#i promise that shmi and anakin's relationship will improve eventually

[fialleril]

In honor of Mothers' Day... any chance of getting a snippet from Anabasis with Shmi in it?

I warn you, anon, I don’t have any snippets with Shmi written yet that aren’t painful, but since several people have asked me for a Shmi snippet, I’m giving you this pain.

And as a bonus, you also get a glimpse of Ahsoka’s POV in the first section.

This snippet is super spoilery, so if you’re avoiding Anabasis spoilers for some reason, you probably want to give this one a miss.

Warnings for: harm to children, trauma reactions, panic attacks, hand trauma, mention of blood, mention of needles and injections

The door slid open.

Masters Yoda and Windu entered first, Yoda looking openlytroubled and Windu scowling. Behind them were two humans, a pale, work-wornwoman in her middle age, and an attractive young man with warm brown skin and asmile that lit his eyes. He looked oddly familiar, like someone she knew not inreality, but from images. His smile seemed actually genuine, but it fell whenhe caught sight of Vader.

The woman beside him sucked in a shallow breath of air, herface contorting with so many emotions that Ahsoka couldn’t begin to name them.Her hand reached out, clutching thoughtlessly at the air, and she whispered,“Ani.”

Vader shuddered and staggered, like a puppet whose stringshad been too violently pulled. His metal hand spasmed at his side, and hisbreaths came in short, sharp gasps. The air around him almost seemed to spark.

Ahsoka stepped back again, closer to Barriss, not sureherself whether she was offering protection or asking for it.

“What?” Vader asked in a hoarse whisper, as though the wordswere torn from him. “Who are you?”

The woman’s face crumpled, and her hand dropped. “Ani,” shebreathed. “Don’t you remember?”

“What is going on here?” snapped Madame Nu.

Neither Vader nor the two newcomers seemed to take anynotice, but Master Windu turned to them and said, “Vice Chair Baab sent them.And I for one would very much like to know why.” And then his eyes narrowed,and he snapped, “Tano. What are you doing here?”

Ahsoka shrank back. “I’m sorry, Master, I – ” she began, buthe had already dismissed her.

Vader was trembling, rooted to the floor and poised in adefensive stance that was less trained duelist and more street brawler. His nostrilsflared and his eyes were wide and wild. The chairs and the small table shook inan unseen wind, and all around them, the Force howled.

“Who are you?” he demanded again, his voice harsh andragged. His eyes darted between the young man, whose expression was open andoddly gentle, and the woman, with her face like stone carved by the silenttracks of her tears.

The young man took the woman’s hand and squeezed it once, andshe tore her eyes from Vader long enough to nod once at him.

“Explain yourselves, you will,” said Master Yoda darkly.

“I – yes. My name is Kitster Banai,” said the man, lookingat each of the Jedi in turn, but finally settling his gaze on Vader.

And now Ahsoka knew how she’d recognized him. He was thatactor, the one she’d seen on advertisements all over Coruscant for the last fewmonths.

Vader snorted. “I know who you are,” he snapped, and for a moment Kitster’s eyes brightened,until Vader said, “My Master was quite a fan of your work.”

“Oh,” said Kitster, his face falling noticeably. Ahsokathought that, for a renowned actor, he seemed to do a very poor job ofcontaining his emotions. He and the woman exchanged glances, and Kitstervisibly squared his shoulders.

“Anakin,” he said, and Vader drew himself up, taut as somelean predator ready to strike.

“How do you know that name?” he hissed.

“Because,” said Kitster, “I’m your br – that is, we grew uptogether. On Tatooine. You don’t remember?”

Vader snarled, stalking forward with fire in his eyes,completely unmindful of the four Jedi Masters who moved to intercept him.

Kitster Banai didn’t back down. He didn’t even lookfrightened. “Anakin,” he said. “What do you remember?”

Vader spun away from him in a flurry of rage, only to jerkto a sudden stop facing the woman. He was breathing hard and fast, his eyesblazing, and he looked as though he’d been caught in a sudden tractor beam. Hisarms trembled and his body tensed, but his feet remained rooted, and he staredat her.

Ahsoka was vaguely aware of the masters moving around her,and Barriss stepping away, but she couldn’t look away from Vader, caught in thepull of the unknown woman’s gravity. The only sound was the ragged gasp ofVader’s breathing.

“Ani,” the woman whispered again. “Ani, what have they doneto you?” And her hand reached out, and this time found the Sith’s cheek andrested there, just for a moment.

Vader sprang back from her touch as if it burned, panting inshallow gulps of air and bringing his hands up in front of his body. The Forcearound him was screaming.

