#also while i was watching the scene between ahsoka and fox to get the line right i noticed he’s a dual blaster wielder

[t7-01]

ok n for character asks: commander fox or thorn or rly any of the coruscant gaurds bros. u pick

omg omg fun fact about me - I LOVE THE CORUSCANT GUARD, i’ll go with fox bc if i debate this too long i’ll just write a character list for every known guard and we’ll be here all day.

fox!

favorite thing about them: oof this is probably fucked up of me, but their internal struggles. i have a hc about fox that he is the direct opposite of jango (and by extension, the direct opposite of cody, who struggles with how similar to jango he is, but that’s a different character list). whereas jango is able to compartmentalize, fox can’t - he struggled as a cadet with feeling things too much, being confused about his extreme loyalty to the republic conflicting with his extreme loyalty to his brothers, and as a result just pushes all of his emotions down in order to get through training. i just think deep down he’s actually full of heart, and is afraid to let that show. i just know he’s the best big brother when he can be.

least favorite thing about them: do i even have to say it? i maintain that close proximity to palpatine meant that fox was often heavily manipulated against his brothers, but still - killing fives was his worst moment.

favorite line: “I can’t say I blame you, Commander Tano. But all the same, you’re under arrest.” - said to ahsoka after she seemingly killed the temple bomber. obviously this line is extremely painful, but it does so much to show his character in such a short amount of time. it’s clear he hated the bomber and wanted vengeance, probably even respected ahsoka’s choices (i imagine, briefly, this moment was the most respect fox ever had for a jedi). but he still must do his duty, always.

brOTP: ooh him and his other coruscant commanders!!! and hound ofc. and also his batchmates, who i hc to be cody, wolffe, bly, and ponds. of all of these characters, i like to think he’s closest to thorn and wolffe, with stone and ponds a close second. cody is the big brother he goes to for advice though.

OTP: i don’t super have one? i don’t really ship him with anyone. i do have an indulgent clone dad jango au where i sometimes think it’d be fun to have him in an enemies-to-lovers romance with a jedi temple guardian, but otherwise i mostly ship him with happiness lmfao.

nOTP: this goes without saying but anything that puts a clone with another clone is a major no-go for me. yikes.

random headcanon: fox and boba would get along spectacularly, and in fact fox tries to look out for boba while he’s in the coruscant detention center, despite his extremely complicated feelings about boba being responsible for ponds’s death.

unpopular opinion: i know this is highly contested, so i guess the fact that i don’t really blame him for fives’s death even if i think it was a low moment. i don’t think palpatine necessarily used the force to make fox kill fives or anything, but i don’t think he had to - the clones were the property of the republic. fox’s choices were essentially follow orders and protect the men under his command from retribution, or spare fives and be either arrested or executed, therefore unable to protect his brothers. we see rex face a similar choice with pong krell’s bad orders.

song i associate with them: oof, that would be “we all die young” by the decemberists. i associate this with all the clones, but ESPECIALLY fox and the coruscant guard. there’s a siren motif at some point that just feels very much like this could be playing the coruscant detention center as some serious shit goes down - it hits hard.

favorite picture of them: was there ever any doubt which one i’d choose?

king of “bitch i AM the manager”

[glimmerglanger]

If you feel like doing more HotR, could you do a Christmas (or any other family event) scene? I had a thought of Ben having a huge family Christmas for the first time in his life and it made me feel some type of way

