the hoverball game replaced with a breaking news bulletin announcing a major victory over the upstart Rebellion on some planet Durra's never heard of. She turns it off so quickly and viciously she cracks the casing on the remote and has to throw the whole damn thing in the trash.

"Bar's closed," she snaps at what's left of the morning drunks. "Pay up and get the hell out."

Harun comes back for lunch instead of eating in the refinery cafeteria. He still has his big heavy work gloves jammed in his belt and he's breathing hard like he ran the whole damn way.

"There's an Imperial inquisitor on Kalaban," he gasps out as Durra locks and deadbolts the door behind him. "He's - "

" - the new shift boss?" Durra finishes. "Already met him. Lock's keeping an eye on him."

"He was here?"

"Asking about you and Bia," she says, and watches as he flinches at his niece's name. "What's he here for? Looking for runaway Jedi?"

The laugh he gives her is one of the most horrible sounds she's ever heard. "You don't want to know."

"But I should," she says as she rummages behind the bar. There's a blaster carbine and some credits behind a false panel, ready if she needs them, because anyone who came out of the Clone Wars and claims they aren't paranoid is a lying sack of shit. "I'm not going to stay here to get interrogated. Lock, either. It'd be nice to know who we're packing up and leaving for."

She isn't the best at reading human expressions, but even she can see the wave of guilt wash over Harun's.

"Look," he begins, "I never meant - "

"You finish that sentence and I'm throwing you into upper orbit," she grumbles.

He looks so crestfallen that she has to remind herself how young he is, even by blink-and-you-miss-it human standards. He's not much more than a kid himself, for all that he acts like he knows what he's doing with that niece of his.

"I'm not a Jedi," he says at last. "Bia's dad was, though."

"Your older brother."

He hesitates just a fraction of a second too long before he nods.

Durra throws half the bundled credits at him. "I, on the other hand, used to fight against Jedi generals for a living. I know how to recognize someone who can use that Force of yours, so stop feeling guilty about hiding things from me. You didn't." She runs a critical eye over him. "Don't you need a weapon?"

"I've got a vibroblade up my sleeve."

"Not funny. Go get your niece. She's in my room. You know the passcode."

He takes off running.

"And find a weapon!" Durra yells after him.

They go down the back alleys between the settlement's prefab duracrete buildings, moving slowly and carefully. Harun darts ahead of them, jumping up onto roofs and ricocheting off walls in a way that Durra knows is going to give her all kinds of fun flashback nightmares. Something about the way he moves tells her he's more familiar with this than with factory work, that running and ducking among buildings is his element, not Kalaban's refineries.

The shift boss gets the drop on them anyway by the simple but effective means of waiting in ambush around a blind corner. Durra dodges his red lightsaber on muscle memory and pure instinct, curling around Bia like a shield as she drops and the blade slices through the air over her head. In the next instant Harun is in front of her and knocking the shift boss back with a kick right to his stomach.

"I've got him," he says as he unclips something from his belt that looks like a welding gun. It produces the sort of bright blue blade Durra hasn't seen in twenty years. "Take Bia and get out of here. Don't wait up for me."

Durra takes a step back, then another. She keeps Bia tucked under one arm like a sack and the carbine ready in her free hand. She doesn't actually turn and leave.

The shift boss - the inquisitor, bit of a difference there - is wandering back slowly. He's a human, only a little older than Harun, so utterly unremarkable that his face slides right out of Durra's memory. Now that he's not commiserating with her over Holonet blackouts or trying to support Lock's weight, she can see that he moves like he thinks he's a holodrama smuggler.

If it weren't for the threat he represents, she would almost laugh at him. She used to take potshots at Jedi trainees his age, way back when. Killed a couple, even. And Lock...well, she's known Lock for years, and she's been around him when he's drunk enough to start rambling. She knows Lock's done plenty worse than she ever will.

But Harun's the one the inquisitor is focused on, and Harun's the one he swings his lightsaber at, and Harun's the one who barely counters with the awkward one-handed grip he has on his welding gun weapon. "My master isn't interested in you, Jedi," the inquisitor says as the two of them cross blades. "He doesn't have time for you. He just wants to know if you can help him find the Rebel Sk - "

And then his eyes go very wide and he makes the sort of horrible gurgling noise that Durra knows means he's choking on his own blood.

There's a vibroblade sticking out of his chest.

"I'm not a Jedi," Harun says as he grips his lightsaber in both hands and swings it down.

The rendezvous is in the hills outside the settlement and hidden among old anthracite mining pits. Lock's already there and waiting for them, dressed in the sort of worn spacer's clothes that wouldn't look out of place anywhere in the Outer Rim. He has a cap pulled down over his gray buzzcut and is wearing a stupid grin plastered on his face.

"Couldn't find any sunfruit," he announces. "Got a ship instead."

"Sunfruit?" Harun echoes as they hurry up the ramp into the little tug.

