Chapter Text
[9 ABY, Coruscant]
General Hera Syndulla—that is, retired General Hera Syndulla—let her posture slip out of that regimented military pose she'd learned to adopt after the Rebellion went legitimate. She'd never been particularly perfect at it, certainly not as crisp or formal as her fellow officers who were ex-Imperial, but she managed.
Something about being here, on Coruscant, made her naturally tense. She shouldn't be, she knew that. The galaxy wasn't perfectly safe, but it was safer than it had been in a long time. She'd left her son with his grandfather all the same, trusting her gut instinct to keep him safe, no matter how much "Aunt Mon" wanted to see him.
If she wanted to see him, she could invite them to visit next time she was on Chandrila. Or any other place she chose.
Maybe that was why Hera was so off balance by the Chancellor's—her friend's—summons. Whatever Mon Mothma wanted had to be time sensitive, and that meant it was business, not a social visit. With the Senate in session and heatedly debating the location of the New Republic's capital planet, Mon couldn't have much, if any free time.
The Chancellor's aide let her in right away, a tight lipped smile on her face and a notch in her brow that screamed of stress on the job. Hera was glad to be out of the politics of the New Republic. She had almost always been a leader but she was a pilot and a soldier, nor a bureaucrat.
Mon looked tired, but smiled warmly as she came in and they embraced briefly. They began with pleasantries, the older woman's eyes bright as she asked after Jacen.
And then, not too soon after they'd sat down, Mon Mothma got right to business.
"I hear you're looking for Ezra Bridger," She said.
Hera didn't bother controlling the arch of her left eyebrow in obvious sarcasm. "You know me," She said as lightly as she dared, "Can't stay out of the fight for long."
Briefly, she wondered if Mon was going to ask her to return to the military. She'd heard that several of her former colleagues had been asked, even as news reports covered the downsizing of New Republic forces in this time of peace.
Thankfully, it wasn't. "Old habits die hard," She mused, smiling gently as she inquired, "Have you made any progress in your search?"
Hera frowned. "I've read every report we had on Lothal, and I've heard nothing from Ahsoka or Sabine that suggests they've found anything, either. There's not really much of anything. Most of the former Imperials I keep in touch with defected too early," She said, "They wouldn't have known anything."
Mon Mothma nodded consideringly. "I figured you would go looking for him eventually," She said. "He is every bit your son as Jacen is."
Hera nodded, the pang of loss she felt still there, still burning, but manageable. Ezra had been her and Kanan's child, just in a different way. They had all made sacrifices for the people they loved and the things they believed in.
“I would like to help you with your quest,” Mon Mothma continued, voice ever soothing, almost nurturing in tone.
“You know something?”
The redheaded woman waved a hand. “Me? No, I do not. But I have my sources.” She raised a questioning eyebrow and Hera nodded.
“Anything you have would be great,” Hera said, relief flooding her. “Thank you,” She added, making sure gratitude carried through to her tone. She’d been grappling with the idea that she was at a dead end for some time now. Anything would be better than that.
“Don’t thank me yet,” The Chancellor quipped, tapping the intercom built into the desktop. “Has my next appointment arrived?” The aide’s affirmative was quiet. “Send her in, please,” She said, and flipped the intercom off. Her blue-green eyes searched Hera’s, and then the door was opening.
“Chancellor,” A feminine voice said, curt.
“Close the door behind you,” Mothma gestured her forward. Her gaze shifted back to Hera from where it had been, resting over her left shoulder. “I don’t believe you two have met,” She said, her eyes sharp, something wordless passing between them. Hera took the hint to brace herself.
She rose to her feet and turned, the words turning to ash in her mouth.
There, standing in front of her was a woman Hera had never met but she had heard very much about. “Commodore Karyn Faro,” She breathed, chest constricting.
The woman was brown haired and brown eyed, with pale skin and a faded, tawny-brown jacket. A rebel jacket. “It’s commander now,” She said, briskly. “Well, it was. It’s good to meet you, General Syndulla.”
Hera sent an alarmed look in Mon Mothma’s direction.
“I hear you’re looking for Ezra Bridger,” Faro said, taking care to look just to the left of Hera’s face, not quite meeting her eyes. “I can help you with that.”
“Well, I don’t know that I want your help,” Hera said, old defensiveness creeping in. The woman had obviously defected at some point. Even so, it was hard to just let it go at a second’s notice.
“Commander Faro is someone I trust,” Mothma said placidly, like she hadn’t just dropped a proton torpedo on Hera seconds before. “And someone, given the events at Lothal, I thought would be prudent to keep away from you and yours.”
The question was thick on Hera’s tongue. “You were Thrawn’s second in command,” She said. “How did you escape?”
