#but kept getting dragged back down by the Sith

[frost-queen]

Join the dark side (Reader x Anakin Skywalker)

Requested by: anon Forever tag:@missmelodramatic  , @merlin-dahlia, @alex--awesome--22, @elllie-does-the-posts, @floatlosers , @merlieve , @queen-of-books , @glimmering-darling-dolly,@denkisclown , @wildieflower , @meyocoko  , @justanothercoco, @subjecta13-thefangirl, @m-rae23, @harleyquinnswifeyfrfr   , @swampthing07, @melsunshine , @panhoeofmanyfandoms , @venomsvl , @the-uncoordinated-house-cat, @rosecentury ,  @imagines-by-her ,  @evilcr0ne , @vviolynn , @niktwazny303,@avada-kedavra-bitch-187 , @sweetheartlizzie07

Summary: Hello there! May the forth be with you. Reader is Padmé's sister. When Anakin has turned to the dark side, he and the empire demand your hand. You are against it, clearly having no say in it as Anakin demands it. Numerous times you try to run from him, arguing, cursing and hating him. Anakin claims you as his wife no matter what. One night you ask Anakin what made him turn to the dark side, feeling empathy for him once you finally understand it a bit more.

There was no denying the sudden shift in the galaxy. Jedi’s were falling and the Sith were taking over. Naboo wasn’t a place you could stay anymore. In a rushed way, you were packing your things. Throwing some dresses in a bag, knowing your sister would be waiting for you in half an hour at the secret passage. She needed a lot of convincing to leave Naboo. Being to headstrong into not wanting to leave the people.

But for now going in hiding would be the best solution. Surely against the empire. Panting loud, you hurried through your room to collect the most important things you needed. Half-way from where your bed was with the bag, suddenly opened your door. It made you freeze with panic, staring with wide eyes as men entered your room. They parted making way for Anakin Skywalker in all black.

“Anakin?”  -  you said confused. Anakin noticed the bag on your bag, making him glare your way. – “Seize her!” – he ordered. His order made you drop your item as the men rushed over to you. Each grabbing you by the arm. – “Anakin what is going on?” – you called out, scribbling against their grip.

Anakin approached you. A darker vibe surrounding him as you sensed it. The way he approached you seeming nothing like he was before. The men pulled at you, pushing you forwards to him. Anakin gave you a sweet smile, hands folded before him. Utterly confused and wary, you didn’t know what to expect.

“Are you going somewhere?” – he asked tilting his head back to look at the bag on your bed. – “What is it to you?” – you bit back. If it weren’t for the other men in the room, you might have reacted different. Yet the way he ordered them to handle you, had upset you too much.

Anakin chuckled humorously bringing one finger up to his lips. – “You are right Naboo isn’t save for you anymore.” – he said looking down at you. The tone in his voice made you swallow nervously. – “You’d be much saver with me.” – he added moving a bit more casual.

It made you furrow your brows as he moved his hand towards you, grabbing you by your chin. – “Marry me.” – he let out as your eyes widened in shock. You tore your face away to release his grip on you. – “Not a chance!” – you fired back. There had clearly something changed about him and you didn’t like one bit of it. Anakin inhaled sharp through his nose, grabbing your chin by force now. Wanting you to look him in the eye. – “That wasn’t a request!” – he made clear that you had no choice in it.

His gaze stern and colder than you had ever seen. Anakin tilted his chin up, looking down on you with a certain ego around him. – “Take her away!” – he ordered his men pushing your face to the side as he let go of you. The men he was with dragged you around him out of the door. – “No!” – you cried out, trying to fight them off. Leaning back and pulling at your arms to get them off you. They were strong as they kept their grip on you.

Looking over your shoulder, you stared at Anakin and the bag on your bed. Tears swelling up as you knew you’d never meet up with your sister Padmé now. Anakin watched you leave with a stern look, hands behind his back. – “Anakin please!” – you begged one last time before they pulled you out of your room, around the corner and out of sight.

You got dragged outside to a craft ship. – “No, no please… Padmé.” – you breathed out looking back as your sister would be waiting for you now. Not knowing what is happening to you. – “Princess!” – two guards came running outside having seen what was happening. The men that were holding you, stopped and turned you around to your guards. – “Release her at once.” – one of the guards called out. – “We will give the empire everything, but not our princess.” – the second one begged dropping to his knees.

You looked at the men holding you with panic. – “You have no right to take her!” – the first one remained determined and guarding. The second guard more beggingly. The hearing of a lightsaber getting active made you gasp loud. The red illuminating in the darkness behind them. The guard on his knees got up startled. The other one jumped frightened back. Your eyes widened with fear as Anakin emerged from the dark, swaying the red lightsaber around. The guards having no chance as they got killed.

Now it was clear as day that the Anakin you knew was gone. The dark side had claimed him as he was one of them now. – “Nooo!” – you cried sinking to your knees. Anakin got up, walking up to you with his lightsaber still in hand. He reached his hand out to you, making you sway your head aside, not wanting his touch on you. Anakin managed to place his gloved hand against your cheek, making you shiver out a breath. He smiled softly. – “I will never harm you Y/n.” – he spoke with politeness. – “You have my word for it.”

With a simple nod of him, his men pulled you up and dragged you onto the ship. The platform shut behind Anakin as he left Naboo for what it was. Needing nothing more of it. Certainly not now that he had what he wanted. What he had always wanted. You. The ship left, going into unknown galaxies for you. The men had knotted your hands together behind your back. Anakin came over once they flew in open space.

“I told them it wasn’t necessary.” – he said, kneeling down before you. – “The cuffs.” – he pointed at you, sounding a bit like his old self. – “They wouldn’t listen, but I know you Y/n.” – he added leaning over your shoulder to reach the cuffs. You heard the cuffs come off as Anakin came in sight again, smiling. The second your hands were free, you punched him against his cheek. Anakin groaned in pain, taking a second to recover.

He grabbed your shoulders with violence, pressing his fingers deep into your skin. You could see the anger in his eyes. Seeing how dominant it was. For a moment, you were truly terrified of him. Not knowing what he would do to you. Anakin then breathed out a laugh, catching you off guard. He took the cuffs again, securing your hands together in front of you.

Anakin got up, leaving your side once more. Lowering your head, there was no denying it anymore. You had no where to run. The ship boarded a floating base in the galaxy. The death star they called it. The guard pushed you forwards, being just a step behind Anakin. Your eyes wide with horror at the hundreds no thousands of stormtroopers on the platform.

You didn’t want to know how many of them roaming this place. There seemed to be little attention for you. Generals bowed their heads when Anakin walked past them. He came to a stop before a room as the door swished open. Anakin took you from the soldier by pressing his hand on your lower back. Pushing you into the room. – “Clean up, our wedding will be tonight.” – he said. You turned angered back at him.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” – you called out. – “No.” – Anakin answered cheeky. – “I hate you!” – you shouted punching your tied up hands against his chest. Anakin barely flinched. Only chuckling amusingly at your silly attempts. He took a step back, letting the door swish shut before him. Once he had left, you gasped when the cuffs fell to the ground.

There was a dress left out for you as you stormed over to it. Grabbed it and threw it on the floor. There was no way you would satisfy him with the pleasure of seeing you dolled up for him. You didn’t know how long you waited, but your door opened once more. A stormtrooper entering your room. – “Princess.” – he addressed you. – “You are coming with me.” – he said. You inhaled deep, chin up with pride as you walked up to him.

He had his blaster at his side as you eyed it. Once you were with him, he moved a bit aside to let you pass first. You stomped your foot on his, grabbing his blaster as you used the end to punch it against his armour. The stormtrooper grunted as he doubled over. Throwing the blaster away, you ran out of the room.

Not caring to where, you just needed to get out. Panting loud, you looked over your shoulder to see if he was following you. There rounded a curve as you ran to follow it, suddenly bumping into someone when you looked back to the front. A firm grip settling on your arm. Gasping loud, you looked up to Anakin, shaking his head. His gaze went down your clothing, seeing you hadn’t changed.

“No matter, you are beautiful anyways Y/n.” – he said making you scoff. – “You are delusional if you think I will marry you!” – you called out wanting his grip to be off you. Anakin chuckled. – “We’ll see Y/n… we’ll see.” – he breathed out pulling you along with him. He dragged you into a room. It was clear he wasn’t going to let you get out of it. So eager to marry you. Anakin walked with you up to the front. – “Charming.” – you responded sarcastically at the wedding view.

The base room with a large glass window overlooking the galaxy. The Sith lord sitting on his throne at the front. The first order standing up straight from behind their panels, saluting. He paused you in front of the Sith lord. You tried your last attempt of running off as Anakin was way ahead of you. He immediately grabbed you by the arm, pulling you back. You weren’t going anywhere.

The Sith lord laughed loud as you elbowed Anakin in the stomach to get him off your back. Anakin grabbed you hard by your arms, turning you to him. – “You will marry me!” – he ordered loud. – “I. would. Rather. Die.” – you answered in a slow pace to deliver your message. Anakin curled up a smile, your taunting only amusing him more. The Sith lord started to conduct the wedding as Anakin kept his grip on you.

“I do.” – Anakin said letting his thumb brush against your cheek. The Sith lord turned to you, waiting for your answer. Anakin stared back at you, ushering you to say the words. – “Asshole.” – you breathed out for only him to hear. – “What was that?” – The Sith lord asked confused. Anakin smiled before squeezing your arms tighter. – “SAY IT!” – he yelled out, forcing you to do so.

“Asshole!” – you repeated louder for everyone to hear. Anakin snapped wrapping his hand around your throat. It made you gasp loud, startled by his sudden violence. – “Say it!” – he asked again gently squeezing your throat as he brought your face closer to his. – “I…I…do…” – you forced with little air. Anakin let go of you, making you grasp for air.

The Sith lord declared you married as Anakin grabbed your chin. Pulling you at him as he soured your lips with his. Kissing you hungrily as you felt the control in his actions. He pulled away, smirking. – “My wife.” – he grinned making you roll your eyes at him. Trying to deny that his kiss might have flustered you. And with that the wedding was over. Married to Anakin that had turned to the dark side.

Ever since the wedding, you could hardly avoid Anakin. He was always there. Confusing you with his actions. Sometimes he was gentle and caring. Other times he was hard and rudely towards you. Acting to you like the master of the puppet that you were. Sometimes you could see his old self slip through. Other days the dark side inside of him took over. Slowly you started to open up to him.

Having always been forced together. You were in the bedroom sitting on the bed. The door swished open as Anakin entered. He walked up to the table, pouring himself a glass of water. – “Anakin may I ask you something?” – you proposed seeing him quirk his eyebrow up. He set the glass back down, coming to lean against the table. – “Of course my star.” – he replied. You shifted nervously on the bed, rubbing your palms together.

Anakin noticed how nervous you were, going over to you. He came sitting with you, taking your hands in his. – “What is it?” – he asked. You took a deep breath before speaking. – “May I know… I want to ask… how… why… why did you join the dark side?” – your words made Anakin tear his gaze away. Almost angered that you dared to ask something like that. You seated yourself better, placing your hands on his shoulders as he had turned his back to you.

“I just want to understand.” – you said shy. You felt his muscles untense under your palms. He slowly turned back to you, making you drop your hands on him. You listened as he explained what drove him to the dark side. Hearing him explain it, gave you a different view of him. Reasons you didn’t think would lead him up to this point. He kept explaining as you started to sympathize with him.

“Anakin I never knew…” – you started taking his hand. – “I finally understand it a bit, not fully, for I cannot. Yet I understand what that feeling is like. Feeling as if you are losing control over everything. Swirling into the despair and doubts. It would make you do everything.” – you continued. Anakin smiled at you, resting his palm against your cheek. Kissing you tenderly for your understanding. For all he ever wanted was to protect you. How didn’t matter, as long as you were his.

------------------------------------------

Read more of my fics on my Masterlists!  

[snapdragonling]

irregular orbit

ozy/kallux, star wars AU, 1.9k an older take on their star wars AU dynamic. different verse from compromised

It’s an unspoken rhythm they’ve fallen into, in the precarious months since Ozy came to him, shattered, and knelt at his feet.

Kallux will be on his own — surviving at the mercy of the Outer Rim as always, eking out a living on some barren planet or shadowed moon — and feel the Force shiver with recognition, rippling at the brush of a familiar presence. 

It’s a different feeling these days. Not the simmering anger of a Sith who’d hunted him from one edge of the galaxy to another, but neither the warmth of the Jedi he’d once loved. Shallow, almost; like the Force was a faint heartbeat. Like it had been smothered, deliberately or otherwise.

Still, Kallux always knows where to look when Ozy appears in his shadow.

He never stays for long. Two days at most. A brief enough window that they rarely have to talk about anything beyond the immediate, and just enough for Kallux to benefit from the fleeting security of someone else watching his back.

Then he vanishes as quickly as he arrived, often without warning, and Kallux goes back to surviving alone, trying to focus on the present and not on the past — or, Force forbid, the future — until the next time Ozy appears, a few weeks or months down the line. 

An irregular orbit, but an orbit nonetheless. Kallux does his best not to overthink it.

—

He can’t in good conscience blame Ozy for his own complacency. It’s the exhaustion that does it, after a particular run of bad lack and bad ports. He and his ship are both running on fumes by the time he settles in a grimy trading post on a small mining planet.

The Force can only do so much when his body is so slow to respond. The bounty hunters get the drop on him while he’s walking back from the market.

The number of them is flattering. Through blurry vision (concussion) and roiling nausea (Force-suppression cuffs) he counts eight, all dressed in mismatched armour so as not to appear like a crew. The woman Kallux assumes is their leader, a broad-shouldered Togruta with one robotic eye, keeps her boot on Kallux’s back while she mutters orders to the rest of them.

Kallux only catches every other word past the roaring in his ears and the agony of his broken ribs. It’s enough to know he’s in deep shit.

He drifts in and out of consciousness. He’s lying in the bloodied dirt; he’s being hauled down a narrow alley; he’s propped against the sloping wall of a warehouse as the bounty hunters ready their ship.

He forces his voice to cooperate. “The money’s- not worth it,” he rasps.

“Agree to disagree,” says the Togruta, her blaster level with his face. His sabers hang at her belt like trophies. “The bounty on your head is gonna bankroll us all the way to the Mid Rim, my friend.”

“The Empire will kill you- first time you fuck up.”

“One day at a time,” she says. “Besides, we’re careful. Kept an eye on you for weeks, you know. Had to make sure your dog was off-world. I’ve got no interest in facing two of you.”

It takes Kallux’s sluggish brain a moment to catch up. When it does—

Your dog. Something clenches in his gut: anger, or fear, or some warped sense of possessiveness. It sharpens his nausea to a crippling peak. Kallux focuses on not throwing up.

“Get him on the ship,” the Togruta barks.

Sudden hands on him, dragging him to his feet. He’s in no state to resist; can only dig his heels in on principle alone — and get punched in the ribs again for his trouble. The ship’s ramp fades in and out of clarity as they haul him into the loading bay.

Kallux doesn’t see what happens next. There’s a wet, wrenching sound, a gurgled scream, and then several shouts of alarm. The bounty hunters drop him. He hits the ground hard.

The warehouse is very dark. Face pressed to the cold metal floor, struggling to focus his watering eyes, most of what Kallux can see is silhouetted by the flickering yellow lights of the alley outside. It’s enough.

A shadow is tearing through the bounty hunters like they’re made of flimsi. Two of them are already on the ground, limbs twisted at odd angles, dark stains spreading out beneath them. The Togruta captain falls with a hole in her chest. Not from a blaster, or even a saber — Kallux hadn’t seen the red blade since their fight in the rain — but from an outstretched hand, now dripping with gore.

Perhaps the Force-suppression cuffs were a mercy. All he could sense was a void where Ozy should have been.

Kallux says his name. It comes out as little more than a croak, choked by his own horror and the sounds of combat. Still — the shadow turns towards him briefly. One yellow eye catches the light.

A half dozen blaster bolts shudder to a halt inches from Ozy’s face. He flicks them aside and advances, leaving Kallux’s narrow field of vision. More screams follow.

The next minute is a blur. Kallux can’t keep himself conscious, losing hazy seconds to his pounding head, and sees only flashes of violence. Another mercy, maybe. The last thing he’s aware of is heavy footsteps and the smell of blood; gentle hands on his face and shoulders, travelling down to his bound wrists; a void in the Force murmuring his name like a prayer. Then nothing but darkness.

—

He wakes to the comforting familiarity of his own bunk, the welded metal ceiling drifting into focus as he blinks his way to consciousness.

The first thing he notices are the bacta patches. The low-grade variety; pressed to his forehead and over his ribs, itching in that particular way low-grade bacta did. Beneath the tingling he can still feel the ache of his injuries, but his head no longer throbbed like it might split open, and he could breathe without fire running up and down his chest.

The second thing he notices is Ozy. Not in the room — the thread that bound them ran out into the hallway and ended at the cockpit, where Ozy’s muted Force presence coloured his periphery like a bruise.

Kallux takes a shaky breath and begins the careful process of hauling himself out of bed. Beside the bunk, a new shirt and his sabers had been laid out in readiness— or offering. He ignores them.

He can tell they’re in hyperspace before he even steps into the hall. It’s the particular hum of the engine, the impossible — perhaps imagined — whisper of distance compressing around the ship. The entire cockpit is bathed in blue and white, the windshield a blur of distorted stars.

At the helm, Ozy turns to look at him impassively. In the Force, Kallux feels the slightest flicker of relief.

“What the fuck was that?” he asks.

No response. Ozy turns back to the controls, adjusts the autopilot, checks something so arbitrary that Kallux knows he’s stalling. “How are you feeling?”

“Don’t,” he says stiffly. “Why would you do that?”

Ozy’s posture betrays nothing, but the Force bond tenses. “They were going to take you.”

“You didn’t have t— you could’ve stopped them.”

“I did.”

“You slaughtered them!” The memory of the bounty hunters’ contorted bodies resurfaces, along with a wave of nausea so strong he reaches out to grip the doorframe, eyes squeezed shut. He hadn’t needed a connection to the Force to recognise the darkness radiating off Ozy in waves.

He takes a steadying breath in through his nose and lifts his head.

Ozy was out of his seat, one foot forward like he’d intended to move to Kallux’s side and stopped himself. His face was tight with the same hesitation that had characterised the last few months of interaction — as if, having failed his Master, he now rarely knew what to do with himself; rarely knew what was expected of him.

“I wasn’t sure,” Ozy says tersely, “if I’d get there in time.”

Five different emotions clamour for space at the front of Kallux’s mind. Memories, too: careful hands ghosting his face, his arms. The distant sensation of being carried, of knowing instinctively that he was safe. A voice speaking to him softly as if he were awake.

In isolation those memories might have been a comfort. In the present, Kallux feels sick. He drags himself back towards anger, fists clenched by his sides. “You don’t get to be both,” he snaps. “You don’t get to be— I don’t want your protection if it looks like that. I can’t accept it.”

The cockpit isn’t large. He’s close enough to see Ozy’s lips thin ever so slightly. “Hate me if you’d like,” he says. “I’d do it again.”

And there was the crux of it, laid bare before them both.

Kallux exhales raggedly, stalks forward, and drags Ozy into a kiss.

They’d barely touched for months. Maybe because things somehow seemed more complicated now than they had when Ozy was hunting him. Maybe because sex with the Grand Inquisitor had always gone hand in hand with violence. Maybe because this unmade version of Ozy was trying to atone, and Kallux was trying to let him, and closeness felt too much like a reward.

There’d been nights when the two of them were alone on the ship that Kallux had wanted him, and Ozy had been watching him, and nothing had happened. It had been for the best.

Kallux doesn’t particularly care about what’s best right now. He cares about the way Ozy stiffens in confusion — a solid second of paralysis — before swallowing a groan and kissing him back. He cares about rough hands on his bare skin, gentle over his ribs and brazen everywhere else. He cares about how easy this feels, still, after everything.

Ozy pulls back with a start. “Kallux,” he says, low and wary; better judgement making a last ditch attempt.

His pupils are blown wide, black ringed in yellow. Kallux can feel the Force bond singing with desire. “I know what I’m doing,” he breathes. “Do you want this or not?”

He gets his answer in the abrupt press of cold metal as Ozy walks him backwards into the wall, one hand braced above his head, the other sliding down his bare side to grip his thigh. Kallux gives him his weight, lets Ozy hike him halfway up the wall with a muffled, urgent sound, gets his arms around Ozy’s neck and his hands in his hair.

It’s so easy to get drunk on it: the Force an echo chamber of want, Ozy’s mouth hot and desperate, his hands roaming everywhere. Kallux tugs on his hair and Ozy’s hips stutter between his thighs. He pants Kallux’s name against the pulse at his throat.

“I’d do it again,” he rasps. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

There is a long list of things Kallux can’t forgive Ozy for. There is a long list of reasons why he still doesn’t hate him. He wishes he could— wishes he wanted to. He wishes it were as uncomplicated as that.

But this was the shell of the man he’d dragged back from the brink. This was what the Force had delivered him; what he’d refused to let go of, for better or worse.

“Later,” says Kallux. “Bed.”

Ozy does as he’s told.

[kaminocasey]

Omega Squad Headcanons

A/N: I'm still not convinced I'm great at HCs lol. But here are my inner thoughts for the Omega boys. I miss them always. And love them with my entire heart and soul!

Warnings: 18+ Always. Minors DNI; Some Fluff, some smut. A little mixture.

Niner bought a ring right after your first date. He was in love and prepared to settle down right then and there. 

Atin and Fi gave him so much shit for months. 

When Niner proposed, you obviously said yes. But you also knew because Fi is TERRIBLE at keeping secrets. 

Niner is a “my wife” kind of guy. Talks about you ALL the time. Never shuts up about you. 

(@rebelsriley says: Knows nothing about sex. Doesn’t care. Eager to learn.) 

You take the lead a lot. The first time he saw you fully naked, he nearly cried because he thought you were a literal angel.

Fi, though… He didn’t think he’d ever get to settle down. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to settle down until he met you. 

Your ability to crack jokes and keep up with his humor nearly brought him to his knees.

Darman still teases Fi that you’re funnier. 

The first time you ever made him laugh, all three of his brothers kept giving him knowing smirks but he tried his best to ignore them. 

One night, the two of you were sitting on the edge of a building, overlooking Coruscant, one of Fi’s favorite views, only second to you, you were teasing each other and the way you looked at him, gave him courage to finally kiss you. 

“Atin and Darman have a running bet that you wouldn’t ever get the courage to do that.” You look up at him, amused.

“I hope you bet on my side.” He acts scandalized. 

You chuckle and hop up. “I always bet on the winning side.” 

He smirks to himself for a minute and then glances after you. “That means you bet on me, right?” 

You bite your lip with a chuckle as Fi gets up to follow you.

“...Right?” He asks again and you burst into a fit of giggles.  

You and Atin argue a lot. Not in a toxic way. But in a both stubborn kind of way. Atin does mean stubborn in Mando’a, afterall. 

The first time you fuck, it’s in a back alley because he dragged you back there to argue away from the group. 

But you ended up kissing him and he pushed you up against the wall and then deepened the kiss and made you get yourself worked up, grinding on his thigh. 