Ohhhh, that’s such a cute and sweet idea. I ended up not going for Christmas, because the idea of a Thanksgiving meal occurred to me and wouldn’t let go. This is SO DOMESTIC. Codywan with a lot of family feels.

~~~~~

Ben had tried to cook a meal on Thanksgiving precisely once in his life, while in college and sharing an apartment with Quin. They’d attempted to cook a turkey in their oven, promising to handle the stuffing and potatoes, as well. Luminara and Bant were each supposed to bring other dishes, he could no longer recall exactly what.

None of them had succeeded.

Some of the resulting food had been, at least, edible. Much of it had not.

They’d eaten stale cereal with milk while sitting around and watching a football game, instead.

It was a good memory, in the end. Something they laughed about together. And Ben had never tried to cook anything like that, again. Qui-Gon had never been interested in such things growing up. He said it always ended up being a waste, and that true thankfulness had nothing to do with cooking too much food or overeating.

And so, really, Ben wasn’t expecting anything when he woke up on the last Thursday in November, tucked in close to Cody in the new bed they’d bought a month ago, tired of trying to wedge into Cody’s little twin.

Technically, he mostly noted Thanksgiving because it meant he didn’t have to work and could, allegedly, sleep in. But Cody was always up early. Cattle didn’t take holidays, after all, and Ben was generally up when Cody rose, after sharing a bed with him for a few months, and so he was sitting at the table in the pre-dawn light when Cody put a cup of tea in front of him and said, “Eat a big breakfast this morning, we won’t eat again until late.”

“Hm?” Ben asked, tilting his face up, and got a kiss in answer.

“I’ll be back,” Cody said, brushing a kiss to his forehead, as well, before zipping up his coat and disappearing through the door. “You finish waking up.”

Ben nodded, drank his tea, and pulled out his books to make some headway on his final paper; not due for weeks yet, but it was a huge project. By the time Cody came back, cold clinging to him, he’d gotten most of his work done and grinned, standing to pull Cody into a hug, murmuring, “How about you let me warm you up properly, hm?”

Cody grinned against his mouth, slid his cold hands up under Ben’s shirt, and said, “Later. We’ll warm each other up. Come on, get dressed. We’re about to start the cooking.”

And it was only then that Ben really, truly, recalled that most people around the country did something for the holiday. “Ah,” he said, with a little grimace, thinking about the delicious food that Jango and Val managed to produce on a regular basis, “I really can’t cook.”

Cody snorted, thumbs brushing over his skin, and said, “We know. That’s alright. Anyone can cut up vegetables. Come on.”

Which was how Ben ended up standing in the kitchen in the main house, which had been cleared of all chairs, the counters and table stacked with meat, vegetables, and large metal baskets.

“Here,” Cody said, nudging Ben between Wooley and Echo, “just cut whatever mom tells you to chop. I have to go check the pit.”

“The pit?” Ben asked, but Cody was already heading out the back door. Echo was involved in an animated conversation with Fives, and Wooley was humming along to whatever music playing through his earbuds, and so Ben just shrugged, took the yams he was handed, and started peeling and chopping them.

The parade was playing on repeat in the other room, the television turned so that everyone working around the table could kind of see it, and Ben fell to talking with Boba and Ahsoka - also contributing by chopping vegetables - as Val and Jango did something with what appeared to be a bunch of chicken over by the counters.

It wasn’t until Fox - and Ben had only met the man the night before - brought over a basket lined with aluminum foil and started putting the vegetables in, that Ben thought to ask, “What are we cooking, anyway?”

Fox blinked across at him. Despite having only met in person the previous day, Ben felt like he knew Fox well enough. They’d spoken often throughout his court cases, after all.

“Dinner,” Fox said.

“It’s a hāngi,” Boba said, tossing yams into the basket. “Mom and dad only do them for special occasions. You missed the one in July. Just put the vegetables in, you’ll see, it’s really good.”

And that was that. Ben helped load up the vegetables, and carried one of the baskets out through the back door when instructed, over to what appeared to be a pit, well back from the house.

Cody and Wolf - who had also flown in the night before - were standing over the pit, which was radiating heat, leaning on shovels. A large pile of ash sat to one side, and Cody’s pants were covered with it. Jango and Val reached the pit first, and Ben watched as baskets were lowered in, one after another, meat first followed by the vegetables.

Cody covered the food with blankets before he and Wolf grabbed up their shovels again and started burying the whole thing.

Ben lingered to watch, smiling when Cody finished and stepped over to kiss him sweetly. “Now what?” Ben asked, since he’d just watched them bury dinner.

