Star Wars Rebels: A Gray Tale

The burger had been perfect.

A greasy, glorious monument to indulgence, dripping with molten cheese and grease that shimmered under the streetlights like liquid gold. It tasted like victory. Like the last good thing before the inevitable crash.

And then came the crash.

Not metaphorical.

One second, I was debating whether to drown myself in the brutal catharsis of God of War Ragnarok or the masochistic beauty of Elden Ring, my sneakers scuffing against the familiar cracked asphalt of the crosswalk. The next—

Light.

Blinding. Twin suns erupting in the night, searing into my retinas. A horn—no, a scream—metal and human, twisted together into something unrecognizable.

Then—impact.

No pain. Just force. A freight train of momentum slamming into me, sending me airborne. The world became streaks of orange and white, streetlights smearing into liquid ribbons. The city sounds—honking speeders, distant laughter, the hum of neon—all dissolved into a single, shrill whine.

And then—

Nothing.

No. Not nothing. Worse.

Blackness. Wind howling past my ears. The sickening lurch of freefall. My stomach vaulted into my throat as I realized—

I'm not on the street anymore.

My clothes were gone. My body felt wrong—smaller, lighter. Rough-spun fabric whipped around my frame as I plummeted. No asphalt waited beneath me. No screech of brakes. Just—

THUD.

Cold metal. Grooved. Unforgiving.

I gasped, the air punched out of me. The burger, the games, the city—gone. Vanished like a half-remembered dream.

Above me, a sliver of light. A hatch. And in that light—

Their faces.

Mira. Ephraim.

No. Not mine. His.

Ezra's.

They stared down at me, their features stretched into something between a smile and a grimace. Backlit by flickering emergency glowpanels, their skin looked waxy, unnatural. The kind of expression you make when you're trying to be brave for someone you love, even when you know you're already dead.

"Ezra!" Mira's voice was a blade, sharp with fear. "Quick—stay down there! Don't make a sound!"

Ephraim's jaw clenched. His fingers gripped the edge of the hatch like he wanted to tear it off its hinges. "No matter what you hear," he said, voice low, trembling. "We love you."

Love you.

The words hung in the air, thick as smoke. A farewell. A funeral chant.

Then—

SLAM.

The hatch sealed shut. Darkness swallowed me whole.

For a heartbeat, silence.

Then—

Screams.

Not just any screams. Not the kind from horror vids or cheap holodramas. These were raw. Unfiltered. The kind that clawed their way out of a person's throat like a living thing.

Mira's voice—high, keening, a sound that didn't even seem human anymore. Ephraim's roar—defiant, then cut short.

Blaster fire.

Not the sanitized pew-pew of toy guns. This was the real thing—the sharp, sizzling crack of plasma burning through flesh. The wet thump of bodies hitting the floor.

I curled into myself, arms locked around my knees, shaking so hard I thought my bones would splinter. The screams twisted, warped, melted together—

And then—

Silence.

Thick. Suffocating.

A silence that wasn't empty. A silence that pressed against me, heavy with something worse than noise.

Then—

A sound.

Not human. Not even alive.

Koe-shhh.

A mechanical inhale. Deep. Resonant. The kind of sound that didn't just enter your ears—it slithered into your bones.

Paaah-koooe.

The exhale. Slow. Deliberate.

I stopped breathing.

I knew that sound. Everyone in the galaxy knew that sound.

SCRREEECH!

The hatch didn't open.

It exploded.

Metal shrieked, wrenching apart like wet flimsiplast. Rust and debris rained down.

And there—

Him.

A shadow blacker than the void. A nightmare given form.

The crimson blade ignited with a snap-hiss, casting the room in hellish red. The polished mask tilted down, the impassive black gaze locking onto me.

But he wasn't alone.

In his grip—limp, dangling like a broken doll—was Vasha.

Her indigo skin had gone ashen. Her eyes weren't wide with fear. No. Worse.

Disgust.

She stared right at me, lips curling into a sneer.

"You lied to me," she spat, voice dripping venom.

The blade moved.

A single, effortless arc.

Her head—

Gone.

Just—gone.

Her body crumpled to the floor with a soft thud.

The monster stepped forward, his shadow swallowing me whole. The lightsaber hummed, its glow painting my face in bloody light.

"Found you," the vocoder growled.

A gloved hand reached for me—not to strike, but to grip my chin. To force me to look at Vasha's corpse.

"You did this."

I screamed—

—and woke up choking on my own breath.