When he kissed you back, you laughed and said “I knew it.” to which he responded “Shut up. No you did not.” And then fucked you. 

Darman was intimidated by you when he first met you. 

You argued with Atin on his behalf one time and he saw stars in his eyes.

While he can definitely hold his own, he was touched that you came to his defense.

When you finally told him how you felt, he felt like his brain was short circuiting.

“Are… are you sure?” He tilts his head.

“Yes, I’m sure.” You smile at him and his entire body goes warm and fuzzy. “Do… you like me?” 

“I do. Very much.”

TAGS: @twistedstitcher27 @misogirl828 @rebel-finn @rexandechosandwich @madameminor @dumfanting @rain-on-kamino @corona-one @tecker @ladykatakuri @brynhildrmimi @the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond @zoeykallus @maulslittlemeowmeow @littlemousedroid @arctrooper69 @rexxdjarin @padawancat97 @hated-by-me @sleepingsun501 @idledreams @redheadgirl @themcuwriter @ashotofspotchka @sunshinesdaydream @crosshairsimp73 @ariadnes-red-thread @rosmariner @heyitsaloy @starstofillmydream @high-ct5555 @echos-girlfriend @sleepywych @nekotaetae @justanothersadperson93 @aconstructofamind @book-of-baba-fett @chopper-base @palliateclaw @501st-rexster @dead-poolz @nahoney22 @where-is-my-mind-tho @jediknightjana @erishimoon @witching3 @queen-of-many-fandoms @wizardofrozz  @burningfieldof-clover

[burnwater13]

Concept art by Nick Gindraux

Grogu wondered where he could find information on Sith colds and flus. He really didn’t think it was normal for Jedi or anyone else to just randomly hear the Emperor talking to them. Plus, the last time Grogu had checked, the Emperor was gone. Done. Finished. Never to be heard from again. Never. To. Be. Heard. From. Again.

So why was he talking to Grogu? Clearly the Mandalorian hadn’t heard him say ‘do it’. His dad had just kept humming and working on the stuff he’d been working on. Grogu didn’t even want to mention to him that anything strange had happened. He knew his dad. He’d get worried, then anxious, and then he’d be dragging them both around the galaxy looking for people who could verify that the Emperor was really gone and that Grogu had nothing to worry about. 

If the Mandalorian did that, there was no way that he and Grogu would be back to their cabin on Nevarro in time for the  Clan Mudhorn Festival. Nope. They’d probably find themselves on Coruscant or Mustafar or even Dathomir. Grogu didn’t even want to go to Naboo or Tatooine to figure this problem out. 

Maybe he could just use his datapad and run some searches and get answers to his questions that way. He didn’t think his dad would mind if he just sat still for a few minutes and looked up some information. He could always tell Din Djarin that he was trying to find his old mentor or come up with ideas for some more of the flats he’d been building. 

He went to his room to fetch the small device and was instantly annoyed. It was in his room. That was good. But he hadn’t put it on its charger. Dank Farrik. He had been so caught up in all the plans, getting R5 to fetch the materials and then working on the decorations and all that, he’d simply forgotten to put it on the charger when he went to sleep the prior or night or even after breakfast when he knew that he’d be doing the work and not just planning it. 

He collected it and brought it over to his dad to see if he could do anything. 

“Sorry, Buddy. This style of datapad doesn’t have removable battery packs. I’ll just have to put it on the charger. It looks like it’s down to a zero power level. Have you charged it at all in the last week?”

Grogu thought about that. Then he sighed. He probably hand’t. He was so caught up with the Festival that maybe he hadn’t charged it since the night before. But he was sure he had charged it then. If that was the case, maybe the battery was just going bad?

Grogu explained to his dad that he had thought it had been charged recently, but in any case what could he do until it was charged enough to use?

“You can use my comp. I’ll get it from the N-1. Just don’t put a bunch of games on it like the last time I let you use it, okay?” 

His dad sounded serious but not annoyed. The last time he let Grogu use it, it just so happened that they were visiting Peli Motto and she and Grogu joined virtual sabacc tournament. Grogu had won a fair number of credits and would have won more if the comp hadn’t started making all sorts of celebration noises and tipped Din Djarin off that some games were now cluttering up the system that he used to manage the N-1’s part list and his blog on armor polishing, tips and techniques. 

Grogu nodded his head. He just wanted to see what caused Sithy colds and flus and then maybe find out how to cure them and perhaps, if he had time, figure out how to reach Din’s old mentor. Those were all good and worthy purposes right?

It wasn’t very hard to find information on general colds and flus. The problem was there were so many that Grogu gave up reviewing the list. It was just too long. Then he found a symptom advisor which would help diagnose which one he had when he entered his symptoms. The list didn’t get shorter until he added the phrase ‘cackles like a Sith with red eyes’ and then there was just one link. Grogu followed the link but all he got was a message that said ‘You’ve fallen to the dark side and have a case of the Siths. Help is on the way. In the meantime, think happy thoughts, tell people you love them, stay away from Sith artifacts, and do not use the Force.’ 

That seemed helpful, but was it? Really?  Grogu couldn’t tell.

He just moved on from that task to seeing if he could find the contact information for his dad’s mentor. That was a bit trickier. Din Djarin was very good at keep track of all sorts of information. Bounty hunters had to be good at that. But Grogu didn’t really understand how his dad organized that information. He couldn't just do a simple search and complex search parameters didn’t help either. 

Then it occurred to Grogu that he could use the Force to help him, despite what the Sith link had directed. He wasn’t a Sith and he was feeling better now, anyway. He began to meditate and asked the Force to show him which of the thousand spreadsheets his dad kept had that kind of life changing data in it. 

Surprisingly, when Grogu opened his eyes, a spreadsheet was open and line 14,300 was highlighted. Yippee! He’d found it! Grogu read through the data presented and then sighed. He’d found something life changing all right. Line 14,300 recorded the amount of beskar the Mandalorian had been paid for turning Grogu over to the Client. Uff. Just like his dad to keep track of that. It also showed the date, the conditions of collection and note that read ‘Such a large bounty for such a small package’. Huh. 

Grogu had certainly changed the Mandalorian’s life and he was a small package. He’d heard that about 14,300 times. And… he was worth every credit. Ha. Those fools! Thinking that a being as strong as he was in the Force could be subdued by any but the best bounty hunter in the Outer Rim! He’d show them that he was worth every plate of beskar! Now he just needed to find that mentor’s name so he could be brought to Nevarro in time for the Festival! Yes… that’s just what would happen…

“Grogu, buddy, what are you cackling about? I think you need to get some sleep pal, your eyes are red again.”

Dank Farrik!

[ebitenpura]

THE FINAL CHAPTER: a rather chaotic compilation of some truly throne-ending stuff, KOTET (Battle of Odessen to Eternal Throne)

Theron: Using yourself as bait is a dangerous game. You're gonna need some help.

Aww Theron... that's nice, but Eight would be so adamant about fighting Vaylin alone since he feels it's his duty to protect them. Plus being bait means you're supposed to be the only target. Self-sacrificial lone warrior whose only ever relied on himself psych eval yadda yadda. Not that Theron or Lana would listen either, which results in an ugh fine from our favorite operative.

I guess he got so stubborn he wouldn't even let Theron on the back of his speeder (which was a glitch where Theron could only run behind him like a pet) in an attempt to leave him behind for his own safety, lol.

To make this whole outlandish scenario worse, Theron not only could not stealth the entire chapter ("Theron, you're ruining my speedrun." 'Theron!' "Well I'm sorry I don't have stealth generators like you two!") he also lost his blasters and started fistfighting Vaylin. Yes, he also fistfought the prior mobs. I was very confused as to why the enemies weren't going down fast enough with 2 comps until I looked over to see him punching skytroopers with all the damage of a wet bagel.

This is why he tried to leave you behind, Theron.

One defeated Vaylin and a storming of Zakuul Palace later, and Theron still was having the same problem of aggro-ing all the mobs due to having no stealth and only his fists, so I tried to stealth out of combat and call him over to see if he could evade them........instead, he died while Eight and Lana buried their faces in their hands.

Which was fine since it let Eight and Lana stealth for the rest of it without him, but his dead body kept showing up after them and it gave me a mental image of the two of them dragging his unconscious body behind them by the legs after he accidentally got caught in an explosion.

Not his best moment.

Valkorion: The Sith who fled her empire. And the charming spy, sired by Republic heroes. Do they truly serve you? Or do they plot your downfall, to claim the throne for their respective factions?

Eight: I'm done listening to you, old man.

"Idiot. It's the other way around," as Eight would say. He's fully aware Valkorion is making a desperate ploy right now to turn him against them, but he has thought about their loyalties ever since the start. It doesn't matter to him: he's bounced between both sides and has no right to judge. Even if they held no thought for him in the end, with him as the means for their own goals.....he'd still have fought for their sake.

Also, I lost count of how many times Eight called Valkorion a decrepit old geezer and told him to shut up these chapters.

Me, shocked: How is he tanking that lightning without a flinch?!

Then again, he did do the exact same thing during the Arcann fight, so maybe it's a combination of his sheer endurance/pain threshold as well as getting used to it. Either way, what a way to stunt on Valkorion. I'd be reeling if I threw lightning at an agent and they stood up. Extremely badass glitch.

Eight: My head's not a halfway house for immortal Sith, but I guess you found that out the hard way.

The only house it is for is Jadus, and you're no Jadus! Get lost!

Arcann: The Outlander didn't kill us. You did.

Oddly enough, I found I liked this ending more than the LS spare everyone version, most likely because it felt more cathartic for Vaylin and Arcann to face Valkorion with their full rage. Eight and Vaylin for some reason....saw eye-to-eye in their brief and vitriolic interactions, which sounds insane to say but can be attributed to how they understand primal emotion more than anything else.

It also felt more rewarding to fight the whole family with little to no help-- as an Echani warrior and one who fights alone, Eight would have it no other way; anything less than their full power would besmirch the honor of their duel and if he cannot have honor anywhere else, he'll make damn sure to have it on the battlefield. No help. No mitigation. Just his own strength, and theirs.

Lana: Theron!

Theron: Go. Save yourself. I'll cover you.

Lana: We fight together, we die together.

Theron: Now that's more like it.

The besties....;_; And poor Theron's sad face getting injured, he looks like a kicked puppy?? Why is he sad? Did it hurt that much? I really love them looking out for one another-- I rarely ever got this moment because it was always Arcann and Senya, so seeing them literally go ride or die was insane. They're lucky Eight can't hear or see them; he'd have thrashed that whole room to bits. What kind of agent would he be if his keepers had to die for him?

EAT THIS RIGHT HOOK VALKORIONNN

Eight followed Theron's example and decided Valkorion's crusty ass was overdue for a massive whoopin', and there's nothing he wanted more than to beat him to death with his bare hands. No powers. No poison. No blasters. Just the feeling of having your skull bashed in with mortal fists. As a martial artist, it was his duty to bring that Sith Lord who'd relied too long on power borrowed from others crashing back down into the cold, hard earth... starting with his body.

Can you imagine the absolute bewilderment he had to feel seeing this goddamn agent crack his knuckles and decide to go mano-e-mano to his godly self? It's the ultimate humiliation.

He beat him. He had to. For Jadus. For himself. Valkorion stood no chance at conquering his mind, to be honest-- for that to work, he himself would have to have a mind like people and on the inside....he is not that.

I'll write out exactly how I imagined it soon, but there's something about Valkorion stepping in and expecting a man, and finding instead what can only be called a wolf in his place.

I also headcanon he only used Eight as a stepping stool to get to Jadus, who shares the other side of the force bond and is his real goal to possess; but where he expected an easy fight he got a mind he couldn't break because it in no way resembled that of any other sentient he'd met. Eight's other personal stake in this is that Valkorion is blocking both sides of his and Jadus' force bond, and for this arrogant Sith to take away what had given him meaning in his life would instill a rage like he'd never known.

Eight: No more nightmares. No more interruptions from a crusty old ghost. I can get used to this.

It's finally fucking over. This was an ultimately tragic part of his life despite the good it meant for others around him and the galaxy; but it had left him isolated and more soaked in blood than the entire agent chapter. It was his duty. It was his burden. It was his wound to bear.

He's laid the dead to rest, and now he will leave. Whatever that means for him.

[saintheartwing]

May the Force Be With You, Ch.16: So You Wanna Be A Sith?

“If you want to play the part of Sith, you’re going to have to start acting like one.”

Zack sat across from his partner as Omarosa nonchalantly twirled her saber around, pacing back and forth in front of the fire they sat at. “…I’m pretty sure I’ve got an idea of how to be all imposing and scary and all that-”

“No, no, no, it’s one thing to just send a scary video to people. Anybody with a stupid camera could do that. We need to work on changing your attitude. You have to learn to confront the darkness by really understanding what it is. Mara gave you that whole spiel on how the Dark Side’s all seductive and dangerous and blabbity blabbity blah. The Dark Side’s like a chainsaw, it’s a tool. If you use it right, like a normal chainsaw, it can cut down a tree. If you use it wrong, like in “Chainsaw Slut Massacre IV”, then you’ll be sawing through sexy co-eds on a college campus.”

“…Chainsaw Slut Massacre?”

“Yes.”

“There’s fucking FOUR of them?!?” 

“People reeeeaaally like seeing sexy coeds being splattered in blood from giant chainsaws. There’s actually this really amazing scene in the film where the villain gets taken out by this THERMAL DETONATOR that the heroine sticks in the big lug’s mouth, the practical effects are astounding!” Omarosa bragged. 

“Wait, wait, I read about that, didn’t they have to go to court to prove to the New Republic court that they didn’t actually kill off the cast because the blood splatter looked so real?” Zack realized as he snapped his fingers. “Yeah, yeah, I read about that in the news! Everyone kept talking about the director being super sleazy and suspicious!”

“He weaseled out of any jail time because evidently he used clones for the performances he REALLY wanted to make good.” Omarosa admitted with a nod. “The law still hasn’t caught up to science on that level, they couldn’t really make a ruling because there’s no laws on the books about clones ever since the Old Republic texts got swept away and all those cloning factories went bye-bye. People just assumed nobody would ever have to put up with clones again until the director dragged it into the public eye. Nobody’s seen clones for decades, so nobody wanted to deal with it. Certainly not in the courts.”

“Yeah, that’s a big can of worms…the director got off easy.”

“Course, now he can’t make any more of those films now that everyone knows how he did those amazing practical effects…” Omarosa sighed. “He went missing, too. The rumor is that his own clone did him in! That’s what everyone’s thinking. But him being so sleazy and devilishly ingenious is one of those things you could  learn from! What he did was underhanded and down right dirty and it DEFINITELY bent the law so hard it almost snapped in two. But that’s the sort of stuff you’ve got to learn to do if you want to be a good Sith!” Omarosa proclaimed. 

“So I need to be…petty and lowdown and resort to scummy tricks.  I mean, I did throw that sand in Darth Sed’yshun’s face…” Zack confessed.

“Yeah, you’re off to a good start! Next time…use glass. Grind up glass, keep it in your belt. Some powdered glass will work wonders. Your enemies won’t be nearly as strong when they’re BLIND.” Omarosa insisted as she showed off a small bag herself, jiggling it around. “But what we really need to work on above all else is that you need to be more than just using cheap, nasty tricks. It’s a MINDSET that has to carry over.” Omarosa put the bag away, got out a big, fat stick, and drew up a line as the two stood at the edges of the jungle at what had been the Jedi Temple only a short few weeks ago. 

“Now…here, we get into the middle of this big ring.”  She drew a line through the center, then stood on one end as Zack stood on the other. “Now. I’m your adversary. I am evil. EEEEEVIIIIL. Got it?” Omarosa inquired as she spun the big stick around. “See this line in the dirt? Now, you must dare…to cross that line! To challenge me!”

“…okay, sure.” Zack immediately moved to cross the line, and THA-THWAK! She bonked him over the head. “Ow! What the heck?! You told me not to cross the line! What’s that for?”

“Cuz I’m evil. Can’t help it.” Omarosa remarked. “Get it? If you’re evil, you need to care less about basic civility. Like…totally.” She added with a big, toothy grin. “I want you to have an attitude of low-grade…well, pissyness. Towards the whole world.  Like, I want you thinking “Geez, I can’t stand everything around me right now”. Think like that.”

“…that sounds really exhausting.” Zack admitted. “Like, having to have that attitude all the time, where you’re constantly in a bad mood sounds like it would wear you down and make you really bitter and meanspirited.”

“Yes…but it’s empowering, too. Because if you’re at your lowest point…there’s NOWHERE TO GO BUT UP.” Omarosa added. “And it feels good when you bring other people to that level. Now let’s move on to the next issue. Trust.”

“Oh, are we gonna do, like, trust fall exercises?” Zack asked. “We did a bunch of those in Jedi training.”

“Sure. Turn around, and I’ll catch you with nothing but my Force powers.” Omarosa said as Zack turned around, held out his arms, then fell back and-THWUMPH.

Hit the ground as Omarosa stood over him, then whacked him in the middle of the forehead with the butt of the stick. “See, the message there is trust nobody.” 

“Yeah. I GOT THAT. I’m beginning to see why this “Sith” thing is so alluring…” He grumbled. “Because now I’m beginning to feel like I wanna zap you with some force lightning!” 

“THAT’S the ticket!” Omarosa laughed. “Now, let’s get into the most basic training of all…instinct. You need a killer instinct. It’s not enough to just block my blows like a Jedi would. You’re gonna need to learn to go on the offensive without use of your eyes for this next-”

This time, it was OMAROSA who ended up learning a lesson. The lesson being “Zack had gotten amazingly good at fighting blind after months on end of practice and using it in the field”. After being given his own stick to fight with and putting a blindfold over his eyes, Omarosa thought she’d be able to whack him over the head AGAIN…only for him to twirl around and do a sweep, knocking her off her feet before SHUDDA-KA-THWAM! A powerful blow slammed her down into the ground. 

It didn’t take long before he was practically raining blows on her every time she tried to strike at him. She would sweep at him from the left, he’d duck and jab her in the ribs, then another sweeping strike would knock her back. She tried to go for HIS legs, and he’d jump up, kick her in the chin, knocking her on the ground so he could just HAMMER her into the dirt below. Try as Omarosa might, she just couldn’t land a single blow on him once the ��instinct” lesson began, and in the end, she was covered in bruises and welts and had a bloody nose as she groaned, rubbing her swollen cheek, talking like she had a gigantic wad of towels forcibly stuffed in her mouth.

“Id uhks ike u dun need no tuhnin reguhhding dat kinda sduff. I dink u god a gud idyuh of huh tuh fuhd, u god a eel kuhuh indink.” (It looks like you don’t need no training regarding THAT kind of stuff. I think you’ve got a good idea of how to fight, you got a real killer instinct!)

“Thanks.” Zack cheerily intoned as he took the blindfold off. “…now how about I patch you up?”

“STUHPH SMYLIN!” (Stop smiling!!!)

“Nope. You were right, bringing other people down to your level really DOES feel surprisingly good!” He confessed with a big grin. “I can’t stop smiling!”

“Muddafudda Imma godda stik dis stik up yur ass-”

Needless to say, Zack had taken these lessons to heart. He was determined to prove he was a real Sith…and he was going to make sure that the Dyad and their forces knew it. And he knew just how to get started…

THE NEXT WEEK…

“NO! No, please, no! AAHHH! Anything but this!”

“I’ll let you off once you start talking. It really is just that simple.”

Zack had evidently decided to start things off with a bang. He’d been stalking the captain of the guards at the Dyad’s tower, finding out where they went home at the end of the day, who they hung around with, a different captain every single day. There were three of them, meaning he had at least two days to devote to stalking them, staying hidden among the common folk of Nar Shadaa, wearing inconspicuous clothing, basic shirt, a large hat to hide most of his hair, a slump in his walk, and a seemingly empty eye socket to indicate how much of a degraded, low-down-on-his-luck rando he really was. A common, begging bum on the street who was just trudging along miserably, ignored, either willfully or otherwise, by the common man. 

People didn’t really ever pay much attention to the beggars and the poor on the streets. They would shell out big bucks to see a dead Mandalorian on display at a museum. But they wouldn’t give a single credit to a bling beggar down the block. This meant that Zack could go unnoticed as a beleaguered, half-blind bum.

And this meant he’d been able to follow each captain of the guard to their homes. He’d waited until the time was ripe, and then snatched the first one up when they slept. It was tricky! After all, he had to get them out the nearby window. The first one though, slept with their window open because summer had arrived and it was miserably hot in Nar Shaddaa and SOMEHOW the air conditioning in the entire apartment complex had been knocked out and would take a few hours to fix…

Gee, whoever could have done that?

“Please! Pleeeaaase don’t!”

“Okay, then tell me when the next shipment of weapons arrives for the Dyad, Captain Neehra.” He informed the woman nonchalantly as he stood by the gigantic buzzsaw. He’d hooked the light-brown-skinned woman up to a contraption that was slowly feeding her towards this buzzsaw, miles away from Nar Shadaa in a formerly-abandoned mill, and he was humming nonchalantly, one hand on the machine that fed her ever-closer to the saw, the other holding up an apple he casually munched on. 

“I don’t know! I don’t know, Darth Mendax!”

“Well, then, I guess we’re going to find out which is your better side…” Zack trailed off. 

“Two days! It’s coming in two days! Midday!” The terrified captain of the guard squealed out. “That’s all I know!” 

“See? Was that really so difficult?” Zack commented cheerily. “…now I just need to figure out how to STOP this thing…”  He added as he turned back to the console, feeling over it.

“WHAT?!” Captain Neehra shrieked.

“I only just figured out how to turn it on. I didn’t get to the part about turning it off. Now, where’s that power cord…?” Zack commented as the BZZZZZZZZZZ of the saw got louder and louder, Neehra shrieking up a storm and at such a high pitch that only dogs would soon be able to hear her before Zack promptly decided to SCHA-THWIIISH! Cut through the whole machine, turning it off JUST before the blade reached Neehra as she breathed a deep, long sigh of relief before Zack conked her over the head to knock her out.

“You know what the best part about this was?” He asked as he and Omarosa helped load the captain of the first guard into their vehicle to bring her back to Nar Shadaa. He smirked, holding up the “buzzsaw”, and waving it about. “Papier-mâché. Totally recyclable.” 

“Oh my lord, I think she actually peed her pants a bit!” Omarosa laughed as they stuffed the poor captain into the backseat. “What a sissy!”

The next captain of the guard was a lot tricker to get hold of until you figured out how much he loved to hang out at the same bar.  He was currently in the back room with a few of his lackeys, who he was forcing to play cards with.

…no. No, it wasn’t Poker.

“Ha HA.  Go Fish!”

“Yeah, boss. Go Fish. You sure are the best at this…” One of the guards groaned as the smug-looking Nemodian took hold of their winnings they’d been forced to bet and “made it rain” as he tossed them up into the air, spinning around on his rotating chair. 

“Hahahahaha! Ohhh, I never get tired of doing this!”

And then the lights immediately went out. All of them blinked in surprise before rising up, pulling out their weapons, quickly bunching up to try and look for whomever had turned the lights on…before a faint hum filled the air, and they glanced up,  seeing the light of a red lightsaber illuminating a foully-grinning Darth Mendax.

