Saga Never Tell Me the Odds| Kessel Run 2023

Title: Never Tell Me the Odds
Author: Raissa Baiard
Characters, Genre, Timeframe: Various, depending on the prompts

Index

1. Week One: Courageous
2. Week Two: Lost Without You
3. Week Three: Not Like Mom Does It
4. Week Four: The Mandalorian Girl
5. Week Five: Purpose
6. Week Six: Mando-Limerick
7. Week Seven: Sister Time

 

Title: Courageous
Author: Raissa Baiard
Characters: Hamato Xiono, Kazuda Xiono
Timeframe: ST, 34 BBY
Genre: Introspection
Synopsis: New Republic Senator Hamato reflects on his actions during the rise of the First Order.

Notes: Hamato Xiono’s backstory is my own extrapolation. With Resistance being canceled after its second season, we never got the resolution of the father-son drama between him and Kaz. So here is the recognition from his father that I always felt Kaz deserved.

Thanks to @Findswoman for beta reading
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He had not been courageous.

Hamato Xiono had come to that bitter realization in the weeks following the destruction of Hosnian Prime. He had not been courageous, and it had cost his family, his world, and the entire Republic.

He turned to make another circuit through the meditation garden. Perhaps if he walked the path enough, it would help him achieve some kind of peace. Or perhaps he would simply lose feeling in his hands and feet from being out in the cold too long. This part of Shioria should have been enjoying the first blush of spring at this time of year, but instead it was still blanketed under heavy, wet snow. Here and there, sad, soggy red-brown leaves showed through the snow. Perhaps another time Hamato would have found something soothing in its quiet austerity, but today it only served to underscore his melancholy thoughts.

Shioria was the third planet Hamato and his family had sought refuge on after leaving Hosnian Prime shortly before it had been destroyed. He supposed that taking them offworld when the political situation had become tense had been another act of cowardice, but it was one he couldn’t truly regret. It saved them from the cataclysm that the First Order had unleashed on the Republic’s capital. His aged mother, his wife, their daughter, her husband and their young son—none of them would be alive if not for Hamato’s lack of courage. He didn’t regret taking them to safety.

No, it was everything he’d done before and since that he regretted.

Once, when he was young, Hamato had been courageous, or at least he liked to think he had been. He’d fought to restore the Republic and bring peace and freedom to the Galaxy, first in the fledgling New Republic’s military and later as a senator, representing Hosnian Prime. Peace had been hard won and dearly bought, and Hamato had vowed to do everything in his power to protect it.

And that, ironically, had been his downfall: he’d come to value peace more highly than freedom. When the First Order had first appeared, he’d been confident that it was nothing more than a pitiful remnant of the Empire, no real threat to the Republic. Hadn’t all the best experts assured the Senate that was so? And so he believed it, even when the Order had started to annex planets and systems on the Outer Rim.

He’d been certain that the Republic could preserve the peace they’d built through negotiation; if only they offered the First Order the right concessions, the Republic could avoid bloodshed. He had dismissed those who warned the Order was no different than the Empire that had given rise to it as fear-mongering pessimists, bent on driving the Republic into a needless war.

Leia Organa, Giall Ackbar, and Amillyn Holdo—leaders he knew and trusted—had all warned that no concession would ever be enough to satisfy the First Order. There could be no negotiations; like the Empire, their goal was to take everything. Hamato should have seen the truth in their words. Instead, he’d seen their willingness to defy the Senate as proof that they were extremists. If only he’d listened….if only he had been courageous.

Kazuda had.

Kazuda, his son. The son whose childhood and adolescence had been a continuous series of accidents and misadventures. Whose time at the Republic Naval Academy had been marked by disaster, not because he was a bad pilot—to the contrary, his instructors praised his talent—but because of the same careless mishaps and rash behavior that plagued him as a boy. There had been times Hamato when had despaired of Kazuda ever maturing.