“Who?” he growled again, but the word sounded old andbroken.

Kitster came forward, eyeing Vader warily, and took thewoman’s arm. He too seemed to have forgotten about the Jedi presence.

“Anakin,” he said with shocking gentleness.“This is Shmi Skywalker. Your mother.”

*

“No,” said Anakin. It was a non-reaction, a flat andtoneless denial. But he could feel his hands trembling minutely as he said it,and his head hummed with a dull ache. The woman’s presence in the Force drewhim like a black hole, unknowable and inescapable.

“No you’re not,” he whispered. “My mother’s dead. My – Everyoneis dead. I k– ”

He stopped. Everything was spiraling. He didn’t know whathe’d meant to say.

“Anakin,” said Kitster again, and Anakin hated him, hatedthe way the other man said his name, hated the way his presence in the Forcefelt so familiar but so strange.

“Anakin,” said Kitster. “What do you remember?”

What do you remember?

He remembered sand. He remembered grit mixing in his blood,old scars newly made, the roar of engines through the open desert. Heremembered tzai, and ralthin, and cadril pepper.He remembered the language: the language of the Hutts and the language that wassecret. He remembered a ship, and he didn’t know why. He remembered thedetonator.

He had no memory of his mother. He’d never had a mother.He’d been born in the jungle.

“No,” he said again, but it was a breath of air, ameaningless exhalation.

“Ani,” the woman whispered, her hand reaching out to touchhis face again. He shied back, but she didn’t drop her hand. “Ani, I’m sosorry.”

His head throbbed. He couldn’t think. The air was thick, andthe smell of rot and the jungle was all around him. He couldn’t think. He was –

“Stop calling me that!” he snarled, and lunged back, pullinghimself away from the woman’s terrible gravity. The room was shaking now, ormaybe that was just him. He reached blindly for control, staggered, andhalf-fell against the table behind him.

It would do.

His fist crashed into the solid surface of the table, fleshand bone yielding to cool metal. The crunch of his knuckles was loud in thesudden silence of the room, broken only by the woman’s gasp of horror. But heignored her. A sharp flare of pain coursed through him, real and present, andhe focused on that, centered himself around it. The look and feel of the bloodon his knuckles was… He didn’t know what, exactly. But it felt right. He lookeddown at his hand and realized that the headache was gone.

There was clarity in pain. That was one of the oldestlessons. He knew that, knew it in his bones, smelled it in the jungle-stink ofthe air. Master had said –

He growled, spinning away from the table again, his eyeslanding once more on the strange and terribly familiar woman.

For the first time, she looked almost afraid. Her eyeswidened and her hand fell away. But she didn’t step back.

“Anakin,” she said. “What happened to you?”

He stared at her. She was drab and tan and weathered, andthere was a timeless age to her face. It was the look of someone who had beenold for a very long time, though she was probably only in her middle years. Herhands were rough, and there were small scars scattered across her knuckles. Hedidn’t think he’d ever seen those hands before.

She was… He tried to stop the thought, but his mind wasspiraling now, spiraling and strangely clear with the pain. She didn’t lookfamiliar but she felt… And if shewas…

His mother was dead. He knew she was dead. He remembered.

But she wasn’t. The Force had never lied to him before. Andnow it was screaming.

She was supposed to be dead, but she wasn’t. And that meant…

“You sent me with him.”

The woman – Shmi, he wouldn’t call her anything else – lookedsurprised.

“Yes,” she said softly, her voice raw. “I sent you with theJedi. I didn’t know – But then there were whispers of purges and we thought – ”

She stepped closer, her eyes tracing over his face,searching, memorizing. Anakin stood rooted, the spiraling in his head givingway to a sudden horrible stillness.

“The Jedi?” he rasped.

Shmi nodded slowly. “Yes,” she whispered.

“The Jedi. You wanted me to be a Jedi.” The words burned inhis throat.

At the corners of his vision, he was aware of his guardsshifting nervously, and the snap of a lightsaber igniting, or more than one.But they didn’t matter. There was just the woman and her strange, terrible faceand the Jedi.

And suddenly he couldn’t stop laughing.

What do you remember?he heard again, and he couldn’t be sure if Kitster had spoken or if the wordswere only in his own mind.

But he did remember, in scraps and pieces and fragments ofbone.

There had been a transport, a ship, that ship, sleek and dark, and there had been sand whirling allaround him, and he’d been coughing, and he was going away, leaving the desertbehind, going with this man to become, to become…

His laughter died in a sudden snarl. “You sent me with him!”