“Hello.” Zack said before he jumped down on all of them! They screamed and yelled hollered but were quickly shut up, Zack beating the stuffing out of all of them whilst Darth Omarosa kept the bouncer right outside the door very busy.

“Wait, seriously, you actually think that HORRIBLE Barbie Girl song’s good? No. No way. I mean, I know the Dyad like to do silly songs sometimes-” Omarosa was insisted as she poured the bouncer another bit of fine wine from her flask.

“It’s called ironic enjoyment.” The bouncer insisted as the rather thick-armed, thick-haired Wookie scratched at himself, speaking in a surprisingly good Basic galactic dialect. “Don’t they teach you youngsters anything in schools?”  

“Hmmm…okay, okay, I guess I can see that. Does that include that Wave Your Hands Side to Side song they did?”

“Oh GOD, that’s just pure garbage.”

“I KNOW, right? But my friend, he just loves everything about it. I think he enjoys dumb party music way too much…”

Ten minutes later, the men that Zack had “collected” woke to find themselves currently blindfolded…but not for long. 

“This is a little thing called  “trust exercise” that I think is going to really help you all understand where I’m coming from. You can remove your blindfolds.” They heard him say, all of them shuddering, wondering why it was so chilly out when it was the middle of summer! Shakily, their hands reached up to their blindfolds…and then, as they took them off, they saw why.  

“Oh my stars and fucking garters.” The Nemodian captain of the guard said aloud. They’d been dragged to the top of the building. A good three stories up. They all turned around, fearfully gazing at the Sith as he nonchalantly tapped his foot.

“Now, we’re gonna play MY game. It’s called “Tell me the codes for that moon facility.” I want to know how to get in. And if you don’t tell me, we’re gonna play a game I like to call “Splatter Painting 101”. Now, granted, I’m blind, I can’t appreciate the post modern mastery of splatter art but I know plenty of people do like analyzing the patterns that your blood will no doubt form once I push you off the edge.”

“…y-you don’t scare us. It may be three stories but a fall like this still wouldn’t kill somebody like me!” Said the Gammorean guard who was there.

“…you’re right. You’ve got QUITE the bone structure. If I just pushed you off, it wouldn’t kill you. Now, If I did THIS…”

Zack clenched his fist tight, and bit his lip as he looked in the direction of that gammorean, and the unfortunate levitated right off his feet, and twirled upside down, hovering RIGHT off the edge of the building. 

“See, now, a fall like THIS would kill you. Don’t you think? And don’t bother looking at those nice, soft, thick bushes down below…even landing in those wouldn’t cushion your fall. Now, is the captain of the guard going to kindly tell me what I want, or do I have to start tossing all his card buddies off the building first before-”

“He’ll talk!...RIGHT, boss?!” The other assembled guards there gave the captain very furious, dark, “don’t you screw us over on this” looks as he sheepishly gulped and tugged at the collar of his longsleeve shirt he wore.

“…um…I…er…y-yes, of-of course.” He murmured. “Uh…the-the code is 19465.” The Nemodian squeaked out. “That will get you into the moon base. I don’t know any of the other codes. I promise you that. It’s designed to be that way. Nobody gets told more than they have to just in case we got captured by forces from the New Republic.”

“Oh, believe you me. You’ve given me everything I wanted. Now…see your death.” Zack nonchalantly flicked his wrist, and the Gammorean flew off the edge. “See your death!” 

FLICK!

“AAAAH!”

“See your death!”

FLICK!

“EEEEE!”

“See your death!”

FLICK!

“NOOOOO!”

“See your deeaaaath!”

FLICK!

“WAAAAAAAUGH!”

“As for you, Captain Sibista, don’t worry, we’re cool.” Zack said as he approached the captain of the guard, the Nemodian breathing a sigh of relief.

“Really?”

“Nah! See your death!” He flat out shoved the man right off the edge, and the guy fell down, down, down…

THWUD. Passing out the second he hit the ground.

Or so he thought. In actually, Omarosa had been hiding IN those thick bushes down below and she’d used HER force powers along with Zack to hover them right down…yes…into the other bushes. One after the other, each one landed, passing out either due to sheer fear or getting conked the head as they hit the bushes. It’d be enough to hurt them…but not enough to kill them. They would make sure of that. The guards would think a freak accident saved them. Quickly bolting off down the street, Omarosa waited in their arranged hiding spot as Zack made his way over to her about five minutes later, holding up a few things.

“I got their pass keys to their vehicles…and their wallets.” He added.

“Spoken like a true Sith!” She laughed. “We’ve got about two hours or so before they wake up. Let’s break into all their stuff and take what we can, then get it back to them. They’re gonna be so confused when they realize all the good s—t is missing from their rides!...along with half their money!”

“Oh, the Captain’s such a GENEROUS man. I’m thinking…all he’s got. Going right back to the others…” Zack reasoned nonchalantly with a small little Mona Lisa smile on his face. 

…

…

…

…the third captain of the guard, however…didn’t need the approach of a Sith. He needed somebody who would show compassion and kindness. 

Zack had found out the captain of the guard was asking about his father, who was, as it turned out, somebody who’d supposedly died on duty at the very moon base that he wanted to infiltrate. The cause of death had, supposedly, been a Mandalorian attack. There were all sorts of horrible rumors that the Dyad were happy to let their soldiers perpetuate ABOUT Mandalorians, but above all that those people were violent, ruthless, wretched warmongering psychopaths that absolutely loved killing. 

But the odd thing was…no body. Nothing sent back for the captain of the guard. It was strange, to be sure. The young captain had been a dedicated man, as had his father, who’d gotten him that position. But the kid had certainly earned it, he’d gotten three commendations in this year ALONE for valor and merit. Darth Raize had personally pinned a medal to him at a ceremony. Why not get the body to him? They’d said it had been a horrible accident, sure. Blown up by a mine planted by the Mandalorians, sure. But surely there’d be something left. 

The real thing that made Zack suspicious was that barely any footage from the moon base ever got sent back to Nar Shadaa. If the news ever did reports on the base, there was something faintly odd, something…fishy…about the footage. But Zack couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

Omarosa, however, could.

“Look.” 

She and Zack had been going over the footage as they played on loops, one floating vid screen at a time and she pointed right at a spot on one of the vehicles. “Look. LOOK, right there. That speeder!” She said, focusing on the hover speeder that slowly whizzed by past several other vehicles. “Look, that speeder has a very faint marking. Looks like a yellow stain on the side? You look close and you can see it.”

“…yeah, yeah, I see it.” Zack peered close. “I’ve seen that same speeder pass by the window at least four times now. They’re…they’re looping footage! They’ve said this stuff is live, but they’re looping footage, CLEARLY.” He said. “But…no, it isn’t just that. Look at where that speeder is. The window. There’s…something wrong with the window…” He gazed even more closely, peering. You could just barely, BARELY tell but there was, indeed, a faint little haze you could scarcely make out on the edges of the window. “…is that a…yeah, they’re…they’re looping footage IN this footage! This is all like on some movie set! They’ve got a green screen thing going on!” He realized. “That window isn’t actually showing the outside! There’s a clear fake background there if you just look super closely!”

“I’m surprised none of the news reporters noticed this…” Omarosa murmured. “…then again, maybe they did…and got ‘taken care of’ when they brought it up. Wouldn’t put it past the Dyad.”

“We need to get hold of what’s ACTUALLY going on up there. If it was just boring moon rocks falling around the place or if things were actually good, they wouldn’t need to lie this badly about what it looks like up there.” Zack reasoned. “They must be hiding something awful if they have to take these steps.” 

Luckily, those codes they’d gotten for the base did, in fact, get them in. And it got better. Over 70 percent of people reused passwords for personal accounts. They’d tested the passcode to the moonbase and, sure enough, that code of “19465” was used for more than just the front door to the base. It was the code to get into the security rooms, the locker rooms, even the bathrooms. Which helped a lot! All they had to do was sneak in after grabbing a couple guards out for a walk around the base, taking their uniforms and their identification after doing a quick bit of work to fiddle with their ID badges.

“I cannot believe they haven’t fixed this yet!” One of the guards was angrily kicking at a vending machine, his friend standing next to him as Zack and Omarosa walked down the hall, approaching them. “It’s been two days and we can’t get a droid repair team up to fix the vending machines?”

“They’re still trying to get all the blood stains from out of the trash compactor after that incident yesterday…” 

“Hey, we can help.” Zack offered as he approached the vending machine and then began to kick it, secretly manifesting his Force powers. The powerful pull of the Force worked, and PA-POP! A candy bar was freed, sliding down a tube for the guard to collect his treat in the dispenser. “How’s that?”

“Thanks! I’ve been really wanting a Choco-Blast Bar.” He said.

“How bad was the incident in the trash compactor?” Zack asked, trying to sound as confused as possible. “I mean, it couldn’t have been THAT bad, right? I know the guys like to exaggerate about-”

“No, it was that bad. You can ask Sal in the security office to show you. Say Thomasin sent you.” The avian-esque guard who had been chatting with the human guard said, looking very pale, blue eyes widening. “It was horrible. Some callous jerk pushed Mr. Wuhd’fall down the trash compactor! It was disgusting. Evidently they got into an argument over the Mandalorians.”  

“Oh, wow. You don’t say?” Omarosa inquired, waggling her eyebrows up and down. 

Needless TO say, when they got shown the footage…it was just as bad as they’d been told. Omarosa and Zack had brought hidden cameras to hide on their persons to record all they saw on the base, and they had not only seen there weren’t ANY Mandalorians kept prisoner, there hadn’t been a Mandalorian attack there in…well…as long as anybody could remember! And quite a few of the workers at the moon base were getting really tired of continuing to lie to the public of Nar Shadaa about what was actually going on up at the Moon Base. They were sick of the theater.

But only Mr. Wuhd’fall had been the one to openly complain about it, as they told his son, Junior, and showed him the footage they’d recorded. “See, this is him complaining to the head of the base’s outer perimeter defense. The guy got a little nasty, he was like that, a nasty sort…” Sal, the security office worker, told Zack and Omarosa on the footage. “And he shoves Sal right into the trash compactor and then just took off! Now, the problem is, he did it JUST as the compactor was turning on! We couldn’t stop it in time, I’d gone off to take a leak, by the time I saw the footage here, the thing was already squeezing-”

“PLEASE shut it off.” 

Zack and Junior had said the exact same thing at the exact same time. They didn’t need to see any more. It was horrible and foul enough. Omarosa shut the little recorder off and Zack gently turned to Junior, who was looking down at the beer on the table in front of him, the three of them sitting in a back room in that familiar bar, both Zack and Omarosa in their “bum” disguises. 

“…I’m so sorry.” Zack quietly said. “The truth can hurt. But lies are much worse.”

“…why would they lie about this? I don’t get it. I…I just don’t get it…” Junior murmured as he gripped the table, fingernails digging in.

“It would make them look bad if they admitted that some lout on their defense force did it. Better to blame it on the Mandalorians. They always blame everything on them up there.” Zack insisted. “The Dyad have been blaming them for years and years without ever taking responsibility for their own people’s failures and screw-ups…or their outright cruelty.” 

“We’re not saying WE’RE great either. But at least we’re gonna be honest with you about what we want. We want the Dyad taken down. Are you going to help us?” Omarosa asked.

Junior took hold of the Medal of Valor he’d been personally given by Darth Raize, torn it off and then tossed it with a THWUNK into the nearby recycling bin. The Dyad wouldn’t know until it was too late, but a REBEL…had been born. 

[kytra-and-tryder]

Dark Side Switch 15

“She just let you go?”

Tryder sat in the cramped living space, nursing the last bites of his dinner. His Rodian companion had been uncharacteristically quiet while he told the story of being kidnapped and then befriended by a Sith, although the Chiss felt the gaze become increasingly disbelieving.

“She let me go, yeah.” Tryder paused. “More like pushed me away, to be honest.” 

“So let me just get this straight, you escaped from the clutches of a Sith Lord by being too nice?” Hal-See was outright mocking him now, clearly waiting for the tales of a daring escape and lightsaber duels and the kinds of tales that had never been truthful recounting of facts. Tryder shot him a glare but didn’t reply.

“Look, Tryder, you’re safe. You’ve concluded that she’s no danger to the Jedi. You’ve got all the ‘data’ you could ever want.” The Rodian stared at his roommate, frustrated. “Can we get off this rock now? There’s nothing for either of us here.”

“She might try to come after me…”

“No she won’t, are you kidding? She’s too stubborn. From everything you’ve told me, if she said get out of here, she meant it.” 

Tryder turned away from the table, staring into the corner of the room, willing away the lump in his throat. “But I’ll miss her.” The thought flew into his mind unbidden and refused to go away, as the Chiss recalled the flow of combat together, the ease of conversation, the way she melted when she was relaxed. 

The Rodian continued, impatient. “Corellia always has space for skilled engineers, I fit that role, I could train you well enough. Or we could go to… fuck, I don’t know, anywhere but here, please. It’s not even like the Hutts are after us. Tryder. Tryder.” He snapped the Chiss’s name, finally having realized he was lost in his own thoughts. Red eyes dragged up to meet his. 

“What, Hal-See.”

“This planet isn’t good for you, Tryder.”

Tryder couldn’t sleep.

Admittedly, “sleep” wasn’t common for most Jedi; many of the Jedi Masters rested simply by meditating, and the behavior was emulated by everyone with enough self-discipline to pull it off. Tryder had never quite gotten rid of REM sleep, though he’d reduced his requirements for it by almost half by the time he – he left.

However, laying in bed in Hal-See’s shitty apartment, he wasn’t managing either sleep or meditation. Each time he tried to clear his mind, to allow the Force space to flood in and guide him, instead he only saw a Nautolan, her mischievous grin, her lithe yet ferocious power. Each time he tried to force her away, she only came back stronger, like even her memory was too stubborn to admit fault or flaw. She must be a hundred klicks from here; why couldn’t he forget her?

It occurred to him, in a shy part of his brain, that perhaps it was the Force, that Tryder hadn’t yet learned his lesson from the Sith Lord; in an even quieter voice it suggested that perhaps they were meant to be together. Tryder quashed that thought quickly, insistently. The Force had engineered a great many things over Galactic history, but it wasn’t known to meddle in such menial affairs as two individuals’ feelings. Too, he felt confident that he’d learned his lesson from… from the Sith; that people could not be forced to change, that good intentions could wreak havoc, that the Force was capable of many great things as well as many twisted and terrible ones. 

And yet her image kept coming back.

Instead of trying to clear his mind, Tryder decided a more workable course of action would be to focus on something in particular; with that in mind he reached out with the Force, trying to count how many beings resided in this apartment block. Hal-See was a familiar shape down the hall, and the strange void downstairs marked his astromech Nines. There was the couple next door, and a single mom further down the block; the mom’s house teeming with life. She must keep plants, the Chiss noted. He wondered if Kytra liked plants – and damn it, there she was again, dogging his every thought even though she’d tried to kill him. Frustrated, the Chiss rolled over, staring sullenly at the wall. 

When he finally fell asleep, he was hugging his pillow to his chest.

[palpatinefucker]

hi i hope you don't mind i just wrote a little something because this is just so beautiful. these gilf's have too much in common but also aren't sure when the other is going to betray/kill the other.

Dooku wasn’t sure if today was the day Palpatine was finally going to kill her.

Sheev was faced away from her when she was summoned to her office. The setting-sun dipping the garish, red-drenched Coruscanti office into an eerie glow like it was on fire. It was ominous, foreboding in the way Palpatine sat in the center seated in a dark chair in the bright room. As the sun began to lap at the walls threatening to be snuffed out completely, there was a sort of desperation in Dooku’s veins -- the light seemed so far away from here and running out.

If this was to be her end, then she would stand here with dignity. But Palpatine let her stand at the other side of room, let her thoughts run a little too long, and in the quiet Dooku began to doubt. Her thoughts wavering and straying for just a moment that perhaps Palpatine had other plans for her altogether.

And, of course, the bitch sensed that trail of doubt, chasing it like a dribble of wine running down her chin. One hand outstretched from the sentry sitting at the front of room, one curled and knotted finger beckoning Dooku closer. From all the way over there, it was like the red tip of her claw were sinking into the scruff of Dooku’s collar and dragging her forward.

The Sith lord’s heart leapt in her chest and her feet dragged against the plush carpet until she was seated by Palpatine’s side. She braced herself for what was to come and hoped that it would be a short death.

“Come have a seat and watch the sunset with me, my apprentice.” Dooku stood there dumbfounded and craned her neck to finally see Palpatine’s face. An eye glanced over to her, glinting with a kind mirth that was so uncommon these days.

“Why are you so tense?” She questioned, and Dooku did not have time to list all the reasons she wasn’t about to get comfortable, let alone reveal how she was truly feeling. Palpatine frowned, leaning deeper into her chair, a pose that seemed more suitable and familiar.

“Relax.” She declared without suggestion.

Finally tired of her games, Dooku leaned against the armrest of Palpatine’s chair, and the crotchety woman put on a better face.

After a beat of silence she asked, “Have a light?” And at that point Dooku realized that she had never seen Palpatine smoke. Dooku stood their surprised for a moment before fumbling around for a lighter.

As if the Chancellor hid many great things underneath her massive sleeves, Palpatine pulled out a cigarette and as the sun dipped past the horizon, thrusting them both into uncertain purples and blues. Dooku lit Palpatine’s cigarette. Her eyes glinted in the light of a flame, that coy smirk returning in the face of Dooku’s staunch refusal to enjoy anything about this moment.

Dooku wondered if she could excuse herself especially when Palpatine exhaled, and a plume of smoke hit her face. She scrunched up her nose and was almost offended when Palpatine offered her the end of the cigarette, and belatedly, Dooku realized she had just run out of cigarettes she kept on her person.

Death certainly wasn’t off the table but if Palpatine had penciled it in, Dooku thought she might as well enjoy herself. She silently accepted Sheev’s offer, blowing smoke into the air.

“Now, apprentice, your training?”

Dooku scoffed, she was getting far too old to be a good student. “Is that why you’ve summoned me here?”

Palpatine frowned and leaned forward to take back her cigarette while her other hand toyed with the hem of Dooku’s robes peeling off a stray piece of lint, “Well, how goes it?”

“What do you want me to say, ‘Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall set me free.”

Palpatine chuckled, a smooth reverberation that sent chills through Dooku, “So academic but if that’s the way you want to go. Then, what of victory, my apprentice?”

“I achieve through power,” Dooku confirmed. Though a willful student, she was always proud of the fact that she was a scholarly one.

“And what of power?” Palpatine quizzed her hand climbing higher and higher like a spider.

“I achieve through strength.”

“And strength? She questioned. Her hand was now at the edge of Dooku’s hood, one red tip of her nail trailing her collarbone.

Dooku huffed, so it was like that, “Through passion.”

“And what of passion, Tyranus?” The trail Palpatine had been making with her finger suddenly dove downward past her neckline to her first button. With a swipe, the flap of her shirt popped open and revealed one breast. The cool air made the hairs stand on the back of her neck and anticipation swelled in her gut. A blush started to climb up Dooku’s cheeks at the sudden exposure.

Palpatine was already running a finger down Dooku’s sternum seeking more and inspecting the sunspots on her chest, “Now tell me, how do you achieve passion?”

Dooku swallowed, reminding herself that death wasn’t exactly off the table.

How to woo a countess

I went insane for @stagbeetleboy 's fem Palpatine and count Dooku art gkfkfllf so these are his designs ! I just can't resist the milfs-

[COMMISSIONS] - [PRINT]

Process below vvv

PS : as time goes on, my star wars fanarts are guetting more and more unhinged haha

[keldae]

FIC: Jailbreak

"Keep your true nature secret." Master Orgus' voice still echoed in Xaja's mind as she opened her eyes, curled up tightly on her side on a bunk in a cell that only seemed vaguely familiar. "Find a way out. Your dark allies will help."

She didn't know who or what to trust, besides the memory of her dead Master. Dark images flickered through her memory, with fragments of screams and the smell of blood. Pain echoed through her entire body, focusing on her hands and her neck, like she had been electrocuted. She could feel a tight shock collar on her neck and tried to force down her terror, feeling like she was going to throw up. She definitely remembered that agony, always hitting right as she had started to feel like her thoughts were clearing, and instinctively braced herself for a renewal of the pain. Have to get out of here. Master Orgus said I’m still on the Emperor’s Fortress? Where's my crew?

The door to her cell hissed open, and a uniformed Imperial officer strode in, seemingly ignoring her as he marched to the console opposite the hard bunk. The door slid closed again, and Xaja watched him with her heart in her mouth, slowly reaching for a lightsaber (a terrible Sith-designed weapon, one that she just knew it hurt to wield. Where were her own lightsabers?). Not a Sith or an armoured soldier, just an officer with a blaster pistol -- and an older-looking human man at that. If she could take him down without raising an alarm--

The officer turned to face her directly as though he could sense her thoughts, looking her dead in the eyes. His own widened slightly before he subtly raised his hand and shook his head, a warning to not move. Frowning, Xaja watched as he blinked a few times, as though interacting with implants she couldn't see, before he spoke, his voice a low whisper. "Do you know who you are?"

"I'm--" Xaja looked down with disgust at her Sith garb, then back at the officer, feeling defiance spark within her. "I'm a Jedi Knight, not a blasted--"

"Shh!" The officer shot her a hard look as he glanced toward the door, then whispered again. "I've uploaded a recorded feed into the security cams in this room to hide our movements, but you can still be heard through the door if you speak loudly enough. Do you know where you are?"

"What…?" Xaja shook her head in confusion. "Imp space… the Emperor's Fortress…" She felt herself pale. "Hells, my team-!"

"Worry about them later, Jedi," the officer whispered as he pulled a small container out of his pocket. "Can you wear contact lenses?"

Xaja frowned, growing more confused by the moment. "I… yes?"

"Good. Put these in. They'll hide your eye colour." The package was set in her hands as the officer stepped away, dark eyes glinting in the light. "If you want to get out of here alive, do exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?"

Xaja looked at him as she opened up the package and pulled out one contact, a fearsome yellow shade that made her feel sick. That was a colour that belonged in a Sith’s eyes. "Why are you doing this?" she whispered.

"I have my reasons, Jedi. Today, if you don't mind." The officer impatiently gestured for Xaja to hurry up with the contacts. "The second the Sith suspect you're not under their control anymore, they'll break you again, and I won't be able to help you. This is our only shot to get you out."

Still utterly perplexed, Xaja obediently blinked in both contacts, anxiously watching her apparent rescuer. Maybe he was SIS? But no, how could a Republic spy make it here? "Who are you?" she softly asked as she stood up, feeling her hands shake. Honestly, it was a miracle the contacts were in right.

"A friend. That's all you need to know right now. Hold still." The officer reached for Xaja's neck, pausing when she flinched out of fear. "I'm not going to hurt you. Trust me. I'm disabling the collar."

"Wh-- can't you take it off?" Xaja pleaded, right now uncaring of how weak she sounded, feeling the collar like a vice on her neck.

"Not yet. It'll alert them that something's up." The officer squeezed her shoulder reassuringly as he fumbled with the collar, before Xaja heard a soft click. "There. It's disabled. Don't give them a reason to want to use it and they shouldn't catch on. You'll be able to remove it when you're out of here." He stepped back and pushed a heavy dark robe in her arms. "Put that on, and quickly. The recorded feed is about to run out."