But Kazuda had not only listened to those who spoke out against the First Order, he’d been courageous enough to act on his convictions. Strong enough to join the Resistance against Hamato’s wishes. Strong enough to keep the Colossus fueling platform from falling to the First Order. Even when Hamato had informed him that the First Order had had put a bounty on Kazuda and his friends for their defiance and urged him to leave the Resistance, he’d stayed and fought. He’d flown at the Battle of Exegol, against overwhelming odds in a rickety one-person fighter with a history of malfunctioning at critical times. That was how strongly he’d believed in doing what was right.

He had been courageous, as Hamato had not.

“Father?” A tentative voice came from behind him.

Hamato Xiono had made many mistakes. Most of them were no longer in his power to rectify, but there was one that was.

He turned around towards the young man standing apprehensively at the meditation garden’s gate. The most direct route to reach him was to push through the slush and snow, but Hamato didn’t mind that his shoes and trousers cuffs were getting soaked. “Kazuda,” he said, embracing his astonished son. “I am so proud of you.”
+++

 

I love these characters although I am unfamiliar with the show. You are giving them depth. Great insight in Hamato's thoughts

 

Firstly, I'm not familiar with the show, but this brought me into its world very nicely.

Loved this line especially. Too many people feel the same these days for my comfort.

Experts... schmexperts. Again, it's too much like real life, not just today, but any age. People let so-called 'experts' talk them into all kinds of tomfoolery.

And that just leaves the door open for Palpatine to stride right in, Force Lightning surging from his hands and then we all get 'energized'!

A good first challenge answer!

 

Wonderful poignant introspection and a sweet moment to wrap up.

 

Father and son have seen the rise and fall of governments peaceful and tyrannical, but even though the fight goes on, doing the right thing is always the best thing to do.

 

As someone who hasn't watched Resistance yet, I have to say (and it was also the case with your Rebels-based fics) that I'm always amazed at how you manage to take characters that I know nothing about and make them into full-fledged people that I care about. Often with canon characters writers assume a degree of familiarity from the reader (which isn't a criticism, it's part of what fanfic is about, after all), but you start from scratch and it's an entirely different reading experience.

And I find this portrayal of Hamato very interesting: the former freedom fighter who got comfortable, so comfortable that he failed to see what was happening under his nose. There are many such people in RL, and you can't really blame them for wanting to have a life after having sacrificed so much, but it can be infuriating to see them cling to denial in order to justify having a life, and that can entail disastrous consequences. Although, as Hamato says himself, there is the silver lining of having kept their family alive – but, even though he won't give himself any credit for it, he raised a child who took up the mantle when their father failed to do so. The fact that he is admitting that he was wrong, both to himself and to his son, is proof that the principled young man he once was is still there under the trappings of old age.

 

Thank you so much! I really have been wanting to do a story like this for a while. Kaz really does deserve the recognition from his dad, who comes off as very stern and gruff from the little bit we see of him in the show. I've played with those aspects of his character in some of my other Kaz-centric stories, so this was a different approach to him as someone who is grieving the loss of his world and questioning how his actions played into the sequence of events that lead to it. I agree that there's really no way of knowing how much impact Hamato standing up to the First Order would have had, but the feeling that he could have, should have done something haunts him, and I think there's a certain amount of survivor's guilt at play when he thinks about moving his family offworld. But at least he is able to see a way forward in reconciling with Kaz and putting aside that stuffy formality to embrace his son, even if that means ruining his (probably very expensive ) shoes.

Thank you! I am very fond of Kaz, of course, and I think that writing this story has given me a new appreciation for Hamato, in considering what his thoughts might be behind his stern demeanor.

Thank you so much! I think it's worth the watch if you get the chance. It's a bit uneven at times, but good fun with some great characters
.

I agree; peace and freedom is a delicate balance, and many people are willing to fudge a bit on their principles if it maintains the status quo, especially when all the Right People are telling you it's okay. And then, somehow, Palpatine returns...and no one understands how it could have happened. Thanks for reading!