Cold sweat. Scratchy thermal blanket tangled around my legs. The familiar scent of soldering flux and ozone.

I was on the couch.

Across the room, bathed in the soft blue glow of a workbench lamp—

Vasha.

Alive. Whole. Head firmly attached to her shoulders. Well, that's a fucking relief if any.

Her lekku swayed gently as she leaned over a dismantled droid arm, hydrospanner in hand. She was humming softly to herself, a tune I didn't recognize, lost in her work.

No blood. No blade.

And then—

"Ohhh, the clones went drinking in the cantiiiiine"

A staticky, off-key warble erupted from the shelf. The droid head, R4-P17, had powered on, its single photoreceptor flickering as it belted out a slurred Clone Wars drinking song.

Vasha startled, the hydrospanner clattering from her fingers onto the workbench. Her head snapped up, her indigo eyes wide. Her gaze found me instantly, sitting bolt upright on the couch, chest heaving, probably looking like I'd just seen a ghost. Which, in a way, I had.

She was already moving, her expression of surprise melting into one of deep concern. "Ezra?"

My heart was still trying to beat its way out of my ribs. The phantom hum of a lightsaber echoed in my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut. Fucking nightmare. What am I, a fucking seven-year-old?

Oh, wait. I am.

The couch dipped as she knelt beside me, her presence a sudden, solid warmth in the chilly room. "Hey... hey, you're okay," she whispered, her voice a low, soothing melody that cut through the lingering dread. "Was it a bad dream?"

I just stared at her, my mouth dry. I couldn't exactly say, 'Yeah, I dreamt the galaxy's most famous cyborg asthma patient shish-kebabbed you after you called me out on my bullshit con.'

So I just nodded, a jerky, pathetic motion. Great. Now I'm the crying kid from the market and the kid who wakes up screaming from nightmares. I was really building a comprehensive portfolio of helplessness.

She didn't press for details. She just reached out a hand, not to hug me, but to gently place the back of it against my forehead. It was a simple, maternal gesture. Checking for a fever. Her skin was cool, her touch impossibly gentle.

"You're alright," she murmured, more to herself than to me. "Just shaken up." She stayed there for a moment, her thumb stroking my temple in a small, hypnotic circle. "You're safe here. Nothing's going to hurt you. I promise."

And there it was. Something in my chest, a tight, frozen knot of cynicism and fear I'd been carrying since I woke up in this universe, just… tingled. It wasn't a melt. It was more like the first crack in a glacier. This woman, who I had systematically manipulated, whose kindness I was actively exploiting, just saw a scared kid and her only instinct—her only instinct—was to offer comfort. No questions, no suspicion. Just pure, undiluted goodness.

She was so damn sweet I felt like I could get a cavity just looking at her. She was an angel in a galaxy that was supposed to be full of scum and villainy.

The cynical survivor in my head was screaming at me to leverage this, to play it up for more sympathy. But for the first time, another voice, one that sounded a lot more like my old self, told him to shut the hell up.

"Hey, Vasha?"

My voice was small, a little croaky, a kid-voice I still didn't quite recognize as my own. Her hand stilled on my temple.

"Yeah, Ezra?"

One word. Just one.

"Thanks."

And like that, the carefully constructed facade started to crumble. The word just… tumbled out, honest and unbidden. It was like the 'isekai protagonist' mask I'd been wearing had slipped for a second, revealing the messy, confused human beneath. I actually meant it. The sheer, disarming simplicity of the sentiment, born from the ashes of a terrifying nightmare and her gentle response, took me by surprise.

All this time, I'd been running on fumes—adrenaline, desperation, a panicked urge to just survive. I'd been so focused on playing the role, on building the con, that I'd stuffed everything else—the grief, the fear, the sheer mind-bending wrongness of my situation—into a tightly sealed box labeled "Deal With Later (If Ever)."

But lying here, her cool hand on my forehead chasing away the phantom heat of a crimson blade, the small kindnesses of a stranger pressing down on me like a gentle weight, that box sprung a leak.

My old life flickered behind my eyelids, a slideshow of mundane memories that suddenly felt unbearably precious. My crappy apartment with the eternally dripping faucet. My job, the one I always griped about, where the worst thing that happened was a passive-aggressive email from Brenda in accounting. My parents, probably pacing the floor right now, sick with worry because their son had simply… vanished.

My sister.

The thought hit me like a physical blow, a gut-punch of missing so profound it stole my breath. My little imp of a sister, the one who'd undoubtedly already claimed my room and was currently ransacking my video game collection. The realization that I might never see her again, never steal the last slice of pizza from her, never hear her snorting laugh or endure her terrible taste in music… it wasn't just a thought. It was a chasm yawning open in my chest, swallowing everything familiar and good.