Xaja shrugged the black fabric over her shoulders, frowning at the officer. "You're Imperial," she hissed. "Why are you helping me? What do you get out of this?"

The officer paused, looking at her for a moment before finally sighing. "My wife and I gave a child to the Jedi years ago," he quietly said, ignoring how Xaja's eyes widened in surprise. "Be about your age now. I want assurance that my kid is alive and safe."

How the blazes… a Jedi child?... Xaja shook her head to clear her thoughts. Checking on someone's Jedi child was a small price to pay for escaping this hell, even if the child's parents were Imperial. "What's their name?" she whispered. 

The officer hesitated, then shook his head. "It’s not safe here," he whispered. "I'll tell you when we get you to your ship."

Xaja nodded and followed her rescuer as he opened the cell door, and immediately fought the urge to flinch when she saw the Pureblood looming in the corridor. The Wrath, her mind supplied, as he spoke to the officer, paying her no heed. "Her status?"

"Perfectly stable and compliant, my lord," the officer answered, his voice the same cool, even tone that Xaja was used to hearing from Imperials. "No problems at all."

"Good." The Wrath nodded and turned to walk off. "Escort her to the interrogation chambers for her training session. Tell the overseer I want an appraisal as to her progress from you directly."

"Yes, my lord." The officer saluted and started walking in another direction, Xaja trailing a step behind, her heart in her mouth. The Wrath hadn't acted like he suspect anything… was it a trap? A pair of contacts and a robe shouldn't have been enough to fool him. Was the officer working directly for him?

Focus, she heard Master Orgus whisper in the back of her mind. She shuddered and quickened her pace to fall into step beside the officer. Was this what Master Orgus has been talking about?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Wrath ordered me to give him an analysis of her status, Overseer. Directly."

The overseer scowled. "She's mine to break and train! The Wrath should trust my judgement, as should you."

"With all due respect, Overseer, I'm more afraid of the Wrath than I am of you." The officer didn't sound scared in the slightest. "He is the one who speaks for the Emperor, after all."

"Fine," the overseer finally snarled. "But stay out of the way. I will not have you causing a distraction." He turned to Xaja, then pointed at the rack. "Today, we test your ability to extract information from the enemy. One of the scum you arrived with awaits interrogation. You’ll conduct it while I watch. You will use the tormentor device for this."

Xaja wanted to kill the overseer with her bare hands for that, or to plead for mercy for Kira on the rack. But over the overseer's shoulder, she saw the officer minutely shake his head, and resigned herself to this. "Yes, Overseer," she quietly said; apparently he was satisfied with that, and let her approach the console and the victim on the torture rack, not seeing how her hands trembled. Oh, hells, Kira, she silently cried out as she saw her Padawan, what have they done to you? What have I done to you? 

“Good,” the overseer said as he followed Xaja to the console. “It’s a simple device. Three inducement settings, each inflicting greater pain on the subject. The tormentor monitors the subject’s vital signs...” Xaja had to tune him out at that, lest she strangle him. But she couldn’t look directly at Kira’s eyes either, not without the guilt crashing down on her for what she had presumably done. Master Orgus had said this wasn’t her fault, but...

"Come on," Kira frantically pleaded as Xaja stepped up to the controls, "I know you're in there. You’re not one of them! If I beat him, you can too!" Hells, Xaja couldn't remember ever hearing her Padawan sound that scared, or that desperate. Fragments of blurry memories made her feel nauseous. Had she been made to torture her Padawan and her friends while in this hell? She was afraid of the answer being yes.

She set her hands on the control console, fighting to keep quiet as she heard the overseer’s instruction to start on the lowest pain settings. Don't draw attention or suspicion, the officer had said. But hells, she couldn't torture Kira! But if the overseer realized that the Jedi wasn't under the Emperor’s mind control…she could see the control for the shock collar at his belt. He would use it if he suspected she had broken free.

An idea glimmered in Xaja's mind, and she jumped on it. "I'm sorry, Overseer," she said as she made a show of pressing buttons on the console and tried to not let her voice shake. "There appears to be a problem with the controls."

The overseer snarled and marched up to the console. "Blasted technicians," he muttered, scowling. "Step aside, I’ll have a look." He knelt to access the cables running under the control panel, and Xaja saw her chance. Her foot flew up in a kick before the Sith saw the attack coming, striking him hard enough in the neck that she felt bones snapping under her boot. He fell in a limp heap, and Xaja frantically fumbled to find the release controls for the rack beside her.

"... Well, it’s about time," Kira shakily said, her voice higher-pitched with relief. Oh, that was Kira, trying to make a joke even in this hellhole. “Get me out of this thing, will you-- who is that?” she added, giving the officer a suspicious look as he approached the console.

"He's a friend," Xaja quickly answered as she disabled the restraints on the rack, letting Kira escape the device. "He helped me get this far. Are you all right?"

“I am now,” Kira nodded as she gave Xaja a hug, one tight enough to make the redhead's ribs ache. “I knew you’d come back. You’ve been fighting him enough…”

"We're not done yet, ladies," the officer interrupted as he opened a supply cabinet and pulled out another robe, holding it to Kira. "Get that on and keep your head down. The hangar isn't too far away. The rest of the Sith here don’t know that you’re back to normal, but that won’t last forever."

"What about the rest of my crew?" Xaja asked, worriedly looking at him. "... they're still here, right? They aren't…" I haven't killed them? Force, please…

"Still in the docking bay, locked in cages. We’ll get them out and get the lot of you on your way." The officer waited for Kira to pull the hood over her head, then opened the cell door and looked out. "Coast is clear for the moment. Hurry, before someone finds that psychopath."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of all the sounds Xaja had expected to hear as they approached the hangar, blaster fire was not one she had anticipated. "What's going on?" she hissed.

"I'm not sure," the officer whispered, drawing his blaster pistol. "Stay behind me. You," he added to Kira, "duck. Your saberstaff is on the ship."

Xaja grimly nodded and tightened her hand on the Sith saber she carried. It felt so different from her right lightsaber, too bulky and jagged in her hand; but it would do to defend her unarmed Padawan. She rounded the corner after the officer, took a look at the commotion in the hangar bay, and for a second felt panic when she saw the Wrath, and a few Imperial soldiers, some of whom were already dead on the ground, and oh no, Doc and Rusk and T7 all on the ramp of the ship, wielding blasters…

The Wrath held his hand up, and the remaining Imperial soldiers were raised up by their necks, struggling and gasping until Xaja felt their life forces blink out, letting silence descend on the hangar. The Pureblood looked up as the officer entered with his charges, eyes widening minutely in surprise. When Xaja looked over to the officer, he appeared equally startled, both by the Wrath’s presence and the unexpected turning on other Imperial assets, and seemed to be deciding whether or not to shoot the Sith.

The Pureblood finally inclined his head in an understanding nod, which the officer returned as he holstered his weapon. "The alarm will be raised in minutes, Jedi," he said, sounding like this was a perfectly reasonable situation to be found in. "More guards will come, besides the ones I killed freeing your crew. Shall we go before they arrive?"

Xaja’s eyes narrowed as she considered the scene in front of her. The Wrath turning on his own faction to save her crew, aiding and abetting their escape… but he was the fucking Emperor’s Wrath! And she still didn’t trust her own mind or judgement. “Free Master Tol Braga and the rest of my strike team, and I’ll consider it,” she snapped, and ignored the officer’s quiet groan of exasperation beside her.

“If they were here, Jedi,” the Wrath answered as he turned to face her, “I would have liberated them as well.” Xaja tried hard to not reveal her intimidation as he stepped up to her, towering over her petite frame, forcing her to tilt her head up to look him in the eye and trying to ignore the ache in her neck. “Had I wanted, I could have killed you on Quesh. Did you never wonder why I hesitated?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I have waited over three hundred years to see the face that came to me in a vision. Your face.”

“... I’m never going to understand Sith,” the officer muttered under his breath, sounding as perplexed as Xaja felt.

Xaja shook her head firmly, trying to clear her mind. How the blazes had she shown up in a vision three centuries ago? “You might have mentioned this on Quesh, or in your master’s fortress.”

“I needed to be sure the time had come,” the Wrath answered with a small shrug. “Now I know. There are only a few beings who have ever broken the Emperor’s domination. You and that girl are special,” he added, nodding at Kira.

“Thanks,” Xaja dryly answered, and for a moment felt confused when she sensed a tiny spurt of pride mingled with worry through the Force, not her own emotions. That couldn’t have been from the officer, could it? “And we have the power to destroy your master.”

“Not yet,” the Sith corrected. “Not without my help.” He seemed to sense the confused looks everyone else was giving him. “Though the Emperor conceals his true plans, I have seen them, and that vision has driven me to this.” He didn’t hesitate as he knelt in front of Xaja, ignoring the way her jaw dropped, or how the officer seemed to put his arm out instinctively as though to protect her. “I pledge my loyalty to you. Take me to your Jedi Council on Tython, and I’ll reveal why.”

“What the blazes…” Xaja frowned. “How do I know this isn’t a trap? You’re the bloody Wrath!”

“And I seek to save this galaxy from annihilation.” The Sith sighed when Xaja didn’t seem swayed. “And without my help, your ship will never escape. I can guide you to freedom.”

“... He may have a point,” the officer finally said, his voice low as he spoke to Xaja. “He’ll have codes to get out of this station’s security that not even I have. And not that it might matter to you, but nobody has ever seen him kneel to anyone else over those three hundred years. Even the Emperor himself is questionable.”

… Shit. Xaja sighed and fixed the Wrath with a hard look. “If you’re coming to the Jedi homeworld with us, you’ll be under guard at all times. Don’t attempt anything.” She could sense Rusk sharply nodding his agreement to her left.

“Your flattery is pointless,” the Wrath dryly said as he stood back up, offering the officer a small nod. “I do not seek your people’s deaths -- only their cooperation. But time is a luxury we no longer possess. We must go -- now. I will navigate us through the defense grid.”

I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m bringing the Emperor’s fucking Wrath on my ship and back to Tython. But if I don’t… if he’s right about the defense grid… Xaja frowned, then offered her crew a terse nod. “Load up. He’s right about needing to leave five minutes ago.” 

“I really hope you know what you’re doing, Red…” Doc muttered as he joined Rusk and Kira in running up the Serenity’s ramp, T7 close behind. The Wrath followed, at what was probably to him a leisurely pace, at a stride that Xaja would have almost had to run to keep up with.

Xaja made to follow the Sith into her ship, but paused on the ramp when she realized the officer hadn’t made to join them. "Are you not coming with us?" she asked, turning back to face him. "What if they find out you helped me?"

He shook his head and offered her a small, tight smile. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I have a cover to maintain here, and I’ll be able to slip away in the chaos of the Wrath vanishing. Get going. Don't stop until you're back on Tython."

"Wait--" Xaja hesitated as he paused in the middle of stepping away from the ship. "... Our deal? You said you had a child in the Order you wanted kept safe? Who am I looking for?"

The officer sighed heavily and finally turned to face Xaja fully. "Yes… yes, I did give my only daughter to the Order as a child." To Xaja's surprise, he smiled, even if the gesture was bittersweet. "You get back to Tython safely, and I’ll consider our deal met. That will be enough for me."

What?... Xaja felt her mouth fall open in shock as she tried to process the officer's words. Impossible! He isn't… he's your… how?...

The officer -- her father? -- smiled as he stepped back toward her, setting his hand on her arm and gently squeezing, his eyes soft and kind like she would have never expected to see from an Imperial officer. "You look just like your mum," he quietly said. "She would have been so proud of y--"

An alarm started blaring, ruining the moment. The officer sharply looked back at the hangar entrance, then gave Xaja a firm push up the ramp, his gentle touch vanishing with sudden urgency. "Go!" he sharply whispered, quickly stepping back off the ramp and reaching for his belt. Xaja heard the flick of a stealth generator as she tried to reach back for her resc-- her father, and barely saw his wink before he had completely vanished. His presence in the Force disappeared like he had never been there, and Xaja hesitated for a long moment. How had--

"Red!" That was Doc's yell from up the ramp. "Let's go!"

Xaja shook her head and ran back up into her ship, lingering for one moment longer as the ramp drew up, trying to get one last glimpse of the man who claimed to be her father. Did you know who he was, Master? she silently asked Master Orgus' spirit, and got no answer. If-- when she got back to the Republic, she would have to try and find the identities of her parents, the nebulous father and mother she had never really thought about before. My father's Imperial? Am I Imperial? Why did he save me then -- or give me to the Jedi in the first place? Is he with the SIS? What about my mother? Why did he sound like my mother is dead? 

She had to push her questions down as Rusk piloted the Serenity out of the station with the Wrath navigating -- no, Scourge, as he insisted on being referred to -- and into hyperspace at a speed that could be called reckless. And she had to focus on her questioning of Scourge and why he insisted on leaving the Empire with them -- and no, he said he hadn't known who the officer was. And he wouldn't give her any details as to why he had left with them, which frustrated her. But she didn't have it in her to argue more with the Sith who had helped her escape. She would have to get her answers with the Council's briefing.

The questions about her father came rushing back when she finally staggered into her quarters and threw the terrible Sith lightsabers into a corner, planning to shower until she had scrubbed the touch of the Empire from her skin. The Imperials wouldn't have raided her ship and taken her Jedi clothing, would they? She would burn the robes and lightsabers she had now when she got to Tytho--

Two lightsabers she had never seen before rested on her bed, neatly side by side. They looked to be worn, yet well-maintained, with old signs of weathering distorting some of the decorative engravings in the silver hilt. Xaja cautiously picked one up and ignited it, and felt relief when the blade was bright blue, not crimson. These weren't her old lightsabers (and who knew where those were now. Odds are the Imps would have destroyed them.), but they were still Jedi weapons that would work just fine for her. Better than the Sith ones she had thrown into the corner, at any rate. The one she was holding felt perfect in her hand, as though it had been made specifically for her -- their crystals seemed to resonate with her as though she had chosen them herself on Ilum.

Then she saw the note on the flimsi sheet under the sabers, in someone's strong, neat handwriting. Her heart in her throat, she deactivated the lightsaber in her hand and picked up the note.

These used to be your mother's. She wanted to pass them down to you, if she ever had the chance. I've been holding onto them since she passed in case I got the chance she never had. I wish it had been under better circumstances. 

She would be so proud of you, and the Jedi you've become, if she could meet you. I'm proud enough for both of us. Stay safe, little one.

Dad

Xaja felt herself crumple to the floor, holding her mother's lightsaber in one hand and the note from her father in the other, tears making the letters in his handwriting blurry until she couldn't read it anymore. For a long moment, grief welled up beside her lingering fear and trauma -- grief for the mother she would never meet, and grief for the lost chance to know her father. Odds were she would never get to meet her father again, or thank him for saving her life. How did one of her parents, who hadn't seen her since she had been a baby, manage to track her down as an adult and rescue her? Why would her father have cared about the child he had given to the Order so long ago? 

And if the lightsabers, so obviously not Sith in design, had been her mother's… was her mother a Jedi? Then why had nobody on Tython ever mentioned it?

Filled with more questions than answers, Xaja curled up in a tight ball, holding the only two tokens from her parents she had ever held. I hope he didn't get caught, she silently pleaded to the Force. Please, let my… let my father have gotten out of there safely, please…

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The message from Marcus himself came in a week later -- which was a nice change from the last few messages that all seemed to centre around telling Reanden off for putting official galaxy-altering missions on hold for personal pet projects that had a high risk of getting him killed. "Fine, you did a nice job jailbreaking. The Council is happy to have their star back... even with a hell of a stowaway. My point still stands: you’re still a dick."

Reanden wearily smiled and hid the encrypted message in his personal files as he piloted the Shadow toward Belsavis. One of his children was safe, even if her brothers were still unaccounted for. He would have to be satisfied with that for the time being, even if he knew the odds were that he would probably never be able to meet his daughter again in-person. As long as she was safe, he could deal with that. Stay safe, baby girl.

[gffa]

You know honestly and ironically I think As Vader, Anakin gained a level of emotional maturity and introspection he lacked before the suit. Of course Vader is still evil and for longtime keeped going dark and etc, but still.

For me, I think the suit and mask and vocoder do the heavy lifting of whatever maturity Vader seems to have, because I don't think he really has matured inside at all. He keeps doubling down on the dark side being all there is, that it always wins, he keeps himself locked in that mental prison, he keeps getting his ass handed to him by the people that undo him, he's never genuinely looked inside himself and asked what would make him happy, he just keeps dragging himself forward because he can't admit to what he's done, it's too monstrous, too terrifying, to admit that he was wrong. But because the disabilities and the suit force him to be slower, because they hide his facial reactions, because they hide his voice, because he's got a Master now who will punish him in horrific ways if he steps too far out of line, he's learned to white knuckle some restraint into himself. He holds back because Sidious will crush his legs and forbid him from using the Force if he disobeys. He holds back because Sidious will drop kick his ass over teakettle in a fight if he doesn't hold still. And even then Sidious still has to keep a tight leash on him! He has to yank on Vader's leash at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi because he's obsessed with Obi-Wan. He has to yank on Vader's leash in Rebels, because Vader's still obsessed with Obi-Wan. He has to assign Vader to another planet because Vader kept leaving trails of wreckage behind him on Coruscant, which was ruining Sidious' political machinations, in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith. Even in the OT, Vader tries to force Luke to be a Sith like him, to rule the galaxy the way Vader wants it to be ruled, which is just the same exact thing he tried to do to Padme on Mustafar. I don't think Vader is any more mature than Anakin was, but that he's forced temporary control over himself because of physical limitations and the threat of violence from Sidious. It's not until the very end of Return of the Jedi that he finally realizes the potential he had in him to mature, to truly let go and be okay with the idea that someone he cares about will live on without him being able to keep them.

[superectojazzmage]

A Handy Summary Of The Star Wars Franchise:

The Phantom Menace: Two hours of political babble interspersed with cool fights and annoying CGI characters. Introduced the world to George Lucas’s… interesting dialogue. Not as bad as you remember.

Attack Of The Clones: The real worst movie of the Prequel Trilogy. Obi-Wan Kenobi IS Philip Marlowe while Natalie Portman makes an admirable effort to act like she’s turned on by child murder. Worse then you remember.

Revenge Of The Sith: Depression - The Movie. The bad guy wins, the good guys are dead or turned to evil, the Galaxy falls to darkness, and the asthmatic cyborg will never get to finish his lightsaber collection.

A New Hope: The one that started it all. The heartwarming story of a himbo farmboy who joins a radical terrorist movement at the urging of an old man who says he’s a wizard. Really more of a framework and jumping off point then a real story, so everybody says they love it but don’t have much of anything to really say about it.

The Empire Strikes Back: Aw yeah, now we’re talking! The best of the mainline movies. The Rebels come out swinging and get their shit kicked in while James Earl Jones and Mark Hamill have a touching father-son reunion and Boba Fett steals the show. Not as shocking as it used to be considered because everyone copied it.

Return Of The Jedi: The OT movie everyone has mixed feelings about. The epic conclusion to George Lucas’s personal story in the setting, dragged down by the addition of hideous funk singers from my nightmares and militant Care Bears. According to Disney, nothing that happened in this one mattered btw!

The Force Awakens: Brace yourself for disappointment. J. J. Abrams blows up the Star Wars universe to get everything back to the “Empire Vs Rebels” status quo and set up his mystery boxes. Tricked you into thinking the Sequel Trilogy would passable.

The Last Jedi: Subverted your expectations that it would be good. Rian Johnson tries to salvage what Abrams did to the Star Wars universe and do something edgy and new, to severely mixed results. Luke Skywalker drinking alien titty milk was kept in but him mourning his brother-in-law’s death was cut as “unnecessary”.

The Rise Of Skywalker: Disney tries to stick the landing and breaks their legs instead. J. J. Abrams throws a shitfit over what Johnson did with his mystery boxes and torches the Star Wars universe down even more. Somehow… this movie is not good. How is this possible? Dark business, corporatizing, secrets only the Mouse knew.

Rogue One: Everybody’s dead, Jim. The Dirty Dozen if it was set in the Star Wars universe. A giant continuity filler manages to be infinitely better then the entire Sequel Trilogy.

Solo: Now the story of the smuggler who lost everything and the acclaimed director who had to film his origin story. It’s Solo Development. The tragically underrated and unlucky one, guilty of nothing but being released at a bad time and quite good removed from that.

Droids/Ewoks: Ah, yes. “Droids and Ewoks”, the first two Star Wars television series made back in the 80s, of generally poor quality and so painfully divorced from the Star Wars aesthetic that nobody acknowledges their cursed existence. We have dismissed that claim.

Clone Wars Microseries: The real first Star Wars TV show. Genndy Tartakovsky makes one of the most kickass cartoons ever in one of the most limited time frames ever. General Grievous gave you nightmares as a kid.

The Clone Wars: “This is for kids?” - The Series. The sprawling, epic story of a failing decadent government’s final days, occasionally interjected with painfully out of place juvenile comic relief. One of the big reasons for the Prequel Trilogy’s salvaged reputation.

The Bad Batch: Immediately after the Clone Wars, a crack commando unit was persecuted by the Empire. These men promptly escaped to the galactic underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them... maybe you can hire The Bad Batch.

Tales Of The Jedi Cartoon: Dave Filoni wants to get those unmade Clone Wars episodes finished and he WILL goddammit! Totally dickteased you by making you think it would be a TOTJ adaptation.

Rebels: The wacky, fanciful, fun-filled story of a terrorist cell waging guerrilla warfare on a tyrannical fascist government. Fights an uphill battle to meet the standard set by Clone Wars, and ultimately succeeds.

The Mandalorian: Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau show Abrams and Johnson how it’s done, God bless them. Pedro Pascal is sent on an epic quest to recreate “Lone Wolf and Cub” using a Yoda-themed Cabbage-Patch Kids doll. Meanwhile, the Mandalorians continue to uphold their most important cultural tradition; hating other Mandalorians.

The Book Of Boba Fett: They fucked with the wrong Māori! Boba Fett tries to become a crime lord but accidentally becomes a civic planner instead, while also going on drug trips and learning the ways of the proud “Native American Metaphor” people. Probably not what you expected it to be, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Ahsoka: Ahsoka and Sabine’s Excellent Adventure. Lucafilm decides to finally resolve plot threads from Rebels over a decade later. Tremble in fear as Rosario Dawson makes the women in your life question their sexuality.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Live footage of Obi-Wan aging terribly due to the stress of his awful life and getting sassed by little girl Leia. Meanwhile, the Inquisitors have some office drama. Shockingly weak despite a lovely premise and some great performances. Tremble in fear as Ewan MacGregor makes the men in your life question their sexuality.

Andor: Disney starts scraping the bottom of the barrel for Star Wars spin-off ideas. Nevermind this show fucking slaps. A treat for all those fans who wanted more dark, gritty Star Wars. Sex becomes canon to the Star Wars universe as Cassian Andor re-enacts Ocean’s Eleven and some more Imperial office drama leaves numerous people dead.

Resistance: The crappy Sequel Trilogy equivalent of Clone Wars and Rebels. Shows great potential but is hobbled at every possible turn, fails utterly to mature, and ends with a whimper. At least the animation’s nice.