“Now it cooks for a few hours,” Cody said, nuzzling back against his jaw. Cody no longer felt cold, but he’d been, apparently, standing by a fire pit and doing manual labour. “And then we eat it.”

“No,” Fives said, bounding up and pushing Cody’s shoulders before continuing on, “now we play football.”

Cody rolled his eyes and said, “That, too.” His expression grew more serious as he looked Ben up and down. “You don’t have to play.”

“I think there’ll be an uneven number of players, if I do,” Ben pointed out. It seemed handy, having twelve children if you wanted even teams for sporting events.

“Nah,” Rex said, arriving at a jog, “Ahsoka’s playing, so you have to, otherwise we’re a man down.”

Which was, he supposed, how they all ended up down in the field where Ahsoka still did the dog training classes, though the obstacles had all been cleared away, giving them lots of open space. The brothers agreed, after only a little arguing, that Fox and Wolf should get to be captains, to welcome them home, and the oldest set of twins quickly picked teams.

And Ben only realized that Cody thought he didn’t know how to play when Cody tugged him to one side - they were on the same team, which Boba had thought was hilarious - and said, “Just have fun, alright? We don’t play tackle anymore, and it isn’t a big deal who wins or loses.”

Ben stifled the smile that tried to curl across his lips at Cody - quite possibly one of the most competitive people he’d ever met - claiming that it didn’t matter who won or lost. He just nodded and said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

And, when he got the ball, two plays into the game, he scrambled back, looked down field, and nailed Crys a few feet away from the line they’d designated the end zone. Crys caught the ball, shouted, laughing, dodged past Ponds, and took the two necessary steps before getting jumped on by half his brothers and buried.

Ben laughed, well back down the field, blood pumping fast with a swell of pleasure, and Cody grabbed him by his shoulders, turning him and pulling him into a kiss. “You!” Cody said, after a beat, pulling away from him. “You can--”

“Throw a football?” Ben suggested, kissing him again, briefly. “Indeed I can. Not as well as I could in highschool, but--”

Cody kissed him again, laughing against his mouth, and only quit when his brothers all gathered around to heckle them, insisting on getting back to the game. They chased one another around the field, grabbing for the rags tucked into belts, tossing the ball around, until Ben felt breathless and delighted, until Jango hollered for them from back towards the house.

Cody took his hand on the way back up the lane and led him around to the back of the house as many of the rest of his brothers flooded inside. Cody, Fox, Wolf, and Rex seemed to be on, well, unburying duty.

Ben watched them work for a moment, turning as Val stepped up to his side, offering him a beer, asking, “Good game?”

“Seemed to be,” Ben said, nodding his thanks and taking a long drink. It was cold, which felt good after all the activity. Despite the chilly temperatures, he was sweating all down his back, even with his coat thrown to one side.

“Good,” she said, and nudged him, “come inside and get cleaned up for dinner. Then you can come back and watch Cody, if you want.”

He snorted a laugh and followed her, scrubbing his hands clean over the kitchen sink, watching Cody through the window over the counter, listening to the family bicker about setting the table behind him and--

Swallowing, thickly, as his throat got tight all at once. He took the opportunity to splash water across his face, drying his skin even as cheers started going up, the brothers outside pulling the first of the baskets from the pit.

Ben shook himself and went to help out, bringing food inside, watching Val and Jango start dividing things up among all the different plates set around. It felt kind of like getting caught in a whirlwind of delicious smells and laughing people, all of it sorting itself out in the end with them clustered around the table, chairs all pressed together, wedged so close that Ben wondered, for a beat, if Cody were about to end up in his lap.

He didn’t, but it was a near thing.

The food smelled delicious, savory aromas filling up the room, chicken and some darker meat on his plate beside sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, and what he thought might be pumpkin. The family talked and yelled and laughed through the meal, and Ben just...absorbed it, sat in the middle of it all and took it in, even as they finished and even as everyone pitched in to clean up.

“You’re quiet,” Cody said, much later, when all the work was done and they were back in their space, Ben toweling off his hair after a shower that he’d desperately needed.

“Mm?” Ben asked, tossing the towel into the hamper and shivering when Cody caught his hips, tugging him over to the bed, pressing a kiss low on his stomach.

“Today too much?” Cody asked, looking up at him, expression concerned, his hair still wet as well, curling up more from the moisture.

“No,” Ben said, leaning into his touch and threading his fingers back through Cody’s hair. He smiled, just a little, feeling his chest aching with an overabundance of contentment. “No,” he repeated, and sighed when Cody kissed his stomach again, “It was just enough.”