Thank you! One of the best things about fanfic is being able to write the moments that should have been in the show

It is indeed! And I think Hamato has a new appreciation for Kaz, for having the strength to do the right thing in difficult circumstances. Thanks for your comment!

Well, thank you very much! *blush* I think that's one of the nicest comments I've received! I know that most people haven't seen Resistance, so I try my best to make my stories accessible to anyone, and I'm happy to know that I not only did that for you, but brought the characters to life!

We don't get to see a lot of Hamato in the show, so I had to do a fair bit of extrapolation. It's implied that he has military experience, so given his age, that would mean he fought in the Rebellion. Which makes it all the more dismaying that he doesn't see that the First Order is just the Empire 2.0. He's far from alone, of course. As you note, people get comfortable and see what they want to see. And I never really thought of it, but Kaz is such a good-hearted, brave young man that Hamato has to have passed along his ideals of service and duty to the Republic to his son. Thank you for reading, and thank you so much for the lovely comment!

 

Week 2
Title: Lost Without You
Characters: Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger, mentions of other Rebels characters
Genre: introspection, angst
Timeframe: ca. 5 ABY, 5 years after the Rebels finale
Synopsis: Five years after Ezra disappears, Sabine spends a sleepless night thinking of her lost friend.

Thanks to @Findswoman for beta reading
———-
It’s been almost five years since you last saw Ezra.

Four years, three hundred sixty-seven days and twenty-three hours, but who’s counting?

Well, obviously you are.

You’re counting because you can’t sleep, and you can’t sleep because every time you close your eyes, you’re lost in the moment you realized Ezra wasn’t going to make it off the Chimaera before the purrgils jumped to hyperspace. When you knew that he’d surrendered himself to Thrawn, knowing he wasn’t going to make it back, and all you could do was watch as the purrgils vanished, taking the Chimaera and Ezra along with them.

And as you lie there, you wonder how, after four years, three hundred sixty-seven days and twenty-three hours, losing Ezra can still hurt this much. They say that time heals all wounds, but here in the dark of almost-midnight, the pain still feels fresh. You wonder if it will ever get better.

It’s strange, but in a way you don’t want the pain to go away, because if it did, it would mean that you’d let go and accepted Ezra was really, truly lost. It would mean you’d given up on him. And you don’t give up. You never give up, especially on your vode.

Especially on Ezra.

How could you, when his last words to you were “I’m counting on you”? That’s why you are here, on his world, with his people, even though your mother, Fenn Rau and Bo-Katan Kryze have all hinted that it’s time for you to come back home to the Mandalore System. Mother has been particularly adamant that your duty to your clan, to Krownest and Mandalore, supersedes any promise that you might have made to Ezra—as if family isn’t more than blood. She’s suggested that you’ve made it impossible to move on with your life by choosing not just to live on Lothal, but also take up residence in Ezra’s old communication tower, and that this choice, along with the full-sized mural that takes up most of the tower’s main room, indicates that you have feelings for Ezra.

Which is ridiculous, of course.

Ezra was—is!—your best friend. He was always there for you—when you were training with the Darksaber, when you returned home to Krownest, when you rescued your father and you thought Mother and Tristan had been killed. He was there to help you, to encourage and comfort you. You’ve grown to dearly love him over the years and now that he’s gone, you feel adrift without him. But feelings…?

Still, sometimes, in the dark of almost-midnight you wonder what might have been if Ezra hadn’t gone all noble Jedi and sacrificed himself for Lothal’s freedom and for his Spectre family—for you. What would have happened if you’d let Hera follow the purrgils’ trajectory immediately instead of telling her Ezra would have wanted you to finish the fight for Lothal? Maybe if you had, you, Hera and Zeb wouldn’t have had to spend the past four years and three hundred sixty-seven days combing the Galaxy for any clue where he might be, following rumors and false leads but never finding any trace of Ezra.

You glance at your bedside chrono; it’s midnight now. Five years that Ezra’s been lost.

