#idflawed writes

[identityflawed]

palpatine drabble

context: a little drabble from my oc fic, repurposed. this takes place shortly after the lawless episode in the clone wars.

cw: implied drug use, implied death... idk what to tag

characters: palpatine, reader

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The doors to the Chancellor’s public office opened with a well-oiled whir, and you were quickly greeted by deep crimson and all-encompassing gold.

The sun was setting on Coruscant, and weather control had artfully painted clouds across the sky, not obscuring the path of the sun, but burning the edges of the clouds in deep indigos and fleshy pinks. A single, blackened silhouette marred the expanse of vibrant color, sleeves flaring at the shoulders, and ice-white hair lined with aurulence like some sort of halo.

The man before you was as far removed from the angels of Iego as one could be, not that you were aware of it.

“Welcome back, Commander,” the Chancellor said as you crossed the threshold from jutting shadows into sharpened light. “I must offer congratulations on your reinstatement into the Jedi Order. Your hard work has paid off.”

“Dividends for the both of us,” you replied, polite as ever. You sat down in one of two chairs in front of his curving steel desk. 

The Chancellor stood motionless, as if considering the implications of your statement.

“And to think a lone Jedi Padawan could bring us to the brink of ending the war.” The man finally turned, his blue eyes catching the fading sunlight as he returned to his wide-backed chair. “Your Master must be proud.”

You laced your fingers in your lap, examining one of the angular decorations on Palpatine’s otherwise empty desk. “The war isn’t over, Chancellor. Grievous’ capture is…” You gestured loosely with your gloved hands. “A boost in morale, at best. Dooku would’ve been more valuable, but even then…”

The Chancellor studied your impassive expression as you trailed off into silence. His own hands steepled over the desk. He waited for you to finish your train of thought, but you made no motions to. 

Perhaps to any other person, it would seem like you were reserving your thoughts to avoid wasting the Chancellor’s valuable time, or musing openly and had come to the end of your considerations. Palpatine knew better. You was baiting him into asking a question, to permit discussion of a topic that the Council had shut down many moons ago: the implication that Dooku was not the leader of the Separatists, but the second-in-command. The presence of a Master. The name Darth Sidious.

“Grievous will be tried and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, I assure you,” Palpatine said, smoothly guiding the conversation in another direction. “There is no denying the horrors that… abomination has wrought upon our Republic.”

“Of that, I have faith,” you murmured, playing with the hem of your robe as you gazed out in the distance. “But he is not the issue. Even the staunchest of Separatists recoil at the tactics he has used to ensure victory. His trial and subsequent execution will bring relief to both sides of the war.”

“A necessary sentiment.”

“From an unnecessary source,” you countered, almost absent-mindedly, as if you weren’t calculating your every word and micro-expression with a professional finesse. “I was hoping for Dooku.”

“As were we all, but I would be hard-pressed to find a single person in the Republic willing to calumniate you over such a point.” The Chancellor smiled in your periphery. “You are the hero of the hour, and perhaps more than that.”

You let the silence stretch before speaking once more. “Perhaps I misunderstood your summons, Chancellor. I thought you gave sufficient commendations at the ceremony earlier today.”

The Chancellor looked somewhere behind you, and a service droid wheeled into the room, a tray of tea balanced over its skeletal fingers. “I wanted to speak to you privately. Eventually, the luster of your successes will fade, and some will begin to question the legitimacy of the cover story that the Jedi Council has conjured for you.” The tray was set on the desk between them. “With particular respect to the Council of Neutral Systems, whose leader you…” He rolled his hand negligently.

“Allegedly murdered, yes."

As the droid poured two cups of tea, the Chancellor eyed you expectantly. “There is video evidence. We managed to lock it down, but…”

Now he trailed off and let the implications speak for themselves. To his well-hidden surprise, you didn’t seem even mildly concerned. Instead, you reached for a small cup of tea and held it close to your chest, appreciating the warmth in the chilly room.

“You're a politician, sir. You should know the truth is often subjective,” you said vaguely. “The Council knows the truth.”

Palpatine took the first sip of the drink, closing his eyes to savor it for a moment. When he opened them again, you had shifted slightly, the hilt of your lightsaber glinting in the crepuscular light. “They have yet to share it with this office, I’m afraid.”

You stared down at the tea – a bloodred liquid, extracted from the pale pink blossoms of Naboo. “Give them time.” You took a tentative sip, your tongue swilling around your mouth. “The real story is not an easy one to process.”

Palpatine thinned his lips. “I will have to determine that for myself.”

You finally met his gaze, your eyes dark as event horizons. “You want me to tell you.” You set down your cup and leaned back in the seat. 

“It would be preferable to get the information from a firsthand source,” the Chancellor responded. “I am all too often ensconced in lies and hyperbole, and for once, it would be more than beneficial for the future of the Republic for me to know what exactly is going on in the galaxy.”

“I don’t believe for a second that you don’t know what’s going on, Your Excellency.” Your voice had no edge, but for the words. You parted your lips to say something else, but the notion seemed to slip from your mind.

Just as quickly, you shook your head, trying to clear the sudden fog that had befallen your senses. The Force seemed to draw away from you, even as you reached for it, clawed at it, seeking an explanation for the sudden shift and recoil. Palpatine stayed silent, statuesque, observing as you blinked rapidly, trying to push to your feet but realizing all too late that something was wrong.