Faro spoke to Mon Mothma’s desktop, standing uncomfortably under Hera’s scrutiny. “I received a new assignment and was to be transferred to Coruscant. I missed the fate of the Seventh Fleet by approximately twenty minutes.”
Hera considered her. She remembered the intelligence Kallus had provided them on Thrawn’s people, once upon a time. Karyn Faro had been a junior officer when the Empire came into power. She was loudmouthed and confrontational, honest to a fault. Not the usual choice of a first officer, but Thrawn had taken her under his wing and she had flourished under his tutelage.
This woman with her hair pulled back in a braided bun, Imperial standard despite the flyaways, and her eyes downcast was not that same woman, Hera would give her that. Still, Hera wasn’t the same woman, either. She’d worked with plenty of former Imperials. That didn’t mean she forgave all of them, especially not ones that had played a large part in hurting her family.
“When did you defect?”
“After Alderaan,” Faro said, fingers tightening over her forearms.
Hera looked to Mon Mothma. The Chandrilan nodded.
“Look,” Faro said bluntly. “You don’t trust me. I get it.” I’m not so keen on you, either, Hera heard in the space between her statements. “But the war is over, and my people are still out there.”
Hera dropped into her chair across from Mon Mothma’s desk. She looked at Mon, disbelievingly. “You knew,” She accused. “You knew she’d want to come with me.”
“Yes,” Mon Mothma agreed amiably. “Commander Faro provided me with a great deal of information regarding the upper echelon of the Empire’s military in the years since her defection.” Faro looked uncomfortable by the prospect. “She is a servant of the galaxy.”
“And she’s got a lead?”
“Nothing concrete,” Faro said, “But I have some ideas about where to start.”
[1 ABY, Planet 5251977]
Faro kept both hands folded in her lap. She did not make contact with the others, the rowdy pilots who walked by careless and unrefined, or the junior officers who were too young for academy, though she knew most of them had come from the Imperial academy first. Her side had been no better.
She had long since ditched the obvious green-gray uniform for sand colored utility pants and a white tunic that was looser than she remembered, with a brown jacket to match. In the pocket of her jacket, datacards clicked and clattered quietly against each other. She had many of them. The most important of which were stored in the plasteel case in her hand, tucked beside the only thing she had that could verify her identity.
“Right over here, ma’am,” Came the voice of an officer at the end of the hall. They had no situational awareness. Even now, Faro knew at least three ways she could escape, and at least two ways she could take more than half the base with her. She wouldn’t, but it didn’t mean they should be sloppy.
Though, for a terrorist organization, Faro supposed there was only so much they could do with what they had. But then again, she’d seen plenty of idiocy in the Imperial Navy. And, her mind reminded her oh so kindly, when it came down to it, the Empire resorted to terrorism—hell, it had even prepared for it.
“Hello,” The red haired woman said, her white garb somehow radiant despite the dust turning it an off shade of cream. Her tone was demure. Faro had heard it a thousand times. “I was told you wished to speak with me.”
Faro closed her eyes, waiting until the wetness abated. She would not show weakness to people who were beneath her. She lifted her head and met the woman’s sea glass gaze. “Hello, Senator,” She said coolly. Recognition skittered into the woman’s face, eyes crinkling on the outer corners, lips thinning with tension. It was more than she’d gotten from most of her own people.
“Commodore Karyn Faro,” She said, stepping back. The officers seemed to read something from her tone, and reached for their blasters.
“Just Karyn Faro now,” She said, ignoring the aggressive gesture. It had nearly been admiral, but that probably would have been the Empire's shortest commendation. She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not stupid enough to come in here armed,” She added.
“You’ve defected from the Empire,” Mothma said, tone level.
“And I’ve taken them for all the information I could get my hands on. I’m sure something I’ve brought you will be useful.”
They took her to a detention cell anyway. She’d suspected as much.
Mothma came to her days later, an intelligence officer at her side. After an interrogation that had taken all night, they gave her a different kind of tan jacket. Afterward, she stood outside the lackluster base watching the sun begin to crest the horizon, Mon Mothma beside her. Wordlessly, the woman held out her code cylinders and rank plaque. It was probably a test, but Faro took them anyway. They were all she had tying her to what once was, and she wasn't stupid enough to think the code cylinders hadn't been wiped clean of any useful information.
“You waited to join us after abandoning your post,” Mothma said into the pre-dawn air. It was more refreshing than the caf the other woman drank, in Faro’s estimation. “Why?”
Faro frowned. She’d answered the intelligence agent’s questions. She’d needed a break after defecting to clear her head. It hadn’t been a lie, exactly, but it also hadn’t been the truth.
This, though hardly explicit, was: “I had hoped I might have a better option.”