You get up and pad softly into the tower’s main room. The light of Lothal’s moons filters through the window, illuminating the mural you painted showing the Spectres when you were all still together. You touch Ezra’s cheek, as you’ve done so many times before, hoping that somewhere, somehow, he can sense it in the Force. You hope that wherever he is, he’s still your Ezra, and you hope this will be the year he comes home.

And you wonder what will happen when he does.
++++
Notes: according to Wookieepedia, a Galactic Standard Year is 368 days long.

 

the loss is showing through the entire story but with hope in the end. Will she see him again?

 

Amazing display of sorrow and loss. Hitting a little too close to home for me right now. Well done.

 

This was a lovely, heartfelt piece of introspection! I'm not particularly on board with the Ezra/Sabine 'ship, and my understanding is that you aren't either (at least from what I've read of your Ezra stories, but there are so many AUs of AUs in there that I might have missed something). However, in this story, the what-if aspect of it makes perfect sense to me: what can Sabine truly feel about someone who's been missing for 5 years, and who she's been trying to find unsuccessfully? Also, this story dovetails so perfectly with the conclusion of Rebels. I can imagine Sabine, just after your story, standing and looking at the horizon, and Ahsoka turning up to fetch her. Here's hoping that, with the new SW series coming in the next few months, we get a hint of what Ezra has been up to all this time!

 

Heart-tugging! She's torn between feeling she has to accept Ezra's lost while hoping he returns.

 

Thank you so much; I'm glad you're enjoying it!

You know, I kind of feel bad now for making Hamato into such a snobby jerk in my other stories! This story made me get into his head and take a more sympathetic look at how he felt and why he might have been so abrupt with Kaz. I still think he was rather harsh with him, but I'm prepared to give him a little more leeway now. As a senator during a politically fraught era, he had to have had a lot of things going on.

It definitely does take courage to admit you were wrong. Losing so much has put things into a new perspective for Hamato, and he realizes how fortunate he is to have his family. They, and not his status or his money and possessions, are what's truly important, and he can appreciate Kaz's strength.

Thank you. You're right that I was playing with the different types of lost-ness here, with Ezra physically lost and Sabine lost emotionally as she deals with his loss.

Oh yes, the Spectres are as much part of Sabine's aliit as any member of Clan Wren and she's not about to give up on any of them!

Of course (though if you think the lady doth protest too much, well...)

Thanks! I was torn whether to go the shippy route or not with this story, and I kind of tried to take a middle ground with it. I'm glad it seems to have worked for people. I can take or leave them as a couple. On the one hand, they have such a strong relationship and there are numerous moments in their story that parallel Kanan and Hera's relationship, so I can see them getting together, but they are just great as is, so I won't be disappointed if they don't get together. But they do love each other, and having their relationship in limbo like it is has to be hard on Sabine.

Thant's one of the things I appreciated about the Rebels finale. I was prepared to mourn Ezra the way I had Kanan, but instead the show ended with the hope that our friends would be reunited one day. It really is all about hope and the triumph of love and family against impossible odds.

Thanks so much!

Hopefully the Ahsoka show will make good on the promise to bring Ezra home...but if not I'll be here to write a reunion for them! Thanks for reading!

Thank you so much and for whatever you're going through that's making this hit close to home.

Thanks! I know--I can hardly believe it's been that long since Rebels ended! As @Mira_Jade noted Sabine does love him, whether that is (or could be) romantically is anyone's guess, but he is definitely her vode and she won't betray the trust he placed in her. I think there's enough of a possibility that Sabine could wonder what might have been between them if he hadn't disappeared into the Unknown Regions, and she would certainly wonder whether they might have found Ezra sooner if only they'd gone after him immediately. Thanks for the lovely comment.

Thank you so much! I do have a couple small Ezra/Sabine stories out there, but I'm not totally invested in them. There are enough of those "rhyming" moments between Sabine/Ezra and Kanera that I can see it happening, but I will be happy however Sabine brings him home. However Sabine feels about Ezra--or could feel about him--the limbo their relationship is in has to be hard on her. She has to continue her life while he's gone, but can't simply "move on" not knowing where he is. I, too, hope that with the new series, we--and Sabine--will get some answers as to what Ezra has been doing!