Your vision was swimming, but you managed to lock onto the watery blue eyes of the Chancellor, realization drawing your face tight as they glinted pale gold.

“You.”

[identityflawed]

captain rex character study

tw: battle scene, death, gore, odd thoughts

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REX SOMETIMES FELT small. Laughably small, inanely so, like a tick on the mane of a manka cat, plucked off by a tamer and squished thoughtlessly between their fingers. Dead in an instant, with no knowledge of just how vast the real world was. No funerals for the bloodsucker, no mourners for the soldier.

Such emotions were an irregularity, almost certainly carried into his mind on the backs of war machines and mass destruction. Back on Kamino, in the barracks he shared with his birth cohort, he’d never felt like this. The pristine halls of Tipoca City were claustrophobic, despite the height of the Kaminoans that so often traversed them. He’d asked his brothers, in their quieter moments, if they’d experienced this oddity. Some said yes, some said no, others said they had no clue what he was trying to say.

Even his accelerated growth modifications did little to allay this… feeling. If he thought about it for too long, his head would begin to hurt. The complexities of his existence — twenty-four years of life, training and biological processes in a mere decade — were utterly useless in the face of a droid army’s blaster rifles and rhythmic footfalls.

And that was what he stared down now, so he stowed away his foible and ran headlong into battle alongside his men.

Christophsis, by all accounts, was a beautiful city with less-than beautiful people. Rex was born and raised seeing nothing but identical faces and his long-necked creators, and he'd thought that he'd be able to enjoy the new people he might meet while fulfilling his duty.

Not here.

Christophsians had a tendency to look down on those who immigrated from off-world, employing them as slaves or underpaid labor workers in the crystal mines that mapped the underside of their capital, Chaleydonia. Once renowned for its glittering crystalline skyscrapers and impeccably-made jewelry, the so-called Crystal City now sat in ruins, blue-green fragments breaking under Rex’s boots.

The buildings at the center of the City Plaza had suffered the most damage from Republic artillery, cannon fire shaking the ground from behind clone forces with distinct pauses between. Rex could picture his brothers hoisting steel shells into the cannon, calling aloud to send another streaking bolt of blue towards the clanker ranks.

He shook the image out of his head and focused on what was in front of him. His helmet HUD lit up in a frenzy, identifying standard B-1s, silver SBDs, the spindly legs of rotating spider droids and the rumbling overture of approaching tanks. Packed in as he was with his men on a standard frontal assault, it was difficult to bob and weave from the blaster fire. In his periphery, a few clones were shot down. Headshots sent a static noise through their shared comm line, but Rex found it within himself not to wince.

Droids numbered in the thousands as they surged through the ruined city, spewing superheated scarlet volleys towards them. A new squadron of spider droids reached the forefront of their attack, their turrets firing in sluggish, powerful bursts. Rex dove to the side to avoid the onslaught, and the ground where he’d been standing was instantly scorched and scarred by the shrieking hyphen of gas.

He rolled over his shoulder and popped back up just in time to see a darkened silhouette landing atop the spider droid’s sloping carapace. A pillar of sky-blue light illuminated in the figure’s hand, driven straight into the droid’s head. In one smooth, coordinated move, the silhouette hung from the saber and dragged it down the droid’s head, before sweeping it wide and relieving the machine of its only weapon. A final slice at the legs on the way down, and the droid crumpled in a whining, whirring heap, smoke and sparks pouring from the question mark -shape drawn across its body. The droids caught beneath it in its dying collapse let out shrieking wails as they were easily dispatched by nearby clones.

General Skywalker couldn’t deny himself a dramatic entrance, and Rex was glad that his commanding officer had skill to match his melodramatic flair. The golden-haired Jedi found Rex in the mess of things, but recognition was fleeting as he was swept back into the tide of battle.

Rex opened fire once more with his twin pistols, reloading them without pausing in his own miniature onslaught for even a second. Muscle memory allowed him to pop out cartridges with a hard flick of the wrist, and then angle his blaster so he could slide the next one in by lining it up on his hip. One then the other. As soon as that was done, he followed his general into the fray.

Another bout of cannon fire shook the ground, taking out a whole squadron of droids on the left, and several more on the right. Rex landed a series of shots on several battle droids, and watched with grim satisfaction as fire burned holes in their metal hearts, spewing glistening oil from the hole as they imploded. If he really focused, he could see his men doing the same with their repeating rifles. At least one — Patchwork — had managed to repair their only flamethrower, and was carving a path of destruction down the eastern front, noxious smoke gushing out into the air. Another — Strale, telling by the eye decal on his helmet — had fashioned a makeshift grenade launcher out of an SBD chestplate, and was launching them wantonly into the enemy lines.

A world’s worth of effort, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Rex felt himself zoning out, his body moving for him. Briefly, he could imagine a bird’s eye view of the skirmish, reducing each of his men into white pinpricks versus taupe and gray, their battlefront into a warring division of red and blue. That’s all he was, one in many. Just a number.

And whatever that meant for him… he found it mattered less as the man beside him was obliterated by a spider droid round. Blood splattered on his helmet, and his visor cleaned it immediately. So what if he was just one man? He had a job to do and a Republic he was proud to serve. Men he was proud to protect, a general he was proud to follow.

All he needed to do was shoot, and shoot to kill.