The Holiday Special: THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN.

Dawn Of The Jedi: The painfully obscure origin story of the Jedi Order and the chronologically earliest Star Wars story. Both more and less interesting then you would think.

Tales Of The Jedi: The awesome as fuck and woefully underrated comics that form the backbone of the whole Star Wars universe. Civil wars, tragic falls from grace, hot Sith-On-Sith action, crazy battle sequences, great characters, and a surprising amount of busting ghosts. What more could you want?

KOTOR Comic: John Jackson-Miller bridges the gap between Tales and Knights using the most pathetic failure of a Jedi ever and his quest to not get murdered for bad grades. None of the characters are who you think they’re supposed to be, except when they are.

Knights Of The Old Republic: You were Space Hitler all along and you didn’t even know! Now redeem yourself by completing side quests and beating up your disabled former friend… or screw that and use Force Persuade to bully people into giving you free stuff. BioWare makes the best Star Wars game ever and ever amen.

Knights Of The Old Republic II - The Sith Lords: Winner of both the “Unnecessarily Long Title” and the “Tragically Unfinished But Released Anyways” awards. Drew Karpyshan’s adventurous writing is replaced with Chris Avellone’s edgy nihilism. An annoying old shrew badgers you to question things while never letting you question her ever. APATHY IS DEATH.

The Old Republic: Post-EA BioWare begins their long and glorious history of shitting on their legacy by refusing to make KOTOR 3 and instead producing a Titantic-shaped MMO that inexplicably did NOT sink and die. Enjoy it for what it is, just don’t regard it as canon for your own sanity.

Knight Errant: A Jedi becomes a social activist in Sith Space. Kinda cool comics and books set between the Old Republic era and Darth Bane. Could’ve bloomed into something more interesting but Disney hates fun.

Darth Bane: A based and red-pilled Sith Lord decides the other Sith are doing it wrong and sets out to do it right. An entire novel trilogy built out of a character and backstory detail that didn’t even make the final script of Phantom Menace, and it’s awesome.

The High Republic: Novels and comics about the Jedi spending their glory days fighting evil plants and a bunch of a anarchist rednecks who know hyperspace magic. Still finding it’s feet but wins lots of points for creativity.

Darth Plagueis: A sweet old evil wizard gets backstabbed by his apprentice after getting shit-faced. Probably one of the most important novels.

Open Seasons: Jango Fett’s Life Fucking Sucks - The Comic Book. Contains vital lore for the Mandalorians which Disney took over a decade to acknowledge.

Jedi Apprentice: The prequel to the Prequels. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan squeeze as many quirky stories as they can into the timeframe right before Phantom Menace.

Starfighter: A pair of great flight sim games set in the Prequel Era. Play as a various mercenaries, soldiers, and privateers and engage in direct action against Space Amazon the Trade Federation. You WILL love Nym.

Bounty Hunter: Jango Fett battles criminals, monsters, fallen Jedi, Mr. Krabs, and annoying level design in this sweet video game tie-in to Attack Of The Clones. Have fun getting distracted chasing after side targets!

Republic Comics: Quinlan Vos is a loose cannon Jedi who doesn’t play by the rules! Also, lots and lots of war crimes happen. One of the few EU works to be fully endorsed by Lucas himself but surprisingly (and undeservedly) obscure despite it.

Republic Commando: SWAT but way cooler because it’s Star Wars. Your tactics will confuse and frighten your men. There’s some supplementary novels too, if you feel like listening to Karen Traviss bitch about the Jedi and suck Mandalorian cock for several hours.

Battlefront: Call Of Duty but way cooler because it’s Star Wars. Watch out for those wrist rockets!!!!

Empire At War: StarCraft but way cooler because it’s Star Wars. Have fun making rancors eat people.

The Force Unleashed: God Of War but… well, it WISHES it was cooler because it’s Star Wars. Fun gameplay is held back by a completely ridiculous story resembling a terrible fanfic that is so embarrassing its barely considered canon, if it is all (it usually is not).

Purge: Rubbing the salt into the wounds of Order 66, starring Darth Vader!

Dark Times: That title ain’t a fucking joke. A Jedi struggles to keep his morals in one of the darkest, bleakest, edgiest Star Wars comics ever written. Seriously, this will give you depression.

Jedi - Fallen Order: The Dark Souls of Star Wars. Cameron Monaghan gets his ass kicked by Oogdo Bogdo so you can get that new poncho.

Vader Immortal: Battle Darth Vader himself with the power of a gimmicky thousand-dollar VR video game accessory that almost nobody owns!

Han Solo Trilogy: The ORIGINAL secret, depressing origin story of Han Solo. If you don’t feel like reading books you can just watch Solo, it’s basically just a distilled version of this.

Marvel’s Star Wars Comics: Comes in two flavors: batshit crazy 80s-era Marvel or bland and worthless 2010s-eras Marvel! At least they do great reprints.

Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye: A really really really weird early novel. Notable for being one of the first EU works and for the copious amounts of accidental incest-shipping.

Tie Fighter/X-Wing: Simulate being a pilot in the Star Wars universe, complete with getting killed by Darth Vader for minor mistakes.

Empire/Rebellion Comics: A cool and underrated little pair of comics depicting the day to day of the war between the Rebels and Empire.

Agent Of The Empire: SECRET AAAAGENT MAN! SECRET AAAAGENT MAN! James Bond comics in the Star Wars universe.

Shadows Of The Empire: Is is a comic, a video game, a book, or a toyline? The answer is yes. Important mostly for how it helped establish how the Star Wars EU could actually function.

Aftermath/Shattered Empire: Disney’s clumsy, boring attempt to make their own Post-ROTJ canon and justify the Sequel Trilogy that will be subsequently contradicted by the Sequel Trilogy itself. Roundly ignored by just about everyone aside from Cobb Vanth and periodic vague token mentions of Operation: Cinder as a thing that happened we guess.

X-Wing Rogue Squadron: Michael Stackpole sends Wedge Antilles and his merry men out onto zany, continuity-fixing misadventures and ends up creating the Chad Fel Empire that makes the Virgin New Republic look bad. Comes in comic, book, and video game forms for easy consumption!

Crimson Empire: One of those Amogus-looking red guys that follows the Emperor around takes center stage and surprises you by being totally awesome.

Squadrons: Disney’s discount version of the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games, but now with an immersive first-person perspective and a yawn-inducing story.

Luke Skywalker And The Shadows Of Mindor: The awesome novel everyone forgets. Matthew Stover fixes Star Wars continuity by pitting Luke Skywalker against his mightiest enemy yet; bad fanfiction.

The Thrawn Trilogy: The REAL Sequel Trilogy. We got military competence and clones all up in this joint! Timothy Zahn sets a standard that future Star Wars will constantly struggle to meet. You WILL root for Thrawn.

Dark Empire: Somehow… Palpatine has returned several decades before Disney did it. Generally viewed with withering contempt by everyone, which makes one wonder why Disney copied it so much over the rest of Legends. Surprisingly not the worst thing looking back.

Dark Forces Saga: KOTOR’s main competitor for title of “Best Star Wars Games”. Kyle Katarn and Jaden Korr spend four increasingly awesome video games torturing stormtroopers with the Force, solving frustrating puzzles, and busting ghosts.

The New Rebellion: Another awesome novel everyone forgets. Luke Skywalker fights one of his students turned evil. That, uh, happens a lot.

Young Jedi Knights: A fun little series of novels about the Skywalker kids becoming real Jedi, and also war crimes. Yet another example of what people WANTED the Sequel Trilogy to be.

Hand Of Thrawn: Weekend At Bernie’s, Star Wars edition, guest-starring psychic furries. Timothy Zahn sits down the EU writers class and shows them how writing for Star Wars is done.

Union: Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade get hitched and promptly get caught up in an international incident proving once and for all the power of the Skywalker Gene.

New Jedi Order: The Star Wars universe is invaded by Warhammer 40K rejects in the epic novel series that breaks all the rules, for better or for worse. Of variable quality for large stretches but ultimately settles down on being pretty awesome, if overly dark at times.

Dark Nest Trilogy: The Jedi fight a bunch of evil bugs. It exists, and that’s about all it has going for it.

Legacy Of The Force: Jacen Solo’s No Good, Very Bad Fall To The Dark Side. Has WILDY varying quality and is mostly just the nightmarish location of a huge spat amongst some of Legends’s writers. Still not as bad as Dark Nest and has some cool bits sprinkled in here and there. But really, you’re better off just skipping to FOTJ.

Fate Of The Jedi: The Jedi and Republic battle corrupt politicians, Cthulhu, and the backwoods yokel version of the Sith in the real sequel to NJO. Things get back on track after the disaster that was LOTF. Deeply flawed in some respects, but ultimately pretty good and a fitting finale for the Post-OT era.

Legacy: The spectacular chronologically final story. Politics, war, redemption, and Cade Skywalker getting high off his ass on deathsticks in the grand final battle between the Jedi and Sith.

Visions: Star Wars finally achieves its lifelong goal of becoming a kawaii as fuck anime. It’s an anthology so quality is all over the place.

Infinities: What If… Star Wars had a terrible ripoff of Marvel’s “What If…?” comics?

Tag And Bink: Abbot And Costello Meet Darth Vader.

LEGO Star Wars: Your childhood comfort food. Spend countless hours of non-canon fun killing Lego Jar Jar and trying to find all the goddamn unlockables.

Legends Canon: The original continuity. Free and experimental but wildly inconsistent at times.

Disney Canon: The new continuity. Relatively consistent but often stifled, bland, and overly-safe.

Your Personal Canon: The only real continuity.

[desireandduty]

corruptedforce​:

His desire for her was not something that had lessened, that was for sure.  He desired her just as much as he ever had.  She was all that he had ever wanted, like this.  He didn’t have as many rules, when it came to things now. He just had stupid other things about it, but he was trying to just let go and be himself right now, whoever that was. He didn’t even know.  

The fight on Mustafar had been brutal. Obi-Wan had taught him how to fight. As much as Vader did not want to admit it, they had been pretty evenly matched and knew how the other fought.  He had narrowly missed getting dismembered and hurt horribly, but he’d managed to stop himself from getting too confident.  “Well thank you.”  This was not the time to explain to her, that Sith Lords tended to get less attractive. 

He moved onto his back, and smirked when she urged his pants off. “You are bossier than I am and I’m extremely bossy.”  They both had always been bossy, but it had been long enough and barely any before that, for him to argue.  The stupid war had kept them apart and now, all of this, it had been a disaster. He wanted her, and he knew she wanted him. 

She knew to some extent that he was just letting her play and do what she wanted for now. Because they apparently both wanted the same thing, after being apart for so long. She almost didn’t care what happened next, as long as she could just focus on them and the miracle that they still loved and wanted each other. As she dragged his remaining clothing down his legs and tossed it away, she noticed another set of cuts and bacta patches, and it made her both angry and sad. She hated seeing him hurt. 

And yet she also didn’t want to think about the war or Mustafar or anything else happening around them right now. They were more than just their roles, their duties, what they had done and said in the past. They were also husband and wife. They had made two darling twins together. They were two people in love, and she had desperately missed him. “I suspect you’re just humoring me, because we both know you like being in control in the bedroom,” she said, smirking at him as she reached up and dropped her dress to the floor. “But I missed you too much to worry about it. I want you so badly.” She crawled up onto the bed and settled over him, bringing her lips to his for a passionate kiss.

[yellowocaballero]

Obi-Wan’s a teen dad and Anakin DESPERATELY wants to do crime

A week after Obi-Wan formally took Anakin as his padawan, he left his quarters.

It hadn’t been Obi-Wan’s intention to spend a week lying in bed - or, at times, lying on the living room floor. Or staring blankly at the stove, or holding a toothbrush as he forgot what he was supposed to do with it. It had been his intention to handle the new...arrangements. Put on a brave face. Take care of business. There was so much to do, and Obi-Wan really did want to do it. But he stood in front of the stove staring at its knobs instead, lost.

Anakin had been a good sport about it, at least. He figured out alarmingly quickly how to work the stove and fry up the sliced fruit in their cupboards. Anakin didn’t understand that you didn’t fry fruit, but Obi-Wan ate it with little complaint. He put food in front of Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan ate it. When Anakin asked him, somewhat fearfully, how to use the shower, Obi-Wan showed him and then took one himself. After the third day he left the living quarters semi-frequently, which would have been worrying if Obi-Wan cared.

Obi-Wan’s depressed, grieving, and has an inferiority complex the size of an Alderaanian mountain. Anakin doesn’t know what’s happening, but he does know that the power grid failure was not his fault. Can Obi-Wan ever be a true Jedi and a competent master? Or is his backstory, as told by the Jedi Apprentice novels, too fucking weird?

Rest under the cut.

A week after Obi-Wan formally took Anakin as his padawan, he left his quarters. 

It hadn’t been Obi-Wan’s intention to spend a week lying in bed - or, at times, lying on the living room floor. Or staring blankly at the stove, or holding a toothbrush as he forgot what he was supposed to do with it. It had been his intention to handle the new...arrangements. Put on a brave face. Take care of business. There was so much to do, and Obi-Wan really did want to do it. But he stood in front of the stove staring at its knobs instead, lost. 

Anakin had been a good sport about it, at least. He figured out alarmingly quickly how to work the stove and fry up the sliced fruit in their cupboards. Anakin didn’t understand that you didn’t fry fruit, but Obi-Wan ate it with little complaint. He put food in front of Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan ate it. When Anakin asked him, somewhat fearfully, how to use the shower, Obi-Wan showed him and then took one himself. After the third day he left the living quarters semi-frequently, which would have been worrying if Obi-Wan cared. 

On day six, Obi-Wan worked up the energy to turn on his datapad, and was promptly bombarded with messages. They scrolled down the screen, a new one popping up every second. 

A lot of them were from his automated specialized education classes. Obi-Wan had finished the required padawan courses when he was sixteen, breezing through each course at his own pace virtually during downtime in transit and on missions. He had signed up for some Knight-level specialized education courses afterwards, loading as many on his plate as he could and managing special permission to complete them all virtually too. Apparently, he had a great deal of assignments due. 

Many messages from the Temple administration. Notification for mandatory forms to complete for requisitions, medical care...reports on the Naboo mission...a mountain of forms to complete for the promotion...a mountain of forms for the new padawan...a mountain of forms for processing Qui-gon’s death. 

Messages from his friends. How are you doing, Obi-Wan? Are you okay, Obi-Wan? Can we come over and talk, Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan, you stupid bastard, how dare you fight a Sith without me? 

Disturbingly, even the master of mission assignments had messaged him. Xe wanted to know if Obi-Wan was going to file for extended reprieve from missions to train his underage padawan in the Temple, or if he wanted to continue taking missions. Decide quickly, Knight Kenobi. Xe are willing to grant three years of light to no missions to help ‘facilitate Padawan Skywalker’s integration into the Jedi’.

The thought made Obi-Wan dizzy. No missions for years? He and Qui-Gon had barely gone weeks without a mission. But Obi-Wan had been thirteen, and Qui-Gon had a particular talent of taking an assignment to mediate standard legislative disputes and turn it into a three month embroilment in an endangered animal trafficking scheme. Staying stuck in the Temple for that amount of time made his skin crawl. Staying at home in the Temple so Anakin could integrate into the Jedi, become the Jedi he dreamed of...

Obi-Wan turned off the pad and tossed it across the room, letting it land on Qui-gon’s private meditation mat. Somehow, he couldn’t really bring himself to care. 

Five hours later, Obi-Wan dragged himself out of Qui-gon’s room to find Anakin lying on the floor with what looked like an entire droid disassembled over the carpet. He was kicking his feet in the air, lying on his stomach, stripping some frayed wire. 

Obi-Wan stared at him blankly, forms dancing behind his eyes. Anakin needed clothing. They had already processed him through his vaccinations - thank hell - and prescribed him some antibiotics for his multitude of intestinal parasites, but there was no way he was taking the pills. He needed to teach him how to braid the padawan braid. He needed to get them some food for the cabinets. He needed to…

“Are you hungry?” Obi-Wan rasped. His hair felt disgusting.

Anakin’s head snapped up, eyes widening. He scrambled off the rug, brushing a suspicious amount of dirt off his knees. “Yeah! I’ll make us that green thing!”

He shouldn’t let the nine year old work the stove. But Obi-Wan let him anyway, as he managed to somehow dump water in the kettle and place it on the stove, standing beside Anakin and waiting for it to whistle. 

I must be doing very well, Obi-Wan thought hysterically, as he stared at the old-fashioned durasteel kettle that Qui-gon had favored. He was releasing his emotions into the Force with perfection. He wasn’t feeling anything at all. He wasn’t thinking about Qui-gon. He wasn’t thinking about anything at all. His mind was clear and empty, and he was perfectly at peace. 

Obi-Wan tried to pour his tea, but he just couldn’t move. He stood and stared at the kettle for so long that Anakin eventually walked in and, straining on his tiptoes, sloshed the steaming water into the plastic white cup. 

***

On day seven, Obi-Wan managed to wrangle both himself and Anakin into some semblance of hygiene and clean clothes. Anakin needed a lot of help, which clearly embarrassed him, but Obi-Wan was too dead inside to be frustrated about it. 

He ended up tying his obi for him, as Anakin wriggled and tried to turn around to see it on the back. He’d have to show him how to do it himself later, but that was for later. 

“Why do I have to wear this?” Anakin whined. “It’s so heavy.”

“I’ll see if I can requisition you an outfit with less layers,” Obi-Wan said. A lighter outfit wouldn’t cut it, as Anakin had ramped up the temperature controls in their quarters a week ago and the rooms haven’t dipped below boiling ever since. “Hold still. Hold - hold still, please.”

“What does requisition mean?”

Anakin held still eventually. He managed to untie the obi in the first ten minutes, but Obi-Wan really couldn’t bring himself to care too much. Then they had to worry about brushing their teeth, and Obi-Wan had to teach him how to do that, and why was this so hard, why was everything so hard -

But when Obi-Wan eventually got them both out the door, he found no relief.The Temple felt different. Obi-Wan didn’t know how; just that it did. It was identical in every worldly way, yet mismatched in the Force. As if it was a different Temple, a pale echo from another dimension, that was the home of a different Obi-Wan. Or maybe Obi-Wan was different: maybe his Force signature was so warped and polluted that he tainted everywhere he went. 

They were all parts of the great whole of the Force. The Force was composed of every Jedi, every sentient being and eddy of wind. There were tens of thousands of Jedi in this Temple - how could the death of one man change it so thoroughly? Or had it just changed Obi-Wan?

Somewhat suspiciously, Anakin seemed to know the way out of the dormitories and into the main thoroughfare of the building. Obi-Wan kept a death grip on his little hand the entire time, slowing his steps so Anakin could keep up without having to jog. It didn’t stop him from trying to run forward every few steps, only for Obi-Wan to gently tug him back. 

“You weren’t supposed to run around the Temple by yourself,” Obi-Wan said flatly. Anakin grinned sheepishly, in what Obi-Wan was already beginning to recognize as his ‘Busted!’ face. 

“Why not?”

“You could have gotten lost.”

“I did get lost,” Anakin said proudly. “But then I found a secret service tunnel for the droids and I crawled through it and I found a server room and -” He stopped abruptly. “But that was way after the power outage yesterday. That I had nothing to do with.”

Obi-Wan...should probably care about this. 

He didn’t. He was too busy releasing his emotions into the Force, and returning his dark thoughts to the Force, and maintaining complete control over his body and spirit. There was no room in that for caring about Anakin, maybe, destroying the Temple.

Wasn’t he a teacher? Shouldn’t he be teaching?

“First rule of being a Jedi,” Obi-Wan said, exhausted, “learn to lie.”

There. That was a lesson. Qui-gon had said the same thing to him when he was fourteen. Obi-Wan was doing great at this. Anakin beamed and made a weird motion with his hand, clenching it into a fist and sticking his thumb out. Obi-Wan stared blankly at him until he put his hand down. 

Maybe it was because Obi-Wan was releasing all of his feelings and thoughts into the Force so well, but he couldn’t help but feel a constant prickling at the back of his neck. It felt like everybody was looking at them. A group of gossiping knights downright stopped talking when they saw Obi-Wan and Anakin approaching, and they broke out into whispers when they left. Padawans and initiates openly stared. Masters were too polite to stare, but their interest clearly peaked in the Force. 

By the time they got to the quartermaster’s and slid in line, Anakin was practically hiding behind Obi-Wan. Anakin had likely gone his entire life without anybody noticing him, blending into the background. Obi-Wan had learned almost a decade ago that it was a useful survival tactic for slaves. Although how he had ever done it, Obi-Wan would never know. The boy was a sun in the Force. Blinding and burnt, as broiling as the temperature he kept their quarters at. 

“Oh my. Padawan Kenobi, is that you?” Meela, the Quartermaster’s knight assistant, stopped and stared at both of them. She was carrying a large box of fabrics, and all of the other Jedi waiting in line stopped talking to crane their heads and stare too. “Oh! It’s knight now, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, before coughing. He hadn’t realized his voice was so hoarse - he hadn’t spoken to anybody but a nine year old in a week. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Meela.”

“Of course,” Meela said quickly. She was looking openly at Anakin, who was pointedly looking at Obi-Wan’s belt. “And you must be Anakin Skywalker! I had no idea you were so young. Is he even old enough to be a padawan, Knight Kenobi?”

“We determined that the creche wasn’t the best place for him.” Obi-Wan quickly grabbed his datapad, brought up the catalogue of items to requisition, and shoved it Anakin. “Pick out what we’re going to get. I’m certain you must be very busy, Knight Meela, so -”

“My, Padawan Kenobi?”

Obi-Wan refrained from gritting his teeth, before rotating on his heel. He stuck his hands in his sleeves, bowing to the aged Togrutan Jedi behind him. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Master Hashi.”

“My condolences for your master’s death,” Master Hashi said sympathetically. His watery old blue eyes were large and perfectly pitying. “It must be so difficult for you. And taking on a padawan so soon after your knighthood, as well.”

“He’s with the Force now,” Obi-Wan said. Smiling. He was smiling. Turn it down. Just a gentle smile. Remember Rishi. “But I appreciate your condolences.”

As it turns out, half the line just needed to express condolences for Master Jinn’s death, how sad, how tragic, how avoidable. He was so young. Obi-Wan was practically sweating by the time they got to the quartermaster’s desk, at which point he was promptly told that he was missing three forms. 

Obi-Wan stood in front of the quartermaster’s desk, gripping Anakin’s hand in his, trying not to unwind. “But I filled out the application on the portal -”

“Yes, but you need your knight’s identification code,” the Quartermaster said briskly. “You input your padawan code.”

“How do I find out my knight’s identification code?”

“It should be on your identification card, son.”

“I was only knighted a week ago.” They were staring. They were all staring - “They haven’t issued me a card yet.”

“I’ll refer you to my assistant, Knight Kenobi.”

Anakin tugged on Obi-Wan’s sleeve. “Are we not getting my new clothing?”

A horrible tremor rose in Obi-Wan’s chest: a choking, sinking feeling. It crawled up his throat, making his trachea burn and his head pound. It felt like a balloon expanding, splintering his chest cavity and threatening to crack him apart. 