The woman who claimed to be his mother started back, her facedrawn and pale with a dawning horror. The Force shuddered, and the table andchairs rattled against the stone floor. The smell of jungle rot and bloodfilled his senses.

And then there was a faint prick against his spine, and hespun around with a growl. He’d forgotten about the Jedi. They were all aroundhim now, Yoda and Windu and Dooku and Nu and even the youngling, Ahsoka Tano,all with their lightsabers held at the ready. But Barriss Offee stood nearest,unarmed and watching him with cool pity.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and just before he dissolvedinto the shadows he saw the syringe in her hand.

[eldunea]

god ok i haven’t even started anakin’s blog yet but i already have his entire pokéverse thought out here i go

ORIGINS.

anakin was born in my fakémon region of preuzien to an enslaved old prussian (prūsai) family. in real life the old prussians were exterminated but in the pokémon world they were made the slaves of the junker ruling class. when the allies came into germany after wwii they tried to put a stop to this but unfortunately were not entirely successful.

as in canon, he has no biological human father, he’s like……the universe’s kid or something, it’s where he gets his insane powers from. in this verse he is also definitely a chosen one, but don’t take that to mean he isn’t a douche because he still totally is

like in canon he was a racer, but he didn’t race pods he raced dragons. his master knew he could make big bucks off him from an early age due to his abilities so according to prussian custom he was put on a dragon before he could learn to walk and learned how to ride that way. 

he speaks three languages: german, prūsiskai (the old prussian language) and english. his inability to speak japanese has been a weakness of his that he wants to improve on, and so he is studying that as well.

his first pokémon was a racing noivern that he named majjis, which is old prussian for “corn.” she loves her name and he didn’t even change it after he went vader, it was real fucking obvious which one of “team sith” would go back to the light side when all the other admins named their pokémon stuff like “void devourer” and “bone crusher” and here was darth vader with his ace named fucking. corn. he is currently 36 and starting from like age 10 he never lost a single race while riding corn until he was finally defeated by his son luke.

also like in canon, he won his freedom in a race but was unable to free his mother. much like lotor at the age of 12, anakin had the sense to get the fuck out of preuzien, but unlike lotor, nothing pressing dragged him back. he went to make a name for himself as a trainer and racer around the world, and also became the world’s strongest psychic.

he did go back to prussia briefly to rescue his mom. by that point shmi had been brutally beaten for refusing to give sexual favors to her master, and died in anakin’s arms. enraged, he slaughtered the entire family that had enslaved him.

DESCENT AND REDEMPTION.

as in canon, he was tormented by prophetic dreams of his lover padmé amidala dying and was corrupted by sheev palpatine to join the sith order (colloquially referred to as “team sith”), a criminal organization in orre that stole some of team snagem’s shadow-turning techniques and aimed to do it on a grander scale. palpatine’s goal was to build something known as the shadow star, a weapon so powerful that when aimed at a planet, it could turn all beings shadow, even arceus. the sith order would then use shadow control techniques to rule the world. but one thing that palpatine was also obsessed with was the search for immortality, which is how he baited anakin into joining him--by promising he could save the one he loved.

when anakin became darth vader, he allowed palpatine to turn him into a SHADOW HUMAN, just like all the other team sith admins. this means that much like a shadow pokémon, the door to his heart was sealed and much of his original personality was subsumed into just. this roiling inner turmoil of anger and violence. formally, nobody knew that star trainer and dragon racer anakin skywalker was actually underground crime lord darth vader, but they could all tell that something was really, really wrong because he started becoming colder and more withdrawn to his fans that he had formerly loved. 

nobody guessed that he had become a shadow, however, because they all attributed his change in personality to the cybernetic enhancements he had been given. by this point he had lost half his head and three of his limbs in battle, and so they were replaced with prosthetics and his artificial brain was enhanced with programming for metagross supercomputers. metagross are known for being assholes who think more like machines than living beings, so it was easy for his adoring fans to believe that anakin’s change of personality was no fault of his own.

he was purified by his children, luke and leia. they were battling rivals who later discovered that they were twins and figured out who their father was. meeting them, he felt human again for the first time when he was around them…then they told him they wanted to defeat the evil darth vader and darth sidious and restore balance to orre, and he was just. well this is awkward.

his first instinct was to just kill his children but something held him back. so instead of killing them, he accompanied them on pointless missions that would ultimately lead them nowhere near close to defeating him and sidious--just to keep them distracted. little did he know, the more he fought alongside them and spent time with them, the more his heart gauge was emptied and the closer he became to purification.

much like a shadow pokémon, the more he was purified, the more his body and brain resisted it. finally the temptation to stay shadow became too strong, at which point he told his kids he was vader, locked them up, and turned them over to sidious to dispose of them. they managed to escape, however, after which there was a double battle of luke and leia vs. vader and sidious. the twins found themselves quickly overwhelmed, and sidious was about to kill them--when the sight of the two children about to die in front of them instantly emptied the remainder of anakin’s heart gauge. finally feeling real love again for the first time in years, anakin killed his master and saved his twins. luke and leia then took him to a purification chamber to be fully restored.