[butchgwenwhyvar]

“And all the stars that scream” “there are no happy endings” “what endings find us happiness”

OW FLAIM WHYYYY 

ok here we go

“And all the stars that scream” would be a codex fic where Rex finds out what happened to Cody on Utapau and the aftermath, and ends in Rex going to Kamino in a royal snit to try and de-brainwash his husband. Unbeknownst to him, Cody’s no longer under the influence of the chip and is training the latest batch of stormtroopers. He’s bitter and lonely and depressed and hates what he’s doing. Sure, there was no glory in war, but he was fighting for a cause, fighting for honour and safety. There’s none of that in the Empire, and now he’s just training a bunch of kids who are freshly kidnapped and scared and he has to show them how to fight and he just can’t take it anymore. The Empire gets hold of Rex and tortures him in front of Cody, and Cody can’t do anything but watch and scream as his husband is slowly killed in front of him. 

Eventually, the rebellion (and Ahsoka) comes to rescue them because Rex got a distress beacon out before he was captured and they get to a safe planet, but it’s too late to save Rex. He gets his happy reunion with Cody, but he dies in his husband’s arms. His last words are probably something sappy like ‘the stars were never as beautiful as you’ (because I like tying fic titles into dialogue for some reason), and Cody joins the rebellion and fights for all that Rex tried to save him from

(and now I’m sad and I want to write this. It’d probably be a multi-chapter epic with a giant playlist and fanart or something)

I thought about turning “There are no happy endings” into my usual obianidala with Obi-Wan moping post RotS but I’ve written three and posted two of those and it’s utterly fucking typical for me, so I’d say this would either be Vader reminiscing about the war and how happy he was and how he fucked it up, or it could be force ghost! Padme looking at Vader and Obi-Wan moping and murdering. 

If we went Vader, it would start with Anakin and Obi-Wan and Padme waking up together and having a peaceful morning with the twins and Ahsoka dropping in and it’s all happy. And then Vader wakes up feeling slightly unsettled, like something from his past’s just come out of his head and whacked him on the helmet, but he ignores it and goes about his day. He keeps seeing things in the corner of his eye though, like there’s a kid following him around the ship. He just shrugs it off because there’s stormtroopers to intimidate and a death star to build, but it keeps him wondering about what really happened to Padme and Obi-Wan and their kids (he can’t be certain, but in those last dreadful moments before Padme’s force blinked out entirely he felt two children). Eventually he confronts Palpatine about it and Palpatine goes all torture-dark-lord-etc on him.

If we went Padme, the fic would open with her death, and seeing Qui-Gon in the force. He’d probably tell her what’s going down and she sits and watches over Luke and Leia and Obi-Wan (she can’t make herself even think about Vader in the early days, can’t think of the man he used to be and the monster he’s become), and eventually figures out what Ahsoka’s doing and helps her set up fulcrum. She’d appear to Luke and Leia a few times, she’d try to talk to Obi-Wan but he’s probably crawled into a bottle or something at this point and is therefore passing off her messages as hallucinations and ignoring it. Vader, on the other hand, is so desperate to hear from anyone from his family, so he imagines Padmé everywhere even though she’s not. Padmé sees what’s going on and tries to snap Vader out of the dark but it doesn’t work, and she tries to help Obi-Wan but it doesn’t work either and the fic ends with her bemoaning her husband’s fates and being sad I guess (thus the title, ‘there are no happy endings’. If I was actually gonna write this fic, it would be called ‘(there are no) happy endings’ just to drive the angst home).

(Oh no I kinda wanna write this one as well)

“What endings find us happiness” would be an au where Anakin didn’t fall, Padme didn’t die, Obi-Wan didn’t go off moping in the desert, and (most of) the clones listened to Rex and Fives and took out their chips. Fives survived because Fox had his guns on stun (like they were supposed to be) and so he was only knocked out; he was around for Anaxes and getting Echo back. 

Mustafar plays out differently, with Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting a fallen Barriss, and as they’re barely escaping with their lives, Padme goes into labour. They end up at Polis Massa with Bail and Yoda etc, when the truth comes out about obianidala’s relationship. Yoda tells Anakin that Ahsoka is most likely dead, but Anakin insists that he can still feel her in the force. There’s an epic screaming match between Obi-Wan and Anakin, who are all for going off and looking for survivors, and Yoda, who wants everyone to go into a nice quiet exile. 