Yes, it's got to be hard for Sabine to move on with life while not knowing what happened to Ezra, but she still has hope for his return.

 

Week Three
Title: Not Like Mom Does It
Characters: Kazuda Xiono, Tori Xiono (OC), Wren Ordo (OC), Canderous the voorpak (OC)
Timeframe: ST era
Genre: Fluff, AU
Synopsis: Kaz has to mind his young daughter while Wren is at the Youth Limmie Playoffs. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do things the way Wren does.

Notes: I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to add any more kids to my multi-generational AU, and then this challenge came along…and that perfect name I had for Kaz and my OC, Wren Ordo’s daughter became a character, complete with a pet voorpak and a plush Loth-wolf, and I love her. So thanks, @Viari_Skywalker for giving me an excuse reason to add Tori to my ocedarium.

Thanks to @Findswoman for beta reading.
----------

“Hi, Daddy!”

Kaz startled at his four-year-old daughter Tori’s piping voice, nearly dropping the spoon with which he was ladling out a bowl of hot, sticky mealgrain cereal. Her footed jammies muffled her footfalls, and Kaz hadn’t heard her come into the kitchen. She grinned at him, her hazel eyes bright and lively even though her dark hair was still sleep-tousled. Like her mother, Tori was an early riser with the ability to go from zero to lightspeed in under thirty seconds. She was accompanied by her pet voorpak, Canderous. The Highland Golden was the grumpiest-looking voorpak Kaz had ever seen, with a pugnacious expression on his pushed-in features and a dark spot over his left eye that looked like a perpetual shiner--not inappropriate Wren said, given his namesake.

Kaz smiled back at Tori as she clambered up into the dining nook. “Hey, good morning, little Early Bird. Your mealgrain’s ready.” He set her bowl and spoon in front of her, the creamy white cereal garnished with two snowgrapes and a slice of puffer pig bacon to make a smiley face.

She looked down at it with a little frown. “Where’s Mama?”

“The Sabrecats had an early game this morning, remember?” Wren had played limmie competitively in her youth, and now coached the local youth league. Under her instruction, they’d made it into the regional playoffs. They’d had to leave at zero-dark-thirty that morning to make it to Capital City for the first round, so Kaz was handling breakfast by himself today.

Tori continued to frown at her smiling breakfast. “This isn’t the way Mama makes it. She puts jogan fruit and warra nuts on it for me.”

“Oh.” Kaz had thought his efforts were rather cute. He’d never considered that there was a Certain Way to make mealgrain. “Well, how about I get you some jogan juice to go with it?”

Tori made a small, noncommittal noise, poking at her mealgrain with her spoon. Kaz decided to take that as a yes and went to the conservator to get the juice. While he was pouring it into Tori’s Loth-cat tumbler, there was a sudden crash behind him. He spun around to see Tori kneeling in the dining nook, looking over the table at the bowl of cereal splattered on the floor… which Canderous was enthusiastically eating.

“What..?” Kaz quickly set the cup of jogan juice back on the counter and grabbed a towel.

“It slidded off the table,” Tori explained, eyes wide, and then giggled. “Candy likes it!” And indeed he did; Canderous was not to be budged from it and had to be lured away with a couple extra pieces of bacon so the housekeeping droid could clean up the mess. Once that had been accomplished, Kaz got another bowl of mealgrain for Tori, this time with jogan fruit and warra nuts, and one with a bacon smiley face for himself, just because.

After breakfast, Kaz had to help Tori get dressed, which was fine, and put up her hair, which was not so much. Hair styling was not exactly a forte of his. He’d never had to do more than gel and finger-comb his own hair into place, and the fact that Tori wriggled and squirmed as he tried to divide her hair into even sections didn’t help. After several attempts and some protest from Tori that the elasti-bands were “waaaay too tight, Daddy”, Kaz managed to get her hair put up into two more-or-less equal twists.