Then came the prelude: that familiar, fizzy tingle at the back of your nose, the universe's two-minute warning for a Category 5 sob fest.

Oh, hell no. Nonononono.

My eyelids started to burn. That sharp, stinging ache that meant the floodgates were about to burst.

It's just the kid's body, I told myself fiercely. He's traumatized. This is leftover Ezra-sadness. This isn't me.

Yeah, totally wasn't me.

FUCK. Why wasn't it stopping?

I squeezed my eyes shut, burying my face in the scratchy pillow, trying to suffocate the rising tide of emotion. It was no use. A pathetic little sniffle escaped, a strangled sound that betrayed my carefully constructed stoicism. Then another. And another. The dam had fractured. Was shattering.

Dammit, child biology! Why were tiny bodies such effing sob-factories?

Vasha heard, of course. The soft scuff of her boots on the floor was the prelude to an inevitable act of compassion I was now desperately trying to avoid. I felt the couch dip slightly as she sat on the edge beside me, her warmth radiating through the blanket. A gentle hand settled on my back, soft and comforting.

"Hey… hey, it's okay," she murmured, her voice a soft, soothing hum that sounded like a lullaby. She clearly thought she had this figured out. "It's okay to miss them. You must be so scared."

And that… that just made everything worse.

Because she was right. And that, somehow, was the worst part.

Her simple, accurate assessment bypassed all my carefully constructed mental firewalls. I was scared. Terrified. And I did miss them. The raw, gut-punch of missing my own family—the one an entire universe away—was now getting hopelessly tangled with the second-hand, phantom grief for Mira and Ephraim. It was a toxic, agonizing cocktail of sorrow, and my seven-year-old body's emotional regulation systems were, to put it mildly, not up to the task.

My throat tightened. My eyes started to sting with that tell-tale, traitorous burn.

Dammit. It's the kid's body, I reasoned fiercely, a captain on a sinking ship of stoicism. Just a PTSD-fueled reflex. Ezra's grief leaking out. Not mine.

I clamped my jaw shut, buried my face deeper into the lumpy pillow, and commanded my tear ducts to stand down. This was a direct order.

A tiny, pathetic sniffle escaped.

My entire being recoiled in horror. It was an involuntary betrayal, a sound of pure, undiluted weakness. I was supposed to be the cunning isekai protagonist, the master manipulator. Not… this.

Another, even more pathetic sniffle escaped, this one accompanied by a hitch in my breath. My carefully maintained control was completely shot. The embarrassment was a hot flush that spread from my neck to my ears.

"It's okay," Vasha murmured again, her hand warm and steady on my back, rubbing gentle, hypnotic circles. "It's okay to cry."

Her voice was so soft, so devoid of judgment, that it almost felt like an attack. It was a lifeline I desperately wanted to refuse. I tried to tell her I was fine, to grunt or mumble something noncommittal, but the words wouldn't form.

"I-I'm…" I started, but the word was swallowed by another shaky breath.

And then she moved. Before I could process it, she was gathering me up, pulling me from the pillow and into a hug. A real, proper, all-encompassing hug. One second I was facing the couch, the next my face was suddenly, unceremoniously, pressed into something warm, soft, and distinctly not-pillow-like.

My brain blue-screened.

Brain Part One: PANIC. EMBARRASSMENT. EXISTENTIAL MORTIFICATION. THIS IS A COMPASSIONATE GESTURE FROM A KIND STRANGER WHO THINKS YOU ARE A TRAUMATIZED CHILD.

Brain Part Two, the lizard-brained, un-evolved gremlin part that was still stubbornly twenty-something: ...well. This is a situation.

She held me tighter, pulling my small frame against her, her arms a warm, solid circle. My nose was buried in the fabric of her tunic, which smelled faintly of soap and machine oil. She was so close, her chin resting on the top of my head, one of her lekku brushing against my cheek like a silk ribbon.

The sniffling wasn't stopping. It was actually getting worse, fueled by the sheer, overwhelming mortification of it all. I was a grown man, involuntarily sniveling into a beautiful alien woman's chest. This was a new low, even for an interdimensional freeloader.

So, with every ounce of my rapidly dwindling dignity screaming in protest, I did the only logical thing a guy in my position could do. I just… buried my face in there.

What? A man's gotta take his chances. And hey, it muffled the stupid sniffling noises. Two birds, one stone. Totally strategic.

