Saga - ST Free as a Fathier or Saving What We Love (Rose Tico Oneshot for Mini Games Challenge)

Title: Free as a Fathier or Saving What We Love

Author: devilinthedetails

Characters: Rose Tico; Finn; Paige Tico.

Genre: General; Friendship; Family; Drama.

Timeline: Saga-ST.

Summary: An exploration of what freeing the fathiers means to Rose.

Author’s Note: This piece was written for @Ewok Poet 's Mini Games event the Badly Received Character Challenge. The character I received was Rose Tico. Given the nature of the challenge, I wanted to focus on reclaiming Rose as a character by delving into two her more maligned moments: freeing the fathiers and proclaiming to Finn that victory is achieved not by fighting what we hate but saving what we love. I hope everyone enjoys this celebration of Rose’s complex character that is worthy of being explored in depth. Also, a special thanks for @Ewok Poet for this character-focused challenge that encouraged me to write about a character I’ve never written about before. This is an exciting opportunity for me, and I hope my readers enjoy the result!

Free as a Fathier or Saving What We Love

Rose’s dad was home after a long shift harvesting ore from the mines of Hays Minor. She sat next to him on the sofa, leaning her head against his chest, watching a holodocumentary in their tiny, sparsely furnished living room. Her dad enjoyed watching holodocumentaries because he said it reminded him that there was a galaxy beyond the dark mines of Hays Minor. Rose treasured both the time she spent with her father (most of her friends’ dads weren’t interested in talking or playing with them after a hard shift in the mines) and because she thirsted to learn more about the wider galaxy. The wider galaxy she was determined to explore one day with her sister Paige when they found their way off this planet, avoiding being trapped in the mines like her parents’ generation.

That night, the holodocumentary’s subject was fathiers. Rose would never forget her first sight of the fathiers on the holoscreen. How long and floppy their furred earflaps were. How sad and soft their eyes looked. How she felt as if she could drown in their deep, dark eyes.

“They’re beautiful,” she breathed with a reverence for these creatures that she’d never felt for anything else. “They look so soft and gentle.”

And sad too, she thought, but she didn’t know why they should be sad.

“Yes, they’re graceful and majestic creatures,” her father agreed as the fathiers on the holoscreen burst into the most fluid run that Rose had ever seen, charging smoothly across a variety of terrains--sandy beaches, green fields speckled with flowers, and stony cliff faces--and leaping like waves over any obstacles they encountered. They seemed indomitable and unstoppable to Rose. The ultimate expression and celebration of freedom.

So, it was a surprise that shook her to the bones when her dad went on, “They’re kept in captivity on Cantonica to run in the races at Canto Bight. They are kept in small pens in overcrowded stables. The beings who have grown wealthy supporting the First Order bet on them, and poor slave children are responsible for trying to care for them in squalid conditions.”

Rose knew all about child slavery. The First Order preyed upon the children of Hays Minor as they did upon the young and vulnerable across the galaxy, kidnapping terrified children to brainwash them into becoming unthinking soldiers and agents of tyranny for the First Order.

“I hate the First Order and all who support them.” Rose felt her whole body tremble. She felt like an explosive about to blow in the mines where her parents worked, breaking their backs for the First Order everyone in her community despised. “I want to see them destroyed. I want to destroy them myself.”

Her hands had clenched into fists without her realizing.

“Don’t give into your hatred, Rose.” Her dad bent his head to kiss her black hair. “If you hate you’ll be like the First Order. You can only fight and defeat the First Order with love.”

“With love?” repeated Rose, nose crinkling dubiously. To her, love seemed too weak to defy the First Order. Surely, the First Order could be destroyed only with a hatred and anger that burned hot as the First Order’s weapons.

“That’s what I said.” Her father tapped her nose. “Hatred can’t drive out hate. Only love can do that. The First Order will be beaten when beings are determined to save what they love, not destroy what they hate. To defeat the First Order, we must be much different from the First Order.”

Rose considered this, chewing her lower lip, before stating in a quiet, timid voice, “I want to save the fathiers. If not all of them then at least some of them. And I want to save the slave children too.”

“Then you will.” Her father smiled at her as if it were that simple. As if wishing and dreaming could make it so. As if she could achieve anything she wanted. As if anything in the universe would ever transpire according to her desire rather than the dictates of cruel fate--a cruel fate that all too often seemed embodied by the First Order.

Years later, when her planet had been destroyed by the First Order and her last remaining family member--her sister Paige--had died fighting the First Order, Rose stared at the fathiers in their pens as she emerged from the grate she had used to escape from prison with Finn.

