It was a strange cocktail of feelings that wrestled through the mind of Soto Terius as he stood and watched the sun rise.

There was a certain familiarity, a certain relief that came from watching Corell crest over the distant horizon as he watched a new day unfurl. He was home. Home. While fighting for the Alliance, he had never missed it, too busy driving forward to allow himself to look back. As soon as the Rebellion had ended, as soon as the war had turned cold, he had been able to do nothing else. It had ached inside him, a tether welded to his heart that pulled at him from across the stars, tension growing stronger and stronger with each fragment of news that filtered out from behind the blockade. He was here now, he had returned. From the gentle caress of cool Corellian air against his head, to the satisfying crunch of Corellian soil beneath his boots, to the very depths of his Corellian soul, it felt good.

Yet it was not good. Far from. If his eyes deviated from the horizon too far, he would glimpse the TIE patrols over the city across the plains. He would glimpse the bone-white daggers of Star Destroyers looming in low orbit, close enough to be visible in the Corellian sky by day or night. It would take macrobinoculars to see the Imperial walkers marching along Corellian streets, electronic surveillance to her the oppressive clank of their every step, but he knew they were there. He could feel them, stomping across his world, enforcing curfews upon the once proud and free citizens of Corellia. With a telescope, he might even see the blockade itself, swarming between the Five Brothers, making prison worlds of the homeworlds.

Even that would not allow him to see the worst of Imperial oppression, however. It was not enough that Empress Tarkin reached out and wrapped her oppressive hand around Corellia. It was not enough that a foreign Moff from Force knows where dictated the terms of how Corellians lived their lives. It was the fact that there were Corellians among them. Corellian officers in the Stormtrooper garrisons. Corellian Security enforcing trade sanctions and flight restrictions. Corellian sons and daughters commanding and crewing the ships of the blockade; and chief among them, worst of all, the blockade's commander-in-chief.

Brigadier Rinzai Terius.

Soto's jaw clenched at the mere thought of it. He and his brother had never quite seen eye to eye, even in their earliest days. Rinzai had a violence and a ruthlessness to him, a focused viewpoint that had clashed often with Soto's more open mind. In their youth, they had embraced it, made it part of their respective identities. Rinzai was the soldier, a decisive solution to every problem. Soto was the engineer, always prepared to invent and innovate. There had been a respect between them. An understanding.

This, though? This, Soto would never understand.

Things had changed over the years, but no matter how much Soto contemplated it, he could never quite understand where the two of them had diverged. Perhaps it was as long ago as the Clone Wars. When the conflict had begun, the brothers had set their differences aside, and been united in their reaction. Both had joined the Republic military; both fought to defend their homeworld, and the Republic it stood as part of. Rinzai had become a leader, and at first Soto had stuck to what he was good at; but circumstances had conspired to turn the engineer of a Corellian Gunship into it's Commander, and for a few fleeting years he and Rinzai had shared a common purpose; a common occupation.

Then the war had ended. Soto stepped down, and Rinzai had not. Perhaps his abandonment of the New Order was what had embittered Rinzai towards him. To Soto, his career at the Corellian Engineering Corporation was a continuation of his service, helping to adapt the transports and light cruisers of the Republic Navy into craft fit for Imperial service. When Soto looked upon the clean grey lines of the revised Gozanti cruiser, the subtle way in which the Star Destroyer delta had been massaged into the design, he felt a sense of pride. When Rinzai looked, perhaps he saw the work of a brother who had abandoned the noble cause of military service for the sake of credits and comfort.

Soto had often wondered why Rinzai had become a TIE Pilot. Perhaps it was compensation: a greater risk and potential sacrifice, to compensate for Soto's surrender. Perhaps he had just grown reckless, so eager for violence and danger that he was willing to risk his life day after day for the thrill of it. It had never quite cost him that, but it came close: the last time the brothers had seen each other was shortly after the accident, shortly after the news that Rinzai's injuries would prevent him from flying a combat starfighter at the Empire's behest ever again. Perhaps it all made a sick and twisted sense if you followed it through: obligation had forced him into that cockpit, and the Rebel Alliance had forced him out of it. Soto Terius, defector and rebel scum, was adjacent to responsibility on both counts. Soto supposed he could understand why Rinzai would blame him, and why his hostility towards rebellion was so relentless.

This though was a step too far. This wasn't hunting the rebellion: this was oppressing his own people.

Soto crouched slowly, fingertips pressing against the grass-covered ground of his father's grave. The headstone loomed, and Soto found himself struggling to look at it, struggling to make eye contact with the last remnant of the man who had cared for and disapproved of the both of them in equal measure, and made them vow at every opportunity that they would never allow anything to interfere with what mattered most: family.

A slow, soft breath escaped from Soto, almost as a sigh.

"Forgive us, father," he muttered, his hand raising to the gravestone, resting as if it were a hand on a shoulder, "For we have sinned."