CURRENT STATUS.

anakin has returned to preuzien to become one of its strategic gym leaders. his gym’s theme is sky battles, which are fought only by pokémon that can stay airborne such as flying-types and those with the ability to levitate. though this may seem to be restrictive, anakin can still fight with a diverse mixture of pokémon.

he’s actually a league member in two regions: preuzien, aka german prussia, and prutenia, the newly-instated old prussian nation. essentially he’s a diplomat but in many ways he’s the wrong choice because……darth vader, have you fucking met him? however, lotor deliberately chose someone who was angry and undiplomatic to fulfill this role because he wanted to make it very clear to the german prussians that the rights and sovereignty of the prūsai are completely non-negotiable and there is a guy in the prutenian league who will happily beat the shit out of anyone who says otherwise.

he and lotor have a very strained relationship. on one hand anakin has healed a lot since he left the sith, and he is very concerned because he sees lotor going down the same path as he did. but on the other hand he still has a long way to go yet acts like he’s 100% redeemed when he lectures lotor, and lotor sees right through this…then when lotor calls anakin out on the fact he still has issues, anakin gets all pissy. also, anakin correctly suspects that lotor is using him as an ally for his “chosen one” status, inviting him to the league and giving him a second chance in spite of him being vader because he wants to get on the legendaries’ good side by treating their chosen one well. basically them being colleagues is an Angry Bastard Disaster that they need a lot of sorting through if they are ever going to be on truly good terms.

one time anakin straight up “force choked” lotor using his psychic powers in a fit of rage. lotor taunted him by choking out the words “vader…you haven’t changed.” this could easily have led to lotor’s death, as anakin was highly emotionally charged, but instead of snapping his neck psychically at that moment he dropped him to the floor and left the room. a sign of hope in their relationship perhaps?

honestly he’s? still a fucking mess??? like just because he left the sith doesn’t mean his issues are over. he’s still angry over his mother’s death and over padmé’s death, and now he’s angry that he let palpatine manipulate him and suffers from crippling guilt that he nearly killed his two kids. not to mention psychologically he’s part machine now so he has forgotten how to be human in some ways, and it’s in this way that he still hasn’t stopped being vader.

he doesn’t feel love for anyone except his twins, majjis, and padmé. he feels small likings toward other people and pokémon and he is trying to turn that into something deeper, but he’s still extremely stunted.

he gets terribly impatient with humans when they’re not as precise or as exacting as he is. in the og movies darth vader hated anything that he perceived to be incompetence, and anakin is the same way…except now that he’s part metagross, his standard of “competence” is so far above anything humans can do that he inevitably gets irritated and lashes out at people just for being human.

he’s lost all interest in “the little things.” he doesn’t appreciate the warmth of a sunny day or the coolness of a soft breeze or seeing a pretty looking bug on the sidewalk or anything like that, the only thing he is fixated on 24/7 is sharpening his intellect. he’s kind of like sabrina in that way.

MISC.

this would be his battle theme, full stop.

he has an aegislash variant that is basically a lightsaber: the hilt is metal but the blade is pure energy. 

he is an overprotective dad and in that way he’s kind of a hypocrite, because of how he was once the biggest threat to his kids before he reformed. he gets rEAL FUCKING ANGRY when leia starts dating han solo, saying he’s just a street rat from orre and he’ll eventually stab her in the back and she’s like do i need to remind you of how you almost killed us?

he doesn’t need to hold out his hand to force choke someone bc that’s not how psychic powers in pokéverse work, he just does it because he’s a dramatic little bitch

he eventually has five grandchildren, all of which he gets overprotective toward. on luke’s side: ben skywalker. on leia’s side: jaina, jacen, anakin and ren solo. and if you thought him disliking han solo was bad, you should see his reaction when ren starts dating palpatine’s granddaughter rey…he just tENSES any time he’s around her saying i sense a great potential for evil in her and his kids are like oh really, well we’ve been sensing that in YOU ever since we met you and we don’t judge, so………damn i hate canon reylo but i mean it could work in an AU where kylo ren was never evil