Everybody was watching. They could not see it. Think about Rishi. Do not let them see it. 

After fifteen humiliating minutes sitting at a sympathetic Meela’s desk, Obi-Wan finally managed to secure them some clothes. Anakin also received the standard pack of Jedi personal items, including his own toiletries and datapad. They secured an identification code for Anakin and input him into the database, and gave him his own lanyard and set of cards. Older Jedi tended to keep them in a hidden pocket in their robes, but for obvious reasons they affixed them to the neck of younger children. 

But, without the identification code and five hundred more hoops, Obi-Wan couldn’t request a new living quarters and new furniture. He thanked Meela for her time anyway, stopped Anakin from attempting to requisition a B900-A40 droid with HyperFlex specs, and escaped something as simple as the Quartermaster’s trying to avoid rattling apart. 

Obi-Wan only exhaled when they were outside, looking at his datapad and marking off the first line. The to-do list scrolled down the screen, and onto another page. Anakin was already shifting from foot to foot, bored. 

“One down,” Obi-Wan said. “Three more.”

“Do we have to?” Anakin whined. “Why were the other Jedi so mean?”

Obi-Wan stopped short. He looked down at Anakin, who was fiddling with his obi again. “Stop messing with that. And they weren’t being mean, Anakin, they were just concerned.”

But Anakin just wrinkled his nose. “They were being mean. They were making you feel bad.”

How had he even - “If you keep quiet through the errands, you can have some fruit for lunch at the commissary.”

“Wizard!”

****

It quickly became obvious that nobody approved of Obi-Wan and Anakin.

Whispers followed them everywhere. Masters, old friends of Qui-gon, subtly disapproved of his choices. Which was nothing new - Obi-Wan had silently suffered almost everybody in the Temple disapproving of Qui-gon to him for years - but somehow it made Obi-Wan want to tear his hair out. The knights - the other knights - expressed incredulity that somebody knighted that morning received a padawan that afternoon. The padawans refused to even talk to Anakin, and he very quickly stopped trying. 

Obi-Wan’s own friends...he did not have many. He was never in the Temple long enough to significantly interact or make connections with any other padawans or knights. He was never home for longer than a few weeks, and if he was planetside for longer than a month then it was because Qui-gon was recuperating from getting blown up when Obi-Wan hijacked a pirate ship and crash landed it on a small moon. 

He used to have friends. Bant and Garen and Reeft and Siri...but a small and horrible part of Obi-Wan hated talking to them. A conversation with them always felt like they were trying to communicate with an Obi-Wan who hadn’t existed for a very long time, crying out over an impassable canyon. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan had begun resenting people who saw through him. 

Anakin was a stubborn and implacable kid, but he was very perceptive. He clung tighter and tighter to Obi-Wan’s robes the further they walked into the temple, and eventually Obi-Wan had to disentangle him and give him a quick talk about appropriate behavior. It was his tenth talk to Anakin about appropriate behavior - about everything from using utensils to washing his hair - but this was the first time he seemed to understand why. 

“So they don’t like you if you don’t do all the dumb stuff they do?”

“It’s not dumb,” Obi-Wan hissed. “And keep your voice down, this is a library.”

Judging from Anakin’s impressed gawking, this was his first time in a library. He clearly didn’t understand why they were supposed to be quiet either, and Obi-Wan was beginning to understand that Anakin refused to do anything unless you gave him a reason. 

Obi-Wan carefully placed him in a small chair in the children’s section, in front of a brightly colored plastic table. Some other initiates were sitting around coloring, or working their way through children’s books. Anakin squinted up at him judgmentally as Obi-Wan frantically grabbed the clunky and friendly library datapad and scrolled through the catalogue until he found a likely suspect. Bugs of Rainforest Planets, light on the words, perfect. 

“Just stay here until I come back,” Obi-Wan whispered, after a hurried explanation of why they were quiet in libraries. “Don’t leave this chair. Please.”

“I want more fruit,” Anakin warned. 

“You will have more fruit. Now please don’t move.”

This was not how you Jedi masters taught padawans. This was not how it was supposed to work. Obi-Wan was not doing this right. He was doing this terribly. And everybody knew, and everybody was judging him.

The children’s librarian was a kind, plump older Twi’lek with long silver lekku down to her waist. Madame Hallan had been a personal favorite of Obi-Wan’s when he was a youngling, and he knew that she still had a soft spot for him. She was probably the only librarian who didn’t explicitly distrust him.

He easily kidnapped her for a meeting - or, maybe, she took one look at his face and kidnapped him - and she shepherded him into her office. He had never been inside, and Obi-Wan felt weirdly on the other end of the fence of his childhood. It was bright and cheerful and had datapads scattered everywhere with tax forms. 

“I understand you have a new padawan,” Madame Hallan said kindly. “I saw him reading. He seems like a wonderful boy.”

She and half the temple understood that he had a new padawan. “I need your help,” Obi-Wan said, excruciatingly impolitely. Since when was Obi-Wan impolite? Since when was he lost? “It’s Anakin - I need to enroll him for lessons and I need some introductory literature for him and -”

“Dear, you’ll want to talk to Master Ravenholme for that.” Master Ravenholme was the Master of Education, and personal blight of many. “He’ll likely ask Anakin to take a placement test to determine which classes he joins.”

“Anakin can’t take a placement test,” Obi-Wan said. “He can’t read.”

To Madame Hallan’s credit, and raising a lot of questions about what exactly the other Jedi knew about Anakin, she accepted the information with a thoughtful look and a nod. “Does he know his letters and some words, or is it total illiteracy?”

Obi-Wan scrubbed his face. He was perched in the uncomfortable metal chair across from her desk, elbows propped on his knees. “It’s sporadic. He’s not totally illiterate, and I think he can read mechanical instruction manuals and labels and signs and that sort of thing...if it has to do with starfighters, he can write the instruction manual...I don’t know, I haven’t checked, but I can’t send him to class like this…”

“Calm yourself, Obi-Wan. Release that tension into the Force. Let’s take this one step at a time,” Madame Hallan said firmly, as Obi-Wan carefully breathed. “I will schedule a  reading and writing assessment appointment for Anakin for an assessment. Knight Fu and Knight Kili are available to administer personal tutoring until we get him up to speed.” Fu and Kili were two teachers in the special education department, which was somewhat lean for children over the age of ten or so. Most of the ‘delayed’ children were quickly assigned to the Jedi Corp. Obi-Wan was highly educated on this, and shamefully bitter. “Now, doesn’t that sound like a plan?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Good.” Madame Hallen typed something out on her computer, making Obi-Wan’s datapad ping. “I’ve sent you a few of the handbooks that we give new knights and first-time teachers. Hopefully they’ll be of some use to you.” She smiled reassuringly at him, oozing serenity. “I think you will make a wonderful teacher, Obi-Wan. Our Temple’s never seen a young Jedi as dedicated and hardworking as you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

 “And I’m certain that once you and Anakin get settled in, no matter where he came from, he will make an excellent student. We’re all Jedi here, after all.”

Betting was not Jedi-like behavior, despite the fact that Obi-Wan was a world-class betting champion on three Outer Rim worlds (there had been a diamond heist), but Obi-Wan would bet five hundred credits right now that Anakin was not in the chair where he had left him.

In the end, Obi-Wan was pleasantly surprised. Anakin, obviously, was not in the chair where Obi-Wan had left him, but he was within easy searching distance and hadn’t destroyed any droids yet. Instead, he had just meandered to the large picture encyclopedia propped up on a wooden stand, flipping through the flimsi with wide eyes. 

Obi-Wan stood next to him, unable to smile but amused all the same. “Do you know what that is?”

Anakin nodded fervently. “It’s an encyclopedia! The padawan guy said it has pictures of every smart species in the galaxy.”

There were, of course, digital databases for these things, but kids loved flipping through things. “Sentient species. Did you learn anything?”

“Yeah!” Anakin lingered on a picture of a Togruta before flipping further at light speed. “The padawan guy said that Qui-gon was a ‘rogue Jedi’ and that he taught you how to do crime and conquer planets and backflip and stuff.”

Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose. Hard. “Please don’t listen to Temple gossip, Anakin. It’ll jump down Coruscant while the truth takes an airlift.”

“But you can do backflips, I saw it.” Anakin turned to look at him - eyes wide, unjudging. “What does ‘rogue Jedi’ mean?”

What did it mean? Obi-Wan had spent half his life wondering. “It means that Qui-gon and I had a lot of adventures,” Obi-Wan said tactfully. “My training was somewhat unconventional in comparison with many other Jedi.”

But Anakin just beamed. “That’s so cool! Is my training going to be uncon - unconvectional?”

“Unconventional.” Obi-Wan sighed. “And at this point, I’m afraid so.”

Was Anakin going to resent him for this once he grew older? He must. Anakin would never be a real Jedi, a proper one. Just like Obi-Wan wasn’t. And Obi-Wan had spent almost a decade now frantically, fervently, desperately trying. He had done everything: mastered the art of saber-fighting, excelled in as many topics as he could. He was an expert in diplomacy, politics, ecology, and tactics. Everybody who met Obi-Wan found him charming, graceful, and handsome - and nobody who ever met Obi-Wan liked him. He topped his classes, was better at saberplay than most knights, and had personally saved the lives of three princesses and a memorable duchess, and he couldn’t figure out how to be a Jedi.

Obi-Wan couldn’t teach what he didn’t have. And he would never be able to give -

“Cool! I want to backflip and conquer planets too.” Anakin grinned up at him, yellow teeth flashing in the soft library lights. “I already know how to do crime, I’m really good at it!”

“Jedi have diplomatic immunity, so technically I’ve never done a crime,” Obi-Wan said, somewhat testily. 

“What’s diplomatic immunity?”

“Lesson number two, padawan, is that it means we can do whatever we want so long as we can justify it in the mission report.”

“Wizard!”

Maybe Obi-Wan should just never repeat anything Qui-gon had ever said to him. Ever. 

In a roundabout act of bribery, Obi-Wan finally led Anakin towards the cafeteria. It wasn’t lunchtime, but few Jedi strictly followed the guidelines of breakfast, lunchtime, and dinnertime. This was mostly because the creche and Initiates did, and nobody wanted to be in the cafeteria while children were everywhere. Obi-Wan was somewhat infamous in certain circles for braving the cafeteria at 0500 hours, when the space was completely overtaken by retired and venerated Masters sipping tea and playing intense grudge matches of shogi. Obi-Wan had been forced into the matter by his habit of waking up at 0430, but the shogi skills he learned had once settled a trade negotiation between two tribal groups with an ancestral grudge on a Mid-Rim planet, so he had no regrets.

Anakin was practically crushing his hand in excitement. His head whipped around everywhere, eyes wide and drinking in the sublimely banal and boring sight. There was the salad bar, there was the meat bar, there was the drink fountain...but to Anakin, it was the most amazing thing on Coruscant. It almost made Obi-Wan smile. When was the last time he had that expression on his face? Even the beautiful spires of Naboo were commonplace to him. 

“And they just -”

“Yes, they just give you the food.” Obi-Wan stopped in the center of the crowded thoroughfare - where, thankfully, everybody was far too focused on their meal or their friends to care about the Temple’s newest spectacle. “I’m sorry, Anakin. What do you...eat, again?”

Anakin suffered this atrocious act of caretaking patiently. What had he been eating until now? Just the self-stable noodles? Had he been handling boiling water?! “At home we ate jinjaraak and ekijun. People with money had fruit and stuff.” He looked around hopefully. “And they just give you fruit -”

“Right,” Obi-Wan said. He struggled to remember the food Shmi had served them. It had been mostly gruel. Obi-Wan had been around the block enough to see that she had been an adept cook of terrible ingredients. “Could you give me an idea of what those are?”

“Uh…” Anakin made little slapping motions with his hands. “Jinjaraak is from clay and lard and spices. I help Mom make little cakes. Like this, see?” At Obi-Wan’s dubious expression, he quickly clarified, “From the good clay. Near the dried up rivers. Not the bad clay. That stuff makes you sick. O’la’rek ate some of that and she got super sick and she barfed up blue -”

  “Let’s get you some fruit,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin got as much fruit as he wanted. Obi-Wan was too busy thinking about what ‘good clay’ could possibly mean to stop him. He could take the extra back to their quarters, anyway. 

There was a line for medical diets, and Obi-Wan eventually shuffled an ecstatic fruit-chomping Anakin into that line. He had to present the script the Halls of Healing gave him to the friendly yet belaboured Padawan working the booth that day, and waited patiently as the Padawan squinted at it and ran off to go get his supervisor. Anakin was in Rylothian Heaven, complete with the trees of plenty. 

Eventually the supervisor shuffled out, and when Obi-Wan recognized Master Law he bowed. The gruff Patitite squinted at Obi-Wan, then down at the effervescent Anakin with jogan juice staining his sleeve. It was a good thing Obi-Wan thought ahead and ordered extra robes.

“Kenobi,” Master Law finally said, with an air of crisp memory. “Iron deficiency.”

“Yes, Master.” Please don’t remind him. “I’m here with a prescription for my -”

“And the Vitamin D deficiency. And malnutrition?” Master Law squinted further at Obi-Wan, as if half-convinced that he couldn’t possibly be remembering correctly. “I had you eating Lo’rok paste for a month.”

“Yes, Master. After I was stationed on Neskar.”

“How the blazes was a Padawan stationed on -” Master Law cut himself off abruptly, staring down at Anakin instead. He looked him up and down with sharp eyes, seemingly picking out a dozen things that Obi-Wan just couldn’t see. “I’ll get you the nutrient shakes. See that he has one with every meal, three meals a day. I’m prescribing extra vitamin gummies, he’s a bit yellow. Those dietician hacks at the Halls of Healing don’t know anything about real food.”

Obi-Wan really didn’t want to get in the middle of that, so he just nodded. But Anakin blinked up at the man, flecks of seeds caught on the corner of his mouth. “What’s a gummy?”

“A very sweet, tasty candy,” Master Law said gravely. “Which young Padawans only receive when they are very brave.”

Anakin brightened. “What’s candy?”

“The best food in the galaxy.” Master Law’s stern countenance split into a sharp smile. “Seems like that’s just what the doctor ordered. If you’ve never had any, then that means I have to prescribe you a double dose.”

Anakin grinned to match, bright and wide, with yellow teeth and crinkled eyes. “That means I’m brave! I’m super brave! Padme said so, and you said so, so it’s like I’m extra brave!”

For some reason that he just couldn’t parse, Obi-Wan found himself anxiously saying, “I think you’re brave too, Anakin.” 

“Triple brave!”

The cafeteria was quickly proving to be Anakin’s favorite place in the Temple. Obi-Wan was reasonably certain that this was a good thing, because it made Anakin happy and happiness was good. That was a reliable fact of the universe: when happiness was scarce, sweet food could usually supply it. Sometimes you took what you could get.

Obi-Wan made an uncharacteristic move and placed a great deal of sugar on his oatmeal. Dumping sugar on oatmeal was crazy. This was probably what going insane felt like. Obi-Wan felt like a criminal. 

“You’re very boring, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said judgmentally. 

“I’m afraid so,” the ten time war veteran agreed. 

It could be worse. Nobody was around to see his shame but Anakin, and the small child wouldn't squeal. All he had to do was ply Anakin with nutrition shakes and fruit, take him back to their quarters, not leave their quarters again for another two weeks in order to recover from this experience, and -

“Obi-Wan! Goodness, Obi-Wan!”

Both Obi-Wan and Anakin jumped a foot in the air, Anakin fighting to keep his food balanced on his child-sized tray. But Obi-Wan recognized the voice, the smooth familiarity soothing his panicking heart and calming down his padawan by connection. 

Despite the fact that the voice was the last person he wanted to see.

Bant didn’t run, because she was a respectable Knight, but she did speedwalk in a dignified waddle towards Obi-Wan and Anakin. Anakin subtly slid closer to Obi-Wan, which he should really discourage. 

“Obi-Wan! Oh, goodness, you - you jerk, you big jerk!” Bant wrung her flippers, jowls shaking with the clear uge to wrap up Obi-Wan in her patented tight hug and foiled only by the tray that Obi-Wan was holding in front of him like a shield. “You’re an absolute bantha’s - oh!”

She had just noticed Anakin, who held his tray tightly. He was frowning at Bant, and Obi-Wan could feel a twinge of childish bad emotion across their still nascent bond. Wait. What bond?

Bant was oblivious, or put on a good show of it. “You must be Padawan Skywalker,” she said warmly. She bent down a little, and Obi-Wan was struck by nostalgia for her glimmering eyes and bright smile. Bant loved kids. Obi-Wan never had. “It’s so good to meet you! Have you been taking care of your silly master for me?”

Anakin pursed his lips judgmentally. “My teacher’s not silly,” Anakin said, a bit loudly. “He’s great and smart and does backflips. It’s not his fault he’s a jerk!”

Never mind. Obi-Wan was never taking Anakin out in public again. He carefully destroyed the urge to wince, settling for smiling weakly at Anakin. Bant looked a little taken back - shocked by the idea that Anakin could have taken her friendly teasing seriously. Or maybe that he would openly call Obi-Wan a jerk. Obi-Wan wasn’t going to contest it. It was fair. 

“Bant’s my best friend, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, with as much warmth as he could muster. His smile was looking more pathetic than anything, so he dropped it. “She knows how good my backflips are.”

“The best in the Temple!” Bant immediately swore up and down. “I’m awfully sorry, Anakin. I think your master’s the coolest guy here. Come on, why don’t you two come eat lunch with me and the rest of Obi-Wan’s friends? We’ve all been dying to meet the newest member of the family!”

A stone sank in Obi-Wan’s gut. He looked over the crowd, effortlessly picking out the familiar table in the back center. Sure enough, he saw the telltale gawks of Siri and Quinlan.

Joy. The two people he wanted to talk to the least. Those two ate Obi-Wan for breakfast on a good day. They would devour him now. They could smell weakness on him. He couldn’t get anything past them. They would take one look at him and know, just know - 

“Obi-Wan has friends?” Anakin asked dubiously. “But he just stays in his room all day.” Went tactfully unsaid: and nobody likes him. 

Somehow, the emotional obstacle course his friends were going to put him through was more appealing than the cold judgement of the nine year old. “I have plenty of friends,” Obi-Wan lied through his teeth. “Let’s go say hi.”

It felt like walking to the guillotine. Actually, Obi-Wan had walked to a guillotine before, and this was - no, it wasn’t worse. Hadn’t he done it twice? The first time was stressful, because he wasn’t sure if Qui-Gon had seduced the prison guard yet. The second time was fine, since he had hidden his lightsaber in the loose floorboard under the guillotine before he set up his own capture. So -  better than the first time, worse than the second time. 

Bizarrely, Siri and Quinlan grinned when they saw them. Obi-Wan was actively fighting the urge to hide behind the nine year old. The nine year old who he couldn’t possibly have formed a training bond with - he had been his padawan all of a week, it was impossible - but who had undoubtedly sensed his anxiety anyway. 

“Obi-Wan, I can’t fucking believe it,” Quinlan shouted, far too loudly. He and Bant’s trays were empty, while the slow eater Siri’s bowl of grains were half-eaten. They had been there for a while, probably hours, talking about life. He had always left after thirty minutes. He had stuff to do. “I must have left you ten damn voicemails -”

“You son of a varnaak.” Siri had a death grip on her spoon, wielding it like a lightsaber. “I’m strangling you with your intestine. Not inviting me to your own knighting -”

“If you’re going to be mean, we’re leaving!” Anakin interrupted, voice high and reedy. “I already said so! I will stomp your feet!”

“You’re not allowed to stomp their feet, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, exhausted beyond measure. “Hello, all. Save the interrogation for after we’ve eaten, please.”

And maybe it was the sheer power of Anakin and his mighty feet, but his friends quieted enough for Obi-Wan to shove sugary oats into his mouth and for Anakin to polish off his fruit before starting in on his nutrient shake. Obi-Wan had to stop and take a napkin and wipe the seeds off the corner of his mouth, and help him to insert the straw in the protein shake, but the act of sucking on a straw amused Anakin and he didn’t hate the taste. There were friendly animal species on the cup. Special nutrient shake for chronically malnourished children - now with bright colors! 

His friends just watched them, without even food to make the environment faux-casual. Their dark eyes seemed to follow him, and Obi-Wan felt his skin crawl. He didn’t want to deal with this. He could barely deal with Quinlan on a good day, much less...today. Any day, lately.

Finally, his grace period seemed to tick down to zero, and Quinlan broke the ice with a fishing spear and an excess of exuberance. “Is this the famous little guy we’ve heard so much about? I hear you’re a good pilot, kid!”

And, just like that, Quinlan was Anakin’s favorite person on Coruscant. “I’m the best pilot,” Anakin asserted arrogantly. Obi-Wan mentally noted the tendency for arrogance and pride down in the ‘Goal Setting!’ part of his brain that was half-heartedly drafting a training curriculum. “I can blow up anything and anyone.”

“Sounds like Quinlan,” Siri snickered. Unlike Bant, she was terrified of children, but she hid it well. “He and your master are Joballian twins that way. Those two could start a fire in deep space.”

“So who are you people?” Anakin asked. Obi-Wan put ‘unbelievably blunt’ in his mental training curriculum. “Are you really Obi-Wan’s friends? He doesn’t like you.”

“I like them very much,” Obi-Wan said rotely. Quinlan pantomimed a shot to the heart. 

But Bant just smiled down at Anakin, unflappable. “You’re a padawan, young one. You should call Obi-Wan your master. It’s good to be polite.”

“Why should I have to do that?” Anakin’s voice tinged a little louder, and at a pointed look from Obi-Wan he toned it down. Siri’s eyebrows rose. “He’s my teacher, not a master of no one.”

Bant winced a bit, and all three of them rippled discomfort in the Force. So they knew, even though it wasn’t totally public knowledge. Quinlan had undoubtedly used his ridiculous clearance as a Shadow to access the Naboo mission records and spilled the details to them. Keeping it professional, as always. 

“Master means something very different to Jedi,” Bant said gently. “It’s a special relationship between two people. Every Jedi teaches and learns from each other, but your master is the person who guides you and makes sure you go to bed on time. It’s just the same word for a very different thing than you’re used to.”

“What do you mean by that?” Anakin gnawed on his straw suspiciously. “I thought Obi-Wan was the one who taught me.”

Quinlan, who had far more experience with the wider world than Siri and Bant, caught on first. He propped his elbows on the table, and Obi-Wan saw him visibly struggle for the ‘wise teacher’ tone before giving up. “The Jedi have different relationships than you’re used to, kid. Who took care of you and watched you all day back home?”

This was heading into dangerous territory, and Obi-Wan frowned dangerously at Quinlan, but Anakin just hummed. “Mom took care of me and we moved around together. But Old Lady Hun watches me and the other kids in the gathering space when Mom’s busy. And when Jipol was sick, Mom and I took care of her two daughters. And Old Man Wa taught me how to fix things. And -”

“Right. So the Jedi are like that. Instead of a very small number of people raising kids, every adult raises every kid. So, for example, any Jedi would tell you to stop running in the halls or stop you from misbehaving -”

“And every Jedi did, with this one,” Siri added. 