Tori patted the tufty bunches atop her head as she regarded herself seriously in the mirror, and shook her head. “That’s not the way Mama does it.”

Since it was Benduday, Kaz had the day off, so the next order of the day was playtime. Tori declined Kaz’s suggestion of playing with her toy ships in favor of playing ball. Sports had never been his strong suit; he tended to fumble the ball or get hit in the head with it or trip over it or… Fortunately, playing with Tori mostly consisted of her kicking the limmie ball up and down the yard giggling while Kaz tried to keep her from “scoring a goal” by kicking it into the tuft-grass border.

Canderous insisted on joining in the fun, too, but being a voorpak, he had no appreciation for the rules of the game. His single-minded goal was to Get That Ball. He zoomed after it on his eight spindly legs, pushing it towards the terrace.

“Candy! You’re on my team!” Tori protested as she chased him. Canderous sprang at the ball, which flew into the air. Kaz dove to intercept it before it crashed into Wren’s potted tigmary and chando peppers, and tripped over Canderous, who was suddenly under his feet.

“You okay, Daddy?” Tori asked, looking down at him. “You’re not as good at this as Mama. You fall more.”

“Yeah,” Kaz agreed, picking himself up. “But I’m a better pilot! Convor One coming into the hangar!” He scooped up Tori, who squealed with laughter and spread her arms like wings as Kaz “flew” her into the house.

After playing X-wings for a while, it was lunchtime, which was supposed to be followed by naptime, but Tori, predictably, was Not Tired.

“Sometimes, Mama tells me stories about Cand’rous Ordo,” she offered hopefully.

Kaz was sure that Wren had an endless supply of stories about her illustrious ancestor, but he was also sure that he would botch the details if he tried to tell any of them. “Why don’t I tell you one that Oba Suzume used to tell me, about T0-B1, the droid who became a Jedi?”

Tori nodded and she listened raptly as he related the tale. By the time he was done, her eyes were droopy. “I like that story, Daddy,” she murmured sleepily, snuggling up against him and closed her eyes.

Kaz smiled and kissed the top of her head. “Something was bound to go right sometime today.”

——
Notes:
Highland Golden voorpak: a breed of the 8-legged creature created by @Findswoman for her story, The Captain, the H-Goater, and the Voorpak. My thanks to her for letting me borrow it.

T0-B1, the Droid Who Became a Jedi is the Little Golden Book version of the short T0-B1 from Star Wars: Visions

 

Love the playfull banter and play between the children and caring parents. The voorpak is a nice creature

 

So cute!

This would be my nightmare as a parent. Mornings are the worst I would have to teach my hypothetical children to be very self-sufficient in the morning, because I can barely function

I feel that he's earned a bacon smiley face for all this

I'm on Tori's side here. Overly tight ponytail holders are torture

Who wouldn't like a story about a droid who became a Jedi?

 

Well played. Nice new OC.

 

Not to brag, but Mr. Chyn gets "that's not how mommy does it" from Chyntuquita all the time That's dads for you, not spending quite enough time on the practicalities of their kid's life. I loved how, after failing with the cereal, the hairdo and the limmie game, Kaz moves back to safer territory with X-wings and deftly dodges the Canderous Ordo trap.

Also:

Yup. Been there, done that. I'm sure you have too.

Lastly, Canderous the voorpak needs a story thread of his own. He's just too good a limmie not to be the star of the show.

 

*reads contentedly while horizontal*

It's not fair how much he worked for his peace and then Stuff happened ...

He's spent the quiet reflection productively, at least, to a good end.

Lessons learned more easily by some than others ...

Five years seems an age to her, but still, she hopes.

Agh, the memories driving various teams in the dark a.m.s to venues 60 miles away resurface ... the icy mornings scraping the windshield; love this descriptive time phrase!

I'm sure he and I are related intergalactically because balls always zero in on my noggin!