Her hand came up to cradle the back of my head, her fingers threading gently through my greasy hair. "Shhh," she soothed, rocking me slightly, completely misinterpreting my tactical face-plant as a gesture of seeking comfort. "It's okay. You're safe now."

I let out a shaky, muffled breath against her tunic. Safe. Sure. And also experiencing a level of cringe so profound it might qualify as a new state of matter. But warm. Definitely warm.

My eyes throbbed, my nose was a disaster zone, and my small chest ached. Pathetic. I felt less like a tragic hero and more like a leaky faucet.But I wasn't prepared at all for what happened next. 

Vasha didn't let go.

Instead, she shifted, her arms tightening around me in a way that sent a fresh wave of mortification crashing through my tiny body. Before I could protest—before I could even process—she was standing, lifting me like I weighed nothing.

My legs dangled uselessly in the air. My face was still smushed against her chest.

Oh.

Oh no.

This was not how I imagined being carried to a woman's bedroom.

"Alright, little one," she murmured, her voice a warm hum against the top of my head. "The couch isn't going to cut it. You're coming with me."

My brain short-circuited.

On one hand: HOT TWILEK WOMAN CARRYING ME TO BED.

On the other: HOT TWILEK WOMAN CARRYING ME TO BED BECAUSE I'M A SNIVELING CHILD WHO CAN'T KEEP IT TOGETHER.

The duality was painful.

I squirmed—just a little—but she held firm, her grip effortlessly secure. Like I was a sack of particularly fragile groceries.

"I—I can walk," I mumbled into her tunic, my voice muffled and pathetic.

"I know," she said, completely ignoring me as she nudged open a door with her hip.

Her bedroom was small, dimly lit, and dominated by a narrow bed piled with mismatched blankets. It smelled like her—that same faint floral scent mixed with the lingering tang of machine oil.

She sat on the edge of the bed, adjusting me in her lap like I was some kind of oversized plush toy. I was painfully aware of how small I was in comparison, how easily she could just manhandle me.

"Listen," she said softly, brushing a stray tear (ugh) from my cheek with her thumb. "I know you miss your mom. It's okay. It's more than okay."

I opened my mouth to correct her—No, actually, I was just having an existential crisis about my old life and also maybe low-key panicking about the fact that I'm stuck in a child's body in a galaxy far, far away—but she kept going.

"So here's what we're going to do," she said, her voice firm but gentle. "You're going to close your eyes. And you're going to pretend I'm her. Just for tonight."

My face burned.

"W-what?" I choked out.

She didn't wait for further protest. In one smooth motion, she shifted us both onto the bed, pulling me against her like I was some kind of emotional support teddy bear. One of her lekku draped over my shoulder like a silken scarf.

"Just like that," she murmured, tucking my head under her chin. "Close your eyes. Pretend."

I was dying.

This was not how I envisioned my first night in a Twi'lek's bed. There were supposed to be flirting. Confidence. Maybe some smooth one-liners. Not… this.

And yet.

And yet.

Her body was warm. Her arms were strong. And despite the sheer, soul-crushing embarrassment of it all… it was nice.

No. No, Alex. Do NOT lean into this. Do NOT let out a contented sigh. Do NOT—

I let out a tiny, traitorous sigh.

Vasha chuckled, the sound vibrating through her chest and into mine. "There you go."

I was weak.

But also… exhausted. The emotional whiplash of the day had drained me completely. My eyelids felt like lead.

"…Fine," I grumbled, half-hearted. "If you insist."

She laughed again, softer this time, and I felt her fingers card gently through my hair. "I do."

And just like that, despite the humiliation, despite the sheer absurdity of the situation… I let myself relax.

Just for tonight.

Just until morning.

Then I'd go back to being the cunning, resourceful isekai protagonist.

---

A/N: You guys are so lucky you know that? This chapter ended up being massive and I was so loooking for any part where it could be broken up but the scene is just too much cohesive, like a damn glueball. 

Well anyways, hope you enjoyed this. Emotional part ends here mostly and from next chapter onward we would be back to improving Ezra, and building up the background before we arrive at the question in synopsis. 

Throw those stones people! We are halfway through the 100 stones goal. Add the book to the library if you haven't.

Meanwhile if you have time, do head over to my patre-on where I am posting advanced chapters or if you wish to support the story(and me by extension!)

Link: www(dot)patreon(dot)com/Abstracto101

There isn't chapter there at the moment, but will be in half an hour or so as I upload them up after final editing.