"A couple of my brothers have a sunfruit farm on Volantis," Lock says on his way to the cockpit. The whole tug smells like the inside of a rancor pit. It's probably best not to ask where or how he got it. "It's registered under one of their wives' names. Forget which one. Point is," he adds as he smacks the console until all the controls flicker to life, "no one will look for us there."

Durra sinks into the copilot's seat and tries to force herself to relax. Who knows when she'll have another chance to sit down? "That would be ideal. We've left a dead inquisitor for your garrison to find."

"Our new friend from the bar?"

"Who else?"

"Oh, great," Lock mutters as they lift off of Kalaban. "Now I can tell everyone I threw up on an inquisitor's shoes."

There isn't any talking for quite some time after that. No one comes after them - there are no Star Destroyers in orbit around the tiny world they're leaving behind, no Imperial ships at all save for the garrison shuttle - and no one stops them when they make the short hop through hyperspace to the next system over.

The Holonet flickers again and comes back up while they're hiding in the shadow of an enormous rocky moon, plotting out the most convoluted and complicated route to Volantis they can manage on half a tank of fuel.

"Hey, look at that," Lock says from somewhere over her shoulder. "Your very first wanted notice."

She hisses a particularly impressive profanity at him, then smirks as her holo is replaced with his. "Yours too, genius."

"They got my number wrong," he grumbles. "How did they get my number wrong? It's right in my file and everything!" He slumps back in his seat and folds his arms over his chest in a rather good imitation of Bia at her sulkiest. "Worst garrison in existence. Back in my day - "

"There is a bottle of Corellian ale in my bag," she says quickly. "You may have it if you stop talking about your day right now."

"You're a real hero, Durra. Don't let anyone tell you you aren't." He gives her the least professional salute she's ever seen and claps a hand down on Bia's shoulders. "Let's go figure out how to keep this bucket of bolts flying," he tells her as he tows her out of the cockpit.

That leaves Durra alone with Harun. He's sitting in one of the passenger seats and turning some kind of box over and over in his hands. His eyes are locked on something very far away.

"So," Durra says into the silence. "I've never seen a Jedi just stab someone with a vibroblade before."

"And you still haven't."

"Don't be smart with me, kid. You can use the Force, can't you? You've got a lightsaber. You saved that shift crew from the refinery chimney with those hunches of yours."

Harun makes a face at her. "What about it?"

"You can say you're not a Jedi all you want. To us regular beings out here in the galaxy, you sure look like one. And don't tell me a Jedi shouldn't stick vibroblades in people," she adds when he opens his mouth. "I fought them, remember? Some of them did worse than that."

That just makes him even grumpier than before. He holds out his hand and the box floats above it, and even after one too many close encounters way back in the Clone Wars, it's still just about the weirdest damn thing Durra's ever seen.

"Thanks for not doing that in my bar," she says. "It would've scared away all the customers." When that earns her an eyeroll, she bites back a quick hiss of laughter and peers at the box. "What is that thing?"

"Something I have no idea how to use."

"So why keep it around?"

He flexes his fingers and the box sinks back down onto his open palm. "It has information about the Jedi in it, and...I dunno." He shrugs. "I feel like it'll be important one day, I guess. Like it's waiting for someone who needs it. And it belonged to Bia's dad," he adds like that explains everything.

Hell, for him, maybe it does.

"For someone who's not a Jedi, that seems like a pretty Jedi thing to do," Durra says. "It's more Jedi-like than most of the Jedi I ever met."

"Weren't you trying to kill most of the Jedi you ever met?"

Durra waves away that insignificant technicality with one hand. "Details," she says.

That actually gets a grin out of him.

From a certain point of view, it starts like this:

There is a man on the farming world of Volantis trying to lug an oversized bushel of sunfruit off a malfunctioning repulsorlift. When the shockwave of Endor hits him, it's muted by time and distance; he looks up to the sky, head cocked to one side like he's listening, and smiles at something no one else hears.

Someday - in months, perhaps, or years - someone will come looking for the little box he has protected all these years. But it won't be just yet.

For now, he waits until after supper to rummage through his bag and dig out the thing everyone on the fruit farm has mistaken for a welding gun. He tinkers with it, adjusting things like power and length, and lets Bia wrap her hands around the hilt. Her eyes are very wide behind her goggles.

"Your dad had one of these," he informs her, and then grins at the way her mouth drops open in a perfect "O" of sheer awe as she stares at the bright blue blade.

He glances off to the side for a moment. There are a pair of crabby old soldiers sitting on a pair of fruit crates, sharing a bottle of something that could strip the hull off a Star Destroyer and acting a little too much like proud, rather alcoholic grandparents.

And behind them…

Behind them are the others, the man known as Harun supposes.

"What're you doing teaching her to use that thing?" Durra grumbles. "How is that appropriate for a six-year-old? Haven't you ever heard of hoverball?"

"You're a good man," Lock announces to the galaxy in general or Harun in particular, cup clutched very firmly in both hands.

Check her grip, no one at all says.

Harun rolls his eyes at the pair of hecklers as theatrically as he knows how and crouches down in front of Bia.

"There's a better way to hold that," he says, and carefully adjusts her grip.