Finn, the member of the Resistance who had been a brainwashed stormtrooper of the First Order weeks ago. Paige, Rose remembered, had been the one to tell her of Finn’s defection. Finn’s defection had been so heartening, so encouraging to Paige, who had been convinced that if one stormtrooper could break free of the First Order’s brainwashing, others could, and the tide of the war could turn with those defecting stormtroopers. The power of the First Order’s brainwashing was breaking, Paige had been so shiningly confident of that after Finn’s desertion.

Rose wondered if Finn knew how much of an inspiration--a beacon of hope--he had been to Paige and so many others when he abandoned the First Order and joined the Resistance. If she had made that clear to him before she tazed him. Or if she had failed at that, and he still didn’t understand how much he was admired in the ranks of the Resistance. Likely, it was the latter, she thought. She had always been clumsy and faltering with her words. Well-intentioned, but tripping over her tongue all too often, bruising herself and others.

How she missed Paige. Paige would have been able to explain everything to Finn, because she could explain anything to anybody. She was just that cool and confident.

Rose would miss her sister every day until she died, but she had a mission to complete.

The fathiers reminded her of that and her long-ago wish to save them. To free them from their oppressors as she longed to liberate the galaxy from the First Order.

So, she freed them from their pens with the help of the slave children in the stables that had the distinctive spicy stink of sweaty fathier. She wished that she could free the slave children as well, but she had nowhere to take them but a warship, and she didn’t want to drag children away to war. That would make her too much like the First Order.

At least the children, cheering and applauding, as the fathiers raced away from the stables into the night, seemed to have been given hope by the arrival of Resistance fighters and the escape of the fathiers. That was the most important thing the Resistance could bring the children now: hope of their own freedom one day.

On fathier back with Finn behind her, Rose ran faster than she ever had in her life down the racetrack where the wealthy bet on captive, abused animals ridden by beaten slave children who were such light jockeys because they were starved to skin and bones. Through the casinos where the war criminals partied and gambled without a twinge of guilt or sliver of shame. Through the colorful windows and past beings in gaudy, ostentatious dress that must cost more than most people would earn in a lifetime.

Out of the city and onto a rocky beach with the wind rippling through her hair and blowing against her cheeks. Across a field as in the holodocumentary she saw long ago with her father. Chased by Canto Bight security with blinding searchlights. Splitting from the main herd of fathiers to give them a chance at freedom. Escaping narrowly with her own freedom and life.

After Canto Bight, after the codebreaker they found failed and betrayed them, amid the salt and First Order fire of Crait, Rose saved Finn as she had saved the fathiers. After she saved him, she kissed him and passed her father’s wisdom onto him: that they would only win the war against the First Order by saving what they loved, not destroying what they hated. Wisdom that she now fully understood and embraced because she loved deeply and selflessly. And she was free as a fathier because she loved deeply and selflessly. She had won her own war against the First Order. Against her own hatred and anger.

Rose Tico was triumphant even as she fainted, overcome by the sheer volume of emotion and euphoria she was experiencing. Nobody had ever warned her that internal victory felt so much like being knocked unconscious but she couldn’t resent them for this omission. She couldn’t resent anyone for anything now. That was what it meant to focus on love instead of being motivated by hatred. That was what it meant to be saved by her own love and capacity for sacrifice.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha As always, thank you so much for commenting! I'm so glad that you found this to be a wonderful character piece because I really wanted to do Rose justice here. Her memory of her father was so touching to me and I wanted it to be a compelling motivator for Rose's actions throughout the story, so I'm so happy it worked that way for you. I did really like Rose's words about saving what we love in TLJ so it was nice to be able to celebrate them and her in this story. And I did find the ride against the beach beautiful in the movie so it was awesome to be able to have a tribute to that. Thank you again for the kind words of support!

@gizkaspice Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! I tend to compare Rose to Jar Jar in that I think unfortunately for both those characters they became lightning rods of controversy and criticism for their respective movies (TLJ and TPM) and that negative reception even spread into the people who played them receiving hateful, harassing comments, so it was great to be able to sort of shine a positive spotlight on Rose and celebrate her as a character. I really enjoyed being able to expand on her background and provide extra history and context behind the iconic fathier scene!

@Thumper09 Thank you so much for commenting! I'm so glad that you liked this story and that you appreciated how I tied the fathiers into a special moment she had with her father growing up. I really wanted to showcase Rose's growth and development as a character in this piece, highlighting how she learned to let go of her anger despite the losses she continued to encounter in her life, so it's awesome to hear I succeeded with that for you. You're totally right that it takes a strong person to endure that kind of trauma and not come out of it even more bitter and angry. Instead, Rose finds a way to grow in her compassion and wisdom, which is truly remarkable. And it felt so empowering to be able to feature Rose's maturation in her thinking when she realizes that she is unable to help the stable workers in the moment no matter how much she wants to, and how she just keeps doing whatever she can in her special Rose way. Thank you again for the kind comment, and I'm so flattered that you found this piece excellent!