Anakin ends up pinching a ship with his spouses and tiny children (Bail offers to look after them for a while and they very nearly take him up on it) and heading to the Mandalore system to try and find Ahsoka and the clones. Padme suggests that they check Utapau to see if Cody’s alive (and not under the 66 trance as well) but Obi-Wan can’t face it and Anakin’s freaking tf out about Ahsoka so they ignore Utapau for now. 

Once they get to Mandalore, they find that Rex and Ahsoka have gone missing (and possibly the fake grave that they set up in the Ahsoka novel), as well as a dying Kix and a freaking out Jesse, with Fives and Echo nowhere to be found. Everyone freaks out and grabs the two survivors (despite the two clones involved in the chip debacle being 501, not many listened to Fives. A few removed their chips, and tried to protect Ahsoka when 66 went off but were gunned down. Rex and Jesse barely escaped with their lives, and Kix was shot several times while trying to save a brother) and they go off on a massive road trip, looking for everyone else. Kix recovers slowly in this time, but Anakin has to build him a prosthetic leg and he’s still in a lot of pain. Jesse usually refuses to leave his side. 

They’re about six months into the ‘road trip’ (complemented with newborns, injury recovery, and the usual PTSD and nightmares combo that they all have) when they find Rex, who’s laying low somewhere in the outer rim. Rex has no idea where Ahsoka went after they parted ways, so they start methodically checking all the planets near Mandalore first, and then they get to Thabeska and find her there, about to head back to Raada to save Kaeden and Miara (they also find out about Bail’s rebellion at this point). Raada plays out pretty much the same. Ahsoka still gets her sabers, and Bail ends up hiding them on Alderaan until the proper rebel base is set up. 

Once the base is set up and they’re monitoring Imperial chatter, they hear reports about two renegade clones causing trouble in the outer rim territories. They start to monitor those frequencies more carefully, and eventually hear of an attack on Kamino by these two. Obi-Wan and Padme, who become the commanders of that particular base, send Anakin and a squad of X-Wings to Kamino to extract the clones and help them out. 

The clones turn out to be Fives and Echo, trying to rescue Cody and Wolffe, and any other clones, dechipped or not (Wolffe’s chip was damaged when Ventress took his eye, he managed to pull himself out of the 66 trance just after Plo was shot down). Anakin and his squad get them out with a couple casualties (Bly is still on Kamino when Fives takes out his chip, he sacrifices himself so that the others can escape because he can’t live with the fact that he killed his General, his riduur) and head back to the base. 

There’s lots of tearful reunions when they get off the ship. Ahsoka immediately launches herself at Fives and Echo. Rex and Cody refuse to leave each other’s sides for ages, and there’s a very emotional conversation had along the lines of ‘I should have listened to you’. Cody and Obi-Wan have their reunion as well and that’s sad as hell.

Life goes on in the Rebellion, Kaeden and Ahsoka get married when they turn 20, and the twins grow up with X-wings for playgrounds and the sounds of air-raid sirens as a lullaby (some nights, when Padme’s waiting up for Anakin, who’s in an X-wing far above, engaged in desperate dogfights with the TIE’s that Palpatine sends, and Obi-Wan’s in the control room, she wishes she’d left her children with Bail or Mon. No child should grow up in a war zone. And then 3 year old Luke starts snoring in the bed beside her and Leia’s hair is in her mouth as her daughter does the octopus on her shoulder, and she thinks that she can never leave them no matter what). Other surviving Clones and Jedi make their way to the rebellion as well, until there’s a thriving community on an outer rim planet full of retired Clones and Jedi and their families. 

A New Hope plays out differently: the twins have been trained (by Ahsoka and Obi-Wan and Anakin) and they know what they’re doing, and Luke and Ahsoka waste no time in grabbing some random smuggler off of tatooine and dragging him out to the death star, where Ahsoka and Barriss fight as Han and Luke rescue Leia. The twins help their older sister and get her (injured, but alive) onto the ship, and Luke joins the death star run while his parents and sisters are chewing their nails to the quick down in the war room. 

Empire Strikes Back is much the same, including Luke heading to Dagobah because Obi-Wan,  Anakin, and Ahsoka decided they needed Yoda’s help to deal with Barriss. The Han and Leia arc plays out the same, and Luke still goes to rescue them and fights Barriss again. 

Return of the Jedi is also pretty much the same as in canon, but it’s Ahsoka and Luke who go up to the Death Star and fight the Emperor and Barriss. There’s an emotional scene between Barriss and Ahsoka at the very end, where Barriss comes back to the light and apologises for what she did. There’s a party on Endor which turns into Wedge and Luke’s impromptu wedding; Han and Leia get married a few days later. 

Everything is happy and nice and calm, no one dies, and nothing bad ever happens to them ever again the end.

(I also want to write this one as a full-blown au like what I planned modern au to be)