“ - but any Knight or Master would help you with your homework, too,” Quinlan finished, elbowing Siri. “We all help each other here. We share food, stuff, school, and teachings. That’s why we practice nonattachment - everything’s everybody’s, not just yours. Make sense?”

Anakin’s brow was furrowed. He paid close attention to everything - chewing everything over again and again until it made sense. Obi-Wan shoveled oatmeal in his mouth, glad Quinlan was doing this. “Why does nonattachment mean you don’t get moms or dads?”

Dangerous territory. Bant opened her mouth to say something soothing, but Quinlan beat her to the punch. “Well, to Jedi, we think the idea of just putting two or three people in charge of kids is pretty crazy. Kids are loud and bouncy. One or two people would get totally stressed out and make mistakes. And imagine just a few people teaching you about life. They could believe all this crazy stuff, and then so would you.”

“And what if the parent’s being a total jerk?” Siri pointed out. “Then the kid’s stuck with that. But when there’s other people around, they can stop and tell the parent that they’re being a total jerk. Then they have to cut it out.”

Anakin narrowed his eyes. “So nobody beats their kids here because the other Jedi would get mad?”

Awkward silence loomed. Finally, Quinlan said, “Yeah, totally. Anyway, that’s why our way rocks and makes sense. Boom. Teaching moment.” Quinlan slapped the table in victory. “We are so good at this. We’re going to be the greatest teachers ever, Anakin. Forget lame old Obi-Wan, he’s going to lead you down the path of boring. Stick with Knight Vos, I’m gonna lead you down the path that rocks.”

At Anakin’s deeply confused expression, Bant put a hand on his back. But when she spoke she spoke to Obi-Wan, gleaming eyes boring into his. “We’re Obi-Wan’s best friends. We’re going to be here for you almost as much as Obi-Wan is. None of us have padawans yet, so we’re all really excited to help you! Did you know I’m a doctor?”

Anakin perked up. He respected doctors highly - apparently it was a very prestigious position on Tatooine. “Wow! Obi-Wan’s friends with a doctor?”

“And I’m a superspy action hero, kid!” Quinlan flexed, tossing his dreads. “I can teach you how to hack into anything!”

“I’m a better pilot than anyone at this table.” Siri awkwardly waved her fist in the air in a pantomime of excitement. “I’ll help you...fly things. Which you can apparently already do. But I’ll teach you how to do it better.”

The idea was heady to Anakin. His eyes widened, filled with possibility and excitement. Of smiling adult faces, wanting to help. But he looked at Obi-Wan instead, fear sneaking in through the gap bored by long experience with misery. “So what does a master do, then?”

Obi-Wan smiled wanly at Anakin. Experimentally, he tried sending him as much warmth as possible. He didn’t have much to spare, but Anakin seemed to appreciate the sentiment. “I’ll protect you, Anakin. And I’d like it if you continued calling me Obi-Wan.”

And he knew that meant more to Anakin than all the rest. At least Obi-Wan won there. 

Although Obi-Wan had gone his entire life despairing for Quinlan’s future padawan, he somehow handled Anakin wonderfully. Even Siri awkwardly asked a question about Anakin’s favorite kind of ship - clearly expecting an answer along the lines of ‘a big one!’ or ‘one that shoots lasers!’ - and sat through Anakin’s ten minute scientific dissertations on the difference in engine ports between Genoshian Special X100 and Genoshian Special X200. 

When’s the last time Obi-Wan had a long conversation with Anakin, where they just talked about nothing? He’d been so selfish, focusing entirely on himself and not even thinking about Anakin. His friends were doing this a thousand times better than he was. They should be the one with a padawan, not him. Qui-Gon hadn’t thought he was ready for knighthood until - well, until it was convenient, but if it took him this long to be knighted he ought to be forty before he got a padawan. 

In a characteristically deft maneuver, Quinlan had flagged down a friend of his - Ku Lun, a friendly face and teacher to the Initiates - and gave Anakin a real world lesson in Jedi togetherness by asking him to walk Anakin back to their quarters. Anakin shot a panicked look at Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan deeply wished to send a panicked look back, but he just nodded supportively. 

“Don’t you want to ask Knight Lun about lessons?” Obi-Wan said. “You can work together to design your school.”

The concept of school, and the power to choose it, was obviously heady to Anakin, and he jumped off the bench with only a tinge of reluctance. “Come back to the room in thirty minutes or you’re fired,” Anakin told Obi-Wan gravely, yet nonsensically, before running off with Knight Lun. 

It wasn’t until the sounds of Anakin’s chattering faded, then disappeared completely, that Obi-Wan turned back to his friends with a sigh. Their plot had worked. Quinlan and Siri’s perfect score in tactics - second only to his more than perfect score - had won again. He was subject to the masses, and the masses were stressed over his wellbeing. 

Better make the pre-emptive strike. “Greetings, my honored friends,” Obi-Wan said dully. “My very best friends in the galaxy, whom I have not spoken to in months.”

“And whose fault is that, you asshole!” Quinlan thumped the table, making the plasteelware rattle, and cuing a withering look from Bant. “You drop out of contact. You leave on a routine diplomatic mission. You get wrapped up in an interplanetary war, obviously, because that’s how your routine missions always go. And you come back with a kid and the head of a Sith?”

“You have the situation well in hand, Quinlan. There’s nothing more I can teach you.”

“Idiot! I’m not asking for a mission report, here.” Quinlan set his mouth, as tempestuous as ever. “Are you okay?”

Was he okay?

Maybe Bant caught something on his expression, because she placed a reassuring flipper on his arm. “We’re sorry about Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan. We know how much he meant to you. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

“You can’t get rid of us just because you don’t talk to us.” Siri scooped the rest of her oats in her mouth, clearly regretful that she no longer had something to hide behind. “Reeft and Garen feel the same way. You’re lucky Garen’s on a mission, or he would have staked out your door.” He would have. Garen was insane. “I know they waived the two weeks in solitude considering your circumstances, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need it. Anakin needs -”

“As his master, I have the best idea of what Anakin needs.” Obi-Wan kept his voice flat, dispassionate. He wasn’t a child anymore, not that impetuous Initiate who yelled and stomped and screamed. Obi-Wan had drowned that anger under thick layers of Jedi robe years ago. “I appreciate and understand your concern. However, I ask for faith in my abilities to handle my padawan.”

“Oh, no. Not the ‘I Am A Perfect Jedi And You Are The Irresponsible Bugs Beneath My Feet’ voice.” Siri didn’t sound amused, as she normally would be while making fun of him. What was funny about speaking properly? “Don’t shut down on us.”

“I’ve never understood where you got the impression that Jedi don’t have feelings, Obi-Wan,” Bant scolded, “but you know it’s not true. Jedi feel their feelings. They feel them and release them. This is you repressing them. They’re just going to fester and get worse if you do that.”

“Yes, Bant. I recieved top marks in Philosophy 101, same as you.” Obi-Wan picked at his sealed up, the rims of thick juice sloshing in the corners, before forcing himself to stop. He forced his hands still on the table, pressing them down hard on the linoleum. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what good a confession would do to all of you. Obviously I miss my master. Obviously I’m all…very sad about it.” Obi-Wan jerked his shoulders in a half-shrug, ignoring everyone’s unimpressed looks. “What good will talking about it do? I have to remain focused. In the real world, you don’t get the luxury of hermitage.”

“Luckily, you’re not in the real world.” Bant’s wry tone imparted the air quotes around ‘real world’. “You’re home. You and Anakin are safe here.” Obi-Wan snorted. “Knight Kenobi, what was that?”

Uh oh. But Siri unknowingly came to his rescue, leaning forward with as intent and sympathetic expression as she could wring from her usually severe countenance. “Don’t give me that dung, Obi-Wan. I cried for a month after Master Tahl died. You were there for me every second of it. What, are you so special that you don’t need help? Are you so much better than us that you don’t feel what every sentient feels? Your ‘better than you’ attitude doesn’t make you better than yourself.”

Bant made a warbling sound of frustration. “Siri, let’s not insult the person we are trying to help.”

“It’s not my fault he’s so - look, this is about Anakin -”

A tightly wound rope of...of something bad snapped in Obi-Wan’s gut. “You don’t think I can handle him.”

“Nobody’s saying that, brother,” Quinlan said, placating for the first time in his life, “but it’s like I was just telling the little guy, right? Nobody can do this by themselves. Cultures that try to do it are - they’re just crazy!”

“None of you think I can do this,” Obi-Wan whispered harshly, trying to keep the - the bad thing locked tight inside, incapable. It wouldn’t stop overflowing, a cup that runneth over. “Nobody in this Temple thinks I’m capable of taking care of him. They don’t think he can be a Jedi. It’s my fault. It’s because he has such a fuck-up for a master.”

Everybody around him suddenly radiated extreme alarm in the Force in unison. Was it really that unusual for him to say the words that swirled around in his head every hour of the day?

“Obi-Wan, we’re the fuck-ups. I mean, me and Siri and Garen. You and Bant are the Rylothian angels here.”

“That’s not what everybody else thinks,” Obi-Wan said lowly. “I’ve always been tainted because of Qui-Gon. Now just being around me is going to taint Anakin. Everybody knows it.”

“Tainted?” Bant asked with alarm. What was alarming? “What are you talking about -”

But Obi-Wan barrelled through her, unwilling to hear whatever sweet and placating words she had for him today. He stood up, carefully stepping off the bench and fussily fixing his robes with hands that did not shake. “We are going to prove it to them. Anakin will become a Jedi. I will make Anakin a Jedi, if it’s the last thing I do.”

He swept off, feeling a little bit dramatic, feeling as if he had expelled the smallest amount of emotion he could. That was the least he could give, portioning out bits of himself to the hungry and braying crowd. 

Why did they want these pieces of him so desperately? What was valuable about these hideous parts of Obi-Wan - the fear, the insecurity, the nightmares shaking him awake each night? People like Bant and Quinlan dug and dug and dug until they found what they were looking for, as if they wanted to prove something to themselves, to him, to the Jedi. 

Prove that he was inferior. Prove that he was just as wild and angry as everybody always said. Prove that his flimsy mask of ‘A Perfect Jedi’ was nothing more than a stage actor placing a pulp-mache bantha’s head mask over his face and strutting about as if he was a king.  Prove what Qui-Gon had always thought of him: that any love for him could only be held at arm's length, that a kid who needed to prove himself never required support or a helping hand, that there was no such thing as ‘good enough’ when you lived in competition with ghosts and shadows. 

Prove what everybody knew, and what Obi-Wan could not hide.

***

When Obi-Wan got home, Anakin was lying on the ground committing atrocities upon the ravaged corpse of a pilfered library droid.

“Please start putting down a tarp when you do that,” Obi-Wan said. “You’ve been getting oil into the carpet.” He paused a beat. “And please stop sneaking away from chaperones.”

“But I need to practice sneaking away from good guys so I can be good at sneaking away from bad guys! And it’s not like I was caught.” Anakin didn’t look up at him, absorbed in his work. “That’s Jedi lesson three, right? ‘Do whatever you want, just don’t get caught’?”

“When had - why do -” Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose, already regretting the one day exposure to Qui-Gon. But..in the face of that logic, Obi-Wan was forced to concede. It was objectively true. “Yes. But make an exception for me. Just don’t get caught by others.”

“You got it! Hey, pinch this wire for me.”

So Obi-Wan lay down on his stomach across from Anakin, staring at him from over a sea of rusty machinery. His round little face, somehow still clinging onto baby fat, was smooth as only a child’s could be. It was flaky and rough from the blistering heat of twin suns, but he had ointment now. His featherly light blonde hair would darken without its sunshine bleach, and it would grow long in limp brown shags. He would look like his mother - if, apparently, there was no father to speak of. 

His expression was screwed up in concentration, tongue poking out of his teeth as he carefully screwed in a bolt where it likely was not intended to go. There was something strangely beautiful about him in that moment - an intelligence at work, a powerful focus rarely applied. He glowed in the Force like a sun, overwhelming and breath-taking. 

But when Obi-Wan’s breath caught, he wasn’t sure if it was the Force. Maybe it was just Anakin. Could you fall in love like this? Just by looking at somebody, just by feeling how great they could be? Stronger than Obi-Wan, more righteous than Qui-Gon? Kinder than Master Dooku, more vibrant than Grandmaster Yoda? 

Could he be better? Or would Obi-Wan only make him worse?

“Do you like my friends?” Obi-Wan whispered.

“Gimmie a min’.” Anakin finished screwing the bolt, huffing at the piece. “Bad. Gotta redo...what didya say?”

“Do you like my friends?”

“Oh!” Anakin brightened. “They’re super cool and awesome Jedi! They’re just like I thought Jedi would be. Bant’s a doctor! Did you know that?”

“I did.” A pang shot through Obi-Wan’s heart. “They’d be better teachers than I. I’m sorry, Anakin. I’m sorry you’re stuck with…”

“No way! I’m sorry you’re stuck with me, Obi-Wan.” Anakin’s expression crumpled a little, although he bravely tried to keep it straight. He was already picking that up from Obi-Wan. “I’m why everybody keeps looking at us weird...it’s all my fault. All the Jedi hate us.”

“Anakin, no. The Jedi love all sentient beings.” Judging from Anakin’s expression, Obi-Wan was speaking straight bantha poodoo and acting as if the Corellian moons were made of cheese. “It’s true. They’d - they’d all help you. You don’t need to rely on me.”

Wires hissed and sparked. Anakin was quiet for a moment, stripping some wires with a deft, chubby hand and tying them together. He reached out to grab a blowtorch, but at Obi-Wan’s dangerous expression he carefully retreated his hand. It was a matter of time until he was using his lightsaber to solder metal. Incorrigible. Finally, Anakin said, “What Mr. Quinlan -”

“Knight Quinlan.”

“Knight Quinlan was talking about how you’re just there to guide me and teach me the Jedi way for a few years. And they all acted like the master and padawan thing is so special and great, but…” His face crumpled a little, overcome by an emotion he couldn’t name. “When we had to leave Mom behind...I thought that meant that you were going to be Mom now. But they aren’t going to let us. They’re going to make other people teach me because they don’t like you, and - and - and!”

Fat tears were rolling down Anakin’s cheeks, no matter how hard he scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. Obi-Wan quickly sat up and moved closer to Anakin, wrapping him in a hug and letting Anakin press his head into Obi-Wan’s tunic. He would probably have to get this one cleaned with Anakin’s robe. He didn’t know why he was focusing on that instead of Anakin’s hitched breaths as he tried to control his tears.

“Nobody’s going to take you away from me, Anakin.” That wasn’t what he meant to say. That was far too possessive. That hadn’t come out right. But what had Obi-Wan meant to say? “We all just want what’s best for you. You might be happier with the others.” Obi-Wan faltered. “You could be a normal child here. Take lessons. Play with the other children. Learn and grow and be happy. My padawanship, Anakin...it was dangerous and isolated. That’s the kind of life I’ve always lived. I don’t want to expose you to that.”

Anakin separated from him, eyes red-rimmed but dry. “They aren’t strong! All the kids and the old people here - they’re weak! Nothing bad’s ever happened to them, so they think sad people like us are freaks. But you’re strong, Obi-Wan. I want to be strong and just like you. I’m not embarrassed to be your padawan.” He faltered a little, rubbing at his eyes. “It’s okay that you’re sad and that I had to make food for a little bit. Mom would get sad sometimes too. She couldn’t leave bed and stuff. I would take care of Mom and make her food. I don’t mind making you food. The slaves all had each other, we did, but...Mom and I took care of each other. We can take care of each other. It’s just you and me. Right?”

Obi-Wan embraced Anakin tightly, fighting to control his breathing. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the correct way to do this. He had to be more like Qui-Gon - professional and strong and affectionate. Qui-Gon would have never let Obi-Wan cling to him like this, swearing an oath that neither of them should ever make. 

Nobody was going to help them. None of them had ever forgotten how Obi-Wan had been a failure as a child, and none of them were ever going to forget where Anakin came from. No matter what they all said, their bright smiles and helping hands - none of them understood what it was like. It was just Obi-Wan and Anakin from now on. 

In some strange way, it felt as if it had always been. As if Obi-Wan had only been alone, because he had not met or loved Anakin yet. 

This wasn’t the kind of master Obi-Wan should be. He should be discouraging this desperation and neediness. But he couldn’t discourage it in himself, and he had no idea how to quench it in either of them. 

As the Rylothians would say - if this was a sin, then hell had greater need of him than heaven. 

He would put in the request for active mission duty. If Anakin grew up like he did - in the midst of adventure and hardship - then he could attain the strength he so desired. That was all Obi-Wan knew how to offer, and that was Qui-Gon’s legacy.

“It’s just you and me, Anakin,” Obi-Wan swore, and damned himself. “It’s just you and me…”

[phoenixyfriend]

Jangobi 5 for the soulmate thing? Because that would make the fight on kamino just *chef's kiss*

soulmate au prompts

5. the one where you don’t know your soulmate until you touch them.

Apparently there’s never any skin to skin contact in the movie? Because armor? So......... we’re gonna just. Quick little thing.

Also I’ve been doing a lot of “marginally less shitty” Jango, but this is just-as-shitty-as-canon Jango. It’s, uh, not much of a romance, because Kamino. Actually it’s mostly just a lot of angry yelling about human rights violations.

...I’m sure they’ll get together eventually. It’s just, you know... it’s going to take a while.

------

Jango’s heard about this Jedi.

The man isn’t famous, or particularly acclaimed. It’s just that Mandalorians gossip, and Death Watch isn’t exempt, and Dred Priest still has friends in the terrorist group. So do a few others.

(Jango sometimes wonders if he’d have invited Priest, had he knows the monster was only a step away from being Death Watch himself.)

(Probably not.)

(He’d at least have been able to see the battle circles coming.)

Death Watch hates one specific Jedi above all others: Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It’s almost enough to make a man like the pretty bastard, except the reason Death Watch hates this specific Jedi is because he kept Duchess Kryze alive, and Jango isn’t much of a fan of hers, either.

In the moment, though, the main thing this all means is that Obi-Wan Kenobi knows Mandalorian customs.

First meetings, out of armor, mean ensuring the arm clasp has skin contact.

His eyes flick down to where Jango is reflexively pulling up his sleeves, and the man just... does the same, sodden as the beige-on-brown-on-dark-brown robes are.

Jango can’t just play it off. He has to, ugh, arm clasp with a Jedi.

Kenobi probably guesses how unpleasant this is for him, going by the grim little smile that he wears, the one Taun We can’t read and Jango can, but they touch forearms and le--

They do not let go.

“Oh kriff,” Kenobi swears, and then it’s just... it’s too late. It’s too late to stop anything.

“Jetii,” Jango spits as if it’s a swear.

He doesn’t want to be soulmates with a Jedi. No sane person ever wants to be soulmates with a Jedi, but as a Mandalorian, and as specifically Jango Fett, who signed onto this project for revenge against Jedi, the idea is just... excruciating.

“For revenge? Not entirely unexpected, but I’m still somehow disappointed.”

“Stay out of my head.”

Kenobi smiles at him, completely devoid of anything but the blackest of humor. “Are you staying out of mine?”

And, well, no. They’re soulmates. Kenobi has more of an idea on how to control how far his mind wanders into Jango’s, but in this moment, just seconds after being bound together by the universe... Jango’s slamming into Kenobi’s shields with an embarrassing lack of control.

“Is something the matter?” Taun We asks.

“I do believe we need to speak alone,” Kenobi says. “Unfortunate timing, but this is our first meeting, and it appears we are soulmates.”

“Ah. We were informed of the human tendency towards such.” She blinks, too large eyes impossible to read for Kenobi, but entirely readable for Jango after all these years. She’s irritated. “I apologize, but it appears we were unable to remove such unpredictability from the product.”

A wave of revulsion leaks out of Kenobi’s mind and into Jango’s. The man just nods. “I understand. As it is, I imagine that the near instantaneous communication on the battlefield will be a boon, if any are bonded to each other or to active soldiers.”

“I defer to your judgement as client, Master Kenobi,” Taun We hums, still irritable. It’s less visible in her face, but... Kenobi can feel it. “I shall leave you to get... acquainted.”

Aaaaaaaand she’s expecting them to sleep together the second she turns her back. The disgust she feels at the thought of such carnal activities is thirdhand to Jango, but he can still feel it, because Kenobi can feel it, because they’re soulmates.

“Oh, do tell me how you really feel,” Kenobi mutters, sweeping past him into the apartment.

Jango wishes he could slam the door as he storms after the Jedi.

“Listen here--”

“Absolutely not,” Kenobi says, with the kind of bland, impersonal smile that Jango’s heard Dred Priest bitch about at least a dozen times. “I need you to answer me this: why are you selling your children into what is clearly slavery?”

“They’re not my children.”

“You choose to be dar’buir, then?” Kenobi clucks a tongue, acting like he can’t even feel Jango’s waves of hate that are just growing by the second. “Shame on you, Mand’alor.”

“I am not the Mand’alor.”

“No. You are demagolka,” Kenobi says, the sweet words of Jango’s first language falling from his lips like poisoned honey. “They are your children, Fett. Your clones, just as human as you.”

“They are little more than droids, Jedi. The Kaminoans--”

Kenobi laughs, sharp and bitter, and it’s enough of a surprise that Jango stops talking. The Jedi strides closer, and it takes everything in him to not step back at what little emotion the Jedi allows through.

“Let me show you,” Kenobi hisses, putting a hand on either side of Jango’s head and it’s too much this is not a sense he is meant to have.

Kenobi cannot lie to Jango, not in this mental space. Not in this existence. He can cherry-pick what he shows, he can exaggerate, he can hide, but he cannot present a falsehood.

What Kenobi shows him, as he pulls Jango into his mind and drowns him in the sensation of the Force, is how each and every clone shines, bright and unique and so very human, so very sentient, so very alive.

These are your children, Kenobi says, directly into his mind and with no room to pull away. If they choose to disown you for your crimes against them, then that is their right, but until they do, they are your responsibility. You’re playing in denial and cognitive dissonance, soulmate mine. If I have to drag you into caring for your children the way any Mandalorian would, then so be it.

“Kriff off,” Jango manages to grit out in the real world. Kenobi looks unimpressed, when he lets go. The sensations in Jango’s mind, the jangled distaste and horror and anger, those are worse.

“Are you going to be dar’manda?” Kenobi demands. “You, who were once king of your people, have you really sunk so low to be the worst of your kind? To be so horrible that even Kyr’tsad would be shamed? Or worse, approve?”

“You have no place--”

“You are violating one of the core tenets of your culture!” Kenobi shouts. “You are being the worst of what you could be, Jango Fett! The most important, the absolute most important element of your culture, the care and nurture of children, and look at what you’ve done--”

“The clones--”

“Your sons!” Kenobi growls at him. “Your children, Fett. I’ve a student that is, by every Mandalorian standard, my son. I know what it is to take in a child that is not yours by blood, to raise a foundling, and you are cutting off millions that are your blood. You aren’t turning away an orphan to another family because you cannot care for them as they deserve, you are breeding your children for war like bantha to slaughter.”

Jango throws the first punch.

Kenobi throws the second.

