A/N: And here comes the next chapter! Thanks to those who are still reading this! I'm getting excited for Rogue One at a speed that is totally inhuman by the way...


Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. I only own my OCs Cas, Tani and Sehr along with the plot of this story.


7. Starbirther


Cas' feet felt like lead as she made her way back inside the base. She knew she basically had nothing to apologize about - her mother had lied to her for most of her life, had hidden her deepest secret, and her reaction was totally understandable. The problem was, in fact, that she had no idea how to start a conversation that she needed but dreaded at the same time...

Using her abilities - realising with a small pang of curiosity that she had not used them as often as these last few days - she felt her mother's powerful aura along with another, almost as powerful, that soon proved to be General Organa.

Both women were still in the com room with the golden droid, and were deep in conversation.

Tani felt her arrive as soon as she stepped in. Her blue eyes found hers and she raised a hand to stop Leia's words, apologizing apparently before she strode to her daughter. "You are going," she said in a voice filled with fear.

Cas sighed and avoided her eyes as best as she could before nodding. "I want to be useful."

Tani took a deep breath as if to shield herself from something, then another as if she had silenced the words she had wished to say. She gently took Cas' arm. "We need to talk."

Cas nodded, and followed her mother out. Without sparing a glance to the other woman who was, well, her Aunt? What?


Tani's quarters were even bigger than Cas', since she had actually rooms. She lead her to one of the armchairs and took the other, her lips pursed and hands folded in her lap.

"What do you want to know?" was her question.

Cas felt some anger rise inside her at those words, spoken so innocently. "Well, basically, everything, since I feel like I haven't been told half of what your life had been before you took me in!" Her purple eyes were full of reproach, and Tani flinched. "Why do they call you 'General'?" was the first interrogation she settled for.

"I feel like most of what I am going to tell you will not make you feel any better towards me, Cas, but I owe it to you anyway..." Tani sighed. She fidgeted with her light-sabre for a bit, then settled it on the coffee-table before her. "This sabre means that I am a Jedi. A Master, in fact. When the Second Death Star was destroyed thirty years ago, Leia, Han, Luke and me thrived to rebuild a New Republic. Luke and I, as the only two Jedis left, created a New Order of the Jedi Knights, and started a school. For a few years, there was no one who was either powerful enough or interested enough to join, but then, kids were found everywhere in the galaxy. Leia and Han's son, Ben, was one of the first." Her voice broke at that, making Cas raise a brow.

"Is it so bad?"

Tani took another deep breath. "Luke and I got married soon after we founded the school, and I bore a child. A son. Ben Skywalker. Called after my father, Obi-Wan Kenobi." Cas knew the name of her "grandfather", but had never heard of a child.

"You have a son?!" her voice was loud, but not laced with anger as much as surprise.

Tani let out a squeal of pain that was so uncharacteristical that Cas felt the urge to take her hand in comfort. She didn't, however. "Ben died when he was four. Sand fever." Her blue eyes blinked to chase away the tears. "I have another child, Cas, a daughter. When you and I left the Order, saved ourselves, my husband took her away, and I have seen neither of them since."

"What?" Cas' eyes were the size of saucers at that time. "You took me in and let your daughter go?!"

Tani smiled sadly. "We saved the only two students who hadn't been killed. You, and her. Luke and I thought we'd see each other much quicker, but then the First Order rose to power and we had to hide for much longer. I lost contact with him ten years ago, three years after we settled to Naboo."

Cas' brow furrowed as she remembered vaguely something. "You were always ready for something. Told me to never truly unpack."

"Yes, until that day." Tani sighed. "I hid this from you to protect you, Cas. You've always known you aren't my biological daughter, but I raised you as my own and that does not change my love for you..."

Cas huffed. "You took me in because of the Force... You must be quite disappointed in my powers now."

"I am not. All Force-sensitives don't end up being Jedis, darling. You are strong with it in ways others aren't and you aren't in ways others are. As in real life."

Cas didn't answer. It was too much to process. Her mother, or the woman she had called 'Mother' all these years, had had two kids. Had abandoned one to go into hiding with her, who could only dream things and pilot well. What a mess.

She stood and made her way to the door without a look back.

It's only when she remembered that she could not come back from this ordeal that she paused and said "I don't hate you, Ma," before she left the room.


