Star Wars Rebels fic: On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone (Chapter 6: Phantom)

[bedlamsbard]

On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone (62483 words) by bedlamsbard
Chapters: 6/?
Fandom: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Characters: Hera Syndulla, Kanan Jarrus, Sabine Wren, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, C1-10P | Chopper, Ezra Bridger, Cham Syndulla, Barriss Offee, Kallus | ISB-021, Darth Vader, Ahsoka Tano
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence
Summary:

Ten years after she vanished during an Imperial raid on a Twi'lek colony, Cham Syndulla sees his daughter Hera for the first time in a hologram -- now wearing the uniform of an Imperial agent and apparently working closely with a human Inquisitor. All Cham wants to do is to bring his long-missing child home to what remains of her family, but he soon finds that Hera Syndulla is only interested in two things: her duty to the Empire and her loyalty to her crew, a mismatched collection of outcasts brought together by Hera and her pet Inquisitor.

With Cham and the Rebel agent known as Fulcrum in pursuit, a new mission takes Hera and the crew of the Ghost to the planet Lothal, where a chance meeting with a Force-sensitive teenager awakens something long buried in the Inquisitor once known as Kanan Jarrus...and has dire consequences for Hera, their crew, the Empire, and the fledgling Rebel Alliance.

*

For a moment Kanan thought the long cargo bay was empty. He had been expecting crates of machinery or weapons, maybe prisoners – though that, he suspected, the lieutenant commander would have been informed of – but instead there was nothing.

Then he felt the faint susurration in the Force and froze. Oh, tell me that’s not what I think it is…

Slowly, as though by doing so he could put off the inevitable, Kanan looked up.

Suspended from the ceiling was a huge green crystal more than twice the length of a human man, slender in proportion but still bigger around than he was, with jagged, irregular ends. Kanan stared at it, too stunned to react.

He could feel it in the Force now that he knew it was there, a deep hum in his bones that seemed to resonate through his entire body. Kanan had felt that before, though not for more years than he cared to think about. And at the time it had been lighter and brighter, a cheerful whisper in his mind that had said, yes, you, you’re the one, I’m the one for you and you’re the one for me. But this was unmistakably the same.

He raised his hands and clasped them behind his head, still staring at the blasted thing. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” he said, crisp Core syllables softening into his usual Rim drawl. “What the blazes are they gonna do with that?”

We, he thought a moment later. What are we going to do with that?