By the time the fight ends, the room is in ruins, for all that they do not draw blasters or sabers. Kenobi has Jango on his back, straddling his chest with knees on his wrists, a vibroblade to his neck. Kenobi’s lip is bleeding, and Jango thinks he might have caused a hairline fracture in the cheekbone. Both of them have at least one broken rib, and Jango’s currently blind in one eye from the blood pouring out of a cut on his forehead.

Kenobi’s a good fighter. If it weren’t for everything else, Jango might have even been able to appreciate that.

“You,” Kenobi growls, fisting one hand into Jango’s curls and yanking for emphasis, earning himself a snarl in return. “Are going to fix this mess you’ve helped create. If I have to drag the entire Jedi council, the entire senate, if I have to drag in all of Mandalore to make you fix this, I will.”

There’s determination in those words, angry and a little spiteful, but mostly just... disappointed.

“Of course I’m disappointed,” Kenobi spits out, like the words are hot coals. He’s expressive. Jango wants to like it, but mostly he just resents the trait. “I hoped to never find a soulmate; it just complicates things. Opsec becomes a nightmare and holding to the code is difficult. And now I have a soulmate, and he’s an absolute monster that views his own children as little more than droids.”

“War is going to come for them no matter what,” Jango manages to say, and Kenobi’s look is back to unimpressed. “Don’t pretend you haven’t heard of the separatists. There’s an army of actual droids, metal and code, just waiting for the right moment to pick a fight. It’s too late to stop it.”

“...you’re not only raising an army of your own children, but engineering the war that’s going to kill them?” Kenobi almost screeches, and the wave of nauseous loathing that slams into Jango is almost enough to make him actually vomit. Kenobi didn’t pull punches, not in the actual fight and not in whatever mental battle they’re apparently having via emotions and words.

“I’m not engineering it,” Jango says. “I’m just one part in a bigger machine. I got my payment. The rest is on Tyranus.”

He doesn’t even stop the images from flickering through his mind, throwing the man who hired him under the speeder.

“Master Dooku?” Kenobi whispers, horror growing. “No, no, I killed the--the Sith can’t--I killed the one on Naboo, and the Council mentioned the Rule of Two, but... oh hells.”

“You know him?” Jango taunts.

“He’s my grandmaster,” Kenobi says, and Jango can’t imagine the rest is meant to reach him, but the undercurrent is there.

Count Dooku is, by Mandalorian law, Kenobi’s grandfather.

Jango... suddenly feels a little regret about the taunting.

“I’d rather you feel regret about your children,” Kenobi snaps at him. “Every single one of them is a person, one that you chose to bring into this world, and they are your children.”

The argument is going in circles, but there are still places to take this.

“Your army is all adults, Kenobi,” Jango decides.

“They are ten years old,” Kenobi retorts. “Accelerated aging, sure, but they are children.”

“They’re soldiers.”

Disgust again, the same thing Kenobi has felt every time Jango has reasserted the purpose these children were born to, the same thing Jango has told his son, his sergeants, himself, for over a decade.

“A son?” Kenobi whispers. “Is your denial that strong, Fett? That you would claim one and not the rest?”

“Payment,” Jango says, and lets Kenobi feel the rest, since he seems so karking keen on it.

“Keeping one child in exchange for letting yourself be the creator of a slave army,” Kenobi says, and he doesn’t seem impressed. “Weren’t you a slave? Two years on a spice ship, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t you dare--”

“And you would put your sons in chains,” Kenobi hisses, hands going for Jango’s head again. It’s a sense memory, this time, of dark tunnels and exploding collars and a dar’jetii that... was his older brother. According to the Jedi way of thinking.

It’s a twisting fear and pain and I will die so that others may live while looking at an older man, a Master, who can maybe save the other slaves at the expense of one too-angry Initiate’s li--

“Get out of my head!” Jango roars, and he still can’t move his arms, and his legs are held down by the Force, but he twists his head to bite and Kenobi snatches his hands away.

Kenobi glares down at him, almost sneering with the amount of disdain he has for Jango’s general existence. “I’m your soulmate, and had we met fifteen years ago, I might have even thought that an alright thing... but whatever you are now isn’t something I can abide by. You won’t listen to morality, so let me say this instead: a Jedi does not kill an unarmed opponent, but I have full authority to arrest you, even here. I will take you back to the Republic, to be tried for your collusion with a Sith, and you will go to prison. You can try to run, but I am in your head, and you’re in mine. Once you’re in prison, what happens to your son?”

The implication is there, but even if it wasn’t, Jango hears the thought:

They’re soulmates. The Republic would place Boba with Kenobi.

He refuses to have his child raised by a holier-than-thou Jedi.

“Holiness doesn’t have any meaning in Jedi philosophy,” Kenobi says, relaxing just the slightest bit. “Other religions, yes, but no place in ours.”

“You’re a self-righteous bastard,” Jango says flatly. “Despite threatening a child.”

“You mean threatening to take custody of a child being raised in an unhealthy environment, one where he’s being taught to devalue his brothers, engendering a mental dissonance where he has to convince himself he’s special for a reason and that you won’t just drop him if he fails to be perfect?” Kenobi asks. “I prefer to keep children with guardians who love them, but the argument that he’s better off away from you isn’t a difficult one.”

“Oh, like a child-stealer--”

“My mother tried to drown me when I was a toddler,” Kenobi says, even flatter than Jango had been a minute earlier. “Because I was Force-Sensitive, and it was considered curse on my home planet. A Jedi saved me. Tell me that was a kidnapping and not being saved.”

Jango grinds his teeth. “You’re damned smug whenever you have some sob story that outranks mine.”

“This isn’t about who has the bigger sob story,” Kenobi says, and Jango can feel how he’s just as ready to start clenching his jaw to deal with Jango’s bullshit. “It’s about you doing your damned job as a Mandalorian and a father, and taking responsibility for your children. All three million of them.”

It really, really is a pity they didn’t meet before Jango took this job. They could have been great together.

As it is, Jango goes for the groin shot the second Kenobi lets him back on his feet.

[agremlinwrites]

A Mother ~ Chapter 1 ~ The Child

Chapter 1 ~ The Child

“The commission was quite specific. The asset was to be terminated.” At the droid’s word, you take out your saber and slash through it, encasing the room with a purple light. The Mandalorian looks between you and Grogu as your son reaches his hands out toward both of you. You take Grogu’s hand while still looking at the man next to you in suspicion. He sticks out his index finger for Grogu to hold, causing your son to coo at him sweetly.

The Mandalorian looks over to you and grabs your arm, searching you for weapons. He takes your saber and blaster and, sadly, notices the small dagger you keep in your boot, "I will take you both to my ship."

"So you can turn us in for money, yes?"

The Mandalorian ignores you and programs your son's pram to follow him. He looks back at you while making his way to the door, "Are you going to come willing, or will I have to drag you?"

You follow him but stick to the other side of your child, who looks up at you sweetly. The Mandalorian leads you through the desert toward his ship; you can't help but wonder who is trying to capture you this time. Most likely an empire wannabe, trying to suck up to a general or, better yet, a sith. As the three of you make your way through a small canyon, you look to the bounty hunter, "What can I call you, dear hunter?" The Mandalorian doesn't spare you a glance; at least you don't think he does. It's a little hard to tell with the helmet. "I can make up a nickname for you if you'd like."

This statement causes him to sigh, "Call me 'Mando.'"

"Hmm, Mando. It'll do for now." Your son hears your playful tone and coos up at you. The Mandalorian continues walking as you stop short; you feel a disturbance in the Force. You close your eyes and try to sense any other life forms. Your eyes snap open as you yell, "Mando! Above us!" Mando turns to see a Trandoshan jumping down from the top of the canyon.

He pushes Grogu away immediately and yells to you, "Protect the child!" You back away quickly toward your son when another Trandoshan sprints toward you, yelling. You front kick him in the chest and then jab him twice in the nose. He tries to smack at you, although he has some difficulty due to the blood coming from his face, you block each attempt and counter with your own hits until the Mandalorian comes up behind him and takes care of him. Finally, a third Trandoshan makes a run for Grogu but Mando shoots him before he can make it.

You and Mando notice the two tracking fobs laying near one body. "You two are pretty special, huh?"

You snort, "Thought you would've realized that since you've seen the delivery payment."

Mando sighs at you then looks at your son. Grogu gurgles up at him happily. Mando shakes his head and spins around, continuing the trek to his ship. The three of you keep quiet for the remainder of the walk back, besides Grogu's cooing of course. You can sense that your son has taken a liking to the bounty hunter, this fact worries you greatly.

'Do not get too close to him, my darling,' You reach out to Grogu through the Force.

He looks up at you with his big beautiful eyes, 'Why?'

'We won't be with him for long.' After you told him this, Grogu kept quiet in your mind but still gurgled and cooed at the man in front of you.

As night begins to take over the day, Mando decides it would be best for the three of you to stop for the night. You and your son sit a couple of feet away from him, and he begins to seal a wound on his arm. You hadn't taken notice of the wound until now. Grogu watches the pained Mandalorian, sadly. He climbs out of his pram and walks toward the armor-covered man. As he gets close, he raises his little hand towards the wound wanting to heal it. You smile softly, proud that he wanted to help. Mando notices him and picks him up, putting him back in his pram. You watch the Mandalorian sit back down and reach for his breastplate. "Let me help you stop the bleeding," he looks up at you; you can feel his suspicion. "It will be easier if someone else does it."

Mando hands you the cauterizing tool and lets you close the wound, but not after a few minutes of contemplation. With his other hand, he works on the breastplate, you look at it while cleaning his arm. You reach over and flipped a switch on the left side of the armor. It immediately chimes and comes back to life. The bounty hunter's surprise is evident, even without the Force. You feel your son come up next to you, trying to close Mando's wound again but he just picks him up and puts him in the pram again. This time, he closes the pram. You go over to the pram and lay next to it, but before you can try to sleep Mando stops you. He holds out your weapons to you, "Why?"

"You seem to be able to protect yourself and you would have tried to escape by now. Take them." You take them from his hands and put them in their proper places before turning to sleep.

As dawn breaks, Mando is anxious to walk again. The three of you are completely silent the whole way to his ship until you make it to the top of a hill and see Jawas scavenging his ship.

"Is that your ship?" You ask with an ounce of amusement in your voice. He says nothing instead dropping to the ground and taking out a scope. He surveys the area before taking out his rifle and killing a Jawa. "What are you doing?"

He shoots two more Jawas as they run back to their Sandcrawler. When the Jawa ship begins moving, so does the Mandalorian. You follow after yelling at him to leave them be. He shoots at the exhaust pipe, then runs and jumps onto the Sandcrawler. You and the pram holding Grogu try to keep up with the Crawler but have some difficulty. You watch as Mando fights with the Jawas on the side of the Crawler as he climbs up, and he almost makes it to the top but he falls when the Jawas break off an old blaster.

"Ouch," you say as you watch him fall, "Should we make a run for it?" You ask your son.

He looks up at you, 'We can't just leave him.'

"Fine." You both make your way to the Mandalorian, when you get there you check him over for any obvious wounds. When you find none, you and Grogu sit in waiting. When Mando did wake up, you knew he was surprised that the two of you were still there. Although, he doesn't dwell on that fact. He gets up and heads straight toward his ship to assess the damage. You and Grogu listen as he tries to start the engines, but it doesn't work. You pick up your son and walk up the ramp, finding Mando sitting in his sleep chamber. "What do we do now?"

Mando looks at the two of you and leads you back out of the ship. "Ready for another walk?" He leads you through the desert again, this time taking you not too far from his ship. You see a figure fixing the wiring on a light pole, as you make it to this new camp.

"I thought you were dead." The figure states, turning to look down at us. A Ugnaught. He makes his way down and Mando explains our situation to him. You and Grogu sit to the side as the Ugnaught fills a bucket with water. Grogu begins chasing a frog around. You watch him carefully knowing he may try to put it in his mouth. "These two were causing all the fuss?" He asks Mando, looking at the two of you.

"I think the little one is a child."

"It's better to deliver it alive then." The Ugnaught states.

"My ship has been destroyed. I'm trapped here."

You speak up at Mando's statement, "Jawas do not destroy, they scavenge. Your ship was unattended, making it their property."

"The girl is right. Jawas steal. They don't destroy." The Ugnaught agrees with you handing Mando a tool to fix his cuff.

"Stolen or destroyed, makes no difference to me," he looks over at you and Grogu when he hears Grogu squeal while chasing the frog, "They're protected by their crawling fortress. There's no way to recover the parts."

"You can trade?"

"With Jawas! Are you out of your mind?" Mando sounds baffled by thought.

"I will take you to them. I have spoken." You smile at the Ugnaught's words. But after, you hear a squelching noise.

"Spit it out!" You scold your son, causing the two men to look at you. They see the frog's legs sticking out of Grogu's mouth as he swallows it whole. "Okay, it's time for bed." Grogu whines but lets you put him in the pram.

The Ugnaught comes over to you, "Is he yours?"

"Not by blood," you tell him, smiling at your son who is beginning to nod off.

"But you love him the same," you nod at those words, "What is your name, youngling?"

You smile at the Ugnaught, "(Y/N), and you, sir?"

"Kuiil."

"It's nice to meet you, Kuiil."

"And you as well, youngling. Rest, we have a long ride ahead of us. I have spoken." You do as Kuiil says and go to rest, staying close to your son and the Mandalorian.

The next morning, you're met with a rainy trip to the Jawas. You stick close to Mando for warmth, keeping your son's pram shut to ward off the rain and cold. When you make it to the Jawa camp, Kuiil greets them in their native tongue. The Jawas draw their weapons when they see Mando.

"They really don't like you for some reason," Kuiil tells Mando.

"Yeah, that tends to happen when someone disintegrates three of their people." You state sarcastically. Mando tilts his head toward you, you can feel the small glare he sends your way but you keep your smile on.

"You need to drop your rifle." Kuiil translates for Mando.

"I'm a Mandalorian. Weapons are part of my religion."

"Do you want to put your ship back together or not?" You look up at him, raising your eyebrows.

He sighs, "Fine." He drops his rifle and gets out of the cart, "Stay here." He looks at the two of you. You give him a thumbs up and a rather aggressive grin.

As he steps towards the Jawas, Kuiil stops him, "And your blaster." Kuiil walks forward making small talk, as Mando looks back at you dropping his blaster next to you. Kuiil waves Mando forward, as you and Grogu watch from afar.

You can't hear the conversation but you do feel Mando getting annoyed. You hear Mando yell before starting his flame thrower in the direction of the Jawas. Two Jawas make their way towards you and you watch as the one talking to Mando and Kuiil stands up, pointing at the two of you.

Mando notices the Jawas near you instantly and screams at them, "Get away from them!"

The Jawas jump away and join the others. A chant of 'suka' begins from the small group. After a moment of deliberation, Mando waves you and Grogu over.

"What egg?" You ask him.

"It's something that will get me my property back. So we're going on a hunt for an egg."

"We?" You ask, surprise evident in your voice.

"We," Mando confirms, causing you to roll your eyes.

You, Kuiil, Grogu, and Mando all pile into the Sandcrawler and make your way towards where this 'egg' is. As you travel, Mando hits his head on the roof of the Sandcrawler quite often. You're beginning to think the Jawas are hitting large rocks on purpose and you're okay with it, entirely. When the Crawler reaches the destination, Kuiil agrees to stay with Jawas as you and Grogu go with Mando.

Mando leads the way around a small rock hill and you see the mouth of a cave at the far end. You and Mando prepare your weapons and walk into the cave, your lightsaber in your hand and his blaster in his. Although your investigation of the cave doesn’t last long as you are both thrown out of it by a Mudhorn. The two of you land in the mud about 20 feet from the cave and you are both left paralyzed for a moment. Mando picks up his rifle and tries to shoot at the Mudhorn as it makes its way out of the cave, but it jams due to the mud. You start firing shots at the beast but it charges the two of you. In a swift motion, it throws Mando to one side with its horn and then does the same to you. 

As the two of you lay on the ground on opposite sides of the clearing, the mudhorn notices Grogu and advances toward him. Mando moves the pram out of the way just in time, making the Mudhorn slam into the canyon wall. It turns, considers you and The Mandalorian, and then goes for Mando. Mando hits it with his flame thrower before getting smashed to the ground, continuing to fire flame at it. When he runs out of fuel, he shoots the mudhorn with his grappling hook causing the mudhorn to pill him towards the cave again. You aim your blaster and hit the mudhorn three times in the head before the grappling hook lets go. It throws Mando with its horn, he doesn’t get up this time. You and your son notice the mudhorn begin moving for Mando again, disregarding you and Grogu completely. 

Mando stands in front of the two of you, holding out his dagger but you and Grogu use the Force and work together to lift the mudhorn into the air. You feel Grogu become tired and you both drop the mudhorn, you run up the left side and slice into the mudhorn with your saber as Mando slams his dagger into the right. The two you just barely make it out of the way as the corpse falls to the ground. You quickly stand and make your way towards the pram, you see your son lying unconscious inside. You still sense him in the Force but know that he expelled too much energy and he will need to sleep for some time. Mando walks towards the two of you, after retrieving his dagger, and sees your son asleep.

“How?” Mando asks, more suspicious of the two of you than he was before.

“I’ll explain once we are back at your ship. It is far too open out here.” Mando lets out a modulated sigh at your response, but turns and walks toward the cave, going to get the egg. When he does, you all make your way back to the Jawas and Kuiil. You notice the ramp up into the Sandcrawler is beginning to close but stops once Kuiil yells out to you and Mando.

“I’ve got it. I’ve got the egg.” Mando states as he walks past Kuiil towards the Jawas who are running down the ramp and crowding him. He hands the egg to them, and they all start yelling ‘Suka.’ They chop the egg open and eat out of it.

“Ew.” You mutter from your spot next to Kuiil. You see Mando shake his head a little too.

“I’m surprised you waited,” Mando tells Kuiil.

“I’m surprised you took so long,” you laugh at Kuiil’s response.

“We got our asses handed to us, so don’t be.”

Once the Jawas are done loading up all of Mando’s ship parts, Kuiil hooks up the Blurrg and you’re on your way back to the ship. You curl up behind Mando and fall asleep rather quickly. Mando wakes you up when you make it back to his ship, night has fallen. Kuiil hands you tools, and you start helping put the ship back together. By morning, you now recognize that Mando’s ship is a Razor Crest.

“I gotta admit that I’m impressed with your ship,” Mando seems content with your comment, “But it's not the best I’ve ever seen.” You state, thinking about Han’s Millennium Falcon. Once finished with the engine, Mando and Kuiil go down the ladder while you stay to check on Grogu. After making sure, he’s still okay you make your way down. You hear another ‘I have spoken.’

“Kuiil, May the Force be with you.” You say to him, he looks at you knowingly and nods back to you. Mando makes his way up to the cockpit with you not far behind, he sits and turns on the engines, lifts off, and then makes the ascent to a high enough altitude to go into lightspeed. Once your destination of Nevarro is set, the Mandalorian looks back at Grogu and shakes the pram a bit. “Leave him alone, he needs rest.”

“What are the two of you?”

You look surprised, “You don’t deserve to know, since you’re still our executioner.”

“I’m not going to kill either of you.”

“Maybe you won’t do it. But you are handing us over to people who will.” You end the conversation, preparing yourself for the fight you will be forced to participate in. You will do anything to protect your son.

[lavenders-fandom-elixirs]

Ⲋเth Ꭺเȥᥲᥕᥲ

A/N: This was a thirst dump that I had with @riotsragdoll a few months ago. Thank you for humoring me and the input of thirsty thoughts.... I was initially going to make this a bigger piece but decided to just let it stand on it’s own. 

Warnings/Kinks: Bondage, Captivity, Gags, Blindfolds, Dub/Noncon, a bit of nipple play

⫘⫘⫘ ⫘⫘⫘ ⫘⫘⫘ ⫘⫘⫘ ⫘⫘⫘ ⫘⫘⫘ ⫘⫘⫘

He'd come back to his quarters and find you on his bed. Shackled, blindfolded and gagged. One dark brow would arch at the sight of you squirming on his sheets, muffled voice straining to cry out for help or demands to be released. Perhaps a bit of both. When the door suddenly hissed closed, you still abruptly, listening. Aizawa makes a point to step loudly and slowly, so you could feel the dread build up as he drew closer to you. Black eyes raked over your subdued form appreciatively, noting how you had been stripped down to undergarments. His minions knew how to serve him well.

"It seems I've got a rebel in my bed..." the Sith allows his weight to settle onto the side of the bed, a hand reaching out to grip your jaw and turn your face towards him, "I recognize you...Ahhhh, you're the one who surprised me and almost shot me."

The muffled and angry cursing only makes him give a silky soft laugh, a smirk twisting on his lips when you rip your face out of his grip. You renewed your struggles, chest heaving as you try to get any kind of slack on your bonds. And Aizawa couldn't help but watch his little rebel prize squirmed and groaned, mussing his sheets even further. You had barely left his thoughts since that day on the reactor, his dreams vexing him with the one who escaped his grip. Now you were his.

A gloved hand gives you a shove so you fall back against the mattress, powerful frame shifting so he could hover over you, greedily soaking in the sight of you helpless for him. Fuck you looked good like that. Rebels always looked the best at his mercy. Aizawa paused before dragging the blind fold down to reveal your eyes, fiery things that sparked with anger and a touch of fear. He dips a dark head down and presses a faux tender kiss to the outside of the metal gag that kept you silent for him, staring deep into your eyes to drink in the embarrassment and shock. Leather covered fingers rasp over the sides of your legs, a shiver rocking through your nerves.

"This wasn't how I'd pictured seeing you again. But I can't say no to a pretty rebel prize tied up like a present for me." he smirked before dipping his dark head down and pressing heated kisses to your ear, "I may not have pictured seeing you like this for our next meeting...but I can't say I haven't pictured you just...like...this." 

Aizawa would arch your body into his by hooking an arm beneath your waist and then kissing a trail down your throat. "I'm going to take my time with you...I'm going to bring you to the brink again and again until it sounds like you've surrendered to me enough. And then I'll take your gag off. So I can hear you beg for me to give you the release that you need."

He’d shift positions, and haul you up so your back is against his chest, the twitching firmness of his cock pressing against you. A hoarse chuckle rumbles in his chest, a velvety wicked thing that hums against your ear. The cool slide of those leather gloves creeps up your front to pull the blindfold back over your eyes so he could make you feel more cornered and helpless. The stifled squawks of indignation melt quickly into shaking moans once he tugs your bra down, leaving your breasts bare for him to knead and tease. Aizawa is relentless, teasing and touching until your head lolls back to rest on his shoulder, the perfect position for him to whisper dark promises into your ear.

"I could keep you like this...a little rebel prize to warm my bed. No one would dare question me. I could play with you every night until you fall to pieces for me." Aizawa gives your nipples a firm tweak and laughs low and husky into your ear, "Fuck I could just do this to you for hours. Keep it all going until you are about to lose your mind." The curve of his nose nuzzles along the shell of your ear, stubbled jaw dragging against your skin as he gives a soft hum as he gives thought to the ways he could tease and torment you, “Mmmm listen to you moaning. I’ve been in your thoughts too, haven’t I Kitten?”

Shouta may have been many things, may have crossed the border into the darkside a long time ago but there was one thing that he could say for certain: these were all promises he had every intention to keep.