Taking care of her assigned ship took Cas less than an hour - she needed the work to empty her mind of any raging thought - and by the time she was introduced to her flightsuit, she had been acquainted with her droid for the flight, an R4 unit that had seen better days.

Poe was hanging something bright orange in her face, and it made her laugh. "Orange is not my colour, Commander."

"Alas, my dear Cas, it is regulation to wear these. I will ask General Organa to change the colour later if you wish."

She rolled her eyes and took the suit from him, turning to unbuckle her tunic's belt. When she realised he was still standing behind her, she smirked and launched a glance over her shoulder. "Would you by any chance wish to see me undress, Commander?"

He chuckled. "Just to make sure you actually know how to zip these things up. They can be a bitch first try."

Cas smirked again and pulled her tunic over her head, throwing in her trousers soon after. She was always wearing long underpants that reached above her knees and a fitting garment that hid her breasts from view, and anyway, she had never been prude.

The flightsuit was indeed a bitch to figure out once you were tucked inside. It was uncomfortable, too orange for her taste, and the many zippers made no sense.

"Let me," Poe offered knowingly, and he moved in front of her to tidy up the ensemble. He was standing closer than anyone would ever do in such circumstances, and he was smiling too brightly for it to be innocent.

Cas eyed him with a flirtatious smirk and a whispered "You know, if you really wished to see me strip, all you needed was ask."

He paused at that, then leaned in to drawl in her ear "Later then, when these orange things are not needed anymore."

Cas chuckled. "Careful, I might hold you to it." Then she eyed the other pilots around them who were climbing in their cockpits, and she added in a much more serious tone, "Be safe up there."

"Same goes to you." He smiled, then left her, all geared up, to climb inside her own ship. R4 bleeped happily to greet her, and she smiled before answering the droid.


At the end of that day, when Cas would remember the battle, she'd think that, if one day she ever had children of her own, she'd tell them all about it.

The X-wings were escorted into hyperspace by a huge ship that R4 described as Mon Calamarian, in short, made by those aliens that looked like General Akbar. Apparently, they were quite powerful.

Starkiller Base was even more hideous from up close. Its disfigurement brought another wave of anger through Cas' veins and she found herself wishing she could catch the son of a Bantha who had ordered the place be turned into a weapon. She'd have turned his face into an unrecognizable mess.

Once Finn's mission was accomplished and the outer shields were down, Poe, who was the Team Leader for this operation, directed the dozens of ships into atmosphere, where ion canons and plasma ones soon started firing copiously at them. Cas was ordered to lure the TIE fighters away from the oscillator they were to destroy, and she pulled out with a bunch of others.

She had thought she was not a bad pilot before. Now she knew she had perhaps overestimated her skills. She dealt minor blasts from TIEs in moves that anyone else easily moved out from, and her first two kills were so messy she almost slapped herself.

"We're not doing any damage" someone complained about a few moments after their initial attack.

"Keep giving them all you've got," Poe answered calmly. From that afar, Cas could not see him flying, but she remembered his style from Takodana, and vouched to do her best to mirror it.

When she got awfully close to a canon that was a second from shooting her in the face, Cas realised the Force was actually something she ought to use. She remembered Tani's teachings, somehow, well, some of them, and meditation, peace-keeping, was one she had used during the worst nights of her life.

So she closed her eyes for a second and emptied her mind of any parasite thought. Her hands moved of their own accord, and the ship upturned to avoid a kamikaze TIE.

After her inner revelation, Cas was much more prudent, and when the first tremors of an explosion over at the oscillator was heard and Poe called everyone in, she felt at least a notch more content.

That is, until a TIE effectively sneaked up on her just as she heard Poe was going in - literally in - and damaged her right lower wing beyond repair.

"I need to pull out!" she yelled inside her com, and she flew out of the scene, and out of the atmosphere just as another, bigger, tremor, overtook the planet.

Shame.

I was not that useful after all...


"All ships retreat! The planet's collapsing!" Announced Red Leader, and Cas directed her ship to witness the way Starkiller Base was getting eaten from the inside, as if the planet itself had had enough of those heresies.

She searched for a black X-wing, thinking she might had missed it, until she saw it emerge, a freighter following close. And just as she turned her ship around to exit the place, behind her, a planet collapsed and gave birth to a star...

Shame.

Uselessness...

No peace of mind for her...