(A/N: The second rewrite of this work I once had here called Into the Gray. I started rewriting it I guess just as the pandemic hit but wasn't entirely happy with the rewriting, and I got discouraged so I hung it up. I had a dream about it lolol I am remotivated now and I hope to stay that way because I really want to get this written, I've had this in my head for so long and I just want it all out. If you like it, I'd love a comment, if you hate it and think I suck, tell me why too! All feedback is welcome as long as you can be polite.

This takes place just before TFA. Fair warning, I will be jiggering with the timeline a little and there will be some movie dialogue in certain parts, but I'll try to keep that to a min.

Enjoy...I hope!

Oh, also I don't know why, I've tried to proof about three times but sometimes when I go from word to here some words magically vanish...if you find anything suspect, puhleaaaasee let me know.)

Prologue

Traitor, some would call her.

Turncoat.

Snake.

Miscreant even.

The list could go on for days. Labels were an easy thing to come by and it never really mattered all that much if they were accurate or not. Perceived betrayal, perceived immorality, and basic human flaw all had a way of stacking up and stamping a person with a less than desirable social classification. They all had a way of leaving the door wide open for a growing reputation that would forever be whispered about and forever gossiped about behind one's back but seldom ever to their face.

After all, almost everyone who was primed and ready to make a snap judgment, almost everyone who set out to satiate their nosey streak with a solid round of speculation and gossip, never really cared much about anything other than a one-sided story … And almost everything anyone had to say about Arra in the most negative sense, every name and every label she was bestowed with, was only ever bestowed upon her on account of just that. A one-sided story. Half-truths and misinformation that she was rarely given the luxury of the benefit of the doubt or a chance to explain the accurate reality of things.

Bygones, of course, and not that she cared either way. People would talk, and someone would always have something to say about her. There was little she could do about it and even if there was, there were more important things to worry about.

People would always talk; people would always have something to brand her with.

Were she tasked with choosing her own label, however, Arra would say she was an opportunist at heart. A lone wolf who lived for and seized each moment as it came. Someone who never missed a chance to jump on whatever presented itself to her ripe for the picking. She was a wild card and she had no promise, no oath of loyalty or anything or anyone … Not anymore anyway. Without anything or anyone to hold her down, she was free to come and go as she so chose. She was free to be a constant observer, a constant collector gathering what she wanted and what she needed to so as to use in her favor. She was free to gather rumors and substantiated information alike wherever she could to use as bargaining chips to buy whatever or whoever necessary to meet her need and endgame …. Whether it be for good intentions or otherwise.

Arra was loyal to nothing and nobody and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Loyalty, as she had learned, was for the birds. Loyalty was useless. Loyalty was never lasting. Loyalty was but betrayal waiting to happen and cloaked under the guise of some idealistic, hopeful happy ending for those to whom it was deserved. Loyalty, it seemed, was never meant for her. She had seen too much, lived too much, and given too much of herself only to be crushed and thrown to the wayside by all those around her in the end. Loyalty, and the resulting lack there over she had received in return for the abundance she had once given, had built her layers thick and hard. Loyalty had taught her she was nothing, and would never be anything, to anyone other than herself. As far as Arra was concerned, that was just fine. Holding to herself was the only thing she knew to do anymore, the only thing she wanted to do, and the only thing that served her well. To do anything different, to be any different, to hold fast to any other way gave too much chance to hope ... And hope was just little more than wishful thinking and fantasy crafted for children's books.

Hope, as she knew it to be at present, was nothing more than the most tragic of jokes that life was all too happy to offer her at every turn. Hope was as much a lie as loyalty, there was nothing that could convince Arra otherwise, she had no mind for hope. More than that, she certainly had no time for it and she certainly couldn't allow herself the risk of buying into it.

Hope was lost to her, that much was for certain.

But loyalty, on the other hand, was something she no longer had the luxury of shunning.

War was on the winds; of that everyone was positive. What had started as whispers in dark corners, quiet conversations of the past repeating were now rolling soft as thunder and sweeping every corner of every common territory to be found. The perceived threat of The First Order realized and multiplied by the day. Fear of The Empire reborn shot ice through veins and haunted the dreams of even the most steadfast. Fear that gripped and clawed its way through every corner of the galaxy like an imposing shadow, an unrelenting entity opposed only now by the threat that rose again to meet it. Opposed now, as always, was hope.

Hope. The constant light that cut a swath through the darkness for everyone else. A comfort and a wish for peace. That foolish storybook concept of a happily ever after that everyone clung fast to in the face of opposition and adversity. Hope, delivered in the form of The Resistance. The rebels. The beacon shining bright in the night for people to flock to. The same sort of hope that had prevailed decades prior would make a stand for humanity, for society, once again. After all, what was to say their victory was a feat that couldn't be repeated?

War was on the winds and there was no place now for a lone wolf to survive in the crossfire, no matter how much Arra wished there was. Loyalty, it would seem, was a concept and an act that she would have to relearn and embrace if she wanted to make it out the other side unscathed and assured of any kind of life in the foreseeable future. The only question that remained, was which path to take. Even then, in all likelihood, the choice had been made for her already so many years ago, when first she had learned so solidly not to place an ounce of trust in hope.

Hope, the farce that had plagued Arra for the better part of her life.

The Resistance, the farce of a faction she had once considered home, once considered family. The path that was now all but lost to her, forced from her even. Too much had happened and at the same time, not enough had. Arra had no choice left open to her other than to turn her back. There would be no return to a "home", no return to a "family" which had closed the door to her, abandoned her in the time in which she needed them most; forgotten her and left her out in the cold … Or so she had so perceived.

There was no way out of the impending crossfire now but to fix her gaze on a new horizon, a path not entirely untravelled.

Arra was an opportunist and a lone wolf and that wasn't something that was really ever going to change so long as she could help it. But to weather the storm on her own would be foolish, to say the least, if not downright dangerous. There was but one choice to make and now was the time to make it.

When the chance presented itself, there was nothing other for her to do than jump. When the chance presented itself dead square at her feet, there was nothing more for her to do than take it by the throat and hope that she could deal with whatever trouble followed and lashed at her heels by consequence.

Chance, it so happened, came not entirely expected in the middle of the night on some piece of shit desert planet by way of a First Order transport ship. Stowed away haphazardly, uncharacteristically unguarded, unmanned, and in plain sight. It wasn't until docking on The Finalizer, being found out and being apprehended that Arra started to second guess her decision and full well realize that she hadn't exactly thought her course of action all the way through. It wasn't until being hauled off into some ridiculously small, ridiculously uncomfortable holding cell that she understood that hoping she would be able to deal with the ramifications of her choice was 100% different than the actuality of doing so.

Moreover, it wouldn't be much longer after that, only once she was smack dab in the center of the proverbial whirlwind she had purposely thrown herself into, that she would realize the magnitude of her entire situation and the way that nothing would ever be the same again.